by R. D. Power
Minutes later, he awoke, a pail of cold water having been poured over his head. The interrogator stepped away and said something to one of the guards standing outside of the cell. That guard, a regular Iraqi army soldier, left, but soon returned with another American prisoner. The prisoner, a corporal, had been beaten brutally. He was forced to his knees and was whimpering. The interrogator instructed the guard to put his pistol to the back of the corporal’s head; his glistening, black eyes bespoke confusion, pain, and terror.
“Now, Sergeant Owens, once again, where are the inspectors? Mind, if you lie, this man will die.”
Seeing no option, Robert told him everything.
After Robert finished, the interrogator nodded at the guard. The guard looked at his superior with a pleading look as if to say, “Don’t make me do this!” The next gesture made the sentence unmistakable. He shot, and the soldier fell dead.
“No!” screamed Robert. The guard turned away in despair. “I told you everything. I told you the truth. You murdered him, you fucking animal!” Robert’s chest expanded and contracted with convulsive sobs. The guard was told to fetch something else. His face again showed dismay.
The interrogator took out his pistol and put it up to Robert’s temple. “Tell me now or die!” he said.
“I swear to God I told you the truth! You executed him for nothing. The inspectors were taken away by one of our choppers at 1:15. I swear, I’m telling the truth!” the terrified man wailed.
“Last chance!” he warned as he squeezed the trigger.
“God help me, I told you everything!” The man pulled the trigger. It clicked. No bullet.
As Robert continued weeping, the interrogator said, “You are a brave man, Sergeant Owens. I’m impressed that you are willing to die to protect the inspectors.” The guard returned, and the sadistic fiend took what he brought back. Holding up a long hypodermic needle filled with a liquid, he said, “Do you know what this is?” The traumatized man shook his head no. “This is a vial of the virus HIV. Do you know of it?” The panicked man nodded his head yes. “No drugs will suppress AIDS with this much virus. Now tell me where the inspectors are, or I will inject this into you. Within two months, you will develop full-blown AIDS. Before six months, you will have suffered a horrible, drawn-out death. Now tell me!”
“For God’s sake, I told you the truth!”
The interrogator brandished the needle in front of Robert’s eyes. Someone came in and whispered something to the interrogator, then left. Enraged, the interrogator punched Robert in his broken nose. He put his face right up to Robert’s and said, bitterly, “I am told the inspectors are at an American base, so you weren’t brave after all; you cracked like a sniveling coward.”
He continued to wave the needle in minatory fashion. “We get a lot of American news here. You know what I hate most? When they say so many hundred people died in the Gulf War or in the latest war—whatever the puppets on American television are calling it—when actually it was so many hundred thousand. Only the hundreds are Americans or their allies, and the hundreds of thousands are Iraqis; as if we aren’t people, as if killing a hundred of you is a criminal act, but killing a hundred thousand of us is nothing! You started this war, not us. It is you who are the aggressors. You think I am evil for doing this to you, and for killing that soldier. Look at him.
“Look!” said the monster as he yanked Robert’s head around to see the corpse. “Multiply him by a thousand and you know our losses, our pain. You killed untold numbers of us. For what? What did we do to America?” Robert’s eyes betrayed his panic. “This is for all my brothers that you killed,” the interrogator said as he took the needle and placed it against his arm.
“No!” said Robert. “Please!” The interrogator pushed the needle into his arm. “Oh, God no! Please don’t,” he cried. The man injected the liquid. Robert wept the profound tears of a shattered and doomed man. He blacked out.
Hours later, he awoke with a start. He was on the cold floor, which doubled as his bed. The pain was so intense, he couldn’t even move. With dread, he suddenly recalled the needle. So distraught was he to be alive, his crying began once more. He was in such bad shape then, he soon fainted again and stayed unconscious for many hours.
Upon reviving, Robert struggled to lift his head to see where he was. Any movement sent a pang of pain through his body. He anxiously moved or felt various parts of his body to see what damage had been done. It felt as if some ribs on his left side might be broken. Three fingers were broken, two on his pitching hand. He briefly panicked about that, but then with a bitter chuckle remembered, I’m done for and I’m worrying about my pitching career. He couldn’t open his right eye; it was too swollen. His face was throbbing, his nose was broken, his jaw was dislocated; two molars had been knocked out. Later, three hairline fractures were discovered in his cheeks.
Through his left eye, he determined he was alone in a small cell. There was a small basin—his toilet—in the corner. Beside it was a cup. So severe was his thirst at that time, he dragged himself to it, every thrust eliciting a muffled cry as his sore body protested the movement. Finally, he covered the six feet only to discover the cup was empty. As guards occasionally walked by, he would lift the cup up as far as he could and attempt to ask for water, but his dry throat would permit no sound through. A while later, a guard slid a small bowl of gruel and a cup of water into his cell. Lugging himself over to it, he drank down the water. Nothing had ever tasted so good.
At some point during the interrogation, he had soiled himself, which was making life uncomfortable for the guards. “Take off your clothes,” they ordered. He obeyed, though he almost fainted with pain in getting them off. When he was naked, a guard showed up with a large hose. He signaled someone, and out came a jet of frigid water. With nowhere to hide, Robert curled into a ball to protect himself as best he could. His cold shower, which lasted two minutes or so, left him clean but freezing. They took away his clothes, leaving him naked and shivering on the wet floor. He remained in a ball to conserve as much heat as he could.
So cold and hurt was he that sleep would not come to him that night, though his body and mind sorely needed it. He wanted to turn over to lie on his left side, but his ribs wouldn’t permit it, so he stayed in one position, shivering against the cold and pain. The next morning his clean clothes were restored to him, providing some welcome warmth and cover.
The guards had done much more for him than he knew. They’d disregarded the interrogator’s order to shoot him and three other prisoners—those who could inculpate him—before he fled. Not only was this repugnant to the guards, they knew they would be held to account after the inevitable flight of the cabal.
As time passed, his condition improved, but there was too much time for thinking. Of course, the virus building in his body preoccupied him. He occasionally glanced at his pitching hand; it was too upsetting to stare at his mangled fingers. He also replayed every sequence of the fateful night in his head. He saw his buddies die. He recalled the look in Hendrix’s eyes the instant before he disappeared. He saw himself kill for the first time, then again, again and again. He saw the poor American corporal murdered. He saw the burnt children. The screams of the man injured by his grenade echoed in his head, but haunting him most were the vacant eyes of the fourteen-year-old soldier he had shot. He knew he did what he had to do. He knew he’d helped to accomplish an incredibly important mission. But those eyes, those dead eyes.
He experienced grief and guilt so overwhelming, he had to share them with Kristen. “This is all your fault, Mrs. Solano!” Toward her he felt disdain, but his disdain bore no taint of hatred; his latent love for her wouldn’t allow it. If Dominic and Judy were there, he would have enjoyed becoming a murderer, and even understood how his interrogator could harbor enough animosity to be so base.
When the body is broken and the spirit is crushed, everything seems hopeless. He’d long ago lost his faith. Now his hope was gone, too, and everyone needs one or the ot
her to face the future. Robert succumbed to a terrible depression during this period. In his abysmal despair, he thought of everything, of everyone with revulsion. He didn’t have the consolation of God. His horrendous experiences over the last few days had pushed him off the fence of agnosticism into the atheistic abyss. No god could permit the horrors he’d witnessed and partaken in. As he lay on his side trying to sleep, a tear escaped his eye, rolled across his cheek and dripped onto the floor.
“It’s hopeless, it’s hopeless,” he muttered. The broken and crushed man fell asleep wanting never to wake up.
•
Every day during this time was an eternity for Kristen. Not knowing whether he was alive or dead, horribly injured, or captured and maybe even tortured. No, it was too much to even contemplate. Everything else ceased in her life. She spent all day watching CNN for updates. Her parents’ attempts at diversion failed, and they began to worry about her mental health.
•
With one hundred thousand allied troops poised to attack, the terrorists fled, the renegade troops ditched their uniforms, and the authorities asserted what power they could. After an initial period of confusion, they got around to freeing the prisoners. Four days after his capture, Staff Sergeant Owens was released and flown to Germany.
Chapter Four
Back Home
Hindsight is said to be twenty-twenty, and although many, especially those with power over us, seem to be myopic even in hindsight, most of us have the gift of seeing what we should have done once it’s too late to do it. Looking back, we wonder how we could have possibly passed up what turned out to be a golden opportunity. Either we failed to perceive its promise or were too afraid to risk what it would have taken to seize the day.
After his dreadful experience in Iraq, Robert Owens was desperately in need of hope, of happiness, of love. Two superb opportunities to realize lifelong love would present themselves in the coming months, but he would forego both, because to seize them he would have had to believe that hope, happiness, and love exist, and in his then-current state of mind, that was impossible. But the love these people showed him in his desperate straits would open his mind to the possibility of lifelong love in pacific seas.
Upon his release, Robert Owens was taken to an American Army hospital in Germany. He told doctors of his interrogation, the American corporal executed, and the needle with HIV. He was told they’d have to wait a minimum of two months after infection to test for HIV.
That afternoon, a stout, redheaded woman in civilian dress and an American colonel came to see him. The woman winced on seeing Robert. He was bandaged, stitched, wired, and encased in pounds of plaster; he was a physical and emotional wreck. Noticing the woman’s reaction, he mumbled, “Yeah, this dude called Picasso dropped by to paint my portrait, but gave it up saying my face was too contorted.” The two smiled politely, trying to figure out what he said.
Wanting to learn what happened from start to finish for their official report, they asked him to speak up as well as he could and leaned closer to him. They were in possession of a recording of the conversation between Hendrix and the contact, and wanted him to begin by filling in the blanks. After thanking him for his actions—for they were impressed with him from what they’d heard on the recording and from the inspectors—they played the recording.
After citing the password, Hendrix immediately told the man of the smallpox, where it was, and to watch for people leaving the area. Before he could go on, though, the contact asked him how he learned of this. Hendrix explained he got the news and password from the UN inspectors. “Where are they?” asked the contact, but before Hendrix could answer, Robert could be heard in the background yelling in Arabic, “I think I got him.” Suspicious, the contact said, “Who was that?”
Hendrix said, “That’s my buddy, Owens, who’s in a Republican Guard uniform squatting between me and an Iraqi tank trying to give me time to get this message out.”
Other questions followed. “Who are you? What’s your position? Was that Arabic he spoke?”
Hendrix told him he and Owens were American soldiers ordered to the sanatorium in search of the inspectors where they’d found them, but asserted that he had no time for further explanation, that any second they would be fired upon. “Just let me finish please!” He told them where the inspectors were hidden. Then loud gunshots were heard. Robert had shot the two from the west. Hendrix said, “Christ, that was close. Good shot, Owens!”
“What was that?” the contact asked.
“My buddy just shot two Iraqis gunning for us. Now let me finish!”
In the background, distant shots rang out, and Robert could be heard screaming, “Time’s out, Hendrix! Run!” to which Hendrix responded, “I haven’t quite finished.” He went on to ask for a helicopter at 0-15—”Get out of there!” Robert was heard to yell in the distance—and specified the coordinates. Suddenly, the line went dead.
Reliving that scene wasn’t the best therapy in Robert’s current vulnerable state. He broke down crying at the end of it. Hendrix had had to waste precious seconds assuring the contact his news was legitimate. This was only prudent, Robert’s logic told him, but the extra time had cost Hendrix his life.
“Obviously, we now know Hendrix was genuine, but from our point of view at the time, there were lots of unanswered questions. We took considerable risks trusting him,” said the redhead. “We’re sorry to put you through this, but we need to know the circumstances of this call.”
Robert recounted the harrowing experience: how they had found the inspectors and hidden them; how they had to find a phone; how they found one in possession of the enemy and, despite the perilous situation, felt there was no choice but to get and use that phone given what was at stake.
He described the scene, and how they were trapped. “There were only seconds to form a plan and execute it. Our only hope was they wouldn’t shoot because they thought I was one of them. It worked, but not for long enough. As soon as I shot the two coming from the west, the jig was up. Their commander yelled ‘Fire!’ and that’s when I ran and screamed to Hendrix to run. But he stayed to complete the message.
“It was the most courageous and selfless act I can ever conceive. He knew he was giving his life to save the inspectors. When he finished the message, he crouched there with the thumbs up sign and a sad smile, then he disappeared … He was a great guy.”
They expressed their sympathy.
“Tell us what happened after the phone call,” said Colonel Larson. Robert related the account up to his capture, but stopped there. “Continue, son,” said the colonel. “We understand you witnessed the execution of one of our soldiers? Was this him?” the colonel asked, showing Robert a picture of a young black man. With a lump in his throat, Robert confirmed it was him, and told them of the murder and his torture. They had brought pictures of people whom they suspected might be the interrogator. Robert identified the criminal. “We’ll catch him,” promised Colonel Larson. They left.
The interrogator never was apprehended. He lived a long, comfortable life as a cleric in Syria.
Robert was released from hospital after recovering for nine days and transferred back to the United States on the next available transport plane. The next several weeks he spent recuperating at Fort Bragg. While there, he was visited by two senior military officials for more debriefing and warm congratulations. They were elated with his achievement. He was told he would receive the Distinguished Service Cross.
“Can we do anything for you?” they asked.
“Can I get out of the Army?”
They were surprised and disappointed at the request. “Why? You’ve done so well. We need men like you.”
“Well, sir, as you may know, I enlisted against my will. I was framed for a crime I didn’t commit and was released on the condition I sign with the Army for six years. But I want to get on with my life—what there is left of it, anyway. If I don’t get AIDS, I think I can still be a major league baseball player. I’ve
served my country well, and I hope you can see your way to releasing me early.”
One of the gentlemen, General Turnbull, told him, “You should know that you’ve been cleared of those crimes.”
“What? How?”
“I don’t have all the details, but I know an inspector with the Ontario Police had a lot to do with it.”
“Inspector Taylor?”
“Yes, that sounds right.”
“I hope you’ll agree, sir, that this makes my case for release more compelling. Can you please grant this? It’s all I ask.”
“Very well, but we’ll require you for more debriefing. I’m also ordering you to undergo psychological counseling. You’ve been through the wringer, and we want to make sure you’re fit to release on an unsuspecting world. Your release will be after your HIV test in early July. That way you’ll be assured the Army will cover the tab for treatment if you do have HIV.”
The daily sessions with the psychologist helped him work through some of the major issues besetting him, but made no progress apropos his rage against Dominic.
On July third, he went for HIV testing. “Staff Sergeant Owens,” the doctor said as he arrived at his room. Expecting the worst, Robert shook visibly. “I have good news. There is no sign of HIV in your blood.” The relief was so enormous, Robert started to weep. The doctor went on, “In odd cases, it takes longer for HIV antibodies to show up, so you’ll need to get tested again in one month and four months from now. But so far so good. I think you should rest a lot easier now.” Robert thanked the doctor and left.
•
Upon his release from the Army, Robert went back to London. On his to-do list were dealing with the bureaucracy of vacating his conviction, killing Dominic, and seeing Kim and his son. In mid-June, he had made an appointment with the prosecutor’s office for July fifth. The prosecutor called Bill with the news. Bill told his daughter.
“He’s alive?” she said jumping to her feet. He nodded. She hugged her dad for pure joy.
