The First Hostage: A J. B. Collins Novel

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  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.

  SADAFCO—Saudia Dairy and Foodstuff Company

  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 conne
ction 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.”

  9

  I opened my notebook and furiously scribbled down every word.

  “The fate of us all is in your hands.”

  It was a sobering line, one I wanted to ask the king about when I saw him again. It suggested the monarch saw not only the president’s personal fate hanging in the balance but his own, his kingdom’s, his people’s. In many ways, he had prepared his entire life for a moment like this. Yet he was not in the field. He was back in the bunker. He had to trust the men under his command, and if they got it wrong . . .

  The general ordered the choppers to bank back toward the target and hit the deck. We were going to come in low and fast. Then he ordered his commanders on the ground to mass tanks and armored personnel carriers at two points, one kilometer east of the compound and one kilometer west, both significantly off the main road and out of sight of all civilians.

  “Do you want us to cut off traffic?” one of the battalion commanders asked. “There are a lot of trucks and other vehicles passing through that area.”

  To my surprise, the general said no.

  “We don’t want to do anything to tip them off that we’re coming,” he explained. “Let everything proceed as normal.”

  But that wasn’t all. Jum’a then instructed his special forces teams on the ground to commandeer buses, minivans, and SUVs and be prepared to drive up to the compound at normal speeds, like all other traffic, upon his command.

  Next the general asked the prince if there were any calls being made to or from mobile phones or landlines at the target site.

  Feisal said both Jordanian and U.S. intel assets were monitoring the site but that they weren’t picking up anything. “It’s all quiet—oddly quiet,” the prince said. “We’re trying to monitor Internet traffic at the site too. But so far, nothing. They seem to have shut down the Wi-Fi system.”

  The general thanked the prince, then gave his men their orders.

  “Two minutes out,” he said when he was done. “Radio silence from this point forward.”

  And all was quiet, save the roar of the rotors above us.

  Colonel Sharif reached behind him, grabbed an MP5 machine gun, and inserted a fresh magazine. Then he reached f
or two flak jackets, put one on, and gave the other to me. It suddenly dawned on me that we might not be staying on the chopper. We might be getting off. I pulled out the gold pocket watch I always carried with me, the one my grandfather gave to me before his death. We had less than a minute. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest and a surge of adrenaline coursed through my system.

  Suddenly the pilot pulled back sharply on the yoke. Rather than flying barely fifty feet off the ground, we climbed rapidly to two hundred feet, then three hundred, and kept climbing until we leveled out at five hundred feet.

  We were less than thirty seconds out. I was pretty sure I could see the compound, but now we banked sharply to our right and began a circling pattern around the target. The Black Hawks didn’t follow. Nor had they climbed as high as we had. They were still racing for the compound at an altitude I figured to be no more than a hundred feet.

  Just then our helicopter was rocked by a massive explosion. One of the warehouses, in the far left corner of the compound, erupted in an enormous ball of fire. But how? Had someone inside detonated a bomb? Or had someone just fired a missile? I looked to my left and saw nothing. But when I turned and looked out the window to my right, I saw an Apache attack helicopter—and it was firing again.

  Two more Hellfire missiles streaked across the afternoon sky. I followed the contrails and watched spellbound as one destroyed the main office building. An instant later, the second missile took out the 18-wheeler that had been blocking the entrance. Then a Cobra gunship swooped in below us and to our left. Its pilot opened fire on the armed rebels patrolling the grounds, then trained his fire on the rebels stationed in the doorways of the remaining five warehouses. One by one I watched men in black hoods shredded into oblivion.

  The Apache opened fire again. More Hellfire missiles rocketed down into the compound. They weren’t targeted at the buildings, however. Rather, they exploded in the open spaces, vaporizing the remaining visible terrorists but more importantly creating deafening booms and raging fires I had to assume were intended to stun and disorient the enemy combatants inside the main building.