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Just as the general was pulling away Stilwell arrived with his Kurds. Rapp told the soldiers to set the stretchers down and had the Kurds take over. He figured the less the GIs knew the better.
Rapp and Stilwell walked into the trailer that housed the offices and a reception area. “Do you have a camera?” Rapp asked.
“Polaroid or digital?”
“Polaroid.”
Stilwell disappeared into an office and returned a moment later with the camera. As he handed it to Rapp he asked, “What else?”
Rapp flipped the camera around to see if it was loaded. “Yeah…find out where those bodies are.”
“What bodies?”
“The ones that I asked that captain, from the QRF…” Rapp snapped his fingers while he searched for the name.
“Captain Jensen,” Stilwell offered.
“Yeah, that’s him. I told him I wanted all the bodies brought back here so we could identify them. Make sure they’re brought here.”
“Not the base morgue?” asked a confused Stilwell.
“Here…right here. I want them stripped naked and dumped in the biggest cell you have. I want every square inch of the floor covered with dead bodies.”
“You?
??re serious?” Stilwell asked with a questioning frown.
“Yes,” Rapp barked.
Taken slightly aback Stilwell asked, “Anything else?”
Rapp was already halfway to the door. He stopped and asked, “What kind of sound tracks do you have to soften these guys up?”
Stilwell looked up at the ceiling and recited the list. “Barney, ‘I love you, you love me,’ ‘The Macarena,’ that obnoxious Nelly Furtado song, a lot of heavy metal…there’s some Barry Manilow, which I personally think is bullshit. The guy’s a genius…”
“No,” Rapp yelled. “I mean soundtracks of people being tortured…screaming, yelling, begging for their life. Not the looped Barney shit. I don’t have a week to wear these fuckers down.”
“Oh…sorry. Yeah, we’ve got a few good ones.”
“Put one on.” Rapp left the office and walked across the compound. The interrogation containers were around back next to a massive tan hangar. The containers had been placed side-by-side and covered in three layers of sandbags. Only one door and an air-conditioning unit weren’t covered. Rapp walked in the door and past a small desk and a bank of surveillance monitors. Twelve ten-inch screens. One for each cell. A man in jeans and a T-shirt was sitting behind the desk with his feet up reading a magazine.
Rapp stopped and pointed to the monitors. “You record what goes on in these cells?”
“Twenty-four seven. Mandated by Congress, courtesy of Abu Ghraib.”
“Lovely,” Rapp growled. “The recordings are stored on that hard drive sitting there?”
The guy looked at the computer sitting on the floor. “Yep.”
“Excuse me.” Rapp nudged past the man and yanked all the connections out of the back of the computer.
“Hey, you can’t do that. That’s against…”
Before the man could finish, Rapp grabbed him under the arm and yanked him to his feet. “Take a break.”
Rapp pushed the guy outside and started for the cells. A hallway had been cut down the center of the three containers, halving them with six cells on each side. The doors and walls were all quarter inch steel with foam insulation in between. Rapp ran into one of the Kurds in the hallway and asked him where the guy was who they thought was the leader. The Kurd directed him to the last cell on the left. Rapp slid the spy hole to the side and saw the man lying on his stretcher in the middle of the cell. He undid the lock, entered the cell and stood next to him. Then he reached down and yanked the hood off the man’s head.
The man opened his eyes for only a second, and then, unable to shield them from the overhead light because his hands were strapped at his sides, closed them. Rapp pointed the camera at the guy’s face and snapped a shot. The Polaroid clicked and then whirled as it spit out the developing photo. Rapp leaned over and used his head to block the overhead light.
