Force of Eagles (15 page)

“Could they be setting us up? We try a rescue mission and they bushwhack us?”

“Possible, Colonel,” Rahimi said. “They would make political hay out of a failed rescue mission, just like Operation Eagle Claw in 1980 in Tehran. And the more casualties the better.”

“The Army’s got to get into the prison fast,” Stansell said. “Dewa, you got anything on the prison walls?”

She flipped through her notes. “The DIA sent us some stereoscopic coverage that’s less than a week old. Here we are…eighteen feet high, five feet wide at the base tapering to three feet at the top. Reinforced concrete. The guard towers at each corner have unrestricted fields of fire.” She paused. “Colonel, I don’t think you can go over the walls. And I found more telephone poles in the compound than are on the mosaic.” She gestured to the photos on the wall. “They’ve also jerryrigged steel towers on top of the buildings. A helicopter or parachute assault into the prison looks suicidal.”

Stansell sat back in his chair, closing his eyes, recalling the previous Sunday night when he had sat alone in his VOQ room in Washington. Had it only been a week?…and he thought again of February 1944, the Gestapo holding those French Resistance fighters in Amiens jail, the Maquis getting word that the Gestapo was getting ready to execute most of them. There was no way they could take the prison so they asked the RAF to bomb it, making a jail break possible. The RAF sent fighter bombers against it, and over 250 prisoners escaped…He told some of this to the chief and Rahimi.

“So what are you saying, Colonel?” the chief asked. “We bomb the prison and maybe kill the people we’re trying to save?”

“No. We bomb the
walls
and blow holes in ’em and put a couple of five-hundred pound Snakeyes into the guards’ building. While the dust is settling the rescue team parachutes in, lands outside the walls and goes through the holes we’ve made.”

“Colonel,” Pullman said, “who the hell can do that type of precision bombing?”

“F-111s or F-15Es,” Locke said.

Pullman looked at him. “Could be…well, I’m going to build a mock-up of the prison—”

“Chief,” Dewa cut in, “you haven’t got
time
to build a full-scale mock-up.”

Pullman turned and walked out the door. He loved a challenge. And without it this rescue wouldn’t ever come off.

*

Tours, France

By noon the ramp at the air base was packed with French kids who had discovered Doucette and were crowding around him under a wing of the F-111. Contreraz had a seemingly endless supply of F-111 shoulder patches that he passed out to teenagers. Doucette noticed the brunette from the bar was acting as an impromptu translator and constantly whispering in the WSO’s ear. Neither of the Americans were surprised when the French Mirage pilot appeared in his flight suit to reclaim the girl.

“So like the Americans,” the Frenchman said, glancing at the F-111 and then at Doucette. “Bigger, not better. Can this really fly or does it just sit on the ground looking like an old overfed ant-eater?”

“It flies,” Doucette said, the combat juices rising, the boredom he’d been feeling at the bar the night before vanishing.

Contreraz’s attention shifted away from the girl when he heard the hard tone in his pilot’s voice. “Sorry, love,” he told her, “got to go. Torch is about ready to engage.” He was too late. Doucette had already agreed to do a low level, high-speed flyby at the end of the show when they launched for Lakenheath.

“Torch, don’t do this,” Contreraz told him. The two were a strange combination. On the ground Contreraz was the wild man  and Doucette was all sobriety and responsibility. In the air the roles reversed. The WSO was the hard-nosed professional and Doucette became an animal. Only his flying skill and Contreraz’s constant restraint kept him out of serious trouble and still flying.

“One pass, haul ass.” Doucette’s motto on a mission. Knocking out enemy targets with his bombs was what he was about, and even a practice run turned him on. But the real thing was where it really was. Still, until a hostile target and a real enemy were in his sights—and it wouldn’t be long—he’d settle for the Frenchman who had insulted his jet.

The WSO groaned, doubting the French knew how low and fast Doucette could take the F-111. “Don’t jump us when we do it, okay? Single ship only.”

“
Mais
oui
.” The pilot smiled, fully intending to intercept them with his Mirage when they flew down the runway.

Doucette reverted to his normal routine and spent the afternoon entertaining children while Contreraz and the girl slipped away for a long lunch. When the WSO returned, Doucette had zipped his G-suit on and was pacing. “Time to go. Flight plan’s filed and our clearance is on request.”

“I don’t want to do this,” Contreraz grumbled as he strapped in. He could see a sleek delta-winged Mirage 2000 taking off. Fifteen minutes later they were airborne.

Doucette lifted the jet off and raised the gear and flaps, cleaning it up and turning the ugly duckling into a graceful swan. He claimed that the old saying about aircraft applied to the F-111—if it looks good, it is good. And in flight, the F-11 l looked good. The pilot headed to the east, sightseeing while Contreraz studied his map and punched a short route into the computer for the run that would guide them around any obstacle, towns or villages. When they were ready Doucette dropped down to the deck, swept the wings back with the variable sweep handle to twenty-six degrees, set the Terrain Following Radar to four hundred feet, engaged the autopilot and headed for the field. “Relax,” the pilot said, “he won’t find us down here in the weeds.”

“Wish I was sure of that,” Contreraz said.

Fifteen miles out from the airfield Doucette called the tower for permission to fly down the runway. He pushed the throttles up when the tower cleared them in and rooted the indicated airspeed meter on .95 mach-610 knots and swept the wings back to fifty-four degrees. Both men kept twisting in their seats, looking for the Mirage. “He’ll be there,” Doucette said. “Wants to impress the home-town crowd.” He milked the F-111 down to 200 feet as they crossed the perimeter fence around the air base. “Got him,” Doucette shouted. “Left eight o’clock high. Coming to our six.”

At mid-field the pilot reefed the plane into a sixty-five degree climb, his eyes locked on the Mirage that was converting to their six o’clock position. Doucette shoved the throttles full forward into the fifth and final stage of afterburner. The 25,000 pounds of thrust being generated by each Pratt and Whitney TF30-P-100 turbofan engine pushed them through the sound barrier. Now he switched hands on the stick, his right hand reaching forward for the fuel dump switch on the center panel between them. He flipped the red guard covering the switch to open…

“No,” Contreraz shouted. Too late. Doucette hit the switch and JP-4 pumped out the fuel-dump mast located under the tail of the F-111 between the burner cans of the two jet engines. The plumb of the afterburners lit the raw fuel streaming out of the dump mast and a torch, four hundred feet long, flashed out from under their tail toward the Mirage. From his side of the cockpit Contreraz could see the Mirage fly through the long plume reaching out behind them as the French pilot pulled off and away.

“Shit oh dear! He was too close. I think you french-fried him.”

“One does hope.”

*

The Mountains of Kurdistan, Iraq

Bill Carroll had been watching the mountain trail since early morning, not sure which side of the border he was on, Iraq or Iran. The trail he was watching showed signs of heavy use, by the Kurdish tribesmen who moved at will across the border, he hoped. The fierce tribesmen had been fighting Iraq for generations, trying to carve out an independent homeland. The Kurds might be able to help him—if he could just make contact with their leaders.

Occasionally the three-and-a-half-million Kurds living in Iran would press for more independence and the Iranian government would execute a few of its own Kurds and take reprisals. When relations between the two countries were strained, Iran would encourage the Iraqi Kurds by increasing the flow of arms and supplies across the border. The Kurds were a people caught between two unfriendly governments.

After arriving in Rezaiyeh Carroll had tried to make contact with the Kurdish Democratic Party but the town-dwelling Kurds he had approached were too wary of strangers. Afraid to delay longer, he had caught a bus and headed south into the vague area called Kurdistan. He needed to find a Kurdish village where a single stranger would not be feared. Forty miles south of Rezaiyeh he had gotten off the bus and hitched a ride on a truck headed southwest toward the Iraqi border. The truck driver had warned him about a large army garrison at the village of Khaneh four miles from the border. He had jumped off the truck before they ran into a roadblock and headed into the mountains.

Movement down the trail now caught his attention and he pulled back into the bushes. He could make out four soldiers moving single-file toward him. They moved quietly, maintaining fifty-foot intervals, scanning the brush and trail for any signs of a booby trap. Just below him the squad leader spoke in Arabic, telling them to find biding places along the trail.

Carroll studied their uniforms and weapons—Iraqi soldiers. The leader had picked the same place to hide along the trail for the same reasons he had: good concealment and a clear view of the trail. Carroll settled down to wait out the soldiers…

It was dusk when Carroll heard the slow hoofbeats and squeaking harness of a pack train, but he did not move, afraid the soldiers might see him. The way they had disappeared into the brush and remained concealed warned Carroll that they were professionals. The few minutes that passed before the pack train came into view stretched into hours.

Through the brush and rocks Carroll could make out a young man on foot leading four heavily laden donkeys. He sucked in his breath and held it when the man stopped his donkeys short of the waiting ambush. He looked around, satisfied with the spot, and propped his assault rifle against a tree. He produced a small submachine gun, an Uzi, from under his baggy coat and hung it from a branch. Carefully he then unpacked the animals, talking to them in a low voice, checking for sores as he stroked them.

The man’s moustache, wide sash around his waist and baggy trousers drawn at the ankle, identified him as a Kurd, and Carroll could make out a dagger and pistol stuck in his sash. Like most Kurds he was a walking armory. When the donkeys had been watered and fed, the Kurd settled to his knees, and in the failing light tended to his evening prayers, the low rhythmic chant of the Shahada reaching the soldiers. “
Allah
-
u
Akbar
,
Allah
-
u
Akbar
,” God is most great, God is most great. Carroll could see the words capture the praying man, embracing, reassuring him.

A shadow moved behind the Kurd. Carroll tensed, waited, his eyes searching for the other three soldiers. The Iraqi soldier now stood behind the Kurd, and drove the muzzle of his rifle into the base of the Kurd’s skull, knocking him spread-eagled to the ground. He grabbed the Kurd’s wrist and jerked the prostrate man’s arm up and forward. Carroll could hear a laugh from one of the hidden soldiers below him when the attacker kicked the Kurd in the armpit. Another kick turned the Kurd over, followed by the Iraqi stomping on the man’s chest.

Now the other three men emerged from hiding. “Miteif,” one called to another, “there’s nothing left.”

“He is not dead,” another said.

The men gathered around the prostrate body. One bent down and bound the Kurd’s wrists and ankles with white nylon-reinforced plastic shackles. Two others dragged him to a tree and propped him against it while another built a small fire. Then the four men settled around the fire and prepared their dinner, content with their work.

Carroll moved out of his hiding place and worked his way toward the fire, a cold anger inside him. He crouched in the shadows, twenty yards from the fire. He did not have to wait long. Soon one of the men stood and walked into the darkness, answering a call of nature. Carroll moved silently toward the man, his knife in his left hand. He could just make out the vague image of the soldier urinating against a rock. He worked closer and stood beside a tree, blending into the dark.

The man turned and stumbled toward the fire, zipping his pants up, walking straight toward Carroll, not seeing him. Carroll’s left hand shot straight forward out of the shadows, jabbing the knife into the Iraqi’s throat while his right hand grabbed the soldier’s hair. Carroll pulled the knife across his throat, cutting the right carotid artery, dropped the man to the ground by his hair, allowing him to bleed to death.

He moved toward the tree where the Kurd had hung the Uzi. The odds were now acceptable.

The donkeys brayed and pounded the ground when they caught the scent of blood. The three men were looking at the donkeys when Carroll lifted the small Uzi off the branch and crouched behind the tree. Miteif pulled two steel rods out of his pack, banged them together and turned his attention to the fire. “This will pass the time tonight,” he said, shoving the ends of the rods into the hot coals of the fire.

“What will you burn off first,” one of the Iraqis said, “his moustache?”

“Why not? The Kurds are proud of their ability to sprout hair under their noses. Then his manhood?”

“Do Kurds have any?”

The men were laughing when Carroll shot them, then quickly checked each body. Miteif groaned and looked at Carroll when he bent over him. Without hesitating he held the Uzi’s muzzle against Miteifs head and pulled the trigger and two bullets ripped into the back of his skull.

Carroll now hurried over to the Kurd. Remarkably, the man was still alive and conscious. The Iraqis had pulled the white plastic straps tight around his wrists, cutting deep into the skin and cutting off the flow of blood and both hands were swollen. Carefully, Carroll sliced through the straps.