“To the left?”
“To the left. Got that?”
“Yeah. But what is it?”
“Just … do it. Don’t ask.” Will’s words were quiet and urgent.
“Now!”
Doug rolled with a sudden, fluid motion across Will’s back, landing between him and Amal, and simultaneously Amal, Harun, and Will leaped to their feet, pulling Doug along with them as they all ran a dozen yards away, bending over to stay out of view, before once again dropping to their stomachs in the sand.
“Now what the hell was that all about?” Doug asked, irritated.
“That, old friend,” Will answered as he caught his breath, “was a sand viper. They do that. They bury themselves in the sand, and all you see are those little horns. He was close enough to strike you on the nose.”
“They’re poisonous?”
Doug heard Will snort. “You ever hear the expression ‘two-stepper’? He bites you, you take two steps and drop. Horribly venomous snake.”
The sound of Doug scrambling to his feet accompanied the last of Will’s explanation.
“Get down!” Will said, craning his neck to the right to look at Doug, who was edging farther from the crest of the dune.
“Like hell I’m going to get back into that sand pile if there’re snakes in it. I hate snakes! You know that.”
“You like Iraqi bullets any better? Get down, man!” Will was gesturing with his palm down, and Doug gingerly sank to his knees as he pointed in the direction of the Iraqi unit now out of sight across the dune.
“They can’t see us,” Doug said.
“They will if you keep moving around with the sun at your back.”
Amal had been moving carefully back toward the crest of the dune, taking care to stay clear of the viper’s location. He was back now at Will’s side, excited.
“Sir, the guard unit is moving away!”
“Away from us?” Will looked alarmed.
Amal nodded and pointed north as the faint sounds of engines firing up filtered over the sand dune. They watched as the Iraqi unit moved on toward the north.
Will brushed back his sand-caked hair and looked at his watch. Thirty minutes to darkness, he figured. A forelock of hair fell right back in his eyes and Will pawed at it once again, shaking his head disgustedly as Doug started laughing at the futility of the effort.
“My kingdom for a shower and some deodorant,” Will said.
“Amen to that. We smell worse than we did after that two-night hell week at survival training.”
“Spokane in the winter. God, don’t remind me of that,” Will snorted. “I’ll never forgive the Air Force for that.”
Doug glanced around to the west at exactly the moment the sun began undulating into the horizon, its passage a conflagration of oranges and reds against deepening purple overhead. They all fell silent then, following Doug’s gaze, Harun catching Amal’s sleeve and pointing at the solar beauty as the disk sank out of sight at last in the barren majesty of a living painting framed by an endless horizon.
“Okay,” Will said at last, “let’s get ready to move. As soon as they’re out of sight, we go toward the Coalition base as fast as we can walk.”
CENTCOM, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Saturday, March 9, 1991—6:30 P.M. (1530 GMT)
The radioed reports of the short-lived battle inside Iraq had already been relayed to the Pentagon as General Martin joined General Bullock and several other senior officers in the war room.
“In brief?” Martin asked.
Bullock nodded and grimaced. “We had to hold off until the dust storm blew over, as you know. That was around sixteen hundred local, but as soon as the first Warthog did a flyby on that partially destroyed hangar, he was fired on. We brought in the Apaches and flushed out two tanks, but just as the hogs were rolling in on them again, white flags came out all over the place. They all wanted to come back as POWs. Our people inspected the hangar and found no trace of the truck, or of Westerman and Harris. They also found no evidence that anyone had been shot. Instead, they found truck tracks leading off to the southeast.”
“Meaning what?” Martin asked.
“It’s anybody’s guess. The Iraqis claimed they hadn’t seen any Americans. But they did confirm that two of their spotter pilots and an airplane were missing.”
“That would be the one …”
“We think so, yes. The one Sergeant Murray used to fly out. The two soldiers she saw in the hangar were probably the two spotter pilots. But where are they? That’s the question we haven’t yet answered, though we’re running some additional RF-4 recon missions now, and one of the choppers has been trying to follow the tire tracks. And that’s the other question. Why did they head southeast with American prisoners?”
“We left those Iraqi troops at the hangar, didn’t we?” Martin asked.
“Yes sir. They were pretty disappointed, I’m told, but we disabled the remaining tanks and left them. They were not Republican Guard.”
At the same moment, two floors below, a nervous Dr. Sandar Almeany, former research assistant to Shakir Abbas, was nudged around a final corner of the linoleum-tiled hallway and into a small conference room, a poker-faced Army MP on each elbow. Since suffering through a plane crash and a mad dash through the night in a wildly bucking armored vehicle, he had been kept locked up and isolated, even though he had asked for asylum.
Colonel Richard Kerr and three other officers were waiting and motioned him to a seat. They gave Almeany a carefully rehearsed briefing on what they already knew about the virus he and Shakir Abbas had developed, and about the events leading to Abbas’s escape—which they called a “disappearance.” The Iraqi listened impassively, then waited an uncomfortably long time to reply. He knew the key question they wanted answered: how much of the virus was out there, and where was it? Sandar was defecting. He had no intention of being elusive.
“Dr. Abbas is my colleague for many years,” he began, “and he asked me similar questions the night of the attack. At first I thought he had been captured, then I understood he had come to you for help. This … this thing we developed is too deadly to be left in the hands of our leader.”
The word leader was spoken with a snort. In Baghdad, that slight nuance could get him shot. In Riyadh, he figured, it would not be ingraciously received.
Sandar looked at the men in the room and continued, telling them what he knew about the two missing canisters, who had taken them, and where they might be headed.
“Why did Dr. Abbas break away from the force we sent in?”
“I suspect,” Sandar answered. “I don’t know. From the questions he asked me, he would have gone after Ansallah and the canister, or canisters, Ansallah took. Shakir is a determined man when he decides to do something.”
They talked about routes and highways, the Abbas family, the location of General Hashamadi, and what Shakir Abbas could be expected to do when on such a vital mission. Richard Kerr had needed an edge—a lead—to have any reasonable hope of using satellite surveillance shots and other intelligence reports to reconstruct Abbas’s whereabouts, and try to find the canisters. The pressure was building rapidly on Kerr. With two other senior intelligence officials on their way from Washington to join him in Riyadh, the needle-in-the-haystack search was becoming frantic. Where were Abbas and the missing viral canisters? No less a personage than the President of the United States had decreed that every effort would be made to recapture the man and his lethal creation, regardless of cost.
Richard Kerr made a few final notes, thanked Almeany, and charged out of the room then, heading back to the basement and a growing stack of satellite surveillance pictures of the area around the destroyed desert lab. Principally, he was looking for the tiny image of a green Toyota van. “All I have to do,” he had said sarcastically, “is follow that van and its occupant across Iraq and, days after the fact, figure out where that driver is now.” And regardless of the increasing number of personnel he had at his disposal to he
lp, he couldn’t ditch the fatalistic feeling that they had already exceeded the limits of electronic surveillance.
Behind him now in a far corner of the conference room, Dr. Walter Hajek of the biomedical research team had been listening quietly and waiting his turn. Now Hajek started in like a gentle professor, quietly building a bond of scientific kinship with the researcher as he probed the details of how the virus had been created.
His mind, however, was elsewhere, and he found himself checking his watch with embarrassing frequency. In approximately two more hours a small vial shipped against his wishes from Riyadh would arrive at Andrews Air Force Base and be rushed to a top-secret biological research facility somewhere nearby.
Hajek knew neither the code name nor the location of the secret facility, and that was fine. What he did know, however, was that all hell was going to break loose when they tried to test that sample.
U.S. Forces Field Hospital, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Saturday, March 9, 1991—6:50 P.M. (1550 GMT)
Sergeant Sandra Murray replaced the handset at the nurses’ station and stood there for a moment, her eyes on the door of the operating room where Bill Backus was still in surgery. Her thoughts, however, were still in the desert, searching for Will and Doug.
“You all right, honey?” The concerned voice of the nurse behind the desk barely registered at first. Sandra turned, a puzzled look on her face, as the words came together in some recess of her brain.
“Oh yes. I’m … I’m fine. Just waiting for word, you know.” Sandra smiled as she felt her right hand twirling the telephone cord—a symmetrical, back-and-forth motion she couldn’t seem to stop. It was soothing somehow. Like a physical chant.
“Was that call about the other crew members?” the nurse tried again. “Your two colonels?”
My two colonels?
Sandra looked at the major, who was at least ten years older and an activated reservist like herself. What was her name? Oh yes. Sara. That was the third time she’d forgotten, and it was embarrassing.
Sandra nodded and took a deep breath. “Yeah. Rescue has found the truck we were in, about eighty miles from where I left them. It was out of gas. It’s strange, but hopeful at the same time. I thought they were captured, but they seem to be heading for the nearest Coalition base.”
“Well, that’s great news, then, right?”
“Yes.” Sandra knew her face contradicted her words, but something seemed very wrong—or was she just exhausted? The doctor who had refused to let her out of the hospital an hour ago had said she was suffering from exhaustion, and she had looked in his eyes and said, “Bullshit, sir.”
Sandra gestured toward nowhere in particular, ignoring the antiseptic smell that seemed to waft over her suddenly as an orderly bustled by with open bottles of unknown content on a cart.
“I should be out there on one of those rescue choppers right now, helping to find them. There’s nothing wrong with me. Why won’t they let me out of here?”
The question was swallowed by the sudden movement of the doors to the operating room as a surgeon came out, pulling off his latex gloves, his mask askew, and a tired smile on his face. He winked at Sara and nodded at Sandra before raising his hand to silence her impending questions.
“There is a rather massive infection, but it’s already responding, and we’ve repaired the internal damage and reinflated his lung.”
“Why’d it take so long? You’ve been in there for hours, sir.”
“I know it,” he said, tugging at his surgical cap. “One of his ribs not only broke, it serrated, and even though I know you folks tried to be gentle, it ripped him up rather badly inside as he was moved around. We had to restructure a few things.”
“Do you think he’ll be okay?”
The doctor nodded. “He’s tough. I think he’s going to be just fine.”
Sandra thanked him and headed for the phone. Bill’s wife was waiting on tenterhooks back in South Carolina for what was going to be good news.
She punched in the numbers as Sara’s words echoed in her mind again.
Your two colonels, she had said.
Al Hajarah desert, south central Iraq
Saturday, March 9, 1991—8:00 P.M. (1700 GMT)
The glow on the horizon was close now, Will figured. Perhaps three miles, and nothing but open desert between them and freedom. They had left miles behind the road where the Republican Guard patrol had stopped.
The base ahead was American. The sight of a Blackhawk helicopter lifting off from a bright circle of floodlights had put their fears to rest.
All that remained was to get there.
Will stood in the night wind and scanned the eastern horizon, noting the distant orange of the oil fires punctuating a background of stars, the enticing glow from the base pulling at him to hurry.
Will glanced back at the dark shape they had passed ten minutes ago. It was the hulk of a burned-out tank that had loomed in front of them suddenly in the darkness. Several hundred yards farther on, the remains of a small truck appeared bathed in ghostly light from the distant mercury-vapor lamps. Moonrise was several hours away, and without flashlights, there was no way to tell what else might be strewn on the desert before them.
What happened here? Will wondered. Aerial attack? Ground attack? The tank had lost its treads as well as having been burned, and the truck seemed to have been blown on its side.
Very strange. There was an explanation for the abandoned hardware, but it was eluding him, while fatigue numbed his need to know.
Harun was thirty yards ahead now and moving impatiently forward, periodically silhouetted by the lights of the base. For many steps he would be only a dark shadow to one side, then suddenly his form would move across the field of light, only to disappear in the darkness to the other side once again. Will had watched the routine oscillations with amusement, waiting each time for Harun to reappear, which he did now, stopping in full silhouette and turning around suddenly.
What’s he up to? Will wondered.
Will could see Harun bend over abruptly, as if examining something on the ground a hundred feet ahead, and at the same moment the image of the burned-out vehicles merged with the fact that they were approaching a battlefield boundary, tipping the last mental tumbler in place, and unlocking a chilling conclusion.
Oh my God!
The unspoken thought that flashed through Will’s mind was punctuated instantly by a blinding explosion of light from Harun’s direction, followed by a soul-shaking THARRUMPP!
A scream of anguish met his ears, then. Not from Harun, but from Amal, who had just seen his brother’s legs vaporized by a land mine.
“Minefield!” Doug yelled. “Oh Jesus, Will! We’re in a live minefield!” Doug’s voice was up half an octave as he held Amal back. Harun could be seen writhing on the ground in the distance, trying to sit up, waving at them weakly and moaning.
Amal was fighting Doug now, and Will moved to him, holding his arms, talking to him firmly.
“Listen to me! We can’t help him if we hit a mine too. You can’t run out there!”
The cries from Harun were in Arabic, and Doug turned to Amal. “What is he saying? Quickly!”
“He tell me not to come, but I must help!” Amal cried.
“What do we do, Will?” Doug asked. “Do you have any training in this? Are we in the middle of more of them?”
Will’s eyes were glued to the mortally wounded brother, trying to calculate whether he could be reached by exactly the same steps. There was too little light. A step in any direction could be fatal.
Harun’s voice cut the air again, in agony, but insistent.
Amal yelled back and, giving a sudden heave of his body, broke away from Doug, sprinting ten feet toward his brother before Harun’s voice met them again. Even without a translator, it was clear Harun had ordered Amal to come no farther. Amal protested, but Harun yelled the same demand again, his hand weakly motioning his brother back.
Amal stepped for
ward anyway, slowly, gingerly, trying to see his brother’s footsteps in the darkened sand. Will and Doug were frozen in their tracks, grappling with the futility of following him and realizing that they couldn’t run back out either.
Harun saw what was happening. He knew his brother would have no choice but to come to his rescue, whatever the consequences. He knew there was nothing he could say to stop Amal from making the same error.
But there was something he could do.
Harun accepted the fact he was dying, the pain from his ruined body almost unbearable. As he watched Amal take another perilous step forward, he reached his decision, and felt a great calm come over him.
Will saw Harun raise his gun into the glare of the background lights—the shape of it melding with the silhouetted image of the Iraqi’s head.
There was a brief burst of automatic fire then, and Harun’s body lurched back and disappeared from view, leaving only the lights of the base, now less than two miles away.
Amal fell to his knees in agony, understanding his brother’s last act. Will walked the ten feet to him and put his arm around the young Iraqi’s shoulder, drawing him back to where Doug was standing in shock.
“I’m sorry, Amal. I’m so sorry!” Will repeated, holding one shoulder, as Doug held the other.
Several American soldiers had already gathered next to the perimeter guard post by the time the company commander appeared.
“In the minefield out there, sir. I thought I could see a couple of figures after the explosion. One of them may have taken a mine, but they’re too far away to make out clearly.”
The major took the nightscope binoculars and examined the scene, agreeing with the assessment. He handed the scope back and stood in thought for a second.
“Keep watching. I’ll see if we can find an Apache to go take a look.”
The Iraqi Republican Guard unit that had moved north also heard the report from the exploding mine. Having received orders earlier by radio to find two American pilots trying to get to Coalition lines in the desert, they had been searching the perimeter of the minefield they had laid several days before. The Iraqi lieutenant, frustrated in their search, had stopped the column of four armored personnel carriers and ordered the engines killed so he could feel the desert night. Together they had stood on their machines and scanned ahead, intent on being the patrol that brought back the missing American colonels, and well aware that the glow four miles to the southeast was that of the conquering enemy.
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