WHAT THE HELL does ‘negative contact’ mean? Did the UCAV crash?” Jake said.
Roach just scowled. He’d been wondering the same thing and the CIA mission control element wasn’t responding.
“I’m going to check the east side of the building,” Jake said, more out of frustration than anything else. He took his rifle.
It was early afternoon, the Yemeni equivalent of a siesta, when much of the male population was out on the street. Despite the heat, most were dressed in baggy trousers, blousy shirts, and camel hair coats, often with loose turbans wrapped around their heads. Many carried a curved dagger, known locally as a jambiya, tucked in their waists. Once a fearsome weapon, the jambiya had become largely ceremonial over the last few decades. For serious work, nearly everyone had a Kalashnikov in his hand, on his shoulder, or leaning against a nearby wall.
Most of the idlers were chewing a locally grown stimulant called qat and visiting with their neighbors, but there were others, groups of men with long beards and unblinking eyes. They were al-Qaeda soldiers, and the locals usually gave them a wide berth.
But something was different today. The qat chewers were agitated. Jake raised his binoculars. A quarter mile away, a group of men were walking down the street, shouting and waving weapons around. Someone fired into the air.
“Curt, check this out,” Jake said across the hallway. He didn’t bother whispering.
Roach had heard the gunfire.
“Sounds like a Middle Eastern wedding,” he said as he walked over. The two men stood back from the window to stay in the shadows.
“They don’t look very happy.”
“Sounds like my wedding,” Roach said. “Let’s stick with the plan and exfil after dark.”
Jake shook his head. “I don’t like it. When was the last time you saw the locals walking arm in arm with al-Qaeda?”
Roach watched the action on the street for a few minutes before he walked to the other room and tried the SATCOM again.
“Mustang, this is Cobra. Come in, Mustang . . . Mustang, Mustang, this is Cobra. How copy?”
Jake stared through the binoculars. The mob was maybe seventy-five men now. There was more gunfire.
Roach came back scowling. “Comms are still down. This is starting to feel like a Ted Graves Special.”
“What’s a Ted Graves Special?” Jake asked, although he already had a pretty good idea.
“Just an expression . . .”
“Well, something is bringing the two groups together,” Jake said. “Maybe a common enemy?”
“If it’s the Saudis, they’ll soften up the target with airstrikes before any ground offensive. We don’t want to be in the tallest building around if we’re looking at Saudi airstrikes. They aren’t known for precision bombing.”
Jake packed up the rest of their gear while Roach used a cell phone to text their driver. The gunfire on the street grew closer. Individual voices could be heard among the din. Chants of “Death to America” and “Allah is the greatest” echoed through the streets.
Gunshots rang out just below the windows and the two Americans prepared to defend the stairs. Roach thumbed his rifle’s selector switch. Jake closed his eyes and listened. The shouting and the gunfire shifted around the building and began to move away. A car drove past on the boulevard.
“Our ride should have been here by now,” Jake said. He wiped the sweat from his brow.
The plan was for their driver to stay inside the city limits to avoid any issues at the checkpoints.
Curt’s watch started vibrating again.
“Motion detector . . .” he said.
“Maybe it’s our driver.”
Roach grimaced. “Maybe.”
He slung his satchel over his back and put the rifle to his shoulder. He descended the stairs silently, his head and rifle moving as one, methodically clearing the open space as a series of arcs. Jake followed behind, covering the opposing doorways and hallways, until the two men reached the second floor. A diesel truck passed by in low gear. Roach shook his wrist in the air to signal that the watch was still vibrating. Whoever had entered the lobby was still there.
Roach descended the next step, his rifle moving left. The arc was clear. He continued down several more stairs, scrutinizing everything, with Jake right behind him. An old Bongo truck backfired at the intersection, but their trained minds filtered it out.
They continued down the steps with the muzzles of their rifles probing the air for trouble. Sunlight streamed in through the doorway to the street, flooding the ground floor with light. They were five stairs from the bottom when Jake saw a shadow move against the back wall.
He reached down and squeezed Roach’s shoulder. The two Americans began to back up the stairs, but the man in the lobby was walking toward the doorway. He had a thick beard and a well-used Kalashnikov at his side.
He spotted the two men on the stairs.
Roach instantly realized what had transpired. The man was part of the street mob. He was using the abandoned building as a toilet, a common practice in the war-ravaged city. Roach lowered his rifle and continued down the last few steps to the lobby floor.
The man spoke to Roach and he responded, but the Yemeni dialect of Arabic was nearly impossible for a foreigner to master.
The man went for his gun.