I pointed my M4 at the ceiling, and everyone did the same. No one seemed to have any qualms about doing to our teammates what they had tried to do to us. Also, we had five or six Bedouin trying to kill us, and we might not make it back alive to see that justice was done—so we had to do it here.
As we were about to fire into the ceiling, a voice shouted in Arabic, and it took me a second to realize it came through the vent hole.
I didn’t know what Buck said, but Brenner apparently did, and he shouted back, “It’s not the Bedouin, Buck! It’s us!” He added, “Alive and well. Surprised?”
Silence.
Well, maybe it was a good thing to let Buck and Chet know that we were still alive and well, but not very happy with our teammates. Then we’d kill them.
I shouted through the vent hole, “Come on down. We need to talk.”
It was Chet, who replied, “Come on up.” He let us know, in case we didn’t, “There’s a chopper inbound to get us out of here.”
Us? Bullshit, right to the end.
Meanwhile, another burst of automatic fire came through the floorboards, splintering the old wood and lodging into the ceiling above us. But we were hugging the perimeter of the mafraj, standing on the floor where the boards rested on thick beams and masonry below, so we were relatively safe—for the moment.
Brenner shouted up, “Drop your weapons through the hole—pistols and rifles—then kneel at the hole with your hands on your heads.”
Brenner, ex-cop, was trying to make an arrest. Corey, ex-cop, was trying to make two corpses.
Buck shouted down, “Paul, I don’t know what you’re thinking, or what—”
“Shut up, Buck!” suggested Paul. “Shut your fucking mouth and get your ass down here. You, too, Chet!”
Buck replied, “There are Bedouin down there. Are you all crazy? Get up here. We’ll give you a hand.”
Buck was stalling for time as the Black Hawk approached, and Brenner was intent on making a bust, then getting on that helicopter with his prisoners.
I’d had enough of this and I shouted to Buck and Chet, “You have three seconds to drop your weapons, or we ventilate that roof and you go on that chopper dead.”
No response.
“One, two—” Everyone raised their weapons at the ceiling, and Brenner said, “At my command.” Then to Buck and Chet he said, “Last chance!”
But before Brenner said, “Fire,” someone else fired. In fact, it was the Black Hawk helicopter, which we could see through the big north-facing arch. It had gotten much closer, and the two door gunners were firing long bursts of machine-gun fire at the tower. We all hit the floor as red tracer rounds sailed through the arches. The rounds began hitting the columns and bullets started ricocheting around the mafraj. A spent round hit my arm, then a not-so-spent round hit the side of my Kevlar vest, knocking the wind out of me.
Chet was obviously in radio contact with the Black Hawk, and he’d told them there were bad guys below him and asked for protective fire. Psychos are smart.
I glanced up through the arch and saw the Black Hawk about a hundred yards away and coming fast. Another burst of machine-gun tracer rounds came through the mafraj and we all got into a fetal position as the bullets sailed above us or hit the stone columns and ricocheted around the stone walls.
I rolled on my back and emptied my magazine into the roof, hoping I’d see blood dripping down through the holes. But Buck and Chet were probably standing tight against the parapet now, and if they were smart, they’d also be standing on their Kevlar vests. Nevertheless, I slammed a fresh magazine into my M4 and fired again, and so did Brenner and Kate, but then another burst of machine-gun fire from the Black Hawk made us tuck in tightly against the floor and walls. Zamo, meanwhile, was lying flat at the top of the stairs, popping off rounds down the stairwell with his sniper rifle, just to let the Bedouin know we hadn’t lost interest in them.
I couldn’t see the Black Hawk any longer, and I knew the chopper was now flaring out above the tower and about to put down on the roof. The good news was that he couldn’t fire through the arches at that angle, and he wouldn’t fire through the roof with Buck and Chet there. The bad news was