by Sean Ellis
Even screaming was unendurable.
“Wake up.”
The command barely reached him, but the ability to comply or resist had long since been torn away.
Nevertheless, he tried to open his eyes. His right eyelid parted, only just, but his left did not so much as twitch.
Through the sliver-thin opening he, beheld the face of his tormentor only a few inches away. The olive-skinned man with jet-black hair wore a camouflage uniform, but Higgins couldn’t make out any insignia or badges of rank.
Higgins lips moved but he made no utterance. He couldn’t breathe.
He had been hung by his arms, stretched out so that, even absent the damage to his chest, the simple act of drawing a breath would have been exhausting. His toes scraped the floor beneath him, close enough to touch, but too far to permit him to gain purchase and relieve some of the strain.
His torturer glanced away and said something incomprehensible, another language, Arabic perhaps. A moment later, the bonds holding Higgins by the wrists shuddered as he dropped a few inches. The pain was transcendent, but he felt the floor grow solid against the balls of his feet. He pushed up, and managed a shallow inhalation.
“You are American?”
Higgins answered with a whimper.
“You are alone now. The man captured with you died while I was interrogating him.” There was a long pause, perhaps to let the gravity of that simple declaration draw the captive deeper into despair. “But you can spare yourself that fate. He told me a great deal about your mission before he expired, and all I require now is confirmation.
“You are badly injured my friend. You need medical attention, and I will see that you get it. Our countries are at war, but we are civilized men, are we not? You will receive the best medical care we can provide. In a way, you are very fortunate. Our forces will soon scatter the carcasses of your countrymen on the sand as a feast for the birds, but you will live. You will be treated with respect, and one day, when your cowardly leader grovels in defeat, we may deign to return you to your home...to your loved ones.
“Or perhaps not. That is for you to decide. It is a decision you must make now.”
Another whimper trickled from Higgins’ lips.
The man spoke again in Arabic, and the ropes holding Higgins went slack, dropping him to his knees. Already at his threshold of endurance, Higgins savored the small measure of relief that followed.
“I believe it’s customary to begin with your name and rank.”
He grasped at the question like a lifeline, but the words that slipped from his mouth were garbled. His tongue was thick in his mouth; his lips were split and swollen from the beating he’d received when captured.
“Sergeant, is it? Not American, though. British, I should say.” The man sneered contemptuously. “America’s lap dog. Your countrymen would do well to abandon the sinking ship of your former colony. But we are soldiers, are we not? Sent off to fight and die at the whim of our imperial leaders.”
Another pause.
“And why is it that the Americans sent you to die here tonight? Were you to reconnoiter our missile emplacements? Gauge our troop strength?”
“Don’t know,” Higgins mumbled.
That was the tragedy of it.
Like any other soldier, Higgins had long known of the possibility that an enemy might capture him, imprison and torture him. And as easy as it was to contemplate such eventualities from the safety of the barracks or over a pint with his mates, no man could know how they might respond when tested, what his personal breaking point might be.
But that was moot, right now. It was not within his power to answer or refuse to answer because he simply didn’t know.
Random bits of information flashed in his head like the pieces of a shattered stained glass window. The American officer...Kismet...dead bodies, strewn about on the floor of a half-buried ruin...a car, erupting in flames...his fellow Gurkhas, ripped apart...See you in the next life.
“Don’t...know.”
The interrogators face drew into a frown, then he spoke in Arabic again.
Higgins felt the rope go taut and before he could draw a breath, his arms were wrenched upward again. There was a bright flash of pain, and then the darkness took him.
* * *
The pain was still there when he awoke again, but tolerable now. The strain on his shoulder was gone; he could even feel a throbbing in his fingertips as his circulation was restored.
“Don’t know,” he mumbled.
“It speaks.” The voice was soft, reaching through the layers of his misery with a promise of comfort, a promise that he couldn’t bring himself to trust. But there was something familiar there; it didn’t sound like his tormentor.
“Lef...Kis...?” His good eye opened a crack and he glimpsed the face of the American with the improbable name. The man bore little resemblance to the lieutenant who had accompanied Higgins’ squad on the nighttime infiltration. Kismet’s combat uniform had been stripped away, and his face and shoulders were a mass of bruises and weeping abrasions.
“Yeah, it’s me. Don’t try to talk. And try not to scream.”
A fresh wave of agony radiated from his right arm, but then almost immediately subsided into a dull ache.
Kismet spoke again. “I think I’ve set the bone, but hold still while I find something to splint it with.”
Higgins eye opened a little wider and his surroundings gradually came into focus. He was lying supine on the floor of a featureless concrete room. An incandescent bulb hung overhead, the only source of light, but there was little for it to illuminate. He saw that he, like Kismet, had been stripped naked, and as this visual message filtered through his brain, he felt the rough floor against his skin.
Kismet moved into view again, and bent over Higgins, ministering to his broken arm. “I hope you feel better than you look, my friend.”
“Said...dead...”
“You must mean Colonel Saeed. He told me you were dead, too.” Kismet made a rough noise, and it took Higgins a moment to realize that it was a chuckle. “I’d say he was half right. For both of us.”
“Where...?”
“He’s gone. They’re all gone.” Kismet glanced around furtively. “I don’t know what’s going on. I searched the whole building...hell, the entire compound. There’s no one here. It’s like they abandoned it. This is probably some elaborate ploy, but what choice do we have?”
Higgins felt a throb of discomfort as Kismet wrapped a length of cloth around his right forearm, but nothing like the agony he’d earlier experienced.
“There,” the American said. “That’s best I can do with what I’ve got. Any other serious injuries I should know about?”
Higgins impulsively shook his head and immediately regretted it.
“That’s what I thought,” Kismet replied, commiserating. “Come on, let’s get you on your feet.”
Kismet’s guarded enthusiasm was contagious. Tapping into a fresh vein of resolve, Higgins felt his strength returning and with only a little assistance from the American, was soon standing more or less on his own; Kismet kept a steadying hand on Higgins’ left biceps.
Kismet stopped abruptly before they reached the exit. “Well I’ll be damned. Look at that.”
Higgins strained to focus his good eye, and followed Kismet’s pointing finger to a tabletop just to the right of the door. Lying there, as casually as one might leave their coat draped over the back of a chair, were a pair of unsheathed kukri knives. Kismet scooped them up and pressed one into Higgins’ left hand.
As his fingers curled around the carved wooden hilt, he felt a strange mix of emotions: pride, that he would have yet another chance to die as hundreds of Gurkhas before him had, with his blade in hand; weary resentment, at the fact that circumstance had denied him relief from his suffering, and instead conspired to place him once more in harm’s way; and a singe grain of desperate hope. The blade was a symbol of all those things, but for practical purposes, it was next t
o useless. He couldn’t hold it in his dominant hand, and was nearly blind to boot… if fate brought them once more into contact with the enemy, it wouldn’t be much of a fight.
But as Kismet had indicated, the building in which they had been held captive was abandoned. They found a storeroom that contained, among other things, uniforms with the red triangle insignia of the Republican Guard sewn on the shoulders.
With no little help from Kismet, Higgins donned a uniform and even managed to stuff his feet into a pair of unlaced boots. As a disguise, it wouldn’t pass even the most cursory inspection, but he felt less vulnerable with his nakedness covered.
With Kismet leading the way, they ventured outside the building. Dawn had broken, but there was no activity whatsoever in close proximity to the structure. Look’s like something from a bleedin’ Mad Max movie, Higgins tried to say, but his cracked lips wouldn’t form the words.
Kismet nevertheless seemed to understand. “Yeah, I don’t like it either.” Hefting the kukri, he turned slowly, scanning in every direction for some indication that their captors were waiting to spring a trap. If they were there, they were well hidden.
A dust-streaked Toyota Land Cruiser was parked nearby and the two men headed for it. Kismet opened the door for Higgins and offered a steadying hand as the latter slid into the passenger seat, and then circled around to the driver’s side. The American searched all the usual places for a spare key, and finding none, shifted the transmission into neutral and popped the hood. He was away only a few moments before the engine turned over and rumbled to life.
“Handy trick,” Higgins managed to say.
Kismet nodded as he slid into the driver’s seat. He reached over the steering wheel and insinuated inserted the tip of his kukri into the gap between the wheel and the steering column. There was an audible click as the locking pin released, and the wheel moved in his hands. “Now we run the gauntlet.”
Higgins nodded weakly. There was no way this was going to work, but then there was also no reason for the Republican Guard to have abandoned their compound. Events were now so far beyond his control, the only reasonable course of action was to keep moving toward whatever was going to happen.
But nothing did happen.
Kismet wandered through the walled enclosure until he found an open gate leading out onto a paved road. The guardhouse beside the gate appeared empty as well, but beyond that, there was at least some evidence that the world had not come to an end without them. Kismet swung the Land Cruiser out onto the road and headed south, away from the city.
* * *
Much of what followed was a blur for Higgins. Several hours and perhaps hundreds of miles slipped by in a pain-induced fugue. He awakened from time to time, mostly when Kismet stopped to top off the petrol from the spare cans mounted to the vehicle’s bumper, but if anything more dramatic than that occurred, it escaped his notice.
In the years to come, Higgins would marvel at the miracle of their escape; it seemed like a religious mystery, something comforting that was meant to be accepted on faith, and which would only be diminished by too many questions.
It would be more than two decades before he would have reason to think about it differently.
PART THREE
Grave Secrets
NINE
The sun was just starting to brush the tops of the trees that lined the west fence as Joe King finished his last pass with the big riding mower, and steered the machine onto the gravel path leading back for the shed. No sooner had he dismounted to throw open the wooden doors when the automated sprinklers activated and droplets of water began falling on the immaculate—and freshly cut—emerald green turf.
Just made it, he thought as he got back on the mower and coaxed it forward a few more feet, into its parking spot. It had been a busy day. His plan to get an early start on the north lawn had been derailed when, on his way out, he’d noticed some fresh graffiti—the third time in as many weeks. He’d spent the better part of the morning scouring paint off the weathered marble and picking up the litter—fast food wrappers and beer bottles—that had been left behind by the vandals. The first time it had happened, he had called the police, but aside from taking the report and suggesting that maybe some additional security measures were in order, the officer had been of little help. Joe understood. From their point of view, it must have seemed like a victimless crime. Indeed, aside from being put off his schedule a few hours, what harm had been done?
But it wasn’t so much the fact of the vandalism that concerned Joe, as the tone and message of the graffiti: swastikas, triple-Ks, and a variety of slurs ranging from the old classics to some Joe had never heard before and only barely grasped.
What did you expect? He had thought to himself as he scrubbed the last bits of paint from a tombstone. Keepin’ one of the oldest cemeteries for black folks in the county. ‘Course the rowdies are gonna make it all about color.
In the end, he’d managed to get the north lawn cut before the sprinklers came on, and now the defaced graves were the furthest thing from his mind as he pulled the shed doors closed and shackled them with a padlock. He knew it had been a slow day up at the office—folks weren’t, contrary to the old joke, dying to get in, at least not into a plot at the Ashley Rest Memorial Gardens, which suited Joe just fine—and that meant plenty of time for Candace to whip up one of her spectacular suppers. He quickened his pace, skirting along the edge of the stately manor that now served as the chapel, and aimed for the adjoining building, a small but adequate single story house that he and Candace called home.
That was when he saw the visitors.
At first, he thought nothing of it. In an age where people could look up their ancestors on the Internet, it wasn’t unusual for folks to come by the house, asking for directions to the last resting place of a distant relation. But as he drew closer and got a better look at the pair standing on the porch, he felt a tingle of apprehension. A tall man with silver-white hair, dressed entirely in black, and a shapely, poised blonde woman.
White folks almost never came asking for directions.
As he got within earshot of the porch, he slowed to listen in on the exchange and heard the male visitor speaking.
“Good evening, ma’am.” Joe thought the man sounded rather abrupt, rude even, but it might have owed to the fact that there wasn’t the least trace of an accent in his voice. “I am looking for Mr. Joseph King.”
Joe could just see the top of Candace’s head, her wispy gray hair bobbing in the space between the two visitors. “Joe’s my son,” she answered. “Unless of course, you looking for Joe’s granpappy, Mr. King senior. You’ll find him out in the gardens, if you take my meaning.”
“He’s dead.”
Joe felt a chill at the way the man said it, and lurched forward again, gathering his courage to shoo this pair away before they could cause any real trouble.
“That’s right,” Candace continued smoothly, with a confidence and courage borne of her years. “So if your business is with him, then I’d say you came about ten years too late. Now, if they’s nothing else, I’ll bid you kind folks good evenin’.”
The tall man seemed to stiffen, and Joe saw him take a step forward. “Actually, ma’am. Maybe there’s something you can help us with.”
Joe broke into a sprint, bounding up the steps, but whatever demand he had been preparing died on his lips when he caught sight of the small automatic pistol the blonde woman now held pressed against Candace’s abdomen.
The silver-haired man half turned to acknowledge him. “Ah, this must be the junior Mr. King. Perhaps you can help as well.”
Joe drew up short and raised his hands in a gesture of supplication. “Don’t want no trouble now, sir.”
“Nor do I. I just have a few questions, and then I’ll be on my way.” The man offered an icy smile as he gestured for Joe to enter the house. “For your sake, I hope you know the answers.”
“What do you want to know?”
Even as he asked
the question, Joe realized the answer, but he still did his best to look surprised when the silver-haired man said simply: “Tell me everything you know about Hernando Fontaneda.”
* * *
“Stop!”
Kismet immediately shifted his foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal, bringing the rented Ford Explorer to an abrupt but controlled stop. They had turned off the main road and onto a long graveled driveway only a few seconds earlier, so there wasn’t much risk of causing a collision, but Higgins’ sudden command nevertheless filled him with apprehension. “What’s wrong?”
Higgins, from the front passenger seat, pointed forward, down the length of the landscaped drive to a cluster of buildings dominated by an immaculate white antebellum manor house. “They’re here already.”
Kismet tried to sharpen his focus, scanning the foreground, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant. A silver sedan was parked in front of the manor—nothing too suspicious about that. Then he caught a glimpse of motion...a flash of golden hair, illuminated by the porch light, disappearing into the doorway of a smaller structure, just as old as the manor house but considerably less elegant, extending out from it like an architectural postscript.
Annie leaned over his shoulder, curious about the unexpected stop, and saw it too. “That bitch,” she snarled.
It was an opinion Kismet shared. He eased off the brake and guided the SUV off the road surface, then turned to his companions. “So, how do we play this?”
Higgins didn’t answer, but instead got out and circled around to open the Explorer’s rear hatch. A moment later, Kismet saw him peering through the scope affixed to a long, matte black bolt action rifle. The business end of the gun was pointed at the porch of the distant house.
