The First Hostage

  But again, no one responded.

  “This is Collins. I need a medic. Over.”

  Still nothing, and now I began to panic.

  “This is J. B. Collins. I’m in the southwest bedroom on the second floor. I’ve just been shot. I’m bleeding badly—in need of immediate assistance. Is anybody out there? Does anybody hear me?”

  My arm was going numb. Inch by inch, it was shutting down, and with it my ability to shoot and my ability to reload—not that it mattered, as I realized I had only half a mag left.

  Suddenly the room erupted again in a hail of gunfire. I covered my face with my left arm and rolled over on my stomach. When there was a brief pause, I slid my MP5 across the floor, through the doorway and into the hallway. Then I began pulling myself across the floor after it. If there was anyone left in the villa, I had to find them. Otherwise I was going to bleed out.

  I heard a metallic clunk and something bumping across the floor. I turned and saw a live grenade rolling toward me. Instinctively I swatted at it and pushed it away, sending it into the far corner of the room. Then it detonated and everything went black.

  * * *

  When I came to, General Ramirez was dumping a bucket of water on me.

  “Where have you been?” he screamed at me. “I’ve been calling and calling you on the radio. You never answered.”

  “Where am I?” I asked, wiping the water from my eyes and hearing gunfire downstairs and bombs dropping and buildings exploding outside, closer than ever.

  “Still in the villa,” he replied, pulling me into the hallway. “Now sit tight.”

  He had a needle in his hand. He was filling it with something and jabbing it in my arm. I winced in anticipation but didn’t feel a thing.

  “What happened?”

  “You got shot and then nearly killed by a grenade, but you did a heck of a job, soldier.”

  He helped me sit up and drove another needle into my leg. As he did, I looked at myself in horror. My right shoulder was wrapped in a blood-soaked bedsheet. The right side of my uniform was covered in blood, as was much of the room. The other side of my uniform—what was left of it—was scorched, shredded, and smoking.

  “I’m not a soldier,” I groaned, trying to make sense of it all.

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re a reporter—whatever. Look, you took out a lot of bad guys from this room and bought us the time we needed.”

  “Where’s the president?” I asked, trying to get up. “Is he safe?”

  “He’s safe. That’s what I’m talking about. You bought us the time to get him out. He’s on a chopper with my guys, and he’ll be fine.”

  “And the kids?”

  “They’re on another chopper, right behind the president.”

  “What about Yael?”

  “Downstairs with three others, holding down the fort.”

  “She didn’t go with the children?”

  “I told her to, but she wouldn’t go,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” I felt like I couldn’t completely understand what he was saying. I heard his words but couldn’t process them.

  “Said she wanted to fight with us. Now look, can you get up?”

  “I’m not sure—but why didn’t she go with the kids?”

  When another bomb exploded nearby, rocking the building, Ramirez ignored my question. He grabbed my MP5 and asked if there was any ammo left in it, and when I told him that there was, he went back to the two windows and fired several bursts. I could hear the screams of the dying, and I knew how they felt.

  When he was finished shooting, Ramirez came back, knelt at my side, checked my radio, and cursed. “It’s shorted out,” he said. Then he grabbed me by the collar, pulled me out into the hallway, and hoisted me to my feet.

  “Come on; let’s move,” he said.

  I knew I should be in agony but felt curiously numb. “Why is Yael still here?”

  Again he ignored me. I couldn’t feel my right arm at all. The left side of my face and body had severe burns, but I couldn’t feel them either. The general dragged me downstairs. I could see three of his men firing out three different windows, and then, as Ramirez helped me around a corner, I saw Yael firing out the front door.

  “He’s alive,” Ramirez told her.

  She finished a burst, ducked back inside, turned toward me, and gasped. “Oh, look at you!” she yelled and rushed to my side.

  Ramirez moved to the doorway and kept shooting.

  “I’m fine,” I lied.

  “Oh no, you’re not. General, we need to get him out now.”

  “We don’t have another bird.”

  “What are you talking about?” she shot back. “You said the next one would be here in a few minutes.”

  “I know. I just got the call,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “The chopper that was coming for us was just shot down.”

  “Where?”

  “About two klicks from here.”

  “How?”

  “RPG—it was coming in low.”

  “So now what?”

  “They’re sending another—from Azraq.”

  “How far out?” she pressed.

  “Twelve minutes.”

  “General, we don’t have twelve more minutes.”

  “I know.”

  “We’re out of ammo, sir. We’re being overrun.”

  Then she turned to look at me. She was bloody and sweaty and a total mess. She didn’t say anything, but I could see in her eyes that she was worried about me. She wasn’t sure I was going to make it. She looked back at Ramirez, but he had nothing to say. He killed another few terrorists racing into the courtyard, and then his gun stopped firing. He was out of ammunition and had no more mags. I watched him pull out his pistol and brace for the inevitable.

  “There’s got to be a way, General,” she yelled. “There’s got to be a way out of here.”

  “There isn’t.”

  “There has to be.”

  I couldn’t believe it. This couldn’t be the end. We’d come too far. We’d rescued the president. We’d gotten him to safety, and now we were going to be captured and shot—if we were lucky. Or more likely, slaughtered like cattle.

  It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t end like this. Yet the look in Yael’s eyes and the tone in the general’s voice and the silence from the others and the fact that all but one of them was reduced to firing with pistols made it clear. We were all going to die. And soon. It was not a matter of if, nor even of when, only how.

  67

  “I’m out!” shouted one of the general’s men.

  I watched as he tossed his pistol aside.

  “Here!” I shouted back. “Use mine.” I struggled to pull it out of its holster but couldn’t manage it, so Yael helped me and tossed it across the room. The commando caught it, and just in time. He fired twice and killed a terrorist rushing across the yard.

  “Okay, this is it; I have to make a call,” Ramirez said. “We either let ourselves be overrun, or I call in an air strike and end it now.”

  He fired at two more jihadists trying to penetrate the courtyard, then turned and took a vote. All three Delta operatives voted for the Air Force to go ahead and drop its ordnance on us and finish us off and the attacking ISIS fighters along with us. Reluctantly, Yael did as well.

  “Okay—then it’s settled,” Ramirez said.

  “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” I said. “I didn’t vote.”

  “You want ISIS to cut your head off?” Ramirez asked.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Then you just voted.”

  “No, wait. I have an idea.”

  “We don’t have time, Collins,” Ramirez said, firing again and trying to keep three hooded men at bay. “I have to call it in now. I only have two rounds left.”

  “Wait, wait, listen to me,” I said.

  “I can’t, Collins; I’m sorry. We’re out of time and out of options.
”

  Ramirez called Yael over to guard the door. She propped me up against the stairs, then rushed to his side and took his .45 while he pulled out his satphone and speed-dialed CENTCOM.

  “General, listen to me. I think there’s another way.”

  “Forget it, Collins. I know you don’t want to die. None of us do. But it happens to everyone. The only question is whether we die with honor or are butchered by cowards.”

  “No, stop—you’re not listening,” I yelled, unbelievably intense pain shooting through every part of my body.

  “CENTCOM, this is General Ramirez, requesting an air strike on my location. Repeat, I’m requesting an immediate air strike on my location.”

  There was a pause. The soldiers around me were firing their last rounds.

  “Yes, sir, I know what I’m asking,” Ramirez continued to the CENTCOM commander in Tampa.

  There was another pause.

  “You can see it on your screen. We’re being overrun. It’s over. Take us out, and everyone around us. . . . Yes, I understand. . . . Thank you, sir. It’s been an honor. . . . God bless us all, sir, and God bless the United States of America. Over and out.”

  Ramirez hung up the phone and the room began to spin. I couldn’t believe what he’d just done. But I didn’t have the energy to stop him. I was getting woozy. I heard myself mumbling, but I knew I was passing out. I saw my mom. I saw Matt and Annie and Katie and Josh. I tried to remember the verses. I tried to remember what Matt had told me, what he’d begged me to accept, but everything was going dark. I couldn’t think straight. I was fading. . . .

  “What? What are you saying? J. B.—wake up. What did you just say?”

  I was looking at Yael’s face. I couldn’t tell if it was a dream or if it was real. But she was shaking me, hard, and demanding that I tell her what I’d just said.

  “I don’t remember,” I said and closed my eyes again.

  “You do,” she yelled, shaking me again. “Come on, J. B.—stay with me. What did you say?”

  “The war . . . ,” I mumbled.

  “The war? What war? This war?”

  “No, the ware . . .”

  “The where? I don’t understand.”

  “The warehouse . . .”

  “The warehouse?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about it?”

  “Hit it.”

  “What do you mean?” she screamed, shaking me even harder.

  “The warehouse,” I said again, barely able to keep my eyes open. “Hit it.”

  “Hit the warehouse?”

  “Not us.”

  “Why, J. B.—why?”

  “The sheh . . .”

  “What?”

  “The shells.”

  “What about them?” Yael asked, pleading with me to stay with her.

  I heard Ramirez telling her to let it go. “He’s delirious, Katzir. Let him be. It’ll all be over in a moment. The F-16s are inbound as we speak.”

  “No,” she shot back. “He’s trying to tell us something.”

  Then she turned back to me, took my face in her hands, and looked me straight in the eye. “What about the shells, J. B.?”

  “The M-six . . .”

  “M687s?”

  “Right.”

  “What about them?”

  “They’ll go off.”

  “If we bomb the warehouse?”

  “Right.”

  “They might, but why? We’ll all die if they go off.”

  “No, just them.”

  “Who?”

  “The bad guys.”

  “Just the bad guys will die?” she asked.

  “Right.”

  “No, J. B., that’s not how it works,” she replied, pity in her voice. “The sarin will kill us all—and believe me, that’ll be far worse than being bombed or beheaded.”

  “No, no,” I said. “We have the s . . .”

  “The what?”

  “The su . . .”

  “I can’t hear you, J. B.—talk to me.”

  “Suits,” I sputtered. “We have the suits.”

  Then suddenly she got it.

  “What is it?” Ramirez asked as understanding dawned on Yael’s face.

  “We have the chem-bio suits—all of us,” she yelled. “Call them back. Redirect the air strike. Have them hit the warehouse. The chemical weapons will detonate. The gas will be released. There’s more than five thousand shells down there, and hundreds more on the upper floors. The gas will spread through the entire village. It’ll kill everyone. And we just might survive.”

  “Might?”

  “It’s worth a shot, General—it’s worth a shot. But you’ve got to call them now.”

  I saw Ramirez look at me. He hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he hit speed dial and got CENTCOM back on the phone and started barking authentication codes and orders. In the meantime, Yael raced to get her backpack and returned to my side. Then she and Ramirez helped me upstairs and propped me up against another wall while the others grabbed their backpacks and raced upstairs with us.

  And soon the bombs started dropping.

  Boom. Boom. Ba-boom.

  The ground shook like nothing I’d ever experienced before.

  “The warehouse,” someone yelled, though I couldn’t see who. “They just hit the warehouse.”

  He’d done it, I realized. Ramirez had made the call. And the Air Force had responded already. There was just one problem. We weren’t ready yet.

  An immense burst of adrenaline shot through my system. I was still in enormous pain, but my heart was racing. I was breathing more deeply now. I was starting to refocus, to see and hear more clearly. Ramirez and two of his colleagues took up positions to guard the stairs while I struggled to get my suit on. I can’t explain it. Maybe it was the prospect of my imminent death. Maybe it was the prayers of my family. I don’t know for sure, but I felt a wave of energy surging over me. I wasn’t better. I wasn’t healed. But I did suddenly have the will to live and to fight.

  Still, with my right hand numb and much of my body badly burned, I couldn’t fasten my helmet. Yael tried to help me, but time was running out. If the warehouse had already been hit, then the gas was already spreading. It would be here any moment. She had to move faster or she’d be dead.

  “Forget about me,” I yelled. “Get your own suit on—now!”

  68

  But Yael wouldn’t quit.

  As bombs exploded all around us, closer and closer every second, I pushed her away and screamed at her to save herself. But she wouldn’t do it. She got my helmet attached, turned on my air tank, and checked to see it was operating properly. Finally she started putting her own suit on.

  The deafening, crushing sound of the explosions seemed to bring me to my senses. I forgot about my injuries. I forgot about my pain. I turned and noticed that some of the others were struggling to get their suits on. The general had found a large tear in his. One of his colleagues had a hole in his air hose. Both handed Yael and me their pistols and the last of their ammo and ran off to find other backpacks, other suits, ones left by commandos who’d already been killed.

  Time was running out. But there was nothing we could do to help them except make sure not a single ISIS fighter got up those stairs.

  I watched down the stairwell as one jihadist after another stormed the first floor. I saw them desperately searching for us. Then one of them spotted the stairs and gave a shout. The moment his foot hit the first step, I started shooting. When his colleagues joined him, Yael opened fire as well. She killed three with six shots. I killed one and severely wounded two, but suddenly I was out of bullets. Yael kept shooting, but there were too many of them. They were coming too fast.

  I yelled for help, but no one could hear me. Then I saw that one of our guys was severely wounded. He’d been hit by a round coming up the stairs or through a window. Someone had pulled him down the hallway and gotten him into his suit and leaned him up against a wall. But he was holding hi
s side and doubled over in pain. I also noticed that he had four grenades on his lap, and now he rolled one to me. I grabbed it, pulled the pin, and tossed it down into the living room as fast as I could. The explosion took out six or seven terrorists. But still they kept coming. I looked back down the hallway and my wounded comrade tossed me another grenade. Again I pulled the pin. Again I hurled it into the living room. This explosion took out five or six more. We did this two more times, and then the grenades were gone, and Yael was out of bullets.

  That was it, I thought. We’d done as much as we could. And now it was over. I could see no more ISIS fighters from my angle. Not yet. The vestibule and living room were a sea of blood and body parts, and for a moment the hordes stopped advancing. Maybe no one else was down there. Maybe they were down there but thought we had an endless supply of grenades. Either way, we had a respite, though I knew it wouldn’t last. They were coming. Soon. And there was nothing we could do.

  But now a new barrage of bombs and missiles came raining down on us, and not just on the warehouse and the houses and buildings nearby but on the courtyard and the backyard and even on the north wing of the villa. One after another, the bombs kept falling and exploding and raining down death on everyone coming to kill us. They were dropping closer and closer and becoming louder and more violent, though I could no longer tell the difference. The villa wasn’t going to be able to take much more. The structure was shaking and heaving. Walls were cracking. Beams were splintering. And then the section of roof directly above us gave way, bringing with it a fiery downpour. Burning timbers and tiles came crashing down on top of us.

  I grabbed Yael and covered her with my body. I might have been yelling. She might have been too. But I couldn’t hear a thing. I could barely see, either. The air was filled with smoke and dust. But was it also filled with gas—sarin gas? Had it come? Was it here? I had no idea. It was colorless. It was odorless. How would we know?

  I could no longer see the two soldiers down the hallway to the north, including the one who’d given me the last of his grenades. I turned to look behind me and saw Ramirez dragging one of his men down the hall in the other direction, toward the south end of the building. I nudged Yael and pointed toward the general, urging her to follow. But she didn’t respond. I shook her, but to no avail.