The Third Target (6 page)

HOMS, SYRIA

Omar, Abdel, and I stashed our rental car in some bushes.

Then we slipped across the border into Syria and hiked for several hours. As we approached the city, we inched our way forward under the cover of predawn darkness. Finally, the three of us lay on our stomachs in the mud in a grassy field trying to figure out our next move.

The crackle of machine-gun fire had grown louder over the past several minutes. Artillery shells were now screaming over our heads. The earsplitting explosions were becoming more intense. The earth shook violently beneath us, and I realized I was shaking too.

To my left I could see the torched wreckage of a Russian-built T-72 battle tank. To my right, about fifty yards away, was the charred hulk of a school bus. Beyond that, about a hundred yards away, stood the carcass of an old VW van. Behind us lay a deserted playground, complete with slides and balance beams and swings swaying in the bitter winter wind. But there were no children
 
—no human presence of any kind, so long as you ignored the dozens of shallow graves that seemed to have been dug quite recently.

Clouds scattered and then regathered overhead, and in the intermittent moonlight I could see row upon row of bombed-out apartment buildings ahead of us. There were no lights on in any of them. No sounds of music or talking or laughter emanated from their midst. Indeed, there were no signs of normal life at all as far as the eye could see.

Welcome to Homs.

Once a thriving metropolis, Homs had been the third-largest city in Syria after Damascus and Aleppo. More than six hundred thousand people had, until recently, called this their home. Now it was fast becoming a ghost town. Most of the residents had fled for their lives over the past few years. Some neighborhoods were nearly empty of living souls. If a ferocious battle between government and rebel forces hadn’t just erupted nearby, I would have had no idea anyone was still left in the area.

Just why anyone was still fighting over this wasteland was beyond me. What was the point? What was left to fight over? Most of the factories had been blown up. Most of the schools had been burned down, the Catholic and Orthodox churches and the mosques, too. The banks had been looted. All but a handful of stores were shuttered. There was barely anything to eat. No running water. No working sewage system. The airport had been obliterated. Even if you had a functioning car or truck, you couldn’t use it. The gas stations had no petrol. The roads were ripped up or blocked by soldiers or rebels. There was no legitimate way into the city, and only a fool would try to enter. Yet there we were, watching the blaze of rockets and mortars streaking through the sky. We could see tracer bullets slicing through the night.

We couldn’t stay put. Forces from one side or the other would be coming soon. We had to keep moving.

Though I tried not to, I couldn’t help but think about all my friends who had died covering this miserable war. My
Times
colleague
and fellow Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Shadid had died in Syria. So had Gilles Jacquier, a photojournalist with France Télévisions. And Marie Colvin with the
Sunday Times
of London. The list went on and on. Well over two hundred reporters and photographers had been killed in Syria alone since the start of the civil war. And that didn’t even count Janet Fiorelli and all the other journalists who had died covering the Arab Spring or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I didn’t want to be one of them, but I did want this interview. I wanted this exclusive, and I was determined to get it
 
—or get shipped home in a body bag.

I whispered a plan to Omar. He quickly relayed it to Abdel. Then, looking into each man’s eyes and making sure we were on the same page, I grabbed my backpack, put it once again over my shoulders, and jumped to my feet and began sprinting toward one of the bombed-out apartment buildings. As soon as I did, however, a machine-gun nest to our right suddenly roared to life. I didn’t dare stop. I didn’t even dare slow down. If I was going to die, I decided, so be it. I would die on the move, on the hunt for this story, not pinned down in the mud, not cowering in fear or groveling for mercy. I wasn’t as fast as I’d been in college. I wasn’t as fast as I’d been when this war began. Hate it though I might, I wasn’t young anymore, and war correspondence was a young man’s game. But I kept moving.

My heart pounded. My lungs desperately sucked in air. My legs burned, but I kept going. As I roared past the back of the bus, I could hear .50-caliber rounds pinging off the other side, but I kept moving. I was terrified
 
—far more so for Omar and Abdel than even for myself, if that were possible
 
—but I didn’t dare look back. I had no idea if the guys were still behind me. I hadn’t heard any screams or cries, though I’m not sure I would have. My ears were filled with the excruciating roar of explosions and automatic-weapons fire. For all I knew, I was alone. I just hoped it wasn’t their time or mine yet.

I broke left and headed for the back door of one of the tenements.
As I drew closer, I could see bullets ricocheting off the cinder blocks. The intense roar of the machine-gun fire seemed to increase exponentially. I wondered if two people were firing at us instead of one. Instinctively, I changed direction. Breaking to my right, I could see the VW van just ahead. It had been burnt to a crisp. It had no tires, no windows. It was nothing but a bullet-ridden shell, but it was my only chance, so that’s where I headed. As I finally reached it, I wasn’t sure I’d stop in time, so I did a Pete Rose, diving headfirst behind the chassis as a hailstorm of bullets slammed into the engine block.

The withering gunfire didn’t stop or slow. Dozens of rounds pelted the side of the van. I could hear many more whizzing over my head. I pressed myself as low to the ground as I possibly could and covered my head with my arms. I’d never experienced anything like this. Not in Afghanistan. Not in Iraq. Not covering the revolutions in Egypt or Libya. In the past, I’d usually been on the move with soldiers. I often stuck close to professionals who were heavily armed and trained for battle. On rare occasions, I even traveled with a group of insurgents, but I’d never been alone, in the open, being shot at with no one around me who could shoot back, no weapons, and no way to defend myself.

Almost before I had time to think, Abdel dove in beside me, and Omar right behind him. Abdel was shouting something in Arabic I couldn’t quite make out in the cacophony. Omar was breathing as hard as I was. By the way he was shaking, I guessed he was probably just as afraid as I was that his heart was going to explode out of his chest even before he was shredded by bullets and left to bleed to death in an open field. But there was no time to commiserate.

“We can’t stay here!”
I shouted.

“Well, we can’t keep going,”
Omar shouted back.
“They’ll kill us all.”

“We should just stay,”
Abdel yelled.
“They have to reload eventually.”

“But when they do, we need to move fast,”
I yelled back.
“I’ll go first, but don’t follow me. We need to break up. Head out in three different
directions. Pick a building, each a different one. Then we’ll regroup on the front side. Hopefully it will be quieter over there.”

“No, no, we need to stay here,”
Abdel shouted at me.

I shook my head vigorously and tried to rally my men.
“If we do, we’re dead!”

No sooner had I spoken the words than there was an ever-so-brief lull. This was it, I thought. We had to move now.

“Go, go, go!”
I shouted, springing to my feet and running again.

I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. But sure enough, moments later, the machine-gun nest roared back into business. Bullets pulverized the walls all around me, but somehow I burst through the rear entrance of the building, out of the line of fire, unscathed.

Now, however, I really was alone. I could hear mortars and artillery shells landing close by and moving closer. The explosions grew louder, and I both sensed and felt the already-pummeled and fragile building above me rocking and swaying with every concussion. I began to wonder how much more the structure could take. There was no reason I could think of for anyone to be firing directly at it. But what if a shell or two went astray? What if the building were hit? Might the whole thing come toppling down?

It occurred to me that no one back home had any idea where I was. Allen MacDonald, my editor in Washington, thought I was merely heading up to the Lebanese–Syrian border to interview refugees about the latest battles in the village of Al-Qusayr, since that’s all I had told him after he shot down my Ramzy pitch. My mother thought I was going to Beirut to interview a Hezbollah commander. My brother? I hadn’t talked to him in years.

Standing in a long, dark hallway, the floor rumbling beneath me, I had absolutely no idea what was in front of me. But I couldn’t turn back now. So I stumbled my way down the hallway, groping in the near pitch-dark with one hand, my other hand touching the wall, as shards of broken glass crunched beneath me.

I felt something run across my feet and then something else. I immediately kicked the second one away, but a shudder ran down my spine. What were they? Rats? What exactly was I heading into? My imagination kicked into overdrive.

Just then, in darkness so complete I could no longer see my hand in front of my face, I stumbled over something and crashed to the floor. I had no idea what it was, but it was large and yielding and my hands slid along the floor tiles into something wet and sticky and cold. Repulsed, I wiped my hands on my khakis and felt around for the iPhone in my jacket. I pulled it out, punched in the security code, and clicked on the flashlight app. Instantly, I realized I had landed in a pool of coagulating blood. The fact that it was not yet completely dry made me shudder all over again. I turned and pointed the camera behind me and froze as I stared down into the lifeless eyes of a young boy, no older than fourteen or fifteen, shot at least a dozen times, his white, stiff hands in a death grip around an AK-47.

Click. Click. Click.
My journalistic instincts kicked in and I snapped three pictures, then turned away in horror, wondering anew when the senseless killing in this godforsaken country would ever stop.

I pointed the light of the phone toward the end of the hallway and made my way to the front door. But as I reached for the doorknob, I hesitated. I needed to find my colleagues, to be sure. I certainly didn’t want to be in this city alone. Nor, I had to imagine, did they. But then again, I had no idea what lay ahead. How in the world were we going to find Jamal Ramzy? For all we knew, he was leading this battle.

Pulse pounding, I again wiped my hands on my pants, then slowly opened the door. What lay before me was a scene from the apocalypse. But Omar and Abdel were nowhere to be found.

The stench of death was thick, revolting, and inescapable.

Everywhere I looked
 
—up and down the street in both directions
 
—I saw mountains of rubble and twisted rebar from half-collapsed buildings, the scorched remains of tanks and trucks and cars and motorcycles, and the ghastly sight of decomposing bodies that even the vultures had rejected. All of it was shrouded in an eerie fog of smoke and ash, bathed in the bluish-silver tint of the moon.

I didn’t dare step out of the doorway. I wanted to call out to Omar and Abdel, but I kept my mouth shut. I pressed myself back into the shadows and all but closed the door to the apartment building, keeping it open barely a crack. Then I peered out into the night, scanning for any movement, any signs of friends or enemies. But nothing was moving save the smoke and ash in the winter winds that were now picking up and bringing a frightful chill. As slowly and quietly as I could, I zipped up my jacket and turned the collar up to protect my neck. Then the light began to dim as a curtain of clouds descended upon the moon.

What now?
We were not yet at our rendezvous point, though as best I could tell we were getting close. To get to Ramzy, we were supposed to meet up with Tariq Baqouba, one of Ramzy’s top lieutenants.
Born in the Decapolis region of northern Jordan, Baqouba was, by all accounts, a young but battle-hardened fighter who had distinguished himself killing American Marines and Army Rangers in Iraq before turning his “talents” to the killing fields of Syria. It was his younger brother, Faisal, a former technician for Al Jazeera television, who was my e-mail contact.

Faisal’s instructions had been simple: My team and I were to meet him in the remains of the Khaled bin Walid Mosque in a neighborhood several blocks away called al-Khalidiyah. Faisal would then take us to his brother Tariq, who would take us to Jamal Ramzy. I checked my pocket watch. The rendezvous time was just twenty-three minutes away. Yet how could I continue on without Omar and Abdel?

My fears were getting the best of me. Had the fighters manning the machine-gun nests cut my friends down before they had reached safety? Had the jihadists come after them? Had they reached a “safe” building, only to stumble upon armed men inside? Mortar rounds kept exploding. The building kept shaking. I knew it wasn’t safe to stay. But I had no idea where to go, unless I headed to the mosque alone. The longer I stayed put, the more questions raced through my thoughts. What if they were injured? What if they were bleeding, dying? Should I go back for them? Of course, I had no idea which buildings they had gone to. Had they split up as I’d told them, or had they stayed together after all?

Feeling dehydrated, I grabbed the water bottle out of the side of my backpack and took a swig. Then, oddly enough, the explosions outside stopped. I had no idea why. Perhaps it was just a lull, but for a few unexpected minutes, there was near silence, broken only by the sporadic crackle of machine-gun fire in the distance . . . and by the ringing in my ears. I began to breathe normally again, but just then I heard a noise behind me. I turned quickly and saw a flash of moonlight pour through the doorway at the other end of a long hallway, though only for a moment. Someone had opened and closed
the door. Someone had entered the building. The hair on the back of my neck stood erect. My heart started racing again. Who was it? Was it one of my men? Or someone about to kill me?

I closed the door behind me all the way, careful not to make a sound. I didn’t want even the slightest ray of light to fall upon me or make me a target.

Now, however, the hallway was completely black. I was stuck. There was no way forward, and I didn’t dare go back.

And now shards of glass were crackling under someone else’s feet. Whoever it was, he was moving toward me. Slowly. Step by step. Inching his way forward.

Trying not to panic, I slowly lowered myself to my knees. Whoever was coming, if they were armed and started firing, I was determined to present as small a target as possible. Then I remembered the AK-47. It was just a few yards away, in the hands of the young boy who likely had been killed merely a few hours earlier at most. I had noticed that the magazine was still in the weapon. I had no idea if there was any ammunition left, but what choice did I have? I did not want to die. Not here. Not yet. On my hands and knees now, I felt around in the dark until I found the cold, stiff corpse. I kept feeling around until my hands came upon the gun.

The crunching of boots on broken glass was getting louder. Whoever was out there, they were getting closer. I was running out of time. Desperate, I pried the boy’s stiff fingers from the weapon and pulled it to my side.

Feeling every part of the machine gun in the dark, I tried to make sense of it. I’d never held a Kalashnikov. It wasn’t like the shotguns or rifles my grandfather had taught me to use back in Maine. Then again, how different could it really be? The key, I decided, was the safety. It was clear the weapon had one. I could feel the switch. I toggled it up and down. But in the dark I couldn’t be sure whether the safety was engaged when the lever was up, or whether it had to be
down. There was only one way to find out, of course
 
—aim, squeeze the trigger, and see what happened.

But I hesitated.
I’m a reporter, not a combatant,
I told myself.
I’m not here to kill, but to cover.
This had been my mantra in every conflict I’d ever reported on. Now, however, everything seemed different. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure of my ethics. But this was it. I had only a moment. If I didn’t shoot now, I might never have the chance. The closer he got, the more likely he was to shoot if I didn’t. I crouched down and aimed. I knew if I pulled the trigger and the gun didn’t fire, I’d still have time to flick the safety the other direction and pull the trigger again. With the element of surprise, I had the chance to live. But should I take it? What if I was wrong? What if he wasn’t alone? What if other armed men were prepared to rush into this hallway and gun me down the moment I fired? If I set down the gun, yes, I might be caught. But in that case, as a journalist, I still might be able to talk my way out. I might be able to persuade this person I was there to help them, to give them a voice to the outside world, and wasn’t that my job? If I was caught with a smoking gun in my hand, there would be no mercy. I was sure to be butchered like an animal, whether the footage wound up on YouTube or not.

I heard a rattling behind me, and the door to the street swung open. Instantly the hallway was flooded with moonlight. I pivoted hard, gun in hand, and found myself staring at two silhouettes. I was about to pull the trigger but could barely see. My eyes were desperately trying to adjust, and as they did, I found myself wondering if this was Omar and Abdel. Were they alive? Had they found me? My whole perspective started shifting. But before I could react, a burst of gunfire erupted from over my left shoulder. Stunned, I yelled out but it was too late. The two men standing in the doorway had been hit. They fell to the ground outside, screaming in agony. Horrified, and without thinking, I dropped the gun, jumped to my feet, and ran through the open door to their side. But they were not Omar or
Abdel. They weren’t anyone I knew. To the contrary, both were in uniform. They were soldiers in the Syrian army. Both held machine guns in their hands. The safeties were off. They had been about to kill me.

One of the men was writhing on the pavement, choking on his own blood. Seconds later, he went limp. The rifle dropped away. He was gone.

The other man had been shot in the face and chest. He was dying a slow, cruel death, and worst of all, he knew it. I stared down at him in the moonlight, sickened but unable to look away. He stared back at me, his eyes wide and filled with terror.

“Help me,” he groaned in Arabic.

I stood there for a moment, not knowing what to say.

“Please,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

“I’m so sorry,” I said finally.

“I don’t want to die. Please, do something.”

But I just stood there, frozen. I wanted to help. I really did. But how? I had no medical supplies with me. I wasn’t a doctor. I had no training. There was literally nothing I could do, and as soon as he understood, his fear grew all the more.

In all my years covering wars, I had seen my share of battlefield deaths. I’d seen men die in drone strikes and by Hellfire missiles. I’d seen suicide bombers and carpet bombings and sniper shootings. I had seen men die instantly and unaware. One moment they were full of bravado and testosterone, and the next they were gone.

I’d also seen men die in the hands of professionals. I’d seen medics and fellow soldiers fight valiantly to save their friends, racing against time, doing everything humanly possible to save their lives.

But I’d never seen anything like this. This man was about to leave this world and enter the next. He was begging me for help, desperately clinging to life, even as it slipped away. Then his eyes unlocked from mine. He was staring up at the sky now. He had forgotten about
me. He seemed to be able to see something I couldn’t. He was riveted on it, and it filled him with panic.

“No!”
he shrieked.
“No
 
—!”

Another deafening gunshot pierced the night sky. Then all was quiet. I turned and saw a young boy standing next to me. At least, I assumed he was a boy because of the way he was dressed. But I couldn’t actually see his face. He was wearing a black hood, and he was aiming a pistol at the soldier’s head. Smoke curled out of the barrel.

And then he turned the pistol on me.