Mission Compromised (59 page)

Komulakov had the Norwegian duty officer read them back twice to make sure that he had written them down correctly and then asked, “Did the American Air Force say how long it will take them to mount a search and rescue mission to pick him up?”

“Yes sir, according to this cable, they have alerted their SAR aircraft in Turkey at both Incirlik and Siirt, and they are now deciding whether to try to rescue him right away or wait until cover of dark. Meanwhile they are keeping two F-16s up over him for protection in case the Iraqis start looking for him. That's great news isn't it, sir?”

“Yes, very exciting indeed, thank you, Major. Please call me immediately if there are any further developments, no matter what hour. I especially want to know right away if the Americans launch a rescue effort.”

Komulakov hung up the phone and sat on the edge of the bed, thinking. He had to get this information to Dotensk so the Ukrainian could pass it on to Hussein Kamil. But he couldn't very well make that call with Captain Sjogren beside him. He patted her leg and said, “Duty intrudes. I must make some calls, my dear. I'll just disconnect the phone here in the bedroom so it won't disturb you.” He got up, took the phone, turned out
the light, and went into his study at the far end of the seven-room apartment. Ever mindful of the tradecraft he had learned as a young KGB officer, the general closed the bedroom door but left the door of the study open so that he could see if Captain Sjogren awakened and approached the study

Just as the Russian was connecting his EncryptionLok-3 to call Dotensk in Baghdad, the phone rang. “Hello, Deputy Secretary General Dimitri Komulakov.”

“Dimitri, it's Simon Harrod. Go secure.”

Komulakov switched the EncryptionLok-3 and when he heard it engage, said, “Yes, Simon.”

“Newman is alive. I was just called by the situation room watch officer.”

“I know, Simon. I'm dealing with it.”

“Good. There are issues at stake here more important than the fate of one Marine.”

“I couldn't agree more, Simon. Do you know when your Air Force intends to mount a rescue attempt? It would be best if they waited until after dark over there so that I have time to make other arrangements.”

“I'll call the Pentagon and tell them the President doesn't want to put any more of our people at risk and that he's ordered the rescue to be postponed until tonight.”

“Very well. That should give me enough time. I'll call you back if I hear anything.”

Komulakov hung up, then dialed another number. The phone rang only twice before Dotensk answered.

“Can you go secure on Alpha, Zulu, Two, One, Seven, Zed?” Komulakov asked.

“Just a minute.” There was a brief pause as both men entered the new
code into their EncryptionLok-3s, waited for the familiar “ping” and then Dotensk said, “Go ahead.”

“Leonid, we have a problem that must be solved immediately. One of the Americans involved in the attack yesterday has survived. He was aboard one of the aircraft that was shot down. I have his current location. You must urgently alert Kamil to this situation and have him deal with it. If some other Iraqi unit finds this particular American, it will be devastating to our client and to you and me.”

“But what is so important about this one American?”

Once again Komulakov hesitated. His entire career had been based on “compartments” where one only revealed to others what they needed to know to accomplish a particular assignment or mission. Now he judged that his co-conspirator needed to be fully motivated.

“The surviving American is the commander of the entire mission. He knows everything. If he is rescued or captured and confesses under torture to what he knows, he will bring us all down.”

“I see. I will immediately try to find our client and advise him, but I warn you, his task will not be easy. The entire Iraqi military seems to be on the move. I'm in Baghdad, and all foreigners have been told to stay off the streets while the Army moves north. The rumor here is that when Saddam got back here yesterday he ordered a full-scale assault against the resistance forces north of Mosul. He was on radio and television last night telling his countrymen that he was going to crush the terrorists who have invaded Kurdistan.”

“Yes, well, nevertheless, Kamil
has
to find a way. Tell Kamil the American knows he wants to defect and that if he's rescued by the American Air Force tonight or captured by the Republican Guards, he's likely to compromise Kamil's plans to escape Iraq. Kamil will believe all that, if you tell him.”

“You say you know the location of the American?”

Komulakov took out the piece of paper on which he had written down Newman's GPS coordinates, and Dotensk wrote them down. Before hanging up he reminded the arms merchant, “Remember, tell Kamil—this must be done at once!”

Apartment of Leonid Dotensk

________________________________________

Rashid Hotel
Baghdad, Iraq
Tuesday, 7 March 1995
0810 Hours, Local

 

As soon as he hung up with Komulakov, Dotensk redialed the cell-phone number for Kamil. As the phone rang, the Ukrainian thought,
It's a good thing that those good communists from Beijing installed this cellular system, otherwise nobody in this filthy cesspool of a country could make a phone call.

The commander of the Amn Al-Khass answered curtly in Arabic, “Kamil, who is this?”

“Hussein, it is Leonid; I must speak to you.”

“After yesterday, I think I have listened enough to you. I am very busy right now. As you probably already know, the Republican Guards and several other divisions have been ordered to attack the pirates' den north of Mosul. I will be too busy to meet with you for the next several days. Do not call me. I shall call you when I believe it is safe to do so. Good-bye.”

“Hussein, Hussein, your life is in danger!”

“What did you say?

“There is an American from one of the aircraft downed yesterday who is alive, and if he is rescued or captured by a unit other than the Amn Al-Khass, he could tell everything about your plan to defect.”

“An American now on the ground here in Iraq knows of what you and I have spoken regarding my family and me? What kind of fool are you, Leonid?”

“Not as big a fool as you, if you fail to hunt him down. I swear, Kamil, you must take action immediately, for your good as well as mine.”

Dotensk could sense Kamil fuming on the other end of the line.

“Where is he?” Kamil snapped, finally. Dotensk gave the GPS coordinates.

The Iraqi wrote down the GPS coordinates that Dotensk recited to him and after consulting a map Kamil said, “Well, dear Dotensk, it appears that Allah may be smiling upon us. The two HIND helicopters you saw are still there. I am supposed to use them to provide flank security for the armored column as it moves north into the area where the American-sponsored puppet army is holed up. I will dispatch them to this location to see if they can find your American who knows too much.”

“The sooner the better, because the Americans know where he is and plan to rescue him tonight. And please, Hussein, keep your phone on. If there are any changes, I shall call you at once. And… please forgive me for my intemperate words earlier. You are no fool. But you are my friend.”

“Of course.” The line went dead.

1400 meters N of Lake Tharthar

________________________________________

Western Iraq
Tuesday, 7 March 1995
0900 Hours, Local

 

“Picnic Six, this is Fox Fire Three Dash One, over.” The call awakened Newman from a sound sleep. Though he had promised himself he would stay awake, the heat and fatigue had won again and he had dozed off, sitting upright, with the small radio on his lap. He grabbed the radio.

“Fox Fire, Picnic Six, go ahead.”

“Picnic Six, we've been advised that the bus won't be coming to your stop until after dark tonight—unless you have any unwanted company, over.”

“Roger, Fox Fire. No sign of any unexpected guests yet, over.”

“Well, don't take it personally, but they may have bigger fish to fry. Our Navy friends with the rabbit ears say they're picking up all kinds of traffic on the Baghdad-Mosul highway—all of it headed north. For whatever reason, we've been instructed to let it go. Meanwhile, we've got to run up to the north to pay a quick visit to a gas station. Think you'll be all right without us for a while? Over.”

“Roger that. I promise to be a good boy and stay right where I am until you get back.”

Newman understood the jargon. The “rabbit ears” were the sensors aboard a Navy EA-6 flying somewhere over Iraq and listening to radio “traffic.” The “gas station” was undoubtedly a KC-10 or some other airborne tanker, flying somewhere over Turkey. The F-16s would fly up behind it, hook up to the fuel drogues, fill their tanks, and then return. Meanwhile he'd sit tight.

What neither Newman nor the aviators above him understood was that the heavy radio communications being picked up by the EA-6 were emanating from the Republican Guards, armored and mechanized units headed north to crush the Iraqi National Congress resistance forces north of Mosul—the very attack that the Iraqi ambassador to the UN had told Simon Harrod about the day before. Just sixty kilometers west of where Newman lay hiding, the best units in the Iraqi military were jammed bumper to bumper on a single highway, headed north. Had Newman known that his failed mission was the cause for Saddam's decision to crush the resistance, he would have been sick. And he would have been further
despondent to know that the Iraqi attack was being permitted to take place unhindered by U.S. airpower because of fears in Washington that Iraq would expose the mission's failure. But then, he also didn't know that his own life was in jeopardy of forfeit as well.

Because he had no knowledge of these things, Newman wasn't worried. Dusk—and rescue—were only nine hours away, and the F-16s would be back in thirty or forty minutes with full fuel tanks.

Underground Pipeline Road

________________________________________

Lake Tharthar, Iraq
Tuesday, 7 March 1995
0941 Hours, Local

 

Eli Yusef Habib was getting ready to go. He had slept overnight in his truck and took his time cooking an egg for breakfast and heating his tea over a small primus stove, one of the consumer products in highest demand along his “sales route.”

He wondered why he was here. Could he have misunderstood his leading?

Habib was beginning to think it was dangerous here. A half hour earlier he had seen and heard two military jet planes swoop low out of the sky and fly over him, then they left the area.

Now he heard another noise and looked to the sky. As he watched from his position three kilometers north of Lake Tharthar, two helicopters roared toward him from the east. He reached into his truck and grabbed his Zeiss 10x56 binoculars. The aircraft were huge, bristling with guns and rocket pods. He recognized them as Russian-built HIND attack helicopters. The Kurds along his sales route called them “flying tanks.” Even at this distance they looked fearsome as they skimmed along, just one hundred feet or so above the ground.

Suddenly, the lead helicopter unleashed a volley of rockets at a small, rocky outcropping about a mile or two away. The first helicopter swooped up to avoid the blasts and the second helicopter, slightly behind the first, repeated the attack, its warheads exploding at exactly the same point, just as the concussions from the first volley reached the old man. As Habib watched, the first helicopter came back around and though the sound had not yet reached him, he could see puffs of smoke from the gun pods and tracer rounds impacting where the rockets had landed.

Both helicopters went into a low hover, firing their guns at the same target, just a few hundred meters in front of them. The downwash from the rotor blades kicked up an enormous dust cloud and, where the rockets and 12.7mm exploding machine gun rounds were impacting, there was more dust and smoke. And now, Habib could hear what sounded to him like two chain saws running at very high rpm—the noise of the HINDs' revolving machine guns sending thousands of rounds a minute into whatever they were aiming at.

Suddenly, two jets roared over the old man from behind. They were the same planes he had seen earlier, but now were so low and so loud that Habib instinctively cringed, expecting an explosion. Instead, the two aircraft each fired two missiles apiece, almost simultaneously, at the two helicopters. He put the binoculars up to his eyes just in time to see both of the HINDs explode in mid-air. The rotor of one spun off at a high, crazy angle and they crashed to earth in a fiery tangle.

Habib was almost breathless at the spectacle being played out before him. He had seen war as a young boy. And he had certainly seen it again during the Iran-Iraq war of the '80s and the Gulf War in the early '90s. He had visited the Kurdish villages in the mountains and the Shia towns near Basra that had been attacked by Saddam's mustard and nerve gases. But he had never seen air combat at such close range. He didn't know who or what the
helicopters had been shooting at and didn't know whose planes had shot them down, but he had no doubt that people had died. He lowered his glasses and said a prayer. “Lord, to You I commend their spirits. In Your merciful hands I pray that those who just died knew Your Son, our Savior. Amen.”

As the old man prayed, high above him, Fox Fire Three Dash One and Fox Fire Three Dash Two were calling back to the tanker, asking for it to cross into Iraq and fuel them up so they could remain on station. They had been heading north to take on fuel when they had heard Newman's frantic radio call: “Fox Fire Three Dash One, Picnic Six, two HIND Delta's coming in low and fast from the east. I think they have me spot—”

That had been enough for both pilots to do a 180-degree turn and head back to where they had just left the Marine lieutenant colonel. The fighter jet pilots had no way of knowing that the HINDs had launched from Tikrit South while the USAF aircraft winged their way north to link up with the tanker.