CHAPTER 56

Yazidi Strike Force Compound

Kurdistan

September

“WOULD YOU LIKE TO observe? ” Erik asked Reece and Freddy with a tad too much enthusiasm, both men having stowed their gear in the dormitory-like rooms to which they’d been shown.

“No, thanks, ” Reece responded without hesitation, remembering his last experience with torture, extracting information from Saul Agnon in a Palm Springs hotel room for his role in the murders of Reece’s wife and daughter.

“Me neither, ” Freddy chimed in. “I’d prefer to maintain some plausible deniability if this thing hits the news cycle. Remember what the last president did to the guys who interrogated Abu Zubaydah? ”

Neither man had any moral objections to whatever interrogation techniques were being used on Landry; they simply weren’t interested in watching. Landry was a traitor, a sellout who had become a terrorist due to a currently unknown motivation. His actions had taken innocent lives and he’d joined forces with his nation’s number one enemy. On top of all that, he was a sadist who had tortured detainees under the guise of a CIA team leader. No, Jules Landry wasn’t going to get any empathy from either of them.

“Suit yourselves. I’m going to go see how it’s going, ” Spuhr said as he walked out.

They had been lounging in the Team Room, a combination clubhouse, living room, and meeting space used by small units around the globe. This one was nicer than most, but lacked the photos, captured enemy weapons, and other mementos that usually lined the walls and infused the space with the character of the occupying unit. With no such decorations, this room looked more like something you’d see in a nursing home or college dorm. It occurred to Reece that he hadn’t watched television since he’d hastily departed the United States months ago, so he turned on the flat screen to see if he could catch the news. He found CNN International and, ironically, the segment was covering the killing of Nawaz by the now-famous Albanian Eagle commandos. He and Freddy exchanged eye rolls as a series of “counterterrorism experts” and retired military officers speculated wildly about how the mission had gone down. How these officers with high-level security clearances could spout off about ongoing military operations just days after they’d retired was beyond them both.

• • •

The freezing water soaked him at seemingly random intervals, leaving Landry constantly on edge in anticipation of the next icy blast, his body jerking uncontrollably. Then, just when his mind began to slip into delirium, the powerful air vents in the room started blowing warm air; the warmth was heavenly. As his body temperature began to rise, he was reminded of just how thirsty he was. He hadn’t had anything to drink since before his capture and he was losing track of how long ago that had been. Every part of his body was soaking wet, save the inside of his mouth. Had his lips not been covered by tape, he would have licked the floor.

His head rose at the sound of the heavy metal door unlocking and quickly tucked it back against his chest, expecting a beating to begin at any moment. Footsteps sloshed across the wet floor. Whoever had entered the room smelled like cigarettes and was standing directly over him. The man pulled the wet cloth sack from his head, and the duct tape that had covered his mouth was torn swiftly away, the sharp pain only slightly diminished by the numbness of his face. His eyes were still taped over, so when something touched his lips he jerked away, causing water to spill on his chin. Water! His natural fear of physical pain was suppressed by his overwhelming thirst, and he extended his face toward the bottle. The cold liquid instantly brightened his mood as he gulped it down. The bottle was pulled away and something small was pressed into his mouth; it had a plastic taste to it. He tried to spit it out but the water returned and his thirst was too powerful; whatever it was, he’d just swallowed it. He pushed the thought aside and drank the water as fast as it was poured into his mouth by the plastic bottle.

The pleasure was short-lived. As quickly and abruptly as the water had come, the man left the room. Still, his body was shivering less as the room warmed, and he was no longer quite as dehydrated as he’d been just moments earlier. He’d learned during the various schools he’d attended in the Marine Corps to relish the brief moments of rest and relief when they came without thinking too much about what might happen next. He exhaled a deep breath and tried to put himself in a different place mentally, a “happy place. ” Just as he began to relax, his skin was blasted once again by the cold rain from above. It was like they were reading his mind.

• • •

A sensor in the interrogation room’s wall relayed the telemetry from the RFID device inside the detainee’s body to the desktop monitor in the observation area. Roman Evdal, a Yazidi physician’s assistant trained in the United States under an exchange program, watched the detainee’s core temperature rise to 37 degrees Celsius and his heart rate slow to 65 BPM. “Rome, ” as he was called by the Americans at the facility, nodded to the man seated next to him, who touched his computer screen, activating the water pumps that fed the shower nozzles that covered the ceiling of the interrogation room. Rome couldn’t hear the detainee scream through the thick Plexiglas with the speakers muted, but he could tell by the man’s agonized facial expression that that was exactly what was happening. He looked over his shoulder toward the handsome Sunni whom he’d been instructed to address as “Major” and received an almost imperceptible nod in response. The “Major” didn’t look like he was part of the Iraqi Army, and Rome suspected that he was part of the more powerful and secretive Interior Ministry. Not that it mattered; whoever he was and whoever he worked for, he was clearly in charge of this interrogation.

RFID-equipped body temperature monitors had been used for several years to monitor students’ core body temperatures in the U. S. Navy’s brutal Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training program. Breaking the will of would-be SEALs required keeping the men on the verge of hypothermia while going through Hell Week, the crucible of SEAL training that tied every generation of frogmen to the next. Men sometimes died as a result of this delicate dance, and the RFID monitors allowed instructors to instantly assess a trainee’s body temperature by pointing a digital “reader” device at his torso.

Having experienced the debilitating effects of cold firsthand as a BUD/S student and later as an instructor, one of the Agency personnel involved in the construction of the interrogation facility had the bright idea of applying the technology in conjunction with “room temperature manipulations” as a method of breaking detainees without laying a hand on them. Not only could they keep them teetering on the edge of hypothermia, but they could prevent them from sleeping. Cold, exhaustion, and hunger are three of nature’s most powerful forces, and they could use all three simultaneously with almost no risk of long-term physical harm. A healthy, fit male of Landry’s age was unlikely to suffer a cardiac event under such stress, but a crash cart was available just in case. This was the first time this comprehensive system had been attempted on a real prisoner and, so far, it was working just as advertised.

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