As his Hawk piled into the ground and exploded in a huge fire ball, Reg drifted down to the tarmac and hit the ground running, following the jets down the runway. Skidding to a halt, he hustled to flatten his chute and pull it to one side, where it wouldn’t hamper the few planes left to land.
He marched down the runway until he noticed three British pilots staring at him in disbelief. By the time he walked up to where they were standing in the shade of a freshly parked Tornado, he was drenched in sweat. It was well over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. One of the Brits was a gangly red-haired lad who was shaking his head in stupefied amazement. Reg didn’t need to see a name tag to guess who he was.
“Better close your mouth there, Airman Tye. It’s wicked dry out here in the desert.”
Things in the camp did not get off to an auspicious beginning. The Saudis insisted on keeping the new arrivals away from their planes and tents. The contingent of international pilots was kept segregated on one side of the plateau, well away from the landing strip. The armed soldiers the Saudis posted along their border refused to answer questions, even from pilots who came from countries allied with Saudi Arabia.
To make matters worse, the pilots quickly balkanized themselves into national groupings and kept well away from their traditional enemies. Everyone in the international part of the camp, it seemed, was angry with the Saudis and deeply suspicious of one another. Even Reg Cummins was having trouble cracking the code of silence among the Saudi guards and wringing information from them. As he was trying, screaming erupted from the Israeli group.
The Israelis had been the first to isolate themselves from the others, most of whom were Arabs. There had been a great deal of shouting in Hebrew since they had withdrawn to the shade of their planes, but it seemed directed toward one of their own. After a shrill, piercing cry rang through the air, the man who seemed to be causing most of the disturbance broke free of the group and came sprinting wildly across the dusty earth toward Reg. Both Sutton and Tye, lounging in the nearby shade, stood to meet the challenge but Reg motioned them back.
“What are you?” demanded the crazed Israeli. He had a haunted, terrified look on his face and was dripping with sweat.
“Easy there, pilot,” Reg said. “I’m an English officer. We’re allies.”
“English? What is English?” he screamed. Two of his countrymen ran up behind the man, whose name tag identified him as GREENBERG and took hold of his arms, but he continued to rage. “That means nothing now. I want to know if you are human? Are you a human or one of them?”
“Human,” Reg assured him, “one hundred percent human.” The answer seemed to calm the man down, but only for a moment. With the strength that only the demented possess, he threw both the men restraining him to the ground and ran to the next group, the Iranians.
“What are you? Are you human?” he screamed at a muscular pilot who had stripped to the waist. The man didn’t answer, but scoffed and turned away. When Greenberg took another step toward him, the Iranian threw a sudden, vicious elbow to the middle of the Israeli’s face. A fountain of bright red blood flew through the air as Greenberg crumpled to the ground. One of the men chasing Greenberg started a shoving match with the Iranian and soon the entire Israeli contingent was converging on the site.
Reg groaned a little. “Let the games begin,” he said, half in disgust before he, too, started hurrying toward the trouble. Before he got there, however, an unlikely figure appeared in the center of the impending storm, shouting for order in atrocious Arabic. The man waved a well-thumbed red phrase book in the air with imperious authority. Reg blinked. It was Thomson.
The gathering mob, which had been on the verge of embarking on a full-fledged rumble, came to a dead stop, startled by the force of the colonel’s command, even though none of them had understood a word he had said. Thomson did not cut an impressive figure. He was an average-looking man, well under six feet tall, and a bit thick around the middle. He sported a pencil-thin mustache and, like many balding men, let what little hair was still left to him grow long enough to comb over the top of his shiny scalp. Curiously, despite being overweight, he hardly perspired at all.
“Now then,” the little colonel roared, “what’s all this nonsense about?” When the two sides recovered from their shock and again
began to shout at one another, Thomson leapt between them, drawing their anger to himself like a lightning rod and diffusing it. As the dispute raged on, he continued to consult his phrase book and shout appropriate phrases over the noise of the assembly. In this manner, he staved off an all-out brawl long enough for Greenberg to be led away. The Israeli was covered in his own blood, and his nose was obviously broken.
Reg was feeling somewhat broken himself. He thought of Jerusalem, obliterated, and sympathized with the jabbering Israeli. After everything that had happened—the city leveled by an unfightable foe, the destruction of his home base, the loss of those pilots over the desert—Reg could understand why madness might be an attractive alternative. Giving in to fear and paranoia seemed, under the circumstances, perfectly natural. It relieved a man like Greenberg of the responsibility of figuring out what to do next.
Even as tensions between the Iranians and Israelis began to dissipate, Thomson continued to quote the scripture he found in his copy of The Traveler’s Guide to Handy Phrases in Arabic. It wasn’t clear whether he realized what an ass he was making of himself.
Finally, one of the Iranians who was laughing at him filled him in on a little secret. “Colonel, perhaps you are unaware of the fact that none of us standing here are speakers of Arabic, not native speakers at any rate.”
Thomson, befuddled, looked at the man and then at his trusty handbook. “How do you mean?”
The Iranian laughed again. “We speak Farsi, and the Jews speak Hebrew. Actually, I have picked up a bit of Arabic, enough to know your accent is absolutely abominable!”
With tensions temporarily abated, the two groups returned to their respective enclaves. Reg, braving the heat, walked to the edge of the plateau and looked over the lip of the crumbling sandstone abutment. Below him, he watched a handful of Saudi soldiers trying to extinguish the still-burning remains of his Hawk and the crashed fuel tanker. The soldiers, wearing traditional red headdresses, and armed only with shovels and small fire extinguishers, did the best they could to suppress the flames. Great clouds of black smoke continued to billow into the windless blue sky. The smoke announced their location for many miles around, a beacon to wandering pilots. Indeed, more planes were arriving all the time, most of them straggling in from the north. But if human pilots could use the fires to find the camp, the aliens surely could as well.
When he rejoined the other pilots, Reg found a large number of them haranguing the guards. They were demanding to know the news from their home countries, if the aliens had landed, and whether or not their planes would be refueled. The more the guards refused to speak, the angrier and more insistent the pilots became. Reg noticed a couple of the Saudis slip away from the confrontation and hurry into the tent town they had erected among the planes on the far side of the runway. In addition to the tactical fighters, there were a number of transport and cargo planes. There was a fuel tanker identical to the one that had crashed and a score of private luxury jets, undoubtedly the property of wealthy families. Reg wasn’t surprised to see the civilian aircraft because he was familiar with the way rich Saudis, especially members of the royal family, considered the armed forces almost as personal bodyguards.
Soon the two men who had slipped away returned, leading a small army of machine-gun-toting reinforcements. They fanned out and crouched along the runway as if they expected a battle.
Their commanding officer was a huge, powerfully built captain with severe eyes and a hooked nose. Like the other Saudis, he wore a keffiyeh, the checkered red-and-white headcloth held in place by black cords. Despite the oppressive heat, he was dressed in an olive drab uniform made of wool. All business, he marched toward the refugee pilo
ts, shouting orders in Arabic. When he noticed the Israelis, however, he stopped in his tracks. For a moment, he seemed to be at a loss. Then he cleared his throat and made an announcement in English.
“Jews are not allowed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This is Islamic holy land.”
Pilots from several nations were shouting, trying to get his attention, but all fell silent when the senior officer among the Israelis, who happened to be a woman, balled her way to the front of the crowd. When he saw her, the Saudi captain backpedaled. He had just gotten used to the idea of dealing with Jews, but now a female Jewish fighter pilot who shared his rank? This seemed as impossible to comprehend to the Saudi as the sudden arrival of aliens from outer space.
“You don’t want us here? We’d be happy to leave. Just give us enough fuel to get the hell out of here.”
In rough English, the Saudi announced that the airfield was in a state of heightened alert until the fires burned themselves out. The pilots were to remain with their planes. Water and food would be brought to them, along with shovels so they could dig their own latrines. They were not, under any circumstances, allowed to leave the area that had been set aside for them until the commander of the base gave the go-ahead.
“And when might that be?” inquired Thomson.
“Commander Faisal is still studying the situation,” came the reply.
“Well, what about an update on what’s going on out there?” Everyone understood Thomson’s vague wave to the north to mean the entire world.
“You must be patient, Colonel,” said the hook-nosed man. With a last, hate-filled glare at the Israeli woman, he turned on his heels and walked away.
“Arrogant son of a bitch, isn’t he?” asked Sutton. He was about Reg’s age, somew'here in his mid-thirties, with a flattop haircut and a sharp cast to his features. He shook his head in disgust. “I don’t know who’s worse,” he continued, “the aliens or these self-righteous bastards.”
“The Saudis are all right,” Reg said. “A bit high-handed sometimes, but they usually end up doing the right thing.”
Sutton wasn’t convinced. He lit a cigarette and squinted into the harsh afternoon sunlight. “We haven’t been here an hour yet and already there have been a dozen arguments, one fistfight, and now we’re being treated like bloody prisoners of war! 1 wouldn’t say they’re doing the right thing at all. No, things are not going well.”
Reg didn’t answer, just watched as the man inhaled deeply on his cigarette.
“Things are probably a bit more comfortable for whites up there in Kuwait,” Sutton said. “Too bad you weren’t able to follow your orders and get us through.” With that, the lieutenant turned and walked back to the shade of his plane.
The blazing sun had one beneficial consequence. It made arguing while standing out in the open an impossibility. Soon, the pilots had retreated to their own mini-enclaves based on nation, still mistrustful of one another. They stretched out on the sand beneath their planes, fitfully trying to rest.
Reg saw soldiers of the Saudi army taking up positions all around the plateau. They were armed with “handheld” SAM launchers, bulky bazooka like weapons. He could see them on the high dunes in the distance. Ready to defend against incoming alien ships. Futile, he thought.
At one point, midway through the afternoon, a Jordanian pilot was called to the main camp. When he returned, word spread among the international pilots that the Saudis had asked him a few questions about the capabilities of the alien attack craft. The man had told them that others had been more involved in the fighting than he, particularly the British officer called Cummins, but they hadn’t seemed interested. Sometime after that, the Saudis finally brought buckets of water and boxes of crackers and distributed them.
What news was passed among the pilots took a circuitous route. The Iraqis had made sure they were as far as possible from their sworn enemies, the Iranians. The Israelis stayed as far as possible from everyone.
It was Thomson more than anyone who facilitated communication. He spent most of the afternoon shuffling from one encampment to the next, bringing his own fussy brand of diplomacy to the situation. No one was convinced by anything he said, but on the few occasions he stepped between arguing parties— once there were even knives drawn—he gave the frustrated pilots a way to back down without losing face.
Unwittingly, he also provided comic relief. Most of the pilots were fluent in English, the international language of aviation, but Thomson persisted in dragging out his phrase book and tripping over elementary Arabic phrases at every opportunity. He would deliver his mispronunciations with great authority, then move on to the next group.
Eventually, he returned to the three British planes, where Tye and Sutton lay sprawled in the sand. Reg was leaning against a Tornado’s landing gear, half-dozing.
“Keeping eyes open and ears alert, I see,” Thomson said. He was covered in dust from head to toe.
The two men on the ground just muttered and ignored the colonel, but Reg asked, “Any news?”
Thomson looked over his shoulder at the various groups of pilots. “It’s shocking. Intellectually, I knew these people hated one another, of course. It’s all over the telly and the newspapers. But to witness it up close like this, it’s enough to turn your stomach.” Reg was no stranger to the strife of the Middle East, but this was Thomson’s first visit to the region. The colonel continued, “I was talking to those blokes from Syria, for example. Educated fellows, polite. Worried about their families, of course. But when the subject of the Israelis came up it was like I’d thrown a switch and turned them into demons or some such. They started going on about how when night comes, they were going to sneak over there with knives and sever a few heads. Quite disturbing really.” Thomson shivered in the heat. “Do you suppose we should go over and warn them?”
Reg looked over at the large Israeli contingent and noticed they’d posted guards of their own. “I wouldn’t worry about them, Colonel. They’re used to being surrounded by unfriendly nations.”
Thomson studied the Israelis himself. “Humph,” he said. “Looks like somebody has already warned them. Still, if I was a
wagering man, I’d bet someone dies before the night is out.” Sutton stood, stretching. “I’d say chances are good that we’ll all be dead before the night is out.”
Thomson ignored the remark. The portly officer ran his fingers through his thinning hair before lying down on his back in the shade. He laced his fingers over the bulge of his stomach and fell instantly asleep. The roar of a Saudi jet lifting off did not drown out his snores.
Time passed, and the British pilots became lost in their own thoughts, speaking to one another very little. Reg scanned the airfield, hoping to catch sight of any of his former students, but saw no one he recognized. He was mystified by the behavior of their supposed Saudi allies, but was willing to wait at least a little while for more information.
The wait ended when the burly Saudi captain returned to “Embassy Row”—as Tye had taken to calling the international part of the airfield—and sent his soldiers to each contingent of pilots with a message. They asked each group to select a representative to meet with the camp’s commander.
“I’ll pass,” Sutton said immediately. “There’s no telling what mischief these blokes are up to.”
“If they’re serving food, sign me up,” Tye chimed in. “I’m half-starved.”
Sutton gestured toward the sleeping figure of Thomson. “Mr. Phrase Book over there is our ranking officer. Maybe we should wake him up.”
Reg was a more logical choice to act as representative because of his years of working with the Saudi military. He was the only one of the Brits with the first clue about the political dynamics of the region, but he felt certain the Saudis weren’t ready to hold a serious meeting so he leaned back against the landing gear. “I don’t know what’s worse,” he said, “the colonel’s snoring or the growls coming out of Tye’s stomach. You go on ahead, lad, and if they’re serving
bangers and mash, bring us back a doggy bag.” Without waiting to hear Sutton’s response, the gangly mechanic left to join the other representatives. Sutton turned away with a petulant shrug and returned to his spot in the shade. “Fine,” he said.
Reg lay down on his back and closed his eyes. But before he could drift off to sleep, a harsh Saudi voice startled him. “Englishman, wake up.” The burly captain was looming over him. “Is your name Cummins?”
After a glance down at his name tag, Reg smiled up at the soldier. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
“You will come with me,” he said impatiently, and when Reg didn’t leap to his feet, he added, “Immediately!”
The two Brits exchanged a look. Sutton was alarmed. “I’m thinking it cannot be a good thing that he knows your name. I wouldn’t go if I were you. Could be trouble.”
As Reg stood and brushed the sand from his uniform, the Saudi repeated, “Immediately!”
Sutton scrambled to his feet. “You don’t have to go anywhere with this damn towel-head, Major. He’s got no authority over you.” Reg grimaced at his compatriot’s ugly remark. “Sutton, don't worry. I’ll go.”
When the captain turned and began leading the way, Sutton caught Reg by the arm. “Take this,” he said, showing him the pistol concealed in his waistband.
“Thanks just the same,” Reg said with a glance toward the dozens of heavily armed Saudi soldiers around the airfield. “I doubt I’d have the chance to use it, even if I wanted to.” With that, he moved off to join the representatives moving toward the Saudi camp.
As the group made its way between the white tents that served the base as barracks, Reg took special note of the civilians milling about, women and even a few children. The women were covered from head to toe in long skeins of black fabric, the abayas dictated by Muslim custom. Regardless of the temperature, Saudi women were bound by law to cover themselves like furniture in an abandoned house. It was a custom Reg found personally distasteful, but one he’d come to ignore.
Stephen Molstad - [ID4- Independence Day 03] Page 4
