“After boot camp, I was assigned to Pendleton and then training at Twentynine Palms. I was sent to Kuwait as a logistics officer for moving ordnance. A week into being there, I was approached by my CO and two agency guys, who asked me to take a special assignment. I say ‘asked,’ but it was a polite order. The mission was to get the Iraqi Prime Minister’s niece to Baghdad from Mosul and from there out of the country.” She grimaced as she mindlessly drew shapes on the tabletop with her finger.
Gwen chewed her lip. “While the bobble head was there, being a clueless twenty-something, she looked up native clothing on the internet. Missing the part about modesty, she bopped into town in tight jeans, a tube top and an Ozzy Osborne hijab.
“She made a memorable appearance. Word started to spread about a disrespectful American girl. A bounty was placed on her head. The Prime Minister wanted the United States Marines to be her savior,” she said sarcastically.
“Mission directive was to pick up the girl, get her to Baghdad, where she’d be placed on a helo and shipped out to our carrier in the Gulf. I helo’d into Mosul with a joint team from the Raiders and Force Recon. Invisible mission, no shooting. Night mission—three hours in, get the girl, and three hours out. As always, it took longer than expected. We lost our primary exfil.
“There was no way we’d make our secondary in darkness. Our only shot was to let the team disperse, and one of the guys, Harry Desmond, the girl and I hid until the next nightfall to get out. Emily was full of attitude, and fear—I forcibly dressed her head to toe in a black abaya and burqa. We needed to look like we followed the tenets of Sharia law. I warned her, if we were caught, we’d disappear—and she got with the program.We had a platoon in Mosul, but we risked exposing mission-specific intelligence.
“Dressed head to toe in black, we tried to avoid everyone and stay hydrated on a 105-degree day. The sun was setting, and we started moving toward our exfil. All was good until it wasn’t. Emily tripped and fell, letting out a burst of curses right in front of a group of women tending to a pot of boiling laundry. In fear, one of them threw the pot at us. I blocked the blow from hitting Emily, and in Arabic, told the women I was waiting with my husband to bring my temperamental niece and her dowry to her betrothed. I offered them a handful of cash; they picked up the laundry and the pot and went inside.Harry didn’t speak enough Arabic. I did the talking.”
She stared out the window before continuing, “I had second-degree burns on my side, back, bottom and the back of my right thigh. My burqa had stuck to the burns on my back and legs. I was slowing Harry and Emily down from our rendezvous with the rest of the team. A shot of morphine helped, but not enough. As we made our way to the exfil, a group of ISIS fighters drove right for us. I told Harry to take Emily and run. He was married with kids. I didn’t want his kids to lose their father.
“I couldn’t outrun them.I held my position long enough for them to escape. I was out of ammo when they pulled me into the Jeep, put a hood over my head and took off.I found out Emily made it out after I got home.” She took a shuddering breath.
“What happened after that?” Troy asked, his voice almost inaudible.
“I was brought to a compound in Mosul and tossed into a cell. The hood was removed, and my hands remained tied behind my back. An English-speaking man told me I was to be prepped for their leader.”I hope this is enough. I can’t tell them the rest.
The three men looked at her expectantly. She stared down at the table and reluctantly continued, “It was better than the second group that had me. Fifty-one days in, I was traded, drugged for the trip, and transported. I woke up in a prison of sorts with metal walls. I was bathed, fed and my injuries were treated. Then the interrogations began. The questions changed too. My new captors wanted to know what I could tell them about the first set of captors. What the group was planning. Weapons and manpower placements. They wanted to know what my primary mission was.
“They insisted I had something valuable—an item. It became all about the item. What item? I never knew. They were cleaner and organized. It became a torture rotation. Drugs, isolation, hanging by my wrists for days, loud noises, starvation, waterboarding, caning to the bottoms of my feet, electrodes applied to my female anatomy, and…”
Julian stood. His hands pressed down on the bar before reaching inside to retrieve a bottle of water. He unscrewed the cap, and with a glance of his hand across hers, passed it to her.
So much for not crying. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she forced out the words: “Sodomy with a foreign object. They followed a plan.”
Martin’s fists clenched and unclenched. He never broke eye contact with her.
“The interrogator and torturers became angrier every day. They thought I was holding out. The torturers never spoke, and the interrogator spoke English. They added strangulation until I’d pass out.”
Troy called to her, “Gwen, look at me. It’s a memory. You’re safe in Julian’s office.”
She wondered how many times Troy had said that to a victim. She couldn’t look at him. If he touched her, she’d collapse. She wanted to be anywhere but where she was. She curled up around herself, but still the words spilled out.
“After that, they gave up. I heard one of them say in perfect English, ‘She’s useless to even sell.’ Another said, ‘She’ll be dust soon.’ I was dragged to a cold, wet and dirty place in the building and thrown in a cell. Women were crying, praying and dying. I said my prayers and atoned for past sins. I disappeared in my head and hoped I’d never wake up." Gwen gazed ahead, seeing nothing.
Suddenly, Troy was near. Heat from his body encircled her. She felt his indecision as he leaned toward her, then back. His voice sounded like an echo from a seashell in her ear, “Gwen, I’m sorry. You did nothing to deserve what happened to you. You were let down.” His voice cracked.
"No one but family ever said that to me." Gwen looked at him for the first time since she started talking. He gave her a long, pained, sorrowful look before breaking eye contact.“My dad told me I was rescued by the Israeli military. It’s still a bit of a blur. I remember men taking turns carrying me. We were in the water. I thought I was being ferried to heaven. A helo took me to Israel. Then a flight to Landstuhl. They continued care, and finally I was flown to Pendleton. My dad and my brother Scott met me there.
“Will met the plane too.” When she hunched over and choked down a sob, Troy passed her the box of tissues. “One look into his eyes and I knew. He was disgusted. I was admitted to the hospital—where I met Boyle and Stacy. Stacy was kind. He did his best, but Boyle was a piss boy even then.
“My options were slim to none. I returned incoherent, mentally ill.Boyle and Stacy spent hours questioning me, claiming it was a debrief. One of the agency guys who gave me the mission tried talking to me as well. I didn’t remember him from Kuwait. Other than knowing I was tortured and some of the ISIS captors, I had nothing. I’m sure it helped them a lot when I told them the animal who used a bottle was called Mohammed. The guy who used his fist was called Anwar.”
All three men shuddered. With Troy’s hand inches from hers, she yearned to have him hold her. Was he holding back to get her statement, or was he holding back because he didn’t care? She couldn’t see the answer in his face.
“Will made an appropriate number of visits before ending the relationship. I was an embarrassment. He told people I broke it off. In the beginning, I jumped at every noise and cringed at every touch. I couldn’t string a sentence together. How was I going to end any relationship?”
“Will couldn’t handle things?” Troy asked, blinking.
“I was supposed to be an officer’s wife, a trophy—not a scandal. Now I was ugly with every ounce of my femininity destroyed. Mentally, I was a zombie.”
The room grew hazy; all she could see was Troy. He was her interrogator, and she was a victim, nothing more.
“My family, the Marines I was with, and my friends rallied around me. It was so strange, the harassment I underwent in the ranks—How many guys did you bone to graduate the Naval Academy? You’re too pretty to be a Marine.The catcalls. Carrying our used tampons in Ziploc bags because there was no sanitation. That all stopped because I was too ugly to harass. All of what I railed against would have been welcomed instead of what was done to me.” She wiped her face with a tissue.
“During the four weeks I was at Pendleton, my aunt arranged for me to have special visitors. They turned out to be plastic surgeons, psychologists and psychiatrists. My dad or Scott was with me the entire time. They helped me cheek the meds the doctors at Pendleton ordered and to take the ones the visitors brought. The Pendleton psychiatrist scared me. He talked to me from the doorway, told me I was schizophrenic. And that because I was devoid of any femininity, I’d never function as a productive citizen, much less a woman.”
