by Chuck Dixon
Levon kept playing dumb through another series of questions about past associations, his life in Saskatchewan, any contacts he made in prison, and anything he might wish to reveal about any illicit behavior in the huts. Levon played it straight and stupid, even faking passing out at one point to be brought around by a strop across the thigh from the Prick’s baton.
The Prick circled behind Levon, out of his sight. He must have beckoned the young guard to join him. They had a conversation in low tones before the young man hurried from the room. The Prick remained behind Levon, rhythmically slapping his baton on the leather palm of his glove. He was playing the bad cop to the hilt.
The young guard returned with two more burly guards. One of them was the big guy Levon had used as a battering ram in the yard fight. The guy had a black welt under one eye. When they undid his cuffs and helped him stand, Levon feigned more weakness in his legs than he felt. They recuffed his hands before him and frog-marched him toward the exit. The young guard held the door open and asked a question.
“Sünger odası,” the Prick said.
The sponge room.
39
Gunny Leffertz said:
“It can always get worse.”
They led Levon from the surveillance room down a corridor that ended in another steel door. Past this door was a concrete corridor lined with more steel doors. These had viewports in them at eye level. A row of plastic pails was lined up against one wall near a brass spigot.
Levon was uncuffed.
“Take a bucket. Fill it with water,” the young guard said.
Levon did as he was told, placing the bucket under the spigot and turning the knob. He stopped to stick his face in the stream. It tasted of rust but was cold. He took long gulps until a slap to the back of his head made him straighten. The bucket filled to the brim. The guards motioned for him to walk down the corridor to where the young guard held a cell door open.
The cell was approximately eight feet wide and ten feet deep. The ceilings were ten feet high. A single bare bulb was set in a recessed grate at the middle of the ceiling. All four walls, the floor and the interior of the cell door were covered in a quilted material. The fabric was rough, and the stain of black mold clung to the folds and seams. It gave beneath Levon’s feet as he entered.
A padded cell.
“Now you will take a shower,” the young guard said from the doorway. The other guards stood. The one with the mouse under his eye smirked. He made a remark and his comrade hissed through yellowed teeth.
“I don’t get it,” Levon said.
“A shower. You will take a shower,” the young guard said again. He mimed upending the bucket over his head.
Levon did as he was told, holding the bucket over his head and turning it over to douse him with cold water. The water puddled on the padding under his feet.
“Now the bucket is your toilet,” the young guard said.
The door was secured shut, and the bolts shot closed. The bulb above went out, leaving Levon in darkness except for a bluish glow coming through the slotted viewport in the doorway.
He stepped from the spreading puddle that was soaking the padded floor. Moisture was pressed up through the fabric everywhere he placed a foot. This was the sponge room.
He moved to the rear corner of the room, where the floor was damp but not soaking wet. He planted his feet together and leaned back into the corner. This was all the comfort he was going to get, but comfort was way down on his list of priorities.
They were loath to risk killing a foreign national from a country friendly to their own. There’d be no more beatings, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t fuck with him at every opportunity and make his life a misery until he either broke or they were satisfied that he understood his place in the order here. And his place was lower than whale shit.
He spent the next few hours weighing all possibilities open to him. He could escape. He saw two clear scenarios for that. One was a solid prospect, but would probably result in a few dead guards. The other was less certain, but there would be zero lethality. He would work on the problem and seek other solutions.
His other option was to wait them out. That was looking like the best one. His original plan remained in place, with this tangent of it an unforeseen hitch. The beating and his current situation might even be turned to his advantage. It was all tenable. All in flux. Good planning allowed for fuck-ups. He’d learned never to allow frustration to play a role in his operations. Shit happened, and you moved around it, under it, over it, or even embraced it. He was the snake in the Garden. He was the lion in the den. He wasn’t imprisoned in here with them. They were imprisoned in here with him.
Satisfied that his way forward was solid for now, Levon controlled his breathing, sipping air and releasing it slowly, bringing down his heart and respiration rates. He willed the pain away from tensed muscles and made his body lighter and lighter until his mind was free and he walked across the floor of a leafy holler from his youth.
40
She began crying at the sound of her mother’s voice. She covered her mouth with her hand. The house was quiet in the hours before dawn. Esperanza was in the kitchen. The hounds were asleep under the kitchen table. One rose to stand by her at the sink counter, tail wagging and head up for a pat.
“Esperanza, my child, my child!”
Esperanza leaned on the counter, her vision swimming, hot tears burning her eyes. She had lain awake all night after finding the crumpled notice with her picture on it. She had offered to take the trash to the can outside the barn. The notice lay atop the trash, the paper white in the moonlight. Unfolding it, she was shocked to see her younger self in her communion dress. She tore one of the tabs at the bottom of the paper free and stuck it in the pocket of the new jeans Señora Hamer bought for her in Huntsville after they had had visited the hospital.
After dinner, she pretended interest in a movie the others were watching. They put up sub-titles in Spanish, but she could not concentrate well enough to follow the story. Something silly about police and a beauty contest. In her country, the police were never something to be laughed at.
She lay in Merry’s bed all night, thinking of the little slip of paper. Merry and Sandy finally drifted off in the sleeping bags that lay on the floor between the bed and the door. In bare feet, Esperanza crept between them to the closet, where she retrieved the phone number from her jeans pocket.
The hallway was dark except for a shimmering glow from the room of Merry’s father. She peeped around the corner of the door and started. Señora Hamer was propped up in the bed, a tablet device leaning against a pillow in her lap pulsing with blue light. The white wires of earpieces looped to her head. From the regular rise of her chest and forward tilt of her head, Esperanza realized that the woman was asleep.
In the kitchen, she picked up the wall phone and listened to the dial tone before entering the thirteen-digit number. It rang and rang. She listened to the ocean noise between the rings, and imagined her mother and father in their tiny apartment. She imagined them around a table eating a meal with her brothers and sisters, maybe a breakfast of eggs fried with peppers. It was warm there, and the sun shone brightly through the windows.
A sharp click was followed by a buzz, and her ear filled with a metallic champing sound echoing with voices behind. Her mother’s voice spoke her name and she cried.
41
“You know, I’m supposed to be retired,” Gunny Leffertz said.
“Like you could retire.” Levon scoffed.
“Nice to get a little something extra in my envelope now and then.”
“That mean you’re paying?”
They were sharing a tall pitcher of Coors at a table overlooking San Diego Bay, enjoying the greatest weather on God’s green Earth. A dry, salty breeze moved the flags slung from the yachts moored in the marina. The cries of gulls wheeling high in the afternoon sky rang out. Mothballed warships were visible against the green of Coronado Island across the water.
>
“Don’t know how much longer I can mother-hen you, Slick.”
“I want to have at least one person I trust in the program.”
“You don’t like Brett?”
“I know my function here, Gunny. I signed the papers and made the pledge, but to guys like Brett and Tobey, I’m a tool, to be set aside and forgotten when the job is done.”
“How do you know I’m not the same?”
“Because you’re a shitty liar.”
Gunny brayed at that.
It was only at Levon’s insistence that Leffertz was kept on as his mentor, guru, and spirit guide. The blind gunny was there as an advisor as Levon went through the brutal months of physical abuse and psychological challenges of BUDs training with the SEALs, sniper training at Pendleton, a punishing course in aikido and Krav Maga with masters of those forms, and a second run through SERE, this time as an observer, watching the process from the outside. He learned to strip, clean, and go lethal with every piece of ordnance currently in use by military units around the world. Demolitions experts both military and private sector showed him how to dismantle, disarm, and build improvised explosives. He learned the state of the science of electronic surveillance, and absorbed a working knowledge of a half-dozen languages common in the world’s recurring trouble spots. Through it all, the gunny was by his side, coaching him toward excellence in every chosen specialty.
The only area of expertise that did not come organically to him was long-range sniping. Practically born with a rifle in his hands, Levon was deadly over open sights inside two hundred yards. Working through a scope came hard to him, however. He got the math and physics, but he’d learned too many bad habits hunting deer, varmints, and pheasants growing up in Alabama. He couldn’t shake them while peeping through the reticle of a 30X scope. He was good—damned good—but not a natural talent.
Gunny excused it, saying Levon was a “hands-on soldier,” an “Old Testament, eyeball-to-eyeball killer.” The agency had plenty of snipers, but warrior adepts like Levon Cade were thin on the ground. His learning became mission-focused now, specifically fixated on a high-value Abu Sayyaf target in the Philippines. His baptism as a hunter/killer was days away.
“You need to let me go home to Mississippi, Slick. Joyce won’t wait forever. Time for you to leave the nest and fly,” Gunny said. He split the dregs of the pitcher between them, not spilling a drop.
“Like Icarus,” Levon replied.
“Hope you do better than that shitbird.”
“Fly or die.”
“You’ll do fine. I almost feel sorry for the assholes. You did a shitpile of hard work. You’re ready for this.”
“I guess this is graduation, huh? The only one watching my ass will be me.”
“Just don’t stay in it for too long, son. You do your part, then pass the baton. Don’t let them use you up.”
“When’s enough enough, Gunny?”
“When you can’t remember the face of the last man you killed.”
Levon looked into the unseeing eyes of the man across the table from him.
“You really are a shitty liar, Gunny.”
Gunny slammed a hand down on the tabletop and roared.
42
Gunny Leffertz said:
“The only thing you can plan on is things not going like you planned.”
Judging by his internal clock, three days had passed.
He was given one meal each day, a piece of crusty bread atop a scorched mash of rice, peas, and lamb, and a plastic mug of water. These were slid through a port at the bottom of the cell door. He broke the days up with an exercise routine and meditation.
Because of the limited caloric intake, he confined his exercise to mostly stretching. His main challenge was keeping warm. During the day, the cell was comfortably filled with a warm fug of damp air from the evaporating puddle in the center of the floor. At night, that turned to chill condensation. He kept moving through the night, pacing a tight circle around the room, stretching and doing presses against the padded walls. Through the day, he leaned or sat in the driest corner and transported his mind to other places and other tasks.
Levon gave himself a deadline. In five days, he would act. Any longer in this environment would be a risk to his health. He did not want to start down a path where his fitness deteriorated because of inactivity and poor diet. The quality and safety of the food was a risk, and eventually, it would make him sick. A bout of dysentery would weaken him and complicate any escape plan.
And the room he was being held in was toxic. Prolonged exposure to the mold encrusted on the floor and walls was a serious health hazard. No telling what kind of bugs were in the food and water. A lung infection or gastrointestinal syndrome would be inevitable if he stayed here for more than a week.
On the fourth day, three guards came for him. He didn’t resist as they secured his wrists behind his back with cuffs. They marched him to another windowless room, where they sat him in a steel chair at a table.
The young guard, the translator, was already in the room, seated opposite Levon. The Prick leaned against a wall behind him, smoking a cigarette. At the center of the table was a digital recording device.
Levon was asked to state his name and place of birth for the record. William Brett Hogue. Moosejaw, Saskatchewan. He was asked about his time in Syria and the cause of his arrest in Altınüzüm. The questions moved to his fight with Mehmet Sadıkoğlu. Now it was a fight rather than an assault.
“I don’t know why I picked him out. I guess I’m going a little crazy in here. All I want is to talk to someone from the Canadian consulate and—”
The translator tapped the recorder and turned to look at the Prick. The Prick nodded. The recorder was tabbed on.
“You were saying?” the young guard asked
“I’m a foreign national being held incognito. My country doesn’t know I’m here.”
“And you do not know who Mehmet Sadıkoğlu is. You were not told to attack him.”
“I don’t know the guy. Never knew his name. I still don’t know who he is. I just picked him out to go ape-shit on.”
“So, he was chosen at random?”
“Is this thing on?” Levon asked. “I said I don’t know the guy. He doesn’t mean shit to me. I just lost it.”
“And there is no history between you?”
“Not until I took a swing at him.”
“And the guards?”
“They were in my way.”
The young guard turned to the Prick, who shrugged. The guard shut off the recorder and stood to speak to the Prick. After a brief exchange, the young guard picked up the recorder and left the room. The Prick took his seat, smearing his cigarette across the tabletop to put it out.
“You will be returned to your hut. Know that I will be keeping my eye on you,” the Prick said in overly precise French.
“And will I be allowed to speak to someone from the consulate?”
“That is being arranged.” The Prick fixed him with a stare. The guy was holding back, but his eyes betrayed his frustration. Events in his little kingdom had gotten out of his control and he hated it. By association, Levon was the focus of his fury. But as a foreign national, even one being held incognito, the Prick was afraid to spend that fury on him.
The door opened and two guards entered. One placed a stack of worn but clean clothing and a new pair of slippers on the table. The other undid Levon’s cuffs. They all stood witness as Levon put on the underwear, string vest, flannel shirt, drawstring pants, and wool socks. None of the clothes were his size, but they fit well enough.
He was escorted from the admin building and released, blinking in the noon sun, into the prison yard.
Klaus was the first to greet him outside Hut 14.
“You are quite the hero now,” the little German said, walking by Levon’s side toward the shower building.
“How did that happen?”
“Word of your attack on Sadıkoğlu got out somehow. There have b
een news vans and reporters at the gate for two days now. A couple were even allowed inside to speak to him. He is being relocated to another prison.”
That explained why they had recorded Levon’s statements. He was on record as confessing that it was an isolated incident. He was no longer held secretly.
“One of them was a BBC reporter. Did he speak to you?” Klaus asked.
“No one spoke to me except the Prick. I’ve been in the hole for the last three days.”
“The sponge room? What was it like?”
“Damp.”
“Your people will come now. Someone from your embassy.” They had come to the lavatory door.
“Guess I’d better get ready for that. I need a shit and a shower.” Levon turned to the shower-house guard, who responded with a nod.
“This is good news, is it not?” Klaus’ face betrayed his confusion.
“It complicates things.” Levon banged the door open to enter, leaving the German standing alone.
43
Rolo Moreno slapped the phone from the whore’s hand and backhanded her onto the floor before picking the phone up from the bed to answer it. He was naked and dripping from the shower. He looked at himself in the mirror as he spoke, the ink covering his lean body in every place but his face, the soles of his feet, the palms of his hands, and his ass. Skulls and bones and his favorite guns. A tiger battled an eagle on his chest. Across his back knelt a big-titty bonita, bare-assed in an Aztec headdress bursting with feathers. She held a human heart in hands dripping with bright red blood.
