by Tony Criddle
Nick couldn’t keep the admiration off his face and she was grinning when they climbed out. He hugged the girl tightly. Sinclair shook his head and waited until she was talking to Imran.
“Remember what I said before laddie, because you’ll need a bloody good psychiatrist if you do screw this up.”
“We’ll have to get another carcass on the flight tomorrow Fred. You okay?”
“Stuff it. I told Baraz I’d help to mark some lambs and kids from the autumn drop. You and Jock can do that though, can’t you?”
“Not a problem. We’re getting a bit low that’s all.”
The Scotsman signalled to the pilot, put a finger to his lips, then called to the girl.
“How about it Laleh. You ready for a hunting trip?”
“Can I go Jock? I’d love to.”
“How do you feel about being the shooter? I’ll do the gutting and skinning.”
Her eyes gleamed. “I don’t mind helping with that too. When I was getting my Masters we went to an abattoir as part of showing us the different attitudes between country and city people. We watched it all from the slaughter to hanging the quartered carcasses in the cool room. One or two seemed to think that a joint started out in the butcher’s shop or in the freezer, but they soon learnt different. It was hammered into us that you can only be choosy about what you eat in First World countries, not where starvation is a daily event.”
“Okay, but it’s a lot different from shooting at targets. Sit with me on the settee and we’ll talk about it.” Laleh virtually skipped when she joined him. They were talking for a long time.
Before climbing into the helo on their next flight, Jock held the long rifle while Nick took both her elbows in his hands and forced her to look at him. She did, intently.
“Remember Lily, you’re the shooter so you won’t be flying, at least until after. Sometimes we get out to shoot, and sometimes we do it from the chopper. Today we’ll keep it fairly simple and do it from the machine if we can. You’ll sit in the left seat because only the front windows slide open, and you’ll have the gun with you at least until it’s done. You happy with that?”
“Yep. Jock told me about the deep breath and holding half of it when you shoot.”
“That’s shooting Lil. I’m talking about aircraft safety.”
“Oh.”
“When you’re settled Jock will hand you the gun and it always points outwards through the window. Always. Remember there’s another cyclic on your side as well. Don’t get the rifle sling tangled up in it.” Laleh was looking at him soberly now. “One other thing. Don’t lever in a cartridge or put your finger through the trigger guard until you’re ready to fire. Got all that?”
This was more serious than she realised, but she could see why when she thought about it. It wasn’t a game. Laleh nodded, completely sobered, and accepted the weapon once she was seated. Sinclair climbed in the back and plugged in his headset.
“I’ll pick your target and remind you of the sequence on this first one Lily, and one accurate unrushed shot only. We don’t want to be chasing down injured animals up there.”
Nick got airborne with his characteristic. “Okay, let’s get this done.”
Nick bored down the river valley passed Shahabad then zoomed into the mountains to the north. There were still flocks grazing in the yellowed pastures that hugged the lower hills, so he went higher and to the north before they started to look. After thirty minutes they’d seen nothing worth shooting so Nick turned towards the southern ranges.
At first they didn’t have much luck further south either. Nick ran down what was probably the same bunch of shaggy, moth-eaten camels they’d seen weeks before but not a lot more. But he was keen for her first hunt to be successful, so he turned back towards the Kavir. Shortly after he exclaimed excitedly and pointed to a small herd of about a dozen gazelle. Sinclair took charge as the animals started to run from the helicopter noise.
“Gun well out the window and chamber a round Laleh.” They didn’t hear it over the chopper noise, but Nick positioned them to the right of the herd. He could see when she was ready.
“I’ll run them for a while then land about a hundred metres behind them. They’ll stop and look back. Now listen to Jock again.”
“Right Lily, your target is the doe running three back. She hasn’t got a fawn so keep an eye on her. Don’t go for the buck either. Their meat is too stringy and rancid. Okay, if you’re happy, safety catch off and finger the trigger.”
Laleh settled herself, knocked off the safety, and tracked her target as Nick slowed to land. Predictably the herd stopped and looked at them nervously.
“Right Lily, rest the rifle in your hands, not on the window frame, the machine vibrates. Aim a foot in from the shoulder and the same below the spine.” The herd still shifted restlessly.
“Right. A deep breath then let out half. Squeeze, don’t jerk the trigger.”
Laleh squeezed. The gazelle’s head arched backwards and it took two quick steps then dropped. Jock whooped as Nick closed the shivering target, and Laleh was out as quickly as Sinclair. He shoved the Tikka under the back bench seat then drew a sharp, wooden handled knife from under his anorak. It was a clean kill, the huge, liquid eyes already starting to glaze. Sinclair cut the throat to bleed the carcass then turned and hugged her. She looked serious when she half-heartedly hugged him back.
“You can get back in now Lily I’ll do the rest.”
“I’m all right Jock. It’s my kill. I’ll give you a hand. It’s a bit sad that’s all.”
Gutting it took only minutes, the steaming grey mass was quickly discarded. Skinning took a lot longer. Laleh pulled while Sinclair parted the pelt from the fat, but she turned away when he decapitated it. Jock wrapped the carcass in the skin and bundled both in the back. As Laleh climbed back in Nick looked at her astutely.
“You okay Lil. The first time isn’t all that easy, is it?” He covered her hand with his.
“I was wrong Nick. Visiting an abattoir isn’t like killing something yourself at all.”
“The French call an orgasm ‘le petit mort’ Lil, the tiny death. I had no idea what that meant until the first time I shot a gazelle. That almost mystical joy mixed with sadness that something special has gone seemed exactly the same to me.”
“I know exactly what you mean Nick.”
“Hey guys, a bit too much information thank you. Can we head back now please.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Several thousand miles to the west, the previous days hadn’t been all that tranquil for President Jimmie Carter and his brass. Operation Iron Claw had been on the drawing board for months by then but nothing had changed for the embassy hostages. The president had to bite the bullet. Someone would have to go and get them.
And it wasn’t rocket science. Any rescue operation was going to be big-time. President Carter knew there were over sixty hostages to pull out, so his advisers confirmed it would take a minimum of six RH 53D Sea Stallion Helicopters to pull it off. To be certain he ordered that all eight on the US Nimitz be available just in case. Marine crews would fly them while the recently formed Delta Force would do the extraction. Delta was well aware it was the first serious mission when it shipped out.
The objectives were clear, but the strategy was a nightmare, and with Tehran so far north even those huge choppers would need in-country refuelling to do it. The Americans identified a vast, isolated desert tract west of Tabas for that, but even so, ‘Desert One’ was one hell of a long way north. Inevitably the operation would run into a second day.
And most military brass tend towards optimism, so it was assumed that the refuelling would go without a hitch and the helos would hole up in the mountains north of Tehran until early the next morning, when Delta would hit the embassy. A C130 was scheduled to pick Delta and the captives up from a small civil strip on Tehran’s southern outskirts after, and the choppers could then scram for Nimitz via another refuel at ‘Desert One’. It was an operation p
lanned by desperate people who didn’t have to actually do it.
The logistics for the ‘op’ were just about as complicated as it gets too. Three Air force C130s at Masirah Island, off Oman, were tasked to carry internal fuel bladders for ‘Desert One’ while more C130 gunships, bristling with mini-guns, were designated as their minders. And they would all need an in-flight refuel, so other C130s would do that. Also a CAP (Combat Air Patrol) from Nimitz would lift sometime after the C130s and choppers, and would be airborne around the clock until the helos got back. Airborne refuelling was required for the CAP as well.
To say that the rescue mission was complicated was an understatement, and even well-planned military operations rarely survive the first enemy contact. Operation Iron Claw was no exception.
The Arabian Sea was like glass as Nimitz ploughed into it at thirty knots. Her task force of destroyers and cruisers cut through the oily, swirling ripples around her like angry guard-dogs.
The only lights that glimmered at all were low energy blues and reds on Nimitz’s flight deck. It was a friendly enough wind right then for sure, but a thick dust storm swirling in low from off the desert was keeping the visibility down to low and dirty. It was not expected to affect the op much, that was many miles inland, and the helos didn’t need a deck wind that strong, but the heavily armed Tomcats would need every knot of it.
The fuel rich C130s had further to go, so they rumbled NNE for their airborne refuelling long before Nimitz launched. Even so, such a large op was impossible to keep completely secret, so the carrier’s crew was as hyped as any combat crew ever could be. When her aircraft did finally flash up the harsh roar of multiple engines bouncing off the flight deck and island would have caused deafness in anyone caught without earmuffs. The launch went well at first, but didn’t last.
The choppers coasted in low and fast near the Pakistan border where there weren’t any Iranian surveillance radars, but unfortunately the haboob was still blowing south. And that was only the start. Almost immediately on crossing the coast one of the choppers developed severe mechanical problems and had to land.
The remaining seven carried on towards the desert strip, but by then they were flying in mountains with appalling visibility and turbulent air, and their tight, stagger-trail formation rapidly degenerated.
And it was about to get worse. While still in the mountains, another of the RH 53Ds developed a flight inhibiting instrument failure and was forced to turn back to the ship. Suddenly the helos were down to the bones of their backsides, and they hadn’t even reached the refuelling rendezvous.
A few days before the op a clandestine air force light aircraft flew CIA operatives into the proposed refuelling strip for a quick surface inspection. Right then it looked good for landing and refuelling, so they planted markers only visible through ultra violet goggles, and gave the go ahead. But Murphies Law is a world-wide phenomenon, and the Great Sandy Desert is no exception.
By the time the C130s landed on an isolated sealed road at ‘Desert One’ the helicopters were widely scattered in the mountainous terrain and abysmal visibility. It took another thirty minutes before they started dribbling into the rendezvous, and one suffered an hydraulics failure as it came in to land. Murphy had struck big time now, but he wasn’t finished yet. The dice got rolled again when it was realised that the two choppers that had already aborted were the ones carrying the rapid-use spares.
At almost exactly the same time, a bus filled with Iranian passengers appeared on the road being used as an airstrip, and it was promptly stopped by troops from Delta. They off-loaded the passengers but almost immediately after a fully laden fuel tanker also cruised by, and this vehicle didn’t stop. One of the special forces soldiers had a rocket launcher and in the end was forced to fire. The tanker exploded savagely lighting up the scene like daylight.
An agonising decision to abort was not easy to make, but there was little choice. There weren’t enough helos to carry out the mission and by now it was almost certainly compromised anyway. Command in Washington cancelled the rescue via sat-phone, but the serviceable choppers still needed to be refuelled before they headed out.
And now the tired, stressed chopper pilots hit another snag. When it had ripped across the strip, the haboob had deposited tonnes of sand in its wake, and the surface was now almost shin deep in gritty sand. The first helo to refuel couldn’t ground taxi through it with its smaller wheels and was forced to hover taxi to get close enough to a C130 to refuel.
In loose snow it’s called a white out. The helo downdraft whips up the loose surface until the pilot loses all visual references close to the ground, and sand and dust has the same affect. The pilot was blinded by the huge clouds of sand his down-draft created and his helo lurched into the fuel laden Hercules.
The explosion was staggering in its intensity, and sent a vivid red and yellow fire ball writhing high into the featureless night sky, framed by twisting tongues of black, oily smoke. The burning RH 53D added its share.
Deep, rolling thunder reverberated far and wide across the shifting sands, and razor sharp shards of jagged aluminium, along with the exploding ammunition, spread outwards at over the speed of sound. The other choppers were peppered with holes much like nails wrapped around an IED would have done.
The shock lasted for several long seconds, but they were seasoned military and there wasn’t time for recriminations. Most troops have an ethic of bringing back its injured and dead, but in those circumstances Delta could do little more than recover the wounded. It was that omission which pissed them off the most.
The injured got hustled into the surviving C130s and Delta and the helo crews quickly boarded with them. Minutes later the big transports screamed south for Masirah Island, leaving a burned out C130 with a Sea Stallion melted tightly into it and a further five damaged RH 53Ds for the Iranian revolutionary guard to find. It was on the telly within hours.
Chapter Forty
Nick had expected something big to happen after the Christmas break but it was as if the world was holding its steamy breath. They made the most of it. They kept clear of Qom as much as possible and from Tehran completely, but each day started with the morning news flash.
And even the 24th April 1980 started normally enough. Nick and Farhad were drinking coffee in front of the set while Laleh took her shower. The telly was throwing out more snow than they’d ever seen and the sound was more a sibilant, grating rasp, so Nick was barely concentrating. But a minute or two later the hash hardened into excitable, animated babbling much like some five months before. His stomach knotted.
A gesticulating crowd milled around Tehran landmarks while talking heads jostling to get noticed again, but what had happened was vague until Ayatollah Khomeini himself was interviewed. He blustered about Allah’s protection, alluded to some sort of divine intervention, then a grainy camera traversed across a stretch of glittering sand. The foreground was smudged with large blackened fire stains and littered with complete military devastation. The pastel desert framed a jumble of burnt out, blistered metal spars, while outof-focus choppers sagging dejectedly in the distance.
The badly burnt ribs and frames of the RH 53 and the C130 were hard to distinguish until the camera zoomed in to readable American markings, black on grey on a pile of metal junk. The talking heads identified the featureless stretch of sand as the great salt desert near Tabas.
It had been an attempt to rescue the hostages, but the Americans had abandoned the operation because of some sort of disaster. Deaths had occurred, though nobody knew how many, but enough clues survived to work out that a chopper had barged into a fuelled up Hercules. The blast was elaborated on excitedly by the bus passengers.
Nick looked worried, Farhad looked devastated, and Jock rushed in as they watched. Laleh hurried from the bathroom with towels wrapped around her torso and hair, she’d caught the gist of it. Nick started thinking rapidly and out loud.
“Right guys, the shit is really going to hit the fan after that, so we�
��ll have to think about another way of getting out. First up though, no heroic gestures and we’ll all stay away from Qom, okay?” He looked specifically at Farhad.
“There’s bound to be a big clamp-down on any movements by Americans now and the government will be watching their allies like hawks, but any searches for you Persians should be on the back burner for the time being Fred.” Nick stood and paced, too agitated to sit.
“First up I’ll have to get in touch with Gerry Hawkins. This is bound to overturn anything he gave us, and we need an update before we do anything else.” They all nodded.
“Okay Jock, you and me to the airport in twenty.” Nick crouched in front of the girl and took her hand. “We stay together no matter what, okay Laleh?” She nodded and squeezed his hand.
“Gerry, what the hell happened?”
“A gigantic bloody cock-up is what happened mate. Our senior military attaché was with the SAS, and almost wet himself when the news came in.”
“Have you got anything useful?”
“It’s raw, hasn’t been confirmed yet Nick, but our senior SIS bloke has a number of contacts. Let’s just say that they aren’t necessarily all in Iran, okay.”
“Raw or not Gerry – anything.”
“Well, it seems that three Hercules stuffed with refuelling bladders, and eight Sea Stallions from Nimitz went in to rescue the hostages. The Iranians have got a fair few still so the Yanks needed a minimum of six big choppers to do it. Two went unserviceable before they got to a refuelling point, and one went tits up at the refuelling point itself. That pretty much snookered them before they were half way in to it.” He drew a long, audible breath.
“And believe it or not after that it got even worse. They’d briefed an emergency spot in the great salt desert for the refuel, but the chopper that went unserviceable there needed a hydraulic pump, and that’s when they found that the ready-use stores they’d taken in were on the two that hadn’t made it. Their HQ in Washington cancelled the mission.”
