The faces of the older Mexican men were unreadable, their eyes like black polished stones in a dark night. The women looked much more defiant, but also fearful for the children. Some of the younger men, boys really, looked excited. Her A-listers, on the other hand, were quietly freaking out.
‘You need to understand this, most of all,’ Julianne concluded. ‘Anyone who steps onto this boat with hostile intentions will be cut down. They will be killed. And there will be no mercy shown them. Because we will receive none in return.’
39
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, CUBA
‘We could let ‘em loose about seventy-five miles north of here,’ Stavros deadpanned.
Brigadier General Tusk Musso snorted softly. Yep, it would solve a few problems if he could just throw all of his prisoners into the Wave. But then what would the
Goddamn, but he needed a rest.
Musso pushed the tips of his fingers under his sunglasses and rubbed at his sore, bloodshot eyes. He could feel bristle growing on his cheeks. The camp had run out of razor blades. He’d have to do something about that. They had to maintain standards.
They had run out of Kiwi boot polish as well, hard as that was to believe. Most combat boots looked as if they’d been polished with a Hershey bar, if at all. The general wore a pair of the new, now rare, suede tan Marine Corps boots. At least he didn’t have to worry about spit and polish every night.
The afternoon sun was warm, but not uncomfortably so. Nonetheless, it glinted off the steel and wire of Camp 4 with a fierceness that made the sunglasses necessary. It was quiet today. The next call to prayer was still an hour away and the prisoners’ initial excitement after the Disappearance had long since evaporated. The Israelis had made sure of that. Most of these humps were now as alone in the world as the Americans who still guarded them.
‘I don’t know what to do, George,’ he admitted to his aide.
‘Pearl wants this expedited. And that’s the extent of their instructions. Except for Susan Pileggi’s Uplift requirements, we really don’t rate as a priority anymore, and the refugee flow has slowed up anyway. God knows, some of these losers really don’t need to be here,’ he said, waving a dismissive hand back towards the imprisoned jihadis. ‘But, on the other hand, nobody’s going to thank me for releasing a couple of hundred more lunatics onto the job market. So what do we do?’
‘Don’t know, General,’ replied Stavros. ‘That’s why you make the
That really was a joke. Neither of them had been paid in weeks. Even if they had been, what use would they have for a dead, worthless currency?
‘Okay, decision time. Let’s set up a small review team. We’ll do a quick and dirty study of each case. The really bad motherfuckers, like Khalid, we’re going to try according to the laws of war. If convicted, they can be dealt with summarily.’
Lieutenant Colonel Stavros looked wary. ‘But General, most of the personnel involved in the commission process were back home. Prosecutors, defence. And most of their files are gone too. What do we charge them with? How can we -’
Musso cut him off with a chopping hand gesture. ‘I didn’t say it’d be pretty, George. Just fast. Some of these guys need their necks stretched. Some of them don’t belong here. Let’s shake the box and see who falls out of which hole. I want it sorted in a month.’
‘A month…’ Stavros stammered. ‘But General, we’ve got
‘A lot of them can be repatriated to their homelands, assuming the Israelis didn’t turn them into a slagheap. We got a lot of Pakistanis here – let Musharraf have them. We might even get lucky. India might nuke him as soon as they touch down. Most of the rest are Saudis, Jordanians, Afghanis – let’s send ‘em home. What happens then is up to their governments. Frankly, I don’t think many of them will survive, but that’s not my problem. A month, Colonel. This is one issue I don’t need to think about anymore. There’s plenty more that I do. Including this waste of space…’
Stavros turned to look over his shoulder where Musso had glowered at two approaching civilians. Professor Griffiths and his assistant Tibor, universally known as Igor. The pair were stomping up the road in front of Camp 4, sweating profusely.
Griffiths began carping as soon as he was in pistol-shot range. ‘Found you at last,
‘Good afternoon, Professor. Always lovely to see you,’ said Musso. ‘And no, you don’t have to remind me. I’ve heard that particular song so many times now, it has its own neural pathway that lights up every time I see you. If this is about your field trip, my staff aren’t thwarting you, Professor. They’re simply following orders. They cannot go into the exclusion zone along the line of the Wave, because they have been ordered not to. The Wave is dangerous, sir. It eats people. It ate one of yours the first week you were here. Left a little pile of goo in a white coat, as I recall. It’s not getting any more of mine.’
Musso’s voice was rising and he could feel his anger slipping the leash. He pushed past the civilians and stomped over to where his driver and Humvee stood waiting on the small loop road in front of the camp. Brown, dried-out grass grew to knee length on the waste ground here and Musso made a note to himself to have that seen to. It was getting to be a fire hazard. He was aware of Stavros crunching up behind him, but his thoughts were elsewhere, sailing out across the blue waters he could just glimpse between the prison camp buildings as he attempted to calm down. Increasingly he found the fuse on his incendiary temper was burning way too quickly. He had once fancied himself the world’s most patient man. Really, he was known for it. That’s what made him a good lawyer. But he did have a temper, a foul one, and it had been running wild for weeks. Ever since the first shock had ebbed and he’d had time to really take in the enormity of the loss. Of his loss, personally.
