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that cave.
    I screwed the .22’s barrel into the soft spot under his left ear, grabbed him by the collar and slow-walked him back. Slim was there and he spun the guard and put him down. I didn’t see the blow, but it sounded like a tree being felled. The guard went out without having said a word. Slim watched our backs as Bunny and I crept to the cave entrance…
    …and looked into a scene from Hell.
    The cave clearly saw regular use. There were chairs, a card table, ammunition cases, cots, and a stove with sterno burners. A Taliban soldier was tied to folding chairs, ankles and wrists bound with plastic cuffs. His clothes had been slashed and torn away to reveal his pale chest and shoulders. His turban hung askew, one end trailing down behind him where it puddled on the rocky ground between his heels. Several Kalashnikovs stood against the wall, magazines removed.
    The other three men of the Marine squad stood in a loose semicircle around the man, laughing as he screamed and begged and prayed. All of them were sweating; a couple had red, puffy knuckles that spoke to the way this session had started. If this was just a group of frustrated Marines knocking the piss out of a Taliban grunt, partly to blow off steam and partly to try to get a handle on something that might result in some real good being done, then I might have just stepped in and calmed it down. Yelled a bit, given them the appropriate ration of shit, but basically dialed it all down with no charges being filed.
    But that’s not what we were seeing. These guys had taken it to a different level and in doing so had crossed the line between an attempt to gather useful intelligence and something else. Something darker that was not part of soldiering. Something that wasn’t even part of torturing or “enhanced interrogation.” Something that went beyond Abu Ghraib and into the darkest territory imaginable.
    They had Amirah—scientist, designer of the Seif al Din , wife of one of the world’s most hated terrorists. There were two ropes looped around her neck, each end pulled to an opposite side by a Marine so that she could not approach either of them. All she could do was lunge forward toward the prisoner. Her wrists were bound behind her. Her ankles were hobbled by a length of rope. She couldn’t flee, couldn’t run. The men had stripped her to the waist, revealing a body that was beautifully made but which now inspired only revulsion. Her once olive skin had faded to a dusty gray-green and there were four black bullet holes—one in her stomach, three in her back—that were crusted with dried blood and wriggling with maggots.
    Amirah lunged forward to bite the man, but the Marines jerked on the ropes and stopped her when her gray teeth were an inch from the Afghani’s face. Amirah snarled and then laughed. It was impossible to say whether she was enjoying this game or if she was completely mad.
    As the men struggled to keep her in check they danced and shifted around, and I could see that there were two other Afghanis in the room. They lay sprawled like broken dolls. It looked like their faces had been eaten, and their throats were tangles of red junk.
    “It’s getting tough to hold this bitch,” growled one of the men, though he was smiling when he said it.
    “Please, in the name of God keep her away!” begged the bound man. He was already bleeding from half a dozen bites. Thin lines of dark red spider-webbed from each bite. The infection was slow for some, faster for others. Snot and spit ran from his nose and mouth as he pleaded in three different languages.
    A big man with sergeant’s stripes—the only one not holding a leash—bent behind the man and spoke with sharp impatience. “We’ll fucking stop when you fucking tell us what we want to know.”
    “But I don’t…. I don’t….” He was filled with too much panic to complete a sentence.
    The sergeant straightened and nodded, and the men slackened their holds on the rope leashes.