Acts of War

EIGHTEEN

They look without seeing, Ibrahim thought.

The young Kurd had shot the wild sheep and dragged it into the road to stop the van. When the driver braked to avoid hitting it, Ibrahim climbed from the ditch in which he'd been hiding. He crept from the side of the road to the back of the van, plugged the exhaust pipe with his T-shirt, and snuck away again. The windows were closed. Once the door was shut, he knew it would take less than three minutes for the passengers to be overcome by carbon monoxide. He had selected a relatively flat stretch of roadway so that when the driver fainted, the van would simply glide to a stop. Then, removing his T-shirt from the exhaust, Ibrahim entered the van and opened the windows. He was both surprised and delighted to find it filled with computers. The equipment and perhaps the data itself would be useful.

Ibrahim checked the three Americans. They were still breathing. They would survive. Dragging the unconscious man to the front of the van, Ibrahim sat him and the others back-to-back behind the passenger's seat. Using his knife to cut out the seat belts and shoulder harnesses, he tied the three people together by the wrists. Then he bound their legs at the thighs and shins.

He took a last look around the van before slipping into the driver's seat. As he sat down he thought he heard something behind him. It sounded like someone gagging. Noticing the flashlight between the seats, he shined it into the back of the van. For the first time he noticed that there were doors in the floor. Drawing the.38 from his belt holster, he walked over. He stopped at the compartments and looked down.

Each compartment was large enough to hold one person. He heard the retching sound again.'There was definitely someone in the left-side compartment.

Ibrahim fought the urge to put bullets into the floor before raising the door. But he knew that whoever was inside would have been incapacitated by carbon monoxide just as the other three had been. Bending, he pointed his gun down and threw open the first door.

There was a woman inside. She was conscious, but just barely so. There was a pool of vomit below her head. Ibrahim opened the other door. There was another soldier inside. He was unconscious. Trapped in the unventilated compartment closest to the exhaust, he had obviously been the most seriously affected of the five. But he too was still alive.

So the American officer did warn these people, Ibrahim thought. They were trying to sneak these two people in to kill them. But Allah was looking out for them, blessed be His mighty name.

Pulling the man out, Ibrahim slipped off his black shirt. Tearing it into strips, he draped the man over the back of the chair and tied his hands to the front legs and his feet to the back legs. Then he went to the woman, threw her over the back of the other chair, and tied her up using the rest of the shirt.

With a self-satisfied smile, he surveyed all his captives one last time before slipping his gun back into his holster and returning to the driver's seat. Flashing the van's headlights three times to signal Hasan to let him through, he put the vehicle into drive and quickly covered the short distance to the hillock.