by Richard Fox
“Ritter, what’s happening? Am I on the menu for dinner?” Shelton asked.
“No, you’re the guest of honor at the victory party.”
Shelton, Ritter, and three other Soldiers watched the Iraqis dance in a semicircle, arms linked together as an old boom box blasted Arabic dancing music. Every few minutes another Iraqi would offer the Americans alcohol, which was politely refused each time. Ritter convinced their hosts to serve them Turkish coffee instead, so as not to be poor guests.
Drinking Turkish coffee was akin to drinking straight shots of bitter espresso. The Iraqis poured the hot coffee into small porcelain cups. Kovalenko tossed back his first shot, grimaced, and held out his glass to be taken away. A smiling Iraqi refilled his glass. A confused Kovalenko shrugged his shoulders and drank again. He proffered the glass to the server, who promptly refilled his glass again.
Ritter couldn’t take any more and chuckled.
“Sir, I drink another shot of this, and I won’t sleep for a week. What gives?” the lieutenant asked.
“If you don’t want any more, hold the glass out and give it a little shake.” Ritter drank his coffee and demonstrated. The server brought a tray over, and Ritter put his glass on it.
“That would have been nice to know a bit earlier,” Kovalenko said as he drank his third glass and repeated Ritter’s gesture.
“The good news is that the Iraqis think you love the stuff and will always have it ready for you when you come to visit,” Ritter said with a laugh.
“What?”
“You have to drink it. Can’t be a poor guest,” Ritter said as he saw a pair of Abu Ahmet’s men hustle a tall, bearded man into an empty garage. The bearded man was hooded, his hands bound with rope. One of Abu Ahmet’s men, Theeb, broke off and jogged toward Ritter.
“I think someone needs to see me,” Ritter said.
Ritter met Theeb halfway, leaving the rest of the Americans to enjoy the party, with Ali to interpret.
“We have someone who might know where your men are. You need to hurry. Abu Ahmet…He has business with this man,” Theeb said.
Ritter followed Theeb into the garage, where a bloody Hamsa was tied to a chair. Theeb yanked the tape off Hamsa’s mouth, taking a good part of the man’s facial hair with it. Hamsa coughed and spat out a bloody tooth. A gash across his forehead had scabbed over and clotted; blood stained the left half of his face. His right eye had swollen shut from a recent blow.
“Tell him where the Americans are before Abu Ahmet knows you’re here!” Theeb yelled.
Hamsa’s remaining good eye widened at Abu Ahmet’s name. “You have to save me!” he pleaded.
“What did you do to Abu Ahmet?” Ritter asked. He knew he shouldn’t waste time with questions, but if he’d snatched this man out from under Abu Ahmet’s nose, he needed to know how serious the repercussions would be.
“I’ll tell you everything! Just get me out of here now!”
Ritter shrugged his shoulders and reached for the door.
“I raped his daughter. Just some girl, but that peasant turned it into a blood feud because he doesn’t have the balls to kill her and protect his honor!” Theeb buried his boot into Hamsa’s chest, knocking the prisoner and his chair to the floor. Theeb hauled the chair back upright.
“Tell me where my missing Soldiers are. Tell me now, and I might take you with me,” Ritter said.
“Shit,” Theeb said. Ritter followed Theeb’s gaze and saw an Iraqi speaking with Abu Ahmet and pointing to the garage.
“Tell me now!” Ritter yelled.
“I…I don’t know! Mukhtar put them in the truck with me and Yousef, and we drove the two Americans across the river. Mukhtar made us both get out of the truck in Owesat. Then he took them south alone. That was the last time anyone but Mukhtar saw them.” Hamsa squirmed in his seat; his breath came in short, panicky bursts.
“Were they alive when you got to Owesat?”
“Yes, but there was so much blood. Mukhtar never spoke about them again, and he refused to answer any questions.”
The door to the garage burst open. Ritter turned and saw Abu Ahmet, his face a mask of rage, a roar billowing in his throat. Abu Ahmet had his Tariq gun in his hand, and it was pointed right at Ritter’s chest. Ritter sidestepped and gave Abu Ahmet a clear shot at Hamsa.
Abu Ahmet fired once. The bullet blew out the back of Hamsa’s head onto the wall of the garage. Hamsa’s body flopped forward and tipped the chair over again. Ritter’s ears rang from the gunshot. He shoved his way past Abu Ahmet, who stared at Hamsa’s body.
Ritter stumbled back into the courtyard, where the party had continued without concern for the gunshot. Shelton and Kovalenko ran toward Ritter.
“What happened? You all right?” Shelton asked.
“Fine, I’m fine. Just a negligent discharge from a captured weapon,” Ritter lied.
Shelton tried to pass Ritter to investigate further, but Ritter stepped in front of him.
“I wouldn’t go in there. Abu Ahmet is using some old Iraqi-style discipline on the guy who let off the shot.” Ritter willed Shelton to fall for the ruse. One glance inside the garage would collapse the entire house of cards.
Shelton paused, then relaxed. “Make sure they know a mistake like that might get them shot by us,” he said.
“I’ll pass that on.”
Sheikh Abdullah—terribly drunk, based on the way his eyes swam in their sockets and on his one-hundred-proof breath—stumbled over to Ritter and Shelton and threw his arms over their shoulders.
“My friends, have you tried this”—he looked at the bottle in his hand—“Crown Royal? It’s amazing. Can you get me more?”
Ritter let Shelton guide the drunk Abdullah back to the party. Abu Ahmet left the garage, his pistol nowhere in sight. Abu Ahmet gave a nod to Ritter, which Ritter returned. By the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Ritter was now an accessory to murder, and he thought nothing of it.
Chapter 26
Yousef parked the car a few doors down from the safe house and grabbed a black plastic bag filled with hummus and baba ghanoush, a dish of seasoned and baked eggplant. They’d bought the food when they dropped off the compliant woman and the two kids. Mukhtar had generously given them a few extra dinars for their trouble but received no thanks from the traumatized woman.
Mukhtar and Yousef walked to the safe house; anyone watching would have assumed they were friends stopping by for a visit. Screeching to a halt half on and half off the sidewalk and racing into the house like scared mice would have garnered attention.
Yousef opened a wrought iron gate and held it open for Mukhtar. Mukhtar stopped inside the courtyard and took out his cell phone. “You go ahead. I have a call to make,” he said. Yousef complied without a word.
Mukhtar dialed his wife’s number and waited as the phone rang. It rang through to voice mail; he hung up and tried again. Same voice mail. Maybe she has the boys down for a nap, he thought. He put the phone back in his pocket and entered the house.
The house was dead silent. The empty bag was crumpled on a wooden dining table, the former contents cooling in the midafternoon air.
“Yousef! Where are you?” Mukhtar approached the table and scooped out a dollop of hummus with his pinkie. He sucked the chickpea-and-sesame paste from his finger and froze. A sandaled foot stuck out from around the corner of the kitchen. He walked around the corner and saw Yousef lying against the wall, a gaping wound in his neck from one side to the other. Mukhtar could see the white of his neck bones peeking from his splayed neck.
Mukhtar turned and ran for the front door. He yanked it open and found Mike waiting for him. Mike’s mouth opened in a snarl, his teeth stained brown by chewing tobacco. Before Mukhtar could react, Mike jammed something into Mukhtar’s stomach.
Fifty thousand volts from the stun baton coursed through Mukhtar’s body. Mukhtar let out a brief scream before falling to the ground. He curled into a fetal position before Mike jammed the stun baton into his kidneys and shocked him again.
Mike stabbed the device into Mukhtar’s crotch and shocked him a third time.
Mike knew he had to use the baton only once to incapacitate Mukhtar. The second and third administrations had been purely for his own pleasure.
Mukhtar’s body twitched as his nervous system malfunctioned under the onslaught. His bladder emptied its contents into his pants. Mike zip-tied his prey’s hands and ankles together, and dragged him out into the courtyard. He clicked his mic three times.
“Roger, target acquired. Stand by for extraction,” Carlos said through his earbud.
Ninety seconds later, Mukhtar was in the trunk of a car.
“Is the new audio track on this disk?” Ritter asked Shannon.
They stood in the observation room, watching Mukhtar lie in the same spot Atif had occupied a few days ago. Unlike Atif, Mukhtar hadn’t said a word since he regained consciousness. A TV on a metal cart was against a wall, and Mukhtar could see it if there wasn’t a hood over his head.
“Yes, we have it ready.” Shannon tugged at her lower lip. “Eric, if he doesn’t buy this, our chances of finding them are low. After ten hours of not checking in, the standard operating procedure is to move O’Neal and Brown or—” She stopped herself.
“Or kill them,” Ritter finished.
“Yes, and we don’t even know if he’s following the same procedure,” she said.
“My plan will work. This is why you brought me into Caliban all those years ago—because I know Mukhtar. After all these years, I can finally put that knowledge to good use,” Ritter said.
“If the first phase doesn’t work, I don’t think we can go through with the contingency,” she said.
“Shannon, that’s the most humane thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Ritter said.
“Should I be insulted?”
“No, not at all. Maybe I was wrong about you. Let’s hope he doesn’t call our bluff.”
Ritter pulled the hood off Mukhtar’s head. Mukhtar blinked hard under the harsh lights before his vision cleared. He worked a glob of spit around in his mouth and spat on Ritter’s chest. Ritter reached back and slugged Mukhtar across the face. Mukhtar’s head snapped to the side, then slumped to his chest.
Ritter shook his head, pulled an ammonia inhalant from his pocket, and snapped it into use. He jammed it under Mukhtar’s nose; the prisoner immediately reeled back and gagged.
“Faking it, Haider? I expect better from you,” Ritter said as he sat across from his old friend.
“Fuck you,” Mukhtar said.
The two men regarded each other for a moment.
“I won’t give them to you,” Mukhtar said.
“Are they alive?”
“I will give you nothing! Nothing, you bastard! I curse you, their families, and your entire Army with hope. Hope that one day they’ll come home. I curse you to forever search for them and keep your failure as a mark against your honor. I know your Ranger creed. Every one of you monsters with that stupid bit of cloth on your uniforms can look at it in shame, knowing you left someone on the battlefield.” Mukhtar smiled, his bloodstained teeth adding to the horror of his grimace.
Ritter felt his heart beat a half dozen times, his anger dissipating quickly. “I think we need to clear the air between us before we continue,” he said.
“There’s no need. I will never give them to you.”
“Badia.”
Mukhtar’s face twitched at the mention of his first wife.
“She’s dead because of you,” Mukhtar said.
“She is dead because you dragged her to Pakistan. She is dead because her worthless father was too much of a coward to fight, so he offered her to you as some sort of atonement for his lack of backbone.” Ritter’s hands balled into fists as he spoke. He wanted Mukhtar to give him another excuse to beat him senseless.
Mukhtar chuckled. “Does it keep you up at night knowing you killed her? She really did love you. She’d tell me every time we fought—how she wished she’d run off with you instead of being forced to marry me.”
Ritter felt his heart go cold at Mukhtar’s admission. He fought his rising panic. He must be lying, he thought.
“I’m afraid you don’t know me that well, Haider. I have something for you to see.” Ritter turned on the TV. The screen showed gray-scale drone footage of a dirty-and-claustrophobic city, a sedan in the middle of the screen. Ritter hit “play” on the DVD player. The sedan drove through the streets; the camera kept it centered.
“That’s you in Peshawar right after you ran from me. You remember all this, right?” Ritter said. He stood and walked behind Mukhtar.
Ritter’s voice came from the TV. “Control, the target is in that sedan.”
“No, I don’t want to see this,” Mukhtar said. On the screen the sedan pulled into a garage.
“Here’s where you went and grabbed Badia and your baby from your safe house. Where were you going to meet them? Abbottabad? Quetta?” Ritter put his hand on Mukhtar’s shoulder; the other reached for the knife sheathed on his lower back. A minute later, the sedan backed out of the garage and tore down the street.
“Watch carefully. See that guy on the street corner?” Ritter said as the sedan passed a standing figure with a cell phone to his ear. “He’s one of our spotters,” Ritter purred as he lied. He needed Mukhtar to believe he was an absolute monster, and the next few minutes would bear that out.
“Control, there’s a woman and a child in the vehicle with him,” said another voice.
“Damn it, I’m calling off the missile strike on account of the civilians,” Shannon said on the video.
“Negative, control. We can’t let the target escape,” Ritter said from the video. That line was fake, added in to the audio a mere hour before. The audio quality was ever so slightly different, but Mukhtar hadn’t noticed.
Ritter leaned in and whispered in Mukhtar’s ear. “I knew they were in the car with you.”
Mukhtar sobbed and squeezed his eyes shut.
“I’ll authenticate the strike. E-R-zero-six-one-eight,” Ritter said on the video. In reality, Ritter had been running for his life from the Pakistani police during the false dialogue, but Mukhtar didn’t know that.
“Rifle!” said an unseen drone pilot.
Ritter pulled his knife and pressed the flat of the blade against Mukhtar’s cheek. “Watch this happen, or I’ll cut your eyelids off,” he hissed.
Mukhtar’s eyes opened and stayed open as he watched the missile kill his wife and child. He collapsed into sobs as Ritter removed his knife and turned off the DVD player.
“I need you to understand that I killed Badia and your daughter. I need you to understand that for what happens next.” Ritter slid his knife back into the sheath.
Mukhtar kept crying, seemingly oblivious to what Ritter was saying.
“You mentioned hope—how it would curse the families of the missing Soldiers. But you’re clinging to hope as well.”
Mukhtar’s sobs slowed down.
“You’re hoping that your new family here in Iraq will be safe.”
The blood drained from Mukhtar’s face. “No! You can’t—”
Ritter switched the feed on the TV to show an interrogation cell. A woman sat against a wall, rocking an infant against her breast, while a young boy played with a stuffed bear. Mukhtar immediately recognized his second wife and their two children.
“This is a lie! A recording or some CIA trickery!” Mukhtar protested.
Ritter pulled Mukhtar’s cell phone from his pocket and gave a quick wave to the one-way mirror on the wall. On the screen a small portal opened at the bottom of the door, and a cell phone clattered into the room. The toddler grabbed the phone and brought it to his mother. Ritter dialed the last number called on the phone and showed the number to Mukhtar.
The phone rang in the woman’s hand. She flipped it open. “Haider?” said a meek voice through the phone. “Haider, is that you? The Americans came for us. I haven’t said—”
“Fatima! Listen to me—
”
Ritter ended the call before Mukhtar could say anything else. Mukhtar strained against his bonds as the woman on the TV dropped the phone and held her youngest tighter.
The little boy picked up the cell phone and held it to his ear. “Dada?” he said, his voice crystal clear through the TV’s speakers. Ritter turned off the TV.
“You monster!” Mukhtar yelled.
“Yes, I am a monster. So when I tell you what’s going to happen next, you had better believe me.” Ritter looked at his watch. “Starting now, for every hour you don’t tell me where they are, I will cut a piece off your family. You get to watch it happen.” He tapped the screen with a knuckle.
Mukhtar stared daggers at Ritter, as if pure hate could kill him.
“Seeing how it’s been three hours since we picked you up, I’d say we’re behind schedule.” Ritter flashed three fingers to the one-way mirror and turned the TV back on. On the screen the door to his family’s cell opened slightly.
“Wait,” Mukhtar said, defeat in his voice.
Ritter held up a fist; the door to the cell closed.
Chapter 27
Ritter sat across from Mukhtar as their Black Hawk crossed over the Euphrates River. The latter was handcuffed, his face and eyes covered by a ski mask and wraparound sunglasses. Carlos kept a meaty arm over Mukhtar’s shoulders, a seemingly friendly gesture meant to keep the prisoner from doing anything brave.
“Wheels down in one minute,” the pilot said over the aircraft’s internal radio.
Ritter looked out the window; the thin strip of green clinging to the river’s east bank gave way to tan desert. A few moments later, the helicopter landed in a billow of blown dust. Carlos heaved the door open and guided Mukhtar out of the helicopter.
Ritter stopped Mukhtar from taking more than a step from the helicopter. He fastened a tan cord with a small aluminum box to Mukhtar’s neck and covered it with the ski mask. He grabbed Mukhtar by the elbow and led him away from the helicopter.
“I put a necklace made from det cord around your neck. Screw around, and someone makes a phone call, and your head will pop ten meters into the sky. Got it?” Ritter asked.
