by Neil Russell
Eddie and Julien were running a hundred yards to our starboard side and angling away. The French skipper had to make a decision, and he stuck with Truman and me. I did all the jukes I could and still remain upright, but the cruiser was still there with his siren dialed up to ear-split. We were roughly even with the coastline where I’d intended to put in, but that was out of the question with this asshole on me.
“He has a .50 cal,” Truman yelled in my ear, “and there’s a guy racking it.”
There’s such a thing as too much information. I was running flat out, and the wind was kicking up five-foot swells, which meant we were only one off-center smack from cap-sizing, so hearing that a stream of roll-of-nickel-sized slugs might be on the way wasn’t data I could use. Suddenly, we hit an oversized wave head-on, and the little Aquascan nose-dived into the trough, bringing us almost to a full stop. The machine gun opened up at exactly the same instant, and I saw the tracers pass overhead. If we’d still been running at the speed we had been a moment earlier, we’d have been hamburger. I guess French for warning shots is “Eat this, motherfucker.”
We had about ten seconds before even a blind gunner found the range. I jerked the rudder hard left for a two-count then jammed the throttles all the way forward and wedged the equipment seabag against them. The searchlights momentarily lost us, and the oncoming swells began to beat our bow, lifting it skyward then smashing it down at unnatural angles. One or two more times, and we’d be upside down and dead.
Over the siren, the engines, the wind and the pounding waves, I heard Truman yell, “Are you fucking crazy!!!”
I slipped the second seabag containing my personal effects over my shoulder, turned, took a step and wrapped my passenger in a tackle that took us both over the side. I tried to hit on my back, and almost got there. I saw the wake of the Aquascan go by and felt my legs hit its edge, flipping them over my head.
I was underwater when the cruiser went directly over us, and after being mix-mastered by the twin screws, I surfaced. Truman was ten yards away, choking out seawater but seemingly none the worse for wear. I heard the cruiser’s engines change, and I saw it half a mile beyond come into a hard turn. I grabbed Truman and pointed him toward shore, wondering how much I had left.
We missed the outlaw airstrip on the first pass, then doubled back and saw the Cirrus’s tail sticking over some low brush. Truman and I were both a little chewed up from the scrub, but our clothes had dried considerably. When he saw the plane, Truman started grinning. “Goddamn, whoever you are, you thought of everything.”
I ignored him and paced off the minimum distance I needed to get airborne. Then I took a flare out of my seabag, lit it and dropped it in the grass. There wasn’t much leeway before we’d slam into a copse of pines, and I made a mental note not to try to cheat an extra ten yards.
When I got back to the plane, Truman was standing beside the pilot’s door. “I assume you’ve got a set of keys for this mother,” he said.
“I do, but you’re not driving.”
Not getting it, he looked at me with that special kind of disdain pilots and surgeons reserve for mortals. “Apparently, you don’t know I’m as good a pilot as there is—anywhere.”
I looked at him and smiled. “Oh, I know who you are, Truman. But on this run, you’re just freight.”
While he puzzled that out, I hit him. It wasn’t the best punch I’ve ever thrown, but it was the best since my father and I cleared out the Dragoon Bar in Belfast. I caught him on the button, and he went down, back of the head first. He wasn’t completely out, so I bent over him and said, “From Kim.” I saw his eyes start to focus and my words begin to penetrate. Then I hit him again and felt his teeth give. “From Archer.” He missed the second dedication, but it didn’t matter.
Lying behind me in the Cirrus, Truman York looked like a terrorist on his way to Guantánamo. I’d put a pillowcase over his head and run a loose line of tape around his neck, giving him some ventilation. A considerable amount of blood had seeped through the makeshift hood, but that came under the heading of it couldn’t be enough.
I had also taped his wrists to his thighs and his ankles to each other. Buckled into the backseat on his right side, he was undoubtedly uncomfortable, but so far, quiet. That his daughter had once lain in an almost identical position was an irony not lost on me, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to this dirtbag again for any reason.
From time to time, I checked to make sure the hood was expanding and contracting, and so far, he didn’t seem to be fighting for breath. But frankly, if he had been, tough shit. I think he sensed that was my attitude, so he reached back into his pilot’s training and avoided hyperventilating.
I held steady at 4,800 feet, high enough to be on everybody’s radar and not be perceived as a threat, but low enough to have plenty of oxygen. We’d refueled once, and before putting down, I’d thrown a blanket over my passenger. He’d flopped around a bit, but if the grimy guy handling the pump noticed, he didn’t say anything. He’d looked at my bandaged hands, then at the hundred-dollar bill I handed him, and evidently decided it was none of his business.
We’d been in and out of rain and wind the whole way, but the autopilot had kept us dead on course. Now as we entered the last leg, I suddenly noticed how stiff and tired I was, and I had to fight off the urge to fall asleep.
Fifteen minutes later, a voice came up in my headset. It was American with a little Alabama thrown in. “FRANCES, BAKER, BAKER, TANGO, ZEBRA…Come in, please.”
“This is F-BBTZ. Go ahead.”
“You are flying into restricted airspace. Authorization to enter is denied. Repeat, authorization denied. Do you copy?”
“Affirmative. Please ask your intelligence officer to come to the tower.”
The voice got more aggressive. “If you are experiencing an emergency, please declare its nature. Otherwise, you must turn around. Repeat, turn around, now. Intercept has commenced.”
“Listen, son, before we ratchet this up any further, let’s agree your balls are bigger than mine and so are your guns. Now, call your intelligence officer and tell him Blue Jungle requests a runway assignment. Got that? Blue Jungle requests an assignment.”
Military pilots and crew, clandestine officers and special operators are issued authenticator codes for emergencies. If you’re on the run in hostile territory, it’s how a search-and-rescue team knows you are who you say you are and not the enemy sucking them into a trap. And if you’re captured, you try to find ways to get your code out so people know you’re alive.
Some of the Vietnam MIAs actually cut their authenticators into hillsides and rice paddies, and our satellites photographed them. But McCain and Kerry and the rest of their goddamn investigating committee decided that the Defense Department’s analysts were full of shit and left our bravest to the tender mercies of Hanoi’s gulag. Some of them are probably still there. I often wonder what they must be thinking. I hope one day they get a chance to tell the John Boys—personally.
Originally, authenticators were nonsensical combinations of letters and numbers. Then somebody figured out that most people can’t remember their old zip code a month after they move, and they switched to words. Since Delta operators are always subject to recall, our codes are supposed to be “hot” until we go to the big shooting house in the sky. They’re also supposed to act as an unquestioned introduction anywhere in the world. I was about to find out.
I looked over the seat. “If we hit the drink, Tru, try not to float facedown.”
A pair of F-16s showed up a few minutes later and streaked by like a couple of kids on skateboards buzzing a senior citizen. I switched off the autopilot and rode the turbulence by hand. It wasn’t necessary, but when they pulled alongside, I wanted to look like I was doing something.
Shortly, they bracketed the Cirrus and were close enough to read the pilot’s names under their canopies. Captain Brubaker was on my left; Lieutenant Montgomery to the right. I waved, and got a wing waggle from Montgomer
y. Brubaker apparently didn’t like me. Then my headset got busy again.
“Blue Jungle, this is Bulldog One. We’re going to ride with you while they sort this out downstairs. Copy?”
“Copy.”
“So here’s the drill. On my mark, we’re going to climb to seven thousand and make a one-hundred degree turn to the west.”
“Negative.”
“I don’t think you understand.”
“Look, Captain, I’ve had a rough couple of days, and I’m dead fucking tired. You want to put one between my eyes, be my guest. Otherwise—”
I was interrupted by the tower. “Blue Jungle, this is Major Borden. G-2.”
“Afternoon, Major, sorry to be such a pain in the ass.”
“No problem, Sergeant. What can we do for you?”
Well, at least he knew who I was. “First thing would be to ask the Bulldogs here to back off a thousand yards. I’m sure they’re used to flying this close, but I’m not.”
The major gave the command, and the F-16s dropped out of my line of sight.
“Thanks, how’s the weather down there?”
“A little overcast, but nothing significant. Five miles visibility.”
“Good, I’m pretty lousy on instruments too. You got a runway I can drop onto so we can chat?”
“It’d be nice to have a mission name or an authorizing officer.”
“How about Marlon Hood?”
Silence, then, “Use One-Four Right. See you in a few minutes.”
“Major?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to need a full set of shackles and a car. Nothing military.”
“And just this morning I was saying nothing ever happens around here.”
The road northeast out of Incirlik had turned hot, flat and empty. The red Chrysler with the super-tinted windows was Major Borden’s personal car. He’d bought it over the Internet from a dealer in Dallas and had it shipped out in a C-5. He said the air force had dinged him two grand for handling, but now he had the best air-conditioning in the country, and it was worth every penny. Looking at the temperature gauge and seeing 121, I agreed.
Truman had made some commotion during the switch-over from tape to shackles, but when you’re wearing a hood, it’s hard to get a bead on your opponent, and I clocked him again. Now he rode alongside me, alternately grunting and calling me a motherfucker. The pillowcase was dripping blood now, so the last punch had either smashed his nose, or he’d bitten his tongue. I didn’t bother to check which.
I hadn’t told him where he was, but he knew. After you’ve lived abroad for a while, you realize that every place has its own unique smell. Southern Turkey’s verdant green, salt wind, even the sun, all carried their portion of the region’s olfactory identity. The rest was borne by the people themselves: baking bread, livestock, spices, decaying fish, blue exhaust and rivers of sweat. All giving dimension to a thriving democracy.
But Truman York wasn’t interested in travel brochures, and neither was I.
Ilker Koca was no longer mayor of Tasar, but a kid named Farouk in white cotton shorts, a Cowboys T-shirt and a tattered fisherman’s cap offered to lead me to him for twenty bucks. I followed the Vespa east for an hour and eventually into a dusty, sprawling town where camels and donkeys stood alongside big Mercedes. Here, Farouk had said, Ilker ruled over the extended Koca family.
A hodgepodge of two-story, vaguely European-style homes was set amid hundreds of tents, some small and worn, others large and ornate, and I struggled to keep sight of the Vespa as Farouk zigged and zagged through the impossibly narrow lanes, scattering dogs, goats and chickens. Once or twice I brushed against something I’m sure I wasn’t sup posed to, and I worried some curious citizen would wander out and I wouldn’t see him until it was too late.
We finally stopped at the entrance to a majestic, bright crimson tent accented by woven gold. In the shade of the entrance’s portico, several veiled women knelt on rugs working at something. I left the car running and got out. As I approached, I saw the women were sorting silver beads of all manner of design. None of them looked up, and my guide frantically motioned for me to go back to the car.
I leaned on the hot door while Farouk took off his fisherman’s cap and entered the tent. I glanced at Truman, who was straining against his seat belt, as if by getting his head closer to the windshield he might be able to see through the cotton cloth.
Suddenly, there was loud shouting inside the tent, and the women scattered. A few moments later, a bearded man in his thirties wearing traditional tribal dress came out. He had Farouk by the neck with one hand and was brandishing a dagger in the other. The kid started struggling even harder, but the man tightened his grip.
He looked at me. “You, why do you come to this place?” he called out.
“I have business with Ilker Koca,” I answered.
“I am Mehmet Koca, his son,” he said. “Any business you have with my father, you have with me. But first, you will watch while this young fool has an eye taken for bringing a stranger to our village.”
I looked at Farouk. The terror on his face told me it wasn’t an empty threat.
“I forced him to do it,” I said.
This seemed to take Mehmet off-guard. “How could you force him?” he said angrily. “He could have ridden away at any time.”
“I told him that my business with Ilker Koca was of such importance that if he did not take me, someone would slit his throat for his negligence.”
Mehmet looked at me for a moment, then laughed loud and long. “I do not believe you, but you are clever and quick.” He pushed Farouk away, and the boy stumbled to his Vespa and was gone in a heartbeat. “Come inside out of the heat,” Mehmet said. Then, for the first time, he looked at the idling car. “Is there someone else?”
“Yes, but he’ll be fine,” I said. He’s very good at waiting.”
Given the blast furnace outside, the comfort of the tent was surprising and welcome. I removed my shoes and followed Mehmet onto the raised platform that constituted the main living area. Ringed by a ground-level walkway, it was roughly thirty by fifty feet and carpeted with a checkerboard of Middle Eastern rugs overlaid with animal skins.
A dozen squat dining tables with three-foot-round hammered metal tops dotted the room, and each of the elaborately carved support posts running down the center of the tent had a shallow oil bowl hanging from it to provide light. Along three sides of the far end of the platform was a long wicker sofa covered with crimson, green and gold cushions, and there, a group of bearded older men sat, talking among themselves.
Mehmet turned to me. All pretense of menace was gone, replaced by an amused look. “So, what is this important and deadly business, my friend?”
“I don’t wish to offend you, but it is business for your father only. If he wishes to include you, I have no objection, but that must be his choice.”
He started to say something, but I stopped him. “It is about the past, and it concerns your sister.”
I watched his face change. After a moment, he turned and walked toward the old men. They spoke quietly, then Mehmet gestured for me to join them.
Ilker Koca had probably never been a large man, but now he was shrunken almost into his skin. His naturally dark complexion was a deep gray, and the whites of his eyes were yellow. Liver cancer, I guessed. Perhaps kidney failure setting in.
When he spoke, it was in a rasp, and he didn’t waste words. “You have brought me something?”
“Truman York.”
If he was surprised, he didn’t show it.
“And the second man? The base commander?”
“He will not be coming.”
Ilker Koca looked deeply into my eyes. “In good time,” he said. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“You are doing it. My sympathies for what happened to your daughter.”
When I got back to the Chrysler, they had already taken Truman away. I fingered the key to the shackles and decided they d
idn’t need it.
I wheeled the big machine around and headed toward Incirlik. A mile out of the village, I stopped and got out. I threw the key as far as I could. When I got back in the car, I felt a lot lighter. I hoped Major Borden had a bed I could fall into.
44
Grandfathers and Ashes
It was a perfect autumn day in London. The wind whipped red and gold leaves across the Stansted Airport runway like welcoming confetti and pushed banks of clouds about the sky so the sun could alternately tease the landscape with the last remnants of the season gone, then plunge it into a preview of the coming months of gray.
Mallory had been staring out the window. “My grandfather spent his entire life soldiering for the Empire, yet every letter he wrote home opened with his memories of this lovely, gentle land. And each time I see it after an absence, I realize it is a stamp upon my soul I shall never lose, nor wish to.”
Archer was seated on the opposite side of the cabin, and she had been quiet since we’d crossed into British airspace. “I’ve always flown into Heathrow or Gatwick. This is…how can I say it…more Englandy.”
“I think you have a future in travel posters,” I said. But she was right. The first great city after the Fall of Rome is making great strides at devolving into another neon-encrusted theme jungle engorged with chain hotels, logoed boutiques and Disney musicals. In my formerly marvelously quirky homeland, where unique was as ingrained in the national character as understatement, one can now order the exact same overdressed dish while sitting in exactly the same bilious décor as in a dozen other “world-class cities.” Meaning that if you happen to drain an extra martini or two, it is entirely possible to forget which language to use when you stumble outside to hail a cab. One can only marvel at the advancement.
Some hard-core traditionalists chart the beginning of the end of British civilization to the day Harrods opened a pizzeria. I’m inclined to go with the razing of my favorite drinking establishment, The Four Swords—in the business of quenching thirsts since 1744—to make room for a day spa called U! U! U! The Philistines have clearly won, so “more Englandy,” anywhere, is to be applauded.