Page 78 of Nobody's Hero
Koenig wasn’t. But he nodded anyway.
They walked back into the living area.
‘I hope the pair of you are insured for water damage,’ Draper said. ‘Things are about to get very wet.’
Chapter 82
In 1947 the United States charged Yukio Asano, a Japanese officer, with war crimes for waterboarding a US citizen. Sixty years later it was official US policy. Which was five hundred years after it had been the official policy of the Inquisitors. Spain’s Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition used the ‘water cure’, under strictly controlled conditions, when all other methods of getting a confession had failed. It polarised Spaniards in the fifteenth century just as it polarises Americans now.
Its champions claim that compared with what the myriad enemies of the US are prepared to do, waterboarding is a mild inconvenience. It’s a high-intensity, kinetic interrogation, but it leaves the detainee unmarked and undamaged. It’s as effective at extracting information as electric shocks, amputations and burning.
To its detractors, waterboarding is torture. There is no grey area. It’s controlled drowning, and it opens a door that cannot be closed. It’s also an ineffective vengeance-based fantasy, as likely to extract junk information as anything useable. They point to a Cambodian man who was tortured by the Khmer Rouge. During his interrogation he confessed to being a Catholic bishop, a CIA spy, a Buddhist monk, the son of the king of Cambodia and a hermaphrodite. He was actually a schoolteacher who happened to speak French. Their point is that people will say anything to make torture stop. A more practical argument is that if the US allows waterboarding, it can’t complain when other regimes use it on captive US citizens.
Koenig fell somewhere in the middle. There were two sides to the argument, and he didn’t trust the people who refused to acknowledge that. He’d been through waterboarding when he’d undertaken Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training with Marine Recon. All US special forces go through SERE. It’s worst-case scenario training, and he’d gotten himself added to one of the programmes. And the one thing he’d taken from his time in the chair was that waterboarding was torture. Even for someone who couldn’t experience fear, it was a horrific experience. It didn’t simulate drowning; youweredrowning. Waterboarding was torture and torture was wrong. It was immoral and it spat out information that couldn’t be trusted. It had to be verified. And if you had the capabilities to verify information, why bother using torture in the first place?
But on incredibly rare occasions, time simply didn’t permit anything else. The threat was imminent, and the fallout so catastrophic that to do nothing was to be complicit.
They carried Nash, still strapped to the kitchen stool, to the white leather couch in the sunken living room. Draper positioned the stool so its legs were on the cushions and the back rest was on the raised arm. The stool and the couch arm formed a simple machine. The stool was the rigid beam, and the couch’s arm was the fulcrum. When the time came, Koenig would lift the stool’s legs, which would put Nash’s feet above her head.
Nash didn’t react. Not everyone did when it came to waterboarding. It was a strange kind of torture. Compared to the pliers and the blowtorches, it seemed cerebral. Like you could manage it by staying calm. That it would only work if you allowed it to work. That changed when the hypothetical met with reality. Even with a prearranged stop signal, Koenig had seen twenty-year veterans of the Marine Corps refuse to strap themselves to the board. But Nash was serene and calm.
They went back for Hobbs and turned his stool so he faced his daughter. It was as if the sunken living room was the stage and the kitchen was the dress circle. The tier above the stalls. Best seats in the house. Close enough to be immersed in the action, not so close you missed anything.
‘If so much as a single hair on her head gets wet, I’ll kill you,’ Hobbs said. His voice was flat and cold, but his eyes told a different story. They burned hot and angry. ‘I’ll kill you all.’
‘I thought you weren’t a killer?’ Draper said.
‘Don’t test me on this. You have no idea what I’m capable of.’
‘Oh, I think we do.’
‘You look scared, Mr Hobbs,’ Koenig said.
‘If that bitch hurts my baby, you’ll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. You thinkI’mscared? I swear you don’t know the meaning of the word.’
‘You’re right there, Mr Hobbs,’ Draper said. ‘He doesn’t.’
Chapter 83
‘Gag him,’ Draper said, nodding towards Hobbs. Her voice was emotionless. Ominous, like welded razor wire.
Koenig had never met this version of Draper. This was the Draper who’d worked behind the curtains. Who knew where the black sites were. Who’d been involved in extraordinary renditions. The Draper who’d tortured enemy combatants. Koenig hated himself for forcing her to become the person she’d struggled for so long to escape.
So, Koenig did as he was asked and gagged Hobbs. Tore off a strip of duct tape and stuck it over his mouth. Smoothed it out but lifted a corner and folded it in on itself. It would make it easier to rip off. Like the crocodile tear strip on a FedEx parcel. Or a grip tab on a pack of sliced turkey. He gagged Hobbs not just because it was what Draper had ordered; he did it so he shared culpability for what was about to happen. He wanted Draper to know that if it came down to it, he’d be standing by her side when the Monday morning quarterbacks judged their course of action.
‘Here’s how this is going to work,’ Draper called out to Hobbs. ‘In a minute, I’m going to remove the tape from your daughter’s mouth and replace it with a towel. Mr Koenig will lift her legs so they’re above her head and I will start pouring water over the towel using the two-gallon container you considerately had in your closet. Harper will keep her mouth closed, but she can’t shut her nose and sinus cavities. They will quickly fill with water. Her immediate reaction will be to hold her breath. It’severyone’sfirst reaction and it’s quite natural. In fact, it’ll be her only option. But this is a high-pressure situation, not a controlled test. In all my years doing this, I never saw anyone last more than thirty seconds. I’ve neverheardof anyone lasting more than thirty seconds. Harper’s gag reflex will make her expel the air from her lungs. This will clear the water from her nose, but then what? She’s already held her breath. She’s in an oxygen deficit. She’ll do the only thing she can: she’ll inhale. But she won’t be inhaling air, she’ll be inhaling water. This water won’t stay in her mouth and nose, though. She’ll suck it into her lungs. And when that happens, the simulated drowning stops and theactualdrowning starts.’ She paused. ‘Nod if you understand.’
Hobbs nodded, defeated.
‘Now, you might wonder why I’ve gagged you,’ Draper continued. ‘The answer is simple. I’m not interested in anything you have to say. Not yet. If I ask you questions under the threat of hurting your daughter, you might be tempted to tell me a lie. Or a half-truth. Or you might think you’ll get away with the sin of omission. This is why you’re gagged. I’m about to hurt your daughter and I need you to understand that there is nothing you can do to stop me.’
Hobbs started to buck and thrash on his stool. His eyes bulged. His scalp wound burst open. Koenig made no move to close it. He now understood why Draper was doing this the way she was. It was psyops. Psychological operations. Influencing emotion and behaviour by conveying information in a certain way. Draper was in Hobbs’s head now. And so far, she hadn’t done anything. Koenig was impressed, the same way a stranded surfer might be impressed by how, in that moment, in that environment, the great white circling their longboard was the perfect killing machine. He’d asked her to do this, but he was still appalled.
Hobbs began to weep.
‘I’m going to keep pouring the water until I decide to stop,’ she said. ‘It might be twenty seconds; it might be three minutes. I’ll keep pouring the water until you’re begging to tell me what we want to know. Again, nod if you understand.’
Hobbs didn’t this time. He seemed stunned. Like he couldn’t believe what was happening. It seemed like even though he dealt in death, he’d never believed it would happen to him. That karma was for other people. Ten minutes ago, he’d been talking about tempura. Now he was tied to a stool and his daughter was about to be drowned like kittens in a sack.