The First Hostage

  But then I spotted the cage. Beside it were a video camera on a tripod and several TV lights on stands. I saw twelve or fifteen armed men wearing black hoods milling about. The president was not in sight, but I feared he might be soon.

  “Okay, men, turn on your comms,” Ramirez whispered, and his men relayed the message up and down the line.

  I fumbled a bit in the darkness to find the switch, but Yael helped me and made sure the volume was set correctly.

  “We good? Everyone on?” Ramirez asked over his whisper mic.

  “Five by five,” came the unanimous reply.

  “Cracker Jack, Lucky, you guys have a shot?” Ramirez asked his snipers.

  Both men said yes, and Ramirez took another moment to size up the situation. Ramirez’s second in command would lead the Red Team to the warehouse. Ramirez would lead the Blue Team to the compound. The colonel, Yael, and I had already been ordered to stick with the Blue Team and help guard their flanks.

  “Okay, you know what you’ve got to do,” the general said at last. “Let’s move.”

  Before I’d even gotten to my feet, the two teams were on the move and racing down the southern slope with impressive agility. But soon I was up and moving too. Yael took point. I was in the middle. The colonel had our backs. My injured knees were on fire, but once we started down the mountain, there was no stopping.

  The problem was, it was pitch-black. It’s hard to describe just how dark it was. With thick cloud cover, there was no moonlight whatsoever. We still had maybe thirty or forty minutes until dawn began to break. There were no streetlights in the village below and no lights on yet in the main compound where we hoped the president was. Nor were there any lights on in the warehouse. This meant we all had our night-vision goggles on. But whereas everyone else was used to running with them on, I was not. As such, I was losing ground to Yael and stumbling often. Several times I tripped over rocks or slipped in the mud and came close to sliding down the mountain. But what worried me most was falling and accidentally making a sound that could draw attention to the team’s approach. Fortunately, each time I stumbled, Sharif grabbed my arm and kept me from slipping. Pretty quickly he decided to stay by my side rather than behind to make sure I remained on my feet.

  Ninety seconds later, Yael, the colonel, and I had made it down the slope. I was sucking air into my burning lungs as fast as I could, but I still had another two hundred yards across relatively flat ground before I reached the large stone wall on the north side of the compound and the iron gates that led into the driveway. The Blue Team was already there, and they weren’t waiting for us. They were scaling the walls. Remarkably, they still hadn’t been detected. By now I’d expected the shooting to begin. So far it had not. When I finally reached the wall and peered through the gates, I saw why. Ramirez’s snipers had taken out four guards and hadn’t made a sound.

  There was no way I was going to make it over that wall. But Ramirez had already planned for that. He’d given Colonel Sharif plenty of Semtex and an order to blow the gates off their hinges at the first opportunity. Yael took one side of the gate. I took the other. Together we made sure no one could come around the corner and shoot us from behind. Then came the explosion that told the whole village we were here.

  The force of the blast was deafening, and I could feel the heat scorching the back of my neck. I’d stood too close and was grateful I hadn’t been hit by any of the shrapnel. For a moment my ears were ringing and I couldn’t hear a thing. But then it was as if the volume had been turned back up and I heard automatic gunfire inside the main building. Soon it intensified and spread through two separate wings. And then, on cue, I could hear the high-pitched scream of an incoming missile.

  “Hit the deck!” Yael shouted, but it was too late.

  The second explosion—far more powerful than the first—lifted me off my feet and sent me hurtling through the air. I landed on my side, rolled for a bit, and couldn’t have been more grateful when I not only was alive but still hadn’t even broken anything.

  I was in the thick of the action. And according to the wristwatch I’d been issued for the mission it was 5:58. The drone strike on the town’s only cell tower, located just across the street, had come right on time, just like we’d been briefed back on the air base. The raid was unfolding like clockwork.

  I dusted myself off, scooped up my MP5 again, and peered into the darkness. So far no one was coming my way. But I could hear people shouting. The voices were angry, confused, and all in Arabic. Down the driveway and toward the west side of town, lights were coming on in house after house, building after building. Then I heard Yael and the colonel calling for me to follow them. I made one last check of my sector, reported we were clear, and headed into the compound. The sounds of automatic gunfire filled the night.

  As I raced through the smoking gates and across the muddy courtyard, I could see through several of the windows the brilliant flash of stun grenades going off, followed by more gunfire and the shrieks of dying men. And then I heard one of the Delta operators say something over the radio that chilled me to my core.

  “POTUS isn’t here.”

  57

  “What do you mean he isn’t here?” Ramirez shouted over the radio.

  “We’ve cleared the north wing, sir,” one of his commandos reported. “We’ve got nothing.”

  Ramirez then demanded a status check from the men clearing the south wing. He got the same reply. They’d checked every bedroom, every closet, every stairwell, every bathroom, every storage area and crawl space, and they hadn’t found Taylor.

  “What about Khalif?” Ramirez demanded.

  One by one his men radioed back that there was no sign of him.

  I heard the general order his men to keep looking as Yael and I burst through the front doors of the main house. Sharif was right behind us. Dead ISIS jihadists lay everywhere. Shards of glass littered the blood-soaked floor. The terrorists’ weapons—Kalashnikovs, pistols of various types, and several RPGs, along with thousands of rounds of ammunition and rather sophisticated communications gear—had been stripped from them and were in a pile on the dining room table. Two Delta operators had taken up defensive positions at the living room and dining room windows, all of which had been blown out in the attack. They occasionally fired into the night and fog, trying to keep the ISIS reinforcements at bay while their commander figured out our next move.

  Ramirez was pacing in the kitchen and talking on a satellite phone. I could tell he was briefing the king and the commanders back in the war room on the latest developments, and I picked up bits and pieces of his side of the conversation. But the staccato bursts of gunfire made it difficult to catch much.

  It wasn’t just these operators near me who were shooting and being shot at, after all. Across the street I could still hear a ferocious gun battle going on at the warehouse. I’d heard no radio traffic from the Red Team yet. That could mean only one thing: they were still locked in a brutal fight for control of the chemical weapons. Was it possible the president was being held there? Could Khalif be there too?

  When the general saw us enter, he signaled Sharif to take up a position at the front door and make sure no one we didn’t know made it inside. Then he waved Yael and me to come to the kitchen. Stepping over the bodies and shards of glass, we made our way from the large entryway toward the kitchen. For such a small village, this was a rather sprawling villa; I wondered who had first built it and who owned it now. Each room was spacious—not palatial, but more than comfortable for even a large family. The chairs and sofas were old and worn. The carpets were not only threadbare but now freshly covered with muddy bootprints. The light fixtures were as dusty as they were outdated. A grand piano stood in one corner of the living room, but it looked like it hadn’t been touched in ages.

  We entered the large kitchen and found appliances and dishes that looked like they dated back to the seventies. It was clear that whoever owned the place had once had a great deal of money. Yet somewhere
along the way that money had apparently dried up and the place was now a shadow of its former glorious existence. How recently had Khalif and his men seized it? I wondered. And had the owners surrendered it willingly, or had they been murdered?

  Just then the radio crackled to life. I heard the voice of the Red Team leader. He said they were encountering much stiffer resistance than expected. They’d secured the perimeter of the warehouse along with the main floor. But they’d discovered that the facility had two lower levels, something the intel briefing hadn’t revealed. The lower levels, he said, were accessible by one of two freight elevators. There were also two stairwells, one at each end of the building. But with four points of entry to cover with only a dozen men, plus the need to protect the main floor from ISIS reinforcements, they needed backup, and fast.

  “They’re on their way,” the general radioed back. “Stand by one.”

  I fully expected Ramirez to send Yael, Sharif, and me, especially since Sharif was a full colonel with plenty of combat experience and Yael was the chemical weapons expert of the bunch. We all knew she was anxious to see exactly what Khalif had on location, how much, and whether the sarin gas precursors had already been mixed and loaded into mortars and artillery shells and were ready to be fired. But that would have violated the general’s strict rule that we were to remain with him at all times. So he ordered the two commandos in the living and dining rooms to hightail it over to the warehouse and “get this thing locked down.” Then he turned to Yael and me. “Get to those windows and shoot at anything that moves. Collins, you always wanted to be in the Army. Don’t let us down.”

  My heart was pounding and my palms were sweaty as I moved to the dining room window. I couldn’t dry them off on my pants because I was soaked to the bone. The winds were driving the rains inside the villa through the blown-out windows, and everything was soaked. Yael reminded me to put more resin on my hands to keep my weapon from slipping.

  I grabbed some from my pocket and followed her advice—and just in time. The night lit up with a spray of gunfire. I ducked away from the window and pressed myself against the wall. When the shooting paused for a split second, I pivoted around the wall, aimed my MP5 into the darkness, and squeezed the trigger in three short bursts. Then I pulled back and waited for the return fire, which came an instant later. In fact, it sounded louder if that was possible. The jihadists were advancing.

  Again I pivoted around the corner and fired three short bursts. Then I ducked back and tried to steady my breathing. I glanced at Yael. I saw her open fire again and then pause to reload. As she did, she motioned for me to put my night-vision goggles back on. They were affixed to my helmet, so I could flip them down into place or flip them up so I could see normally. I’d flipped them up upon entering the kitchen, since a small lamp was on and several candles were burning next to the stove, illuminating the general’s laminated map of Alqosh and floor plans of the compound. I quickly flipped the goggles back in place and turned to fire again.

  What I saw terrified me. At least four and possibly five armed men were climbing over the eastern security wall not fifty yards from me. When they dropped to the ground, they’d be coming right at me. To my right, at least as many terrorists were scaling the fence closer to Yael. Two were already firing at her. I could see the flashes pouring out of their barrels. There was nothing I could do to help her, so I aimed at the men in my sector, pulled the trigger, and shouted for Ramirez to come help. I felled one jihadist instantly. I downed a second but he wasn’t dead. He screamed in pain and started crawling back to his weapon. So I pulled the trigger again, but this time nothing happened. My magazine was empty, and three more jihadists had just cleared the wall.

  I ducked back out of the window and against the wall, ejected the spent magazine, and fumbled in the darkness to reload. As I did, Ramirez rushed to my side, his MK 17 SCAR assault rifle in hand. He opened up with four quick bursts. I finished reloading and pivoted back around the corner to help, but it was immediately apparent the general had finished off everyone in the yard, including several of the terrorists trying to charge Yael. Then he let go of his weapon, letting it dangle at his side, grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, and threw it over the wall. The flash was blinding. The boom was deafening. But the effect was decisive. We heard screaming for a few moments, and then all was silent save the gun battle behind us in the warehouse.

  Just then, six Delta operators converged in the living room and called for Ramirez’s attention. One of them explained that they had left the rest of their men firing at ISIS forces from bedrooms in the north and south wings of the building. The general ordered three of them to replace Yael, Sharif, and me, and the other three to head up to the second floor and take defensive positions there. Then he motioned us to follow him down a dark hallway in the north wing. We did as we were told and quickly found ourselves in what looked like it had once been a master bedroom that had been converted into a communications center. There were no beds or dressers but rather tables lined with shortwave radio equipment, laptops, printers, satellite phones, and open cases of video cameras, lights, and sound gear. There were also three dead bodies on the floor and blood splattered everywhere.

  “When you and your team were surveilling this compound, did you see ISIS forces moving back and forth between here and the warehouse?” Ramirez asked Yael.

  “No, not really,” she said. “Why?”

  “Doesn’t that seem odd?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This was clearly the headquarters,” Ramirez said. “I suspect Khalif spent most of his time in here and in the adjoining room over there.”

  He led us through a bathroom to another room, which no doubt had also once been a bedroom. It, too, had been cleared of beds and anything else domestic. Instead, there were several card tables set up, a half-dozen wooden chairs and stools, three additional laptops, a printer, a television set, a large map of Amman on one wall, and a blown-up satellite photograph of Dabiq on another wall. The second map had several buildings marked, including the elementary school. There were also two dead bodies on the floor, clearly recent casualties of the Delta raid.

  “Doesn’t it seem odd to you that Khalif and his closest advisors never went over to the warehouse, never checked on the progress of the weapons?” he asked. “Never? Not at all?”

  “I guess so, yeah,” Yael replied.

  “Unless we’re missing something,” Ramirez said.

  “Like what?” Colonel Sharif asked.

  And then I got it.

  “A tunnel.”

  58

  Ramirez raced for the main stairwell with Yael, Sharif, and me right on his heels.

  We headed to the basement, weapons drawn. My heart was racing. But my hopes were fading fast. The longer the president wasn’t found, the more likely it was that he was dead or in the process of being killed, or at least being dragged away to another building by forces tipped off by the initial shooting and explosions—if he was here at all. And we still didn’t know.

  At this point, the only possible clue was the armed men in black hoods who had been gathered around the cage and video camera and lights at Nahum’s tomb, just down the road, a few hundred meters from where we were now. Had they been preparing for the president? Or had they simply been planning to kill other hostages they captured and post the footage on YouTube?

  Ramirez took point, gun at the ready, and motioned for us to check the rooms behind him on each side of the hallway. Yael took the rooms on the left. I was to search those on the right. Sharif kept our backs.

  As I entered the first room, a small bedroom, the MP5 in my hands was shaking. It seemed unlikely to the point of being impossible that the Delta team—with all their training and experience—could have missed any terrorists who were hiding down here, much less the president. But could it be possible that in the darkness and the rush of battle the general’s men had missed the entrance to some kind of makeshift tunnel leading to the warehouse across the stree
t or anywhere else? Probably not. In any other circumstances I would have bet everything I had against it. But the truth was, we were down here because their boss thought it very well might be possible after all. So, night-vision goggles on, I was now looking under the beds, behind dressers, under carpets, and in the backs of closets.

  I found nothing in the first room, so I moved into the hall and into the room next door and repeated the process. As I did, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted Ramirez to be right or not. If he was right, we might find the president after all. But we might also stumble across one or more jihadists ready to shoot or butcher us.

  “Clear,” I heard Yael shout from across the hallway.

  “Clear,” I shouted back, referring to the first room, and a few moments later I repeated it to account for the second room.

  The next room on my side of the hallway was a rather large but absolutely filthy bathroom. To the right there was a bulky wooden vanity containing two dust-covered porcelain sink bowls along with two sets of rusty faucets. To the left was a shower stall overflowing with bags of trash and a separate bathtub filled with tools and building supplies. I saw bags of cement, boxes of nails, hammers, and numerous other things I didn’t have time to identify. Straight ahead but in a small nook off to the right, I spotted a smashed porcelain toilet and a rusty bidet, neither of which had clearly been used in quite some time. The floor tiles were chipped and broken, and the room was cluttered with all kinds of odds and ends, from an old bicycle to mildewed wooden crates containing empty glass bottles to soiled clothes and other random items—everything, that is, except an opening to a tunnel.