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"Yeah whatever."
Rapp actually laughed for the first time in days. He watched as they tore the hood off the first man and tossed him over the fence with no care whatsoever as to how he landed. Rapp turned to Urda. "Tell them not to drop them on their heads. Especially the old man. I need them alive at least for a while."
He glanced into the pen and watched the man struggle against his bonds as pigs sniffed and licked him. His eyes were wide with fear rather than anger, and his shouts were stifled by his filthy gag. Rapp thought he'd seen it all, but this took the cake. He shook his head and walked away from the pen, fishing out his satellite phone. After flipping the large antennae into the upright position he punched in the number General Harley had given him.
A duty officer answered and Rapp asked for the general. Five seconds later Harley was on the line. "Mitch."
"General, have you ID'd the other two prisoners?" With reasonable certainty Rapp had already identified Hassan Izz-al-Din, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, and Ali Saed al-Houri.
"Not yet, but we're working on it."
"What about Langley?"
"As per your request, we're scanning documents as fast as we can and sending them back to the CTC."
"Have your guys, or Jamal's guys, found anything I can use?"
"Oh, there's stuff here," Harley said confidently, "it's just a question of getting it organized. We've got financial records, names, documents on WMD, plans for terrorist attacks my J2 is telling me we hit the mother lode."
"Good." Time was critical, however. Word would get out quickly that al-Qaeda's command structure had been compromised. Bank accounts would be emptied, people would disappear, and plans would change.
"Listen, General, I can't stress enough how time-sensitive this information is. Have your people made any progress on the computers?"
"Not yet."
"Shit." Rapp ran a hand through his thick black hair. "Does the CTC have Marcus Dumond on it?"
"Let me check."
Rapp looked back at the pen in time to see another body tossed in. Marcus Dumond was the little brother he'd never wanted. A bona fide computer genius and hacker extraordinaire, the social misfit had been personally recruited by Rapp to work for the counterterrorism center at Langley.
The general came back on the line. "They haven't been able to track him down."
Rapp's face twisted into an irritated frown. It was approaching midnight back in the states, and knowing Marcus he was probably hanging out at some cyber café with his friends. "Listen, General, I have to start interrogating these guys, so I need your people to work really fast. The second you learn anything, I want you to call me."
"Roger."
Rapp put the phone away and went back to the pen. His five prisoners were all on their backs writhing in agony as the dirty swine defiled their supposedly purified martyred bodies. He looked to Urda and said, "Have your boys bring them inside."
Rapp then gestured for Urda to follow him. The two men walked a safe distance away from any prying ears. Rapp looked around at the dusty hardscrabble landscape, and asked, "Off the record, how rough have you had to be?"
Urda shrugged. "Afghanistan is a rough place hell, it shouldn't even be a place. It should be fo
ur or five countries. We've got communists, war lords, or drug dealers however you want to describe them, we've got the Taliban, we've got people who want democracy, and we have a lot of nice men and women who just want to live their lives, and the other assholes who won't let them do it, so what we've got is one gigantic fucking mess."
"You didn't answer my question." Rapp kept his eyes fixed on Urda's. "How rough have you had to be?"
Urda returned his stare with equal intensity. "You mean have I tortured people?"
"Yeah."
He looked back toward the warehouse, obviously not wanting to answer the question. "There have been times where I have let the locals get physical, but I prefer to stay out of it as much as possible."
Watching every twitch of the man's bearded face, Rapp decided he was lying to him, or at least not telling the whole story. A notoriously impatient man, he said, "Jamal, let's cut the shit. I'm guessing you're a pretty straight shooter, but you don't want to say too much because I'm a little too high up on the totem pole."
Urda shifted his weight from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable with this line of questioning. Finally he said, "Those pricks back in Washington have no idea how ugly it is over here. They want us to act like we're cops everything by the book." He spit on the ground, then threw his arms out gesturing at the harsh landscape. "There is no fucking rule book over here."
Rapp nodded. He understood. Having worked in the field for so many years he had very little affinity for the people back in Washington who tried to tell him how to do his job. Before he took this next step, however, he needed to make absolutely certain that he and Urda were of the same mind. "Listen, I'm about to go in there and do something that is so far off the reservation it can never be discussed with anyone and I mean anyone."
