Nelson Demille - The Panther

Zamo ran to the indoor outhouse and kicked the door in, but no one was there. What was also not in the diwan was the washstand, and I pointed this out to everyone, who drew the same conclusion: Our missing teammates had headed for the roof.

Kate, Brenner, and I looked out the window into the courtyard. The van was a burning heap of twisted metal, and clouds of black smoke billowed from the wreckage. The courtyard was strewn with burning debris, and it appeared that three of the Bedouin had been killed or injured. The other ten seemed stunned as they wandered around the courtyard or stood dazed and silent.

Then one of them looked up and noticed us in the window, and he pointed and shouted.

Someone fired a full burst of rounds, which hit the stone above us, and without waiting for Brenner to give the order, Kate and I fired back with our M4s on full automatic, then Brenner pushed Kate away from the window and emptied a full magazine at the Bedouin down in the courtyard.

We didn’t wait around for an accurate body count, but it looked to me as though we’d taken out about five of the remaining ten guys, including Yasir, who I’d seen fall. I said to myself, “Sorry.”

The other Bedouin, unfortunately, had made it into the tower, and they were now right below us. Time to go, and there was only one way to go.

We raced up the stone steps and I could hear the shouts of the Bedouin behind us.

Brenner got to the next level first, and he called down, “Clear.”

Kate and Zamo, with me bringing up the rear, charged up the stairs just as a burst of AK-47 fire came up the stairwell. Another burst ripped through the thick floorboards, close to where we were standing.

I fired a burst of rounds back through the floorboards as Kate fired down the stone stairwell. That seemed to quiet down the Bedouin, and we charged up the next flight of steps, then the next, which put us on the level below the mafraj.

So far, no sign of Chet and Buck, but they had to be in the mafraj or on the roof. Or they were up to their old tricks, so I fired a full burst of rounds into the wood outhouse, then kicked in the door and looked down the shaft through the holes, but I didn’t see anyone.

I then looked up and I could see through the squatter hole in the floor of the mafraj, up to the vent hole in the ceiling. I thought I saw a shadow pass through the sunlight and I fired a short burst up through the vent, but I didn’t draw any return fire.

I exited the outhouse and said, “I think they’re on the roof.”

As I said that, we heard a huge, thunderous explosion off in the distance, and we all turned toward the west-facing window. There was another explosion, then another, and in the far distance we could see black smoke rising into the blue sky.

Brenner said, “That’s the airstrike on the Al Qaeda base camp-probably a flight of F-15s from Najran, dropping two-thousand-pound bombs.”

Wonderful. Can they drop a smaller one on Chet and Buck?

The sound of the explosions kept rolling through the windows, and I counted twelve before it got quiet.

So that was the end of the Al Qaeda base camp-but there were more of them, and there’d be more coming. The Panther, however, was dead, and badasses like that were not as easy to replace as a camp full of jihadist recruits.

I said to everyone, “We need to get up to the mafraj.”

Before we could make a move toward the stairs, Kate shouted, “Look!” and pointed to the window on the north side of the tower.

We looked out at the sky and in the far distance we could see a helicopter coming toward the Crow Fortress.

Brenner was covering the stairwell, firing single rounds down the stone staircase, but not drawing any return fire from the Bedouin, who were probably watching the helicopter approaching.

The helicopter was getting closer, and Zamo took a look at it through his sniper scope. He said in a quiet voice, “It’s a Black Hawk… no markings, but it’s got to be U.S…. I see two door gunners…”

Great. The cavalry had arrived. Unfortunately, it had not arrived to save us; it had arrived, as per schedule-or a few minutes late from Najran-to save Buck and Chet’s treacherous asses. This was the part of the plan that Chet and Buck forgot to mention, though Brenner had thought about it-but a little late.

Well, when the Black Hawk got to the roof, what they’d find was two dead guys.

“Let’s go!” I said, and we all ran for the staircase as a long burst of AK-47 fire came through the floorboards around us, followed by another burst that came up the stairwell.

I led the way up to the mafraj and we fanned out along the four walls with our backs to the stone columns that supported the large arches. I saw the washstand sitting against the wood wall of the excrement shaft, confirming what we already knew.

I pointed my M4 at the ceiling, and everyone did the same. No one seemed to have any qualms about doing to our teammates what they had tried to do to us. Also, we had five or six Bedouin trying to kill us, and we might not make it back alive to see that justice was done-so we had to do it here.

As we were about to fire into the ceiling, a voice shouted in Arabic, and it took me a second to realize it came through the vent hole.

I didn’t know what Buck said, but Brenner apparently did, and he shouted back, “It’s not the Bedouin, Buck! It’s us!” He added, “Alive and well. Surprised?”

Silence.

Well, maybe it was a good thing to let Buck and Chet know that we were still alive and well, but not very happy with our teammates. Then we’d kill them.

I shouted through the vent hole, “Come on down. We need to talk.”

It was Chet, who replied, “Come on up.” He let us know, in case we didn’t, “There’s a chopper inbound to get us out of here.”

Us? Bullshit, right to the end.

Meanwhile, another burst of automatic fire came through the floorboards, splintering the old wood and lodging into the ceiling above us. But we were hugging the perimeter of the mafraj, standing on the floor where the boards rested on thick beams and masonry below, so we were relatively safe-for the moment.

Brenner shouted up, “Drop your weapons through the hole-pistols and rifles-then kneel at the hole with your hands on your heads.”

Brenner, ex-cop, was trying to make an arrest. Corey, ex-cop, was trying to make two corpses.

Buck shouted down, “Paul, I don’t know what you’re thinking, or what-”

“Shut up, Buck!” suggested Paul. “Shut your fucking mouth and get your ass down here. You, too, Chet!”

Buck replied, “There are Bedouin down there. Are you all crazy? Get up here. We’ll give you a hand.”

Buck was stalling for time as the Black Hawk approached, and Brenner was intent on making a bust, then getting on that helicopter with his prisoners.

I’d had enough of this and I shouted to Buck and Chet, “You have three seconds to drop your weapons, or we ventilate that roof and you go on that chopper dead.”

No response.

“One, two-” Everyone raised their weapons at the ceiling, and Brenner said, “At my command.” Then to Buck and Chet he said, “Last chance!”

But before Brenner said, “Fire,” someone else fired. In fact, it was the Black Hawk helicopter, which we could see through the big north-facing arch. It had gotten much closer, and the two door gunners were firing long bursts of machine-gun fire at the tower. We all hit the floor as red tracer rounds sailed through the arches. The rounds began hitting the columns and bullets started ricocheting around the mafraj. A spent round hit my arm, then a not-so-spent round hit the side of my Kevlar vest, knocking the wind out of me.

Chet was obviously in radio contact with the Black Hawk, and he’d told them there were bad guys below him and asked for protective fire. Psychos are smart.