Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,66
to ‘hurry, come nab the dangerous American killer.’ He’d thought his beard, ballcap, and dark glasses would’ve kept him safe. They’d worked before. Not like he’d ever see that ballcap or those Ray-Bans again. Worse, the local chief of police had made him shave. What a mess.
What Walker hoped would’ve been a simple, routine visit by the authorities on the high seas, had turned into a brouhaha that hadn’t needed to end as brutally as it had. But when one of those loud-mouthed Azorean police officers kicked Rover, well, Brimley had taken offense. As he should have. One thing had led to another. Someone threw a punch. Brimley went flying over the railing. The next thing Walker knew, it was lights out, and he was picking himself up from a concrete floor in a cell in Somewhere-Other-Than-America.
It’d been a long time since he’d been ambushed. But while he’d knocked two of those bully cops on their asses and sent one flying overboard, another had come up behind him and clubbed him. He remembered the sound of his skull cracking, but after that—nothing. Until he’d come to behind bars. By then someone had treated the raw cut on his forehead, but the knot on the back of his head was still touchy as hell, and he’d learned quickly not to make any fast moves. Dizziness had become a constant, annoying companion.
After an intense grilling session under bright, hot lights, during which Walker quickly admitted that, yes, he was the Navy SEAL who’d escaped USA custody, the Azorean officials had quickly washed their hands of him. Within twenty-four hours, they’d transferred custody to a five-man squad of armed, stone-faced guys, each the height, width, and breadth of Goliath. Made him feel like David when he’d stepped out of his cell and had to look up at them. What he would have given for a slingshot. A few smooth stones would’ve been nice, too.
They’d never cracked so much as a lip twitch. It was actually funny, the way they’d treated him as if he were lethally dangerous. Which he was—when he wasn’t hampered by a screaming migraine, metal cuffs, and weighted shackles. Nice touch, them. Weighted restraints made his feet and legs feel heavier than they were. Or maybe they weren’t weighted at all, and his feet really were that heavy. Because his head certainly felt like it was somewhere up in the clouds. Man, a handful of Motrin would sure come in handy.
The speed with which they’d moved him out of that cozy island jail had concerned Walker at first. He’d thought he was on his way to a firing squad, or worse, given to ISIL. Instead, they’d marched him to a long black limo parked at the curb, which took him to the local airport. Only when he’d seen the bright blue KLM logo on the bird’s tail he was being steered toward, did he realize how bad things were. He was being shipped off to the Netherlands, home of the infamous International Criminal Court in The Hague. The intergovernmental organization that had, over and over again, attempted to apprehend, jail, and prosecute US military members, citing alleged war crimes allegedly committed in Afghanistan.
Which, in some cases, may have been accurate. Men cracked in battle, and untreated PTSD was a raging nightmare during any firefight. Not that those reasons absolved anyone, but they did provide understanding. And then, there were also those guys who’d enlisted just because they enjoyed the killing. Walker had always been on the lookout for those types. He didn’t need psychopaths on his team, and he’d refused to work with the only one he’d ever come across.
At its core, the ICC was biased against Americans. In the few cases they’d apprehended US soldiers, those innocent men’s names, faces, and alleged crimes had been splashed across European media outlets, and the suspects were considered guilty before their cases were even heard. Which, now that Walker thought about it, wasn’t much different than what the US Navy had done to him. Feed the media frenzy first; then conduct a rigged trial. Way to go, Navy.
So here he was, behind bars again, this time in the bowels of a hostile foreign detention unit, where anything could happen. He would soon be facing the same court that had indicted the likes of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Not like either of those ‘gentlemen’ had accepted the ICC’s judgments or arrest warrants. But still.