4

SANA’A, YEMEN

Patrick Quillen felt the shock waves from the explosions. He waited for the “clear” signal, then motioned his men forward. Staying low, they ran across the road and stepped around the smoking piles of charred rubble at the gaping hole created by the missile. He shouldered his HK 5.56 rifle and swept the area, his men fanning out to clear the prison yard.

The place looked more like a refugee camp than a high-security prison. Rows of dusty garments hung drying on clotheslines, and rugs apparently used as canopies for shade stretched from the clotheslines to the chain-link fence ringing the inner compound. There were no trees, just barren ground with a slab of concrete and a basketball hoop at one end.

Basketball. Who knew?

Patrick and his men crossed the prison yard with no resistance. The Houthis had apparently retreated inside the inner walls.

The four teams came together, leaving a handful of members at strategic points in the yard to provide overwatch. A breacher set a small charge at the gate in the fence and blew it open, and the men hustled inside. They divided into two teams of six, with Patrick’s team staying at the front entrance to the main prison building.

The thick steel door in front of them required a larger charge. Beef knelt, peeled the backing off the adhesive strip on the two-inch-thick breaching charge, and attached it to the door. He checked the blast area, and the other men backed out of the way.

“Explosives set, south entrance, building 1,” Beef said.

Beef rolled out of the way himself, then triggered the charge and the door blew open. Another man threw a flashbang inside, and Patrick was the first to step through, moving quickly away from the death funnel of the doorway, sweeping his rifle in an arc.

There! On a catwalk, trying to regain equilibrium, were two Houthi guards.

He heard the pop of their guns, a few wild shots in the split second before Patrick and another assaulter put several rounds into them. One guard was blown back against the wall. The other slumped over the railing, hung there for a second, then plummeted to the floor below, landing with a thud.

The SEALs fanned out in the entry room. It looked to be an administrative space used for processing inmates.

“Lobby secure,” Patrick said.

The other team leader responded. “Alpha Two is in.”

The plan was for the two infiltrating teams to converge at the third-floor pod where the targets were being held. But first they had to navigate the steps and breach another steel door on the third floor.

Patrick prepared to open the door to the stairwell but hesitated. He had learned to trust his instincts. The extra guards in the towers had been unexpected and had cost his team the element of surprise. He was sure the Houthis were now waiting at the top of the metal-grate steps and would try to stack his team up on the staircase.

His radio squawked. The team leader was breathless. “Alpha Two engaged in the stairwell. Eagle down.”

Patrick heard Beef curse behind him.

“Get that guard over here,” Patrick said, motioning to the Houthi they had killed in the admin area.

Two assaulters grabbed the man under his arms and dragged him to the stairwell door. “Toss him in after I kick open the door,” Patrick said. “Take cover. Then go.”

His men nodded. Patrick kicked open the door, and they tossed the dead guard through. He took a round of fire but no grenades. Two assaulters slid in right behind him, hugging the walls and returning fire at the guards above. Two more SEALs followed quickly behind.

The guards retreated, and Patrick and his men sprinted up the steps, training their rifles on the doors at the second and third levels, leaving two men behind to seal the entrances.

The four remaining SEALs gathered at the landing just outside the third-floor door. Beef attached explosives, and the men retreated down half a flight of stairs. The door blew open, and Patrick launched another flashbang inside. The team followed through the opening and immediately took fire.

“Allahu Akbar!” the guards yelled.

Patrick rolled as bullets cracked over his head. It was pitch black, and he knew the Houthis didn’t have night vision goggles. They were at the other end of a pod of cells, retreating and firing, spraying bullets everywhere. The prisoners huddled in the corners of their cells, shouting in Arabic. Patrick and his men stayed low and returned fire. In a matter of seconds, the Houthi guards were lying facedown in their own blood.

Patrick and Beef hustled to the far end of the pod, poked the guards with muzzles to make sure they were dead, and kicked the AK-47s away from their bodies. The prisoners in the cells were wide-eyed, most cowering next to the exterior walls. A few moved gingerly toward the front of their cells, reaching through the bars and calling out to the SEALs.

The team moved quickly along the row of cells. They were less than twenty meters from where Holloman and Abdulaziz were being held when the bad news started pouring in.

“We have seven hot spots moving toward the target,” Patrick heard over the command net. “Transport vehicles. Alpha One and Two, do you copy?”

“Roger that,” Patrick said.

“Copy,” yelled the leader of Alpha Two. He sounded breathless, still under fire. Patrick and his men would have to help in the north staircase as soon as they secured the prisoners.

There was no telling how many Houthis were in the armored vehicles moving toward the compound. They might have RPGs that would make it hard for the extraction helos to land. How had the rebels mobilized so quickly?

The radio traffic picked up.

“Alpha Two still engaged. Resistance is heavy.”

“Neptune One engaged,” one of the snipers said.

“Neptune Three engaged.”

Two snipers under fire. The other breaching team pinned down in the stairway. Extra guards in the towers. Houthi reinforcements on the way. The prison guards had drawn Patrick and his men deep inside the prison. It all added up to a trap.

A few seconds later, when Patrick and Beef reached the cell where Holloman was supposed to be, his worst fears were confirmed.

“Alpha One to Hawk,” Patrick said, calling Admiral Paul Towers, the commanding officer of the Joint Special Operations Command. He was the man ultimately in charge of the mission, communicating directly with the director of the CIA and the president. Patrick, like all SEAL team leaders, revered the man.

“Hawk here.”

“You need to see this,” Patrick said.

He switched on the light attached to the rail system on his helmet, illuminating the cell where Holloman should have been. His camera beamed the visual back to headquarters.

There, in the corner of the cell, smiling, was a full-size cardboard cutout of President Amanda Hamilton.