The Third Target (7 page)

“Who are you?” he demanded in Arabic, his voice cold and detached.

For a second I was too startled to answer. His head and face were covered by a black hood, but I could see his eyes, and that’s what chilled me. They were dark and soulless. There was not a spark of life or hope in them. He had gunned these men down without giving it a thought. He had clearly killed others. Probably many others. And I knew at that moment he would not hesitate to kill me.

“I’m a reporter,” I replied in Arabic, my mouth bone-dry.

He said nothing.

“I’m supposed to interview someone.”

Still nothing.

“Soon,” I added.

The boy just stared through me, this haunted, hunted look in his eyes.

“At the Khaled bin Walid Mosque,” I mumbled, not sure why I was still talking.

He obviously couldn’t have cared less, and I wondered if he was going to shoot me now.

There was a long stretch of silence. Well, silence in the sense that neither of us was talking. The winds were howling through the
concrete canyons and across the barren wasteland of the streets of Homs. A fresh round of gunfire could be heard several streets to the east, the
rat-a-tat-tat
staccato of automatic weapons being fired in short bursts. I heard a stray mortar round or two, but the pitched battle of the last hour appeared to be dying down. Then again, maybe that was wishful thinking.

“The bag
 
—what’s in it?” the boy asked at long last, pointing the pistol at my backpack.

Startled, scared, not sure how much to say, I stammered, “Oh, uh, you know, just some stuff. Notebooks, pens, whatever.”

“Food?” he asked in a barely audible voice.

“I’m sorry?” I replied, not sure I’d heard him right.

“Do you have any food?” he repeated, only marginally louder now.

“Oh yeah, well, a little
 
—not much
 
—just some apples, some PowerBars, that kind of thing.”

“Give it to me,” he said.

“Which?”

“All of it
 
—whatever you have.”

Was he serious? Didn’t he want my wallet, my cash, my credit cards? Then it dawned on me these would do this boy no good. There was no place for him to buy food no matter how much money he had. I took the pack off, set it on the ground, and unzipped the top.

“I haven’t eaten anything but a few olives in the past three days,” he said as if reading my thoughts.

I stopped what I was doing and looked up. What he said stunned me
 
—not his words but the way he said them. There was no emotion in his voice. None. He wasn’t complaining. He wasn’t a little kid whining or moaning or asking for sympathy. He was just stating a fact, and come to think of it, I don’t think he was even saying it to me. It was almost as if he were saying it to himself. I just happened to be standing there.

As I looked more closely, I saw how his loose his trousers were,
how they barely hung on his emaciated frame. His gloveless hands, gaunt and bony, looked cold and raw.

Who was this boy? I wondered. What was his name? Where did he live? How did he spend his days? Who looked after him? Did anyone, or was he just roaming the streets at night, gunning down strangers in hopes of finding a little food? I wanted to ask him so many questions. I wanted to write a story about him, put him on the front page of the
Times
.

But he waved the gun at me, hurrying me along. He was growing impatient, and I could sense how dangerous it would be to try to engage in conversation. Whoever he was, he had long since lost his innocence. He had seen too much, done too much, and he didn’t want the world to know. His world had contracted. His only aspiration was to survive the night, not tell his story, yet in that cold, dark street I wondered if even his will to live would last much longer.

“Never mind,” he said with a sudden urgency. “Just give me the bag.”

Again I looked up at him. I could see in his eyes that he meant it. There would be no arguing. No negotiating. And he wasn’t going to ask twice. I zipped up the backpack. It wasn’t simply filled with notebooks and pens and a bit of food. It also held a brand-new digital camera and telephoto lens and a digital audio recorder, all property of the
Times
. I cautiously took a few steps forward and held it out to the boy. For a moment I wondered if he would look inside and then shoot me for not telling him the full contents. But then I saw he was getting edgy, anxious to get moving, off this street, back into the shadows. I set down the pack and carefully backed up to where I had stood before.

Glancing around in every direction to see if the coast was clear, he reached down, stripped the dead soldiers of their ammo, stuffed the magazines into one of the side pockets of the backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and ran back into the long, dark hallway.

Before I knew it, I was standing all alone in the middle of the rubble-strewn street, just me and two new corpses. I knew I should run. To stand there was to be a target. But I just stared at the two soldiers and the sheer terror in their eyes.

My brother liked to talk about heaven and hell. That’s what he’d been trained for. That’s what interested him. Until now, I’d honestly never thought much about one or the other. But at that moment, I realized I could not say these men were in a better place. As cruel as their last moments were, was it possible they still existed but now in someplace worse? I didn’t want to think this way, and I never had before. I’d never thought much about the afterlife, but to the extent I’d pondered it at all, I had just assumed that when we died, we were all simply snuffed out like a candle. That was it. That’s all there was. But now I was haunted by this Syrian’s last words. As he was slipping away from this world, he had clearly seen another, and it had terrified him. I’d seen it in his eyes. I’d heard it in his voice. And all of it rattled me.

Forcing myself to turn away, to think about something else, I looked around me. All I saw was carnage and ruin. Ten-, twelve-, fifteen-story apartment buildings were partially collapsed, riddled with bullet holes, devoid of windows, blackened and charred by fire. Not one or two buildings looked this way. They all did. Everything was devastated and abandoned.

This was Syria. This was what the Arab Republic of the Assad years had degenerated into
 
—a concrete jungle of Syrian soldiers and starving, suffering, soul-scarred children rooting around for bits of food, and the decomposing bodies of those who got in their way. Did the world really understand what was happening here? Did it care? Did I? How long had I covered the war like a football match, chalking up wins and losses, with play-by-play and color analysis? How many peace conferences and diplomatic initiatives had I written about from swank five-star hotels in Geneva and Paris, wining and
dining with foreign ministers and secretaries of state and defense, all pontificating about the tragedy but never actually doing anything about it? Year after year this nightmare was unfolding, and still the world did nothing definitive to stop it. In Washington, the politicians talked tough. In London and Paris and Berlin and Geneva, it was all the same. But nothing changed. Nothing got better. Not for these two men. Not for this little boy. Not for anyone who had once lived on this street in Homs.

I was witnessing the implosion of an entire country, and for the first time it began to truly dawn on me that if no one stepped in, there might not be a country left in another year or two. Was that really possible? Were we witnessing the utter disintegration of a modern Arab state? Might this nation actually never be put together again?

I’d never thought like this before. I’d certainly never written anything of the sort. But suddenly, standing alone on this street, seeing what I had just seen, I realized I had absolutely no idea what would become of Syria. Perhaps Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards would take it over and turn it into another province of the mullahs in Tehran. Or maybe al Qaeda and the other Sunni rebels would win the day and create a new Afghanistan or Somalia on the borders of Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan. Either way, I couldn’t see President Assad and his forces lasting much longer. Honestly, I was stunned that he was still alive after all that had happened so far.

I heard a roar overhead and looked up to see two F-4 Phantoms streaking past. Moments later, two more shot by. Then the bombs started falling. It was the thunderous explosions and massive balls of fire, all just a few blocks to the north, that snapped me out of my foolish introspection. This was neither the time nor the place to muse over the future of Syria. There were far more urgent questions facing me. What was I going to do now? Where was I going to go? Time was fleeting. Faisal Baqouba wasn’t going to sit around in that mosque all night. Unless I got moving, I was going to miss him and
miss his brother Tariq, and with them the interview that could make my career.

Then again, if I started moving toward the mosque alone, there was a very real chance I wasn’t going to make it home alive.

A new round of machine-gun fire erupted, and then sniper fire too. Someone was squeezing off single rounds from a high-caliber rifle. I’d heard it before, but never so close. If I had to guess, I’d have said it was just up the street and around the corner to the north.

I was out of time. I had to get out of there. Stepping over mounds of broken, crumbled concrete blocks, I moved off the street and ducked into the shadows of a doorway.

Someone grabbed me from behind. Before I realized what was happening, he clamped a hand over my mouth. Someone else grabbed my arms and pinned them behind me. I couldn’t move, could hardly breathe. They dragged me into a windowless, putrid building. I couldn’t see a thing. A surge of adrenaline shot through my system. I wanted to fight back, but I knew someone would slash my throat or put a bullet through my head before I got in my first good hit, so instead I went limp and crashed to the floor.

Immediately I felt the cold steel barrel of a gun jammed into the base of my skull. Someone’s boot thrust down hard on my back. Another came down on my neck. My hands were wrenched behind me again. In short order they were bound with rope so tight it cut into my wrists. I felt them start to bleed.

Then someone threw a bag over my head. It was plastic and opaque, a garbage bag probably. It was tied snug around my face and neck. I began to hyperventilate. I kept telling myself to calm down, not to panic, but to no avail. The walls were closing in. I felt claustrophobic. I decided they weren’t going to shoot me or they would have done it already. But that could only mean one thing: they were going to behead me. The very thought nearly made my heart stop. Then I felt a needle being jammed into my arm, and time stood still.

When I woke up, I had no idea where I was.

I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious. There was still a garbage bag over my head and tied around my neck, but it had been loosened enough that I could breathe. I was achy and stiff and freezing. My jacket was gone. So was my sweater. All I had on were my T-shirt and boxers.

My arms were still tied behind me. My feet were now bound as well, but my shoes were gone and so were my socks. As best I could tell, I was sitting on a frigid concrete floor, leaning against cold cinder blocks, and I could hear a driving rainstorm and the most intense booms of thunder I had ever experienced.

In the distance, I could also still hear the occasional burst of automatic-weapons fire. I strained to hear anything else, something that might tell me where I was. Soon I heard what sounded like two fighter jets roaring overhead. After a moment, another two flew past, and then I heard repeated explosions. They weren’t loud or close
 
—certainly not as close as when we’d first entered the city. But the activity suggested a government offensive was still being waged against a rebel enclave.

I could also hear something flapping in the breeze. At first it
sounded like a flag. But then it sounded like sheets of plastic. A terrible draft was coming into whatever room I was in, and occasionally a spray of bitterly cold rain. I didn’t hear any windows rattling. Indeed, I hadn’t seen much evidence that there was any unshattered glass left in the city. So I concluded I was in a place where plastic bags or sheets of plastic had been fastened over the blown-out windows in a semi-futile effort to keep out the worst of the wind and the rain.

Then I heard heavy footsteps. I don’t know how to describe it precisely, but there was something about the tone and pitch of the sounds that made me think someone
 
—or actually several people
 
—were ascending a nearby concrete stairwell. Whoever they were, they clearly wore boots, and the weight suggested they were men. Whether they were regular soldiers or jihadist rebels I had no idea, but I was sure I was not in a bunker or a basement. I was several flights up at least, perhaps in a top-floor apartment or office, doubtless stripped of all carpets and furniture and other amenities.

No one was saying anything, but they were getting closer, and with each step I feared my end was drawing near.

There was so much at that moment that I didn’t know. All I knew for sure was that I was not ready to die. There’s no other way to put it. I could tell you I was bravely ready to meet my Maker, but that would be a lie. I was petrified.

The footsteps stopped right in front of me.

“What is your name?” a man asked me in English, though his voice bore a thick Arab accent.

I tried to swallow but had no saliva. Suddenly I felt the edge of a blade against my throat, just below my Adam’s apple.

“James,” I replied, trying to steady my voice. “James Bradley Collins.”

“Where are you from?”

The very question struck terror in my heart, but what choice did I have? Would they really hesitate to kill me if I acted Canadian,
British, or Australian? Maybe, for a while. But what would happen when they found I was lying to them?

“America.”

“What city?”

“Washington.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a reporter.”

“For what paper?”

“The
Times
.”

“Which one?”

“The
New York Times
.”

“Why did you come to Syria?”

Here I hesitated. What was the right answer? Who was holding me? What did they want to hear? My mind rapidly considered a wide range of options. But in my situation, none seemed viable. I didn’t have the energy and mental wherewithal to construct a cover story and stick with it through days or weeks of starvation, sleep deprivation, beatings, and whippings. I wasn’t in the CIA. I wasn’t trained for this.

A simple thought then crossed my mind:
Just tell them the truth
 
—there’s nothing to be gained by lying.
But that wasn’t necessarily true, I told myself. Lying might buy me time until I could figure a way out of here or until someone could come rescue me, maybe Omar, maybe Abdel. Lying, I thought, just might save me. But before I knew what I was doing, I heard myself saying I had come to do an interview.

“With whom?”

“Ramzy,” I said without thinking.

“Jamal Ramzy?” came the reply.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He invited me.”

No one said a word.

“Look in my pocket,” I said quickly. “The pocket of my trousers. You’ll find a printout of the e-mail.”

Did they believe me? Did they care? Were they part of Assad’s forces or rebels? And where were Omar and Abdel? Had they already been killed? Had they been captured? Were they being interrogated? All the more reason to tell the truth, I decided. My captors very well might know the answer to every question they were asking me.

Thunder crashed around us. The winter rains were coming down even harder now. I thought I heard the rustling of a piece of paper but couldn’t be sure. Then the blade was removed from my throat, though I felt it nick me and draw blood. A moment later, the plastic bag was ripped off my head. A flash of lightning momentarily blinded me, but as I got my bearings, I found myself staring up at three men.

Each was well built, muscular, armed to the hilt, and covered in a black wool hood. The one on the left wore a dark-blue sweatshirt, faded blue jeans, and black combat boots. He held a machine gun pointed at me. The one on the right wore a winter parka, green fatigues, and brown boots. He was brandishing a sword, which shimmered in the moonlight. I thought I detected a drop of my blood on its tip. The one in the center seemed the youngest. He wore sneakers, black jeans, and my leather coat. He already had the e-mail in his hand, and when our eyes met, it was he who spoke.

“
As-salamu alaykum
, Mr. Collins. I am Tariq Baqouba. These are Faisal and Ahmed. They are my brothers. Welcome to Homs.”

I was stunned yet relieved. I know it sounds strange to say, and I admit that before that night it would never have occurred to me to breathe a sigh of relief in the presence of three proven al Qaeda killers. But I was relieved. Maybe
relieved
isn’t the right word, but I cannot think of another. The simple fact was I was glad to still be alive and off the streets. I had not yet missed my appointment, and I was now heading
 
—I hoped
 
—to meet the man for whom I’d come all this way.

“Now, come with me,” Tariq ordered.

The man on the right quickly put his sword in its sheath. He untied my feet, pulled me up, and produced a bag that turned out to be filled with my clothes. While his brothers held their weapons on me, he set my hands free long enough for me to put my clothes and shoes back on. They were cold and a bit damp, but under the circumstances I was grateful, especially when I felt my grandfather’s watch ticking away in my right front pocket.

I had a thousand questions, starting with where my colleagues were. But I said nothing. My hands were tied again. A machine gun was thrust into my back, and we proceeded down the concrete steps, down five floors to the ground level. Along the way I came to realize we were, in fact, in what was left of the Khaled bin Walid Mosque. It had been shelled and shot up pretty good. But it had not yet collapsed, and I saw signs that people had been here recently. A few sleeping bags in one place. The remains of a campfire in another. Shell casings and cigarette butts were everywhere. It seemed to be a safe house of sorts. I made a mental note of it in case I ever got out of this country alive.

We didn’t stay for long. When we reached the ground floor, they led me through the charred remains of the main hall. Then we stepped into another stairwell, where we descended to the basement. They turned on flashlights as we walked down a labyrinth of damp, dripping hallways until we reached a mechanical room of some kind. We entered and they led me past the boiler and some new-looking electrical panels. I couldn’t fathom their purpose. The room wasn’t that big. What could the panels possibly be powering? But as we turned a corner, I saw an opening in the rear wall.

Feeling the barrel of the machine gun being prodded into my back, urging me to go through the opening, I ducked down and, trying not to lose my balance, crawled through the hole. I found myself crouched in a makeshift tunnel that had been dug under
the city. Strangely, though most if not all of the city of Homs was blacked out, the tunnel had power and was reasonably well lit. It was no more than five and a half feet high and at best four feet wide, but it was long. It seemed to go on forever. It reminded me of the smuggling tunnels I’d seen on the Sinai border with Gaza and on the U.S. border with Mexico.

The rebel with the machine gun told me to move faster, and I did as I was told. I hunched over and began to walk. After what I guessed was a good ten or fifteen minutes, we finally reached a ladder and a hole in the ceiling. The tunnel didn’t stop there. It kept going and broke off in two directions. But I was directed up the ladder, and with some difficulty since I couldn’t use my hands, I eventually made it to the top, where two more hooded thugs, both well armed, grabbed me, pulled me through the hole in the floor, and threw another bag over my head. We walked for another long stretch, down hallways, up and down flights of stairs, and through another tunnel, until finally I was told to stop, sit down on a cold metal stool, and keep my mouth shut. When the bag came off my head, I could barely see at all.

Enormous klieg lights were shining in my face. I was sitting at an old metal table. It reminded me of the kitchen table I’d grown up with. As I squinted, I could see a giant figure sitting across from me.

“Welcome to
ad-Dawla al-Islāmiyya fi al-’Irāq wa-al-Shām
, Mr. Collins,” he said in a throaty, almost-gravelly voice, like someone with emphysema or throat cancer. “I am Jamal Ramzy.”