Or maybe they had everything to die for.
On this night, though, those men hung back, like they were waiting for something. Maybe they were playing games with Bear, the false advancement and the tall man yelling at us. That would have been enough to throw us off, make us think that they were a group of regular guys. Of course, they could have just been a group of regular guys. Maybe they were waiting for us to do something. It'd give them a reason, at least.
Then there was Martinez. He was in rare form tonight. Bear and I worked together, but we weren't always assigned to the same CIA team. We floated between four different groups. We'd spent enough time with Martinez to know he was a high strung, high motor midget. His guys weren't any different, either. This incident wasn't the first time that we'd squared off. It had happened three other times, including once on base. But this time he seemed to be daring me to make a move. Every time we got into it, it was because he pushed the limits on acceptable treatment of detainees. He pushed further than ever before with the woman, and in front of her kids, nonetheless. For a moment, I thought he'd pull the trigger. He might've had I not said anything. His guys sure wouldn't stop him. Pussies.
The gauntlet would come down on me over this. I knew that. It was their word against ours. There were four of them and two of us. Their bosses wouldn't bother questioning the family for their account of what happened. My bosses were in the U.S. in the Carolinas. I needed to call Abbot and Keller. Give them my side of the story before anyone else talked to them.
I got dressed, exited the restroom and walked back down the empty hallway to our room.
I pushed the door open and called out to Bear from the hallway.
"What do you say we go grab something to eat?"
No response.
"Bear?"
I stuck my head in the room. The back door stood open. I figured he'd stepped outside for some fresh air and decided I might as well join him. I grabbed a beer and found my jacket. My hand reached inside a pocket, searching for my cell phone. Oddly, it was missing. It had been in that pocket all night long. I hadn't even taken it to check the time.
"Bear, have you seen my phone?"
Still no response.
I stopped moving things around on the table and looked toward the back door and took two steps toward it. I saw Bear standing on the back patio, and he looked at me, but he said nothing.
"Bear?"
He clenched his jaw, but did not respond.
"Jack Noble," a voice said from behind.
I stopped and turned my head and saw two men, both armed, standing in the back of the room. I knew them by face, not by name. They weren't friends of mine. I dropped my beer and clasped my hands together behind my head. I looked at the floor and saw fizzing beer wrapping around the soles of my boots.
Two other men led Bear inside. He looked at me and shook his head. Pretty obvious what he was thinking. Same thing I was.
"What's going on guys?" I said.
"Shut up, Noble," one of them said from behind me.
"You can't just detain us without a reason," I said.
The man laughed. "We're in Iraq, Noble. We can do whatever the hell we want."
They grabbed my hands, forced them down and behind my back. I felt the thick plastic zip ties close around my wrist and draw my arms close together. The hard plastic dug into my skin the more I moved.
"If we want you to disappear," he continued, "there are thousands of miles of deserted land where we can bury you."
"That a promise?" I said.
"Keep talking." He grabbed my wrists and forced them upward. "And it will be."
"Jack," Bear said, his voice was low and trailed off at the end.
I looked at him.
He shook his head and looked down at the floor.
I followed his gaze and saw my cell phone on the floor, crushed.
"You know, I already talked to Col. Abbot about what happened tonight." I paused. "He's sending a team to investigate Martinez."
The four men laughed.
One behind me said, "You think we're worried about Abbot? He has less say here than he does in America." He walked around me, stopped with his face inches from the side of mine. "He doesn't have crap for pull with us. Our chain of command moves up a hell of a lot faster and farther than yours."
I cleared my throat but said nothing. I felt a knot form in the pit of my stomach but didn't let my external expression change.
"Are you getting this, Noble? You're screwed. Nothing is going to get you out of this."
For what, I thought. Kicking that douchebag Martinez's ass? Hell, the other ops teams we worked with all said they couldn't stand him.
"Let's go."
They led us through the front door, down the hallway, and outside to a Humvee parked in front of the building. We climbed in through the back passenger side door. Bear and I sat in the middle. Two men sat in back with us, guarding the door. They held their weapons firmly pressed into our sides.
"Make sure you avoid the potholes," I said.
Bear chuckled. The four men didn't. These guys had no sense of humor.
"Shut the hell up, Noble," the driver said.
I did.
We drove on in silence across the base. Stopped in front of the building we used for detaining persons of interest. Guess that was what Bear and I were now.
We waited in a gray concrete room. Mold covered the plaster ceiling and the rank smell of mildew overpowered my senses. There were no windows, only a single steel door, and just one table with two small wooden chairs. We were not in a cell, it was an interrogation room. We hadn't spent much time in this part of the building, as the CIA had specialized agents on site to handle the interrogations. Even if they used the field agents we were attached to, they wouldn't allow us in the room with a prisoner. We had been trained in interrogation techniques, though, and I had a feeling that training was about to come in handy.
Bear paced the room along the walls. "You believe this garbage?" He said it flatly, shaking his head.
I shrugged. "We knew it was coming."
"Yeah, but…" He threw his hands up and resumed pacing.
"Just sit back, nod your head and don't admit anything."
"You know I can't stand that suck up crap, Jack."
"Me either, big man, but we've got no choice. Let's just take our slap on the wrist, get out of here and get Abbot on the phone."
"Abbot," he said, shaking his head. "Who knows what they've filled his head with by now?"
I agreed. Chances were he and Keller had already been briefed and given Martinez's side of the story.
"He'll listen to us. Don't worry about that."
Abbot would listen, I felt sure of it. He had known both of us since we were eighteen years old. He oversaw our training and our placement within the agency.
"I still can't believe he agreed to these garbage orders," Bear said.
"Yeah, well," I said. "I don't think he had much choice."
Following the attacks, the agency pushed hard for all of Abbot's men to deploy to the mid-east. Most of the guys went to Afghanistan to join in the hunt for Bin Laden and the attack on the Taliban. The remaining twelve of us were sent here. The best of the best is what Abbot had said, and that meant our talents were being wasted away guarding frigging doors and doing grunt work for guys like Martinez while he and his team botched opportunity after opportunity. These guys weren't operators, they were baboons.
"What the hell are you smiling at?" Bear said.
"Didn't realize I was."
He stopped in the corner opposite the door and leaned back against the wall. "I'm done with this."
"The team?" I said.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm ready to get out."
Bear and I joined the Marines at the same time. And even though I only had a few months left until my enlistment ended, he still had two years to go. When the topic came up, neither of us could make a good argument for or against doing another two to four years. I didn't know what I would do next, though. I'd spent enough time dealing with CIA operatives that I knew I wanted nothing to do with the agency, even though I had an open invitation after my enlistment was up. The FBI wouldn't talk to us without law degrees, so they were out, not that they were ever really in. There was local law enforcement and government agencies like the DEA, but after everything I'd done, I didn't take to the idea of having to follow laws in order to do my job.
"I'm starting to feel the same way," I said.
I leaned my head back, resting it against the top of the wooden chair back, studying the mold patterns on the ceiling that started in the corner near the door, spread out evenly across the ceiling and then turned to the right, stopping before it reached the opposite wall. I wondered what was above the room.
"Look, Bear-" A rap at the door interrupted me.
Bear straightened up and braced himself against the wall. His face looked tired and pale and void of any emotion. He stared down at his boots. They'd taken our laces, but left us with our shoes.
I thought about staying seated at the table, but if they decided to come in and rush us, it would be better for me to be standing. I got up and went to the far end of the room, away from the door, and leaned against the wall adjoining Bear's wall.
We heard another knock and muffled voices, and then the distinct sound of a key entering the chamber of a lock followed by the latch turning. The handle bent down and the door cracked open a few inches. The barrel of a gun pushed though. I felt my stomach sink into that all too familiar personal pit of despair.
"Turn and face the wall!" a man shouted.
Bear looked at me, his expression spoke volumes. His cheeks turned red, his nostrils flared, his wide eyes were covered by his heavy brow, furrowed down. I knew that look. Hell, I'd been on the wrong end of that look a couple times in recruit training, before we were forced on this journey together.
"Take it easy," I said.
He started toward the door.
"Bear," I said, arms out, palms facing him. "Don't do it."
He stopped, face went slack, head lowered toward the floor. He turned slowly, placed his hands against the wall.
I did the same. Part of me wanted to turn and fight, just like Bear, but I knew the best option for us was to get out of that room, off base, and back to the U.S. That wouldn't happen if we attacked the men who had the power to let us go.
The door creaked open on rusted hinges. The concrete walls absorbed the echoes of dull footsteps as several men entered the room. I turned my head to get a count.
"Face the wall, Noble."
I felt a something in the middle of my back and quickly realized it wasn't a hand. It was the barrel of a gun. I turned my head toward the wall, focusing on an imaginary spot. The scuffs and cracks in the wall created an illusion of a woman with one arm over her head and the other across her belly. Maybe she was on an island somewhere. Then it hit me. I knew what I'd do instead of re-enlisting. I'd get out and head to an island where I'd open a bar and live the dream.
"Sorry to do this to you, Noble." Hot stale breath hit my neck and wrapped around my face, entering my nose despite my attempts to exhale heavily and send it away.
Men appeared on either side of me, grabbing my wrists and jerking my arms behind my back. They wrapped steel cuffs around my wrists, and I heard them click as the cuffs locked and tightened. I glanced over and saw three men attending to Bear, two on either side of him working his arms, while another man stood directly behind him, holding a gun to the back of his head with one hand, handcuffs dangling from the other.
"Let's move, Noble."
I didn't budge.
"Don't make us move you."
I said nothing and didn't move.
"We warned you."
I'm not sure what was worse. Knowing I was about to get hit over the head with a blackjack, or the blackjack actually hitting me over the head. It didn't matter. The world went black right after impact.
* * *
I'm not sure how long I was unconscious. I couldn't be sure I had actually regained consciousness. My head hurt like hell. The dark room offered no signs as to whether the sun had come up yet or not. I blinked the sleep away, opened my eyes and squinted as they adapted to the dark surroundings. Tainted air burned my lungs during a deep breath. They stretched and filled to capacity. The slow exhale eased some of the pressure and pain in my head.
My hands and arms tingled. I shook them until full sensation returned. Then I sat up and stretched my arms behind my back and felt a twinge of pain in my shoulder followed by a shot of pain radiating across my back and down my arm. I must have injured it when they cuffed me, although I didn't remember resisting hard enough for my shoulder to sprain. It didn't matter. I took another deep breath and pushed away the pain, closed my eyes, tried to relax. I managed three exhales and then there was a knock on the door.
"Come in," I said, not bothering to get to my feet.
The key clanked against the lock. The latch clicked. The handle turned down and a crash filled the room as the door opened the first few inches.
Two men entered the room. Both were tall, skinny, dressed in camouflage cargo pants and dark t-shirts. No weapons visible. I didn't recognize either of them. I found that odd. I thought after six months I'd seen every person on this base. They took a seat at the wooden table in the middle of the room.
"Sit," the dark haired one said.
I got up slowly, using my hands to keep my balance in check. Took a couple steps and grabbed a hold of the wooden chair across the table from the men. I sat down and placed my hands on the table. They didn't appear to be armed, but that didn't mean they weren't. I didn't feel like finding out just yet.
They had two manila folders spread out in front of them. Both were open. They rifled through papers. A quick glance confirmed the files were all about me.
"You guys know what time it is?"
They said nothing, just continued to look at the papers.
"You know, most of that is fake," I said. "Fodder for the guys at the Pentagon."