Dead in Damascus: A Special Operations Group Short Story ([#0] Special Operations Group)

by Stephen Templin

  “Status report,” Senior called to the SEALs.

  Gorgeous sounded off first, reporting on any wounds and remaining ammo: “Gorgeous, okay, four magazines.” The others sounded off in succession. Then came Chris’s turn. “Reverend, got a nick on my right ear, three magazines.” Reverend was Chris’s call sign—given to him because when the guys went bar-hopping, despite relentless ribbing, Chris wouldn’t drink alcohol. Psycho gave the last report.

  Beanpole made eye contact with Chris for a moment. Chris was pissed.

  If you’d gagged Mordet properly, this wouldn’t have happened.

  Beanpole looked away as if he could read his thoughts.

  Little Doc came over to take a look at his ear while the guys with more ammo donated bullets to the guys with less. As Little Doc examined Chris, he calmly said, “Looks like they shot off half of your ear. Did you pick it up and bring it with you?”

  Mordet had a grin on his face as he chewed on something.

  Chris pointed to him and said, “He bit it off.”

  “What?” Little Doc asked.

  Mordet continued to chew.

  Disgust and anger roiled in Chris’s stomach. “What the—damn, he’s eating it!”

  “Eat this!” Little Doc slammed the butt of his rifle into Mordet’s face. The chewing motion stopped. Little Doc grabbed Mordet’s nose with one hand and his jaw with the other and opened Mordet’s mouth wide. “You sicko-freako-shit-sucking-no-life-mother—” He shook half of a chewed-up ear out of Mordet’s mouth. It was impractical for them to carry ice in the field, so Little Doc wrapped the piece of flesh in some gauze and put it in Chris’s shirt pocket.

  They sat silently until Mordet regained consciousness. This time, Little Doc struck him so hard with the rifle butt that it probably knocked his IQ down twenty points. Little Doc gagged him again before Chris slammed the hood down around Mordet’s head.

  As the SEALs continued their return trip, Little Doc disinfected and bandaged Chris’s ear.

  Will my ear ever be the same again? I hope I don’t bleed to death.

  His enlistment was near its end, and this wasn’t giving him warm, fuzzy feelings about re-upping. Then he realized that if he kept thinking about his ear and reenlistment, he might miss spotting an ambush and lose more than his ear. He focused his eyes and mind on the shore, scanning for threats.

  The SEALs traveled unmolested to their base in Al Anbar Province, where they handed Mordet over to the civilian-clothed Agency interrogator and his assistants.

  A hospital corpsman showed up soon after and escorted Chris away.

  In sick bay, the surgeon greeted Chris, who took his piece of ear out of his pocket.

  The surgeon didn’t have to examine it long to make a judgment: “This is too mangled. Even if I did sew it back on, it would remain deformed like this for the rest of your life.”

  “Right now, all I want to do is find Young.”

  “After I sew up your wound here, I can arrange to have you flown to the facial prosthetics lab at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Their 3-D camera can produce images for a mold of your ear. I can even arrange for you to have a summer ear and winter ear with appropriate skin tones and an ear in camouflage.”

  “Thanks, Doc, but I don’t have time right now to fly back to the States. That’ll have to wait until after we find Young.”

  “I’ll just sew it up for now.”

  Chris nodded.

  As the surgeon went to work, Chris noticed his Yale diploma on the wall and remembered his sophomore year at Harvard. At that time, part of Chris had wanted to become a preacher and part of him had wanted to become a SEAL, but when 9/11 happened, the choice had become clear: he’d left Harvard and joined the Navy. Now he hunted evil men through fire and brimstone, and although he repeatedly reminded himself that he wasn’t a part of the bad guys’ underworld, he bore the scars of their world on his body and soul. He longed for light. He longed for a place closer to Heaven.

  After the surgeon finished suturing his wound, Chris departed and hurried to the gator pit, where he found Hannah watching a live video feed of the interrogation. She was a raven-haired chameleon who shape-shifted between geek, Sampson, and Delilah.

  Hannah’s eyes didn’t leave the video feed as Chris stepped up beside her. “What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?” she asked with a sweetness in her husky voice.

  He smiled. “Same thing a nice gal like you is doing.” He pointed to the monitor. “What is he doing?”

  “Waterboarding Mordet,” she said.

  “And?” Chris asked.

  “Mordet hasn’t said a word.”

  The interrogation booth was a small room made of plywood. A TV monitor on the wall was hooked up to a laptop on a table, so if Mordet began talking about Young’s location, the gator could have Mordet point it out on a high-tech map on the TV monitor. Mordet was tied on his back on a board the size of a door, with his feet elevated. A wet orange cloth was wrapped around his face.

  The gator’s head looked like a lemon—it had more width than height, and his skin color was jaundiced. He also had the muscle mass of a bodybuilder. Gator nodded to his assistant, who poured a gallon water jug from two feet above Mordet’s nose and mouth. Immediately, Mordet gagged. Seconds later, his body went limp. Either he was too tired to fight or he was purposely allowing his nose and mouth to fill up with water and causing himself to asphyxiate. The average person would begin talking by fifteen seconds—saying anything, truth or lies, to make the waterboarding stop. Each session would last no longer than forty seconds but could be repeated for up to twelve minutes in a day. “How long have they been doing this?” Chris asked.

  “About half an hour,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “I’m not complaining, but does Lemon Head know what he’s doing?”

  Hannah shrugged. “He’s a contractor.”

  “We really don’t have time for amateur hour. Young doesn’t have time.” Chris left the gator pit and rushed to the interrogation booth, where he burst inside the cramped room.

  Gator turned around, and his brow furrowed. “What the hell?”

  Mordet stirred as if from a sleep. Water trickled from his nose and mouth.

  Chris motioned for Gator to step out of the room with him. The man gestured to his assistant to watch their prisoner.

  They exited the booth and walked down the hall. “I was in the middle of an interrogation,” Gator said.

  “The middle?” Chris asked.

  Gator puffed out his chest. “I’ll break him,” he said proudly.

  “I can see that.” Chris was unable to hide the sarcasm in his voice.

  “Who are you?”

  “We can’t launch a rescue until we know where Young is.”

  Gator came to a stop in the pit near where Hannah sat. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Young is running out of time and—”

  “You can’t rush progress,” Gator interrupted.

  Chris stared hard at him, and tension filled his voice. “We’re out of time.”

  Gator leaned forward. “My interrogation was working until you interrupted.”

  Chris stood his ground. “Maybe you can update me on the intel you already extracted.”

  With his index finger, Gator poked Chris in the chest. “You need to chill.”

  “I am chill.” Chris pushed the finger away from his chest.

  “You don’t seem chill to me.”

  “Maybe I can persuade Mordet to talk.”

  Gator leaned in even closer so Chris could feel the heat and smell the bunghole-stink of his breath. “Maybe you don’t understand who’s in charge here.”

  “I’m not asking to take over,” Chris said. “You can take credit for any intel I acquire. I’m just asking for a shot at Mordet.”

  “You hot-shits think you can do anything you want because everyone’s scared of you. Well, I’m not scared of you.”

  “I’m not trying to s
care you. I just want to find Young.”

  “So does everyone else, but I’m the one who knows about interrogation, and you need to get authorization before you interrogate the prisoner!”

  “Are you saying you have no authority here?”

  “I have authority!”

  Chris tried to remain calm. “I only know that I was waterboarded in SERE school. And I’ve worked with some of the best gators in the business. And you’re not one of them.”

  Hannah, still sitting in her chair in front of the live video monitor, chuckled.

  Chris turned to her and said, “Tell those guys in the booth to stop screwing around and prepare the prisoner for interrogation.”

  She left the pit and headed to the booth.

  “You can’t do this,” Gator said.

  Chris moved in so close that he was toe-to-toe with Gator. “Saving Young is deadly important to me,” Chris said quietly. “How important is it to you?”

  The veins in Gator’s neck bulged as if they were about to pop.

  Chris prepared to flip his inner switch from chill to bone-burning conflagration.

  “Your commanding officer will hear about this!”

  Chris didn’t know whether Gator was smart for not fighting or cowardly for backing off. Maybe he was both. “I’m sure he will.”

  Gator kicked a trash bucket across the room on his way out.

  “Does anyone know where I can get a good bottle of wine ASAP?” Chris shouted out to the others in the gator pit.

  A man in civilian clothes hesitantly raised his hand.

  “I need it for the interrogation. How fast can you get it here?” Chris asked.

  “Right away.” The man left his desk and rushed out of the room.

  “If Mordet likes wine and my ear, I’ll give him what he wants.” Chris borrowed Hannah’s phone, called the surgeon, and asked for his ear in a small cooler.

  He observed the monitor of the interrogation booth. Gator’s henchman cleared out the waterboarding equipment, handcuffed Mordet’s hands behind his back, chained his feet together, and sat him in a chair.

  Minutes later, when the cooler and wine arrived, Chris left the gator pit. After the henchman stepped out of the booth, Chris stepped inside. He closed the door behind him and set his cooler down beside the door. Then he took a seat on the plastic chair in front of a table between himself and Mordet.

  It’s time we have a little chat, my friend.

  2

  The booth, like other interrogation rooms, was kept cold to make the prisoner uncomfortable. Chris exhaled, purging any anger or anxiety from his system—neither would help him succeed in the interrogation.

  Mordet gazed at the bandage on Chris’s ear. “I gather that we have already made each other’s acquaintance, but my doctorate is in philosophy, not medicine.”

  Chris felt the same giant, dark hand pressing down on him that he’d experienced at Mordet’s estate. “You gather correctly, Professor.” Chris poured a glass of wine and gave him a sip.

  After Mordet finished the sip, he licked his lips. “It seems that you know about me, but I do not know about you, other than the fact that you and your comrades were highly professional, and we left via the Euphrates River. No conventional military units would operate inside Syria. I can only guess that you are a Navy SEAL—probably from SEAL Team Six.” Mordet stared into Chris’s eyes as if he were probing Chris’s brain.

  Chris showed no expression in his face or voice. “I can neither confirm nor deny—”

  Mordet was equally cool. “No need—I have already confirmed it. Even so, I still do not know your name.”

  Chris didn’t know how the interrogation would play out, but if he was patient, he might spot an opening and exploit it. “My name is Chris.”

  Mordet’s eyes sparkled. “Do you have a last name, Chris?”

  Chris continued without showing emotion. “Yes.”

  Mordet took another drink. “Will you give it to me?”

  “No.”

  The sparkle in Mordet’s eyes faded. “That is not very sporting. You have come here to ask me where Young Park is, but you will not even tell me your last name.”

  “Yes, I came here to ask where he is.” Chris gave him the rest of the drink.

  He seemed pleased. “Why is he so important to you?”

  Chris refilled Mordet’s glass. He had thought he was in control of the interrogation, but now he wasn’t sure. He gave Mordet a long drink.

  “Is Park related to you?”

  Chris said nothing.

  “A friend?”

  “Yes.”

  Mordet stared at Chris’s eyes. “This rescue has more meaning to you than mere friendship. Maybe this is more about the rescue than about Young Park.”

  The remarks caught Chris off guard, as if Mordet had a sixth sense for digging into his soul. Every rescue was deeply personal, but the purpose of the interrogation was Young, not Chris. He surveyed for a warm spot in Mordet’s cool veneer. “You bit off my ear and tried to eat it. Don’t you think that’s a bit strange?”

  Mordet gazed at the ceiling. “Is it? During the Vietnam War, a CIA SOG officer killed enemy combatants and cut off their ears. And made necklaces out of them.” Mordet sniffed the air as if he smelled a meal, and then his eyes lowered to his interrogator.

  Mordet had an aura about him that made Chris’s skin prickle, but he didn’t show it. “I’ve heard the stories. I’ve heard a lot of stories and seen a lot of things, but you weren’t making a necklace.”

  Mordet frowned like a lecturer disappointed with a student. “What would be the point—a trophy? How droll. And wasteful.”

  “I don’t know anyone who eats the body parts of humans.”

  There was a shadowy stillness in Mordet’s eyes, and wine stained the corner of his lips like blood. “In western New Guinea, when the Korowai tribe finds that someone is a khakhua, a witch doctor, they eat that person’s brain while it is still warm.”

  Chris saw the source of the giant, dark hand that pressed on him, and the more he saw, the less he wanted to see, but he didn’t show his aversion to the blackness emanating from Mordet. “I didn’t know that,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Mordet smiled, but the corners of his smile were closer to a sneer. “In America, when the Donner Party became trapped in the snowy Sierra Nevada, the survivors ate the dead.”

  “That remains unconfirmed.”

  “In the 1972 Andes flight disaster, the survivors ate the dead bodies of their classmates and friends.”

  Mordet disgusted Chris, and the conversation made him weary, much like the war did, but Mordet gave off an aura of evil unlike any Chris had ever encountered. In spite of his weariness and his need to end the conversation, his need to rescue Young was greater.

  What makes you tick, Mordet?

  “But I don’t guess you belong to a tribe in New Guinea nor were you in the Andes flight disaster.”

  “Not the Andes flight disaster, but when I was a teenager, my mother, younger sister, and I flew to Turkey for a winter vacation. We crashed in the Taurus Mountains. Only my sister and I survived. After we ran out of food, I suggested we eat the bodies. My sister refused and insisted we try to climb off the mountain. I told her the weather was too severe and it would be easier for a search party to find a wrecked plane than two people wandering through the snow. So I did what was necessary to survive, but I will never forget the way she looked at me, like I was … such a monster. Two days later, I woke up and she was gone. One month after the crash, they rescued me and found my sister’s body. She’d frozen to death.” He finished his drink.

  “You ate human flesh for nourishment.” Chris refilled his glass and gave him a drink.

  “Yes, of course. When I returned home, news traveled about how I’d survived, and my classmates and their parents ostracized me. Sometimes I fantasized about eating them. I read about the Korowai tribe and was fascinated. Of course eating another human is part of their culture, but
more important, eating another human gives them spiritual power to destroy forces greater than mortality.”

  “But eating my ear didn’t give you the power to escape. You’re still imprisoned here.”

  “Ah, but I did not finish the whole ear, you see.”

  Chris wanted to put a bullet through him, but he exercised patience instead. “I’m not here to judge you. I just want to know where Young is.”

  “Why should I help you?” Mordet looked at the cooler and bottle of wine near the doorway. “If you give me a bottle of wine and what is left of your ear in that cooler, you think I’ll tell you where Young is?”

  Mordet’s weakness seemed to be his pride in his intellect and his eagerness to rationalize his cannibalism as some mystic gift. “You suggested that if you could finish the ear, your spiritual power would increase, enabling you to escape this situation.” Chris moved his chair closer to Mordet. “Jeffrey Dahmer ate people because his brain was a couple bullets short of a full magazine. I’m just trying to confirm how I should classify our conversation in the report I send to my superiors and our allies.”

  Chris gave him the rest of the glass, but he didn’t pour a refill. “Très bien. I am not so strange. If you had walked in my shoes, you would have done the same.” Mordet whispered: “During my senior year of high school—”

  “If you’re not interested, I understand.” Chris stood up, turned around, and walked to the door. He picked up his cooler. “I think I know how to write my report.”

  “Wait,” Mordet said.

  Chris stopped and turned to face him.

  “Give me the wine and cooler, and I will tell you where Young is.”

  “It doesn’t work that way. After we find Young, you get what’s left of the wine and my ear. I’ll write a report about your belief in your mystic power. Then it’s up to you to prove to everyone that your power is real. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” Chris reached for the door.