Unchained

by J C Ryan

  Some of Egypt’s troubles spilled into Iraq’s, with Muslim extremists joining ISIL at the beginning of the Iraq war. That was still very much a danger zone and expected to remain so for some time to come. One member of Millard’s remnant team rejoined the US Army, said to have been absorbed into Delta Force and acting as an advance observer. If that proved true, they had little hope of tracking him down and even less hope of getting within a country mile of his location. For the Army to allow that would be to compromise his mission.

  Another buddy pair’s last known movement had been to the Sudan, where they could be anywhere. Marissa argued that it could take years to track them down and it would be extremely dangerous to do given the ongoing civil war.

  The last member of Millard’s surviving group had simply vanished. They had no information on him at all. Brandt suggested they look for him in Afghanistan first, among the other paramilitary organizations active there. If that didn’t prove fruitful, they could go on to try to find the others. At the end of their discussion of the options, Josh and Marissa agreed that might be the best use of their waiting time.

  Josh had been right about his safety argument. Every time they questioned a local, they risked blowing their cover, which in Afghanistan was already thin. They could point to no articles coming out of their ‘journalistic’ research. If anyone questioned them, they’d have to explain they hadn’t completed their research, but if anyone dug deeper they’d find that these journalists made no notes and took no photos.

  Falling afoul of any law, and there were many that they were sure they just couldn’t even anticipate, would get them thrown out of the country or worse. The further they dug, the better they understood what Rex had been up against when he’d been assigned there for over a year. Eventually, though, they asked the right person the right question.

  It was in a coffee shop in a poor quarter of Kabul, on the edge of a teeming marketplace. Unbeknown to them this was the market which Rex frequented to pick up on gossip and befriend informants. Marissa overheard someone sitting at a table next to theirs with some men, talking about a friend he thought was dead. He was explaining that he’d given the friend a lead on a job loading a truck, but the truck had exploded the next day. Fearing his missing friend was the one who had caused the explosion and that the subsequent investigation would lead back to him, the speaker, he’d fled Kabul and only just returned.

  To Marissa, who understood every word the man was saying, the story sounded vaguely familiar. She translated for Josh. When they’d come to Kabul, they had a full briefing on Rex’s mission and his reports, and they’d seen how frustrated he was at the inaction he’d been under orders to maintain. Observe and report – that’s all he was supposed to do. But Josh had known of Rex’s reputation, and he knew Rex had a reputation for being a rebel at times, an agent who sometimes followed his own council, not the orders he was given. They’d also been briefed by Brandt about the mysterious bombings and other raids against the opium industry, which Brandt thought was the work of Rex Dalton. With the wisdom of hindsight, Brandt speculated it was probably what led to the false flag mission ordered by Carson that killed the mission team and maybe Rex. Or not.

  The truck bombing described by this man to his friends at the table sounded like one of those that could have been pulled off by Dalton, though it took place in Kabul rather than in the opium fields and factories around the country. But it was no secret that the truck was loaded with drugs at the time of the explosion.

  Marissa eavesdropped until the man she overheard expressed the opinion that he’d always been suspicious of his friend’s sudden appearance in Kabul. He was explaining that the friend had a story about where he’d been before, but the accent was slightly off, as if he’d been brought up in Kabul instead of where he said he was from. And the man would disappear for days at a time, then show up again asking questions about drug trade jobs.

  “If you ask me, he was an undercover policeman,” the man finished. “I liked him, though. I wonder where he’s gone now. It’s been weeks since I saw him.”

  One of the other men at the table wondered if his friend could have been vaporized in that explosion. It was a really big one. He’d seen the wreckage afterwards and said no one who was close would have been left recognizable.

  Marissa had quieted Josh’s prattle with a firm hand on his wrist. When the man stopped talking, she nodded toward him and squeezed Josh’s wrist.

  “Follow my lead. I’ll explain later,” she said in English.

  Josh nodded once.

  Marissa got up and went to the table where the man was still sitting. His companion had left, leaving the coast clear for her questioning.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in Arabic, “but I couldn’t help overhearing what you were talking about. Do you really know an undercover policeman?”

  The man looked offended. “It is not proper for you to speak to me. Tell your husband to come over here and ask me. I will not talk to you.”

  Marissa smiled. They’d chosen the right cover, though the only reason the man had for assuming Josh was her husband would have been that they were out in public together.

  “My apologies. I didn’t mean to offend you. My husband does not speak Arabic. Would it be okay if I translate for him?”

  The man though about it for a moment and nodded.

  Marissa asked Josh to join them and told him how it should be done. He’d need to ask her the questions while looking at this man, and she would translate the conversation. But it was imperative that he must always have the conversation with this man, not with her. She was just a sideshow.

  Josh nodded his agreement and fired the first question.

  “We are journalists, and if you could tell me what you know about that policeman, it would help our story.”

  “But I don’t know much about him.”

  “Can you tell us what he looks like? How tall is he? What is the color of his eyes, his hair? Any marks and features on his face or body?”

  Their informant shrugged. “Hair almost black, dark brown eyes. I noticed no blemishes on his face, and of course I did not see anything else except his hands. He has large hands, working man’s hands. And his nose, now that I think of it.”

  “What about his nose?”

  The man turned his profile to them, and then looked directly at them again, displaying a nose shaped rather like an arrowhead when viewed from the front, and a hawk’s bill from the side. “His nose looked like a youth’s.” He took the fleshy part of the end of his own and wiggled it. “This part was thinner. Like a European’s nose.”

  “Is that unusual?” Marissa forgot to let Josh ask the question first, and the man became offended again.

  “Tell your husband what you asked me. If he wants to know, I will answer.”

  Marissa, angry with herself for the mistake, told Josh what had happened. “I think that may be our answer, but I’m not certain it’s all that unusual. Pretend to be angry with me, and then ask him.”

  Josh put a bit too much authenticity into it for Marissa’s taste. Her eyes told him there would be consequences when he yelled, “How dare you address another man! You belong to me, and you’d better get that into your head.”

  Then he turned and asked the informant the same question Marissa had. Marissa translated after explaining that her husband was very angry with her for her mistake and apologizing.

  Mollified, the Afghani graciously accepted her apology. “It is not unusual among our youth. But this man is older. Perhaps my age.”

  Marissa’s guess was that the man was between thirty-five and forty, so if he was describing Rex, he was about right on the age estimate.

  She translated the answer for Josh and then asked, “Is there anything more to be gained from this man?”

  “I can’t think of anything. He’s just described fifty or a hundred million men of Arabic ethnicity. Rex was passing for native, so it could have been him, but I’d say best case scenario would be about fifty-m
illion-to-one.”

  Marissa sighed, and her shoulders slumped a little. “Well, at least the food and coffee here were good. Tell him thank you, and let’s get out of here.”

  Josh addressed the man with a smile and nod of thanks, Marissa translated, and they paid for his meal as a gesture of good will. The upside of their effort was, if either of them ever had to come back here on a mission, they’d have a friendly native to start with.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  REX HAD BARELY begun to consider the room, his situation, and the possible use of items in the former to help with the latter, when Iskandar returned. The tall Saudi strode straight from the door to Rex’s chair and backhanded him with such force that the chair turned over and Rex banged his head on the stone floor.

  So that’s the way it’s going to be. He’s going to beat me to a pulp while his boss is making atonement to Allah for doing so.

  He was relieved in a way. Being forced to watch the women being beaten had been far worse torture to him than anything this pig could do to him. Even if that included killing him.

  Rex wasn’t afraid of dying, he just didn’t have in mind doing so now.

  But it wasn’t enough for Rex to endure the beatings. Sooner or later, Mutaib would get tired of playing with him and kill him. Worse, when they killed him, they’d do the same to the women but probably rape and torture them before doing so.

  I got them into this – it’s my obligation to survive and get them out.

  He was going to have one hell of a headache, but he hadn’t lost consciousness. That meant no concussion, he thought. Then he started thinking about how he could turn the tables and stop Iskandar. He was on his own for now. He didn’t know where Digger was, if he was in range of the comms unit with his head phones or not. All he could do was try, but not with Iskandar in the room.

  Should have thought of that while I was alone.

  Rex was already in a bad shape. He barely noticed when Iskandar summoned someone to help set his chair upright again, with him still trussed to it. He forced his mind to ignore the pain and concentrate on what he was going to do when he got out. He never allowed himself to even think that he might not get out. He was thinking about what he could say to Digger when he had the chance, and how he could say it, to have the dog to lead the women out of the compound.

  He only paid more attention to what was happening in his immediate presence when the door opened and Mutaib returned. Silently, the prince walked close to him to examine his bruises and contusions. He stepped all the way around Rex’s chair and then backed up toward the wall with the door.

  “Continue,” he said.

  Iskandar had dismissed his helper. “Gladly, Your Highness,” he said. He stepped forward and punched Rex square in the nose. More blood started streaming from it.

  Rex smiled, allowing the blood to spill into his mouth, where he knew it would line his teeth and present a gruesome sight to anyone watching. “Is that all you’ve got?”

  Iskandar looked at Mutaib with an unspoken question in his eyes. The prince nodded. Iskandar squatted to release the bindings from Rex’s legs and his handcuffs just long enough to release the chair’s arms from them. He yanked Rex up and shoved him against the wall, where he swiftly attached a handcuff to each hand and clipped them onto two rings in the wall above his head. With his torso exposed and unable to bend over to defend it, Rex felt the first blow to his liver.

  He no longer had the ability to even try to tense his muscles to absorb such a blow. But Iskandar had made the mistake of leaving Rex’s legs unshackled. When he approached again, Rex flexed with his core and drew both legs up. Hanging from the handcuffs, he shot his legs out and caught Iskandar in the solar plexus. The force of the kick lifted him off the ground and sent him flying backwards, his heels and the back of his head hit the floor at the same time. Lights out.

  Despite his pain, Rex laughed out loud when Mutaib let out a girlish shriek and fled from the room. A moment later, two men came in and dragged Iskandar’s limp form out. The door slammed, an electronic click told Rex he’d been locked in, and he was alone.

  Time to return to his escape plan again.

  ***

  WITH HIS ARMS extended far above his head and shackled, Rex could stand for hours, but there would be a toll on him. First his hands would go to sleep as the blood drained from them and couldn’t return. They’d be useless if someone unshackled him. Permanent damage would occur if it went on for long. Furthermore, all his options for escape required the use of his hands.

  Rex supposed someone would be in eventually to beat him some more or kill him. In the meanwhile, he was hungry and thirsty, his hands were beginning to tingle, and to make matters worse, he needed to take a leak.

  It would have been laughable if he hadn’t been so desperate, but he was not going to give them the satisfaction of pissing in his pants.

  He took his mind off the urgency and searched the room with his eyes, taking note of everything in it, though there wasn’t much. He did it methodically, starting with the door, its lock, and its latch handle. It was a lever-type opener. He visually took the measure of the distance from him. Could he lift himself like he’d done to disable Iskandar and jostle the door open? That would force someone to come sooner.

  The chair he’d been sitting in was wood. If he could get loose, breaking one of its legs in just the right way would provide him with a fine weapon. He’d gladly skewer Mutaib. Iskandar’s discarded quirt lay in the corner. Rex could see no use for it as an escape tool, maybe as a weapon once he was out of the restraints. His fists, legs, and head, his Krav Maga instruments of destruction, would be much better weapons, if they weren’t useless blobs of tingling flesh by the time he had the chance to use them.

  There was nothing else in the room. The chair, the quirt, the rings he was half-suspended from, which he couldn’t see but knew were there. But the rings were not going to come out of the wall — he had already tried. And there was a lone lightbulb without a cover dangling from a wire stretching from the ceiling.

  Go figure. They didn’t put me in quarters reserved for honored guests. How many have gone through here before me? I’m willing to bet very few, if any, ever left here alive. But Rex Dalton will be going out on his own two feet.

  Rex tried bellowing for help, on the chance that Digger could hear him, or annoy any guards outside into coming in to check on him. After a while he realized the yelling was only making him thirsty. So, now, he was thirsty, and he needed to take a piss.

  “Not too bright, Einstein. Shut up and think,” he chastised himself aloud.

  Just when he thought there was nothing left to consider, the door opened. An impossibly old woman, Saudi he guessed, came in with a bowl of water and a crust of what looked like moldy bread. Her face was not covered by anything but ten thousand wrinkles. She was so stooped it was a miracle she didn’t topple over on her face, and she moved with the arthritic stiffness of a nonagenarian.

  He greeted her in Arabic, saying, “Thank you for the water, grandmother. Can you let my hands loose, so I can lift the bowl?”

  She ignored him, refused to even look at him, as she went about her business. She set the bowl on the ground, and the bread beside it. She picked up the quirt and tucked it into the folds of her garment.

  There goes one of my weapons. Do you mind? I wanted to strangle some asshole with that.

  When she left again without acknowledging him, he started laughing.

  “Hey! How the hell am I supposed to drink that?” he yelled.

  To his surprise and gratitude, the door opened, and a man came in, much younger than his last visitor. Rex didn’t wait to see what he would do. He spoke in rapid Arabic but deliberately mumbled and slurred his words to create the illusion that he was weak and crushed. “I must relieve myself. Can you let my hands loose, please? They have brought me water and bread, but I need my hands also to drink and eat.”

  The young man was short, but bulky. Rex estimated the man would
outweigh him by fifty pounds or more, and it appeared to be all muscle.

  I can take him even with my hands asleep. If I can just get them loose. But this is not the time to put up a fight, not yet.

  Without speaking, the man reached to release Rex’s left hand, staying as far away from it as he could while doing so. He kept one end of the handcuff around Rex’s wrist and used the other to control Rex’s movements and keep his swing short. Rex could have made a move to hit him in the throat with an elbow, but controlled the urge to go into action.

  The young man wrestled Rex into the chair and cuffed his hands together in the back with zipties but didn’t tie them to any part of the chair.

  “When I have gone, you may do as you wish. Drink from the bowl like a filthy dog if you want. Piss in your pants, I don’t care. The prince wants to keep you alive for a long time while he tortures you, but the rest of us would gladly kill you. Enjoy your life while you can. What’s left of it is going to be full of pain and suffering. I wish the prince would allow me to give you the deathblow, but I think he is keeping that privilege for himself.”

  Rex didn’t respond, just sat there, limp in the chair, keeping up the ruse that he was spent.

  The man stepped through the door, and Rex heard the distinct electronic click that told him the lock was engaged. He was in far better shape to make an escape now. His hands were as good as free, he had water, sustenance in the form of bread, and he could finally take a piss. And the guard had just given him the opportunity he was waiting for. The zipties.

  Life was good.

  Rex had been trained to defeat handcuffs, duct tape, ropes, and zipties. There were three or four ways to get out of handcuffs provided one had some sort of metallic pin or a double-jointed thumb. But he didn’t have to worry about that now.

  Contrary to popular belief, zipties are not invincible. There are many ways to defeat them. The first, of course, is to cut them, but Rex could see no rough edges in the room. He could break the chair, but cutting the zipties with a rough edge of wood would likely be a good way to make a bloody mess of his wrists before he got the ties cut.