More Than Courage (19 page)

the disgusting mess already fouling his small cell.

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The thud of boots on concrete roused Specialist Four David Davis from his stupor. He found that being blindfolded had sharpened his hearing, something that was anything but a blessing as he listened to the Syrian guards come closer. The same sort of growing panic he had felt when he had been a child seeking any means to escape punishment began to well up as he began to quietly plea for deliverance. "Oh, Lord, make them go away. Please, make them go!"

But the boots didn't go away. They only grew closer with each passing second. The sound of the hard rubber soles increased until they came to an abrupt halt just outside the door of Davis's cell. His fear mounted as a guard sorted through his key chain until he found the one he was looking for, shoved it into the lock, and twisted. Next came the snap of the bolt as it was slid aside with a brisk and exaggerated motion intended to add to the prisoner's apprehensions and fear.

If that was their intent, the Syrian jailers were succeeding.

Every loud sound they made was now so painfully familiar to Davis that he instinctively began to panic even before they were finished opening the door. He knew he needed to fight this fear and resist their efforts to break him. Though he was a prisoner,, Davis understood that he was still an American soldier. As such he was expected to resist by whatever means available. He was prepared to do his best to keep the faith.

He also understood there was only so much suffering, pain, and psychological intimidation he could endure, that sooner or later he would give in. Anticipating this he began preparing himself for what he'd do when he finally did break. Already he had decided that when they finally did reach that point he would tell the Syrians a story, a series of stories just like he used to tell his ttiama whenever she caught him doing something he wasn't sup Posed to be doing. He could pull this off, he told himself as he listened to the hinges groan under the weight of the steel door j! ,¦¦!¦

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slowly swinging open. The only thing he needed to be careful about was that once he started spinning his little stories he would need to be consistent, keeping his lies in order while making sure that he left out all the details that he knew were classified or might be harmful to other members of the team.

Davis could now smell the men who would take him to his next beating. With all the grace of a pair of stevedores manhandling a sack of grain, two of the Syrians grabbed Davis by the arms, jerked him to his feet, and began dragging him toward the door. With his hands tightly bound behind his back and his legs manacled at the ankles there was very little he could do to make the process less painful to himself. Even before he was out of the cell the injuries that had been inflicted during previous beatings were aggravated by the brutality of the way he was being dragged, causing Davis to moan.

Annoyed by this sobbing, a Syrian behind Davis brought his AK assault rifle up and smashed the butt between Davis's exposed shoulder blades. The force of the blow caught the guards who were holding Davis by surprise, causing the one on Davis's left to lose his grip. Unable to stand on his own and supported only on one side, Davis swung about and slammed into the Syrian who had been supporting him on the other side. Amid a tirade of shouts and Arabic oaths the two of them tumbled onto the floor in a heap.

Even before the Syrian who had gone down with Davis could free himself from the tangle of arms and legs his companions were all over Davis, kicking him and yelling for all they were worth. A few of their blows missed their intended mark as Davis squirmed in an effort to escape them and hit the Syrian lying on the ground instead. Already embarrassed and angered by the incident and feeling the sting of his companions' blows, as soon as the Syrian guard untangled himself from the fray and scrambled to his feet he turned on Davis and joined the pounding his companions were heaping upon Davis with a vengeance. Screaming at the top jfw

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of his lungs, the enraged guard pummeled Davis's head and shoulders with clenched fists. All he could do to protect himself was to curl up into a tight ball.

To Davis the beating seemed to go on forever. It wasn't until a Syrian officer, impatiently waiting for the guards to bring the American to the interrogation room, came down into the cellblock and brought the impromptu beating to an abrupt and merciful halt.

Making no effort to hide his anger at having been kept waiting, the Syrian officer barked a quick series of orders as he admonished the guards gathered around Davis's prostrate form.

One of the guards tried to justify their actions. For his trouble this bold Syrian guard drew a fresh volley of reprimands from the officer followed by a sharp slap across the face. The officer's actions only served to increase the guard's ire. When they picked Davis up again, they used every trick they knew to inflict as much additional pain on their charge as they could. Half carrying, half dragging their prisoner, who was now sobbing incoherently, the guards continued their trek to the interrogation room where Davis would be beaten in a more professional and deliberate manner.

At some point during this journey Davis became aware that his blindfold had slipped during his one-sided melee with the, guards. By leaning his head back and rolling his eyes clown as low as he could, the young specialist four found that he could catch fleeting glimpses of his surroundings. Nothing he saw was very impressive or unexpected. From what he could see of them the guards hauling him around the prison were wearing the olive green uniforms and black boots that all Syrian soldiers wore.

Looking down at the floor Davis noted a rut worn into the tiles.

This well-trodden path told Davis that he was but one of many who had endured this ordeal.

As they went the two guards detailed to drag Davis made no euort to coordinate their efforts. The resulting twists and jerks

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caused the manacles about his wrists, already excruciatingly tight, to dig deeper into his torn flesh. Worse than the pain, though, was the growing terror Davis felt as they drew closer to the interi, rogation

room. He suspected that the guards' slow pace and the roundabout route were part of their torment. The longer they took, the more time he had to think about what was coming.

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When they reached the interrogation room the guards would plop him into a chair before leaving him to the mercies of professional thugs who would beat him for an hour or so.

Davis used the brief interlude that passed between the time when the guards relinquished control over him and the professional interrogators took over to make a cursory inspection of the room he so feared. Like the rest of the prison he had managed to see thus far, this room was as expected. There was nothing of note, only bare floors, scant furniture, and walls badly in need of

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patching and painting. Whenever he saw the toes of the boots worn by the Syrians in the room turn toward him, Davis froze.

He suspected that if he jerked one way or another as if looking away the Syrians would begin to suspect that he could somehow see them. If they did, his blindfold would be rebound even more tightly than it had been before, depriving Davis of sight and giving them another reason to beat him.

Davis desperately needed the freedom he had to explore his new world for as long as possible, if only to give him a faint sense of control over something and maybe even a small sliver of hope.

He needed all the hope that he could latch on to. The withholding of food and water and his constant beating would eventually break him. The only question Davis had was which would go first, his body or his mind. He suspected that his tormentors knew they could not push too much further lest they run the risk of losing him completely to death or madness. Once that happened he would be worthless to them in a propaganda war that he figured they were already waging. All he had to do, Davis kept telling himself, was to hold on. Hold on to hope. Hold on to his sanity Hold on to his life. Just hold on.

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Having no practical experience to rely on except for a few watered-down training exercises that addressed the fine art of torture, Davis didn't know what his limits were. All he knew was that as long as he remained conscious, they would beat him. So when the first blow fell upon his broken cheekbone, all Davis could think was, "Bring it on, motherfucker. Bring it on and put me down."

And bring it on they did. As they had in each of the previous sessions, the pair of Syrians assigned to brutalize Davis went about their labors in silence without making any effort to ques^

tion him. This continued to be a source of surprise to him. Like a couple of gandy dancers driving a railroad spike, the thugs simply took turns pounding him. Time had no meaning to Davis. All he could do was to respond as best he could to the rhythm that his tormentors fell into, first from the left, then the right. A full bodied slap to the left side of his head by a hand in a lead-lined glove was followed by a jab from behind aimed right at his right kidney. A jarring whack delivered to the side of his face was preceded by a thrust to the side of his stomach that knocked the wind out of him. Left, right. Left, right. Blow after blow slammed into his body, sending him reeling this way, then that. In short order Davis was no longer able to separate one pain from another as the beating went on. Left, right. Left, right.

At some point during this pounding Davis lost his balance,, causing him to topple off the straight-back chair he had been sitting on. Already dazed by the well-disciplined pummeling, Davis couldn't brace himself tor the impact with the floor. He simply fell like a withered leaf falling from a tree. Hitting the ground as he did only increased the agony, if that were possible, and almost caused him to lose consciousness. At any other time he would nave welcomed a slide into mindless oblivion. But even in his Cental fog, he realized that lying on the floor as he was gave him 311 excellent opportunity to look about the room in an effort to See what his tormentors looked like. Knowing he had little time

Perore he was placed back on the chair, he gazed about the room swiftly as he dared.

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Besides the Syrian thugs who had been administering the beating there were two other Syrians. From the cut of their uniform and age Davis guessed that they were senior ranking officers, though their reason for watching a routine beating during which no one asked the prisoner any questions was unclear. Slowly, ever so slowly he continued to scan the room until he caught sight of his own officers tucked away in a corner of the room, gagged and bound to chairs, but without blindfolds.

Startled, he stared at them even as the Syrian thugs were wrestling him off the floor and back onto the chair. He had no way of knowing for sure if Captain Burman and Lieutenant Aveno had been there during his previous beatings, but he suspected they had been. Their presence did much to explain why the senior Syrian officers were there. It was at this moment, as the Syrians got back into the rhythm of their beatings that it all began to make sense to him. He wasn't being asked questions because the Syrians weren't interested in what he knew or had to say. He was simply being used as an incentive. The real object of these

brutal sessions was to beat him in the presence of Burman and

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Aveno, beatings they could stop at any time if they gave in and talked. It wasn't his will they were trying to break, Davis concluded

. It was theirs. As they sat there watching, the two Special Forces officers would know that the longer they remained silent, the more their men would suffer. As best he could tell, they hadn't talked yet, giving rise to a new round of speculation. What would break first? His body or their conscience?

¦"¦¦

As silently as ever, the pair of Syrian tormentors went about plying their trade, delivering a blow against the left side of his skull, followed quickly by a thick stick swung across his chest.

Left, right. Left, right.

The senior Syrian officer, a colonel, waited until a pair of guards had dragged Davis's limp body out of the room. As soon as the door was closed he nodded to one of the sergeants who had been

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beating Davis. It was time to remove the gag from the American officers. The colonel strolled over to the table where the club, lead-lined glove, truncheon, steel rod, and other assorted instruments used to torment the American enlisted men were arrayed.

He looked them over until he found one that was his personal favorite. Picking up a large metal hook similar to those used to lift and carry bales of hay, he took a moment to study it before looking over at Aveno. "Your men are disappointing me. I expected soldiers of your caliber to be more resilient and durable. I do not think they will last much longer."

As the Syrian spoke Ken Aveno glanced at his commanding officer. Burman's condition had not changed since he had first seen him in the truck. Were it not for Burman's coloration, poor though it was, and a stream of drool that ran from his gaping mouth, down his chin and onto his lap, it would have been easy to mistake him for dead. But he was alive, alive and like Aveno untouched while RT Kilo's surviving soldiers were beaten before their eyes. Given the severity of those injuries that he could see and Burman's continued unconsciousness, Aveno concluded that his commanding officer was suffering from permanent brain damage.

And while it was true that he wasn't in a position to exercise any authority while in Syrian captivity, Aveno slowly came to appreciate that he would remain RT Kilo's acting CO throughout this ordeal.

As the hours dragged by and his men were brought before him, blindfolded and bound to be beaten to within an inch of their lives, Aveno began to envy Burman's obliviousness to the suffering occurring in front of him. As the acting CO and the only conscious team officer, he had to endure the horrors Unfolding before him alone and live with the knowledge that Only he had the power to decide when the beating of his men should stop.