Force of Eagles (18 page)

“An American needs our help?” She turned and walked back into the hut.

“Give me a chance.”

She looked back at him. “It’s not me you have to convince. It is Mulla Haqui. And he hates all foreigners—especially Americans.” She disappeared then into the hut.

*

Kermanshah, Iran

Colonel Clayton Leason was looking out the cell window, counting the guards in the watch towers. The distance was too great to see their faces so he would try to identify them, individually, by theiractions and habits. He had instructed all the POWs to gather information on the guards—their routines, habits, what they liked…It all would be passed on to his escape committee. He had established a series of cutouts in the prison, isolating the escape committee and shielding it from compromise. Even if Mokhtari were to break him he could never tell who was working on escapes or what their plans were. “Doc, why did you join the Air Force?”

“I guess I was bored with my practice,” flight surgeon Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Landis told him. “You get tired of looking down throats, treating colds, flu, and an occasional case of the clap.” Leason nodded. The Doc’s sense of humor was coming back—a sign he was recovering from his last brutal going over by two guards.

“One of my patients was a master sergeant assigned to the local recruiting office,” Doc was saying. “He did a sales number on me. Anyway, the middle age blahs were getting to me and the thought of being a flight surgeon in the Air Force and zooming around in the back seat of a fighter became more exciting with each case of whooping cough that came through the door. So I signed up for a two-year tour.”

“No one can blame you for having regrets,” Leason said, “not after this…”

“Hey, I’ve loved the Air Force, flying in the back seat of an F-4…And I’ve met some of the best people I’ve known.”

Both men became silent when they heard a cough followed by two rapid coughs—the signal that a message was being passed. Each pressed an ear to the wall and listened to the faint tap code working its way down the cells.

“It’s about Espinoza,” Leason said.

Doc motioned him to be silent. “Sounds like pneumonia. Clay, if I can get to him I might be able to save him, at least ease his suffering.”

“I’ll try to work on Mokhtari, but don’t expect anything.” Leason passed command to Landis. “You’ve got it until I get back.”

“My turn,” Landis said. “Let me see him.”

“Doc, he’s brutal.”

“I’m no good sitting in this cell. I’ll try to cut a deal with him, I’ll treat the guards if he’ll let me treat our men.”

“That might qualify as collaboration—”

“Collaboration is not what I have in mind. I’ll try to open up a channel to the outside, another source of information. You can’t keep taking all the risks and you’re in no better shape than I am. And it’s not collaboration when I trade off my services for the sake of your men.”

“Can you take three or four days in the Box?”

“One way to find out.”

*

Mary Hauser huddled in the corner of her cell, clasping her knees, occasionally rocking back and forth. She unfolded and sat on the edge of her bunk when she heard the dull thumps made by a sand-filled rubber hose impacting against a body coming from the interrogation room. She pressed an ear against the door and listened. She could hear the rage in Mokhtari’s voice as it echoed down the hall. They had not closed the door. “Prisoners do not talk to each other, silence is the first rule—”

“I’m a doctor, Commandant.”

She heard sharper, more distinct thuds. They were using their fists.

“Who told you the prisoner was dying of pneumonia?” Mokhtari’s voice.

“Amnesty International.”

It was Doc Landis’ voice. Good lord, Amnesty International. Did he think Mokhtari gave a damn about that?

The beating finally stopped and she could hear voices muttering in Farsi. The words were too low and indistinct for her to recognize any familiar word but she thought she could make out an undercurrent. Footsteps came down the hall. The door to the cell next to hers creaked open and she heard the guards drop somebody, probably Doc, on the floor. The footsteps retreated down the hall.

For three hours Hauser listened at the wall, occasionally hearing a gasp for air. Then a faint tapping started. It was the same code she had been taught in survival school at Fairchild AFB in Washington. It took her several moments to recall the pattern. Fear and a rush of nausea swept over her when she deciphered the first four letters—W-H-O-R. Whore—Mokhtari was still at work. Then the fifth letter came through—U. W-H-O-R-U. It didn’t make sense. “Oh…Who are you?”

R U O K, she tapped back, testing the sender and identifying herself.

BRKN RIBS LANDIS.

HAUSER, she tapped.

Another message started. HOWS THE FOOD

It
was
Doc Landis, not a trap set by Mokhtari.

They tapped messages back and forth until they heard footsteps in the hall. The door swung open and the warder handed her a plastic bowl and spoon. Hauser looked at him, not believing what she saw. The bowl was full, and the indecipherable stuff in it was topped by a large chunk of bread. The man’s face was impassive as he reached and turned the light on, breaking the perpetual darkness she lived in. When the door banged closed she had to force herself to eat slowly, not wolf the food down.

And a new feeling came to her…a dangerous one, she knew, but she would allow it. For the first time since she could remember, she thought she might actually make it.

*

Dulles International Airport, Virginia

“Nasir, there,” Hasan Zaidan said, pointing Stansell out as he broke free of the knot of people coming down the passenger ramp at Dulles International Airport. The phone call alerting the two agents of the Islamic Jihad had been vague about the colonel’s movements, and the caller only knew that Stansell was expected to fly into Dulles from Las Vegas that day.

Nasir Askari removed his sunglasses, calculating his next move. He had been right to insist they watch the flights arriving from St. Louis and Chicago, the two most common connections with Las Vegas. His partner Hasan Zaidan had wanted to leave immediately, not patient enough to wait and see if Stansell would appear. Nasir doubted if Hasan could understand, much less appreciate, the demands their controller at the Albanian Embassy was making on the Islamic Jihad. They had to take their objective quickly or the funds that kept them alive would disappear. He envied Hasan’s simple approach to problems—all action, no thought.

Stansell headed for the car rentals, deciding that would be the quickest way to get to the Pentagon twenty-five miles east. He glanced at his watch, nine o’clock traffic on a Tuesday morning shouldn’t be too bad. He was determined to confront Mado and if need be, Cunningham about Task Force Alpha. He felt he had been used and anger churned inside as he thought about the sacrifices Thunder, Jack, and Pullman had made to join him.

He shifted his carry-on bag to his right shoulder and pushed his way through the thinning crowd. The complete ops plan was in the bag, sealed in a large envelope.

“Rupe.”

Stansell paused when he heard his nickname. Maybe someone had been sent to pick him up. He didn’t see a familiar face or an Air Force uniform. He hiked the bag’s strap up on his shoulder and walked quickly away. A vice-like hand grabbed his left arm just above the elbow.

“Keep walking,” a heavily accented voice said on his left.

He glanced quickly to the left, saw Hasan’s face. The Arab was three inches taller than Stansell and outweighed him by fifty pounds. His grip bore down on Stansell’s left arm, sending the first tingles of blood starvation down the colonel’s forearm. Hasan’s left hand brushed against his unbuttoned coat, moving it aside, letting Stansell glimpse a small Beretta clipped to his belt.

“Don’t be stupid,” Nasir’s voice on his right warned. “We need to talk.” Two other men were now walking straight toward them.

Stansell raged at himself, nailed in my own front yard by four terrorists? Memories of his captivity at Ras Assanya flashed through him, and without thinking he threw his right shoulder into Nasir, then spun toward Hasan, kicking at his knees. He felt a satisfying crunch, slipped the strap of the bag off his shoulder, grabbed it with both hands and swung it as hard as he could in the general direction of Hasan’s head. A direct hit.

He almost lost his balance and fell as he jerked around to face Nasir, whose arm bounced off his head—Stansell’s height, or lack of it, had worked to his advantage. Now he barreled into Nasir, throwing him into three white-turbaned Sikhs. Nasir reached into his coat for his revolver, but before he could pull the gun free a gunshot echoed through the concourse. For a moment, silence. In that frozen moment Stansell saw one of the two men that had been walking toward him in a shooter’s crouch, hands extended straight out in front of him holding a gun. He was vaguely aware of Hasan, a Beretta in hand, crumpling to the floor, and as he did, squeezing the trigger. A last shot in more ways than one for the dying man.

People, panicked by the gunshots, screamed and ran for safety. And Stansell, still holding onto his bag, moved quickly behind the Sikhs and disappeared into the crowd before the other two men could reach him.

*

Susan Fisher had been waiting in the basement of the warehouse the CIA used for one of its cover operations. The elevator doors opened. Allen Camm was alone, and his confident look reassured her that she had done the right thing. She had never “neutralized” a foreign agent before.

“Where are they?” Camm asked.

She pointed to an office and held the door open for him. The man who had shot Hasan was pacing the floor. His partner was sprawled out in a chair, relaxed and at ease.

“Tell me about it.”

“We made the two Jihadis at Dulles,” the pacing man told Camm, voice under tight control, trying not to reveal the stress working through him. It was his first time. “Carl”—he nodded at his seated partner—“saw them first as they nabbed Stansell. That guy is tough—broke free and clobbered one with his bag. The Arab pulled a gun, and that’s when I took him out. A clean shot. Stansell disappeared into the crowd. You can imagine the confusion.” He took a deep breath. “We grabbed the other Jihad and brought him here. It was easy in that mess.”

“What about the one you dropped?”

“We left him,” Carl said. “He was dead. Murphy’s a good shot.”

“Anyone follow you?”

“Please, Mr. Camm,” Carl said. “It was clean.”

Murphy was still pacing. “It’s okay,” Camm reassured him. “You did exactly right. Get your report to Miss Fisher.”

“Where’s the Jihad?” Camm asked her when the two agents had left.

“In primary, want to see him?” Camm nodded and followed her out of the office and down a well-lit hall that reminded one of a hospital corridor. She stopped in front of a steel door and buzzed. They both looked up at the TV camera above the door, waiting to be recognized. The door clicked open. Inside, two white-smocked technicians were sitting at desks watching a TV monitor. “What’s his status?” Fisher asked.

One of the technicians said, “He isn’t talking, yet.”

“Nothing at all?” Camm asked.

“Only what we already know. His name is Nasir Askari, twenty-eight. Born in Tripoli, Lebanon.” He glanced at the elapsed-time master-clock on the wall. “He should be spilling his guts within sixty-eight hours. I’ve never seen anyone last more than seventy-two before they go crazy.” He pointed at the TV screen.

Camm pulled a chair up and sat down, studying the screen. “Is the audio up?”

The technician nodded. “Got to be if we’re to pick up the clues in time. Once they break, we get ’em out fast.”

The infrared image on the TV screen was amazingly sharp, letting them see the man clearly in the darkened cell. Nasir Askari was lying on the floor, naked. The padding on the floor partially enveloped him, yielding to his movements. His arms and legs were bound together with wide soft straps, holding him in a fetal position. The straps would stretch and contract with his movements, always holding him secure.

“Why the mouthpiece?” Fisher asked.

“It keeps him from chewing on his tongue or cheeks,” the technician told her. “We try to shut off all tactile, auditory and visual stimuli.” He smiled at her. “Sometime when you haven’t anything to do, come on down and we’ll put you in there for a few minutes. You can’t believe how quiet and
dark
it is in there. After a while they’ll do almost anything to create a tactile sensation. That’s why we restrain them.”

“How long has he been in there?”

The technician glanced at the master clock. “Three hours, sixteen minutes. We’ve had some telling everything they know by now.”

“What if someone lies just to get out?”

“We always put them back in for a few minutes until the story is the same.” He paused, studying the screen. “This one is going to go for a while. We may have to increase his dosage. We heighten the effect of sensory deprivation by using a new drug, Dicayocaine-Neural-Propoxylase, DNP for short. It reduces the sensitivity of the nerve endings in the skin.”

“What happens if they don’t break?”

“It happened once. Subject flipped out.”

“What did you do then?”

“What we had to do. Look, Miss Fisher, we’re not here to torture people. We’re after clean, accurate information. That’s our job and we do it.”

*

The brigadier general commanding the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigation headquartered at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington fidgeted in his chair. He found the waiting difficult and wondered why the shortish colonel with no right ear was taking so much of General Cunningham’s time. Still, when the Air Force’s chief of staff beckoned and called, he waited. He ran the colonel through his mental bank of pictures, trying to place a name with the face. Finally the general’s aide ushered him into the inner sanctum of Cunningham’s office.

“Sit down, Hoskins.” Cunningham pointed at a chair. “I’ve got a problem. Colonel Rupert Stansell here has got his ass in a crack. Apparently four terrorists tried to kidnap him this morning at Dulles International. It’s complicated because I’ve got him on a special mission.”