The Mingrelian

by Ed Baldwin

  Raybon turns clockwise toward Tehran and circles to the west. When he comes back at level flight he is a few hundred yards south of the prison and 400 feet above ground level. There are flashes of small-arms fire from the nearest tower.

  “Coming up on the left, concentrate on the closest tower.”

  The first controlled burst of six rounds blows the roof off the guard tower, eliminating the brick wall the shooters had crouched behind. The next burst eliminates the shooters in a spray of red. The next blows the other side of the protective wall out, and the final burst collapses the floor into the stairwell as the old aircraft lumbers off into the snowy mist. When it turns to the south Boyd can see people running out the back door toward the highway nearby.

  “The far tower. I’ll give you more elevation this time.”

  They are higher but closer. Raybon drops the left wing slightly.

  There is nobody in the second guard tower now. The first burst of 50-caliber fire eliminates the roof, and a long second burst collapses the top half of the tower.

  “Open the back.”

  Controlled from the back, the loading ramp of the C-130 lowers below horizontal to allow vehicles to drive into the cargo bay. It closes by rising above horizontal and meeting with the door, which retracts inward, thus closing the back of the aircraft in a clamshell fashion. The loading ramp has the same dual rail pallet system as the rest of the cargo bay, so one standard pallet can be carried there. The Vulcan, bolted to a standard aluminum pallet, has been rolled onto the ramp and secured to the two rails beneath. As the back of the aircraft opens like a whale’s mouth, the Vulcan hangs slightly down into the slipstream.

  Davann Goodman is standing behind the Vulcan wearing body armor and is anchored by a paratroop line to the side of the cargo bay. Rick Shands lowers the ramp 10 degrees below horizontal. The rest of the back-end crew stay well forward, lest a sudden lurch throw someone out.

  “Coming over the top now,” Raybon says. “The door is reinforced steel with thick stone supports.”

  He brings the 130 right over the prison. There is no small-arms fire.

  “Remember, there are people inside there,” Boyd says.

  Evin Prison flashes beneath them.

  Blurrpp. A 25-round burst takes less than a second.

  Raybon banks hard to the left, and Boyd cranes in his seat to see out the window behind the pilot. The prison door has been blown in with a burst of dust and smoke.

  “Close the back,” Raybon says, looking back at the wreckage.

  “We could land on that highway,” Emmet says. “Get somebody to clear those cars and mark an approach point.”

  Evin Prison is just off a major, controlled access, four lane highway with an elevated straight span nearly a mile long.

  “Good shooting JUBA.”

  “SLUGGO, clear that highway down there, mark the east end just at that overpass with paint, then measure a thousand meters and mark it again. We’ll land there.”

  Boyd sees men streaming through the gate into the prison. As the aircraft circles out south toward Tehran, three pickups race down the road from the prison toward the highway. Over the next 10 minutes, cars are pushed off the overpass, and a bucket of red paint is thrown across the highway to mark the beginning of the makeshift landing zone. As the C-130 circles, Boyd searches the city more carefully.

  “They still have an air force, you know,” he says. ‘We could see a Mirage or Mig-29 any second.”

  “Right,” Raybon says. “We’d better get this done and get out of here. If they figure out what we’re up to, they’ll launch something.”

  Raybon tightens his circle heading back to the prison. They can see red paint on the highway and black paint at the other end, and the road is clear. Several vehicles are gathered at the exit closest to the prison. They make a low-level pass, only 100 feet off the ground, to check for debris and holes in the road. It is clear.

  “Let’s land to the east, that puts us closest to SLUGGO, and we can load up, turn around and be gone,” Raybon says, banking sharply and throttling back, lining up on the west end of their makeshift runway.

  “Roger,” Boyd says, “Pre-landing check list. Flaps down, gear down …”

  The old C-130 glides over stalled traffic and a few astonished pedestrians and touches down at 100 knots right on the black splash of paint on a highway overpass a half mile from Evin Prison. Safely landed in just over half of the 1,000 yards allowed, they taxi to the waiting knot of PMOI fighters.

  Shands and two Marines in body armor and armed with sidearms and M-16s jump from the crew door and run to meet the insurgents. Boyd can see them briefly as he and Raybon turn the aircraft on the highway and point it back to the west for takeoff. There is a heated discussion with waving of arms and pointing back to the prison. Something is wrong.

  Chapter 42: Ratface

  R

  atface is in Evin Prison. Everything changed in the moment of the first nuclear blast at Parchin, and he hasn’t returned since Ekaterina’s first night here. The party he’d so looked forward to when he’d first seen her nude in the hospital gown was postponed by events. The Supreme Leader had been at Niavran Palace collecting his belongings before moving to a secure bunker in the mountains in anticipation of a possible conflict in a week or two. Angered at the incompetence of his subordinates when the war kicked off early, he had summoned and executed by firing squad the president, the chief of the Revolutionary Guards, the head of the Iranian Armed Forces and the commander of the Quds Force, the special forces unit of the Revolutionary Guards trusted with exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution – the man in charge of managing Hezbollah.

  The next round of executions took out the VEVAK director for failing to expose and destroy the traitors in the senior leadership, leaving Ratface as the head of the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security and personally responsible for the safety of the Supreme Leader.

  The other influential Western nations had declined to send diplomats to the Tehran leadership conference, leaving Dabney St. Clair as the only hostage of consequence. When the Supreme Leader was trapped in Tehran after the nuclear exchange, hostages were brought from their hotel suites and consolidated in a bunker near his palace in anticipation of a major media broadcast to the world announcing that diplomats were still trying to work something out.

  With only one prominent diplomat, and she known to be a spy, that didn’t seem worth the effort. So, the pretense that the dozen or so hapless diplomats were welcome guests at an international negotiation was dropped and they were concentrated in one room in a bunker under armed guard. They were to appear on a television broadcast as hostages, and the more the merrier. Ratface had been dispatched to Evin Prison before dawn to pick up Ekaterina Dadiani to add to the list.

  When he opened her cell door, he could see she was hypothermic and disoriented and hadn’t had food or water for almost four days. The Supreme Leader would want her to appear reasonably healthy, and the television broadcast was to be immediately upon his return. Desperate to revive her, he wrapped her in a blanket and turned up the gas heater in his office while he boiled water for tea.

  The first shots were fired by the PMOI fighters at dawn. He barricaded the door and gave her tea, bottled water and candy bars while bullets ricocheted off the side of the building and fighting raged. Then it was quiet. An aircraft flew over, very low, and then there was firing of a heavy machine gun and an explosion at the front gate. He was afraid it was one of those commando raids the Americans are so notorious for.

  At the back of the prison, across the hall from the interrogation room, Ratface has an office with a secure exit used to remove bodies after interrogation. Many opposition figures rumored to have been arrested but never seen in Evin Prison have passed through this door. This is where he is now barricaded, Ekaterina blindfolded and gagged. He has used cable ties to bind her hands and feet, and then those tied together so she’s pulled into an obscene ball with
her bare butt exposed beneath the blanket.

  He hears shooting and shouting in the halls, then footsteps as several men enter the holding area and unlock all the cells. He hears grateful cries as the starved, frozen, dehydrated prisoners are released. Then silence. He can hear the aircraft engines in the distance; they must have landed. Half an hour passes, his spirits rise. Then he hears footsteps again, and two or three men walk across the broken glass, look in each cell and break down the door to the interrogation room. They are speaking English.

  Ratface’s heart is racing. He clutches his pistol, aiming at Ekaterina’s head. Then the men leave and there is silence. He waits 10 minutes, 15. Silence. His car is parked just outside the door. The road to the highway is open.

  Ratface stands and listens at the door. He hears nothing. He removes the barricade, opens the door and peeks out. The holding area is deserted. He goes to the interrogation room and retrieves a hospital gurney. Pulling it through the door to his office, he smiles. Her eyes are wide with fear. Color has returned to her cheeks, and she looks healthy again. He lifts her torso onto the gurney, freely feeling the now warm flesh beneath the dirty hospital gown.

  No time now for the party he had planned, but no harm in a thorough pat down; no telling what these prisoners get smuggled to them. She could have a gun or a knife, and the Supreme Leader would be in jeopardy. Can’t let that happen. He pulls the gown up and, in the dim light does a thorough examination, leaving nothing unexplored. He fights back his excitement, as the Holy Quran forbids a man being aroused by a woman not his wife; this is work. This is necessary. So necessary is the security of the Supreme Leader that he ponders taking Ekaterina back into the interrogation room for a quick session before returning with her for the hostage broadcast. Really, time does not permit that.

  Well, it would take only 10 minutes, 15 at the most. If something unfortunate should happen, he could tell the Supreme Leader that she’d been killed in the assault. Then he remembered that there had just been a prison break. Thousands of family members and friends would find out about it and descend on the prison looking for loved ones, loved ones long since dead and secretly buried. Don’t want to be here when they get here.

  Suddenly a paragon of efficiency and job focus, Ratface pulls the gurney to the steel door and opens it, peering out. On the other side of the building, he can hear the C-130 still idling, but the road down the hill and under the highway is open.

  Chapter 42: Evin Prison

  B

  oyd Chailland’s hand flashes from behind the door and slams into Ratface, the grip finding his neck. The momentum of the thrust lifts Ratface off his feet. Boyd steps forward and slams Ratface into the wall and, for a moment, the two men’s eyes are locked. In that moment, Ratface pulls his pistol and fires two shots into Boyd’s abdomen. The muzzle flash in the dim light momentarily illuminates the two men’s faces.

  “Arrgghh!” Boyd cries, not in agony, but in rage. He is wearing body armor, and the two 25 caliber bullets fail to penetrate it, although the impact is like a body punch. He pulls Ratface back from the wall and takes a step forward before doing a 360 degree turn holding Ratface over his head and smashing his head into the stone of Evin Prison. The head smashes like a rotten pumpkin, and blood and brains boil out of the back. Boyd can’t stop, he pirouettes again and Ratface's head makes another sickening crunch against the wall. Boyd drops him and turns to Ekaterina.

  The Marine that accompanied Boyd from the C-130 steps into the office to cover their back.

  When Boyd first went to Ekaterina’s empty cell, his nose told him that she’d been confined there without relief of any kind for the entire duration of the nuclear war and that she was probably still alive. When they broke into the interrogation room, his nose told him it had not been recently used. The shackles, blunt objects, probes, drills and curling irons were clean and neatly displayed in their racks and shelves; no scent of blood or burnt flesh. He saw the gurney and surmised its use. Prisoners could walk in here, but when Ratface got started, he wouldn’t be able to stop and they wouldn’t walk out. The door across the hall was wider than a regular office door, to accommodate that gurney. There must be an exit there. If Ratface had left already, and Boyd was pretty sure he had, a quick circle around the back to make sure wouldn’t hold things up too much. If he were still there, he’d be in that office with a gun to Ekaterina’s head, and a hostage situation would play out. Break down that door, and Boyd and/or Ekaterina would die.

  Tears welling in her eyes, she is cold, dirty, pitiable but alive, and Boyd’s heart soars. It’s the best possible ending for this mission, so far at least. He kneels and, pulling his K-Bar knife from its sheath on his ankle, cuts her loose.

  “Got a blanket here,” the Marine says, returning from the office. “Nobody back there.”

  He pulls up short, recognizing that he is interrupting something as Boyd and Ekaterina embrace.

  “Right,” Boyd says, standing. “Let’s go.”

  He lifts Ekaterina from the gurney, wraps her in the blanket and carries her toward the corner of Evin Prison.

  *****

  “Close the bleeds,” Raybon says as they start the pre-takeoff checklist.

  Boyd shuts off the auxiliary power generators and heaters that run off the engines to increase power for a short runway takeoff. He resumes the checklist. “Flaps 50, engine to full power, release the brakes …”

  The old aircraft creaks and shudders and begins to roll. They have Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Mohammad Mashadi, his secretary, Ekaterina Dadiani, a wounded insurgent, five Marines and Maj. Rick Shands, Boyd, Raybon, Davann and Emmet. Snow swirls now as they retrace their landing from the west along the elevated four-lane highway north of Tehran, lumbering along, all four engines flat out.

  *****

  The approach radar at Imam Khomeini International Airport south of Tehran, operational on generator power throughout the nuclear exchange, has followed the old C-130 from the time it crossed the peak of Mount Damavand, watched it circle and land, and now sees it take off. The Iranian Air Force lays shattered, its wreckage strewn across the nation from encounters with Israeli, Saudi, Qatari, Kuwaiti, Omani and some unidentified aircraft that might have been American. The main base at Mehrabad, near the center of Tehran, was neutralized on the first day of the war with medium range missiles, cruise missiles and bombs. Most of the fighter aircraft able to get aloft on that day were destroyed, but a precious few have retreated to the newer Imam Khomeini International and are hidden in hangars and bunkers on the periphery of the airport. Not wanting to risk another nuclear detonation, they are being held in reserve for whatever might lie ahead.

  The Ansar-Ul-Mehdi Corps commander in Tehran, Brig. Gen. Abdol-Najafi, has been notified that some type of commando raid is in progress at Evin Prison. He has assumed command of all the armed forces around Tehran as well as protection for the Supreme Leader. The purpose of this raid isn’t clear, but it poses a threat to the Supreme Leader, and Najafi has given orders to stop it. An old American F-4 Phantom jet fighter, given to Iran during the days of the Shah, has been hurriedly prepared for flight, and a pilot has been rushed to the aircraft in the hour Boyd’s nonstandard crew has been in the area. The Phantom is loaded with heat seeking air-to-air missiles and a 20 mm M61 Vulcan six-barrel Gatling gun identical to the weapon strapped to the ramp of the C-130.

  As the C-130 takes off north of Tehran, the Iranian pilot at Imam Khomeini International Airport pushes his two General Electric J79 turbojets into full afterburner and begins to roll. He is 30 miles away.

  *****

  “PECOS to JUBA, bandit at heading two five zero.” PECOS has flown into Iranian airspace along the Caspian Sea and gone to maximum altitude to allow its side-looking radar to see over the mountains and into the Tehran area. They are continuing the agreed-upon process of adding 90 degrees to the actual heading to confuse listeners.

  “Bandit, roger,” Boyd responds. He snaps his eyes to t
he southwest just as the wheels lift off the road.

  “That would be the international airport south of town,” he says over the intercom.

  “Up big boy,” Raybon says, looking to his left. The C-130 is climbing at full power.

  “Emmet, can we make a right turn?”

  “Not yet, too close to the hills.”

  Raybon turns the aircraft to the left, into the bandit, and they circle through south to the east.

  The Iranian pilot has also taken off to the west and is just retracting his landing gear and turning back to the northeast. He levels out and streaks across the city, passing through 600 miles per hour already. Heavy, and old, the F4 is still capable of impressive acceleration. He is four minutes away.

  “OK, turn north, we’re over the hills,” Emmet says.

  “Love those clouds now,” Raybon says, turning north as they rise into thick clouds and swirling snow.

  “Stay down in back, we’ve got a bandit approaching. We might have to take evasive action,” Boyd warns those in the back over the intercom. “Keep your body armor on.”

  They are traveling at 250 mph, climbing at 1,500 feet per minute, at an altitude of 6,000 feet, which is 2,000 feet above the ground. They are ascending the foothills on the side of Mount Damavand, the peak of which is 10 miles away.

  The Iranian pilot has acquired the lumbering C-130 on his target radar, which is remarkably like the weather radar in the C-130 Hercules. He arms his Sidewinder missiles.

  “We’re locked on to target radar,” Emmet says as a warning klaxon breaks out on his console. “Make a left turn.”

  Raybon turns the aircraft sharply to his left.

  The Iranian pilot sees the turn and adjusts as he blows by Evin Prison just under the speed of sound and pulls up into the clouds.

  “There’s a ridge up ahead and a valley just beyond,” Emmet says, eyes flicking from a contour map folded on his desk to the weather radar. “Skim the top of the ridge and drop into the valley.”