15

SANA’A, YEMEN

The reports came in so quickly Patrick was having a hard time assimilating everything. The snipers were all surrounded and engaged. The other assault team, Alpha Two, was trapped in a stairwell and under heavy fire. Houthi soldiers were approaching the prison in trucks and transport vehicles. Drones would be unleashing more Hellfire missiles soon. And inside the prison itself, Patrick had no idea how many Houthis were lying in wait as part of this trap.

Patrick had four team members cornered with him in this third-floor pod, with two others providing cover in the stairwell at the other end of the hallway. Even now, those men were taking fire.

Patrick knew he and his men would have to fight their way out of the prison facility. The Black Hawks were on the way and would be there in a matter of minutes. Reinforcements from the QRF would take longer, but if he could just get his men out to the prison yard, there was a chance they could get extracted.

He decided not to go back to the same stairwell they had used to access the third floor. That’s what the Houthis would expect because that stairwell was still partially secured. Instead, he motioned two of his men forward to the nearest stairwell, at the west end of the prison. They would shoot their way down these stairs and then circle back to the north end of the building to exit.

He signaled for two of his men to approach while he and Beef provided cover, their sights trained on the two intersecting hallways that led to the stairwell. Once this near stairwell was secure, Patrick would radio the men at the other end of the hallway to retreat and join them.

He glanced over his shoulder as one of his men kicked open the door, but the Houthis were one step ahead. The opening door triggered a blast that filled the pod with heat and shrapnel and light. The force of it knocked Patrick to the ground and staggered Beef. Patrick felt piercing pain in his left shoulder and a burning sensation where the shrapnel had gouged his right cheek. He knew his two buddies at the doorway had not survived.

“Eagles down, west stairwell,” he gasped into his mic, struggling to get to his feet. “You okay?” he asked Beef.

Beef had his gun trained on the gaping hole where the stairwell door had previously been. He was expecting Houthis to pour through, but so far none had entered.

“Let’s make those bastards pay,” Beef said.

The reports of casualties were coming in too quickly for Patrick to process. Alpha Two was losing members fast. One of the men Patrick had left behind to secure the stairwell was down. Patrick and Beef decided to join the lone surviving member of the team. They would go out the same way they came in.

They moved quickly to the east-end stairwell, where their teammate was just inside the frame of the door they had blown off its hinges on the way up. He was stepping through, spraying rounds at the Houthis, and then stepping back.

“Up top and below,” he said breathlessly as Patrick and Beef came up behind him. The left arm of his shirt was drenched in blood.

“Beef, drop a grenade on the men below. I’ll step through and give you cover with the ones upstairs. You two take the steps and blast your way out.” It wasn’t much of a plan, but they were out of options.

Without hesitation, Beef tossed a grenade down the steps. The explosion rocked the stairwell, and the three men stepped onto the third-floor landing. Patrick began emptying rounds into the Houthis one flight up. They were returning fire wildly, a shower of bullets clanging off the grated metal staircase. Patrick was stacking them up, picking them off one at a time as his rounds slammed into their bodies, his night goggles providing a decisive edge.

But then a light flashed from the landing above him, some sort of battery-operated spotlight that lit up the stairwell for a split second before Patrick could shoot it out, enabling the Houthis above and below to find their marks on the three SEALs caught in the middle.

The world slowed down, frame by frame, as Patrick squeezed off a last round and felt the pain sear through the right side of his neck, just above his body plate. He stumbled down a step, dropping his rifle, and braced himself with his left hand, slumping onto the step below. He could hear the triumphant shouts of the Houthis mixed with the roar of blood rushing to his ears as they clambered down the metal staircase to execute Patrick and his fallen teammates.

The images were blurred, but his last sight was of his best friend sprawled across the steps below him, his mouth open and his gun still in his hand. Somehow Patrick pulled himself down a step, draped his body over that of his friend, and grabbed the grenade from his own belt. He pulled the pin free with his teeth. And just before the world went dark, he placed the grenade under his body, sandwiched between him and Troy.

His last thought was about the smallest of victories. There would be no desecration of these bodies. No weapons or information would fall into enemy hands. He had lived to be a warrior. Now he would die like one.