12

Al Hajarah desert, south central Iraq

Friday, March 8, 1991—7:30 A.M. (0430 GMT)

The first Iraqi column had passed without slowing—several heavy trucks, an armored personnel carrier, and a jeeplike vehicle from the USSR headed for the Iraq-Saudi border some fifty miles distant. If anyone in the column had even noticed the squat masonry building, he’d paid no official attention, but it had taken Sandra, Will, and Doug a half hour to get their heart rates back to normal.

The sun was climbing the eastern horizon now with classic intensity, a merciless spotlight poised to reveal any attempt they might make to move from the broken-down building. They were trapped by the proximity of the Iraqi road, and knew it.

By the time another rumble of engines and wheels reached their ears, the three of them had rearranged the sparse collection of supplies and the few sticks of furniture to hide them from any casual observer who happened to glance in the door. The table was turned on edge, a broken chair and a discarded piece of plywood placed to either side, and Bill was moved to the floor against the far wall behind the visual barrier where they all now huddled.

Bill Backus had been conscious for nearly thirty minutes, enough time to drink a can of Coke from the six they had left. His pain seemed to have subsided somewhat, but the flight engineer was still weakening.

As his eyes had begun to close again, Sandra had grasped Bill’s hand in hers, her eyes locking on his with fierce determination. “You’ve got to fight, Bill. Fight to hang on! We’ll get you out, but it will take a while. You’ve got to want to hang on!”

He had nodded dreamily, smiled, and gone back to sleep—or slipped into unconsciousness. The difference was esoteric at this stage, Doug thought.

Will was at the window again. Except for the presence of a single tank, the oncoming column looked like the last. This convoy, too, was headed south for the vicinity of the Saudi border, which seemed strange. Will knew Saddam wasn’t totally defeated, and that stuck in all their craws, but why were viable military forces being used to guard the borders when the Butcher of Baghdad was busy exterminating Kurds to the north and Shiites to the southeast and needed all the murderous help he could get?

“Republican Guard, you think?” Doug asked.

“Probably,” Will replied. “Their logo is a red triangle, though, and I don’t see anything like that.”

Will dove back into the shelter as the column passed, the noise of the tank and trucks just beginning to recede, when suddenly the squealing of brakes and the shouting of Iraqi soldiers sent shivers down their backs.

The column was stopped dead in the road only a hundred yards or so past the building. The shouting continued, obviously inflamed Arabic rhetoric, the words indecipherable, but the tempers clear. Someone was madder than hell about something.

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 leave 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.