"Yes he would. He looked like he was holding down on us. I would have dropped him myself. I told you, I'm taking you out of here. I exerted my will, and the engine coughed once and started.
We picked up an honor guard a quarter mile from the airport. A Nissan pickup, filled with authentic heroic Palestinian freedom fighters. Somebody must have passed the word; it was oh-dark thirty, and there were no streetlights, so they could not have gotten a good enough look at us to see our faces were paler than the Tehrani norm. But they passed us going the other way, whipped a U, and came on, blasting over the top of the cab with their trusty Klashin.
I put the pedal to the metal. The rear window blew in and sprinkled us with sugared glass. Ackroyd ducked.
"Can't you make the driver disappear?" I asked.
He gave me a hate stare. Then he raised his head, cautiously, poked his finger up over the bottom of the now-empty window.
I was splitting my attention between screeching down the narrow street at eighty miles an hour and the wing mirror. I saw the Nissan lurch to the side and hit a parked Paykan. Fidayin went rolling out like apples from a vendor's cart.
"Bullseye!" I cheered. "Well done."
He grinned and bobbed his head. Then he realized those bodies sprawled all over the street there were not dummies or stunt men. Some of them would be getting up again slowly, if ever. He turned his face forward and buried it in his hands.
"More company," I said, a few seconds later, looking in the rearview.
"You want me to murder them too?"
I shook my head. "Too many. If one gets too close, I may call on you. But save it."
"I don't believe I'm here," he said. "Why did they do this to us? Why would they set us up like this?"
"So we could take a fall on behalf of the wild card. We fail. Maybe the hostages back there die. Who's to blame? Aces, of course. President Jimmy, too, I guess — he's too soft on us wild cards to suit some tastes."
"And you went along with it," Ackroyd said.
I felt my cheeks begin to burn. "Yeah," I said, "yeah, that's right. I like the thought of dying. I like the thought of people under my command getting tortured and killed. I like being in charge of the biggest balls-up since the Mayaguez raid — "
No, I told myself, you don't have the luxury to snap now. You're good at handing out tough talk; it's time to shut up and soldier, soldier.
And count your losses later. I made my jaw clamp. It was much tougher than making the truck go where I wanted.
"I'm sorry," Ackroyd said. "That was cheap."
"Yeah. So please shut up for a while."
There was some more wild driving, bullets cracking past our ears — they don't whistle, they go faster than sound for the most part, make little sonic booms — and then Ackroyd said, "There's a chain link fence up ahead."
"Mehrabad International Airport," I said.
"Uh — don't you think you should slow down?"
"No," I said, "because then I couldn't do — "
I hit the fence. Metal broke with squeals of protest, and dragged sharp claws back along my body the truck like fingernails on a blackboard.
"— this."
"Jesus Keerist!" Ackroyd yelped. "You're out of your fucking mind!"
"If you don't quit saying that, you'll give me a complex."
He turned in his seat. "I don't know what kind of jackass scheme you have in mind, but it isn't working. They're still on our tail."
"No worries." I was heading toward a point I remembered from studying the aerial recon photos. "Look up ahead."
There they were, as advertised: the dark broken-nosed shapes of a pair of American-made F-4s.
"What are those?"
"Your tax dollars at work. Gifts to our noble ally, the Shah of Iran."
"What are you planning to do," he asked, "ram them and go out in a blaze of glory?"
There were a pair of men in flightsuits standing by the nearer Phantom, performing a preflight check. Or trying to. One of them was scratching his head under his helmet. The other was kicking the tires. Pilots hadn't fared so well under the new regime, either; these guys probably knew a lot more about Khomeini's book The Explication of Problems than they did about the flight manual on this baby.
The one scratching his head saw us. He tapped his buddy on the arm. He gave off bending to peer into the wheel well and turned to stare at us.
I steered right for Fric and Frac. They fled.
There were ground crew with their little carts fussing with the plane. Hoping some of them still had a clue as to what they were doing, I stopped the truck, stepped out and fired my Kalashnikov in the air. They joined their pilots in bunny impressions.
We'd extended our lead over the pursuit, but they were closing fast. I drew my Kabar sheath knife and laid my left hand on the tarmac.
"What the hell are you doing now?" Ackroyd demanded.
"Don't look," I said, and cut off my hand. It was not a neat process.
It hurt like the Devil, I have to tell you. Maybe I'm sick as that illegitimatus Battle, with that dumb stubbing-the-cigar-on-his-own-arm trick of his — I was surprised he didn't whip that out on poor President Jimmy.
"Climb aboard," I said, and started up the hook-on ladder into the pilot's seat. I only have so long before the blood loss starts to get to me.
Ackroyd had watched the whole thing — why should he start to listen to me now? He managed to pull himself off his knees despite the dry heaves and scurried up into the back seat. Following my example he jettisoned the ladder.
I pressed my stump to the console. Any old where would do. "Ahh — " Nothing like the feel of fusion with a fine piece of machinery.
"Poor girl," I said. "They've treated you badly. But you'll pull through for us, won't you?"
I could feel Ackroyd's eyes boring through the headrest into my skull. "Don't we need flight suits?" he demanded.
"I'll try not to do anything radical enough to black us out." I felt for the twin engines, reWed them, felt their power surge. It's why pilots are such an arrogant lot — there's nothing like the feeling of unbridled power a jet fighter imparts. And they only get it at one remove, poor sods. I got it all.
A horrible light dawned on Ackroyd. "Do you know how to fly this thing?" he demanded.
"No."
He started to clamber out. "I just remembered," he said, "I have an appointment to get my nails done. Pulled out by the roots, that is."
I dropped my canopy on him, trapping him. "Calm yourself, my boy," I said — I was starting to feel giddy now, I don't mind telling you. "This baby knows how to fly herself."
Outside, our pursuers drew up alongside in their vehicles, apparently afraid to open fire on one of the Ayatollah's personal warplanes. What they did didn't matter. I showed them our tail, and flame, and we rose into the sky and freedom.
***
The Shi'ites have a prophecy, that the Antichrist will appear in the desert of Khorasan, to lead an army of 144,000 Jews in battle against the faithful at Armageddon. Desert One lay smack in the middle of Khorasan.
I wonder if Battle knew that all along. Probably not.
Later they said it was Cy Vance who talked Carter into puppying, after the crash at Desert One. The loss of life shook him, and his bowels turned to water at the thought of what the world would say if he turned a Night Shadow's miniguns on a crowd of civilians in the streets of Tehran.
Well, all that's true enough — at the crunch, Jimmy Earl didn't have the sand to carry through. But it wasn't just Vance working on him. It was Brzezinski. And Battle, back at Desert One, spinning long-distance tales of how the mission was a wash and it was time to cut his losses.