AMOK: A Dox Thriller, page 2
The shapes reached Beeler and surrounded her. Isobel could see them better now. They were soldiers in camouflage uniforms and floppy hats, all with rifles. One of the soldiers stepped forward and prodded the girl with his rifle muzzle, while another, farther back, kept his rifle trained on her. The girl lay still.
“I don’t know her!” Beeler said. “I told you, there’s no one here! I’m an American journalist and you have no right to detain me!”
The words were brave, but the pitch of her voice was even higher now, her throat constricted by terror.
One of the soldiers stepped away from the others, toward the hut Isobel was crouching behind, and turned his head leisurely back and forth. This one wasn’t wearing a hat, and in the dim light, Isobel could make out something strange about his head. Then she realized—it was his haircut. A mohawk.
Her terror deepened. Maybe it’s someone else, she thought. Someone else with that haircut.
Something about his bearing made Isobel sense he was the leader. The muzzle of his rifle was slung low, but he swept it slowly along, tracking his gaze, as though ready at an instant’s notice to raise it and shoot. Isobel thought it was too dark, and the surrounding ferns too dense, for him to be able to see her head partially exposed from behind the hut. But she felt a dreadful certainty that he could sense her. Or smell her.
A long, frozen moment went by. One of the soldiers said something in Bahasa.
Another moment passed. The leader nodded at whatever the man had said and turned back to Beeler. In English, he said, “Come.”
Beeler shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere. You have no right.”
The man raised his rifle. “Come,” he said. “Or we’ll leave you here. In the dirt. Dead next to this girl you say you didn’t know.”
The man’s English was very good. Did that mean he worked with the Americans? Isobel’s terror grew worse.
Beeler didn’t respond, but Isobel could hear her panicked breathing.
Help her, she thought. Help her. But what could she do?
The leader raised his rifle higher and pointed the muzzle at Beeler’s face. The man standing behind Beeler quickly stepped to the side.
“I’ll count to three,” the leader said. “One. Two. Th—”
“All right!” Beeler said, raising her hands. “All right. You win.” Then she groaned, and Isobel realized the woman was crying, whatever bluff she had summoned exhausted now, evaporated.
A soldier took Beeler by the elbow, and they all walked off. A moment later they were gone, swallowed by the trees and the darkness, and the only sound was the cicadas again. It had happened so fast, and had been so surreal, it might have been a dream.
But for the girl lying in the dirt.
She might still be alive, she thought. Help her.
But she was still rooted to the spot. She understood physiology, of course; she knew that freezing was simply a biological mechanism, a survival reflex, the same in humans as in a rabbit that smells a jungle cat. But she had to move. The soldiers might come back.
A bead of sweat ran into one of her eyes. She felt herself blink to clear it. The sweat stung and she blinked again.
Do it again. Just blink. Blink your eyes. Keep blinking them.
She did. Her eyes weren’t frozen. She managed a grimace. Then flexed her hands. And all at once, she could move again. She sucked in a huge breath and clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. She stood like that for a moment, clutching herself, rocking back and forth in mingled terror and relief.
She wanted to run. But the girl. She couldn’t.
She tiptoed forward in a crouch, certain with every halting step that the soldiers would suddenly return. They would surround her, and take her away, and then, and then . . .
Stop. Stop it. Help this girl. You have to help her. That’s all.
She reached the fallen girl, dropped to her knees, and eased the girl over until she was faceup, taking care to support the girl’s back with her thighs, then edging away as she turned her. The girl coughed out frothy blood. Isobel checked the airway—the breathing was rapid and shallow, but she was alive.
But her shirt was soaked with blood. Immediately Isobel saw why—the bullet had exited the left side of the chest. Beneath the bloody material a hole fluttered, issuing the characteristic hissing sound. A sucking chest wound.
The shirt had buttons—faster to tear it open than to cut, and Isobel did so. She reached into the medical bag and pulled out some folded plastic wrap and a roll of duct tape. The clinic had long since run out of petroleum gauze, the aluminum-foil wrappers of which were perfect for sealing SCWs. But kitchen supplies could still be had.
She unfolded the plastic, placed it over the wound, and taped off three sides of it, using gauze to wipe away blood so the tape would adhere to the skin. She knew it was nearly hopeless. Without oxygen, a chest tube, a transfusion, surgery . . .
But she had to try. She couldn’t just leave this girl to die.
For a moment, the girl seemed to rally. The plastic worked, sealing off the wound as the girl inhaled, releasing trapped air on the exhale. Isobel started to prepare an occlusive dressing for the downside wound.
The girl’s lids fluttered open. She looked at Isobel and grimaced. Then she started to cry. “Lae,” she whispered in Tetum. No.
“It’s okay,” Isobel said, supporting the girl’s head. “I’m here. I’m a doctor. It’s okay.”
The girl looked at her. Then her head eased to the side, and suddenly she was looking through Isobel, past her, again as though at something in the distance, or perhaps at nothing at all.
Isobel checked for a pulse. There was none.
She lowered the girl’s head to the ground. Tried to collect herself. And all at once, couldn’t.
She balled up the gauze she had used to wipe the blood and hurled it away. She pounded a fist in the dirt. Again. A third time. Then she knelt there for a moment, crying in rage and frustration, grieving for this girl she didn’t even know.
At least they didn’t take you, she thought. At least they can’t hurt you anymore.
She felt a sudden wave of guilt that she had stayed hidden as the soldiers led Beeler away. She knew that even if she had been able to move, there was nothing she could have done. If the soldiers had seen her, they would have taken her, too. But still.
And maybe Beeler would be all right. Maybe they would be afraid to hurt an American journalist.
But Isobel didn’t really believe it.
She retraced her path to the hut, again certain with every step that the soldiers would return.
But no one came. After a minute, she hurried back to the dirt road into town, her wet pants clinging to her, the smell of urine pungent in the night air. There was a stream at the edge of the village, low because of the season but deep enough to wade into and get clean. If anyone came, she would hide again. The satchel strap cut into her shoulder once more, but this time she welcomed the pain—proof that the bag’s contents were still with her, that the soldiers hadn’t won.
Now that she was away, her fear was intensifying, threatening to escalate to panic. She tried to push it aside, to force herself to think. Think.
What happened?
Someone must have told the soldiers. For the moment, Isobel couldn’t imagine who. Maybe Beeler had said something to the wrong person. And the soldiers had caught her, and made her tell them where she was going, tried to make her tell them what she was doing in Maliana.
But she hadn’t told them. If she had, the soldiers would have taken Isobel, too.
She felt a fresh wave of guilt. Despite the woman’s tears and terror, Beeler had protected her. She had risked her life to save Isobel’s.
Or given it.
Isobel forced herself to think again. The soldiers had known something was going to happen at the well. Or at least they’d suspected. And the girl they shot . . . Maybe they assumed she was part of it. That Beeler had been there to meet the girl. Which is why, once they had shot the girl, they had left without bothering to search the area.
Despite the fear and the guilt, Isobel felt a sudden surge of relief so strong it bordered on joy. Because whatever the soldiers knew or suspected about what Beeler was doing in Maliana, they couldn’t have known what was in the satchel. If they had, they never would have stopped searching.
And then the fear gripped her again, worse even than before. Because they had Beeler now. If the man with the mohawk was who she was afraid he was, it would be very bad for the journalist. And if the woman so much as hinted at what was in the satchel, then not just Kopassus, but the entire Indonesian army would be searching for Isobel.
And if Beeler outright confessed, it would be even worse than the army. Much worse.
Chapter 2
Carl Williams sat on a steel bench bolted to a gray painted floor. The tables, also steel and also bolted to the floor, were all occupied, many by mothers with children, and the sounds of conversation echoed off the concrete walls. Carl wondered how often these folks came to the Huntsville Unit. Once a week? A month? There was a sense of routine in the air, and for a moment he marveled at what people could get used to. Maybe he should have visited more often himself. Maybe he could have gotten used to it, too.
Instead, he’d come only once, eight years earlier, just before leaving for Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, to deliver the news that he’d joined up. That was 1983, when the old man was in Administrative Segregation, which among other things meant no visiting privileges, but Carl had written to the warden, himself a former Marine and veteran of the Frozen Chosin, and the warden had allowed the old man out so Roy Williams could see that his son was making a man of himself. In the end, none of it mattered. Roy had sat in his leg irons in this very room, barely saying a word, while Carl rattled on like a fool. At the end of the hour, two guards had stood Roy up and led him away. Roy hadn’t even looked back as the barred door clanged shut behind him.
But Roy had been out of Administrative Segregation for years now, and in just over a month, would be eligible for parole. Carl’s sister Ronnie was scared to death about it. So was their mother, Carl knew, though unlike Ronnie, Mary had always kept her fears to herself.
Carl snapped the front of his shirt back and forth a few times to get some air into it. It didn’t do much to cool him down. If they had air-conditioning here, they sure weren’t wasting a lot of money on it. Everyone was sweating—the visitors, the prisoners, the guards. In fact, the whole place smelled like sweat, even the check-in area where he’d been searched and had to show ID. And not good sweat, either, like in a gym or boxing club. This smell was more like . . . sadness. Resignation. Broken people and broken dreams.
He glanced up at the television set they had bolted to a ceiling corner. MTV was playing “Good Vibrations” by some guy named Marky Mark. The melody was hard to hear over all the people talking, but it sounded pretty upbeat. Earlier it had been Paula Abdul singing “The Promise of a New Day.” Carl was grateful for the distraction, though he would have preferred a game—after all, the Houston Oilers were seven and one, and people were starting to talk about their playoff chances. But it seemed the prison administrators wanted to serve up some musical irony instead.
A sound cut through the conversation around him—the heavy steel clack of a prison door lock being thrown back. Carl looked over and saw him coming through. Roy.
His heart started pounding and he stood, as automatically as if he were coming to attention. Carl had seen a lot since the last time he’d been here—some in the Corps, and a whole lot more in Afghanistan. He realized he’d been expecting that being face-to-face with Roy again, he’d be facing him like a man, the man he now was. But he suddenly understood he’d been wrong about that. Because all he could see before him now was his father, who’d been taken away when Carl had been too small to really understand why. He’d missed his daddy back then, missed him badly, and had understood instinctively that he could never talk to Ronnie or their mom about it. He had to keep his doubts to himself, and his worries, and muffle the tears in his pillow at night. And so he had, until the tears came less often and less hard, and he understood better why Ronnie and their mom had been forced to do what they did, until he came to see that what they did, as hard as it was, was right.
He watched while Roy leisurely scanned the room. No leg irons this time, or handcuffs. And no guards. No smile, either, not even when he saw Carl. Just a nod, then another scan of the room. A prison habit, Carl supposed. But there was nothing furtive about it. More the air of a man surveying his realm.
When he had finished taking stock of the room, Roy strolled over. He looked as brawny as ever in his prison whites—more so, in fact. He’d always been heavy boned, but he’d put on weight, from the look of it all muscle. And though he was a tall man, standing close to six foot three, now he looked taller. His posture, Carl realized. It was so ramrod straight he could have been a Marine Corps drill instructor. He still had the goatee, and a full head of close-cropped, sandy-colored hair. The same color as Carl’s, and everyone had always said the two looked a lot alike, the hair and the bones and build, too. As Roy got closer, though, Carl saw some gray was creeping in at the temples. Still, that was the only apparent sign that Huntsville had aged him.
He stopped a few feet from Carl and looked him up and down. Carl had filled out, too, since they’d last seen each other, but not like Roy.
“Another month wouldn’t have made no difference,” Roy said by way of greeting. “Could have met on the outside.”
Carl was embarrassed that his heart was still pounding, and by all the confused emotions roiling inside him. Part of him thought he should hug his dad, or at least shake his hand. Maybe Roy wouldn’t be closed to those possibilities. But he didn’t exactly seem open to them, either.
“That a sure thing?” Carl said, just saying whatever to make a little time to get ahold of himself.
“It’ll happen. Why, you hoping it won’t?”
Ten seconds in and the old man was already trying to pick a fight. Weirdly, it calmed Carl down. At least now he understood what the tone was going to be.
“Why would you say something like that?”
Roy frowned. “You going to tell me your sister doesn’t feel that way? Your mother?”
Carl didn’t want to answer that. “I don’t know. Have you given them a reason?”
“Sure, you don’t know. You must think your old man’s gotten soft in the head in here. They put you up to coming?”
“Why would they have to put me up to anything? You’re my father.”
Roy gave him another up and down. “You look like my son, I’ll say that. Even wearing a goatee now.”
Carl had grown a full beard in Afghanistan, which he’d since trimmed back to a goatee. He rubbed it as though to remind himself it was there. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Bet your sister and mother don’t care for it.”
Roy was probably right about that. Mary hadn’t said anything, but Ronnie had frowned when she first saw him. Carl had sensed why, but didn’t want to think about it.
“They didn’t say. They were just glad to see me.”
Roy waved a hand as though the truth were too obvious to require confirmation. “Well, in just over a month, son of mine, the parole board is going to decide whether to keep me in here or let me out. Your mother and sister will be there, trying to make sure it’s the first one. Telling everyone who’ll listen what a bad man I am. The sort of thing they said that got me put in here in the first place. This time, they’ll want you to join them.”
Ronnie had already been testing the waters with Carl on this topic, though so far she hadn’t come right out and said it. Roy, true to form, was less diplomatic.
“I don’t know what they want,” Carl said. “I’m back in town. I came to see you.”
“Really? I see my boy twice in fifteen years. First time he’s leaving town, second is when I’m coming up for parole. The world is just full of coincidences, isn’t it?”
“This what you want?” Carl said. “You want to fight? Haven’t seen you in eight years, and now we’ve got two hours, no, less because I’ve been waiting, and you want to spend the whole time fighting? Okay, fine, what do you want to fight about? Bet you got a whole list of things, I’ll let you pick.”
Roy didn’t answer. After a moment, he offered a smile—not a particularly friendly one.
“I see my little man’s all grown,” he said.
Carl sighed and gestured to the bench. “You want to sit?”
Roy shrugged. “It’s your visit.”
Carl let the comment go. They sat a few feet apart.
For a minute, neither spoke. Then Roy looked at him. “Yeah, my little man. Standing up for himself at last. Wish you’d had the guts to stand up for me when I needed you.”
Carl tried not to get exasperated. “I was ten years old. I barely even understood what was going on. The last time I saw you before you got yourself thrown in here, you hit me so hard I woke up in the hospital. Mom and Ronnie thought I was dead.”
Roy laughed. “I knew you had a hard head.”
Goddamn. He actually felt a swell of pride at Roy’s confidence. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t right.
“Well, you sure did your best to bust it open. Mom’s and Ronnie’s, too. What were they supposed to do? It was like they were living with a rabid dog.”
“That what they told you?”
“That’s what I know.”
“You don’t know the half.”
“Well, tell me, then. Tell me why the three people who lived with you were constantly having to explain to the doctors and teachers and police officers that they’d fallen down the stairs again, or walked into a tree branch, or gotten their leg caught in the door of the truck.”
He knew it was all true, but it also felt like he was protesting too much.
“You weren’t too young to know I was going through a hard time. There was a recession.”
