2002

Lieutenant Eric Ritter was well and truly lost. When he pondered where he was, the

answer was simple; he was on a private plane. He had no idea where the plane was or its final

destination, which brought him back to the conclusion that he was indeed 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. He hadn’t seen any sign of urban sprawl for

hours. 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 a

stern “Return to your seat!” over the P.A system. The only doors open to him were the lavatory

and a refrigerator stocked with soda and freezer-burnt entrees. 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 became a trend once a rather well-built major intercepted

him outside of the Fort Huachuca lecture hall. 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 even sign out with

the orderly room. 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 scrambled through his disheveled bachelor pad grabbing things

he thought he might need. Ritter changed into civilian clothes and gathered a small bag of

toiletries. Ritter almost 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, stairs 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 of 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. Not for the first time, he wondered if there was a pilot and

copilot 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 speculating, 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 in 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, made Ritter

wonder what kind of airline he was flying on.

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 a 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 with a click.

Florescent light and the whine of recycling engines invaded the cabin as the stairs slowly

lowered and the door opened. The plane was in a rusted hanger with oil stains marring the bare

concrete. A beat-up white sedan sat in front of an open car port door. Ritter grabbed his bag of

toiletries and tentatively 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. Ritter saw a pistol in a holster under his left arm.

The man stopped arm’s length from Ritter and looked him over, “You better be Ritter.”

His eyes were tired and he had a 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, which was completely lined with carpet.

Ritter tried to step around Carlos in order to make his way to the passenger door but

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 feeling of

falling before slamming into the trunk. He was more shocked then hurt. Then 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 that the current homeowners just didn’t

care.

Compared to the trunk of the car, the room was a step up. He wasn’t able to 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 house’s 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

trailing 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 tired eyes.

“My name is Shannon. Your name is Lieutenant Eric 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

and officer’s candidate school then commissioned into Military Intelligence. You were all of two

weeks in to your basic course before we procured you.” She recited all of this by memory, which

unnerved Ritter. 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,” he said.

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 Non-Disclosure Agreement. 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. Haider joined Al Qaeda? How could his old friend, who’d never

been an advocate for anything but non-violent resistance, join a terrorist organization?

“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 disturbing 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 cut out of the fabric stared at Ritter.

“What? You want me to a rob 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

shrinks 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 on a plane and none of this ever happened.”

*****

Ritter fiddled with the ski-mask that he had pulled over his head 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. Not that this was the time or

place to voice such a complaint.

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 otherwise

bare 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 walked 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 Congressman Hawker, his father’s old friend, once this was finished.

Ritter moved through the bare room as the man sank back down, 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.

He had to get Haider’s attention and then show his face, just as Shannon instructed.

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 Haider’s body.

Ritter rubbed his hand along Haider’s collar bone leaving a filthy smear as Haider

mewled in protest. Ritter held Haider’s head back for a second; then let him go. Haider collapsed

against the chains and swung like a heavy punching 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 he saw her head nod. “Maybe I can still help you find him.”

Ritter couldn’t see it, 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 can get to a unit deploying to

Aghanistan. 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. 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.” She reached out and grabbed his

forearm. “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. He yanked his arm away from Shannon.

“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, snarled with monitors and 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 seen before 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. Errant plates of half eaten food were 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.” Tony shook his head

and rolled 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 his 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 laptop 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 laptop. 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. “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 quickly nodded her head.

“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. And 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 laptop 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 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.

Shannon glanced at her watch. “The deadline”—she winced at the word—“his time ran

out six hours ago. Now you understand the haste.”

Ritter nodded, then stood and examined the map of Peshawar. Blue flag pins dotted the

map. “What do these pins mean?” Ritter took in the map and looked for any rhyme or reason to

the smattering of pins.

Tony called over his monitor, “Possible al-Qaida safe houses based off phone records,

bank transfers and our very poor informant network.”

“Wait,” Ritter turned to Shannon “why isn’t this all over the news? Doesn’t al-Qaida

want some publicity for all this trouble?” he asked.

Carlos snorted as he dipped his flat bread into a bowl of orange 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, while 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, beheaded and chopped into peices. 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. But, moving to Pakistan with a

terrorist wasn’t like her either. 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 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—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 asked.

“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.” Tony plopped 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 with a need to know

where the safe-house was located.

It took Tony 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 get the Chief of Station 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 cover. 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 rout 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 are.” 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 not, had a fist sized knot of 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, Carlos weaved his sedan through morning traffic with Ritter sitting in

the passenger seat. This mission warranted non-trunk riding privileges, getting in and out of a car

trunk in the middle of the day on a busy street was suspicious in any country.

Carlos stopped in the middle of traffic, heedless to the horns of protest that spawned, and

Ritter got out of the car.

The only thing he had to do next 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, who despite his issues with personal hygiene, was a genius analyst and had

convinced Shannon that Haider was at the safe house they hadn’t investigated in the early

morning hours. A number of money transfers to a hawala, the ancient version of Western Union,

from a suspected Saudi financier corresponded with the location. 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 criminal

acts.

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 Chief of

Station and the rest of the CIA in Pakistan would handle the capture.

Ritter’s 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 jolted upright 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. “How is

this situation natural? Wait… 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 lentils into a hanging scale called out to Ritter. Years of

watching Bollywood movies taught him enough Hindi, the lingua franca of India which was

closely related to Urdu, the language of Pakistan, 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

Hindi 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 garish 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 either

side of the briefcase handle. 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 rack 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 along the length of the car, leaving a comet’s trail of gore along

the side. The dead man flopped against the ground as the sedan slalomed 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 on water fleeing a drop of soap. 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. “I could use some help here!”

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 to be 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. Where’s my extraction?”

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 again. 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 from 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 from 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 flat. 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. Mike’s eyes widened in surprise at the word.

“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.

A shriek screamed over their car followed by a tremendous explosion. The concussion

shattered the rear window 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 to 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 grape and old banana in the hours since he had 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 railed.

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 his feelings. 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 her 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 any part of Pakistan was clean. Carlos passed Ritter a small jar with a

screw top.

“What’s this?” Ritter asked.

“Never been in a third world morgue before? Its menthol, blocks the smell.” Carlos said

dryly as pointed to a milky salve on his upper lip.

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 shrouded bodies,

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 sheet of paper. “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 blackened 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 report, 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.

Shannon covered Baida up with some 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 her hand reached towards the small bundle, but

stopped before she touched 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 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 right 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 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, do we have a name? 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

From the Author:

Thank you for reading THE CALIBAN PROGRAM! Please leave an honest review of the story, I want to improve my writing and your feedback is important to me. Interested in news about new releases? You can follow me on:

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Novels in the Eric Ritter Military Thriller Series:

1. INTO DARKNESS

2. THE SOCOTRA INCIDENT

3. DEBTS CALLED DUE (Coming Soon)

Also by Richard Fox:

THE RED BARON: A NOVEL OF THE GREAT WAR