Abdulhasan Askari had moved to a more fortified location in the basement of the Miraflores Locks main control building after the Javelin round took out his machine gun in a room a couple of doors down from where he was observing the initial attack. His new view of the fighting, although not by human line of sight, was supplanted by a wide bank of closed circuit television cameras enclosed in a concrete bunker.
The Central Miraflores Security Center allowed the best views of the entire campus and surrounding areas. Most of his time at the Canal Zone had been spent in this office, and much of the equipment had been upgraded at his request. As the security supervisor for the entire Miraflores Lock operations, he was now the fox, and the Panama Canal was his hen house. His position had been particularly helpful when he would put on full Muslim crews, mainly at night, and plant explosives and string antenna wire for detonators during the down period when ships were not coming through the locks. He now needed to call his helicopter commander, but had his hands full with the sudden attack of tourists in flower-covered shirts carrying automatic weapons.
*****
“You are all to proceed to your hidden positions. You will hunker down there out of sight until you are commanded to advance to our objectives. We have a deficit of four helicopters, so each of you is asked to man-up and cover our losses. I know many of you are incredulous about us completing our mission. Just know that Allah is with us. God is great. Good luck and good hunting,” said Romuald Farouk, flight commander of the Panama helicopter group. Farouk had served as a captain in the Egyptian Air Force, where he flew American AH-64 Apaches and French Gazelle reconnaissance helicopters. He left Egypt and the military to work for Al Qaida and the Panama Canal militants.
Farouk had gone to the same college as Askari but didn’t know him well. Unlike Askari, Farouk didn’t care for engineering and instead embarked on a path of study which earned him a master’s degree in philosophy. Askari never mentioned it to his face but did tell some of his associates that the degree was frivolous. It didn’t matter to Farouk, who was tall, well-constructed, and had an extremely attractive face. Several people had asked if he was Omar Sharif, the famous Egyptian movie star. With his physical attractiveness, women were drawn to him like mosquitos in a swamp. He currently had two wives and a selection of mistresses as needed.
He would tell his friends that he was writing a novel, but no one ever saw it. When he spoke, there was a tendency to add too many words, either to impress, or to just play with his extensive vocabulary. Arabic was his native tongue, but English was the language he liked to experiment with in elongated conversations, knowing full well most of the people around him couldn’t compete verbally.
Beyond his excessive vocabulary was his love for American movies; in particular, he loved war movies and Westerns. Jargon such as “saddle-up” and “lock and load” got mixed into the sentences to the point that if Farouk didn’t have a language of his own, he certainly had a unique colloquial style. It wasn’t unusual for his helicopter pilots to call each other to interpret what he had just said to them as a direct order.
Askari didn’t have much patience or the time to figure out his messed-up communications. Usually within a few seconds, he would stop Farouk and say, “Romuald either talk to me in short little sentences, or I’m hanging up. I don’t have time for your shit!”
Fueled by a reprimand, Farouk would go into a John Wayne short-sentence routine.
“Will do, Addul—jump right on it! Choppers ready—say when.”
It was apparent to Askari that nothing about his head pilot was normal. However, his skills with a helicopter had never been in question. Farouk could fly them upside down and flip them through a series of loops at critical angles that no one thought was possible for a helicopter. Most people believed if anyone else tried to duplicate Farouk’s antics, they would be killed. So far, no one had been stupid enough to try.
The attack from the air was going to be after the locks were full and the opposite harbors had ships stacked up ready to go in the opposite direction. All Askari wanted was to have the canal locks full so he could do the most damage. He didn’t care which directions they were going. They would begin the process of filling the locks at 2:00 p.m., and in three and one-half hours it would be full of ships. Then it would be closed again, and for the next three and one-half hours, no new ships would go through. At 9:00 p.m., the cycle would start from the opposite ocean all over again. The air war would begin once the canal was full—at exactly 5:30 p.m.
*****
Maria and Jordan were in a SEAL team ordered to clean out the four levels of observation decks above where Lester and Debi were stationed at ground level. There was more than one team going up, but they were the first. One by one, the fire team had engaged the militants on each level. Maria and Jordan had the assignment of watching and guarding for any jihadists attacking from the rear. So far, all the combatants had been in front and the SEALs took them out quickly with little resistance.
As they approached the upper deck, which included the entire back roof area along with an observation area, a dramatic change took place. Militants seemed to come out of every crack and crevice. Jordan noticed them first as they attacked from the right rear of the group. He dropped to the floor behind a large planter filled with golden bougainvilleas and red Hawaiian Ti plants and pulled Maria down beside him. Bullets buzzed above their heads and blew off pieces of concrete behind them, as they struck the wall of the observation deck. Before he hit the deck, Jordan got a glance of the two shooters and saw they were behind a patio table that had been turned on its side. The combatants were shooting their AK-47 on fully automatic, which meant their magazines would need to be switched out soon. Jordan waited for the clicks and heard them both hit empty with audible clicks.
“Now, Maria!” Jordan yelled, as both rose and sprayed the patio table with over thirty rounds each. First there were screams, then gurgling sounds, then nothing.
The rest of the fire team had taken cover nearby. They signaled Maria and Jordan to stay down, since they had taken fire from a doorway on the far left of the upper level of the building. Jordan raised his head and peeked through the leaves of the Ti plant. There was no movement on their side of the roof. A couple of closed doors and one small window were about all Jordan could see. Gunshots sounded out all over the compound, but everything was quiet on the roof for now. Maria jammed a fresh magazine in her MAC-10 after she observed Jordan reload his weapon.
“Did we waste ammo on those guys?” she asked.
“Hey, we got the assholes. One use of automatic weapons is to cover a large area when you can’t see your enemy. We did that. But, to answer your question—yes.”
“I’m going to use short bursts next time, if I don’t freak out,” Maria said, as she looked for that setting on her weapon but only found semiautomatic. She clicked the lever down for single shots as fast as she could pull the trigger. If things got hairy, she now knew where the full auto switch was located.
“I’m leaving mine on auto, and I will try to get off the trigger in a hurry,” Jordan said.
Every few minutes he would rise, using the Ti plant for cover, and check for movement. Suddenly, as if timed by a stop watch, doors opened on both sides of the roof and five militants came through each door. At the same time, a machine gun came alive from the small window, raking rounds all around Jordan and Maria, providing cover fire for ten crazed jihadists as they rushed towards overturned patio furniture. Inexplicably, they all stopped and took positions behind small plastic chairs, Plexiglas tables, and fallen umbrellas.
Once they slid into place, Maria stood up a few milliseconds before Jordan and started pulling the trigger as fast as she could. Once Jordan was fully up, he pumped in short bursts through the flimsy fortification where the jihadists were huddled. Some turned to run but were mowed down. In a matter of seconds, with very little return fire, all the militants were on the deck, either dead or seriously wounded.
The couple even had time to move their weapons to the left and spray the men coming out the door in front of the rest of the SEAL team; however, the machine gun at the window on Maria and Jordan’s side roared back to life now that their own men weren’t in their line of fire and sent the couple down hard on the deck behind the planter. A yellow-orange trail zoomed across the deck from the SEAL team and entered the window of the shooter and exploded. The window was doubled in size and nothing more was heard from the machine gunner.
Elements of the SEAL team rushed in all the doors to root out other fighters. Maria and Jordan heard a few rounds expended, but it seemed slight compared to what they had been through. Their fire team leader came over to the flower planter and spoke to the European couple.
“My name’s Grant Givings. Thanks for taking out all those assholes. Man, you fucked ’em up! We still got work to do, but you guys can be on my team any time.
“We’re leaving a couple snipers up here, but we need to move out. Got other objectives. Follow us down. How’s your ammo?” Givings pointed at their magazines protruding from their weapons.
“I have two mags left,” Maria said.
“Me, too,” Jordan said.
“Should do okay with that. Let’s go,” he said, and led the group through one of the secured doorways.