"Some friends of mine were involved in setting the thing up," said Greg, slowly rocking back and forth in the chair.
"I suspected as much."
"They tell me that NSA picked up on the movement of the Iranian troops at least half an hour before you got there."
"No shit!"
Greg nodded. "The question is, why didn't somebody warn you?"
"We monitored the damned satellite all the way in after the commit. Never heard a peep out of the White House." The realization that the ambush could have been avoided outraged him.
Both men fell silent as Karen brought in two cups of coffee, then left. Greg leaned forward sympathetically. "Sorry to be the bearer of such disturbing news, but I thought you ought to know."
"I appreciate it," Roddy said, letting the hot coffee soothe his churning emotions. "Some bastard at NSA must have screwed up royally and passed the word on too late. I wonder why it hasn't come out yet?"
"They rarely give public acknowledgement of NSA intercepts. It's called protecting intelligence sources. Also protects people who don't like to admit their failures. Particularly when it involves the White House."
"But the Air Force has investigated for months. Why didn't they turn it up?"
"I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't involve more than we know," said Greg in a warning tone. "Be careful, Colonel. You're in a dangerous position."
"You really think so?"
Greg nodded. "You've been hurt enough. I wouldn't want to see anything else happen."
"Thanks for the concern."
"You probably aren't aware of it, but you saved my ass a couple of times. I owe you. Let me know if I can ever be of help."
As it developed, Roddy found out what he meant hardly a week later, on a chill, gray morning at the first of February. When he answered the doorbell on crutches, having graduated from the wheelchair after his last round of therapy, he found two men dressed in business suits. One carried a briefcase. From their appearance, they might have been life insurance salesmen, but Roddy knew better. They produced identification cards from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and asked if they could come in.
It was Karen's day for bridge at the officers club, and Roddy led them back to the den. He switched on a reading lamp to brighten the room, which was bleak and shadowed in the morning gloom.
The agents appeared to have been paired for their dissimilarity. One was tall and lanky, with a dour face, the other short and heavyset. He had a small black mustache. The lanky one introduced himself as Evanston.
"The Inspector General has renewed the investigation into just what went wrong in Operation Easy Street," he explained in a bored voice, draping his long, thin frame at an angle across one end of the sofa. He had an annoying habit of squinting his eyes frequently as he blinked.
"Lots of luck," Roddy said offhandedly. "I'd sure as hell like to know myself. Nobody has talked to me about it since the debriefing I had over in Germany."
"I believe the earlier inquiry was inconclusive," Evanston acknowledged. "Some new facts recently came to light."
At the agents' prodding, Roddy recounted the mission from its inception to the fateful plunge into the Zagros Mountains.
"One thing puzzles me," said the squat man, who had identified himself as Godwin. "When we talked to Captain Schuler, he said you never mentioned changing to the new satellite and frequency. You know, the one for the alternate national command channel." His mustache was twisted by a puzzled look that silently demanded why?
Roddy folded his arms deliberately, his forehead rumpled, the frown pulling at a spot recently occupied by several stitches. Were they talking about the same mission? He had never heard anything about a new satellite. "Why, for God's sake, should I have mentioned anything like that?"
"Major Bolivar briefed you on the change just before takeoff," Evanston said, squinting even more than usual. "But according to Schuler, you had him using the originally planned alternate. Which, of course, was out of service."
At that, Roddy pushed himself straight up in his chair and stared at the investigator. "What the hell are you talking about? Major Bolivar never told me any damn thing about any change in channels. If he—"
"Did Bolivar call you aside before you left the briefing room?" cut in Godwin.
Rodman thought back to that September night in Kuwait. He had been able to recall only bits and pieces when they had first interrogated him at the hospital in Wiesbaden. But in the long, dismal months since, most of it had come back painfully clear. "Yeah." He nodded, remembering. "Bolivar said General Patton wanted to remind me that our first priority was to get the passengers safely out of there."
Evanston glanced at his notebook. "And then he told you there was trouble on the originally planned FLTSATCOM satellite, so they were changing the alternate."
"The hell he did!" Roddy blurted. Then the possible import of the agent's words slowly seeped into his mind. "Just what the devil are you implying?"
"We're not implying anything," said Evanston. "We're just trying to establish the facts. It was originally assumed that you didn't receive the recall message because of equipment failure. With the physical evidence all destroyed, it was a logical conclusion. But somebody reviewing the file recently noted neither pilot had mentioned the alternate national command channel change. Captain Schuler reported receiving the commit signal on only the primary. That raised some questions."
Roddy's frown had changed to a scowl as he listened. "Let's back up a minute. What the hell is this about a recall message?"
"When they discovered the operation had been compromised in Iran, General Patton sent a recall message on the new alternate frequency. That was an hour and forty-five minutes into the flight. Since the satellite with the original channels had gone out, it was transmitted on the new alternate. Schuler said you were monitoring the wrong satellite and never received it."
Roddy stared in disbelief, brows knitted. That was confirmation of Greg's story about the National Security Agency learning the mission had been compromised, but a recall message? An hour and forty-five minutes into the flight? He would have turned back instantly and hightailed it out of Iran. Barry and the other guys would still be alive and he and Dutch would be somewhere playing tennis.
They had changed the alternate channel. Could Major Bolivar really have given him that information and he neglected to pass it on to Dutch Schuler? Was his memory playing tricks now and suppressing a terrible gaffe?
No. It wasn't possible. Anything that important he would have written immediately on his note pad and passed on to Dutch when they did the "comm" check during preflight. Somebody had their facts all screwed up.
"When did you talk to Dutch… Captain Schuler?" he asked. Except for a Christmas card, they had not been in touch since he had left Germany.
"Last week," Evanston said.
"In California?"
"Yeah. At the hospital in California."
"How was he? Did his shoulder get well?"
Evanston shrugged and squinted. "We didn't inquire about his health. He seemed pretty nervous—"
"Shaky." Godwin smoothed his mustache absently.
"Yeah, shaky. He seemed to have a problem talking about some of the details, particularly about the ambush."
After the agents had left, Roddy poured himself a glass of Scotch and sat bent forward like a hermit hunched over a fireplace. His mind was a jumble of confusion, a beehive of questions buzzing about blindly in search of answers. He picked apart everything the two men had told him, pondering it like pieces he was trying to place in a giant jigsaw puzzle. It made absolutely no sense. He was positive there had been no mention of a frequency change. Why had Major Bolivar made such a statement? He winced at the thought of that recall message they had never received.