The Panther

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.