He had managed some sleep, but he woke thirsty and stressed. The cuts to his face and head stung and had been joined by dozens more scrapes and bruises where he’d been roughed up by the guards.
This was not because he’d been singled out for special treatment. He had not. In fact, all the prisoners had been forced to march down a long hallway with their hands tied behind their backs while, standing along the walls, a dozen ISIS men used their feet, fists, and rifle stocks to beat the prisoners as they passed.
Court looked to find the Terp in the crowd. The young Syrian was there, just feet away, his own face black and blue, but his eyes open and alert.
The young man leaned closer to Court and spoke softly in English. “I wish I knew what happened to Azzam yesterday.”
Court said, “If he were dead, these guards would probably be talking about it.”
“True, but if it happened at a Russian base, they could keep it quiet for a day.” He thought it over. “I think.”
Court shrugged. “I guess you and I will never know.”
A guard walked up to the bars and began shouting to all the prisoners in the cell. He went on for a couple of minutes without stopping; Court couldn’t make much of it out at all, and what he did understand didn’t tell him anything about his predicament.
But he could see the fear and dread in the eyes of the others.
When the man left, Court looked at the Terp. “That didn’t sound good.”
The young man had a similar look on his face, although he tried to hide it. “We will be taken to a lake in an hour. Then we will be shot and we will be thrown in the lake so that it will be fouled with our corpses. Daesh is pulling out of the area, but they want to poison the water. A camera crew will film it all to show the world that ISIS is still fighting in Syria.”
“That’s nice,” Court said, leaning his head back against the wall.
The Terp said, “Somehow I made it through seven years of war without getting killed.” He smiled at the American. “Today I will finally find peace.”
Court said, “Glad you’re cool with it. I, on the other hand, am pretty annoyed about the whole thing.”
The Terp was interested in this. “Why? Is your mind troubled?”
“When they kill me, that means they win and I lose. That means one more of those sons of bitches doesn’t die at my hand.” Court shrugged. “That pisses me off.”
The young man said, “You were a lion yesterday. You are a true warrior. Even if we didn’t get Azzam, we showed him this land will never be safe for him.”
“Thanks, kid. You were pretty badass yourself. What’s your name?”
The Terp smiled. “Abdul Basset Rahal. You can call me Basset.”
* * *
? ? ?
Three hours later Court knelt by the lake, his head down in accordance with the orders of the men with the guns all around him. Once every forty to fifty seconds he heard the crack of a rifle, and the splash of a man falling into the lake.
A cameraman stood on the edge of the pier, and a second was positioned in a rowboat in the water. The gunmen were mostly behind the prisoners, except for the two walking the condemned up the pier and the lead executioner himself.
Eventually Court felt the guards cut him off the long rope lashing the prisoners together, then they yanked him to his feet by his shoulders. He was pulled through the brush at the water’s edge, his feet just skimming the ground for the first few feet before he found his footing. Cord was wrapped tight around his wrists in front of him.
Behind him Basset shouted to him, but in Arabic, and Court missed most of it.
He’d picked up the words “friend,” “fight,” and “die.”
Yeah, Court thought. That encapsulated the situation well enough.
He heard the crack of an AK’s stock as it pounded into a head, and he figured the poor interpreter had taken another beating for saying good-bye.
Court ignored what was going on behind him and listened to his footfalls on the pier, counting them off. He passed the photographer on his right; the man was bored now, beyond the thrill of killing, just focusing on his job.
Then he looked up to see the executioner beckon him on.
At the end of the pier Court was pushed down to his knees; they slipped in the slime a little, but he caught himself.
The executioner was off Court’s right shoulder; the two guards were each a step behind him, one on the right and one on the left, and from the sound of the movement of the sling swivels on their rifles, he could tell the muzzles of the weapons were within a foot of the back of his head, at 45-degree angles, equidistant.
The executioner himself raised his weapon and the sling swivels told Court where it was in relationship to his right ear.
Court relaxed the muscles in his back and legs, brought his shoulders back and his head up, and fixed his eyes in resolution.
“Here we go.”
Court launched up from the kneeling position, pushing off with his left knee, spinning him in the air to his right. His arms fired out, the cord he’d managed to untie an hour earlier fell to his side. His hands swept around while he spun, and when he faced up towards the sky he arched his back, pulling his head back and down towards the dock, and his fingers clutched the barrels of the guards’ AKs, holding them tight near the front sights. He shoved the weapons up and formed an X with them, and as part of the same movement he jerked both rifles hard.
The executioner had been startled by the blur of movement in front of him but he pulled the trigger now, just as both guards fired their weapons at the exact same moment. The executioner’s bullet passed within four inches of Court’s face, scorching his beard and cutting his lip with tiny bits of unburned gunpowder racing out the weapon’s muzzle at two thousand feet per second.
Because of the X orientation of the two guards’ weapons at the moment their rounds discharged, the men shot each other. Bullets ripped point-blank into one guard’s lower torso and the other guard’s genitals. They both teetered backwards off the side of the dock, and as soon as Court landed on his back on the wooden slats, he grabbed the executioner’s rifle with both hands and yanked hard across his body, tipping the executioner over his body because he was caught by the sling around his neck.
The two guards splashed into the water as one, and just as the executioner shouted out, he, too, fell face-first into the lake.
Court rolled off the dock to his right, following the executioner off the boards. He crashed into and then disappeared under the bloodred surface of the water.
* * *
? ? ?
Basset had heard the gunshot, then the splash, and he knew it was his time to die.
Then he heard the shouting . . . and the second splash.
He looked up, his eyes focused on the end of the dock just when the American rolled from his back off the pier, fell one meter down, and belly-flopped into the water.
Around him the ISIS fighters began spinning towards the dock, their guns rising in front of them.
Basset had two guards just behind him; they were taking him to die next, after all, and now they opened fire on the lake at the edge of the pier. Both weapons were extended over Basset’s kneeling form, so he stood up between the guns, leapt back, and yanked other men tied to him as he went. The two ISIS gunmen fell to the ground under the scrum of prisoners, and the prisoners kicked and bit and elbowed and shouted as they fought with them. Other men on the rope line fell back or jumped back, knocking into gunmen standing close to them.
* * *
? ? ?
Underwater, Court grabbed at the eyes of the executioner with one hand while he pulled on the AK with the other hand. The water was fifteen feet deep here, dark and brown, so Court felt his way forward, vying for the rifle before the man recovered and thought to reach for one of the ornamental knives in his belt.