Destiny in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Scopolamine?” Claire asked. “Wasn’t that once used in childbirth?”

  “You’re correct, it was. It was used to cause a semiconscious condition called a twilight sleep. It completely relaxes the inhibitions part of the brain, and it has a further benefit of causing amnesia about the time the subject is under its spell. That way, Sharif won’t remember what we did or what we asked or even what his answers were.”

  “So,” Ben said, “we can repeat the process and double-check the answers to the same questions to see if he gives the same response?”

  Buck nodded. “Sure. It’s a way to make sure he wasn’t able to lie to us the first time.”

  “You mean even with all this, some people are still able to lie under the chemicals?” General Goddard asked, as if he couldn’t believe such a thing.

  “Yes,” Buck answered. “It depends on how strong-willed the subject is. Back in the days of Korea, the Koreans only had about a twenty-percent success rate with the Americans they tried to brainwash, because Americans were very strong-willed and had grown up in a country that prized individuality.”

  Buck paused. “However, since this man grew up under the Arab culture, where conformity and obedience at all costs is taught, he should be much easier to break.”

  Claire nodded. “So, you plan to start first thing in the morning?”

  “Yes, ma’am. What I need from you is a list of questions you want answered and information you are seeking. It’s best if only one person questions the subject.”

  “Can I be there?” Ben asked. “That way, if one of the answers leads to another question, I can let you know.”

  “Sure,” Buck said, “but I have to be the only voice Sharif hears. During interrogation, there is a weird sort of transference that takes place between the subject and his interrogator. Too many voices spoils the effect.”

  Ben nodded, satisfied. “In the morning then . . .”

  “Dr. Buck,” Jersey said.

  “Yes?”

  “As one of the people involved in capturing this man, I’d like to be one of the women in the room when he’s brought in naked.”

  “Me too,” Anna said.

  Both Corrie and Beth nodded that they wanted to be included in the audience.

  Coop snorted. “You that hard up to see a naked man, Jerse?” he asked.

  “No, idiot,” she answered, “but I think it might make him feel even more insignificant if the women who aided in his capture were there to observe his humiliation.”

  Buck nodded. “You’re exactly right, Jersey. I’d like all of you to be there in the morning. You too, Coop.”

  “Okay,” Coop said, “but only if I don’t have to look at his ... equipment.”

  Jersey laughed. “Yeah, we wouldn’t want you to feel inferior, would we, Tiny?”

  Coop raised his eyebrows in disbelief at Jersey’s statement. “Oh, yeah? And just how would you know anything about the size of my ... er, uh ... you know.”

  “Oh, it’s not from personal observation, that’s for sure,” Jersey said, a look of distaste on her face.

  “Then you’re just guessing,” Coop said triumphantly.

  “No,” Jersey replied, “but on the wall of the women’s head back at our base, someone wrote, ‘For an unremarkable time, call Tiny,’ and under it was your phone number.”

  “That’s a damned lie!” Coop protested as all the other members of the team burst out laughing.

  Claire Osterman glanced from one member of the team to another, wondering how these fools could be so silly and yet be such devastating warriors. It was clear she just didn’t get the camaraderie that existed among men and women who fought together and put their lives on the line together.

  Thirty-five

  After the meeting in the conference room broke up, Jersey stopped Buck in the outside corridor and whispered something in his ear.

  He laughed and nodded. “A great idea, Jersey. I’m gonna make an interrogator out of you yet.”

  “What was that all about?” Coop asked.

  “Dr. Buck says we can be the ones to escort Sharif to his new quarters,” Jersey said, a glint of mischief in her eyes as she told the others what she had planned.

  Achmed Sharif was sitting in his cell, wondering when the infidels were going to come to question him. He had prepared himself mentally to stand up to whatever torture they tried on him. After all, was he not the descendent of princes of the realm of Arabia? he thought with some pride.

  The metal door to his cell banged open and several men and women filed in. Two of the women were holding Beretta pistols in their hands, the hammers back and ready to fire, he noted.

  As he looked at them, he recognized them. They were part of the Scout team that had captured him and destroyed the airplanes as they tried to land at the airport.

  In general, Sharif was opposed to the idea of women being in the Army, thinking they were too weak to make good fighters. But, he had to admit to himself, these female Scouts of Ben Raines’s Army made excellent warriors.

  As two of the women covered him with their side-arms and the two men stood in a corner with their arms crossed and enigmatic smiles on their faces, the female with the dark skin and long black hair pulled out a K-Bar assault knife, its razor-sharp blade glistening in the pale light of the cell.

  Sharif took a deep breath. He was determined not to show any fear, no matter what the crazy woman did to him.

  She approached, a slight grin on her face and a weird glint in her eyes, causing his heart to beat fast and sweat to appear on his brow.

  He stood up straight, his chest out and his lips in a tight line, determined not to let his fear show.

  Jersey walked up to him, lightly running her finger along the blade of the assault knife. As she stepped in closer and raised the blade, Sharif could stand it no longer.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he asked in his most imperial voice. “Don’t you realize I am a prisoner of war and am to be accorded all the amenities of an officer?”

  None of the troops spoke or even acknowledged his words.

  “Wait a minute,” he protested, taking a step back. “Just what do you intend to do?”

  Jersey moved closer and raised the knife. In a lightning-quick motion, she sliced through his shirtfront, leaving it hanging open.

  And then, she reached down and put her fingers in the front of his pants, pulling them out away from his stomach. Sharif’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to protest.

  With another quick motion, Jersey sliced through his pants and underwear, opening his trousers and letting them fall to the floor, leaving him standing naked from the waist down.

  “What . . . ?” he began, until she reached up and jerked his shirt off his shoulders, leaving him completely unclothed in front of the troops.

  Sharif took another step back until his legs were against the corner of his bunk, and tried to cover his private parts with his hands.

  His face blushed a fiery red as he noticed the women glancing down at his shrunken member, smiles of derision on their faces.

  “This is unacceptable behavior toward a captive officer,” Sharif began as Jersey took his shoulder and shoved him out of the cell and into the corridor.

  Other troops were along the corridor, observing his nakedness and his futile efforts to keep his hands over his genitals as he stumbled down the long passageway.

  “I am a prince of Arabia,” he protested, trying to ignore the grins and laughs as he was paraded nude past dozens of men and women along the way.

  Fear caused a terrible urge to urinate that he fought with all his strength, knowing that would be the final humiliation.

  After a long walk and a descent down three flights of stairs, Sharif was shoved into a dank, dark cell with no window and no light in the ceiling.

  “What are you doing?” he asked again as a solid steel door was slammed in his face.

  He turned round and round, unable to see his hand before his face in the co
mplete blackness of the room. With his hands outstretched, he moved slowly around the cell until he found a bare metal bunk against a far corner.

  It was cold to the touch, the temperature in the cell being in the fifties. When he lay down upon it and placed his arm over his eyes, he shivered and could feel his genitals shrink with the cold.

  These infidels were tougher than he’d been led to believe by the propaganda of his home country, which portrayed them as weak and vacillating creatures with no backbone in them.

  As he lay there, his mind cast back to what he’d done to prisoners in the past to make them talk, and his genitals shriveled even more at the thought that now such things might be done to him.

  “Allah, give me strength,” he whispered, but could feel no answering solace in his words.

  Sharif spent a horrible night. He slept fitfully, often awakened by terrible dreams of dismemberment and mutilation at the hands of the infidels, all with the terrible women warriors watching and laughing as his penis fell, shriveled and twitching, onto the concrete floor of his cell.

  By the time the cell door opened—Sharif was unable to tell how many hours later—he was almost babbling and talking to himself. Even though he knew it was a sign of weakness, his terrorized mind was unable to stop playing pictures of his naked body being paraded sans penis among hoards of laughing, gesturing females.

  When Harley and Coop and the women of the team walked into the cell to take Sharif to his interrogation, they found a much different man from the almost arrogant one they’d met at the airport.

  He was sniveling, tears of rage and fear coursing down his cheeks, his body reeking of fear-sweat, puddles of urine on the floor next to his bunk.

  Coop wrinkled his nose at the smell that permeated the tiny confines of the cell. “My,” he mused, a smirk on his face as he stared at Sharif, “how the mighty have fallen.”

  Sharif put his hands together in front of his face. “Please, I beg of you. Do not do this. Contact my embassy. I am a prisoner of war!” he almost screamed.

  The team didn’t bother to answer his pleas. Coop and Harley grabbed him by the arms, bodily lifted him off his bunk, and force-marched him out of the cell and down the corridor.

  Jersey and Anna and Corrie and Beth made sure to cast their eyes on his nakedness and smile snidely, as if they weren’t much impressed by his manhood, or lack thereof.

  By the time they made it to the interrogation room, Sharif was again talking and mumbling almost incoherently to himself. The team couldn’t understand his words since they were in his native language, but they sounded full of self-pity and terror.

  Just the state Buck had said Sharif would be in after a night alone in the dark imagining all sorts of terrible outcomes to his imprisonment.

  When they entered the interrogation chamber, even the team, who knew it was all for show, was taken aback. There were rows and rows of saws and knives and terrible gleaming chrome instruments arrayed on a table next to a stainless-steel autopsy-type table, with gutters and drains for the blood to flow out of into a pot on the floor, which was already filled with a crimson liquid.

  Sharif’s eyes widened and he stifled a scream at the sight of the implements of what he supposed was to be his upcoming torture.

  “No . . . no ... please,” he begged, dragging his feet and struggling not to enter the room.

  “I’ll tell you what you want to know . . . just don’t . . .” he yelled.

  Dr. Buck was standing next to the table, gowned and gloved and masked, looking ominous in the half-light of the room.

  “Come in, Mr. Sharif. I’ve been waiting for you,” Buck said in a deep, gravelly voice that sounded an awful lot like the actor who played Frankenstein in the old movies.

  Coop had to turn his head to hide his grin at the overacting of Buck, but he could see it was having its desired effect on the terrorist, who turned his head rapidly from side to side, as if looking for someone to rescue him from this horror he was facing.

  Coop and Harley hoisted him up on the table and secured his arms and legs with wide, leather straps.

  Sharif’s eyes looked like they were going to bulge out of his sockets when Buck leaned over him, only his dark eyes visible over his mask.

  “Are you ready to pay for your sins, Sharif?” Buck asked.

  “No-o-o-o!” screamed Sharif, twisting his head back and forth and foaming at the mouth as Buck inserted a needle attached to an IV bottle into his arm.

  As the clear liquid in the bottle dripped into his veins, Sharif subsided, his eyes half closing and his head lolling to the side as he became semiconscious.

  Ben Raines stepped from behind a screen where he’d been hiding and whispered to Buck, “Jesus, he seems really spooked, Doc.”

  Buck nodded. “Yeah. He’s probably been on the giving end of this sort of thing many times before, and so his memory is doing a job on his mind. He’s expecting what he’s doled out in the past to be done to him, and he doesn’t much like the prospect of being on the receiving end.”

  Ben nodded to Corrie, who set up a video camera and pushed a button to record the session for later study.

  Buck took a syringe off the table next to where Sharif lay and added five cc’s of another liquid to his IV line.

  Sharif smacked his lips and began to mumble to himself, his words slurred with the effects of the Amytal and scopolamine mixture flooding into his veins.

  Buck consulted a list of questions prepared by Osterman’s committee and Ben, and began to ask Sharif questions in a low, steady, nonthreatening voice. It was almost as if they were having a normal conversation, except that Sharif’s eyes remained at half-mast, as if he were drunk.

  Once Buck had gone through all of the questions about the leadership of the invasion and its ultimate plans and tactics, Ben thought of another series of questions to put to Sharif, and whispered in Buck’s ear.

  Buck nodded and leaned back over the table. “Mr. Sharif, what is your personal code for your cell phone?”

  “The numbers 7615402 followed by the pound sign,” he said tonelessly, as if discussing the weather.

  “Are there any other codes necessary to get it to work?” Buck asked.

  “No.”

  “What is the phone number you dial to get in touch with your leader, El Farrar?” Buck asked.

  Again, Sharif spoke the numbers without any noticeable reaction.

  “Do you know the names and phone numbers of any of your FFA contacts?” Buck asked.

  Sharif nodded, but didn’t answer.

  Buck sighed, realizing he had to be very specific in his questioning. The subjects answered the questions very literally when asked, and didn’t usually volunteer information unless they were asked.

  “What are they?” Buck asked.

  Sharif rattled off a series of names of Americans affiliated with the FFA and their cell phone numbers on the phones they’d been given by Farrar.

  Buck glanced at Ben, who nodded that he had no further questions.

  “When you awaken, you will remember nothing of what we discussed, Mr. Sharif. Is that clear?” Buck asked.

  “Yes . . . remember nothing . . .” Sharif mumbled.

  “Now for the coup de grâce,” Buck whispered to Ben.

  He turned back to Sharif. “When you awaken, you will have no feeling from the waist down. Your legs will be completely paralyzed and you will have no control over your bowel or bladder movements. Is that clear?”

  Sharif nodded, but didn’t answer.

  Buck stepped back from the table. “Take him back to his cell,” he said to Coop and Harley, who began to unfasten the leather straps.

  After he was out of the room, Ben asked, “Why did you give that last command, Doc?”

  “To further demoralize him, Ben,” Buck answered. “He’ll think he’s paralyzed for life, and the loss of control of his bowel and bladder will humiliate him and make him much more manageable.”

  “But can you really paralyze him just by
suggesting it to him?” Ben asked.

  “Not really,” Buck said. “The effect is more like the hysterical paralysis we see in neurotic patients, and it will wear off in a couple of days. But until then, our visitor will be as miserable a human being as it is possible to be.”

  Ben glanced out the door Sharif had been taken out of. “Good, Doc, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving individual than our Mr. Sharif.”

  “I agree,” Buck said. “From the way he acted when he saw my instruments, I have a feeling he’s been here and done this a lot more times than I have.”

  “Yeah,” Ben agreed. “And probably with a lot more long-lasting results than he’s gonna have.”

  “I do have one regret, though,” Buck said.

  “What’s that, Larry?”

  “I feel really sorry for the soldiers who are assigned to clean up his cell for the next couple of days.”

  Thirty-six

  Ben Raines and his team met again with Claire Osterman and her advisors after the initial interrogation of Achmed Sharif had been completed.

  Osterman was a little miffed that Ben always insisted on having his team with him in these high-level meetings, and pulled him aside while he was getting his coffee before the meeting started.

  “Ben, I’d like to talk to you a minute before we begin,” she said, placing her hand on his shoulder as he was pouring his coffee.

  He glanced at her. “Okay, Claire, shoot,” he said in his typical no-nonsense manner.

  She glanced at the conference table in the room behind them where Ben’s team was taking their seats, Coop and Jersey as always gibing each other about one thing or another.

  “Do you always have to have your . . . uh, soldiers present at these staff meetings?” she asked.

  When he raised his eyebrows in question, she continued. “I find their irreverence somewhat off-putting to the seriousness of our discussions.”