The First Hostage: A J. B. Collins Novel (23 page)

42

It was now 4:17 p.m.

Less than fourteen hours until the deadline was up.

Not even a half hour until the sun went down.

The colonel and I were silent on the elevator ride back up to the main floor, where the ISR command’s meteorologists worked, along with most of the administrative staff and technical support team. When the doors opened, the MPs were waiting to take us back to the armored personnel carrier. But as we headed toward them, I noticed a group of young officers clustered together around a TV set. Curious at what they were watching, I peeked over someone’s shoulder and found them absorbed by a report on Al Arabiya.

Israeli prime minister Daniel Lavi had just passed away.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The anchor repeated several times that the information was still unconfirmed, but he referenced two separate reports
 
—one from the BBC and one from Agence France-Presse
 
—citing unnamed doctors at Hadassah Medical Center and a senior officer in the IDF, all of whom wished to remain anonymous since they were not authorized to discuss the prime minister’s condition.

I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t possible. I stopped and leaned in,
hoping to learn more, but the rest was just a discussion between the anchor and two political analysts via satellite
 
—one from Cairo and one from Dubai
 
—discussing the possible implications of Lavi’s death, “if it is proven true.”

I turned to Sharif and told him what had happened. He, too, could hardly believe it and came over to hear more. It was amazing to see how hard the news was hitting each of these young Jordanian military officers and support staff. I’m not saying they had suddenly become Zionists or that they had a deep love for Lavi or his unity government. But they were deeply traumatized by the events that had transpired in their own capital in recent days. They were heavily engaged in fighting to protect their country from the forces of the Islamic State. They knew all too well the pain that they and their people were suffering, and they seemed to identify with the trauma the Israelis were now suffering as well.

“Please, Yusef, I need to be in touch with my office and my family,” I whispered to the colonel after he’d had a few moments to absorb the shock of the discussions.

I prepared myself for resistance, for an argument, but to my relief he said, “Of course; I understand. Come with me. Let’s find someplace quiet.”

Sharif motioned to the MPs that we were going to be a few minutes; then he led me down the hall and around the corner to a small kitchenette. There he pulled out his smartphone and entered his passcode.

“I’m still under strict orders not to let you call off this base,” he said. “But if you want to dictate notes to a few people, I’m happy to send them myself and let your people know they can reach you through me.”

It wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. I wanted real contact. I needed real conversations, not a few impersonal e-mails. But with zero hour fast approaching, I realized this was the best I was going to get, and I intended to take full advantage of it.

I asked that the first text messages be sent to my mom and brother and gave Sharif their phone numbers. I explained that I was still in Jordan, but safe. I told them that my phone and computer had been destroyed in the attacks but that I had only minor injuries, certainly nothing life-threatening, and that they shouldn’t worry. There was no point in telling them I’d been shot. Or imprisoned. Or that I’d killed anyone. Or experienced a sarin gas attack. It was only going to freak them out. There was nothing they could do about any of it, so I figured they didn’t need to know. Instead, I told them I was covering the latest developments but had very limited access to the outside world, and I apologized for not being in touch sooner. Finally I told them that I loved them and that I couldn’t wait to see them again, and to please keep praying for me and not to let up for a moment.

Sharif typed the message, then showed it to me to make sure he’d gotten it right. I reread that last line asking them for prayer. I wondered if that might give them the idea I was still in harm’s way or going back into it. But then again, wasn’t that the truth? I was in a forward operating base in the midst of the worst military crisis in Jordan in decades. The fact that I’d narrowly escaped death numerous times in recent days was, I was beginning to think, potentially related to how much my family was praying for me. Regardless of how unclear I was about God and Jesus and my own eternity, I figured I’d be an idiot not to ask for prayer. It was working. They were willing. Why not?

I thanked Sharif and he hit Send.

Then I asked him to send a quick message to Allen MacDonald back at the
Times
D.C. bureau. The colonel agreed but said I couldn’t say anything newsworthy or substantive, only that my phone and computer had been destroyed but that I was alive and safe and still on the story
 
—essentially the same as I’d told my family, without the reference to prayer.

“Can I ask if this story about Lavi is true?” I inquired.

“No.”

“Can I ask what he’s heard about Jack Vaughn being arrested?”

“Absolutely not.”

“So that’s all I get?”

“Was there someone else you wanted to write to?” he asked.

“Many.”

“One more.”

“Why just one?”

“Because I just got a text message from the war room,” he said. “They want us to come back immediately. We need to move fast. So is there someone else
 
—your wife, perhaps? Laura, right?”

I looked at him sharply. That was not a name I ever expected to hear again
 
—not this far from Washington
 
—and I was completely caught off guard not only by the suggestion but by the fact that a Jordanian colonel whom I had only just met somehow knew so much about me. Did they have a dossier on me? What else did they know? And what gave him the right to bring Laura up at such a time as this?

“Ex-wife,” I said coldly.

“Right,” said Sharif. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“Should I send her a note, tell her you’re okay?”

“No,” I replied.

“Then is there someone else? We only have a moment.”

There was, of course
 
—Yael Katzir. But I didn’t dare say it. Not the name of an Israeli Mossad agent. Not her personal mobile number. Not in such a sensitive moment in relations between Jordan and Israel. Not with Agent Harris on the same base, just a few buildings away, still wanting to talk to her about why she’d fled the scene of the car bombing in Istanbul.

Yet Yael was the one I wanted to reach out to, the one I found myself thinking about in every spare moment I had. I was worried about her, especially after the death of her prime minister.

But that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to reconnect. The truth was I missed her. It embarrassed me to think it. But I missed her. I wanted nothing more than to sit with her and have coffee and listen to her talk and pry her for more stories and get to know her better. It wasn’t simply a physical attraction, though it was certainly that. There was just something about her that fascinated me, intrigued me, drew me to her, and I wanted to find out what it was. But now wasn’t the time or the place.

“No,” I said at last. “We’d better go.”

The king was waiting for us, though I had no idea why.

43

“I’m divorced too,” Sharif said as we drove back to the war room.

“Sorry to hear that,” I said, not exactly in the mood for small talk, if that’s what this was supposed to be, and certainly in no mood for baring my soul or having the colonel bare his.

“It’s the girls I miss the most,” he continued somewhat wistfully as the storm raged around us. “Amira is my oldest. Just turned five.”

“That’s a lovely name.”

“It means ‘princess.’”

“You must be very proud.”

“You have no idea. And then there’s the three-year-old, Maysam, which means ‘my beautiful one.’”

For the first time since we’d met, he actually handed me his phone. But it was not to make a call or read the latest headlines. He wanted me to see some digital pictures of his girls, taken at the younger one’s most recent birthday party.

“Adorable, both of them,” I said, doing my best to be polite. “Congratulations.”

I forced myself to hand the phone back to him. I could see Sharif wasn’t smiling. He was just staring at the pictures and his eyes were growing moist.

“How often do you see them?” I asked.

“Never,” he said. “Well, it seems like never. Once a month. Maybe twice. They live with their mother in Aqaba. It’s hard for me to get down there.”

“I’m sure. That’s quite a drive from Amman. How long does it take?”

“Four hours.”

“But you have the whole weekend with your girls?”

“No, just an hour,” he said, choking back his emotions. “I leave before sunrise on a Friday. We have an hour for lunch. I’m back by dinnertime. But after all this? I have no idea when I will see them again.”

Just then lightning struck a nearby electrical transformer, creating a small explosion, sparks spraying everywhere. At almost the exact same moment, multiple booms of thunder rocked our vehicle. The storm was directly upon us now, and even though the sun had not technically set, it was eerie how dark the skies had become.

I felt bad for Sharif. He was a reserved and quiet soul, fiercely loyal to the king, proficient at his job, and overall had been quite decent to me. But for the first time I realized his mind was far away. Here we were at a secret base in the northeastern part of the country, and his heart was nearly four hundred kilometers away in Jordan’s southernmost port city. I had no idea what the circumstances were that led to his divorce and ripped him away from the two little girls he clearly loved most in the world. Certainly it was not my place to ask, and it wouldn’t have been right to anyway. All the deep and hurtful wounds that he typically kept in check in order to perform his official duties were presently forcing their way to the surface, and I genuinely wished there were something I could do to comfort him.

Yet what advice could I possibly give him? I’d completely failed as a husband. Laura and I had been married for only five years. It had started as a torrid love story. We’d met as interns in Robert
Khachigian’s Senate office, and I’d fallen for her immediately. We dated all summer, got married that Christmas, and everything had seemed like an intoxicating dream . . . until it didn’t anymore. Suddenly she was as cold as ice. Then she announced she wanted some “time away” to figure things out. And the next thing I knew, she was moving in with some hotshot lawyer she’d met at the New York firm where she’d just been hired and was filing for divorce. The whole thing completely blindsided me. I never saw it coming. I still didn’t know what I’d done wrong. And ever since, I’d avoided thinking about it, and certainly talking about it, like the plague.

The only sliver of grace in the entire emotional train wreck was that we hadn’t had kids. I’d wanted to. Lots. Right from the start. She didn’t. Not till she was done with law school. Not till she was with the right firm. Not till she was a partner. If I was being honest, I’d have to admit I resented her for that
 
—and for a million other things
 
—but I had to be grateful we hadn’t brought some adorable little souls into this world only to drag them through our selfish, twisted, mixed-up lives.

All that had been a long time ago, of course. Almost twenty years. But my wounds had never fully healed. I couldn’t imagine how much worse it would have been with little children caught in the middle.

We pulled into the garage over the main bunker, the door lowered behind us, and the colonel and I were soon on our way back down to the war room. Neither of us said anything, both lost in other thoughts, other troubles, far from this war. But just as the elevator doors reopened, Sharif handed me his phone.

I really didn’t want to see more pictures of his children, but nor did I want to compound his pain. So I took the phone and looked at the screen.

There were no pictures of children. Instead there was a text message from my brother.

I read the message twice, then handed the phone back to Sharif and stepped off the elevator. Rather than taking me into the king’s private office, however, Sharif led me down the narrow, dimly lit corridor to the waiting area outside the war room. As we walked, I wasn’t thinking about the discussion that was coming with the generals. My thoughts were back in Bar Harbor. All I wanted to do at that moment was see my mom and make sure she was okay, catch up with Matt and Annie, hug their kids, and have a home-cooked meal in that big old drafty house, even if my whole family did want to convert me. They’d been trying for years, and it had annoyed me something fierce for as long as I could remember. But I knew they didn’t mean any harm. They loved me. They believed Jesus was the answer to my problems. They wanted me to believe it too. I still wasn’t sure. Religion wasn’t my thing. But I guess I’d finally become convinced my family meant well. They weren’t trying to bother me. They were trying to help me. And the older I got, the more help I realized I needed.

Seeing them all in person was not in the cards, however. Not anytime soon. The best I could hope for was a phone call with Matt.
But even that would have to wait. An unprecedented coalition of Americans and Sunni Arab countries was going to war inside Syria, and I was about to get a front-row seat on the plan and
 
—I hoped
 
—a seat on one of the choppers going into battle as well.