As he feared, he fell straight down and crashed hard onto his back on dirt and rock.
Multiple arms pulled him up to his feet now, then half walked, half dragged him down a gravel path and into an enclosed space—some sort of a building. He was shoved against a wall and then pushed down on his butt; even through the bag he could tell it was pitch-black in the room, and then the hands guiding him let him go.
The door slammed shut.
He thought about his predicament, and he held out no hope. His bindings were well tied, and he’d heard the trucks of a dozen vehicles at one time or another during his ascent into the hills, so whoever owned this territory seemed to own it outright.
The door to the room opened and Court felt other men being shoved against him, pushed down onto the floor. These would be more prisoners, and this made him think that ISIS was storing prisoners so they could execute them en masse as soon as the sun came up tomorrow.
CHAPTER 64
At some point Court fell asleep, and he dreamed of his own death. He was with dozens of other men, all wearing the orange suits that ISIS loved to dress its prisoners up in as a way to dehumanize them. They were each taken, one by one, on a short walk, then pushed to their knees and shot in the back of the head.
The dream was horrific, but more so as Court had watched his fellow prisoners receive the shot that blew their brains out. When Court’s time came, in contrast, he found himself oddly at peace.
He thought about Jamal Medina and Yasmin Samara, and Dr. Saddiqi, and he lamented that he could not fulfill his promises to help them, and he thought about Tarek and Rima Halaby and their two children, and about Bianca Medina, who, while certainly not innocent, was nonetheless still a mother who loved her child, and wholly undeserving of all that had happened to her.
It was sad he wouldn’t fulfill his mission here in Syria, but there was nothing he could do about it, so as he walked to his death in the dream, he told himself it was finally time to let go, as if he knew a long-awaited and much-earned rest was coming for him.
He welcomed the rest as he bowed his head and waited for the gunshot.
* * *
? ? ?
Court woke suddenly to the sound of a man calling out in shock and fear next to him. He recognized the man’s voice. It was Broz, the Croatian mercenary. He’d obviously kept his own mouth shut all night long to hide the fact that he was a European, a non-Muslim, and thereby would suffer more at the hands of these monsters.
There was a small amount of light coming through his bag, and he thought it must be morning now.
Court could hear Broz being dragged away, out of the room, and as soon as he was pulled away, Court felt hands grabbing him. He was yanked roughly to his feet, frogmarched out of the room, and shuffled ahead.
He heard a wooden door open and he was turned, walked along a moment, then pushed down on a chair. Seconds later the door he’d entered through slammed shut. His bag had been left on his head, but even through it he felt the presence of someone standing in front of him.
This would be an interrogation, of this Court was sure. He wasn’t going to reveal to anyone here that he was an American. If these assholes were going to execute him, they weren’t going to do it with the special fanfare reserved for high-profile Islamic State prisoners. No, he’d rather get his head chopped off for a small crowd and his body dumped in a sandy ditch and be forgotten than show up on YouTube in some insane music video–style execution.
A man spoke to him now. It was in Arabic, of course, but Court understood the words. “What is your unit?”
Court did not reply. If he said anything in Arabic, that would be just the same as indicating he was a foreigner, because he couldn’t fake the accent, dialect, or language skills of a native Arabic speaker.
He felt a blow on the side of his head. “Hey! What is your unit?”
Still Court didn’t reply. The man stepped away, then muttered something to someone in the room, but this Court couldn’t make out.
Again the interrogator tried. “You were with the Desert Hawks, but you don’t wear their uniform. Where do you come from? Are you Syrian?”
It occurred to Court that if this asshole just pulled the bag off Court’s head he’d probably be able to figure out for himself that he wasn’t a local.
He received another smack to the side of his head, and although he had fantasies about launching himself up and head-butting his interrogator into a coma, he did not react to the hit.
From the far corner of the room Court heard the sound of a wooden chair being pulled across the concrete floor slowly. He tracked the sound all the way up to him; whoever was dragging it along was making a dramatic show of coming closer, slowly and ominously. The chair stopped just a couple of feet in front of where Court sat, and then it was swung around; again Court could hear its placement by the scraping sound.
The wood creaked as an obviously large man sat down on it.
It was already dark inside the bag, but it suddenly got even darker, as the man seated in the chair in front of him leaned right into his face.
Nothing was said for several seconds. Whoever this guy was, he was patient, intense, and he knew how to intimidate a prisoner.
Finally he spoke.
“English?”
Court did not reply.
A few seconds later, the man repeated himself. “English?”
Despite his decision to show no reaction to his interrogator, Court cocked his head a little. Something was off about this guy’s accent.
The man spoke a third time, and this time as soon as the words left his mouth, Court felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck, because the accent was unmistakable now. “Hey, dickhead. I asked if you spoke English.”
This asshole was from the United States.
Court hesitated just a moment, and then he replied, “Dude, you take this bag off my head, I’ll quote Shakespeare.”
The bag came off slowly. Court blinked away the brightness of the room, even though the only light came from a large opening in the plywood ceiling of the stone block room that looked like it had been created by a direct hit from a mortar round. He then focused his eyes on the man sitting three feet in front of him. He was American, clearly, in his late twenties or early thirties. He wore a gray T-shirt under tan body armor. There were tats on both forearms, and he had sandy brown hair and a thick beard that looked like it had been growing for months.
His green eyes looked at Court with absolute suspicion, but Court was almost overcome with relief. The man wore no insignia on his gear or clothes, but he was clearly a member of the U.S. military.
The man said, “Well, well. Aren’t you an interesting son of a bitch? What’s your name, Slick?”
“Why don’t you just call me Slick?” Court found he could barely talk, his throat was so dry.
“All right then, Slick. What’s your story?”
He swallowed roughly, then said, “No story. Just passin’ through.”
“Sweet. Thanks for dropping in on our little corner of paradise.”
“Pleasure’s mine. Got any water?”
“Yeah, loads. But we don’t hand it out to terrorists.”
“I’m not a terrorist.”
“Oh, cool. Then I guess you can go.”
Court looked past the American and saw a half dozen smaller Arab men back by the door of the dim room looking on. Some had AKs and some were unarmed, but to a man they all wore black tracksuits with no uniformity, and some wore headbands. They looked like a sloppy soccer team.
A couple had short beards or mustaches, but most were clean-shaven.
Court could tell in an instant this wasn’t a jihadi group, like he’d first thought when he saw them from a distance in the low light the evening before.