43

SOMEWHERE IN SOUTHERN LEBANON

Marcus opened his eyes—or tried to.

He had not been sleeping. Al-Masri had pistol-whipped him until he had been knocked unconscious. Now both of his eyes were caked with sticky, partially coagulated blood. Turning his head as far as he could, he rubbed his right eye against his right shoulder. Then he turned the other direction and did the same with the left. Now he was squinting, trying to adjust to the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling as he realized two important facts.

The first was that he had been moved again. His hands and feet were still bound in iron manacles. Yet he was no longer being held in the cave or the old container. He was inside what looked like a walk-in freezer—the floors, ceiling, and walls of which were stainless steel.

The second was that Kailea and Yigal were with him. They, too, were bound, and they were right beside him—Kailea on his left, Yigal on his right. All three of them were chained to a large, dusty compressor unit that clearly hadn’t worked for years. The freezer was not cold. To the contrary, it was quite warm and humid, with no fans running and thus little, if any, ventilation.

“Hey, Ki—you okay?” Marcus whispered, nudging her in the side. She was either asleep or unconscious.

It took a moment, but she began to stir.

“Ki, look up,” he whispered. “It’s me—Tommy boy.”

Battered and bruised far worse than he was, Kailea finally cracked a smile. She hadn’t opened her eyes yet. But she had recognized his voice and apparently remembered that he was using an alias.

“Millner?” she whispered back. “That really you, old man?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“It seems you haven’t forgotten how to show a lady a good time.”

Marcus recognized the line from the first Indiana Jones movie and smiled. “How’re you holding up?” he asked.

“I’ve been better,” she replied. She still hadn’t opened her eyes.

He noticed more clearly her broken nose and a huge welt on her forehead.

“Good grief, Ki—what happened to you?”

“Ah, it’s nothing. Just got into a little scrape—a little tussle—with our buddy the Egyptian. That’s all.”

Marcus couldn’t help but smile again. He now understood who had broken al-Masri’s nose and wished he had done it himself. “Last time I saw him, it looked like you gave as good as you got.”

She didn’t reply. Yet as she tried to sit up straighter—she was currently slumped against the wall of the freezer—she winced in pain. Marcus was grateful they had, at least, put a T-shirt on her. Seeing her up close, he noticed how badly her legs and arms had been beaten. They were almost completely black-and-blue, covered in welts and oozing blood in several places. In the end, she wasn’t able to get herself into an upright position. Instead, she simply shifted from leaning against the stainless steel wall to leaning against him.

“Anything broken?” he asked. “Besides your nose.”

“Feels like everything.”

From the looks of her, Marcus was sure it did.

“Guess who has also graced us with his presence,” Marcus suggested.

“Danny boy?” she replied.

“Yeah,” he said, proud of her for remembering Yigal’s alias.

“Is he awake?” she asked.

“No, but let’s see what we can do.”

Marcus proceeded to nudge the Israeli gently, seeing how badly he had been beaten as well. Yigal was not wearing a T-shirt. Only boxer shorts. And he was covered with horrific gashes and burn marks.

“Good morning, Mr. Case,” he said softly. “Hello, Mr. Case—Danny, hey, time to rise and shine.”

Yigal shifted slightly and moaned but did not wake up. Kailea asked if it was really morning. Marcus confessed he had no idea what time it was, what day it was, where they were, or how long they had been there. Now that he thought about it, though, given that they were in a freezer, he could probably rule out the notion that they were in the air. Given that he sensed no rocking motion, he was inclined to think they were not at sea. He guessed, therefore, that they were still in Lebanon.

All this Marcus said in a whisper. He had to assume al-Masri or his men were listening. Though he saw no evidence of microphones or cameras anywhere in the freezer, his training had taught him to be cautious. He knew Kailea would be too. He still wasn’t entirely sure what to expect of Yigal, though Marcus had been incredibly impressed with the Israeli thus far. Despite unbelievable torture, the young man had stood his ground. He’d remembered his alias. He’d played the part of the American. He hadn’t betrayed Marcus’s real identity. And so far the Egyptian was buying it. It was an unexpected performance by Yigal, and it had saved his life. Probably Marcus’s as well.

The key question now was how long Yigal could keep it up. Everyone broke eventually. Everyone. Yet based on what he’d seen of this guy’s steely resolve, Marcus felt increasingly confident. That said, it was probably better to let him sleep for now.

Kailea began to stir again, drawing Marcus’s attention. She winced as she tried to make herself somewhat more comfortable. Rather than trying to sit upright, she curled up beside him and rested her head in his lap. And mercifully, she soon drifted back to sleep.

Marcus was also drowsy. However, he decided to use the time to make a more careful survey of the freezer. It was spacious, roughly eight feet by twenty feet, maybe twenty-two feet, or about 175 square feet, give or take. There were several sets of metal shelves, all empty and dusty. At the end farthest from them were stacks of some two dozen cardboard boxes. The printing on them was in Arabic, which he could not read.

He saw no tools anywhere, nothing he might be able to use to unlock their manacles. And he saw only two openings to the outside. One contained a double set of exhaust fans, neither of which were running. Marcus guessed they did not work. The other was the door, located directly across from them. It had no handle. It did, however, have a safety release latch—a large plastic button on a short metal lever, designed to allow someone accidentally trapped in the freezer to open the thick, insulated door from the inside. Whether that worked or not, he could not say. Either way, he had to assume the door was padlocked on the other side and monitored by guards with AK-47s. None of it boded well.

And if this weren’t bad enough, Marcus now realized that even if he could break them out of their chains—and get that door open and do it quietly, in the middle of the night when the guards happened to be asleep—neither Kailea nor Yigal was in any shape to run.