The Panther

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE


Brenner and I explained the plan to Zamo and Kate, who signed on without a lot of questions. I mean, the more you think about bold ideas, the more problems you find. And if you keep going down that path, you’ll come to an unpleasant truth: This is f*cking dangerous. So why think about it? Just do it.

We had to do some fast talking to convince Colonel Hakim to take only one Humvee and not a hundred men with him, explaining that this was a stealth mission and not an invasion.

Hakim was in his Humvee with his driver now, along with two PSO thugs, plus Altair, who didn’t want to take a ride with us, but one of Hakim’s PSO goons hit him with a taser, then threw him in the rear compartment. On the plus side for Altair, he was now clothed, fed, watered, and alive.

Hakim had provided us with hand-held radios, and we left the scene of the Hellfire attack and headed into the sinking sun, back toward the highlands.

Hakim was in the lead, and we followed in the Land Cruiser. Zamo drove, I rode shotgun, and Kate and Brenner sat in the rear.

The basic plan was to first find the Al Qaeda base camp, because we all agreed that The Panther’s cave couldn’t be too far from his camp, so that was a good starting point, and a good place to encourage Altair to point the way to his boss’s hideout.

Colonel Hakim had also provided us with a military terrain map, and Brenner, who knew how to read these contour maps, was looking at it with Kate. I’d given them the coordinates of the Al Qaeda base camp that I’d taken from the Predator monitor, and we’d put a mark on the map. Brenner said, “Very inaccessible terrain… no roads, but maybe some mountain trails that aren’t shown here.”

I reminded Brenner, “We saw a few vehicles on the Predator video monitor, so there’s some kind of vehicle access.”

Brenner agreed, but said, “The airstrike may have caused rockslides.”

“So we’ll walk. Meanwhile, we don’t have a lot of daylight left. Call our partner and tell him to step on it.”

Brenner called Hakim on the hand-held radio and suggested, “We need to move faster, Colonel.”

Hakim replied, “This is a good speed.”

Brenner insisted, “A little faster.” He signed off and said to me, “That’s the story of the Yemeni Army, police, and government—too slow, too cautious, and too late.”

“I don’t think Hakim has much enthusiasm for this,” I said.

“I can’t imagine why not.”

“He’s a government worker.”

“So are we,” Brenner reminded me. He also reminded us, “He wants the money. But he doesn’t want to get killed earning it.”

“Same here.”

So we continued on the long, straight road toward the plateau where the Crow Fortress sat, and where the highlands began. Smoke still rose into the air from the burning tower and I asked Zamo, “Why did you set the hay on fire?”

“Because it burns.”

“Right.” Well, so much for Buck’s Sultan Crow Fortress Bed & Breakfast. And so much for American-Bedouin relations.

As we continued on, I thought about what was going on in our absence, and I had no doubt that Chet had concocted a good story about the friendly fire mishap to the Land Cruiser, though that would be a hard sell. The only people he could level with were the people in his Company who’d sent him on Operation Clean Sweep. And they’d cover his ass because Chet was a hero in Langley, and Buck was a hero at Foggy Bottom. The news release of this incident was already written, and the American public would be pleased to learn that Bulus ibn al-Darwish, the American traitor and a mastermind of the Cole attack, was taken out with a Hellfire missile. Unfortunately, in a separate but related incident, four unnamed Americans are missing in Yemen.

But if these Americans got back alive, they’d have, as I said, a different tale to tell, ending hopefully with me throwing The Panther’s head on the table.

We were approaching the base of the plateau, and after a quick radio conference with Hakim, we decided not to go into the highlands via the Crow Fortress approach. Instead, we’d go cross-country and skirt around the plateaus from the north, then we’d head into the highlands forty kilometers west of here, closer to where the Al Qaeda camp was hidden in the bad terrain.

We went off-road and the ride got a little rougher, and Hakim’s Humvee slowed up. I said to Zamo, “Give him the horn.”

Brenner chose his radio instead and urged Hakim and his driver to push it.

We continued on, across the arid fields and pastures, and whenever we came to a stone fence, Hakim in the lead found the gate and smashed through it, liberating hundreds of goats.

It took us an hour to travel forty kilometers along the base of the highlands, and we could see up ahead that the plateaus were now extending farther north, blocking us.

Brenner consulted his map and said, “The highlands get higher up ahead, and the only way through them is the Sana’a–Marib road, which takes us off course. So we need to head into the highlands around here… but I don’t see any trails or paths on this map…”

I reminded him, “Rahim ibn Hayyam said he got to the camp by vehicle.”

Brenner replied, “If you knew the uncharted trails, you could do it… but I do see some ravines that a four-wheel drive might be able to navigate.”

“Great.” I saw this in a TV commercial for a Jeep. “Let’s do it.”

Brenner radioed Hakim, who stopped, and we all got out for a map conference.

Zamo, too, was a good map reader, and even Kate had taken a map-reading course. I can read a subway map, and I can easily find my ass with both hands, but I had no clue about scoping out a terrain map. My contribution was reminding the A-team that we’d seen vehicles in the camp, and they weren’t made there.

As the map committee was deciding on a route, I went to the Humvee to check on Altair, who was lying in the back compartment, covered with a blanket, holding a bottle of water. He didn’t look great, but his color wasn’t pre-croak, and his breathing seemed okay. “Hang in there, old man. God saved you to help us find Bulus ibn al-Darwish.”

At that name, Altair shook his head.

Everyone got back in their vehicles and we took the lead now. Brenner sat up front with Zamo still driving, and he directed Zamo toward a shallow depression in the ground, saying to us, “The map shows a wadi here, and there it is.” He further explained, “This is a stream which comes out of the highlands during the rainy season, and I’m thinking that this has to be flat from erosion all the way up into the hills.”

Kate, who was born and raised in the great outdoors, said, “The streambed should be a layer of small stones, which will give us good traction.”

I offered, “Just like the wadi highway that cuts through the middle of Sana’a.”

“Correct,” said Mr. Brenner.

Maybe I have been here too long.

So we drove into the wadi, and Zamo headed into the hills. It was easy to follow the dry streambed, and within fifteen minutes we were in a sort of gorge or valley between two towering plateaus. The streambed got very steep as we climbed farther into the highlands.

I kept checking to see if Colonel Hakim’s Humvee was still behind us. I mean, I wouldn’t put it past that bastard to throw it in reverse and go backwards all the way to Sana’a. But he kept right behind us, driven forward by duty, honor, country, and money.

The sun was definitely sinking, and the eastern sky was darkening, but there was daylight left to the west. After about an hour, we were driving in near darkness, but the rising half moon started to cast some light on these dead, dry hills, which almost shone in the moonlight.

No one had too much to say, and now and then Brenner and Hakim would exchange a few words on the radio. It occurred to me—a few times—that if there were any jihadists left in these hills, we were sitting ducks down in this wadi with high terrain all around us.

I asked Kate, “How you doing?”

“Still fine.”

I was sure her ribs were very sore where that AK-47 round punched her Kevlar vest. Sometimes you get a broken rib, and always a big, ugly bruise. But, as we say, better red than dead.

The status of Zamo’s arm was not his favorite subject so I didn’t ask, but I could see by how he handled the wheel that his arm was stiff. Hopefully, we didn’t need him to blow al-Darwish’s head off from a kilometer away. Or take out some a*shole firing at us.

The wadi was getting very narrow now, and the terrain was getting steeper and rougher. Brenner said, “We’re coming to the end of where the rainwater drains into the wadi.”

And?

“And the terrain ahead is unpredictable. It could rise up like a wall and that’s as far as we go.”

“Then we walk,” said Kate.

“Right,” I agreed. As my mother used to tell me, “God made feet before He made cars.” There’s no actual proof of that, but if it’s true, then that’s the reason for the gas pedal. On another subject, what the hell was I thinking?

We continued on, and we were in luck because there was no wall of rock as we crested the top of the rising terrain.

And there it was.

We stopped, and everyone got out of the vehicles and stood at the edge of a slope. Below us in the distance was a flat basin, maybe the size of four or five football fields, nestled among the rising hills around it. Just like we saw on the Predator monitor.

But the camp looked different now. The whole expanse of flat ground was smoldering, like the earth was cooking, and I counted twelve huge bomb craters, about thirty or forty feet across, and deep enough that I couldn’t see the bottoms.

Brenner said, “Good bomb pattern.”

I was just thinking that myself. What?

He continued, “See how they’re evenly spaced? No overlap. The crew pretty much covered the target with twelve two-thousand-pounds.” He also said, “Beautiful. Haven’t seen that in awhile.”

“Looks great,” I agreed. I asked him, “Anyone alive down there?”

“No.” He explained, “The blast sucks the oxygen out of the air, and the shockwaves burst your lungs, and sometimes turn your brain into jelly.”

Wow.

He continued, in a faraway voice, “Sometimes you do find people alive, but they’re zombies… blood coming out of their ears, nose, and mouth.”

“Yeah… well… good bomb pattern.”

Zamo added, “We don’t want to go down there.” He explained, “There’ll be, like, unexploded ordnance, like mortar rounds, or grenades, and they get sensitized by the shock, and if you step on something, they could blow and you’re toast.”

“Good to know that.”

Meanwhile, Colonel Hakim and his three PSO goons were standing off by themselves, looking down at what the Americans had wrought. I had no idea what was going through their minds, but I thought that they had to be impressed, but also troubled, like they’d seen the future.

An acrid odor drifted up from the destruction, like burnt fuel and melted metal, and it took me a few seconds to recognize that smell. The Towers.

Kate, who hadn’t said a word so far, now said, “Payback.”

So we stood there and looked at the smoldering fires and the black gaping holes in the earth, lit by a bright rising moon; a little bit of heaven, and a lot of hell.

Now we find The Panther’s lair, and if he’s home, we kill him.