Hot Blood

Начало книги

Johnny Lake pulled his legs up against his chest and slowly banged the back of his head against the wall. It was the fourteenth day, and on the fourteenth day they had said he would die. There were six men holding him hostage, but he only knew one of them by name. Kamil. Kamil was the leader of the group. His name meant ‘perfect’. He was the one who spoke to the video camera, in accented English. It was Kamil who waved a Kalashnikov and said that the Americans must leave Iraq and that if they didn’t Johnny would be killed. When he was in front of the camera, Kamil wore black-leather gloves and a black-wool ski mask with holes for his eyes and mouth. His companions wore masks, too, or had scarves tied round their faces. They said nothing whenever the camera was on, other than to chant ‘ Allahu Akbar.’ God is great.

His captors weren’t aware that he knew what they planned to do with him. Johnny hadn’t let on that he spoke Arabic. He had studied the language for two years in Chicago and had spent a year in Dubai, then six months in Kuwait City before moving to Baghdad. He was fluent and could read and write the language, but from the moment he’d been forced into the back of a van at gunpoint he hadn’t said a word of Arabic. At first he figured that being able to eavesdrop on their conversations would give him an edge, but all it had done was to fill him with despair. Fourteen days was the deadline they’d set. Two weeks. Three hundred and thirty-six hours.

Читать дальше →