by Vince Flynn
“I will see if I can arrange that. Anything else?”
“Some clothes would be nice.”
“Of course. I will see what I can do.” As Mukhtar left the room he gave Kennedy one more comforting smile and then closed the door behind him. He waved for the guards to follow him down the hallway.
When they were far enough away Mukhtar lowered his voice and in Farsi said, “Wait five minutes and then bring her a pot to go to the bathroom in. I want you to watch her do it. If she gets shy, rip her panties off, but do not rape her. At least not yet. When she is done you can slap her around a bit, but do not hit her face. Then put the hood back on her. Do you understand?”
Both men smiled and nodded.
“Good. I will be back in one hour.”
48
Rapp stood behind Marcus Dumond and watched the younger man’s fingers fly over the computer keyboard with the skill of a concert pianist. Dumond was by far the most accomplished hacker at Langley, and perhaps in all the U.S. government. The MIT graduate had scanned the photos Rapp had taken and was now running a search through multiple databases to see if he could come up with a match.
“How long will it take?” Rapp asked as he zipped up the khaki flight suit Stilwell had given him.
“It could take five minutes. It could take five hours. That’s even if we have them in one of the databases.”
“You talked to NSA?”
“Yep. They came up with nothing.”
Rapp had asked Dumond to contact the National Security Agency and see if they could locate Kennedy’s secure mobile phone. Even if it was turned off they should have been able to locate it. The fact that they couldn’t meant her captors must have destroyed it.
“Any other ideas?” Rapp asked.
“Not really.” Dumond kept working the keyboard. “I’ll keep pounding away on this while you start pounding on them.” Dumond nodded at the stack of photos.
“I want you listening to the interrogations. I’ll try to do as much as I can in English, but if I switch to Arabic or Farsi, Stan will be with you to translate. Once we find out where these guys are from, I’ll need you to work your magic and try to confirm what they’re saying.”
“No problem.”
“All right. Let me know the second you find anything.”
“Will do.”
Rapp walked down the short hallway and poked his head in Stilwell’s office. It reeked of cigarette smoke. The chief of base was working his contacts, trying to find out where the local police commander had run off to. Stilwell interrupted the person he was talking to and told him to hold on for a moment. He covered the phone and said, “What’s up?”
“I need a video camera and some rubber gloves. Some drugs too.”
Stilwell held up a finger and put the phone back to his mouth, “Faris, I’m going to have to call you back.” Stilwell tried to hang up, but it was obvious the man had more to say. “Yes, there will be money. Lots of it.” Stilwell looked at Rapp and asked, “How much?”
“For the police chief or Irene?”
“Irene.”
Without flinching, Rapp said, “A million dollars cash and a U.S. citizenship…no questions asked.”
Stilwell repeated the information.
“Tell him the offer’s only good until midnight,” Rapp added. “And it has to lead to us getting her back.”
Stilwell listened and said, “Yeah, tax free, Faris. Sure…whatever you want. Just find out who took her and where she is…Yes, your wife and kids can come with you. If you help get her back, Faris, I will personally find you a house and help you move in. Now get going.” Stilwell stuffed the phone back in the cradle before the person could ask any more questions.
“Who was that?” Rapp asked as he examined some clothes hanging on a hook.
“One of my sources. He’s pretty good. He loves money and his wife wants to move to the states so he’s highly motivated.”
“Send him the photos of the three guys we have in lockup.”
“Good idea.” Stilwell looked up Faris’s e-mail address, typed a quick note and attached the photos.
“What are these?” Rapp pointed to the clothes.
Stilwell glanced up and smiled. “Those are my clerical robes. No better way to pick up women.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Not about picking up women, but you’d be amazed the doors those things open.”
“What’d you find out about the police chief?”
“Fucking rat bastard is nowhere to be found. I hope someone put a bullet in his head.”
“I’d like to talk to him first.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah…What kind of drugs do you have?”
Concern on his face, Stilwell asked, “Are you hurt?”
“No. I want to soften these guys up before I start in on them.”
Stilwell opened his desk drawer and grabbed a set of keys. He stood and said, “Follow me.”
The two men left the trailer and stepped out into the bright afternoon sun. They were cutting across the courtyard, dodging satellite dishes and antennas, when they ran into Ridley, who was talking on a mobile phone. Ridley held up his hand to stop the other two men and said to the person he was talking to, “Of course I’m going to pay you. Just send me the damn photos.”
Ridley stuffed the phone into his pocket and said, “Mitch, I know the president gave you a blank check, but I want you to at least consider something.”
Rapp stepped around him and kept walking.
Ridley fell in line and followed the two men. “I think it’s great that the president gave you the green light, but we both know if this thing ends badly, all of us are going to get thrown to the wolves. The damage to the Agency could be catastrophic.”
“Rob, if we don’t get Irene back alive, I really don’t give a shit who’s thrown to the wolves.”
“You don’t care if this mess sets the CIA back another twenty years?”
As Stilwell punched a code into a cipher lock on the door to the storage trailer, Rapp said, “How are we going to suffer any more under these idiots than we already have?”
“By you mutilating prisoners. Do you have any idea how that will play with the average citizen? They’re going to think we’re a bunch of monsters.”
“Right now I am a monster. Just like the guys who took Irene. That’s how you fight this damn war. Not with politicians, reporters, and lawyers.”
Stilwell opened a small refrigerator and started reading off labels. “Sodium pentothal, phenobarbital, lysergic acid diethylamide, heroin, speed…you name it, we’ve got it.”
“Give the fake cop the sodium pentothal, and the other two the speed.”
“Got it.” Stilwell grabbed a bottle of each and a handful of syringes.
Ridley was still hovering. “Mitch, please, just don’t do anything permanent. I mean, come on—you can’t cut the guy’s dick off. If that ever gets out, it’s going to look so bad.”
Stilwell was poking around the storage shelves. Without bothering to turn around, he said, “He’s got a point, Mitch. I mean, you’re just threatening to cut these guys, right? You’re not actually going to do it, are you?” Stilwell found a box of latex gloves and handed a pair to Rapp.
Rapp took the gloves and thought about the question for a moment. He had absolutely no problem doing whatever it took to get these guys to talk, but he saw a possible middle ground that might work to heighten the anxiety of his prisoners. Looking at Stilwell he asked, “Did your Kurds get those dead bodies stripped and dumped in a cell?”
“Last I checked they were working on it.”
“All right,” Rapp said to Ridley. “For now, I won’t cut their peckers off, but I’m not going to make any promises.” Pointing to Stilwell, Rapp said, “Give each of them a healthy dose, and I’ll be in there in five minutes.”
49
Congressional oversight was a nuisance Rapp had been working feverishly to circumvent for the m
ajority of his career. In theory it was fine; Congress doled out the money, and someone had to keep an eye on how it was spent. When it came to national security, though, things got a little more complicated. The number of elected officials who were willing to put the good of the country ahead of their own ego, and the success of their political party, was minuscule. Given the chance, they would tout freedom of speech, a person’s right to privacy, and any other platitude they could come up with, rather than shut their mouths and grapple with the hard fact that they were fighting an enemy who didn’t play by the rules. Invariably, only a small handful had the dignity to resist the call of the camera and personal fame. The politicians, for the most part, were lawyers; men and women who’d been trained to argue both sides of an issue with equal passion and vigor.
Rapp knew Ridley was right on this front. Washington was run by people like the attorney general, who had little if any practical experience with the war on terror. People who, if in Kennedy’s perilous position, would be praying frantically that someone like Rapp would be there to do absolutely everything it took to make sure they were rescued. These were the same men and women who would eventually sit him down in a committee room and dissect every move he’d made to save his boss and protect America’s most important secrets.
Rapp had no doubt they would be revolted by what he was about to do, but he didn’t give a shit. When the time came, he would go to them, raise his right hand, swear to tell the truth, and for perhaps the first time in his entire career, he would do exactly that. And then he would ask them what they would want Rapp to do if they were ever taken hostage. Would they want the State Department to begin negotiations for an exchange that might take years, while they were tortured and tormented? While their teeth fell out and they lost a third of their weight? Is that what they would want or would they want someone like Rapp to throw away the rule book, climb down in the gutter, and begin bashing heads?
Kennedy was too important to him personally, and too important to the country, for him to get squeamish. The three men in the holding cells were not merely suspected terrorists who’d been turned in by their neighbors and snatched out of bed in the middle of the night. These three had been caught in the thick of it, and that made what Rapp had to do significantly easier.
The door to the first cell on the left was wide open. Inside, the floor was covered with naked hairy men, piled one on top of the other. Blood was everywhere; smeared across fleshy, pale skin and pooling on the uneven, dented floor. Most of the bodies had bullet wounds to the head or chest. A few had wounds beneath the waist as well. Rapp figured he’d killed a good number of them. He surveyed the scene with a flicker of reservation. He told himself that the task before him was necessary to convince the prisoners that his threat was real. Three tugs and three quick slices, and he was done.
Rapp left the cell, wiped the blood from the blade on the thigh of his coveralls and put the knife away. He walked all the way to the end of the hall and stood in front of the last cell on the left. Rapp slid back the metal cover on the peephole and looked at the youngest of the three prisoners. He was sitting in a galvanized metal chair, his ankles handcuffed to the legs of the chair and his hands cuffed behind his back. Rapp stepped to the side of the door, undid the lock, and then swung it open just enough to toss one of the severed appendages into the cell.
Rapp closed and locked the door and then moved back to the peephole. The prisoner looked at the hunk of flesh at his feet. A look of confusion quickly melted away as he realized what he was looking at. The young man shut his eyes and began shaking his head vigorously. Rapp closed the peephole and moved to the next cell. He undid the door, entered the cell and stood over the man he thought was the commander of the group. The man was still strapped to a stretcher.
Rapp held the severed organ in front of the man’s face. He casually bent over, dropped it onto the man’s chest, and said, “I found out this guy was lying to me.”
Without saying another word, Rapp left and went to the last cell, where he did the exact same thing. He then found Stilwell and told him he wanted only audio recordings of the interrogations. Rapp checked the time and then continued back to the first cell. He grabbed an extra chair and brought it in with him. He positioned the chair four feet from the prisoner and sat. On the floor almost exactly between them was the severed penis. Rapp didn’t speak at first. He looked at the severed organ, up at the man across from him, and then back.
The prisoner was sweating. His knees were beginning to tremble, and his eyes were darting all around the small cell. He took in everything except the hunk of flesh at his feet. Rapp studied him. He tried to lock eyes, but the prisoner wouldn’t commit. The speed he had been given would only heighten his anxiety.
“I’m a soldier,” the prisoner blurted out in a panicked voice. “I shouldn’t be treated like this.”
Rapp smiled. “A soldier. That’s interesting. Most of the soldiers I know wear uniforms.”
The man closed his mouth tightly and shut his eyes.
“That body part there,” Rapp pointed to the organ on the floor, “belongs to one of your comrades. I told him not to lie to me. I told him I had plenty of ways to verify what he was saying. He thought he was smarter than me. Do you think you’re smarter than me?”
“No.”
“Good…then this should go much smoother. Let’s start with your name, and look me in the eye when you answer.” Rapp cocked his head slightly to the left and studied the man’s face.
“Corporal Nouri Tahmineh.”
“Where were you born?”
The man hesitated.
“This is the speed round, buddy. Rapid-fire. You don’t have to think about these. Just answer. I got five guys in another room that can hack into any computer system in the world. I’ve got another room full of people back in Washington working the phones. We’ve got spies in every frickin’ government in the region. Right now they’re calling around about you and if what you say is true, and you’re a soldier, we’ll find your military records. If the photo doesn’t match the name, or we can’t find you, I’m going to cut off your left nut just like I told you I would. Your friend there,” Rapp pointed to the object on the floor. “He gave me the wrong name, the wrong town, and a bullshit date of birth. He made it real easy for me. I just cut everything off in one fell swoop. You probably heard him screaming like the peckerless little pussy that he now is.”
Rapp pulled out his knife and extended the blade. “Here’s how dumb the guy is. After all that…he’s in so much goddamn pain he ends up telling me his name anyway. The point is, you’re going to end up telling me everything, so you might as well hold on to your manhood.” Rapp pointed the tip of the knife at the man’s crotch. “Now, are you ready for the speed round?”
The prisoner nodded quickly.
“Name?” Rapp fired the question like a drill sergeant.
“Corporal Nouri Tahmineh.”
“Place of birth?”
“Qom.”
The only city Rapp knew of by that name was approximately 100 miles southwest of Tehran. “Date of birth?”
“Fourteenth of January, nineteen-eighty-two.”
“You said you’re a soldier. What unit?”
“Twenty-Third Special Forces Division. Jerusalem Force.”
Rapp kept his emotions in check. The man sitting before him was not some insurgent volunteer. He was an Iranian soldier. A member of their elite Quds Force or, as some of the more anti-Semitic men referred to it, Jerusalem Force. His involvement in the kidnapping of Kennedy caused Rapp to see things in an entirely different light.
“How long have you been in Iraq?” Rapp asked while he tried to think of the implications of direct Iranian involvement.
“Almost two months.”
“All of it in Mosul?”
“Mostly…and the surrounding area.”
Rapp wondered if Minister Ashani had ordered this. Up until now, he had thought the man very reasonable. Now he wondered if the si
ncerity he had shown Kennedy was all an act. “You married?”
The man looked away nervously and hesitated.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Engaged.”
Good leverage, Rapp thought to himself. He unzipped the thigh pocket on his coveralls, and pulled out the stack of Polaroids. He flipped through until he found the one he was looking for. He held the stack in front of Tahmineh’s face and said, “Careful on this one. Name and rank, just like it says in the Geneva Convention. Which also says you’re supposed to be in uniform, but we’ll talk about that later.”
The young Iranian looked at the photo and hesitated.
“Your fiancée,” Rapp started, “will never marry you if the goods are damaged.” Rapp could tell the speed had taken full effect. Tahmineh’s knees were shaking and his eyes were darting around the room. “Look at me!” Rapp screamed. “Is she pretty?”
“Who?” the man asked genuinely confused.
“Your fiancée.”
“Yes.”
Rapp stuck the tip of the knife up against the man’s crotch. “Then you’re screwed. No way in hell a good-looking Persian woman is going to marry a guy without a dick. Now quit fucking around, and tell me who this is and remember I might already know his name. This could be a test and if you fail, off comes the first nut.”
“Captain Rashid Dadarshi…my commanding officer.”
Captain was the equivalent of a captain in the U.S. Army. “When were you told who you would be kidnapping?”
Tahmineh looked nervous. “I was never told.”
“Never?” Rapp said forcefully.
“Never. We were only told it was an American, and that we were not to harm her.”
Rapp looked at him skeptically even though he had a suspicion the man was telling the truth.
“We were only told yesterday of the plan.”
“Who told you?”
“Captain Dadarshi, of course.”
“No one else?”
Tahmineh shook his head.
