by Alex Ryan
There was another exchange between the two, and then the woman said, “Commander Zhang says that is what we are here to determine. He again asks that you please answer only the questions he asks.”
Nick sighed and again turned to the Commander. “Okay,” he said. “Shoot.”
“Why are you in Kashi?”
“As I already said, I am an NGO volunteer working on a clean water project.” He started to explain more but stopped himself. He thought he saw some satisfaction in the eyes of the military Commander, who controlled the conversation on multiple levels.
“How do you know the Uyghur named Batur?”
“He is a paid worker on my project.”
“He is your friend?”
“Yes,” Nick said, then his throat tightened. “He was.”
The Commander continued through the doctor.
“Have you prayed with him at the Id Kah Mosque or attended prayers there before?”
“The mosque?” Nick asked, confused by the direction of the conversation. “No, never.”
“Are you Muslim?”
Nick was startled by the question. What the hell did that have to do with anything? He knew, of course, of the rising tensions between the Han Chinese and the Muslim Uyghur minority in the region. Those tensions had come to a violent head after the murder of the state-appointed imam of the Id Kah Mosque, Juma Tahir. He did not like where this conversation was heading, and he understood the reason even less.
“No,” he answered finally. “I am not Muslim. I was raised Presbyterian, if that is relevant to this outbreak somehow.”
The Commander again leaned to the woman doctor and said something with what Nick felt was exaggerated irritation. The woman said something back, and the Commander shook his head and sighed. Then he straightened up and drilled his laser-beam eyes into Nick’s forehead.
“What do you know of Batur and his ties to terrorism?” the Commander asked, in Dr. Chen’s demure voice.
“Ties to terrorism?” This time there was real surprise in Nick’s voice. “Nothing,” he said, sounding more defensive than he meant. “I very much doubt that Batur was a terrorist.”
There was no way in hell that Batur was tied to terrorism. If anything, it seemed to Nick the Uyghurs were victims of paranoia, sparked by the actions of a crazy few. He sure as hell didn’t like the way this was going. He tried to read something—anything—in the cold, dark eyes of the Snow Leopard Commander, but he saw nothing. A terrible dread washed over Nick. If Zhang knew about his special operations background, the session would not end well.
“Do you understand the question, Mr. Foley?”
“What?” Nick asked.
The interrogator, speaking with the beautiful doctor’s voice, had apparently asked another question.
“Do you work for the United States government?”
Shit, he knows. He knows I was a SEAL.
Nick felt a shift inside, and suddenly the conditioning from the grueling training he endured in the cold, Pacific Northwest woods kicked in. He’d been conditioned to resist this kind of questioning during SERE school. He slipped the mask on, and the mask felt good. The mask gave him strength, and confidence, and certitude.
“I do not,” Nick said. “I work for an international NGO providing clean water to poor people around the globe.”
“Do you collect information during your travels on the countries you work in and provide this information to the US government?”
“You mean am I a spy?”
The Commander leaned over and spoke softly again to the doctor.
“Do you hate Muslims?” the counterterrorism soldier asked through the woman.
“What? No, of course not.”
“Are you a terrorist, Mr. Foley?”
Zhang was trying to shake him; he would not crumble.
“No,” he said, evenly holding the interrogator’s gaze. “I am not a terrorist. And I do not hate Muslims.”
The Snow Leopard Commander leaned back and crossed his arms across his chest.
“Yet you killed many Muslims in Afghanistan, did you not, Mr. Foley? And in Iraq as well, I believe.”
Both Nick and the doctor stared wide-eyed at the Commander after his sudden display of perfect English. Zhang turned to the doctor. “You may leave now, Dr. Chen,” he said.
The woman’s face flushed, but she quickly collected herself.
“I prefer to stay,” she said in English.
The Commander shrugged and rose from his chair.
“As you wish,” he said. He paced behind the doctor’s chair. He smiled again at Nick. “You were saying, Mr. Foley? About the Muslims you killed?”
Nick said nothing. Time to keep silent, he decided.
“You did serve in the United States Navy, did you not?”
“Yes,” Nick answered.
“As a SEAL, yes?” the Commander asked, leaning now on the back of the doctor’s chair.
Nick said nothing and then leaned forward.
“I would like to speak to someone from the US embassy now.”
The Commander waved his hand, as if shooing away a fly, and chuckled.
“There is no reason for that, I assure you, Special Operator Second Class Foley,” the Commander said, using Nick’s final rank when he had left the Teams. “We are both soldiers—both men of action, yes? And the lies and maneuvers of bureaucrats do not suit us. Let us talk as soldiers.”
Zhang took his seat. He leaned in, making a little temple with his long, thick fingers. “As a SEAL, you are well trained in terrorism operations, correct?”
“I am well-versed in counterterrorism operations.”
“Of course. Counterterrorism,” the Commander said, the thin smile still on his face. “So you learned to kill Muslims and to use the tools of terror, and now you are here—a former Navy SEAL in China making clean water. And after only a few weeks, we have dozens of dead Muslims in what appears to me to be a terror attack.” Zhang leaned in, his smile gone and his eyes burning a hole in Nick’s forehead. “What am I supposed to think, Mr. Foley?”
Nick’s mind went into overdrive as he recognized Zhang springing the trap.
Time to go on the offensive.
“You are a Snow Leopard Commando— one of China’s most revered counterterrorism experts—so you know full well what you are saying is bullshit,” Nick said, his voice rising as he resisted the urge to rise from his seat as well. “I was a soldier—not a terrorist. I fought terrorists—not Muslims. And,” he added, lowering his voice, “Batur was my friend.”
The Commander leaned back and again crossed his arms across his chest.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, so you have said. But still, what would you think—one soldier to another, one counterterrorist expert to another—were you sitting in my chair, hmm?”
“If I were sitting in your chair, I would ask myself the following questions: Why would a man secretly working for the US government attack the most despised minority in China, in the middle of the desert, where no one is likely to notice, let alone care? Conversely, if I were a terrorist, why would I target Muslims over Han Chinese? And why would I select Kizilsu over Beijing, or Shanghai, or Hong Kong if my goal was to create mass hysteria and panic? Because that is exactly what terrorists do, Commander Zhang—they go for the throat.”
His anger properly ventilated, Nick took a long, deep breath.
“What else would you ask yourself, Mr. Foley?”
It was the beautiful Chinese doctor who spoke this time, and immediately the Snow Leopard Commander shot her a critical look.
“I would ask myself,” Nick said, gaining control for the first time in the conversation, “if this is a terrorist attack—not an epidemic, or a toxic chemical release, or whatever the hell this is—then who has the most to gain from it?”
She fixed her bright, almond eyes on him, and Nick felt a moment of communion.
Then, Commander Zhang leaned in to conference with her, and the moment was gone. They traded
harsh whispers back and forth in Chinese. The argument ended abruptly with Zhang standing. He glared at her, and she popped to her feet a heartbeat later, looking diminutive beside the powerfully built Snow Leopard.
“You will be discharged soon,” Commander Zhang said. “We may wish to speak with you again, but until then,” he said, waving a familiar-looking, worn, blue rectangle in his right hand, “I will be holding on to this.” He flashed Nick’s passport between them and then slipped it into his pocket.
“Of course,” Nick said, forcing calm into his voice. “And I would be happy to help in any way I can.”
“I’m sure,” the Commander said.
“As I said, Batur was my friend.”
“Of course.”
Then the Commander spun on a heel and led the doctor out of the room gently by the arm. At the threshold, she glanced over her shoulder at Nick with curious eyes. He met her gaze with a blank stare. In situations like this, he followed one simple rule: Trust no one, and beautiful women least of all.
After all, wars had been started by such women.
Chapter 9
Artux People’s Hospital
Kizilsu
1730 hours local
Two hours later, Nick was ushered out of quarantine and into the light of day.
He paused on the front steps and let the sun beat on his face and fresh air fill his lungs. Freedom was an even sweeter elixir than Nick had imagined. The last three days, especially the last twenty-four hours, had been both physically and mentally exhausting. Finally, the nightmare was over.
He was free.
“Nick!”
He turned and Yvette was there. She flung her arms around his neck in a tight hug; any sexual tension he had once sensed in their relationship was now gone. She hugged him like a sister, and he hugged her back accordingly. After they had been separated for his interrogation, he had not expected to see her again. He’d figured by now she would be cruising in an Airbus at forty thousand feet on a one-way flight to Brussels. Her presence indicated that perhaps she and Bai were also suspects. Maybe you didn’t have to be a Navy SEAL to be interrogated and accused of colluding with terrorists.
“How are you?” he asked, pulling back from her embrace.
“I feel fine . . . You?”
“Fine,” he said. He wondered how long until the poor girl could go home to her family. “Are you out of here soon?”
She nodded.
“They tell me I will be allowed to leave the country in one or two days. I have no idea what to do until then. I’m done digging trenches, I can tell you that. I have no desire to go back where Batur got sick.”
Nick nodded. That was for damn sure.
“There’s no need,” said a voice behind them.
Nick looked past Yvette to see Bai walking toward them from the glass doors of the hospital. The NGO coordinator was wearing a smile on his face—an embarrassed smile, but a real one nonetheless. Nick could not remember the last time he’d seen Bai smile like that.
“I have arranged rooms at the Qidong Grand Hotel for each of us,” Bai said as he extended a hand toward Nick.
Nick shook it firmly and placed his other hand affectionately on the smaller man’s shoulder. There was something about a shared trauma like this that bonded people, he knew. “That’s very generous, Bai,” he said, wondering if this was the man’s way of apologizing for his aloofness and suspicion the last few days. “And unnecessary.”
“I disagree,” Bai said with a slight bow. “Our staff already collected your belongings from the work site. Your bags are waiting for you in your rooms.”
“You will get no arguments from me,” Yvette said. “Where is your truck?” she asked looking around.
“Taken by the government officials, I’m afraid,” Bai said. “The good news is the hotel is only a short walk from here.”
“I’m more than happy to walk,” Nick said, stretching out his back. He had not walked farther than a few paces to the shared bathroom until yesterday when they led him down the hall to his interrogation. Since then, he had sat alone in a small hospital room, under guard.
Bai gestured left, and they followed him northeast along Pami’er Road. They arrived at the hotel in less than fifteen minutes.
By American standards, the hotel was equivalent to a Motel 6, but after living for weeks in the NGO tents and then spending three days in quarantine, the place might as well have been the Four Seasons. They walked beneath the movie theater–like marquis and into the small lobby, where Bai handed each of them a key.
“Your rooms are on the second floor, just up the stairs,” he said. “Would you let me take you to dinner?”
“Of course,” Yvette said.
“Sounds great,” Nick said.
Nick and Yvette followed Bai up the gently sweeping stairs, looking at the gaudy, yellow-and-brown sunburst chandelier that reminded Nick of Orlando for some reason. At the top of the stairs, they split up and headed to their respective rooms.
“Out front in an hour?” Nick asked, and his companions nodded in agreement.
The room was a far cry from big-city US luxury, but Nick had no doubt that booking three rooms at the Qidong Grand was a blow to Bai’s meager NGO budget, and so he appreciated the gesture. He tossed his oversized backpack on the bed and stripped off his clothes. Moments later, he was standing in a steaming-hot shower. He put his palms against the wall and let the heat unkink his aching back and shoulders.
While the water did its work, he let his mind wander.
What the hell am I doing here?
What the hell am I doing with my life?
This was not the first time he had asked these questions. A part of him wanted to go back to Texas, put his education to work in the construction business, find a girl, and live the American dream. Another part of him wished he had never left the Navy. He supposed he could always try to get back in the game—use his SEAL pedigree to work as a security specialist like so many former operators did. That had to be better than toiling for free in this barren outland of western China, a stone’s throw from the rugged Afghan country that was the crucible of his guilt.
The guilt was always there, just below the surface.
Gnawing and burning . . . gnawing and burning.
Now he could add the bloated death mask of his Uyghur friend to the gruesome mental catalog he kept of the charred, dismembered corpses of women and children who had been killed in the hellfires of Afghanistan. Batur was collateral damage in someone else’s war, he told himself, but this did not make him feel better. He envied his SEAL brothers who could operate in the black-and-white world of combat. For Nick, everything was shades of gray.
He shuddered.
He felt the water temperature drifting lukewarm, and he immediately spun the handle to stop the spray before it turned cold. Most people thought that SEALs enjoyed the cold, became conditioned to it after shivering for hours in the freezing surf in BUD/S—the first stage of Navy SEAL training where 80 percent or more of candidates washed out. The truth was, for Nick anyway, he had once enjoyed the cold, but BUD/S had stolen that joy forever. He frigging hated the cold now. He shivered and smirked at the notion that he and Yvette had single-handedly exhausted the hotel’s entire hot water supply with their postquarantine showers He toweled off and looked longingly at the bed, suddenly desperate to slip between real cotton sheets and drift away. But if he napped, he would not be able to drag himself out of bed to meet Yvette and Bai for dinner. So he immediately dressed—pulling on clean underwear, cargo pants, a black T-shirt, and a gray flannel shirt. He sat on the edge of the bed and slipped on his “camp” shoes instead of the work boots he usually wore. The pair of KEENs felt amazing on his abused and blistered feet.
An audible growl from his stomach reminded him just how hungry he was. With his mind on roasted chicken and rice, he slipped on a jacket, dropped his wallet and key into his left cargo pocket, and headed downstairs to meet Bai and Yvette. He glanced at his watch and r
ealized he was a few minutes early. He thought about grabbing a beer. A cold beer would be amazing, but one beer would lead to two, and two to three . . . In his state, that would be a disaster.
Instead, he paced the lobby.
“Excuse me, please,” said a woman’s voice behind him.
“Oops, sorry,” he said, sidestepping clear of the lobby doors to clear the path. Even under the caustic yellow lights of the oversized marquis, he recognized the woman immediately—the interrogator’s accomplice.
She dismissed him with a wave and looked down at her phone.
What the hell was the name she had used? He was terrible with Chinese names and decided to simply go with “Doctor.”
“Excuse me, Doctor?” he said.
She looked up and he met her eyes. She did a double take, and for a moment looked panicked.
“Nick Foley—the American from the hospital,” he said, but she knew exactly who he was. “Are you staying here at the hotel?”
“I am late for a meeting,” she said, composing herself. “Please excuse me.”
She turned abruptly to leave, and he resisted the urge to grab her by the arm. He needed to be careful—she was one of them, a part of the Chinese government machine with the power to kick him out of the country or, worse, toss him in a Chinese prison to rot. He fell in step beside her as she headed out of the lobby.
“I have a few questions,” he said as they pushed through the doors together. “Can I walk with you?”
She turned to him, her eyes hot with emotion. Anger, irritation, exasperation? He could not tell.
“No,” she said sharply. “I am sorry, but I have no information for you. You will need to speak to Major Li.”
She picked up her pace.
“Who is Major Li?” he asked.
“We should not be talking,” she said.
With a quick glance right and then left, she abruptly dashed across the street, leaving him standing alone on the sidewalk.
“Who the hell is Major Li?” he hollered after her.
She ignored him and did not look back.
For a moment, he contemplated chasing after her—he had plenty of questions for the beautiful CDC doctor—but he knew that would be a mistake. He needed to lay low, get his passport back, and then . . . and then what? How could he walk away from something like this? His instincts told him there was more to this outbreak than met the eye.
