Acts of War

THIRTY-SEVEN

Phil Katzen crouched on the mesh floor of the dark pit. He had quickly grown accustomed to the stale smell in his little prison. To the stench of the sweat and waste of those who had been incarcerated before him. Any lingering discomfort he felt passed when Rodgers's torture began. Then it was the smell of burning flesh which filled his nostrils and lungs.

Katzen had wept when Rodgers finally screamed, and he was weeping still. Beside him, Lowell Coffey sat with his chin against his knees and his arms around his legs. Coffey was staring through Katzen.

"Where are you, Lowell?" Katzen asked.

Coffey looked up. "Back in law school," he said. "Arguing in moot court on behalf of a laid-off factory worker who had taken his boss hostage. I do believe I'd try that one differently now."

Katzen nodded. School didn't prepare a person for much. In graduate school, he had taken specialized courses as part of his training for extended visits to other countries. One of these was a semester-long series of lectures by visiting professor Dr. Bryan Lindsay Murray of the Rehabilitation and Research Center for Victims of War in Copenhagen. At that time, just over a decade before, nearly half a million victims of torture alone were living in the United States. They were refugees from Laos and South Africa, from the Philippines and Chile. Many of those victims spoke to the students. These people had had the soles of their feet beaten mercilessly and had lost their sense of balance. They had had eardrums punctured and teeth pulled, tacks thrust under fingernails and toenails and cattle prods pushed down their throats. One woman had been enclosed in the bell, a glass dome which remained over her until her sweat had reached her knees. The course was supposed to help students understand torture and help them to deal with it if they were ever captured. What a big, fat intellectual sham that'd been.

Yet Katzen knew that one thing he'd learned in the lectures was true. If they survived this, the deepest scars would not be physical. They would be emotional. And the longer the captivity went on, the less treatable their post-traumatic stress disorder would be. Fits of panic or chronic despondency could be brought on by re-experiencing anything they had suffered today. The smell of dirt or the sound of a scream. Darkness or a shove. Perspiration trickling down their armpits. Anything.

Katzen looked at Coffey. In his fetal position and distant expression he saw himself and the others. The time they'd spent tied up in the ROC had enabled them to pass through the first phase of the long emotional road hostages faced — denial. Now they were moving through the numbing weight of acceptance. That phase would last for days. It would be followed by flashbacks to happier times — which was where Coffey was already headed — and finally by self-motivation.

If they lived that long.

Katzen shut his eyes, but the tears kept coming. Rodgers was snarling now, like a caged dog. His chains rattled as he tugged against them. Private DeVonne was talking to him calmly, trying to help him focus.

"I'm with you," she was saying to him in a soft but very tremulous voice. "We're all with you"

"All of us!" Private Pupshaw shouted from the pit to the left of Katzen's. "We're all with you."

Rodgers's snarls soon became screams. They were short, angry, and agonized. Katzen could no longer hear Sondra's voice over his cries. Pupshaw was swearing now, and Katzen heard Mary Rose vomiting in the pit to the right. It had to be her. Seden was still unconscious.

There wasn't a civil, dignified human sound to be heard. In a few short minutes, the terrorists had transformed a band of educated, intelligent people into desperate or frightened animals. If he weren't one of them, he might have admired the simple skill with which it was done.

He couldn't just sit there. Turning, Katzen dug his fingers into the mesh and pulled himself to his feet.

Coffey looked up at him. "Phil?"

"Yeah, Lowell?"

"Help me up. I want to stretch too but my goddamn legs are like rubber."

"Sure," Katzen said. He put his hands under Coffey's armpits and helped him to his feet. As soon as Coffey was standing, Katzen released him tentatively. "You okay?"

"I think so," said Coffey. "Thanks. How about you?"

Katzen turned to the mesh side of the pit. "Shitty. Lowell, I have to tell you something. I didn't get up to stretch."

"What do you mean?"

Katzen looked up at the grate. Rodgers was shrieking now in clipped bursts. He was fighting the pain and losing. "Oh, for God's sake stop!" Katzen moaned. He looked down and shook his head from side to side. "Jesus God, make them stop."

Coffey wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. "It's kind of ironic," he said. "We're in God's backyard and He isn't even listening. Or if He is," Coffey added apologetically, "He's got a plan that's not making much sense to me."

"To me either," Katzen said. "Unless we're wrong and these other people are right. Maybe God is on their side."

"On the side of monsters like this?" Coffey said. "I don't think so." He took two halting steps across the pit and stopped beside his coworker. "Phil? Why did you get up? What were you going to do?"

"I was thinking of stopping this."

"How?" Coffey asked.

Katzen put his head against the mesh wall of the pit. "I've dedicated my life to saving endangered animals and ecosystems." He lowered his voice to a loud whisper. "I've done that through action, by risking my life."

"You've got a streak of steel in you," Coffey said. "I've told you that many times. Me? I don't know how well I'm going to stand up under — under that." He looked up quickly and then back. He leaned closer conspiratorially. "If you're thinking of trying to get the hell out of here, I'm with you. I'd rather die fighting than cringing. I think I'm strong enough for that."

Katzen looked at Coffey in the faint light falling from above. "I'm not thinking about starting a war, Lowell. I'm thinking about ending one."

"How?"

Katzen shut his eyes as Rodgers howled louder than before. It was only a short cry because the general bit it off. But it tore through Katzen's bowels. After a moment, he leaned closer to Coffey.

"When the ROC is turned on, when it's completely on, the locator will go on too," Katzen said. "Op-Center is sure to locate it. When they do, the military will blow the hell out of it and the terrorists with it. It won't be used against anyone."

"Wait a minute. Are you suggesting we help these people?"

"They're burning Mike alive," Katzen said, "and God knows what they'll do to Sondra. By taking some kind of initiative we have a chance of living. Or at least dying with dignity."

"Helping these bastards isn't dying with dignity," Coffey said. "It's treason."

"To what?" Katzen asked. "A rule book?"

"To your country," Coffey said. "Phil, don't do this."

Katzen turned his back on Coffey. He reached up and wrapped his fingers around the grate. Coffey came around to face him.

"I've fallen way short of my potential in a lot of ways," Coffey said. "I can't now. I couldn't live with myself."

"This isn't your doing," Katzen said. He pulled himself up so that his mouth was pressed against the cool iron. "Stop it out there!" he yelled. "Come get me! I'll tell you what you want to know!"

Silence fell in pieces. First Pupshaw, then the hiss of the burner, then Rodgers and DeVonne. It was broken as footsteps crunched on the dirt. Someone shined a flashlight down at Katzen. The environmentalist dropped back down to the bottom of the pit.

"You've decided to speak?" asked a deep voice.

"Yes," Katzen said. "I have."

Coffey turned away from him and sat back down.

"What is your group?" the deep voice demanded.

"Most of these people are enviromental researchers," Katzen said. He shielded his eyes against the bright light. "They were here studying the effects of dambuilding on the ecosystem of the Euphrates. The man you're torturing is a mechanic, not anyone's 'superior officer.' I'm the one you want."

"Why? Who are you?"

"I'm a United States intelligence officer. The Turkish colonel and I came along to use some of the equipment in the van to spy on Ankara and Damascus."

The man above was silent for a moment. "The man beside you. What is his specialty?"

"He's an attorney," Katzen said. "He came along to make sure we didn't break any international laws."

"The woman we have out here," said the man. "You say that she's a scientist?"

"Yes," said Katzen. He prayed to God that the man believed him.

"What is her specialty?"

"Culture media," Sondra said. "Gelatinous substances containing nutrients in which microorganisms or tissues are cultivated for scientific research. My father holds patents in those areas. I worked with him."

The man switched off the flashlight. He said something in Arabic. A moment later the grate was lifted. Katzen was pulled out at gunpoint. He stood before a dark-skinned man with a scar across his face. To the left, from the corner of his eye, he could see Rodgers hanging from his wrists. Sondra was tied to the wall on the right.

"I don't believe that you are environmentalists," said the commander. "But it's no matter if you're willing to show us how to work the equipment."

"I am," said Katzen.

"Tell him nothing!" Rodgers gasped.

Katzen looked directly at Rodgers. His legs weakened as he saw the general's mouth, which was still contorted with pain. As he looked at the dark, glistening areas of burned flesh.

Rodgers spat blood. "Stand where you are! We don't take orders from foreign leaders!"

The dark-skinned man spun. He swung a fist hard at Rodgers's jaw. The blow connected audibly and snapped the general's head back. "You take orders from a foreign leader when you're the guest of that leader," the man said. He turned back to Katzen. His mood was less amiable now. "Whether you live depends only on whether I like what you show me."

Katzen looked at Rodgers. "I'm sorry," he said. "Your lives are more precious to me than that principle."

"Coward!" Rodgers roared.

Sondra pulled at her chains. "Traitor!" she hissed.

"Don't listen to them," the commander said to Katzen. "You've rescued them all, including yourself. That is loyalty, not treason."

"I don't need your stamp of approval," Katzen said.

"What you need is a firing squad," DeVonne said. "I played your game because I thought you had a plan." She looked at the commander. "He doesn't know anything about the van. And I'm not a scientist."

The commander walked up to her. "You're so young and so talkative," he said. "After we see what the gentleman does know, my soldiers and I will come back and speak with you."

"No!" Katzen said. "If any of my friends are hurt, the deal is off!"

The commander turned suddenly. In the same motion, he slapped Katzen with a vicious backhand. "You do not say no to me." He regained his composure at once. "You will show me how to operate the vehicle. You will do so without any further delay!" He slid his left hand behind Sondra's head and held it tightly. Then he seized her jaw with his right hand and squeezed her mouth into an O. "Or will you work better hearing her cry as we use a knife to pry out her teeth one by one?"

Katzen held up his hands. "Don't do that," he said as the tears began to flow again. "Please don't. I'll cooperate."

The commander released Sondra as a man pushed Katzen from behind. He stumbled ahead. As he walked past the Striker, her eyes felt more lethal than the gun at his back. Dark slits, they cursed him to his soul.

Katzen winced as he walked through the cave into the sunlight. Tears continued to flow. He wasn't a coward. He'd protected harp seals by shielding them with his own body. He simply couldn't let his friends suffer and die. Even though, after this day, he knew that these people who had been so important to him for over a year would be his friends no more.