? ? ?

Court woke suddenly to the sound of a man calling out in shock and fear next to him. He recognized the man’s voice. It was Broz, the Croatian mercenary. He’d obviously kept his own mouth shut all night long to hide the fact that he was a European, a non-Muslim, and thereby would suffer more at the hands of these monsters.

There was a small amount of light coming through his bag, and he thought it must be morning now.

Court could hear Broz being dragged away, out of the room, and as soon as he was pulled away, Court felt hands grabbing him. He was yanked roughly to his feet, frogmarched out of the room, and shuffled ahead.

He heard a wooden door open and he was turned, walked along a moment, then pushed down on a chair. Seconds later the door he’d entered through slammed shut. His bag had been left on his head, but even through it he felt the presence of someone standing in front of him.

This would be an interrogation, of this Court was sure. He wasn’t going to reveal to anyone here that he was an American. If these assholes were going to execute him, they weren’t going to do it with the special fanfare reserved for high-profile Islamic State prisoners. No, he’d rather get his head chopped off for a small crowd and his body dumped in a sandy ditch and be forgotten than show up on YouTube in some insane music video–style execution.

A man spoke to him now. It was in Arabic, of course, but Court understood the words. “What is your unit?”

Court did not reply. If he said anything in Arabic, that would be just the same as indicating he was a foreigner, because he couldn’t fake the accent, dialect, or language skills of a native Arabic speaker.

He felt a blow on the side of his head. “Hey! What is your unit?”

Still Court didn’t reply. The man stepped away, then muttered something to someone in the room, but this Court couldn’t make out.

Again the interrogator tried. “You were with the Desert Hawks, but you don’t wear their uniform. Where do you come from? Are you Syrian?”

It occurred to Court that if this asshole just pulled the bag off Court’s head he’d probably be able to figure out for himself that he wasn’t a local.

He received another smack to the side of his head, and although he had fantasies about launching himself up and head-butting his interrogator into a coma, he did not react to the hit.

From the far corner of the room Court heard the sound of a wooden chair being pulled across the concrete floor slowly. He tracked the sound all the way up to him; whoever was dragging it along was making a dramatic show of coming closer, slowly and ominously. The chair stopped just a couple of feet in front of where Court sat, and then it was swung around; again Court could hear its placement by the scraping sound.

The wood creaked as an obviously large man sat down on it.

It was already dark inside the bag, but it suddenly got even darker, as the man seated in the chair in front of him leaned right into his face.

Nothing was said for several seconds. Whoever this guy was, he was patient, intense, and he knew how to intimidate a prisoner.

Finally he spoke.

“English?”

Court did not reply.

A few seconds later, the man repeated himself. “English?”

Despite his decision to show no reaction to his interrogator, Court cocked his head a little. Something was off about this guy’s accent.

The man spoke a third time, and this time as soon as the words left his mouth, Court felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck, because the accent was unmistakable now. “Hey, dickhead. I asked if you spoke English.”

This asshole was from the United States.

Court hesitated just a moment, and then he replied, “Dude, you take this bag off my head, I’ll quote Shakespeare.”

The bag came off slowly. Court blinked away the brightness of the room, even though the only light came from a large opening in the plywood ceiling of the stone block room that looked like it had been created by a direct hit from a mortar round. He then focused his eyes on the man sitting three feet in front of him. He was American, clearly, in his late twenties or early thirties. He wore a gray T-shirt under tan body armor. There were tats on both forearms, and he had sandy brown hair and a thick beard that looked like it had been growing for months.

His green eyes looked at Court with absolute suspicion, but Court was almost overcome with relief. The man wore no insignia on his gear or clothes, but he was clearly a member of the U.S. military.

The man said, “Well, well. Aren’t you an interesting son of a bitch? What’s your name, Slick?”

“Why don’t you just call me Slick?” Court found he could barely talk, his throat was so dry.

“All right then, Slick. What’s your story?”

He swallowed roughly, then said, “No story. Just passin’ through.”

“Sweet. Thanks for dropping in on our little corner of paradise.”

“Pleasure’s mine. Got any water?”

“Yeah, loads. But we don’t hand it out to terrorists.”

“I’m not a terrorist.”

“Oh, cool. Then I guess you can go.”

Court looked past the American and saw a half dozen smaller Arab men back by the door of the dim room looking on. Some had AKs and some were unarmed, but to a man they all wore black tracksuits with no uniformity, and some wore headbands. They looked like a sloppy soccer team.

A couple had short beards or mustaches, but most were clean-shaven.

Court could tell in an instant this wasn’t a jihadi group, like he’d first thought when he saw them from a distance in the low light the evening before.

No . . . these guys were likely FSA, the Free Syrian Army. And this was the best news he’d had in a very long time.

Court tried to determine exactly who the American was now. Most likely he was U.S. Army Special Forces, a Green Beret, though he could have been from one of the “White Side” SEAL units, or possibly even the Army’s special-mission unit, commonly referred to as Delta Force.

The bearded man just looked Court over, saying nothing, so Court added, “Let me help you out. This is the part where you ask me who I’m working for.”

The man smiled. “Is it? Okie-doke. Thanks for the tip. Who are you working for?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Is that because you’re workin’ for ISIS, workin’ for Jabhat al Nusra, or working for the SAA?”

“None of the above.”

The big American stood up fully, reached into his belt, and pulled out a pair of thick contractor gloves. As he began putting them on, he said, “Let me tell ya ’bout a little unwritten rule we have around here when it comes to prisoners.”

“Can’t wait.”

“Talk shit . . . get hit.”

“I wonder why you haven’t written that one down.”

The soldier laughed, genuinely enjoying the repartee. “Bunch of tightasses at the State Department and Pentagon send us memos tellin’ us we can get in trouble for coldcocking a prisoner without cause, but somethin’ tells me I can get away with it as long as the prisoner is another gringo. I think I might have to bust your smartass mouth just to find out.”

Court smiled. He liked this guy. “You’re SF. Fifth Group? Third? No . . . you’re Tenth Group.”

The American blinked when Court said the third number, so faintly the man didn’t realize it himself.

Court said, “Yeah, Fort Carson, but doubt you’re seeing much of Colorado these days.”

“Who the hell are you?” the man asked. He sat back down in the chair, forgetting about his gloves and his plan to punch his prisoner in the face.

“Can’t tell you that, but I bet you twenty bucks I can guess your name.” Court squinted in the sunlight beaming through the hole in the ceiling, looking over the man’s face. “Bobby? Billy? Randy . . . Ronnie? You look like a Ronnie.”

The bearded man now made a slight but obvious reaction.

Court took this to mean he’d nailed it. “Okay, Ronnie. How about you have one of your little guys back there bring me some water? It will help me talk.”

The American in the body armor called out to the men behind him without taking his wide eyes off his prisoner. “Meyah lal shereb!” Water!

A young man with a wispy beard and a shiny black Adidas jacket with white stripes pulled a bottle of water out of a pack on the floor and brought it over. He spoke English to the soldier as he handed it to him. “Who is this guy?”

“Dunno yet.”

Court was not untied, but the American soldier squirted several ounces of water into his mouth. Court drank it down, closing his eyes a moment as he let the water bring him back to life. Then he said, “Ronnie, you’ve got a tough job. But I’m going to make it a little bit easier today.”

“Are you?”

“I’m going to give you a phone number that will connect you to an office building in McLean, Virginia. Call it yourself, or kick it up to your command and have them call it. This will get straightened out and I’ll get out of your hair.”

“McLean, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re saying you’re CI—”