The security office was in complete bedlam. Men were rushing around shouting and yelling, some in complete, very unsoldierlike panic. Some of them were hurriedly putting on gas masks. But it didn’t seem as if they were under attack. “What’s happening?” Patrick asked. “What’s wrong? Does anyone speak English?” Everyone was ignoring him. Patrick was able to find his way through a maze of corridors and up one flight of stairs and finally emerge outside ...

. .. where he found several dozen dead Egyptian soldiers, simply lying in the road. All of them had lost a significant amount of blood through their mouths and nostrils and in some cases through their ears and eye sockets.

Patrick went back inside the security building. There, at a reception desk, a pregnant female security officer was frantically dialing a telephone. Her hands were trembling so bad, she couldn’t punch the buttons. “Can you help me?” Patrick asked her. “Do you speak English?” She looked at him, and she seemed to understand what he was saying, but she kept trying to dial the telephone. Once she did correctly dial, she cried out in frustration as she reached a busy number or one that didn’t answer. “You speak English, don’t you?” he asked.

“Yes,” the officer replied. “Please stand away from the door and do not panic. Do not. ..” And then she wiped a rivulet of blood from her eyes, and she started to bawl.

“It’s all right,” Patrick said. He didn’t know what else to say. He was standing in the lobby in long underwear, barefoot, with his hands cuffed behind his back, unable to do anything. “Just relax.”

“I cannot find my husband,” she sobbed. “I do not know what is happening.”

“It looks like the building is being evacuated,” Patrick said. “Why don’t you report to the base hospital? Your husband will find you there.” The woman nodded, got out of her chair, then noticed Patrick was handcuffed. She went back to her desk with a handcuff key and released him. “Shukran gazilan,” Patrick said. “Do you need me to drive you to the hospital?” She seemed to have trouble understanding him. He made a steering motion with his hands. “Mustashfa?” Patrick asked, dredging up as many Arabic words as he could. “El is'aef? Doktor? Haelan. ”

The woman nodded, then retrieved a desert camouflage jacket someone had left on a coat hook and a set of keys from a wall keyholder. Patrick went over to open the door for her ...

... and that’s when he noticed the trail of blood coming from between her legs. The woman took Patrick’s hand, nodded her thanks . . . and then her eyes rolled up into the back of her head, and she slumped to the floor, dead.