“Greg Bolton, Staff Sergeant, 491…” Hunter rattled off the name, rank and social security number for his cover identity with Rubicon, then repeated himself again and again. Regardless of what his colleagues at Force Zulu thought of him, he would not betray them to Rubicon. He had to keep up his cover story so Rubicon didn’t learn that Zulu was investigating them. They might suspect it, but he wasn’t about to confirm anything.
“Like I give a rat’s ass who you are, you fucking traitor,” his Rubicon jailor carefully enunciated each word. Hunter guessed Minnesota or Wisconsin, a refugee from a blue state.
The other man shoved him to the ground. He twisted his body to break the fall, but it didn’t do much good against the hard concrete. The guard kicked him and rolled him over, face down. A knife blade scraped against his back, then the man slit his shirt and ripped it from him. He did the same with his pants and underwear. Then Hunter heard the click of a camera.
“I will now be conducting a body cavity search.”
A latex glove slapped against the man’s wrist and Hunter knew it was for the sound effect. It worked.
“I hear you’re a muj lover.” The man grabbed Hunter’s testicles and squeezed. “You know, I could do this all day.”
His hands were a vice. Hunter gasped and nausea washed over him like a tsunami, but didn’t recede. The jailor twisted and grasped even harder. Hunter thought he was going to pass out; he wished to god he would.
The guard let go and stood there. Hunter drew himself into fetal position and rubbed his thumb against his missing fingernails, a reminder, courtesy of the North Koreans, that he could survive anything. He tried to focus on controlling his breathing, but it smarted too damn much. His eyes teared up and he was sure his balls were badly bruised and swelling up like a bull’s.
Hunter had gone through far worse in North Korea and he knew this was only the introduction to the Baghdad Hilton-a tour of the hotel grounds and a welcome cocktail. Thanks to those commie bastards, he knew himself better than any man should. Love for America, pride in the Corps and his belief that he was warrior on the side of democracy and all things right had kept him going in the catacombs of hell somewhere north of the 40th parallel. The North Koreans were pros, but they couldn’t get inside him where it really mattered. What the North Koreans couldn’t do in six weeks with their bamboo sticks and electrodes, Rubicon had accomplished in minutes. They got inside Hunter and twisted and squeezed and bruised his very soul.
None of his training had prepared him for torture at the hands of another American.
Underneath the hood, a Marine cried.
Chapter Forty-Eight
[A]ny legal condemnation of the private trade in military services on the international level is mostly veiled. There are no possibilities of threats of company fines or dissolution, as no international laws specifically recognize the existence of the firms. There is also no mechanism for dealing with clients who hire the firms…In fact, the only real legal sanction available applies not to the firms, but only to their employees, and only in very limited circumstances. If individuals working for the firms are captured, they might lose their rights provided in the general laws of war.
– Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, Spring 2004, as contributed by Peter W. Singer
Camp Raven, The Green Zone, Baghdad
At the Black Management Baghdad headquarters, Camille looked at Pete over the top rims of her sunglasses, shook her head and walked past her into the trailer, favoring her right foot. She couldn’t get Hunter off her mind and she wanted desperately to stop thinking about him, even for a few moments. She knew all too well what Rubicon would be doing to him to motivate him to give up whatever information he possessed and Hunter was not the kind of guy who would let go of anything. His will could scratch diamonds.
Pete followed her inside. Someone had straightened up the trailer. The blanket and fresh sheets were stacked on a chair in the corner. Camille tossed her sunglasses onto the coffee table and they slid across it and fell to the floor where they stayed. She then opened a metal file cabinet and rooted around. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she slammed it shut and went on to the next.
“Whiskey’s third drawer down. But you might not want it, though. I managed to rustle up a bottle of Beefeater,” Pete said as she walked over to the cabinet in the kitchenette. She took out a bottle of gin and held it up with both hands as if it were made of expensive crystal. “I couldn’t bring myself to go with the vodka, because it was all cheap stuff you wouldn’t like.”
“Best news I’ve heard all day. So you ran down to the local package store to please the boss-lady?” Camille knew it was a little more complicated than that. Café Babylon sold bottles out of the backroom, but their overpriced stock was hit and miss.
“Anything for her.” Pete flashed a smile as she got ice and a bottle of tonic water from the fridge. “I traded a favor with the boys over at the Bechtel party trailer.” Pete mixed a gin and tonic, then poured herself a straight whiskey. “So do you want to hear the latest Julia Lewis installment now?”
“Let me drink in peace for a few minutes. It’s going to take a few stiff ones until I can handle any more today.” Camille sat down on the sofa and unlaced her Merrell hikers. The boys in the Black Hawk had brought her one size too big and it had rubbed blisters. She had only really noticed them burning in the past couple of hours after adrenaline levels in her body had started to settle. Pete tossed her a bag of pistachios. She caught it and set it aside.
“I almost had him. I was within ten meters of Hunter, then that stupid, stupid man took off running and the next thing I knew he had his paws in the air, giving himself up to Rubicon.” Camille rubbed her foot while she inspected the blisters. The biggest had already burst. Gritting her teeth, she ripped the dead skin off.
“You were shooting up his helicopter this morning-”
“My helicopter.”
“I stand corrected-your helo. My point is, this morning you were trying to kill him. What does it matter if Rubicon does the deed instead of you? Dead is dead.”
“It matters.” Camille rubbed the dead skin between her fingers, then flicked it away toward a wastebasket. She leaned back and sighed. “It matters. Rubicon is not going to get away with shooting down one of my birds.”
“You want him only because they want him?”
“Works for me.”
“Not for me. It was because you let him get to you last night.”
“Fuck you.” Camille gulped down the gin and tonic too fast and felt the gas building up inside. She put her hand over her mouth and stifled a belch. “You talk to our lawyers?”
“Yeah, Sarah Wang was out of town-Minneapolis again-she must really love it there. But I spoke to Patrick Jones. When I told him you wanted to know if you could sue Rubicon for taking out the Hawk, he couldn’t stop laughing. Said you’d be better off visiting Rubicon’s HQ in Herndon and staging a slip and fall than trying to nail them for shooting down your helicopter here in Iraq. Ain’t gonna happen.”
“We paid Marr Hipp Jones and Wang for that?”
“You always say they’re the best. To be fair, he covered all the bases. You want the detailed analysis?”
“Cut to the punch line.” Camille untied the bag of pistachios and pried open a nut. Her mind kept going back to how she had failed Hunter. Rubicon was probably torturing him right now.
“He said your best option is write the whole thing off and watch your back. The bottom line is we’re all operating outside of Iraqi law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice doesn’t apply to private security companies like us.” Pete poured herself another glass of whiskey. “That’s why we can do whatever the fuck we want.”