Unleashed

by Patrick McLaughlin

Chapter 17

  The Special Forces team medic once more checked El Sharrad’s vitals just as a CIA chopper came in hard for his emergency transport to Camp Bastion. They had no time to lose; the sooner Craig interrogated his captive, the more time he would have to wrench from him the details of the pending attack. Bastion was now NATO’s intelligence center in Afghanistan with one non-descript building dedicated to hard cases. Bagram was now forever hot as the Afghanistan base notorious for the shocking intimidation and humiliation of the al-Qaeda prisoners while in the custody of U.S military personnel.

  Craig sat in his jump seat directly across from El Sharrad, glad they were not headed to that hell hole. Shit, he thought, the only things those soldiers did wrong was torture without purpose. He reasoned they were bored, pissed off, and abused the prisoners for sport. Hell, Bagram was like spending a night at a Holiday Inn Express with lousy staff as far as he was concerned. In his mind, when terrorists want to kill innocent civilians, any means used to prevent it is warranted. Play nice, or pay thrice, as he liked to think. The stupid soldiers who were caught deserved to be court marshalled solely for the one act alone of preserving the abuse with photographs.

  The flight took forty five minutes and Craig never let his prisoner rest. Each time El Sharrad’s eyelids lowered the sharp Vibram sole of Craig’s boot jammed into the soft spot beneath his knee. They kept the captive’s head strapped back against the bulkhead and Craig bore holes through to the back of his head with a stare that could kill. The interrogation was initiated the minute they were loaded onboard and he and El Sharrad sat face to face.

  Landing at the center of Camp Bastion in an inner compound with fourteen foot walls behind the detention facility, El Sharrad was whisked through the secure door by security personnel, held up only by his elbows, feet never touching the ground.

  Craig’s method was simple, the pain never stopped, the subject never slept, and he never asked his prisoners any questions. The pain and his silence drove them mad. They were told to expect angry American interrogators, screaming and insults. He knew many could not read or write, but they weren’t stupid, and all the yelling only offered them a distraction between the applications of techniques. Pure, constant pain and the subtle indifference from the interrogators made them beg for relief. There was no one to complain to or shout offenses at. As the pain intensified, loneliness and despair overcame them. From this suffering and neglect rose the basic human desire to be saved and recognized. This is when the most valuable intel spilled from their souls.

  Bringing him into a cell with one-way mirrors on all four sides, El Sharrad was stripped and his head once more strapped down, as he lay on a narrow band of metal, like a plank except it bowed and flexed with is weight in the middle. From his neck up and his ankles down, these two parts of his body were solidly placed on sturdy tables. A leather strap around his waist was attached to a bolt in the ceiling; it was long enough to allow his body to droop, but far enough for the metal band he was stretched out upon to strike an electrified bar of steel only two inches beneath his lower back. If he kept his body rigid, this, with the light tension of the metal which bore him, kept his torso off the bar and from being shocked. If he relaxed his body, the metal strip flexed and made contact with the lower bar.

  Using this method, it was always only a matter of time with all prisoners; they had to relax at some point, so El Sharrad had either to endure the paralyzing muscular spasms as he exerted himself to stay straight and above the rod, or replace one type of suffering with another and rest down on the barely electrically charged metal beneath. Craig knew in the beginning, this gave his subjects a false level of control, but soon they found out it was a sick trick and no matter what they chose, the end result was intense pain. As an added touch, El Sharrad’s eyelids were taped open, his face pointed at an angle towards a mirror which offered Craig a view directly into the eyes and mind of his subject. Never lose eye contact, never during the entire ordeal.

  Hours went by and El Sharrad gave up any hope of holding himself off the bar, even for a few seconds. All the while Craig barely blinked, watching for the change as he had the interrogator at the controller fluctuate the charge. By now his victim knew, it was his weakness which brought the suffering and beyond that, only Craig could stop both. Then, ever so slowly, the look appeared in El Sharrad’s gaze. The detached abandonment a human feels when total despair sets in. Craig allowed thirty minutes more, and then ordered El Sharrad cut down and moved to an adjacent room.

  This space was tiny by comparison, with two armed chairs face to face and a narrow table between. A dark, sixty inch monitor was mounted along one side for both seated to see. El Sharrad was upright; his head held back with Velcro straps, eyelids still taped open. They allowed him some modesty by covering him with a robe. More than fifteen hours had passed since he was apprehended and Craig had maintained eye contact for all but ten minutes. In and out of delirium, his face flush and drawn, El Sharrad came to dozens of times to the sight of Craig, only Craig, until El Sharrad understood Craig was his master.

  After they were both seated, Craig waited until El Sharrad stopped shaking and his pulse rate dropped to a range of 145 to 155 when he knew he would have his undivided attention. “Your faithful is prepared and they need your command. Share with me the words to initiate the attack on the infidels. We have selected this moment to burn their souls for eternal damnation.” Craig spoke purposefully to El Sharrad; the stupor which enveloped him would only last for fifteen to twenty minutes so concise communication was critical. “Confirm location, we must not fail.”

  El Sharrad tried to turn his head, to blink. An aid continued to place moisturizer into his eyes. He mumbled in Arabic, the words unintelligible.

  “The time is here, we will descend down on the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The truck is ready to move,” Craig continued.

  “No, it, it is wrong,” El Sharrad managed to say.

  “Tell me how we are mistaken; we will soon be at the stadium?” Craig asked, but these were the only words El Sharrad would offer.

  “Well, at least we can eliminate LA as a possible target.”

  Craig sat and waited, this method had never failed before and he now saw El Sharrad was regaining his senses. This man was tough; he would have to fall back on his secondary plan.

  Looking briefly up at the camera mounted in the ceiling corner, Craig directed, “Flip on the screen.” With that, the screen beside them lit up with a live, aerial view of a village in Pakistan with traffic in the streets and inhabitants moving to and fro. Gradually, the landscape narrowed until the focus was on one small home. A small woman in a blue burka was seen beating a rug hung on a wooden rack, children ran with a goat in circles around their mother.

  “El Sharrad, look to your family,” Craig commanded. “Your children, the mother of your children, they are all there. Do you not see?”

  The hate had returned to his eyes and although weakly, he began to speak, “It is a trick; they would not be out in the open like this. You have recorded this before. You can kill my brothers, you can torture and kill me, but we are not fooled. Allah guides us now and in our future. Here and beside him, we are filled with his wisdom and truth!”

  “Yes, I think they are all there, three of your children and your wife Aaminah. Her name, I believe it means secure, safe. El Sharrad, right now, she is anything but. We have an armed drone circling far above only awaiting a signal from me. You kill our innocent civilians; I will have no issues with killing your family!”

  El Sharrad said nothing.

  “I guess if you believe in your jihad, and have no reservations about killing our women and children, you will accept the death of your children without remorse,” Craig taunted.

  El Sharrad’s fists closed on the armrests. His knuckles whitened; the veins on his forehead pulsed as he did his best to appear calm.

  “One word, right now, and they go before you to Mohammad!” Craig warned.

  “It is of
no use, they are already dead,” El Sharrad announced.

  “No, not yet, but soon I fear. I give you my word, if…,” but Craig never finished his words. In a massive explosion, the entire screen went white, orange, then grey, and cloudy, dark smoke billowed where there was once a family.

  “Goddamn it to hell! What just happened?” Craig roared, spinning around and charging out of the room. “What fucking moron of a goddamn piss ant gave the order to unleash the drone? I am going to rip somebody’s throat out!”

  The four in the observation room instinctively backed away from Craig as he stomped back and forth demanding a communications feed to Langley. “Now, goddamn it, now! Get the incompetent piece of shit on comms now!”

  A CIA intelligence officer entered the room and came up behind Craig, but this was a mistake. The instant the guy touched his shoulder, Craig had him on the ground, his boot heel on his throat and his arm twisted in his grasp. “It better be fucking good for you to come up behind me like such a fucking idiot!” Craig lessened the pressure on the officer’s neck to let him respond.

  “Major Craig, sir, it wasn’t us, our drone is still on station, all onboard weapons intact.”

  “What do you mean it wasn’t us? Then who the fuck was it then, Tinker Fucking Bell?” Craig released his grip and allowed the man to get to his feet. He stood motionless for what seemed like minutes, but was only a few seconds, and then, he turned to look back in through the one-way glass at El Sharrad. “No, he didn’t, c’mon no!”

  Craig reentered the room and El Sharrad was waiting.

  “Yes, I did. You are correct; our mission for God is above all earthly things. It was understood, if I was captured, my family would be sacrificed. To me, they have been dead for some time. Now, they are surely with Allah!”

  In Craig’s earpiece came, “Sir, confirmed, it was their people. Unreal sir, are they human?”

  El Sharrad was impassive. “My family, they are with Allah. All praise to Allah!”

  Now the rage showed upon Craig’s face and he once again exited, shouting to the group in the control room, “Pack all our gear, including the piece of shit in there; let’s move to Guantanamo! No one has ever beaten me, and this isn’t about to be the first time!”