“Until then, what do you want us to do with our captives?” Coop asked. “You want to start questioning them or wait for the big boys back at base?”
Harley’s face grew grim. “I don’t believe I’d better have any contact with the men . . . I’m afraid they wouldn’t survive it, and I know Ben will want to question them himself.”
Jersey shook her head. “I don’t think the Arab gentleman is going to be very cooperative,” she said.
Harley grinned, but there was no mirth in it. In fact, it made the hair on the back of Jersey’s neck stir. She’d never seen such an evil face on her friend.
“Oh, he’ll talk. It’s amazing what Intel can do with the chemicals they have available to them nowadays,” Harley growled in his deep voice.
“Better living through chemistry is what I always say,” Coop added irreverently.
“Meanwhile, you’d better keep a close eye on him until we get him safely back to base,” Harley said. “These rag-heads think if they martyr themselves it assures them a place in heaven, or wherever the hell they go when they die.”
“He’s tied up tighter’n a hog on slaughterin’ day,” Coop said. “I saw to that myself. He’s even got a gag in his mouth so he can’t swallow his tongue or something.”
Jersey laughed derisively. “That’s an old wives’ tale, Coop. People can’t really swallow their tongues.”
“Bullshit!” he said, following her as she walked out of the office and down the corridor. “I once had an Uncle Festus who swallowed his tongue.”
“Oh?” Jersey asked, her eyebrows raised.
“Yeah. It was on his wedding night. When his bride took off her nightie, he noticed she had a ... er ... she was equipped like a man.”
“What?” Jersey said.
Coop nodded. “Yeah, poor ol’ Festus. He always thought it was funny her having a mustache an’ all, but he put it down to a lack of female hormones.”
Coop hesitated, then laughed. “Guess it was after all.”
“You lying sack of ...” Jersey began.
Coop held up his right hand. “Truth, I swear.”
When they got to the room holding the prisoners, the FFA man, Jim Short, and the Arab, Achmed Sharif, Jersey walked over to Anna, who was standing there with her Uzi aimed at their midsections.
She leaned over and whispered in Anna’s ear. “Harley says to watch the Arab real close. He figures he might try to off himself to keep from talking.”
Anna snarled back, “If he does, I’ll just start shooting off various parts of his anatomy until he gives it up as a bad idea or I run out of parts.”
Jersey laughed and glanced at Sharif, who was straining to hear what they were saying. He tried to say something, but the gag made his words unintelligible.
Coop leaned over him. “Huh? What did you say? You’ve got a gag in your mouth and I can’t understand a word.”
This infuriated the Arab and he rocked back and forth, struggling against the duct tape Coop had wound around and around his body.
Coop soon tired of tormenting his captive and went to sit next to Jim Short, the FFA man they’d captured in the tower. The other FFA men who’d been guarding the road were similarly tied up out in the main terminal waiting room.
Coop stared at the man and said, “You look like you could use a cigarette. You smoke?”
“When I can get them,” Short answered morosely. “Usually, they haven’t been available in the U.S. since the last war.” He grimaced. “In fact, most things that make life worth living aren’t available either.”
Coop fished in his pocket and brought out a pack of smokes. He put one in his mouth and lit it, then passed it over to Short, who took a deep inhale and let the smoke trickle out of his nostrils with a look close to ecstasy on his face.
“I’ve been wondering, Short,” Coop said. “Why did you and the other guys throw in with these rag-heads anyway?”
Short cut his eyes up at Coop. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said.
“Try me.”
Short shook his head. “No, you live in a place where you have some say in your government and your life. It’s different here in the U.S.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. We’re told when to work, what to do, what to eat, how to dress . . . that is, when food and clothes are even available, which is not too often.”
Coop shrugged. “Last I heard, the U.S. is still a democracy. If the people are so unhappy with Osterman as president, why don’t they just vote her out of office?”
Short gave a quick laugh. “Yeah, it’s a democracy all right. Trouble is, the ruling class, the government, is in charge of counting the votes.”
He leaned his head back and sighed. “After the last election, I asked around. I couldn’t find one person who said they’d voted for Osterman and her Socialist/Democratic Party. Not one, mind you, and yet the official line was she won the election by seventy-five percent of the vote.”
“I’m surprised more of the citizens didn’t rise up and revolt like you did then,” Coop said.
Short snorted. “Hah. Most of the people here are so demoralized by the way the government treats them, they’re like little children. They are afraid to speak out against Osterman for fear of losing what few privileges we still have.”
“Did you try protesting the results of the election to the United Nations?” Coop asked.
“Sure,” Short said. “The leader of the FFA set up a meeting with representatives of the U.N. to discuss the voting irregularities, but for some unknown reason, he disappeared the night before the meeting.”
“Disappeared?”
“Yeah, as in taken away by Osterman’s Black Shirts to some dungeon never to be seen again . . . or worse.”
“So, the U.N. did nothing?”
Short shrugged. “What could they do? After our leader was made to disappear, nobody else had the balls to make a formal complaint, and the whole matter just sort of died from lack of interest.”
“So, how did you guys come to be working with these Arab terrorists?” Coop asked.
“Evidently, their leader, El Farrar, has some contacts in the U.N. Enough so he could find out the name of our organization and a few names of members. He sent some men over here last year to feel us out on the idea of working with him to get Osterman ousted from office.”
“Didn’t you realize that was just exchanging one despot for another?” Coop asked, amazed at the naivete of the man and his organization.
“Of course, we knew that was a risk. But we figured in the confusion of the takeover, we might be able to get the upper hand.” He shrugged. “At least it was worth a try. And if we didn’t succeed, we figured having Arabs as our leaders would make it easier to recruit people to join us in opposition and eventually we’d be able to take our country back.”
Coop shook his head. “Well, partner, I’m afraid you backed the wrong horse in this race. There’s no way these assholes are gonna take over the U.S., not with Ben Raines joining in on the side of the present government.”
Short stared at Coop. “Speaking of that, just why did Raines agree to help Osterman? We never for a minute figured on that happening.”
Coop shrugged. “You got me, pal. That’s way over my head. I’m just a grunt in this man’s Army, and I goes where I’m told and I shoots who I’m told. That’s the way the Army has always been and that’s the way it’ll always be.”
Coop stopped as the sound of an airplane could be heard through the shattered windows of the terminal.
He stood up and motioned to Jersey. “Let the troops know, the train home has arrived.”
Jersey got up out of her seat and went to tell Harley to wake Hammer up. His ride had arrived.
Thirty-four
When the Osprey landed at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, Hammer was taken off first. Dr. Larry Buck had an IV going, and quickly started intravenous antibiotics and painkillers.
Ben, who was standing on the landing field, asked Dr. Buck how he was d
oing.
“Okay, I think,” Buck said. “The bullet passed through his deltoid muscle without hitting the bone, so it should heal all right. But I want to get him to surgery right away and clean away some of the damaged muscle to prevent any infection from setting in.”
He hesitated as corpsmen working under him hustled the stretcher containing Hammer toward the base hospital. “The bullet left a pretty big hole in the muscle, so I might have to do a plastic repair and take some muscle from his gluteus maximus to fill in the defect.”
“Gluteus maximus?” Ben asked.
“His butt, Ben, his butt,” Buck said with a grin.
“Ouch!” Ben said, sympathizing with the pain Hammer was going to be feeling for some time.
Buck shrugged. “Other than not being able to sit down comfortably for a while, it shouldn’t give him too much trouble if all goes as expected.”
“Go on and get to work, Doc,” Ben said. “When you’re done with Hammer, we’ll discuss a chemical interrogation of our prisoners.”
Buck gave him a thumbs-up and trotted after the stretcher as the other members of the team exited the plane.
Once Hammer was under anesthesia and his wound area and the possible donor site on his left buttock had been prepped, Dr. Buck stepped to the table and prepared to operate.
The wound on his left shoulder was a small entrance hole in the anterior portion of his left deltoid muscle, with a larger, more gaping hole where the bullet had exited on the back side of the muscle.
First Buck used a plastic brush to thoroughly scrub both areas, making sure to get out all pieces of cloth from Hammer’s shirt that had been carried into the wound.
After that was accomplished, he used a pair of Metzenbaum scissors and some tissue forceps to grasp all of the grayish-appearing dead muscle and cut it away until there was a bed of fresh uninjured muscle slowly oozing blood across the entire diameter of the wound.
Using his fingers, Buck pulled the edges of the wound together to see if it could be repaired without having to take a chunk of donor muscle from the hip area.
He was pleased with what he saw. The damaged muscle had swollen to the point where he thought he might be able to bring the edges together by undermining the skin and subcutaneous tissue enough to free up the edges and make them more mobile.
He slipped the points of the Metzenbaum scissors under the skin, and using both blunt and sharp dissection, cut the skin away from its underlying soft tissue attachments. This loosened it enough that when he pulled the edges together, there was no tension on them, a necessary process for the wound to heal properly.
“Give me some three-O chromic suture on a large needle,” Buck said to the scrub tech standing next to him.
The tech placed the needle with the attached suture on a needle-driver and slapped it into Buck’s hand.
Using a deep vertical mattress-type technique, Buck made a deep pass through both sides of the muscle and gently pulled them together with several sutures.
Once this was done, he leaned over and had a nurse wipe the sweat from his brow. The temperature under the big operating lights over the table was twenty degrees warmer than the rest of the operating room, and the thick gown Buck was wearing made it even hotter.
Finally ready for the last part of the procedure, he stepped back up to the table.
“Four-O nylon on a cutting needle,” he said.
The tech obliged, again slapping the needle driver into his palm with a smack.
Buck glanced at him out of the corner of his eyes. “Gently, son, gently,” he said. “Put it in my hand and give a little push. You don’t need to slap it like you see on television and in movies.”
“Yes, sir,” the embarrassed tech replied.
Buck again used the vertical-mattress technique for the skin sutures to keep tension off the edges of the skin so the wound would heal properly.
After an hour and a half, the surgery was completed. Buck stepped back from the table. “Would you dress that for me, please?” he asked the tech.
“Yes, sir,” the tech replied, reaching for some Vaseline, gauze and sterile tape on the mayo table next to him.
Buck entered the command center still in his scrub clothes from surgery.
Ben Raines, the rest of his team, and President Osterman and her cabinet were all in the large conference room when Buck walked through the door.
Ben stopped talking in mid-sentence to give him a worried glance. “How is Hammer doing?” he asked, speaking the question on each of the team members’ minds.
Buck smiled widely. “Great! I was able to clean and debride the wound and close it without having to take any donor muscle from his hip.”
“That’s really good news,” Ben said, a look of relief passing over his face.
Even President Osterman and her men smiled at the good news Buck had given them.
“Yeah,” Buck said. “That means he’ll heal much faster.”
“When will he be operational again?” Harley asked, trying not to show his concern for his best friend.
“Oh, he’ll be up and around with his arm in a sling ready for desk duty by tomorrow. No heavy lifting or exertion until the stitches come out in five to seven days,” Buck said. “Otherwise, we’ll be right back where we started if he busts those stitches loose.”
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t use the arm too much,” Jersey said, causing Coop to give her a look that had jealousy written all over it.
“Are you too tired to sit in on our discussion?” Claire asked the doctor.
Buck shook his head. “No, I grabbed a Coke on the way over here to get my blood sugar up, so I’m all right for another hour or so ... then I need to get something to eat.”
“This shouldn’t take that long,” Ben said. “We’ve been discussing the best way to proceed with the interrogation of Achmed Sharif, the leader of the Arab terrorists captured at the airport.”
“You want my advice?” Buck asked, walking to the corner table, picking up a coffee cup, and filling it with the strong, black brew in the pot.
“Well, General Goddard thinks we should try to question him first without chemicals to see if he’ll give us any information that way,” Claire said.
Goddard nodded. “That’d be much faster than chemical interrogation,” he said.
Buck glanced at the general as he took a seat next to Ben Raines. “You want fast, or do you want effective?” Buck asked, sipping the coffee and making a face. He set the cup down without drinking any more.
“Effective, of course,” Claire said.
“Then here are my recommendations. First, do not attempt to question him at all right now. It will just tip him off to what we’re going to ask later, and will let him build up a mental resolve not to answer those questions, or worse, it may allow him to formulate accurate-sounding lies.”
“Uh-huh,” Claire said. “What then?”
“Strip him naked and put him in a completely dark cell for twenty-four hours with no sensory input to let him tell the passage of time.”
“Why take his clothes?” Claire asked, interested in the reasons behind Buck’s thinking.
“People, especially men, from a macho male-dominated culture like that of the Arabs, feel especially vulnerable when they are naked. Being dressed gives them a feeling of protection, of invulnerability. Keeping him time-disoriented and spatially disoriented, lowers his mental defenses and gives his mind all kinds of nasty things to think about—like what we’re going to do to him when we come for him.”
“That sounds barbaric,” Claire said, a look of distaste on her face.
Buck shrugged. “It IS barbaric, but so is war, Madam President. The North Koreans established this protocol over seventy years ago during the Korean War, and the tenets of brainwashing and interrogation haven’t changed a whole lot since then.”
“Okay, so we strip him and keep him in the dark for twenty-four hours. Then what?” Claire asked, leaning forward with her elbows on the conference t
able.
“The guards who come for him must be instructed not to talk to him at all, no matter what he asks or says. He is to be treated as if he is of no importance whatsoever. This will further lower his mental defenses. As a leader of the Arab terrorists, he will be used to being treated with some deference and respect. We must change that from the get-go.”
“Go on, Doctor,” Claire said.
“Tomorrow morning, after he’s lain awake all night in the dark wondering what’s to become of him, we’ll take him from his cell and walk him naked through the corridors to my interrogation room, which will be filled with all manner of terrible-looking instruments and machines. I and my helpers will be gowned and gloved as if ready for surgery when he enters the room.”
Buck thought for a moment, then smiled. “Also, it will be better if there are several females in the room.”
“Females?” Claire asked, astonished at this request.
Buck nodded. “There’s nothing to make a man feel insignificant and impotent like having women see him paraded around with his genitalia hanging out. It strips him of what remains of his pride in his manhood.”
“Especially for an Arab who culturally has great disdain for women,” Jersey added, a look of malicious glee on her face at the thought of the arrogant terrorist in this position.
“I see,” Claire said, smiling herself at the mental picture this evoked.
“Then, when he is in the room, he will be blindfolded and strapped on an operating table. By this time, his mind will be conjuring up all kinds of horrible torture scenarios. In fact, it will most probably remind him of things he’s done to enemies in the past, further helping to demoralize him,” Buck said.
“You don’t really intend to torture this man, do you?” General Goddard asked, as if the very thought were foreign to his thinking.
Buck shook his head. “Not in the least, General. Once he’s on the table, I’ll start an IV and begin to infuse the chemicals I use for interrogation.”
“You mean, like sodium Pentothal?” Claire asked.
“Naw, that’s old hat, Madam President,” Buck answered. “I’ll start with sodium Amytal, a distant relative of Pentothal, but much quicker and more potent. Once the Amytal has him relaxed and calm, I’ll add a pinch of scopolamine.”
Destiny in the Ashes Page 21
