I wasn't sure how much time had passed since my capture. I felt myself withdrawing, building a room of my own deep within and hiding away there. I knew what my mind was doing. The Air Force had prepared me for this a long time ago with a course in capture and torture.
One morning, or it could have been afternoon, I sensed plenty of activity outside. There were many horses stamping and snorting, and voices. There was also cheering. The commotion died down and nothing much happened for the rest of the day. No interrogation, no punishment, no threats. I was hoping they had all decided to move on and had forgotten about me. I was about to try to stand up when my cell filled with people. My eyes were swollen almost shut, so I couldn't see too well. I felt a hand under my chin that smelled of horse sweat and dung. The hand lifted my head and I looked into a face. I knew this guy. He was an old friend. He'd aged a little since I last saw him, and grime was pressed into the pores of his skin, but his eyes were soft and brown and his lids drooped a little like he was tired. Maybe he was. Hell, I was. “Hey,” I said. “How you doin'?” My voice cracked, and it came out as a whisper. I gave him a smile, too. I wondered what this friend of mine was doing here in this place and whether he'd come to get me out. I thought I should warn him he was in danger of ending up a punching bag. Those kind, sad eyes looked into mine, but I saw no recognition in them. I was a stranger to him. “It's me. Vin,” I said, again in a whisper. This was a funny situation. Finally, here was someone come to take me home, a familiar face, a buddy, and he didn't even recognize me. I must look like shit. The hopelessness of it made me laugh. It was funny. It was dumb.
The laughing earned me a beating.
FORTY-SEVEN
It was day or night, I wasn't sure which but I knew it had to be one or the other. I felt my shoulder being shaken. “Come on, wake up. Time to go.”
I wondered where this stranger was going and why he was telling me. It didn't occur to me to wonder who “he” was.
The owner of the voice shook me again and said, “Here, drink this.” I felt the pressure of a cup against my lips, and smelled heaven inside it. I tasted warm coffee, full of sugar. The flavor was exquisite, powerful. My shaking hands spilled some as I tried to get it all in my mouth, past my swollen lips, and I nearly wept. Next came a small chunk of soft cheese. He put the end of a bag in my mouth and cool, clean water flooded my throat. I coughed, hacked.
“Shhh…” said the man, putting a finger to his lips. He whispered, “Put a sock in it, buddy.”
Put a sock in it, buddy? That threw me. The words were said with what sounded like a broad New York accent. I was also thrown because this guy was one of the Afghans, one of the people who'd beaten the crap out of me when I hadn't given the right answers.
I heard the familiar light tinkle of key against stainless steel and my hands were released. The blood surged through my shoulders, down my arms, and out to my fingertips, which throbbed and burned and felt as if they would burst like a couple of balloons overfilled with water.
While I was trying to adjust to this sudden change in fortune, the guy fiddled around behind me, unwinding the end of the cable from whatever had secured my hands. He held up my handcuffs and set them on the floor beside me. “A souvenir,” he whispered.
I picked them up and pushed them into a thigh pocket. Smith & Wessons — the bastards had used my own handcuffs on me.
“I'm gonna take a look at your feet. OK?”
I nodded.
He checked them out. “I'm gonna put these on you.” He showed me a pair of old socks and boots that appeared to have been resoled countless times.
I nodded.
The socks and shoes went on and the sensation was strangely reassuring.
“Can you stand?”
Another nod.
He helped me to my feet. “You've been here nine days. They haven't tortured you. You should be OK.”
Haven't been tortured? Easy for you to say, pal, I thought. Nine days. It had felt like nine months. He threaded my hands through the sleeves of a thickly padded, coarse, knee-length coat, and then fastened the front buttons. The coat was far from tailored, but it was warm. I sagged against the wall while he wound a length of black wool around my head and face, and then a dirty blue wool cape around my shoulders.
“These are your gloves,” he said under his breath, holding them in front of my face. “Can you put them on?”
More nodding. The knuckles of my formerly dislocated fingers were swollen up like golf balls, but I could wiggle the digits and they didn't hurt as bad as they had a right to.
“Take this,” he said. “Feel free to use it if you have to. But use it quietly, OK?” He wiped the weapon on his cloak and handed it to me.
It was a knife, a long, thin, lethal knife, the edges modified — honed razor sharp. I knew this knife. I ran my gloved fingertip down the inscription on the blade, wiping away some of the crimson coagulated blood clogging the letters. There wasn't enough light by which to read the words, but I knew what they said: And the American Way. This was Ruben Wright's knife, the one Clare Selwyn and I both thought was lost close to where Ruben had died. Truth, Justice on the one side, And the American Way on the other. Ruben Wright's personal motto, the last line of the theme song from the original Superman TV show.
“Where'd you find this?” I asked.
“Same place we found you. Can you walk?”
This must have been what my fingers found when Butler and I had grappled in midair. “Who are you?” I asked, taking a couple of unsteady steps.
“A guy who's about to blow his cover. Come on — the window of opportunity's small. We get this wrong, we're both dead.”
He helped me to the front door. I slipped and almost fell. There was something on the ground, hidden in the night shadow from the flickering orange light of the hurricane lamp. It was one of the Arabs. His throat had been cut and his blood had leaked out, making a hell of a sticky, slippery mess. His clothes had been stripped off him and his feet were bare. We stepped over his sprawled legs, through the door, and into a densely black night. Snow was falling. It was utterly quiet, all sound absorbed by fat, ghostly flakes the size of flower petals drifting down from above.
My rescuer pulled out a pair of night-vision goggles from somewhere and put them on. “This way,” he said, nudging me in an uphill direction. We made our way up through what was a small village cut into a rock face that was close to vertical. Somewhere, a mutt barked halfheartedly, the sound muffled by the falling snow. I was lucky. Everything in the village was made of stone and mud brick and even the smallest sound would usually bounce around amplified in a place like this, especially in the thicker night air. Nevertheless, we stopped moving occasionally, my guide making the gesture of silence with his finger pressed against his lips. Once, I was pushed back against a wall and into a deep shadow as two men with AKs strolled past. They were both smoking. I knew from experience the glowing tips would register in the NVG's lenses like a pair of usher's flashlights.
We climbed over a couple of low walls and left the black silhouette of the town behind, then climbed a steep hill through soft, knee-deep snow. I guessed we were well above 10,000 feet. I had a headache that reminded me of my heavy-drinking days, and my lungs were searing with effort. I couldn't get enough air into them, and what air I could get was frigid, which made my nose, throat, and mouth feel like they'd been sliced up with a straight razor. When I tried to stop to get my breath, which happened every half-dozen steps, my rescuer gave me a push. Eventually, the climb lessened and we dropped over the ridge into another valley. My hands and feet were again numb with cold, the shooter's gloves not providing a lot of protection against the elements and the snow having found its way inside the boots. I had questions for my savior and guide, but I was too cold and tired to ask them.