result of his ever-sobering state. But he couldn’t just sit here in agony. “T … V. Pee,” he stressed.
He presumed that Raggedy Ass knew that he worked in television, but Suicide Sam hadn’t paid any attention to Birk’s laminates, so the correspondent was doing all he could to draw the man’s attention to them. He wished he could actually point to the goddamn things—I look like a fucking bobblehead doll—but this was not possible. And what’s with the plastic cuffs anyway? he wondered. Not what he would have expected from jihadists. Bailing wire, maybe. Rope, for sure. But plastic cuffs? Weird. Too Western for these troglodytes, although for all he knew, everything, including plastic handcuffs, had gone global. Al Qaeda probably buys them by the gross on the Net. Address? Third cave past the bombed Humvee. Christ, he hated terrorists. Not worth the lice in their straggly-ass beards.
The metal door of the engine room clanged open. Raggedy Ass glanced at him, then eyed Suicide Sam. With a single move of Raggedy Ass’s head, Suicide Sam left. Birk figured he was off to keep watch on the captain, who was probably hogtied in the wheelhouse.
Higgens would be right at home here.
Keeping to his soft-spoken strategy, still equal parts desperation and near delirium, Birk looked pleadingly at the top banana jihadist: “Please Mr. Scum-fuck Terrorist, could you rub your two brain cells together just long enough to realize that I’m your greatest asset?”
Hopeless. Raggedy Ass stared at him like he was from Mars. Birk nodded with what he thought was an idiotic grin, trying his damnedest to conform to the jihadist stereotype of a typical American: “CNN. BBC. Pee.”
He spoke slowly and loudly, consciously reinforcing the caricature of an American trying to make a foreigner understand him, but this asswipe seemed incapable of even the most basic civilized discourse.
Raggedy Ass walked over to him, shaking his head just like Suicide Sam had.
“Oh, of course, the poor terrorist is all befuddled,” Birk baby talked to him.
Raggedy Ass must have picked up on Birk’s poorly hidden hostility, because he abruptly kicked apart Birk’s legs. The old man became immediately uneasy, having his privates so wantonly vulnerable. Raggedy Ass placed the muzzle of his fifth appendage—the AK-47—right on Birk’s balls.
The reporter’s spineless smile morphed immediately into a wince, and he rued having alluded to his privates. Then Raggedy Ass exerted serious downward pressure, and Birk was overwhelmed by sickening pain. Turned into a writhing mass of wrinkled, tormented flesh. Even so, Birk managed to keep his gaze pinned to the man’s trigger finger.
Oh, God.
“Now you listen to me,” Raggedy Ass said in shockingly clear English. Not just English, but English with a thick Southern drawl. What the fuck? “You think you’re real funny, Rick Birk, but you want to know something?”
That I’m in the deepest shit ever? But outwardly, all Birk could manage—and only barely—was a nod.
“I’d have killed you back in Malé along with the other infidels, if I didn’t think you could help us, so stop your blasphemous swearing or I’ll send you straight to hell.”
“You … speak … English?” Birk gasped out.
“You’re a regular Einstein.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m someone who grew up in the Great Satan. I found my true faith nine years ago on a pilgrimage to Mecca.” Raggedy Ass’s eyes rose briefly to the stained ceiling. “English is my first language. Heard enough? I know I’ve heard all I want to from you. I’ve heard every foul word and insult you’ve spoken.” He grabbed a fistful of Birk’s white hair, forcing the codger to look up at him at a painful angle. “You’re everything I hate. You’re everything Allah hates. But I’m going to spare you the horrors of eternal hell for a few more days, as long as you do exactly what I tell you to do.”
He pulled out a menacing combat knife, and Birk thought, despite the man’s words, that the jihadist was about to slice off his head. Instead, Raggedy Ass cut off the plastic cuffs and dragged the newsman to his feet. Birk’s legs almost buckled from a seizure of pain in his lower back, but he ground his teeth and confined evidence of his agony to a single moan.
The jihadist shoved him toward the door. “Out. Walk in front of me. Try to run and I’ll shoot you in the spine.”
“Where are we going?” Birk couldn’t forget what had happened to every member of the crew after Raggedy Ass dragged them to the railing.
“You’re going to