Ripple Effect

HASAM KHALED WAS WORRIED, for himself and for the great jihad. A new round of interrogations had begun, and while it had been several months since he was questioned, granting ample time for him to rest, Khaled feared that he might be weakening in custody. He had been too long out of contact with his brothers, and despite his faith in Allah to sustain him, lately there had been no answer to his prayers.

Each time the smug Americans passed by his cage, selecting someone else to grill for information, he was certain they had come for him. Someday they would, and who knew what techniques they would employ this time?

Before, they had progressed from stilted courtesy to bullying and threats, suspension of his so-called privileges. Diet could be adjusted in proportion to collaboration with the enemy, so Khaled lost weight. He didn’t mind the sacrifice of flesh, content to know that Paradise awaited him.

But if he broke, what then?

The whispered rumors frightened him. In place of simple tactics—insults, threats, sleep deprivation—it was said that more effective methods soon might be employed. Torture, perhaps, or forced “repatriation” to some allied country where interrogators weren’t as squeamish as Americans. Or drugs, the kind that robbed even a dedicated warrior of his wits and his determination to resist.

Hasam Khaled was frightened of the drugs. Torture was fearful, but he thought—hoped, prayed—that he could weather beatings, possibly electric shocks, without soiling his honor. Drugs, however, stole a victim’s will and left him helpless, babbling everything he knew to agents of the Great Satan.

And once Khaled began to talk, how could he stop?

There had to be something he could do.

Khaled recalled his training, exhortations that prepared him to give up his life for God’s holy cause. He had been lucky so far, stunned in an explosion that inflicted only minor injuries but killed his two companions and a number of civilians. The Americans weren’t entirely sure whether Khaled was a combatant or a bystander, but they had shipped him to Cuba anyway. Uncertainty had given him a way to dodge their questions, up to now, but if they came at him with drugs…

There was one obvious alternative. He could become a martyr to the cause, not unlike those who strapped explosives to their bodies and then detonated them where it would do the most harm to their enemies. His self-inflicted death, while not as grandiose as an explosion in a market filled with Zionists or U.S. soldiers, still could serve the cause and bring great honor to his name, his family.

Khaled’s imam had been explicit on that subject. Any death in God’s service was commendable. He didn’t have to kill a hundred enemies, or even one. It was enough that he intended to destroy the infidels, and by his death prevented God’s enemies from gaining an advantage in the struggle. If by dying he could snatch salvation from the fingertips of targets marked for death by his comrades, Khaled would be a hero.

And his place in Paradise would be assured.

That vision made him strong—or stronger than he might have been without it.

Escape wasn’t an option, Khaled realized, and while some other inmates of the camp had been released to satisfy the Red Cross or the media, once he was questioned under medication there would be no possibility of freedom. Once they heard his secret, Khaled might be whisked away to the American mainland for further questioning, until the heathen bastards satisfied themselves that they knew everything.

And would it be enough to save them?

Possibly.

Khaled couldn’t be sure. He knew only a name, a fragment of a rumor shared by comrades in the dead of night. He had no details of the master plan itself, but once the name was given to his enemies, the rest might be superfluous. The scouring of dossiers and databases would begin, and ultimately they would have the man himself.

Khaled couldn’t permit it.

There were no weapons in his cell, of course—or none, at any rate, regarded by his captors as a weapon. But the simple cotton robe he wore could serve him as an instrument of suicide.

And when he’d finished with it, they could use if for his shroud.

There was no privacy in Camp X-ray, but neither was Khaled exposed in fact to round-the-clock surveillance. When he pulled the plain white robe over his head, no one except the occupants of two adjoining cages saw him do it. Neither spoke as he stood tall on tiptoes, double-knotting one sleeve of the robe to bars that formed the ceiling of his cage.

Neither adjoining prisoner called out for help as Khaled tied a makeshift noose around his neck and pulled it tight. They offered no objection as he checked the simple hang-man’s rope for length, then climbed the nearest barred wall of his cage for altitude.

The bars were slippery. He almost lost his grip and tumbled back, but that wouldn’t provide enough impact to stun him and prevent his hands from rising to the noose as he began to choke. In case his will to live proved stronger than his faith, Khaled was banking on a sharper drop to render him insensible.

A few more inches now. That should be high enough. The floor seemed far below him, like the bottom of a canyon. All illusion, in his present agitated state.

With one last prayer, Hasam Khaled released his grip and plummeted toward Paradise.

BOB ARMSTRONG DIDN’T CARE much for the spit-and-polish military types. He tolerated them whenever necessary, wore a smiling mask to hide his general contempt for amateurs who meddled in intelligence, and he never under any circumstances gave away the information his superiors had classified as need-to-know.

Sometimes, like now, he’d flatter certain officers with lies or slick evasions when they had to work in tandem toward specific goals, but he would no more tell a grunt in uniform what he was really thinking than he’d drop his pants and wag the weasel at a formal diplomatic function.

Some things were simply not done by professionals. Full stop. Case closed.

But sometimes you had to prime the pump, and so he said, “The truth, Lieutenant Lewis—may I call you Joseph, by the way?”

“It’s Jordan.”

“Ah, my apologies. Then, may I—?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Big smile. “The truth, Lieutenant Lewis, is that Langley’s under fire right now with accusations that we overlook the little things. Nobody seems to care much if a war goes on for years with no result, but we catch hell if we don’t know the dictator of the day’s zip code. You follow me?”

“Not yet,” the Marine said.

“My point is that we want to dot our i’s and cross our t’s, make sure we don’t miss any little thing, regardless of how insignificant it seems.”

“And that affects me…how?” the lieutenant asked.

“I’ve been asked to start from scratch with some of the neglected prisoners. Not my word, mind you. From the top, you know? Wish I could duck it. Big pain in the neck, I realize, but there it is.”

“No problem,” the lieutenant answered somewhat stiffly. “Do you have a list, or are we starting over alphabetically?”

“I have a list,” Armstrong admitted, “but it’s more like alphabet soup. They’ve been prioritized somehow, by someone. You can ask me how, why, who, but I don’t know. God’s truth.”

He was about to put a hand over his heart, but thought that might be overdoing it.

“I don’t require an explanation, Mr. Armstrong,” Lewis said. “When did you want to start?”

“This morning, if that’s feasible.”

“I’ll need your list.”

“Of course.” Armstrong retrieved two sheets of folded paper from an inside pocket of his jacket, passing them across the desk. Lewis unfolded them, blinked once, then tried to mask his surprise as he surveyed the twin columns of small, single-spaced type.

“This looks like nearly half the men in camp,” the lieutenant said.

“Is it?” Armstrong cocked an eyebrow, as if mildly curious. “I couldn’t say.”

“And these have been prioritized, you say? Does that mean that the first, say, dozen on the list are now prime terrorism suspects?”

Armstrong shrugged, his face contorting into something that approximated puzzlement. “Beats me,” he said. “For all I know, they could have ranked them in reverse order, with small-fry at the top. I really couldn’t say.”

“Mm-hmm.” Lewis looked skeptical, to say the least. “And you want to begin with number one, meaning top left on the first page?”

“Correct.”