The twins picked up their weapons and stepped into the room with the American hostage, leaving Hunter alone with Fazul and the teenager, who still carried an AK slung over his shoulder.
“No! Stop! No!” The American woman screeched. “No!”
Without thinking, Hunter grit his teeth and pain from the tooth immediately electrified his mouth. He searched for options, fighting to conceal his emotions while white-hot anger seared his gut. At Fort Bragg, Hunter had spent long hours with his team day after day running through live-fire hostage rescue exercises in the Force Zulu shooting house. Suddenly their worst-case scenarios seemed so naïve.
The boy looked toward the door and laughed. Then he turned to Fazul. “May I go, too? I never get my turn.”
Ignoring the boy’s whines, Fazul fiddled with the wires of a blasting cap fastened to a AAA battery. He sat in the line of fire between Hunter and the boy’s AK. Hunter eyed a screwdriver laying on the table and he inched his hand toward it while he watched Fazul sink the blasting cap into the Semtex. Hunter would need the full force of his right arm to shove the screwdriver into Fazul’s temple, so he would have to use his left one to grab the gun from the terrorist’s lap to take out the boy before he could fire the AK. He figured that the twin waiting his turn at the woman would come running out of the bedroom with his AK before Hunter would have time to switch hands. He was glad that he had trained so hard shooting lefty.
The woman’s screeches grew fainter, more haunting.
Hunter snatched up a screwdriver and lunged across the table. His chair fell to the floor. At the last moment, he saw Fazul with a wire in each hand, moving them toward one another, about to close the circuit and accidentally detonate the bomb.
Hunter let the screwdriver fall to the floor as he seized Fazul’s hairy wrists and held them apart.
“Allahu akbar. Praise be to Allah. You almost detonated it,” Hunter said before the boy could react. He then pulled the yellow wire from Fazul’s hand, gave it a tug and the cap pulled out of the Semtex. He reached over to the battery and ripped the tape off, separating the wires from it.
Alerted by the commotion, one of the twins ran out of the bedroom and pointed his assault rifle at Hunter.
Hunter and Fazul stared one another in the eyes without moving. Then Fazul glanced down at the screwdriver and Hunter recognized the flash of doubt.
“I kept you from blowing yourself up,” Hunter said.
Fazul was shaking. “You saved my life. Thanks be to Allah, the merciful and compassionate.”
Grunts and screams came from the bedroom. The one twin was still going at her. Hunter hated himself as he tried to block out her screams and said, “Yes, thanks be to Allah, the merciful and compassionate.”
“Come.” Hunter followed, aware that the teenager was behind him, carrying his weapon. Fazul walked over to the doorway to the room where the woman was being held. Her blouse was ripped and she was naked from the waist down. Her legs and arms were covered with fresh red bruises and older ones that had turned shades of yellow and brown. “Now I reward you.”
“But I’m supposed to be after Gamal! Not him!” The boy said.
“Gamal! Off her! Now!” Fazul pounded Gamal on his back as if he were beating a stubborn donkey. “Off! I said off her!”
Gamal ignored him and continued to hump her. Fazul picked up his AK and whacked him with it in the kidneys. Gamal rolled off her, reaching for his back.
“Why did you do that?”
“Obey me.” Fazul kicked him.
The woman’s shoulder-length brown hair was matted from dirt and tears. Her lips were parched and cracked and her eyes sunken. The woman needed fluids badly. She turned on her side with her back to them and moaned. If she had been an animal, Hunter would’ve shot her to put her out of her misery.
“My friend, here is your reward. You may have her.” Fazul stretched his arm toward the woman as if presenting a gift.
“No. It is haram, forbidden to know a woman who is not your wife.”
“The Prophet, peace be upon him, blessed temporary marriages, particularly for those away from their wives when on jihad. It is halal. Declare your mut’a and take her. Then it is pure.” Fazul looked into Hunter’s eyes and grimaced. “My friend, you are not thinking of dishonoring me and refusing my gift?”
The room where they were holding the American woman had to be well over a hundred degrees and it reeked of stale urine and feces. Sweat dripped down Hunter’s face and he wiped it away with the sleeve of his dishdashah.
The twins and the teenage muj blocked the doorway. They carried their weapons and so did Fazul. Hunter was helpless to try and help the woman without getting both of them killed. Insulting Fazul by refusing to rape her could have the same effect. He understood the scenario well. When his unit had been crosstrained at the Farm, his CIA instructors had spent the better part of an afternoon making them role play the dilemma. He had gone along with the playacting, but he had always believed that if this happened to him, he would be clever enough to figure out an innovative solution.
Now it was for real and Hunter Stone saw no way out.
Chapter Fifteen
Anbar Province
“My gift awaits.” Fazul swept his arm toward the American woman lying on a ripped mattress in a fetal position, sobbing.
Hunter despised the muj, but at that moment he hated himself more as he pulled up his dishdashah and climbed on top of the woman, upon Jackie Nelson. She let out a low groan, a sound that penetrated Hunter’s bones.
Forgive me.
Chapter Sixteen
The days when journalists could move around Iraq just by keeping a low profile-traveling in beat-up old cars, growing an Iraqi-style mustache, and dyeing their hair black, or when women reporters could safely shroud themselves in a black abbaya and veil-are gone. When Jill Carroll of The Christian Science Monitor tried such tactics this January, she was kidnapped while trying to get to an interview with a Sunni politician…
– The New York Review of Books, April 6, 2006, as reported by Orville Schell
Ramadi, Anbar Province
Camille took off her Oakley sunglasses and rubbed her eyes. The bustling market was a security nightmare. Everyone and everything seemed to be in constant motion and the honking of car horns was deafening. Worst of all, they all were armed. She had long ago given up on trying to keep track of the flow of people for someone who might be watching them. Some of her best operators were close by dressed as locals, in case someone decided she was a target of opportunity and tried to snatch her like they had the American geologist a few weeks ago. Whatever the muj were doing to that poor woman, they were not going to have the chance with Camille Black-even if that meant premature death.
A hawker jumped in front of her with a display case of Iraqi bracelets and necklaces. She brushed him aside, remembering how she and Hunter were once enjoying a night market in Istanbul when two men had tried to rob them at gunpoint. They neutralized the threat and, rather than deal with the hassle of the police, Camille had wanted to flee the country. Hunter had surprised her with a better idea: kick up their vacation a notch and tour ancient ruins, staying one step ahead of the Turkish police, putting their skills to the test. Hunter knew how to treat a woman to a good time. She’d give anything to live like that again, she thought, as she and her Lebanese interpreter walked into yet another store selling satellite dishes and cell phones, Iraq’s two postwar obsessions. It was the fourth Omar’s Electronics they had visited in the past two hours. Since nowhere in the town seemed to have electricity unless it was from a generator, she couldn’t imagine that business was exactly booming.