Path of Jen: Bloodborne (22 page)

Jen stepped to the door and peeked out the
cracks around the tray slot. She was definitely in some kind of
military compound. There were concrete barriers with military
trucks backed up against them in a neat row. Another barrier was
made of linked metal-mesh baskets that were lined with fabric and
filled with dirt. A group of soldiers in brown uniforms walked past
her cell.
“These must be Iraqi soldiers!”
she thought
excitedly.
“They’re allies with America!"

“Hey!” Jen yelled in English. “I’m an
American! Help me! My name is Jena Amahdi, and I’m an American!" No
one paid her any attention. “I was kidnapped in Iran two years ago!
Hey!" She slammed her fists on the door and kicked it when still no
one listened. “Please,” she said, feeling defeated. Jen sat down
heavily on the floor and buried her head in her hands. She felt her
cut lip again and hoped it had stopped bleeding.

In the morning, Jen heard someone outside her
door. She sat up and tried to look like she was still restrained.
The tray slot opened and a face peered at her from outside. She
stared back at them without speaking.
“What are they going to
do?”
she wondered.
“Do they think I’m their enemy? Maybe
they aren’t even Iraqi soldiers…”

The tray slot closed and the door opened. A
man stepped in and blocked the doorway with his body. Jen could see
another man behind him. They were both dressed in the brown uniform
pants, but instead of brown uniform shirts, they wore tan t-shirts
with the letters ISF over the left side of their chest. The man in
front had rubber examination gloves on.
“Oh no!"
Jen leaned
away from him until she was about to fall over.

In Farsi, he said, “Don’t be afraid. I am
just taking fingerprints and a retinal scan. No needles. My name is
Kasim" He reached back and the other man handed him what looked
like a briefcase. Kasim opened the briefcase and laid it not the
floor. Inside, at the bottom of one half there was a flat,
rectangular box with an ink pad. At the bottom of the other side
was another flat rectangular shaped platform with a hinged flat
metal window on top. Kasim took a piece of card stock and slipped
it under the hinged metal window on top of the platform. The metal
window framed a series of squares on the card, where the
fingerprints would go.

Kasim motioned for Jen to come closer. She
scooted to the briefcase and held out her hands. Kasim frowned when
he saw that her wrists were no longer bound. “Are you going to give
me any trouble?” he asked. The look on his face told Jen that he
was not actually giving her a choice.

She shook her head side to side.

“Good. Give me your left hand." Kasim pressed
each finger on the black ink pad and then rolled it on the white
card. Then he did the same with her right hand. When he was done he
stripped off the gloves he was wearing and tossed them on the
floor. He passed the card back to the other man who handed him a
smaller box. The second box looked more like an old polaroid
camera. He held it in front of Jen and motioned for her to look
into the eye pieces. She pressed her forehead to the end closest to
her and stared into the eye pieces. Kasim made several adjustments
and then the eyepieces lit up. He presses a button and pulled it
away from her. He closed the briefcase and set another card on top
of it. The second man handed him a pen. Kasim clicked it and held
the pen ready. “Name?” he asked.

“Jena Ahmadi,” Jen answered in a shaky voice.
Her whole body trembled.
“Someone will know I’m alive! I might
actually go home!"

“Date of birth?”

“June 1, 1999, in Dallas, Texas,” she
answered in English.

Kasim gave her a dangerous look and repeated
the question in Farsi.

Jen felt frustrated, but obeyed his request
and repeated the date in Farsi.

“Sunni or Shia?” Kasim asked.

“Christian,” said Jen defiantly. She raised
her chin and silently challenged him to make her say different.
“I’m not denying my faith anymore! I’m a Christian and I won’t
lie about it to save myself! Not again! Not ever!”
she wanted
to shout.

Kasim raised an eyebrow and stared at her for
a moment, but only nodded and recorded her answer. “We’ll be back
soon. I’ll make sure you get some food and something to drink if
you behave." He gathered up the boxes and paper, and both men left
the cell. The door closed and locked behind them.

Jen stood and paced in her cell. “I need a
phone call,” she said. “And a tooth brush." She stopped pacing and
dropped into the push-up position on the floor. “Stop whining,
Jen,” she chided herself. She began doing push-ups. Jen stopped at
forty and flipped onto her back. She did fifty flutter kicks and
then held her feet off the ground for a minute. When she was done,
Jen jumped to her feet. She felt better. Her blood was pumping and
the feeling of self-pity had passed. She felt so good, she did a
few jumping jacks and ran in place until she was breathing hard and
sweating. She laughed, “Okay, now I really do need a shower!”

It was late in the evening when the door
popped open and Kasim stepped in again. He made Jen turn around,
and he put metal handcuffs on her before he took hold of her arm
and walked her out of the cell. Jen offered no resistance, and
surveyed her surroundings as he led her to a small building in the
center of the compound. A soldier opened the single door on the
side of the building and they walked through. It was dark. Jen
hesitated, and Kasim pushed her farther in. A light flipped on and
Jen could see a single table in the middle of the room. There was a
camera on a tripod facing the table, and a single chair on the
opposite side. The light was suspended above the table and provided
little illumination beyond the table and chair.

Kasim motioned toward the chair and Jen
walked slowly toward it.
“Is this an interrogation?”
she
wondered.
“What is the camera for? Am I going to record a
message for my family? Oh! I hope that’s it!"

When she rounded the table, Jen saw a metal
ring anchored in the floor near the chair, and a similar ring
bolted to the edge of the table. She looked back at Kasim, who just
nodded and pointed at the chair. Jen sat down and folded her hands
on the table in front of her. She startled when someone was
suddenly standing next to her.
“Where the heck did he come
from?"
The soldier removed one of Jen’s handcuffs and brought
both of her hands to the front. He fed the unlocked cuff through
the metal ring fastened to the table and then re-locked it around
her wrist. He knelt down and fastened leg-irons to her ankles and
used a second pair to fasten them to the metal ring in the floor.
“Great,”
thought Jen.
“Obviously, they still think I’m
one of the bad guys.”

The soldier stepped back into the darkness
and Kasim came to the table. He stood on the other side next to the
camera silently. The overhead light made his facial features
sharper and he looked even more intimidating. He reached over the
top of the camera and pressed a button. A small red light came on
above the lens, and Jen knew she was being recorded.

Kasim leaned forward over the table and said,
“We know who you are, Jenna. Imagine my supervisor’s surprise when
we sent your name up and you turned out to be her." He chuckled as
if it was a joke. “The mother of all, what was it again? Suicide
bombers?" He chuckled again. “I look forward to this, Jenna."

Kasim stood upright and the smile left his
face. He pulled a notepad out of his cargo pocket and began asking
the same questions he asked earlier. Jen provided the same answers.
When she answered all of them, Kasim started over and asked the
same questions again. He repeated the process no less than five
times. Jen began to get frustrated and even started to question her
own answers. That’s when the questions started getting
difficult.

“When did you join the Islamic State?” Kasim
asked abruptly.

“What? I didn’t join! I was kidnapped!” Jen
said angrily.

“Why did you join the Islamic State of Iraq
and Syria?” he asked flatly.

“I just told you, I was kidnapped. I didn’t
want to join anything!”

Kasim looked down at the table and asked,
“Name the crimes you have committed as a member of ISIS.”

Jen jerked against her restraints and growled
in anger. “My name is Jena Ahmadi! I am an American citizen! I was
kidnapped from Tehran two years ago, and all this time…" She broke
down and started to cry. She bent her head over the table and began
working her wrists in the restraints. One of the cuffs was almost
loose enough, and although she tore her skin trying, she couldn’t
manage to get her hands free. She raised her head slightly and
sobbed into the camera, “I’ve just been trying to get home!”

“I see,” Kasim said. He looked to his left
and spoke in Arabic to someone Jen couldn’t see. A television
flickered on and the Jihadist video of Jenna threatening the world
played without sound. It flicked off.

Kasim continued asking his baited questions,
and then started over from the beginning. After the third time
through, Jen stopped answering.
“They aren’t going to let me go
home,”
she realized.
“They are looking for a
confession."

After a few unsuccessful attempts to get Jen
to answer the repeated questions, Kasim changed his tac. He asked
about the conditions in the city, and the strength of the ISIS
soldiers holding it. He asked about sympathizers and dissenters
among the residents. Jen pled ignorance, saying, “I was held
captive the entire time I was in the city. I don’t know." She
finally stopped talking all together and stared just into the
darkness.

When it was obvious that she would not
cooperate any further, Kasim turned the camera off and called to
the soldier behind Jen. The soldier stepped forward and began
removing her restraints. He unlocked the leg irons first and
removed them. Then he unfastened her handcuffs and worked them back
through the ring in the table.

Jen took advantage of his momentary
distraction and jumped up. Instead of running away, she leapt onto
his back and clawed at his face. He flailed backward and managed to
take hold of Jen’s hurt wrist. She winced when he wrenched it hard,
swinging Jen down and around and knocking her to the ground. Kasim
shouted and more soldiers ran in.

Jen looked up at the angry soldier standing
above her. He had his fist cocked, but he didn’t swing. He looked
at Kasim, who shook his head slowly. The soldier above her growled
in anger and touched the bleeding scratches on his face. Jen saw
that it was the same hand he used to grab her cut wrist.

The other soldiers pushed past him and
dog-piled on top of Jen. They held her down and forced her hands
behind her. Just as one of them was trying to slip flex-cuffs on
Jen’s wrists, she heard a terrible scream.

The soldier she had scratched had latched
onto the man cuffing her and bit him viciously in the neck. The
other soldiers broke apart and several drew weapons. Jen stayed
flat on the floor as blood sprayed and the infection spread. When
the shooting started, Jen used the covering noise and confusion to
scoot farther into the semi-darkness and hide.

More and more soldiers came into the building
in response to the gunfire and shouting, and the contagion spread
like wildfire. Jen was grateful that the building was mostly dark.
She couldn’t see everything. What she could see was the stuff of
nightmares.

The melee was over and the compound was quiet
after a few intense starts and stops, and about twenty-five minutes
of sporadic savagery. Jen waited a few more minutes and listened
for any sounds indicating more screams or gunshots. When it seemed
clear, she stood up and ran outside. It was getting dark, but Jen
wasn’t exactly afraid. She was anxious. She needed to get out of
there and find somewhere safe. She needed a vehicle.

Jen went to the nearest parking area and
checked the first vehicle. It was a small brown SUV and the
driver’s door was unlocked. She opened it up and looked for a key.
“Score!”
she thought when she saw the keys sitting in one of
the cup holders in the center console. She grabbed the keys and ran
back toward the dark building.

As she got close, she saw what she was
looking for and breathed a deep sigh of relief that she didn’t need
to go back inside. There were several dead soldiers outside and
most were armed. Jen picked up two new looking AK47 rifles, and
then stripped several of the full magazines the soldiers wore in
their uniform pouches. She looked for a flashlight and stuffed the
small one she found in her pocket. She spotted a watch on a
soldier’s wrist and decide to take that as well. Jen stowed one of
the rifles and all of the ammo in the SUV and then went back to
find some food and water.

Jen checked to make sure the magazine was
full and charged the rifle. It didn’t eject a round, which meant
the soldier she took it from wasn’t shooting when he went down.
“That won’t be me,” she said.

Jen pulled out her flashlight and hustled
through the buildings. She looked for food and water, and anything
else that might be of use. She tossed what she wanted out the door
onto the ground and ran to the next building. She went as fast as
she could, and only gave herself ten minutes for the hunt.

When her time was up, she ran back to the SUV
and hopped in the driver’s seat. She put the key in the ignition
and rotated it forward until she heard the engine come to life.
“Yes!” she shouted. Jen held onto the steering wheel and bounced up
and down with excitement that it actually worked. “Okay, this is
too easy, I got this,” said Jen as she located the shifting lever
and placed her foot on the brake. Jen already had her learner’s
permit, and she was ready to take her driving test after her
birthday. Her dad wasn’t exactly happy about the idea of her
driving, but he didn’t forbid it either.