Page 59 of Whisper
“And I want you to head to wherever the Shura Nazar are keeping their prisoners. They captured al-Qaeda training camps, bases, and fighters. I want them interrogated, as soon as possible. We need to know what they know. We need to dig up everything at the camps. Everything they were up to.”
“George, may I take Sergeant Haddad with me?”
“Can’t be without your little friend for even a day, can you?” Ryan grinned. Jim chuckled once, but sucked in a breath and shut down immediately after.
It had been seven hours since breakfast. Not that Kris was counting. “Medical care in the Shura Nazar is minimal at best. They’re not going to spare anything for captured al-Qaeda fighters. They didn’t even bury them on the Shomali. If we bring medical care, they might be more willing to talk.”
“Good thinking.” George nodded. “I’ll let Palmer know we need Haddad for this. Let’s get moving.”
He and David were guided to a bombed-out warehouse in a dark and destroyed sector of Kabul. Broken windows let in snow flurries and icy wind. It was too cold and dry for the snow to stick, and it felt like a thousand blades hitting his skin. The al-Qaeda fighters were kept in shipping containers with holes drilled in the sides. They stayed in the dark until pulled out by Shura Nazar guards for Kris to question.
Kris’s stomach turned as the first prisoner came to them. He had a shrapnel wound on his face, over his cheek and curling up to his forehead. Blood and pus matted his head. His face was swollen, his eyes glassy.
“He won’t be able to answer any questions. Not until he’s recovered,” David said softly.
“Offer him medical care. It’s what we can do.”
The man was Saudi, and he gratefully accepted David’s offer to clean and bandage his wounds. He sat stoically through it all, never once flinching. He seemed surprised when Kris revealed he and David were from the CIA. He claimed he had been studying the Quran in Afghanistan and had been caught in the war. That he was innocent.
“You were in Afghanistan studying the Quran?” Kris asked in Dari.
The Saudi frowned, confused. “What did you say?”
Kris switched to Arabic. “Why come to a Dari-speaking country to study an Arabic text?”
The Saudi said nothing.
Kris and David sent him back.
Word spread that the interrogators were giving medical aid. They had dozens of volunteers willing to speak, scores of young fighters lining up for David’s care.
Man after man repeated the same line: that they were in Afghanistan to study the Quran. That they had lost their passport. That they had never heard of Bin Laden.
There simply wasn’t any reason for Arabs, Chechens, Chinese Uighurs, Burmese Muslims, or Central Asian Islamists to be in Afghanistan other than as fighters. Certainly not hundreds of them studying the Quran in a language the Quran wasn’t even written in. How had all these students been so grievously wounded by bombs and bullets? Weren’t they supposed to be studying?
Al-Qaeda had prepped their people well, giving them the same line to use in detention. As long as no one broke, their answers were impenetrable, and without any actual hard evidence—impossible to come by in a warzone—their answers couldn’t be challenged.
David patched them as best he could and sent them back to their cells.
Kris kept questioning each fighter. He could recite their answers now, and he mouthed along with their protests as they delivered the same line again and again.
Until an older Yemeni sat before him.
“Why were you in Afghanistan?”
Silence. Kris frowned.
“I came to fight the infidels,” he said slowly. “The Americans. We knew they were coming for the Sheikh.”
“The Sheikh? Bin Laden?”
“Nam.” David had stitched together the Yemeni’s face, plucking out a bomb fragment. Stitches ran up his cheek, down his throat. He’d narrowly avoided death. Kris’s eyes kept drifting to the stitches, squiggly lines that moved when the man spoke, like he had two mouths, two voices.
“Where is the Sheikh now?”
“He is waiting for you. Where he killed the Soviet infidels. He will kill you, too.”
“George, Bin Laden is retreating to Tora Bora. Where he fought the Soviets in ’87 at Jaji. If we don’t stop him now, he can slip over the border to Pakistan through the mountains.”
