The Last Days (11 page)

“Snapshot to DSS agents. Snapshot to DSS agents. Please respond. I repeat, please respond. Can you hear me?”

She strained to pick up even the slightest sound. There was nothing but static and hiss. McCoy feared the worst. Was it really possible that the entire protective detail from the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security had been captured or killed? Were they so badly wounded that they were unable to respond to her messages? How could that really be true? What about the undercover guys? Why weren't they responding? She'd covered every frequency. So had the Black Tower command center. But the fact remained—no one was responding, and there could only be one reason why.

 

Tariq turned down another side street, then raced into an alleyway.

He screeched to a halt behind an abandoned five-story, boarded-up hotel known as the Hotel Baghdad. A broken neon sign out front read Vacancy in Arabic and in English, though all of the letters were long since burnt out. They could hear the wail of approaching sirens. They could see crowds of young men running for the beach road to see if the Americans had finally been caught and killed. But in the rush for safety, what Tariq didn't see—but should have—was the fifteen-year-old boy in the fourth-floor window of the apartment building across the street. He was peering out at them from behind some tattered blue curtains. He was holding a cell phone, and he was dialing.

The earth poured forth fire, as the demons below found their way of escape.

It was noon, but there was no sun. It was winter, but it was not cold. Into the thick, black, midday sky climbed the howling, raging, deafening firestorms. Up, up into the darkness—thirty, forty stories high—shot the flames of fury.

Daoud Juma was no longer twenty-six. No longer was he commander of Saddam's fedayeen. No longer was he on the run, escaping a wounded, occupied Baghdad in a stolen French Renault—packed with dozens of cans of extra fuel, bottles of water, and boxes of food and other supplies—racing west toward the border of Syria, surrounded by oil well fires, burning wild and deadly.

In his mind, in his heart, Daoud was suddenly back in the desert sands of Kuwait. His thoughts raced back in time, to April of 1991. He was a child, just seven years old, and he was standing over the charred bodies of his mother and father. His eyes began welling up with tears and he began to weep. Through his tears he was staring out at hundreds of oil well fires, Saddam Hussein's parting gift to the people of Kuwait and her neighbors.

At over 2,200 degrees, the great furnaces were quickly turning the desert sands into glass. They consumed more than 5 million barrels of oil a day, and already the infernos had been raging for nearly a month.

In an instant, in the blink of an eye, Daoud was transported back to the nightmare of his youth. Not so long ago, he and his family had all been together, peaceful and content. They lived a sparse but decent life. His father managed oil wells along the Iraqi border, not far from Basra. His mother raised him and wrote letters to Daoud's three older brothers, conscripted into the military. Then came August 2, 1990—the beginning of Saddam Hussein's “liberation” of Kuwait. Then came January 16, 1991—the beginning of the air war, the beginning of Operation Desert Storm. Then, early in the morning of February 24, 1991—the thirty-eighth day of the bombing campaign—came the start of the one-hundred-hour ground war. The Americans and their allies invaded. They polluted the Iraqi motherland, and in retaliation Iraqi forces set fire to more than six hundred Kuwaiti oil wells, and changed Daoud Juma's destiny forever.

All three of Daoud's brothers died in combat operations that spring. So had his mother. So had his father. Suddenly, Daoud was an orphan in a firestorm. In time he would search out the history of those days, trying to learn more details, trying to make some sense of it all. It had taken some ten thousand personnel from forty countries more than nine months and $1.5 billion to fight and extinguish all those fires. It was an enormous, expensive, exhausting challenge. But left alone, those fires could have raged on undiminished for another hundred years.

No amount of time or money or historical perspective could bring back his mother or father or three older brothers. Nothing could bring back the innocent life he'd once known. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, they were gone forever.

Never again would he hear his father regale him with colorful tales of his parents and grandparents and ancestors battling the Israelites and the Persians, the Greeks and the Egyptians, the Ottomans and the British. Never again would he hear his mother tell him bedtime stories of growing up in Palestine, running through the olive groves, hiking through the rugged hills, napping under the cool breezes sweeping in off the sparkling Mediterranean, sparkling like the most brilliant diamonds in Hammurabi's vaults. Never again would he hear his brothers' infectious laughter, or wrestle with them in the yard, or play pranks together on the neighbors across the street. Never again would he hear his mother's voice, singing him to sleep on hot summer nights with songs of the Great Revolution, while she scratched his back and gently stroked the perspiration away from his eyes and forehead.

The more he thought about his mother the more Daoud Juma wept. She'd been born in Jericho. Her family had escaped through Transjordan and made their way to central Iraq during the 1948 war, when the Jews announced their new State of Israel. So, while they were ethnically and legally Iraqis because of their father, the Juma family sympathized with the plight of their brothers and sisters in Palestine, and the Juma boys grew up hearing stories of a Holy Land they longed to see one day, hearing stories of a holy war they someday longed to win.

Daoud refused to blame Saddam Hussein for the death of his parents. He blamed the Great Satan. He blamed the Zionists. He certainly did not blame the man who'd given his family a home and a heritage.

 

Tariq hustled Sa'id and Galishnikov into the back entrance.

Bennett and McCoy grabbed the luggage and supplies and followed them inside. Then they went back for Mancuso's body and set it down in a corner of the lobby. The whole transaction only took a few minutes but Tariq insisted they move faster. If they were seen, if they were caught, he couldn't guarantee their safety, or his own.

Once everyone and their things were safely inside, Tariq shut and bolted the door behind them. He'd worry about the VW later. He'd stolen it the day before. No one could trace it to him or his team, and with chaos engulfing the Strip, it wasn't likely the police would be tracking down stolen goods for the next several weeks, if ever. If the van was gone in a few hours, who would really care? Tariq would just steal another and dub that the new Batmobile and it could certainly serve as his new mode of transportation, for a while anyway. That was the first law of Gaza—there was no law in Gaza. The sooner Bennett and his team understood that, the better off they'd be.

 

Daoud remembered his father as a proud, gregarious man.

A native-born Iraqi, he constantly boasted of being able to trace his family's roots back to the days of King Nebuchadnezzar and the glories of ancient Babylon, though as Daoud grew older he doubted this could literally be true.

His father was not a Tikriti. He'd grown up in a small, dusty town not far from Tikrit. He loved his country and he worshipped Saddam. Literally. Every morning, early, before daybreak, before he left for the oil fields, Daoud's father would face Mecca, kneel down on his small rug, bow his forehead to the ground and say his prayers. Then he would kiss Daoud and his brothers and his mother good-bye, and then kiss the framed black-and-white photo of Saddam that hung in their living room. Every day, year after year. It was a ritual, a way of life, and it made an impression on Daoud.

Once, in the marketplace, a shopkeeper—the man sold bread, or maybe meat, Daoud was only seven at the time so couldn't remember for sure—anyway, the shopkeeper cursed Saddam for the food shortages their town was experiencing. Daoud's father was not a large man, maybe five foot seven, maybe five foot eight. He weighed only about a hundred fifty pounds. But Daoud would never forget how enraged his father became. His face had turned deep red, almost purple. He'd shouted at the man. He cursed him to his face. He said the man was a Zionist, a lover of Israel. He demanded the man recant or die.

The shouting match came to blows. A crowd was gathering, chanting and shouting. The scene was getting uglier by the minute. Daoud feared for his father's life. Then a shot rang out. People screamed and scattered. Daoud ran to his father. He saw the blood on his father's hands and face and started sobbing uncontrollably. But after what seemed like a few minutes, he wiped the tears from his eyes and realized his father was not wounded. His father was holding a smoking pistol. The shopkeeper was lying in a pool of his own blood. His father had killed him, and Daoud now feared for his father's safety.

But he needn't have worried. Three days later, his father received a signed letter of commendation from President Hussein himself, a promotion to foreman, and a sixty-dollar-a-month raise. Daoud couldn't believe it. Neither could his father. That night they slaughtered a lamb, roasted it over a spit, invited the entire neighborhood over, and celebrated throughout the night. It was one of the happiest days of Daoud's life. Then the war came. Four days later his brothers left for the front. Two weeks later, his entire family was dead.

What made Daoud—the baby of the family—so loyal to Saddam and his regime was not simply that the Iraqi leader had been a great friend of the Palestinian people, though he certainly was. He'd given them jobs and opportunities in the oil fields and in his paramilitary forces. He'd funded their war against the Jews, and given them weapons and training. But it was more than that. Saddam Hussein had given the Juma boys the chance to wage jihad against the Jews and against the Americans. He'd shown favor to Daoud's father, he'd honored them—kept them from public humiliation and shame—and in so doing he had won the allegiance of the Juma boys forever.

To Daoud, Saddam was an Arab savior. It was the sheikhs of the Gulf who were ruthless and corrupt. At best, the Kuwaiti and Saudi elites treated Palestinians like second-rate citizens. At worst, his relatives working in the Gulf states were treated like slaves, like the Jews under the pharaohs. The Palestinians built the sheikhs kingdoms of splendor by the sweat of their brows, but never tasted the fruit of their endless labor. Why should such despots be rewarded in this life? Why shouldn't Saddam have been allowed to claim what was rightfully his—the oil fields of Kuwait? Why should such wealth and power remain in the hands of the thieves and prostitutes?

Daoud grew up listening to the preachers in the Sunni mosques and to Saddam Hussein on Iraqi state radio. He loved the fiery speeches, the unflinching resolve to liberate Palestine and create a great, unified, prosperous Arab nation from the Persian Gulf and the Euphrates River to the shores of the Mediterranean. From the earliest days he could remember, he'd been inspired by the Great Revolution led by Saddam and Yasser Arafat and the imams of his youth. And from the time his parents were killed, he'd been ready to give his life for a cause greater than himself. He was willing to pay whatever it took to avenge his parent's death and see Palestine rise again like a Phoenix from the ashes. This was Allah's will, his eternal destiny, and he was ready.

But for the moment, Daoud was engulfed in a lake of fire. Only a madman would be out here alone. Only a pitiful soul—a man with absolutely nothing to lose—would take such risks, driving through a hellish landscape, risking death by an American smart bomb. Yet a magnet was drawing him forward. Senior Iraqi officials and Ba'ath party members and advisors had a standing—if covert—offer of safe refuge from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, son of the late president Hafez al-Assad, one of the most feared of all modern Arab dictators. So here he was, on the road to Damascus. He had come this far, and he could not go back.

Amidst the scorched earth of a forward Iraqi military outpost, he could see only charred bodies, melted wreckage, and utter carnage all around him. Now—here—staring out at this ghastly, incomprehensible vision of destruction, his eyes burned. His throat burned. His skin blistered as it baked. His filthy black T-shirt, covered in sand and dried blood and drenched in his own sweat, reeked with the stench of fear and fatigue. The heat was unbearable. He could smell the cooked flesh. He could taste the acrid smoke. But he could not breathe. He could not speak.

And then Daoud began to vomit. He vomited again and again and again, until he was down on his knees, doubled over in excruciating pain. His body convulsed in dry heaves, until he nearly collapsed, exhausted and dehydrated. His systems began to shut down. Yet he knew he could not stay out in the open. He had to keep focused. He had to keep moving. Or he would be hunted down and killed, and his vows would go unfulfilled.

 

Tariq handed out flashlights and clicked on his own.

He headed to the lobby of the Hotel Baghdad, motioning Bennett and McCoy to follow him closely and to guide Galishnikov and Sa'id, each of whom still wore the black hoods. Torrents of rain poured through a large gash in the left far wall, in what looked to be an old dining room. There were no tables or chairs in the room any longer, but shards of porcelain and glass dishes of some kind were scattered all over the wooden floor. It appeared as though that corner of the building had been hit once by a mortar round or RPG and had never been repaired. Now it was wet, cold, and covered with mud.

The hotel's foyer and main lobby were around the corner from the dining room—damp, not soaked, but also quite cold. Bitter winter winds howled through the building, sending a chill down Bennett's spine, if no one else's. The place was eerie, to say the least. Bennett scanned the shadowy, cavernous rooms. Apparently built in the late 1940s or early 1950s, the hotel had once been quite beautiful and ornate. But everything about the place suggested it hadn't been used or inhabited in any way for at least a decade, if not more. A glass chandelier dangled overhead, barely connected to the ceiling by a fraying wire and completely covered with cobwebs and dust. Tattered old cloth-and-wood furniture lay scattered about the room—three couches, two coffee tables, and four overstuffed chairs whose stuffing had long ago disintegrated.

An old Coca-Cola machine stood plugged in but not working in one corner. A stack of yellowed newspapers, all in Arabic, lay beside it. Badly mildewed Egyptian and Iraqi carpets covered sections of the floor, though several other large carpets were rolled up and leaning against the base of the once grand staircase that led up to a balcony on the second floor and then continued winding up to the third, fourth, and fifth floors above. Hideous green-and-yellow drapes covered all the windows and everything was covered in thick layers of dust and chunks of plaster falling from a damp, rotting ceiling.

Something inside Bennett wanted to explore a little with his flashlight and his Uzi. He wasn't entirely sure why. A few minutes before he'd been cursing the fact that he'd ever stepped into this godforsaken hellhole known as the Gaza Strip. Now, so long as no one was gunning for him, he suddenly had the urge to do a little exploring. Who knew what secrets this place might hold?