The Terrorist

Gary Moskowitz, a 32-year-old office supplies salesman, was reading the in-flight magazine, when suddenly, for no apparent reason, the plane went into a nosedive. The fasten seatbelts sign lit up with a dinging noise, oxygen masks popped out of the ceiling, the captain’s voice said, “Assume crash positions” over the loudspeaker, and the passengers (including Gary) pressed their heads between their knees and wrapped their legs around their thighs—as if it mattered what position they were in when they hit the ground. Sunlight flickered as the plane tumbled through clouds. Gary braced himself for impact. But suddenly, the plane grew stead, leveled out, and then began to ascend. All around Gary, passengers wept with joy and hugged one another.
“That concludes our crash drill,” the captain's sturdy voice said over the loudspeaker. “Please remain in your seats until we regain our cruising altitude.”
The passengers looked at each other, and smiles broke out on their faces. They laughed aloud
and joked about how frightened they had been.
“What's going on?” Gary asked the woman next to him. “Are we going to die?”
“Didn't you hear what the captain said? It was only a crash drill.”
“What's a crash drill?”
“You live in a cave or something? That's when they pretend we're crashing, to practice what we'd do in case of a real crash.”
“I never heard of such a thing.”
“Hey, everybody!” the woman shouted. “He never heard of a crash drill.”
The passengers laughed at Gary, who flushed red.
The flight attendant was walking down the aisle, returning oxygen masks to their compartments in the ceiling and collecting used motion sickness bags. She was a blonde woman of about 50. Her face had a thick cake of makeup that cracked along her wrinkles, causing little makeup chips to dangle like old paint.
“Excuse me,” Gary said.
“Yes, sir?” the flight attendant said, smiling at Gary and causing makeup chips to break off from the corners of her mouth.
“I have a complaint,” Gary said. “It's about the crash drill.”
“Yes, what about it?”
“Are we going to die?”
“Eventually.”
“How about today?”
“Sir, it was just a drill.”
“Don't you think it's a bit inconsiderate to pretend the plane is going to crash?”
“We have to be prepared, in case there's a real crash.”
“Isn't that what the preflight
safety instructions are for?”
“That's just theory, sir. We have to practice it.”
The flight attendant started to walk away, but before she got two steps, Gary pressed the button that called the flight attendant. There was a dinging sound, and next to the no-smoking light, another light lit up with a picture of a person. The flight attendant walked back to Gary, pressed a button on the ceiling to turn off the person-shaped light, and smiled, causing chips of makeup to break off from the corners of her eyes.
“Yes, sir?”
“Couldn't you at least have warned us that there was going to be a crash drill?”
“Sir, you're being rude,” she said.
“No, I'm not. I'm being assertive.”
“The crash drill has to be a surprise, sir. If passengers knew it was just a drill, they might not take it seriously, and it wouldn't be good practice.”
“That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”
“You should just be glad it was only a drill and you're not dead.”
She turned to walk away, and Gary again pushed the button to call the flight attendant.
“Sir, have you ever heard of the boy who cried wolf?” the flight attendant asked. “You might someday really need a flight attendant, and no one will believe you.”
“I want to speak to your supervisor,” Gary said.
“He's busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Flying the plane.”
Gary unbuckled his seatbelt and squeezed past the woman in the aisle seat.
“Pardon me,” he said, getting into the aisle.
“Sir, the fasten seatbelts sign is on,” the flight attendant said.
Gary marched toward the front of the plane, intending to give the pilot a piece of his mind.
“You can't go up there,” the flight attendant said. “That's first class!”
Gary tore back the curtain separating coach from first class. He squeezed past a male flight attendant who was pouring fresh glasses of champagne.
When Gary knocked on the cockpit door, he was surprised to see it swing open. He had expected it to be locked, and that he'd have to speak to the pilot through the door.
There were two men in the cockpit—an older man with streaks of gray at his temples and a younger man with shocking bright red hair. Gary supposed that the older was the pilot, the younger the copilot. They looked up and saw Gary.
“You were supposed to lock the door,” the pilot said to the copilot.
“I thought you locked it,” the copilot said.
“You were the last one to open the door. When you went to the bathroom.”
They reminded Gary of a bickering old married couple.
“Excuse me,” Gary said. “What do you think you're doing?”
“I might ask you the same question,” the captain said. “How did you get up here.”
“The door was unlocked.”
“Are you a first class passenger?”
“You don't look first class,” the copilot said.
“What do first class passengers look like?” Gary asked.
“I know 'em when I see 'em,” the copilot said. “Flying a plane, you see a lot of passengers.”
“You want to try explaining this crash drill?” Gary demanded.
“Return to your seat,” the captain said.
“I will as soon as you explain yourself.
The captain picked up a speakerphone and pressed a button. “We have an intruder in the cockpit,” he said. “Could I please have the sky marshal up here?”
“Alright, fine, I'm going,” Gary said. “But I'm complaining once we reach the ground. I'm writing a letter to the newspaper.”
He opened the cockpit door. Dozens of passengers were charging toward him. Apparently they were all sky marshals. No. That wasn't it. Gary slammed the door and pressed his body weight against it.
“Call them off!” he shouted, but the pilot and copilot just stared forward at the puffy clouds. “Call them off!” Gary repeated. “If they all come to the front, the plane'll be too topheavy. We'll go into another nosedive.”
The pilots laughed.
“Why don't you leave the aeronautics to us,” the copilot said.
The door burst open. Hands tore at Gary's face and clothes.
“It’s just a hijacking drill,” Gary screamed. “We have to be prepared in case there’s a real hijacking!”
They kept tearing at him and pounding him. Gary lunged to the pilot’s seat and gripped onto the steering controls.
“Sanctuary!” he screamed.
The passengers tugged at Gary, causing him to pull down on the steering controls, causing the plane to ascend sharply, which sent passengers tumbling backwards, rolling out of the cockpit.

After the passengers subdued Gary, the plane made an emergency landing in Chicago. Hulking men dressed in black handcuffed Gary and dragged him off the plane. Gary tried to speak, but his mouth had a dirty sock in it, stuck there by passengers who grew tired of hearing Gary protest his innocence.
The large men brought Gary into a well-furnished office deep within the airport. One man gripped Gary’s right arm, another his left. A third man, short, with large ears, crooked teeth, and bad skin, pulled the sock from Gary’s mouth.
“I didn't hijack the plane,” Gary said.
“That's not what everyone else says,” the short man said. “Captain says you was
hijacking the plane.”
“Listen to the black box,” Gary said. “The cockpit voice recorder will tell you the truth.”
“We only listen to it if there's a crash. You failed—you didn't bring the plane down. So there's no need to listen to it!”
“It proves I'm innocent. I just went into the cockpit to complain about the crash drill.”
“If you’re not a terrorist, how come you’re against crash drills?”
“It’s unpleasant being in a plane that’s in a nosedive, particularly when you don’t know it’s just a drill.”
“What building were you planning to crash the plane into?”
“I wasn't planning to crash it into anything.”
“The Sears Tower?”
“I'm not a terrorist.”
“You probably think you're a freedom fighter.”
“I am neither a terrorist nor a freedom fighter.”
“You're gonna start telling us the truth.”
The short man knocked the computer off the desk, sending it smashing to the floor. Then the big men held Gary down with his back on the desk, his head hanging off the end. The short man lifted the large plastic jug of water from the water cooler. It rhythmically glugged water onto the carpet as he brought it toward Gary.
“You’re getting water-boarded,” the short man said.
“I want a lawyer,” Gary said. “I want my phone call.”
“You think you got Miranda rights? Haven’t you heard of the Patriot Act?”
The large men laughed and held Gary down tight. The short man held the water jug over Gary. Since it rhythmically splashed on his face, Gary was able to time his breathing and didn’t’ feel as though he was drowning. The water-boarding would have been more effective if they poured the water from a bucket, but Gary wasn’t going to tell them that.
Suddenly, the door burst open.
“My office!” the man at the door moaned in despair. “You got water everywhere. I let you use my office, and this is how you repay me?”

Gary’s interrogator’s decided to take him somewhere else to torture him, somewhere where no one would complain if they made a little mess. They fitted him in an orange jumpsuit, tied a burlap hood over his head, and shackled his wrists and ankles. After a plane ride of several hours, he was brought out into balmy air. He figured he was in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The hood was pulled off, and Gary saw he was in a large compound. Guard towers and barbed wire loomed over him. The colors of the prison were dull and depressing—grays and browns. The sand at his feet looked dull, as though someone had gone through it grain by grain to pick out all the quartz. A thick-necked guard unshackled Gary and pushed him forward.”
“Start walking, terror boy.”
“I'm an innocent man!” Gary screamed.
“Sure you are, Mohammad.”
“My name is Gary.”
“Your name is prisoner two-five-nine-seven.
Memorize that number. It will not be given again.”
“You can't do this to me,” Gary said. “I'm an American.”
The guard inhaled through clenched teeth. “You might want keep quiet about that,” he said. “The other prisoners don't like Americans so much.”
Gary was led down a narrow corridor past concrete cells. Through the bars, he saw swarthy men in orange jumpsuits. They all had long dark beards. They barely looked up as he passed; their dull eyes stared at the concrete floor.
The door to Gary's cell had one of those key card slots used for hotel rooms. The guard slid a card through the card reader, and the door slid open. There was a metal cot, a sink, and a toilet.
“Mecca is thataway,” the guard told him, pointing to an arrow made from duct tape on the concrete floor. He handed Gary a Koran with English on one side of the page and what looked like Arabic on the other.
“I'm not Muslim,” Gary said.
“You got that right,” the guard said. “Islam is a relgion of peace. You fanatics are giving it a bad name. It makes me mad.”
The bars slammed shut.
In the cell facing Gary's was another man in an orange jumpsuit. He was tall and broad with a long dark shaggy beard. He introduced himself, speaking in a thick terrorist accent. His name was Abdullah. He was an Afghani shepherd, but after American warplanes blew up his entire flock of goats, he joined the jihad against the Americans. He told Gary that he would take him under his wing.
“You will be my bitch,” he said. “I'm not gay, but in here the pickings are slim. We're in separate cells, so we'll have to talk dirty to each other.”
Gary tried to ignore him. He was glad there were two sets of bars between them.
“I want to pour oil in your beard and run my fingers through it,” Abdullah said.
“I don't have a beard.”
“Not that beard.”
Gary sat on his cot and tried to ignore Abdullah's obscene tongue motions. Having nothing else with which to occupy himself, he flipped open the Koran and started to read. He had never read it before. It was boring, but he supposed that with nothing else to read, it would soon brainwash him into being a Muslim fundamentalist.
He was too frightened to make sense of the words he, but he kept turning the pages.
A while later, the guard returned to Gary’s cell. He slid a card through the card-reader, and the door slid open.
“Let's go, Muhammad.”
“My name is Gary.”
“Let's go! Now!”
Gary folded in the corner of the page to mark his place, then closed the book. Abdullah let out a furious scream.
“You will regret that,” Abdullah said coldly, a look of abject hatred on his face.
“Regret what?”
“What you did to the Koran.”
“Reading it?”
“You desecrated it.”
“I did not.”
“You folded in the corner.”
“I was marking my place.”
“You should use a bookmark.”
“I don't have a bookmark.”
“There is no excuse for desecrating the Holy Koran.”
“Sorry.”
Gary opened the Koran and tried to smoothe out the corner. A thin line stayed where he had folded it. The crease would be in the paper forever.
“Let's go, Mohammad,” the guard said.
Gary set the Koran down on his cot and followed the guard out of his cell. Abdullah's hairy hand reached through the bars and grabbed Gary's ear.
“As you have done to the Koran, so shall it be done to you!” Abdullah screamed, and bent down the ear as far as it could go.
“Yeoww!!!”
Gary wrenched his ear free and rubbed it.
“It's just paper!” he screamed. “You nearly tore my ear off!”
“Next time you read the Koran, I hope you'll be more respectful.”
The guard marched Gary through the prison, across the dusty yard flanked with guard towers.
“Where are we going?” Gary asked.
“We'll ask the questions,” the guard said.
“Okay, ask me a question.”
“No. We have a professional to do that.”
He brought Gary into a cube-shaped concrete shed smelling of stale sweat. A single bare light bulb hung from the ceiling. A short bald man leaned against a metal folding table in the middle of the room. He smiled at Gary with crooked, yellow teeth. Then he broke a clove from a bulb of garlic, popped it in his mouth, and chewed. He walked up and breathed his garlicky breath in Gary's face.
“I'm innocent,” Gary said.
“Shut up,” the bald man said. “I'm going to ask you some questions and you're going to tell me the answers. Question number one—who do you work for?”
“H and Q office supplies. I'm assistant regional sales manager for the midwest.”
“Yet you’ve been moonlighting as a suicide terrorist.”
“I was trying to complain about the crash drill.”
“Right.” The bald man grinned. “That's fine. I prefer if you make it more difficult for me. Give me a chance to earn my salary. I've got good news and bad news for you. The good news is the United States doesn't use torture, so we won't be yanking out your toenails or attaching electrodes to your genitals. The bad news is that we have other ways of getting information out of you.”
A woman cleared her throat. She was sitting in a metal folding chair against the wall, scribbling on a clipboard.
The bald man sighed. “Our Red Cross observer,” he said, nodding at the woman with the clipboard. He handed Gary a small white plastic card. “That's a stress card. If at any point, you feel the interrogation is too intense or stressful for you, hold up the stress card, and we'll stop.”
Gary was about to point out how stupid the idea of stress cards was, but then he feared that if he did they would take it away, so he kept silent.
“Now we're putting you in what we call a stress position,” the bald man said. “It won't cause any permanent damage, but as you'll see, it's mighty uncomfortable.”
One of the guards knelt down lifted Gary’s foot into the air. Then he let go.
“Keep it up there,” the bald man told Gary. “You're standing on one foot till you tell us everything you know.”
Gary held out his arms to balance himself.
“No arms for balancing!” the bald man screamed, and Gary lowered his arms to his side.
Standing on one foot was difficult, particularly when not allowed to use his arms for balance, but Gary
was determined not to use the stress card. He wouldn't let them break him.
“Look at you,” the guards mocked. “Standing on one leg like a flamingo. We should get you a
pink jumpsuit!”
The woman with the clipboard cleared her throat. “It has to be orange,” she said.
Soon Gary's leg ached terribly. Sweat poured down his forehead. He was about to fall, so he
held up the stress card and set his foot down.
“Dagnabbit!” the bald man said.
The guards looked crestfallen.
The bald man left and then returned with a plastic bucket full of water. The guards lay Gary on his back on the metal table, his head hanging off the side, just as in the airport office.
“Who do you work for?” the bald man asked.
“H and Q Accounting,” Gary said.
The bald man poured cold water over Gary's mouth and up his nose. This guy knew what he was doing, as he should, being a professional interrogator. He used a bucket, not a jug. The cold water came in a steady stream, without gaps for Gary to breathe. Soon, he could no longer hold his breath. His lungs tried to suck in air, but only sucked in water. He felt as if he were drowning, so he lifted the stress card and waved it around.
“Dagnabbit!” the bald man said, throwing the half-full water jug against the wall.
Gary sat up and coughed out water. A cigarette taste burned his sinuses.
The bald man sighed. “All right,” he said. “Were gonna try something new.”
He picked up a steel crowbar and rhythmically tapped its hooked end in the palm of his hand. Guards pushed a large wooden crate into the room. The crate was turned on its side, and was about the size and shape of a refrigerator. A humming noise, like fluorescent lights, came from inside the box.
“I have good news for you,” the bald man said, stroking the curved end of the crowbar like a cat's neck. “This crate just arrived, so you get to be the first to try out our new interrogation method. But I should warn you—this is the first time we're attempting this particular method, so there may be a few bugs.”
The guards chuckled. “A few bugs,” they chortled.
The bald man smacked the crowbar against the crate. Whatever was inside went crazy. It buzzed and screamed like a swarm of locusts. The bald man popped a fresh clove of garlic in his mouth and got up close in Gary's face.
“Half a ton of caterpillars,” he said. “Freshly shipped from the Amazon. And you're taking a bath in them.”
Gary's heart pounded and his legs shuddered. He was terrified of insects. When he saw a spider in his kitchen, he called over the neighbor to kill it. Gary pulled the stress card out of his pocket and held it up. It shook in his trembling hand.
“Your card's been canceled,” the bald man said.
The guards laughed.
The card slipped from Gary's shaking fingers and fell to the floor. He looked toward the Red Cross woman.
“Sorry,” she said, scribbling on her clipboard. “He's right. This one is okay, and you can't use
the card on it.”
“How is this not torture?” Gary asked.
“I don't make the rules,” she said. “I'm just here to observe and make sure the rules are
followed.”
The bald man stuck the flat end of the crowbar in the crack at the top of the crate and pressed. The wood creaked.
“All right! I admit it!” Gary screamed. “I'm Osama bin Laden! Please, I'll tell you whatever you want!”
The guards laughed again. The bald man jumped up and then came down with all his weight on the crowbar. The wood cracked in the corner of the crate. A burst of color shot out—green, blue, purple, red. It kept pouring out, filling the room. The guards screamed and covered their faces to protect themselves from the fluttering wings. Gary had never seen so many butterflies. He had to cover his mouth to stop them from flying in. One of the guards opened the heavy door and stumbled out. The swarm of butterflies flew out after him. The bald man grabbed a guard by the collar and pulled him close to his face.
“Butterflies!? Why are there butterflies in there?! There's supposed to be caterpillars!”
“I don't know, sir.”
“What do you mean you don't know!!??”
“I ordered caterpillars, sir. They must have sent the wrong box.”
Gary looked down into the crate. It was empty except for a layer of dead bugs at the bottom.
“Put him in the box,” the bald man said.
The guards grabbed Gary by the arms and dragged him closer to the box. It had a foul smell—a week's worth of their droppings. The larva shells looked crunchy.
“You can't put him in there,” the Red Cross observer said. “You're not allowed to stick a prisoner in an empty box.”
“It's not completely empty,” the bald man said.
“It has to be at least seventy percent filled with caterpillars,” the Red Cross observer said.
“Dagnabbit!” the bald man screamed, spewing a mouthful of chewed garlic bits.
Suddenly there was a loud roar from outside, like cheering at a soccer match. Then a burst of machine gun fire. But the roar didn't subside. It grew louder. A guard burst into the interrogation shed. He was sweating and out of breath.
“The prisoners are rioting!” he gasped.
“What happened?” the bald man demanded.
“It's the butterflies. They saw the butterflies and they started to freak out. They're shouting that the butterflies have made them remember how beautiful life is. Now they want to be free.”
The bald man kicked the empty crate.
“Dagnabbit! I've spent years breaking down their spirits, and now all my hard work is ruined! I'll have to start from scratch!”
Just then, half a dozen bearded men in orange jumpsuits burst into the interrogation shed. They were weeping openly with joy. They screamed something in their guttural terrorist language.

Gary was swimming in the middle of the ocean, all alone. He had escaped with the other detainees running down to the beach and swimming away. Many of the other prisoners couldn’t swim, so they drowned. Others were eaten by sharks. Now, only Gary remained.
He was exhausted from swimming, so he did a back float. He would let the current carry him to Florida, and then try to pass himself off as a Cuban refugee. He would need Spanish for that, so he began conjugating Spanish verbs aloud. He was surprised he still remembered so much from high school.
The sun beat down on him. His lips cracked and his throat ached from thirst. The salt water was tempting, but Gary knew drinking it would dry him out and kill him. He needed fresh water. However, since there was no fresh water, he had no choice but to drink his own urine.
Still floating on his back, he unbuttoned his orange jumpsuit and peed into the air, trying to make it land in his mouth. Most missed the target, but he did manage to swallow a few refreshing drops. Not enough to slake his thirst, though.
Soon he was greedily quaffing sea water. It was delicious.
Then on the horizon he saw what looked like a boat. The ship of the dead, he thought. It’s coming to take me away.
It kept approaching, and Gary saw that it was enormous. It was at least five stories high and coming straight toward him. It might have been people coming to capture him, but he didn’t care. Gary splashed around to get their attention. He tried to shout, but his throat was parched and no sound came out. His tongue felt larger than his mouth. Everything went fuzzy.
The next thing Gary knew, two me were pulling him into an inflatable life raft.
“Water,” Gary gasped.
“Don’t worry,” one of the men said. “The water can’t hurt you any more.”
They rowed to the enormous ship, attached dangling cables to the raft, and were lifted up out of the water. As Gary ascended, he saw hundreds of faces peering over a ledge and looking down at him. There were men, women, and children—it wasn’t a military vessel out to capture him.
When the raft landed on deck, and Gary stepped out, the passengers crowded close to him. They were fat and pale. Many wore bathing suits and flip flops. This was a cruise ship.
The passengers peered at Gary curiously. The man next to Gary held a glass filled with pink liquid and a tiny toothpick umbrella sticking out of it. Severely dehydrated, Gary snatched the ice-cold drink from the man’s hand and tried to gulp it down, but the umbrella stabbed him in the eye.
“Yeoww!!!?
The glass shattered on the deck.
With his good eye, Gary saw an enormous swimming pool in the middle of the deck. There were children kicking on inner tubes, old women floating on plastic rafts, and, most importantly, water. Lots of it.
Gary dashed for the pool. A lifeguard blew a whistle.
“No running on deck!”
Gary stuck his face in the water and began lapping it up like a dog.
“I peed in the water,” a boy on an inner tube said.
Gary didn't care. The chlorine-flavored water was delicious.
“Running on deck, eh?” a gruff voice said. Gary looked up. It was a big, bristly man dressed all in white with a white sailor cap. “I can see you're a troublemaker. You're not on my ship one minute, and you're already breaking rules.”
“You're the captain?” Gary croaked out.
“That's right.”
Gary vomited at the captain's feet. He had drunk too fast.
“Seasick already?” the captain said scornfully. “Well, we don't put into port for another four days, so you're gonna have to get used to it.”
Gary wiped his mouth and stood up.
“I got pulled away from conducting a wedding because of you,” the captain said.
“Sorry,” Gary said.
“If it were up to me, I'd let you drown,” the captain said, “but there's an international law of the sea. It says I have to carry you to the next port. But this isn't a pleasure cruise. Well, it is a pleasure cruise, but not for you. You're going to work to earn your keep.”
“Hey, don't I know you?” shouted a man in a straw hat.
“No,” Gary said.
“Sure I do. I saw you on television. I just can't remember which show.”
The passengers began to murmur excitedly. Someone from TV was aboard.
“If he’s on TV, he must be able to afford a cruise ticket,” someone pointed out.
“It's not the money,” the captain said. “It's the principle of the thing. We can't allow stowaways.”
“He's not a stowaway. He's a castaway.”
“True, but if we let on castaways, next we'll probably be letting on stowaways.”
Just then, a helicopter roared overhead. It was enormous and painted army green. A cable dropped from it, and a man repelled down the cable, onto the deck next to Gary and the captain.
“I told you,” the captain said. “Let on one castaway, and pretty soon the whole world's trying to board your vessel.” He glared at Gary. “This is your doing.”
The man who had just landed on deck was muscular and wore a black jacket that said DHS on it—Department of Homeland Security.
“And who are you supposed to be?” the captain demanded.
“My name is Agent Jones. I'm the hostage negotiator. Hello, Gary, AKA Mohammad, AKA Prisoner two-four-nine-seven, AKA the Sleek Sheik.”
The passengers gasped and cowered back. The captain fainted, making a loud crash as his face collided with the wooden deck. Only the man in the straw hat didn’t seem frightened.
“I knew it!” he exclaimed happily. “I knew you were famous!”
“He’s not famous, he’s infamous,” Agent Jones said. He took a step toward Gary and held up his hands, fingers splayed apart. “Relax, Gary. I’m not armed.”
“This is ridiculous,” Gary said. “We don’t need a hostage negotiator—there are no hostages.”
“Whatever euphemism you pirates use for them,” Agent Jones said. “Booty, I suppose.”
More military helicopters buzzed over head.
“There aren't any hostages!” Gary screamed. “I'm not holding anyone against any will! I don't have a gun, I don't have a bomb, I don't have anything!”
“I just wanted to tell you that we don't negotiate with terrorists,” Agent Jones said.
“I'm not a terrorist! I'm not a pirate! I didn't do anything wrong!”
“The point is I'm not negotiating with you.”
“Then what kind of hostage negotiator are you? I'm a tax payer. Why am I paying for you to do nothing?”
“It's a new policy. The powers that be haven't got around to firing me yet.”
“I'm not a terrorist. Listen to the black box! Listen to the flight recorder! It proves I was talking to them about the crash drill!”
Suddenly there was a large explosion and the ship keeled to the side, almost falling over. Passengers shrieked and fell to the deck.
“What was that?!” Gary said.
“That would be a torpedo,” Agent Jones said. “It's our new policy for dealing with
terrorists who take hostages. We sink the ship.”
The ship was heavily tilted to one side. Water from the swimming pool cascaded past Gary's legs.
“But everyone’s going to die,,” Gary said.
“Next time terrorists will know hostage taking doesn't work, so they won’t try,” Agent Jones said.
“You'll die too,” Gary pointed out.
“With the new policy, hostage negotiators are unnecessary,” Agent Jones said calmly. “I have no further reason to live.”
There was another jolting explosion, and the ship started to sink fast. Passengers ran for the lifeboats.

Despite Agent Jones’s claim that the new policy was to kill everyone, the military did all it could to rescue people, pulling them into lifeboats. Gary, too, was pulled into a lifeboat. Then he was dressed in an orange jumpsuit, shackled, and had a burlap sack tied over his head. When the sack was removed, he recognized the high guard towers and dingy-colored sand as belonging to Guantanamo Bay Prison. The bald interrogator was in the courtyard. He gave Gary an evil grin and belched his garlicky breath on him.
“I got some new interrogation methods approved by the Red Cross. You're just in time to help me try them out.”
The thick-necked guard led Gary to the detention block.
“We've captured a lot more terrorists, so it's getting a little crowded. You won't have a cell to yourself any more. Now you'll have a cellmate.”
Gary was horrified when he saw the big bearded man who would be his cellmate.
“The bitch is back!” Abdullah shouted as the guards locked Gary in a cell together with him.
“I'm not your bitch,” Gary said.
“We'll see. We'll see if you're my bitch or not.”
Just then an orange and black Monarch butterfly landed on the metal railing of one of the cots. Gary felt a surge of hope.
“It's so beautiful,” Abdullah said. Then he sat down on his cot and began tearing pages out of his Koran.
“What are you doing?!” screamed Gary.
“Origami,” Abdullah said.
“What?!”
“The Japanese art of paper folding!”
“I know what it is! Why are you ripping pages out of the Koran to make origami?”
“I'm making a key. That butterfly made me remember how beautiful life is—too beautiful to sit here in a cell.”
He folded several pages in half, then pushed them through the bars, and slid it through the card reader. It didn't work.
“This is going to be harder than I thought,” he said.
“Shouldn't you rip off your own ears?” Gary suggested.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because. As you did to the Koran and all that.”
Abdullah stared at him as though he thought Gary was crazy.
“Never mind,” Gary said. “I give up.”
He plounced down on the bed, causing the Monarch butterfly to flutter away, but Gary didn’t even notice; he was staring at the concrete floor.