The sound of sheet metal being hit by something else metallic reached their ears. A panel opened, then banged shut. More shouting, and the sound of footsteps.
But none of it was getting any closer.
“What on earth is going on out there?” Sandra’s head was cocked in the direction of the window.
“Let’s find out.” Doug slithered out from the corner before Will could protest, and, keeping below the visual line of the windowsill, raised his head slowly and peered over.
For a few seconds he watched in silence, then turned back toward Will and Sandra with a stage whisper that sounded to Will like a shout. “One of their trucks has broken down.”
Alarmed, Will tapped his lips with his index finger for quiet, and Doug nodded, turning back to watch, staying silent until one particular voice outside reached a new pitch of anger, loud enough to drown out any noise they could make from inside.
Doug turned his head toward them again, his voice a forceful whisper.
“I don’t believe this.”
“What’s going on?” Will’s whispered reply seemed just as loud.
“One of them is getting ready to shoot someone! I can’t tell who. Maybe the driver.” Doug looked back outside, gesturing with his right hand, narrating from one side of his mouth. “He’s motioning everyone out of the back of the truck now, and he just cocked his gun … He’s walking over by the hood, but I can’t see anybody there. Now he’s raising the barrel toward the side of the truck … What the …!”
Doug turned in disbelief to look at Will. “The sonofabitch is going to shoot his own truck!”
An automatic rifle rattled cacophonously, echoing off the masonry walls, accompanied by laughter from the troops outside, then applause, followed by a stern voice.
“Their sergeant is ordering them into the other trucks.”
The tank started moving again, the distinctive tread noises clanking away as other engines were gunned and the column moved off, leaving the unnoticed building and its relieved occupants in its wake.
“Where’s the dead truck?” Will asked at last.
Doug turned with a growing smile, pointing outside. “Still sitting in the road. He only shot the side of it! You thinking what I’m thinking?”
Will was nodding. “Sure am. In fact, you have any idea what I’ve been doing with my spare time at Charleston the last ten years?”
“Something utterly responsible and boring as hell, I imagine.” Doug smiled, hoping Will wouldn’t take offense, but willing to test him regardless.
“No, wholly irresponsible and self-indulgent. I rebuild cars at the auto hobby shop on weekends when I should be taking Janice to the beach.”
“Really?” Doug found the image incongruous. Since when had the cerebral Will Westerman started working with his hands?
Will was looking right through Doug, visualizing the truck just outside.
If there were no more Iraqi units nearby, and if they could get it running …
CENTCOM, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Friday, March 8, 1991—7:30 A.M. (0430 GMT)
General Herm Bullock had approached the intelligence analysis section to ask for urgent help. He knew there was a sizable flock of manned and orbital electronic eyes actively looking down on Iraq. That meant that the odds were good that somewhere in the resulting flood of surveillance shots, the crash site would appear.
Now the senior NCO he had tasked was back, with a triumphant smile.
“General, I may have something.”
He led the way through a crowded warren of offices to a cluttered light table containing several transparencies, and motioned him to the eyepiece of a magnification device.
“This was taken at nine-nineteen local yesterday morning, several hours after the crash. It’s an infrared shot. The sun’s just come up, so we still have a relatively cool desert. Something measuring about a hundred degrees Fahrenheit will show up. See the small dark spot I’ve got circled?”
“Yes.” Herm had to strain, but the spot was clearly marked.
“That’s the crash site, full of hot metal. Now look to the southeast a little, where I’ve got a small arrow. Look to the end of that arrow. See the tiny dot?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Something warm’s out there. It could be a camel, or it could be one or more human beings. Probably the latter. Two hours later it’s gone.”
Another transparency slid into position, and Herm found the crash site marked as before, but the dot to the southeast had moved farther southeast.
“Now this one,” the sergeant continued, “may be our smoking gun. The dot’s the same size and type as before, and when you project a line back through the previous position, you’ve got a direct line to the crash site.”
“They aren’t Bedouin tribesmen?”
“Unlikely, sir, for many reasons. All in all, General, I’d say some of our people survived that crash and are headed southeast on foot, and …” he pulled another photo across the table and pointed to a highway, “… if they kept going in a straight line last night at a steady pace, they should have reached this highway before dawn, and there are some possibly abandoned buildings up and down here.”
“Great!”
“Not necessarily, sir. If one of our people holed up in one of those, he’d have no way of knowing that right down here …” The sergeant’s finger dropped a quarter of an inch to the south. “… is a very active Iraqi military post. It’s a very dangerous place to be, sir.”
Herm Bullock straightened up and pointed to the table. “Can you bring all this with you right now?”
“Yes sir. Where’re we going?”
“To launch a reconnaissance bird down that highway, and then get another rescue mission on the way.”
Herm Bullock picked up the phone and punched in General Martin’s intercom number.
Al Hajarah desert, south central Iraq
Friday, March 8, 1991—8:30 A.M. (0530 GMT)
Will’s head was out of sight beneath the hood of the Russian-built army truck. The coup de grace administered by the angry driver had hit nothing vital. The battery was charged, there was plenty of fuel, and the starter worked, but the cylinders refused to fire. Nevertheless, the odds were good, Will had assured Doug and Sandra, that he could find and fix the problem.
“Either no gas or no spark,” Will concluded.
The electrical system was working, and Will had drawn a healthy spark from the distributor on the first try, using a small tool kit from the cab of the truck. He began disassembling the fuel system then, while Sandra and Doug kept a tense lookout atop a small rise on the other side of the road, sitting side by side facing in opposite directions—she watching the north, he the south.
Sandra had been pensive and quiet for so long that when she spoke, her voice startled Doug.
“Sir, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” Doug’s eyes locked on hers.
“I’ve known you through the squadron for years, but I don’t know Colonel Westerman. Is he going to be okay? I mean, last night … he was pretty mad at you.”
Doug nodded, letting his gaze return to the horizon.
“There are some things you ought to know about Will, Sandra. He’s a very driven, intense guy, but he’s also capable and determined. We’ve fought like cats and dogs at times over the years—we don’t share the same sense of humor—but Will’s a good man, and an excellent officer.”
Sandra considered that for a few seconds before replying.
“You said you and he grew up together?”
“Back in Dallas, that’s right. Our families weren’t close, but in the same social circles, and we started hanging out together at an early age.”
Doug paused and glanced at Sandra, gauging her interest.
“Will is like he is because of his dad, Sandra. For many years his dad was a raging alcoholic, severe, morose … one of the soldiers who returned from a prison camp at the end of World War II but in some ways could never l
eave it behind.”
“He was a German POW?”
“No, Japanese, in the Marianas. Much worse than the stalags the Germans kept our flyers in. Anyway, Will grew up being hard on himself and irritatingly responsible. My dad set a different example. He’s fun-loving and about half-irresponsible, and I guess I take after him somewhat.”
“You and Colonel Westerman are quite a contrast,” Sandra said.
“We complement each other. We always looked out for each other, you know? As kids, I was always getting in fights after school—fights that I couldn’t win—and Will would always walk over calmly and flatten my opponent to save me. We went through school together, chased ladies together, only they’d”—Doug held his right hand out flat, like an airplane, sliding it forward—“shoot right past me after a date or two and end up in love with him. Really discouraging. I used to kid him that I was his procurer of females. Girls found him more attractive. Maybe because he seemed more solid and secure. I don’t know.”
He fell silent for nearly a minute before speaking again, this time in a slightly lower voice, his throat tight and his thoughts far away.
“It sure was a shock to run into him the other night … not to mention all the other shocks. I don’t have the slightest idea what we’re doing here.”
“I know!” she said. “I’m trying hard not to be, but I’m scared.” She was looking north along the road again, and Doug looked away as well.
“We are going to get out of this, Sandra. But I’ve got to tell you I’d much rather be at home in Seattle right now with Kathy and my two boys. Or even back on the flight deck of a United 747, bitching about everything.”
Sandra looked at Doug’s face and noticed he was not smiling. She looked at his hands and saw them shaking ever so slightly.
The sound of an automotive engine roaring to life suddenly filled their ears, startling both of them. Across the road, Will stood back from the hood of the truck and raised both arms in a victory salute.
“Jesus!” Doug said. “He did it!”
Within ten minutes they had backed the truck to the door of the ramshackle building, loaded Bill inside, and drawn the rear flap of the heavy canvas cover closed. They threw the small amount of survival gear inside then, leaving the makeshift sled, and huddled briefly in the doorway.
“I’d say we go north as far as we dare, find a place to hide until nightfall, and then take the first turn eastbound,” Doug said. “If we can make it to our lines to the west of Kuwait, we’re home free.”
Sandra was nodding. “I’ll stay in the back with Bill. The last thing you need is a female visible in an Iraqi army truck.”
“I agree. Let’s get moving,” Will added.
The sound of the RF-4 Phantom flashing down the road at barely five hundred feet caught them totally by surprise, the adrenaline level in all three jumping to alarm proportions, the smoke trail of the recon jet disappearing to the north before they could react. They knew it was an F-4, the distinctive sound and shape unmistakable to U.S. Air Force people. But without seeing the unique nose with the photographic port, there was no way to know for certain that the building, the idling truck, and a tantalizing glimpse of one of them had just been recorded on high-speed film of incredible clarity, and would be on its way back to Riyadh within minutes.
“Dammit!” Doug’s eyes were locked on the remains of the Phantom’s smoke trail to the north. “If that was one of our recon birds, he didn’t see us. We were too far into the doorway. Damn!”
“Will he come back over?” Sandra asked, following Doug’s thoughts. “Should we stay?”
Both Will and Doug were shaking their heads, but Will spoke first. “Probably not. Anyway, we can’t stay here. Eventually Abdul’s going to come looking for his dead truck.”
They scrambled aboard then, Will jamming the truck into gear and accelerating noisily off to the north, their four identities now hidden within an image that, when viewed from the air or from space, could be identified only as one of the thousands of army trucks roaming Iraq.
13
Crown (E-3 AWACS)
Friday, March 8, 1991—10:42 A.M. (0742 GMT)
This one was personal. Captain Margaret Ellis felt anger and guilt at the news that yesterday’s C-141 crash rescue had been botched, and fellow flyers had been left in the desert.
The briefing, which had come halfway through an otherwise uneventful airborne shift, had shaken her. An RF-4 had just returned pictures of two surviving crew members standing in a doorway by an Iraqi truck with a distinctive white smudge on top, and one of them was female. Intelligence had also concluded that the crew members had been captured and were being trucked north to Baghdad. Within an hour of that conclusion, a huge rescue effort had been thrown together to find and intercept that truck.
Margaret tried to concentrate on her display as a northbound flight of four F-15s came into her sector with a brief radio check.
“Magic one-two, Crown, loud and clear.”
She searched her screen even more aggressively now for anything overlooked. Eight F-15s were flying CAP—combat air patrol—as an entire squadron of U.S. Air Force A-10 Warthog tank killers streamed north across the Iraqi border, each pair assigned to buzz down every road within the search sector, looking for a single Iraqi truck with a unique mark on top.
“Jolly thirteen, Crown, loud and clear.”
Two MH-53J Pave Low Special Operations helicopters—Jolly 5 flight of two—had already penetrated the border and were closing on Point Alpha, a small building the American crew had been held in.
Four more MH-53s—including Jolly 13—were to land and sit on the ground just south of the border, waiting to be called in while a flight of eight Army Apache gunship helicopters followed the A-10s down each highway in the triangular search box. It would be the A-10s that would spot army trucks fitting the description she’d been handed, and the Apaches that would move in and verify that they had the right one.
The mission commander, a major using the unimaginative call sign “Airboss,” was using Jolly 5 as his command ship. Margaret was responsible for keeping everyone safe from marauding airborne Iraqis—if such a thing still existed—and keeping the friendly traffic separated.
Jolly 5
0749 GMT
Major Walt Perkins had brought his MH-53J helicopter in from the east, perpendicular to the highway, with a second MH-53J alongside. The little stucco building was right ahead now, the highway secured by the Warthogs from unwanted traffic for miles in each direction. He added back-pressure to the cyclic stick held gently in his right hand as he rolled in more power and nudged the collective lever in his left hand up a hair, the big helicopter staying just ahead of translational lift as its airspeed dropped through thirty knots and the surface of the desert rose through fifty feet to meet them. With years of experience guiding his movements, he brought the big machine to a hover a few feet off the ground for a moment as they kicked up a hurricane of sand and dust, thinking the controls in the appropriate directions, before settling the final few feet to the surface.
Perkins stayed in position while Major Kent Kost accompanied several armed PJs as they jumped to the ground and scrambled to the side of the building, assuring themselves that no one was waiting inside.
In five minutes he was back on the secure channel to Lighthouse.
“There’s a makeshift sled that appears to be a scrap of metal from the crashed 141, and judging from some of the trash—MRE packaging and so on—there’s no question that at least one of our people was here.”
The sled, however, indicated someone was hurt and being pulled.
But there were no signs of bullet impacts or blood in the building.
“How about the tire tracks from the door?” he was asked.
“North. They go north before entering the road, as we figured.”
Kost noticed Walt Perkins looking over his shoulder from the right seat. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the ceiling, and Perkins nodded, rol
ling in power and collective as he pulled the helicopter back into a hover, gained altitude, and accelerated to the north.
Sandy 8
0756 GMT
The radar and computers on the Joint-Stars 707 had spotted it first, a lone target moving north from the abandoned building.
Captain Dennis Rounds had been vectored to the area minutes before in his A-10, and now, with less than a mile to go, the target truck was just ahead, exactly as advertised.
“Airboss, Sandy eight lead, sector Echo Charlie. I’ve got the target by himself northeast-bound … Seems to be the right model truck.”
Rounds brought the A-10 in from behind and slightly to the right while his wingman pulled up and established an orbit at two thousand feet to watch over his partner. Rounds throttled back his two turbofan engines and extended his speed brakes, slowing through two hundred knots as he maneuvered and closed on the lone truck from behind.
Easy, man, that machine could be full of guns and gomers, he cautioned himself. The A-10’s cockpit was heavily sheathed in a type of lightweight armor, but even that couldn’t protect him from a sudden hail of bullets through the canopy.
Yet he had to get a solid glimpse of the canvas top.
The A-10’s huge gatling gun was fully loaded and armed, and he ran his finger lightly over the trigger as he stabilized the approach for the flyby. Not that it would do much good. The last thing he wanted to do was shoot at a truck that might be carrying captured Americans.
The voice of the commander of the rescue package—as the entire force was called—rang in his ears again, impatience eating at the man.
“Sandy eight lead, Airboss, you looking at his roof yet?”
“Stand by, Airboss, I’m closing.”
The truck was less than a thousand yards away now, and he was slowing nicely. He would flash overhead at a closure rate of over 120 miles per hour, some fifty feet above them, if he did it exactly the way he was planning, and he’d have to take a mental photograph of the canvas top. That was going to be the hardest part. He considered extending flaps and slowing more, but he was already exposed enough.
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