The Pave Lows turned east and headed into the heart of the Turkish mountains toward Iran.
41
The helicopters thundered across the harsh Turkish terrain, the sky now completely black. Moonrise wasn’t for another two hours. They had achieved the condition for Special Operations that they always wanted: EENT, End of Evening Nautical Twilight. It took 99 percent of the world off their threat scope. It meant the average soldier, farmer, or adolescent with a slingshot could never just aim at them. They would never see them. The only ones who would see them after EENT were those with technology: radar, IR, low-light TV, or night-vision devices.
The Pave Lows streaked toward the mountains of eastern Turkey and their rendezvous. The Captain turned on the radar and activated the terrain-following function. The vector came up on the screen and the pilot followed it into the valley.
The copilot checked their fuel consumption against the prediction. They were within a hundred pounds of where they expected to be. On the ICS, he spoke to the Captain. “You see ’em?”
The pilot responded immediately. “Two tallies.”
Approaching the rendezvous, the Captain slowed to one hundred knots. He picked his tanker, the lead, and climbed to five hundred feet. They had practiced tanking with the MC-130Ps many times, always at night, always on night-vision devices; but they hadn’t practiced much in the mountains of Turkey. The terrain was as difficult and remote as it was possible to get. It made the backside of the moon look attractive. The Combat Shadows had picked the rendezvous spot during one of their several recent training missions. It was a valley with enough room to fly in a good six-mile circle yet be completely protected from detection by the mountains all around.
The MC-130P saw the Pave Low coming and turned on its formation lights for the rendezvous. The pilot of the lead plane climbed and extended the refueling probe past the spinning rotor blades. He waited until the Combat Shadow tanker was ready and drove his probe home to refuel. He was very conscious of the catastrophe that resulted the last time the United States tried to rescue hostages from Iran. Jimmy Carter had ordered it. The H-53s had landed to refuel. No problem. Except on taking off one of the helicopters had run into one of the refueling planes, causing death, destruction, conflagration, failure, and embarrassment. The pilot would make sure that didn’t happen this time.
Iran was America’s long-running tar baby. Everything that happened there turned out badly, including a U.S. Navy Aegis cruiser shooting down an Iranian airliner because it thought it was under attack. The Captain still remembered the images of the bloated bodies floating in the Persian Gulf carried worldwide on CNN.
The other Pave Low plugged into the second MC-130P. The helicopter bounced slightly in some turbulence sending a wave up the refueling hose, not enough to cause a problem, but the pilot tried to steady the Pave Low to make sure the hose didn’t rupture. If they couldn’t refuel, they couldn’t get back.
The commandos in the back were becoming restless. They had checked everything three times and were tired of waiting. But waiting was part of their training. They tried to sit quietly, most staring straight ahead as their airplanes took on the fuel they would need to make it home.
In less than ten minutes the two Pave Lows were ready. They backed out of the refueling baskets and turned together toward the east, with the Captain in the lead and his wingman behind him.
They knew they were less than forty minutes away from the scariest sixty seconds of their lives.
Farouk was furious. Their operation was in shambles. The Sheikh was dead, and Farouk was the only one of the council who had survived — he had been out watching for other intruders as the Sheikh had insisted. It was all on his shoulders now, but for what? To become the Sheikh? Perhaps to call himself the Sheikh? Who would know he wasn’t? He could take the name and carry on the lifelong mission, but he knew he didn’t have the leadership skills, the knowledge of the inner workings of the teachings of the Isma’ilis. He also knew that the men who had done this were out there. The Iranians had shot one of the planes down, and the pilots were on the ground. Farouk understood that the one thing he must do now was to find them and capture them. To get hostages to embarrass America.
He realized now that they had miscalculated. They had found one American spy with his laser designator, but there must have been two. How stupid he had been to conclude the one spy had been operating by himself. He had been so pleased with himself when they’d found the one that he hadn’t checked the area thoroughly for other camouflaged boulders. But there had to be at least one more. How else could they have known exactly where to drop their bombs to penetrate the mountain like that? There had to be someone else on the ground.
He knew something else as well — that when there was a downed U.S. airman, they would come to get him with airplanes. Fine. Come. The few handheld SAMs the Assassins had been able to accumulate had survived the attack. He and his men would be waiting.
Woods almost lost his footing as they climbed over the rocks above their hideout when his head was suddenly filled with static. His radio had come alive with a voice, but he had missed the words. Then he heard the voice again, clearly this time.
“Watchmaker 08, this is Sidewalk 71, inbound to Point Whiskey, ETA fifteen minutes. How do you read? Over.” The lead AC-130U Spooky was in charge of the operation until the Pave Lows arrived. The helicopters were to be TOT, Time Over Target, fifteen minutes after the gunships. It would give the gunships fifteen minutes to clear out any opposition to the rescue attempt. It was also the job of the Spooky to find the downed aircrew.
Woods turned to Wink. “They’re on their way. Fifteen minutes out from Point Whiskey.”
“How do you know they’re on our side?” Zev asked suspiciously.
“They used our mission call sign, Watchmaker.”
“Who is it?”
“Sidewalk somebody.”
“Who is that?”
“Beats me. American voice, though.”
Wink moved more quickly. “I don’t remember anybody on our call sign assignment sheet named Sidewalk,” he said. “Do you?”
“No, but it changes every day. We’ve got to get higher on this hill so they can get us.”
Zev wasn’t so sure. He looked around in the dark, shifting the backpack that was full of his gear. He had left most of it behind under the boulder. “How do you know they’re Americans?”
Woods hadn’t thought about it. “How would the Iranians know about Point Whiskey?”
Zev was unconvinced. “What is that?”
“Alamut. Our target.”
“Did you have a chart for your flight?”
“Sure.”
“Did it mention this Point Whiskey?”
“Sure. It was marked.”
“Where is this chart now?”
“It went down with our airplane. Burned up.”
“You know for certain it was burned? You think the Assassins didn’t search the wreckage? How do you know they didn’t recover it?”
Woods was tired of trying to imagine how horribly wrong things could go. He knew an American voice when he heard one. “You’re paranoid. I guess we’ll just have to take the chance.”
“And what of your mission call sign? You never transmitted it before?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, trying to remember.
“What about your wingman?”