Black Storm by David Poyer

Author:David Poyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2002-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

WHEN THE screaming ended, when the charred, blistered face stopped moving, Al-Qadi said something to the guard behind Dan. He heard the slide of metal on leather and a click. Then a shot cracked, deafening in the enclosed space, and he felt wetness and fluid on his naked skin, and smelled the sickeningly sweet scent of brain matter.

When he looked again, Zeitner lay still. The blanket was still burning. Most of the forehead had been blown away by the exiting bullet. He saw the glistening surfaces of brain and blood, the dark cavities of sinus before he looked away, back at the bored men at the table.

The major was talking on the telephone. The conversation was rapid and somehow muted, as if he was making a report to a superior. He listened at the end, said, nodding rapidly, “Nam, Sayidi,” and hung up. He seemed to ponder for a moment, and one of the others asked him a question. He replied in a word or two, then looked at Dan.

“I have always found it hard to predict what will make a given man decide to cooperate,” he said. “The truly brave will not speak. Like your comrade here. Not for a long time; not for days or weeks. But we know about the American marines, that they have to kill a member of their families before they are accepted into the Marine Corps.

“But most men will submit once they see a friend or wife or child threatened. Occasionally, I would say this of the cowards, one must operate directly on them. I think you are one of the cowards. Otherwise you would have saved your friend. What do you think?”

He sat rigid, still unable to feel or even think through the horror and the disbelief. But dimly he knew anything this man said was a lie. And any reply to him, a mistake. If he’d kept his mouth shut, like Zeitner, they’d have given up eventually and turned them over to the army. Now his fumbling, his fucking cleverness, had killed Jake. And probably himself.

And under that again yet a colder and older part of his mind knew that it was exactly this his interrogators were counting on: that he would act now out of guilt and fear rather than from what he still knew to be his duty. His feelings struggled below the surface of his still numbed mind, like carp tumbling just beneath the surface of a pond too murky yet to see into.

He knew then there was no way they’d release him now. Whatever this was…Mukhabarat, secret police, military intelligence…he wasn’t leaving here alive. So there was no alternative, no way of second-guessing or tricking them. He could tell them what he knew, or he could die as silently as Zeitner had. Those were the only choices left in his life.

He set his teeth and sat looking stonily ahead.

After a moment more the major sighed, and spoke to the guards. The other watchers sat back, gazes gone

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