Iron Gate

by Richard Herman

  A strong feeling that something was wrong, very wrong, hit Leonard. Among fighter pilots, it is called ‘situational awareness’ and Leonard never disregarded it. ‘Gorilla,’ he transmitted over the UHF, ‘strangle your lights. Bag, stay above five thousand feet on the first pass.’

  ‘Climbing to five thou,’ a disappointed Bag said as Gorilla’s anti-collision light disappeared in the night. Suddenly, the ground erupted in bright flashes as a combination of antiaircraft artillery and shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles converged on both Bag and the C-130. Only Gorilla was safe, hidden in the night. ‘Oooh shit!’ Bag roared. He pulled off hard to the right and started jinking, that series of short, random, and hard changes in altitude and heading that broke any tracking solution.

  Flares popped out behind his Warthog, capturing the seeker head of the SAM missile that was homing on him. The missile curved in on the first flare and disappeared into the night without exploding.

  Kowalski rolled ninety degrees to the left, standing her Hercules on its left wing, and pulled the nose to the ground. ‘Hold on!’ she yelled. A string of glowing orange-red tracers reached up from the ground, finding them in the night. The maneuver loaded the Hercules with over two Gs and knocked Leonard to the deck.

  The flight deck exploded over him and he felt something warm and heavy on his back as the C-130 rolled out, wings level. Wind noise deafened him and he tried to push himself to his feet. But something was holding him down. He pushed again and the pulpy mass of the flight engineer slipped off and freed him. He came to his feet. Kowalski was flying the aircraft and rubbing at her face, which was a mass of blood. Brenda Conklin was half-standing out of her seat and reaching over Kowalski to pull the fire handles and feather an engine.

  ‘I can’t see!’ Kowalski shouted over the wind noise. Leonard grabbed a blanket off the crew bunk and mopped at her face. He was surprised to see she was unhurt. ‘I’m okay,’ she yelled. ‘Brenda, how we doing?’

  ‘We took a hit on the left wing. Number one is feathered, fire light out and fuel shut off. What happened to Pat?’ Staff Sergeant Patricia Owens was the flight engineer.

  Leonard grabbed a flashlight and looked at his feet. The sour taste of bile rose in his throat and he felt dizzy. He gulped for air and dropped the blanket over the body. ‘She bought it,’ he yelled. He found a headset and plugged back into the intercom. That helped with the wind noise and he heard Kowalski talking to the Hogs.

  ‘We’ve taken battle damage,’ she transmitted, her voice surprisingly calm and matter-of-fact. She had been in combat before.

  ‘Say altitude,’ Bag radioed. They didn’t need a midair collision and the Warthogs would stay clear of the stricken C-130.

  ‘Straight and level at nine thousand,’ Kowalski answered.

  The last of the flares had drifted over the antiaircraft battery and cast an eerie glow over the landscape. ‘I got the fucker in sight,’ Gorilla radioed. ‘He’s under the flares. I’m in.’ Since Gorilla was running dark with no lights, no gunner could visually track him in the night.

  A flash erupted on the ground, much too bright to be his high-explosive shells. ‘I’m off,’ Gorilla radioed.

  ‘You got something big,’ Bag said.

  ‘Probably a fuel tank,’ Gorilla replied. ‘The train has stopped short and didn’t make the hook up.’

  ‘I’ll check it out,’ Bag transmitted. ‘I’m in. Cover, por favor’

  ‘Got it,’ Gorilla answered as he positioned to fly cover for Bag. They were two professionals going about their work. Bag was back on the radio. ‘The train is not moving and the rear car is still separated. No reaction on the ground.’

  On board the C-130, Leonard had regained control of his raging emotions. ‘Can you make it to home plate?’ he asked Kowalski. Ysterplaat was 430 nautical miles away and he was thinking of diverting into Bloemfontein. But he wasn’t sure of the reception they’d get there.

  ‘Can do,’ she answered.

  ‘Brenda,’ Leonard said, ‘radio Groundhog with our status.’ He keyed his UHF radio. ‘Bag, Gorilla. Can you find us and join up?’

  ‘Have you in sight,’ Bag answered. ‘Tango, what the hell happened?’

  For the first time, Leonard had time to evaluate the damage around him. A single round of AAA had penetrated the left side of the flight deck, gone through the flight engineer, and exited above the navigator’s head. Part of the navigator panel had fallen on to Sims and stunned him, but he appeared to be okay.

  Kowalski answered, her voice flat and unemotional. ‘Two hits. Triple A. One outboard on the left wing. Number one engine feathered. Fire light out and fuel shut off. Second hit on the flight deck. My flight engineer is dead. We’re cleaning up the mess.’

  The two A-10 pilots did not respond. There would be no more talk of flying whorehouses in the wing.

  *

  Sunday, March 8

  Ysterplaat Air Base, Cape Town

  *

  The men and women filed into Intelligence, the room where the mission had started. Bag and Gorilla sat on the floor, their backs against the wall, while Conklin and Sims found seats next to the door. The C-130’s loadmaster, Tanya Perko, arranged two empty chairs for Leonard and Kowalski to use when they arrived for the debrief. The shadow of Staff Sergeant Patricia Owens, the C-130’s flight engineer, hung over them and they waited in silence.

  ‘Room,’ the wing’s Intelligence officer called, ‘ten-hut.’ They all stood as Pontowski entered. Leonard and Kowalski were right behind him. She had on a clean flight suit but her hair was still matted with patches of blood.

  ‘Seats, please,’ Pontowski said. ‘Colonel Leonard, it’s all yours.’

  As mission commander, it fell to Leonard to conduct the debrief. Intelligence took notes for the OPREP, Operations Report, and the INTSUM, Intelligence Summary, messages they had to send out immediately afterwards. The debrief went smoothly as Leonard recapped the mission in chronological order. Occasionally, he called on others to fill in details. The tension kept building as he neared the subject of Sergeant Pat Owens.

  ‘There was absolutely no activity on my RHAW,’ said Bag. ‘Hell, I don’t know, maybe they got a visual on us from the flares. They drifted off the train and I got a good look at the Triple A. It came from the hills a half mile to the west.’

  ‘That’s the bastard I nailed,’ Gorilla said, a cold hard satisfaction in his voice. ‘Got a decent secondary explosion.’

  ‘Weapons employed?’ the Intelligence Officer asked.

  ‘GAU-8 cannon,’ the A-10 pilot answered. He had been through the questions many times before in China. ‘Eighty-four rounds expended, high explosive/depleted uranium mix, absolute altitude 150 feet, range 2250 feet, speed 325 knots.’

  Both Pontowski and Leonard nodded in satisfaction. Gorilla had flown a perfect strafing pass at night, under flares, over strange territory. It was a stellar performance. ‘One secondary,’ he continued. ‘A fireball consistent with a vehicle’s fuel tank.’

  ‘I can confirm the secondary,’ Bag said.

  The Intel officer turned to Kowalski. ‘Did you ever see the Triple A that hit you?’

  She nodded. ‘I was in a left bank at the time. We took at least two hits.’

  ‘And neither detonated?’

  ‘Negative,’ she answered. ‘We were damn lucky.’

  ‘Lucky?’ the Intel officer asked.

  Leonard answered. ‘Yeah, lucky. If either shell had exploded like it’s supposed to, everyone on board would have bought it. The shells must have been old stuff, floating around the international arms market for years and decayed over time.’

  ‘But someone on the ground knows how to shoot,’ Brenda Conklin replied. ‘Where did he come from?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Gorilla said. ‘He’s dead.’

  Lori Williams skidded through the door and rushed up to Pontowski. ‘Martine is on the phone. She was back in contact with the Blue Train and they said one of our bombs killed six pe
ople. But before she could clarify, the connection was broken. General de Royer wants to see you immediately.’

  ‘Boss,’ Leonard said, ‘we weren’t carrying bombs.’

  Chapter 14

  Monday, March 9

  UN Headquarters, Constantia, Cape Town

  *

  Pontowski ignored de Royer’s injunction against flight suits in his headquarters and brought Leonard, Kowalski and Gorilla with him. The right side of Bouchard’s face showed surprise when he saw the small group troop into the office for the meeting. The other half of his face had been cast into marble and never changed expression.

  Pontowski was tired and Bouchard’s fire-scarred face momentarily broke through his defensive shield and conjured up memories from his past. An image of Shoshana flashed in front of him and he remembered how fire had seared her body and forever changed her. But Bouchard had been through a living hell that far transcended Shoshana’s ordeal. What had it done to him?

  ‘The general was expecting you alone,’ Bouchard told Pontowski in French.

  ‘If the general wants to know what happened,’ he replied in the same language, ‘these are the people who were there and can tell him.’ Bouchard did not reply. He escorted them in and announced their names to refresh the general’s memory. Strange, Pontowski thought, how only the right of his mouth moves, not the left. Yet it doesn’t affect his speech.

  For once, de Royer was sitting down and not standing at the window. ‘I am waiting for Madame Martine to return from the Ministry of Defense,’ he said in English. His words were accent free and spoken in a curiously flat monotone. They are demanding a full explanation about the bomb.’

  ‘It wasn’t ours,’ Pontowski told him. ‘The A-10s only had a gun.’

  Much to his surprise, de Royer only nodded. ‘This presents us with a new problem,’ he said, and fixed them with his cold-fish stare. ‘I assume Colonel Leonard was the mission commander. Please tell me all that happened.’

  I’ll be damned, Pontowski thought. He never questioned what I said, knows how we work, and is going for the facts. He reevaluated the French general, sensing for the first time why he was selected to head the UN forces in South Africa.

  Leonard’s recap of the mission was short and complete. ‘Any questions, sir?’

  De Royer turned to Gorilla. ‘Captain Moreno, exactly what happened on your attack?’ The general had a curious way of speaking. He never seemed to ask a question. He listened silently while Gorilla described his strafing run on the AAA battery that had shot at Kowalski’s C-130. ‘What caused the large secondary explosion?’ he asked.

  ‘General,’ Gorilla answered, ‘when you strafe any target with a mix of thirty-millimeter high explosive and depleted uranium ammo, you get secondaries.’ The general scowled, not understanding. ‘If there’s anything that can explode,’ Gorilla told him, ‘it does. Even bodies.’

  ‘I have never seen a demonstration of your Avenger cannon,’ de Royer replied. The glint was back in his eyes for a moment. ‘Perhaps that can be rectified.’ Bouchard interrupted the meeting and announced Elena was waiting outside. ‘Please show Madame Martine in,’ de Royer said, still speaking in English.

  Elena walked in and sank into the chair Bouchard placed next to the general’s desk. ‘It’s a mad house at the Ministry,’ she told them. ‘No one is in charge or able to make a decision, and they are looking for someone to blame. Unfortunately, they are more concerned with the bomb you dropped than who is attacking the Blue Train.’ She went on to tell them how the position of the UN had been compromised. A few ministers were demanding the arrest of the pilot, and no one wanted to wake the President with the bad news. ‘This was the very reason I agreed to Pendulo’s Rules of Engagement in the first place,’ she said.

  ‘We weren’t carrying bombs,’ Leonard told her.

  ‘I saw bombs being loaded on A-10s,’ Elena said.

  ‘They never launched,’ Pontowski replied. ‘They’re still sitting on the ramp where you last saw them.’

  ‘Then where did that bomb come from?’ she demanded. There was no answer.

  ‘The situation is complicated by Captain Moreno’s attack,’ de Royer said.

  ‘I do not need to remind you, sir,’ Pontowski replied, ‘that we were given the right to self-defense.’ Reminding the general was exactly what he had in mind. De Royer did not answer and looked at Elena. What sort of game is he playing? Pontowski wondered.

  ‘Fortunately,’ Elena said, ‘we also suffered a casualty on Colonel Kowalski’s aircraft ...’

  Kowalski interrupted, anger flaring. ‘Excuse me. Since when are casualties fortunate? My aircraft was hit by two antiaircraft artillery rounds. One hit the flight deck.’ Her words were fast and furious. ‘It hit Staff Sergeant Patricia Owens, my flight engineer, in the left armpit and exited the top of her head. It punched a hole over my navigator, barely missing him. Sergeant Owens’s brains were splattered over me and my copilot. While we handled the emergency, Colonel Leonard had to mop my head so I could see without blood dripping from my hair. My navigator and loadmaster removed Sergeant Owens’s body from the flight deck in pieces.’

  She paused, letting her words sink in. The room was silent. Kowalski’s hands were on her hips as she leaned into Elena. ‘Right now, my loadmaster is drinking herself into a blind drunk because that’s the only way she can handle it.’ She stood, faced de Royer, and came to attention. ‘Will there be anything else, sir?’ The ‘sir’ was crisp and abrupt, almost a shout.

  ‘No,’ de Royer answered. ‘You are all excused. General Pontowski, please remain for a moment.’

  Pontowski was almost certain, but not positive, he heard signs of life in de Royer’s voice. He waited as the others left. ‘Explain to Colonel Kowalski that Madame Martine was correct. It was a “fortunate casualty” because it validated the subsequent attack by Captain Moreno. Without such proof as to the severity of the attack on the C-130, we would be in an untenable position. As to what happens next, I will speak to the President. I do not expect the South Africans to react but we may be allowed to intervene. Have two A-10s and a C-130 on station at first light and be ready to respond to new tasking.’

  Pontowski turned to leave. De Royer’s voice stopped him. ‘No disciplinary action is necessary for Lieutenant Colonel Kowalski’s outburst.’

  Without turning around, Pontowski said, ‘Thank you, sir.’ He left, wondering where the ‘thank you’ had come from. He hadn’t intended to say it.

  *

  Monday, March 9

  The Blue Train, near Colesberg

  *

  Sam Darnell moved down the corridor of the Blue Train, past the luxury suites. The cars were still dark but the first glow of morning twilight gave her enough light to see and move quickly. She videotaped a young black attendant dressed in a blue blazer and gray slacks who was sweeping up the broken glass where bullets had stitched the side of the car. ‘Are you okay, Marcus?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘The cooks have prepared a breakfast in the dining car.’ Sam shook her head. Even under the most appalling conditions, the staff was still living up to its reputation. She made her way into the President’s Car to find Elizabeth Gordon. Heavy curtains were pulled across the windows and the lights were on.

  Liz Gordon was in the main room with Pendulo and motioned for Sam to join them. ‘This is quite a performance,’ she whispered. Sam sat down and rested her video camera on her lap. She aimed it at Pendulo and hit the record button.

  He was stalking up and down, head twisting from side to side. ‘They are after me!’ he screamed. ‘You must get help now.’ He turned to one of his aides. ‘Why isn’t the phone working?’ No answer. ‘Go find out. Don’t come back until it is working. No, come back immediately.’ The aide darted out of the car, glad to escape Pendulo’s wrath.

  ‘Why aren’t my guards here!’ he shrieked. Again, no answer.

  ‘Where are they?’ Sam asked in a low voice.

  ‘In the car
that was cut loose,’ Gordon answered. ‘He ordered the engineer to back up, but they start shooting if we move. ‘Are you recording?’ Sam nodded an answer. ‘Watch this.’ Gordon stood and caught Pendulo’s attention. ‘Mr Minister, have any more passengers died and how many are wounded?’ Pendulo waved a hand at her, dismissing the question. Gordon sat back down. ‘Did you get all that?’

  ‘I can’t be sure,’ Sam said. Pendulo looked at her video camera, his eyes in a narrow squint. ‘I think I’m in trouble,’ Sam whispered.

  Pendulo turned to another aide. ‘Order the engineer to back up immediately. I require my guards.’

  They waited while the order was relayed forward. After a few minutes, the train shivered with life and started to creep backwards. The windows shattered as gunfire raked the side of the train. Sam fell to the floor and crawled to a window. She held her camera up and pointed the lens out a window. She hit the zoom button and swept the scene, hoping to get something. The train stopped moving and the gunfire stopped.

  Sam lowered the camera, hit the rewind and then the play button. She looked through the viewfinder to see what she had recorded. She had all of Pendulo’s performance, including the expressive wave of dismissal. The guy is a real actor, she thought. Unfortunately, she had caught none of the action outside the train. She looked up and saw Pendulo talking to another aide who was looking directly at her.

  She slipped out the door and headed for their suite. She made it as far as the connecting passage leading to her car when a hand grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and grabbed at the camera. It was Pendulo’s aide. Sam instinctively curled over the camera and protected it with her body. Without it, she was lost. ‘What do you want?’ she shouted.