“North?”
Will nodded.
“The war’s over, Will.”
“Not for us.”
“You’re going to fly whatever this mission is yourself?”
“No choice. My two SOLL pilots are in critical condition.”
Will quickly shared his deep worries over Rice and Collinwood, and the inbound C-130 trying to beat the sandstorm to the base.
Doug nodded. “That sandstorm was beneath us. It can’t be more than an hour away. You could see it even in the moonlight.”
Will looked at his watch again; it was 8:14. A small twinge of panic roiled his stomach, and his mind focused on that, almost shutting out Doug’s next statement. “What?”
“I said I’m going. Leave Tilden here. He’s not AR qualified, and I am. Noncurrent, but qualified.”
Will smiled and shook his head. “No … nothing doing, Harris. We’re both too old for this sort of thing, but I have no choice, and all I need is a copilot.”
“Yeah, bucko, but—”
“Bucko?”
“Yeah,” he was chuckling, “would you prefer ‘meathead’?”
“Bucko? No one uses ‘bucko’ anymore.”
“Look, Will, cut the crap.” Will was doing his best to look incredulous. “You need a copilot ornery enough to take the airplane away from you if you start screwing things up. We’re both full bulls now and inherently intimidating. These young troops may have had aircrew coordination training, but in most cases they’ll sit on their hands and watch respectfully while we fly them into the side of a mountain. I don’t know what this mission is, but it sounds demanding, and you need my help. That’s that.”
Will was still shaking his head. “Bucko?”
“What do you say?”
Will sighed. “Doug, you’re a civilian. You’ve got a life.”
“I’m active duty at the moment, and this is my life.” Will turned away slightly to think, and Doug repositioned himself in his field of view.
“Think, Will. You’ll intimidate the hell out of that young captain. I’ve been running roughshod over him since we left Torrejon yesterday, without trying.” He suppressed a laugh as he gestured back toward the ALCE, remembering an incident at the visiting officers’ quarters. “Hell, he … he even came to my VOQ room when we were alerted and tried to carry my bags to the crew bus, for crying out loud.”
Will raised the palm of his hand to stop the onslaught of arguments, and Doug ignored him.
“Hey, guy, whatever it is we’re supposed to do, it’s in a good old 141 and we own the skies over Iraq, if that’s where we’re going. And … and … it’ll be the old Westerman-Harris team on deck again. What do you say?”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay, dammit. I don’t have time to argue.”
Doug nodded. “Okay.” They both fell silent, until Doug broke the moment.
“So where are we going?”
“Come on.” Will gestured and wheeled, with Doug following, as they returned to Tilden and his crew. Tilden would stay behind to ramrod the C-130 evacuation of Rice and Collinwood, but his crew would go with Harris and Westerman. Directions were given, bags moved, and the enlisted crew members dispatched back to the aircraft at high speed.
“One more thing.” Will had already briefed Ronson in the ALCE box. They were back outside.
“Yeah?”
“There’s someone you’d better meet. He’ll be going with us, but you may have to restrain me from booting the bastard out of the plane on the return leg. He’s the cause of this whole thing in more ways than one.” Will, who stood six-foot-two with long, powerful legs, put on a burst of speed as he headed into the tent city, leaving the five-foot-eight Doug Harris scrambling to keep up.
“Doug, what time are you showing?”
Doug fumbled for the light button on his digital watch as he half-trotted to stay up with Will. “Twenty past the hour. Which hour I’m not sure.”
“I am. We gotta be in the airplane, ready for engine start, in fifteen minutes.”
Dr. Shakir Abbas sat on the side of the U.S government–issue cot in the small, portable accordion-fold building, and listened to the sounds of airplanes coming and going—sirens, cars, engines, and other unexplained noises in the night. He had no idea when the Delta Force commander would come for him. He had spent hours briefing them on the layout of the lab, and who would do what once they reached it. In effect, he would be in the lead—with a gun at his back.
Once again he looked at his watch, reading a local time of 8:20 P.M. He had never expected to see the watch again, assuming the Saudi guards who took it when he came over the border had no intention of returning it. It was a Seiko he’d bought in London in 1988, a gold digital calculator watch with memory capacity for fifty addresses or numbers, and it had become part of his memory—a vital part. In fact, he had trusted it too much.
In the cell at Badanah he had sat in a panic, trying hard to remember all the information he had stored in the fifty tiny electronic pigeonholes of the watch’s silicon chip. The watch, he figured, was long gone. But the numbers he desperately needed were in his head—somewhere. It was amazing how many he could recall when he really tried, but two of the most vital numbers had eluded him. For hours he had tried, almost seeing them—almost able to read them in his mind’s eye. But each time he had attempted to mentally sharpen the focus, the numbers had evaporated like a heat mirage in the noonday desert.
And then the Americans had come like a breeze of cool air, and the Saudi officer who had appeared to have tossed his note aside—but hadn’t, Allah be praised—suddenly handed back his watch! How poor was his opinion of human nature to have assumed otherwise.
Little victories, little defeats. He had oscillated from confidence and purpose to the depths of despair and back a dozen times in the past few hours while waiting, waiting, waiting. Time was slipping away, and if these bright-eyed, confident, sturdy westerners he had always admired didn’t—what was the phrase?—“get their act together” very rapidly, the canisters would be moved, and the consequences would shake the planet.
He had never for a moment thought Saddam could be a Hitler. He thought he understood Saddam. Butcher, bully, master manipulator, and demagogue—but not a madman like Hitler. While studying one weekend in the library at Oxford, during his baccalaureate years, when he had been absorbing everything western, he had run across the newly discovered plans of the Third Reich for the British people. The incredible brutality of the postwar blueprint was beyond the comprehension of a sane mind: all British men would be exterminated; all British females would be enslaved, many for the casual sexual use of German males; all male children would be slaughtered; and all British institutions and museums would be not only dismantled but eradicated, as if there never had been a Britain. Shakir had been shaken to the depths of his being that such a monster existed. Surely Saddam could never approximate such evil.
And yet, with Shakir’s self-indulgent help, that was exactly what he had decided to do. The Israelis thought they were the focus of Saddam’s rage. They had no idea it was mankind itself that stood in his crosshairs, and mankind came in many forms and cultures.
The image of his children and Saliah, his wife, came again, and his composure slipped. How I miss them! How I miss her!
She was so beautiful, even after all these years of marriage and children. So many Iraqi wives stopped trying after a while, but not Saliah. She began the day and ended the day trying to look beautiful and desirable to him—and she succeeded. How I want her!
Strange, Shakir thought. What a curious response to separation. His smile broadened as the thoughts and memories of her became more sensual. How lucky he was. Their hunger for each other had grown, not diminished, especially with the lonely months of separation. When Saddam had ordered him to the desert in 1989 to stay and work at Saad-18, one of the bunkerlike underground desert labs he had helped build, only occasional visits home had been permitted. I
t had been an agony for the family, and a special agony for Saliah and Shakir. Iraq was anything but a traditional Muslim country when it came to females. There were women provided to serve the masculine needs of Saddam’s loyal workers in the desert; Shakir had never been interested in them. Only in Saliah. He lived for the trips home.
And now what had he done? Slammed the door on his life.
So it all comes down to this in the end. The worth of what I’m about to do is nothing compared to what I may lose for myself.
Once again, a crushing sadness and feeling of shame fell over him like a shroud, the energy draining away, the purpose that had driven him the past few days seeming trivial. He was an enemy of the state now, whether they knew it or not. Saliah and the children could become targets at any time. If they ran an autopsy on that charred corpse he had left at the side of the road …
Logic told him there was no way such sophisticated forensic detective work would be done in a bombed-out country fighting a civil war. But the mere shadow of a possibility that Saliah might some night open their door and find a two-footed animal from Saddam’s secret police waiting there paralyzed him with fear. How would such horrors begin? With a knock? Or do they just burst in, guns firing?
With his mind in Baghdad, the sudden opening of the door echoed the nightmare, and Shakir jumped from the cot in confusion at the noise, searching for a place to run before realizing where he was.
Will, who had stepped in first, was startled to see the Iraqi scramble toward the flimsy wall, his eyes dilated with fear.
“Abbas? What the hell’s the matter with you?”
Doug switched on the light, as Shakir slowly regained his composure.
“You startled me. I’m sorry.”
“Colonel Harris, meet Doctor Abbas, otherwise known as Doctor Death.” Will’s words were tinged with acid, and as Doug began to extend his hand, Will quietly tugged his arm back. “Don’t shake this individual’s hand, Doug, until you hear what he and his little Saddamites have been doing up there in Iraq for the past few years. Tell him what this is all about, Abbas.”
Will sat heavily on an opposite cot and added, “And make it quick. We take off in a few minutes.”
Doug sat too, slowly, feeling somewhat awkward in the heat of the hatred Will obviously felt for the man. “What’s your field, Doctor?”
Abbas sat down on the opposite cot and looked Doug in the eye.
“I am a microbiologist and biochemist,” he began. “The Iraq government paid for my education in London and in the United States. My Ph.D. is from Johns Hopkins. I have worked as a researcher in what we call the Iraq Research Institute since 1972, long before Saddam. I … this … Colonel, this gets to be a long story, so I’ll just say that I have become a traitor to my country and come to Saudi Arabia and to the allied forces for help because one of the terrible things I helped invent—something that was never supposed to be used for anything but a threat—is about to be used by Saddam, and we have to stop him.”
Abbas let that sink in. Doug turned and searched Will’s face before continuing. “What the hell is it we’re doing?”
“You do not know, then, Colonel?” Abbas asked softly.
“I just got here,” Doug began. “There was a crash …”
Will raised his hand slightly. “Abbas, we had a last-minute change of flight crew, but the assault team you’ve met and instructed will be the same. Colonel Harris here will be my copilot.”
Will turned to Doug. “Okay, here’s the deal. We’re flying the assault team in quite close to where his underground lab is located. We don’t drop them in by parachute—we actually land. A combat support team did a high-altitude, high-open drop in there yesterday from a C-130. They’re on the ground now and talking to the AWACS, and everything’s secured. Early in the morning, we land, the commandos take Abbas here and go to the bunker, Abbas destroys these bugs he’s invented, they take anyone they find down there prisoner and blow up the place, then they scramble back to the airplane and we get the hell out of there and go south in time for breakfast.”
Doug looked at Abbas, then at Will, then at Abbas, and back at Will, and laughed. “That’s all?”
“That’s enough for one night.”
“Is he …” Doug turned to Abbas. “Are you trustworthy, Doctor? Why are you doing this?”
Will stood up and snorted. “Because after all this time he’s had a conscience attack! Interesting timing, isn’t it? His pipsqueak criminal country loses, and suddenly he needs our help. Come on. Let’s get going.”
Abbas got up slowly and reached for Doug’s sleeve. “Colonel, my family and my life are still in Iraq. When this mission is complete, I’ve still got to get them out. I’m putting myself and my family in great danger. This is no trick.”
Will whirled on him, the frustrations of the past hour boiling over and spilling out at the only target in sight.
“Abbas, I don’t think you know what you’re asking, and what the cost has already been. I don’t think you have any idea of the destruction and pain this mission has already caused. I’ve got two flight crew members dead, a man and a woman—true professionals—and I’ve got a pilot with a broken neck and a copilot bleeding internally so badly he may not make it. All because of your germ-warfare experiments and the fact you came running to us to clean up your mess.” Will stood with his hands on his hips, glowering at Abbas.
“I am sorry, Colonel. I needed your help … to prevent many more from dying.”
“From a virus you created!” Will snorted.
Abbas nodded. He could feel Westerman’s frustration. It didn’t make it any easier, but he understood. In many, many ways, he now shared the loathing of what he had done—the realities to which he had blinded himself for so long.
Major Ronson leaned out the open door of the ALCE, genuine concern showing, and shook Will’s hand. “Good luck, sir. You’d better get moving. The winds are picking up, and the gust front is only about five miles away.”
“Thanks for all the support, Jerry. You say she’s fueled?”
“Seventy thousand pounds, sir. They just finished. I checked weather for Jiddah, by the way. It’s clear for a bingo alternate. That’ll put you on the refueling track with at least thirty thousand pounds. The C-130’s going to make it in just before you launch. The patients are already in the ambulance, and the doc said to tell you there’s no change. The copilot’s hanging in there.”
Will gave Taylor and Richards a small wave through the open door and swung into the right seat of the Humvee, which rushed them to the aircraft.
Senior Master Sergeant Bill Backus was waiting for him, an anxious look on his craggy face. “Sir, I’m going with you.”
Will studied Backus in silence, the flight engineer’s six-foot frame bent toward the window of the Humvee as his arm balanced against the roof. He had a slight paunch and jowls that made him look older than his forty-eight years, but his eyes were lined and sad, like those of a basset hound, and the effect in the subdued light was that of a supplicant enormously afraid his request would be denied.
“I need you here, Bill,” Will said. The image of Backus standing in the middle of the burning fuselage of the crashed C-141 was indelible in his mind. He should be in a hospital, not flying the mission.
Yet he was unhurt, and well trained.
Will tried again. “I think you should stay with Jim and Jeff. The 130 called in before I left the ALCE. He’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“The medical people can do that, sir. I didn’t get a scratch in the crash, I’m SOLL-trained, and you’ve fully briefed me on this mission already as we were flying to Riyadh, remember? The other two engineers are neither SOLL-trained nor up to speed on what this is all about, sir.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the lighted cockpit.
“Bill …”
“Please, sir. What if something goes wrong? I’m trained to shoot and escape and evade. You’ve got two engineers up there who aren’t. And you and I’ve flown togeth
er before.”
Will sighed and looked at his feet as Doug hustled past and disappeared up the crew entry ladder.
“Sir, I want to do this. Please!”
Will looked up at him, trying to read his eyes. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Yes sir!”
Will nodded. “It’s against my better judgment, assuming I have any, and it’s probably against regulations, but all right. Hurry. Get up there and find out who wants to stay. You have your—”
“Already arranged, Colonel. The other guy’s ready to leave, and I’m going to borrow his headset and manuals.” Backus fairly leaped at the ladder as Will followed him onto the flight deck and dropped into the left seat, hurriedly connecting his seatbelts, headset, interphone cord, and oxygen mask. In the right-hand copilot’s seat, Doug was already working rapidly, his abbreviated checklist open on his knee, the present position punched into both INSs—inertial navigation systems.
“Okay, pilot,” Doug began, “the INSs are aligned, the engineers already put in present position, and we’re down to state five on both INS one and two. Ready on the APU, engineer?”
The auxiliary power unit—the APU—a small jet engine in the left wheel well, provided electrical power and pressurized air for engine start.
“Ready.” It was Backus’s voice. He had already taken over. One of the other two flight engineers was disappearing down the ladder with his briefcase.
“Who’s left in the engineering department?” Will asked.
The incongruity of a sudden cascade of feminine blond hair and a hint of perfume over the center console completely confused Will’s senses for a second. Staff Sergeant Sandra Murray leaned over to shake his hand as Will fumbled to remove his headset.
“That’s Sandra,” Doug announced over the interphone, as if the name told the story. “One of my people.”
Will’s eyes met hers and lingered for a second. Her mouth was exceptionally wide, he noticed, turned up in a permanent smile on both sides of a rectangular face set with a pug nose, her eyes china blue, round, and huge. Will shook her hand briefly and disengaged, trying unsuccessfully to push her pleasing image from his conscious thoughts, her shoulder-length blond hair still catching at his peripheral vision. It was amazing, he mused, what a well-proportioned female like Sandra could do to a standard Air Force flight suit.
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