The guard picked her up and dropped her into the chair. She rested her elbows on her knees and dropped her head, not wanting the men to see her face. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m telling you the truth. I was using the radar out of the old SAGE system we had in Vietnam. That’s semi-automatic ground environment. I did not have the command-guidance computer that interfaced the system with airborne aircraft—”
“Why not,” the general asked after his aide had translated. “Too old, too unreliable. We rely on airborne equipment now. I don’t know anything about that.”
“You’re lying.”
She looked up, forcing tears. The men would expect her to cry at this point. “Sir, I’m not lying.” The pleading in her voice sounded about right. “Must I lie to answer your questions? I’m only a woman.” And she knew her last four words were a mistake the moment she said them.
The general was silent, sensing that the woman was holding her own, trying to manipulate the interrogation. “She’s a lying bitch. Work on her.”
Mokhtari was pleased to oblige. “Strip her.”
“Not again, Commandant,” she said, standing up. This always came after the beatings. The fear of being raped while in captivity had eaten at her resistance, wearing her down. She fought it by telling herself that rape was another form of torture and that the anticipation of torture was as destructive as the physical pain and degradation. It didn’t really work. She was scared to death.
One of the guards reached for her shirt and pulled it off her. The rough hands of the two guards stripped her other clothes away. Finally she stood there wearing only her boots.
“Proceed.” Mokhtari pointed at one of the guards.
“She’s unclean,” he protested, staring at her blood-stained legs.
She could feel the heavy silence come down on the men. Islamic prohibitions, it seemed, were protecting her. Then it came to her … act ashamed … exploit their deep-seated beliefs about women. She hung her head and strangled a sob, just loud enough for the men to hear.
“Remove her,” Mokhtari ordered.
The two guards rushed Hauser to her cell, and one threw her clothes on the floor at her feet.
You won’t win the next one, she told herself, breathing deeply.
The Saturday night reception for the pilots assembled for Sunday’s air show had reached the dying stage. The generals had all left with great amounts of rigorous French protocol and most of the civilian high rollers had departed. The F-111 pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Garret “Torch” Doucette, wandered into the bar, finding it more to his — liking than the formality of the main ballroom in the French officers’ club. He found his Weapon Systems Officer, Captain Ramon Contreraz, sitting at the bar, the coat buttons of his Class A Blues undone and tie pulled loose, having a beer. They were the only Americans at the air show.
“Beats the hell out of that pissy champagne they’ve been serving in there,” Contreraz told him, motioning to the seat beside him.
Torch Doucette heaved his bulk onto the stool. Middle age had not been kind to him and his waistline was expanding as rapidly as his hairline retreated. Contreraz had been paired with Doucette in F-111s long enough to know that the flabby image was misleading, the pilot had the personality and muscles of a bulldozer. “Well,” the lieutenant colonel said, “how do you like French air shows?”
“Boring,” Contreraz told him. The two officers had flown an F-111F from their base in England, RAF Lakenheath, into the air base outside Tours for an air show being staged by the French Air Force. They were not part of the demonstration-flying, their jet lined up only for static display. “How’d we luck into this, anyway?” the captain asked.
“My good looks and your Latin charm,” Doucette told him. “Be nice to the natives.”
Contreraz grunted into his beer. “I’m here ‘cause you’re here, and you’re here ‘cause you speak frog and have a froggy last name.” The WSO looked around the room, focusing on a pretty brunette who had come in with a group of French pilots they had met earlier. “Ah, la belle demoiselles.”
Doucette shook his head. Contreraz was slightly drunk. “It’s les belles, pronounced lay, not la.”
“Right on — lay.” Contreraz stood and buttoned his coat, still looking at the girl. He checked himself in the mirror behind the bar, straightening his tie. He was just over six feet, and the way he moved reminded Doucette of a matador. Being dark-complected, slender, muscular and good-looking added to the image.
“Remember Franco-American relations,” Doucette said, deciding the captain was about to notch up another conquest.
“That’s what I’ve got in mind.”
Doucette watched him approach the French pilots before turning back to the bar. The boy’s a credit to the image, he thought. He swirled his beer and stared into the glass, thinking about hanging it all up and retiring. The Air Force had turned into a drag, he needed to escape the humdrum routine he’d slipped into. He was amazed that he’d been promoted to lieutenant colonel, had no hope of a higher promotion. Still, civilian life held little more prospects than some paper-pushing desk job at a headquarters. He was definitely getting antsy. All right, he’d hang tough for a while longer — as long as he was still assigned to the cockpit. Who knew, maybe something would come along, like the Libyan raid in ‘86—
Loud voices from the other end of the bar. “No good relations there,” he said to himself, and headed for the group, intending to take his WSO back to their rooms before things boiled over.
“Ah, Colonel,” one of the French pilots said when Doucette reached Contreraz, “your navigator is a fraud. He passed himself off as a fighter pilot and then tells us he flies, what do you call it, the Aardvark? Not a fighter at all, nothing like our Mirages.” A chorus of rude remarks about the F-111 broke out among the pilots.
“Tell Qaddafi that,” Doucette said. He couldn’t tell them that he and Contreraz had led the attack on Libya in April of ‘86 and they were the crew that had walked a stick of five-hundred-pounders across a Libyan air base.
“But you missed him,” the pilot replied. More rude comments from the pilots.
“How did we know it was the camel’s turn to be on top?” Doucette shot back. “Got the camel, though. Qadaffi’s been heartbroken ever since.”
“Is it true,” the same pilot said, “that flying the F-111 is like beating off — it’s fun while you do it but you’re ashamed afterward?”
“Old, old joke, my friend,” Doucette said as he took Contreraz by the arm and hauled him out of the bar.
“Sorry, Ramon. That was getting out of hand.”
Yes, he thought, he definitely needed some real action.
CHAPTER 11
Chief Master Sergeant Mortimer M. Pullman had made the coffee and was waiting for the officers in Rahimi’s office Sunday morning. He had been up most of the night and pleased with himself — the trailers were ready.
After a second walk-through Friday he had trashed any idea of renovation. Instead he had grabbed a base telephone directory and run through names looking for anyone he might know. A familiar name surfaced in the Directorate of Resource Management, a sergeant he had saved from a dead-end assignment when he was working in the NCO-assignments section at headquarters. He called the sergeant and collected on the favor. Late Saturday night three trailers complete with office equipment and air conditioners were delivered to building 201’s parking lot and the three old ones hauled away.