Authors: Richard Fox
“Not yet,” Ritter mumbled. Abu Ahmet, despite his crimes, was still useful and needed. If Ritter captured him or simply shot him in the heart the next time they saw each other, it would destroy the relationship with the Qarghuli tribe. The search for the missing Soldiers would go back to square one and probably get even harder if the locals turned on them again.
Ritter popped the DVD from the laptop and slowly turned it in the screen’s pale glare. This knowledge wasn’t power; it was a burden. The idea of maintaining a facade with Abu Ahmet turned Ritter’s stomach, but there were no better options. Abu Ahmet was a dead man, but Ritter could choose the time and place of the reckoning—after they found their missing Soldiers, after he found Mukhtar.
He snapped the DVD in half, then in half again. Others in the American military wouldn’t share Ritter’s conclusions. If Shelton knew, he’d arrest Abu Ahmet in a heartbeat without remorse or regret.
I used to be like him, Ritter thought. A thought flickered in the back of his mind. What if he did what the Army deemed to be the right and honorable thing? He could turn his back on Shannon and the Caliban Program forever. The thought danced for another moment before succumbing to the darkness in his soul. He wasn’t that kind of person anymore. He would balance the scales between him and Abu Ahmet, and only the Caliban Program gave him the power to do that.
A muffled thump pressed against the walls of his room. If there wasn’t a storm and sand blasting everything from here to Baghdad, he would have guessed the thump was a mortar impact. Ritter powered off the laptop and pulled his armor back on. This day was just full of surprises.
Thomas and Nesbitt sat at the base of the stairwell leading to the second floor. The lieutenant had decided to keep everyone on the second floor during the storm. He wanted a guard on the only unbarred entrance to the house, and Sergeant First Class Young had set up a hasty guard schedule.
Nesbitt checked his watch; it had been twenty minutes since the thump. He almost told Kovalenko and Young about how he’d booby-trapped the suicide belt but chickened out at the last minute. If someone had set the belt off, then he or she was dead, and Nesbitt didn’t have a problem. If it wasn’t the belt and he admitted to something the lawyers might label as a war crime, then he’d definitely have a problem.
“I think it was a sandworm,” Thomas said.
“What?”
“That thump. It was a sandworm from that
Dune
book. They live in the deep deserts, and that’s all we’ve got out here,” Thomas said.
“I saw the movie, and you keep talking like that, and Sergeant Young will give you a piss test for acting crazy.”
“It ain’t crazy. This is just like Arrakis. We’ve got Fremen and Harkonnens. Hell, even that Captain Ritter is like Muad’Dib with him speaking Arabic and carrying that knife around.” Thomas leaned forward from where he sat on the stairs. His armor sagged downward, releasing a hot air pocket, which had turned the inside of his vest into an oven.
“I have got to get you laid when we get back. Besides…” Nesbitt debated making his next point. Messing his pants had caused plenty of harassment, and any display of nerd knowledge could make his life worse. “Besides, who are we in this situation? The Fremen or the Harkonnens? The movie didn’t end well for one side.”
Thomas didn’t answer as the storm rattled the front door on its hinges.
“Damn it, Nesbitt. Why do you have to go and ruin things by thinking about them?”
A blue light lit up the stairwell. “Two coming down,” said Specialist Porter as he tromped down the stairs, his aide bag in hand. Ritter was a step behind him. Porter sat between the two guards and looked at Thomas.
“I heard you took a round. Crack open your vest so I can see where you got hit,” Porter said.
Thomas shrugged. “I’m just fine, Doc. The armor worked as advertised.” He opened the Velcro side patches to his armor, then exposed his fish-belly-white abdomen. Porter turned on a flashlight and gently pressed against Thomas’s stomach. There were no visible bruises, and Thomas didn’t react to any of Porter’s pokes.
“Doesn’t look like you have any internal bleeding. How’re you feeling?”
“You mean, how do I feel after getting shot, almost blown up by some terrorist asswipe, then getting lost in the middle of a sandstorm? I’ve had better days,” Thomas said.
“Any slurred speech, vomiting? Blood in your stool?”
“No, and the only shit I’ve seen is—”
“You shut the hell up,” Nesbitt said.
Ritter cleared his throat.
“You two go back upstairs. Greely found a stash of those ketchup-flavored potato chips and that nasty Iraqi soda. Go get some chow,” Porter said.
Thomas contorted himself to reset his uniform and armor. “Hey, sir, thanks for shooting that guy. I would’ve done it, but that woman was there with her kids and all…”
“No problem. I had a better angle on him than you did,” Ritter said.
“Sir, what did you say right before you shot him? Baba-babaganoosh or something?” Nesbitt asked.
“
Baba alleh
. It means ‘Look at me.’ I thought some Arabic would take his attention from the suicide belt long enough for me to shoot him,” Ritter said.
The storm mashed the front door against the hinges as sand invaded the room through the gaps above and below the door. “Careful, sir. This is Ceti Alpha Five,” Thomas said as he took the stairs up two at a time.
“Don’t eat all the chips, you virgin,” Nesbitt said as he started up the stairs. Ritter grabbed him by the forearm before he could get very far.
“Good work finding that laptop,” Ritter said as he handed Nesbitt a slightly congealed bag of cherry sours. Nesbitt didn’t appear overly impressed with the reward. “And I’ll put you in for a medal when we get back,” Ritter added. Nesbitt nodded as he took the candy and went upstairs.
Porter waited until they were beyond earshot before speaking. “We need to evac Thomas. It’s standard procedure to keep someone who took a hit like that under observation at a hospital for twenty-four hours. After a couple of Soldiers fell over dead from internal bleeding, Big Army got smart and—”
“I know, Specialist Porter. All of us will leave as soon as the evac birds can return,” Ritter said. He watched Porter slump against the wall when he mentioned the helicopters. “Do you know why I pulled you away from your patient? From Captain Shelton?”
Porter nodded; he didn’t bother to look at Ritter. “Yes, sir. I’m a medic, and I’m one deep out here. What would all these knuckle-dragging, eleven bang-bang infantrymen do without me? Buddy aide?” He sniffed the air. “Nesbitt can barely wipe his ass right. Think he can run an IV?”
“Not really, which is why we need you here.”
Porter pushed himself off the wall and sat up. “Nothing personal, sir, but I wish Captain Shelton was here.” Ritter chuckled at Porter’s admission. “I mean, you’re doing great, for an intel weenie.”
“Thanks. You think he’ll be all right?”
Porter thought for a moment. “Internal injuries—head injuries especially—are tricky. He could be on his feet at the aid station trying to get back here, or he might never wake up.” The medic slipped his helmet off and pulled a small photo from between the pads on the underside.
Porter handed the photo to Ritter; an obviously drunk Porter in civilian clothes was with an equally drunk woman in her early twenties, who sat on his lap. She was scantily clad, much of her exposed skin covered by tattoos. “I’m supposed to be on my way home for leave. I know I’d be stuck at the big terminal on Victory, waiting for this storm to clear, but I’d be a step closer to seeing her again.”
Ritter handed the picture back. “Been married long?”
Porter smirked. “Add five to the number of days we’ve been deployed and—”
A metal crash broke through the wailing storm. Ritter pulled his combat knife from his sheath and pushed himself to his feet.
“The wind blew the front gate open, is all,” Porter said. He made no move from his seat on the stair.
"Sir, there's been some debate among the men and maybe you can settle it. You and that hottie civilian...did you?"
Ritter twisted his blade until the words "Cry Havoc" glinted in the feeble light. "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."
"Come on, sir. You can--"
The front door burst open, and two figures stumbled in from the darkness. A blast of sand stung Porter’s eyes. The figures were wrapped from head to toe in loose robes, their original color subsumed by impregnated sand. Porter caught a glimpse of an AK-47 slung over the lead man’s shoulder before Ritter blocked his view.
Ritter struck out with a fencer’s lunge, stabbing his blade into the lead man’s heart. The blade stuck with a meaty thump, the force of the blow arresting the man’s forward momentum. Ritter grabbed the man by the back of his head with his free hand and shoved him toward Porter. The fall freed the body of Ritter’s knife as the man fell on top of Porter.
The body pinned Porter’s hands against his chest as he lost hold of his picture. The flashlight was smothered between the corpse and Porter’s armor, plunging the room into sudden darkness. Porter felt blood gushing onto his hands, a sickening warmth spreading down his forearms. He struggled to call for help, but the man’s chest was over his face, stifling his voice.
Porter rocked his body from one side to the other and quickly gained enough momentum to shove the corpse off him. The room was silent but for the howling wind. Where were Ritter and the other insurgent? Porter ran his bloodied hands across the steps, searching for his flashlight.
Something shifted in the darkness to Porter’s left; then there was the sound of feet sliding over sand and the concrete floor. A wraith flew toward the sound, and a cry of pain came from the darkness. Grunts and quick yells in Arabic marked the scene of a struggle. Porter’s hand found his flashlight tucked against the corpse. He pulled it from the body as a high-pitched squeal came from the struggle. He thumbed the light to turn it back on.
Ritter was atop a prone insurgent. Ritter’s blade was held back from the insurgent’s neck by one of the man’s hands. The man’s other hand was in Ritter’s face. Ritter’s teeth clamped onto the meaty part of the man’s hand, blood dribbling where Ritter’s bite had pierced the skin.
“
La! La, fadlik!
” the insurgent cried.
Porter watched in horror as Ritter brought his free hand into the air and plunged his thumb into the insurgent’s eye. The insurgent screamed in panic and horror as Ritter gouged the eye from its socket. The insurgent flailed at Ritter’s violating hand, which gave Ritter the opening he needed. The insurgent’s screams turned into a sickening gurgle as Ritter’s blade cut into his throat. Blood shot into the air from the severed carotid artery. Once the blade slipped through the insurgent’s neck, Ritter raised the knife into the air and then struck downward. The blade passed through the insurgent’s remaining eye; the orbit behind the eye cracked as the blade punctured the man’s brain.
The insurgent bucked and convulsed, then settled into stillness moments later. Ritter withdrew the blade slowly, then wiped the clear goo from inside the insurgent’s eye onto the dead man’s clothes.
Porter managed to gasp; the horror of what he’d just witnessed robbed him of speech. Ritter’s head snapped toward Porter, blood coating his chin and lips like a goatee. Ritter sprang to his feet, the dripping blade held loose in his hand. Ritter growled with each exhalation as he looked Porter over like he was his next meal.
“Sir?” Porter squeaked.
Ritter shook his head from left to right quickly as if struggling to wake from a nap. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and stared at the blood on his hands and knife. “Turn that white light off,” he said. “There may be more out there.”
Porter clicked the flashlight off and grabbed a glow stick tucked into the web of his armor. He snapped the light in half and shook it to activate the chemical reaction that gave off a green light.
“Hey! Hey, we need some help down here!” Porter yelled up the stairs. The battle had lasted no more than two minutes, but the ruckus should have gotten the attention of the rest of the Soldiers upstairs.
Porter used the glow stick to search the ground. He found the picture of him and his wife swirling in a puddle of blood near the body on the stairs. The picture was inundated with blood; if it didn’t fall apart the moment he touched it, it would carry the red tinge of death forever. Out of nowhere, Porter smelled bleach. Something deep inside his mind snapped, and he wept.
Carlos and Shannon watched Mike and the Saudi financier through a one-way mirror. Mike wasn’t actively interrogating the Saudi but merely nodding along with the detainee’s rant and taking a few notes. The speakers in the observation room were off, but he could hear some of the detainee’s words as they reverberated through the glass; it was like watching a TV show on one volume tick above mute.
“What are we waiting for?” Carlos asked. “We have enhanced interrogation authorization for this scumbag. This is a waste of time.”
Shannon had her arms folded across her chest. She reached up and tugged at her bottom lip, her eyes still on the Saudi. “We’re waiting for Ritter. He’ll conduct the interrogation when he gets back.”