Chapter 3
We waited in a gray concrete room. Mold covered the plaster ceiling and the rank smell of mildew overpowered my senses. There were no windows, only a single steel door, and just one table with two small wooden chairs. We were not in a cell, it was an interrogation room. We hadn’t spent much time in this part of the building, as the CIA had specialized agents on site to handle the interrogations. Even if they used the field agents we were attached to, they wouldn’t allow us in the room with a prisoner. We had been trained in interrogation techniques, though, and I had a feeling that training was about to come in handy.
Bear paced the room along the walls. “You believe this garbage?” He said it flatly, shaking his head.
I shrugged. “We knew it was coming.”
“Yeah, but…” He threw his hands up and resumed pacing.
“Just sit back, nod your head and don’t admit anything.”
“You know I can’t stand that suck up crap, Jack.”
“Me either, big man, but we’ve got no choice. Let’s just take our slap on the wrist, get out of here and get Abbot on the phone.”
“Abbot,” he said, shaking his head. “Who knows what they’ve filled his head with by now?”
I agreed. Chances were he and Keller had already been briefed and given Martinez’s side of the story.
“He’ll listen to us. Don’t worry about that.”
Abbot would listen, I felt sure of it. He had known both of us since we were eighteen years old. He oversaw our training and our placement within the agency.
“I still can’t believe he agreed to these garbage orders,” Bear said.
“Yeah, well,” I said. “I don’t think he had much choice.”
Following the attacks, the agency pushed hard for all of Abbot’s men to deploy to the mid-east. Most of the guys went to Afghanistan to join in the hunt for Bin Laden and the attack on the Taliban. The remaining twelve of us were sent here. The best of the best is what Abbot had said, and that meant our talents were being wasted away guarding frigging doors and doing grunt work for guys like Martinez while he and his team botched opportunity after opportunity. These guys weren’t operators, they were baboons.
“What the hell are you smiling at?” Bear said.
“Didn’t realize I was.”
He stopped in the corner opposite the door and leaned back against the wall. “I’m done with this.”
“The team?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m ready to get out.”
Bear and I joined the Marines at the same time. And even though I only had a few months left until my enlistment ended, he still had two years to go. When the topic came up, neither of us could make a good argument for or against doing another two to four years. I didn’t know what I would do next, though. I’d spent enough time dealing with CIA operatives that I knew I wanted nothing to do with the agency, even though I had an open invitation after my enlistment was up. The FBI wouldn’t talk to us without law degrees, so they were out, not that they were ever really in. There was local law enforcement and government agencies like the DEA, but after everything I’d done, I didn’t take to the idea of having to follow laws in order to do my job.
“I’m starting to feel the same way,” I said.
I leaned my head back, resting it against the top of the wooden chair back, studying the mold patterns on the ceiling that started in the corner near the door, spread out evenly across the ceiling and then turned to the right, stopping before it reached the opposite wall. I wondered what was above the room.
“Look, Bear—” A rap at the door interrupted me.
Bear straightened up and braced himself against the wall. His face looked tired and pale and void of any emotion. He stared down at his boots. They’d taken our laces, but left us with our shoes.
I thought about staying seated at the table, but if they decided to come in and rush us, it would be better for me to be standing. I got up and went to the far end of the room, away from the door, and leaned against the wall adjoining Bear’s wall.
We heard another knock and muffled voices, and then the distinct sound of a key entering the chamber of a lock followed by the latch turning. The handle bent down and the door cracked open a few inches. The barrel of a gun pushed though. I felt my stomach sink into that all too familiar personal pit of despair.
“Turn and face the wall!” a man shouted.
Bear looked at me, his expression spoke volumes. His cheeks turned red, his nostrils flared, his wide eyes were covered by his heavy brow, furrowed down. I knew that look. Hell, I’d been on the wrong end of that look a couple times in recruit training, before we were forced on this journey together.
“Take it easy,” I said.
He started toward the door.
“Bear,” I said, arms out, palms facing him. “Don’t do it.”
He stopped, face went slack, head lowered toward the floor. He turned slowly, placed his hands against the wall.
I did the same. Part of me wanted to turn and fight, just like Bear, but I knew the best option for us was to get out of that room, off base, and back to the U.S. That wouldn’t happen if we attacked the men who had the power to let us go.
The door creaked open on rusted hinges. The concrete walls absorbed the echoes of dull footsteps as several men entered the room. I turned my head to get a count.
“Face the wall, Noble.”
I felt a something in the middle of my back and quickly realized it wasn’t a hand. It was the barrel of a gun. I turned my head toward the wall, focusing on an imaginary spot. The scuffs and cracks in the wall created an illusion of a woman with one arm over her head and the other across her belly. Maybe she was on an island somewhere. Then it hit me. I knew what I’d do instead of re-enlisting. I’d get out and head to an island where I’d open a bar and live the dream.
“Sorry to do this to you, Noble.” Hot stale breath hit my neck and wrapped around my face, entering my nose despite my attempts to exhale heavily and send it away.
Men appeared on either side of me, grabbing my wrists and jerking my arms behind my back. They wrapped steel cuffs around my wrists, and I heard them click as the cuffs locked and tightened. I glanced over and saw three men attending to Bear, two on either side of him working his arms, while another man stood directly behind him, holding a gun to the back of his head with one hand, handcuffs dangling from the other.
“Let’s move, Noble.”
I didn’t budge.
“Don’t make us move you.”
I said nothing and didn’t move.
“We warned you.”
I’m not sure what was worse. Knowing I was about to get hit over the head with a blackjack, or the blackjack actually hitting me over the head. It didn’t matter. The world went black right after impact.