“The Khaled bin Walid Mosque,” I said.
“What part of the city?”
“From the center, it’s due east, in a neighborhood called al-Khalidiyah, not far from the M5 highway.”
Zoona began typing coordinates into her laptop. Soon she put up on the main screen the live feed from a surveillance drone. I’d never seen the city from the air, so at first nothing seemed familiar. But after a few moments something caught my eye.
“Wait—there, in the upper left,” I said, pointing to the monitor.
“What, the playground?” she asked.
“Exactly. Can you zoom in on that?”
“I can, but there aren’t any mosques in that neighborhood.”
“I know, but I—”
And then there it was. It looked different from the sky, but I was suddenly looking down on the large field Omar, Abdel, and I had crossed to get into Homs. There were the towering yet abandoned apartment buildings ringing the field. There was the old VW van. There was the broken-down school bus and the deserted playground and the burnt-out Russian battle tank.
And then I spotted something else and every muscle in my body tensed. Even from miles overhead, I could actually see the small crater in the ground and the charred grass and soil, the very place where Abdel had stepped on a land mine, the very place where he had—
The horrific images flooded back. I could see the look of stark terror on his face, the panic in his eyes, just before he stepped off the mine. Just before—
The colonel asked me what was wrong, but I couldn’t speak. Zoona asked if she should keep searching, but I couldn’t reply. I could barely breathe. I felt like I was suffocating, drowning in my own guilt.
Finally I asked for a glass of water. Zoona went to fetch one. While she was gone, I forced myself to look away from the monitor. But all I could think about was that Abdel was only the first of so many colleagues and friends who had died since I’d started to pursue this story about ISIS and chemical weapons. And the deaths just kept piling up by the hundreds and perhaps soon by the thousands.
When Zoona returned, I drank the entire glass of water in mere seconds. Then I asked her to keep searching for the mosque. I knew it was close, but I had no desire to explain to her—to either of them—what I’d seen or what I’d remembered. I felt cold and tired and completely disinterested in what we were doing.
As Zoona kept looking, images of schools and churches and restaurants and shops blown to smithereens or burned to the ground flew by on the monitor. I could see shuttered supermarkets and bodegas. I could see the twisted wreckage of cars and trucks and motorcycles and roads riddled with the craters of bombs and mortars of all kinds. What I didn’t see were people. No soldiers. No civilians. No one. Some six hundred thousand people had once lived in Homs. Where were they all now?
“Okay, there’s Clock Square,” Zoona said. From there, she directed the drone eastward down a boulevard named Fares Al-Khouri, and a moment later there it was. We could see the large green spaces all around the mosque. We could see the two minarets out in front, though only one was still intact. The other had been hit by some sort of bomb and was only half there.
“You’re sure that’s where you were?” Sharif asked me.
“That’s it,” I said.
“And that’s where Jamal Ramzy was?”
“Not exactly, but he was close,” I said.
I explained to the two of them that my colleagues and I hadn’t actually walked directly to the mosque. Rather, we’d each been captured by ISIS rebels, drugged, stripped almost naked, and blindfolded before being brought to the mosque. We’d each been grabbed by different teams and likely each taken to the mosque by different routes.
“How did they get you there?” the colonel asked.
“I don’t know.”
“So how do you know that’s really where you were?”
“I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious,” I explained. “But I woke up with a bag over my head and tied around my neck. I was freezing. My clothes were gone. My hands and feet were tied, and I was sitting on a cold concrete floor. There was a huge thunderstorm bearing down on the city—not so different from tonight. When someone finally ripped the bag off my head, three armed men covered in black hoods dragged me down a bunch of flights of stairs to the ground level. That’s when I realized we were in what was left of the Khaled bin Walid Mosque. It had been shelled and shot up pretty good, but everything about the architecture made it clear it was a mosque. When we reached the ground floor, we stepped into another stairwell and descended to the basement, where we walked down a series of dripping hallways until we reached a mechanical room of some kind.”
“What happened then?” the colonel asked.
“One of them shoved the barrel of a machine gun into my back. They forced me to go through an opening in the wall into a makeshift tunnel that had been dug under the city. I remember thinking it was strange because even though most of Homs was blacked out, the tunnel had power and was reasonably well lit. It was no more than five and a half feet high and at best four feet wide, but it was long. It seemed to go on forever. But eventually we wound up under another building. We climbed up a ladder and they sat me down in front of Jamal Ramzy.”
Zoona positioned the drone over the mosque and moved it around, and we examined the structure from every angle. It was immediately clear that there were no ISIS forces guarding its entrances. There certainly were no SAM or triple-A batteries anywhere to be seen. In fact, there was no one there. Not a soul. The building had clearly been further damaged since I’d been there last. Upon closer examination, it looked like the south side of the structure had collapsed entirely. It seemed unlikely in the extreme that the president or any other high-value prisoner was being held there.
So we broadened our search. We went building by building, street by street, block by block, looking for any signs of heightened ISIS activity or any activity at all. But we found nothing. Zoona then brought up ten days’ worth of archived Key Hole spy satellite images of the mosque and its neighborhood and the adjacent neighborhoods spanning twenty blocks. But there were absolutely no signs of an ISIS safe house to be found. Just utter, catastrophic destruction.
We had come to a dead end. And had wasted almost two hours in the process.
I felt sick to my stomach.
42
It was now 4:17 p.m.
Less than fourteen hours until the deadline was up.
Not even a half hour until the sun went down.
The colonel and I were silent on the elevator ride back up to the main floor, where the ISR command’s meteorologists worked, along with most of the administrative staff and technical support team. When the doors opened, the MPs were waiting to take us back to the armored personnel carrier. But as we headed toward them, I noticed a group of young officers clustered together around a TV set. Curious at what they were watching, I peeked over someone’s shoulder and found them absorbed by a report on Al Arabiya.
Israeli prime minister Daniel Lavi had just passed away.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The anchor repeated several times that the information was still unconfirmed, but he referenced two separate reports—one from the BBC and one from Agence France-Presse—citing unnamed doctors at Hadassah Medical Center and a senior officer in the IDF, all of whom wished to remain anonymous since they were not authorized to discuss the prime minister’s condition.
I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t possible. I stopped and leaned in, hoping to learn more, but the rest was just a discussion between the anchor and two political analysts via satellite—one from Cairo and one from Dubai—discussing the possible implications of Lavi’s death, “if it is proven true.”
I turned to Sharif and told him what had happened. He, too, could hardly believe it and came over to hear more. It was amazing to see how hard the news was hitting each of these young Jordanian military officers and support staff. I’m not saying they had suddenly become Zionis
ts or that they had a deep love for Lavi or his unity government. But they were deeply traumatized by the events that had transpired in their own capital in recent days. They were heavily engaged in fighting to protect their country from the forces of the Islamic State. They knew all too well the pain that they and their people were suffering, and they seemed to identify with the trauma the Israelis were now suffering as well.
“Please, Yusef, I need to be in touch with my office and my family,” I whispered to the colonel after he’d had a few moments to absorb the shock of the discussions.
I prepared myself for resistance, for an argument, but to my relief he said, “Of course; I understand. Come with me. Let’s find someplace quiet.”
Sharif motioned to the MPs that we were going to be a few minutes; then he led me down the hall and around the corner to a small kitchenette. There he pulled out his smartphone and entered his passcode.
“I’m still under strict orders not to let you call off this base,” he said. “But if you want to dictate notes to a few people, I’m happy to send them myself and let your people know they can reach you through me.”
It wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. I wanted real contact. I needed real conversations, not a few impersonal e-mails. But with zero hour fast approaching, I realized this was the best I was going to get, and I intended to take full advantage of it.
I asked that the first text messages be sent to my mom and brother and gave Sharif their phone numbers. I explained that I was still in Jordan, but safe. I told them that my phone and computer had been destroyed in the attacks but that I had only minor injuries, certainly nothing life-threatening, and that they shouldn’t worry. There was no point in telling them I’d been shot. Or imprisoned. Or that I’d killed anyone. Or experienced a sarin gas attack. It was only going to freak them out. There was nothing they could do about any of it, so I figured they didn’t need to know. Instead, I told them I was covering the latest developments but had very limited access to the outside world, and I apologized for not being in touch sooner. Finally I told them that I loved them and that I couldn’t wait to see them again, and to please keep praying for me and not to let up for a moment.
Sharif typed the message, then showed it to me to make sure he’d gotten it right. I reread that last line asking them for prayer. I wondered if that might give them the idea I was still in harm’s way or going back into it. But then again, wasn’t that the truth? I was in a forward operating base in the midst of the worst military crisis in Jordan in decades. The fact that I’d narrowly escaped death numerous times in recent days was, I was beginning to think, potentially related to how much my family was praying for me. Regardless of how unclear I was about God and Jesus and my own eternity, I figured I’d be an idiot not to ask for prayer. It was working. They were willing. Why not?
I thanked Sharif and he hit Send.
Then I asked him to send a quick message to Allen MacDonald back at the Times D.C. bureau. The colonel agreed but said I couldn’t say anything newsworthy or substantive, only that my phone and computer had been destroyed but that I was alive and safe and still on the story—essentially the same as I’d told my family, without the reference to prayer.
“Can I ask if this story about Lavi is true?” I inquired.
“No.”
“Can I ask what he’s heard about Jack Vaughn being arrested?”
“Absolutely not.”
“So that’s all I get?”
“Was there someone else you wanted to write to?” he asked.
“Many.”
“One more.”
“Why just one?”
“Because I just got a text message from the war room,” he said. “They want us to come back immediately. We need to move fast. So is there someone else—your wife, perhaps? Laura, right?”
I looked at him sharply. That was not a name I ever expected to hear again—not this far from Washington—and I was completely caught off guard not only by the suggestion but by the fact that a Jordanian colonel whom I had only just met somehow knew so much about me. Did they have a dossier on me? What else did they know? And what gave him the right to bring Laura up at such a time as this?
“Ex-wife,” I said coldly.
“Right,” said Sharif. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“Should I send her a note, tell her you’re okay?”
“No,” I replied.
“Then is there someone else? We only have a moment.”
There was, of course—Yael Katzir. But I didn’t dare say it. Not the name of an Israeli Mossad agent. Not her personal mobile number. Not in such a sensitive moment in relations between Jordan and Israel. Not with Agent Harris on the same base, just a few buildings away, still wanting to talk to her about why she’d fled the scene of the car bombing in Istanbul.
Yet Yael was the one I wanted to reach out to, the one I found myself thinking about in every spare moment I had. I was worried about her, especially after the death of her prime minister.
But that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to reconnect. The truth was I missed her. It embarrassed me to think it. But I missed her. I wanted nothing more than to sit with her and have coffee and listen to her talk and pry her for more stories and get to know her better. It wasn’t simply a physical attraction, though it was certainly that. There was just something about her that fascinated me, intrigued me, drew me to her, and I wanted to find out what it was. But now wasn’t the time or the place.
“No,” I said at last. “We’d better go.”
The king was waiting for us, though I had no idea why.
43
“I’m divorced too,” Sharif said as we drove back to the war room.
“Sorry to hear that,” I said, not exactly in the mood for small talk, if that’s what this was supposed to be, and certainly in no mood for baring my soul or having the colonel bare his.
“It’s the girls I miss the most,” he continued somewhat wistfully as the storm raged around us. “Amira is my oldest. Just turned five.”
“That’s a lovely name.”
“It means ‘princess.’”
“You must be very proud.”
“You have no idea. And then there’s the three-year-old, Maysam, which means ‘my beautiful one.’”
For the first time since we’d met, he actually handed me his phone. But it was not to make a call or read the latest headlines. He wanted me to see some digital pictures of his girls, taken at the younger one’s most recent birthday party.
“Adorable, both of them,” I said, doing my best to be polite. “Congratulations.”
I forced myself to hand the phone back to him. I could see Sharif wasn’t smiling. He was just staring at the pictures and his eyes were growing moist.
“How often do you see them?” I asked.
“Never,” he said. “Well, it seems like never. Once a month. Maybe twice. They live with their mother in Aqaba. It’s hard for me to get down there.”
“I’m sure. That’s quite a drive from Amman. How long does it take?”
“Four hours.”
“But you have the whole weekend with your girls?”
“No, just an hour,” he said, choking back his emotions. “I leave before sunrise on a Friday. We have an hour for lunch. I’m back by dinnertime. But after all this? I have no idea when I will see them again.”
Just then lightning struck a nearby electrical transformer, creating a small explosion, sparks spraying everywhere. At almost the exact same moment, multiple booms of thunder rocked our vehicle. The storm was directly upon us now, and even though the sun had not technically set, it was eerie how dark the skies had become.
I felt bad for Sharif. He was a reserved and quiet soul, fiercely loyal to the king, proficient at his job, and overall had been quite decent to me. But for the first time I realized his mind was far away. Here we were at a secret base in the northeastern part of the country, and his heart was nearly four hundred kilometers away in Jordan’s s
outhernmost port city. I had no idea what the circumstances were that led to his divorce and ripped him away from the two little girls he clearly loved most in the world. Certainly it was not my place to ask, and it wouldn’t have been right to anyway. All the deep and hurtful wounds that he typically kept in check in order to perform his official duties were presently forcing their way to the surface, and I genuinely wished there were something I could do to comfort him.
Yet what advice could I possibly give him? I’d completely failed as a husband. Laura and I had been married for only five years. It had started as a torrid love story. We’d met as interns in Robert Khachigian’s Senate office, and I’d fallen for her immediately. We dated all summer, got married that Christmas, and everything had seemed like an intoxicating dream . . . until it didn’t anymore. Suddenly she was as cold as ice. Then she announced she wanted some “time away” to figure things out. And the next thing I knew, she was moving in with some hotshot lawyer she’d met at the New York firm where she’d just been hired and was filing for divorce. The whole thing completely blindsided me. I never saw it coming. I still didn’t know what I’d done wrong. And ever since, I’d avoided thinking about it, and certainly talking about it, like the plague.
The only sliver of grace in the entire emotional train wreck was that we hadn’t had kids. I’d wanted to. Lots. Right from the start. She didn’t. Not till she was done with law school. Not till she was with the right firm. Not till she was a partner. If I was being honest, I’d have to admit I resented her for that—and for a million other things—but I had to be grateful we hadn’t brought some adorable little souls into this world only to drag them through our selfish, twisted, mixed-up lives.
All that had been a long time ago, of course. Almost twenty years. But my wounds had never fully healed. I couldn’t imagine how much worse it would have been with little children caught in the middle.