Sand and Fire (9780698137844) (23 page)

“What are you doing to bring him back?”

Parson told her the same thing he'd told Buell.

“You bring him back to me,” she said, enunciating each word as if a period followed it. A command if there ever was one, with all the moral authority of the most just military order. Fair enough, Parson thought.

“Ma'am,” he said, “we're going to do all we can.”

“And just what is that?” she asked. “Just what is all you can? Fly a bunch of airplanes around so you can say you tried? Maybe kill some terrorists after my husband is gone? What good does that do me and my children?”

If Blount's grandfather had sent chills up Parson's spine, Blount's wife turned his bloodstream to ice water. Yes, of course he'd do all he could. But, as she said, what good would that probably do in the end?
She had him dead to rights. What could he possibly say to bring this woman any comfort?

“Ma'am,” Parson said, “I can't imagine—”

“No,” she interrupted. “You cannot. You cannot imagine what I'm going through. You cannot imagine what his children are going through. My husband was
home
. He was here, just days ago. And now they're about to cut his head off.”

Bernadette Blount's voice trailed off. Parson heard a stifled sob and the muted background noise of a hand over a receiver. He had no idea what to offer next, and he berated himself for making this call to begin with. Had he only made things worse? Could he seriously tell her it would be all right? Because it wouldn't, almost certainly. Bernadette Blount surely knew about all the people around her untouched by war, intact families safe at home and taking it for granted. But because she'd married into a line of those who chose to serve, she bore a unique burden. Before Parson could think of anything to say, she spoke again.

“My husband has done more than his share for this country,” she said. “He has done more than you people had any right to ask. My husband has earned his peace and his home. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

Parson already knew there was no point bullshitting Marines. Same thing applied to their wives. He had nothing to fall back on but truth.

“Yes, ma'am, I do,” he said. “I saw him earn it in the space of ten minutes in a cave in Afghanistan. I've seen him at work, Mrs. Blount.” Parson paused, unsure what to add. Then he said, “He deserves to come home.”

The sat phone connection hummed wordlessly so long that Parson wondered if Blount's wife had hung up. When she spoke again, her voice cracked with emotion.

“Yes, he does,” she said. “Make it happen.”

I
n the late afternoon the terrorists made up their minds. Kassam led his band of dirtbags into the adjoining room. Blount heard yammering in Arabic, chains clanking. Kassam must have pointed to his chosen victim. An American voice began to speak.

“No,” the man said. “No, please. Just wait a while. They might give in. Just wait a while.”

The man's voice trembled with fear but did not sob. Blount recognized him by sound: Sergeant Daniel Farmer. All along Blount had wondered who lay in the other room.

Fender and Ivan both sat up, looked at Blount. They understood what was happening. Fender's face took on an ashen cast.

Farmer. Dear Lord up in heaven. A boy who had a good future ahead of him, whether he stayed in the Marines or not. Skinny white guy who didn't look like your typical Marine. Hair short enough for regulation but not shaved or high-and-tight. Bookish type. Two years at UNC–Wilmington before joining the service. Biology major or something. Just got engaged.

Blount's mind raced. What could he do? How could he stop this? He twisted the bolt, ground it against the cement. Still not free yet. Forget it. Get them in here close enough, Blount decided, and just do what you can.

“Hey!” Blount shouted. “Leave that boy be. What's wrong with you people?”

Maybe Rat Face would run in and give Blount a kick. But in the other room, no one responded.

“Is your God telling you to do this?” Blount yelled.

Still no response. More clanking of chains. They were probably unshackling him. Now Farmer's voice spoke in a murmur: “Oh, God; oh, God; oh, God.”

“You want to mess with somebody,” Blount called, “come in here and mess with me.”

No response.

Something horrible was about to happen and he could do nothing about it. His grandfather's words about a warrior's attitude seared in his memory now: “You go into a situation and think, everybody here is safer because I'm here.”

But not this time. Blount burned with impotent rage. Yanked hard against his chains. More dust fell from the cement, but not enough.

He could offer nothing but words. Pitiful, but he'd do the little he could do. Let Farmer hear a friendly voice on the way out.

“Semper fidelis, Farmer,” Blount shouted.

“Semper fi!” Fender yelled.

Even Ivan repeated the motto in his Russian accent. Maybe he knew the Latin for
Always faithful
, or maybe he just repeated the syllables to add his voice to this show of unity.

The other prisoners in the next room did the same. Monkey Ears shouted, “Silence!”

“Tell my fiancé I love her,” Farmer said.

Oh, Jesus, Blount thought. Somebody gotta stop this. A Delta team or some SEALs need to blow through that wall this instant. Stop this, stop this, stop this. Couldn't there be a last-minute miracle? Stranger things had happened.

No miracle came. They led Farmer away; Blount heard the chains drop, the feet shuffle. Farmer evidently kept his composure; Blount heard no crying or begging.

Several minutes went by in silence. But then from another room
or maybe from outside, Blount heard a harangue in Arabic. Then he heard a harangue in English, from Monkey Ears:

“To imperialists, Zionists, and infidels who have chosen to ignore our warnings: This is the fate that awaits all crusaders. The pasha of Tripolitania, slave to God, wields Heaven's sword. He will drive you from the lands of the faithful and he will strike you in your own dens of infidelity. You must convert to the one true faith, or you will die by the sword, the bomb, or the chemicals of a mighty God. Let the death of this pig serve as your notice.”

Blount shook with fury. He put his hands over his ears, then put his hands back down. He must hear everything. He must gather intel, remain aware. If nothing else, the sounds would motivate him to greater strength.

Ivan stared straight ahead. Fender buried his head in his arms. Chains clanked in the other room.

And the screams began.

Dear God, they went on forever. The analytical part of Blount's mind tracked the screams for maybe half a minute. But that half minute stretched across all time. As Farmer was killed like an animal at slaughter, Blount pulled and turned the bolt. Torqued it harder than he had imagined possible. Heard the grinding under the cries of agony.

His fist trembled as it gripped the metal. Cement cracked, gave way.

As the screams died, the bolt came loose. Blount pulled it out of the wall, held it up and examined it. The thing was a shaft of iron as big around as his little finger, with a barb-like flange on one end. The other end, of course, held the ring to which his left chain was attached. Fender and Ivan looked at him, eyes widened. Blount put his finger to his lips.

“Shhh,” he whispered. “Don't say nothing. I'll see if I can loosen the other one.”

“I'll work on mine,” Fender said.

“Nah. Just play it cool. Don't want them to catch us. Pay attention to everything, and stay ready for anything.”

“Aye, aye, Gunny.”

Several minutes later Kassam and Rat Face came into the room. Blount thought he'd descended into the lowest trenches of rage and disgust, but his anger deepened further when he saw the terrorist leader. Blood soaked his sleeves. Blood had spattered all over his shirt and sash. Blood flecked his flintlock pistol. Blood dripped from the machete in his right hand.

Blount glared at Kassam. Kassam placed the machete on the table with the weapons and equipment, wiped his hands with a towel. Placed the flintlock on the table, too. Rat Face carried a video recorder and a still camera. He took a photo of the objects.

Every cell in Blount's body wanted to lash out right then. But he bided his time, swallowed his fury. When he made his move, he expected to get only a few seconds to work before an AK cut him down. He needed to choose that moment with cold calculation, not hot emotion. The dirtbags had said they'd kill a hostage a day. With one chain loose, Blount figured he had about twenty-four hours to grind away at the other one. The more freedom of motion he had in his last seconds, the more harm he could visit on his tormentors.

Kassam and Rat Face left the room. Blount supposed their next task would involve posting their murder porn online, sending their message out into the world. Go ahead and post your message, he thought. Pretty soon you're gonna get one from me.

With his head leaned back against the wall, Blount closed his eyes and began to twist the bolt connected with the chain on his right. He found that one a little harder to move; the cement held it more firmly. No matter. Whether he got it loose or not, he already had one arm free. He'd make do with that if he had to.

Blount let his mind drift as he turned and twisted the shank of iron. He knew he'd meet his Maker in a day or so. What would that be like? He'd always tried to live a good life, but he still found the prospect of judgment daunting. What would the Good Lord have to say about the lives Blount had taken? Each one had been what guys called a “righteous kill,” justified in combat, legal under the laws of war. But man's law held no sway where Blount was going.

He decided not to worry about that. He could not change the past; he could only act in the present. And he harbored no doubt that his last kill—or kills—would be righteous.

Something he'd heard from his minister back home came to mind. At the A.M.E. Zion church one Sunday, the preacher read the Prayer of Saint Francis. Blount remembered only the first line:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
He liked that idea, though he knew some folks might find it ironic coming from a Marine. But to him, it made perfect sense. In the quest for just peace, you needed force when all else failed. And in Blount's last moments, he wanted to serve as an instrument of peace. Remove from the earth one of these men who delighted in the murder of innocents in the name of God.

He let a long stream of consciousness flow through his mind in the form of meditation. People found all kinds of ways to get close with the higher power; Blount had seen many right in his home community. He recalled one Sunday when his mother—a troubled woman who'd married an abusive man—took him to a Praise House over on St. Helena Island. Some of the Gullah folks there still danced the ring shout.

A ring shout didn't actually involve shouting—just singing, clapping, and stomping while moving in a circle. The ancient tradition had crossed the Atlantic in slave ships, its roots in African dance. Even as a child, Blount had been touched by the dancers' sincerity and the way they enjoyed the company of their fellow worshippers. This tradition had seen his people through the darkest days imaginable, when all they had was one another.

And that's all we got now, Blount pondered. Here in these chains, surrounded by enemies, we got nothing but one another.

Around sunset, Blount heard his captors murmuring in Arabic. Praying, maybe? Funny thing; he knew Muslims prayed five times a day, but he could not remember having heard these dirtbags do it before now.

He wondered how they could even think about praying after the despicable act they'd committed. What kind of thinking could lead you to believe in a God of long knives? Even if you wanted to kill somebody, why would you saw through the neck of a living, breathing, screaming fellow human being? Especially when you had a gun and you could kill the man less brutally.

This mystery he would never understand. From his training and reading, he knew all normal people of all races and creeds carried a natural aversion to killing their own species. Healthy minds just clicked that way. In the military, you needed to condition people to overcome this natural aversion. On the rifle range, you made them fire not at a round bull's-eye but a torso in silhouette. In the shoot houses, you had pop-up dummies that looked like a real enemy. You worked to create a trained response so a guy wouldn't hesitate at a critical time on the battlefield. Because even after all that training, a normal person
still
hated to take a life.

But not Kassam and his henchmen. Something in their souls had died, twisted, turned black. Blount did not consider them soldiers; he counted them psychopaths and sadists, fringe elements of humanity without that normal disinclination to murder and cruelty. Their talk of jihad only offered religious excuses for things they wanted to do anyway. In Blount's travels he had met plenty of peaceable Muslims whose only jihad took place within their hearts as they strived to do the right thing day to day.

As the sky outside began to darken, Rat Face brought food to the prisoners. Same garbage—boiled lentils. Same smirk. And the same gesture, a slashing motion across his throat.

Blount fought the urge to react. Kept his eyes downcast. Jerked his foot like he didn't have good control of his nervous system. Tried to look still sick.

He lifted the bowl of lentil mush. Sat with his back to the wall so his chains had plenty of slack, and the loose one would not pull out of the masonry. The food was slightly warm this time. Blount brought the bowl to his mouth, drank, slurped, chewed. Nothing except tasteless calories, but that's all he needed.

“You guys eat as much as you can,” Blount whispered.

Ivan winced as he reached for his bowl; his leg wound clearly pained him. Likely infected by now, Blount guessed. If a machete didn't take the Russian's life, gangrene probably would.

Fender drew in long breaths as if eating took a great measure of focus. Maybe it did; who knew how different people would react to this kind of stress? Fender's bowl shook as he picked it up with both hands, but he took a fairly big gulp of the mush. Swallowed without chewing, slurped another mouthful. After a few minutes, the three men had eaten all their lentils. Blount allowed himself about two seconds of satisfaction over this tiny tactical success. Get stronger, boys, he thought. We're still on a mission.

In the early evening, the dirtbags seemed to relax. Apparently their boss man had departed; Kassam never came into the room again. But once more, he left his flintlock pistol on the table. Yeah, Blount thought, he's coming back tomorrow. Same reason.

The dirtbags began eating their own suppers, and they enjoyed fare that looked right much better than lentil mush. Monkey Ears brought a wooden chair into the room, set it down a few yards away from Blount. Sat in the chair and opened a yellow pouch containing American-made humanitarian rations. Taken, no doubt, from some village these terrorists had raided. In the dim light Blount could not read the lettering on the package, but Monkey Ears began spooning something that looked like chili. As Monkey Ears ate, he regarded Blount. Not with Rat Face's impudent smirk, but with a look of
contentment. Like he'd traveled some long road, climbed some high peak, and now found himself within reach of triumph.

Monkey Ears ate in silence. He got up and left, came back and sat down with a steaming cup of what smelled like tea. Blount wondered if Monkey Ears was trying to torment him with the sights and aromas of better food and drink. Didn't work; Blount had eaten enough of the mush to satisfy his hunger, and he didn't care for hot tea, anyway. Like most folks from the Deep South, he liked his tea very cold and very sweet. He pushed away that thought so he wouldn't dwell on small pleasures he'd never taste again.

The dirtbag sipped until he finished the tea. Then he fingered a shirt pocket until he came up with an unfiltered cigarette. Struck a match and lit the cigarette, shook out the match and dropped it on the floor. Blew out a long plume of tobacco smoke.

You still ain't getting to me, Blount thought. I like cigars instead.

Why was this fool playing these games, anyway? Men about to lose their lives don't care about tea and cigarettes.

The ash on the end of the cigarette grew long. Monkey Ears took another drag, and the fire within the ash brightened and faded. The ash dropped into his lap. Monkey Ears brushed away the ash, held smoke in his lungs for a moment, then exhaled and began to speak.