Read Online The First Hostage: A J. B. Collins Novel by Joel C. Rosenberg - Free Book Online Page A

MP5. I had a Nikon. He was a trained soldier. I was just a journalist. Besides, I’d had enough excitement for one day. I’d already been shot at   —and hit. I didn’t want to go back into the fray. I wanted to stay with General Jum’a, high above the action. It wasn’t just safer; it was an ideal way to track all the elements of the battle. But now the general was shouting at me to get out. The colonel was unfastening my seatbelt and yelling at me to move faster. He wasn’t kidding. This was really happening.
    I ripped off my headset, grabbed the camera bag, and scrambled out of the chopper after him. And no sooner had my feet touched solid ground than I felt the Little Bird lift off behind me and race out of the hot zone.
    “Come on, Collins, let’s go,” Sharif yelled over the nearly deafening roar of the helicopter blades and the multiple explosions. “Follow me.”

10

    I did as I was told, though I hadn’t much choice.
    To my shock, Sharif didn’t head for the cover of the perimeter. I guess I’d expected him to put me close to the action, at the side of some of the Jordanian forces, to see and hear and smell the battle for myself. Instead, the colonel took me into the heart of darkness.
    Suddenly we were racing into the compound, even as the ear-shattering explosions and blistering staccato of machine-gun fire echoed through the courtyard. Sharif didn’t take us around the raging flames of the 18-wheeler. He literally jumped right through them, and I had no choice but to follow suit. He was, after all, the only one with a weapon, and I didn’t dare get separated.
    Inside the courtyard, Sharif was running flat out, and I struggled to keep up. He was in far better shape. I was gasping for air. Just then fresh machine-gun fire opened up from a window above us. Fortunately it wasn’t aimed at us but at an armored personnel carrier that was coming in behind us. The ground reinforcements were beginning to arrive, and they were drawing intense resistance.
    The colonel broke right, then dove through a gaping hole in the wall of that warehouse. Terrified, I dove too. By a minor miracle, the camera wasn’t damaged, though I did drop the bag with all theattachments. I should have worn it like a backpack, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I turned and saw the bag through the smoke, about twenty yards away. I started to go back for it, but out in the courtyard bullets were now whizzing in all directions. A moment before we’d been able to race through unharmed. Now it was a kill box out there, and there was no way I could retrieve it.
    Then again, how could we go forward? Gunfire suddenly erupted on the other side of the warehouse floor. I had no idea if it was from the terrorists or friendly fire from the Jordanians. There was no way either side could see us clearly. To them we were only shadows moving through the smoke. That’s certainly how they all looked to us.
    Scrambling to my feet, I ducked into a row of pallets piled high with canned goods and other foodstuffs. Sharif aimed his MP5 and returned fire. Then he ducked in beside me and took cover behind the pallets.
    Why we were in this particular building I had no idea. If we were going to take such risks, then I wanted to be in the main event, in the next warehouse over. That’s where the president’s Suburban was. That’s presumably where the president himself was. That’s certainly where the biggest gun battle was taking place. We needed to be there too. Instead, we were hunkered down in a warehouse that, as far as I could tell, had no strategic significance. We couldn’t go back. We couldn’t press forward. And the raging fires of the main office building were rapidly spreading. The flames had reached this building and were leaping up the walls. The entire warehouse was going to be consumed in the next few minutes. We had to get out.
    If that wasn’t enough, we knew for sure there were terrorists above us   —the ones that had been shooting