Sandra jumped out the back and came up beside them as Will stared hard at the building, moving his focus to one side, letting his black-and-white night vision pick up more detail. It was a building, but more like a large hangar, and it looked like it might be bomb-damaged.
Will looked at his watch again. It was approaching five-thirty. The first light of dawn would be only a half hour away, with sunrise about 6:45 A.M. They couldn’t afford to approach the border in daylight with no guns, no disguises, and no ability to speak Arabic.
“Will! Look here!” Doug had walked ahead of the truck a distance. His voice, tinged with amazement, carried back to Will and Sandra, and they followed, finding him standing on the edge of a jagged break in the road that ran fully ten meters from side to side and five meters across.
“This sucker would have eaten our lunch if we’d hit it at fifty! Jesus!”
“Did you see it ahead?” Sandra asked.
“No,” Doug replied with a chuckle, motioning to Will. “Old eagle-eyes here saw the markings of a highway airstrip just in time.”
They stood in silence for a minute, each running through a variety of thoughts as the night wind picked up and ruffled Sandra’s hair. She pawed at it as Doug held his arms out, his hands palms up, and addressed Will.
“Okay, Kemo Sabe, what now? We can go around, of course, but daylight’s coming.” Will was still studying the ominous darkness of the large hangar to the right of the road, trying to let his eyes take the necessary time to sort out the image.
There were no signs of life. The hangar was only a few hundred yards off the roadway, but while a portion of it had collapsed from the impact of a bomb, one of the large doors seemed still in place. Maybe they could hide the truck and themselves inside and wait out the daylight again.
They drove off the road toward the hangar, the lights still off, Sandra sitting with them in the cab for the short distance, reminding both of them that Bill was burning with fever.
“If we don’t get some liquids down him …”
“Infection, you think?”
She nodded, and somehow in the darkness they both understood. They needed to get him across the border to safety now, not the next night. Capture wouldn’t help him either.
“Stay here. I’ll take a look,” Doug said, putting on the brake and leaving the truck idling as he scrambled out of the cab and walked toward the broken maw of the building.
It was huge, the entrance at least three hundred feet wide by ninety feet high, the body of it an imperfectly curved concrete arch, the doors heavy steel. The bomb—or bombs—had entered the right side of the roof, taking out the back corner and two of the five huge sliding metal doors, and obviously destroying whatever and whomever was inside. Doug imagined they would see some unpleasant remains when filtered daylight filled the interior in a few hours.
But somehow the structure hadn’t collapsed, and as Doug looked up at the moon through the jagged bomb hole, he could see why: the concrete was reinforced by tons of steel rebar reinforcing rods and girders. It had been an impressive installation.
But it had tangled with the wrong air force.
Something in the far, mostly undamaged left corner caught his eye. He saw the tracks of wheels through the desert dust and bomb-damage rubble leading in the direction of a vague shape. The tracks were obvious even in the reflected moonlight, and he followed them to the pitch-dark corner, almost bumping into a small airplane. A quick check showed it was operable, and at a dead run he quickly made it back to the truck, his breath coming hard.
“There’s enough shelter to hide us, but you’re not going to believe what’s in there.”
“Okay, what?” Will’s impatience was obvious.
“An observation airplane. Single-engine. About the size of a Piper Cub. It looks flyable, it’s undamaged, and it’s fueled! Someone boogied in here with that bird, and it may be our ticket to getting Bill out of here.”
“What do you mean, getting Bill out of here? Let’s all get in the bird and get the flock out of here, buddy!”
Will’s excitement was rising, and Doug felt guilty about raising his hopes. Will recognized the look on Doug’s face.
“Okay, what’s the matter?”
“Will, it’s only a two-seat aircraft.”
Air Force One, in flight over Kansas en route to Los Angeles
Friday, March 8, 1991—8:30 P.M. (0230 March 9 GMT)
The information flow had gone on for the past twenty minutes and was becoming repetitious. President George Bush raised his right hand at the wrist, signaling enough. He had been director of Central Intelligence. He understood only too well what the proposed “finding” would say—and portend.
The grim-faced men and one woman sat around the plush airborne conference room of the new Boeing 747 presidential jet and kept quiet, letting the President think, his fingers drumming the table for a moment.
The word had come from Riyadh an hour before that the virus created by the Iraqis appeared on preliminary testing to be one of the most virulent ever discovered. They had exposed several test animals, the team reported, and death had been amazingly rapid.
The President leaned forward, rubbing his forehead, his eyes wandering the cabin before coming to rest on the number-two man at the CIA, William Gates.
“Okay, Bill. You know the limits and you know the risks, but if this stuff is half as monstrous as it sounds, I can’t sit around and hope it’ll go away. You prepare the finding, then use everything we can, including the few human assets you say we’ve got on the ground in Iraq, to find the rest of it. I’m impressed with the fact that you can’t safely manufacture more of it without an appropriate lab, so if we can find any other infant-formula factories Saddam has redecorated in pink”—the group chuckled at the reference to the bombed biological weapons factory in Baghdad—“we gotta shut them down somehow.”
“Maybe Peter Arnett could locate it for us,” one of the group said.
More laughter.
“Now,” the President responded without a smile, index finger in the air, “that brings up something. This is, and will remain, top secret. There had better be no leaks on this one, folks. Everyone got that? There will be no mention of, or confirmation of, anything to do with Iraqi biological weapons, or our desert raid on that lab, or the sample we got, or the tests, the missing crew—anything.”
“Unless, of course,” one of the analysts replied, “they actually use it on someone.”
At the same moment, in the Situation Room at the White House, Dr. Alan Benedict, a biochemical advisor to the National Security Council, was taking a call from a civilian member of the Army biological warfare team at the commandeered and heavily guarded lab in Riyadh.
Dr. Walter Hajek had driven across Riyadh to use a secure phone at CENTCOM and stay out of earshot of his boss, whose plans had upset him.
“Alan, they want to ship about half of the viral serum we’ve got back to Washington, for God’s sake! We’ve been able to get a look at it here with an electron microscope, and there’s nothing you can do there that we can’t do here.”
The reply had been hesitant. “What’s your point, Walter?”
“My point is that I don’t want something this dangerous to human life back in our country. What if an accident occurred? What if … what if the plane crashed at Andrews? Remember that movie, The Andromeda Strain? This stuff is worse than the fictional virus they created in the movie because it’s so resilient it can live in ordinary water.”
“Walter, I don’t control—”
“Can’t you call someone? Can’t you call Scowcroft, or the President?”
“I got your message earlier, Walter. They don’t agree with your worries. The sample is to be shipped as scheduled, and I suggest you not make a big deal about this.”
“Alan, for God’s sake, man, think about it. We destroy all there is over here, right? What, then, if some of our bright pragmatic thinkers decide that having the worst biological weapon in the world
is a good deterrent? Suppose we decide to grow more of it?”
“That’s a different reason, now, isn’t it? Walter, you’re getting paranoid.” Benedict fairly snapped the words at him. “You know damn well we don’t do such things.”
“I’m glad you’re sure of that,” Hajek replied, “because I’m not.”
Al Hajarah desert, south central Iraq
Saturday, March 9, 1991—6:30 A.M. (0330 GMT)
Sandra had protested, but she was qualified in tail-draggers—light airplanes with tail wheels instead of nosewheels—so Sandra would go. That one fact had let Will and Doug both off the hook. As much as they wanted out, neither could tolerate either the thought of leaving the other behind just to save himself, or the idea of leaving behind an enlisted crew member under his command. Will was the aircraft commander, but Doug was Sandra’s squadron commander.
And there was the fact that Sandra was a female, and decent males don’t leave females in the desert. That factor was chauvinistic and unspoken, but a factor nonetheless.
“Sandra, listen to me. I fly airplanes with cockpits forty-five feet in the air! Will flies cockpits twenty feet in the air. And neither of us has ever flown a tail-dragger. This is no time to learn.”
“That’s B.S. and you know it, Colonel, sir.” She was upset, and the words were impassioned. “Either of you could fly this thing in your sleep.”
“Don’t you want out?” Will had said at last, almost exasperated with the “No, please, after you” debate.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “But this is a Hobson’s choice. I want both of you out, too.”
Will had looked at her for several seconds before he realized why the reflected light of early morning was glistening in the corners of her eyes. He nodded at Doug as Sandra looked down, his right hand finding her left shoulder. “I’ve got to make a command decision, Sandra. That decision is, you go. You fly Bill out and to the nearest base, get him to a hospital, then debrief rescue and send them back in for us. We’ll pull the desert in around our ears and sit tight this time. We’ll be back with you in no time.”
She nodded and said nothing. It was done.
Doug rechecked the control cables and quadrants in the airplane for the third time as Will helped Sandra load Bill into the rear seat. The move hurt him, and he regained consciousness long enough to hear what was happening. But he was in pain and beginning to hallucinate with the fever. They were thankful when he slipped back into a deep sleep.
The three of them pulled the little airplane over to the entrance, keeping it hidden as Sandra hugged each of them, fought back tears, and strapped in.
“Taxi straight out to the highway, the way we came in, take off that way, then turn back immediately and keep it at treetop level. I figure we’re no more than fifty miles north. Go due south, but avoid anything and everything human. Highways, towns, troops—”
The sound of her soft voice interrupting had stopped him. “I know. I got it all the first three times.”
There were yellow and orange light rays painting the eastern horizon as Sandra touched the starter button, giving a silent prayer of thanks when the prop whirled and the engine caught almost immediately. The familiar sound of a fixed-pitch prop slapping the air was music to her ears. She nudged the throttle and began rolling toward the highway, Doug walking beside her right wing, the noise of the engine obscuring sudden shouts from behind them as two figures in fatigues raced toward the front of the hangar and the departing airplane, waving automatic weapons.
Standing partly behind the hangar door, Will was out of their line of vision. He started to yell a warning, but realized he’d never be heard over the noise of the engine.
Doug was still beside the airplane, seventy-five or so feet from the hangar, as Sandra accelerated slightly. Will calculated the intended path of the two soldiers who were now sprinting toward the airplane in a path that would take them past Will by some fifty feet. They had not seen him, Will realized. They were focused on Doug and the airplane, and as they closed on the boundary line marking the hangar entrance, Will found himself running to intercept them as if he were playing forward tackle on some bizarre football team where the quarterbacks carried assault rifles.
The two men were forty or so feet from the entrance and gaining speed, their eyes glued to the departing single-engine plane. Will accelerated as well on a ninety-degree intercept course. The man closest to him raised his weapon, aiming in the air over the departing airplane. Will wondered if it was by chance or by choice. The bullets were long departed before the sound waves hit Doug’s ears as he paced the accelerating airplane, which was now halfway to the road. Will could see Doug turn in puzzlement, and could see the look of shock as he turned back toward Sandra and gave her a frantic, wide-eyed gesture that said, Go! Go now!
The two Iraqis—for that’s what they had to be—spotted Will now. The second man fired his gun, also aiming harmlessly in the air, and somewhere in his head Will realized they didn’t want the airplane full of holes.
They would have no such attachment to Doug or Will.
Doug was fully exposed now, standing clear of the accelerating aircraft as both soldiers stopped in their tracks, the muzzles of their guns both dropping from a high angle to a flat angle. Will knew they had seen him approach. They were less than twenty feet away now. Will had to alter course to the left to reach the two as they took aim, presumably at Doug. Will could see in his peripheral vision that Doug’s hands were in the air. He could see directly ahead of him that the nearest Iraqi was turning, bringing the barrel of his gun around. Their fingers were both inside their respective trigger guards. There was simply no time left.
“NO! STOP IT! HOLD ON! DON’T SHOOT!” Will screamed the words at the top of his lungs, waving his arms in the air as if trying to block a basketball shot, his body coming to a halt in their line of fire, between them and Doug. He braced mentally for the impact of bullets. It was a clinical, detached thought, but he wondered if it would hurt.
The two soldiers had not moved. They stood stock-still, their guns both leveled at Will, who was now standing less than five feet away. Doug was behind him somewhere, and the sound of the departing aircraft engine told him that Sandra was off the ground. Mission accomplished.
Still the two men stood there. If they were going to shoot, why didn’t they get it over with?
“You … come!” one of them ordered, motioning to Doug. Will prayed that Doug would run. Instead, Doug’s footsteps approached from behind, and then he was standing beside Will, both of them holding their hands in the air.
The two Iraqis looked at each other and said something in Arabic, their voices chattering in staccato bursts as they kept their guns aimed at Doug and Will, their fingers holding firm on the triggers.
“You … Americans?” one of them finally asked, pushing his gun forward for emphasis.
Doug and Will nodded slowly. Their flight suits were hardly civilian camouflage.
“Surren … surrender!” The Iraqi turned the word over tentatively, his agitation growing.
Doug and Will, their hands still in the air, glanced at each other. Doug shrugged. “I thought we already had.”
The order came again, even more insistent.
“Surrender!”
Will nodded slowly, painfully, every movement of his head a confirmation of his worst nightmares. His voice was almost inaudible.
“Yes,” he said, “surrender.”
“I … ah … do, too,” Doug echoed, equally subdued. “I surrender.”
The two soldiers stepped back, talking rapidly to each other, keeping their weapons pointed directly at the two colonels. They stepped back suddenly, almost in unison.
This is it, Will thought.
“Surrender, yes?” the one said again.
“Yes, dammit! Surrender!” Will repeated.
Simultaneously the two Iraqis raised their guns to a port arms position, sank to their knees, and placed the guns on the concrete floor of the hangar,
raising their hands in the air.
“We surrender now! You will take us please … Saud Arabia. Yes?”
16
Al Hajarah desert, south central Iraq
Saturday, March 9, 1991—7:00 A.M. (0400 GMT)
Sandra Murray put a couple of hundred feet between the small aircraft and the desert floor and tried to concentrate on the horizon ahead, seeing nothing but flatness and desolation in all directions.
She felt empty inside, as if she’d turned her back on her family in a time of crisis. The sounds of gunfire behind her as she taxied out of the hangar and seeing Doug Harris standing there, frantically motioning for her to gun the engine and escape, had triggered an instinctive reaction.
She had responded by jamming the throttle to the stops, raising the nose, and yanking them into the air before even reaching the highway—and feeling instantly guilty for doing so. There was nothing else she could have done, of course. Logic absolved her. But somewhere deep inside, loyalty condemned her.
Once airborne, she was supposed to turn and fly south, but she couldn’t do it. She had to know. Carefully staying at a half-mile range, she circled behind the hangar and flew past the open doors once more with the engine back to idle, expecting a hail of bullets for her trouble.
Instead, she saw just for a split second an image that hung in front of her like a nightmarish hallucination: Doug and Will, their hands in the air, facing the two gunmen point-blank.
There was nothing I could do!
Sandra closed her eyes momentarily to exorcise the memory, praying they were merely captured, and not dead. She turned her thoughts to her unconscious passenger instead.
If I can save Bill, then maybe leaving them will make sense.
The highway had long since disappeared to the left, angling to the southeast as Sandra flew due south instead, popping up a few hundred feet every few minutes to check for military installations ahead. If the hangar where they’d found the airplane was fifty miles north of the border as Doug had surmised, Saudi Arabia would be just ahead.
Scorpion Strike Page 24