At mid-field the pilot reefed the plane into a sixty-five degree climb, his eyes locked on the Mirage that was converting to their six o’clock position. Doucette shoved the throttles full forward into the fifth and final stage of afterburner. The 25,000 pounds of thrust being generated by each Pratt and Whitney TF30-P-100 turbofan engine pushed them through the sound barrier. Now he switched hands on the stick, his right hand reaching forward for the fuel dump switch on the center panel between them. He flipped the red guard covering the switch to open …
“No,” Contreraz shouted. Too late. Doucette hit the switch and JP-4 pumped out the fuel-dump mast located under the tail of the F-111 between the burner cans of the two jet engines. The plumb of the afterburners lit the raw fuel streaming out of the dump mast and a torch, four hundred feet long, flashed out from under their tail toward the Mirage. From his side of the cockpit Contreraz could see the Mirage fly through the long plume reaching out behind them as the French pilot pulled off and away.
“Shit oh dear! He was too close. I think you french-fried him.” “One does hope.”
Bill Carroll had been watching the mountain trail since early morning, not sure which side of the border he was on, Iraq or Iran. The trail he was watching showed signs of heavy use, by the Kurdish tribesmen who moved at will across the border, he hoped. The fierce tribesmen had been fighting Iraq for generations, trying to carve out an independent homeland. The Kurds might be able to help him — if he could just make contact with their leaders.
Occasionally the three-and-a-half-million Kurds living in Iran would press for more independence and the Iranian government would execute a few of its own Kurds and take reprisals. When relations between the two countries were strained, Iran would encourage the Iraqi Kurds by increasing the flow of arms and supplies across the border. The Kurds were a people caught between two unfriendly governments.
After arriving in Rezaiyeh Carroll had tried to make contact with the Kurdish Democratic Party but the town-dwelling Kurds he had approached were too wary of strangers. Afraid to delay longer, he had caught a bus and headed south into the vague area called Kurdistan. He needed to find a Kurdish village where a single stranger would not be feared. Forty miles south of Rezaiyeh he had gotten off the bus and hitched a ride on a truck headed southwest toward the Iraqi border. The truck driver had warned him about a large army garrison at the village of Khaneh four miles from the border. He had jumped off the truck before they ran into a roadblock and headed into the mountains.
Movement down the trail now caught his attention and he pulled back into the bushes. He could make out four soldiers moving single-file toward him. They moved quietly, maintaining fifty-foot intervals, scanning the brush and trail for any signs of a booby trap. Just below him the squad leader spoke in Arabic, telling them to find hiding places along the trail.
Carroll studied their uniforms and weapons — Iraqi soldiers. The leader had picked the same place to hide along the trail for the same reasons he had: good concealment and a clear view of the trail. Carroll settled down to wait out the soldiers …
It was dusk when Carroll heard the slow hoofbeats and squeaking harness of a pack train, but he did not move, afraid the soldiers might see him. The way they had disappeared into the brush and remained concealed warned Carroll that they were professionals. The few minutes that passed before the pack train came into view stretched into hours.
Through the brush and rocks Carroll could make out a young man on foot leading four heavily laden donkeys. He sucked in his breath and held it when the man stopped his donkeys short of the waiting ambush. He looked around, satisfied with the spot, and propped his assault rifle against a tree. He produced a small submachine gun, an Uzi, from under his baggy coat and hung it from a branch. Carefully he then unpacked the animals, talking to them in a low voice, checking for sores as he stroked them.
The man’s moustache, wide sash around his waist and baggy trousers drawn at the ankle, identified him as a Kurd, and Carroll could make out a dagger and pistol stuck in his sash. Like most Kurds he was a walking armory. When the donkeys had been watered and fed, the Kurd settled to his knees, and in the failing light tended to his evening prayers, the low rhythmic chant of the Shahada reaching the soldiers. “Allah-u Akbar, Allah-u Akbar,” God is most great, God is most great. Carroll could see the words capture the praying man, embracing, reassuring him.
A shadow moved behind the Kurd. Carroll tensed, waited, his eyes searching for the other three soldiers. The Iraqi soldier now stood behind the Kurd, and drove the muzzle of his rifle into the base of the Kurd’s skull, knocking him spread-eagled to the ground. He grabbed the Kurd’s wrist and jerked the prostrate man’s arm up and forward. Carroll could hear a laugh from one of the hidden soldiers below him when the attacker kicked the Kurd in the armpit. Another kick turned the Kurd over, followed by the Iraqi stomping on the man’s chest.
Now the other three men emerged from hiding. “Miteif,” one called to another, “there’s nothing left.”
“He is not dead,” another said.
The men gathered around the prostrate body. One bent down and bound the Kurd’s wrists and ankles with white nylon-reinforced plastic shackles. Two others dragged him to a tree and propped him against it while another built a small fire. Then the four men settled around the fire and prepared their dinner, content with their work.
Carroll moved out of his hiding place and worked his way toward the fire, a cold anger inside him. He crouched in the shadows, twenty yards from the fire. He did not have to wait long. Soon one of the men stood and walked into the darkness, answering a call of nature. Carroll moved silently toward the man, his knife in his left hand. He could just make out the vague image of the soldier urinating against a rock. He worked closer and stood beside a tree, blending into the dark.
The man turned and stumbled toward the fire, zipping his pants up, walking straight toward Carroll, not seeing him. Carroll’s left hand shot straight forward out of the shadows, jabbing the knife into the Iraqi’s throat while his right hand grabbed the soldier’s hair. Carroll pulled the knife across his throat, cutting the right carotid artery, dropped the man to the ground by his hair, allowing him to bleed to death.
He moved toward the tree where the Kurd had hung the Uzi. The odds were now acceptable.
The donkeys brayed and pounded the ground when they caught the scent of blood. The three men were looking at the donkeys when Carroll lifted the small Uzi off the branch and crouched behind the tree. Miteif pulled two steel rods out of his pack, banged them together and turned his attention to the fire. “This will pass the time tonight,” he said, shoving the ends of the rods into the hot coals of the fire.
“What will you bum off first,” one of the Iraqis said, “his moustache?”
“Why not? The Kurds are proud of their ability to sprout hair under their noses. Then his manhood?”
“Do Kurds have any?”
The men were laughing when Carroll shot them, then quickly checked each body. Miteif groaned and looked at Carroll when he bent over him. Without hesitating he held the Uzi’s muzzle against Miteif’s head and pulled the trigger and two bullets ripped into the back of his skull.
Carroll now hurried over to the Kurd. Remarkably, the man was still alive and conscious. The Iraqis had pulled the white plastic straps tight around his wrists, cutting deep into the skin and cutting off the flow of blood and both hands were swollen. Carefully, Carroll sliced through the straps.