The Mingrelian

by Ed Baldwin

  “Ma Deuce to the rescue,” Davann said, tipping a beer to Raybon. “Ragheads hate that 50-cal.”

  “So he jumps down, runs over to me in the snow, puts his tourniquet on my thigh, cinches it up tight and drags me back to the Humvee. Just as he’s loading me into it, the ragheads shoot him in the butt.”

  “Blew my fuckin’ ass off,” Davann said indignantly.

  “Even with his ass shot off, he drags me into the Humvee and gets back on the 50-cal,” Raybon said. “The flight engineer and loadmaster jump in, and the driver hits the gas in reverse and we get out of there. The next thing I remember is we’re on a C-17 flight back to Germany.”

  “It was three days,” Davann said. “They gave Raybon about 20 pints of blood, and we both went into surgery a couple times.”

  “So,” Raybon continued, “we hit the operating room a couple more times, lie around with a morphine drip for a few days and are on our way to the U.S. We decided to stay together, so they sent us to the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda. I get a state-of-the-art prosthesis, and Davann gets a titanium ass.”

  “I got no ass. I got a titanium prosthesis and a ceramic cup.”

  “You got a titanium ass. Well, anyway, we get patched up, rehabilitated, cashiered out. There we are standing in the street with nothing going for us but the VA. What do you give the guy who saves your life? I gave Davann the only thing I had. I taught him to fly.”

  Boyd jumped in.

  “So I met these guys, they were running illegal whiskey into Mombasa, Kenya, in a 60-year-old Grumman Albatross seaplane.”

  “We were a bona fide tourist charter, flying nature enthusiasts out to the Mombasa Marine Park,” Raybon protested with mock seriousness.

  “Rum runners,” Boyd dismissed Raybon, “but open to a proposal to fly out to an uninhabited island in the Indian Ocean. That’s how we met. How about that C-130, how did you guys get that?”

  “Well, first, Davann gets married!”

  “What? A ladies man like yourself?” Boyd asks.

  “You met Mariam,” Davann responds. “She worked at the Yacht Club in Mombassa. One night, I wake up in my apartment, and here’s this big dude with two bigger dudes to back him up standing by my bed. He was Mariam’s uncle, who turned out to be the general over all the South Sudan Army. He made us an offer we couldn’t turn down to fly the Albatross down there and help out. It was a great setup and, well, married life got to looking pretty fine.”

  Raybon resumed the story.

  “With Davann’s new inside connections, we were going to sell the Albatross and open a tiki bar in Juba. Her family assured us we’d be a big hit. Then, one day, this CIA guy drops by with an offer. They needed someone to fly supplies into South Sudan with no direct connection to the U.S. So we became RD Associates, a South Sudan corporation, and started Juba Airlines, a South Sudan certified commercial air carrier. It’s all official, and the CIA funded the whole thing. We found this old B-model flying resupply into North Sea oil camps in Norway. It started out as a Viet Nam era Air Force plane, then went to Egypt, then Bolivia, then Senegal.”

  “Any upgrades?”

  “No. It’s had basic maintenance, engines overhauled not too long ago, standard radios and weather radar. No GPS nav aids, no big fancy engines. Just an old B-model.”

  “I’ve been flying an H-model,” Boyd said.

  “The controls are the same, the instrument panel looks different, but all the basic stuff is in the same place. You won’t have any trouble. Davann only has about 50 hours in it, so we’ll put you in the right seat.”

  “What about Emmet? How did he get on this team?”

  “No way we could fly into those remote air fields in Africa without someone to find them for us. He’s been with the Company since he retired from the Air Force 20 years ago.”

  “All I ever wanted to do was fly,” Emmet said. “I declined the command and staff jobs to stay in the cockpit, so I didn’t get promoted. Just as well. Once I retired, there were so many nav jobs open I could pick and choose. Gradually, the newer planes with better nav began to replace the old B-models and DC-3s we used to use for clandestine flying. I’ve found cocaine fields in South America, resupplied insurgents in virtually every country in Africa, been to Arctic and Antarctic bases, Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere.”

  “The very definition of an ‘old hand,’ ” Raybon said.

  “Old indeed. I’ve got a Medicare card in my pocket.”

  “I negotiated that deal with you for the Albatross, Raybon,” Boyd laughed. “When the CIA came to you, did you start toasting the United States Army with shots of Jack Daniel’s, and then the Navy and so on like you did with me?”

  “Oh, yeah. By the time we got to the Coast Guard and the Civil Service, the CIA guy saw the need for a long-term contract, renegotiated with each mission, expenses, fuel and full indemnification through the government of the United States.”

  “What was that thing in the back of plane this afternoon, under the tarp?” Boyd asked.

  “That’s Davann’s toy,” Raybon said, finishing his beer and ordering another pitcher. “Ace Digby, an old army mechanic working for the CIA in South Sudan patching up their Blackhawk helicopters found it for us. It’s an M61 Vulcan 20mm Gatling gun. Ace bolted it to a pallet so we can slide it to the front if we have cargo and slide it back to the ramp if we don’t. We can ratchet it down on the ramp, open the door, and have that bad boy pointed aft.”

  “We been flying down the White Nile lookin’ for ragheads,” Davann said. “Motherfuckers just vaporize when one of those 20 mikes blows through.”

  “We’ve been doing resupply into really bad spots, and sometimes you have to sterilize a runway before you can land on it,” Raybon added.

  “How does that work?” Rick asked. “Do you have elevation and traverse?”

  “Neither,” Raybon said. “It’s fixed at 10 degrees below horizontal. Davann sits back there and calls left or right through the intercom, and I turn the aircraft. He tried lifting it to get a change in elevation, but the damn thing weights a thousand pounds. The best range is about 2,000 yards, just over a mile. He sprays short bursts as we pass over. Couple hundred twenty millimeter rounds make a big noise. And anybody shooting at us as we’re taking off gets silenced pretty quick.”

  “So, with Davann in the back shooting ragheads, you’re up front alone,” Boyd asked.

  “No, Emmet sits in the right seat. Hell, he’s been around C-130s since before we were born.”

  “That’s a nonstandard crew.”

  “Yeah, flying some nonstandard missions,” Raybon responded.

  “Well, this is a nonstandard mission for sure,” Boyd said. “Rick’s Marines are back at the embassy loading everything from the armory into the van. It’ll be tagged as diplomatic and at the aircraft at zero four hundred. We’ll have five Marines, a 50 cal, a dozen sidearms, six M-16s, and three sets of body armor.”

  “And a Vulcan M61 with a thousand rounds of 20 mike,” Davann added.

  “Sounds just like Nam,” Emmet said. “Bring it on.”

  “Well, you old warriors better get some crew rest,” Boyd said, standing. “We’re supposed to be over Mount Damavand in Iran at 0900 tomorrow morning.”

  Chapter 41: Mount Damavand

  “JUBA, this is PECOS.”

  Boyd jerks upright and hits his mic button. “PECOS, this is JUBA.”

  The “nonstandard crew” in their 45-year-old C-130B are at 25,000 feet crossing the Caspian Sea just north of Iran. In 10 minutes, they plan to descend to 5,000 feet and turn south to enter Iranian airspace. PECOS is the AWACS plane circling at 35,000 feet, 50 miles farther east. PECOS will warn JUBA if it detects any air defense radar. A lumbering C-130 would be a fat, easy target for even the oldest surface-to-air missile.

  “SLUGGO has a schedule change, over.”

  “SLUGGO schedule change, roger.”

  SLUGGO is the UHF radio of
the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI) commander who should now be assaulting Evin Prison. UHF radios transmit line of sight only, not the 100 miles or more distance from Tehran to the AWACS plane over a mountain range.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Boyd turns to the crew. The radio is his responsibility, while Raybon in the left seat flies the aircraft.

  Transmitting UHF radio into open air during military operations is an art and a science. Anyone with a UHF receiver can be listening. Air Force pilots practice keeping all radio transmission concise, but it can be a riddle at times.

  “They couldn’t have received anything from SLUGGO on UHF,” Raybon says.

  “PECOS has satellite capability,” Emmet says from behind. “They must have gotten something passed through from Washington. SLUGGO might have a satellite phone or satellite Internet.”

  “I thought we shut all that down,” Boyd says, looking out at the thick clouds, beginning to have that sinking feeling when failure becomes more likely than success.

  “Satellite telephones aren’t all under the control of the U.S. government,” Emmet says. “I’ve got a Broadband Global Area Network terminal that connects my laptop to the Internet anywhere in the world. My service provider is in South Africa.”

  “So, SLUGGO has a problem,” Boyd says, part statement and part question.

  “If they broke Ekaterina and the Ayatollah out and the Iranian army chased them up the mountain, and the airfield is contested, this show is over,” Raybon says. “That cannon in the back would be zero help against a MANPAD (Man Portable Air-Defense System).”

  “What if they couldn’t get into the prison?”

  Rick, sitting in the flight engineer’s seat, asks, “What if they got in and Ekaterina and the Ayatollah didn’t make it out?”

  “Could be weather,” Emmet adds, hastening to get away from Rick’s question.

  “Could be all of that,” Boyd says, his enthusiasm is ebbing away.

  Thick clouds are now spitting snow against the windshield.

  “JUBA, this is PECOS.”

  “JUBA.”

  “Ceiling over SLUGGO 300 feet, over.”

  “SLUGGO 300 feet.”

  “OK, guys,” Raybon says, pulling off his headset off and turning to the group. “Time to talk. Is this thing a go or not? We’ve got the tallest mountain in Central Asia between us and SLUGGO, and wherever on it SLUGGO is, the ceiling is 300 feet. PECOS can vector us over the mountain and into the vicinity of the target, but once we descend below the top of the mountain …”

  He pauses and looks at the navigator.

  “Emmet, how tall is that thing?”

  “Eighteen thousand four hundred and six feet.”

  “Once we descend below the mountain, we lose line of sight with PECOS. We’re on our own.”

  “JUBA this is PECOS.”

  “JUBA.”

  “SLUGGO is at yesterday’s location, over.”

  “SLUGGO at yesterday’s location, roger.”

  “Crap! That means they’re still at the prison,” Boyd says, his exasperation showing. “No prison break.”

  “That means they’re not on the mountain,” Emmet says brightly. “Flat land is better than mountains with no visibility.”

  Boyd looks at Raybon. Too personally involved in this decision to make it, Boyd wants him to make the call to continue or not. It’s Raybon’s aircraft.

  “OK, we could go in, descend over the prison, see if we can contact SLUGGO, see what the ceiling is and make the call then.”

  “Thanks,” Boyd says. At least he doesn’t have to abandon Ekaterina yet.

  “PECOS, this is JUBA.”

  “PECOS.”

  “Point HARLEY.” That’s their code to begin descent to 5,000 feet to penetrate Iran’s airspace.

  “Point HARLEY, roger. Turn to heading 250, over.”

  Boyd clicks the mike button but says nothing. They had agreed that all vectors from PECOS would be called 90 degrees more than the actual heading to confuse any listeners. They are actually turning from a heading of 90 degrees, due east, to 160 degrees, south southeast. In clouds the whole way, they cross the beach over Chalus and use the radar altimeter to stay at a safe altitude as they ascend the coastal mountains. All are silent as they turn further east to follow the crest of them up to the top of Mount Damavand.

  “Point DIAMOND,” PECOS says, even more cryptic now that JUBA is well into Iranian air space. Point DIAMOND is the peak of Mount Damavand.

  “How are we going to do an approach with no approach control?” Boyd asks, unable to understand how he could get this aircraft safely onto the ground in snow with no ground-based instrument landing system.

  “Airborne radar approach,” Emmet says.

  “We don’t have airborne radar, except for the weather radar.”

  “That’s radar, you can see the ground with it if you tweak it just right,” Emmet says, holding up his right hand and rubbing his thumb across the tips of his index and middle fingers. “Touch, my friend, touch.”

  “You ever done that before?” Boyd asks.

  Emmet nods.

  “Really?”

  Boyd had never heard of using weather radar for anything but looking at clouds to stay out of rain and hail.

  “In ’71, we’d landed at Da Nang after a 12-hour day, and they asked us to run up to Hue for an emergency air evac,” Emmet says. “Aircraft commander said he’d do it. After we got airborne, they called us, a thunderstorm had blown through and there was no power. No approach radar, no runway lights, nothing.”

  “It’s flat there, how could you use the radar to find the airfield?”

  “There’s a river at Hue, with a distinctive horseshoe bend,” Emmet says, making a horseshoe bend in the air with his index finger. “I found the river bend with the weather radar, and the runway was just alongside it on the south side of town.”

  Boyd shakes his head.

  “Maybe, just maybe, we can vector in using SLUGGO’s UHF band radio signal and use the weather radar to see the ground,” Emmet says, maps spread out over his desk, the bunk and the floor behind him.

  He selects one, folds it to focus on the point at hand and puts it in front of him, then begins adjusting the weather radar screen in front of him.

  “There’s a four-lane highway right by the prison,” Emmet says. “This map shows a cloverleaf intersection nearby, I may be able to see that on radar.”

  “JUBA, this is SLUGGO.”

  It is faint, but it's coming in over the prearranged frequency the PMOI commander has agreed to use.

  “This is JUBA.”

  “Hello, we are still at the prison. We cannot get through the gate, over.”

  Nothing cryptic or concise about that transmission, which is heavily accented and garbled.

  “I have a heading. Turn right and descend,” Emmet says, frantically looking at the map, one eye on the radio direction finder the other on the weather radar.

  “What is your visibility?” Boyd asks.

  Boyd checks the altimeter: 8,460 feet. He checks the radar altimeter, which gives an exact distance to the actual ground: 4,550 feet. Tehran is at 3,910 feet of altitude.

  “What is visibility?” The PMOI commander asks.

  “How far can you see?”

  “I can see smoke from the other side of Tehran.”

  “How high are the clouds?”

  “I can see the hills, but not the mountains.”

  “Is it snowing?”

  “Yes, but not hard.”

  “Is there fighting now?”

  “No, we have the prison surrounded, but the guards in the towers have machine guns and we cannot get close enough to the gate to blow it open.”

  “We’re right over the prison,” Emmet interrupts. “Descend another thousand feet.”

  Raybon is flying the aircraft. He makes a tight turn, and they descend into swirling snow. It gets brighter,
and they break suddenly below the clouds.

  “Whoa, there it is.”

  Tehran is spread out below them to the south, a city of 8 million people, cloaked in a layer of smog with scattered fires burning in its southern part. There are lights on in some western and northern areas, but the southern half is dark. Smoke rises from fireplaces, portable heaters, generators and bonfires. Most streets are clogged with abandoned automobiles and trucks, but some main thoroughfares are open and filled with cars leaving the city.

  “That’s the prison at three o’clock,” Emmet says, looking at his instruments and not the window.

  The radar altimeter shows 410 feet above ground level. The prison is at the northern edge of Tehran, and hills rise steeply beyond. Raybon circles counterclockwise to the south. They all stand to look out the side window behind Raybon.

  “Set up the 50-cal at the jump door,” Raybon says.

  Rick Shands jumps to the ladder, nearly toppling one of his Marines who had been standing on the top step. Davann is right behind him. The jump door is just forward of the cargo ramp on the left side of the aircraft, the pilot’s side. In a counterclockwise turn, the jump door is inside the circle.

  “There’s mountain over here,” Boyd says. From his perspective in the right seat, the ground slopes steeply upward. “Let’s make it a straight pass.”

  “Roger,” Raybon says. “You guys ready on the fifty cal?”

  Raybon turns to Boyd. “Think we can take out the towers with just the 50-cal?”

  “Oh, yeah. Let’s don’t use that cannon yet. Neutralize the towers so we don’t take any ground fire, then fly right over the prison and get the front door on the way out.” Then he keys his microphone. “SLUGGO, get your people away from the towers.”