“Do it, then,” bin Zari said.
Terreri flicked the safety on, put the gun back in his holster.
“You think I’d kill you, Jawaruddin? No. We want what’s in there.” Terreri tapped his temple. “That fat head of yours. Your organization, your e-mail addresses, your contacts in the ISI, your safe houses, all of it. And you’re going to give it to us.”
Bin Zari shook his head. And smiled, his wide lips spreading into a rubbery grin. Terreri felt a bloom of rage surge into his chest, his heart taking three beats where one would do. This fool. His bravado, real or fake, would lead only to more agony. You’re going to make us hurt you. Why are you going to make us hurt you?
He was so tired of this.
“Your choice.” Terreri nodded to Williams.
“Full shacks?” Williams had seen this speech before.
“Nice and tight.”
Williams pulled the hood over bin Zari’s head.
THREE MINUTES LATER, Terreri sat alone, staring at the empty chair across the table. He laughed, a low chuckle. His rage had faded. That poor deluded asshole.
Then the door opened. Terreri found himself looking at the shrink. Rachel Callar. Another irritation. From the start, Terreri had wondered if she was tough enough for the job. But Whitby had insisted that they had to have a real doctor, preferably a psychiatrist. And Callar had volunteered. Before she’d signed up, Terreri had interviewed her, asked her if she understood what she was getting into.
She told him about a private she’d met in Iraq, a guy from the First Cav, two kids and another on the way. Guy’s name was Travis. An IED hit his Humvee. He walked away with a bad concussion and a broken hand. But the other guys in the Humvee both got wasted. The gunner’s leg landed in Travis’s lap. Travis blamed himself for getting hit. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. When he closed his eyes, he heard his gunner cursing him out. His hand healed, and he wanted to get back to his squad. Callar told him, “We’re gonna send you stateside, get you the help you need.” Three a.m. on the day he was set to go home, he put his.45 in his mouth and blew his head off. Left a two-word note: I failed.
“I let him down,” Callar said. She told Terreri she was tired of playing defense, trying to fix guys. This way she could be part of the fight, get the intel that they needed to save lives.
The story bugged Terreri. He wasn’t seeing the connection. She wanted in on interrogations because this guy offed himself? But they had to have a doctor, and she said she’d move to Poland. So he signed her up.
She’d been fine the first four months. But then something had happened. Okay. Terreri knew what had happened. They’d had a problem with this nasty little Malaysian named Mokhatir. He’d come to them from a raid in the southern Philippines. A Delta/Philippine army team had caught him in an apartment with three soda bottle-sized bombs that looked just about right for taking down an airplane. The other two guys in the apartment had been killed, so Mokhatir was all they had. He wouldn’t talk, and after a month the Deltas sent him to the Midnight House.
He insisted he hadn’t made more than three bombs. Karp and Fisher hadn’t believed him. They’d pushed him harder than any prisoner they’d had before. Over Callar’s objection, they’d locked him in the punishment box for fourteen hours straight. When they opened the cell, Mokhatir couldn’t move his legs or left arm. At first they thought he was faking, malingering, but after a few minutes they realized he wasn’t.
When they called for Callar, she said he’d had a stroke, probably the result of infective endocarditis. Bacteria had built up in a heart valve and caused Mokhatir’s blood to clot inside his heart. Then the clot had traveled to his brain, blocking blood vessels there and causing a stroke. Callar said he needed to get to a hospital for real care, but Terreri refused, told her to do what she could on the base. Without an MRI or CAT scanner or clot-busting drugs, she was reduced to the basics. She gave him aspirin and antibiotics, kept him hydrated, elevated his legs. She knocked down the infection, and eventually the clot seemed to break. A few days later, Mokhatir regained the use of his arm. But he never walked again. After a month, they put him on a plane, sent him to the Philippines, said he’d had a stroke, cause unknown.
The day after they flew him out, Callar knocked on Terreri’s door, said they needed to report what had happened.
“To who,” Terreri said. “Whitby? Sanchez? You think they care?”
“He’s permanently disabled.”
“He’s got a limp.”
“He can’t walk.”
“One of those bombs of his had blown up in his face, he’d be disabled.”
“Colonel—”
“Major, I have heard your advice, and I will consider it. Anything else?”
“No, sir.” Callar didn’t argue further. But her attitude changed. Twice since then, she’d interfered during interrogations, made Karp and Fisher pull detainees out of the punishment box. The squad had to have a doctor, so Terreri couldn’t dismiss her. But she was yet another reason this deployment couldn’t end soon enough.
NOW SHE WALKED into the interrogation room, sat across from Terreri. “Colonel.”
“Major.”
“You seem tired.”
“So do you.” Tired, and getting old like a local. She seemed to have aged a decade in the last year. And lost about fifteen pounds. She wasn’t bad-looking, but her skin was tight on her face and her arms painfully thin.
“Why were you laughing just now, Colonel?”
He considered blowing off the question. Then decided, might as well tell her.
“Jawaruddin was in that chair just now. Playing tough. I was thinking what we’re going to do to him, and it seemed funny.”
“Why did it seem funny?”
“Figuring out how to break guys without leaving a mark. It’s a strange way to spend your life.”
“Are you uncomfortable with the idea of hurting him?”
“Are you?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“The answer is no. I’m plain sick of these guys. That’s all.”
“Do you think you’ve lost the ability to empathize with them? Does that bother you?”
For the second time in five minutes, Terreri found himself laughing. She didn’t say anything. He laughed as long as he could. Then his laughter petered out and they stared at each other in silence.
“That’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said.
“Why?”
“You really are a shrink. I say you’re stupid, and you say why. I don’t want to empathize with them. I want to break them. If you can’t handle it, you let me know.”
“We both want the same thing, Colonel. But I see disturbing tendencies in some of the interrogators. Even in you. I’m worried about depersonalization.”
Terreri felt his stomach tighten, rage bubble up. This woman, this reservist with some fancy letters behind her name, telling him what to do.
“Three months left and we’re done. I don’t need this crap right now, Major.”
“Sir. Three months is a significant length of time. I am responsible for monitoring the mental health of the members of this squad. As well as the physical health of the detainees.”
“That speech you gave me when you signed up, that private you didn’t save. Guy who decided to find out how a bullet tasted.”
“Travis.”
“Travis. That was his name. Now, Travis, he got depersonalized. He depersonalized himself with a.45. And I warned you it wasn’t going to be easy, but you signed for it, and now we’re almost through. Jawaruddin bin Zari, we caught him with a truck bomb. His buddy Mohammed put a bullet in one of our guys. Your job is to help us get these men to talk. You understand that?”