25

The Egyptian never saw it coming.

In a blinding fast move, the woman in chains reared back her head and just as suddenly shot forward, smashing her forehead into the center of his face.

Al-Masri heard the cartilage in his nose crack. Everyone in the room heard it. The force of the blow sent him flying backward. The back of his head snapped down hard against the concrete floor and blood began pouring both from his nose and the back of his skull. For several seconds, he couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t move. Everything went black. But only for a moment. When he reopened his eyes, everything was blurry. The room was spinning.

Al-Masri heard the boots. He could see his men rushing toward him. Yet he held up his hand and cursed them in Arabic not to come one centimeter closer. Finding the hood lying on the floor to his right, he grabbed it and pressed it to his nose. A shock of immense pain jolted his body. Blood covered his face and shirt and much of the floor around him. He forced himself to his feet, staggered a bit, then stared at the woman who had, just a moment before, been the object of so much desire.

Then, still holding the hood to his nose to stanch the bleeding, al-Masri turned to Zayan, his most trusted aide, and growled at him in Arabic.

Kailea had no idea what the man had said.

Part of her hoped al-Masri had issued the command to kill her. But she doubted she was so lucky. Though determined not to show it, she was terrified by what this psychopath was about to do. Yet she knew it was nothing compared to what the Iranians were probably planning to do to all three of them once Hezbollah turned them over. She had no doubt that if she survived these few days, she would soon be transferred to Tehran. They all would be.

Left to their own devices, Hezbollah’s leadership would likely try to make a deal to secure the release of thousands of jihadists held in Israeli prisons and at Guantánamo Bay. And at some point, she figured, Jerusalem and Washington would probably give in. The Iranians, however, would never make such a deal. They had no interest in making a trade. They were out to humiliate the Great Satan. They would torture the three of them in the most inhumane manner, extract every bit of intelligence they possibly could out of them, then hang them from cranes in the heart of the capital, leaving their naked bodies dangling there to decompose in the summer heat, to be gawked at by the people and picked apart by birds.

If she was doomed to die anyway, she preferred to die here and now.

Al-Masri’s chief thug came toward her and towered over her. He motioned for the other guards to lift her to her feet. When they did, the man pulled out a hunting blade from a leather sheath on his belt and held it in front of Kailea’s face.

This was it, she realized. She wasn’t religious. Yet now she shut her eyes tightly and began repeating the Hail Mary. She didn’t know what else to do.

The man, however, did not slit her throat. Rather, he cut away her black T-shirt, soaked with sweat as it was. This caught her off guard. Her eyes went wide. To her shock, he put the blade away. But he was not finished. Instead, he unbuckled her belt, tossed it and the shirt aside, then unbuttoned her jeans and yanked them down to her ankles. He grabbed her head with both hands and forced her to look at him.

Kailea knew what was about to happen, and to her it was worse than death. Without another thought, she jumped up, yanked her knees toward her chest, and shot her chained feet forward as she fell back into the chair.

The force of the blow came hard and fast as her feet connected solidly with the man’s groin, and he collapsed to the ground, squealing in pain.

“You whore!” al-Masri shrieked through gritted teeth.

Unleashing a torrent of obscenities, the Egyptian grabbed the wooden truncheon from Zayan and backhanded the woman across the face with all the force he could muster. Now it was her nose that everyone heard crack. Now it was her blood pouring down her face and body. Al-Masri watched her and the chair topple over, and now it was her head snapping hard against the concrete floor.

“Get her up,” he snarled. “Now.”

The men did as they were told. Yet the woman could barely sit upright.

“Hold her in place.”

Again they obeyed their orders. Then they watched him take the truncheon, hold it up like a baseball bat, and smash it into her stomach.

The American doubled over and collapsed to the ground, gasping for air.

“Again,” al-Masri shouted. “Get her up.”

Once more Zayan and the others forced the woman to sit upright. This time al-Masri circled behind her. Raising the truncheon, he struck her repeatedly on the back and neck. When she again collapsed to the floor, again he ordered the guards to pick her up, and again the beatings commenced.

“Tell! Me! Your! Name!” al-Masri screamed, coming back around to face her, punctuating each word with another blow.

Still she would not talk. Still she refused to look at him. Instead, he noticed she was staring at his right hand. He could see she was waiting for the truncheon’s next blow. He smiled, his face nearly as bloody as hers. Then, without warning, he balled up his left hand and drove his left fist into her right eye. The shock of the blow snapped her head back. Al-Masri dropped the truncheon, balled up his right fist, and drove it into her other eye. Again and again he struck her in the face until her entire body went limp.

And then al-Masri wheeled around and made for the boy.