Nelson Demille - The Panther

I glanced up through the arch and saw the Black Hawk about a hundred yards away and coming fast. Another burst of machine-gun tracer rounds came through the mafraj and we all got into a fetal position as the bullets sailed above us or hit the stone columns and ricocheted around the stone walls.

I rolled on my back and emptied my magazine into the roof, hoping I’d see blood dripping down through the holes. But Buck and Chet were probably standing tight against the parapet now, and if they were smart, they’d also be standing on their Kevlar vests. Nevertheless, I slammed a fresh magazine into my M4 and fired again, and so did Brenner and Kate, but then another burst of machine-gun fire from the Black Hawk made us tuck in tightly against the floor and walls. Zamo, meanwhile, was lying flat at the top of the stairs, popping off rounds down the stairwell with his sniper rifle, just to let the Bedouin know we hadn’t lost interest in them.

I couldn’t see the Black Hawk any longer, and I knew the chopper was now flaring out above the tower and about to put down on the roof. The good news was that he couldn’t fire through the arches at that angle, and he wouldn’t fire through the roof with Buck and Chet there. The bad news was that we couldn’t fire through the ceiling at Buck and Chet and take a chance of hitting the chopper. I mean, the four-man crew of the Black Hawk had no idea what the situation was except what Chet had told them, and Chet lies.

I could hear the rotor blades beating as the Black Hawk hovered above the roof. In about a minute, Chet and Buck would be airborne and on their way to Najran airbase, and we’d be left here to deal with the pissed-off Bedouin, whose sheik Chet and Buck had killed. Shit.

The chopper’s rotor blades were getting louder, then I heard the thump of the wheels hitting the roof.

Chet and Buck would have some explaining to do at Najran and at every stop on their way to Washington-but they’d killed The Panther and that would make people happy, and happy people don’t ask too many questions.

Unfortunately for Chet and Buck, the rest of the A-team was still alive, and we had a different story to tell. Now all we had to do was stay alive to tell it.

Brenner called out to everyone, “When the chopper lifts off, he’ll open fire again to cover himself.”

Correct. So let’s get the hell out of here. The staircase was not an option, so without anyone saying the obvious, we ran in a crouch toward the excrement shaft.

As we got to the door of the shaft, we heard the Black Hawk’s engine revving, and the pitch of the rotor blades changed as the big chopper began lifting off the roof. Almost immediately, two streams of red tracer rounds penetrated the roof and tore into the center of the floor.

We could now hear return fire from below-the Bedouin firing at the chopper through the windows. Then long bursts of machine-gun fire from the Black Hawk answered the Bedouin fire from below, taking the pressure off us for the moment.

We all quickly squeezed into the tight outhouse, and Brenner said he’d go first and establish a beachhead on the next level, where the Bedouin were hopefully not using the squatter. He squeezed himself into the hole, dangled by his fingers, and dropped as quietly as possible to the next level, then got down on one knee and covered the door with his M4.

We could hear more bursts of AK-47 fire as the Bedouin continued to fire at the chopper, which must have been almost out of their range by now. There wasn’t much good news at the moment except that the Bedouin undoubtedly thought that all the Americans were on that helicopter. No such luck.

It took a few minutes for each of us to drop, level by level, squatter hole by squatter hole, to the last level below the diwan, right above the excrement level, which was pungent.

We were all jammed into the indoor outhouse now and Brenner put his ear to the door, saying softly, “I don’t hear anything.”

The surviving Bedouin were either still on one of the higher levels, or they’d taken the stairs down and were in the courtyard, which would not be good.

Our choice now was either to get out of the outhouse and go down the stairs, or drop through the last hole and land in the pile of shit, which didn’t seem so bad at this point. Both ways would get us to the ground floor, but not get us to our Land Cruiser and out of here. To do that, we might have to knock off the rest of the Bedouin, and to be honest I didn’t want to kill any more of them. But neither did I want them to kill us. Actually, since we’d wasted a bunch of them, and since our Hellfires had vaporized their sheik and their buddies, we’d be lucky if they only killed us.

Kate whispered, “We can’t stay here. The Bedouin from the rock pile could be on the way.”

Good point. We didn’t want to deal with more pissed-off Bedouin.

As we were contemplating our next move-stairs or free fall into the shit pile-we heard footsteps above us in the diwan, and voices in Arabic. If I had to guess, I’d say the Bedouin thought we were gone and they were rummaging through the stuff we’d left behind.

Well, before they took the stairs down, this was our chance to get out of here, and we all knew that.

The staircase was quicker and cleaner than the excrement route, so I threw open the door and we moved rapidly across the dark, windowless tower room, which was used to store hay, straw, and whatever. Zamo paused long enough to light a pile of hay.

I hit the stairs first and bounded down three and four at a time, then shoulder-rolled across the earth floor and got on one knee and covered the narrow doorway with my M4.

Kate came down next, followed quickly by Brenner and Zamo.

I stood, moved quickly to the door, and peered out into the devastated and body-strewn courtyard. Some of the wreckage was still smoldering, and the only people out there were dead.

I signaled all clear, pointed in the direction of the gate, and charged into the courtyard, with Kate, Brenner, and Zamo right behind me.

I got to the gate, stopped short, and spun around in a crouch to cover the courtyard and tower. I could see smoke seeping through the stone walls of the tower.

Just as Kate was getting to the open gate, a figure appeared in the diwan window and fired. Kate went down and lay sprawled on the ground. I got between her and the tower and fired long, rapid-fire bursts at the window, glancing back at Kate, who was getting to her feet. No blood, so she’d taken a round in her Kevlar, and I yelled to her, “Move! Move!”

Kate and Zamo ran through the gate, but Brenner spun around and emptied his magazine at the window. The smoke was pouring out of the tower now, and I could see flames in the windows of the diwan.

I slammed a fresh magazine into my M4 and emptied it at the five vehicles in the courtyard, blowing out the tires and shattering the windows. Brenner did the same and one of the Hiluxes burst into flames. Time to go.

We ran through the gate and I saw that Zamo was already behind the wheel and Kate was in the rear, leaning out the window covering us. I jumped in beside her and pulled the door closed as Brenner jumped in the front. Before his door was even closed, Zamo was pushing pedal to the metal and we were shooting across the flat terrain toward the ravine.

Brenner and I lowered our windows, leaned out, and turned back toward the gate.

Two Bedouin came charging through the gate and all three of us opened fire, hitting one of them and making the other dive back behind the stone wall.

Within a few minutes we were at the edge of the plateau, and Zamo was slowing up, looking for the ravine. He spotted some tire marks and cut the wheel sharply to the right, then hit the brakes as the Land Cruiser’s front wheels slipped over the edge of the plateau and into the ravine.