Hellfire hit. He grabbed al-Baiwani, jamming the Glock against his side and whispered into his ear, “Ta’ala ma’ee.” Come with me. “We have forty-five seconds to get out or we’ll be dead.”
Al-Baiwani stared horrorstruck at Scorpion, his face showing that he understood about the Predator. The CIA had used them so often in Yemen that in AQAP camps and villages, anyone found carrying a cell phone could be summarily executed.
“Yalla,” al-Baiwani said hurriedly. Let’s go. He got up and motioned for his guards to follow.
There was a ladder from their roof down to the roof of the next building. As al-Baiwani put his foot on it, Scorpion shoved him, leaping down at the same time. Al-Baiwani cried out in pain. The two of them landed on the lower roof just as bin Jameel’s al Qaeda men swarmed out onto the other roof. Someone shouted, and the al Qaeda men began shooting at al-Baiwani’s Bani Khum guards, who fired back. Scorpion prodded a limping al-Baiwani ahead of him as they scrambled down the interior stairs of the building while the shooting went on outside. They could hear children shouting and women screaming.
A little boy, who couldn’t have been more than three, stood on a landing, staring at Scorpion and al-Baiwani as they ran down the stairs. A woman, presumably the boy’s mother, came out of the apartment and stared at them in terror. When the two fleeing men reached the boy, Scorpion scooped him up and handed him to the mother, yelling at her to lock the door and lay on the floor.
Reaching the ground floor, Scorpion checked his watch. The Hellfire would hit any second. He yanked at al- Baiwani, pulling him down to the floor, where they put their arms over their heads.
They waited, every nerve screaming.
Nothing happened.
Scorpion checked his watch again. The Hellfire should have hit. He waited another fifteen seconds, counting every second. There was no Hellfire. From above, he heard men clattering down the stairs. That son of a bitch Peterman, he thought. It would take a miracle to get out of Ma’rib alive now.
Cautiously, Scorpion peered out from the front doorway, looking for Jabir. The Land Rover was parked across the street, not far from the three black SUVs. Jabir was there, scanning the buildings, an M-4 with a mounted M203 grenade launcher in his hands.
Time to go. Scorpion nudged al-Baiwani, then sprinted across the street to the Land Rover.
An Abidah tribesman from one of the SUVs spotted them and started to aim his AK-47. Scorpion shot him in the neck with the Glock. A moment later, a half-dozen Abidah tribesmen heading toward the safe house turned to fire at Scorpion and al-Baiwani, and Jabir opened up with his M-4 on full automatic. Two of the Abidah went down. Just before Scorpion reached the Land Rover, Jabir was shot in the face and collapsed to the dusty street. Scorpion grabbed the M-4 from his lifeless hands, whirled and cut down two more of the Abidah. The remaining tribesmen turned and fled to the safe house.
Al-Baiwani started to get into the Land Rover when Scorpion grabbed him and instead pulled him toward the front SUV. There was an Abidah driver still in it, and Scorpion fired the M-4 as he ran, bullets spiderwebbing the windshield. Shots from the other SUVs and the buildings kicked up on the street around his feet.
Scorpion fired through the SUV window at the driver, killing him. Taking an Abidah shaal from a dead tribesman, he tossed it to al-Baiwani, who was climbing into the SUV’s passenger seat. Scorpion grabbed the dead driver’s shaal for himself, letting the driver’s body tumble into the street, then climbed in. They drove off in a hail of bullets coming from the other SUVs and the roof of the safe house.
“Use this,” Scorpion said, handing the M-4 to al-Baiwani as he swerved around a man with a donkey. Looking in the rearview mirror, he saw that the other two SUVs, filled with Abidah tribesmen, were in pursuit.
“What should I do?” al-Baiwani asked.
“Shoot through the rear window!” Scorpion shouted, making a sudden turn around a corner, then careened down the street toward the main road. Al-Baiwani fired on automatic, shattering the rear window.
The first SUV made the turn and sped after them as Scorpion, tires squealing, pulled around another corner and slammed on the brakes. He jumped out, rummaged for a moment in the backseat, then grabbed the M-4 from al-Baiwani and readied the M203 launcher and loaded a grenade as the first SUV came swerving around the corner. He aimed the laser at the SUV’s windshield and fired, ducking behind his SUV and pulling al-Baiwani down beside him as the grenade exploded, the hot air ripping past them.
The blast killed everyone inside the other SUV. What was left of the chassis continued rolling till it bumped against a cart by the side of the road. Scorpion reloaded the launcher with another grenade and peeked around the corner of the building. The second SUV was no longer following them. It was stopped in the middle of the street, guns bristling.
He motioned al-Baiwani back to the SUV and got back in himself. Tucking the M-4 beside him, he headed toward the main road. On the outskirts of the city they saw a roadblock ahead. It was manned by AQAP fighters, their guns aimed at them as they approached.
“What do we do?” al-Baiwani asked.
“We’re Abidah, remember?” Scorpion said, touching his shaal and slowing as they approached the roadblock.
Scorpion and, after a moment, al-Baiwani raised their fists and shouted, “Alahu akbar!” The AQAP fighters shouted back, “Alahu akbar!” several firing their guns in the air for effect as one of them waved them through.
They drove carefully through the gap in the roadblock, Scorpion waiting until he was at least a hundred meters away before he gunned the SUV. The roadblock receded in the rearview mirror, then the last mud-brick buildings gave way to desert. Al-Baiwani looked at Scorpion but didn’t say anything.
Ten kilometers on, Scorpion pulled to the side of the road and stopped. They were in a sandy desert plain, the road an empty blacktop for as far as they could see in either direction.
“Why are we stopping?” al-Baiwani asked.
Scorpion pulled out the Glock. “Where’s McElroy, the American?” he said, pointing the gun at al-Baiwani’s groin.
Chapter Three
Jebel Nuqum
Sana’a, Yemen
As the SUV approached Sana’a, the road began to fill with battered cars and trucks laden with produce. In the distance, the silhouette of Jebel Nuqum, the mountain that loomed over the city, could be seen on the horizon. Scorpion was still shaken by what he had found in the farmhouse. His cell phone call to Peterman from the road hadn’t helped.
“What happened?” Scorpion had demanded.
“What do you mean? The Predator?” Peterman said, his voice somehow both distant and on edge. Scorpion wondered where he was or what drug he was on.
“This is an open line, dammit! You really want to talk in clear?”
“Right, sorry,” Peterman apologized. He was always apologizing, Scorpion thought. He was the type who had a lot to apologize for. He could almost see the sweat on Peterman’s face. “Did you find you know who?” Peterman asked, meaning McElroy.
“Yes.”
“Was he… you know?”
“Fortunately.”
“Fortunately?”
“What do you want, a diagram?” Scorpion snapped. There were no words for what had been waiting for him and al-Baiwani at that farmhouse. Even Scorpion, who thought he had seen the worst that human beings could do to each other, had bent over the primitive iron sink heaving at what they found.
“Allahu akbar,” God is great, a stunned al-Baiwani had muttered over and over to himself, staring blankly at the wall to avoid looking at what was left of McElroy.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had brought a lot back from Afghanistan, including something the Taliban called “undressing,” which involved making incisions in the skin around the waist and up both sides, then down to
