Twenty-four Days Read online

  The world swam and his stomach heaved. He swallowed hard and tried to make sense of the blurred image through one slitted eye. Two men—no, one, twice—feet spread, cleaning his nails with a knife.

  How the hell does he know my name?

  He tried for a witty response, but his tongue got in the way, dry and sticky from lack of saliva. Someone yanked his head back and dribbled water through his swollen lips. Water never tasted so good.

  “What’s your name?” Rowe’s voice cracked. His throat burned.

  The man grinned, eyeing Zeke Rowe like he might tonight’s dinner. “I will start. Where is your fellow SEAL, Lt. Cdr. Duck Peters, serial number 523640248?”

  Duck. The brother Rowe never had.

  “Who would name a soldier ‘Duck’?” The man was tall, dressed in a filthy white robe with a ragged turban around his head. He stank of goats and sweat and wore Rowe’s watch.

  “That’s my… time…” He couldn’t think clearly. The Bedouin looked back at someone and Rowe’s left hand exploded. White pain arced down his fingers, up his arm. The trigger finger on his left hand was gone at the first knuckle. Blood pumped onto the parched dirt at his feet.

  “We know he seeks our leader. We would like to know where.” The voice was calm, kind. Not the voice of a madman.

  Rowe gritted his teeth. “Duck… is… what I should have done.”

  Rowe’s favorite story about Duck Peters popped into the SEAL’s fuzzy brain. In the early days of the War, insurgents lobbed a grenade into Duck’s SEAL nest. The man, a month out of BUD/S, threw himself on top of it while he bellowed for his teammates to take cover. He smothered it for five seconds, then five more, but nothing happened. Duck gingerly extracted it from beneath his belly and pitched it back toward the enemy quipping, “There goes the Medal of Honor.”

  Another nod from the Bedouin. This time, Rowe’s right hand burst into white-hot flames.

  “Do you wish to assist yet?”

  “If I don’t …” Rowe panted. “…you gonna chop off…” He paused as a wave of nausea rolled through his stomach. He tried to bend forward so he wouldn’t choke on his vomit, but jerked back at the sight of his finger by his boot. “…another finger? …Get it …over with.” He’d never rat out a brother.

  The Bedouin’s smile was forced this time. His eyes narrowed. “I thought a SEAL’s fingers were important.” He cocked his thumb and index finger to simulate a gun. “I misjudged.” He spoke perfect English with a cultured British lilt.

  Rowe had trouble listening. Saliva dribbled down his lip. Ants attacked his finger stubs.

  A small brown man with a full beard appeared, dragging a shark-toothed Conibear trap. An image flitted across Rowe’s mind of a golden retriever he had found snared in one. Her frantic efforts to escape had torn the muzzle from her face. Rowe had tried for thirty minutes to free her, but she suffocated.

  The little man struggled to lever the teeth open, face dripping sweat, eyes darting from Rowe to the mangy Bedouin. He finally forced the jaws around Rowe’s right knee and let go. A wet crunch announced the bite of metal into Rowe’s flesh. He howled, fingers forgotten.

  The little man had one more task. Rowe flailed, but two goons held him while the yawning maw of a second trap locked onto his other knee. Rowe passed out.

  He didn’t so much regain consciousness as sense pain, like animals chewing on his living body. Rowe tried to move and heard the clang of metal against metal. The Bedouin raised an eyebrow, popped a strawberry into his mouth and fixed Rowe with a questioning stare.

  “I can help you, Mr. Rowe. By now, you should welcome assistance.”

  “From you? Like a case of the clap.”

  The man puckered like he’d eaten a lemon. “What will it hurt? Your friend will not be there anymore.”

  Rowe tried to ignore the throbbing tissue around the Conibear. “He’ll be here soon. Stick around.”

  Which Rowe believed with every fiber of his being. Positions reversed, Rowe would move every sand dune from here to Kuwait to find Duck. “You want to live, let me go before he arrives.”

  When angered, Duck was your worst nightmare. Shoulders like a ledge, fight scars in all the right places, arms that looked like he could bench press a Volkswagen, with a neck so thick it was part of his shoulders. But his physical assets paled next to his brain. Duck had a warrior mindset. He never gave less than full throttle because war killed those in second place. What Duck really knew how to do—and he did it well—was win.

  The Bedouin smiled. “We are invisible. What is it you Americans say—like finding a straw in a haystack?”

  Rowe ignored the fire in his knees and the coppery scent of his own blood, and eyed his tormentor. “Duck’s specialty is doing the impossible.” He kept his voice soft, calm, betraying none of the pain that raged through his ravaged body.

  The Bedouin laughed. “He’s just one man, Zeke Rowe. We are many.”

  Rowe pinned the man with his working eye. “And Little Boy was just a bomb.”

  The Bedouin turned to his left. The small brown man approached Rowe, eyes equal mix of fear and concern. “Tell him. He will not stop.”

  “Neither. Will. I.”

  The man mouthed I’m sorry as he slammed a dinner plate-sized rock against the Conibear trap, driving the teeth deep into tissue and bone. Rowe bit hard on his tongue and tasted blood pool in his mouth. When he still refused to talk, the trap crunched again. And again until his tormentors were too tired to continue and left him for the night. When the camp went quiet, a mangy dog crawled in, so skinny his chest could double as a picket fence. He curled up at Rowe’s side, licked the warrior’s wounds, and disappeared by daylight.

  The interrogation continued the next day and the next, same torture with the same results.

  One morning, something clacked over Rowe’s head and his arms flopped to his sides. He tried to move them without success. He heard a rattle, then a sucking noise and his legs blew up. Pain rippled through his body.

  “You’re not free, American. We have a new game we learned from your Hanoi Hilton.”

  Hanoi Hilton. The North Vietnamese house of torture for captured Americans during the Vietnam War. Rowe kept his face stoic, a mask of disinterest.

  “Duck here yet?” He croaked.

  Rough hands shackled his numb arms and manhandled him to his destroyed knees. Red and yellow puss oozed into puddles that stunk like rotting carrion. He swallowed a scream, rolled over to take the pressure off his broken joints and was kicked back to an upright position.

  “You move, we beat you,” so Rowe stayed, packaged up the pain and stowed it for later. A round three-inch tube of rebar nestled in the craw of his knees, and then his feet were tied together with a length of canvas looped around his hands. Someone yanked and his back arched like a rocking chair, forcing his hands toward his feet. Within moments, the rebar began cutting off circulation to his feet. As the pain burned through his damaged joints, he understood how this would make most soldiers talk.

  But Rowe never considered himself ‘most’ soldiers.

  “Answer and we remove the rebar.”

  “You mean where Duck is?” Thousands of white-hot pins burned Rowe’s arms. He chased the pain and trapped it in a corner of his mind. “Last time I saw him was fucking your mother.”

  The strawberry-eating leader put his full weight on the rebar and Rowe failed to bite back a shudder. Every cell screamed for oxygen, the nerves firing off their last cries for help. Sweat beaded his forehead. Try as he might to hide it, he began to shake.

  The leader laughed. “Tell us, Zeke Rowe, and we release your feet.”

  The voice came through Rowe’s consciousness like rats clawing at an attic floor. He let the world dissolve into sensory overload and planned his escape.

  This group was sloppy. One piece of canvas around ankles and wrists made inflicting pain easier, but if Rowe overextended his arms, almost dislocating his shoulders, he could pick the knot.

 
; The problem was an American SEAL, baddest of the bad, was a prize never left alone. When not being tortured, soldiers spit in his face, slapped him, and laughed at his damaged body.

  Rowe waited.

  One morning, excited chatter filled the air about an American caravan ripe for the picking. The Bedouin leader stuck his head in Rowe’s prison. “You will soon have company,” and left. War cries mixed with the pounding of boots and then faded to silence. Only three tattered, gun-toting teenagers remained to guard the American with the destroyed knees and shattered hands, a man who had been tortured for days, starved, and was considered too weak to be a problem. The choking smell of excrement and gore kept them outside where the air was fresher.

  Rowe had his opportunity. He arched, bone fragments from his cracked kneecaps stabbing into his flesh and muscles. He bit back a yelp, fingered his way down the canvas strip until he came to the knot that connected everything. Without the first knuckle on his index fingers, it was harder than expected, but he cajoled and wheedled until the knot unraveled. As he prepared to slip the ropes from his wrists, the Bedouin leader approached his tent. The man paused to say something to the guards giving Rowe just enough time to pitch forward to his original position.

  When he entered, he stopped and studied Rowe. “Your eyes sparkle. Why?”

  Rowe forced a cough. “I’m sick, you theocratic thug. I need a doctor or I’ll die of whatever I caught from you. Try bathing.” Rowe coughed again, “or stay away from camels.”

  The leader snorted. “I feared we had broken you. That would end the fun.” He picked at a hangnail. “Are you looking forward to company?”

  He stepped forward as he talked, eyes toggling between his finger and Rowe’s face. Rowe had to distract him and did the only thing that came to mind.

  He spit at the Bedouin’s sandaled foot. “You’re the first one I’ll kill when I’m free.”

  The leader stepped back, shocked, eyes on his foot. Rowe rocked back on his heels and scrambled up on rubbery knees. Pain rolled through his body in waves. He tried to focus on the Bedouin, but the figure wavered in and out of focus. One moment, Rowe was standing; the next his knees buckled and he pitched forward, arms stretching for his tormentor.

  The man effortlessly sidestepped Rowe’s clawing fingers.

  “Who untied you?” The Bedouin sounded more surprised than frightened, which meant he’d underestimate Rowe. The man pulled a knife from his belt and waggled it as he advanced.

  Instinct kicked in and Rowe snatched the rebar from under his body and launched it like a spear straight into the man’s left eye. The Bedouin cried out and collapsed, the knife bouncing across the room. The tent door flew up and three guards sprinted in. They froze at the sight of their dying leader.

  Rowe needed a weapon, fast, before these two oafs woke up, but the leader had no gun and the knife had ended up too far away. That left the rebar embedded in his enemy’s skull. He scrabbled forward and wrenched it free as the first guard clumsily unholstered his weapon. Before he could flip the safety and aimed, Rowe hobbled to his feet and swung with a strength he shouldn’t possess. The guard’s head popped like a melon exploding. Rowe’s embattled knees gave up and he pitched forward, snatching the man’s weapon and aiming it at the next guard. With his trigger finger missing, he shot awkwardly but relentlessly until the slide locked open which turned out to be eight shots more than he needed. The third guard screamed and fled.

  But not far. Rowe heard a scuffle, a frantic yip, and then silence. He dropped the empty gun and dragged himself toward the knife. The flap flew open, but Rowe focused on reaching that weapon. A voice he knew laughed.

  “Dammit, Duck. I spent the last three days hiding you from these goons. What are you doing here?”

  Duck Peters carried an M-16 over his shoulder, a 9mm in one hand, and a K-bar and a bag of claymore mines in the other. He blinked as he stuffed the handgun into its holster and the knife into his belt.

  “Usually you only need one round.” His voice caught.

  Rowe raised his hand. “I had to adapt,” then asked, “Did you get him?” Meaning the radical Islam leader responsible for the bomb that destroyed a Marine caravan of fifty-two souls.

  Duck glowed. “Dragged him right out of his spidey hole. He only had fifteen guards. Half my team never fired a shot.” A team was six. Pain cut the big man’s face. “I bet you feel better’n you look.”

  He ripped the dead Bedouin’s robe into strips and then wrapped them gently around Rowe’s knees and hands. “Can you make it?”

  Rowe labored to his feet. “If I didn’t plan on making it, why let them take my fingers.”

  “OK then. Let’s hurry. Even these idiots will soon realize they were tricked.”

  It hurt to chuckle, but Rowe did. “I see. No American caravan ripe for the attack?”

  Duck chuckled. “Remember that techie geek, Eitan Sun?”

  Using the rebar like a crutch, Rowe snatched his watch from the dead man’s wrist, then hobbled to where his backpack had been thrown a lifetime ago and hoisted it over his shoulder. “He’s a myth, Duck—”

  “Yeah, well that myth hacked their communications, alerted them to an American medical convoy passing through,” which meant, lightly armed, “and then blocked the lines so they couldn’t verify it. They took the bait.”

  Rowe hurt everywhere, from his head where the bullet grazed him to his hands with their raw stumps to his shoulders and chest. But his knees hurt the worst. He tried to move quickly, but settled for a shuffle.

  Duck offered a shoulder, but Rowe brushed it away and focused on placing one foot in front of the other. They got a mile before barking registered through Rowe’s fierce concentration.

  “It’s the damn dog.”

  “What damn dog?”

  “I made a friend there.”

  He stopped long enough for a mangy mutt more bones than bark to limp up, dragging one leg, tongue lolling, tail wagging furiously as though he discovered a bone burial ground.

  “When they finished beating me for the day, this little guy came to visit. I think he hates them as much as I do.”

  The wretched creature looked exhausted and hungry, but leaped up on Rowe as though to say, Did you forget me?

  Rowe winced. “Careful, buddy. Sore knees,” but he scratched behind its ears, and then placed it tenderly in his backpack. It yipped contentedly until it fell asleep.

  Zeke Rowe jerked awake. The sheets wrapped his legs in a tight knot. Sweat swathed his body and his head pounded. Somewhere, a bell chimed. His hand patted under his pillow where he kept his pistol—gone. He stared hard into the darkness, wondering who knew where he stowed his weapon.

  And remembered. No more SEALs. No more target on his back. No more gun under his pillow.

  He blinked hard and the room swam into focus—double bed, chest of drawers that belonged to his Grandma, the roll top desk he bought to commemorate the beginning of his academic career. Was the chair in a different spot? No. He moved it last night so he could see the park where he and Survivor spent hours exploring. The dog was the only plus to come of Iraq. He still missed him.

  Kali rustled next to him. “Get the phone,” and curled back to sleep.

  Rowe knocked the clock off the bedside table trying to get to his cell. 2:13 a.m. August 7th. Ten years since his capture and it felt like yesterday.

  “What?” An empty line and then a click, like the last time and the one before.

  A dog barked. Why would a dog be awake at this hour? Rowe crawled out of bed and peered through the window, thought he saw a shadow and then it disappeared.

  He rubbed his sore knee. Why the nightmares again? The shrink called them guilt for killing so many, but Rowe carried no guilt. He defended himself, his buddies, and his country. He felt no shame being that man. If not for the medical discharge, he’d still be one.

  But he wouldn’t have Kali. They met last year when her son was kidnapped by a terrorist to force her to give up an artificial
intelligence she had created. Rowe had stopped the madman, rescued Kali’s son, and surprised himself by falling in love. What such a beautiful mind saw in a damaged soldier like him was a mystery but every day, he tried to show her she made the right decision by turning his back on the best life he’d ever lived and starting over.

  Except Duck. There, he made an exception.

  Rowe picked up a picture of the two of them on his last paleoanthropologic dig. His smile was genuine, eyes glinting with happiness, shoulders relaxed, with none of the telltale scrapes or cuts every SEAL wore like badges of honor, no wariness to his face from searching out the closest escape route. He brushed his truncated finger along the curve of her cheek, over the firm jawline, and wondered what she saw in him.

  He quietly pulled on shorts and a top being careful not to awaken her, got in his car, and left.

  Chapter Two

  Day Four, Thursday, August 10th

  HMS Triumph, six hundred miles from Devonport, England

  Eyad Obeid wiped Vaseline up his nose. The smells on HMS Triumph made him nauseous. The cleaner—Amine—might keep the air breathable, but the stench clung to his clothes and hair like stale cigarette smoke, not to mention the constant drone of machinery.

  Twenty-four hours had passed without a problem. Obeid expected to be miserable, but found he enjoyed the sub. For the first time in his life, he felt important. He wracked his brain for a way to stop what al-Zahrawi had started. Otherwise, he would share responsibility for everything about to happen.

  How had his bright dreams come to this?

  Out of the eight hijackers, four were PhDs like Obeid, participating to fulfill the jihad required of all Muslim males. The other four—radical theocrats from Kenya—were thugs, but what they lacked in intellect they more than made up for in physical strength. Obeid begged his colleagues to help, but they refused. When he tried to talk to the Captain, he was too busy getting ready for the war games. In desperation, Obeid snuck into the communications room, but lacked the proper passwords to send a message.