The Last Good Man

Daniel

Rey parks just off the gravel driveway beneath the shade of a massive mango tree. As True gets out, black hens and two colorful roosters nervously retreat into the surrounding bushes.

The house is a modest wooden one-story, pastel pink with white trim and a gray corrugated roof with mounted photovoltaic panels. Red hibiscus bushes flank three wide steps leading up to a screened porch.

True is aware of the blue gull circling above them, but she doesn’t look at it, not wanting to draw attention to its existence. Rey is not so reserved. He pulls his phone out and takes pictures of it—though he doesn’t take pictures of them since that would be a violation of their agreement. True doesn’t like it, but there’s not much she can say without getting into an argument.

They gather in a loose group to walk toward the house, except for Rey, who stays behind. Miles turns back, asks curiously, “Aren’t you coming?”

Rey flashes a grin. “Didn’t I mention it? Mr. Ocampo has asked me not to attend. He doesn’t trust me to not publish this interview.”

True is sympathetic to Mr. Ocampo’s caution. She too does not entirely trust Rey to keep quiet.

Alex takes her hand. “You okay?”

“I’m good.”

Nervous as hell, but good.

They walk together through the oppressive afternoon heat, Lincoln and Miles following. They climb the steps to the screened porch, pull open the door. The porch is spotlessly clean, gleaming with fresh paint. A petite woman in a blue dress waits for them, her smile friendly as she holds open a screen door into the house. Neat black hair frames her smooth face.

“Please,” she says in heavily accented English. “Come inside.”

The floor is linoleum, the furniture wicker. Fans blow hot air around. Sheer white curtains sway in the breezes. Framed photographs are on the walls and an acrylic pitcher of juice garnished with citrus slices sits on a low coffee table, wearing a thin skin of condensation. Everything in the room is neat and clean—including the man seated on the wicker sofa.

He uses a cane to stand up from the faded green cushions. He’s short and slight, dark-skinned, with a broad nose and a face pitted by acne. No gray yet in his black hair, which he wears parted on the side and neatly combed. He’s dressed in brown slacks and a white shirt embroidered on the sleeves and around the neck with floral patterns. True is startled to notice that both his feet have been replaced with prosthetics, dark brown in color and designed to look like natural feet, but too perfect and too motionless to pull off the deception.

She forces her gaze back to his face as he looks them over, caution in his eyes.

“Welcome,” he concludes after several seconds, leaving True with the impression that until this moment he had not quite decided if he would welcome them at all. “I am Daniel Ocampo.” The woman in the blue dress moves to his side. Her smile is warm, but her eyes are wary. He says, “This is my wife, Carina.” Daniel’s voice is soft and a little hoarse. His words are pronounced with an accent that True finds challenging to understand. He acknowledges this, saying, “My English is not so good.”

“No, it’s fine,” they all say. Apologies are made, because while between them they speak Arabic, Farsi, Spanish, and some Russian, English is the only language they have in common with Daniel.

Lincoln introduces everyone. Carina urges them to sit. True hesitates, her attention drawn by movement beyond one of the windows, but it’s just Rey, wandering toward the goat pasture in back.

Miles and Lincoln sit in padded chairs. True sits on a small sofa alongside Alex, her pack at her feet and tablet in her lap. The tablet’s screen is blank, but at a touch it will display the feed from the circling gull. Carina serves everyone a glass of juice, explaining that it is calamansi juice, a Filipino version of lemonade. She joins her husband on the larger sofa, their shoulders touching.

“Delgado and… Brighton?” Daniel asks, looking thoughtfully at Alex and True. “You are not married?”

Carina pats his hand, clearly embarrassed, while Alex answers. “We’re married. True kept her own name.”

“Is it all right if I record this conversation?” True asks. “It’s just for myself, to keep the details clear.”

Daniel inclines his head in reluctant approval, perhaps guessing that she is already recording. He looks somber as he says, “It’s been many years since that terrible time but I offer my condolences. What was done to your son… it is beyond the understanding of good men.”

True says, “We would like to learn more about your time there. Of course we’ve read Reynaldo Gabriel’s interview—”

Daniel waves his hand dismissively. “Mr. Gabriel made me seem like a brave man in the story he wrote, like a hero. It isn’t true.”

True glances at the window. Rey is no longer in sight. She wakes the tablet to check the blue gull’s video feed. She is able to see it well enough without her glasses, and quickly locates him out back, leaning on a fence post, watching the goats.

“He admires you,” Miles says.

Daniel shrugs this off. “We both want to see reform.”

True is determined not to let the conversation drift. “Anything you can tell us,” she says, “about what you saw, or heard, or were told while you were being held at Nungsan—we want to hear it.”

He resists this idea with a slow shake of his head. “I cannot speak of what was done to your son. It is beyond words.”

“You don’t need to speak of that,” Alex says quickly.

Daniel regards him for many seconds. “You’re thinking of that video,” he decides. “So you know that part of the story. I never watched it. I pray I will never witness a thing like that again.” He sips his juice, puts his glass on the table, takes Carina’s hand. He says, “I don’t like to talk about my time in that place. It’s not a thing I want to remember, or be remembered for. I agreed to speak to you now only because your son was there—but I don’t think what I have to say will bring you comfort.”

Echoing Daniel’s gesture, Alex reaches for True’s hand. He squeezes it, letting her know he’s aware of what she’s thinking: I am not here for comfort.

If Daniel could offer her comfort, if there was something he could say that would ease the horror of what was done and smooth the scars that mark her life, True would refuse to hear it. For eight years she’s rejected all such words. She does not need comfort. She needs her scars. But she keeps these thoughts to herself.

She says, “We know what they did to Diego. We want to know the rest.”

Daniel looks deeply unhappy, but he says, “I will tell you what I can.”

He speaks slowly at first, groping for words: “The Saomong prison… it was under the ground. Part of a concrete bunker. Filthy and wet. Black mold on the walls. It would flood. The floor was plastic shipping pallets sinking in mud. At first I was alone, and I was sick. I could not hold anything inside me. My bowels ran. I vomited. So of course it stank. It was hot. So hot. Just the memory makes me feel sick again.”

Sweat has appeared on his forehead. He reaches for his glass. True watches his hand and notes a tremble that she’s sure wasn’t there before. He takes two long swallows of the calamansi juice, then continues, speaking faster now. “I think they tried to ransom me, but there was no money, and this made them angry. They began to beat me. Every day they order me outside and I am whipped or beaten with sticks. One day I refuse to leave my prison. They come down the stairs and drag me out and it is worse. They told me I must renounce God, but I refuse. I tell myself I am ready to die. I thought it was true.

“Eight or nine days like that. It does not sound like a long time, does it?” His face squeezes as if he’s perplexed, struggling to make sense of the nonsensical. “I prayed for strength, for forgiveness, for pity. I was granted none of those things. Then they brought the two American soldiers in.

“The one was wounded. Shot three times.” Daniel points to his own body as he says, “His side, his leg, his shoulder.”

Alex’s fingers tighten around True’s hand. Their gazes meet in shared affirmation. Those were the wounds they saw on the video. It’s what the autopsy reported.

Daniel continues, saying, “Later I learned his name was Diego, but his friend never called him that. He called him ‘D,’ just the letter.

“D was feverish and very weak. The other soldier tried to comfort him. ‘D, D,’ he whispered. ‘I promise you, they know where we are and they are coming for us. You have to hold on, D. They will come.’

“Both of these soldiers, they wore only trousers. Their boots and their shirts had been taken away. Their wrists were tied. I could see all this because light came in through a steel grate that was like a trapdoor at the top of the stairs. I thought that D would die that night. I wanted to give him last rites, but the other American, he told me to fuck off. He told D, ‘You are not going to die. They’ll come tonight. You’ll be okay.’

“That night after the lantern was put out, it was very dark, and after a time, very quiet. No rescue came. I thought D had passed, but that was wrong. He was still alive in the morning. He looked a little stronger. I thought maybe he will live after all.”

True’s thoughts flutter past half-noticed things: the restless motion of the white curtains, the slick film of sweat between Alex’s hand and hers, the terrible pressure behind her eyes.

He might have lived. Even then, even that last morning, it was not too late.

“D was a strong man,” Daniel says, his gaze fixed on the runnels of condensation drawing slow lines on the pitcher of juice. “That was his curse. Better for him if he had died that night with his friend at his side.

“The Saomong, they argued in the room above us. I could not understand what they said. But at noon, they came for him. The American tried to get in their way, to fight them, but they had a Taser. One of them brought a syringe. He gave D a shot. I don’t know what it was, but it made him awake. Alert. It made him seem stronger than he was.”

Daniel goes silent, brows shifting, gaze unfocused as if enduring some internal battle. After several seconds, a coarse sigh. He says, “They made us watch. After… after it was over the American was amok. I thought he might kill me. He needed to kill someone. I stayed in a corner. Finally the guerillas came in and beat him unconscious.

“I do not understand such evil as we were made to witness. I will not pretend to understand it.”

Daniel falls silent. There is the sound of the fans, the tap of the blowing curtains. One of the men, Lincoln maybe, softly clears his throat. True feels adrift, only marginally present as she watches Carina stroke Daniel’s hand. All wait. When Daniel speaks again, it’s in a different voice, more detached, as if he’s achieved a needed distance from the past.

“They did not feed us after that,” he says. “For two days the only water we had was what dripped from the walls. When they finally lifted the grate again, they called to me to come out. I thought they would kill me the same way… But no. It was just a beating.

“When they returned me to the prison the American spoke to me for the first time since he’d told me to fuck off. He asked, ‘What do they want from you?’

“I told him they wanted me to renounce God.

“He said I should do it. He said renouncing God is easy. We talked more about it. I never knew his name. He said we had no need of names. I came to trust him though. There was no one else.

“And finally I did it. I did what he said. I renounced God in front of their video camera. And they laughed at me. They told me, ‘Good job. You are a smart man.’ They took me out of the village, along a path in the forest. Not far. I thought they meant to shoot me, but even that was more mercy than they would give. Along the path was a bamboo cage, half-sunk in the mud. They forced me into it and left. I never saw them again after that.

“I was feverish. I don’t know how long I was there. More than a day. I remember hearing them away in the village, practicing their soldier skills, but mostly it was quiet. Just the sounds of the forest, the birds, the rain.

“It was raining hard when the American came, but not hard enough yet to wash away all the blood splashed on his face, caught in his beard, running in streams on his chest.

“I think he was surprised to find me there because when he saw me, he stopped on the trail. We looked at each other, both of us dazed. Me from my fever. Him…” Daniel shakes his head. “I said nothing. I thought it must be a dream of mine that he was there. I was resigned to my death, wishing for it. So I did not ask him to help me. But he helped anyway. He did not have a gun, but he carried a hammer that he used to break the cage open.

“Then he left.

“I crawled away. I don’t know where I went. I remember terrible dreams. I thought I was in hell, but I was just very sick. When I finally woke, I found I was in the care of Good Samaritans. They found me and took me in.” He gestures at his prosthetics. “I lost my feet from gangrene. But by the grace of God, I made it home. I gave up the priesthood. That calling was over for me. But because the American stopped for me, I lived. And now I have Carina, and we have a daughter.”

The room’s heat has gotten inside True. Soothing, distancing. Her thoughts run like hot oil as she takes in every word, every tic in Daniel’s expression. “Did he speak to you of other things than God?” she asks him in a husky voice.

“We spoke,” Daniel concedes. “But not about D.”

She sips cold calamansi juice to ease a throat swollen with emotion, then asks, “Did he talk about the mission? About what he’d been doing before he was captured?”

“He said some things,” Daniel acknowledges. “But I was feverish. Maybe I don’t remember it all. Or maybe I don’t remember it right.”

“Tell us what you remember,” Lincoln urges.

Daniel looks… he looks embarrassed, True decides. She holds her breath, waiting to find out why.

“The American hated the guerillas,” Daniel tells them. “He called them cowards. He said, ‘We were beat, but not by them.’”

Lincoln is getting impatient. “By who, then?” he presses.

Daniel’s cheeks puff out as he expels a breath. “By killer robots.” His eyebrows knit as if reconsidering his choice of words. He looks like a man struggling to remember what was really said, what really happened eight years ago when he was feverish, dying… but he shrugs. This is the best he can come up with. “Killer robots,” he says again. His body rocks with a contagious uneasiness that leaps to True. “The American said two of his men died within seconds of the robots’ attack. They fought the attack, but the guerillas heard the gunfire. They came hunting him and his men. Sixty, hunting the four who still lived.”

True allows herself to consider only this surface description, to think only about the tactics, to look on the scenario Daniel has described as if it were a chess game and not the fucked-up travesty that killed her son. She turns to Lincoln. Her voice is still husky when she says: “Did they have a combat robot on that mission?”

“Not eight years ago,” he tells her. “They might have had surveillance, even an armed UAV. If so, it would have been called a UAV, not a killer robot. That tells me it was something he had never seen before.”

Lincoln means “something Shaw had never seen before.” But he doesn’t say Shaw’s name aloud. Daniel does not know who the American was. When this visit was planned, it was agreed no one would tell him. Shaw’s identity is dangerous knowledge. No reason to burden Daniel with it.

Miles says, “The Saomong could have been running North Korean hardware. Something new. Unknown at the time.”

Lincoln shakes his head. “I’ve seen a hundred intelligence reports from conflicts involving Saomong. None mentioned a robotic fighting system.”

True thinks about the Chinese and the speculation that they interfered in the recovery of the prisoners because they wanted no witnesses… but no witnesses to what? Could the Chinese have been running an experimental combat system in the forest around Nungsan? A robotic system that went disastrously wrong—and wound up targeting allied troops?

Her heart hammers, flushing out the lethargy of her grief, allowing outrage to blossom. Was Rogue Lightning sacrificed to keep an embarrassing failure secret? Had someone, somewhere, made that decision?

Comfort, True decides, can have many definitions. Over the years she has taken some comfort in the simple fact that all those involved in Diego’s death are themselves now dead and gone. But the existence of a killer robot means she’s been wrong about that.

It’s not something she can discuss here, now, in front of the Ocampos, but that’s all right. She has only one more question. She leans in, gaze locked on Daniel. “Have you ever heard from the American, or heard of him, since that day he broke open the cage?”

“No. Never. I have never heard from him, never heard of him, never seen him again.”

True stands up. She is ready to go. She needs to go before her anger becomes visible. “I want to thank you, Mr. Ocampo—”

“Just one more thing,” Alex interjects. “Mr. Ocampo, do you remember what kind of a hammer the American was using when he broke the cage?”

Despite the heat, True shivers. She looks to Daniel to find his head cocked, expression puzzled. “Is it important?” he asks.

Alex says, “Maybe.”

Daniel looks like he wants to ask why, but he doesn’t. “I remember it clearly,” he tells Alex. “Because I saw it before. It was the kind of hammer with a large, heavy head, like this.” He touches the tips of his fingers together, enclosing a space with his hands. “The kind of hammer used to drive stakes into the ground. Or into a man.”

True refuses to even consider that image. Instead she recalls Lincoln’s description of the two bodies the forensics team found in the village, close to the pyre, both with crushing skull injuries. And she remembers Hussam’s story of Jon Helm killing the men who tried to crucify him. She does not doubt the truth of it anymore.

Lincoln asks, “Where were you when the village was destroyed?”

Daniel shakes his head. “Those who cared for me told me that place was blown up. I don’t remember it. It must have been after I crawled away from the cage. But I don’t remember.”

“Thank you, sir,” Lincoln says. He leans forward in his chair, extending his hand across the low table. “We appreciate your willingness to discuss—”

From outside, there’s a sound like glass breaking, followed by a startled cry from Rey, “Ai!”

Lagging by half a second, the sharp crack of a gunshot.