Mission Compromised (60 page)

Now both USAF aircraft were running dangerously low on fuel.

The two jets each made separate passes over the burning wreckage of the HINDs and fired on it with their guns, but it was clear to Habib there could have been no survivors in the helicopters.

From beside his truck, Habib watched the two aircraft make a few more runs over the wreckage of the burning helicopters and then turn and head north, once again passing almost directly over where he stood. As they passed by, he could see clearly, beneath the gray camouflage paint, the USAF markings on their sides. And then they were gone over the horizon behind him.

Who or what were the helicopters attacking? Did it have something to do with the parachutes he had seen yesterday? He concluded it did—and further, because the helicopters had been shot down by American jets—that the helicopters must have been shooting at any American survivors
from the events of the day before. He chastised himself for not investigating last night.
Some poor souls must have spent a terrible night alone in the desert. And because I did not go to help them then, they may now be dead.
Once again he said a silent prayer as he threw his belongings into the truck and started down the dirt track toward the smoking wreckage.

It took him about five minutes to get near the place. The fire was parallel to the highway, but nearly a kilometer away—and still he could feel its heat. Habib stopped his truck and gazed at the destruction.

He was shaking. It had just occurred to him how vulnerable he would have been had the helicopters seen him, or if the American jets had mistaken him for an enemy. Habib uttered a silent prayer of thanksgiving to his merciful God and decided that he'd make a quick search for whatever the helicopters had been shooting at. If he found nothing, he would get away from this area before more helicopters or soldiers came.

And then it occurred to him that more American planes could come at any moment and mistake him for an Iraqi soldier. Looking back to the north, he didn't see the planes coming back, nor did he see Army trucks coming from the east. But it was certainly time for him to keep moving.

Habib drove as close as he could to the small outcropping where the helicopters' rockets and machine guns had hit. There was the strong scent of ammonia from all the explosions. Dust and smoke still hung thick. As he got out of the cab, he spotted what at first seemed to be a smoking bundle of rags. He looked again. Was it a person? Yes… it was a man! He was on fire—or at least his clothes were. The old man grabbed a five-gallon water jug out of the bed of his truck and scrambled up the slight incline.

 

 

With the burned and blasted man now regaining consciousness, Habib began to examine his wounds. His right side was a mass of blood;
the old man guessed he was wounded by fragments thrown by the rockets and stones chewed up from the machine gun fire. The old man firmly but gently examined the burns on the victim's neck, right arm, and leg. He scrambled down from the rock, ran back to his truck to find his first aid kit, and then climbed back up the little hill. When he got there, the man was trying to remove what was left of his smoldering flight suit. Habib saw the charred U.S. insignia.
So
—
this man is an American.
Habib spread the ointment from his first-aid kit liberally on the ugly burns and bandaged the worst of the many puncture wounds on the man's torso, arms, and legs. As he helped bandage up the holes in his body, he removed and set aside a money belt strapped around the victim's waist.

Newman watched the old Arab as he applied the salve. His first thought as he had regained consciousness was that he was drowning. Water was pouring over him, and then he felt strong hands gripping his flight suit and trying to hold him upright. He had looked up through seared eyelids and could barely make out the silhouette of a bearded man wearing Arab garb. The man's lips were moving, but Newman couldn't hear a thing. He remembered that he had been on the little survival radio, calling the F-16s to turn back because two HIND helicopters had been approaching, and then there were explosions. He could remember nothing else. He assumed his eardrums had ruptured from the concussions.

The old man's hands were gentle and expert. “Thank God that you came by when you did,” Newman said.

“Ah… you are a Christian,” the Arab said with a broad smile as he worked away at Newman's wounds. “I am also a believer. I am glad to meet a Christian brother from America. But I must get you away from here. The army may return, if not with planes, at least with trucks and soldiers to find you. Come, climb into the truck with me. I will drive you somewhere where you can be sheltered and recover from your wounds. Yes… thank God.”

Though Newman's hearing was still terribly impaired, he could catch parts of what the man was saying—and it was in English. The old man shouted, “You cannot walk. Put your left arm around my neck and I will carry you to my truck. We must get away from here.”

Newman did as he was told, and to his amazement, the old man picked him up and lifted him in a fireman's carry. He took Newman down the hill to the truck and helped him climb in on the passenger side. Then, the old man ran back up the hill and picked up the burned remnants of Newman's flight suit, the charred pack he had made from his parachute, the money belt, and the shattered pieces of the survival radio the Marine had been using when the helicopters unleashed their deadly fire. Returning to the truck, the Arab threw all of Newman's possessions in the bed of the truck, jumped in, and slammed the door.

“We must go now.” He put the truck in gear and drove back toward the highway.

Until they reached the road, the bouncing and jostling of the truck was extremely painful, but once they reached the underground pipeline road, the pain eased. The old man noticed as he drove that the American was dozing off to sleep. “Lord, let him sleep and kindly take away his pain,” he prayed aloud. Newman appreciated the sincerity of the man's concern. He closed his eyes.

Newman was awakened three hours later when the truck came to a halt. They had traveled a little less than seventy-five kilometers.

Directly in front of the truck there was a sign in English and Arabic: “Pumping Station 3.” In front of them was a long line of cars and trucks. And up ahead, Newman could see a wrecked bridge and another sign, “Euphrates Ferry—50 Dinars.”

The old man turned right, off the main road onto a side street, stopped beneath a tree to shade the truck from the midday sun, and
jumped out to rummage through some of the boxes he had in the bed of the truck. He fished out a white linen garment that looked like a woman's cool summer dress and handed it in to Newman. He then fished around in another carton and brought back a white skull cap, not unlike a yarmulke, and a large square red-and-white-checked cloth with a black cord.

He climbed back into the cab and leaned over near Newman's ear. “I know that this will be painful, but you must put these on. I will help you.”

Newman nodded that he understood, and the old man explained that the long white garment was called a
thobe
, that the skull cap was called a
tagia
to hold in place the red and white
gutra
which in turn was held in place by the black cord, called an
igal.
All of this, the old man explained, was intended for a customer that he would see on some future trip.

With his passenger suitably attired, the old Arab turned the truck around, went back to the main highway, and took a place in the line of cars and trucks waiting for the four-vehicle ferry to take them across the Euphrates. Sitting in the seat beside the old man in the heat, as the truck inched forward in line, Newman dozed off again. He barely awoke a while later as the truck bounced off the ferry on the southeastern side of the river.

Because he had been asleep, he had missed the transaction when Habib had handed the Iraqi soldier collecting tolls and checking identity papers and travel documents, ten 50 dinar notes.

As they pulled off the ferry, the sun was much lower in their faces and Newman noticed that they once again had left the main road and turned right, onto what was barely more than a well-traveled dirt path. A handwritten sign announced, “Al Fuhaymi—30 km.” He looked at his wrist compass and then his watch. Both were smashed, but from the sun's angle
Newman could tell they were moving to the northwest, parallel to the river on their right.

Fifteen minutes later the old man again stopped the truck alongside a building with a weathered hand-painted sign in Arabic. Several other pickups and cars were pulled up alongside and in front of the single-story structure. The old man motioned for Newman to wait where he was and went in through the front door. When he returned, he had a pan of warm water and some more ointment.

Once he had cleaned and treated Newman's burns, and put clean bandages on both of his hands, his head, and his back, the Arab returned to the establishment and this time emerged with a bowl of steaming soup and several loaves of flat bread. Newman finished the soup and took some aspirin, helping them down with pieces of the flat bread.

“We must keep moving,” the old man said quietly to Newman as they noticed a few men some fifty yards away who were looking at the truck. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes, I'll be all right,” Newman said to his new friend.

“My name is Habib. We should go now.” Habib started the engine and pulled back out to the track taking them not northward but west. Newman could see by the sun that they must be heading toward Syria. And while Newman was anxious about where he was being taken, he knew that his wounds were severe enough that he lacked the reserves to flee, even if he had known where he was.

Habib noticed Newman looking about and shouted over the noise of the engine, “That is the Euphrates. Do you remember? It is one of the two great rivers mentioned in Genesis. The other is the Tigris.”

“Genesis?”

“In the Bible… Adam and Eve… Eden was somewhere between the two rivers. The earliest paradise was not far from where we are now.”

“Ah… the Bible.” But Newman's planned escape route followed the
Tigris
River, not the Euphrates. He knew the aircraft that had come to his aid earlier in the day would never think to search for him along the Euphrates. And the QRF, coming in from Turkey, was to search for anyone from the mission escaping and evading on the way
north
, to Turkey. Newman tried to push back the pain he was feeling to envision the course of the Euphrates.

The wounded Marine closed his eyes again. He had no choice. He had to trust that this old man who called himself a Christian would help him.

 

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Road to Anah, Iraq

________________________________________

Tuesday, 7 March 1995
1600 Hours, Local

 

N
ewman awoke just as the truck passed through the little riverside town of Al Fuhaymi. His driver was listening to an excited voice talking in Arabic on the truck's radio. A sign on the outskirts of the village gave notice of the next settlement big enough at least to warrant a name: “Anah — 25 km.” The throbbing pain from his burns had subsided a little, and the breeze from the open truck window was a soothing, cooling touch to his face and upper arms.

The old man stopped the vehicle at an isolated bend of the sluggish river to their right. He took two gas cans from the bed of the truck and filled the gas tank.

“We must remove anything that would identify you as an American,” he told Newman when he got back in. “There is a checkpoint up ahead with guards that may not accept my offering as an incentive to blind their eyes. We cannot take that chance.”

He unloaded the remnants of Newman's uniform and equipment and headed for the river.

“Wait,” Newman shouted. There are some things there I simply must have. Please.”

The old man came back and Newman painfully pawed through the charred remains of the parachute-material knapsack he had made. He removed a signal mirror, a flare launcher, a pistol, the extra ammunition, the money belt—into which he placed the dogtags and wedding rings of his dead crewmates—and the EncryptionLok-3. “I must keep these,” he said to the old man.