“Monday.”
“You expect me to get them ready over the weekend? You’re going to need some miracles around here, Colonel.”
Miracles better be our stock-in-trade, Stansell thought.
The gate guard turned his back to the wind and tried to hunch down lower beneath his collar as the small Fokker F-27 transport plane taxied up to the fence and cut its two turboprop engines. The passenger door swung open and people started to clamber down the steps, most of them wrapped up against the wind blowing off nearby Lake Urmia. October nights in the mountains of northwest Iran were very cold at forty-two hundred feet.
The passengers ignored the guard and hurried toward the bus waiting to drive them into the town of Rezaiyeh three miles to the south. The guard waved new passengers through, angry because his replacement had not shown up. When the last of the passengers had boarded the airplane for the flight to Bandar Abbas he banged the gate closed and ran for the bus, not wanting to spend the night at the airport or walk into town.
The guard sat down now in the only empty seat next to a soldier. The two glanced at each other, acknowledging their mutual profession. “The driver is a pig,” the guard said. “I was lucky he didn’t leave without me.”
Bill Carroll unwrapped the scarf around his head. He did not want to get into a conversation but the guard might become suspicious if he ignored him. “It used to be different,” Carroll said. “Not too long ago they would have asked you when you wanted to leave and waited for you.”
The guard sighed. “Things change. Even here.” They rode in silence for a few moments, then: “Are you from Rezaiyeh?”
“No, passing through on business. An uncle lives nearby and this is a chance to visit him.”
The guard looked hard at Carroll. He wanted to be sure he did not sit next to a Kurd. He had killed enough of them, too many of these traitorous tribesmen lived around Rezaiyeh. Satisfied that Carroll did not look like a Kurd, he relaxed. “What is your business here?”
Carroll turned and stared at the guard. “I’m here because the Council of Guardians sent me. What is your name?”
The guard wanted nothing to do with the Council of Guardians. “I’m just a guard—”
“Yes, I understand,” Carroll said, facing the window.
“I can find you a room for the night …”
“It is late. Thank you. What is your superior’s name? I’m not after loyal soldiers like yourself, only incompetent leaders.” Carroll was getting into it.
Here was the guard’s chance to even matters with his sergeant. But then he thought about it, better not get involved. “Sergeant Afrakhteh … but he is honest and hard working.”
“Good. Do not mention that I am here. It would make my work much more difficult and that would not be wise.”
“Yes, of course.” Anyone from the Council of Guardians was dangerous.
Carroll stared into the night. How much longer can I bluff like this? My luck can’t last, I’ve got to find help and get to Kermanshah.
CHAPTER 10
Vahid Mokhtari was pleased with himself. The visit by the commanding general of the Peoples’ Soldiers of Islam was going well. The PSI was the military arm of the communist Tudeh Party and had recently been integrated into the Iranian armed forces, reviving and strengthening the Iranians with a massive infusion of Soviet arms, aircraft and supplies. The general had insisted on walking by himself, hobbling along on crutches, still not used to the loss of his right leg. His one eye blazed when he looked at the Americans, and he constantly adjusted the black eyepatch over his empty eye socket.
“Their commander, a Colonel Waters, led his Phantoms in an attack on my headquarters,” he told Mokhtari. “His bombs did this to me. I killed him.”
Mokhtari had escorted the old man through the main building, explaining the smell. “The Americans are willing to live in this filth. They will not wash or care for themselves.”
He did not mention his rigidly enforced rule of not allowing the prisoners to bathe or wash their clothes. Eventually, filth and bad diet would have their effect, exactly as he planned. Then Colonel Leason would do as he was ordered or watch his men die like vermin. Mokhtari found the thought of Leason collaborating against the men he claimed to command very satisfying.
Mokhtari concluded the tour by escorting the general into the small interrogation room in the basement of the administration building. “I am personally questioning the controller from the radar site at Ras Assanya who directed aircraft against your pilots. We are extracting information about the secret equipment she was using. Would you care to observe an interview?”
The general nodded and sat down.
A guard positioned a chair in the middle of the room facing a metal desk and left. Mokhtari leaned against the front edge of the desk and folded his arms. The door swung open and two guards shoved Mary Hauser into the room, her wrists manacled and the canvas bag over her head. One grabbed her arm and wrenched her around, forcing her into the chair.
“Remove the bag and handcuffs,” Mokhtari ordered, then spoke in English. “Captain, we have been through this before. Salute your superior officers.” The general did not speak English and an aide interpreted for him.
“Permission to speak, Commandant?” She was playing the game, studying the old man sitting slightly to her left. Somehow he reminded her of a peregrine falcon.
“Granted.”
“Military protocol says that I must be standing in order to salute. Permission to stand?”
Mokhtari nodded. She stood, saluted. “Captain Mary Lynn Hauser reporting as ordered, sir.”
The general’s one eye dissected her.
Mokhtari nodded at the guard standing behind Hauser, who took hold of her shoulders and pushed her back into the chair.
“Tell us about the equipment you were using at your radar post. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
Mary Hauser steeled herself. The interrogation sessions followed a set pattern, beatings came next. Mokhtari used such anticipation as a way to break her. “I’ve explained it before, there was nothing special or new, it was a standard radar, the same type we used in Vietnam …”
Actually she had been using the latest model of the AN/TPS 59, a state of the art 3-D air surveillance phased array radar. By using high-speed computers it could handle five hundred targets on every ten second scan of its rotating planar array antenna — a powerful and sophisticated command-and-control radar system.
Before she had abandoned the radar post perched on a low hill nine miles inland from the base at Ras Assanya her crew had blown the site apart with high-explosive charges, and she had poked through the wreckage to insure nothing important could be recognized or salvaged.
Mokhtari nodded at the same guard who slapped her with his left hand, the force of the blow twisting her face to the left.
“Again.”
The guard slapped her the second time.
“Again.”
The general leaned forward. “We are not fools. Our technicians did not find a parabolic radar antenna in the wreckage.” The aide translated the general’s words into English for Hauser. At least it gave her a bit of time to think.
“Permission to speak?”
“Again,” Mokhtari snapped. The guard hit her, harder, matching the blow to the volume of Mokhtari’s voice.
She fell to the floor, exaggerating the effect of the blow, staggering part-way back into the chair but fell again to the floor, willing herself to control the pain.