The Panther

by Nelson DeMille

  Kate asked the obvious question. “What is he saying that we can’t hear?”

  Buck replied, “Just about everything.” He explained, “This is all verbal so there is no written record of anything, and there can be no witnesses to what Chet says and what is said to him.” He further explained, “Chet is speaking through the secure telephone unit, so names of personnel in Washington are en clair, and we don’t need to hear those names—or hear anything.”

  I could almost hear Chet now. “Hey Dick, hi Ralph, Chet here. So, we’re ready to vaporize some asshole jihadists and burn The Panther’s traitorous ass with a few top-secret Hellfire missiles. You guys still okay with that? Any problems at that end? Just nod… Oh, sorry, I mean just say yea or nay.”

  Sounded reasonable. But who knew why Chet wanted to be alone or what he was saying and hearing? Not us.

  So we had some time to kill before we were allowed to go into the van and watch the drama taking shape—the arrival of Sheik Musa and his merry Bedouin at the goat herder’s hut, the arrival of The Panther and his retinue, the kiss of death, the tea party on the carpet, and finally the sheik ducking inside the hut on some pretext. And where, I wondered, would the sheik’s men be? Hopefully not too close to The Panther and his men who were going to be hit by four laser-guided Hellfire missiles, each warhead packing twenty pounds of high explosives. Maybe all of the Bedouin would need to go off to take a piss at the same time.

  There is an old saying among detectives: Never overlook the obvious.

  And what was obvious to me was that Sheik Musa and his men, along with The Panther and his men, were actually going to share the same fate at that meeting. So obviously the A-team was not driving to the scene of the carnage, where some of these men—Bedouin and Al Qaeda—might still be alive and very pissed off.

  If the obvious were true, then how do we, the Americans, get out of the Crow Fortress with thirteen Bedouin around us who would know soon enough from the survivors what happened to their sheik and their buddies? Right?

  Well, we will see how it actually plays out. I could be wrong. Or I could be half right.

  Buck said he was going down to speak to the Bedouin again and see if he could get a better sense of what they knew about the sheik-Panther meeting, and also what their instructions were.

  It’s good to have an Arabic speaker on the team. We couldn’t have even attempted this mission without Buck. Next time I volunteer to go into Al Qaeda territory, I want Buck with me. Or maybe another Arabic speaker who wasn’t so full of bullshit. Or better yet, maybe I’d take a pass on the next offer.

  Buck left, and I brought up my concern of Hellfire missiles causing collateral damage to friendlies, meaning Sheik Musa and his men, and thereby putting us in a dangerous situation here at the Crow Fortress.

  Brenner, who has seen a lot of high-explosive warheads ripping people apart, said, “I was thinking about that myself.” He added, “As accurate as these missiles are, they throw out a lot of shrapnel. You don’t want to be anywhere near a hit.”

  Kate said, “Why didn’t you—we—bring this up at the meeting in Aden?”

  Brenner replied, “I was thinking that Chet knew what he was talking about.”

  Well, he does, but sometimes he forgets the details.

  Brenner continued, “I’m thinking that when Sheik Musa excuses himself to go into the stone hut, that’s obviously the signal for Chet to order the Predators to fire the four Hellfires—but it’s also the signal for the Bedouin to haul ass and dive for cover.” He added, “They have about four, maybe five seconds to do that before eighty pounds of high explosives and shrapnel turn the area into a slaughterhouse.”

  One, two, three, four… I could be in the next province if I knew a Hellfire was on its way.

  Brenner also surmised, “It would take The Panther and his men a few seconds to realize what’s happening, but before they could react, they’ll be in Paradise.”

  Probably true. Nevertheless, I did say, “There could still be friendly casualties.”

  Kate and Brenner thought about that, and Kate said, “God, I hope not.” She asked, “How would we get out of here?”

  “Very quickly.”

  On that note, we climbed up the stairs to the mafraj to talk to Zamo and give him a heads-up on some of this. Brenner also said he wanted to show us something up there. Maybe a new species of bird shit, and that wouldn’t smell half as bad as the bullshit we were getting down here from Buck and Chet.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  We told Zamo the good news about the Panther-sheik powwow, and Brenner also told him, “We’re going home today.”

  Zamo, man of few words, just nodded.

  Brenner then drew our attention to the excrement shaft and pointed out a square hole in the ceiling directly above the shaft, whose wooden walls rose about eight feet, only half the way to the high ceiling of the mafraj. Brenner said, “That’s a vent hole.”

  Right. Shit flows downhill, but the smell rises.

  Brenner said to me, “Give me a boost.”

  So we walked over to the half wall of the shaft and I boosted him up so that he was standing precariously on the top of the wall with his fingers barely touching the edge of the vent hole for balance.

  The squatter hole on each floor below was large enough for a person to squeeze through and drop to the next floor, which I’d noted as a means of escape. But you wouldn’t drop straight through each hole into the pile of excrement without some squeezing and twisting. Nevertheless, I warned Mr. Brenner, “Careful. It’s about sixty feet down. But the pile of shit will soften your fall.”

  “Thank you.” He stood on his toes and grabbed the edge of the vent hole with both hands, then pulled himself up through the opening onto the roof.

  Good upper-body strength. Now what?

  He knelt at the hole and said, “We can do this.”

  I saw his legs and body drop through the hole, and he dangled by his fingers at the edge of the rough-hewn roof plank, then he swung himself clear of the wall of the excrement shaft and landed on the floor, announcing, “The roof has a four-foot-high parapet around it, which is good cover if we’re in a firefight.” Brenner, whose last war, Vietnam, was all about helicopters, also informed us, “The rooftop will easily hold a helicopter.”

  That was really good news if we were trapped on the roof and taking fire, but I reminded him, “We have no helicopters in Yemen.”

  “Correct. But we’re about one hundred seventy-five miles from Najran airfield, right across the Saudi border—about an hour flight time.” He further informed us, “That’s where the Predators come from, and probably also where the Otter is now.”

  “Okay. And?”

  “And, if we have to, we can get a U.S. Army or Air Force chopper here to take us off this roof.”

  “Why,” Kate asked, “would we have to do that?”

  “Because,” he replied, “if the Al Qaeda delegation figured out where they were taken, they may try to save a hundred thousand dollars and also show Sheik Musa who’s the boss, not to mention avoiding that meeting.”

  “I hear you,” I said.

  Brenner continued, “I’m also not sure about our Bedouin allies, so we need to have a plan of escape.”

  And I thought I was paranoid. But this wasn’t paranoia; this was Plan B from Point A.

  Kate said, “It seems to me that a helicopter from Najran would be a better way of getting out of here and across the Saudi border than an Otter landing on a road.”

  “It would be,” Brenner agreed, “but the Otter is Company run and this is a Company operation. Also, the helicopter—with or without U.S. Army or Air Force markings—can be easily identified as American, and that’s not what the plan calls for. But if it’s an emergency situation—here, or at the scene of the attack—then a chopper is what we’ll need.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “But an hour is a long time to wait for the cavalry to arrive.”

  Brenner agreed. “It is, but it�
�s better than waiting for nothing to arrive.”

  Kate asked the obvious question. “Can we contact whoever it is we need to contact to get this helicopter?”

  Brenner replied, “I made a sat-phone call to Ed Peters in the embassy, and he’s trying to locate a contact number for the American installation at this Saudi airfield.” He told us, “Officially, the U.S. is assigned there as a training group to the Royal Saudi Air Force, but everyone knows we also have some CIA and NSA resources at Najran to keep an eye and ear on the Yemeni situation. That’s where the F-15s will come from to pulverize the Al Qaeda base camp.”

  Interesting. I asked, “Are we sharing this information with Chet and Buck?”

  Brenner replied, “I would bet money that Chet and Buck already have a direct sat-phone number and radio frequency for the American chief of operations at Najran airfield. And if they don’t, they can radio the CIA at Najran.” He also pointed out, “They haven’t said a word to us about Najran or about helicopters.”

  Right. I mean, there was some crap going on here, but maybe not as much or as deep as my paranoid mind had imagined. There could be rational and logical national security explanations for everything that wasn’t adding up. But if it keeps quacking like a duck, and keeps telling you it’s an American eagle, you gotta be a little suspicious.

  I asked Zamo, “Can you pull yourself up there?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because your arm is fucked up.”

  Brenner said, “I’ll go first, you second, and we can easily pull up Zamo and Kate.”

  Did we forget old Buck? How about Chet?

  Kate let us know, “I’m sure I can pull myself up.”

  I looked at the wall of the excrement shaft, which as I said was about eight feet high, and I pointed out, “The last person won’t have anyone to boost them up.”

  Brenner replied, “That washstand in the diwan will hold Zamo’s weight, and he’s the heaviest person here.”

  I guess they already tried that. You can always count on military guys to show initiative and good skills in solving field problems.

  I let Brenner and Zamo know, “Good thinking and good job. But let’s hope we never have to get to the roof.” On a related subject, I said, “You may have noticed that the squatter hole on each floor is big enough for any of us—even Zamo—to squeeze through.”

  Brenner, the expert on tower houses, said, “They’re made big so it’s easier to dump kitchen garbage and chamber pots down the hole to the excrement level.” He also informed us, “The excrement shaft is a primitive fire escape in the tower houses.”

  You learn something new every day. Anyway, I pointed out, “If we need to go down the shaft instead of up, we can also manage that.”

  We all agreed that the excrement shaft had multiple uses, but before we adjourned the meeting, I brought up a perhaps moot subject and said to Brenner and Zamo, as I had said to Kate, “After the Al Qaeda guys came here and saw the bait, all of us, except for Chet, could have gotten out of here.”

  Brenner nodded and said, “I thought about that back in Aden.”

  And that would have been an excellent time to bring it up, Paul.

  Brenner continued, “But”—he looked at me, Kate, and Zamo—“I don’t think any of us ever intended to leave.”

  “No,” I agreed, “we never did, but for the record, and for later, no matter what happens in the next few hours, we should acknowledge that we stayed beyond the time we were needed. We stayed to see how it ended.”

  No one had anything to add to that, except maybe the words, “Brave but dumb.”

  So the mafraj meeting was adjourned for probably the last time, and Kate, Brenner, and I went down to the diwan, leaving Zamo to contemplate the abstract thought that excrement shafts go up and down and either way could get you out of deep shit.

  This was all coming to a head, and we had lots to think about, but the bottom line was the mission: Kill The Panther. Then worry about how to get out of here alive.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  It was time to join Chet and Buck in Moses’ Red Sea Fish van so Kate, Brenner, and I went down into the courtyard.

  The sinking sun cast a shadow along the west wall, and the thirteen Bedouin sat or squatted in the shade, drinking herbal tea and chatting. Little piles of green leaves sat on the ground between them. It was the happy hour.

  Kate, Brenner, and I went into the van where Chet was sitting in the left-hand chair, staring intently at the video monitor. Buck was in the right-hand chair doing the same.

  Chet’s screen showed the aerial view of the sheik’s goat herder’s hut, with a very close resolution of maybe a few hundred feet.

  Buck’s screen had a higher and wider image of the area around the hut, showing a two- or three-kilometer radius. I saw five white Land Cruisers heading for the hut from the east. The Bedouin? Or Al Qaeda? Probably the sheik and his men, who as hosts needed to get there early to make tea.

  As we all knew, each of the two Predator drones over the hut had, in addition to video cameras, two laser-guided Hellfire missiles, each with a high-explosive warhead, ready to launch, then seek and destroy whatever was in the crosshairs of the monitors. Awesome.

  Chet came out of his electronic trance and said to us, “Look. The sheik is arriving.”

  We looked closely at his screen and saw the five Land Cruisers pulling up about thirty yards from the hut, which was farther away than they had been when we’d arrived from the Otter to meet the sheik. In fact, the vehicles were far enough away from the kill zone to avoid winding up in an auto body shop.

  As we all watched, the Bedouin began piling out of the five Land Cruisers, and I counted a total of fifteen, all carrying AK-47s, except one—the sheik.

  Sheik Musa was distinguishable in his clean white robes and his regal shiwal. I couldn’t see his face, but from this computer-enhanced height of a few hundred feet, I could actually see his awesome proboscis. I mean, that thing cast a two-foot shadow, and probably had its own zip code.

  The Bedouin were unloading the SUVs—three carpets, and what were probably crates of bottled water, plus burlap bags of what was maybe bread and tea. They were carrying other things that could have been camp stoves and pots to boil water—but no khat for their Al Qaeda guests. Other than that, they had everything they needed for a Yemeni picnic, even ants in case someone had malaria. And, of course, they had their AK-47s, because later, in a gross breach of Bedouin hospitality, they’d kill any of their guests who hadn’t been killed by the American Hellfires.

  Sheik Musa ducked into the hut with a few of his men, and the rest of the Bedouin began setting up for the powwow.

  Chet said to us, “The Panther and his men will arrive in about an hour or more. It’s okay to be late, but never early.”

  If they had a woman with them, they wouldn’t have to worry about being early. Sorry. That just slipped out.

  Chet hit a button on his console and said, “The video is on record. So we can play the final few seconds of Mr. al-Darwish’s life over and over again.”

  There was still the question of friendly fire casualties, and Brenner asked Chet about that.

  Chet had a ready answer and replied, “The two sides don’t mix. Al Qaeda is on their carpet or around their own vehicles, and the Bedouin do the same. Only the sheik and The Panther sit together on their own carpet and speak privately, and when the sheik excuses himself to go into the stone hut with a few of his men to drag out the Americans, that’s the signal for the Bedouin to take cover.” He added, “I then give the order to fire, and about four seconds later, it’s all over for Mr. al-Darwish and maybe half his men. The Bedouin will finish off the survivors.” He reminded us, “We discussed this in Aden.”

  We did, but maybe Chet was still full of shit and everyone down there was going to die. Or at least lose a body part. And then we had to get out of here. Quickly.

  Chet split his screen and the left half now showed a wide view of the Crow Fortress taken
from one of the second pair of Predators on station over the plateau. Chet said, “There’s no one out there.”

  Right. No Al Qaeda army ready to storm the Crow Fortress. So that was one indication that things were going as planned and that The Panther was going to show up at the goat herder’s hut.

  Chet said to us, almost matter-of-factly, “There’s been a change of plans.”

  A little buzzer went off in my head.

  He swiveled his seat toward us, looked at me, Kate, and Brenner, and said, “But a good change.”

  The buzzer got louder. Also, I noticed, Buck had been uncharacteristically quiet since we’d entered the van. Was he thinking about something? Or worried about something?

  Chet continued, “It has been decided at the highest level that you three will leave here. Now.”

  Neither I nor Kate nor Brenner asked why. That was coming.

  Chet said to us, “Your role in this mission is finished, and in fact it’s been finished since the Al Qaeda delegation saw you.”

  We all knew that, but this was the first time Chet had mentioned it.

  He answered the unasked question. “The thinking in Washington was that you would stay around for a few days after these Al Qaeda guys saw you, in case they figured out where they were taken, and in case Al Qaeda was watching the Crow Fortress to attack it or to see if anyone left.” He went on, “But now that everything is in place and moving toward a conclusion, the mission planners want to split the team to ensure that we don’t have all our eggs in one basket.”

  Again, the three eggs who were going to be put into another basket didn’t raise any questions. Best to let Chet talk.

  And he did, saying, “Buck and I will stay here until the Hellfires do their job. We’ll keep Zamo here for security. And we will also have a Predator overhead for observation and security—the other Predator follows you.” He looked at us again and said, “You will take one of these Land Cruisers and drive it down the north slope, pick up the Sana’a–Marib road, and drive to the Marib airstrip, where you will meet a chartered aircraft—a Company plane—that will take you to a location in Saudi Arabia, and then to Riyadh International Airport and home.” He informed us, “If you push it, you can be at the airstrip in less than an hour.”