by Pete Kahle
Their boots made no sound on the ground outside, so Kaleed had no idea as to the terrain, but, regardless, he strained to hear as the Secret Service agents who’d arrested Faisal and himself met with, and began to speak to, what sounded like a second party of men.
The mumbled scraps of conversation Kaleed could discern made him nearly certain that they, Faisal and him, were to be transferred into the custody of this second group.
Moments later, his suspicions were verified as the Secret Service broke back into the truck and dragged him and Faisal, judging by the muffled shouts, out into the overbearing heat. Kaleed tripped on the door of the truck and fell from a height onto the hard ground.
“Stay fucking down!” A hand clasped the nape of his neck and pushed his hooded face firmly into the hot earth.
He could sense that Faisal was struggling against similar treatment on the ground a few feet to his right.
“Lie in the fucking sand!” another voice barked. “Faces down! The sand’s the best place for you fucking rag-heads!”
Then Kaleed heard a third voice; out there somewhere in all the indistinct terrain. It seemed to be a member of that second group of men.
“I don’t think there’s any need for language like that,” the voice said.
Kaleed frowned under his hood. The comment had taken him completely by surprise. He’d expected to be brutalised. He’d expected treatment worse than Guantánamo Bay. One thing he’d never expected was a member of the American establishment to stand up for him; not after what he’d done and tried to do.
Truthfully, the speaker’s tone of civility created an unnerving discord against the situation in general.
“It’s okay,” the civil voice said; and Kaleed could sense the speaker as he kneeled by Faisal’s incapacitated body.
“Just relax,” he said.
Then Kaleed heard Faisal as he began to scream under the duct tape. The sound of his comrade in pain made Kaleed go wild. He started flexing hard at the tie-wraps around his wrists and tried with all his weight to buck the kafirs off his own back.
“Stay fucking still!” One man pushed his face deeper into the roasting sands.
“It’s okay,” the calm voice said.
Suddenly the speaker was kneeling by Kaleed.
A few feet away Faisal wasn’t screaming anymore. Somehow Kaleed could sense that his friend’s body had gone entirely limp and— somehow— he knew exactly what was going to happen moments before it did.
“Just relax,” the calm man said.
Then it was Kaleed’s turn to scream as the hypodermic needle slid through the skin of his neck like so much butter and a powerful cocktail of drugs was introduced into the current of his blood.
# # #
There was no way Kaleed could tell how long he’d been out.
As he began to come to, he immediately remembered his training and took in as much as he could regarding his surroundings. The room was small and windowless, most probably subterranean, and the slightly plastic quality of the breathable air suggested that the facility was artificially ventilated. More evidence for it being nowhere above ground.
The only door was just ahead. A foot of solid steel with a viewing slot for the use of his captors. The walls were made of reinforced concrete and were therefore completely unbreachable.
Kaleed turned his attention from his hopeless situation to an examination of his own body. His head was still woozy and his thoughts were confused. He was freezing cold in the frigid air.
He looked down and saw risen gooseflesh on his naked chest and abdomen. His eyes focused with some effort and it was with some despair that he took in the sight of his similarly naked arms and legs, which had been strapped to the chair in several places; that and his flaccid cock and scrotum lying against his thigh.
The chair itself, the one he’d been strapped to, was dead-bolted to the floor and completely immovable. The only other utility in the entire room was a second chair— his interrogator’s no doubt— which was lying, unattached to the floor, a few feet away.
Kaleed had plenty of time to take in his austere surroundings and, truthfully, the fear of the coming interrogation was starting to turn to bile in his stomach.
He closed his eyes and for a moment he thought he might vomit.
He tried to remember what they’d told him in Tikrit.
All the martyrs faced their fears with a redoubling of faith. In Mecca, when the Message was first revealed to the Prophet, peace be upon him, the pagans had pegged the first faithful to the burning ground and had lashed their bodies with thorny branches. The faithful had declared over and over that there was only one God and that Mohammad was His Messenger. Later, under pain of death, they had become the first Muslims to be admitted into Paradise.
Kaleed’s twitching guts relaxed at the thought of it. Paradise. Gardens under which rivers flow. To be as close to God as Adam was before the Fall.
He kept his eyes closed and began to mutter under his breath, “In the name of Allah the infinitely Compassionate and Merciful. Praise be to Allah. Lord of all the worlds. The Compassionate. The Merciful...”
A sound across the room dragged Kaleed’s thoughts down from the transcendental into the present moment and he ceased speaking the salat immediately. His eyes shot open just in time to see the viewing slot in the steel door sliding shut again.
They’d been watching him!— his interrogators— from behind the door. And, as he looked at the dormant metal, Kaleed couldn’t help but imagine that they were still out there.
“Who are you!?” he shouted, and he was surprised to hear his voice echoing in the small room. “Who’s out there!?”
His voice echoing back again was the only reply.
“Who’s out there!?” he tried again.
The stillness of the room was driving Kaleed wild with apprehension.
“Praise be to Allah!” he screamed at the inert door, a string of spittle landing on his naked chest, “Lord of all the worlds! The Compassionate! The Merciful! Ruler on the Day of Reckoning!”
He found after a moment he couldn’t scream anymore. The oxygen— recycled as it was— seemed somehow thin and in short supply. He felt himself dragging in his breath in laboured rags.
He stared at the door for long minutes. Breathing. Listening. Then, half startled and half relieved, he heard it as a latch was pulled away and he saw the door begin to open from the outside.
# # #
“Where is Faisal?” he asked.
But he wasn’t answered.
The man who’d entered the interrogation room was most certainly the calm voiced man who’d sedated both Kaleed and Faisal before bringing them to this place. He looked how he sounded. A small, inoffensive man with dark though receding hair and faint rimmed spectacles. By the look of him he might have been of Iraqi descent; just like his two detainees.
“My name is Dr. Tiskup,” the stranger introduced himself.
“Where is Faisal!?” Kaleed demanded.
Tiskup looked down at Kaleed’s naked, bound body on the interrogation chair. He smiled.
“I think maybe I will ask the questions,” he said.
Kaleed set his jaw defiantly.
“You can ask anything,” he said. “I’ll answer nothing.”
There isn’t much you can hide, Mr. Masri,” Tiskup was still smiling, Kaleed noticed the dossier he had open in his hands, “That’s you, yes? Kaleed Masri? Born in Bloomington, Indiana, April 9th, 1979, to Arkan Masri and Sahar Raheem-Masri, immigrants from Ramadi who arrived in the US in the August of 1971. Am I correct?”
Kaleed looked at his bare feet and refused to speak.
“I could go on,” Tiskup said, flicking through papers, “I think I have your SAT scores somewhere in here.”
Kaleed looked up.
“Where am I?”
Tiskup just smiled.
“Ah, so you want to communicate?” he said. “Tell you what. Let’s play this thing quid pro quo. I tell you where you are an
d you answer one of my questions.”
Kaleed stayed silent for a moment. Then he nodded. He could always renege if Tiskup’s questions became too invasive.
“Okay,” Tiskup nodded. “You are in a state of extraordinary rendition. We are at present in a secret facility several hundred metres under the Mexican side of the Chihuahuan Desert.”
Mexico, Kaleed thought. He knew they’d been traveling south. But something wasn’t right.
“Why Mexico?” he asked.
Tiskup shrugged a little noncommittally.
“Our client,” he said. “He prefers the climate this far south to the climate of the United States. We indulge Him.”
Kaleed frowned. Their client?
“Now...” Tiskup said, “Quid pro quo. We know you were radicalised in Tikrit. To which organisation do you belong?”
Kaleed began to laugh sardonically. Then he stopped and stared Tiskup directly in the face.
“Go fuck your bitch mother,” he answered.
If anything Tiskup’s smile became more polite than ever.
“It’s within your interests to co-operate, Mr. Masri,” the doctor said. “I’m giving you an opportunity to cooperate, but in reality an examination of your body has already answered the question of your affiliations.”
Kaleed’s eyes grew frightened and he tried to draw his bare thighs together on the cold, metal chair.
Tiskup took his own chair and slid it into place, facing Kaleed’s. He seized his captive’s right leg with more force than his slight frame suggested he had to hand and pulled it to one side, exposing the man’s inner-thigh.
Kaleed looked down at Tiskup’s fingers rooted in his flesh and— to his dejection— he observed that the slight dark hair on his right inner-thigh had already been shaved away; revealing the small Arabic word that stained the skin.
“An unusual practice for an Islamic sect,” Tiskup observed. “Marking the body is, after all, haram. I know of only one organisation in the region of Tikrit who use scarification of this kind on their initiates. The AMD. The Al-Mumīt Devotees, yes?”
Kaleed’s eyes sank. Then his lip curled with hatred.
“If there’s one thing I hate more than an American kafir,” he said, “it’s an Iraqi one. You’re a disgrace to your country; playing the lapdog to these fucking degenerates.”
“What degenerates?” Tiskup looked amused as he sat back on his chair.
“The Americans,” Kaleed answered. “Murdering fucks. Rapists. Baby-killers. That’s who you’re working for!”
Tiskup shook his head.
“Mr. Masri, I thought I made this clear. You’re not in the USA. You’re in a point on the map chosen by our client for purposes of his comfort. Our client is not American nor is he at all interested in your little escapade on the 15th of November.”
“Escapade?” Kaleed felt indignant. “We attacked the White House!”
“Fuck the White House!” Tiskup interrupted. “Let it burn. Let it fall like the temples of Jerusalem and the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar. Our client isn’t concerned about organisations or nations or creeds. Our client recognises only the single organism and its survival.”
Kaleed found himself beginning to subconsciously strain at the restraints binding him to the chair. Tiskup was making less and less sense and his eyes, behind those professorial spectacles, were filling up with radical fervour.
“You expect me to believe the US government’s just forgotten what we did?” Kaleed reasoned. “They’ll want a hand in what happens to us.”
Tiskup almost laughed.
“For the right price any government can be bought off,” he said. “Right now they’re probably using your little stunt as a rationale for a more aggressive bombing program in the Middle East. They’ve changed your names by now and linked your fictional profiles to whatever organisation they most want to root out. The truth is irrelevant, Mr. Masri. And, as of this moment, so are you.”
Kaleed was shivering. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You expect me to believe you just bought us?” His voice shook. “From the government?”
“Our client bought you,” Tiskup clarified, “and now you belong to him.”
Kaleed’s face grew tight with horror and confusion.
“Who is your client?” He asked.
Tiskup took off his glasses, rubbed at his eyes, then replaced them.
“Five years ago there was an unprecedented drought in Iraq,” the doctor said, “it was around the time you were being radicalised in Tikrit...”
Training, Kaleed thought. Training in Tikrit.
“Anyway,” Tiskup continued, “I was in Iraq too that year. Working on an archaeological site on the Hadithah Dam. A tomb which had been exposed by the receding water. It was there I met our client in person for the first time.”
A noise rang out behind the two men and the door to the cell swung open.
Kaleed’s heart started hammering in his chest and he tried the restraints again with all his strength.
The two men who entered were tall and thin and nondescript. They came on either end of a medical gurney that squeaked and moaned like a wounded animal as they rolled it into the room.
“Ah, gentlemen!”
Tiskup stood to greet his colleagues.
“These will be your nurses, Mr. Masri,” he gestured to the two men.
Kaleed’s mouth went dry. Nurses!? He started rocking in the chair. Trying to get free.
“Don’t concern yourself, Mr. Masri,” Tiskup smiled benevolently. “This portion of the process is quite painless. They merely need to analyse a sample of your blood... Oh!...”
Tiskup turned to the nurses.
“And flesh,” he reminded them. “The client wishes you to test his flesh. The other’s was barely suitable.”
Faisal, Kaleed thought. They were talking about Faisal! Faisal’s flesh!?
“What have you fucking done to him!?” He rocked more violently on the immovable chair. “What have you done to Faisal!?”
Tiskup looked down on Kaleed with something like disdain.
“Mr. Yakoubi— or Faisal, as you call him,—” he said, “will soon be one of the many martyrs of Islam.”
Kaleed went wild with grief and anger; pounding his impotent fists against the arms of the chair.
“I’m going to kill you mother-fucking bastards!” he screamed. “I swear to God! I’m gonna kill you!”
Tiskup made a forbearing face and gestured to the nurses. They entered the room like grim spectres; pushing the gurney closer to their new patient.
“I’m gonna kill you!” Kaleed snarled at them, more pathetic than threatening.
“Remember,” Tiskup told the nurses, “blood and flesh analysis...”
Then he looked at Kaleed again.
“It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Masri,” he spoke over Kaleed’s angered screams. “I know that the client too is very anxious to meet you.”
The doctor nodded to the nurses then turned and left through the open cell door. Kaleed listened in fevered awareness as Tiskup’s feet echoed off down the subterranean hallways outside. He was going to Faisal’s cell. Kaleed knew it out of instinct. Faisal was still alive and could still be saved.
He screamed and tried his hardest to bite as the first nurse grabbed at his skull and pulled it back against the headrest.
The second started undoing the restraints at his wrists.
All at once he knew only one thing, but with blinding clarity.
He couldn’t let them get him on the gurney.
# # #
His training with the AMD in Tikrit came back in wild, disconnected flashes.
He remembered the evenings in the desert cool by the blue banks of the Tigris; honing his skills in hand to hand combat should he ever he relieved of his firearm.
Before he even knew he was free of the restraints he’d already palmed the first nurse’s nose-bone up into the soft cerebral matter above. Blood spurted from the man’s n
ostrils and eyes as he tumbled back and hit the cold, sterilised floor.
The second man came at Kaleed with the hypodermic but Kaleed sidestepped, grabbed at his attackers arm and fractured it at the elbow.
He seized the nurse in a chokehold around the neck and right now, feet away from the first dead body, he was slowly increasing the pressure around the struggling man’s airway.
Moments later he felt it and heard it as the assailant’s trachea burst and he let out one last distorted breath before going limp in Kaleed’s arms.
# # #
Kaleed moved quickly after that.
His naked skin was covered in the blood of two men now. He was in a secret facility under the Chihuahuan Desert. That much he knew. The place was probably well guarded and it would be miles from any major sites of Mexican infrastructure; including the roads that would constitute his getaway if Kaleed could find them.
His only hope, as far as he probably was from a water-source, was to attempt to find and hotwire one of the vehicles that these people doubtlessly kept for purposes of their own transit into and out of distant population centres.
He stripped the pants and shirt from the man whose trachea he’d just busted and pulled them on over his naked skin.
He rose quickly; searched the gurney; found the collection of scalpels those freaks had been going to use on his body and slipped a few into the back pocket of his pants should another altercation arise during his bid for escape.
After he was sure he’d gotten everything he needed from the room, he exited through the steel door and made sure to shut it over after him so as not to arouse the suspicions of his captors should they pass that way.
He was hoping it would be half an hour before anyone noticed the two corpses he’d left inside.
# # #
There was something wrong with the facility.
The place was like one vast series of burial chambers spiraling away into unknown distances under the desolate Mexican wilderness. Close and claustrophobic as a rabbit warren, the earthen halls and corridors reminded Kaleed of what he’d imagined the ossuaries under Paris would look like or— from his own memory— the ancient and empty tombs that ran like termite holes through the dry earth of Al-Anbar and Salah ad-Din; the pagan catacombs that had been excavated there before the birth of Mohammad.
