PointOfHonor

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  To the west lay the twin demons Al-Hamad and Al-Harrah of the Syrian Desert—a sun blasted wasteland devoid of water and animal. So desolate is the Syrian Desert that the jackals do not hunt and the vultures do not fly. They would need food, water, and petrol before attempting to cross, and the only place to get those items was Ar-Rutbah.

  The south held some promise for Harper’s team. They would need to navigate to the east of the lake and travel over broken ground to get to the Saudi border. A mere line on paper. There were no markers or neat dotted lines in the hard sand and barren rocks. Somewhere further south lay the main pipeline across the Arabian peninsula and a road running east and west. The first town where Harper could find refuge was Ad-Duwayd. If necessary, Duri would kill everyone there to recapture the American.

  Kuwait was over four hundred kilometers to the east. A difficult journey to accomplish over mostly Iraqi territory. It would be a simple thing to alert all the militia units between here and Kuwait to stop the Americans. Harper’s best option was the Saudi route. Duri could create a wall of armored vehicles leading eastward and then drive south as fast as possible and run down the Americans. Perhaps there was still a chance to avoid the boiling death in one of Saddam’s gas chambers.

  Duri realized it had become a personal war between himself and Harper. He looked down sadly at his shattered knee. He would get the American before dawn. They would meet again under the brightening stars, and this time there would be no place to hide. He would retrieve Stillwell and present Saddam with a world class weapons’ expert. He would batter and truss his American soldiers so that they could be dragged through the streets of Baghdad. The tame CNN reporters would gleefully play the tape over and over across their vast cable and satellite networks. It would be Somalia all over again. There was no reason to believe the American President would do much more thanfeel their pain.

  He licked his lips anticipating the confrontation to come. The acrid smoke from the Data Center hung in the still desert night air. Harper was correct about a secondary site being a periodic data dump. The fail over scenario designed to ensure the survivability of the Data Center. It was supposed to prevent loss of service should a catastrophic failure occur.Fail over was one of those marvelous buzz words, but no one ever tested it for fear of failure and the implications failure held for technicians in Saddam’s Iraq. Plans certainly had been drawn up and many hours spent in writing proposals and arguing technologies, but never had an attempt been made to find out if Iraq’s secret weapons’ system network could handle the catastrophic failure of the primary site. He wondered how many irreplaceable computer technicians would be shot in the next several hours.

  The prowling E-3ASentry AWACS and JSTAR systems would observe the increase in signal traffic. The Americans always responded to increased traffic on Iraq’s radio network. Additional flights would soon sortie from air fields in Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the cursed American carriers. By midnight they would be crisscrossing Iraqi airspace taking their pictures, searching for active surface to air missile sites, and dropping the occasional bomb. Flights were always coordinated by three or more AWAC command planes operating safely behind a flying shield of F-15Eagles .

  Duri found that some of the wounded had freed themselves from their bonds. They looked dazed. Considering his own injuries, he did not feel too good himself. He waved one of the healthier ones toward him.

  The sergeant held his rifle by the receiver keeping it horizontal to the ground. He had a bandage wrapped around his thigh and it glistened with fresh blood. The sergeant did not bother to salute; he straightened his shoulders and said hoarsely, “Sir.”

  “Find one of the Jeeps and one other solider.”

  The sergeant grunted and turned away to shamble towards the camouflaged bivouac. There were three secreted around the Data Center. Five additional vehicles remained at Duri’s disposal. There was no need to deal with the injured; the relief column should arrive shortly from Karbala. Colonel Taha Duri needed to be gone before they arrived. Their job was to tend to the wounded and secure the Data Center. If he got tangled in thebureaucracy, Harper would escape and Duri would face the very permanent solution designed for Israel and America.

  Duri shrugged and reached down for the field telephone. He started making the calls to flush Harper towards the Saudi border.

  * * * *

  Nukhayb was not much of a town anymore. It had the distinction of being the first Tall Man radar station to be hit by allied aircraft on the first night of the air war. The Tall Man radar stations formed the early warning perimeter of Iraq’s air defense system. The only warning the Iraqi command had was when those very radars went dark, and bombs began to fall on parts of Baghdad. Beyond that distinction, most of the streets are unpaved. Most of the homes go dark after the sun sets. At best, the power grid provides intermittent service due to the neglected damage inflicted during the war.

  Much of Iraq had been abandoned by the Baghdad government. Those living in the periphery survived as they had for centuries. In many places, running water was replaced with a series of earthen wells. Electrical lights were basically useless fixtures, and ancient oil lamps filled the gap. The dazzling Presidential palaces and five star hotels found in the capitol were nothing more than rumors on the periphery.

  Night replaced day with a deep purple, and the Milky Way band was clearly stretching across the night sky. The billions of stars provided enough light for Hayes to drive the Jeep using their only surviving pair of night vision goggles. They rolled quietly down the streets finding the occasional dog examining them from folded paws or a darting cat in search of dinner.

  The residents were bored with khaki colored vehicles and drab men toting automatic weapons. It was a dusty town at the edge of the real desert—a last outpost somewhat reminiscent of civilization with a mix of nineteenth- and twentieth-century technology. These days only nineteenth-century technology worked.

  Harper tapped Hayes on the shoulder and pointed to a truck parked next to a darkened barracks. Hayes slowed the Jeep down as Anderson and Harper dismounted holding their weapons. Stillwell simply stared straight ahead. Hayes had pumped him full of Valium once they cleared the Data Center. It was better to have a walking zombie than someone who might start screaming.

  Anderson slid up to the barracks door. Harper slung the Mossberg over his shoulder and produced the silenced Browning. He flipped the safety down and nodded to Anderson. The large man tapped with the back of his fist on the wooden door. They both heard someone grunt from inside the barracks.

  The door pulled open and Harper stuck the Browning in the soldier’s face. An oil lamp illuminated the room. The electricity was reserved for the radio. The Browning seemed more menacing with a thick sausage sized-silencer hanging off the end of the barrel. The soldier spread his hands wide and backed into the barracks. Harper gave him a shove and said quickly in Arabic, “Keys.”

  Anderson slid into the barracks behind Harper. He quietly closed the door behind him and found a second man snoring away on a cot next to the radio. His eyes snapped open when the cold muzzle from the M-16 jiggled the fatty tissue around his neck.

  The soldier examining the Browning managed to point to the board where the keys were nicely tagged. Harper spun his man against the wall, finding several pair of handcuffs hanging next to the keys. He turned his man around and cuffed him from behind and through the back arms of a chair. It certainly would not hold them for long, but long enough to get clear. Harper was tired of killing.

  Anderson trussed his Iraqi and tossed him into a closet. The radio was of marginal value to Harper. All Allied communication was transmitted on encrypted and secure networks. The chances that someone who knew about their mission might be listening were remote.

  “Captain, wreck that thing.”

  Anderson took his combat knife in hand. Sixty seconds later a mass of sliced and shredded cables lay on the floor beneath the radio transmitter. Harper fired a magazine’s worth of 9mm rounds in
to the case before tapping his Iraqi with an uppercut to the chin and “lights out.” Harper saw a torch and an area map on the wall. He grabbed both on the way out the door.

  Hayes caught the keys to the truck. He had moved Burns and Kincaid to the bed of the truck. The rest of their gear and Stillwell kept company with the dead Marines. Anderson climbed into the rear next to his Barrett sniper rifle. Harper climbed in the cab next to Hayes.

  Less than five minutes passed as the truck rolled out of Nukhayb and headed east towards Kuwait. Harper hunched over the map and Hayes drove into the night. The entire reason for the mission sat in a canvas bag on the floor between Harper’s feet. Harper needed a plan, and the only ones he came up with were bad.

  * * * *

  Dylan Scott handed Jonas a spare pair of night vision goggles. “It’s much better than using a spotlight. Doesn’t give the bad guys such an obvious target if they’re a mind to try their shiny new rifles.”

  Jonas took the pair and slipped them on. The world turned to multi-shaded green fuzziness. They were twenty klicks from the locator point. The insistent dot had remained stationary. Jonas was beginning to lose heart and considered the dreadful possibility that Harper was dead.

  Dylan Scott said quite suddenly, “He’s not dead, lad.”

  Jonas cocked an eyebrow at his pilot. “You think not?”

  “We are talking about Jim Harper, aren’t we?” chuckled Dylan Scott.

  “Yes.”

  “Harper’s not dead. He called for help. That’s what the locator beacon is for—correct?”

  “Yeah,” murmured Jonas dejectedly.

  “Things didn’t go so good did they? Someone pulled your bones didn’t they?”

  Jonas nodded agreement. They were seventeen klicks away. Dylan pulled the chopper from the headlong plunge towards their target and engaged the silent rotor. “Just a little extra I had added when I specified drop tanks and the chain gun. We’re going silent. You see, we may not be armored, but we can be stealthy.”

  Jonas sighed. “I fear he’s dead. The locator hasn’t moved since it went off.”

  Dylan shook his head. “Has it even occurred to you that the Iraqis might be capable of tracking the same signal? Maybe he used it to ambush somebody. Maybe he used it because he truly needed help. We won’t know for a few more minutes.”

  Jonas considered his words. “There’s no way the Iraqis could track the signal.”

  Dylan held up his hand cutting Jonas off. “There’s no way. Oh, I’ve heard that so many times. We all think these ragheads are stupid. They’re not, you know, and the worst thing a warrior can do is underestimate his opponent.

  “We were told finding those SCUD missile launchers would be a snap. We found some of them—those that were really launchers, but we missed the trucks with hydraulic lifts, and grain silos titled sideways, and concrete culverts pointed in funny directions. We never thought our good friend and ally would turn into the evil monster he always was.

  “As long as Saddam was killing Iranians, you Americans turned a blind eye to the Kurds getting slaughtered and the nuclear weapons development. You forgot Saddam was more of a Soviet client than a tame Western dictator. We underestimated the threat, and then woke up one morning to find the fourth largest land army in the world was poised to roll over the Saudi Kingdom and lock up close to half of the world’s known oil reserves. That wasn’t supposed to happen either. So don’t tell me they can’t track your signal.”

  Dylan Scott spoke with the authority of one who had been on the sharp end of the war. An alphabet soup’s worth of Special Forces teams had penetrated Iraq during the Gulf War. They prowled throughout the entire country with the laser painting targeting devices, satellite phones, and a general, mischief-making bag of tricks.

  Not every bridge collapsed because aTornado orIntruder dropped enough bombs. They certainly did drop bombs, but a great deal of that ordinance was directed by the hearty souls dug into the desert buried in their steel coffins. Satellites did not always work, especially when the weather failed to cooperate and harsh storms swept over theater operations.

  Targeting dozens of Saddam’s underground bunkers took place because a man with a rifle was close enough to laze the correct airshaft. Launch on warning occurred many times because a soldier with a gun was close enough to phone home. Dylan still believed it was the wrong decision to stop when they did. Baghdad was naked before the Allied Army, and Saddam would eventually have to surface. Instead, they had settled for a stalemate as they had in Korea and Europe at the end of Hitler’s war.

  The carnage suddenly swept into focus. Dylan tapped Jonas’ arm pointing at the wrecked helicopter. “Looks like aSea King .”

  Jonas peered out the windscreen. The still warm bodies quivered like ghosts in their NVG vision. Two more wrecked helicopters came into view. After the thirdSea King , Jonas spotted the HMMWVs laying burned and broken on their backs. He tapped Dylan’s arm and pointed.

  “Bad news, that,” muttered the SAS man.

  “Those were Harper’s vehicles!” shouted Jonas. “Can you pull closer?”

  Dylan pulled the Puma to a mere ten feet off the deck. The wreckage was twisted and burned, but the lack of bodies struck both men as odd. Elsewhere there were bodies on the ground. Some shapes still moved in a drunken way.

  “If they were toast, we should see them,” said Jonas, explaining the obvious to the older man.

  Dylan nodded. Hope is a slender reed. It takes faith to keep hope alive. “They’re not here.”

  Dylan swung the helicopter around and flew through the smoke cloud hovering above the Data Center. “What was that?” snapped Jonas.

  “Smoke—smells like some plastic melted down.” He pushed the throttle towards the wadi and said, “Your locator signal must be down there.”

  Jonas followed the outstretched hand and saw nothing. He found the two dead Iraqi soldiers after a couple of seconds.

  “It looks like war took place here.”

  “Right you are,” replied Dylan Scott.

  They flew across the quarry. Jonas recognized the land’s contours from the many satellite and U-2 photographs taken. The both saw the column of lights plodding southward from the north on a road that was little better than a goat track.

  “Company,” said Jonas.

  “Fresh troops for a battle that’s over,” observed Dylan. “He’s not here, young Jonas. He’s left.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know Harper. I know how he thinks.” They spun back over the triage finding several men milling about. “He left the wounded alive. Putting someone out of the fight was enough for Harper, unless it became personal that is. If it ever became personal, then Harper took no prisoners.” He pointed to the wrecked HMMWVs.

  “His transport is smashed, and probably most of his supplies. That means he’s low or out of just about everything he needs to survive—ammo, food, water, medicine and petrol. Not good news.”

  Dylan held thePuma steady above the nearest wreckedSea King. “So what would he do?”

  “Finish his mission and get out. Obviously, someone has flattened the bad guys. And just as obvious, the plan didn’t quite follow the script. Otherwise, the HMMWVs wouldn’t be smashed. From the looks of this, he’s probably got wounded or dead with him. He’s running.”

  Jonas eyed the truck column approaching from the north. They would be there in less than fifteen minutes. Dylan pulled the helicopter away from the carnage below.

  “He’s afraid to use the other locator beacon isn’t he?”

  Dylan nodded. “That’d be my guess. He’s been burned once. I doubt he can afford to burned twice.”

  “So where would he run?”

  Dylan thought for moment. “I’d run south as fast as I could. Still, from here that’s a long run. He’d need transport and probably medical supplies. He’ll be moving fast.”

  “So we head south.”

  “It’s not that easy,” corrected Dylan.

&nb
sp; “Oh?”

  “There are three wrecked helicopters down there, and a bunch of casualties. Harper isn’t going to trust very much. He has a couple of routes across the border. Most of those routes are more lines on a map than any recognizable landmark.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “We’re going to need help. Iraqi signal traffic might tell us something. But it’s time for you to concoct some tale and get the good guys into the fight.” He tossed a satellite phone into Jonas’s lap.

  “You’re sure about him going south?”

  “Closest to your own lines and this isn’t the movies. Overland treks through hostile territory make for good stories, but there’s enough drama just getting home sometimes.”

  Jonas flipped open the laptop and punched up a list of phone numbers. Perhaps asking Admiral Trevor Barnes to assist in securing the Saudi border was enough of a deviation from his original orders to justify a pair ofHornets .

  Jonas resented being cut off from resources he had been promised. He suspected Harper downright hated the idea.

  PART 3

  Blackest of the Black

  "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”

  Isaiah 5:20

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Washington, D.C., Pentagon D-Ring

  Monday, November 17, 1997

  1:00 P.M. EST

  General George Carnady examined the photographs, the printouts, and the Q files onhis people. Everything Louis pulled out of his briefcase was classified above secret. For a foreign agent to have such information in his possession was a critical problem. For the information to be current, as to include a briefing he had attended on Saturday, was catastrophic.

  “Where did this come from again?”

  Louis leaned forward in his chair. “Did you see the news last night about the FBI raid in Virginia?”

  “Hard to miss it.”

  “Came off of a hard disk they found in the basement,” explained Louis.