Force of Eagles (21 page)

“You have lied,” Mokharti said. “You were a command post controller at Ras Assanya, not a security policeman.” The guard worked the rope, drawing Nesbit’s elbows still closer. “I guarantee you will tell us what we want but only after you’ve been punished for your lying.” The commandant then left the basement, leaving the guards to their work.

One guard held Nesbit’s head down while the other cinched the rope up, working it until the elbows were almost touching. Then he tied the rope off, making sure the knot would not slip. The other guard let go of the sergeant’s head and threw a rope over a hook in the ceiling. They tied one end of the rope to Nesbit’s wrists and pulled on the other end, lifting his arms up behind him, his screams ricocheting off the walls, filling the room with his pain. Jefferson saw Nesbit’s shoulders dislocate. When Nesbit’s buttocks were barely touching the floor, they tied the rope to a ring in the wall and walked out, leaving the sergeant sitting on the floor in his agony.

Jefferson fought to control his urge to beat against the door. In-stead he threw himself against the walls of the box, twisting and turning around. He laid his check against the pipe and tapped out what he had seen, all the while listening to Nesbit, whose sounds had been reduced to a whimper.

*

Texas Lake, Nevada

“I hear you’ve never been on a drop before, Colonel?” Dunkin said, leading Stansell, Locke and Bryant around the C-130s as the Rangers marshaled for the airdrop. “You oughtta’ go along and watch them go out the back. Quite a show. We’ll drop a stick of twenty on each pass—ten out’a each door—then come around and drop the second stick.”

“You going to come as close as you did last time?” Locke said, thinking about the dummy load Dunkin had almost dropped on the helicopter.

“Naw, I only do that with canister drops. Never for the real thing.”

“How’s this drop shaping up?” Stansell asked.

“No problems. Looks like it’s gonna be a Hollywood jump.” No combat equipment, he meant.

Stansell scanned the ramp, annoyed he hadn’t noted it sooner…The Rangers were going about the loading routine with measured precision, but he didn’t see a single Ranger waddling around with a rucksack slung in front under his reserve chute, bouncing against his knees as he walked, or a weapons case strapped to his side. “They’re only wearing K-Pots,” he said, referring to the Kevlar helmet the Army used. He looked for the battalion C.O., Lieutenant Colonel Ham Gregory. “We’re not on a picnic here.”

“Too late to do anything about it now,” Dunkin said, checking his watch. “We crank engines in nine minutes.”

Stansell headed for the flight deck of Dunkin’s Hercules, his right ear itching for real.

*

The Pentagon

Now it was coming together, Cunningham could feel it. Hoskins, the brigadier general running the OSI, had just left after assuring him that no foreign agents were watching Task Force Alpha at Nellis. Mado had taken Stansell’s operations plan and added to it, working in an AWACS for command and control, and had a bureaucratic polish on it, thereby providing Stansell with what he needed to create an alternate for Delta Force. Cunningham had told Mado to give the ops plan a name—OPORD WARLORD—Operation Order WARLORD. Let everyone think we’re playing some goddamn shogunate epic out at Red Flag, Cunningham thought. It all added to Stansell’s cover as a Red Flag warlord.

The intercom buzzed and Cunningham’s secretary told him that Colonel Ben Yuriden, the Israeli air attaché, had arrived. Cunningham had first met Yuriden when the Israelis were getting their F-16s. Even then the general could sense the commitment in the man, and Yuriden had proved it in the raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad in June of 1981, as well as in the air battles over the Beka’a Valley in Lebanon in ’82 where the Israeli Air Force had downed over thirty MiGs, without a single loss. Cunningham made a mental promise to ask someday if there was any truth to the rumor that after the F-16 raid on the PLOs’ headquarters in Tunisia, the PLO had directly threatened Yuriden’s family. According to the legend that surrounded Yuriden, his reply had been to fly a lone F-16 against the group that had issued the threat and put a single bomb in the backyard of the PLO commander—when no one was home. The PLO got the message about Israeli intelligence, bombing accuracy—and Ben Yuriden.

“Ben, thanks for coming.” Cunningham stuck his hand out, welcoming the middle-aged man that entered his office. Average looking in the extreme, only his intense brown eyes marked him.

“General, why do I think you’re calling in…what do your people say?…a marker?” Yuriden had a knack for cutting to the quick.

So did Cunningham. “I need a favor—a very unofficial one. It’s something I’ll probably never be able to repay.” The colonel said nothing, gave no indication. Cunningham thought, I’d hate to play poker with you. “One of my officers is loose in Iran and I need to get a message to him. Can your people do that for me?” Cunningham calculated that WARLORD’S best chance for success hinged on having trucks or buses in position to move the POWs to the airfield. Task Force Alpha could do everything else, even fly in their own transportation, but vehicles in place were their best option. The CIA had told him they wouldn’t do it, so maybe Bill Carroll could, providing he could contact him.

“Captain William Carroll,” Yuriden said. “He’s not in Iran right now but, I hear, with the Kurds in Iraq—Jalali tribe. Yes, we can do that. Perhaps we can do something else to help?”

Cunningham kept a straight face. An opportunity he hadn’t counted on had just presented itself…The Israelis had the best secret intelligence service in the Middle East, and he had just been offered their help. He knew that making an unauthorized contact with the Mossad could stir up a hornet’s nest, but he’d take the chance. “I need about ten trucks or buses—”

“At Kermanshah.”

Cunningham’s mouth almost dropped open. Although he trusted Yuriden, he did not want to tell him why he wanted the vehicles. Did Yuriden understand all that? The position he was in? Were the Israelis onto Task Force Alpha?

“No doubt for Delta Force,” Yuriden added, also with a straight face. It was a game of poker between two allies who liked and trusted each other, but neither could ever turn over all his cards.

Cunningham said nothing, relieved that Task Force Alpha was still apparently secure, even from Yuriden.

Smart for a
goy
, Yuriden thought, understanding the delicate position Cunningham was in. “Why don’t you have Carroll work with the Kurds to get the vehicles you need? There are many Kurds around Kermanshah. They only need some money.”

“Then you’ll play postman for me and deliver a message to Carroll?”

Yuriden nodded, calculating how Israel could use the rescue operation to its advantage and weaken its Arab enemies.

After the colonel had left, Cunningham asked for OPORD WARLORD to be brought in from the safe. He thumbed through the plan, mentally checking off what had been accomplished so far. He briefly wondered if he was making a mistake by not telling Mado what he was setting up. No, he decided, better Mado think Alpha was still a cover operation. He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his rotund stomach, thinking about his next move. His eyes snapped open when Stevens knocked at the door, waiting to be acknowledged before entering.

“Dick,” Cunningham said, “tell General Leachmeyer that I’ll be glad to send him some AC-130 gunships to support Delta—if he wants them. And send one out to Nellis for WARLORD. Also have Operations coordinate with the Turks and move up our annual air defense exercise with them two weeks, and use AWACs and EC-130s this time.” The “exercise” would be a good cover for the rescue activity…Am I getting too involved with nuts and bolts again? he wondered briefly. Trying to do too much myself on this one? I’ve got a bagful of two- and three-star generals…

Stevens turned to leave. He had not taken a single note. Sundown Cunningham didn’t favor note-takers, just doers.

Chapter 16: D Minus 19

Nellis AFB, Nevada

Red Flag’s building was deserted except for Dewa’s back office in the Intelligence section. The sergeant responsible for locking up had checked the building and asked Stansell if he would be sure the front door was secure when he left. Stansell watched the sergeant disappear out the door, anxious to get to the NCO Club for a Friday night.

The colonel kept working on the sketch he was making of the prison at Kermanshah. By recapturing it on paper he committed every detail to memory. When he had finished he compared his sketch with polaroid pictures Pullman had taken of the mock-up in Tikaboo Valley that was nearing completion.

As he relaxed in his chair his pencil, seeming to move of its own accord, sketched a three-quarters profile of his oldest daughter Lisa. He let the pencil move, drawing in the face of his youngest daughter, Marilee, alongside Lisa. “I miss you,” remembering…

He snapped the pencil in two and threw the pieces in a waste basket.

The phone rang, breaking the hold that loneliness and a sense of loss had on his life. “Yeah?” It was the night manager at the officers’ club telling him that one of his men was turning into an ugly drunk and asking if he could handle it before they had to call the security police. Stansell slammed the phone down and hurried out of the building.

The casual bar in the officers’ club was alive with fighter jocks in for the Red Flag exercise telling their latest war story earned over the Nevada desert. The night manager pointed to a corner table occupied by one Captain James “Thunder” Bryant. An empty space surrounded him, a safe zone. “He’s drunk on his ass,” the night manager told Stansell. “The bartender refused to serve him so he just helped himself. One of his buddies tried talking to him. Didn’t do any good. That’s when I called you.”

Stansell bought a drink at the bar before he pushed his way through the crowd and sat at Bryant’s table. “Get lost, Colonel.”

“When you tell me what’s got a hold of you.”

Bryant focused a cold stare on the short colonel that sent a warning signal—he was on the edge of violence. Stansell sipped at his drink and waited. Bryant fumbled in his jacket pocket, pulled out a crumpled folded envelope and threw it across the table. “Read it.”

The return address was a law firm in Wilmington, Delaware. Stansell smoothed the envelope flat, not opening it. “I got one just like it,” he said, “when my wife gave me the boot.”

“So that makes us buddies?”

“No, it only means I’ve been where you are.” He stood up. “Get it together and stop feeling sorry for yourself. Come talk when you’re sober.”

“That’s easy for you to say now—”

“You think so? Twenty minutes ago I was drawing pictures of my girls. I don’t get to see ’em growing up.”

“So what the hell do I do right now?”

“You hurt, you take it, and you work like hell not to hurt anyone else.”

Chapter 17: D Minus 18

Northeastern Iraq

The old Kurd squatted outside Zakia’s infirmary, sketching the floor plan of the Iraqi army headquarters in the dust with a short stick. He was, Carroll was certain, key to the support needed from Mulla Haqui.

After talking to Haqui, Carroll had gone through the camp asking if anyone had a relative or friend that worked in Irbil, the town where a rifle division of the Iraqi army was headquartered, and found a young woman who told him about an old uncle who collected trash in the city. With Zakia’s help he and the woman found the only available telephone twelve miles away and she contacted the relative in Irbil.

The second day after the phone call the old man appeared in camp, dog-tired but anxious to tell his fellow tribesmen what he knew. When he had finished he rested back on his haunches, pleased he could help his people and that someone had had enough sense finally to ask him.

Carroll told them they needed to attack the Iraqi headquarters, and to do that, they would give the Iraqi “a real target to chase and bad information. What kind of information do the Iraqis trust?”

“What they see,” one of the men said. “And what they torture out of Kurds.”

“Have the Iraqis captured a Pesh Merga lately?” Carroll asked.

“Four days ago,” Mustapha told him. “Rashid Shaban. He will die before he tells them anything—”

“Would you like to free Rashid? It will be difficult and the Iraqis will take reprisals.” The burst of words, shouting, and animated gestures that erupted around him confused Carroll until he sorted out what they were saying. They weren’t arguing if they should do it, just how and when. Quietly he sketched his plan in dirt, interrupting occasionally to ask for specific information. One by one they stopped talking and turned their attention to the rough map he was creating. “Old uncle,” he asked the trash collector from Irbil, “can you get a message to Rashid?” The old man spat a glob into the dirt. Loud and clear, Carroll thought, suppressing a smile.

*

Las Vegas, Nevada

“Okay, Colonel, what’s eating you?” Dewa sat down at her desk in building 201, then saw the sketch he had made of his daughters and regretted her question.

Stansell shook his head. “Sorry, forget it…but,” he said, looking at Chief Pullman and Bryant and Locke, “I don’t like what I’m seeing, I didn’t like the Hollywood jump on Thursday or what I hear went on at the Red Stallion last night, the Rangers brawling in a parking lot…We’ve got to build a fire under our people, weld them together into a tight team, make them want to commit to what we’re doing.”

“Why don’t you tell them we’re here to rescue the POWs?” Locke asked.

Dewa ruffled through a stack of messages on her desk, avoiding eye contact with Stansell. Would he tell them the truth? If not, she would still do her job, but as for the future…