The Caliban Program

by Richard FoxCopyright Richard Fox 2013

Published by Triplane Press Publishing at Smashwords

2002Second Lieutenant Eric Ritter was well and truly lost. He knew his location, a private

plane, but he had no idea where the plane was or its final destination. After countless hours in the air, he could cameto terms with being lost. As the only passenger of the aircraft, the problem was his alone.

Ritter looked out over the wing and into darkness. He counted the steady blink of the wing lights and scanned for any sign of civilization. The location of the last refueling stop was also a mystery since the pilot lowered all the window shades by remote before they landed and kept them down until they were back in the air. Ritter wasn’t sure if that was to keep him from looking out or to prevent others from looking in.

Banging on the cockpit door and demanding answers accomplished nothing other than receiving a stern “Return to your seat!” over the PA system. The only doors open to him were the restroom and a refrigerator stocked with soda and freezer-burnt microwave meals. Ritter sighed and rummaged through the fridge for the eighth time, finally deciding to eat what might be a bean and cheese burrito.

Not having questions answered had turned into a trend since a rather well-built major intercepted him outside a the lecture hall at Fort Huachuca. The major told him that he was being pulled from the Military Intelligence officer’s basic course and reassigned, effective immediately. Ritter had new orders that would be explained at a later time and he was required to leave with the major, also immediately. No chance to share farewells with his fellow lieutenants or to sign out in the company log book. The major, Jones according to his name tape, then led him to a white van with government plates and drove Ritter back to his apartment.

“No cell phone. No government identification, uniforms or electronic devices,” were the only words Jones said as Ritter had changed into civilian clothes and grabbed a small bag of toiletries. Ritter had asked if he could make a call to his parents, but the look of near-murder in Jones’s eyes as he brought out his cell phone told him that idea was a no-go.

They left Ritter’s apartment and drove to a small civilian airport just north of Fort Huachuca. A motley assortment of single engine planes crowded the only hanger; a larger private airliner waited on the tarmac, stair lowered and impatient engines whining. Ritter had started to utter a protest, but stopped when he saw the tremble in the major’s lip and his ogre hands grip the steering wheel hard enough to cause a groan in protest from the steering column. Ritter concluded that if he didn’t get on the plane at full combat speed he would be thrown on in a less-than-gentle manner.

The stairs rose as soon as Ritter stumbled into the plane which lurched into movement soon after. No pre-flight safety briefing, no stewardess and no reminder about the FAA’s stern policy against smoking. That was eighteen hours ago, by Ritter’s watch.

Ritter tossed the mystery burrito into the microwave and hoped for the best as he watched the microwave’s timer tick down. Was there even a pilot in the cockpit? No one had come out to eat or use the facilities since he’d come aboard. He chided himself for such useless speculation, and went back to speculating why he was even in this situation.

Had his father’s foreign contacts triggered some sort of alarm with military intelligence? As one of the world’s leading petroleum engineers, Ritter’s father was well traveled and well known to every country with hydrocarbon reserves. Perhaps one of those Russian venture

capitalists was involved in something treacherous and—the PA system chimed, interrupting his speculation.

The fasten seatbelt light came on, and Ritter felt the aircraft press ever so slightly against his feet as it began its descent. Ritter looked at the still cooking burrito, and sighed heavily. He plopped down and buckled himself in before looking out the windows as the shutters slowly closed by their own volition. Automatic shutters, on an otherwise no-frills aircraft, struck Ritter as an odd feature.

Below him was a sea of densely packed lights, a highway filled with head and tail lights bisected the city. Just before the shutters slid shut, Ritter noticed a distant patch of blackness surrounded by smog smeared pinpoints of light. Must be a lake, he thought.

The plane touched down moments later. Ritter stayed seated as the plane taxied down the tarmac. He felt the ambient air seep into the cabin, hot and humid.

The plane jerked to stop. Ritter stood and stretched. He wondered how long this stop would be before they moved on. The PA system’s static hiss filled the cabin. “This is your stop,” came over the speakers, and then went silent.

Florescent light and the whine of re-cycling engines invaded the cabin as the stairs slowly lowered and the door opened. The plane was in a rusted hanger, bare concrete floors marred with oil stains. A beat-up white sedan sat in front of an open car port door. Ritter grabbed his bag of toiletries and stepped off the plane.

There was no one in the hanger and no welcome signs. The sedan doors opened, and two men got out with eerie synchronicity. The bearded men wore long white tunics typical of South Asia, but to Ritter’s eye they walked like Westerners. One of the men, olive skinned and broad shouldered, approached him quickly. As he neared, Ritter saw a pistol in a holster under his left arm.

The man stopped arms length from Ritter and looked at him over with tired eyes, “You better be Ritter.” Ritter’s gaze lingered over the vein-like scar running down his nose.

“That’s right. Second lieu—“ the man held up his hand. “No more rank, kid. Come with me.” He turned and walked back to the car. Ritter, caught flat-footed, jogged to catch up. “Hey, ugh, I didn’t catch your name.”

Ritter kept glancing at the large caliber pistol under the man’s arm. The other man popped the trunk as the two approached.

“I’m Carlos, that’s Mike.” The other man nodded. “Now get in and we’ll explain more later.” Carlos stopped next to the open trunk, the interior lined with carpet.

Ritter tried to step around Carlos in order to make his way to the passenger door. Carlos blocked him with his linebacker mass, his nostrils flaring in annoyance.

“I told you, ‘get in,’” Carlos said, pointing to the trunk. Ritter blanched, “What? I just spent the last God knows how long on Twilight Zone Air. I

don’t even know where the hell I am and now you want me to get in the trunk?” Carlos stared at him with indifference, and then glanced towards the other man. Ritter

turned to face Mike, who took a calm step towards Ritter. Mike smiled, and then moved with snake-strike quickness; grabbing Ritter by his neck and wrist. Ritter had the brief sensation of falling before slamming into the trunk. The trunk slammed, casting him into darkness.

“Kid,” Carlos’ voice was muffled but understandable, “you’re in Pakistan.”

Ritter’s new waiting area might have been a small bedroom at one point. The off-white dry wall was scuffed at waist height along the walls, as though a bed had been systematically dragged along the walls in order to find the perfect location. Mouse droppings in the corner meant that this room had been empty for a long time, or the current homeowners just didn’t care.

Compared to the trunk of the car, the room was a step up for Ritter. He couldn’t keep track of the numerous sharp turns the car made as it traveled from the airport to wherever he was now. Ritter figured Carlos must have taken a complicated route to the house to offset any attempt to remember the route from the airport. At least, that’s what Ritter would have done if he had someone in his trunk that didn’t need to figure out the location of a safe-house. And Ritter was pretty sure that a safe-house was where he was.

He strummed his fingers on the beat up card table in front of him, the only piece of furniture in the room besides the folding chair he sat in and another chair resting against the wall. It had been fifteen minutes since the car pulled into the garage and Carlos had silently led him to this room. The door wasn’t locked, but Ritter was sure Mike was standing outside to dissuade any urge to explore the rest of the house.

The door opened, and a woman swept into the room. She was tall and carried herself with the poise of a fitness model as she grabbed the folded chair and shook it open in a violent motion. She tossed the chair next to the table and sat down. Her errant black hair framed an oval face with a set jaw. Her half-Asian features eluded any immediate distinction, but were on the edge of middle-age.

She placed a manila folder on the table and snap-clicked a pen that she put on top of the folder before looking at Ritter with blood shot eyes.

“Lieutenant Ritter: age 23 graduate of the American University of Beirut with a dual degree in physics and history, odd combination. You speak near-native Arabic, French and Spanish. You enlisted last year. Completed basic training, officer’s candidate school and were commissioned into military intelligence. You were all of two weeks in to your basic course before we procured your services.” She recited all of this by memory, which Ritter found unnerving. She looked at him with annoyance, like he was a door-to-door salesman and tolerating him only out of politeness. “As a military intelligence officer, you have a top secret clearance and are eligible for sensitive compartmentalized information. I’m going to read you on to…a program,” her jaw clenched at the last two words. She opened the folder and slid a piece of densely worded paper towards Ritter. A yellow and red SIGN HERE tag pointed out a signature line on what Ritter recognized as a standard non-disclosure agreement.

“We would never go to these extremes if you weren’t our last best option. Please, sign the agreement,” the woman said as she pushed a pen towards him.

Ritter didn’t move, “I don’t really understand what you’re asking me to do. What does all this mean?”

The woman pressed her temples with a single hand for a moment. “Eric, I know this isn’t fair to you. It is damn unusual for us too.” She dropped her hand; she smiled and looked at him with curiosity. “Let me ask you something, why did you join the military?”

“9/11. I was in Beirut when the towers fell, and I—“ he cut off before he could go into his rehearsed lie about wanting to use his experiences to help the Army understand Arabs and

Islam and lessen suffering in case of a wider war. This woman wasn’t some left-leaning co-ed at a bar; the truth would suffice. “I wanted revenge.” She nodded.

“Sign that, and you’ll be in the fight against al-Qaida. Not some basement virgin with a death wish running around the Afghan countryside, the senior leaders. If that isn’t enough, there is a CIA agent whose life is in grave danger, and we need your help.” She rolled the pen across the table. “Just sign so we can get to work.”

Ritter scooped up the tumbling pen and looked at the NDA. He considered reading the legalese and asking about why phrases like “never acknowledge or disclose” or “Title 50 activity” were highlighted. Instead, he signed his name with a flourish. It’s not like I’m signing away my soul to the devil, he thought.

“Thank you. You are now read-on to CLB—don’t ask what it stands for. There are limits to how far I can sensitize you. Understand this, what we do is covert. We operate without the official protection of the United States government, and your actions while part of the program will never be officially recognized or acknowledged. When, not if, we withhold information it is for your protection, and ours.” She pulled out a sheet of paper with a single photo on it. A half dozen twenty-somethings on a beach, flashing idiot-grins at the camera as they crowded around each other. Ritter was dead center of the photo, his favorite picture from a college trip to Cyprus.

She pointed to a young olive skinned man with a thin, patchy beard. “Who is this?” she asked.

“Haider, he’s a good friend of mine. I haven’t heard from him since he dropped out of the university after 9/11. What does he have to do with all this?” Ritter’s eyes crept towards a woman in the photo; pale green eyes gleamed from behind wisps of dark hair. That was the night Baida told him about the engagement.

The woman snatched the photo away and slid it back into the folder. “After 9/11, your friend Haider joined al-Qaida.” she said in a most matter of fact

manner. Ritter’s jaw slackened, slowly distending towards the table. “He didn’t make it to Afghanistan in time to be blown to hell by Operation Enduring

Freedom, but he did link up with a man named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, sound familiar?”Ritter managed to blink. “No, I didn’t think so. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is, we believe, the man who planned the

9/11 attacks. We don’t know what else he’s planning, but we know that KSM, and his cell are behind the kidnapping of a CIA agent—“she looked at her watch “—that took place forty-nine hours ago. And Haider is part of that cell.”

Ritter clamped his mouth shut with an audible click. He stood, his fingertips seemingly stuck to the table.

“He-he had said some radical things after 9/11. But this…” Ritter’s eyes darted back and forth as he racked his brain, trying to reconcile the man he knew with the person the woman described.

The woman pulled a black knit cap from under the table and placed it on the table. A pair of crude eye holes stared at Ritter.

“What? You want me to a rob a bank?” Ritter said. The woman spoke in measured syllables, “We have Haider, here, in this house. He refuses

to identify himself. It’s a common resistance tactic among terrorists. We need you to go into

his room: show your face then tell him we know who he is and tell him to cooperate. The psyches at Langley think that will break him. Can you do this?”

Ritter picked up the ski mask and traced the eye holes with his fingers. “Then what happens?”

“Then you get back on a plane and none of this ever happened.”

Ritter fiddled with the ski-mask as Shannon led him down a poorly lit hallway. The mask itched and smelled faintly of chewing tobacco. A CIA safe-house deep inside a hostile Pakistani city meant a certain degree of austerity, Ritter knew, but a second-hand and unwashed ski-mask struck him as unprofessional.

Shannon stopped at a battered door and rested her hand on a patina-scarred handle. She looked at him. “Ready? You understand what to do?”

Ritter nodded. “Yeah, no sweat,” he lied. Shannon cocked her head towards the surveillance camera pointed over the door, and an

electric buzz shook the door. She yanked the door open and Ritter stepped inside. Chains hung from the ceiling, a man dangled from them in the center of the room. His

arms were extended over his head and his feet could just barely scrape the floor. If he stood on the tips of his toes, it could relieve the pressure in his arms, but once his calves gave out he would hang from his arms. There was no way the man could rest; his body was constantly fighting pain and exhaustion by being cheated of a few inches of chain.

Ritter balked two steps into the room. What the hell have they done to Haider, he thought. Anger welled up in him as the man extended his bare feet to the ground, buying his arms and shoulders seconds of relief. Ritter was certain that this was illegal. He’d get word of this to Senator Billings, his father’s old friend, once this was finished.

Ritter moved through the bare room as the man sank lower, moaning slightly as his body weight strained his shoulders. He was shirtless and filthy. Dried piss stained his pants and assaulted Ritter’s nose as he stopped within arm’s length. The man’s face was downturned, greasy black hair obscured his face. Ritter spied a patch of blood that marred a nascent bald spot.

He stopped arms length from the man, just as Shannon had instructed. He had to get Haider’s attention and then show his face. Shannon would open the door once they were sure Haider was “shocked into compliance,” as she put it, then Ritter would leave the room. Ritter grabbed the bottom of the mask.

“Haider, look at me,” he said in Arabic. The man jerked at the sound of Ritter’s voice. He struggled to raise his head as he pawed

the ground with his feet. “I told you...That’s not my name,” he rasped. He pushed up with his toes and opened his arms wide enough to bring his head back between them..

His face was a mess of bruises and cuts. Shannon said he’d resisted capture and had to be subdued, but Haider was barely recognizable.

Ritter started to pull the mask off, but stopped before it cleared his mouth. Something wasn’t right. He let go of the mask and reached for the man. The man squealed and tried to hop away from Ritter, as though his touch were electric. Ritter caught him and shoved his head aside, his hand slipping against the sweat and bloody film clinging to his body.

Ritter rubbed his hand along the man's collar bone leaving a filthy smear as he mewled in protest. Ritter held the man's head back for a second; then let him go. He collapsed against the chains and swung like a heavy bag.

Ritter turned and walked towards the door, wiping the grime and filth off onto his shirt. The same buzzer rang and the door swung open.

Shannon was in the hallway, her arms crossed and a nasty scowl across her face. “What the hell? You had one job! One goddamn job that was so simple not even a lieutenant could screw it up.”

Ritter peeled off the mask and tossed it on the floor. “That’s not Haider.” Shannon grabbed Ritter’s arm and turned him to face her. “No, that has to be him!” She looked at him with a mixture of disbelief and hope. Ritter pulled his arm away and shook his head. “I’m sure that guy looks like him, under all

the bruises, but it ain’t Haider. We were on a ski trip in Lebanon when Haider smacked into a cedar tree. He broke his clavicle and had a plate put in.” He ran his fingertips over his collar bone. “Haider has a scar, a long and ugly scar. That guy doesn’t.”

Shannon slammed her fists against her thighs. Her face flushed as she turned and buried her face in her hands. She took in a ragged breath edged with tears and sorrow. Ritter raised a tentative hand towards her shoulder. Before he could touch her she spun around, her now-stoic face betrayed nothing. “Thank you for your help. We’ll get you back to the States as soon as we can.” She turned and walked away.

Ritter watched her go. So this is how his first contribution to the War on Terror would end; failure. “Wait!” She stopped. “You’re sure that Haider’s involved with al-Qaida? And that he’s out here?” She didn’t turn, but she nodded. “Maybe I can still help you find him.”

Ritter couldn’t see, but a cruel, half-smile crept across her face. Sometimes, this is just too easy, she thought.

Shannon half-looked over her shoulder, the smile hidden, and said, “No, Mr. Ritter, you’ve done all that we require.”

Ritter jogged down the hallway and stopped in front of her. “Look, I joined up to fight. If you send me back to Huachuca it will be months before I finish the course. Then more months before I’m integrated into my new unit and who knows if there will even be a war to fight by then! Let me do something now…here.” He chewed his lower lip, waiting for a response.

His face flashed with inspiration, “I know Haider! I can do more than pick him out of a line-up. I know what he likes, how he acts, how-“he stopped as Shannon held up her hand.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for. If you stay on you’ll see more of our methods. We’re not sure this is right for you.”

“What do you mean?”“You are a Soldier. That means rules and honor.” Her face hardened. “We have no rules.

We have no honor. Can you accept that?”Ritter thought of the man hanging from the chains; that violated everything that the army

had taught him in his brief career. A cold, still voice deep inside of him told him to walk away from this woman and her methods. He remembered Haider on 9/11. He remembered how he had cheered as the towers fell then joined the celebrations in the Palestinian refugee camps. The fury of that day boiled inside of him.

“Let me help you find him.”

She squeezed her lips into a thin line as she looked away. “God damn it…Come with me.”

Shannon opened the door to what was once a large dining room. Plastic folding tables lined the walls, burdened with monitors and crowded with computer cases. Multi-colored wires ran up the walls and across the ceiling, dropping down to a conference table covered with laptops and maps of the city. Carlos and Mike turned from a large map board as Shannon and Ritter entered the room. Men Ritter didn’t recognize manhandled a huge plasma TV onto a wall mount.

An overworked coffee pot shared space with cardboard boxes overflowing with Pakistani take-out on a corner table. Plates of half eaten food nestled against keyboards.

A fat man pushed his chair back from his computer workstation and jabbed a finger at Ritter. “What’s this un-cleared doing in here?” He spat the words ‘un-cleared’ as though Ritter were some sort of vermin that had crawled into the room.

“Settle down, Tony. Mr. Ritter is read on and will help us out as best he can. We’re short a native Arabic speaker and maybe a fresh set of eyes is what we need.” Shannon said.

Tony shook his head and pulled his chair back to his computer. Ritter did his best to not notice the ring of fat peeking out from under Tony’s shirt, or the gaping plumber’s crack. Tony typed furiously at his computer; Ritter saw a picture of Haider pop up along with several passport type photos of Arab-looking men.

Carlos cracked open a lap top and slid it to Ritter. “Don’t mind him. Feed him a couple pop-tarts and he’ll be your friend forever.”

Tony’s middle finger shot up. Shannon cued a video on the lap top. A frozen security camera feed of an apartment

complex filled the screen. “Here’s what we know.” She hit play and a man with a bowl haircut and round glasses exited the building. “He's one of ours. His name is Jeremy. Three days ago Jeremy left one of our safe houses after a source meeting.”

On screen, a man came around the corner of the house and closed on Jeremy. Carlos shook his head as Jeremy continued oblivious to the approaching threat. “We should never have put him out there. Analysts aren’t field agents,” he said. Carlos pushed a picture to Ritter, a screen capture from the video with the face of Jeremy’s attacker digitally enhanced. Ritter recognized his friend Haider in the photo.

“How do you know this is Haider?” Ritter asked. Carlos glanced at Shannon, who nodded. “Tony fed the picture into a facial recognition database. Haider’s passport photo was a

hit.” Carlos said.“And not one ‘thank you’ for that little miracle!” Tony said. Carlos and Mike both gave

him the finger. Ritter thought for a moment. Haider had never been to the States, why would they have

his photo? “So, how big is this database?” Shannon chuckled. “It has every single passport photo used for international travel in the

last ten years. No, foreign countries do not knowingly or willingly share this information, so keep it to yourself.”

Ritter did the math, “This program got a match in…hours?”

“This is the big leagues, kid. Now pay attention.” Carlos flicked the lap top with his finger.

The video continued as the man ran up behind Jeremy and smashed something into his back. Jeremy arched back and fell as a van pulled up next to them. Moments later, the van pulled away leaving no one behind.

“A day later, a DVD with this video was delivered to our embassy,” Shannon continued. The video switched to Jeremy sitting in front of a blanket, hands clutching a legal pad. A rifle barrel pointed at his head. “If this looks familiar it’s because it is almost exactly how the Daniel Pearl kidnapping progressed.”

Jeremy held the legal pad towards the screen, the words CIA AGENT were scrawled on the yellow paper. Jeremy’s fingers tapped against the pad.

“My name is Jeremy Regland, and I’m accused of being a CIA agent. I’m just a journalist on assignment to Pakistan, if the United States government will free all Muslim prisoners held in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, I will be released. If three hundred prisoners aren’t free within two days—” Jeremy’s voice quaked with fear as he glanced up at his captor “I will be killed.” Ritter watched Jeremy’s fingers tapping, and mimicked the short and long pauses on the table.

“He’s signaling with his fingers.” Ritter said.Carlos huffed, “Not bad, it’s the license plate from the van.”“We traced it to the house where we picked up—” Shannon paused “—the guy we thought

was Haider.”The camera swung towards a man in a ski mask. A red headband with the al-Qaida logo in

script hung low over his brow. The man ranted in Arabic and gesticulated with an AK-47. Ritter leaned in, listening intently. “That’s Haider speaking. Not the Haider I knew, but that’s him, Iraqi accent and everything. He’s complaining about the ‘illegal Zionist state of Israel’ and America’s crimes against the—“

“Yes we’ve had it translated.” Shannon interrupted.“How do they know he’s CIA?” Ritter asked.Carlos rolled his eyes. “We don’t know for sure. It’s just some jihadi fantasy that every

Westerner in Pakistan is somehow in the CIA—““Or the ISI sold us out.” Shannon interrupted, invoking the Pakistani secret intelligence

agency. “Or it was bad tradecraft on Jeremy’s part. Or his lack of resistance training made it easy for him to break under duress.” She looked at Ritter. “We have to operate under the assumption that our entire team is compromised. That’s also why we abandoned our last safe-house; we lost valuable time relocating here.”

“How much time do we have left?” Ritter asked. Tony’s tapping stopped.Shannon glanced at her watch. “The deadline—“ she winced at the word “—his time ran

out six hours ago. Now you understand our haste.”Ritter nodded, then stood and examined the map of Peshawar. Blue flag pins dotted the

map. “What do these pins mean?” Tony called over his monitor “Possible al-Qaida safe houses based off phone records, bank

transfers and our very poor informant network.” Ritter took in the map and looked for any rhyme or reason to the smattering of pins.

“Wait,” he turned to Shannon “why isn’t this all over the news? Doesn’t al-Qaida want some publicity for all this trouble?”

Carlos snorted as he dipped his flat bread into a bowl of orange colored stew, “Perceptive. Maybe he can be trained.” He half-mumbled to Mike, barely loud enough for Ritter to hear. Carlos raised his voice and motioned at Ritter with the corner of his flat bread, drooping with sauce. “They don’t want any heat from the Paki police. When the tape of Pearl went on every news channel in the planet the Pakis were embarrassed enough to get off their asses and shake the tree. This time they sent the tape straight to our embassy.”

Ritter’s brows furrowed, “Why don’t you pass the tape to CNN? Force the Pakistanis to get involved?”

Carlos and Ritter glanced at Shannon. She cleared her throat, “It was,” she rolled the next word out of her mouth slowly, glaring daggers at Carlos, “decided by the program managers that releasing the tape could compromise our presence in Pakistan. If the kidnapping goes public, the government will deny it ever received the tape.” Shannon pushed her chair away from the table and rummaged through a pallet of shrink wrapped water bottles.

Ritter kept quiet as his mind raced. He knew how the Pearl kidnapping ended, that man was dead. If Jeremy had been captured by the same group, then every effort should be made to get him back, according to Ritter’s logic. How could the secret of CLB be worth more than Jeremy’s life? Ritter opened his mouth to object, to argue, to make Shannon see reason, ‘program managers’ be damned.

Mike snapped his head towards Ritter and locked his ice-blue eyes on Ritter. Mike shook his head. Do not pursue.

Ritter’s shoulders slumped in resignation. He looked over the mishmash of Pakistani take away as his stomach rumbled. He’d never cared for South Asian food, and for the first time in his life Ritter longed for a freezer-burned burrito.

“So, where are we on finding Jeremy?” Ritter asked as he scooped lentils and potato curry onto a paper plate.

“Nowhere,” Shannon spoke towards the map as she ran her fingers from pin to pin. “There are too many places to look, and we don’t have nearly enough assets in country to run them all down. Not in the time that he has left. You were supposed to get us somewhere with whoever-it-is in the interrogation room.”

Carlos cursed and quickly left the room. Ritter leaned across the table and sniffed a dish filled with lemons and fish filets. The

smell reminded him of late nights in Beirut and the laughter of a beautiful woman he once knew. Could she be here?

“Is Haider’s wife in Pakistan?”“Which one,” Tony asked.“Badia, she’s Saudi but he and I knew her in Lebanon. Wait, what do you mean ‘which

one’?” Ritter thought he must have misheard Tony. Baida agreed to her father arranging the marriage to Haider, but allowing a second wife wasn’t like her. Neither was moving to Pakistan with a terrorist. Maybe he never knew her as well as he thought he did. He almost convinced her to come to New York with him after graduation, then 9/11 happened and her father developed a sudden affinity for the Wahabi school of Islam.

Shannon, still transfixed on the board, said “Haider married the widow of a prominent al-Qaida member who stopped a bullet with his face during Operation Anaconda. Having multiple wives is common with well-to-do Arabs. You know that.” Ritter snorted. Haider once told him that an Iraqi man’s heart was like a forest; there was always room for another tree. “As for Baida: She’s here, came over with their infant daughter fifty-three days ago.”

“They had a baby…” Ritter felt a jealous bile rise in his throat. A finger snap jolted him from his reverie. “Why do you ask? Is there something useful you

can share?” Shannon’s words were tinged with hope as she looked at him with renewed intensity.

Ritter forced his emotions to leave his face and took a deep breath. “Baida has kidney problems.” Tony peaked over the top of his monitor, his attention piqued by the scent of new data. “She never took medication for it, just insisted that this god-awful Lebanese recipe would cure it. Samkeh harrah, it’s spicy fish covered in tahini paste. It’s worse than it sounds.” Ritter shivered slightly at the memory.

“Point, Ritter. What is your point?” Shannon demanded. “She used to eat it three times a week, and the fish had to be red snapper. She wouldn’t

eat it if it wasn’t cooked Lebanese style. If she’s here, I guarantee you she’s ordering it constantly, and with very specific instructions.” Ritter said.

Tony sat back down and started typing. “Tony will have a list of every Lebanese restaurant in a few minutes. What then?”

Shannon asked. “Then I’ll call each one and see if they can make it just the way she liked it.” Ritter said. “You speak Urdu?” Shannon raised an eyebrow.“No, but I speak French and Lebanese Arabic. Baida won’t eat it unless a Lebanese cooked

it. She’s…kind of racist that way. We could figure out where they’re ordering from, and maybe we can get a delivery address or something.”

“Got the list!” Tony yelled as he yanked a still-printing sheet of paper from the printer. “They won’t have the food delivered, that’s bad trade craft. But it will give us a starting

point.” Shannon handed him a cell phone. “Good thinking, get to work.”

He was in the trunk again. Ritter half-hoped that after calling dozens of restaurants and asking enough careful questions to find the few restaurants that could cook Baida’s fish, just the right way, he would have gained some respect. But, respect did not equate a “need to know” where the safe-house was located.

It took Eric an hour to match potential safe houses against the right restaurants. He’d rattled on about power bills and walking distance and police reports until he identified two addresses. One address was in a commercial district, and was surrounded by “collateral” at all times, according to Carlos. They couldn’t assault that address with their small team, it would require help from the embassy teams as well as Pakistani assistance. Deduction based on a Lebanese menu and housing expenses wouldn’t convince the CIA chief in the embassy to authorize an operation.

The other address was a large house in the suburbs, which Shannon decided, was isolated enough that they could raid it without significant risk to their covers. That’s where the car

was heading, at least Ritter thought so. Riding in the trunk made it hard to know where he was or where he was going.

The ride was rough thanks to Peshawar’s terrible roads and frequent turns as part of what Shannon called their ‘surveillance detection route.’ After enough sharp turns that bumped him around the trunk, Ritter half-wondered if the ‘surveillance detection route’ was an elaborate excuse to drive poorly.

The car came to a stop and the engine rumbled to a stop. Ritter heard the car doors open, then four quick knocks on the trunk. Four meant things were fine. Shannon told him that if the trunk opened suddenly or without the knocks, something was wrong and he should do his best to run like hell and find the US embassy.

Shannon slowly creaked open the trunk, a pensive look on her face. “Come on, Mike cleared the building.” Ritter crawled out and looked around. There was no power in the neighborhood and the distant glow from the city center cast a false dawn behind the row of large homes.

Shannon pressed a flash light into Ritter’s hand. “We have to hurry; the first call to prayer is soon.”

“Did Mike find anything?” Ritter kept his voice low. Waking up the locals with their conversation wouldn’t help matters, it would be even worse if they heard him speaking English.

She led him to an iron gate built into a high wall around a two story house. She opened the gate and slipped inside. Ritter followed her inside. The house was large, surrounded by garbage and an empty chicken coop, delicate feathers smattered across the wire.

“I don’t get this.” Ritter scanned the darkened windows, watching for movement. “Where are Mike and Carlos? Did they find Jeremy?”

Shannon pressed her hand against an ear-piece. “The house is abandoned, but they were here.” She turned on her flashlight; a dull red smear of light hit the ground. “Help me search out here. Look for bills, receipts anything that’ll tell us where they went.” She motioned towards a distant trash heap.

Ritter turned on his own flashlight and swept it across the ground as he made his way towards the heap. Empty soda cans, small plastic bags and to-go food cartons littered the ground. He stopped to pick through a bag that had a yellowed paper-back novel and a few toothbrushes. Another bag, tied into a tight knot, was full of powdered detergent.

The acrid smell of smoldering plastic hit him as a gust of wind blew past him. There was a burn pit next to the trash heap. Something else was in the air, a smell like putrid milk and cheap perfume. Ritter thought he’d found the missing chickens.

The trash heap was waist high and a few feet from the smoldering burn pit. Tightly wrapped used diapers and trash bags made up most of the heap; newspaper and other detritus mortared the pile together. Ritter mashed the back of his hand against his nose as he picked through the trash pile. The newspapers were weeks old and were sprinkled in rancid rice.

He saw the edge of a large legal pad stabbing out from a garbage bag, he grabbed the corner of the bag and pulled. The whole pile heaved as he worked the bag out. He plopped the bag down and tore open the plastic around the exposed corner. A ghastly smell escaped from the bag as he exposed the contents. Nothing but old food and a blank legal pad.

The heap shifted and collapsed in a squeal of stretched plastic bags rubbing against each other. Ritter watched it fall, stepping back to avoid a full diaper rolling towards him like a sick tumbleweed.

He shined his light on the base of the pile and froze. He tried to breath, tried to move tried to call out, but he was petrified. His mind rebelled at what he saw, what was at the bottom of the pile could not be.

A bouncing red light crept closer. “What is it” came Shannon’s loud whisper. Ritter tried to say her name, but only a sibilant hiss escaped his mouth. Shannon ran over and added her light to his. A face peered up from the pile. Jeremy’s mouth hung half open, as though about to tell

how his head came to be at the bottom of a garbage heap. Broken glasses reflected the red light and mercifully hid his eyes from Ritter.

Shannon reached out and lowered Ritter’s light. Jeremy’s face sank into darkness. She raised a hand to her ear. “This is four. We have recovery. Consolidate anything of intelligence value at the car and bring a body bag to the burn pit.”

Three hours later, Ritter weaved his way through morning traffic. Carlos dropped him off a few blocks away, easier now that Ritter rated back-seat privileges. No one suggested he share the trunk with Jeremy’s body bag as they left that house. Shannon was incensed with identifying Haider’s location, which led to his current task.

The only thing he had to do was walk. Carlos made it sound much easier than it really was. Just walk down a busy commercial street in a foreign city in local dress and don’t get caught. If he got caught, then the Paki police and intelligence service would work him over until he spilled his ridiculous, and unverifiable, story of how he ended up wandering down a Peshawar street carrying a briefcase full of surveillance gear and a very illegal pistol.

The briefcase was heavy enough that he fought a lopsided gait. Maybe it wasn’t that heavy, maybe it was the pistol loaded with hollow point rounds hidden in the briefcase that preoccupied his mind. Ritter wasn’t a stranger to pistols, weeks of Basic Training followed by marksmanship training at Officer Candidate School taught him enough to be, as Carlos put it: “more likely to shoot someone else than himself.” Hollow-point rounds were something new. Carlos promised that one round was all it took to end a threat as long as they weren’t wearing body armor.

Tony assured everyone that Haider would be in Rawalpindi or any other major Pakistani city receiving his regular wire transfer from Saudi financiers. Ritter wondered if Baida’s father was somehow involved in those transfers. He’d met the man once, a nasty drunk who thought his newfound devotion to religion would excuse decades of philandering and neglect for his family.

The plan was simple enough. All Ritter had to do was walk down the target street and hope the surveillance gear, which both Carlos and Shannon demurred to explain, would figure out which house Haider was using. They would then pass that information on to the spooks at the embassy and they would handle the rest.

His hand passed over the lump of Pakistani rupees in his pocket. A tight roll of bills held together with a rubber band. Carlos said it might be enough to bribe his way out of a tight spot, but if he was caught with the briefcase then Ritter should “stick your head between

your legs and kiss your ass good luck, Pakis like pretty boys in prison.” Ritter wasn’t sure if Carlos was serious or joking. Neither option filled Ritter with confidence.

The street was a riot of early morning traffic. Street vendors packed the sidewalks selling stacks of flat bread and hawking ruddy looking oranges. Ritter stopped next to a curry shop; the smell of cardamom and turmeric wafted towards him from large bags full of spice as he looked down the street. The target buildings were a hundred yards away, grey concrete buildings loomed over the dirt road bustling with goat laden vans and women obscured by the hijab.

“Why are you stopping?” cracked a voice in his ear. Ritter stiffened at the sudden noise. “God damn it act natural!” Shannon hissed through the tiny ear piece. Ritter took a deep breath and rubbed his nose to mask his mouth as he spoke. “Just how

many ways is this situation unnatural? Wait…how can you see me?” Ritter glanced around; no one was supposed to be anywhere near the target building in case Haider and his cell knew what Shannon and the rest looked like.

“There’s a drone overheard. Stop screwing around and complete your task.” Tony joined in. Ritter mumbled incredulously and stopped scratching his nose. No one mentioned a drone to him, the whole “need to know’ bit was starting to get on his nerves.

The shopkeeper pouring dry lentils into a hanging scale called out to Ritter. Years of watching Bollywood movies taught him enough Hindi, and by extension Urdu, to get by, but he was forbidden from opening his mouth. He wore the local dress, a long tunic, baggy pants and sandals, and his complexion was tan enough from the Arizona sun that he could blend in well enough with the locals, but if he uttered a single word his accent would betray him as a foreigner. Carlos insisted that speaking with a Hindi accent would get a lynch party on him faster than a Western accent. Decades of hate and war in South Asia bred an especially virulent form of xenophobia.

Ritter smiled at the shop keeper and turned away, and looked straight at a passing police car. He let his gaze pass the laconic police officers and walked towards the target buildings as the ice-shock of adrenaline hit his system making his heart pound.

“Stay cool, you’re doing great,” Shannon’s tinny voice half-whispered.Ritter lengthened his stride and focused on the flat bread cart at the end of the street.

Just get to the cart, he told himself. He brushed past an elderly man with a cane and stepped around a pile of manure.

“Stop, we’re getting something.” Tony ordered. Ritter slowed and mingled into a small crowd around a cart selling grilled meat on a stick.

None of the morning’s customers seemed to mind, or notice, the dark stream of raw sewage a few feet from the cart.

“There’s a blue sedan across from you, point the briefcase at it,” Shannon said. Ritter rotated his wrist slowly until the narrow side of the briefcase lined up with the blue

sedan, stopped in the middle of the road. The front passenger door opened, and a large man with a bushy beard got out. He quickly scanned around before his eyes locked onto the distant police car. The man slapped his palm on the hood of the car three times.

“Does this seem odd to you?” Ritter whispered. “Maintain radio silence. We’re watching.” Shannon said as furious keyboard clicks filled

the background of her transmission.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ritter saw the police car drive through the intersection and out of view. The bearded man smacked a closed fist on the top of his car several times. A black silhouette stepped out from an alley behind the car and walked towards the car. Ritter felt his heart beat harder as the figure stepped into the street, and was promptly blocked from view by a huge and garish gold covered truck.

Half a dozen colorful metaphors came to Ritter’s mind as he side stepped around the crowd, keeping the briefcase pointed at the sedan.

The gold truck lumbered off with a cough of exhaust. Ritter and Haider saw each other at the same moment. Ritter hoped that the intervening

years and local dress would keep Haider from recognizing him, but that hope vanished when Haider pointed at Ritter and screamed “CIA! American!”

The large man reached into the car as Ritter squeezed the two hidden switches on the either side of the briefcase. A trap door popped open and Ritter grabbed the pistol, the hammer already locked back. His world slowed to a crawl as he saw the large man pull an Uzi from the car and racked the charging handle with practiced ease. Ritter kept his eyes on the large man as he brought the pistol in line with the man and pulled the trigger.

The pistol snapped up as Ritter fired. He half-lowered the pistol as several things happened all at once. The man stumbled back against the car, his bloody arm clenched against his side. Haider opened the car door and leapt into the driver’s seat, and everyone around Ritter started screaming.

“Go!” the wounded man yelled in Arabic as he tried to raise the Uzi with his good arm. Ritter aimed and fired. The man’s head hinged back as blood and brains splattered against the car. The man slumped against the car, his right foot twitching. The sedan tore off in a cloud of dust, dragging the man’s head against the car, leaving a comet’s trail of gore along the side. The dead man flopped against the ground as the sedan weaved its way through the street, horn blaring.

Ritter started at the dead man lying in the road, a bloody puddle growing beneath his body. He looked down at the pistol, cordite smoke wafting from the barrel. Had he really just killed a man?

A tin shrill broke through the air causing Ritter to put a finger against his ear. Why couldn’t he hear Shannon? The shrill grew louder as he looked around, the crowd was radiating away from him, like a film of oil fleeing a drop of detergent. A second later Ritter realized the shrill wasn’t his earpiece, it was a police whistle.

“Get the hell out of there!” screamed his ear piece. Ritter didn’t care who said it, he turned and ran as the two police officers came running

around the corner. The locals immediately pointed towards Ritter and screamed “CIA!” as he shoved his way past the flat bread cart.

“Do we stay on the asset or the target?” Ritter heard through the ear piece. Ritter looked down the road Haider took and saw the car turn off several blocks away. The locals on this street ducked into stores or behind food carts as they pointed at him. The police whistles grew louder.

Ritter sprinted down the street and saw a young, clean-shaven man swatting at a street urchin who used the confusion to stuff his pockets full of dates. Ritter rushed towards the young man. He looked enough like Ritter that his idea might work.

“Target vehicle pulled into a garage. What’s the play?” Ritter still didn’t recognize that voice as he ran past the young man and tossed the pistol to him. The young man caught the pistol, purely out of reflex. Ritter glanced over his shoulder and saw the police come around the corner and point at the young man, who looked shocked and terrified that he was holding a gun

Ritter put a truck between him and the police and hoped the switch would work long enough to put more distance between him and the cops. “Ritter, was that Haider in the car?” Shannon asked.

Ritter slowed to a brisk pace as public attention focused on the cops and the young man. He felt a bit of pride that he had misdirected the pursuit. The pride vanished a half-second later when he realized that he’d also tossed away his only tool for self-defense. A frantic voice screamed from the knot of people around the cops. “Yes, that was him. How do I get out of here?” Mike and Carlos were supposed to pick him up next to a mosque blocks from the target area. Ritter saw the minaret peaking behind apartment complexes and lengthened his stride.

“Target reacquired!” Tony yelled loud enough to make Ritter wince. Behind Ritter, the police whistles started to shrill. Ritter turned and saw both police

officers running right for him. Ritter cursed as he tried to run, his sandals doing their damndest to trip him up.

“Laze it! Ritter, your extraction is waiting for you, can you make it?” Shannon said. The cops were closing behind Ritter as he raced onto the wide street, the mosque visible

in the distance. The street was packed with vendors and pedestrians, who took a keen interest in the approaching police whistles. Ritter reached into his pocket and pulled out the roll of rupees and removed the rubber band. He tossed the bills into the air as the police rounded the corner.

Pandemonium erupted as people lunged for the bills wafting through the air, and one of the police officers went down in a heap of avarice. The other officer cursed as he shoved past the frenzy.

Ritter kept running towards the mosque, which seemed farther than ever. Carlos and Mike were supposed to be in the same white car that had picked him up from the airport. The fact that the road was full of white cars didn’t help Ritter in the slightest.

The police whistle started again, as Ritter raced past a small truck overflowing with goats. “Um, I’ve got some company!” Ritter said.

A leg shot out of the wall of onlookers and sent Ritter sprawling. He tumbled straight into a parked car. His forehead cracked the rear lights and sent stars across his vision. He tried to stand and wipe blood from his eyes.

“Roku! Roku!” yelled the cop in-between blasts of his whistle. Ritter ducked around the car and crouched. The cop rounded the car as Ritter swung the briefcase up. The briefcase, coupled with the cop’s forward momentum, slammed into the cop’s face with enough force to knock him parallel. The cop fell to the ground and lay still.

A white car screeched to a halt and the rear passenger door flew open. Mike was in the back seat, waving frantically at Ritter. Ritter ran and leaped into the car, Carlos didn’t wait for the door to close before driving off.

Ritter lay in the back seat, exhausted and bleeding. He pushed himself upright and closed the door. “What took you so long, kid?” asked Carlos.

“Rifle!” yelled his earpiece. “What does that mean?” asked Ritter. “It means Shannon isn’t screwing around with your old buddy.” Carlos growled as he

swerved into oncoming traffic. He pulled the earpiece off his head and tossed it onto the empty passenger seat.

A shriek screamed over their car followed by a tremendous explosion. The concussion shattered the rear windows into a million pieces, spraying Mike and Ritter with bits of glass. Ritter saw a black pillar of smoke rise several blocks away.

“What the hell was that?” demanded Ritter. “A special delivery from the drone we have overhead.” Carlos stopped driving left-of-

center and turned down a street with less traffic. Most of the cars had pulled over as their occupants ogled the rising smoke.

Ritter turned away from the carnage. His old friend was dead, he must be. “What have I done?” he asked no one.

“You did good, kid.” Carlos said.

Ritter flipped down his sunshade and examined his bruised face in the mirror. His right eye and forehead had turned shades of purple and yellow in the hours since he hit the car bumper. Carlos had patched up the cut with liquid stitches and assured him it wouldn’t scar over. His head kept up a low throb of pain, muffled by 800mg Motrin tablets. Bruises aside, Ritter wasn’t sure he knew who he saw in the mirror.

“The bruises are an asset.” Shannon said from the back seat. She’d tried goading him into conversation since they arrived at the hospital, but Ritter kept quiet, brooding over the disaster that was the last twenty-four hours of his life. He kept ignoring her, looking out the tinted windows at the flashing lights of coming and going ambulances. How many people in those ambulances was he responsible for?

A strong kick hit his seat. Ritter turned towards Shannon, his face a mask of fury. “What the hell is your problem?” he asked.

Shannon smiled at him. “You’re in a bad mental state, and I had to shake you out of it. Now that you’re angry enough, we can talk. So, what’s bothering you?”

“Oh, I don’t know” his voice dripped with derision, “could I be a tad upset because I shot a man to death in the middle of the street. Maybe it’s all the civilians that died when you dropped a bomb on Haider’s car. Do you know how many innocent people died in the explosion?”

Shannon adjusted the black folds of her nebulous abayya and folded her hands over her lap. “Five, by the last press report,” she recited the number like they were yesterday’s sports scores.

“Jesus, I thought you were worried about our cover. What are the Pakistani’s going to do when they figure out what we did?”

Shannon nodded along as she listened to Ritter. “The bomb won’t leave any forensic clues; the DS&T geeks do good work. The Pakis are treating it as a terrorist car bombing, which aren’t unheard of in Peshawar. As for the air asset, the Paki air defense is a joke, and

not even the Russians could have picked up that drone.” She cocked her head to the side. “Does the collateral damage bother you that much?”

Ritter’s voice was low, “They were innocent.”Shannon leaned forward and rested her arms on the back of the driver’s seat. “After the

Cole bombing, there was a serious discussion over whether we should have bombed bin Laden’s main camp at the Tarnak farms in Afghanistan. Hitting UBL shouldn’t have been much of a discussion, but there were women and children at the camp with him. After an…impassioned plea by a senior CIA analyst, the strike was called off. UBL took our anemic response as a sign of weakness, and he authorized the 9/11 attacks, sure that we wouldn’t go to the mattress over another terrorist attack.”

Shannon’s eye unfocused and her voice became very far away. “Then we lost so many innocents. If we could have stomached a few dead women and children 9/11 might not have happened, and they’d still be with us…all of them.” She snapped back, her eyes and voice hard. “Now, we have purpose. That’s what we do, Ritter, we kill. We kill them where ever we find them, and if unconnected Pakis have to suffer to save American lives: So. Be. It.”

Ritter took in what she said and even though a part of him objected to the suffering of innocents another part of him accepted the killing. Ritter knew that the indiscriminate use of power had unintended consequences but the memory of Jeremy lying at the bottom of a trash heap tempered him. If Haider had escaped, what would he have done next?

“Guilt is not our burden.” She locked eyes with him, and Ritter saw a flicker deep inside her that told him she was lying. She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. Ritter knew she meant to comfort him, but her touch was cold and stiff.

Shannon’s cell phone beeped twice. “That’s us,” she said as she covered her face with a deep blue abaya and opened her

door. Ritter got out and followed her across the hospital parking lot. They avoided the front

entrance and went around to the back. They walked past an access door with no handle and Shannon tapped a rapid code against the door. The door popped open and Carlos waved them in.

They followed Carlos down a dank access tunnel; the smell of stale shit and mildew made Ritter question if of any part of Pakistan was clean. Carlos passed Ritter a small jar with a screw top.

“What’s this?” Ritter asked.“Never been in at third world morgue? Its menthol, blocks the smell.” Carlos said dryly as

he rubbed his upper lip with a milky salve. Ritter unscrewed the jar and applied the strong smelling goop. He passed the jar to

Shannon.They came to a set of double doors where Mike was waiting. A giant sign in Arabic script

contained the word MORGUE slapped on with paint. Mike pushed the door open.A dozen concrete and ceramic slabs lined either side of a long hallway that constituted

the morgue. Most of the slabs were empty; bodies wrapped in white sheets populated either end of the hallway. White strips of cloth were tied around the knees and over the torso, the knots towards the ceiling. The smell of bleach and carbonized meat crept past Ritter’s salve.

“Any problem with the staff?” Shannon asked

“An appalling lack of professionalism,” Carlos said as he rubbed this thumb and forefinger together. “Our John Doe is at the end. Just follow your nose.”

“What about Ritter’s kill? Is he still here?” Shannon asked. A ‘kill,’ Ritter rolled the word around his mind. I’m a killer, he thought. Not a hero. No,

he could never label himself a hero after this day. Carlos held up a paper bag. “Somebody claimed the body a few hours ago. We have our

next lead” he said. Shannon nodded her approval.Ritter followed them down the aisle, each step a growing labor. All he had to do was

positively identify Haider, and this whole nightmare would end. The corpse near the end of the aisle was different, white sheets were draped over the body instead of wrapped; a large round object lay beneath the sheets.

Mike grabbed the end of the sheet and looked back at Ritter, who had stopped several feet away. Mike looked at Ritter, and motioned towards the body with his head. Ritter forced himself to take three more steps closer.

Mike lifted the sheet. The body was burnt beyond all recognition. Ashen white patches of skull, surrounded by

blackened and twisted flesh, glared in the overhead lights. The circular object was a car steering wheel, clutched by skeletal hands. There was no way for Ritter to ID the body, as most of its face was missing; only a dark mass of nightmare fuel remained.

Ritter dry heaved and covered his mouth. “Keep it together,” Carlos said as he snatched a clipboard from the slab and read over the

attached forms. Ritter heaved again, and slapped at his collar bone. “What? Oh, his surgical plate.” Carlos

said as he peered over the body. “Nope, that’s gone too.” Carlos shrugged and turned to Shannon.

“Get a DNA sample. We’ll find something to match it against,” she said to Mike. Mike produced a pair of pruning shears from under his coat and reached for the body’s hand. Ritter turned away as he heard the snap of bone cracking.

Ritter took a slow, deep breath. This was almost over. Carlos cleared his throat. “According to this, the other bodies from inside the car are

here, too.”Ritter spun around. Carlos pointed at a wrapped body two slabs away. “Other bodies? He was alone. I swear!” Ritter replayed the moment Haider got in the car

again and again, there was no way anyone else was in the car. “You mean they were killed in the blast,” Shannon said.Carlos shook his head. “Says here they pulled a woman and an…infant girl… from the

backseat. No identification recovered.” Ritter’s heart skipped a beat. “No…” he whispered. Shannon tugged the sheet from beneath the body’s head and peeked underneath. She

looked up at Ritter. “Is this Baida?”She flipped over the sheet, uncovering a smashed and bloated face. Ritter nodded as he

looked at the long curly hair which lay in bloody strands across the lips that she never let him kiss.

Ritter backed away from her body. He bumped into an empty slab and sank to the ground. She's gone, he thought. The same thought rattled through his mind over and over again as he fought to keep tears at bay.

Shannon covered Baida up with a slight degree of reverence. “We lost track of his vehicle for a few minutes when he pulled into the garage. He must have grabbed Baida and their baby at that location.”

“He was bolting?” Carlos asked. “Reasonable. When he saw Ritter he knew we were on to him.” Shannon turned and

looked at the small bundle on the next slab. “We’ll catch hell for the collateral damage.” Carlos wiped the edges of the clipboard with

the edge of his shirt and placed it back on the slab. “We didn’t know anyone else was in the vehicle. As for the rest, the Pakis think that the

explosion was a car bomb.” Shannon shrugged as she reached her hand towards the small bundle, but hesitated before she could touch it. She clenched her fist and pulled her hand back.

Mike raised the shears. Clack. Clack. “No need. We have what we came for.” Shannon pulled the abaya hood over her face.

“Let’s go.”

His room was quiet. He sat on one of the two cots, staring blankly at the overturned cardboard box that was being used as a table. Ritter wasn’t sure how long he had to wait, or what he was waiting for. In fact, he wasn’t even sure what day it was. Nothing made sense anymore.

Haider. Baida. Their little girl. Part of him thought they would demand more of his racing mind. He helped extinguish that family, but their deaths meant less and less the more he reflected on his long day. Ritter’s mind replayed the moment he pulled the trigger and shot the bearded man. He felt the pistol jerk in his hand over and over, saw the Rorschach smear against the car.

Someone knocked on the door. Ritter pulled his head out of his hands and sat up. “Yeah?” he said. Carlos opened the door, Mike stood behind him. Carlos held several plastic cups in one

hand, and a flask in the other. “Mind if we join you?” he asked, but didn’t wait for a response as he and Mike entered and sat on the cot across from Ritter.

Carlos placed four plastic cups on the overturned box. “We’ve got to hand it to you, kid. You kept it together pretty well today.” He unscrewed the flask and poured three shots.

A strong smell of whiskey tickled Ritter’s nostrils. Ritter looked up at Carlos, “Then why do I feel like hammered shit?”Carlos smiled and passed a cup to Mike, then raised a toast. “To your first!”Ritter shrugged and grabbed a cup. They threw back the shot and Ritter hacked and

coughed as the alcohol burned his throat. “Christ, what is that?” he gagged. Carlos poured more shots, but left the cups on the table. “We only bust out the good stuff

in honor of a first kill.” Ritter felt the booze burn in his stomach and leaned back against the wall.

“Not everyone can pull the trigger like you did, or think on their feet as they run from Paki cops. Most Farm types would’ve been pinched in a heartbeat, but you got it done and we got our man.” Carlos nodded.

Ritter’s eyes clenched as he thought of the morgue. “That’s not all we got.”Carlos pressed a cup back into Ritter’s hand. “It gets easier.” Ritter looked into his drink. “It gets easier to do, or to deal with?”Carlos kicked back his shot and said, “Yes.”Mike cleared his throat and pulled a sheathed knife from his cargo pocket and handed it to

Carlos. Carlos held the knife up next to his face. “In our last unit, a Soldier earns his knife with his first kill. Things aren’t exactly ideal out

here for a proper ceremony. But you earned this. You helped nail the bastard that killed Jeremy.” Carlos and Mike placed their hands over their knife hilts and Carlos held out the hilt to Ritter. “For blood.”

Ritter reached out and grabbed the hilt, Carlos held the sheath in an iron grip. “Say it,” Carlos intoned.

“For blood,” Ritter said. Carlos let go of the sheath. The hilt was identical to the knives he’d seen Mike and Carlos carrying. Ritter slid the

knife from the sheath; it was double bladed and bore an inscription CRY HAVOC. Ritter found the balance point at the hilt and practiced reversing the grip.

Mike nodded slightly and nudged Carlos. “Ha! If things work out maybe we’ll teach you how to use that.” Carlos said. “Work out?” “Shannon’s speaking with, uh, them, about you.” Carlos seemed reticent in his use of

pronouns. “’Them’ who?”“The program directors,” Carlos’s voice lowered “and that had better be the last time we

ever speak of it. Not every secret will make you happy."Several gentle knocks rapped on the door. Mike stood and opened the door, Shannon was

there, back in a more form fitting dress. “You bastards started without me?” she glared at Carlos and sat next to Mike on his cot. Carlos poured her a shot, which she drank without hesitation or a moment’s discomfort.Shannon looked at Ritter and smiled, “You have a decision to make. If you want, we’ll put

you on the next flight back to Arizona, and that will end our relationship with you.” She paused, watching Ritter for a reaction. “Or you can stay with us. Stay as part of the team and fight here in Pakistan, or where ever we’re needed.”

Ritter felt his bruised face and traced the cut on his forehead. “Is every day like this?”“We won’t throw you in to the deep end again, not until you’re ready.” Shannon pulled

out the non-disclosure agreement and clicked open a pen. “So, will you stay or will you go?” Ritter looked at the piece of paper and the pen. “I can’t ever go back, can I? Not to the

way things used to be.”Shannon shook her head and rasped, “No.”“Then I’ll stay.”Shannon tore the paper in half, and in half again and again. “Excellent.” She stood up to

leave.

“Wait, what does CLB mean?” Ritter asked. Shannon leaned in, as if to kiss Ritter and placed a hand behind his neck. She whispered

into his ear “I will teach you a word, but you must never repeat it. Understand?” Ritter nodded. “Caliban.” 

THE END

Ritter's journey continues in the full-length novel INTO DARKNESS, available from Amazon.com on January 21st.

Chapter 1Fear made his hands shake. Private First Class O’Neal would blame the chill Iraqi air if his

fellow Soldiers noticed his palsy. Admitting his fear was intolerable; a fearful turret gunner was a liability to the crew and the vehicle he had to protect. The rest of his crew wouldn’t understand his fear, since they were surrounded by nothing but night and wind.

O’Neal peered over the armored parapet of his turret. He saw the surrounding orange trees, hundreds of faux suns bobbing and swaying in the wind. He couldn’t make out much else through the trees and bushes lining the road. Occasionally, the wind pushed the sound of a distant generator that was powering the feeble lights of a distant farmhouse.

There was nothing to be afraid of, which was the source of O’Neal’s phobia. His mind filled the darkness with black-clad Iraqis bent on murdering him. Whenever he was in danger of nodding off, the danger became an irate drill sergeant waiting to catch him asleep at his post. Despite the armored protection of his vehicle, despite being armed with a belt-fed machine gun and a rifle within arm’s reach, and despite being surrounded by men who would kill and die to protect him, he was afraid.

I’m nineteen years old and still afraid of the dark, he thought. He loathed himself as he imagined the humiliation of admitting his feelings to his buddy, Brown, or his fire team leader, Sergeant Mendoza. They’d probably ask if he wanted his mommy and a new diaper before going to sleep.

O’Neal shook the contents of a tiny bottle of Tabasco sauce onto his finger, then rubbed it into his gums. The pain kept him awake and kept his mind away from the apparitions scuttling through the orange orchard. The distant glow of Baghdad was some comfort; the light pollution seemed to defy the abyss that stretched to the west over the Euphrates River and into the desert.

Something cracked in the darkness. O’Neal clutched his machine gun and squeezed it against his shoulder. His knuckles went white as the weapon trembled along with him. The weapon was oriented toward the rear of the Humvee, not toward the bump in the night. Sergeant Mendoza had told him to keep his machine gun pointed down the road in case some Iraqi decided tonight was the night to drive around after curfew hours. The stacked razor wire along the roadside would ward off any threat to their flanks; at least that was what Sergeant Mendoza had told him.

O’Neal looked toward the other Humvee parked fifty yards down the road. The other Humvee watched over an enormous bomb crater at the nearby road intersection. Insurgents had blown a hole, six feet deep and twenty feet wide, in the intersection, which made

logistics efforts along one of the few paved roads in this part of Iraq a lot harder than they already were. Brigade promised engineers would be out after dawn to fix the road, but someone had to baby-sit the crater until the engineers arrived. The insurgents had a nasty habit of planting bombs where they knew the engineers would work.

So the two Humvees would sit where they were until the engineers showed up and probably stay there until they finished the repairs. At this rate he’d get back to the patrol base for a long-overdue shower by next never.

He ran a trembling hand over the ammo links leading into his M240 machine gun, then keyed the walkie-talkie attached to his armor. “Hey, Ellridge. Time to change sectors of fire.”

No response from the other gunner. “Ellridge, you copy?” Nothing. O’Neal cursed under his breath. If Ellridge had nodded off, there would be hell to pay

when Sergeant Mendoza found out. He thought for a moment, then figured out how he could help his buddy.

O’Neal pushed aside the strap that served as his turret seat and squatted next to Specialist Brown, who was fast asleep while wrapped in a poncho. After a quick glance around the Humvee, O’Neal realized he was the only one awake in the vehicle. He shook Brown’s shoulder until the Soldier awoke with a snort.

“What the hell, man?” Brown said. “I can’t get Ellridge on the radio...The batteries in his radio might be dead,” O’Neal said,

giving a more palatable reason for Ellridge’s silence than being asleep at his gun. “Call him on the platoon net. It’s too cold to get out,” Brown whined. “If I call him on the net, Sergeant Young will think we’re sleeping out here and dick-stomp

us the moment we get back inside the wire,” O’Neal said. Brown rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sighed heavily. “You go. I’ll take the gun for a

bit. I bet your legs need a stretch,” he said as he freed himself from his poncho. BOOM! Ellridge’s Humvee burst with white light. The force of the explosion cracked the

windshield on O’Neal’s vehicle. O’Neal’s driver and Sergeant Mendoza snapped awake to the nightmare of a burning Humvee right in front of them.

O’Neal stared, dumb struck, at the carnage in front of him. Dark figures ran between him and the burning Humvee. It took a blow from Brown to jolt him into action. O’Neal struggled back into the turret and immediately ducked back into the vehicle as bullets snapped over the top of his turret and struck the armored sides of his cupola with hammer blows. He fell on his ass, staring as green tracer rounds zipped through the sky above his turret like falling stars.

Now that he was faced with actual danger, O’Neal’s fear was gone. He pushed himself up to a crouch and waited for a lull in the enemy’s fire so he could get back to his weapon. A round smacked into the ballistic glass of a door, creating an instant spider web of cracks. Through the cracks, O’Neal watched as a bulbous shape made of shadow and nightmare shuffled to the Humvee.

Something smacked against the inside of the turret and tumbled into the crew compartment. A plastic pipe with metal end caps spun in the air in front of O’Neal’s face as he tried to catch it. He fumbled the pipe, sending it into a vacant seat. He reached for the pipe as Brown screamed, “Get it out! Get it out! Get—” 

Chapter 2The brigade operations center went by many names. Some called it the Bridge because of

the three levels of workstations arrayed like stadium seating, all facing a wall with a gigantic map showing the swath of Iraq the brigade “owned” and a quad bank of plasma TV screens. For those who spent the better part of sixteen- to eighteen-hour shifts seven days a week for the nine- month-and-counting deployment, it was the Pit. The junior enlisted Soldiers who worked in the brigade headquarters and did their best to avoid the many senior-ranking officers, those commissioned and otherwise, called it the No-Smile Room.

During the day the operations center was a teapot on the verge of boiling over. A single shooting match with insurgents, a roadside bomb explosion, or a mortar attack on any of the remote bases (or even on sprawling Camp Victory, where the brigade owned its own corner), and the teapot screeched with activity. Calls for fire support, casualty evacuation, situation reports, and intelligence assessments would rocket around the operations center as the brigade command team tried to control a battle it could neither see nor touch. The boiling teapot sputtered with activity until the wounded were recovered, the enemy broke contact, or harried route-clearance teams neutralized the bomb. Then, as if someone had snapped off the burner, the steam from the teapot subsided.

This night the teapot simmered. The graveyard shift had half as many Soldiers on duty as the day shift. Most passed the time watching movies illicitly added to the brigade’s intranet or crafting yet another untruthful e-mail for friends and family back home, assuring them that the war was faraway and that there was no danger. The battalion liaison officers rarely strayed more than arm’s distance from their phones and computers, ready for the phone call that would wreck an otherwise-quiet evening.

Despite the relative calm, Captain Eric Ritter was having a lousy night. Soon after his assignment to the brigade, some enterprising personnel officer had looked over his bio sheet and told the brigade commander Eric was fluent in Arabic. Instead of taking over an intelligence section at one of the battalions or working on the brigade staff, Ritter was promptly assigned to translation duty. There was an impressive backlog of evidence and sworn statements from Iraqi prisoners that needed to be translated, which was why he was up so late at night. And why he was engaged in a frustrating conversation with the brigade detainee manager.

“I’m telling you, this piece of paper isn’t a bomb diagram. It’s a homework assignment from an Electrical Engineering 101 course.” Ritter tapped a finger on a sheet of paper inside a plastic sheath marked EVIDENCE.

“Well, the interpreter that found the evidence is positive it’s instructions for making an IED,” Captain Joe Mattingly said. Improvised Explosive Devices were the insurgents’ deadliest weapon, and any Iraqi associated with them garnered special attention from American forces. His eyes were red but open thanks to the copious amounts of the oily coffee he drank, available from a dirty corner of the operations center. He had two piles of manila folders on

either flank, each bearing the photo and information sheet of a scared-looking Iraqi on the outside.

“I read the sworn statement from that interpreter,” Ritter said. “I’m pretty sure he didn’t finish the Iraqi equivalent of middle school. Look, this is the only piece of derogatory information on this Iraqi, and it isn’t even legit. Why don’t we recommend his release and move on to the next file?”

Mattingly’s eye went wide at the suggestion. He cast a furtive glance toward the uppermost row of seating, where Lieutenant Colonel Reynolds held court. Reynolds was preoccupied, scowling at something on his laptop. “I know you’re new here, but let me explain how this works. Detainee review boards are nothing more than theater. All of these guys”—he patted the top of each pile—“will go to the prison at Camp Cropper. If their file is weak, like this aspiring student’s, they’ll be released in a few months.”

“Wait. What?” Ritter said. “This guy hasn’t done anything to us, but we’re going to send him to Cropper, where he’ll make friends with hard-core jihadis and come back home all pissed off that we sent him to prison? Explain this logic to me, please.”

Mattingly lowered his voice. “It’s all about our percentages. Every other week we report what percentage of detainees we send from our detention facility up the chain to Cropper. If the percentage is low, then Division assumes we don’t know what we’re doing out here. If our percentage is high, then we’re great Americans, and Division is pleased.”

Ritter kept his protests to himself. He was too new to the unit to fully understand the ins and outs of politics on the brigade staff. He could effect change once he knew the players and the game.

“Then why are we going through all these files if their fate is predestined?” he asked.“So that when Lieutenant Colonel Reynolds makes the determination to send him to

Cropper, I can tell him that the file was fully reviewed.” Mattingly scrawled some notes on the bottom of the detainee’s cover sheet and moved the packet to the smaller of the two files. “Every so often Reynolds will let one or two go. A one hundred percent rate would be suspicious. Maybe this guy will get lucky.”

“Good evening, gentlemen. How goes the labor?” Captain Jennifer Mattingly asked as she handed Styrofoam clamshells of food to her husband and Ritter.

“Slow. At least Hercules had a purpose and end state to his twelve tasks,” Ritter said.“Hercules wasn’t in the United States Army. How was the mess hall?” Joe asked his wife.“Madness. There’s always a run on grilled cheese sandwiches and cold fries this early in

the morning,” she said as she pulled an energy drink from her cargo pocket. “I’ll make the next run,” Joe said. A phone rang, and a hush fell over the room. A lieutenant, one of the liaison officers from

one of the six battalions making up the brigade, snatched up the phone before it could ring a second time. The entire room waited for the lieutenant to announce, “Attention in the operations center” and detail the life-and-death situation the brigade staff had to remedy. Conversation resumed as the lieutenant mumbled into the phone and reached for a pad of paper.

Ritter watched as the lieutenant’s hand trembled, his face pale. Ritter focused on the end of the lieutenant’s pen as it moved through the air. Learning how to transcribe another person’s writing was one of the first pieces of spy craft he’d learned from the Caliban

Program. Using those techniques outside the bounds of a sanctioned operation was expressly forbidden, but Ritter didn’t give a damn about what they wanted. Not anymore.

The Caliban Program, a covert arm of the CIA, recruited Ritter soon after he joined the Army. Despite Ritter’s extensive international travel and near-native mastery of Arabic and other languages, the Caliban Program needed him because of his connection to an al-Qaeda operative that had kidnapped a CIA officer in Pakistan. After surviving his first field mission with the Caliban Program, they kept him on board until he “made a mistake and died,” as the team leader so gently put it.

The men and women of the Caliban Program were killers. Killers tasked with eliminating threats to the United States. While most of their targets were individual eliminations with little in the way of complications, the collateral damage from some of their missions included women and children. Ritter lasted three years before he’d had enough of the Caliban Program’s “ends justifies the means” way of doing things.

Ritter wrote down ten numbers before the lieutenant put the phone to rest on the table. The lieutenant didn’t hang up the phone; whoever was on the other end of the call needed information or guidance immediately and didn’t want to wait for a callback.

The ten digits weren’t a phone number; they were grid coordinates. Ritter plotted the grid on the operation center’s map board, where he saw a laminated picture of a Humvee tacked to the spot.

The lieutenant smoothed the front of his uniform with a nervous gesture and climbed the stairs to Reynolds’s perch. Reynolds, his attention still on his laptop, ignored the lieutenant. The lieutenant almost spoke to Reynolds but balked. No one in the operations center spoke to Reynolds without his acquiescence; to do otherwise would trigger a loud and public dressing down featuring the worst in English profanity.

“Something’s up,” Ritter said as he wrote the grid on a yellow sticky note. He left his seat and made his way to the next-lower aisle.

The intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) section managed the brigade’s handful of unmanned drones. The video footage from the drones was streamed to the bank of plasma TVs across from the section, providing the operations center a real-time view of the battlefield. The officer in charge of the ISR night shift, First Lieutenant Cindy Davis, smiled as Ritter approached.

Ritter smiled back, doing his best to keep up the appearance of a friendly conversation. He kept the sticky pad cupped in his hand as he squeezed behind Davis. He knelt next to her, taking cover from Reynolds’s view.

Ritter slipped the sticky note onto the desk next to Davis’s mouse pad. “Act casual,” he said.

“Sure, this situation is totally casual,” Davis said. “Once that lieutenant screws up the courage to speak with Reynolds, he’ll ask for

permission for one of your drones to check out that grid,” Ritter said. “Think we can get a drone over there now and save some time?”

Davis took the sticky note and tapped the grid into a chat box on her laptop along with some quick instructions to the distant drone pilots. A few seconds later, the footage on one of the plasma screens broke off from a leisurely scan of a highway and cut across the countryside.

“No problem. Tonight’s show is a rerun,” she said. She cocked her head to the side, the dark-red bob of her hair shifting to reveal a decidedly nonregulation flower-shaped earring. “Why don’t you sit in the conveniently empty chair next to me? Reynolds is talking to the lieutenant now.”

Ritter scooted into the seat. “Sorry—old, paranoid habits are hard to break.”“Now everyone will think we’re flirting, not reallocating brigade assets without Reynolds’s

permission.” She gave him a wink. The drone footage passed over a white truck speeding along a dirt road.

“Looks like we found a curfew violator,” she said. “Want to follow it?”“Let’s scope out the grid first.” The lieutenant broke away from Reynolds and tromped down the stairs. He thrust a piece

of paper at Davis. “Can you send a drone to take a look at this grid? Dragon Company heard an explosion in

their sector, and they can’t raise one of their observation teams on the net,” the lieutenant said. Davis wrenched the paper from the lieutenant’s iron grip. The lieutenant chewed his lower lip and shifted his weight to either foot as he stared a hole in the TV monitors.

Davis double-checked the grid and gave a suspicious look to Ritter. “We’re already on it.”“What? How—”“Military intelligence officers never reveal their tricks,” Ritter said. “When was the

explosion?”“About thirty…thirty-five minutes ago.”Ritter scratched his head and looked back at the lieutenant. “That long?” Ritter asked.

“When was the last radio contact with the team?” The lieutenant opened his mouth to speak, but then his jaw dropped open. Davis gasped and immediately covered her mouth with her hand. Ritter spun around and

froze with horror. Two Humvees burned on screen. Flames shone as bright as sunlight from the drone’s infrared camera, black smoke billowing from the open doors of the wounded vehicles. A pile of bodies were laid out between the Humvees, their heat signatures dropping to match the ambient air temperature.