"You can depend on it."
Todd Gilroy doubted his schemer's sincerity, but knowing who the schemer was made all the difference. Once back from Iraq he would play the tune, and Deladier would dance to the music.
Gilroy mailed a sealed letter to his lawyer marked to be opened upon his death or disappearance. Within was a second envelope addressed to Gunnery Sergeant Clicker Bell at the Sixplex ranch that described the entire operation.
Gilroy smiled at his own conceit. If anything went wrong, he wanted Bell to know that he, Todd Gilroy, had done his damnedest to see that Bell got what should have been coming to him.
Of course, nothing would go wrong, and his second copy of the letter would be his guarantee that all would go as expected. He mailed that copy addressed to Henri Deladier at the Sixplex with an explanation of his original, now hidden, that would be exposed if he was too slow in returning from Baghdad.
If Deladier had plans to simply dispose of Todd Gilroy once the hide was located, the letter would instantly alter those intentions, and Gilroy expected that he could now afford to travel both to and from Iraq in first class seating.
Chapter 13
The Iraqi Desert
September 1999
An hour earlier, an American jet fighter had buzzed them at less than one hundred feet. It had sliced in from the west, unheard and unexpected. The plane's engine thunder had shaken all of them, and Greg Maynard swore at the disappearing speck.
"Damned sky jockey. He was just goofing around, scaring the pee out of innocent desert travelers. You get his number, Clicker? I'm turning his ass in."
"Get his number? I was like you, Colonel, wondering if the world had come to an end. I'm not even sure what kind of plane it was. Damn, what a racket"
George Patton's young volunteers were less insulted. They chuckled and made flying motions with their hands. Bell wished he could remember their names, but the words were strange to his ears, and he kept forgetting the sounds. So, he called them "Hey" and "You." To get both, he merely said, "Hey, you ..." and they both paid attention.
Clicker followed the fighter's path judging its direction. "I'm glad he veered off to the south. If he was following our tracks, he could see that we are heading straight for that old radar site."
"Who cares? What can he do, land on that dirt strip and ask to see our passports?"
Clicker shrugged and signaled his men to mount up. "Best to have plausible deniability, Colonel. No way to tell how this will turn out, and we do not need a bunch of people standing up to say that they saw us in this desert heading for that airstrip."
Maynard asked, "How far away do you figure we are, Click?" He took off his cap and whipped a layer of sand from it.
"Two hours at most."
"That's how I figure it." Maynard was making another GPS check, and marking it on his map.
The global positioning device was only pocket size, but it could pinpoint within yards any position in the Northern Hemisphere. The devices had been known during the Gulf War seven years earlier, but they had been rare. Now every yachty going beyond sight of land carried a GPS locator. As they crossed the desert, Maynard had faithfully marked off his checkpoints, and the device would return him along the same course as surely as if he followed tracks.
+++
The journey had gone smoother than they could have expected.
Their departure from the Sixplex had been explained as a trip to the West Coast to bid on a fine bull being offered at auction.
Arrival in Jordan had been without incident. The Lear was berthed in a hanger well away from the airport's major activities while its silvery exterior was cleaned and polished. It was understood that the wealthy Mister Maynard might return at any time and wish to be away to his next destination. Mister Maynard's schedule, it was recognized, might be altered at any moment as business requirements developed, and the corporate pilot and co-pilot were ordered to remain available and prepared to fly on short notice.
Their Jordanian mechanic arrived on an ATV, assured his employers that both machines were in perfect running condition, full of clean and strained gasoline, and surrendered both to the flatbed truck that would transport them to George Patton's small village.
Before their departure, Clicker checked the contents of the extra gas cans—filled in expectation that the village would not have handy gas pumps, it was explained. The spare parts were properly stowed—mostly extra spark plugs and air cleaners. The desert could be deadly on both.
The Kawasaki Prairie Model 400 4x4 All Terrain Vehicles were powered by 391cc engines, and were capable of carrying anything that could be piled on. Bell had equipped them with headlight guards, winches, and rear rack extensions. The sand colored vehicles were odd looking because of the saucer-shaped fuel tanks that Bell had manufactured and faired into place, but an interested party would admit that the tanks would hold a large amount of fuel, which could be useful in a land where gas pumps were not always available.
George Patton was loving every moment. He had exclaimed over the dreary over-ocean flight as if it were his first. Each refueling stop in Europe was an exciting adventure, and his obvious pleasure in everything provided better disguise than either Bell or Maynard could have anticipated.
Patton's promised local help had been waiting, and it was difficult for Maynard to keep the older man from joining them in crossing the desert. Now Patton waited, with vast impatience Maynard was sure, for their return with the mysterious treasure only hinted about.
The villagers were told that the Americans intended to explore as tourists in the southern Jordanian desert, an area of interest to almost no one. That they departed in the evening to avoid the heat of the day was accepted as sensible and the village continued its routines with little thought of the travelers enjoying themselves on their marvelous machines.
Traveling through the night the ATVs devoured the distance, and by dawn they were deep within Iraq and moving swiftly. Unlike their three mile per hour walking pace escaping Iraq, the Kawasakis worked comfortably at fifteen to twenty miles per hour. The passing of the jet fighter had been the only unexpected development, and as its final thunder silenced, Bell moved the team ahead. He wished to be in position at the hide and thoroughly camouflaged before dark made tasks difficult.
Clicker lay on his belly studying the radar site through his 7 x 35 binoculars. Greg Maynard was alongside using his own glasses.
Bell had halted the team well before the hide site, and he and Maynard had moved cautiously forward. They now observed the blown-up radar from nearly three miles.
''Hell, Clicker, nobody's been there since we left. The place looks like an ancient ruin, maybe from the first World War."
Bell's answer was short. "Somebody's been there. You'll notice that your burnt-out airplane and the jeeps are gone."
"Probably junked them as soon as the war was over. They didn't get much."
Bell was studying the single road in. That road they now knew led to the north and a town named Rutba that had grown into a small metropolis because it lay along the Amman to Baghdad haul road. Everything to and from the radar site would use the single dirt trace, but the distance was too great to tell if the route had been recently traveled.
Clicker said "I'll walk on ahead. You bring the team forward, but keep them well behind. The idea will be that you will see me, and 'You' and 'Hey' will see you. The further we stay spread out the better I will like it. You and I can drop out of sight, but those ATVs will stick' up like flag poles. We want them always in defilade."
For the hundredth time, Greg Maynard marveled at how Bell took charge. There had been no talk or agreement on who would give orders, but as it had been the first time, Clicker Bell simply took charge, and Colonel Greg Maynard followed his orders because Bell knew a hell of a lot more about it than he did.
Maynard had been an infantry non-com in Vietnam, but Bell was specially trained in scouting. He had been Sniper One, and as far as Greg Maynard was concerned, Clicker
always would be the best of the best.
The hide was there. Wind had exposed the crude door closure of their back entrance, but the place appeared undisturbed. Maynard was hungry to get in, not only to start digging but to see again the place where they had holed-up and launched their attack on the Iraqi Scuds. So long ago, now. Almost from his youth it seemed, but still so fresh in his memory.
Clicker said, "If I were a fanatical Iraqi, and I found this place with the rifles still there and all the stuff piled around, what I would do is remove everything valuable and booby trap the entrance. Somebody might come back for what was left, and being a fanatic, I wouldn't care if I did happen to blow up the wrong people. It would be worth killing innocents for the chance of destroying another infidel or two."
"Most Iraqis aren't like that, Bell."
"It would only take one, Colonel. I'll look around before we go in."
Clicker crawled to the front of the hide's earth mound and clawed away the dirt and then the dried out cardboard covering the viewing port. He looked in and found himself staring into the lens of the left-in-place spotting scope. The M49 would have been considered valuable by the
Iraqis, and it would not have been ignored. He judged the hide was undiscovered.
Bell was still careful. He opened the hide's rear entrance as if Nazi sappers might have prepared a welcome. Once open, with the light flooding in, it was clear that the small world they had inhabited was undisturbed. Clicker moved aside and waved Maynard forward.
Greg Maynard had come prepared. He had been shooting pictures since they had started, and he had increased his photographing since they had arrived. This archeological dig would be thoroughly recorded.
Maynard crawled inside, camera strobe flashing. His exclamations came back to those outside.
"Air smells clean, Clicker. That buried Iraqi probably mummified.
"Alright! Here's the Barrett, the Kalashnikov, and the M40A1." The rifles were handed out, and Bell set them aside for thorough cleaning.
After his own quick look inside, Clicker stayed in the open. He assisted "Hey" in camouflaging the ATVs with scraps of old military netting brought along for the purpose. The vehicles were aligned in as deep a hollow as he could find, and their silhouettes were disguised by draping the nets loosely over everything.
Maynard and "You" were already digging at the earth supporting the camel bones. Clicker approved the effort. The faster they found out what was there, the quicker he could lead them out of Iraq.
Next, Bell cleaned up the Barrett. The bone dry air had preserved the rifles and the ammunition looked good. A lot of .50 caliber ammunition that still got fired was from the World War II and Korean eras, so Clicker had little doubt that his newer stuff would shoot as well as ever.
Armed, he felt better about their situation, and informed the busy Maynard that, while they still had light, he was going down to take a closer look at the radar site and the road coming in.
He scouted quickly, not mooning over the craters left by the exploding Scuds or kicking through the debris of the site. He searched for signs of recent travel but found none.
The road also appeared abandoned. The ruts were filled with blown sand, and Bell doubted it had felt wheels for many months or even years. That too was encouraging, but Clicker still wished to do the in-and-out drill and be gone.
Maynard was sitting on top of the hide when Clicker surfaced from a nearby ravine.
"Damn, Bell, you scared the hell out of me. You ought to announce your coming. Blow a trumpet or something."
Clicker kept irritation from his voice.
"We shouldn't be exposing ourselves, Colonel. There isn't a sign of life anywhere, and no one has been there for a long time, but I'd like to remind you that if Tex or someone like him was around here, we wouldn't know it until his shot hit home."
"Tex? Good God, Clicker, how would he get...." Maynard approached speechless. "We're alone, Clicker. We are here and they aren't. If there is a shield, we will get it." Maynard grumbled, but he got off the skyline and hunkered beside Clicker.
"Find anything?" Bell was curious, and secretly hopeful.
"Not yet, but we are mostly getting over-burden off the bones, so that we can dig more swiftly and be able to get our spoil out of the hide, so that we will have room to move around."
Clicker snorted, "Long sentence, Colonel. What's all this 'over-burden' and 'spoil' stuff? Were you once a coal miner or something like that?"
"I am an educated man, Bell. I talk like that." Maynard could feel the tension of the journey and the memories it raised leaving them both. Within the next day they would know if they had scored or if all of the efforts had been in vain. That discovery should bring peace to their souls, no matter which way their luck fell.
Clicker said, "I'm going to assume that we will find something. I'll drain the fuel from one of the ATV's and fill the tank on the second. That way, it'll be able to start grinding off rivets to open the empty tank without a lot of delay."
An excited call from the hide snatched their attention. "Hey" popped into view, and he clutched a handful of the tiny golden bells.
"There are many many more, Mister Maynard." The man's English was horrible, but the Americans understood and slid into the hide.
Greg Maynard got to work with his camera, and he had something to photograph. The bells lay in piles. Once they had been fastened into strings, but those cords were a thousand years disintegrated.
Bell found his heart pounding, and his lips dried. The huge number of bells proved that this really was the camel called Ushi, and the shield of the Great Khan might lie with her. The thought was a thriller. Ancient treasure! Such possibilities charged the imaginations of all peoples.
They settled down, and Bell went to work on a gas tank. The grinder was swift in eating away the aluminum rivet heads, and he slid his knife blade through the silicone sealing the tank halves. The opened tank looked big enough for a bath. Bell positioned his replacement pop rivets, riveting tool, his silicone tube, and his matching touch-up paint. He filled the Kawasaki's ordinary tank, and shifted extra gas cans.
Finally ready for whatever treasures turned up, Clicker realized that night was descending on them. They were already tired from a full day of travel, and they should rest, but time wasted could not be recovered.
Maynard would want to close up the hide and work inside all night. Bell guessed he would hold his objections for a few hours. By then the workers would be so worn down that they would readily agree to pack it in until morning.
Bell helped with the blacking out of the hide before wrapping himself in a blanket and choosing a comfortable overlook on which to doze. He listened to the chunking of the shovels against the undisturbed earth and an occasional mutter of the Jordanians as they labored. Maynard too spoke now and then, and despite their sealing of all openings, the dimmed light of his photo flash could be detected.
Clicker awoke to silence. The diggers had quit on their own, and all three had chosen to roll up within the comparative warmth of the hide. A good choice, Bell decided. Outside, the night was as cold as he remembered.
His watch said 0300, and the sky was darker than a well bottom. Bell stepped to the highest ground and studied the unseen horizon for revealing lights. Even on the American plains it was rare not to see night glow from distant farms or villages, but the Iraqi darkness was uninterrupted. Iraqi towns lacked the wattage of American civilization. In Iraq no advertising signs lit up the dark, and if there were street lights, they were dim and primitive by western standards.
Bell was more interested in the glow of campfires or the headlights of traveling vehicles. There was nothing, and that was satisfying. It was still too early for the first touches of morning light, but it would not be long.
Clicker returned to his blanket, snuggled deeply, and wished he were back in his familiar bed at the Sixplex. Perhaps he was getting too old for this sort of thing, or just as likely, he was finally smartening up and recognizing th
at it took no special skills to be uncomfortable.
Then there was Sydney. He had been holding off because of the Tex thing. Once they had the shield, or agreed that it could not easily be found, whoever was guiding Tex should lose interest. Then it would be safe to begin serious courting.
He had said as much to Sydney, who had tartly reminded him that millions of men had courted their loved ones before going off to real wars and not just to look for an old gold shield. Appropriately chastened, Clicker had promised himself that it would not be much longer.
Breakfast was hasty, and Clicker took a close look at the diggers' progress.
Maynard said, "The camel's pretty well dug out, but we haven't found anything more." There was disappointment in his voice.
"How much more will you dig?"
"I'm wondering if the weight of the gold might, over the hundreds of years, have sunk the shield deeper into the earth." Maynard scratched at his unshaven chin. "We'll go down a couple of feet just in case."
Bell nodded. "I could imagine that happening. Placer gold is found at the bottom of everything, and I knew a couple in Alaska who dug down more than one hundred feet, all by hand, to get to bedrock where the color would lay."
"They find anything?"
"Yep, but the steady laboring in the bottom of that shaft killed the husband pretty young, and it aged his wife something unbelievable. I couldn't see the worth of it."
"The lure of gold can be strong, Clicker."
"That's why we are here, isn't it, Colonel?"
"In no way. If it was just a gold pile, I would be back in the Big Horns looking over our fall hunting. It's the historical significance of this artifact that has me, Clicker."
Maynard sounded wishful. "Just imagine, a treasure older than most of the Bible. What will the languages on the shield be? They could be the great value. Why, one or more of them might be lost to history, or they might still be untranslatable, or...."
A digger hit something that went thunk.
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