Prepared For Rage

"When we took him into custody, you mean?" Ahmed said austerely, and spoiled the effect by gri

"He must smell pretty ripe by now."

"Yeah," Bob said laconically. "Probably time to let him clean up. After a while they stop smelling themselves, so it's less of an incentive to talk. Better to clean him up and let him shit and smell himself again; more motivation."

"What's taking her so long?" Patrick said, the urgency he felt gnawing at him like a sharp set of teeth. Even more so now, he had the awful feeling of a clock ticking down in the background. The longer Akil stayed out of sight, the more afraid Patrick was of what he would do when he eventually regained the spotlight. Maybe it was a condition of being a spy but more than any other single thing Patrick Chisum hated and feared not knowing what was going on. When you had no knowledge of the horrors in store there was no way to stop them or, worst case, prepare for them. Ignorance was not bliss. I

The door opened a crack. Mary peeped inside. She waited until Sadiq's head came up to see who was there. "Oh," she said, her voice a nice blend of nerves and compassion. "Oh, you look just awful." She slipped inside, took a quick look into the hall, and shut the door with exaggerated stealth. "You poor thing. I brought you some water."

She carried a glass of water in both hands like a supplicant. "Is she tiptoeing?" Ahmed said in a faint voice.

Bob said proudly, "She is in fact tiptoeing."

Mary held the glass to Sadiq's mouth, one comforting hand on his shoulder. He drank greedily, some of the water spilling down his neck. Mary made a distressed sound and used the tail of her shirt to dry him off, not forgetting to give Sadiq a flash of midriff.

"Oh, please," Ahmed said with dismay. "A honey trap? You ca

The corner of Bob's mouth quirked up. Patrick said nothing. He'd chosen his people, the best at what they did. Now all he could do was step back and let them go to work. Still, he was taut and tense as a violin string, vibrating at the lightest touch, the balls of his feet digging into the floor. Come on, he said silently, come on.

Inside the interrogation room, in the middle of mopping up Sadiq, Mary pretended to hear something in the hallway. "Oh, no! I have to go!" She bent down to look earnestly into Sadiq's eyes. "I'm so sorry about all this, Mr. Sadiq. They're so mean to you men, and it seems to go on forever. I'll get back when I can, I promise." She gave his shoulder another consoling pat and tiptoed out.

"My cue," Bob said, and left the room.

Barely had the door to the interrogation room closed behind Mary when Bob kicked it open again, his head pushed forward aggressively, his eyes full of contempt. He walked over to Sadiq and without preamble balled one hand into a fist and hit Sadiq in the face, hard enough to knock his chair over. The chair with Sadiq still handcuffed to it slid across the floor until Sadiq's head hit the wall with a thump clearly audible to the two men on the other side of the glass.

Bob walked across the room and kicked him in the ribs. He looked down at Sadiq and smiled.

Sadiq groaned and coughed up blood and phlegm. There might also have been a tooth, but from behind the mirror Patrick couldn't tell for sure.

"Plenty more where that came from, friend," Bob said to Sadiq. "Where's Isa?"

Sadiq groaned again and tried to curl into a fetal position.

Bob shrugged. "Okay by me. I can keep this up all night." It was ten a.m. but part of the disorientation process was to divorce the detainee from real time. "No one will stop me. You're here until I say you can go." He leaned down and said into Sadiq's ear, "And I can do anything I want to." He straightened and reached for his belt buckle.

Sadiq's eyes went wide and his body bowed, heaving and struggling so violently the chair scraped a foot across the floor, his wrists straining against the handcuffs.

Bob laughed. His hand went to his fly.

"Jesus," Ahmed said.

Talk, you little fucker, Patrick thought.

The door to the room opened and Mary, looking frightened but determined, poked her head inside. "Mr. Crenshaw?"

Bob snarled. "What the fuck do you want?"

Her voice trembling, Mary said faintly, "I'm sorry, but Mr. Casawba wants a word."

Bob stormed past her into the hallway, refastening his belt and shoving her into the wall with a loud thud as he passed. The door slammed shut behind him.

"Oh," she said in a hurt voice. She pulled away from the wall, hand to her injured shoulder, and crept across the room. "Oh, what did he do to you?"

"Please," Sadiq said, coughing again. "Please help me."

Mary looked on the verge of tears. "I don't know what I can do." She blinked rapidly and said with brave determination, "Let's get you back up." With much heaving and struggling, she managed to right Sadiq and his chair. More ineffectual dabbing with her shirttail at the blood on his mouth, pretty concern over the lost tooth, and all the while Sadiq was saying in desperation, "Please, I don't know anything, I don't know why I'm here, please help me, please, get me out of here!"

Mary did cry then, actual tears, Patrick could see them distinctly, sliding down her cheeks. She was one of those women who looked good in tears, too, her nose didn't run and her eyes didn't redden. She knelt at Sadiq's side, the end of the heavy tail of black hair almost touching the floor, and held one of his hands below the handcuff, patting it ineffectually. "I can't do anything," she said, swallowing a sob. "I'm just a clerk. Bob-" She shuddered and cast a hunted look over her shoulder. "He's the lead interrogator here. He can do anything." She looked back at Sadiq. "Anything," she repeated, her lower lip trembling.

Sadiq swallowed hard, his horrified gaze fixed on Mary's haunted face. Even to Patrick, this seemed the essence of melodrama, overkill in a major key, any self-respecting detainee would laugh Mary out of the room. Surely Sadiq would see this, would catch on to what they were doing, would reject their attempts with the contempt they deserved.

But Yaqub Sadiq was a novice terrorist, barely a year out of his middle-class cradle. Ahmed was right, Isa was operating outside al Qaeda and thus had no access to the culling process of the organization's usual thorough and ruthless recruiting practices. He'd been reduced to finding his own people, which, Patrick suddenly realized, must mean that he was in a hurry. Why?

He looked through the glass at the handcuffed man, hovered over by the waif with the ponytail. This was not the usual experienced, hard-shelled detainee. Yaqub Sadiq had been abducted and drugged and had woken up handcuffed to a chair in an anonymous room with no idea of where he was or what day it was. His captors had not identified themselves but Sadiq had to know they were American and Isa's sworn enemies. If not American, then they were at the very least American allies and at the very worst contract interrogators in friendly states with no constitutional guarantees of due process and no qualms about torture. They'd withheld food and water until his stomach was one big growl and his tongue was swollen in his mouth, and they'd refused him access to a toilet so that he was forced to sit in his own piss and shit.

From the intel gleaned in Germany Patrick had seen photos of Rashid Nurzai, a very fierce-looking gentleman who looked ready to compete in the shot put in the next Olympics. He was surprised that Nurzai had only made an anonymous call, if he had. From that photograph Patrick would have expected Nurzai to take more direct action in a matter involving his wife. Patrick would have run from that himself.