Sam Wick Ultimate Boxset

by Chase Austin

He knew Josh would talk. They all talked, eventually. No man, no matter how strong he was on the battlefield or in his training, could endure this kind of torture forever. Getting them to talk wasn’t the problem. True skill lay in getting them to tell the truth. Josh was no different. So far, he had stuck to his story of being a CNN reporter in Afghanistan, a story that Wasim knew was an out-and-out lie, but he had not been grilled enough yet. He would be soon.

  Chapter 17

  Zahoor noticed the man before anyone else. The man running towards them as though his very life were at stake, waving his hands and calling out desperately, looking back every now and then like he was being hunted, his blood-soaked clothes, hands and face telling a compelling tale of survival even from afar. The other men in the caravan turned to look at him.

  The scene was a shock for everyone else but for Zahoor, it was more than that. He had seen this before, with his own father. A wave of anger and fear rose in his chest.

  Wick’s right foot hit an insignificant rock and his speed unraveled rapidly. He swerved in the air and landed flat on the uneven ground, but that didn’t stop him. His hands lifted him off the ground and his legs kicked the sand, propelling his body forward. His crawling soon turned into a struggle. Zahoor saw the man in trouble and his natural instinct was to step forward and help, but one of the boys grabbed his arm reminding him of his place.

  Wick noticed Zahoor’s keenness and identified the benefactor who could help him get into the group without much resistance. He struggled to his feet and altered his course.

  By the time he reached the caravan, he was panting hard, his heartbeat was through the roof, his eyes were watery, and his throat parched. He bent over, hands on knees, wheezing.

  Zahoor could not resist this time. He stepped forward to help Wick but before he could grab him by the shoulder, Wick clutched Zahoor’s left hand. His eyes met with Zahoor’s who saw a pair of fearful brown eyes on a bloodied weather-beaten face. He signaled the nearest person to get some water. The boy, despite his reluctance, didn’t have the heart to refuse the visibly shattered man. He ran and got a small bottle of water. Zahoor handed it to Wick who took it gratefully and gulped it down in one breath, his eyes closed.

  Wick splashed the last few drops on his face, getting rid of the blood from his eyelids.

  “Thank you.” Wick’s eyes were moist with gratitude.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Omar from Mushan village. I went to Kandahar market, with my father, to sell our goats. On our way home, some local dacoits attacked us. We fought hard, but they had numbers on their side. They killed my father, but I managed to escape.” Wick’s sobs grew heavier as his story reached its sad ending. He could see Zahoor and the elders of the caravan shaking their heads in sympathy. “I just need to get to Zangabad, my maternal uncle lives there. Can you please take me with you to the village? It’s very near, but I’m scared they will find me again. Please, please help me.” Wick was on his knees, pleading with his hands folded. It was a gut-wrenching sight for everyone, a man pleading for his life.

  The elders of the group glanced at each other. Wick watched them go into a huddle away from everyone, his eyes full of hope, his face wet with tears. The success of his plan rested on those select few.

  “What do you say?” the first elder asked an open question.

  “We don’t know him. How can we trust him?” the man standing next to him protested.

  “But we cannot leave him in this condition,” a third man chipped in.

  “What if his assailants attack us also?” the fourth chimed in.

  “Then we cannot stay here for long. Zangabad is only thirty minutes from here.

  We need to keep moving,” the first man said in a worried tone, scanning the horizon.

  “We still need to decide about him,” the fourth one said, looking at Wick from the corner of his eyes.

  “If he is saying that his uncle will meet him in Zangabad then we only need to take him till there and then he’s on his own,” the third man reasoned.

  “His blood-soaked clothes can be a problem for us when we enter the village. There will be questions.”

  “I have clean spare clothes he could wear. We can hide him,” Zahoor said quickly, seeing an opportunity to sway the decision.

  The four elders looked at each other. There was no unanimous decision on Wick. They were worried about the dacoits, but a desperate man was in need and Allah wouldn’t be kind to them if they left him to die. Finally, one of the elders glanced at Zahoor and nodded. It was all he needed. Wick saw Zahoor’s lips widening into a smile, and he knew they had agreed to take him with them.

  “You need to change into these.” Zahoor handed a set of spare clothes to Wick with an encouraging smile. “Your clothes are no longer usable. You can put them in this.” He handed him a cotton bag.

  Wick hadn’t seen this coming. He knew he could not give up his coat. It had everything he needed.

  “This coat is the last thing from my father before his death. Please don’t take it from me, I will wear the rest as you wish,” Wick pleaded with moist eyes.

  Zahoor stared at Wick. His own situation had been similar once. He smiled and agreed but decided not to discuss this with the elders. He knew they wouldn’t be thrilled about it.

  Wick got behind a sitting camel, away from everyone’s eyes and changed swiftly into the new clothes. He soon donned a long kurta and pajama. They ill-fitted him but his movement wasn’t hampered. That’s all he needed.

  The caravan started its journey again with Wick walking along with the others. Thirty-five minutes later, they were at the village entrance.

  Chapter 18

  The Ford came to a halt near the foot of the rocky hill. Killing the engine, Eddie started his labored climb on foot to the hilltop. He was also frequently checking the red dot on his GPS device. He needed a vantage point to the location thirty-seven degrees north from the hilltop. The sun’s position was crucial, and daylight was waning. He checked his earpiece. There was no response from Wick. He could only hope Wick would be at the right place at the right time, before the sunset. Meanwhile, he needed to find his spot.

  Wick looked around and found a marked difference between the village and how he had perceived it to be. They had decorated the path to the marketplace with small blue flags. Once the caravan reached the entry spot, the event organizer came to meet the elders and escorted them to the registration desk. Zahoor moved forward and placed a pile of papers on the desk. The organizer looked satisfied with the documents. He then asked one of his men to show Zahoor and the others the spot reserved for them for the next seven days. Wick remained invisible during all this. He wanted to break free of the group as soon as possible, and he knew he would get a chance soon.

  Sure enough, Zahoor and few young people started on the first thing they had to do—erect tents. The rest started to unload their wares. There was a lot to be done and, in the bustle of work, Wick was forgotten.

  He secretly checked his watch for the GPS information. Wasim’s SUV was a mile to his left. He checked the sun’s position and found himself calculating the time left before darkness would descend. There wasn’t much time left for him to finish the job. He had to start his journey now.

  Chapter 19

  Wasim checked his Casio F-91W, given to him by Basit. It was a cheap watch, easy to buy anywhere in the world, and it could also work as a handy bomb detonator if needed. But for now, it only marked his depleting patience.

  He’d have preferred to simply shoot the American and move on to better things, but his commander had other thoughts.

  Basit had gone to meet the Great Cleric at Kandahar. The Cleric’s involvement had further complicated what should have been a relatively simple situation. Wasim knew it was above his pay grade and he shouldn’t think much about it, yet the sudden interest of the Cleric in their prisoner intrigued him. It didn’t help that he had a deep aversion towards the man himself. Wasim didn’t approve of the Great Cle
ric’s way of operating. He was slow and indecisive. Maybe it was his age—he was already on the wrong side of fifty.

  The other thing bothering him was the place itself—Division 71, where he was standing.

  He abhorred this windowless underground bunker. It literally made his skin crawl. He hated it more than the others. It had the vibe of a mental hospital. Only the attendants here were not like the orderlies in white uniforms.

  This place had been refurbished recently. A brainchild of the Great Cleric, it was designed to weaken the human spirit. Wasim did not understand how the handlers who manned this facility and walked these corridors resisted the oppressive claustrophobia and depression this place induced.

  From outside, the facility looked like any small one-room hut standing in the middle of ninety acres of barren land. Cattle grazed the vast tracts. Shepherds tended their herds. Maintaining this kind of cover was especially important given the prying eyes of the American satellites that constantly hovered ghost-like over their country. The ruse had worked perfectly so far. No one knew about the shelter’s existence. Even the Taliban leadership had no information about its existence. It was completely off the books. The army securing it came from the personal wealth of the Great Cleric, a by-product of his connections in the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI. The sweet irony was that it was U.S. aid aimed to eliminate terrorism that partly funded the facility.

  It was a relic of an earlier war, one of several sites used by the British in the 1900s to fight against the Afghan tribal armies. Terrible things had been done to people in this crypt. This was where the most notorious Afghan tribal leaders had been tortured and executed to death. People, in fact, had forgotten about it, yet it was now back in use.

  It wasn’t a pleasant place, but Wasim knew it was a necessary cog in the wheel of fueling rage against America. He knew its significance, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

  Wasim looked at the prisoner again. Fletcher was now hanging somewhere between light and dark, his head still, his chin touching his chest.

  Chapter 20

  Wick covered the distance quickly, continually checking the GPS. In a few hours, the sun would set, and darkness would descend on the plain barren lands making the extraction more difficult than it already was.

  Once he was at a safe distance from the facility, he stood casually amidst a roaming flock of sheep whose shepherd was nowhere in the sight. His silenced Beretta and two Ka-Bar blades lay well within his reach in his coat. Pretending to count the sheep, he casually took in his surroundings.

  The wooden door of the target house was manned by two men, who were currently cooling their heels on a cot kept just outside the door. A gust of wind lifted their shawls and revealed that both were armed.

  From outside, the facility looked like a village hut made of mud, but Wick knew better. It was just a ploy to hide the concrete chambers underneath from the prying eyes of American satellites.

  Wick knew Josh would be facing intense suffering in those underground chambers. How long he could sustain the torture was the critical question. The state he was in would decide the manner of his rescue.

  He switched on his mic and whispered to Eddie. “You ready?”

  Chapter 21

  The sun glinted off the vast tract of sands as Eddie Vicar lay prone in his vantage point, heavily camouflaged, eye to the lens of a .300 Win-Mag sniper rifle, his weapon of choice. His Bible lay on his left. Tracking the scene, sweating his ass off over a hot rock and under tons of sand. Covered with local grass and scrape leaves, it was a fucking hot case. All he had seen since he began his stakeout were minor dirt-devils swirling in the farmlands some twelve hundred yards away. The dirt tasted like dogshit. He tried to ignore the discomfort as he lay waiting for this chance. His eyes scanned the only wooden gate in the vast desolate land.

  At long last, Wick’s voice crackled in his earpiece. Time for action. He knew Wick was much closer to the target than he was. His job was to give Wick the best possible entry.

  Sand and rocks, goats and shepherds, he blurred everything else out of his vision and focused on the two men sitting on a cot outside the door. The door opened and a third man came out, talking on his cell phone, his hair tossed by the wind.

  Eddie keyed the mike and whispered, “I got a new military-age male, talking on a cell phone, standing at the door.”

  Wick responded, “Got it.”

  Eddie shifted the rifle’s crosshair slightly to the left of the man, compensating for the wind. He inhaled deeply, held, then expelled the air. Sucked in air again. Closed his eyes. The world flooded back in. He felt his breath filling every cell of his body. This was his ritual. Master your breath, master your mind. After that pulling the trigger became an inanimate effort as he exhaled, he tapped his natural respiratory pause and space between his heartbeats. He was trained to kill. The rules were simple—aim for the eye, then you might hit the neck. The worst-case scenario was to aim for the stomach, where you might hit the legs or nothing.

  The man with the cell phone looked to his right as if there was something incoming from that direction. Eddie glanced in that direction and paused. An open Toyota was racing towards the hut leaving a trail of dust in its wake.

  Wick saw it too. The SUV covered the distance in less than ten minutes and stopped near the door.

  Looking through the scope, Eddie smiled.

  Chapter 22

  “Did you notice the Toyota?” Eddie asked.

  “Yes, but I couldn’t get a clear picture of the men in it.”

  “You will find this interesting.”

  “What?”

  “Abdul Basit has just entered the facility.”

  “Abdul Basit!” This time even Wick couldn’t hide his shock. He was the reason Wick was in Afghanistan for the last five months. Barely a week before his arrival in Kabul, the Taliban had killed seven people in a bomb attack on a police station. The month before, thirty-seven people had died in a Taliban attack on a well-known expat restaurant. Abdul Basit had led both attacks. Officially, he was wanted dead or alive for the several atrocities he had committed, but his true value lay in his knowledge of the key players and plotlines that linked the terror networks of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The TF-77 wanted to get their hands on him, and they needed him alive. Wick had been on Basit’s tail for the last several months that had taken him to Pakistan, Iraq and then back to Afghanistan.

  But even Abdul Basit was a pawn in the larger scheme of things. He worked for a man called Irfan-Ul-Haq, commonly known as the Great Cleric. Haq was their main target, but being a religious figurehead in Pakistan, there was little they could do about him unless they could piece together enough evidence to unequivocally show his connection with the Taliban. Only Abdul Basit could give them those proofs, and now he was here.

  In the underground facility, Wasim stood watching Josh. He had always considered himself a reasonable man, and he understood that the man sitting on the other side of the mirror could be a hardened professional, ready to die rather than betray his country. But Wasim doubted Josh had ever encountered a ruthless interrogator like Basit.

  Basit was an expert in getting the nastiest secrets out of any person. He had once explained his methodology to Wasim - People seldom considered the means necessary to get what they genuinely sought and that was what made them weak and ineffective. Basit focused on what he wanted. The next step was knowing who could provide him with what he wanted, and what he himself needed to do to get it from that person.

  If the path to his desires involved causing unthinkable pain to a person so much so that the person begged to be allowed to die, he would not hesitate to do what was required. If it required him to hook alligator clips to a man’s balls and send two hundred amperes of searing current through his body or to get a woman gang-raped by his men for days or weeks until she slipped into a coma, Basit had no problem in giving the orders, or in getting his own hands dirty.

  People would tell you anything and ev
erything to stop the pain. They would sign anything. Tell you anything you wanted to know. They would even turn against their own mothers. It was monstrous, it was cruel, but Wasim knew people like Basit were required to counter a barbaric nation like America.

  Moreover, he had no sympathy for men like Josh. Josh was lying about being a journalist and Wasim hated liars more than anything else. Josh was a CIA dog and Wasim had heard stories of his Taliban brothers being tortured by the agency. This man deserved a gruesome death, but he restrained himself because of his orders.

  The door behind him opened and a slightly older man entered the room. His deep black eyes flicked from Wasim to the three fighters in the room. Then, he strode to the two-way mirror, his stance communicating to everyone that he was in charge now.