Wrong Town: A Mark Landry Novel (36 page)

One hundred twenty-four

Landry could hear his interrogation instructor’s voice in his head as he prepared to question his prisoner.

Interrogation is more art than science. Once a man studies the different approaches, like a sculptor learning to wield his chisel, a personal style begins to form. Some men are soft-spoken, with an almost soothing presence meant to build rapport and attract the detainee like a moth to a lantern. Others are horrifyingly brutal, with the goal of compelling the detainee into cooperation through fear and pain.

Mark Landry’s approach was a hybrid of the two.

Landry unscrewed the cap from the bottle of cold water and held it upside down over Amir’s head until it was empty. “Wake up.” Amir was securely fastened to a wooden chair with his hands bound behind his back. Mark placed another chair approximately five feet in front of his prisoner and sat down with his rifle cradled in his lap. “I said, wake up!” he yelled.

Amir bobbed his head from side to side and spat up a mouthful of saliva mixed with blood. The flash bang had taken him from a state of deep sleep to complete disorientation long enough for Mark to enter the room, strike him in the head with the butt of his rifle, and bind his hands and feet with zip ties.

From there, Landry went to work clearing the rest of the cabin. Crouched low, he bolted room to room, quickly checking under beds, behind doors, and inside closets on the main floor before turning his attention to the basement door in the kitchen. He turned off the light over the sink, flung the door open quickly, and stood to the side for several seconds, then peered down the stairs and activated the tactical light mounted on the barrel of his rifle.

Green light spilled down the stairs and illuminated a small, unfinished cellar. At the bottom step was the body of a young, Middle Eastern–looking man with a bullet hole where the bridge of his nose used to be. Mark descended several stairs and swept his muzzle from left to right. He saw stacks of napkins, cups, and paper plates overflowing from three boxes labeled “restaurant supplies,” but nothing else. He focused the light on the dead man’s face and recognized Yasir from the photos. Satisfied that the cabin was clear, Landry sprinted back up the stairs to prepare his prisoner for questioning and look more closely at the equipment spread out on the floor. He counted nine Sig Sauer M400 rifles and discovered a pound of factory-sealed C4 plastic explosive material inside a backpack.

Amir slowly opened his eyes and tried to regain his bearings. He struggled violently for several moments to free his arms and legs before noticing the shadowy figure sitting in front of him. He blinked furiously to adjust his vision to the darkness. The only light in the cabin came from a burning candle somewhere behind the masked man.

“What’s your name?” Mark asked.

The prisoner struggled again to break free. “Please! Quick! You have to help me! He’s going to kill me! Get me out of here, please!”

“Who is going to kill you?”

“I don’t know what his name is. Yasir, I think. He and his uncle are terrorists. Please help me!” Amir begged as tears rolled down his panic-stricken face. “I don’t want to die! I swear I haven’t done anything wrong! Just get me out of here and I’ll tell you anything you want!”

Landry stared at Amir through the wide, oval opening of the black ski mask that enveloped his eyes. He showed no reaction to the prisoner’s words. He simply waited patiently and watched the show in silence until Amir had finished pleading.

“You shouldn’t lie to me. I can’t help you if you lie to me. Now tell me your name.”

Amir gasped for air and contorted his face like a three-year-old who just had all his toys taken away. “No! Please! I swear I’m telling the truth. I’m in danger. I’ve been held here against my will. Why don’t you believe me?” he sobbed.

Mark held up his hand, indicating that he had had enough. “I don’t believe you because Yasir is in the basement with a bullet in his head. And I’m guessing the bullet came from the .45 you had with you when I caught you napping. Listen, if you lie to me again, I’m going to hurt you. Do you understand that? Do I look like I’m fucking around? Look at me.”

An effective interrogator knows the importance of setting precedent from the very beginning. If he threatens violent punishment for non-compliance but doesn’t follow through, he effectively transfers power to the prisoner. Furthermore, when the interrogator does follow through, the violence must be sufficiently shocking to the prisoner. Insufficient force that is easily tolerated may actually empower and motivate the prisoner to continue his resistance.

Mark did not plan on making either of those mistakes. He was fully committed to setting the precedent early, and more than ready to get violent if he had to—especially with a man he already knew to be a cold-blooded murderer.

Landry leaned his rifle against the table, reached a hand up under his long-sleeve hiking shirt, and pulled out the karambit-style, curved blade from the sheath that hung around his neck. “I’m going to count to three. If you lie to me, if you say anything other than your name and why you shot up those innocent people two days ago, you will regret it. One …”

Amir’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened.

“Two …”

He shook his head furiously.

“Three.”

“Wait! Wait! Wait! I swear I had nothing to do with it!” he screamed out.

“Wrong answer.” Mark leapt from his seat, grabbed Amir’s right ear with his left hand, and held it tightly. With his right hand he slid the razor sharp karambit’s blade down the side of Amir’s face and separated the ear from his head in one clean motion.

A thin stream of blood spurted from the wound as the prisoner screamed out in anguish. He gasped for air and struggled to free himself. Mark returned to his seat, tossed the ear onto the floor between the two chairs, and waited patiently for the screaming to die down.

“You bastard! You pig! You better kill me now … if I ever get the chance I will cut off your head!”

Amir’s fake tears and false claims of innocence had changed to pure rage. With one single knife motion, Mark had peeled back the mask of the innocent young man and exposed the terrorist. The next few minutes would be crucial. As the interrogator, Mark had established precedent with his swift and shockingly violent follow-through. But now he needed to evaluate the likelihood of gleaning any valuable information from the prisoner. In his past experience he had seen plenty of men, true believers in their cause, endure ruthless violence without uttering a word. And he had seen others soften up quickly and spill their guts when threatened with much less. Mark had a feeling that this one would end up in the former category, but he needed time to make an educated assessment.

“I saw you on the roof. I saw you shooting. Tell me about the attack. Who chose the target and why?” he asked calmly.

“Go to hell!”

“Were you acting on your own? Or do you belong to a larger organization? At least tell me what your beef is. That wouldn’t be betraying any secrets. Hell, you should be proud, right? So why did you do it? Did you have a reason or do you just get off on hurting people?”

“You might as well take the other ear because I’m not telling you anything.”

Mark leaned to the glance at the ear. “One’s enough for now, but let’s see if we can slow down the bleeding. I don’t want you passing out on me.” He retrieved a stack of napkins from the kitchen and pressed them hard onto the side of Amir’s head from behind with his gloved hand. Amir screamed.

“Let me bleed! Let me bleed!”

The glow from an electronic device lit up a corner of the room behind Mark and caught his attention. He released his grip and walked out of Amir’s sight to the corner to retrieve the phone. The control screen indicated dozens of missed calls and almost fifty unread text messages. Mark scrolled to the most recent one, from someone named Linda.

MESSAGE: JOHN! WHERE ARE YOU! ARE YOU OK? I’M AT THE HOSPITAL! THE BABY IS COMING! PLEASE CALL ME! I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS ALONE!

He scrolled down. All the messages were similar. All the missed calls were from the same person. He pocketed the phone and returned to his chair in front of Amir.

“What’s your name? Where are you from? Is your name John?” Mark asked.

“John?” Amir chuckled. “No, I am definitely not John. Did you just find his phone? I threw it at the wall when that stupid woman wouldn’t stop calling and texting. Call her back and tell her that her baby will be fatherless, just as many babies across the Muslim world are fatherless thanks to men like her husband.”

“Where is he? What did you do to him?”

“I’m not telling you anything, so you might as well keep cutting and save us both the time,” Amir said, looking directly into Mark’s eyes.

If a prisoner makes a violence-provoking statement at the beginning of an interrogation, he is often bluffing and may still be motivated through violence to share information. However, if he has already been subjected to substantial violence when he makes the statement, it is possible that the interrogator is dealing with an extremist who is unlikely to crack. In those cases, any further escalation of the violence runs the risk of becoming a distracting battle of egos rather than a deliberate attempt to extract valuable information.
Do not take the bait. Instead, change to a nonviolent approach and keep control of the interrogation.

“I guess I could do that, but what’s the use? If you’re not going to talk, you’re not going to talk and there’s no need to get myself any dirtier. I’ll just turn you over to the authorities and they can deal with you.” Mark kept eye contact with his prisoner for a few moments. Then he removed Kenny’s encrypted phone from his pocket and slung his rifle onto his back. He walked to the far end of the kitchen to escape the glow of the candle and texted Kenny.

MESSAGE: CHATTING WITH #4

The response came within seconds.

MESSAGE: AND?

Mark looked up to check on Amir before tapping his reply. His head hung low. The shock of being taken prisoner coupled with restricted blood flow was taking its toll.

MESSAGE: WORKING ON IT. HEAR FROM FRANK?

Again, Kenny’s response came almost instantly.

MESSAGE: NOTHING. LIGHTS OUT.

Landry put the phone away and quietly returned to his seat opposite the prisoner.

“Just kill me now. Or don’t you have the courage?” Amir goaded him.

Mark rubbed his face through the mask. “Courage? It doesn’t take much courage to kill a man who’s tied to a chair. And it didn’t take any courage at all to do what you did on that field two days ago. You blew up, then shot up a bunch of unarmed people, including women and children. Then I watched you run like a pussy when the other three guys stood and fought like men. So don’t lecture me about courage.”

“Burn in hell!” Amir screamed, causing a stream of blood to shoot from the side of his head. “You are the cowards who drop bombs on innocent Muslim families from thirty thousand feet! You fly drones from soft leather chairs thousands of miles from the battlefield because you lack the courage to fight God’s true warriors face to face.”

Mark exhaled and leaned forward in his chair. “Listen, I don’t want to get into a pissing contest with you. But I’ve fought plenty of so-called jihadists up close and—no offense—I wasn’t very impressed with what you guys can do. Seriously, unless you’re slaying unarmed women and children, you’re pretty much fish out of water. That’s just a fact.”

“You’re lying. If you had ever faced the fury of God’s holy warriors, you wouldn’t have lived to tell about it,” Amir declared.

“Okay. Whatever. You don’t have to believe me. But unless you’ve actually been in battle—like, real battle—your opinion doesn’t mean shit, ok? And from what I saw of you, I’m guessing this attack was your first rodeo.”

Amir smirked at the insult and responded slowly. “Fallujah, Tikrit, Mosul.”

Mark nodded his head. “Okay. So you’ve seen some shit. But listen. I hate to burst your bubble, but the spiritual leaders in the Islamic State fill the heads of the common, low-level nobodies like you with a lot of bullshit.”

Amir bowed his head. “I am not a low-level nobody. You’re the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Common soldiers are not sent on important holy missions.”

“What? Shooting up civilians at a picnic? Yeah, I’m sure only the pick of the litter get to go on those missions. Tell yourself whatever you want, buddy. But you’re not worth my time, so I’m done with you. I’m going to hand you off to the feds. You’re going to jail for the rest of your life, and the security on you will be so tight you won’t be able to take a dump or jerk off without somebody watching. And all because you were so awesome that the Islamic State sent you to shoot up a picnic.”

Amir started to speak, but Mark laughed out loud and walked into the kitchen.

“What’s your claim to fame? You’re just an ass in a mask. Why do you hide behind that mask anyway? What have you got to hide? If you were really there on the field, you saw all of our faces because that is how real men fight. You weren’t even there, were you?”