Tom Clancy's op-center_ acts of war - Tom Clancy [108]
"I'm sorry," Ibrahim said. "I belong at your side."
"You will be even closer," Mahmoud said. He touched his chest. "You'll be in here. Make me proud of you, little brother."
"I will," Ibrahim said. "And you be careful."
The men hugged for a long minute, after which Mahmoud walked deeper into the cave to meet with the field commander.
Ibrahim walked toward the makeshift barracks, where he sat on an empty cot and removed his boots. He lay back slowly, stretching toes and leg muscles which were happy to be free of their burden. He shut his eyes. Ibrahim was aware of the soldiers trooping past him, toward the cells.
Siriner would have a "talk" with the Americans. He would torture them. They would break. And then their leader would have nothing to do but help the other Kurds run the computers and drive the van.
It wasn't glorious. He wasn't even convinced that it was useful. But he was tired and perhaps he wasn't thinking clearly.
In any case, he hoped the American did break. He wanted him to capitulate, to cry out. What right did any foreigner have to interfere with the fight for Kurdish freedom? And to take the life of a fighter who had displayed compassion as well as heroism was unforgivable.
He listened as the grates creaked open, as two prisoners were pulled out, as the others shouted from their cells. Their cries were like a campfire on a cold night, warming him. Then his mind drifted to the events of the past day and visions of the storm they would unleash before this day was through. He thought of his brother and the pride he felt for what he was about to do. And the warmth settled over him like a blanket.
* * *
THIRTY-FOUR
Tuesday, 11:43 a.m.,
the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon
When she was a young girl, Sondra DeVonne used to help her father Carl as he worked in the kitchen of their South Norwalk, Connecticut, apartment. By day, he managed a fast-food hamburger restaurant on the heavily traveled Post Road. By night, he mixed ingredients by the bowlful looking for a custard recipe which would taste better than anything else on the market. After two years, he came up with a soft ice cream which his wife sold on weekends at Little League games and carnivals. A year after that, he quit his job and opened an ice cream stand on Route 7 in Wilton, Connecticut. Two years later, he opened his second stand. A few months before Sondra joined the United States Air Force, he opened his twelfth Carl's Custard and was hailed as Connecticut African-American Businessperson of the Year.
Watching her father at night, the ten-year-old girl learned patience. She also learned dedication and silence. He worked like an artist, intense and unhappy with distractions. Sondra always remembered the time he'd gotten so much powdered sugar on his face that he looked like a mime. She'd sat on the small, butcher-block kitchen table for nearly sixty full minutes, turning the crank of the ice cream maker and swallowing back a laugh. Had she succumbed, her father would have been deeply offended. For that long, long hour she kept her eyes shut and sang silently to herself--any top-forty tune that would keep her mind off her dad.
This wasn't her small kitchen in South Norwalk. The man in front of her wasn't her father. But Sondra had flashes of being small and helpless again as her hands were pulled behind her and cuffed to a waist-high iron ring. In front of her, on the other side of the cavern, Mike Rodgers's shirt was cut off with a hunting knife. His arms were pulled up and handcuffed to a ring which hung from the stone ceiling of the cavern. His toes barely touched the floor. As an afterthought, the man with the knife cut a bloody pencil-mustache over Rodgers's upper lip.
In the glow of the single overhead bulb, Sondra could see Rodgers's face. He was looking in her direction though not at her. As the blood ran in streams into his mouth and down his chin he was focusing on something--a memory? A poem? A dream? At the same time he was obviously marshaling his energy for whatever lay ahead.
After a few