by Young, Tom
He took two Dr Peppers from the fridge, gave one to Gold. He told her about Chartier’s idea for round-the-clock flights in the Mirages.
“Sounds like you guys have things covered pretty well from the air,” she said. “I’d like to think of something more I can do from the ground.”
“Just staying available as an interpreter helps a lot. Maybe we’ll capture one of these bastards and ask him a few questions.”
“That worked out well last time.” Her eyes glinted with an unusual coldness.
Never once had Parson heard Sophia speak sarcastically. She must really feel duped or used, he thought, though nobody could reasonably blame her for what had happened. Maybe she was blaming herself.
Parson put down his Dr Pepper and placed both his hands on her shoulders. Gold leaned in, let him hold her for a moment. Her body relaxed against him as if to let go of all her tension for just an instant.
On the television, a map of North Africa appeared over the anchor’s shoulder. Gold pushed away from Parson’s grasp. She hunted for the remote and found it on a flight scheduler’s desk among half-empty water bottles, Styrofoam coffee cups, and a booklet of approaches for Mediterranean and North African airports. She aimed the remote at the screen and pressed a button with her thumb until the newscast became audible:
“Terrorist leader Sadiq Kassam says he is holding the six Marines and French Foreign Legionnaires who have been missing since Thursday. In a statement delivered to Arab news agencies, Kassam vows to begin executing the prisoners one per day unless coalition forces withdraw from North Africa immediately. Kassam’s group, now calling itself Holy Warriors for the Caliphate of Tripolitania, released a photo purportedly showing one of the missing Marines.”
The television switched to a full-screen image of the photo. Though video editors had blacked out the prisoner’s face, Parson immediately recognized Blount. The gunnery sergeant lay in the back of a Toyota pickup truck, bloodied and beaten. Insurgents sat around him, wielding pistols and AK-47s. He appeared to have vomited down the front of his MOPP suit, and he looked unconscious.
“Oh, God,” Parson said, “that’s Gunny Blount.”
Gold’s back straightened and her mouth dropped open. She placed the fingers of her right hand across her lips as she watched the video.
“No,” she whispered.
Parson tried to process everything he’d just learned. First, the six missing men were in the hands of an enemy who intended to kill them. Second, the vomit suggested Blount had suffered from chemical exposure. And if Blount had gotten slimed, the rest probably had, too. All this bad news came straight from the news media instead of intel channels because Kassam had delivered the statement and photo directly to media outlets. Everybody was seeing it, both here and back home.
Apparently, a similar thought occurred to Gold.
“I hope Blount’s family doesn’t see that,” she said.
“They almost certainly will.”
Parson had known Blount and the others faced dire circumstances. But the visuals brought home the horror in the starkest way. Parson’s Marine Corps friend now rode the thinnest edge of existence, with a life expectancy likely measured in hours. The leering captors in the photograph filled Parson with rage. If not for your damned poison toys, he thought, that man would have broken all of you in half with his bare hands.
Before Parson could finish getting his mind around what he’d seen, the newscast cut to a related story:
“The captured military members served with a coalition battling jihadist insurgencies across North Africa. The fighting has created a humanitarian crisis as villagers flee towns attacked by terrorists. The United Nations says its refugee camps have become crowded, and officials are opening new camps in Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia. Our correspondent visited one of those camps. . . .”
The screen displayed a row of blue tents set up in the desert. After the story ended, the anchor interviewed an analyst who discussed the difficulties in supplying remote camps, and the risk of disease caused by overcrowding. Parson wondered how much TV analysts got paid for pointing out the obvious.
“Looks like your UN people have their work cut out for them,” Parson said. “We all do.”
He didn’t know if Blount and the rest of the captives stood any chance at all, but he’d marshal every resource at his disposal. One of those resources stood next to him now. At the moment, Sophia looked more pensive than horrified. Parson’s first instinct called for him to keep her out of harm’s way. But she had come to help, not stay safe. Once she took on a mission, you couldn’t stop her; he’d seen that before.
“I’m almost afraid to ask this,” Parson said, “but what are you thinking?”
“I’d like to tour all of those camps. Talk to as many people as I can. Maybe somebody saw something or knows something about where the insurgents hide between attacks.”
Parson liked that idea. With Gold looking for human intelligence on the ground and the aircraft watching from the air, it amounted to a two-pronged stab at the problem. Though he’d spent his career as an airlifter, he knew enough about battle to understand the concept of combined arms: Bring to the fight as many different ways to hurt the enemy as possible. A task force might hit them with naval gunfire as well as airplanes. A division might hit them with attack choppers as well as mortars. A platoon might hit them with a .50-cal as well as an antitank rocket. A single infantryman might hit them with his rifle or a grenade. When one thing didn’t work, another might. Maintain your options.
“Just tell me when and where you want to go,” Parson said.
CHAPTER 23
Once when Blount was a kid, he saw a man dying of snakebite. Frump, the county drunk known only by that nickname, had wandered along a dirt road, thumbing for a ride. When nobody picked him up, he kept going until the road crossed a creek. Frump stumbled down the creek bank instead of walking across the bridge. Maybe he’d already downed a bottle of that cheap apple wine he bought at country stores.
As he waded the creek, Frump stepped on a water moccasin. The snake bit him on the calf. Poor old Frump was too drunk or ignorant to put a constricting band above the bite. Back then, first-aid books still said to cut Xs across the fang punctures and suck out the poison. Frump didn’t do that, either. He might have fared better if he’d just sat there and waited for the next farmer to drive by.
Instead, he ran. When he couldn’t run anymore, he walked. He traveled three miles to where the dirt road met a paved highway, with Phil’s Grocery and Mercantile at the intersection. By the time he got to Phil’s, his heart had pumped that venom all over his system.
Blount and his grandfather saw Frump lying under a pin oak back of Phil’s, and he was one pitiful sight. Frump kept throwing up, and his calf swelled up bigger than his thigh. Grandpa tried to give the old drunk first aid with a snakebite kit from Phil’s shelves, but it was too late. By the time Grandpa scissored open Frump’s pant leg, the skin around the bite had discolored to an unnatural shade between blue and gray, as if that part of Frump’s body had already turned corpse.
“It burns, it burns,” Frump kept saying. His breathing came quick and shallow. The last thing he said that anybody could understand was “My mouth taste all rubbery.” Phil tried to give him an RC Cola while they drove him to the hospital in the back of a flatbed, but Frump couldn’t even sit up to drink it. Before they reached town, old Frump’s sad sojourn on this earth had ended.
“You don’t normally die of a cottonmouth bite,” Blount’s grandfather said later, “unless you’re real young, real old, or you got something else already wrong with you. Frump’s been poisoning himself with alcohol for years.”
Now, as a grown man with military training, Blount knew what killed Frump was a hemotoxin, or what chem warfare specialists would call a blood agent. Blount suspected something different had poisoned him and the other Marines and Legionnaires:
a neurotoxin, or nerve agent.
Such idle thoughts occupied Blount’s mind as he worked at the bolt that suspended the ring that anchored his left chain to the wall. He gripped the ring and bolt with his left hand held behind his back. Shoulders and head against the wall, Blount stared up at the ceiling with his mouth open like he was sicker than he felt. He could rotate the bolt for about a quarter turn, and he kept grinding it back and forth. At first he thought he made no progress. But his fingers kept getting all powdery, and he’d wipe them on his trousers until the dust blended in with the general filth. Each time, he knew the dust meant that much less cement securing the bolt.
Blount had no idea of the hour except that it was dark outside. Fender and Ivan remained asleep, and from time to time Blount dozed, too, but never for long. At one point, in the netherworld between sleep and wakefulness, he thought he heard the ocean. But then he realized it was only the surf of wind through the desert. He shook off the drowsiness and got back to work. He balanced his need for rest with his lack of time. How long would he have to free himself?
Even if he succeeded, he still expected to die. But this way, he could choose his moment of action instead of just waiting for them to come and get him. A slight tactical advantage.
The sound of shuffling and footsteps came from behind the door. Someone in that room flicked on a light. A shaft of white light angled through the doorway and lit up a slice of the floor. Blount wondered about that; he wouldn’t have thought this hovel had electricity. A few minutes later, Rat Face came in with a battery-powered lantern. The lantern threw harsh light and stark shadows, and the glare made Blount squint.
What brought this dirtbag at this hour? Rat Face walked around the room, stopped over Blount. The lantern’s twin fluorescent tubes burned Blount’s eyes, but he forced himself to look up at his tormentor. Blount’s hand remained on the bolt. If he’d worked it free by now, this moment would have presented a golden opportunity. Instinctively, Blount studied the distance and angles. And the targets: Rat Face’s head, neck, ribcage, groin, knees, shins.
Rat Face just kept staring. That made Blount worry. Had he been discovered? Had the guards heard the grinding? He dared not move his hand now. He just held his body position, took in long breaths and tried to make them sound ragged. Yeah, dirtbag. I’m still sick and weak. You can come close as you want, and I can’t do nothing.
Without a word, Rat Face kicked Blount in the side. Didn’t hurt much; Rat Face delivered the kick with poor technique and little power. A hateful and brutish act should come naturally to a terrorist, Blount thought, but this guy is so stupid he can’t even get that right. Still, Blount groaned and allowed himself to fall over. He let go of the bolt; he didn’t want to look like he was hiding something. He knew Rat Face wouldn’t notice the concrete dust. Somebody too dumb even to kick properly wouldn’t catch a thing so subtle, especially in dim light.
Blount guessed correctly. Rat Face stood over Blount with a smirk on his face, babbled something in Arabic. Turned and strode into the other room. Victorious again.
So why would that lowlife come in just to deliver a kick? Blount pondered for a moment, then came up with a theory. If the terrorists made good on their threat, the coming day would bring the first execution. Rat Face was too excited to sleep.
A flush of heat came over Blount. The heat of terror, he realized. He began to sweat, and he sensed the salty odor of his own body. The old folks used to say dogs could smell fear, and he wondered if this was how that happened.
Through his nose, Blount drew in a big chestful of air and let it out. This time he did it not to exaggerate sickness but to try to control his body and thus his mind. Stave off panic. He vowed he would not descend into abject fear. Recruit Blount would master himself as he had mastered his rifle.
He pushed himself back up to a sitting position, chains clanking. Placed his hand on the ring and bolt. Twisted back and forth, a quarter turn each way. After several repetitions, Blount rotated the bolt clockwise as far as it would go, then applied all the torque he could muster. The gristle of his hand stretched and tightened so hard he feared he would pop a tendon or break a bone. The binding force traveled all the way up his arm to his shoulder. He gritted his teeth. Held his breath.
Something gave.
The bolt lurched in his hand. Metal scraped against cement with such force that Blount just knew Rat Face heard it. Sounded like when you were plowing tobacco and a plow point struck a rock. But the noise drew no reaction.
And now Blount could rotate the bolt a half turn. He tried pulling it out of the wall. The bolt came out about half an inch, then stopped. Clearly he’d knocked away some of the cement that had secured the bolt. That cement must have broken away in a solid chunk that fell inside the wall. Real progress.
Blount forced his mind to focus on this little victory, and it improved his spirits. Kind of like the time back in high school when his team was losing real bad, and he caught an interception and ran forty yards with it. Didn’t win the game, but he made the other side’s quarterback look like a chump. Took away some of the pain of defeat.
To Blount’s right, Fender snored. He lay curled in a fetal position, chain draped over his hips. Good that the boy can get some rest, Blount thought. To his left, Blount felt eyes on him. He turned to see Ivan awake. The Russian leaned on his side, weight supported by his elbow. In the pale light cast from the battery lantern in the other room, perspiration gleamed on Ivan’s bald head. Ivan looked at Blount’s hand gripped over the ring and bolt, and he gave a nod with a thin smile. Blount considered telling Ivan and Fender to work on their bolts, too, but decided against it. Triple the risk of detection. Ivan looked too weak to apply much torque anyway.
The next twist of the bolt came easier. The flange on the other end dug deeper into the cement; Blount could feel the bite of the metal. The more play he had, the more damage he could do to the cement. He sat awake, twisting, torquing, until the sky lightened to the east. By then the bolt rotated nearly a full turn, and it came out of the wall about two inches. So how long was the darn thing? Three inches or a foot? Only one way to know. Keep cranking on it.
A vehicle pulled up outside. Bustling sounds came from the next room, yammering in Arabic. More lanterns and flashlights clicked on. One of the prisoners in the other room said, “What’s happening?”
“Silence,” someone hissed. Monkey Ears.
More abba-dabba talk.
So Kassam has come back, Blount thought. Not a good sign at all. Blount had held some small hope that the talk of executions was bluster, that somehow this time would turn out different. The history of these extremists gave no reason for that hope, but the mind sought hope the way lungs sought air. A drowning man could not stop himself from one last attempt at breathing, even if he inhaled water.
Kassam entered the room where Blount, Ivan, and Fender lay chained. Rat Face, Monkey Ears, and two other dirtbags came behind. Monkey Ears shone a flashlight on each of the prisoners. Rat Face held an AK.
Blount froze. Kept his hand behind his back, on the bolt. Had his time come? He still hadn’t freed the bolt, so his options remained limited. His palm grew slick as it gripped the iron.
He felt fate rush at him with mind-numbing speed. The walls blurred. He’d sometimes wondered what date would appear as the second date on his headstone. Today’s date.
Stop, Blount told himself. Stop, stop, stop. Think tactically. You’re back in the dojo for pads-on, full-speed, full-force sparring. Just let it come natural. Muscle memory and training will do their job. This ain’t nothing. If they come for you, get up, present your shackles to be unlocked. And shift your feet to assume a fighting stance.
They didn’t come for him.
Kassam went over to the table, picked up his flintlock, and stuck it in his sash. He and all the other dirtbags left the room. Ivan and Fender sat up, awake now, part of their chains coiled in their laps
.
So I get a little more time, Blount thought. Gotta use it well.
Blount heard the terrorists talking in the next room, and then their voices grew even fainter. Perhaps this building had a third room for a kitchen or something. Blount couldn’t be sure; when they’d brought him in he’d been too disoriented and sick to process his surroundings well.
It made no difference. Blount’s mission remained the same: get that chain out of the wall. With the dirtbags’ eyes off him now, he resumed working at the bolt. Twisted it to the left. Twisted it to the right. Pulled at the same time, for more friction against the cement.
Fender stared at the floor. Ivan looked straight across the room, gazing at things beyond visual range. Blount imagined they’d both thought what he’d thought: This is the end.
Well, this was the end. But not this very moment. In the meantime, he wanted them to stay alert. He decided to take a chance on talking.
“Y’all okay?” he whispered.
Fender looked over at him, shrugged. Ivan cut his eyes toward Blount but made no other response.
“Stay loose,” Blount whispered. “Be prepared for anything.”
He figured Fender, at least, ought to know what that meant. At pretty much any deployed Marine Corps combat ops center, you could find a dry-erase board or a computer file labeled BPT. Be prepared to do the following. Be prepared for a convoy. Be prepared for an assault on a high-value target. Be prepared for a recon patrol. Depended on the mission.
In this case, be prepared to follow my lead, whatever that may be.
Through the walls, Blount could hear Kassam and his henchmen talking in excited tones. That didn’t bode well; Blount supposed they debated which prisoner to kill first. But for now, it offered a chance for some rare communication.
“Say, Ivan,” Blount muttered. “You all right over there?”
