Disavowed Manuscript by: David Gray Credits begin: Flashes of news paper articles and TV news footage about CIA kidnapping operations in Europe and Afghanistan appear between credits. Sounds of helicopters, machine guns firing, and radio chatter plays behind the theme music. INT. DARK ROOM A bull whip flies out of the dark and cracks against the flesh of a man. The man hangs by his bound hands from the ceiling of a darkened room. His hair is cut short in the typical U.S. military fashion. He is wearing only black B.D.U. (Battle Dress Uniform) pants and combat boots. He is clean shaven but dirty and bleeding. A single dim bulb hangs above him illuminating his beaten body. The whip is being held by an interrogator who is standing in the dark, just out of view. Each time the interrogator asks a question and doesn’t get an answer he strikes the military man with the whip. SHALABEBE KILLMUR (Interrogator / Torturer) What is your name!? (Whip crack!) What infidel government sent you!? (Whip crack!) JACK BLACK (Military man / prisoner) Go to Hell goat herder! (Whip crack!) The military man refuses to talk. He holds his screams as he is whipped. Each time the interrogator asks a question the military man’s mind take him back to the memories that correspond to the question being asked but he never answers verbally. KILLMUR Who do you work for? FLASHBACK: USMC M.E.P.S STATION, San Antonio, Texas. Jack Black’s mind takes him back to his first oath. The oath he took at 17 years of age when he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He is standing in a room with a group of other recruit candidates. They all have their right hands raised as they repeat the oath in front of the U.S. and Marine Corps flags with several Marines present in the room. Then he flashes forward several years to his second oath. The one he took when he entered the C.I.A. (Whip crack!) The sting of the bullwhip brings him back to the present situation. KILLMUR What is your name, rank, serial number!? Jack Black’s mind takes him back to his days as a new trainee in the C.I.A.’s Paramilitary branch. C.I.A. INSTRUCTOR Gentlemen, from this day forth you no longer exist. You are a ghost, an aberration, a demon created out of the fears of your enemies. You don’t have a name. You are no longer of this world. Your sole reason for living is to crawl up from the bowels of Hell to maim, kill and destroy. DO YOU UNDERSTAND!? JACK (In a group of other Paramilitaries) SIR, YES, SIR!!!!! (Whip crack) KILLMUR What was the purpose of your mission? What were the names of your men? INT. HELICOPTER – NIGHT TIME: Jack Black flashes back to the previous night. He and his men (12 soldiers + 2 pilots and 1 aircrew man + Jack = 16 total) are on a large military helicopter. Jack is going around with a small box collecting dog tags, shoulder patches, family photos, religious medallions, etc … JACK Okay boys … pass ‘em forward. Any and all items that can identify you. All patches, dog tags, photos and even wedding rings. We are ghosts tonight, Gentlemen. This is a snatch and grab operation. Get in, take out your targets, stay focused on the objective, get out. This man is the objective. (A photo of Abdula Sharif is held up) We want him alive and talking. (Whip crack) KILLMUR Why did you attempt to kidnap Abdula Sharif? What was his value to your country? AFGHANISTAN: NIGHT – Outside Abdula Sharif’s house: Jack Black sees in his mind the recollection of the mission in progress. His warriors running through the compound that contained the house Abdula Sharif was living in. Bodies of Sharif’s guards dropping to the floor as bullets spit from the silenced weapons fired from his and his teammate’s sub-machine guns. (Heckler and Koch MP-5 SD Sub-Machine guns) The sounds of bullet casings hitting the tiled floor of the large house rings in his ears as his memory is interrupted by … (Whip crack!) KILLMUR Did you assassinate Abdula before or after he was on your aircraft? Jack sees Abdula’s bare feet being drug across the rough, sandy ground as he is being forced into the large waiting helicopter. (Flash forward a couple of minutes) The bird is in the air. Jack’s men are firing at forces on the ground below from all open ports of the aircraft. They are taking casualties. The pilots are yelling into their radios as a rocket propelled grenade strikes the aircraft. PILOT White Rook, White Rook, this is Black Knight! We are taking heavy small arms fire from ground forces below, over!!! CO-PILOT- RPG!! PILOT This is Black Knight … We are going down! Jack pulls off the burlap sack that was covering Abdula’s head, bulls his pistol from the holster, says his farewell and shoots Abdula twice in the chest and once in the head as the helicopter spins out of control towards the earth. JACK May God have mercy on your soul, because I will not. (Blam, blam … blam) (Whip crack!) KILLMUR (He leans in close to Jack) You tell me what I need to know and all the pain will stop. I will contact your government and negotiate for your release. Or you can remain silent and die a painfully long and humiliating death. Which will it be? JACK One day you will be on the other end of the whip. How loud will you scream? I bet I could break you in a day. You will NEVER break me! INT. PENTAGON: A man walks into a conference room. (Walter Kruptos, 46, grey hair, tall and slender) There are several other men in the room in suits and military uniforms. Walter plops a folder down on the oval table and tells his supervisor, Dan Fogleburg, something that makes him look worried. WALTER KRUPTOS “WALT” (Whispering in Dan’s ear) One of our birds just went down. It was Black Knight. DAN FOGLEBURG “DAN” Are you sure? (Walt nods yes) DAN Gentlemen, if you would please excuse us. General McCabe and Admiral Cross, if you would remain behind. The room empties of all but the four remaining men. General McCabe of the USMC is a man of average height and slender build, approximately 50 years of age. Admiral Cross is heavier with glasses and a Navy Seal “Budweiser” emblem on his uniform. Dan is a smallish man, balding with beady eyes and a pot belly. DAN Gents, we have a situation. One of our birds has gone down in Afghanistan. There were 17 souls on board. Six Navy Seals, one Air Force combat air traffic controller, four Force Recon Marines, two Navy pilots and their crew chief, one door gunner … and one company PM. We also lost a suspected terrorist leader that we were attempting to bring in for interrogation. GEN. MCCABE By company PM you mean he was one of your C.I.A. paramilitary operatives, don’t you? DAN That’s right General. Furthermore, the Marines on that bird were TAD to us from your counter terrorist unit. And of course the seals belonged to Admiral Cross. ADMIRAL CROSS What do you mean belonged? WALT They are all dead Admiral … all except one. GEN. MCCABE How have you confirmed their deaths? (Flash-file news footage of Blackwater Security’s men being drug through the streets of Fallujah and hung from the “Brooklyn Bridge”) WALT (Voice over the file footage) Their bodies were dragged through the streets of a local village and the video footage of it has been playing on Al-jarzerra TV for the last four hours. As of yet there has been no mention of the lone survivor. (Flash news footage of U.S. Army soldiers being drug through the streets of Somalia. “Black Hawk Down”) ADMIRAL CROSS How long ago did this happen? DAN Twelve hours ago. WALT That’s when we lost all radio contact. They were operating without G.P.S., Satcom, or Friendly Forces Identifier. They were on a black op, so they didn’t need to be tracked. They were completely off the grid. GEN. MCCABE Well where did the bird go down? DAN Afghanistan, north of Kabul, in the mountains. Currently I am not authorized to tell you the exact location of the crash site. You just need to know that you have families to contact and we need to spin this for the media and public. MCCABE So what’s the spin? Training accident? I hate using that one all the time. The spouses get fucked outta the truth about their loved ones. WALT You’re right. We want the spouses to be satisfied with whatever cover story we are forced to feed them. So let’s make it a good one. CROSS Wasn’t that area of Afghanistan listed as a no-fly zone several weeks ago because of some agreement with some freakin’ tribal leaders in the area? DAN Yes it was. And the agreement was with the new government for that region. So we can’t go letting them know that we flew in there on purpose. WALT We could say that their SATCOM and G.P.S. were out of commission and they got lost. DAN Blown off course while trying to avoid some high altitude turbulence. The bird has some kind of mechanical failure and crashes while trying to deliver food and supplies to a Red Cross station. WALT Sounds weak, but it will have to work. CROSS You C.I.A. guys make me sick. MCCABE Fuck, you people do this shit way too often. DAN Look, Gents. Either you play ball or you lose us as a source of intel. Your boys will be dropping like flies without the info our interrogators provide. And don’t forget your asses are riding the line because you’re the ones who provide the shooters that we use to hunt and destroy our civilian targets. FADE IN TO INT. JACK’S CELL – Jack is sitting on the floor eating slop with bread and sharing it with a mouse. CROSS (Voice-over) Who is the one survivor and what are we going to do to get him back? WALT He was recruited from General McCabe’s Marine Corps back in 1998. Pulled from a Force Recon unit. We utilized him on the war on drugs and he was by far one of our most lethally effective and determined shooters. Hi is an expert in explosives, small unit tactics, hand to hand combat and the list goes on and on and on. Basically the guy has a Masters Degree in killing. He took every combat specialty school the Marines and Navy could throw at him and graduated in the top 5 of his class. We aren’t just talking MCI’s here. We are talking SERE school, amphibious warfare and even NAB Coronado’s infamous BUDS. DAN (Interrupting) Okay Walt. That’s good, thank you. The only other thing you need to know is his name. Jack Black. His call sign was Black Knight. And currently we have do disavow any knowledge of his existence. Jack hasn’t spoken to his family in years and isn’t married and has no children. In short no one is going to be asking about him.