“You can leave if you want to.”
“And the others? What about them?”
For a brief moment an insane hope lights within her. He wants to save her again. She still means something to him. They can be together again, just the two of them. A desperate voice inside warns her: Don’t talk to him.
“The others stay here.”
“I belong with them.”
“If that’s what you want.”
Is there a glimmer of regret in his eyes? She looks away. She doesn’t want to know. She just can’t think that way. She squeezes his shemagh, which is still in her pocket. Now, the scarf is nothing more than a talisman. Will she feel the same throbbing between her legs when she puts a bullet in him?
She’s led down into the storage room beneath the stall. Hearing Schrøder’s steps behind her, she stops to support herself against the uneven wall. The darkness feels like an impenetrable third wall that won’t let her pass.
She feels Schrøder’s hand on her shoulder, and a jolt of electricity races through her. He steps past her and then disappears into the darkness.
When she reaches a large room illuminated by exposed light bulbs, she sees her captured comrades sitting on cushions all along one wall and a group of armed Afghans facing them.
She sees Sara sitting by herself at the opposite end of the room, with Zuy standing by her side, as always. Does he ever sit down?
Sara is uneasy. She looks back and forth from one group of men to the other, as if she’s looking for something.
She’s searching for something, thinks Hannah, something she hasn’t gotten enough of. She’s waiting for us to start killing each other. That’s why she led us here.
17
The prison guards order them to take off their clothes. Sara doesn’t look away when the men stand naked in front of her. She sees right through them.
Sørensen searches his breast pocket frantically for his photo of Frederik and Anton. He won’t surrender it. Each of them receives a shalwar kameez. As they sit on the floor in the dimly lit room, it’s difficult to separate them from their guards. Adam, Viktor, Dennis, and the chaplain already have full beards. Simon has never had anything more than a few wisps of hair on the end of his chin, along with a little fuzz along his cheeks. Here, they’re all forced to let their beards grow. Sørensen and Steffensen, who were clean-shaven, already have some stubble.
Hannah has also received a shalwar kameez. She’s relieved—she would have never been able to handle being confined in a burka.
They’ve been here for two days. Food is served in clay bowls and there’s no variation; it’s always rice and lamb, along with flat, unleavened bread baked in a tandoor oven. They have no idea where the oven is or where the rest of the food is prepared. They haven’t seen any daylight, and the constant twilight they’re living in contributes to their overall lethargy.
They receive water in plastic bottles, which they also pee into. Those who have to go stand in a corner with their backs to the others—but they soon discover how impractical it is to stand up and at the same time try to keep a grip on the baggy trousers and long robes. So they do what they’ve seen the Afghan men do, squat down to pee, still with their backs turned. Hannah and Sara are led off to a dark cubbyhole that reeks of shit and ammonia. It’s also where the men shit, on top of a crack in the floor, perhaps a natural fissure in the rock. There’s a pot of water next to it; they’re supposed to wash off their ass with their hand.
The soldiers sleep a lot, rolled up in the sleeping bags they’ve been allowed to keep, or else they pace restlessly. Viktor makes sure they do CrossFit until, exhausted, they all fall to the floor. The enormous loss they’ve suffered hits them now. Half their platoon is gone. The sense of loss drains them of all energy. They left to avenge the dead; now they feel as if they’re trapped with them and just waiting to suffer the same fate. Foolishly, they believed their hatred would make them invincible. The opposite happened. Hatred made them blind, and now they’re helpless. They live, breathe, eat, drink, and shit. That’s all.
They stay on one end of the room and their guards on the other. The same watchful eyes are on them at all times; the same Kalashnikovs point in their direction. Schrøder is nowhere to be seen.
Hannah has let her loathing for Sara take over. The Afghan woman is always staring straight ahead, as if she’s in a trance. Zuy, on the other hand, has been revitalized. He’s often with the guards, who let him hold their pistols. Hannah notices that they’re all Neuhausens.
They’ve all taken a survival class, the so-called CAC course—Conduct After Capture—where they’ve been carefully taught how to behave if they’re ever taken hostage. They had hoods pulled over their heads, were beaten and shoved down steps, and had threats and insults screamed at them. They learned never to say they were atheists or nonbelievers in some vague sense. Atheist, secular, generally enlightened—that’s the worst. Fundamentalist Christian is better. Fanaticism is something the assholes can understand.
They also learned to prattle on about their own private lives—wives, children, siblings—to invent entire families if necessary, and to stake everything on creating a personal connection, making it more difficult for the executioner to pull the trigger at that crucial moment. Act like you respect them. Abandon all your principles. Trash your own government. Tell them you realize you’ve been fighting on the wrong side and you regret it. Whatever it takes. Your survival depends on it.
They try to make contact with the Afghans. No response. The guards keep an eye on their hands but seem totally uninterested in anything else.
Are they prisoners? Hostages? They don’t have the faintest idea. And the man keeping them locked up knows them at least as well as they know themselves. They just don’t know anything about him. They don’t know if he’s working for someone or if he’s a crazy convert. They have no idea what his motives are.
Why did Schrøder select some of them to die and let others go? Why exactly are they among the survivors? What’s the pattern? There’s a guilty feeling behind their questions. They look at Adam.
“You knew something was wrong?” asks Simon.
Adam looks down. “You wouldn’t listen.”
“You could have done something.”
“It was just a hunch. I saw him threaten one of the interpreters. Roshaan.”
“Did you have something personal against him? It seemed like that.” Simon scrutinizes Adam’s face.
Hannah looks down. She’s the one they should really be reproaching. She was closer to Schrøder than any of them. She’s searched her mind for some clue, a warning, something that should have been a red flag. The last time they were together, he trashed her friends, and then there was all that nonsense about being an unholy warrior and the obese man with osteoporosis who had a mental breakdown. Were they hints? She didn’t understand it at the time, and she still doesn’t understand it. Yes, he said that no one was going after their relatives, but she assumed that was just an offhand remark. She’s wracked with guilt. Her relationship with Schrøder is the last thing she wants to talk about.
“You have no idea how much I blame myself for not doing anything,” says Adam. “At least something.”
Hannah feels relieved. He could have passed the blame onto her; he’s protecting her. She’ll have to thank him. But how? She’s filled with despair again.
Steffensen says nothing about the interpreter’s warning. Unlike Adam, he heard it directly from Roshaan. Still, it all sounded so improbable, and he was wound up when the accusation was made against the platoon leader. His judgment was clouded. What was he supposed to do—arrest one of his own officers because of unspecified accusations from an interpreter who had just tried to bribe him?
But why should some of them die and not others?
Any way they look at it, aren’t they all doomed simply because they were part of Schrøder’s platoon?
What if they hadn’t gone out on their revenge mission? They’d be sitting in Ca
mp Price, out of danger, while drones, satellites, and the American Special Forces hunted down Schrøder.
They all know the question is pointless. They had no choice. They couldn’t stay where they were—they had to go. This is about their own survival, as people, as soldiers, and as comrades. Everything in them demanded that they acted as they did. They look at each other, collapsing under a sense of the inevitable in their decision to go out on this mission. Whether or not they’ve brought a death sentence down on themselves, they’re here now and that can’t be changed.
“But we must be able to do something, damn it. He needs to be killed!” Dennis stands up. “If three or four of us all jump on him at once, we can reverse the situation. He’ll become our hostage—and we can threaten to kill him if they don’t let us go. I doubt they’d just start shooting all of us.”
“Can we take that chance?” responds Viktor, his voice calm and collected as ever. “What if they really don’t care about him? And do you really think we’d be able to grab him before we’re all mowed down? Take a look into the eyes of the guys guarding us. They aren’t high on anything, and they’re not just sitting there sleeping, especially if he’s nearby.”
Steffensen also stands up. “If no one else wants to say it, then I will.” He smiles apologetically.
“A soldier must never lose courage,” he says, making his voice sound as earnest as possible. “But there’s something else we mustn’t lose—and that’s our common sense. Look around. We’re unarmed, surrounded by nothing but armed men. And we have no idea how many more of them are outside. I know you’ll hate what I’m about to say, but I’ll say it anyway. The only way we can survive is if Schrøder stays alive. If he dies, they’ll attack us from all sides—”
“We kill him!” interrupts Dennis.
Steffensen smiles indulgently. “Good luck with that.”
“What are you really trying to say?” Dennis stares at him.
“That we have to learn to live with Schrøder for a while. Those are the conditions. So we might as well get used to it.”
Sidekick has slept through the entire discussion. Without his camera, he’s nothing.
18
On the third day they’re led back up out of the cellar. In the street there are small ash heaps where the bonfires burned; the camels have also left their marks. Otherwise there’s no sign of life. They stand for a moment shielding their eyes from the unfamiliar light, and then they notice a ladder leading up onto a roof.
Armed men are waiting on the roof. This is their new life as prisoners, unarmed with guns pointed at them at all times.
Schrøder is standing on the roof and surrounded by bodyguards. Under one arm he has a laptop. “Where’s Andreas?” he asks.
“Are we going to be shot now?” asks Adam.
Schrøder ignores him. “There’s something I want to show you.” He points down into the valley. A caravan, like the one whose arrival at the bazaar meant the end of their revenge mission, inches across the deserted landscape. The camels rock forward in one long row. Women, children, and men walk next to the heavily loaded beasts.
Schrøder leads Andreas to the edge of the roof and points south, where a heavy buzzing makes the air vibrate slightly. Then he hands him a video camera, which Andreas recognizes, his face lighting up in a smile. Flipping open the screen, he turns it on.
A drone glides over the ridge of mountains at the valley’s other end. Right now they’re exposed and clearly visible on a roof in a ghost town that would make a perfect hideout for insurgents. From a distance, they’re indistinguishable from the Afghans. Is this how they’ll die—killed by a Hellfire missile set off by some pimply nerd sitting at a computer in Nevada whose superior just confirmed that they look suspicious enough to warrant a death sentence?
Schrøder and the guards don’t move. They’ll die, too, if the drone attacks. They can’t be that crazy, can they?
Schrøder smiles. “Start filming now,” he tells Sidekick, and then he squats down with the laptop.
“Tell me—is the drone flying the usual ten to fifteen kilometers high?” asks Steffensen.
“Not this one.”
Once the drone passes over the ridge, its shadow falls across the pale-gray valley. The nomads flee in all directions, the camels in a heavy trot with their owners hanging on to their bridles, and women holding children with one hand and their flowing skirts with the other while their veils flutter behind them. The older girls have children hanging on their hips. A couple of boys race off in a dizzying sprint. Compared to this breathtaking whirl of activity, the drone seems to be moving in slow motion. Its silvery cross hovers over what had just been the center of the caravan, now torn apart by panic’s centrifugal force.
The hovering metal monster buzzes in the air while its relays wait for the impulse telling it to rain destruction on the scattering crowd. A galloping camel stumbles into the desert as if it has tripped over something, but before the heavily burdened animal hits the ground, it vanishes in a fireball. A powerful blast rolls across the valley, reaching the onlookers on the roof. They’re used to seeing bombs hit their targets in geysers of dirt and shrapnel, but they’ve never seen a camel obliterated by a fire-spewing dragon.
Schrøder’s long fingers dance across the laptop’s keyboard. “And now!” he says, sticking one finger up in the air like a conductor lifting his baton right before the grand finale. Andreas turns the camera on him and then pans across the valley.
The drone spins around like a helicopter that just took a hit in its tail rotor. It wobbles as if an inexperienced pilot without knowledge of even the most elementary functions on the dashboard were inside it. Then it straightens out and sets course back toward the southern ridge where it first appeared. It flies lower and lower, as if heading toward an invisible landing strip, and then slams into the mountainside in a volcanic explosion. A prolonged blast rolls across the valley before echoing from the opposite side, making it sound as if the crashed metal dragon is struggling against the throes of death. Powerful smoke rises from several spots on the steep hillside, now littered with remains from the wreckage. Farther down, dried-out vegetation bursts into flame; the entire hillside soon looks like it’s burning.
The sight hypnotizes them. They know enough about drones to know that what they’ve just witnessed is impossible. The drone never came under fire. It simply adjusted its course and self-destructed. Mechanical error, computer error, or human error? There are countless explanations, yet every one of them must take into account what they just witnessed. They were invited onto the roof to observe a catastrophe that Schrøder already knew would happen. That wasn’t some e-mail home to Mom he was composing on his laptop when the drone crashed.
They have it on camera, and the camera never lies. Andreas is still filming.
Schrøder looks at them—or is he looking at the camera?—with a triumphant expression he has no intention of hiding. “The dog barked,” he says, “but as you can see, the caravan is still moving.”
Down in the valley, the caravan has regrouped. A little ways off there’s a dark, scorched crater from the missile’s impact and the remains of the blown-up camel. The survivors continue their long march through the landscape.
And the mountainside is still burning.
19
“Maybe you can hack into a drone’s computer system and screw around with the GPS so it’s disoriented—but taking control of it?” Steffensen shakes his head. “I’ve never heard of that.”
They’re back in their underground prison. Sara and the boy have been down here the whole time. Zuy gets up and walks over to one of the Afghans as if the man has been expecting him. He points at the handgun hanging on the prison guard’s holster. Their usual game.
The Afghan takes out his gun and places it in the boy’s hand. Once again he shows him how the weapon works. Zuy holds the pistol in his outstretched hand.
“I have it on film.” Andreas tinkers with his camera. “And, bang! It happens!”
Zuy points the gun’s barrel at one of them and then another. They ignore him.
“There’s some nerd sitting in front of a computer in Nevada controlling this drone,” says Andreas. “And then Schrøder, with a laptop here in Afghanistan, flies it right into the side of a mountain. It’s fucking crazy.”
Suddenly there’s an ear-deafening bang. Terrified, they all look around. Zuy has just fired the pistol. There’s no surprise or fear in his eyes. Furious, the Afghan yells at him. The fool gave his weapon to a child without first securing it.
Zuy points the same gun right at the man’s chest. The determined look in his eyes indicates that he’s not playing a game. The Afghan, taking a cautious step back, says something else to the boy, who shakes his head dismissively. He’s still holding the pistol.
The Danes stare at each other. Zuy’s back is to them; he’s about seven meters away. Could one of them reach over and wrest the weapon from him? But the Afghans are standing there with their rifles—one pistol won’t be enough to take them out of the game. Take the boy as a hostage and order their guards to lay down their weapons?
The room is charged with tension. The soldiers and their guards look back and forth between each other and the boy. In a moment everything will explode. This whole time Sara has been sitting with her back against the wall, wearing that same dead expression that seems to indicate that her mind is on autopilot. Now she stands up and, crossing the room, goes straight toward her son. There’s a strange light in her eyes.
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