‘Here she comes,’ Meat called over. ‘I can see the light.’
The engineer saw light spilling in on the screen’s left side, indicating the spot where the entry tunnel joined the passage. She kept it moving straight.
‘Yeah, there she is,’ Meat said, peering to the end of the entry tunnel. The bot came in and out of view before disappearing to the left. He kept reeling in the slack fibre-optic cable.
‘Keep in on night vision,’ Crawford instructed the engineer.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said.
The bot roved through the tight, rocky walls that glowed dull green in night vision. There wasn’t much to see, but then the audio began to detect activity.
‘Wait,’ Jason said. ‘Hear that?’
The engineer brought the bot to a stop. The sounds became more pronounced.
They all listened intently. It was a voice.
‘Someone’s definitely in there,’ she said, adjusting the audio level. ‘Sounds like he’s …’ She tried to decipher the singsong chant.
‘He’s praying,’ Hazo said to them. ‘He’s reciting the
Maghrib
. The Muslim prayer that follows sunset,’ he specified.
‘Well, it’s a little late for that,’ Crawford said. ‘Let him pray all he wants. He’s gonna need it.’
‘Let’s get visual confirmation,’ Jason suggested. ‘See what we’ve got. Use gas to root him out, if necessary.’
Crawford nodded. ‘You heard the man, private,’ he said to the engineer. ‘Forward march.’
As the engineer advanced the bot again, a bright white light flashed from the bend in the passage.
Then came a startled scream, presumably from the same man who’d been praying.
‘Now what?’ Crawford grumbled. ‘Where’s that light coming from?’
‘Don’t know, sir,’ she said.
By the time the bot rounded the bend, the mysterious light had gone away. And the audio had picked up the distinct echoing of fast footfalls.
‘He’s running,’ the engineer said. ‘Should we release some gas?’
‘Not yet, keep moving. And for Christ’s sake, speed it up.’
On the monitor, the bot accelerated. A few metres ahead, it began sharply rising and falling over heavy debris strewn about the tunnel floor. Dense dust began swirling around the camera lens.
‘It’s a real mess in there,’ the engineer reported.
But Crawford was tuned into the audio feed - the footsteps. They were close now. Very close. ‘Keep moving.’
Then the audio picked up the sound of the man again. He was coughing.
‘Forget the gas … Seems the dust will do the job for us,’ Crawford said, leaning closer to the screen.
‘How’s the air quality in there?’ Jason asked.
The engineer peeked at the sensor readouts. ‘Nothing toxic. But he’s going to suffocate himself with all that dust.’
The footsteps abruptly stopped.
The coughing intensified.
Then the camera detected movement up ahead.
‘I think we should stop there and shine some light,’ Jason said. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’
Crawford told the engineer to do it.
When the floodlight went on, a figure sharpened onscreen, three metres from the camera. It was a man huddled in a fetal position beneath a pile of rubble that completely blocked the narrow passage from floor to ceiling. He was using his headscarf to shield his mouth and nose from the dust.
‘Looks like he’s not going anywhere,’ Crawford said. ‘Is he armed?’
The engineer zoomed in on the bloody hands, down along the body. ‘Doesn’t appear to be armed, sir.’
‘Good.’ Crawford stood and called over to a pair of marines posted near the cave entrance. ‘Holt … Ramirez … Put your respirators on, get in there and pull him out!’
Tensions were high as everyone waited for Crawford’s marines to emerge from the cave with the first captive.
Jason’s anxiety was particularly acute. Five hostiles had gone into the cave. Only one was in the process of being extracted, the fate of the remaining four unknown.
The images staring back at him on the PackBot’s viewing screen showed that the mysterious explosion had resulted in a complete collapse of the second tunnel branch. Was this an accident, or had the Arabs decided to buy more time by covering their tracks? Burying themselves in the cave seemed foolhardy. If there truly wasn’t an alternative escape exit, the oxygen might not last very long.
‘Miss me?’ a voice interrupted.
Jason looked up. It was Camel. He was wearing a marine flak jacket and helmet so as not to be confused for a hostile. In his right hand, he gripped a night-vision monocular. ‘Did you see anything up on the ridge?’
Camel spat tobacco on to the rocks and wiped some dribble from his lip. ‘Nah. Walked the entire ridge. Nothin’ there. Couldn’t really see much on the other side. Lots of rough terrain.’
‘All right. Good work,’ Jason said. Where could the watcher have gone?
‘Was that an explosion I heard?’
‘Yeah,’ Jason sighed. ‘Something went off in the tunnel. Take a look.’ He pointed to the screen and Camel studied the image for a few seconds.
‘Did they shoot off the RPG again?’
‘Not sure,’ Jason said. A commotion started up behind him. He looked back and saw the snipers shouldering their weapons.
‘We have visual!’ one of the snipers reported.
‘What’s going on?’ Camel asked in a low voice. ‘Visual on what?’
‘One of the Arabs,’ Jason replied.
‘We caught one of them?’
Giving Camel a shushing gesture, Jason inched forward. He considered: five went in. One’s coming out. A 20 per cent chance … He watched the snipers’ weapons shift slowly upward as the target drew nearer.
‘Looks like we’re about to get some answers,’ Jason said. He stood and crossed his arms.
‘Let’s give ‘em some room!’ Crawford barked at the snipers: ‘You two … fall back!’
Forced to the sidelines, Jason felt like a paparazzo roped off from the red carpet.
‘Should’ve been us going into that cave,’ Camel grunted. ‘This prick Crawford shouldn’t be getting any glory.’
Then three figures emerged from the opening: two marines wearing respirators flanking a tall, bedraggled prisoner. One of the marines had a pistol pressed into the Arab’s back.
At first, Jason couldn’t make out the Arab’s identity since the man had his bound, bloody hands raised up to shield his face.
Crawford quickly stepped in, pulled the man’s hands down, and pointed a flashlight into his face.
Though the captive’s face was smeared with blood and grime, Jason immediately recognized him. Confirmation brought both rage and relief.
‘Holy fuck,’ Camel said in astonishment. ‘Is that …?’
‘That’s him,’ Jason replied.
‘Look who we have here. Fahim Al-Zahrani. Mr Jihad himself,’ Crawford said, full of glee. He snapped off the light, put his hands on his hips, and stepped up to the Arab. ‘
As salaam alaikum
, asshole.’
The dour prisoner didn’t reply, glaring defiantly at the colonel.
Confirmation of the prisoner’s identity rippled through the ranks. The excited marines began gathering at the bottom of the slope, whooping.
‘Another pussy ass terrorist pulled out from another hole,’ Crawford said. ‘Like a bunch of fucking gophers. Have the medic clean him up,’ he told the marines. ‘Make him look presentable. We’ve got to take some pictures to send back to Washington.’
From a neighbouring mountaintop to the south, the vigilant watcher - one of the dozen scouts sent to locate the besieged convoy - peered through a night-vision monocular and anxiously waited for the two marines who’d gone into the cave to reappear.
It had been almost seven hours since his lieutenant received the distress call from blessed brother Fahim Al-Zahrani’s aide. With all the gunfire in the background, the message had been difficult to understand. However, the critical points had been successfully conveyed by the aide: an ambush was under way, many had already been killed and urgent assistance was needed. As to the convoy’s precise location, however, the aide had been far from clear. Perhaps Al-Zahrani’s men had been disoriented with the redundant landmarks of this foreign country. Or maybe the local Al-Qaeda contact designated to navigate the convoy through the terrain had been killed at the onset of the firefight. Nonetheless, the aide had only been able to estimate that the attack had taken place four or five kilometres northwest of the intended rendezvous point.
The true locale was eleven kilometres to the northwest.
By the time the watcher had spotted the stranded trucks on the roadway, an American marine platoon had already arrived. The Americans were highly focused on clearing debris from a cave at the foot of the mountain that overlooked the roadway. Creeping in close to the encampment, the watcher had overheard them saying that five men remained trapped inside the cave. And he was hopeful that the intensity of the effort meant that Allah, in His bountiful grace, might have spared brother Al-Zahrani.
As the marines came out from the cave, the watcher’s heart raced when he saw that they’d dragged a prisoner out with them. He tightened the monocular’s zoom. Though the moon shone brightly from above, he strained to make out the prisoner’s face. Then the platoon leader briefly shined a flashlight on the prisoner. The moment the captive’s face came into view, the watcher’s instant elation quickly gave way to terror. Our leader has been captured!
The watcher scrambled up over the ridge, his legs shaking coltishly beneath him, tears streaming down his cheeks.
Since the marines routinely monitored radio communication, he was forced to use a more discreet signal to alert the rescue team. In the pale moonlight, he could see the trucks parked in the valley below. He stood high up on the outcropping designated as the signal relay spot. Then he pulled a plastic glow stick out from under his tunic, cracked it, and continuously waved the luminescent green tube side to side in wide arcs.
Central to Crawford’s encampment were two Compact All-weather Mobile Shelter Systems, or CAMSSs - barn-shaped, military-grade tents ten-and-a-half feet high at the eaves, twenty feet wide, thirty-two feet long, which four men could assemble in less than thirty minutes.
The first tent served the dual role of central command and billeting Crawford (not that he did much sleeping) and his staff sergeant.
Normally, the second tent stored boxed rations, and accommodated ten sleeping mats, used on rotation by the platoon detail. But Crawford had ordered the marines to clear out the sleeping area so that the space could be used for Fahim Al-Zahrani’s temporary detainment.
The prisoner sat on an empty munitions crate, his hands bound tight with a nylon double-loop security strap. A second strap looped snugly around his ankles. Two marines with M-16s stood to either side of him.
The company medic, Lance Corporal Jeremy Levin - a scrawny 31-year-old bachelor, family practitioner, and reservist from Detroit who was five months into his third tour in Iraq - sat on a crate facing Al-Zahrani. He’d already flushed the wound on Al-Zahrani’s hand with Betadine and cleaned the prisoner’s face with sanitizing wipes. But he was concerned by Al-Zahrani’s condition: clammy complexion, despondency and wheezing. So he immediately began a medical exam.
He inserted an otoscope in Al-Zahrani’s left ear, which was perforated, then the right ear, which was leaking blood and clear fluid.
Crawford was watching over his shoulder. Jason and Hazo stood behind him.
‘Hey asshole,’ Crawford said loudly to Al-Zahrani. ‘I know you speak English. Just want to let you know that I think the Geneva Convention is a load of camel shit. So don’t expect me to respect your civil liberties.’
‘The right ear shows severe tympanic perforation too,’ the medic reported, peering through the otoscope.
‘So both his eardrums are blown out?’ Jason said.
‘I’m afraid so. He must have been very close to the explosion.’
‘Not close enough,’ Crawford grunted.
‘Unless he reads lips, Colonel, he won’t understand a word you’re saying,’ Levin said. He cleaned the otoscope with a sanitizing wipe and put it back in the carrying case. Next he retrieved the opthalmoscope, flicked on its tiny light, and moved close to examine Al-Zahrani’s unblinking, blank eyes. ‘Pupils are responding just fine … no apparent neurological damage. Doesn’t appear that he’s in shock.’
‘So he’s just pretending to be mute?’ Crawford asked.
‘I’m sure he’s a bit overwhelmed, Colonel,’ the medic replied curtly as he went back to the case for an aural digital thermometer. He took the temperature in both ears and made a sour face. ‘Hmm. He seems to be running a high fever. That could explain the apathy.’
‘You telling me he caught a cold?’ Crawford said.
‘More than a cold,’ Levin replied coolly.
Apathy was an understatement, thought Jason. The world’s premier terrorist seemed lifeless. His dark, emotionless gaze remained fixed on the ground. What could he be thinking? Was he humiliated or afraid? Jason wanted him to fight … wanted him to react. He wanted to choke the life out of him.