“What we’re not going to do is drive down that slope and head cross-country toward the Marib road, because if we do, we’re not going to get to the Marib road.”
Brenner asked, “Then why are we even in this Land Cruiser? Why didn’t you tell us this back in the Crow Fortress?”
“If I had, what would we have done?”
“Tell Chet and Buck what you just told us.”
I replied, “At least they would believe me. But here’s the deal—the mission comes first. Chet is poised to kill The Panther. And we will let him do that. But we will not let him have a friendly fire accident on our way to Marib.”
Brenner sort of nodded.
I said to him, “Let’s go.”
As we moved toward the rock pile and the Bedouin guarding the approach to the plateau, I said, “Chet has not directed a Predator to watch us because the Predator pilot and other ground controllers would see that it was us who got into this Land Cruiser, and they would not fire on it.” I explained, “Chet will get a Predator on station when he thinks we’re traveling cross-country toward the Marib road. He will tell the pilot to keep us in his sight, then at some point he will inform the pilot that the Land Cruiser is a confirmed target. And then Chet will execute the assassination stage of the flight and order the pilot to take out the target.” I added, “Kate’s balto and our shiwals will be mentioned in the incident report as one reason for the misidentification of the people in the Land Cruiser as a target.” I added, “Souvenirs can be dangerous.”
No one had anything to say about that, so I asked, “Would anyone have a problem with asking one of those Bedouin to drive this vehicle down the slope and toward the Marib road?”
Zamo replied in a heartbeat, “Not me.”
Brenner said, “I would have a problem with that… but…”
Kate didn’t reply, and I said to her, “If nothing happens, then you’re right and I’m crazy.”
She hesitated, then replied, “I… would not want to see an innocent person killed…”
I pointed out, “You said I was wrong.”
“I’m not making that decision.”
“Okay. I’ll make it.”
The Bedouin around the rocks were watching us, and Brenner pulled close to them.
I said to him, “I need your Arabic.”
Brenner and I got out of our Land Cruiser and everyone did their peace thing.
There were five Bedouin with AK-47s and they had one white Land Cruiser with them.
I said to Brenner, “Tell them we will give them mucho rials if one of them will take our vehicle to the airstrip and pick up an Amriki who is waiting there for us.”
Brenner glanced at me, hesitated, then began speaking in halting Arabic.
The five Bedouin nodded in understanding, and Brenner said to me, “This gentleman”—he pointed to a bearded guy in his thirties or forties—“will go for us.”
I nodded and smiled at the guy.
“He says he’ll take his own vehicle.”
“No.” I took Brenner’s arm and we stepped onto a small flat rock. I said, “See that?”
Brenner stared at the roof of our Land Cruiser, whose dusty white paint was smeared with what looked like blood, probably goat blood. He kept staring at the smear, then said, “Jesus…” He looked at me.
I stepped down off the rock and asked him, “So what do you think, Paul?”
He seemed at a loss for words, but then reminded me, “Yasir told us to take any vehicle.”
“Right. Pick a card. Any card.” At the risk of stating the obvious, I said, “They’re all marked.”
He nodded.
I said to him, “We can wipe the red target off, or since all the Bedouin vehicles are communal, we can swap cars with these gentlemen, and we can proceed to the Marib airstrip, and hopefully not get vaporized on the way. But I don’t think there’s anything or anyone waiting for us at the airstrip. So I suggest we go back to the Crow Fortress and deal with this.” I checked my watch. “We should be there about the time The Panther is in Chet’s sights.”
Brenner, who has seen lots of death, has probably not seen lots of treachery and double crosses, and he still looked a little out of it. Hello, Paul?
Kate and Zamo were out of the Land Cruiser, and Kate glanced at Brenner, then asked me, “What’s happening?”
I said to Brenner, “You tell her.” She never believes me.
The Bedouin were watching us, curious about what the crazy Amriki were talking about, so we didn’t want to go look at the roof again and put ideas into their heads. But Brenner said to Kate and Zamo, “There is a red marking—looks like blood—on the roof of the Land Cruiser.”
Zamo, who’d painted lots of people red with a red laser beam before he sent them to Paradise, got it in a heartbeat, and said, “Holy shit.”
Well said.
Kate is quick, but stubborn, and she reminded us, “But Yasir said—”
“They’re all marked,” I informed her. “They weren’t marked when we were up in the diwan or I’d have seen that, because I was looking for it. But when we went down to burn our civilian passports on the ground level, the Bedouin, at the prior request of Chet, marked all the roofs with goat blood, probably thinking that they were putting some kind of holy protection mark on the SUVs. You know, like the Passover thing with the lamb’s blood.” I added helpfully, “Exodus.”
Well, maybe that was a stretch, but close enough. Or Yasir and his buddies had no idea why Chet gave them a few rials to do something weird. But they did know to keep their mouths shut about it. I further informed my teammates, “Chet also asked Yasir to give us the shiwals, which will be mentioned in the incident report.”
Kate looked at me, and I thought maybe she’d say, “Sorry I doubted you,” but she didn’t. She asked me, and all of us, “What do we do now?”
I explained to Kate and Zamo that a road trip to Marib airstrip might not be productive, and I suggested, “We can let this kind gentleman here take the vehicle marked for death, and absolutely confirm that Chet was planning to whack us.” I asked, “Anyone need to see that?”
No one apparently did.
I suggested, “Let’s go back to the Crow Fortress and talk to Chet and Buck.”
Brenner agreed, but said, “They will deny everything.”
Kate agreed, and so did Zamo.
Indeed, Chet and Buck would deny everything, and we had no proof that I wasn’t totally crazy. And if we disobeyed orders and went back to the Crow Fortress and I accused Chet and Buck of plotting to kill us, that could get very weird, and I’d be the one answering charges back in the States. Not to mention that the Company would definitely see to it that Kate and I met with a fatal accident. So we couldn’t go back to the Crow Fortress without proof, we didn’t want to drive to Marib, and we couldn’t stay here.
Zamo said, “Let the guy drive.”
No one responded to that.
The guy in question, whose name was Emad, said something to Brenner, who didn’t reply.
Okay, someone has to make life-or-death decisions, and like Brenner, I too get paid for that. And yet…
Finally, I said, “Let Emad drive to Marib airstrip.”
Neither Kate nor Brenner seconded that, but neither did they object. Zamo, however, said, “Otherwise, you’ll never know for sure.”
Brenner hesitated, then said something to Emad, who smiled and got into our Land Cruiser. Emad didn’t ask for his money up front, but Brenner pressed a handful of rials on him and said something to him in Arabic.
In truth, we were becoming more callous and more like the bad guys, but at least we had a conscience.
Emad waved and took off down the slope.
Well, part of me hoped I was wrong, but the blood on the roof said I was right. In fact, everything said I was right.
One of the Bedouin said something to Brenner, and Brenner said to me, “He wants to know if we need a ride back to the Crow Fortress.”
I looked at
my watch and said, “Ask him if we can borrow his vehicle.”
Brenner asked, and it was no problem, and I tipped them with the last of my rials.
I drove this time, and Zamo rode shotgun. Kate and Brenner sat silently in the rear.
After a few minutes we could see the Crow Fortress ahead, and I spotted a pile of rocks on the left. I pulled over and said, “We can watch from here.”
We got out of the Land Cruiser and climbed onto the rocks, which gave us a clear view of the flatlands below.
Zamo put his sniper rifle to his shoulder, adjusted his scope to full power, and said, “I got him.”
Brenner, Kate, and I did the same with the weaker-powered scopes on our M4s.
I could see the white Land Cruiser driven by Emad kicking up dust about a mile away, heading north toward the Marib road.
There wasn’t much vehicle traffic on the dirt roads that cut through the dry fields, and it was easy to follow the lone dust trail even as the Land Cruiser grew smaller.
The more time that went by without the SUV erupting into a ball of flames, the more I began to think that maybe I was missing my flight out of here.
No one spoke, but I could imagine what Kate and Brenner were thinking: Poor John has gone gaga. Zamo, however, was looking through his scope like he was tracking a Taliban general. He was as still as a statue and his breathing was so controlled that I thought he’d gone into a trance.
I was half hoping that I hadn’t sent an innocent man to his death, but as the seconds ticked by, I also hoped that a Predator pilot had the Land Cruiser in its crosshairs and was waiting for Chet to say, “Engage the target.”
After three or four minutes I lost sight of the SUV in my scope, and so did Kate and Brenner, and they put their rifles down. But Zamo still had him and kept looking through his scope.
I said, “Maybe this will happen later.”
No one replied.
Zamo said, “Lost him,” and put his rifle down.
Brenner asked me, “What do you want to do now?”
I replied, “Sit here and wait for the streak of white smoke.”
Again, no one replied, but Zamo was staring out at the distant horizon without his scope, so we did the same.
Kate said to everyone, “Let’s ask one of the Bedouin back there to drive us to the Marib airstrip.”
Brenner suggested, “Or let’s walk back to the Crow Fortress and say our car broke down and we need another one.”
Did I detect a note of sarcasm in his voice?
I said, “We can see the smoke trail for over twenty miles from up here.”
Brenner informed me, “I’m not waiting half an hour for that.” He said to Kate, “Please talk to your husband. We need to make a decision.”
“John.”
“Quiet.”
So we sat on the rocks and stared out at the blue sky. The crazy guy was in charge. Or he needed to be humored until he came to his senses—or until they could get the drop on me.
So we continued to wait, but only Zamo and I were giving the sky our undivided attention. Kate and Brenner were exchanging glances.
Please, God, let me be right about the CIA wanting to kill me and my wife. That’s not too much to ask.
Less than two minutes after we’d lost sight of the dust cloud, a white trail of thin white smoke cut across the blue sky. An instant later, there was a flash of orange light on the horizon, but no sound.
Zamo said, “Target killed.” He added, “Holy shit.”
Brenner stood, but said nothing.
Kate, too, stood, and stared as a column of black smoke began rising above the horizon. She said, “Oh my God…” I didn’t know if she was addressing me, but she looked at me and said, “I can’t believe this…”
Birds in the fields below suddenly took flight, then a muffled sound like distant thunder reached us and died away, leaving a stillness in the air.
Brenner was still staring at the rising smoke, and he said, “Those bastards.”
Zamo said, “I guess John was right.”
I guess so.
Kate said softly, “That poor man… he’s dead.”
No one responded to that.
Brenner said, “Okay, let’s go back and talk to Buck and Chet.”
I said, “They’ll think they’re seeing ghosts.”
We got into the Land Cruiser and headed back to the Crow Fortress.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
I drove fast, but not so fast as to attract the attention of the Predator pilot whose job it was to watch the immediate vicinity of the Crow Fortress. But even if he saw us as we approached the fortress, all he’d see was the Bedouin Land Cruiser from the rock pile, so no reason to call Chet.
As for Chet and Buck, both their monitors would now be tuned in to the two Predators flying above the goat herder’s hut. One of their screens would have been split to direct another Predator to follow the suspected target in the Land Cruiser—us—and Chet had just given the order to destroy the target. I wonder if Chet had a lump in his throat when he saw his teammates getting blown up.
We were now a few hundred meters from the Crow Fortress, and as I’d noticed since we’d been here, the Bedouin rarely posted a lookout on the walls of the courtyard—guard duty was the job of the Amriki in the tower—and I didn’t see anyone as I looked at the wall in front of us.
When I got within fifty meters of the fortress, I retraced my route to come around to the gate on the east side.
Brenner asked, “Do we have a plan?”
I replied, “There is no plan possible for this situation. Sometimes you just have to shoot from the hip.” Literally.
Zamo suggested, “They need to die for what they did.”
Good plan.
Brenner reminded Zamo and all of us, “I give the order to fire—but you can fire if fired upon.”
Or if I feel like emptying a full magazine into those two bastards. But first we had to make sure that Chet had completed his mission and killed The Panther.
I pulled up near the gate, which was closed, and I turned the vehicle around, pointing it toward the edge of the plateau that we’d driven up on the night we landed in this shithole. I kept the engine running, and we all got out quickly, leaving the doors open.
Kate pulled off her balto for better mobility and access to her spare magazines, and Brenner said, “Rock and roll,” meaning move your selector switches to full automatic.
I insisted on going in first and alone, and I lifted the latch handle, swung the gate in, and slipped into the courtyard.
The Bedouin were still where we’d left them, sitting along the shade of the west wall, chatting and chewing. I noticed also that all the vehicles were still there, so Chet and Buck had not yet left here to drive to the scene of the attack, meaning it hadn’t happened yet. I checked my watch: 6:15 P.M., so apparently The Panther was late—or he wasn’t showing up at all.
The Bedouin noticed me, but none of them looked surprised, though a few of them seemed to be discussing my return.
The doors of the van with the Predator monitors were closed, and the engine wasn’t running, but I could hear the hum of the gasoline-powered generator.
I motioned to Kate, Brenner, and Zamo to come in, and I said, “Act normal,” which meant walking casually across the courtyard to the van. The Bedouin were looking at us, and maybe they were unhappy that Kate was dressed like a man.
We stopped at the closed doors of Moses’ Red Sea fish van and I saw that the padlock was not there, meaning someone was inside, which I expected. Hopefully it was both of them.
Well, I didn’t want to interrupt Chet while he was in his stealthy assassination mode, but we couldn’t stand here smiling at the Bedouin.
Brenner nodded toward the door and whispered, “Let’s go.”
Right. Chet and Buck would be unhappily surprised to see us, but they had a job to do and they’d do it, and then we could discuss other matters.
I leveled my M4 as Brenner and Za
mo swung both doors open, and I jumped into the van.
Unfortunately, no one was there.
Brenner and Kate came into the van, and Zamo stayed outside to keep an eye on the Bedouin.
Kate asked, “Where are they?”
Definitely not here. But the consoles were fully lit and the monitors were both on, as though they’d just stepped out for a minute.
We moved to the front of the van and looked at the screens. The left-hand screen—Chet’s screen—showed the close view of the goat herder’s hut, and the right screen had a split view, a higher and wider shot of the area around the hut, and another high shot showing a white SUV traveling on a dirt road.
As we watched, an electronic crosshair came onto the split screen over the SUV, and a few seconds later the white SUV was gone, replaced by a bright orange flash, followed by swirling black smoke and debris. A message came on the screen that said, “Target engaged.”
Then I saw another, smaller message in the left-hand corner of the screen that said, “Replay.” Then the original image appeared again and our SUV with the blood mark on the roof and Emad driving was vaporized again by the Hellfire missile. Ouch.
Brenner said, “Those bastards.”
Kate said, “Look.”
We focused on Chet’s screen, which was also on replay, and watched silently as Sheik Musa, surrounded by about half of his fifteen men, walked from left to right toward another group of men who were moving from right to left.
Both groups stopped in the middle of the carpet, and after a hesitation, Sheik Musa took the hand of The Panther and kissed it. The Panther then did the same to Sheik Musa.
I don’t know if they embraced or not, because the crosshair on the screen brightened, then an electronic message flashed “Fire,” and the screen brightened again in an orange glow, followed by black swirling debris, then smoke and fire. The words “Target engaged” flashed on the screen.
Everyone, I was sure, including Sheik Musa and all the men around him, were dead or mortally wounded. Same for Mr. Bulus ibn al-Darwish—The Panther was dead.
I said, “Mission accomplished.”
Brenner said, “Chet killed the sheik, too.”
The Panther Page 53