Dead in Damascus: A Special Operations Group Short Story ([#0] Special Operations Group) Read Online Free PDF Page B

glass of wine and gave him a sip.
    After Mordet finished the sip, he licked his lips. “It seems that you know about me, but I do not know about you, other than the fact that you and your comrades were highly professional, and we left via the Euphrates River. No conventional military units would operate inside Syria. I can only guess that you are a Navy SEAL—probably from SEAL Team Six.” Mordet stared into Chris’s eyes as if he were probing Chris’s brain.
    Chris showed no expression in his face or voice. “I can neither confirm nor deny—”
    Mordet was equally cool. “No need—I have already confirmed it. Even so, I still do not know your name.”
    Chris didn’t know how the interrogation would play out, but if he was patient, he might spot an opening and exploit it. “My name is Chris.”
    Mordet’s eyes sparkled. “Do you have a last name, Chris?”
    Chris continued without showing emotion. “Yes.”
    Mordet took another drink. “Will you give it to me?”
    “No.”
    The sparkle in Mordet’s eyes faded. “That is not very sporting. You have come here to ask me where Young Park is, but you will not even tell me your last name.”
    “Yes, I came here to ask where he is.” Chris gave him the rest of the drink.
    He seemed pleased. “Why is he so important to you?”
    Chris refilled Mordet’s glass. He had thought he was in control of the interrogation, but now he wasn’t sure. He gave Mordet a long drink.
    “Is Park related to you?”
    Chris said nothing.
    “A friend?”
    “Yes.”
    Mordet stared at Chris’s eyes. “This rescue has more meaning to you than mere friendship. Maybe this is more about the rescue than about Young Park.”
    The remarks caught Chris off guard, as if Mordet had a sixth sense for digging into his soul. Every rescue was deeply personal, but the purpose of the interrogation was Young, not Chris. He surveyed for a warm spot in Mordet’s cool veneer. “You bit off my ear and tried to eat it. Don’t you think that’s a bit strange?”
    Mordet gazed at the ceiling. “Is it? During the Vietnam War, a CIA SOG officer killed enemy combatants and cut off their ears. And made necklaces out of them.” Mordet sniffed the air as if he smelled a meal, and then his eyes lowered to his interrogator.
    Mordet had an aura about him that made Chris’s skin prickle, but he didn’t show it. “I’ve heard the stories. I’ve heard a lot of stories and seen a lot of things, but you weren’t making a necklace.”
    Mordet frowned like a lecturer disappointed with a student. “What would be the point—a trophy? How droll. And wasteful.”
    “I don’t know anyone who eats the body parts of humans.”
    There was a shadowy stillness in Mordet’s eyes, and wine stained the corner of his lips like blood. “In western New Guinea, when the Korowai tribe finds that someone is a khakhua , a witch doctor, they eat that person’s brain while it is still warm.”
    Chris saw the source of the giant, dark hand that pressed on him, and the more he saw, the less he wanted to see, but he didn’t show his aversion to the blackness emanating from Mordet. “I didn’t know that,” he said matter-of-factly.
    Mordet smiled, but the corners of his smile were closer to a sneer. “In America, when the Donner Party became trapped in the snowy Sierra Nevada, the survivors ate the dead.”
    “That remains unconfirmed.”
    “In the 1972 Andes flight disaster, the survivors ate the dead bodies of their classmates and friends.”
    Mordet disgusted Chris, and the conversation made him weary, much like the war did, but Mordet gave off an aura of evil unlike any Chris had ever encountered. In spite of his weariness and his need to end the conversation, his need to rescue Young was greater.
    What makes you tick, Mordet?
    “But I don’t guess you belong to a tribe in New Guinea nor were you in the Andes flight disaster.”
    “Not the Andes flight disaster, but when I was a teenager, my mother, younger