For a moment I just stood there and stared, too stunned to think, too paralyzed to move. Then suddenly I turned and vomited all over the tracks near me, again and again until there was nothing left in my system. When my dry heaves finally ended and I had steadied myself against one of the walls, Yael handed me a bottle of water. I took some, swished it around in my mouth, and spit it back out. Then I took some more and swallowed and felt it burn the whole way down my throat. Only then did I notice that Yael had just finished vomiting too.
Wiping my mouth, I gripped my weapon and forced myself to keep moving. Yael started moving as well. Once again, she stayed on the right side of the tracks with me on the left. She picked up the pace, eager to get out of this house of horrors as quickly as possible, but I lagged behind. I tried not to look at the dangling corpses above us or the bulging eyes and gaping mouths of the heads stacked in the carts. As I kept my head down and eyes averted, I couldn’t help but notice piles of debris running along each wall. Curious, I finally stopped and took a more careful look, and then I realized these weren’t heaps of garbage. These were crosses and icons and Communion cups and Bibles and other holy books. And then I knew who these people were and why they had died such grisly and horrible deaths.
Shaken like I’d never been in my life, I, too, picked up the pace and caught up to Yael just as she was pivoting around another bend in the tracks. There were no bodies this time, nor even any carts. Nor were there any signs of ISIS fighters. But here the tracks and the tunnel began to tilt upward, and we started climbing back toward the surface.
Eventually we came to another bend in the tunnel, and again no one was immediately visible. But there was something I hadn’t expected: a large retractable steel door—almost like a garage door or a blast door—coming down from the ceiling and completely blocking our path. At the base of the door were two rectangular notches about three and a half feet apart that accommodated the rails. As we got closer, I noticed that there was also a smaller door built into the larger one that would permit a person to pass through while the larger door still blocked passage of the mine carts in either direction. Yael motioned for me to move to the right side of the smaller door. She moved to the left. Then she silently counted down from three with her fingers, turned the handle, and cautiously stepped through, her MP5 leading the way. I followed immediately and shut the door behind us.
We were now standing in the pitch dark. I quickly switched back to night-vision goggles, and when I did, I was aghast at what I saw. For here, against each wall—both on the left and right sides of the tracks—were metal cages. Inside each cage was either a young boy or young girl, ranging in age from maybe eight to no more than ten or eleven years old. They were naked, gaunt, and shivering. And now that they knew someone had just entered their hell, they were awake, wide-eyed, backing away, and cowering in fear.
They couldn’t see us or each other in the blackness, of course, but they must have been awakened by hearing us open the door, and they had surely seen the light spilling in from the other side as we had entered. Perhaps they had seen our silhouettes as well. None of them dared to say anything. No one called out and asked who we were. But neither did we call out. I didn’t dare. I knew they were hostages. They were captives. They were slaves. But they weren’t here to work—they were far too young. Which meant they were being held here for only one purpose: to be sex slaves to—and likely to be brutally raped by—their ISIS masters.
An involuntary shudder rippled through my body. I’d rarely experienced the presence—the physical presence—of evil before. But I did now. I’d heard rumors of ISIS members engaging in sexual slavery. I’d seen some unsourced reporting. But I’d never taken it very seriously. I’d certainly never believed any of it. All the allegations and insinuations seemed so outlandish, so far beyond the pale, as to be unworthy of serious attention. This was the twenty-first century, I’d told myself. No one was savage enough to be engaged in such barbaric behavior, I’d convinced myself.
But what else were these children doing here, naked and alone, at such tender young ages?
61
The stench in the place was overwhelming.
The children were living in their own filth. But it was the horror in the eyes of these kids—staring out through the darkness, trembling in terror, unable to see us but knowing we were there—that haunted me most.
The monstrosity of it struck me hard. I grabbed Yael’s arm and tried to pantomime what I was thinking, that we should let them out and lead them back through the tunnels. But Yael shook her head, put her finger over her lips, and then pointed forward. We had a mission. We had to stay with it. And of course she was right. These children weren’t going to be any safer in the tunnels behind us or up in the villa than they were right now. Their only hope was for us to clear these tunnels of the enemy, link back up with the Delta Force teams, and hold our own until the choppers came to rescue us. Then, just maybe, hopefully, we could get these children not just out of the cages but out of Iraq to somewhere clean, somewhere safe. Until then, they had to remain where they were. And quiet.
So we kept moving. Carefully. Stealthily. My heart was alternating between compassion and rage. But in the end I chose rage. It seemed the only possible choice.
Turning forward, we could see that there was another large steel door, similar to the one we had just passed through, about thirty meters ahead. It too had a smaller door built into it. As we approached, we could hear the sounds of a gun battle growing louder and louder. The good news was that the racket masked what little noise we were making. The bad news was that I suddenly realized we were coming up on the back side of the battle the Delta Force team had been engaged in for the last forty minutes. On the other side of this steel divide was the third and lowest level of the warehouse. This was where several dozen ISIS fighters were holding their own against America’s finest. What chance did we have? Going through that door might very well be suicide.
Yael was going anyway, I had no doubt. I saw her back stiffen and her stride quicken as she headed for the small door. I raced to catch up with her and grabbed her by the arm again just before she turned the handle. I shook my head. I couldn’t let her go through that door. There had to be another way. We could radio back to Ramirez. We could explain the situation to him. He could send some of his men through the tunnels to link up with us. They could help do the job their colleagues couldn’t get done on their own. And we could stay to protect the children.
The only problem was that I couldn’t say any of this. I didn’t dare do anything that might alert the jihadists to our presence. We had one ace up our sleeve, and only one, and that was the element of surprise.
But just as I was about to let go of Yael’s arm, I looked over her shoulder at the cage not five feet behind her. I had thought it was empty, which seemed odd since it was the only one of sixteen cages that wasn’t filled. But at that moment I thought I saw movement. I pivoted her around and aimed my weapon into the cage. Then I saw it again. Something or someone was in there, hiding under a blanket. Yael saw it too, and it momentarily stopped her from going through the doorway. Whatever it was, it seemed too large to be another child. Perhaps it was an animal, maybe a dog of some kind. But then it moved again and I saw a foot slide out from under the blanket—only for a second, and then it disappeared again. But it was definitely a foot. A human foot. A man’s foot. A bloody foot.
I moved toward the cage, aiming my MP5 at the center of the mass. Yael didn’t stop me. I didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances. I handed her my machine gun. Then I handed her my .45. I was going into this cage one way or the other, but I didn’t dare run the risk that an ISIS fighter trying to take a nap—or God forbid, having his way with one of these children—might grab one of my weapons and kill me and Yael with it.
Wiping my sweaty hands on my rain-drenched fatigues, more out of instinct than because it dried them off, I reached for the door of the cage. It was cold to the touch. Only then did I notice the
padlock. There was no way I was getting this door open without the key. So I started looking around. Maybe it was hanging on a hook somewhere. Yael searched as well. But we found nothing. And when our search was over, we found ourselves standing in front of the cage again. I wasn’t going in. That much was clear. Not without killing whoever had the key. So Yael handed my weapons back to me, and I began to back away toward the door, toward the inevitable. We were going through it, come hell or high water. We were going to take ISIS on from behind.
And then, just as I was about to turn toward the doorway, the figure under the blanket rolled over in his sleep. For a moment, the blanket slipped away from his face. Only for an instant, for he shifted again and pulled the blanket back over his face. But that instant was all we needed. It was unmistakable. It was Harrison Taylor.
62
I stood there in the darkness and couldn’t believe it.
Had we really just found the president?
I turned to Yael, and she nodded slowly. She’d recognized him too.
But now what? We were no more able to get him out of that cage than any of these children, and even if we could, we had no place to take him. Seething with rage, I moved to the small door within the larger doorway and motioned for Yael to follow me. There was no point in delaying the inevitable. The only way we were getting out and getting the president and all those children out and going home was by going through that door and killing everything that wore a hood and moved.
Again Yael didn’t stop me. So I took a deep breath, put my finger on the trigger, and turned the handle.
The first thing that happened was that I was temporarily blinded. The room on the other side was fully lit, and it felt like my night-vision goggles had just burned holes in my retinas. Yael saw me turn away in pain and quickly removed her goggles and scrambled into position behind me to assess the situation. Fortunately, the gunfire was so intense it masked any sounds we were making.
As I recovered, it was clear we had indeed made it to the bottom level of the warehouse. Through a smoky haze I could see no fewer than nine ISIS fighters. One was close, maybe five yards away. Others were spread out in a row. The farthest was about fifteen yards away. They were all hiding behind mine carts, overturned metal tables, and pallets stacked with steel boxes of some kind and piles of unused artillery shells they’d apparently been filling with sarin precursors before the Delta offensive began. And they were all firing in the direction of exit doors and elevators on the far side of this lower level of the warehouse.
I aimed at the closest fighter, pulled the trigger, and put four bullets in his back. Blood darkened his shirt, and soon he stopped screaming and twitching and fell to the floor, dead. Without waiting, I pivoted slightly to the right, fired another burst at the next closest fighter, and felled him instantly. Yael, meanwhile, fired at the terrorist farthest away and began working back across the room from right to left.
The effect was to create chaos in the warehouse. We had completely caught the ISIS fighters off guard, but we’d blindsided the Delta team, too. They had no idea who we were or where we were coming from or that we were allies. Bullets were flying everywhere. The jihadists were scrambling in all directions. Yael was radioing the general what was happening, but I can’t imagine he or anyone else on the comms could hear over the battle.
Several of the black hoods now turned toward us and began firing back. Instinctively, I pulled Yael back through the doorway and slammed the door shut. I could hear a barrage of bullets hitting the door, but none of them could penetrate.
“Red Team Leader, Red Team Leader, this is Katzir and Collins!” Yael shouted over the radio as both of us reloaded. “We’ve found a way into the warehouse—lower level—from the back. That’s us doing the shooting. Over.”
“That’s you, Katzir?” came the reply.
“That’s affirm—press the offensive.”
“Roger that. Do you have grenades?”
However hot the firefight had been sixty seconds earlier, it had just gotten exponentially hotter.
“Say again,” Yael shouted into the radio. “I repeat, say again.”
The terrorists seemed to be unloading everything they had against the smaller of the two doors. And then I realized there was no lock. The bullets were breaking through the steel. But if any of the fighters still alive on the other side decided to open the door, we had no way to stop them except to shoot them point-blank.
“Grenades, Katzir. Do you have grenades?”
“Yes, I have two,” Yael replied.
“Get them ready,” said the Red Team leader.
“Okay, hold on,” she said, then turned to me and told me to back up, aim for the door, and not let anyone past, no matter what. She pulled out a flare, set it off nearby to give us a little light to operate since there was no way we could keep switching to night vision and back again. Then I watched as she pulled two grenades out of her vest.
The children were screaming now. I didn’t blame them. But then I heard Taylor’s voice, trembling and in shock. “Collins? Collins, is that you?”
“It is, Mr. President. Just hold on.”
“How did you find me? And who’s this with you?”
“We came with the Delta Force, Mr. President. They’re here to rescue you. But I can’t explain any further. Not right now. Just move to the back. Stay against the wall.”
I saw the president comply as Yael moved to the door.
“J. B., come here,” Yael shouted.
Immediately I moved to her side.
“Set your gun down.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. “Set it down.”
I did.
“Now hold the handle and when I say go, open it just a crack—just enough so I can toss these through. Got it?”
“Yes,” I said and grabbed the handle.
“Okay, I’m ready,” Yael shouted over the radio.
At that point I noticed that bullets were no longing pummeling the steel door. I wasn’t sure why, but I took it as a positive sign.
“Okay, good; we’ve drawn their fire back to us,” came the response from the Red Team leader. “Now you’re going to toss them both through—one to the center, one to the left, on my mark.”
“Your left or mine?”
“Mine. Your right.”
“So center and my right.”
“Yes.”
“Ready.”
“Good. On my count—one, two, three, go—now-now-now!”
I yanked the door open about half a foot. Yael pulled pin one and tossed the grenade to the right. Then she pulled pin two and tossed it to the center, just as she’d been told. She yanked her hand back and I slammed the door shut. We both reached for our weapons as we heard the explosions go off. And then all was silent.
63
We waited for a moment, just to be sure.
Then the Red Team leader said the words we both wanted to hear. “We’re clear.”
For the first time in several minutes, it seemed, I finally started to breathe again. I turned to Yael, but she was already moving back to the door. She readied her weapon just in case and radioed ahead that she was coming in. Then she slowly turned the handle and pulled the door open. Instantly she was hit in the face by a wave of black smoke. She immediately shut the door again but the damage had been done. Thick, acrid smoke poured in, and I smelled the ghastly odor of burnt flesh. I turned away and covered my nose and mouth, but it wasn’t enough. My eyes started watering. My throat was burning. I heard the president and the children choking and gagging behind me.
“Mr. President, are you okay?” I asked, moving toward his cage.
“I think so,” he sputtered, trying to clear his throat and catch his breath. “Is it over?”
“Yes, Mr. President, for the moment,” I said. “But we still need to get you and all these children out of here. American rescue choppers are inbound. We need to get you aboveground and fast.”
“Start with them,”
he said between coughs. “They’ve been living a nightmare.”
“Of course, Mr. President,” I replied. “Let me just tell the others that we’ve got you.”
I radioed to the general and the rest of the Delta team that Yael and I had found the president. He was safe. But we needed medical and logistical help immediately. Then, as Yael lit several more flares to provide some desperately needed light, I explained the situation as we’d found it—the cages, the locks, and the children. Ramirez immediately ordered the Red Team leader to take charge of freeing the president and the children while the rest of Red Team moved back upstairs to the ground floor to aid the men fighting to keep the ISIS forces at bay.
“The choppers are twenty minutes out,” Ramirez told us. “Everybody stay focused. Keep fighting. But don’t lose heart. The cavalry is almost here.”
I didn’t find myself rejoicing, however. The strain in Ramirez’s voice was clear. The intensity of the gunfire around him was clear as well. A moment later we heard him make a satellite call back to CENTCOM in Tampa and call in the most devastating series of close air strikes so far. “They’re everywhere,” we heard him say. “I don’t know if we can hold them back much longer.” Then someone next to him told him he was still on comms, and he fumbled to shut off his mic.
A chill ran down my spine. We weren’t out of the woods yet, and twenty minutes suddenly seemed like an eternity.
Just then someone started pounding on the door.
“Katzir, Collins, it’s me,” shouted the Red Team leader. “I’m coming in.”
Yael opened the door and let him through, and more billows of smoke poured in with him. She closed the door again immediately and then turned a flashlight on President Taylor. I did the same.