The First Hostage

  I started to panic. I wasn’t sure if she was dead or just unconscious, but I scrambled forward and began dragging her with me. I could use only my left arm. My right arm was completely paralyzed by this point. But as more and more of the roof collapsed, I had no choice. I couldn’t wait for Ramirez to come back for us. I had to get Yael to safety.

  Screaming at the top of my lungs and straining every fiber of every muscle in my body, I pulled and pulled, desperate to get her through the burning wreckage. And then the floor collapsed as well.

  69

  We landed hard.

  Then what was left of the blazing roof came down on top of us—and not just on the two of us, but on all the bodies littered across the living and dining rooms.

  My suit caught fire. I furiously rolled and twisted to put it out, then stumbled over all the burning debris to reach Yael. She wasn’t moving. Her helmet was cracked, though it didn’t appear to have busted open completely. If she hadn’t been dead a moment ago, I feared she was now or would be soon. Still, I couldn’t leave her there.

  I kicked away the burning timbers and used my left arm to pull her through the living room, through the dining room, and down the hallway toward a bathroom I’d seen earlier. It took several wrenching, deafening, terrifying minutes, but I finally got her there, pulled her inside with me, and shut and locked the door. Then I covered her again with my body and prepared to ride out the attack or die trying.

  And then suddenly it was quiet. Not completely quiet but eerily so.

  I could still hear the raging fires. But the gunfire had stopped. The bombing had stopped. The explosions had stopped. I no longer heard fighter jets overhead. I no longer heard men shouting in Arabic—or in English. I didn’t know why. Was I dead? Was it all over? I couldn’t see a thing. Everything was black—so black I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or shut. I tried to move my right arm, but nothing happened. I tried to move my feet and toes and my left hand and arm. All of them worked. I wasn’t dead, just severely wounded. Trapped, but alive. Hiding from terrorists in a house that was burning down around me. But I wasn’t finished yet. There was still time.

  I shifted off Yael and tried to turn her over. I still couldn’t see. But now I knew it was because the bathroom had filled with smoke. I couldn’t smell it through my chem-bio suit filters. But we had to get out of there fast.

  I groped around in the darkness and felt Yael’s back. I slid my hand up higher and sat quietly for a moment. I could feel her body rising and falling ever so slightly. She was breathing, which meant she was alive. But now what?

  I sat there in the darkness, trying to decide what to do. I was still a bit foggy but dramatically better than I’d been a few minutes earlier.

  Why had the bombs stopped dropping? The generals at CENTCOM and back in Azraq were surely watching by satellite and with drones. They could see whether the ISIS forces were still swarming all around us. Was it possible the danger had passed?

  I moved to the door and decided to peek out. But when I did, I found that several burning timbers had fallen directly in front of the doorway, blocking our escape. There was no way forward, and now more smoke was filling the bathroom. I closed the door and made a decision. I moved around Yael and felt in the darkness for the window above the toilet. I found a latch and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. No matter what I did, nothing worked. I heard a beeping in my helmet. It was an alert from my air tank telling me I had less than five minutes of oxygen. We couldn’t stay here. We had to get out now. I stood on the toilet, braced myself against both walls and smashed the window with my boot. It occurred to me that I might be making a dangerous blunder, making so much noise and thus giving away our position. But I didn’t see I had a choice, and anyway, what was done was done. So I cleared the rest of the glass away with my boot as well.

  Very quickly the smoke in the bathroom dissipated. I could see again. I could see and hear the rain pouring down on the courtyard outside. I could also see at least a dozen hooded men twitching and convulsing and writhing in pain and dozens more lying all across the field, lifeless and still.

  The air strikes had worked. I could hardly believe it. The gas had been released. The battlefield had been cleared.

  Turning to Yael, I knelt down and, using only my left hand, pulled her onto my back. I grabbed the side of the tub to steady myself, then lifted with my legs and got to a standing position. Then I stood on the toilet again, leaned toward the back wall, and rolled Yael out through the window. She landed with a crunch on the broken glass below, but that was the least of my worries. I climbed out the window myself, jumped to the ground, and checked to see if she was still breathing. She was, but her tank, like mine, had less than four minutes of oxygen to spare.

  I reached down, picked her up the best I could, and pulled her over my good shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Then I started moving through the courtyard, away from the blazing wreckage that had once been a beautiful villa. I decided my only hope was to get to the top of the mountain, away from the sarin gas, away from the flames and any ISIS forces that remained standing. But as I climbed over bodies and twisted, molten pieces of metal—the remains of the missiles and bombs that had, so far, saved our lives—I collapsed. I scanned the horizon for anyone who could help Yael. But all I saw was death in every direction. Those who had been overtaken by the sarin gas released by the air strikes were twitching and convulsing and foaming at the mouth. They were dying a slow and painful and grisly death. But they were dying. They couldn’t kill me. And for the moment, to be honest, that’s all I cared about.

  I struggled to my feet, the excruciating pain once again spreading across my body. I had no idea how I was going to get Yael up that mountain.

  Suddenly someone grabbed me and spun me around hard. I balled up my fist, prepared to strike, but found myself looking into the mask of General Ramirez. We just stared at each other for a few seconds, and finally I started to breathe again. My heart—temporarily frozen in terror—resumed beating.

  Ramirez was saying something, but it was muffled at best. But then he took Yael, hoisted her up on his shoulders, and motioned for me to follow him up the mountain.

  But he wasn’t walking. He was running flat out. I couldn’t keep up. My legs and lungs were burning. My head was pounding. Sweat was pouring down every part of my body. Finally, several hundred meters up, I saw Ramirez stop abruptly and set Yael down. When I reached them, he took off her mask and then his own. At first I looked at him like he was crazy. Did he want to die? Was he trying to commit suicide and take Yael with him? But then I heard another beeping sound in my helmet. I had only thirty seconds of oxygen left. It hadn’t been five minutes yet, I thought. It couldn’t have been. But I checked the meter and realized I’d nearly sucked the tank dry. And if I didn’t get this thing off fast, I was going to suffocate. With the general’s help, I quickly removed my helmet, tossed it aside, and breathed in the bitter cold air as the rains drenched me anew.

  “What about the gas?” I asked, fearing each breath.

  “It can’t hurt you up here,” Ramirez said.

  “What do you mean?” I replied.

  “Sarin is heavier than air,” he explained as he knelt down and checked Yael’s pulse and breathing. “Stays low to the ground. We’re already almost five hundred feet above the village. We should be fine.”

  Should be wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear, but we had no choice.

  I turned to Yael. “How is she?”

  “I don’t know,” he said bluntly. “We need to keep moving.”

  Ramirez picked her up again and started for the summit. I followed as best I could, and before long we were at the top amid the whipping winds. The first thing I saw was pieces of two corpses scattered over the top of the ridge. They were the remains of the two Delta snipers who had been laying down covering fire for us. They had apparently been hit with an artillery round or two. I could barely believe my eyes. I wasn’t sure how much more carnage I could take.
>
  Ramirez said nothing. His eyes were hard and his jaw was set. He laid Yael down on the north slope, trying to shelter her a bit from the direct force of the wind.

  “Where’s the rest of your team?” I asked as I sat down beside her.

  But the general shook his head and looked away.

  “None of them survived?” I asked in disbelief.

  “No,” he said quietly.

  “What about Colonel Sharif?”

  Again he shook his head.

  “It’s just us?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid so,” the general replied.

  I didn’t know what to say. The cost of what we’d just done was growing by the minute.

  Turning now, I looked down at the unbelievable devastation in the valley. It was like a scene out of the Apocalypse. The town of Alqosh was gone. All of it. Not a single building remained standing, except one, and barely, at that—the mausoleum around Nahum’s tomb.

  Then I saw a group of five men emerging from the flames of the compound. They were heading our way, running at full speed. They had chem-bio suits on, but a wave of fear washed over me. Could some of the ISIS forces have stripped our guys of their suits and put them on? We had no weapons. We had no way to defend ourselves. But as they approached us, they took off their helmets. They were Delta. Ramirez rushed over and embraced them, amazed and thankful that anyone else had made it out alive.

  I greeted them too, grateful beyond words. One of the men was a medic. He and Ramirez and I carefully removed Yael’s chem-bio suit, and the medic examined her injuries. She had a major gash on the back of her head, and her left arm was broken. It was bloody and swollen and part of the bone was actually visible. But for the moment there was nothing we could do. We had no first aid kit, no medical equipment, no drugs, just a satellite phone, which Ramirez used to call CENTCOM. He gave them our status and position and requested an extraction.

  Meanwhile, I just sat beside this incredible, mysterious woman, held her hand, stroked her hair, and begged God to have mercy on her, whatever it took. I couldn’t bear any more loss.

  70

  A few minutes later, a Black Hawk roared into view.

  Before I knew it, a team of American special operations forces was fast-roping down to us, as there was no place for the chopper to land on the summit. They put Yael on a stretcher and hoisted her back up to the chopper. I was next. Then Ramirez and his team were brought up.

  On board, a doctor and a nurse immediately began working on Yael. They strapped me down on a stretcher right beside her. A young African American Army medic, probably in her early thirties, began assessing my injuries. By the time we lifted off, she had put me on an IV and was giving me several units of blood. I tried to ask questions, but the woman attending to me wouldn’t allow it. It wasn’t my problems I wanted to know about, I told her. It was Yael’s. But she insisted that I settle back and rest during the flight, and she promised me it wouldn’t be long.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “You really need to stop talking, Mr. Collins.”

  “Please,” I said. “I just want to know if we’re heading back to Amman.”

  “We’re not.”

  “Then where?”

  “You don’t take no for an answer.”

  “No, I don’t—are we heading back to Azraq?”

  “No,” she said as she started cleaning the severe burns I had over much of my body.

  “Then where?” I asked. “Because I need to talk to the king.”

  “That’ll have to wait, Mr. Collins.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re not going to Jordan.”

  “Then where?”

  “We’re heading to EIA.”

  “Where?”

  “Erbīl International Airport.”

  “Erbīl?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Kurdish capital?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t give the orders, Mr. Collins. I just follow them. Except to you. I do give you orders, and right now you need to rest.”

  “But I need to get back to Azraq. It’s urgent.”

  “Then I’m afraid you just got on the wrong flight.”

  I turned to General Ramirez. A nurse was working on him, too, and only then did I realize that he had been shot as well.

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “But you . . . I didn’t . . .”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine,” he said again, and he sounded like he meant it.

  “You’re sure?” I pressed.

  “Believe me, Collins, I’ve been through much worse.”

  On that, it was hard to doubt him.

  “Can you make them tell me about Yael?” I asked.

  “They’ll tell us when they know something,” Ramirez said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means she’s not out of danger yet, Collins. So just stay quiet, let the docs do their job, and we’ll all know soon enough.”

  The satellite phone rang. Ramirez was getting stitches and refusing additional anesthesia, but he still took the call.

  “Yes, sir. . . . Right now. We’re en route. . . . I don’t know—maybe six minutes, maybe eight. . . . Got it. . . . No, sir, we did not. . . . It’s possible, but I couldn’t say for sure. . . . No. . . . No. . . . I appreciate that, but with all due respect, sir, I need to go back. . . . I understand. . . . Yes, we need to secure it, but my men are back there. We need to get their bodies and get them home to their families for a proper burial. Can you put that together? . . . I’d be grateful. . . . Okay, that’s—sir, what’s that? . . . Yeah, he’s right here with me. . . . No, I think he’s going to be fine. . . . Yeah, she’s here too. . . . I don’t know. Too soon to say. . . . Okay, out.”

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “CENTCOM,” the general replied.

  “And?”

  “They want to know where Abu Khalif is.”

  “And?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Could he have gotten away?”

  “He could be a pile of ashes right now for all I know,” the general said. “Who knows? We need to put boots on the ground, secure that site, and go over it inch by inch. There may not be much left down there. But we’ve got to try.”

  “And get your men back too.”

  Ramirez nodded. “And get my men back.”

  There was quiet for a bit, and then I asked him for an update on Dabiq, wincing as the medic cut away more scorched sections of my uniform to treat the burns on my legs.

  “Don’t go there, Collins.”

  “Why not?”

  “Dabiq is a mess.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You should rest.”

  “That bad?”

  “Really, Collins, you should rest.”

  “Just tell me what happened.”

  “Off the record?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “I have your word?”

  “You do,” I assured him, but he didn’t seem convinced. “Look, the Times will have plenty of coverage of that fight, but I promise none of it will come from me.”

  Ramirez sighed. “It was ten times worse than this,” he said.

  “You’re kidding,” I replied, not sure that was possible.

  “I’m not,” Ramirez said. “The guys at CENTCOM didn’t have time to go into a lot of detail, but they told me ISIS was waiting for our friends. They launched chemical weapons almost the moment the Jordanians, the Egyptians, and the Saudis got there. Our friends fought well, I’m told, but they took heavy casualties.”

  “How heavy?

  “You have to remember they went in with a much bigger force than we did.”

  “How heavy, General?”

  “It was a bloodbath.”

  “How many dead?” I asked.

  “At least two hundred dead.?
??

  I didn’t respond. I had no words.

  “In the end, it may be more,” he said. “The fighting is still under way.”

  “I thought the king ordered his forces to withdraw once we found and secured the president.”

  “He did,” Ramirez confirmed, “but the bulk of the assault force was already on the ground and moving into the school when the retreat order was given. The men got caught in a wicked cross fire. It seems most of the forces who went in were lost. The rest are fighting their way out, but it doesn’t look promising at this point. At least six coalition helicopters were shot down trying to get the men out. And then there’s the collateral damage.”

  “How bad?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Ramirez said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  Ramirez shook his head as the chopper shot across the plains of Nineveh. “First reports indicate all or most of the buildings around the school were filled with civilians, primarily women and children, just like the school itself,” he said. “Once ISIS started using the sarin gas, everyone in the neighborhood was doomed. CENTCOM is saying the civilian body count could top fifteen hundred by day’s end, maybe more. It’s . . . I don’t know; it’s just . . .” The general’s voice trailed off.

  “A mess,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “A total mess.”

  I lay back against the pillow. The scope of the carnage just kept getting worse. The magnitude of the Islamic State’s evil was like nothing I had ever seen or heard of. I would have thought by this point in my career I had seen it all. But clearly I had not. Where was it all leading? What was coming next? How would it end? I had no idea.

  Suddenly the face of Colonel Sharif came to my mind. I couldn’t believe he was dead. I thought of his kids. I wondered who would tell them and when. I wondered how they were going to bear the loss. They’d already been through so much.

  The medic leaned over to me and whispered again that I should close my eyes and let myself fall asleep. But how could I? Every bone in my body was in pain. Most of my flesh was burning. I knew I was in good hands. I knew I wasn’t going to die. Not in the air over Iraq. Not in the capital of Kurdistan. Not today. But I was still in enormous pain.