The Prince of Bagram Prison (23 page)

“Is this it?” he asked, slowing the Peugeot.

Kat looked down at the map again. “Yes. Here. Turn here.”

Kurtz turned the wheel sharply, taking them off the highway and into a neighborhood of industrial buildings and government-style slums. In the distance, a squat gray structure loomed before them. Five floors high and nearly as long as a football field. A prison, Kat thought immediately, for there was almost nothing else it could be. Then she remembered Jamal's description of Ain Chock, and realized this was it, the place where the boy had spent the first fifteen years of his life.

I
T WAS WELL PAST MIDNIGHT
when Kat and Hariri finished in the booth and made their way back along the catwalk to the ICE. Down in the cages, the prisoners were tucked in for the night, most of them sleeping soundly despite the unrelenting glare from the overhead lights and the semiautomatic weapons trained on them. It was a scene Kat had witnessed countless times, but which never failed to unnerve her: the men one to a pallet beneath their astronauts' Mylar blankets, knees and arms drawn in to protect themselves from the cold, spines almost universally curved in the classic fetal pose, as if each body were in the midst of some kind of organic transformation, on its way to becoming something else.

After the intimacy of the booth, the chaos of the ICE was an affront to Kat's senses. The regular night crew had all sorts of perverse tactics for keeping themselves awake, most of which would have been violations of international law had they been used on the prisoners. Tonight's strategy, which had the added benefit of making Kat feel impossibly old, involved blasting Green Day's “American Idiot” at decibels normally used to extract confessions from high-ranking Al Qaeda members.

A small but boisterous group of men—not just interrogators but MPs and a couple of civilians as well, Kurtz included—were huddled around one of the operations monitors. Intent on something, Kat observed, most likely one of the seemingly endless and infinitely complicated battlefield-simulating computer games the younger soldiers spent a good deal of their downtime playing.

Trying to shake the booth-numbness from her head, Kat helped herself to a cup of fuel-grade coffee and found a free computer where she could type up her interrogation report. For an instant, she allowed herself to think about Colin. Seeing Kurtz reminded her of what had happened at the Special Forces compound the night before. The way she and Colin had left things was sitting badly with her. She'd hoped to make it back to the British compound that night to clear the air, but it didn't look as if that was going to happen now. Green Day or not, it was going to be a long shift.

A collective cry of triumph erupted from the group at the monitor, and Kat glanced up from her work.

“They're in!” one of the MPs said excitedly. Then he and the others exchanged testosterone-injected high fives.

When the men moved, Kat could make out a portion of the monitor, a night-vision flickering of ghostlike shapes moving in formation across the screen. Not a game, she realized then, recognizing the grainy look of the footage from the few times she'd seen it at Kandahar, during Operation Anaconda. What the men were watching was real-time feed from the battlefield. A Special Forces raid, from the looks of it. Some enterprising soldier must have hacked into the central communications network, hoping for some late-night entertainment.

Kat stood up, craning her neck to get a better view. “Anyone know who that is?” she asked.

“British team,” the MP who'd hand-slapped the others said, and then, with fervent appreciation, “Those SAS guys are real motherfuckers.”

One of the interrogators looked over his shoulder at Kat. “It's SBS, actually. One of the teams from C Squadron.”

Kat felt sick. She had no illusions about the danger inherent in these nighttime raids. So far, she had managed to avoid thinking of Colin in such a context. But now there was no getting around the possibility that he might be down there, one of those eerie figures on the screen. She glanced over to see Kurtz watching her.

Everything would be fine, she told herself, ducking Kurtz's gaze, not wanting to give him reason to gloat. The raids were standard practice, after all, and almost always went off smoothly. Besides, Colin had said nothing about leaving when she'd seen him the night before, and surely he would have. For all she knew he was still on base, getting fat and happy on meat pies and fish and chips over at Camp Gibraltar.

“There!” somebody shouted. “There!”

A single figure had stepped out of a structure in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and was heading straight for the soldiers.

“Get him!” someone else yelled, with the same enthusiasm he might have shown for his favorite linebacker. “Get the fucker!”

Something must have alerted the men on the ground to the interloper. They stopped in unison, then moved quickly to the outside, in an apparent attempt to flank the figure.

“Motherfuckers!” the appreciative MP repeated, flashing a touchdown smile to the rest of the group. “What did I tell you? Those guys are bad motherfuckers!”

“Not so fast,” one of the civilians interjected. “Look at this.”

Some two dozen figures had appeared on either side of the screen and were converging slowly and steadily on the British soldiers.

“Who the hell is that?” someone asked.

“It's an ambush,” the civilian who'd first noticed the crisis said softly. “It's a goddamn ambush.”

He was right. It didn't take a military mastermind to see that the whole thing was a setup, that the first solitary figure had been nothing more than bait. Someone had known the team was coming.

“We can't be the only ones watching this,” one of the interrogators said. “There's got to be a chopper in the area.”

There was an explosion then, the blast big and bright enough to fill almost the entire screen. When the glare subsided, Kat could see that several of the British soldiers had been thrown to the ground. The ones who were still able to had regrouped almost instantly and were exchanging heavy gunfire with the men flanking them.

“Where's that fucking chopper?” someone yelled. Despite the gunfire, the figures on the outer flanks had begun to advance again, moving slowly forward, forming a loose circle around the British team.

Kat scanned the figures on the ground. Two had rolled over and were firing their guns, but one lay motionless, his left knee cocked slightly, his arms sprawled at his sides. There was no way of knowing who he was.

“Look, here!” one of the MPs yelled. “I think someone's coming.”

The figures in the outer circle had stopped advancing and were now rapidly moving back in the direction from which they'd come.

The chopper, Kat thought, please, God, let it be the chopper. And it was.

A tracer rocketed in from the left side of the screen. A Hydra, Kat guessed, from the explosion that followed, taking out a handful of the fast-retreating figures and sending the rest scattering across the hilly terrain. A second blast followed, and then a third.

The group in the ICE erupted in cheers.

“Die, you Taliban fuck!” the enthusiastic MP yelled, addressing a writhing figure on the monitor.

Kat looked away, suddenly embarrassed, not wanting to be a witness to the man's death. As she did so, her eyes caught Kurtz's. He was staring straight at her, his lips curved. He made no move to look away, but nodded instead, slightly, almost imperceptibly, as if confirming her worst fears.

He knew, Kat thought for an instant, just an instant. And then, realizing how ridiculous such an idea was, she felt suddenly guilty for having thought it.

She looked back at the monitor, and she could see the scorpion-like silhouette of the medevac helicopter and the British team scurrying toward it with their wounded. No, she told herself, these things happened. They were in a war, after all.

N
OTHING
,
KAT REALIZED
, stopping just inside the front gate, surveying the wasteland that was Ain Chock—the broken windows and tattered tarps, the garbage fires burning in the lanes. After everything Jamal had told her, she had understood nothing.

They beat us,
Jamal had said once, talking about his childhood at the orphanage, and Kat had thought, Yes, they beat you. But the boy's words came back to her as she followed Kurtz into the putrid maze of the courtyard shantytown. They beat him, she thought, and the beatings themselves now seemed trivial in relation to the utter brutality of the actual place.

Third World slums can be dangerous for outsiders, especially those with obvious means, and Kat had prepared herself for a confrontation. But she could see now that there was no reason to be afraid. The inhabitants here were the castoffs of the castoffs, the ancient and the sick and the mentally faltering, those from whom life had been drained like the juice from an orange, and whose deflated faces followed Kat and Kurtz with dispassionate interest.

Someone somewhere was burning shit. The stench of it, rank and utterly familiar, reminded Kat of the months she'd spent at Kandahar, and of the lunar desolation of that place. She had not realized it at the time—none of them had—but looking back she could see a certain symmetry to their time there, a kind of perfection in the emptiness of those surroundings, the landscape scoured as they themselves had been. Scoured by rage and grief, stinking of revenge.

The orphanage itself appeared to Kat to be uninhabited, or, at least, uninhabitable. Through the broken first-floor windows Kat could see piles of garbage and upturned mattresses, walls flushed with black mold. As she and Kurtz approached the front door, two young men emerged from the dilapidated building carrying disordered bundles of electrical wire.

How much, Kat wondered, did they expect to get for their effort? A few dirham coins in the scrap market, if they were lucky. Not even enough to put a down payment on their next meal.

They were close to Jamal's age, one dressed like a soccer player in red track pants and a green-and-yellow shirt, the other playing the part of a New Jersey goodfella in blue jeans and a leather jacket. Kat was about to call to them when she heard Kurtz's stilted Arabic.

“Hey! You! What are you doing?”

The two scavengers looked up, their eyes flicking briefly from Kat to Kurtz and back again. Nonplussed, they shifted their burdens slightly and continued walking.

“Hey!” Kurtz called again, but this time Kat put her hand on his arm to silence him.

She nodded and smiled broadly, greeting the young men in the traditional manner. She was still wearing the head scarf she'd picked up at the gas station and she was glad of it, hoping it might buy her some small modicum of respectability.

The pair stopped where they were but did not return Kat's greeting.

“Brothers,” she continued, trying to erase any hint of threat from her voice. “Perhaps you can help us. We are looking for a friend, a young man close to your age. His name is Jamal.”

The sporting one fingered his bundle of wires. “There is no one by that name here,” he said forcefully.

“Are you certain?” Kat asked, glancing at the second man, the one in the leather jacket. He was standing slightly back from his friend, his eyes hard on Kat, his expression suggestive, almost sexual. Was it the look, Kat wondered, of someone who wanted to speak but could not?

“We are prepared to show our gratitude,” Kurtz interjected.

Yes, Kat thought, watching the man in the leather jacket, his eyes flaring at the suggestion of money: this one would tell them what they wanted to know. But not now, not here.

“We cannot help you,” the sporting one insisted, turning to go.

The second man moved to follow, but as he did his eyes met Kat's one final time. What passed between them then was like the look of two lovers, two people drawn to congress with each other but unable at that moment to consummate their desires.

Then, in an instant, the pair was gone, swallowed by the shadowed mouth of one of the courtyard's many narrow alleyways, disappeared into the stinking bowels of the slum.

Kat looked up at the sky. “It's getting dark,” she said.

“Yes,” Kurtz agreed unhappily. “We should go.”

“Is it ‘in like a lion, out like a lamb,’ or the other way around?” Janson had mused, trying to delay the inevitable, the real reason for his call: that the time had come to cut and run. “I never can get it straight.”

“The first one, I think,” Harry offered. “But from up here March looked a hell of a lot like a lion coming and going.”

It was April Fools' Day, the Monday after Easter, and Da Nang, barely four hundred kilometers to the north, had fallen to the Vietcong the day before. It was a matter of days, possibly even hours, before the North Vietnamese reached Nha Trang.

“What's the word on friends?” Harry asked, thinking about his earlier promise to An. “Staff and such.”

“Officially, everyone who needs a ride gets one.”

“And unofficially?”

“What do you think, Harry?”

There was An's face again, her stony prediction of his failure.