Backdrop

by C. G. Cooper

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Andy had instructed Cooper to remove the battery cartridge from the drill. Using strips of aluminum foil, they fashioned two foot-long leads to clip onto the battery terminals on the tool. After that, he had Cooper strip the ends of the cell phone cord to expose the wires, while he duct-taped a makeshift crank together using screwdrivers, and inserted one end into the drill bit, clamping it tight.

  O’Brien had remained in his upright fetal position the whole time. Andy went over to him now, crouched down to address him.

  “We’re gonna need you, buddy. Whatdya say we give these bastards their money’s worth?”

  “I hated you,” said the kid. “When I first met you.”

  “I have that effect on people sometimes.”

  The kid shook his head. “You don’t understand. It was everything you represented. Everything Jack represented too. That old school, God and country stuff. It’s not all black and white, you know.”

  “You don’t think I know that? It’s my job to find the black and white, though, and take a side.”

  “My dad, he was a Marine.”

  “You don’t say.”

  The kid paused to take a troubled breath. “Can I tell you something?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “After he retired, he became a coach for my high school lacrosse team. I hated lacrosse, but I joined up to please him. One day, we had practice. I was just getting over bronchitis, or maybe it was strep throat. Anyways, we were warming up with laps, and I started choking like crazy. My father – man, that guy had a set of pipes on him, you know? I hear him from the other side of the track. ‘What’s the matter, Donny? You alright? Go on, sit down over there on that bench!’ And so I sat while my teammates did their laps. Next thing I hear, “Donny, you look a little thirsty! Hey, you Winston! Go inside and get Donny a glass of water!’ And Winston runs inside for some water. ‘You look a little uncomfortable on that bench, Donny! Brooks, go inside and get Donny the pillow off the chair in the gym office!’ Winston comes out with a glass of water, hands it to me, and gets back into formation. Then, ‘Donny, that water ain’t cold enough for you, boy! Markoff! Go inside and get Donny some ice for his water! Now! Move it!’ And on it went. He made my teammates pay for my coughing fit. And for what? So he could flex his muscles? To this day, I still don’t know. I hated him, and I hated everything he stood for.”

  “Just because he was a Marine didn’t mean he was a saint,” Andy said calmly. “That’s not honor or integrity or character he showed you. That’s a sadist who gets off on lording power over someone else. And to do that to your own flesh and blood?”

  “Right,” said the kid, pounding his knee with his fist. “But you don’t think that way when you’re caught up in the thick of it. All you think about it is that he goes one way and so, therefore, you must go the other way. Imagine his disgust when I told him I was moving to Hollywood to become an actor.” He chuckled half-heartedly. “When I realized what you’d done, taking care of that guy who was about to kill me... I’m ashamed of the thoughts I had. Up till that point, I didn’t give two shits about whether we got killed. Now, I care, but I’m all confused. I don’t know how to feel.”

  Andy looked to his right, focusing into the distance. “Listen, kid, forget Cooper. Forget me. You have a responsibility to what you believe in. If you honestly can sit there and tell me you’re willing to sell out your country, then so be it. I have no control over that. But I have a duty to protect my country, and that means anyone who represents my country and its ideals. Those are the people here, that’s Ashburn and Thompson. It’s funny because I lost sight of that a little bit. You get used to having everything reduced to a mere symbol; you forget what’s behind the symbol.”

  There were tears in O’Brien’s eyes. “I don’t want to sell out my country.”

  “Then get up and help us do what we have to do for our friends.”

  He held out his hand. O’Brien clasped it.

  “How’re the muscles in your arms?” Andy asked.

  “Pretty good.”

  “Good. That means you’re the only one qualified. Over there is a drill with a little MacGyver crank contraption. I want you to crank that thing like your life depends on it. Because it does.”

  O’Brien went and cranked the thing, continuing for the next half hour. When the cell phone’s battery indicator registered the lowest level of power, he called out for Andy.

  But Andy paid him no attention, for Dale Thompson had entered the room.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “Don’t shoot!”

  Andy could have sworn there was a trace of glee in the words.

  “What the hell’s going on, Thompson?”

  “I’m here to offer a deal on behalf of our antagonists. I have been instructed to conduct negotiations with you for the release of the prince.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Thompson’s eyes drifted over to his right. Down. Andy’s rifle lay on the floor.

  Andy made a dive for it.

  For a fat man, Thompson was surprisingly agile. He grabbed Ashburn around the neck and pressed a pistol to her temple. “I’ll do it, Andrews.”

  “You sonofabitch,” cried Jack Cooper.

  Thompson craned his neck, “Ad hominem attacks will get you nowhere, Jack.” The fat man backed up, dragging Ashburn over to the fake boulder that covered the entrance to the tunnel. Andy could see it was partially rolled away.

  “There’s a lever on the inside, you see,” said the director. “A quite ingenious mechanism. A few pulleys, oiled well.”

  The prince emerged from another room. His face personified pure horror.

  “Ah, Your Highness. I’m going to shoot your girlfriend. Would you like to watch?”

  “Let her go,” said the prince.

  “Not a bloody chance,” said Thompson. “She’s with me, now. You can come along, if you like.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “Sorry, Prince,” said Andy. “You’re staying with us.”

  Mansour scowled at the Marine. “You have no dominion over me in my country, Major Andrews.”

  “Now you decide to play the royalty card?”

  “Let her go,” said Mansour. “And I will follow you.”

  “Oh,” said Thompson, “I’m afraid she comes with us. She’s leverage, you understand. A negotiation tool.”

  “Bullshit,” said Andy. “Let her go.”

  “Bugger off, buzzcut.”

  “You think I can’t pull off a shot to your forehead from here?”

  “I think you can, which is why I’m not alone.”

  At this, two men in shemaghs emerged from behind the fat man. One of them rested his rifle barrel on Thompson’s meaty shoulders.

  Ashburn’s terrified eyes turned in their sockets to the barrel. Her breath came in labored gasps.

  “Major Andrews,” said Mansour, “put down your weapon.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “Then I’ll splatter this pretty girl’s brains all over these rocks,” said Thompson, his face glowing hot with rage. “I’ve had enough of you, Andrews. I’ve had enough of your meddling and cheap heroics.”

  The kid came in from the right, so fast that Andy barely had time to register what it was that was taking place.

  O’Brien, swiftly and silently, charged at the man who stood alone, his weapon pointed at Andy. He slammed the guy into the wall. A rifle went off. Andy fired.

  The man with the rifle fell dead. And O’Brien, the victim of the last bullet the guy ever fired, fell too.

  And in that instant of distraction, Thompson and the henchman with the gun on his shoulder had backed into the secret passage.

  And Mansour had followed them.

  Someone had pulled the lever, and the boulder locked in place.

  Andy ran up and gave the boulder a whack with the butt of his rifle. Cooper had already run to the dying boy’s aid.

  “Aw God,” Cooper m
oaned. “That... bastard! Right in the face.”

  Andy put his back to the boulder, closed his eyes, his mind wailing with immeasurable rage and frustration.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Mansour wasn’t blindfolded. This was a problem.

  It was a problem because it told the prince that he would never find himself in a position where he could disclose his whereabouts. They intended to kill him.

  They marched him and Serena through the tunnel. She cursed at them, which caused him some distress. The fact that she would never lose her Americanism no matter how acclimated she became was a thought for another time. For now, his concern was that she had better exercise prudence with their captors, or face some fairly serious torture—merely for their personal delight. He had heard stories.

  “Don’t give them the satisfaction of tears, Serena,” he said, putting it in terms a Westerner would understand. They have a fetish for steadfastness in the face of adversity, the Americans. They understand that better than they understand the repercussions of ill-timed speech.

  As if to belabor this point, the soldier knocked him in the back of the head with the butt of his rifle, then cursed his mother in Arabic.

  The tunnel was a narrow affair, dug into the sandstone—it must have been painstaking work, evidenced by the myriad excavational ridges along the walls. The tunnel twisted slightly, taking incongruous turns and dips, its ceiling dropping every so often. The smell of the cool stone surrounded them, as did the sharp smell of animal musk and decay. Hairy, camel-colored spiders skittered away from the beams of searching light as they approached, and shunted themselves into cracks in the stone or under sheaths of webbing.

  Soon, the tunnel would end, and soon he would have to face his death.

  But when?

  His mind raced. Back up, think it through.

  His studies at the Princes’ school in Riyadh, where he immersed himself in religion and natural science, taught him to be a rather good critical thinker. “But do not let your mind be open so long that your brain falls out,” his professor had admonished him. Nevertheless, he passed his time solving little mysteries that he sought out in whatever environment he found himself in. (Why did Allah choose to have the clouds float overhead from West to East?) Here, he reverted to this exercise. When would they kill him?

  Al-Salakhi would want to do it publicly, or as publicly as the jailbird could manage it. That meant he’d want to stage it, video it. For that he would need light, an audience perhaps, and he would force confessions from him, Mansour, as the final humiliation. The act would be preceded by false bargains—give us this statement and we won’t kill you, or we’ll kill you quickly—in order to coerce these confessions. Then they would kill them as they liked. He’d seen it countless times. He would wait, therefore, and train himself not to fear until the thug had a camera with him.

  Until that time, he promised himself, he would not lose hope. There was always the power of riches. Al-Salakhi’s followers may be devout and rigid in their principles, but Al-Salakhi had a price. Whatever it was, the prince could pay it. Was it influence he wanted? Granted. A public forum? That could be granted too. Channels could be set up to cover Mansour’s complicity in giving Al-Salakhi a mouthpiece. All for the greater good of Saudi Arabia; he would live to rule.

  By the time he was finished with his little mental exercise, and repeated it for good measure, they’d reached the end of the tunnel and were placed within separate SUVs awaiting them. From there, it was a drive across a short plain to the base of a mountain. And from there, a short climb until they reached a path cut into the rock. Through this, into a clearing. It was here that he and Serena were separated, marched to two different tents; her to a small tent off to the right side, and he to a large tent on the opposite end.

  He entered the tent, his hands free; That particular state, he surmised, would not last long.

  The thug sat with his back to him. “Leave us.”

  “Yes, saiyid,” said Mansour’s escort.

  Mansour’s stomach tightened. Rage and fear twisted his guts.

  “Come around here where I can see you.”

  The prince stepped lightly around the couch, over the thug’s outstretched legs.

  Al-Salakhi looked him up and down, nodding his head. “You’re not as tall as I thought you’d be. Royalty adds deceptive inches, does it not?”

  The prince remained silent.

  Al-Salakhi gave a smug chuckle. “Would you care for anything? I have coffee.”

  Keep silent.

  “Mansour,” the thug said sweetly, “I need to hear your voice. That most excellent speaking voice that is the toast of all Saudi Arabia. Tell me, what does the second surah say about hypocrites and unbelievers? Hm? Would you do me that much honor? Quote the Word for me.”

  Mansour said nothing.

  Al-Salakhi smiled. “Very well. ‘Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing, and over their vision is a veil. And for them is a great punishment.’”

  The prince gritted his teeth. “You will not soil the Word with your filthy tongue.”

  Al-Salakhi spat in his face. Mansour raised his hand to strike. From behind came the cocking of a rifle. He turned to see a soldier aiming directly at him.

  Al-Salakhi shrugged. “It’s no use, Mansour. As the Book says, it is all the same whether I warn you or not–you will still disbelieve. And so you are impenetrable. And so you must die.”

  The thug turned to pace a couple of steps away from the prince, froze, then turned as if seized by a sudden thought. “Don’t think for a moment that you can buy your way out of this, Mansour. This is not about the accumulation of wealth.” He smiled. “I must be getting generous in my advancing years. In my younger years, I would have waited until I received such a proposal from you before revealing that it was in vain. I am a just man, Mansour, know this. Wealth? Power? Unlimited access to high places or to the media? I am not susceptible like you are to the allure of a pig’s ransom. I can achieve these things with Allah alone on my side. So put that thought away, Mansour. Know that you will die for no other reason than because you are such a pig, an unbeliever, lower than the lowest creatures that slither through the desert.”

  Here he spat again. Mansour brought his hand up to his face; the barrel of the gun pressed against his back.

  “Leave it on your face, Your Highness,” sneered the thug. “For every wipe, we will beat the girl fifty times.” He turned, and with his back to Mansour, said, “Take the rubbish away.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  She sat in a bare tent, on the ground, in the middle of some arid hellhole. There came the smell of cooking meat, an unappetizing odor if there ever was one. Her hands were zip-tied behind her.

  A man came in. He was short, grizzled, and had eyes like flint. He placed a plate of something in front of her. It looked like it had already gone through a sick animal.

  He had a pair of pliers in his hand. He bent down behind her and snipped the zip ties.

  “Don’t move or I will shoot you. Eat.”

  “Eat that?” she said. “Are you kidding me?”

  It was a cruel trick. They knew she was starving. She wouldn’t let them have the satisfaction.

  He pushed the plate toward her. “Eat, or we will force feed you.”

  She took a piece of charred meat between her thumb and forefinger and placed it on her tongue. It was sinewy and copper-tasting, and there were tiny bits of bone within. She gagged and spat it onto the plate.

  “What the hell is that?”

  The guard smacked her with the back of his hand. Then, enraged, he hastily zip-tied her wrists together in front.

  “You Americans are too pampered. You will eat. Trust me. I know what it is like to starve.”

  He left her there with the plate of rancid shit, growing cold, or as cold as anything could get in this place.

  She closed her eyes. Once again, she replayed the scene between her and the prince. She found it had
given her some measure of comfort to lose herself in the daydream. She wasn’t sure why it gave her comfort. It wasn’t a pleasant scene. But there was a grayness to it that she felt free to color any way she wished.

  She lay down on the ground and breathed deeply. The mists of time clouded around her. She remembered...

  They were at the prince’s party. Things were going swimmingly. They had been able to steal a moment alone on a bench behind the hedgerow.

  “Can you see me as a princess?” she said, cuddling his arm.

  His lips tightened in a smile, and he bowed his head: the princely version of a blush.

  “There,” she said coyly, “you see? I can still get to you. I knew it!”

  “There are a lot of... steps, is that the word? A lot of steps to go through before you become a princess. I can’t just snap my fingers.”

  “Of course you can. Snap! I’m a princess.”

  Serena Ashburn lay on the ground in a hellhole, a soft tear running over the bridge of her nose

  It wasn’t what he had said. It was in the spaces between what he had said. That was the grayness. He was unsure about the two of them. And why wouldn’t he be? They could not have been from two more opposite points of the spectrum if they tried. And she had let herself get carried away with it. With them. She’d pasted her romantic ideals on the lens through which she allowed herself to view the two of them. She was ashamed of herself for that.

  And for the fact that she was terrified of losing him now.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Jack Cooper stared at the Marine, his mind slowing to a languid pace. He was exhausted, hungry, nearly out of all stores of energy. He was old. He got up, his legs creaking, screaming, burning and tingling. He took a few shambling steps, then stopped, wincing through the pain.

  He’d become the type of shuffling old coot he hated when he was younger.