by Roger Hayden
She unclipped her seat belt and rose with one hand pushed up against the ceiling for balance. “What’s the plan?” she said loudly as she moved toward the others.
Thaxton took notice of her and said, “We land soon,” but not answering the question. She leaned in closer, her helmet strap fastened tightly under her chin, and continued. “If the coordinates are correct, we should be able to find Captain Martinez before he puts himself in any danger.”
“If he’s already been captured, then we’re looking at a rescue mission,” Sutherland said with one hand cupped at this mouth.
Oh great, Angela thought to herself. She then turned and walked back to her seat, feeling the pressure of the situation in all of its enormity. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as the pull of gravity intensified with their further descent.
She wanted to know what she had gotten herself into. She wanted to know why the FBI seemed so personally concerned with Martinez. She wanted to know everything and more. The answers, however, were not currently within her grasp.
***
Martinez’s private team was well aware of his activities and waiting on an update, but he wouldn’t be calling this particular team at the station, or talking with Chief Drake. The FBI wasn’t included on the list either. Martinez’s team was a militia group he had linked up with, mostly made up of vigilantes disillusioned by government inaction on the border.
The self-proclaimed Outlaws were also known as the Texas Border Recon Group. They had taken refuge in the area to control the influx of illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and terrorism. They weren’t authorized to use force, but their leader, a man named Buck, did things his own way and had made an enemy in the U.S. government.
Martinez had reached out to an old friend who was high up the ladder of the FBI. He hadn’t spoken to Assistant Director Jennifer Thaxton in ages. But when he reported his recent findings of terror activity to her in a hasty eleventh-hour call, she seemed much more interested in what he knew about the Border Recon Group than anything about terrorism.
Martinez then spoke to another friend from the academy, Victoria Swanson, who had been demoted to a clerical position with the FBI. The revelation had surprised Martinez. He recalled Victoria as being very smart and able.
“Don’t ever cross Jennifer,” Victoria told him one day over the phone. “She’s ruthless. Trust me, I know. You simply can’t trust her.”
During their revealing phone call, Victoria confided in Martinez. “I don’t even know what this agency is doing any more. The growing number of all these sleeper cells. The lack of arrests, warrants, and everything else. It’s staggering.”
Before getting captured, Martinez had watched the valley below through his long-range binoculars. The compound was hidden, but he wanted to get a better look.
He left his position, climbed down the mountain, and traveled under the cover of dusk, low to the ground and closing in on the strange cement structure in the middle of the Sierra de Juarez desert. No one knew a thing about his mission beyond his inner circle. Buck, the gruff middle-aged leader of the Outlaws would receive word in due time.
He mounted his night-vision goggles to his head and fastened them. His grainy surroundings could then be seen in an illuminated bright green. He unzipped his leather jacket about halfway and pulled out his pistol while carefully creeping ahead.
The air was quiet except for a distant coyote howl and the rumble of an unseen airplane in the sky. A long black snake slithered past, startling him, and burrowed into the ground. Martinez kept his eyes forward while staying low to the ground. There hadn’t been a flicker of light, and he wondered if he had imagined it from the get-go.
“Don’t doubt yourself,” he said under his breath. “These bastards are close. I can feel it.”
He hurried along, his breathing growing more rapid with each step. The structure was suddenly in view and the coordinates close to matching. He reached the clearing where he could get a better look at the compound. There were no windows or doors. A large tarp was spread over it, held aloft upon several poles. Not a soul was visible outside.
“Where you at, Salah?” Martinez asked. He crouched and suddenly felt the ground beneath him give way. He dropped down in an instant, and his body smacked against the ground, deep in a pit surrounded by darkness. He lay on his side in pain. The goggles had flown off his head, and he still had little understanding of what had happened.
Sand poured into the hole from all sides like an hourglass. Martinez tried to stand, but he had twisted an ankle in the fall, maybe even broken something. He crawled around on all fours, searching for his pistol and goggles.
“What the hell?” he said to himself in a panicked breath.
He looked up into an opening about twelve feet above him as though he had fallen into a recently dug grave. He could see movement. The silhouettes of several men, casting shadows, moving around and looking into the hole. The shine of a flashlight hit him in his eyes as he stood frozen against the wall. A glimmer of hope that the recon team had found him entered his mind. But when one of the men spoke, the prospect of any such luck diminished as quickly as he had, falling into the hole.
“Who do we have here?” the man holding the flashlight said in a thick Arabic accent. Several others started laughing in a threatening way.
***
Martinez awoke at the shock of a bucket of cold water thrown in his face. He wasn’t sure where he was or who was holding him. He gasped for air, trying to see, but everything was blurry, and the room was very dark. The laughter that followed was similar to what he had heard when trapped in the hole. If the people holding him were indeed terrorists, as he suspected, he was surprised that they hadn’t yet killed him.
They had him in a metal chair bolted to the ground. An empty bucket was at his feet. He tried to move, but his arms were bound with rope behind the railing of the seat. His ankles were tied together as well. His leather jacket was gone, as were his shoes. His T-shirt was soaked and his jeans dripping wet. His bare feet touched the sandy concrete floor.
He blinked rapidly as water ran down his swollen face. His body ached, particularly his sides. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to move. It even hurt to think. He whipped his head around, trying to shake the water off and see who he was dealing with.
“Why am I here? What do you want?” he said, exhausted.
He could make out the figure of a man standing five feet in front of him. The man held up a flashlight and shined the light into Martinez’s face again, blinding him.
“I ask the questions here,” the man said, calmly. Martinez detected a Middle Eastern accent. They certainly weren’t the border recon team he had hoped.
“What is your name?” the man began.
“Get that light out of my eyes!” Martinez shouted, squinting.
The man clicked it off. For a moment Martinez could see. Then his captor flashed it back on and off again repeatedly, while laughing to himself. “Your name,” the man said.
Martinez could make out the man’s thin face and dark sunken eyes. His trim beard seemed little more than a five o’clock shadow, mixed with shades of gray that matched his short hair. His beige pants matched a long-sleeved shirt with an open collar, worn under a black open vest. Martinez could also see that he was wearing sandals.
There were five or so men standing behind him, but Martinez couldn’t make out their faces. He could, however, see that each and every one of them was holding a rifle. He moved his head around, scanning the small room. The walls were barren concrete as was the ground. Behind him, he glimpsed at chain hanging from the ceiling. To his side was a flat doctor’s exam table with open leather straps lying out. Terror pricked at the back of Martinez’s neck.
“We don’t have all day,” the man said. “Why don’t you make this easy on yourself?”
Martinez turned his head to face the man who was speaking and the quiet, stonelike entourage behind him. As his eyes further adjusted, he caught sight of perhaps the m
ost disturbing thing of all in the room: a table in the corner with a row of knives, a power drill, and a branding iron.
“My name is Jorge Martinez,” he said, looking the man directly in the eye.
“Jorge Martinez?” the man said. He took two steps closer and then continued. “And just what were you doing around here, Jorge Martinez?”
“Nothing,” Martinez said. “I was lost. Truck broke down a mile off the freeway.” His mind raced with possible answers to the questions that were sure to follow. “I was looking for some help.”
“You really shouldn’t be walking around here, Jorge Martinez,” the man continued.
“Where is here?” Martinez asked.
The man turned his head slightly to one of the men behind and to his left. They spoke in Arabic as the headman was handed a long wooden cane. He turned to face Martinez, brandishing the cane, and looked at him with a stern, serious face.
Before Martinez could react, the cane came down with full force and wracked his legs with such intensity he thought the bones might be fractured. He felt hot, scorching pain and couldn’t help screaming, which only garnered hoots and laughter from the amused group.
“What did I tell you about questions?” the man shouted.
Martinez gritted his teeth, waiting for the searing pain to leave his legs. The man took a few more steps toward him, extended the cane, and playfully tapped him on the head with it. “Should we start at the beginning?”
“I’m Jorge Martinez,” he said through rapid breaths.
“You said that already.”
“I got lost. Wandered too far from the road. That’s all. I’m nobody. I live in El Paso. Work for a construction company.”
The cane struck his legs again with even more force, landing in the very same place where he was hit before. Martinez screamed again as he thrashed about, trying to get loose. But it did no good. The chair wasn’t going anywhere and neither was he.
The man placed a hand over his chest. “My name is Kareem.”
Martinez lifted his head. His eyes watered with tears. Kareem held both arms out and continued. “Now that we are no longer strangers, it’s time we got to know each other better.”
Kareem snapped his fingers, and one of the men leaned forward holding a backpack. Martinez could see that the man’s face was concealed by a black mask with an opening in the middle for his eyes. His dress was reminiscent of an ISIS fighter.
Kneeling, Kareem took the backpack and set it at his feet. He unzipped the bag and pulled out a pair of night-vision goggles—his pair of goggles. Kareem looked up, smiling, exposing slightly crooked and yellow teeth.
“You always walk around with these?”
He released the goggles and dropped them on the floor. Martinez stared ahead, not saying a word. Kareem reached into the bag again and this time pulled out a 9mm covered in dust with an attached silencer. “How about this? This belong to you?”
Martinez lowered his head again, feeling some relief that he had left his wallet back in his truck. Though Kareem was well on his way to assuming that Martinez didn’t just happen to be out looking for help in the desert. He reached into the bag one last time and pulled out the long knife that had been strapped at Martinez’s ankle.
“Bet this would come in handy right now, eh?” Kareem laughed and stood up, leaving the cane, pistol, and goggles at his feet. He approached Martinez, holding the blade out, taunting.
“You have a wife? Family?”
“Yes,” Martinez said, looking away. He felt control fading away—if he’d had any to begin with.
“And who do you work for in the government?”
Martinez looked down, hesitating. The sharp point of the blade was inches from his left eye.
Kareem told him softly, “If there were ever a time to tell the truth, now would be the time.”
As the blade got closer, Martinez flinched. “I’m a Border Patrol Officer! Del Rio sector.”
Intrigued, Kareem lowered the blade. “I see… I knew it was something. I thought FBI.” He then brought the blade back up and pressed the tip against Martinez’s cheek, drawing blood. “Are you sure you’re not FBI?”
Martinez clenched his eyes shut. “Yes!”
Kareem released his pressure and lowered the blade once again. “Great. Now let us make you a little more comfortable.”
He snapped his fingers, and two masked men from the shadows stepped forward and walked over to the chair. Kareem handed the knife to a tall masked man who then stood behind Martinez. The man sawed at the rope around his ankles until he cut it loose.
Martinez’s eyes darted around the room. He wasn’t sure what they had planned for him or why. He didn’t know if he was ready for it. Would it even matter if he told them anything? Would they simply kill him then? The man cut the rope at his wrists, and Martinez’s hands slumped to the side. For a moment, he was free. And it was an opportunity that he wasn’t going to let pass.
Martinez leapt from the chair, punching the masked man in front of him square in the nose. Following a pop, the man jerked back with his hands to his face. Martinez knew one thing and one thing only: his pistol was only a few feet away from him.
He pushed Kareem and charged forward. The taller man ran, the one who’d been behind the chair, ran after him as the remaining men swarmed him like moths to the light.
Martinez leapt to the ground toward his pistol. His chest hit the concrete, knocking the wind out of him. A dozen feet were moving toward him in unison. Kareem shouted from the sidelines to stop him. The muffled cries of the masked man continued in the background.
As Martinez reached for his pistol, inches from his grasp, a large weight fell on top of him, pinning him down. The tall man dug his knee into Martinez’s back and yanked both arms behind him, dislocating one of his shoulders.
Martinez screamed just as a boot from one of the other men kicked him right across the face. An intense white flash left his head rattling and his ear throbbing with a high-pitched ringing. Within moments, he was hoisted up by multiple masked men and carried across the room in a frenzy. His vision was blurry again and his senses disoriented. They tossed him flat on the doctor’s table—hard. Blood spurted from his mouth like a sprinkler.
Some of the men backed away as hands grabbed both his arms and legs, holding him down and fastening the leather straps at each end. He screamed out in anger, trying to move, but they had him fastened, arms at his sides and legs bound at each ankle. They tightened straps over his chest and stomach, and he could hardly breathe. Movement was impossible. They had been rendering him defenseless and at their mercy.
The hard metal surface of the table seemed to dig into his back, as if he were lying on spikes. The men dispersed, leaving only Kareem standing over him, staring down, curious. The ceiling light cast a shadow on Kareem’s face, and for a moment, he just examined Martinez as if he were a science project.
“That’s one way to speed up the process,” Kareem said with a smile. “We weren’t going to jump right to this, but you seem to be in one big hurry. So let’s begin…” He paused and then held up Martinez’s knife, taunting him. “It’s always the hardest at the beginning, but then the body does this thing. It tries to suppress the pain and numb the body by releasing endorphins.”
“Listen to me!” Martinez said, cutting in. The side of his face was badly swollen from the kick, and he could hardly speak. “I don’t care about this place or you. I was looking for drug traffickers.”
He had already determined that they weren’t cartel. They were, in fact, the very terror cell he was looking for. But he had screwed up. They weren’t supposed to catch him. He had been so careful, or had he?
“Whatever reason you have for being here, we are going to get to,” Kareem began.
Martinez jerked his body, testing the straps and trying to gauge whether it might be possible to loosen them and break free.
Out of the corner of his good eye, he saw two men from the corner of the room begin to push
the wheel table in his direction, displaying instruments of pain and torture.
Kareem leaned in. “Let me tell you a little about myself. I went to school in Jordan to become a surgeon.” He turned to the table as the two masked men parked it and walked away.
Kareem set Martinez’s knife on the cart and picked up an X-Acto knife about the size of a writing pen. “I had a promising career ahead of me. But then war broke out back home. Civil war, they called it. And I had to return from school at the behest of my family.”
He ran the knife down Martinez’s chest. “Your government got involved. They backed the rebels. My people. We hated Assad and wanted him gone. But what the U.S. didn’t understand—or maybe they did—was that Assad was at war with the Islamic State. That’s why we wanted him gone.”
“Please. Kareem, listen to me. You don’t want to do this,” Martinez pleaded.
Kareem brought the knife back up and pushed it against his chin. “I’ve heard many men scream, and I’ve heard many men beg.” He pressed the tip into Martinez’s neck as Martinez struggled to prevent himself from shaking. “I’ve lost count of how many I’ve cut up and mutilated as they lay screaming until their last conscious breath drained away. As an executioner for ISIS, sometimes I have had to keep men alive as long as possible so they can feel every last moment of pain.”
Martinez couldn’t hold back any longer. “Stop this!”
Kareem gave him an indulgent smile. He pulled the knife away and tossed it onto the cart. He then studied the other instruments, trying to make up his mind. His eyes stopped at the power drill. He couldn’t think of any better way to send his message.
“Ah, here we go.” He held up the blue cordless power drill, admiring the four-inch, blood-stained silver drill bit. “Americans like their power tools.” He pulled the trigger and held the drill close to his ear, listening to the whirring sound of the motor and glancing at the spin of the drill bit.
