The First Hostage: A J. B. Collins Novel (6 page)

7

Lieutenant General Abdul Jum’a led the way to the tarmac.

Colonel Sharif and I followed close behind and soon found ourselves climbing into the back of an MH-6 helicopter. Known as the “Little Bird,” the chopper would serve as the command-and-control aircraft for the unfolding mission as the general directed the movements of six Black Hawk helicopters and the elite SF operators they were carrying. And Sharif and I would be able to see and hear everything that was happening in real time.

We were still buckling up as the two-man crew up front lifted off. Soon we were racing south by southeast to an area not far from Queen Alia International Airport, where the emergency beacon’s signal was coming from.

So much was still unknown. Were the president and his security detail out in the open or in an urban area? Were they alone or under assault by ISIS forces? And what exactly was the rescue strategy?

With the president’s life potentially in imminent danger, there was no time to develop a detailed and proper plan. Rather than gather all kinds of intelligence and put his men through several hours or days of training, the general was going to have to improvise, and that was going to make a risky situation all the more dangerous.

I had a hundred questions. Was there any way to approach the target by stealth? If not, what would be the best way for the general’s men to get to the president and extract him? How was Jum’a going to handle the fact that it was the middle of the day and we weren’t going to have the cover of darkness? What if the enemy had RPGs? Would it be possible for the approaching aircraft to be shot down? If that happened, then what? If there was no plan A, what was plan B?

These and other questions were racing through my mind, but for the moment I didn’t dare ask any of them. It seemed best merely to keep quiet and observe.

The general was sitting in a row of seats ahead of the colonel and me, just behind the pilot and copilot, before a communications console he was powering up and preparing to use. I had no idea what he was thinking. But nor did I want to bother him. For whatever was unclear at the moment, two things
were
clear: this guy did not want me on his chopper, and time was of the essence.

My job, I knew, was to document everything that happened without getting in the way or complicating a tense situation more than I already was. One thought crossed my mind: I was dying to take some pictures. In times of crisis, readers wanted to see what was happening behind the scenes. They wanted to try to understand how leaders made decisions and what it was like to be “in the room” in moments of great stress and drama. My phone had been taken away, so that wasn’t an option. But just then, as if he were reading my thoughts, the colonel nudged me. Without saying anything
 
—only the pilots were talking
 
—he handed me a small backpack he’d brought on board and motioned for me to open it. As I did, I was speechless. Inside the bag I found a nearly brand-new digital SLR camera. And this wasn’t any old model. It was a six-thousand-dollar Nikon D4, professional grade, top-of-the-line. As I dug deeper, I found a high-powered Nikkor telephoto lens as well. I couldn’t believe it. Sharif hadn’t let me head into the field empty-handed after all.

I smiled and slapped the colonel on the back to thank him. This was far more than I needed and probably more than I knew how to handle. I was a war correspondent, after all, not a photojournalist, and this was like handing Tiger Woods’s personal clubs to some kid at a miniature golf course. Nevertheless, with the colonel’s gesture of permission, I took a few shots of the general at work and then quickly attached the telephoto lens.

Then Colonel Sharif nudged me again. As I turned, he handed me a pair of headphones with an attached microphone. He was already wearing a set and pantomimed that I should put mine on immediately. As I did, I could hear the general’s cool, professional, unflappable voice. And he was talking to me.

“Mr. Collins, can you hear me back there?”

“Yes, General, I can.”

“Good. Now listen, back at the palace, when you were preparing to evacuate the king and his family, you were one of the last people to see the president, correct?”

“Yes, sir, that’s true.”

“You saw him get into the Suburban next to the king’s vehicle?”

I thought about that for a moment. I wanted to say yes, but it wasn’t exactly true. “No, I saw the SUV pull away, but the president and his men were already in the vehicle.”

“How many agents were with him?”

“Well, at least two, but maybe not more,” I said, closing my eyes and trying desperately to remember every detail. “I saw the driver and another agent in the front passenger seat. But I can’t say there were more. Most of them were killed in the firefight, as you know.”

“The king just radioed me,” the general replied. “He says he’s pretty sure he saw an agent in the backseat, covering the president with his own body.”

“That could be,” I said. “I don’t know. I was just trying to get our Suburban started.”

As I said this, I noticed the chopper was now banking toward the desert, not toward Amman. And it wasn’t just us. All six Black Hawks beside and behind us were changing course too. Why the new course? Why weren’t we heading back to the area around the airport? Was the president on the move?

The general relayed the information I had given him to the rest of the troops. The president had at least two agents with him, possibly three. But even if there were four agents with him, which was possible but seemed unlikely, it wasn’t going to be nearly enough protection if they really had been found and attacked by ISIS.

Worse, while the Chevy Suburban the president was in was solid
 
—armor-plated with bulletproof windows like all the Suburbans used by the United States Secret Service
 
—it wasn’t nearly as secure as the fleet of presidential limousines, each of which was known by agents as “the Beast.” These specially designed Cadillacs were essentially luxury battle tanks. Each door was made of reinforced steel eight inches thick, built to withstand the direct impact of an antitank missile. The trunk and gas tank were armor-plated. The windows could withstand armor-piercing bullets fired at point-blank range. Each limo had its own oxygen supply, fire-suppression system, and special steel rims supporting Kevlar-reinforced tires that could continue at high speeds for miles even after being blown out in an attack. Each model also had a supply of the president’s blood type on board, the most secure satellite communications known to man, night-vision technology, and even a state-of-the-art system that would allow its driver to navigate through fire and smoke. The Suburban the president was in couldn’t possibly compare. How long could he and his men hold out under a direct assault?

Suddenly the king’s voice came over the radio. He explained that he and Prince Feisal had just opened up a secure conference call with the American vice president, the director of the CIA, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the director of the Secret Service, and
the commander of CENTCOM. For the first time, King Abdullah now gave General Jum’a precise coordinates of the beacon’s location and explained that momentarily they’d be sending live images of the location from two different sources, a U.S. spy satellite and a Jordanian drone.

“The signal is coming from a warehouse several kilometers north of the interchange between Routes 35 and 15,” the king said. “And it’s been completely overrun by the enemy.”

8

One of the monitors in the communications console flickered to life.

Though my angle was partially blocked by General Jum’a, the images I could see were at once compelling and chilling. Clearly visible via a spy satellite feed was an area that was part industrial and part agricultural. I could see a compound composed of seven main buildings. Six appeared to be warehouses. The seventh looked like it housed the main offices for whatever company this was. The entire rectangular site was enclosed by a high concrete wall and surrounded on the north, east, and west sides by open fields, though there appeared to be a factory of some sort just across the field to the west. On the south side was a two-lane road, and across the street there appeared to be a nursery of some sort, as there were dozens and dozens of greenhouses covering multiple acres. Down the road a bit was a major oil depot.

We were patched in on the conference call but could hear only the king and prince, not the principals in Washington or the CENTCOM commander, who I assumed was in Tampa. The king explained that the beacon’s signal was coming from the midsize building located in the center of the compound.

The general opened a laptop, connected it to the monitor, and
then took a moment to highlight the specific warehouse on his screen and transmitted the image to the men on the Black Hawks around us. “What exactly is this place?” Jum’a asked as he pulled up a GPS map on a separate screen.

“The factory you see on the west side is the SADAFCO plant,” Prince Feisal said. “We think the compound we’re looking at was recently purchased by SADAFCO as a warehousing and shipping center. But my men are checking on that. Stand by.”

I turned to the colonel. I didn’t want to talk over my headset microphone as it would be heard by everyone in the chopper and by the king and prince as well. But I had no idea what SADAFCO was. The colonel saw my questioning look and quickly took out a pad and pen and scribbled me a note.

     
Largest producer of milk and dairy products in Arab world, or one of them.

     
Also make foodstuffs
 
—cereals, tomato paste, frozen french fries, etc.

     
This must be their Jordanian subsidiary.

Why in the world was the signal coming from there, of all places? That was my first thought. My second thought was whether there could be a connection between the ISIS terrorists and the Saudis.

None of that was clear. What was clear
 
—and what made the images so terrifying
 
—was that the place was crawling with heavily armed men. Whether they were ISIS for sure or some other group, I couldn’t tell. But I counted more than sixty fighters, all wearing black hoods, and several were holding rocket-propelled grenade launchers. They had taken up positions on all sides of the compound and were using a tractor-trailer truck to block the main entrance. Snipers were clearly visible in the upper stories of the office building, and several more
could be seen looking out the doorways of the warehouses. Whoever these guys were, they weren’t running a food processing plant.

Another monitor on the communications console now flickered to life. I could see this one a little better, though again my view was partially blocked by the general. But it appeared to be the feed from a drone over the site providing thermal images of the building from which the signal was coming. While it looked to me like a warehouse from the outside, the images suggested it was more of a garage. I could see the outlines of numerous vehicles, including one that potentially could be the president’s. I could also see the heat signatures of dozens of people in the facility. Most were grouped in what might have been an office of some kind in the back right-hand corner. Others were clumped in the remaining three corners of the building.

“General, are you seeing the feed from the drone?” the king asked.

“I am, Your Majesty,” Jum’a replied. “Is that the president’s Suburban on the far right in the back, near the office and all the people?”

“We believe so,” the king said. “The Secret Service director says the signal is strong and authentic. It’s not being jammed or manipulated. As best he can tell, that’s the real thing.”

“But am I seeing this right
 
—the doors are open, and no one’s in the vehicle?”

“I’m afraid that’s right.”

“So what do you want to do, Your Majesty?”

“Can your men take that compound?”

“Yes, sir
 
—in less than two minutes.”

“Can you get the president out safely?”

“Honestly, Your Majesty, I can’t say. There are an awful lot of variables in play here. But an assault is not our only option. We could surround the place and try to negotiate his release.”

“No,” said the king. “The vice president has ruled that out. The U.S. won’t negotiate with ISIS under any circumstances. And Jack
Vaughn is worried that if they’re given any more time, they will behead him.”

The very notion gave me flashbacks of seeing Abu Khalif, the ISIS emir, behead the deputy director of Iraqi intelligence just outside of Baghdad. That was horrifying enough. I couldn’t imagine the sight of the president of the United States being beheaded. Surely they would do it on camera. Surely they would post it on YouTube for all the world to see.

I tried to imagine what was going through the vice president’s mind at the moment. Martin Holbrooke had been a senator from Ohio for more than thirty years when he’d been tapped by Harrison Taylor to be the VP nominee. He certainly had lots of Washington experience. But was he ready for this? Was anyone?

“This all presupposes the president is even in that building,” the general said.

“Right.”

“We still don’t know that.”

“No, we don’t
 
—not for certain,” the king conceded.

“Can the Secret Service say for sure? Do they have a way to know, like we know where you are at all times?”

“Good question,” said the king. “I’m sure they do. But wait one.”

He put us on hold, and we waited. But not for long.

“Yes, they have a way to know,” said the king. “The president wears a special watch, a Jorg Gray 6500 Chronograph. It was picked out by the president but specially built for the Service. It operates as a panic button and has a tracking device inside it.”

“And?”

“And right now none of the American satellites, drones, or other assets are picking up the signal from the watch. They can’t say why. Could be any number of reasons.”

“You mean the watch could have been removed from him and destroyed.”

“Yes, that’s possible. But there are other possibilities as well.”

“Bottom line
 
—can they say the president is in that building?”

“No, General, at the moment they cannot. But they can’t rule it out either.”

“Well, it’s your call, Your Majesty. What do you want us to do?”

“Give me a moment,” said the king. “And make sure your men are ready to go if I give the order.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. I certainly will.”

Again we were put on hold. We still couldn’t hear the conversation between the king and the American leaders. But it was now clear to me why our pilots weren’t proceeding straight to the site but were instead circling over the desert. Until the general was sure what his orders were, he didn’t want to tip the enemy off that he was coming. So we waited.

And waited. Much longer than the last pause.

Two minutes went by. Then five. Then ten.

I said nothing, only glanced at Colonel Sharif. The look on his face said it all. He was just as bewildered by the delay as I was. If the Jordanians were going to strike, they had to move hard and fast. If the president wasn’t in that Suburban
 
—and clearly no one was in any of those vehicles in that building
 
—then his life was in grave danger. There wasn’t a second to spare. He might be killed in a rescue attempt. But he was going to be killed anyway. The only hope was a forcible extraction. And it had to happen now.

Finally our headsets crackled back to life.

“Okay, General, they want you and your men to go in. God help you. The fate of us all is in your hands.”