"Then put a stop to it," the commander said. "You're not an archaeologist. You're a soldier." He nodded toward Rodgers. "This man has been trained. I can see that. I feel it." He stepped closer to Sondra. "I don't enjoy doing this. Talk to me. Help me and you help him. You help my people. You will save lives."
Sondra said nothing.
"I understand," the commander said. "But I won't let dozens of women and children die every day because others do not approve of our culture, our language, our form of Islam. Hundreds of my people are in Syrian prisons where they're tortured by the Mukhabarat, the secret police. Surely you can understand my desire to help them."
"I understand," she replied, "and I sympathize. But the cruelty of others doesn't justify your own."
"This is not cruelty," he said. "I would like to stop. I have been tortured. I have suffered for hours with electric wires threaded inside my body so there would be no bruises. A dead animal hung around your neck in a steaming-hot cell leaves no marks. Nor do the flies it attracts or the vomiting it induces. My wife was raped to death by an entire Turkish unit. I found her body in the hills. She was violated in ways which I hope are worse than you can imagine." He looked back at Rodgers. "Other nations have made halfhearted efforts to help us. The United States special envoy tried to bring together the feuding Talabani and Barzani factions in Iraq. He had no budget, no arms for them. He failed. The United States Air Force tried to prevent the Iraqis from bombing Kurds in the north. They succeeded, so the Iraqis simply poisoned their water supply. The Air Force could not prevent that. It is time for us to help ourselves. For one of us to lead all of us."
This is why we aren't supposed to talk to them, Sondra thought. The man was making perfect sense. And the Kurd was right about one thing. Someone would probably talk. But it couldn't be her. She had taken an oath of allegiance, and part of that oath was to obey orders. Rodgers did not want her to speak. She couldn't. She wouldn't. Living with that shame would be worse than dying.
She continued to look at the commander as Rodgers's handcuffs rattled against the iron ring. After a minute, the torch was moved to Rodgers other side. He jumped this time, and so did she, as the flame was applied. The jaw was no longer so strong. His mouth fell open, his eyes rolled, and his entire body trembled. The tips of his feet kicked up and down vigorously. But he didn't scream.
The commander watched with a relaxed, confident expression as the flame was moved to Rodgers's back. Rodgers arched and shook and shut his eyes. His mouth went wide and there was a gurgling deep in his throat. As soon as Rodgers became aware of the sound he forced his mouth shut.
Though tears formed in her eyes and fear dried her mouth, Sondra refused to say a word.
Suddenly, the commander said something in Arabic. The torturer stepped away from Rodgers and shut off the burner. The commander turned to Sondra.
I will give you a few minutes to think without having to see your friend suffer." He smiled at her. "Your friend or your superior officer? No matter. Think about the people you can help. Yours as well as mine. I ask you to think about the German people during the Second World War. Were the patriots those who did the bidding of Hitler, or those who did what was right?"
The commander waited a moment. When Sondra said nothing, he walked away. The torturer left with him.
As their footsteps died, Sondra looked at Rodgers. He raised his head slowly.
"Say nothing," he ordered.
"I know," she said.
"We are not Nazi Germany," Rodgers gasped. "These people are terrorists. They'll use the ROC to kill. Do you understand?"
"I do," she said.
Rodgers's head dropped again. Through tears, Sondra looked at the dark, raw burns under his upraised arms. Rodgers was right. These men had killed thousands of people by blowing up the dam. They'd kill even more if they were able to use the ROC to watch troop movements or listen to communications. The Kurds were oppressed, but would they be any better under a warlord like this? He was a man who had suffered, yet he was willing to burn hostages alive and keep them in pits to get his way. If he were Syrian, would he tolerate the Turkish Kurds? If he were Turkish, would he tolerate the Iraqi Kurds?
She didn't know. But if Mike Rodgers was prepared to die to say no to him, she was too.
And then she heard the footsteps returning. Sondra saw Mike Rodgers breathe deeply to bring up his courage and resolve and felt her own legs weaken. She pulled on the handcuffs and wished she could at least die fighting their captors.
The torturer reappeared without the commander. After lighting the burner, he moved toward Mike Rodgers again. And impassively, as though he were igniting a barbecue pit, he turned the flame on Rodgers's breastbone.
And after his head rolled back and he fought for a long moment to keep his teeth clenched, the general finally screamed.
THIRTY-FIVE
Bob Herbert started working on his fourth pot of coffee while Matt Stoll finished off his seventh can of Tab. Except for bathroom breaks, neither man had left Stoll's office, even when the night shift came on duty.
The two were examining photographs of the Bekaa Valley which had been taken from 1975 through the present by satellites, infiltrators, and Israeli Sayeret Tzanhanim paratroopers. They knew the ROC was somewhere in the valley, but they didn't know where. An F-16 flyover from Incirlik hadn't provided any clues. The thick tree cover and camouflage undermined visual reconnaissance. And except for the low-watt satellite-killer program, the ROC had apparently been shut down or else hidden in a cave or beneath a ledge. Otherwise, an infrared search might have turned up something. The Air Force plane had also been sending out millimeter-wave microwave signals in an effort to raise the ROC's active-passive radar reflector. Had Rodgers been able to get to the dashboard and switch the ROC transponder on, it would have replied with a coded message. So far, there had been only silence.
With nothing else to go on, the two men looked at photographs. Herbert wasn't certain what he was looking for. But as the pictures filled Stoll's twenty-inch monitor, the intelligence chief tried to think like the enemy.
According to Turkish intelligence, which was confirmed by Israeli intelligence, there were nearly fifteen thousand PKK soldiers. Some ten thousand of those were living in the hills of eastern Turkey and northern Iraq. The rest were divided into pockets of ten to twenty fighters. Some of these people were assigned to specific areas of Damascus or Ankara or other major cities. Others were in charge of training, communications, or maintaining supply lines through the Bekaa Valley. Now, the Bekaa was also apparently the home of a new, aggressive Syrian Kurdish unit. One which was working closely with, or perhaps even joined with, Kurds from Turkey and Iraq.
"So the terrorists capture the ROC," Herbert said.
Stoll let his forehead plunk down on his arms, which were crossed on his desk. "Not again, Bob."
"Yes, again," Herbert said.
"There's got to be something else we can try," Stoll moaned. "The farmers out in the fields contact their hands using cellular phones. Let's listen to them. Maybe they saw something."
"My team is doing that. They've picked up zip." Herbert took a mouthful of warm coffee from a chipped, stained mug which had once sat on the desk of OSS chief Wild Bill Donovan. "So the terrorists capture the ROC. They report back to their headquarters. Since we can't find the terrorists, we have to find the command base. The question is, what do we look for?"
"A command center has to have access to water, and it'll have generators for electricity and a radar dish for communications and probably heavy tree cover for security," Stoll droned. "We've been through this a zillion times. Water can be trucked in or flown in, generator exhaust can be vented by hose to someplace and dispersed so an airplane heat-sensor won't see it, and a radar dish is easy to hide."