Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

They halted in the middle of the day – not for food or to drink, but to pray. They had eaten and drunk before they had left the well and would not do so again until they stopped and pitched tents. By walking at the back of the caravan, with the boy, Caleb had distanced himself from his unchosen companions. The last evening, before they slept, Fahd had told him briefly, with a sneer, of the disaster to Iraq, the fall of the regime, that American tanks had driven at leisure through the wide avenues of Baghdad. Then Tommy's glance had settled on Fahd and the story had been left unfinished… In front of him, astride the camels and perched on the humps, they all suffered.

The Saudi would yell out his pain, and twice the Egyptian had tumbled into the sand. Rashid had lifted him up without sympathy, then thwacked the camel's back to get it moving again. He sensed, constant in his mind, the resentment they held for him because they had waited twelve days for his arrival.

They climbed, scrambled, descended, and each in his own way would have prayed for another of the salt-crusted flats that made plateaux before the next line of dunes, and the heat was unforgiving

… and it was only the start. The questions had started again, the piping voice demanded answers.

'No,' Caleb said. 'You shall answer me.'

'What?'

He saw the triumph on the boy's face: a response had been won.

'How long do we travel?'

Mischief lit the boy's face. He grinned. 'How fast can you go? And the others? I think we go slowly.'

'How many days?'

'The camels drank this morning.'

'How many days can the camels travel after they have drunk?'

'For eighteen days.'

'Is eighteen days enough time?'

'How fast will you go?'

'What happens after eighteen days?'

'The camels die,' the boy, Ghaffur, said, and his eyes sparkled. 'But we must have water.'

'How many days can we live without water?'

'Two days, then we die.' The boy's smile wreathed his face.

'Has your father been on this route before?'

'I do not think so. Not with me. He has not said it.'

More questions bounced in Caleb's mind. All had the same core.

How did the guide, Rashid, know where he was going? What markers did he use? What pointers guided him? They were un-spoken. They had barely started, it was only the beginning… On every camel goats' stomach skins bulged with drinking water. Two days after that water was exhausted, they would die of thirst, and after eighteen days the camels would die. Caleb had not seen anything that told him men and beasts had gone this way before. The sands were pure. There were no tramped trails where hoofs or feet had been, and he did not think there was any possibility, however remote, that a vehicle could have ploughed through the soft, shifting sands of the dunes. Twice, in that morning's march, the guide had stopped and looked ahead, had seemed to sniff at the air, and his concentration had been total. The first time he had veered towards the right, a sharp, angled turn, and the second he had gone to the left, a softer turn. But the boy said his father had never been here before.

He realized it: their lives depended on the instincts of the guide who strode ahead of them, led them further into the sand wilderness.

Caleb asked, 'Does anyone come here?'

'God is here.'

He walked faster. The straps of his sandals were making blisters on his heels. He saw nothing that supported life, only the dunes – no track, no bush or dead wood, no trail. If he had not been important then the challenge of crossing the wilderness would not have been given him, but he did not know why he was important… He walked faster but his legs were leaden and his mouth cried out for water. The boy gambolled beside him, mocked him.

He staggered. The boy caught his arm, but Caleb angrily pushed him away, and the horizon was blurred by the sweat in his eyes. He seemed to see, in his mind, the bones of the dead who had exhausted their water, and the bones were stripped white by the sand and the wind. He blinked, then wiped the sweat savagely from his eyes. He had stared into a trap of self-pity, as men had done at X-Ray and Delta.

He screamed and the sound of it soaked into the dunes' walls and the cloudless sky.

He checked his list for the day – three interrogations.

They would all be dross. The Bureau and the Agency ruled in Joint Task Force 170, and the DIA ran a poor third, bottom of the heap. In his cubicle, Jed had scanned his overnight emails – nothing that couldn't wait – then turned to the files of the three men. The Bureau and the Agency worked the prisoners who stared at the ceiling and soundlessly repeated Holy Qur'an verses, or fed out the disinformation snippets, or gazed back at the questioner with silent contempt. The Bureau and the Agency had the big-time game of trying to break into the silence or the lies, and that was good, stimulating work. The men given to the DIA were the no-hopers, the unfortunates on the edge of nervous collapse. In the morning he would see a Kuwaiti, who said he was an aid worker in Jalalabad. In the afternoon, an Afghan would be brought in who said his father had given offence to a tribal chief in Paktia province and the chief had therefore denounced him. In the early evening, across the desk there would be a German passport holder from Tunisia who claimed the Pakistanis had handed him over when he was only an Arabic language student. It was pitiful.

By now, any benefit of Jed Dietrich's vacation was eroded. He wouldn't have told his father, Arnie Senior, but the work at Guantanamo bored him. A few times, he felt compulsive anger towards his targets, the men he faced, but the army's interrogation manual was clear cut on the boundaries he must not cross: he was permitted to use 'psychological ploys, verbal trickery, or other non-violent and non-coercive ruses'; he was warned that 'the interrogator must have an exceptional degree of self-control to avoid displays of genuine anger'; and absolutely forbidden was the 'use of force, mental torture, threats, insults or exposure to unpleasant or inhumane treatment'. Maybe if he had responded to that anger and kicked shit out of them, life at Guantanamo might not have been so dreary. It would not happen… He supposed that what kept him sane, what kept a man buying a lottery ticket, or what kept a guy out on a rainy day walking mud fields with a metal detector, was that something – one day – might just turn up. He started to read the case notes of the Kuwaiti who claimed to have been doing charity work in Jalalabad.

A clerk brought the signal to him.

He signed for it, watched the clerk close the door, and read it. He hadn't really the time to ponder on it, not if he were to get the Kuwaiti done in the morning. He read it a second time. He bit at his lower lip and dug his fingernails into his palms, but couldn't beat the frustration.

From: Lebed, Karen. DIA, Bagram.

To: Dietrich, Jed. DIA, Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay.

Subject: Fawzi al-Ateh. Ref. US8AF-000593DP.

Hope the sun's shining and the swimming's good. Concerning the above individual – no can help. Afghan national Fawzi al-Ateh did a runner (exclaimer). He escaped from USMC escort en route Bagram-Kabul. A mess (double exclaimer). Subject should have been collected by Afghan Security (yeah****yeah****) but incoming flight was delayed and they'd gone home – believe me. Subject pleaded nature call and was allowed out of transport, but didn't drop his trousers, just ran.

Anyway, ivhy the query? Wasn't subject cleared for release? Subject's home village is not accessible to us unless in battalion strength, bandit country. Low priority means follow-up assessment is not possible. OK, OK, so he wenr home early. Wishing you a happy day.

Best,

Lebed, Karen