Acts of War

FORTY-EIGHT

Phil Katzen sat at Mary Rose's station inside the ROC. An armed, English-speaking Kurd stood on either side. Each time Katzen was about to turn something on, he had to explain what it was. One man took notes while the other listened. All the while, sweat trickled down Katzen's ribs. Exhaustion burned his eyes. And guilt churned inside of him. Guilt, but not doubt.

Like most boys who'd ever played soldier or watched a war movie, Phil Katzen had asked himself the question often: How do you think you'd hold up under torture? The answer was always: Probably okay, as long as I was just being beaten or held underwater or maybe electrified. As a kid you think about yourself. You never think: How would you hold up if someone else were being tortured? The answer was very badly. And that had surprised him. But a lot had happened between the days when he'd played soldier in the backyard and now. He had gone to college at Berkeley. He'd seen the campus paralyzed by student marches for human rights in China and Afghanistan and Burma. He'd helped care for students who were weakened by hunger strikes against the death penalty. He himself had partaken in fish-free weeks to protest Japanese fishing tactics which netted dolphins along with tuna. He'd even gone shirtless for a day to call attention to the plight of sweatshop works in Indonesia.

Upon obtaining his doctorate, Katzen had worked for Greenpeace. Then he'd worked for a succession of environmental organizations whose funding came and went. In his free time he built houses alongside former President Jimmy Carter, and worked at a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C. He learned that the suffering of parents who couldn't feed their children or the oppression of good souls opposed to tyranny or the pain inflicted on dumb animals was worse than one's own physical pain. It was magnified by empathy and worsened by helplessness.

Katzen had felt sick when Mike Rodgers was being tortured. But he'd felt dehumanized because Sondra DeVonne had been forced to watch, told that her own punishment would be worse. In retrospect, Katzen knew that that was what had broken him. The need to get some of that dignity back for himself and for her. He also knew that the pain he'd caused Mike Rodgers was greater than the torture inflicted by the Kurds. But as he'd discovered with Greenpeace, nothing good came without a price. If you saved the harp seals, you robbed fur traders of their livelihood. If you protected the spotted owl, you put loggers out of work.

Now here he was, showing the people who had tortured Mike how to work the ROC. If he stopped telling them what he knew, his colleagues in the pits would suffer. If he continued, scores of people might be injured or killed — starting with that poor soul the ROC'S thermal-imaging system had shown lurking in the foothills. Yet an equal number of Kurds might also be saved.

Nothing good came without a price.

Most importantly, Katzen had bought time for his fellow hostages. With time came hope, and the hope-sustaining knowledge that Op-Center had not abandoned them. If something could be done to help them, Bob Herbert would find it.

Yet Katzen had also had the basic "S&S" course — seighty hours of safety and security. All Op-Center personnel were required to take them. Traveling abroad, American government officials were tempting targets. They had to know the fundamentals of psychology, of weapons and self-defense, of survival. Katzen knew that to survive, it was vital to be alert. However tired he was, however unsettled he felt about what was happening, he had to be aware of his surroundings. Hostages could not always count on rescuers to pull them out. Sometimes they had to seize on the distraction of a counterattack to escape. Sometimes they had to counterattack on their own.

Because Katzen had faith in Bob Herbert, he had decided to buy time by working as slowly as possible. He'd also decided to turn on equipment that would be useful to him. Radios, infrared monitors, radar, and the other basics. Since his two captors understood English, he was careful to avoid the Striker frequency. He would record it and listen later, if possible.

It was Katzen who had inadvertently aleited the Kurds to the presence of the lone spy in the foothills. The man had been listening to them with a sophisticated radio, possibly a TACSAT-3. With the help of the ROC's laser imaging system, the Kurds had been able to follow him easily as he tried to get away. Every move he'd made had been radioed to the pursuers in the field. What the Kurds didn't know was that the man had been prepared to beam a signal to Israel. Katzen had watched the man's parabolic dish search for the uplink. As soon as he saw where the dish was headed — there was only the Israeli satellite in that sector of the sky — Katzen had switched to a simulation program which showed a field operative attempting to contact a recon group, code-named Veeb. Veeb, for Victory Brigade, was a group of unknown size and an indeterminate nationality in an unspecified region of the Syrian-Israeli border. The point of the simulation was to use ROC software to find out who and where they were.

After the man was taken, Katzen had used the ROC to listen to everything which transpired in the cave. The man had been speaking in Arabic to the commander, so Katzen had no idea what had passed between them. His two guards understood, of course. Their smug expressions told him that, though they said nothing. When Katzen stole a low-tech look out the front window of the van and saw the prisoner being led out, he had no doubt that the man was going to be executed. He might have been a spy. Or perhaps he'd been a scout for Striker.

Katzen took a nervous breath. The air-conditioner had been cut down to conserve fuel. He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. He'd risked his life for seals and bears, for dolphins and spotted owls. He wasn't about to stay in the van and let this happen.

"I need some air," Katzen said suddenly.

"Work," the man on his right commanded.

"I need to breathe, dammit!",she said. "What do you think I'm going to do? Run away? You know how to follow me on this" — he pointed to the monitor—"and where the hell would I go anyway?"

The man on his left pursed his lips. "Only for a moment," he said. "There isn't much time."

"Fine," Katzen said. "Whatever you say."

The" Kurd grabbed the back of Katzen's collar in his list. He tightened it to a knot and yanked him up. He put his.38 to Katzen's head. "Come," he said, and walked his captive to the closed door of the van.

They started down the two steps, the Kurd pushing Katzen ahead. Katzen opened the door. As he did, he drew on the survival training which had taught him how to use stairs to his advantage. He crouched. For a moment, the gun was pointing at the empty air above him. Making sure he was low and centered, Katzen reached across his chest with his left arm. He grabbed the arm fabric of the jacket his captor was wearing. Then he tugged the fabric toward his shoulder, dipped his shoulder down, and pulled the Kurd over.

The man tumbled head-first over Katzen. He landed on the ground, on his back, and Katzen leapt toward him. The Kurd was already getting up when Katzen landed on him. Katzen's head was facing the Kurd's feet, the gun hand to his right. He turned, raised his fist, and pounded the side hard on the man's wrist. The fingers opened reflexively. Katzen grabbed the.38.

The American took a moment to turn and look for the two men and their prisoner. They had stopped down the road, about twenty yards behind the van. One of the men had turned to look at him.

"Yu af!" he cried. "Stop!"

Katzen heard the other Kurd in the van running toward the doorway. Katzen regarded the Kurd on the ground. He'd come out here to save a life, not to take one. But if he didn't do something his own life would be lost. Still facing the Kurd's feet, Katzen raised the.38 and put a slug through the man's right foot.

As the Kurd shrieked, Katzen glanced toward the two executioners. The one who'd looked back at the van turned his pistol toward Katzen. The moment he did so the prisoner twisted like a top to his right, literally rolling his neck off the barrel of the other man's gun. Simultaneously, he cocked his right arm like a chicken wing and raised the elbow head-high. As he turned he rolled the elbow behind him, using it to push the gun aside. For a moment, neither weapon was trained on the captive. The prisoner kept turning until he was at the side of his would-be executioners, facing him. As the gunman turned to retarget the prisoner, the captive lifted his hands so they were on either side of the gunman's wrist — palms turned to one another as though he were about to clap. Then the palms flashed toward the gunman's forearm, one slightly closer to his elbow than the other. When they came together they kept moving, snapping the man's wrist between them. Katzen could hear it break. The gun fell. The captive bent to retrieve it.

All of that happened in an instant, and it was all Katzen saw. Behind him he could hear the Kurd in his heavy desert boots clomping down the steps of the ROC. There were shouts coming from the cave to his left. In a moment they'd have him pinned in a three-way cross fire. There was only one avenue open to him: straight ahead, toward the edge of the dirt road. There was a drop on the other side, he didn't know how far, but a fall could be more forgiving than a rain of bullets. He opted to take it. Hopping off the writhing Kurd, Katzen dropped to his side, rolled several yards, and went over the ledge.

He never seemed to hit the steep slope so much as roll alongside it. Branches cracked as he went down and rocks punched him as he rolled over them. He held tight to the gun and covered his face with that arm as he tried to stop his fall with the other. He heard several gunshots, muted by distance and by the sound of sliding dirt and splitting twigs. But he didn't think that anyone was firing at him. The shots were too far away to be coming from the ledge.

Katzen stopped with a jolt. He'd landed on his back in the crook of a tree growing sideways from the slope. It not only punched the air from him, it felt like it broke a rib. He lay there for just a moment as he drew a slow, painful breath. There were more shots, and Katzen squinted up at the solid blue sky. As he did, someone looked down at him. It was the man who had stayed behind in the van. After a moment, the face was joined by a gun.

Katzen still had the gun he'd taken. His arm was dangling beside him, and when he tried to raise it pain ripped across his chest. His arm shuddered as he tried to lift it again. He let it drop back down.

Panting, Katzen waited for the bullet to strike. But before the man could fire, his head seemed to bounce to the right. It bounced again, and this time it also turned around. The head drooped, the gun fell, and then another head appeared. This time it was the man who had been marched from the cave. He motioned for Katzen to stay where he was.

"As if I can go anywhere," Katzen said to himself.

The man swung over the ledge, sat with his legs stretched before him, and followed them down as if he were on a slide. He held his arms in front of him and jerked them up and down for balance. There was a gun in each. As he neared the tree, he put his feet sole-down and slowed to a stop. Crawling under it for protection, he set the guns down, placed Katzen's.38 beside them, and helped the injured American off the tree. Katzen put his hands under his body and tried to brace himself. He sucked air through his teeth as each move caused fresh pain.

"I'm sorry," said the newcomer. "I wanted to get you under the tree for cover."

"It's okay," Katzen said as he eased to the ground. "Thanks."

"No," said Falah. "My thanks to you. Because of the distraction you caused, I was able to deal with the men who were going to kill me. I also managed to finish the men who had you."

Katzen felt a flash of sadness. Because he'd left the van, four men were dead instead of one. It was a quantitative judgment, nothing more. But it was still a weight on his soul.

"There are more men inside," Katzen said. "Maybe twenty Kurds and six of my own people."

"I know," said the man. "My name is Falah and I'm with—"

"No!" Katzen interrupted. "The machine's still recording audio up there. They don't know how to replay it, but there's no guarantee we'll get it back."

Falah nodded.

Katzen struggled onto one elbow. "My name's Phil," he said "Were you scouting this location for anyone?"

He nodded again. He pointed to Katzen and saluted.

My troops, Katzen thought. Striker. That must have been who he was trying to radio.

"I see," Katzen said. "What where they supposed to do if they didn't hear anything from"

Katzen fell silent as his companion suddenly pushed him back. Then Falah lay flat beside him. Katzen heard it now too: boots crunching on the dirt. He turned his face around so he could look up the slope. A semi-automatic weapon was poked over the side. As Falah huddled close beside Katzen under the tree, the gun was fired. Bullets tore into the tree as well as the earth around them. It continued for only a second, though it seemed much longer.

Katzen looked at Falah to make sure he was all right. He looked up. Broken bark was sticking off the tree at odd, ugly angles. Katzen couldn't help but think that that was the first time a tree had ever saved an environmentalist.

But for how long? he wondered.

Falah brought both guns around. Still lying flat, he held them in front of him, pointing them up the slope. There were more footsteps, followed by silence. And then a horrifying thought hit Katzen. He'd left the goddamn infrared imaging system on in the ROC. It was still running at Mike Rodgers's station. Even though the men who had been taught how to run some of the ROC equipment were dead, anyone could go inside and have a look at the monitor. And anyone who was within two hundred yards of the cave would show up as a red figure on the screen. Bodies hit by gunfire would leak warm, detectable blood.

He and Falah weren't bleeding and the Kurds would know it.

Katzen leaned over so his mouth was right beside Falah's ear. "We're in trouble," he said. "The van can see us the way they saw you. The infrared — they know we're not dead."

After a short silence there were more footsteps. There was a high-pitched whimper. Katzen twisted his face so he could look up. A moment later he saw Mary Rose standing at the edge of the slope.

Someone was standing behind her. All Katzen could see were his legs through hers.

"You men down there!" shouted a voice from above. "You have a count of five to surrender. If you don't come up your people will be shot in turn, beginning with this woman. One!"

"He'll do it," Falah whispered to Katzen.

"Two!"

"I know," Katzen replied. "I've seen how they work this drill. I've got to give myself up."

"Three!"

Falah put a hand on his arm. "They'll kill you!"

"Four!"

"Maybe not," Katzen said. He got up slowly, painfully. "They still need me." He looked up. They were doing a fast count, the bastards. "I'm hurt!" he shouted. "I'm coming as fast as I can!"

"Five!"

"No, wait!" Katzen screamed. "I said—"

Suddenly, blood exploded from the top of the slope and sprayed darkly across the blue sky.

"No!" Katzen screamed, his face distorted as Mary Rose fell to her knees and the blood rained toward them. "God, no!"