“Only my operator licenses, American and Iranian. Both say I’m Iran Air Force.”
“Stay undercover, I don’t know what’s going to happen…but we’ll hope.”
“Skipper, we should climb out of this crap, no need to press our luck,” Wazari said. “We’re over the line, safe now.”
McIver looked aloft. The cloud and haze cover was thinning very fast, now hardly any cover for them at all. The red warning light seemed to fill his horizon. Better climb, eh? Wazari’s right, no need to press our luck, he thought. “We’re only safe when we’re on the ground,” he said out loud. “You know that.”
KUWAIT AIRPORT TOWER: 4:38 P.M. The big room was fully staffed. Some British controllers, some Kuwaiti. The best modern equipment. Telex and phones and efficiency. The door opened and Charlie Pettikin came in. “You wanted me, sir?” he said anxiously to the duty controller, a rotund, florid-faced Irishman wearing a headset with a thin-tubed boom mike and single tiny earpiece.
“Yes, yes indeed I did, Captain Pettikin,” the man said curtly, and at once Pettikin’s anxiety increased. “My name’s Sweeney, look!” He used his grease pencil as a pointer. On the outer periphery of his screen at the twenty-mile line was a small blip of light. “That’s a chopper, possibly two. He, or they have just appeared, haven’t reported in yet. ’Tis yourself who’s expecting two inbounds, so I’m told, in transit from the UK, is that it now?”
“Yes,” Pettikin said, wanting to cheer that, at long last, one or both were in the system—they had to be from Kowiss on such a course—at the same time achingly aware they were a long way yet from being safe. “That’s correct,” he said with a prayer.
“Perhaps they’re not yours at all for, glory be, that’s the deevil of a curious course to use, approaching from the east, if he or they’re transiting from the UK.” Pettikin said nothing under Sweeney’s scrutiny. “Supposing he or they belong to yourself, now what would their call signs be?”
Pettikin’s discomfort increased. If he gave the new British ones and the choppers reported in on their Iran registrations—as they were legally bound to do—they were all in trouble. The actual call letters had to be seen from the tower when the choppers came in to land—no way that controllers would not see them. But if he gave Sweeney the Iranian registrations…that would blow Whirlwind. The bastard’s trying to trap you, he thought, a great emptiness inside him. “I’m sorry,” he said lamely. “I don’t know. Our paperwork’s not the best. Sorry.”
The phone on the desk purred softly. Sweeney picked it up. “Ah yes, yes, Commander?… Yes…no, not at the moment…we think it’s two…yes, yes, I agree…no, it’s fine now. It goes out from time to time…yes, very well.” He hung up, once more concentrating on the screen.
Uneasily Pettikin looked at the screen again. The all-important blip did not seem to be moving.
Then Sweeney switched to maximum range and the screen picture reached out far into the Gulf, westward the few miles to the Kuwaiti border with Iraq, northwest to the Iraq-Iran border, both so very close. “Our long range’s been out for a while or we’d’ve seen them sooner, now she’s fine, glory be to God. Lots of fighter bases there,” he said absently, his grease pencil indicating the Iran side of the Shatt-al-Arab border waterway toward Abadan. Then the pencil moved out into the Gulf on a line from Kowiss to Kuwait and poised over a blip. “These’re your choppers, if there are two—and if they belong to yourself.” The point moved north a little to two other rapidly moving dots. “Fighters. Not ours. But in our area.” He looked up and Pettikin was chilled. “Unbidden and not cleared, so hostiles.”
“What’re they doing?” he asked, sure now he was being toyed with.
“That’s what we’d all like to know, indeed we would.” Sweeney’s voice was not friendly. With his grease pencil he indicated two other blips, outward bound from the Kuwaiti military strip. “They’re ours, going to have a look.” He handed Pettikin a spare earpiece, clicked on his sender. “This is Kuwait; inbound chopper or choppers heading 274 degrees, what is your call sign and altitude?”
Static. The call repeated patiently. Then Pettikin recognized McIver’s voice. “Kuwait this is chopper…this is chopper Boston Tango with chopper Hotel Echo in transit for Al Shargaz, going through six hundred for seven hundred.” McIver had given only the last two letters of the Iranian registration, instead of all the letters required on the initial call, including the prefix EP for Iran.
Astonishingly Sweeney accepted the call: “Choppers Boston Tango and Hotel Echo report at outer marker,” he said, and Pettikin saw that he was distracted, concentrating on the two hostile blips that were now closing on the choppers fast, tracking them with his pencil on the glass. “They’re flat out,” he muttered. “Ten miles eastern.”
McIver’s voice in their earphones: “Kuwait, please confirm outer marker. Request straight in, we’re low on fuel.”
“Straight in approved, report outer marker.”
Pettikin heard the inflexibility and suppressed a groan. Sweeney began humming. The senior controller, a Kuwaiti, quietly got up from his desk and came over to stand behind them.
They watched the circling trace leaving a picture of the land and the blips of light in its wake, seeing them not as blips but as two hostile fighters and two far slower Kuwaiti interceptors still far away, two choppers helpless between them. Closer. The hostiles were almost merged with the choppers now, then they moved off and away, heading eastward back across the Gulf. For a moment all three men held their breath. Rockets took time to reach their targets. Seconds passed. Chopper blips remained. Kuwaiti interceptor blips remained, closing on the choppers, then they too turned back for home. Momentarily Sweeney switched into their channel and listened to the Arabic. He glanced up at the senior controller and spoke to him in Arabic. The man said, “Insha’Allah,” nodded briefly at Pettikin, and went out of the room.
“Our interceptors reported seeing nothing,” Sweeney said to Pettikin, his voice flat. “Except two choppers. 212s. They saw nothing.” He went back into the regular band, airplanes reporting in and being channeled for takeoff and landing, then he switched the radar to closer range. Now the choppers were separated into two blips, still well out to sea. Their approach seemed interminably slow against the tracks of incoming and outgoing jets.
McIver’s voice cut through the other voices, “Pan-pan-pan! Kuwait, this is chopper BT and HE, pan pan pan, both our warning lights are on, gauges empty, pan pan pan.” The emergency call, one step below Mayday.
Sweeney said, “Permission to land on Messali Beach helipad directly ahead, near the hotel—we’ll alert them and send you fuel. Do you copy?”
“Roger, Kuwait, thank you. I know the hotel. Please inform Captain Pettikin.”
“Wilco, at once.” Sweeney phoned and put their air-sea rescue helicopter on standby, ready for instant takeoff, sent a fire truck to the hotel, then held out his hand for Pettikin’s earpiece, glanced at the door, and beckoned him closer. “Now listen to me,” he hissed, keeping his voice down. “’Tis yourself who’ll meet them and refuel them, clear them through Customs and Immigration—if you can—and get them the deevil out of Kuwait within minutes or yourself and they and your high and mighty ‘important’ friends will all be in jail and good riddance! Holy Mother of God, how dare you jeopardize Kuwait with your madcap adventures against those trigger-happy Iran fanatics and make honest men risk their jobs for the likes of you. If one of your choppers was shot down…it was only the luck of the deevil himself stopped an international incident.” He reached into his pocket and shoved a piece of paper into Pettikin’s hand who was stunned by the venom and suddenness. “Read it, then flush it.”
Sweeney turned his back and got on the phone again. Weakly, Pettikin went out. When it was safe he glanced at the paper. It was a telex. The telex. From Tehran. Not a photocopy. The original.
Christ Almighty! Did Sweeney intercept it and cover for us? But didn’t he say, “clear them through Customs and Immigrat
ion—if you can”?
MESSALI BEACH HOTEL: The small fuel truck with Genny and Pettikin aboard swung off the coast road and into the vast hotel gardens, sprinklers going. The helipad was well west of the huge parking lot area. A fire truck already there and waiting. Genny and Pettikin jumped out, Pettikin with a shortwave walkie-talkie, both of them searching the haze out to sea. “Mac, do you read?”
They could hear the engines but not see them yet, then: “Two by five, Charlie…” much static… “but I… Freddy, you take the helipad, I’ll go alongside.” More static.
“There they are!” Genny cried. The 212s came out of the haze about six hundred feet. Oh, God, help them in…
“We have you in sight, Mac, fire trucks standing by, no problem.” But Pettikin knew they were in deep trouble, no possibility of changing the lettering with so many people watching. One engine missed and coughed but they did not know which chopper. Another cough.
Ayre’s voice, too dry, said, “Stand by below, I’m coming into the helipad.”
They saw the left 212 detach slightly and start losing altitude, reaching for distance, engine spluttering. The fire fighters readied. McIver doggedly held course, maintaining altitude to give himself the best chance if his own engines cut.
“Shit,” Pettikin muttered involuntarily, seeing Ayre coming in fast, too fast, but then he flared maximum and set her down in dead center, safe, McIver into emergency approach now—for Christ’s sake, why’s he flying alone and where the hell’s Tom Lochart—committed now, no room to maneuver, no one breathing, and then the skids touched and at that moment the engines died.
Fire fighters, in radio contact with the airfield, reported, “Emergency over,” began packing their gear, and now Pettikin was pummeling McIver’s hand and he rushed over to Ayre to do the same. Genny stood beside McIver’s open cockpit door, beaming at him.
“Hello, Duncan,” Genny said, holding her hair out of her eyes. “Good trip?”
“Worst I’ve ever had, Gen,” he said trying to smile, not quite with it yet. “In fact I never want to fly again, not fly myself, so help me! I’m still going to check Scrag—but only once a year!”
She laughed and gave him an awkward hug and would have released him but he held on to her, loving her—so relieved to see her and to be on ground again, his passenger safe, his bird safe, that he felt like crying. “You all right, luvey?”
That made her tears flow. He had not called her that for months, perhaps years. She hugged him even tighter. “Now look what you’ve made me do.” She found her handkerchief, let him go, then gave him a little kiss. “You deserve a whisky and soda. Two large ones!” For the first time she noticed his pallor. “You all right, luv?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so. I’m a bit shook,” McIver looked over her to Pettikin who was laughing and talking excitedly with Ayre, the truck driver already pumping fuel into the tanks. Beyond them an official-looking car was pulling in from the road. “What about the others, what’s happened?”
“Everyone’s safe—except Marc Dubois and Fowler Joines. They’re still missing,” She told him what she knew about Starke and Gavallan and Scragger, Rudi and his men. “One fantastic piece of news is that Newbury, he’s a consulate man in Al Shargaz, got a message from Tabriz that Erikki and Azadeh are safe at her father’s place but her father’s dead, it seems, and now her brother’s Khan.”
“My God, that’s wonderful! Then we’ve done it, Gen!”
“Yes, yes, we have—damn this wind.” She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “And Andy and Charlie and the others think Dubois has a good ch—” She stopped, her happiness evaporating, suddenly realizing what was wrong. She whirled and looked at the other 212. “Tom? Where’s Tom Lochart?”
SOUTH OF TEHRAN: 5:10 P.M. The deserted oil well was in desolate hills about a hundred miles from Tehran. Lochart knew it from the old days, his 206 was parked beside the fuel pump and he had refueled manually, almost finished now.
It was a way station for helicopters serving this area, part of the great northern pipeline that, in normal times, housed an Iranian maintenance crew. In a rough hut were a few spare bunks for overnighting if you were caught in one of the sudden storms endemic here. The original British owners of the site had called it “D’Arcy 1908” to commemorate the Englishman by that name who had first discovered oil in Iran in that year. Now it belonged to IranOil but they had kept the name, and kept the fuel tanks topped up.
Thank God for that, Lochart thought again, the pumping tiring him. At the rendezvous on the coast, he had lashed two empty forty-gallon drums on the backseat against the possibility that D’Arcy 1908 would be open, and rigged a temporary pump. There was still enough fuel left at the shore to top up on the way out of Iran, and Sharazad could work the pump in flight. “Now we’ve a chance,” he said out loud, knowing where to land, how to park safely, and how to sneak into Tehran.
He was confident again, making plans and counterplans, what to say to Meshang, what to avoid, what to tell Sharazad and how they would escape. There’s got to be a way for her to get her rightful inheritance, enough to give her the security she needs…
Gasoline overflowed from the brimful tanks and he swore at his carelessness, capped them carefully, wiped the excess away. Now he was finished, the drams in the backseat already filled and the pump in place.
In one of the huts he had found some cans of corned beef and wolfed one of them—impossible to eat and fly, unless with his left hand, and he had been too long in Iran to do that—then picked up the bottle of beer he had set in the snow to chill, and sipped it sparingly. There was water in a barrel. He broke the ice and splashed water on his face to refresh himself but did not dare to drink it. He dried his face. The stubble of his beard rasped and again he swore, wanting to look his best for her. Then he remembered his flight bag and the razors there. One was battery-operated. He found it. “You can shave at Tehran,” he said to his reflection in the cockpit window, anxious to go on.
A last look around. Snow and rocks and not much else. In the far distance was the Qom-Tehran road. Sky overcast but the ceiling high. Some birds circled far overhead. Scavengers. Vultures of some sort, he thought, buckling his seat belt.
TEHRAN—AT THE BAKRAVAN HOUSE: 5:15 P.M. The door in the outer wall opened and two heavily chadored and veiled women came out, Sharazad and Jari unrecognizable. Jari closed the door, hastily waddled after Sharazad, who walked away quickly through the crowds. “Princess, wait…there’s no hurry…”
But Sharazad did not decrease her pace until she had turned the corner. Then she stopped and waited impatiently. “Jari, I’m leaving you now,” she said giving her no time to interrupt; “don’t go home but meet me at the coffee shop, you know the one, at six-thirty, wait for me if I’m late.”
“But, Princess…” Jari could hardly talk, “but His Excellency Meshang…you told him we’re going to the doctor’s and there’s n—”
“At the coffee shop about six-thirty, six-thirty to seven, Jari!” Sharazad hurried off down the street, cut dangerously into the traffic and across the road to avoid her maid who started to come after her, went into an alley, down another, and soon she was free. “I’m not going to marry that awful man, I’m not I’m not I’m not!” she muttered out loud.
The derision had already begun this afternoon, though it was only at lunch that Meshang had announced the great evil. Her best girlfriend had arrived an hour ago to ask if the rumors were true that Sharazad was going to marry into the Farazan family. “It’s all over the bazaar, dearest Sharazad, I came at once to congratulate you.”
“My brother has many plans, now that I am to be divorced,” she had said carelessly. “I have many suitors.”
“Of course, of course, but the rumor is that the Farazan dowry has already been agreed.”
“Oh? First I’ve heard of it, what liars people are!”
“I agree, awful. Other vile rumormongers claim that the marriage is to take place next week and your…and the prospec
tive husband is chortling that he outsmarted Meshang on the dowry.”
“Someone outsmart Meshang? It has to be a lie!”
“I knew the rumors were false! I knew it! How could you marry old Diarrhea Daranoush, Shah of the Night Soil? How could you?” Her friend had laughed uproariously. “Poor darling, which way would you turn?”
“What does it matter?” Meshang had screeched at her. “They’re only jealous! The marriage will take place, and tonight we will entertain him at dinner.”
Perhaps I will, perhaps I won’t, she thought seething. Perhaps the entertainment will not be what they expect.
Again she checked her directions, knees weak. She was going to his friend’s apartment, not far away now. There she would find the secret key in the niche downstairs and go in and look under the carpet in the bedroom and take up the board as she had seen him do. Then she would take out the pistol and the grenade—God be thanked for the chador to cover them and keep me hidden—then carefully replace the board and the carpet and come home again. Her excitement was almost choking her now. Ibrahim will be so proud of me, going into battle for God, to be martyred for God. Didn’t he go south to be martyred doing battle with evil in just the same way? Of course God will forgive his leftist silliness.
How clever of him to show me how to take off the safety catch and to arm the gun and to hold the grenade, to pull the pin, then throw it at the enemies of Islam, shouting “God is Great, God is Great…” then charging them, shooting them, being lifted into Paradise, this evening if I can, tomorrow at the latest, the whole city rife with rumors that leftists at the university have begun their expected insurrection. We will stamp them out, my son and I, we will, Soldiers of God and the Prophet on whose name be praised, we will!
“God is Great. God is Great…” Just pull the pin and count to four and throw it, I remember everything he said exactly.
KUWAIT—AT THE MESSALI BEACH HOTEL HELIPAD: 5:35 P.M. McIver and Pettikin watched the two Immigration and Customs men, the first peering impassively at the airplane papers, the other poking about in the cabin of the 212. So far their inspections had been perfunctory though time-consuming. They had collected all passports and airplane papers, but had just glanced at them and asked McIver his opinion of the current situation in Iran. They had not yet asked directly where the helicopters had come from. Any moment now, McIver and Pettikin thought, waiting queasily.