The First Hostage: A J. B. Collins Novel

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Now the Black Hawks moved into position. Two hovered over the warehouse where the president’s Suburban was located. A moment later I could see the king’s most elite forces fast-roping to the warehouse roof. Two other Black Hawks broke left. The remaining two broke right. The commandos in all four choppers were soon fast-roping to the ground, then scrambling to secure the perimeter. And that’s when the shooting started.

  The initial explosions had done their job. They had caught the terrorists completely unaware. They had temporarily thrown the enemy into confusion. But some of the ISIS soldiers were firing back. Within seconds, the fighting had reached a fever pitch. From our vantage point, watching the drone and satellite feeds and looking out the window to our left, we could see the Jordanian commandos in the heart of the compound. They were using Semtex to blow the doors off the warehouse on the north and east sides. Then we watched mesmerized as they tossed flash grenades into the main warehouse.

  The thermal images on the second monitor revealed the chaos inside the facility. The king’s commandos were now storming in from all directions. They were firing at anything that moved. I could see bodies dropping, including some of the king’s men. But they didn’t stop. They kept firing, kept pushing forward, kept advancing toward the back office, though they were encountering fierce resistance.

  I was feverishly snapping photos through the windows of the Little Bird as well as at the images from the two video monitors. I was also trying to keep track of the radio chatter. But it was in Arabic and it was coming fast and furious. My Arabic wasn’t horrible, but I certainly wasn’t getting it all. Too much was happening to take it all in. And then, without warning, the Little Bird plummeted. I realized too late it was a planned descent as we hit the ground hard in the driveway just yards from the remains of the tractor-trailer out front, now engulfed in flames.

  The moment we slammed to the deck, Colonel Sharif threw open the side door and jumped out. When he shouted at me to follow, for a moment I didn’t move. Was he crazy? The situation was hardly secure. There was an intense gun battle under way. In the chopper, we’d had the perfect vantage point. Why in the world would we get out now?

  I’m not saying I was scared. Okay, I was scared. He had an MP5. I had a Nikon. He was a trained soldier. I was just a journalist. Besides, I’d had enough excitement for one day. I’d already been shot at—and hit. I didn’t want to go back into the fray. I wanted to stay with General Jum’a, high above the action. It wasn’t just safer; it was an ideal way to track all the elements of the battle. But now the general was shouting at me to get out. The colonel was unfastening my seat belt and yelling at me to move faster. He wasn’t kidding. This was really happening.

  I ripped off my headset, grabbed the camera bag, and scrambled out of the chopper after him. And no sooner had my feet touched solid ground than I felt the Little Bird lift off behind me and race out of the hot zone.

  “Come on, Collins, let’s go,” Sharif yelled over the nearly deafening roar of the helicopter blades and the multiple explosions. “Follow me.”

  10

  I did as I was told, though I hadn’t much choice.

  To my shock, Sharif didn’t head for the cover of the perimeter. I guess I’d expected him to put me close to the action, at the side of some of the Jordanian forces, to see and hear and smell the battle for myself. Instead, the colonel took me into the heart of darkness.

  Suddenly we were racing into the compound, even as the ear-shattering explosions and blistering staccato of machine-gun fire echoed through the courtyard. Sharif didn’t take us around the raging flames of the 18-wheeler. He literally jumped right through them, and I had no choice but to follow suit. He was, after all, the only one with a weapon, and I didn’t dare get separated.

  Inside the courtyard, Sharif was running flat out, and I struggled to keep up. He was in far better shape. I was gasping for air. Just then fresh machine-gun fire opened up from a window above us. Fortunately it wasn’t aimed at us but at an armored personnel carrier that was coming in behind us. The ground reinforcements were beginning to arrive, and they were drawing intense resistance.

  The colonel broke right, then dove through a gaping hole in the wall of that warehouse. Terrified, I dove too. By a minor miracle, the camera wasn’t damaged, though I did drop the bag with all the attachments. I should have worn it like a backpack, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I turned and saw the bag through the smoke, about twenty yards away. I started to go back for it, but out in the courtyard bullets were now whizzing in all directions. A moment before we’d been able to race through unharmed. Now it was a kill box out there, and there was no way I could retrieve it.

  Then again, how could we go forward? Gunfire suddenly erupted on the other side of the warehouse floor. I had no idea if it was from the terrorists or friendly fire from the Jordanians. There was no way either side could see us clearly. To them we were only shadows moving through the smoke. That’s certainly how they all looked to us.

  Scrambling to my feet, I ducked into a row of pallets piled high with canned goods and other foodstuffs. Sharif aimed his MP5 and returned fire. Then he ducked in beside me and took cover behind the pallets.

  Why we were in this particular building I had no idea. If we were going to take such risks, then I wanted to be in the main event, in the next warehouse over. That’s where the president’s Suburban was. That’s presumably where the president himself was. That’s certainly where the biggest gun battle was taking place. We needed to be there too. Instead, we were hunkered down in a warehouse that, as far as I could tell, had no strategic significance. We couldn’t go back. We couldn’t press forward. And the raging fires of the main office building were rapidly spreading. The flames had reached this building and were leaping up the walls. The entire warehouse was going to be consumed in the next few minutes. We had to get out.

  If that wasn’t enough, we knew for sure there were terrorists above us—the ones that had been shooting from the window on the second floor seconds earlier.

  Through the flames, I noticed a stairway to my right. When I pointed it out to Sharif, he quickly motioned for me to get down and stay behind him. The reason was fast becoming obvious. The terrorists were either going to be consumed by the fire racing to the second floor or get suffocated by the thick black billows of smoke that were surging into the rafters—or they were coming down those stairs any moment.

  The heat was infernal. Sweat was pouring down my face and back. My shirt was already soaked. I mopped my brow, steadied my camera, and started shooting just as Sharif did. Sure enough, three masked terrorists came barreling down the staircase. They weren’t expecting us. Sharif unloaded an entire clip. The men were dead before they hit the ground. I’d captured it all, but Sharif wasn’t finished. He raced over to the men, checked their pulses to make sure they were really gone, then pulled off their hoods as I kept snapping pictures. Then I rifled through their pockets and came out with cell phones, maps, and other articles. I shot all of it, item by item.

  As he began loading the items into his own backpack, I got curious. Looking up the stairwell into the hazy darkness, I hung the camera around my neck, pried an AK-47 from one of the terrorists’ death grips, and began moving slowly up the stairs.

  When the colonel realized what I was doing, he must have thought I was crazy. He yelled at me to come back. No one in his right mind would be going up those stairs at that moment. The entire building was now on fire. We had maybe a matter of minutes before the whole structure collapsed. But I kept moving, and I’m not sure I can tell you why. If I’d taken some time to think about it, I would never have done it. But I wasn’t operating on rational thought at that moment. I was going by instinct, and my instincts were calling me upward.

  Every step seemed an act of delayed suicide, yet I couldn’t stop. More gunfire erupted behind me, but I kept moving, step by step, into the unknown. I’d thought the heat was unbearable when we’d first entered the building. But it was getting worse a
nd worse by the second. When I reached the top of the stairs, I could barely see. The smoke was nearly impenetrable. It and the flames were sucking out what little oxygen was left in the air. I dropped to my knees, then quickly glanced back. Sharif was no longer with me. From the sound of the gunfire below, he was in full contact with the enemy. I was alone.

  Crawling forward, I could barely see the window from which the terrorists had been firing, but I decided this was my destination. I scrambled ahead, stopping every few moments to check my six, terrified someone in a black hood was going to come up and shoot me in the back. Yet the farther I pressed forward, the less I could see behind me. My eyes were watering. I was choking on the smoke and fumes. The gunshot wound to my left arm was throbbing.

  I was now crawling on my belly. The only air that was left was down here. The Nikon was on my back. I still held the Kalashnikov, sweeping it forward from side to side as I crawled, just in case.

  Why was I doing this? It made no sense. I was moving farther away from the center of the story and putting myself in grave danger in the process. Parts of the roof were collapsing all around me. The holes created new sources of oxygen, giving new fuel to the flames now shooting twenty or thirty feet into the air. I was completely drenched with sweat. I could barely breathe or see. But as I reached the window, I found the bodies of two terrorists. I checked their pulses. They were both dead. I went through their pockets for phones or IDs or anything else useful but found nothing. Was that it? Was this why I’d come? I’d risked my life for what? For nothing?

  Cursing myself, I ripped off their hoods and took a few pictures, then turned to leave. But then I began to panic. What if I couldn’t make it back? What if I died here, foolishly, without cause and without any idea where I was going next? I thought about my mom. I thought about my brother, Matt, and his wife, Annie. I thought about their kids. I thought, too, about Yael. I desperately wanted to see them. I wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. Not here.

  As I scrambled back toward the stairs, I stumbled upon something I hadn’t seen coming the other direction. It was a leg. A body. But whoever it was wasn’t dead. He was groaning. He was bleeding heavily, but he was alive. And this wasn’t a terrorist. He was dressed in a suit. I rolled him over and to my astonishment found it was an American. This was an agent of the United States Secret Service. He had a sharpshooter rifle at his side and a gaping wound in his chest. His breathing was shallow. His pulse was erratic.

  I threw the strap of the Kalashnikov around my neck so the weapon itself was now slung over my back, side by side with the camera. Then I scrambled around the agent and began dragging him toward the stairs. There was no way I could stand up. The flames along what was left of the roof were coming down closer and closer to the floor. We had only seconds left, so I used every ounce of energy I had to drag the agent across the floor, inch by inch, begging God to allow us to make it to the stairs before it was too late.

  But just then the roof above us collapsed, and part of the floor below us gave way.

  11

  Amid the blazing wreckage, we plummeted toward the first floor.

  But we didn’t fall the entire way. We dropped, instead, onto a row of pallets, then rolled off and landed with a thud on the concrete floor. My left arm was in excruciating pain. My knees had smashed on the pavement and were killing me. But as I looked up and wiped sweat and soot from my eyes, I could see the agent’s suit was on fire. I summoned what little strength I had left, tossed the Kalashnikov to the side, and threw myself on him, extinguishing the flames with my own body. It had all happened so quickly I didn’t think the agent had actually suffered any serious burns. But I feared the fall might have finished him off. Again I checked his pulse. It was weak, but it was there. He was still alive, though barely.

  I turned to look for the colonel, to call for help, but instead found myself face to face with one of the terrorists. Shrouded in a black hood and covered in blood, he was pointing an AK-47 and screaming at me in Arabic.

  “Get up—get up and prepare to die!”

  Slowly, and with some difficulty, I rose to my feet, my hands in the air, not wanting to make any sudden movements. His eyes were locked on mine, and they were wild with a toxic mixture of rage and self-righteousness. I’d never seen anything quite like it, and I instantly lost all hope that this could turn out well.

  And then something changed. I couldn’t see his full expression, of course, just his eyes, but behind the rage something was different. Whatever was fueling his emotions at that split second didn’t soften, nor did it weaken, but it did alter somewhat.

  “You,” he said, shaking the barrel of the machine gun at me. “I’ve seen you.”

  I said nothing.

  “You’re . . . you’re the infidel . . . the one who interviewed the emir,” he said, practically spewing the words out of his mouth as if they were laced with poison. “You filthy kafir—you will pay for what you have done!”

  I was frozen—couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. I saw the man’s finger preparing to pull the trigger, and I wish I could tell you that I reacted in some way—that I lunged at him or dove for cover or at least closed my eyes and prayed. But I just stood there. Eyes wide open. Waiting for death. And then a machine gun erupted to my right and the terrorist’s head exploded.

  Before I fully realized what was happening, Colonel Sharif was rushing to my side to see if I was all right. I wasn’t, though I told him I was fine. Smoke was curling out of the barrel of his MP5 as a squad of Jordanian commandos came rushing by.

  “Clear,” I heard one of them say.

  “You sure you’re okay?” the colonel asked.

  I couldn’t answer. Instead I drew Sharif’s attention to the agent.

  “Who is he?” Sharif asked, dropping to the man’s side and checking his vitals.

  “I have no idea,” I replied.

  “Where did you find him?”

  “Upstairs, near the window.”

  “What was he doing up there?”

  I just shook my head.

  Sharif pulled out a radio and called for a medic. Moments later a team of four men rushed in. They immediately put the agent on a stretcher and raced him out to a chopper that was landing in the courtyard. At the same time, Sharif grabbed my arm and led me out of the inferno—and just in time, for we had no sooner begun to cross the courtyard than the entire building collapsed in a huge ball of sparks and smoke.

  I turned and looked at the burning wreckage. I just stood there for a few moments, watching it. Then I heard Sharif telling me to follow him again. I wasn’t sure that was a good idea, but it was dawning on me that the entire site was now secure. All of the terrorists must now be dead or in custody.

  Soon I found myself stepping inside the next warehouse over. It was cavernous, much larger than the others, and it was swarming with Jordanian commandos. Some were tending to their wounded. Others were collecting clues or taking photos as if it were a crime scene. One soldier was videotaping the scene, presumably for the king and the prince, perhaps even to uplink to the White House Situation Room, the war room in the Pentagon, and CENTCOM. The floor was littered with shell casings, shrapnel, and shards of safety glass from the blown-out windows of one vehicle after another. The metallic, acrid smell of gunpowder hung in the air, mixed with the stench of the fires all around us.

  Instinctively, I grabbed the Nikon around my neck and began snapping photos as well.

  But Sharif pulled me aside. “Stop,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “It can wait,” he said quietly.

  “For what?” I pressed. “This is why I’m here.”

  “Trust me,” he replied. “It can wait.”

  Sharif asked me to come with him. I didn’t want to miss anything. I had an unprecedented world exclusive, if only the king—and my editors back home—would let me run with the story. (That, of course, assumed I hadn’t been fired yet, though I knew I’d cross that bridge later.) Reluctantly, I did le
t go of my camera and let it dangle around my neck as the colonel brought me to the very back of the warehouse.

  There it was—the president’s bullet-ridden Chevy Suburban.

  I stiffened. The scene was eerie—haunting, really. The two front doors were open. So were the back doors. The bodies of three Secret Service agents lay before me. I peered into the backseat of the SUV. It was covered with blood. And on the concrete floor was a trail of blood leading away from the Suburban and out a side door.

  “Tell me you found the president,” I said, suddenly sure they hadn’t.

  “We haven’t,” Sharif said, confirming my suspicion.

  “Please tell me he’s safe.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Tell me you know where he is,” I pressed.

  “I’m sorry, Collins; we have no idea.”

  12

  AMMAN, JORDAN

  We landed back at the air base in Marka just after 8 p.m. local time.

  It was now one o’clock in the afternoon in New York and Washington, and I knew Allen and his bosses had to be furious at me for not answering my phone.

  As we headed into the bunker, I asked Colonel Sharif to brief me on what was happening in the outside world. He might not be authorized to give me back my iPhone, I argued, but I couldn’t do my job if I had no idea what everyone else was reporting. He agreed and summarized several of the stories he was reading on his Android.

  Agence France-Presse was reporting casualty figures of more than five hundred dead in the attack on the peace summit, though Sharif and I knew the real figure was, tragically, double that number.

  Reuters was reporting that Palestinian president Salim Mansour was now in guarded condition at a hospital in Ramallah but was increasingly expected to make a full recovery.