Cody's Army (19 page)

“Take care of her. If she gets worse, if she needs medical attention, call your guard and make a fuss. These Arabs treat their
women badly, but they are sentimental about them at the same time. Play on their sympathies.”

“Captain, I think you need a doctor, too.”

“No, just a sneaky kidney punch. We’ve got to talk about how to get out of here.”

“They have a series of roving guards with submachine guns, Tom,” Jenks reported. “Place is crawling with guards. Then at the
wall, which is maybe thirty yards out there, there are more guards on top. At the one end I can see is a mounted machine gun.”

“Great, the place is a fort.”

“I heard a State Department man talk to some pilots about a month ago,” Jenks said. “He told us the government would never
let there be another drawn-out hostage situation. He said Uncle Sam would move in and end it.”

“Sounds a bit ominous, doesn’t it.” Sharon said. She scowled. “Well, I’m going to take care of my people the best I can. And
I won’t be afraid to complain if I need to. The first thing I’m going to demand is more cots. We have only six in here and
eighteen women. It’s degrading and inhuman.”

“Be careful how you talk to these men, Sharon,” Jenks warned. “They are not diplomatic.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Ward growled. “I have a bad feeling. I think they are going to kill more of us to send a message
to our government. I have a black, terrible feeling.”

“No, Captain, they made their point at the airport,” Sharon argued. “They know those two brutal deaths shocked the whole world;
it’s enough. Any more would be overplaying their hand. These men seem smarter than that. What we have to do is hang on and
work an escape if we can.”

“We probably shouldn’t let them see us talking through here,” Ward said. “Close up most of the panel, just leave part of it
open.”

“That won’t really help you any this time, Captain,” Abdel suddenly snarled as he looked through from the women’s side. He
slammed the panel shut and screamed, “What you doing, dumb woman!”

The others had backed away, but Sharon stood there in front of him, her arms folded under her breasts. She still wore the
white-blouse and blue-skirt airline uniform. She had given her blue jacket to one of the women the previous night.

“Are you in charge here?” she demanded in a strong, no-nonsense voice. “If you are, I want to tell you that we need more places
to sleep. We have eight elderly women and they simply can’t sleep on the floor. We need cots, and sheets, and blankets…”

Abdel grabbed Sharon’s arm and pulled it upward until she had to rise on her tiptoes.

“Shut up!” Abdel hissed. “Western women are all whores. Look at you! Your big tits are pushing out against your shirt. You
don’t even cover your face. And your legs, you show off half your legs to tease a man. It’s a wonder you don’t get raped every
hour!”

He let go of her arm and reached toward her breasts. She slapped his hand away. Before she could admire her quick work, Abdel
had one hand grasping her breast and the other with a sharp knife blade pushing against her throat.

“You strike me again, American whore, and I’ll strip you right here and spread your legs and make you beg for death.”

“Take your hands off me!” Sharon shouted, her voice steel and fury. “Take your hands off me or I’ll find you wherever you
are and castrate you with a dull knife.”

Abdel stepped back as if he had been shot, stared at her in disbelief, and then put the knife back in its belt sheath.

“Yes, American whore,” he said quietly, ominously. “I will enjoy tearing your clothes off and showing you how a woman should
be treated. You will learn to love it.”

He stepped back and slammed the wall panel shut.

“There will be no more talking through the wall, no more plotting to escape. And there will be no more cots or blankets. This
is not a resort. You are my prisoners, and I will deal with you any way I wish to!”

Abdel turned and marched out of the room.

Sharon ran to the door and heard the lock click in place, then a heavy bar slide into brackets.

She turned to the women in her care. They were her only concern. She checked on Mrs. Vereen again. She was stable, but Sharon
was sure the woman needed medical care.

She turned toward the other women who watched her. “Is one of you a nurse or doctor? Mrs. Vereen needs care.” She watched
the women shake their heads and went back to Mrs. Vereen.

“Now, don’t you worry, Mrs. Vereen. We’re going to be out of here sometime tomorrow, and we’ll have a doctor take good care
of you. Just try to relax, and hold on.”

Sharon held her hand and the woman looked up and smiled. It was something, she thought. At least she could be doing something
for her passengers.

It was 14:12 hours, the day after the hijacking.

FOURTEEN

G
orman stared across his desk at the slightly built Lebanese man. He was not yet twenty, but already he had killed a U.S. diplomat
and tried to bomb an embassy car. Gorman did not believe in turning trash like this over to the East Beirut militia.

If the killer knew the right people in the Christian Forces militia, he could go free, despite his being a Shiite. Sometimes
the Christian Forces operated in a strange fashion. Better to settle matters right there on United States soil and have it
over with.

“Camel shit, you little bastard!” Gorman bellowed.’ Who else worked with you when you killed Phillips?”

There was no reply. Gorman nodded and one of his men drove his fist into the Shiite’s unprotected belly. He grunted and sagged
forward. Another man behind him grabbed his bound wrists and jerked him erect.

“We have all day, asshole!” Gorman snarled at him. “The games we play get rougher and rougher. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

It had been established that the Arab spoke English, at least enough to understand the questions. He only glared at them and
tried to spit on Gorman.

“Filthy pig!” Gorman screamed and slammed his own fist into the man’s jaw. Gorman pulled back his aching hand. He had forgotten
how it hurt a hand to smash it against a hard jawbone.

“Who were you working with? Was it the Amal, or the Hezbollah, or the Jihad? Maybe you’re a Sunni. Tell me, damn it, and you
might have a chance to live.”

“To die for Allah is everlasting glory!” the prisoner screamed.

“Allah? You murder and bomb and rape and steal for Allah? Sounds like some real kind of a camel-shit god.”

The Lebanese man surged forward, his right foot lashed out, grazing Gorman’s scrotum enough to bring a sharp, piercing pain.

“Bastard!” Gorman rushed the man, his hands around his throat, choking him. The prisoner’s struggles only increased Gorman’s
fury. His hands tightened around the yielding flesh until he saw the Arab’s eyes bulge.

“No, damn it!” he said, relaxing and stepping back. “That would be too fucking easy for him, too quick. Take him down to the
storage room, where we can have a little bit of privacy.”

The prisoner gasped and coughed, wheezed to get his breath back, and was still wheezing and gurgling when the three agents
hurried him out of the second floor office and down the back steps to the storage room that Gorman had used before. He followed
them a few minutes later, after detouring to the kitchen to get one small item. He carried the tool in a paper sack as he
went to the basement and found that the guards had already stripped the prisoner naked.

“He don’t look so fucking tough to me,” Gorman said. “Like in Nicaragua. Those damn gigaboos didn’t know when they had a good
thing going. We had to move in and teach them a damn painful lesson. Got to be the same way with this asshole, I guess. Where’s
the stick?”

One of his men handed Gorman an electric cattle prod that had the power turned up to the maximum amps.

“Know what this is, killer?” Gorman asked the Arab, who was sucking in breath with an effort. The prisoner nodded.

“So why don’t we make it easy. What’s your name?”

“Ronald Reagan,” the Arab spat.

“Asshole.” Gorman sighed. He touched the metal end of the prod to the prisoner’s thigh, causing him to leap away, his whole
body trembling.

“Tie him,” Gorman said. Quickly, the guards bound the Arab’s hands to an overhead beam and then fastened his ankles to twenty-pound
cement pier blocks on the floor. He was spread-eagled standing up.

“Now, camel dung, what’s your name?” Gorman asked.

The prisoner made no reply.

Gorman held the cattle prod against the man’s scrotum and pushed the button. Four, five, six seconds he pressed the jolting
rod against the young Shiite soldier’s testicles. The prisoner screamed and then clamped his mouth shut as his body shook
and jolted with the electric shock.

When Gorman pulled the prod away, the prisoner sagged forward, held up only by his wrists tied to the ceiling beam.

“Passed out, Chief,” one of the agents said.

“Too quick. Maybe he’s faking.” Gorman touched his cheek with the prod, but there was no reaction to the sharp jolt of electrical
current.

“Wake him up. I’ve got another idea that you guys are going to get a boot out of.” He took the eight-inch, heavy meat cleaver
from the paper sack. “I figure we can play fingers and toes with our young killer. Hard to keep quiet when you’re losing your
fingers one joint at a time.”

A knock sounded on the door. Gorman motioned with his hand for one of the men to see who it was.

“It’s Nelson, sir.”

“Yeah, let him in.”

Nelson took one look at the prisoner, lifted his brows, then spoke softly to Gorman.

“I followed Cody and his bunch like you told me to, but they parked down by the Green Line, and the next thing I knew they
vanished down an alley. By the time I got there, nobody knew anything. I hung around for an hour and they didn’t come back.
Maybe he and the girl got themselves blown up over on the west side.”

“Not likely. Nelson, you really fucked up. How in hell do you expect me to…forget it. Get out of here. Maybe I’ll have more
luck with this piece of stinking meat than I did with you.”

Nelson took one more look at the unconscious man and hurried out of the room.

Several miles to the southeast of the American Embassy, below the hippodrome and the beautiful pine forests around the Palace
Omar Beyhum, lies the section of Beirut known as Badaro. This part of Beirut borders on Rue De Damas, the general dividing
line between East and West Beirut, commonly called the Green Line.

All her life Oma Yafi had lived across the Green Line on the West Side of Beirut. She and her husband ran a small shop for
copper goods across from the law courts building and beyond Avenue Sami Solh. Their shop had provided enough income to feed
their young family and pay most of their bills.

She looked up quickly now as the bell rang over the door, and she saw her husband rush into the store. She was nursing her
four-month-old baby at her large breast, still flushed and heavy with milk.

“Hurry, hurry!” her husband, Nabih, screamed at her. “We must get the panels up over the windows. There is trouble outside.
1 just saw a dozen armed men down the block and they are not from this area. They could be another faction, one who hate the
Amal!”

Nabih struggled with a four-by-four-foot square of half-inch-thick plywood toward the front door of the little store. Just
as he opened the door there came a blinding flash, then a roar such as Oma had never heard before, and everything in the shop
came crashing down around her and her baby. She fell to the floor, holding her daughter to her breast, and rolled under a
heavy table.

Hundreds of copper pots and pails and decorations cascaded from the walls and ceiling, where they had been carefully hung
to show off their best features.

The sound had been terrible. Oma was sure she could not hear a thing. Her ears rang like cymbals being clashed. The air was
thick with the dust of centuries, but the table kept the heavy copper and brass pots from her and her baby. Huge chunks of
the plastered walls and ceilings fell as well. Some of the plaster was four inches thick where it had been recoated decade
after decade.

Oma lay under the table until the last of the pots had fallen. Slowly she realized that she could hear rifle and machine gun
fire outside. Her hearing was coming back.

For a moment all was quiet, then another explosion shook the building and more plaster fell. This blast must have been outside,
perhaps next door. She waited again.

Men yelled.

Machine guns and automatic rifles stuttered out their deadly messages.

A grenade exploded.

Then a sullen, strange silence filled the street and the ruined store where Oma and her daughter lay. Slowly she pushed back
from the protection of the table. She kicked a vase worth forty pounds out of her way and crawled from under the table.

Tears sprang to her eyes as she stared at the destruction of the shop. No one could have done a more complete job if he had
planned where to plant the explosives. The small room’s dividing wall had been blasted into rubble, the front windows were
blown outward, three-foot-square chunks of heavy plaster littered the floor. Copper pots and pans and vases had been smashed
and scarred and strewn about like garbage in the street.