The Uvalde Raider

by Ben H. English

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  One morning while in the midst of his growing frustrations, an old acquaintance happened to stop by. This welcomed visitor was a man in whom he put a good deal of trust in, and who was also a fervent follower of the Ayatollah. As a point of fact his comrade had been in the fight alongside him from the very beginning, from the street demonstrations to the government armory sackings to the taking over of the American Embassy.

  Not only that, he was also a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and a fellow instructor in the training of the Basij. Recently he had moved over into politics, and Yahla al-Qassam believed his old ally had great possibilities in that area. The acquaintance’s name was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and he possessed information that would solve several of Yahla’s remaining difficulties.

  During his visit, Mahmoud listened intently to the current crop of problems involved in Al-Qassam’s monumental undertaking. As a trusted member of the Sephah and a quickly rising political force supported by the ruling Mujtahids, Ahmadinejad was already aware of the plan and had given it much thought. A very bright individual with a master’s degree in civil engineering from the Iranian University of Science and Technology, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad understood instinctively how successful this operation could be. He also understood the breadth and depth of the attending difficulties requiring resolution to ensure that success.

  Qassam’s trusted friend had a suggestion. Ahmadinejad had heard of and confirmed the existence of a few old World War II era heavy bombers still operational in America, and that were in private hands. These airplanes were used for living history exhibitions and air shows, and were mainly based in the American Southwest, specifically the state of Texas.

  Furthermore, there was an organization for such aircraft enthusiasts known as the Confederate Air Force, headquartered in the very southern tip of Texas within twenty kilometers of the Mexican border. Among the airplanes still being flown were a couple of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses.

  Mahmoud laid a thick binder with yellow tab markers in front of Yahla al-Qassam. Inside was a gold mine of information concerning these aircraft, their capabilities, where they were based in this region of the United States and some background notes on their present caretakers.

  Yahla immediately grasped how several of his problems were being solved in one fell swoop. Nevertheless, the resolution of so many at once still necessarily led to other ones. Who could fly such a craft and how could they be persuaded to do so? These planes were nearing a half century in age, and the knowledge of how to operate them must be as rare as the aircraft themselves.

  Mahmoud had an answer for that, too. It came in the form of the person who had helped in collecting this information for him, and who was a walking encyclopedia on this particular type of vintage American heavy bomber. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad related how he had first met this young man while still a student at the university in Tehran, just before the return of the exiled Ayatollah.

  At first, he struck Ahmadinejad as being a bit ‘different.’ Yet he was full of religious fervency and professed loyalty for the Ayatollah, and proudly bore the description of an utterly committed Shi’a Islamist. Possessing a high intelligence, his behavior occasionally bordered on being obsessive in nature. He was never a leader but rather the gifted loner completely dedicated to his cause with little room for anything else in his life, including the people around him.

  Yet in this strange young radical Ahmadinejad saw real promise, and had taken the necessary steps to recruit him into Sephah. As Mahmoud had gotten to know this individual better, he had learned that his peculiarly geared recent recruit had one other great obsession in life: the American Boeing B-17 heavy bomber.

  The young man’s uncle had once been in charge of the converted B-17G given to the Shah by Trans World Airlines after the Second World War. As the uncle’s favorite nephew, the little boy was regaled with the stories of his flying adventures and of this magnificent airplane that served as the royal family’s official aerial transportation. Finding a mesmerized audience the uncle enjoyed reliving his past experiences in flying the four engine craft, speaking in detail as well as acting out at great length.

  This was followed by assorted learning aids being given to the boy, as the uncle began to realize just how fascinated and technically adept his nephew was. Books, models, manuals, posters, and the like soon crowded every available nook and space in the boy’s room.

  His uncle went as far as to come up with an instrument panel from a cannibalized B-17, and would quiz the boy as to what instrument did what and why. Not only that, the nephew memorized proper fuel mixtures, RPM settings, performance graphs and flight characteristics of the Boeing at different altitudes.

  The young boy soaked it all up like a sponge; he was destined to fly. That destiny reached its full realization during the harsh years of the Iran-Iraq War, a chaotic, unforgiving environment that he not only survived but managed to thrive in. Now a reputably experienced as well as exceptional combat pilot in an array of different aircraft, that same young boy was presently sitting in the pilot’s seat of The Uvalde Raider. His name was Gholam Javad.

  As he had done with the others in his handpicked strike team, Yahla al-Qassam had learned from Gholam the rudimentary things necessary as far as piloting duties for the completion of their mission. That was something a good leader did as a role model for any group. It also allowed him to better understand the difficulties associated with each task assigned and prove himself as not only the driving force in command, but as someone who was also part of the team.

  It had been deemed imperative that someone assist Gholam with flying the antique Boeing. Yahla had accepted that assignment due to its importance and steep learning curve, but did not share in the enthusiasm and almost rapturous involvement that Gholam heaped upon this infernal machine. The Sephah commander only wanted the operation completed, so that he could remove himself from this incredibly complicated and cantankerous metal beast.

  The terrorist leader reached down beside the seat for his operational checklist, consulting it yet once again after scanning the bewildering multitude of switches, levers and instruments before him. The compass heading was good, as well as the altitude and speed. Gholam was a rather strange type, but there was no denying that he was doing a very good job at flying the heavy bomber.

  Any minute now they should pick up the meandering bed of the Guadalupe River to the east. Yahla glanced over to the south, seeing in the distance the well-defined right-of way that marked the traffic lanes for Interstate 10. Once over the river, they would follow its general course to a point just short of Canyon Lake where U.S. Highway 281 ran south to San Antonio. At that juncture, they would turn to the right and follow U.S. 281 into the very northern edges of the city.

  At some three minutes out, the two Hezbollah Shi’a sitting behind him would start a pair of portable air compressors, pressuring up their respective tanks to deliver the necessary PSI. Upon reaching the required air poundage, the tandem mounted centrifugal force pumps rated at approximately 65 gallons per minute would be made ready.

  The Boeing would start a shallow descent from their current altitude of 5,000 feet as they crossed Loop 1604, picking up speed to 185 knots while banking gently east over the San Antonio International Airport. Just north of the airport, the pumps would engage and the oily droplets of the nerve agent would start their lethal decent to the unsuspecting population below.

  Qassam had wanted to come in at a higher altitude, but there was some concern about the small gasoline engines for the compressors having fuel mixture problems at such heights. Still, the two pumps would be able to project the amber tinted VX agent about 75 feet out from either side of the plane, and the turbulence from the four rotating propellers would help further distribute the substance.

  The Hezbollah leader had also taken the trouble to locate and install controlled droplet applicators, which would take the liquid stream and separate it into a more uniform mist, thus making for ev
en better dispersion. The release was timed for the middle part of the morning, after the predicted easterly wind had a better chance to pick up. Latest weather reports forecasted this breeze at about seven miles per hour, which would assist in spreading the deadly mixture not only on the land itself, but into the nearby San Antonio River. This would allow the agent to be transported by the waterway.

  Continuing south along their course they would ease back over U.S. 281 and aim for the very heart of downtown San Antonio, using the numerous tall buildings located at its center to guide upon. Once over downtown, the hijacked B-17 would fly south along Roosevelt Avenue, crossing just west of Stinson Municipal Airport. Yahla al-Qassam had calculated they would run out of agent near the intersection of Roosevelt Avenue and Loop 410. The portable gasoline engines would shut down, and the historic city of San Antonio would start to wither and die.

  With the release of the five hundred gallons of VX, the Boeing bomber would be appreciably lighter. That fact, combined with their continued slight descent would increase the airplane’s speed still further.

  After another half hour they should be landing at an old auxiliary airstrip situated roughly south of Carrizo Springs, on a cattle ranch known as the Chupadera. This remote paved strip, built during the Second World War, was about 4,000 feet long and originally constructed to handle large aircraft such as the B-17 in an emergency situation. Gholam would have no problem setting down the Flying Fortress there.

  Taking additional care to land into the wind, they would abandon the contaminated Boeing and meet up with a part of the support team that would provide transportation back into Mexico. It was about five kilometers to the Rio Grande from the airstrip and only another eight through the state of Coahuila before they would be on Carretera Federal 2, the main highway between Nuevo Laredo and Piedras Negras.

  Inside another 24 hours, all of the Hezbollah personnel involved would be out of Mexico along with their new hostages. Most would leave the country by civilian airliner while a few, tasked with the security of their captives, would make their way out on a Cuban flagged freighter.

  Meanwhile, the United States would be fighting a growing manmade catastrophe of a magnitude near unheard of in its existence. The persistence of the nerve agent could last for weeks with the cooler temperatures of fall and then winter, while the disruptions to the country’s infrastructures would continue for years to come.

  Over the next hour, the most sinister plan ever devised by any principal of modern terrorism would reach full engagement, and what occurred then would be completely irreversible. The man called Yahla al-Qassam would go down in history as the greatest practitioner of such terrorism ever, and would finally reach the important destiny for which he had been created for. ‘Allah’u Akhbar!’ Nothing could stop him now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Ezekiel Templar had been rapidly gaining on the renegade B-17, traveling better than twice the speed as the Flying Fortress was making at this altitude. He kept low to the ground and off the horizon from the Boeing, letting the mottled gray camouflage of the Messerschmitt blend in with the Hill Country landscape below.

  As he closed rapidly, Ezekiel formulated a hasty plan of attack that seemed to have the best chance for success. He would come up fast on the right side of the four-engine bomber, zooming up beside as he cut throttle and lowered flaps to match its speed. Opening the small window framed into the side of the 109’s canopy, he calculated to close within 50 yards and attempt to put rounds into the flight deck area with the folding stock AK.

  It was a plan rife with ifs and maybes, but it was the only plan handy for the circumstances he found himself in. He knew he had to stop The Uvalde Raider now, before it got any closer to the populated areas surrounding San Antonio. To do that, he figured he only had about thirty rounds in the AK and the element of surprise to get the job done.

  Each one of those rounds would have to be placed out of the danger zone where the VX was stored, or the aircraft would leak the deadly substance over the area overflown. Somehow, he had to bring the bomber down, hopefully in a sudden and uncontrollable manner. There was plenty of highly inflammable aviation gas in the wing tanks of the old bomber and that was how stocks of nerve agent were best destroyed, by incineration.

  As he came up fast from behind and below, he could make out the metal tube protrusions angling down and away from the original waist gunner positions on the Boeing. Evidently, these delivery devices were connected to the original .50 caliber machine gun mounts still emplaced in the aircraft. He reasoned that the holding tanks and other apparatus were in the bomb bay area, it was where he had seen the terrorists working the night before. Ezekiel made a big mental note to keep his rifle fire directed away from that section of the airplane.

  He was where he needed to be, on the right approach with enough air speed to surprise the bomber’s occupants. The colonel started a zoom climb, timing the diminishing distance to coincide with a chopping of the throttle while in the same instant employing the flaps on the German fighter. It was a maneuver that called for an enormous amount of finesse. Once he matched the speed of the slow-moving Boeing, the Messerschmitt would only be a few miles an hour over its stalling speed.

  The Me109 Gustav arced gracefully skyward. Ezekiel Templar made his best guess on the throttle and flaps, and cracked back the side window as the splotchy gray German fighter pulled alongside the polished aluminum clad American bomber. A blast of wind through the cockpit greeted him as he struggled to bring the AK into position. The pistol grip of the assault rifle banged hard against his left thigh; its barrel being whipped about by the hurricane force of air. The pain was sharp and intense, and Ezekiel fought against the ensuing nausea that added upon everything else occurring within the cramped confines of the Messerschmidt’s interior.

  ‘There!’ he thought to himself as he lodged the forearm of the AK into the space created by the opened slot of the side window. He rotated the safety lever to what he thought was semi-auto fire as Micah had instructed, and looked at the huge Flying Fortress that filled the view to his left. Shifting the muzzle toward the flight deck against the shrieking wind, he found himself staring into the saucer sized eyes of a startled Yahla al-Qassam. The old Air Force colonel gripped the assault rifle even tighter and pulled the trigger.

  The first indicator for Gholam Javad that things were not going well was when Al-Qassam grabbed the co-pilot’s control wheel and steered hard to the left, swearing vehemently in his native Farsi. As the Flying Fortress banked hard in that direction, he heard the sound of impacts on the side of the old bomber as if someone was banging on it with a baseball bat. He knew the sound for what it was, he had been shot at often enough by the Iraqis.

  However, Gholam’s biggest problem was not the incoming rounds, but in making the corrections needed to keep the staggering Boeing in the air. Yahla’s sudden action had upset the balance of the airplane and caused them to lose a lot of speed. He reached over and pushed all four throttles forward, while at the same time working control wheel and rudder to gently bring The Uvalde Raider back to level flight. Behind him he heard yet more cursing, this time in Arabic as the two Shi’a Lebanese bounced off the bare metal sides of the Boeing’s interior.

  “Brother! Do not do that again!” he addressed Yahla with raw authority in their native Farsi. Qassam might be the leader of this team and the golden boy of many but Gholam Javad was the commander of the Boeing while in the air, as well as those who flew along with him.

  Qassam whipped his head around and glared hard briefly at Gholam. But as a growing realization set in, the Hezbollah leader’s expression changed into a palpable chagrin. He had panicked for the briefest of moments and responded in a way that nearly brought on that one giddy mistake he so feared. If one of those containers of VX had ruptured or if Gholam had not responded as skillfully as he had…

  The shooting had ceased and he ordered one of the Shi’a Lebanese aft to check the containers and delivery equipment. Then he bega
n to peer around for the German fighter, wondering where it had gone. How had that old man managed to free himself, get that Messerschmitt in the air and track them down? The same Messerschmitt, by the way, which he had been assured by his men as being rendered inoperable?

  And why wasn’t Max Grephardt flying the fighter? What had become of Mustafa Abbas, his young champion whom he left in charge of the hostages as well as the other half of his team? What happened to the rest of his Hezbollah men left on the ground? And most importantly, who all knew of his plan now and what was being done to stop him?

  The man known as Yahla al-Qassam shook the growing list of questions from his mind, and concentrated on the here and now. Even if the captives had managed to escape, they were still some fifteen miles from the nearest town. Their vehicles were disabled and all communications going into the ranch house had been cut off. Time and Allah were still on his side.

  Looking through the windscreen of The Uvalde Raider he could plainly see the Guadalupe River below, even if he could not see Ezekiel Templar and the Messerschmitt. Moving his head and eyes all around, he wondered to himself: Where has that accursed infidel gone and what is his next move? The terrorist leader found himself wishing fervently that he had put that bullet into the old man’s head, rather than his leg.

  At that same precise moment, Ezekiel Templar was recovering from several different problems of his own. In handling the unfamiliar AK, he mistakenly rotated the safety lever to full auto. The weapon had proven nearly impossible to control in that mode, twisting and bouncing around in the cyclone-like wind. Most of his shots went wild, and he had wasted precious ammunition as well as that element of surprise.