chapter 53
KARIM finished tying the gag around the man's mouth and then removed his shoes. He held the tip of the knife a few inches from the man's eyes and said, "Toenails can grow back, but toes will not."
It was a line he had heard an Afghan use on a British paratrooper they had captured one night during a battle. He had learned much that evening watching the Afghani methodically wear the man down. He had always assumed there was a real skill to torture, but he'd had no appreciation for it until he'd seen it firsthand. There were several truisms. The first was that everyone broke. No matter how tough they were, eventually they cracked. The only time that wasn't true was if the subject was overstressed and died prematurely of a heart attack. The other truism was that you could get anyone to say anything. In this instance Karim thought that was the more important lesson to keep in mind. The subject was fit and looked to be under thirty. His heart would be able to handle a great deal of pain.
He did not want to start out asking the man if he worked for the CIA, because eventually he would admit to it only to stop the pain. He needed to get him to flatly admit who he worked for. No leading questions.
"I have found in these situations it is best to show the subject that I am serious." Karim looked up at Aabad, who was standing behind the man, and said, "Hold him tightly around the chest." Karim grabbed the man's right foot and placed the tip of the knife under the nail of the big toe. Looking into the frightened eyes of the man, he said, "I can make this one toe last for hours."
The man began to fight. Karim held the foot firmly and jammed the tip of the knife under the nail bed. The man went stiff with pain and his eyes rolled back into his head. Fifteen seconds later he stopped fighting them and his breathing became labored.
"Take off the gag," Karim ordered Aabad. After it was removed he asked the man, "Your name, please. The one you used when you were a Ranger."
"Tony... Tony Jones."
Karim smiled. "I don't believe you, but we will check." He stood and grabbed a mobile phone from a shelf, and he dialed a number and then gave the person on the other end the name.
"Put the gag back on," Karim ordered.
"No," the man screamed. "You haven't even found out if I'm lying to you."
"I know you are lying." Karim smiled.
"No, I'm not," the man pleaded.
"Really... tell me then why you were trying to get into the storage room across the hall."
"I..." the man stammered, "was looking around... that's all. I swear. It's my job to know what's going on around here."
Karim nodded for Aabad to put the gag back on. The man struggled and fought him every step of the way. When it was secure, Karim stuck the tip of the knife back under the nail and slid it back and forth. The man bucked and writhed in pain. Karim waited for it to pass and then asked him, "Who do you work for?"
With the gag off the man sputtered, "I'm a carpenter. I work for myself." He craned his head around and said, "Aabad, please tell him. You know me."
"He doesn't know you," Karim laughed. "No one here really knows you, do they?"
"That is not true."
"Yes it is." Karim held up the knife. A drop of the man's blood ran down the silver blade. "I will ask you one more time, who you work for. If you lie to me the toe comes off. Now... who do you work for?"
The man's eyes were filled with fear. "I told you who I work for. I work for myself. I don't know why you're doing this."
Karim gave the signal and the gag was slipped back on. It took all their combined strength to hold him down this time. Karim sat on the man's legs and when he had him reasonably still he pressed down on the big toe of the right foot. The man jerked and the cut was imperfect, the blade slicing through most of the big toe as well as the one next to it. The man's screams were muffled by the gag, but he was writhing in pain. Karim waited for him to lie still for a moment, and then he quickly cut the remaining tendons on the big toe. Things continued like this for thirty more minutes and two more toes, until the man, sobbing uncontrollably, uttered the acronym that Karim had been looking for.
"The CIA."
It was a strange victory. He had broken him, but he had also confirmed their worst fears. "Who is your handler?" Karim asked, his mouth only a few inches from the man's ear. The gag was off. The man no longer had the energy to fight. He hesitated, so Karim jammed the tip of the knife into one of the stumps on the right foot. The man started to scream, but Aabad was right there with a towel. He stuffed it in the man's face and waited for him to stop.
"Who is your handler?" Karim repeated.
"Mike..." the man's voice trailed off.
"Mike who?" Karim asked while grabbing him by the shoulders.
"Mike Nash."
Karim let him go. It was a name he knew. Al-Qaeda had key sources inside both Saudi Intelligence and Pakistani Intelligence. As part of his plan, Karim had asked for the flowchart of American counterterrorism operations. He wanted to know who he was up against and how they would respond to his attacks. He also wanted the ability to turn the hunter into the hunted.
"Mike Nash," Karim said to the man. "Former U.S. Marine, married, four children, lives in Arlington or Alexandria, I can't remember which one. Is that the same Mike Nash you work for?" The man did not answer. "The same Mike Nash who reports to Mitch Rapp?" he asked in a lighthearted voice.
The man looked up at him with confused eyes and said, "Who are you?"
"Ah," Karim said in a happy voice, "you don't know how pleasing it is to me that you have no idea who I am. Now let's get back to what we were talking about."
Over the next hour Karim coaxed as much information out of the man as he dared. He knew there would be protocols in place for an operative like this, but since he had no way of checking them, he wasn't sure it was worth pursuing. Instead, he focused on what the man had discovered at the mosque and what he had already passed on to his handlers. What he learned was that nothing of any value had been relayed. Indeed, the only thing that had been passed along was the fact Aabad had been shooting his mouth off that something big was going to be happening. That and the delivery of the supplies that had been placed under lock and key. Karim questioned him for thirty minutes on this one point alone. When he was done he felt extremely confident that the CIA had nothing more than suspicions.
Karim left the room and took a long moment to make sure he had everything figured out. Was it worth it to push it a little more? That was the question he kept asking himself. It was now nearly 1:00 in the morning. He doubted the man had a midnight check-in, but even if he did, this Mike Nash was likely asleep. Nothing would happen until morning, Karim decided, so he called Hakim using one of the disposable phones and ordered him to remove the back three benches from the van and return to the mosque with two of the men.
There were twenty-five cardboard boxes, each one weighing forty pounds. They were sealed and had USAID stenciled in blue on the sides. The contents of the boxes were courtesy of the U.S. government, but they could hardly be considered humanitarian aid. Each box was loaded with U.S. military C-4 plastic explosives. The shipment had been lost in Kuwait and ended up on the black market. Karim ordered Aabad to unlock the storage room and have his men begin placing the boxes on the delivery elevator. Hakim arrived twenty minutes later. His lack of enthusiasm for the change in plan was apparent from the moment he set foot in the door.
He came down to the basement and said, "We need to leave right now."
Karim smiled and calmly said, "We are fine. I have thoroughly interrogated him. I will explain it all to you later. Right now we need to load the boxes into the van." Karim pointed at the delivery elevator, which already had eight boxes loaded.
"But they will come looking for him," Hakim said as he nervously moved about.
"Yes, eventually, but I do not expect them before morning. Now, don't argue with me," he said in a surprisingly happy tone. "Let's get moving."
The first load of twelve cases was sent up, as more boxes were brought down the hall. It was like a fire brigade, with four men in the basement, passing the boxes from the room, down the hall, and onto the rusted metal platform of the elevator. Then up they went and into the back of the van. With seven people helping, they had the van loaded in less than fifteen minutes.
As they were preparing to leave, Aabad inserted himself between Karim and Hakim and in an extremely agitated state asked, "What should we do with him?" He pointed back down through the hole in the sidewalk where the delivery elevator was descending.
The him, they had found out, was a twenty-nine-year-old American named Chris Johnson. He had done two tours in Afghanistan and another in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division. After his last tour he was recruited by Mike Nash to join a counterterrorism group within the CIA. There was actually no question what would be done with him, it was simply who would do it.
"Kill him," Karim said, as if he was ordering him to move another box.
Aabad looked at the ground and began mumbling to himself as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "I..." he started to say, and then stopped.
"You can do it," Hakim hissed as he looked at Karim.
Karim looked from one end of the block to the other and thought they were pushing their luck. Now was not the time to stand around and debate the issue. To Hakim he said, "Wait for me in the van." To Aabad, he said, "Follow me."
Karim walked back into the mosque and down to the storage room. He looked at the bloody prisoner on the floor. He had already inflicted a great deal of pain on the man, but he still didn't feel it was enough. He decided he would not simply put him out of his misery. Struck by a sudden inspiration, he said to Aabad, "Do you have a video camera?"
"Yes, in the office."
"Get it." He ordered.
Aabad went down the hall and returned ten seconds later with the camera in hand.
"Turn it on and make sure you do not get my face." Karim pulled the hood on his sweatshirt over his head and turned his back to Aabad. "Is it recording?"
"Yes."
"Move in for a close-up after I'm done." Karim reached down and pulled Johnson's head back. He looked into the agent's tired eyes and said, "You are a deceiver, and you have insulted all of Islam. There will be a special place in hell for you."
Karim placed the blade against the throat just beneath the Adam's apple and drew the knife across the thin layer of flesh. The cut opened up pink, and then white, and then crimson as the blood began pouring out in a sheet. Karim stood upright and watched Johnson begin to choke on his own blood. It took a good thirty seconds for the agent to submit to his own death, and then he lay still on the blood-soaked floor.
Karim wiped the blood off the blade with what was left of the man's torn shirt and then said to Aabad, "Wrap him up in a prayer rug, bring him to an area where no one will see you, douse him in gasoline, and burn him."