“So … I want you to make Task Force Alpha more than a cover operation. Make it a creditable alternative for the President to consider seriously.” Stansell started to protest that he couldn’t do that with what he was being given, but Cunningham held up his hand. “You’ve got to do it with what you’ve got because right now you do not look like a rescue force. That’s your cover. Why do you think I sent you Rangers? Or a C-130 crewed by women? They know about our restrictions on using women in combat … This is ironic, but I believe glasnost is a factor. It has made it easier for the Russians to spy on us, and my guess is that they’ll be watching Delta Force. Let’s use that.”
“General, are you saying the Soviets will tell the Iranians?”
“I am. A warning from them that might cause the rescue attempt to fail would help solidify their position with the Iranians. They’d figure it that way. Rupe, I want you to go back to Nellis and get your team ready. Bury them in the desert, no security leaks. Act exactly like a warlord out there and you’ll be seen as part of Red Flag. If anyone is still looking at you, the fact that we haven’t replaced you after the attempted kidnap can mean only one thing — what you’re doing has nothing to do with the POWs or the Persian Gulf.
“Make it happen while I play bureaucratic games over this. Also make sure I know everything you’re telling Mado.” Cunningham punched his aide’s button on his intercom. “Dick, have Andrews lay on a C-20 for Colonel Stansell. I want him back at Nellis today.” He sat back in his chair. “Rupe, don’t tell Mado what I said about being a creditable alternative to Delta Force. He’s the best planner I’ve got for special operations, but—” He cut it off. Stansell didn’t need to know about the bureaucratic maneuverings Mado was involved in, how he was working to advance his career by using his connections with Leachmeyer and the Joint Special Operations Agency … “Now get going.”
Cunningham’s aide Dick Stevens was waiting in the outer office while a secretary placed a call to Andrews AFB to arrange for the flight to Nellis. Stevens smiled and shook his head at the look on Stansell’s face. He had seen it before. Stansell had learned one of the best-kept secrets in the Air Force — the rough, profane, nail-eating Cunningham was a carefully forged mask.
CHAPTER 14
“Come,” Zakia said, pointing out the door of her small infirmary. Carroll followed her into the bright morning sunlight, blinking his eyes. Two battered Land Rovers stood in front of a nearby mud hut and a small group of armed men were clustered around the door. Zakia shouldered her way through the men but two of them grabbed Carroll and searched him. They found the garrote wire in his thigh pocket but missed the small knife under the bandage taped to his calf. While they examined the wire he pulled his pants cuff up and ripped off the bandage, handing them the knife.
Zakia had been watching them search Carroll, and now grabbed him by the arm and shoved him into the hut. It probably saved his life.
A wizened man of indeterminate age sat by the only table in the room and motioned to the chair opposite him. “Mustapha tells me you saved him from the Iraqis,” Mulla Haqui began in English. “I am grateful but I find it hard to believe what Zakia tells me — that you seek help from the Pesh Merga.”
Carroll chose his words carefully, using phrases in Kirmanji when he could. He decided to tell the truth. “I am trying to reach Kermanshah in Iran and establish contact with the American prisoners of war being held there. I want to rescue some of them if possible but I need help. I was hoping you could put me in contact with your people in Kermanshah. I know many Kurds live there and have been treated badly by the Ayatollahs …”
“My concern is with the Iraqis, not the Ayatollahs in Iran,” Haqui told him. “The Americans have done little to help our struggle. The Israelis have been much more helpful. For saving Mustapha’s life I will help you reach Turkey. Nothing else.”
Carroll stared at the floor. “I thank you. But I must go back to Iran.” He raised his head and looked directly at the leader of the Pesh Merga. The old man could have been easily lampooned by a political cartoonist with his carefully wrapped turban and huge mustache. But in person he had an aura of implacable will. Haqui had led the Iraqi Kurds in their struggle for an independent homeland for more than a generation, and recognized something of himself now in Carroll — a strong, uncompromising dedication. It was the stuff that won revolutions, and too valuable to waste.
“Prove yourself to the Pesh Merga and I will help you.” He nodded at Zakia, who motioned him out the door.
Haqui’s bodyguards were silent as he left the hut. One of them handed Zakia the knife and wire. “Now how in the hell can I prove myself to Haqui,” he mumbled under his breath.
“By hurting the Iraqis,” Zakia said. “Talk to Mustapha.”
The lieutenant backed the alert truck into the reserved spot in front of wing headquarters and let out the two men. The young officer stayed in the truck, telling Doucette that he was close enough to Colonel Billy Joe Barker and would have the motor cranked if the alert horn went off and they had to scramble for the waiting jets on the alert pad.
“What the the hell does Barker want?” Captain Ramon Contreraz muttered as he followed his pilot, Torch Doucette, down the hall toward the Deputy for Operations offices. The captain had figured the week they were spending on alert because of the “incident” at the French air show was only a warm-up for what the DO was really going to do to them. “I didn’t think he’d be dumping on us this soon,” he told Doucette.
Doucette tried to reassure his WSO. “He can’t do too much more to us.” Barker had thrown them onto alert as punishment after having confronted them Monday morning with the bad local publicity about their hotshoting against the French Mirage in their F111. But now he was worried as he lumbered into Barker’s outer office. Lieutenant Colonel Mark Von Drexler, the Assistant Deputy for Operations, had gone into Barker’s inner office ahead of them.
“How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?” Contreraz moaned. Von Drexler was the wing’s golden boy, the officer singled out for early promotion, the fast-burner. And he looked it. Handsome and articulate, some had figured he should have gone into the movies. Doucette wished he had, seeing as how he couldn’t fly the F-111 worth squat-all.
“Aah, he only looks good in the showers,” Doucette said.
“I beg your pardon?” the prim Englishwoman who served as Barker’s secretary asked.
“It’s about—”
“Yes, I get the point.” She buzzed Barker and told him the aircrew was there.
Doucette and Contreraz stood in front of Barker’s desk. They did not expect to be offered seats. “The wing has been tasked to send three of our jets to Red Flag for a special exercise,” Barker said. “Volunteers only. I can understand why they want F models with Pave Tack and came to the 48th. The message also asks for crews who were on the Libyan raid in April of ‘86. Obviously they want someone with combat experience. It bothers me that you two are the only Libyan raiders left in the 48th, the rest have rotated back to the States—”