The Pale: Volume One, Jacob Long [best beach reads TXT] 📗

“Hey, bro.”

What?

“Hey, wake up.” A man with a soft Middle Eastern accent roused Adam from his sleep. He tapped his hand lightly on the side of Adam’s face.

What do you want? Adam stirred a little, his face quickly communicating his irritation.

“There you are,” the man said. “Come on, stay with me.”

Adam attempted to open his eyes but managed only a flutter at first. The light in the room was too intense for his tender vision.

“Open your eyes,” the man goaded. “Do you know where you are?”

Doing as he was told, Adam continued to force his eyes open. The light, soft as it turned out to be, stung. Shapes registered only as blurry outlines. At least he could see something. His vision was returning, though his head still throbbed. His muscles ached, his skin was burning, and his throat was dry, but somehow, he’d survived the explosion.

“Talk to me, bro,” the man’s voice persisted. “Do you know where you are?”

Adam shook his head as much as he dared. “No,” he croaked.

“Ahh, you see? He’s parched. Give me your water.”

A shape Adam hadn’t realized was another person moved across his field of vision and handed a canteen to the man sitting in front of him. The man unscrewed the canteen and held the opening gently to Adam’s lips. Adam leaned forward to receive the water, only to discover that his range of motion was limited by the ties securing his hands behind the chair on which he was seated. This frightened and confused Adam, but the revelation that he was somehow a prisoner fell to the wayside for a moment as the water poured from the opening and Adam received it gratefully. He drank greedily, but the man removed the canteen before Adam was completely satisfied, and water dribbled down his dirty chin.

“Not too fast. Not too fast, my friend. Not smart to be drinking so much,” the man chided.

Adam’s eyes were slowly focusing. Shapes began to define. He was inside a room, a nice room decorated by well-crafted furniture and beautiful carpet. The chair Adam was tied to was simple but strong. From his vantage point, he could only see two captors. The man on Adam’s right was an armed guard. He wore fatigue pants and a black shirt, with a light equipment holster. A balaclava hid the man’s face, and he cradled an old AK-47 in his arms as he leaned against a bureau.

The man seated directly in front of Adam, who had served him the water, was dressed far more casually with a plain black long-sleeved shirt and jeans. His face was uncovered except for a neat beard, and he wore a checkered taqiyah atop his head. Adam eyed him with anger and suspicion upon recognizing him.

“Ahh, hey! It looks like you’re coming around! How do you feel?” the man in front of Adam asked.

Adam didn’t answer; he simply continued to hold the man with his fierce gaze.

The man continued to behave sociably. “Ohh, now. No need to be like that, bro. Do you know who I am?”

“Harun El-Hashem,” Adam answered plainly.

“That’s right. I assume you and your friends came here for me, though I can’t imagine why.” El-Hashem lifted a pair of dog tags on a chain to read what they said. “And you are Rodriguez, Adam, H. Social Security number six-zero-two, six-two-six, five-one-eight-three. Blood type: A-positive. Religious preference: Catholic.”

Adam hadn’t noticed that his dog tags weren’t around his neck anymore. Since he was thinking about it, a lot of his equipment had been removed. He no longer wore his helmet, gas mask, body armor, or pads. His combat jacket had been removed. He sat, tied to the chair, in only his shirt, pants, and boots.

El-Hashem leaned in closer to Adam. “Are you really Catholic, or is that just how you were raised? I hear it’s real common among your uh . . . people.”

Adam remained silent. He was not in the mood to entertain El-Hashem’s patronizing questions.

El-Hashem dropped the subject. “You’re probably wondering how you ended up here, aren’t you? What with all of your friends so close to where you fell, how could you be in my hands now? You guys have the best army in the world!”

Quiet permeated the room as Adam simply let the question hang in the air. Seconds passed before Harun continued in his smug rhetoric.

“Well, I can tell you that it was not easy. Your friends do not like to give up, but once they came to realize just how many grenades and grenade launchers we had, they had no choice but to retreat. We could have pressed the attack, but, well . . .” Harun paused to tap his skull with his index finger. “I’m a little smarter than that. What with your American choppers in the air and many bullets and tomahawk missiles, I thought it best not to provoke them. Instead, I wait here. We regroup, and I make a plan. You see?”

Adam didn’t know how much more of that he could take. He just wanted to go to sleep, and the pain covering his body was quickly becoming unbearable. He groaned and shifted in his seat.

El-Hashem continued, no longer expecting Adam to participate. “We pulled you from the rubble and the fire and brought you here. I sent one of my men to speak with your commanding officer to tell him that I want to speak with him. I am leaving this place. I will not be captured, you see? So me and your boss are going to come to an agreement.”

“We don’t negotiate,” Adam deigned to contribute.

“So I hear,” El-Hashem replied, “but your boss, he will negotiate with me. You see, because if he doesn’t . . . I will be forced to destroy the other half of my mansion.”

“Shame,” Adam quipped.

“Yes,” Harun shook his head solemnly. “It would be a shame to destroy this place. It’s very nice. I got it from the son of an oil baron for cheap when he angered his father and had to give it up.” El-Hashem chuckled warmly at the thought. “But you know what I think would be worse for you and your boss? When I blow it up with all the women and children that I house here inside.”

El-Hashem’s facial expressions went dead, and he looked into Adam’s eyes with the cold, thoughtless determination of a murderer. Adam’s conviction wavered, and it showed on his face when his jaw slacked ever so subtly and his eyes softened.

El-Hashem continued to speak, though no longer feigning kindness. His voice was flat and as serious as a heart attack. “You can’t have that, can you? No. Your whole country couldn’t possibly abide that. You’re . . . you’re all so convinced of your righteousness. You’re all so pure. That’s why you had to come here and bring war: so you could ‘purify’ the rest of the world too.” El-Hashem paused briefly to gather his thoughts. “You got the revenge you wanted for the attack on your country a long time ago, but here you are still, and is it still about that? Do you feel that you have not caused enough pain?”

Adam’s gaze hardened once more. He couldn’t believe he was going to be at the mercy of this terrorist’s “devil America” speech.

Harun squinted his eyes at Adam. “I think it is not that. I think when your American public was exposed to the way life is here, on your American news, that it couldn’t possibly leave us alone. Life here is different from life in your country, and you just couldn’t have that. We had to be like you. We had to have democracy. We had to have stability. Never mind that we already had it. We just didn’t have it in a way that you could accept. You think it is your job to police the world, to mold it into your vision of perfection.” El-Hashem stuck his finger in Adam’s face. “But you are not perfect. Your country is diseased, and instead of staying at home, you spread that disease to all around you. We do not want your help, American. We don’t need it.”

After El-Hashem finished his speech, Adam continued to stare at him in silence. He couldn’t help but be amazed at the man’s twisted point of view. Finally, Adam asked, “Why do you have women and children housed here?”

El-Hashem was silent, his face still taut.

Adam answered for him. “When you say ‘house’ what you really mean is ‘hold here against their will until you can auction them off,’ right? That’s who you’re holding hostage: slaves.”

“Does that bother you?”

“A little bit, yeah,” Adam understated.

“Well, too bad.” El-Hashem stood and moved his moved his chair to the side. “Your feelings have no bearing here. Your foolish idealism is impotent in the face of hard reality, and your hard reality is that your commander will negotiate with me. He will let me go, and all this will be for nothing. This isn’t a comic book. This is the real shit. The bad guy wins.”

“What if he refuses?” Adam asked.

Harun leveled a hard gaze at Adam.

“What if the captain doesn’t just let you go?” Adam restated. “What if he sticks to the American policy of not negotiating with terrorists and decides instead to take his chances with blowing your silly head off?”

Harun bent over and braced his weight on the back of Adam’s chair aggressively. He tilted Adam backward to make getting right in his face that much easier.

Harun did not shout, but instead spoke quietly. “Then I will torch the soft skin off every innocent woman under my control, you, the commander, myself, and anyone else close enough to feel the power of my wrath. I will not be taken prisoner by your American pig politicians . . . posturing . . . using my capture to further their ridiculous crusades. The crusade of their own advancement in a society that worships status over all else. A paradise for those who have it and a living nightmare for those who don’t. Even people who don’t live in your country are infected by its sickness, and for as long as you and your friends are here, we are all at its mercy. I will not be taken in.”

Adam had been stricken silent. All his cynicism melted away uselessly. The man that stood before him was the real deal. In Harun El-Hashem’s frosted eyes, Adam saw no remorse, only the conviction of a psychopath who would do whatever it took to avoid capture.

Harun stood erect, lowering Adam’s chair to the floor gently. His baleful eyes never wavered but continued holding Adam under the weight of their indignation.

“Sounds like you have it all figured out,” Adam managed to say, “but what does this have to do with me?”

An expression that Adam would have sworn looked like satisfaction grew on El-Hashem’s countenance. “Huh, smart man. Now you ask the right question. Why would I repel your compatriots’ assault just so I could pull your broken corpse from the debris?”

Adam didn’t speculate aloud. He waited, fearfully then, for the inevitable smug explanation. Harun may have deigned to massage his ego, too, had something not diverted his attention. His eyes suddenly flashed toward the room’s lone door, and he waited in silence. Adam didn’t know what sight or sound had distracted the drug lord. His ears were still mostly useless, and he’d been bound facing away from the exit.

El-Hashem’s twisted smirk grew, and he looked at Adam, knowingly. “You’ll see. I think it may be time.”

The sound of heavy footsteps running up the hall finally reached Adam’s damaged eardrums just before an armed thug wearing a balaclava bounded into the room. Short of breath, the thug spoke urgently to El-Hashem in Arabic. Harun responded tersely, and the masked thug swiftly exited after spitting what Adam could only imagine was the Arabic equivalent of “Yes, sir!”

Harun huffed a quick sigh and moseyed over to where Adam sat. “All right, Adam,” he said, “it’s time.” Harun then tilted Adam’s chair forward. “Stand,” he ordered.

The ties did not have Adam secured to the chair as he had thought; they only bound his hands behind the back support, so he stood, with the only difficulty being how his right kneecap screamed in disapproval. Adam hid the pain, stifling a plaintive groan that threatened to escape his throat.

“Take him with us,” Harun ordered to the thug leaning on the bureau.