A knock at
her front door pulled Cora Patrick out of her bed at three in the morning on November 29.
Swearing, she climbed out from under the covers, careful of waking her three-year old daughter, Erin, who’d slept
fitfully beside her during the unseasonable thunderstorm they’d had earlier today.
She tiptoed to the entryway and peeked discreetly around the curtains on her window.
It was dark out, but in the dim illumination
of the streetlights, she could make out the silhouettes of a black sedan and SUV. She
frowned and wrapped her arms around herself, unnerved by a sense that something bad was about to happen.
A knock came again--this time louder and more
insistent.
She hesitated.
“Who is it?” she asked, because there
was little else she could do. Ignoring her visitors was evidently out of the
question.
“The United States Army, ma’am, please
open the door” came a cordial, though clipped voice.
Shocked, she stared ahead and stepped away from
her home’s front entrance. There wasn’t a single reason she could
think of for the Army to show up on her doorstep at this time of night. Or any time of day really.
A different voice spoke now and it contained
none of the kindness or patience of the first.
“Cora Patrick, if you fail to comply with
our orders, we are authorized to use force to carry them out.”
With a cautious look towards where her daughter
continued to sleep, Cora unlocked her deadbolt and turned the knob. She jumped
back as the door swung towards her and her tiny space was crowded with men in tactical gear.
They rolled like a tide through her homestead
in practiced ease and efficiency, kicking doors open and calling out, “clear” to one another. That is, until they reached her bedroom.
She lurched forward instinctively against the
two officers restraining her when Erin began to scream.
“That’s my daughter. Let me go, let me go to her.”
One of the nondescript men about her had the
good grace to look apologetic.
“No, ma’am. I’m sorry. We have our orders. And, those are to bring you in for questioning.”
Though she kept her eyes trained forward for
any sight of her suddenly quiet child, she allowed them to momentarily flit towards the man in question.
“Pertaining to what?” she asked,
completely mystified. “I haven’t done anything!”
“That’s not for me to say, ma’am”
he responded stoically.
She shook her head, feeling as though she was
trapped in a hellish nightmare that refused to end.
To her immense relief, Erin appeared, walking
hand in hand with one of the boys in black. He carried his helmet under his arm
and took small, slow steps so that she could keep up. She appeared unharmed and
even smiled when she recognized her mother.
“Mama,” her daughter broke free of
the young man and locked onto Cora’s legs with an iron grip. Firmly, she
commanded, “Up.” She wanted to be held.
Cora shook her head, smiling in spite of her
daughter’s disappointed expression. Though her daughter couldn’t
see, her wrists were securely bound in plastic wrist ties behind her back. She
had no use of her hands.
“Kiss,” Erin tried instead.
Cora couldn’t deny her now anymore than
she ever had and looked pleadingly to the men book ending her.
One, though not the one she’d spoken with
earlier, lifted petite Erin up so that Cora could plant a light kiss on her chubby chin.
Unexpectedly, as three-year olds did everything, Erin threw her arms around her and had a fit at so much as being touched
by anyone else.
Cora didn’t resist. She was comforted by her baby’s closeness.
She began to hear the contingent of tactical
officers returning from their fruitless search. There wasn’t anyone in
this house, she knew. However, she was wise enough in her years to know that
her ordeal was far from over.
The officer most clearly in charge entered the
hall, helmet also carried under his arm. As nondescript as all of his subordinates,
he nodded to a man standing sentry on the porch.
“All clear.
Call it in.”
The man, hardly more man than boy, saluted and
performed a smart about face into the moonlight.
Cora might’ve hidden Erin had she full
use of her arms. She didn’t like this man or anything about him. Perhaps it was simply the circumstances.
“What is going on here? Why is the Army in my house?” She bristled at the critical
visual appraisal he began to give her. “Well?”
“You tell me,” he challenged her
brusquely.
Erin began to snore into Cora’s pajama-clad
shoulder, forcing her to maintain her tenuous calm.
“I’m calling my lawyer. You have no right to do this.”
“Ah, no.” He ignored her second statement. “Not today you’re not.” He adjusted his munitions vest. “Today you’re going with us. Homeland Security
has some questions for you.” He inclined his chin towards her dozing toddler. “Get the kid. We’re out of
here.”
Cora was powerless to fight Erin being pulled,
however gently, away.
“Where are you taking my daughter,”
she demanded to know.
“Somewhere she’ll be well cared for,”
he answered in passing as he ordered his troops to move out over the com.
“Which is?”
He paused and turned to look at her--instead
of through her. He appeared both more human and sympathetic than he had when
they initially spoke.
“I don’t know. However, for your sake, it’s best to believe that. It’ll
make things easier in the long run.”
Upon being led out of the house, she was faced
with more plain black vehicles. Between them and her property, plain washed-out
individuals moved stealthily over the grass and didn’t spare a glance in her direction.
She shivered in her robe, the precipitation in
the air clinging to her skin in freezing droplets. Over her shoulder, she spied
Erin being carried to the sedan she’d seen earlier and being loaded into the backseat.
“Where are they taking her,” she
asked another time in vain.
“I really don’t know.” The Commanding Officer climbed into the passenger seat ahead as she was placed in
the rear.
She fidgeted uncomfortably, her arms wedged between
her back and the seat. Her wrists were raw under the ties.
“Then, where are you taking me?”
To that, she received no response at all. Pursing her lips in frustration, she
eyed the scenery that flew past her windows. The suburbs passed away into open
fields of nothing. Then, something.
It was an airfield.
Her forehead wrinkled in further confusion; she
was scared now.
“Where are you taking me,” she questioned
desperately, emphatically.
She listed forward as the suburban slid to a
controlled stop. For a moment, each of them was still.
The CO was the first to regain his composure.
“Yates, switch the prisoner’s ties
for cuffs.”
Yates, the driver, responded with a “Yes,
sir” and hopped out from behind the wheel. The door swung open beside her
and she scooted towards him at his behest. He turned her around and went to work.
“I’m not a prisoner,” she intoned
rather pointlessly.
“No, but you are an alleged terrorist suspect
and must be treated as such.” He stiffened as though he’d said too much.
She laughed aloud, on the verge of hysteria.
“What is this? Some horrible joke? I haven’t done anything.”
“Not according to my superiors.” He shifted in his seat, making no effort to look at her.
“What do they know? Ask me! I should know.”
Yates completed the switch with notable relief. He pulled her out of the car as his colleagues followed. An aircraft was on the runway, ladder dropped to the tarmac and the propellers spinning away.
She pulled back on the chains, stuck dumb by
dread.
“Where?” She noticed Yates looking to his CO for permission to say. He
nodded.
“Gitmo.
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.”
As clearly as crystal, the shards of the morning
came together. No warrant, no lawyer, no probable cause. The dead of night. She gagged on her own conclusions and fell
into her seat as though every bone in her body had dissolved.
“I’m never going to see my daughter
again, am I?”
The young tactical officer she only knew as Yates
fastened her chains to a sturdy iron ring on the wall of the plane.
“She’ll be well cared for,”
he attempted to placate her.
Cora clinched her fists and shut her eyes, blocking
out the sound of the engines roaring to life.
“But not by me.”
The plane took off two minutes later and Cora
Patrick was gone, without a trace.
