The First Hostage: A J. B. Collins Novel (36 page)

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 his 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.

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.