Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) Read Online Free PDF

home here…and that’s no urban myth, I can assure you.” He laughed with his men, but his face had then turned grim as he added, “Or you might meet others who live here—not like my fine friends, but shayteen, to use the Muslim expression, demons who look like men. And let me warn you, they would not be too squeamish to see what a well-fed terrorist tastes like.”
    Grale lived with dozens of his followers in a surprisingly large cavern about the size of a university gymnasium. Within the cave’s confines and some other nearby tunnels and openings, the inhabitants had created small “apartments” carved into the walls or, like Grale’s, built from pieces of wood, bricks, and cinder blocks they’d gathered from the world above.
    Scavenging seemed to be the inhabitants’ main occupation as they came and went like ants foraging for the winter—leaving with nothing but the ragged clothes they wore but always returning withsome useful item, whether it was a piece of food or of corrugated tin. al-Sistani had been surprised that these homeless beggars had electricity to dimly light and heat—via glowing space heaters—their filthy hole in the ground. Then it dawned on him that they must be tapping into the energy source for the subway trains that could be heard rumbling beyond the walls surrounding the underground encampment.
    Grale had pointed to Jeremy and Paulito. “These good men I’ve asked to watch over you are, in fact, your protectors as much as they are your guards. The others generally avoid the parts of my kingdom we patrol. But you never know when hunger will drive them to take chances, and with winter approaching they will be even more ravenous than usual.” al-Sistani realized then that he’d been allowed to escape as a lesson.
    Al-Sistani originally believed that Grale had to be some agent of the Great Satan in Washington, D.C., part of a secret U.S. antiterrorism agency that was holding him incommunicado to keep him out of the American court system, where he would have been afforded a lawyer and rights. When he learned that wasn’t the case, he’d offered Grale millions of dollars in gold for his freedom. But the lunatic just sneered at his offer. “What use will I have for gold in the Kingdom of God?”
    Only then did he realize that Grale was simply insane. A religious zealot who saw himself as a modern-day Crusader, battling the forces of evil—in his case, Islam—as he waited with his followers, who addressed him as “Father,” for the Apocalypse. So he’d pretended to be persuaded by Grale’s counterarguments. He claimed to have seen the error of his ways and wanted to convert to Grale’s version of Christianity—a sort of mystic Catholicism built around the concept that Armageddon was fast approaching.
    He felt no shame or sin in pretending to convert to Christianity. According to the imams in the radical madrasah of Saudi Arabia, strict fundamentalist schools, the Muslim concept of al-Taqiyya allowed believers to lie and deceive if it was for the good of Islam and the conquest of the non-Muslim world. In fact, the imams insisted that Allah blessed such deceptions.
    But Grale, whose glittering, intense eyes seemed to see intohis mind, merely laughed. “I find your ‘conversion’ insincere and, therefore, as a servant of Christ, I reject it as false,” he’d said, smirking. “Consider yourself a condemned man for crimes—committed and intended—against humanity. Your life is forfeit, but should you wish to prolong it, you will tell me everything you know about the plans of your evil brethren.”
    At first, al-Sistani had refused to divulge anything. He’d expected to be tortured—as that’s what he would have done—but was surprised that Grale did not physically abuse him. However, the rats and the wet darkness—and the gibbering voices that sometimes seemed too close as he sat chained against a wall—eventually proved too much. He decided that Allah wanted him to stay