"Where do we do it?" he asked. "Right here on the roof? I've always wanted to be an ace. I also always loved little blonde girlies like you — "
About that time Ray caught him by the upper arm and threw him across the roof. About twenty feet. He landed hard, rolled over, picked himself up groaning to his knees.
"All right, buddy," Billy Ray said. "If we can't get along, let's get it on."
Darius came up with a Browning High-Power in his hand. Ray moved like a mongoose, crossing the intervening space in three lightning steps and kicking the pistol away before the Iranian could squeeze the trigger. The Browning went skittering across the gravel with a sound that turned my bowels to ice water.
"Harvey," I said. The Librarian was quick on the uptake, I'll give him that. He dropped his Hardy and scrabbled to my side.
The roof became quiet. Very quiet. Ray had grabbed Darius by the front of his T-shirt and dragged him to his feet, preparatory to punching his face in. Darius was digging in a back pocket of his jeans, no doubt for a knife. When he produced it, Ray would pull his arms and legs off and shower him down on the Pasdaran like confetti, I hadn't any doubt.
I grabbed up an AKM, racked the bolt, and fired a burst into the roof at their feet.
It didn't make the slightest sound. A bomb going off would have made no more, though the rolling overpressure would've kicked up quite a fuss once it got beyond the limits of the Librarian's hush-field. The bullets gouged into the asphalt at the combatants feet and stung their legs with gravel. That got their attention.
I pulled a finger across my throat. The gesture signified both cut in the directorial sense and what I would literally do to their gullets if they kept this nonsense up. Billy Ray released Darius, and the two stepped away from each other. I gestured for them to take up positions well apart from one another, then touched Harvey on the arm and smiled at him.
Sound came back. It was very strange, like having a switch thrown: suddenly the city sounds were there again, the distant traffic noise, the faint yammer of an argument from the building next door, a gunshot, blessedly far away.
"Ray, get on the horn to Angel Station. It's time to check in." Since he was strongest, our Wolverine got to carry the AN/PRC-77, which was a heavy beast. Using the radio was a touch on the risky side, with the Abbas Abad garrison less than a mile to the west. But we needed to communicate, and word was that the people who could operate — or at least maintain — the Shah's radio-direction finding equipment were high on the list of purgees.
I put the Kalashnikov back on safety and returned to my own spot by the parapet. My mood was black. I had had to use a weapon to keep discipline. That's the worst possible command procedure. It was a lick on me.
The primary mission of Special Forces, and their despair, is taking indigenous forces and trying to turn them into soldiers. Or at least credible guerrillas. Indiges are notoriously unstable and exasperating to deal with — that's i-n-d-i-g-e-s, by the way. Most of my Special Forces brethren leave out the "e," which would make the "g" hard. Most of my Special Forces brethren are slightly on the illiterate side, I fear.
We all of us, in what you civilians call the Green Berets, have a special secret fear. It's that we might someday be called upon to whip Americans into fighting trim, and they'd be just as aggravating as indiges from the ceiling-fan country of your choice. And guess what? I had five Americans, well-educated, intelligent, reasonably well socialized, and aces into the bargain. And guess what? They were acting just like indiges.
Darius was looking at Damsel as if to burn her clothes off with those hot black eyes. She was shrinking up against Paul Chung.
The warmth of her nicely-rounded little body at last penetrated his paranoid insecurity. He put an arm around her.
I moved over to Darius. "What is your problem?"
He spat in the gravel near my feet. I let it go by. "When I was recruited by your government, I was told I could become an ace. It's why I agreed. I want it." He flicked his eyes toward Damsel. "I want her."
"I don't know anything about that. I wasn't party to any such agreement. If you have a grievance, take it up with the person you cut the deal with. Meanwhile, keep your hands off my people."
He laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound. "She'd have come around quickly enough, if I had met her when I was with Sazman-e Amniyat Va Ettelaat-e Keshvar," he said. "She would have had no choice, you know? But I think she would have come to like it." He shrugged. "Or not. She's just a woman. Who cares what she enjoys?"
Since shooting him through the head would reflect poorly both on my wit and my command abilities, not to mention giving our position away, I moved away. I made sure not to hurry.
Ackroyd caught my eye, flipped his head off to one side, obviously signaling for a private chat. I nodded and walked to meet him beside the elevator housing.
"Just what the hell is going on here?" he demanded in a fierce whisper.
"Isn't it a little late in the day to be asking that question? There are fifty Americans held hostage in the Embassy, we're here on a commando raid to rescue them — "
"Get serious," he hissed. I forbore from pointing out the irony to him. "Don't you think there's something a little funny here?"
"Eight of us versus four and a half million heavily armed fanatics? My sides are splitting as we speak."
He made an irritated wave of his hands. "No, look. I mean, look at us. What do you see? A handful of deuces. Second-string aces."
"There are some pretty potent powers here," I said.
"Give me a fucking break. Where's Howler? Where's Golden Boy? Where's Cyclone, for Christ's sake? You'd think he'd eat this up with a spoon, he's such a headline hound."
— I should set the record straight here for the first time. I've heard a lot about how Cyclone was involved in the Embassy raid. Matter of fact, I read it in the Xavier Desmond book about the WHO world tour — the UN, not the rock band — that came out after his death.
The late Vernon Henry Carlysle took no part in the mission, at any level. I was surprised to discover he was not involved. This was just the kind of high-profile stunt that usually drew him like a fly to honey.
It may have been a command decision by old Vernon, as in, "if I'm not in command, my decision is no." Or maybe he was just smarter than I am. Or maybe the people who set the thing up had reason not to want to use him. But he wasn't in it. -
"Maybe they were busy," I said in as neutral a voice as I could manage. If a commander has his doubts, he's an irresponsible fool to share them with those under his command.
"That's crap," Ackroyd said. "I know 'military intelligence' is a contradiction in terms, but not even you buy that. We've been set up like bowling pins."
"No." My head seemed to be shaking of its own volition. "The mission has some problems. It may turn into a total SNAFU. But that's the nature of events, not conspiracy." I showed him teeth underneath my moustache. "What you said about oxymorons isn't exactly untrue."
I saw no conviction in his eyes. "We're talking about our country, here," I reminded him. "Our own people. Americans. They're not going to set us up for a fall."
"What about Watergate?" Ackroyd demanded, volume rising. "What about the McCarthy hearings?"
But then Billy Ray was waving to me and holding up the radio's handset. It might be that I wasn't ungrateful for the interruption.
"Got 'em," Ray said. If he resented the means I'd used to break up the fight, he didn't show it. I can say this for the kid, he did not seem the grudge-holding type. If you made him mad, he either busted your head right off, or he put it behind him.