Vince Flynn - Protect And Defend

Two Humvees came rolling up and stopped just short of Rapp and the prisoners. Rapp recognized the base commander, General Gifford, as he climbed out of the lead vehicle. He was in full battle gear-helmet and all. He walked right up to Rapp.

“My recon choppers are up, I’ve got three Predators in the air, and two Reapers are on their way up from Baghdad. There’s four main roads that come into the city, and six more secondary roads, the Hundred and First is in the process of setting up checkpoints on all ten of those roads between forty and sixty clicks.”

“What about the river?”

“Covered to the north and south,” he replied in his clipped military tone. “We’re mobilizing every soldier we can and putting them on the street. Is there anything else you need from me?”

Rapp thought of the conversation he’d just had with O’Brien. “Yeah.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the three prisoners in black hoods. One was walking and two were on stretchers. “These guys with the bags over their heads…you never saw them…understand?”

Gifford looked beyond Rapp at the men. He hesitated for a moment as he thought of the obvious implication. He gave a quick nod and then said, “What men?” The general turned and marched back to his Humvee, over his shoulder he shouted, “You need anything, call me.”

Just as the general was pulling away Stilwell arrived with his Kurds. Rapp told the soldiers to set the stretchers down and had the Kurds take over. He figured the less the GIs knew the better.

Rapp and Stilwell walked into the trailer that housed the offices and a reception area. “Do you have a camera?” Rapp asked.

“Polaroid or digital?”

“Polaroid.”

Stilwell disappeared into an office and returned a moment later with the camera. As he handed it to Rapp he asked, “What else?”

Rapp flipped the camera around to see if it was loaded. “Yeah…find out where those bodies are.”

“What bodies?”

“The ones that I asked that captain, from the QRF…” Rapp snapped his fingers while he searched for the name.

“Captain Jensen,” Stilwell offered.

“Yeah, that’s him. I told him I wanted all the bodies brought back here so we could identify them. Make sure they’re brought here.”

“Not the base morgue?” asked a confused Stilwell.

“Here…right here. I want them stripped naked and dumped in the biggest cell you have. I want every square inch of the floor covered with dead bodies.”

“You’re serious?” Stilwell asked with a questioning frown.

“Yes,” Rapp barked.

Taken slightly aback Stilwell asked, “Anything else?”

Rapp was already halfway to the door. He stopped and asked, “What kind of sound tracks do you have to soften these guys up?”

Stilwell looked up at the ceiling and recited the list. “Barney, ‘I love you, you love me,’ ‘The Macarena,’ that obnoxious Nelly Furtado song, a lot of heavy metal…there’s some Barry Manilow, which I personally think is bullshit. The guy’s a genius…”

“No,” Rapp yelled. “I mean soundtracks of people being tortured…screaming, yelling, begging for their life. Not the looped Barney shit. I don’t have a week to wear these fuckers down.”

“Oh…sorry. Yeah, we’ve got a few good ones.”

“Put one on.” Rapp left the office and walked across the compound. The interrogation containers were around back next to a massive tan hangar. The containers had been placed side-by-side and covered in three layers of sandbags. Only one door and an air-conditioning unit weren’t covered. Rapp walked in the door and past a small desk and a bank of surveillance monitors. Twelve ten-inch screens. One for each cell. A man in jeans and a T-shirt was sitting behind the desk with his feet up reading a magazine.

Rapp stopped and pointed to the monitors. “You record what goes on in these cells?”

“Twenty-four seven. Mandated by Congress, courtesy of Abu Ghraib.”

“Lovely,” Rapp growled. “The recordings are stored on that hard drive sitting there?”

The guy looked at the computer sitting on the floor. “Yep.”

“Excuse me.” Rapp nudged past the man and yanked all the connections out of the back of the computer.

“Hey, you can’t do that. That’s against…”

Before the man could finish, Rapp grabbed him under the arm and yanked him to his feet. “Take a break.”

Rapp pushed the guy outside and started for the cells. A hallway had been cut down the center of the three containers, halving them with six cells on each side. The doors and walls were all quarter inch steel with foam insulation in between. Rapp ran into one of the Kurds in the hallway and asked him where the guy was who they thought was the leader. The Kurd directed him to the last cell on the left. Rapp slid the spy hole to the side and saw the man lying on his stretcher in the middle of the cell. He undid the lock, entered the cell and stood next to him. Then he reached down and yanked the hood off the man’s head.

The man opened his eyes for only a second, and then, unable to shield them from the overhead light because his hands were strapped at his sides, closed them. Rapp pointed the camera at the guy’s face and snapped a shot. The Polaroid clicked and then whirled as it spit out the developing photo. Rapp leaned over and used his head to block the overhead light.

“Open your eyes.” Rapp spoke in English this time.

The man slowly opened his eyes.

“Where did they take her?”

The man started to purse his lips like he was going to spit.

Rapp was ready this time. His right fist came crashing down and hit the man square in the mouth. The guy coughed and turned his head to the side, spitting out blood and a tooth. Rapp let a moment pass and then in a very congenial tone said, “All right, I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way. You do know you’re gonna tell me where she is, though.”

The man spit a gob of blood from his mouth and then said, “Fuck you.”

Rapp laughed and leaned in a little closer. “Let me tell you how this is gonna go. I’m gonna start by slicing off your left nut…and then I’m gonna slice off your right nut.”

The man closed his eyes.

“And if you manage to make it that far without telling me,” Rapp continued, “you won’t get much further. Because trust me on this one…you’re going to tell me what you know, because no man in his right mind wants to have his dick cut off and shoved down his throat.”

Rapp stood up and when the man opened his eyes, he took another photo. Almost as if on cue, the voice of a man screaming in pain erupted from somewhere beyond the door. Without saying another word, Rapp turned and left.

Halberg sat in his elevated chair, an elbow on each armrest, his hands bridged under his chin. They were halfway through the channel and so far there had been no sign of the Yusef. Not that Halberg expected any. With a constant stream of supertankers coming and going the acoustics were horrible. Add to that freighter traffic of all shapes and sizes, fishing boats, and pleasure craft, and his sonar men were left with a din that was comparable to trying to listen to your cell phone while sitting in the front row of rock concert. Still no one complained. They simply did their best to sort it all out and make sure they didn’t run into anything.

Halberg got up from his chair, walked into the sonar room and noticed a concerned look on the face of one of his operators. Each of the five men was wearing noise-canceling headphones so they wouldn’t be distracted by the other conversations taking place in the CACC. The captain took a sip of coffee. His eyes stayed trained on Louis Sullivan, or Sully as he was called by the rest of the crew. He was by far the best sonar operator on the boat. If he looked concerned, that meant something unusual was going on outside the hull and that meant Halberg needed to be concerned too. He waited for Sully to start nodding. Waited for the smile to form on his thin lips. That’s what Sully always did when he classified a particularly difficult contact.