“Waters is dead.” But there was some pain in the chiefs voice.
Jack Locke knew what it would take to convince Pullman. “Chief, I’m calling in a marker on this one. You know about markers.”
“I don’t owe you, Captain.”
Nothing left but to tell him…“Colonel Stansell is putting together a rescue mission to get the POWs out of Iran. That’s close-hold information. You know a leak means it won’t go. We haven’t got much time. We need you.”
Pullman sat down, a pain shooting through his stomach. “Dammit. My stomach hasn’t squeaked since I decided to hang it up and retire. Now it’s squeaking like hell. Captain, my markers don’t go that high. Besides, you need the heavies backing you up, not me.”
But he was still the first sergeant of the 45th Tactical Fighter Wing. The POWs were his men. Pullman couldn’t shake off his sense of responsibility for them. He had become the wing’s first shirt because he knew when to cajole, teach, bribe and kick people along. And now the captain was standing in front of him, asking that he finish his job and do what all first shirts did when they got to the bottom line—protect their people. It wasn’t a debt he owed, it was an obligation he had undertaken when he started his climb through the ranks to become one of the top noncommissioned officers in the Air Force.
“Chief, I know that, and they’re behind us. But you know the people, the working troops who can make things available to us. You can make that happen double-time.” Locke had played his last card.
“I’m about to collect my biggest marker,” Pullman said. He picked up the phone and hit the button to the wing commander’s office. “.Sir, I’ve got to talk to you. Something has come up.” He walked into the hall, heading for his commander’s office.
Minutes later he was back, a rueful look on his face. “The Old Man wasn’t happy when I told him I wanted to postpone my retirement. He says the next ceremony will take place at the out-processing desk in base personnel. Hell, that’s nothing compared to what my wife is gonna say.”
*
The Zagros Mountains, Iran
The stream he had been following through the rugged Zagros Mountains of western Iran cascaded out of a canyon and turned southward, flowing into a long valley. Carroll could see an occasional clump of small shacks nestled along the streambed where families tried to keep a farmstead alive. He was surprised by the number of people who lived in the area, grazing mostly goats and irrigating small plots of land. It was hard to disappear.
After burying the woman and man in a shallow depression, Carroll had scrambled down a steep embankment at first light and headed cross-country until he stumbled onto the stream, which he was willing to follow until it turned south, away from where he wanted to go.
He found a spot in a clump of bushes that surrounded a small pool of water and made sure he used his right hand while he ate the last of the bread he had been rationing. It seemed like he was always hungry. He washed his shirt and pants and spread them out to dry. After shaving and washing himself, he stretched out in the warm late October sun. Trying to figure what the hell he should do.
Had the passengers on the bus or the driver reported the incident to the authorities? From the way the driver had acted and the passengers had almost thrown the man and woman off the bus, he doubted it. But it only took someone to start asking about their missing relative and that would lead to the bus. He had two, maybe three more days to find cover. Luck had to be running out. He couldn’t help talking in his sleep, and being left-handed eventually would probably trip him up. Islamic cultures demanded that the right hand be used for doing “clean” things while the left be used for “unclean.” One slip and he would be recognized if, say, someone caught him eating or leading with his left hand. How did he get himself into such a mess, he asked himself, a sense of total aloneness adding to his misery.
The images that drove him came back, much as they always did, were violent and crystal clear—his final hours at Ras Assanya…his commander Colonel Muddy Waters ordering him out and he refusing, remembering too Waters then telling him to stay with the flight surgeon and help with the wounded…the surrender of the base and the terrible moments when three Iranians broke into the aid station and started shooting, hitting the sergeant on the operating table while Doc Landis was working on him…He had shot one of the Iranians in the face and killed the other two before escaping into the night. But Doc Landis was left behind, still trying to save the wounded sergeant on the operating table. He’d made it to the beach and was in the water for over four hours. When he did reach safety he made a promise to follow the last order his commander had given him—help the wounded, the ones left behind…
Lying in the sun on that rock beside the quiet pool, Carroll knew he had to go on but he needed allies. He searched his memory for all he had read on Iran. His duties as an Air Force intelligence officer had given him information to draw on, but blending what he knew into action was tough. He tried to recall the intel summaries and maps he had seen about Kurdistan, the undefined area to the north about the size of Wyoming that stretched through Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Okay, he decided, he knew where he’d likely find the help he needed.
He dressed and forced himself to start walking away from Kermanshah, where the POWs were, and toward the airport at Ahwaz, a town one hundred and fifty miles to the south.
He needed to catch a flight. He needed some allies.
*
Nellis AFB, Nevada
Captain Bryant was waiting for Stansell when he came into building 201, the home of Red Flag at Nellis Air Force Base. The building was surprisingly quiet for 7:30 A.M. “Sorry, Colonel, we’ve got a problem I can’t handle,” Bryant told him, tension in his voice. “A real kludge.”
“Is that ASTRA lingo?” Stansell asked, looking at the big captain.
“Yeah. Kludge means bottleneck. In this case it’s one Colonel Wilford, Red Flag’s commander. He’s bent out of shape and is digging his heels in. Not much cooperation. He claims we’re getting in the way of his mission.”
“I know Wilford,” Stansell said. “First name’s Tyrone. We used to call him Tyrant Wilford. I’m gonna have to get his attention real quick.”
Bryant followed Stansell to Wilford’s door. “Wait out here, this may not be pretty,” Stansell said, knocking on Wilford’s door.
“Come,” said the commander of the 4440th Tactical Fighter Training Group known as Red Flag. Wilford did not offer Stansell a seat when he entered. “Well, colonel, it seems your captain, the big black guy, wants to take over my operation. I run the biggest, the best, the most for real war game in the Air Force. Nobody comes as close to the big game as we do. Red Flag teaches our fighter jocks the pressure of war, the sensory overload, the disorientation of flying in combat. We get the tactical Air Force ready for the first ten days of combat and you’re not going to get in the way of that.”
“Mind if I sit down? This sounds like a pitch for a bigger budget.”
Wilford pointed to a chair. “Colonel, I don’t make dumb-ass jokes around here. I’ve got fifty-six jets with their crews landing here tomorrow for the next exercise—which starts Monday. I’ve also got a cryptic message from some paper-pushing flunky in the Puzzle Palace saying to support you and your Task Force Alpha. Then a captain with a sexy foreign number shows up wanting to use my facility. No way José. In case you didn’t get my message, read my lips.” The burly colonel leaned across his desk, his face rigid, humorless.
“Can I borrow your phone?” Without waiting for an answer Stansell dialed a number. “Dick, Rupe Stansell here. I’m having a little trouble convincing the commander of Red Flag that I need his help, can you explain it to him?” He handed the phone to Wilford. “I think you know who Dick Stevens is --Cunningham’s aide.”
Wilford did all the listening. Gently he replaced the phone. “Stevens asked if I knew why they call Cunningham ‘Sundown’.” The Air Force’s chief of staff was legendary for ordering colonels to be cleared off base by sundown
when their performance fell short of his standards. “He wouldn’t tell me what you’re doing but it seems I’ve two choices, help you or start packing. Colonel, it looks like I don’t have a say in the matter. I’ve got three old forty-foot trailers in the parking lot out front you can use. But for God’s sake keep what’s her name—”
“Dewa Rahimi, our intelligence specialist.”
Wilford stared at Stansell. “That means she’ll have to use our intelligence shop in the main building. Not good. She’ll drive the jocks coming in for the next exercise up the wall.”
Stansell left, having heard enough from Tyrone. Bryant was waiting for him in the hall. “I think we have Colonel Wilford’s attention,” he said deadpan. “Let’s get to work.”
*
They found Rahimi in a large office in the back of the Intelligence section. She explained how the Air Force Special Activities Center had opened the door for her with a message. Judging by the way the men in the section danced attention around her, Stansell decided she might have had some influence on the cooperation she was getting.
“Okay, Dewa,” Stansell said, closing the office door, “give me an update on the situation in Iran.”
“Unchanged.” She pulled a folder out of one of the office safes. “Here are current photos of the prison at Kermanshah. The last two are infrared. We’re getting heat signatures from the barracks behind the rear wall that indicate they’re occupied. Trouble is, we don’t know by who or what. I’ve got a request into the DIA for info. So far, nothing. We do know that all the POWs are at Kermanshah, but we still haven’t accounted for Captain William Carroll. Apparently he’s running around loose in Iran. No idea at all about what he’s doing.”
“The political front?”
“Hold on,” she said, and turned to a computer terminal beside her desk, keyed up a data bank from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the screen filled with Arabic script.
“You can read Arabic?” Bryant said.
“No. Farsi uses the Arabic alphabet. These are recent newspaper articles and verbatim TV and radio reports.” She read for a few moments, then called up short intelligence summaries in English. “Captain, there are four factions trying to take control of the Council of Guardians away from the Islamic Republican Party. Whoever controls the Council of Guardians controls the POWs. As of yesterday the Islamic Republican Party was trying to align with the IPRP, that’s the Islamic People’s Republican Party.” She shook her head, “Hey, sometimes even I get confused. Anyway, the IPRP wants half the POWs as a sign of good faith. So far the Islamic Republican Party is stalling.”
“Sounds like the POWs are a hot ticket,” Bryant said.
“Just like the American hostages they held in 1980,” Stansell said. “How long before the POWs start getting traded off?”
“I can only guess,” Rahimi told him. “It depends on how bad the Islamic Republican Party needs the support of the IPRP to keep control of the Council of Guardians. I’d say maybe six weeks at the outside.”
“You can’t hardly tell the players without a program,” Stansell said. “Okay, we’ve got a lot to do, and not much time to do it in.”
“Let’s get with it.”
Chapter 9: D Minus 26
Kermanshah, Iran
The guard had received fresh orders from the commandant and hurried across the dusty prison compound. He could feel Mokhtari’s eyes following him—the commandant, he knew, watched all activity in front of the administration building from his corner office. The guard stomped through the entrance into the main cell block, glad now to be out of Mokhtari’s sight and out of the same building. The sharp smell of bodies and dirty clothes was nothing compared to the fear Mokhtari generated. He turned to the left and walked down the iron steps to the basement, past the room where the prisoners were interrogated and to the small punishment cells.
“The commandant has ordered Leason back to his cell,” the guard told the on-duty warder.
The two men unlocked the wooden door to the smallest cell, the one the POWs called the Box. It was only forty inches high, twenty-four inches wide and forty inches deep. They reached in and pulled the man out, knowing he could not move on his own after being locked up for two days in his cramped position.
Colonel Clayton Leason, over six feet tall and towering above the guards, rested his weight on their shoulders. His jaw clenched as blood flowed into his cramped legs and pain replaced numbness. The two guards let go of Leason, then caught him when his legs crumpled.
“Wait a minute,” the colonel told the warder, who spoke English. “Give my damn legs a chance.”
“A shower, Colonel?” the warder said. “You can wash out your clothes.”
Leason looked at the man. He was being offered two unheard of luxuries. As Senior Ranking Officer among the POWs he had to be careful of everything the Iranians gave him or his men. “Nothing’s free with Mokhtari,” he said. “What’s the price?”
The warder shook his head. They helped Leason into a shower and handed him a bar of soap. He still could not stand alone and sat on a wooden stool. The shower, though was pure heaven. The guard took his clothes after he had washed them and hung them up to dry. Leason let the warm water stream over his head as he scrubbed his graying hair. He could feel lice wash out. Briefly he thought that if Mokhtari had not ordered the shower and found out, the two Iranians would be in deep deep trouble. Forget it and be grateful for big favors…
The colonel looked down at his body. He had been overweight when captured, weighing over 260 pounds. At Ras Assanya the flight surgeon had been on his case about losing weight, but his duties as the Deputy for Maintenance with the 45th seemed to interfere with any serious dieting and exercise. Now the same flight surgeon, Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Landis, was saying that his roll of fat was helping him survive. Leason was down to 180 pounds but the flight surgeon was emaciated, and only Leason’s sharing of his meager rations was keeping the doctor going. Something had to be done. Maybe the guards were the answer.
“I owe you,” he told the guards when he dressed. His clothes were still wet but he could dry them off in the cell he shared with Doc Landis. “Do you know why Mokhtari threw me in the Box?”
The warder translated for the guard, who shook his head no.
“Besides asking for more rations, I told Mokhtari that he had better think about his future. We’ll be released eventually or rescued. Think about it. When an American tank drives through that wall, you’ll want a friend. I told Mokhtari that if he treats us right we will be fair when we report our treatment. Sooner or later, it will happen.”
Leason let his words sink in. “I also told him to stop interrogating Captain Hauser. We know she’s here and what you’re doing to her.”
*
Nellis AFB, Nevada
The sleek blue-and-white Gulfstream III arriving from RAF Stonewood taxied into the blocks in front of Bas Ops and shut down. The door flopped down, and Locke and Pullman clambered down the steps and walked toward the two waiting men. Locke tried to keep his face impassive but broke into a grin when he shook hands with his old buddy Thunder Bryant and then Stansell.
“How’s Gillian?” Bryant asked.
“Two months preggers,” Jack said, trying to affect an English accent. “She should be here in a few days. And Francine?”
“She’s with her mother in Wilmington.” Bryant shook his head. “The Air Force is pretty rough on her.”
Stansell and Pullman were following them and overheard Bryant’s remark. It was a familiar story in the Air Force—failing marriages. They looked at each other, both thinking the same thing; would Bryant’s personal problems interfere with the mission that needed total commitment.
“That’s going to be home.” Stansell pointed out the three trailers in front of building 201 as they drove into the parking lot. Pullman got out of the car and walked through the trailers. “I’ve seen better chicken coops,” the chief said. “We’re talking shacks here, Colonel, shacks. No electrici
ty, no furniture, nothing. When did you say they got to be ready?”
“Monday.”
“You expect me to get them ready over the weekend? You’re going to need some miracles around here, Colonel.”
Miracles better be our stock-in-trade, Stansell thought.
*
Rezaiyeh, Iran
The gate guard turned his back to the wind and tried to hunch down lower beneath his collar as the small Fokker F-27 transport plane taxied up to the fence and cut its two turboprop engines. The passenger door swung open and people started to clamber down the steps, most of them wrapped up against the wind blowing off nearby Lake Urmia. October nights in the mountains of northwest Iran were very cold at forty-two hundred feet.
The passengers ignored the guard and hurried toward the bus waiting to drive them into the town of Rezaiyeh three miles to the south. The guard waved new passengers through, angry because his replacement had not shown up. When the last of the passengers had boarded the airplane for the flight to Bandar Abbas he banged the gate closed and ran for the bus, not wanting to spend the night at the airport or walk into town.
The guard sat down now in the only empty seat next to a soldier. The two glanced at each other, acknowledging their mutual profession. “The driver is a pig,” the guard said. “I was lucky he didn’t leave without me.”
Bill Carroll unwrapped the scarf around his head. He did not want to get into a conversation but the guard might become suspicious if he ignored him. “It used to be different,” Carroll said. “Not too long ago they would have asked you when you wanted to leave and waited for you.”
The guard sighed. “Things change. Even here.” They rode in silence for a few moments, then: “Are you from Rezaiyeh?”
Force of Eagles Page 10
