Azzawi was helpless now, hoping just to stay alive…
“But, God, if you let me live,” she said aloud over the sounds of death and destruction around her, “I will find the ones responsible for this attack, and I will use all of my powers to raise an army and destroy them. My previous life is over—they have taken my family from me with brutal indifference. With your blessing, God, my new life shall begin right now, and I will avenge all those who died here tonight.”
“Canak Two-Seven, Diyarbakir Tower, winds three-zero-zero at eight knots, ceiling one thousand overcast, visibility five in light rain, runway three-five, cleared for the ILS approach normal category, security status is green.”
The pilot of the American-made KC-135R tanker/cargo plane acknowledged the call, then clicked on the passenger address system. “We will be landing shortly. Please return to your seats, be sure your seat belts are secure, stow your tray tables, and put away all carry-on items. Tesekkur ederim. Thank you.” He then turned to the boom operator/flight engineer seated behind the copilot and shouted cross-cockpit, “Go see if he wants to come up for the landing, Master Sergeant.” The engineer nodded, took off his headset, and headed aft to the cargo compartment.
Although the KC-135R was primarily an aerial refueling plane, it was frequently used for both hauling cargo and carrying passengers. The cargo was in the forward part of the cavernous interior—in this case, four pallets filled with crates, secured with nylon netting. Behind the pallets were two twelve-person centerline economy-type passenger-seat pallets bolted to the floor, with the occupants facing backward. The ride was noisy, smelly, dark, and uncomfortable, but valuable force-multiplying planes such as this were rarely allowed to fly unless fully loaded.
The crew engineer squeezed around the cargo and approached a napping passenger seated at the end of the first row on the port side. The man had longish and rather tousled hair, several days’ worth of whiskers, and wore rather common street clothes even though anyone traveling in military aircraft had to wear either a uniform or business attire. The engineer stood before the man and lightly touched his shoulder. When the man awoke, the master sergeant motioned to him, and he stood and followed the master sergeant to a space between the pallets. “Sorry to bother you, sir,” the boom operator said after the passenger had removed the yellow soft foam earplugs that everyone wore to protect their hearing from the noise, “but the pilot asked to see if you wanted to sit in the cockpit for the approach and landing.”
“Is that a normal procedure, Master Sergeant?” the passenger, General Besir Ozek, asked. Ozek was commander of the Jandarma Genel Komutanligi, or Turkish national paramilitary forces, a combination of national police force, border patrol, and national guard. As a trained commando as well as commander of the paramilitary unit charged with internal security, Ozek was authorized to wear longer hair and whiskers to better slip in and out of undercover roles and more unobtrusively observe others around him.
“No, sir,” the boom operator replied. “No one is allowed in the cockpit that is not on the flight crew. But…”
“I asked that I not be singled out on this flight, Master Sergeant. I thought that was plain to everyone on the crew,” Ozek said. “I wish to remain as inconspicuous as possible on this trip. That is why I chose to sit in the back with the other passengers.”
“Sorry, sir,” the boom operator said.
Ozek looked around the cargo pallets and noticed several passengers turning around to see what was going on. “Well, I suppose it’s too late now, isn’t it?” he said. “Let’s go.” The boom operator nodded and escorted the general to the cockpit, thankful he didn’t have to explain to the aircraft commander why the general hadn’t accepted his invitation.
It had been many years since Ozek had been inside a KC-135R Stratotanker refueling aircraft, and the cockpit seemed a lot more cramped, noisy, and smelly than he remembered. Ozek was a veteran infantryman, and didn’t care to understand what attracted men to aviation. An airman’s life was subject to forces and laws that no one saw or fully comprehended, and that’s not the way he ever wanted to live. The re-engined KC-135R was a good plane, but the airframe had been around for over fifty years now—this one was relatively young at only forty-five years—and it was starting to show its age.
Yet aviation seemed to be all the rage in the Republic of Turkey these days. His country had just taken possession of dozens of surplus tactical fighters and bombers from the United States: the much-loved F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter-bomber, which was also license-built in Turkey; the A-10 Thunderbolt close air support attack plane, nicknamed the “Warthog” because of its ungainly, utilitarian appearance; the AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunship; and the F-15 Eagle air superiority jet fighter. Turkey was well on its way to becoming a world-class regional military power, thanks to the United States’ desire to relieve itself of battle-tested but aging hardware.
The boom operator handed the general a headset and motioned to the flight instructor’s seat between the two pilots. “I know you didn’t want to be disturbed, General,” the pilot said over the intercom, “but the seat was open and I thought you’d enjoy the view.”
“Of course,” Ozek responded simply, making a note to himself to have the pilot removed from the service when he got back to headquarters; there were plenty of men and women who knew how to follow orders waiting to fly tankers in the Turkish air force. “What is the security status at the airport?”
“Green, sir,” the pilot reported. “Unchanged for more than a month.”
“The last PKK activity in the area was only twenty-four days ago, Captain,” Ozek said irritably. The PKK, or Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, was an outlawed Marxist military organization that sought the formation of a separate state of Kurdistan, formed from parts of southeast Turkey, northern Iraq, northeast Syria, and northwest Iran, all of which had Kurdish ethnic majorities. The PKK used terrorism and violence, even against large military bases and well-defended places such as civilian airports, to try to keep itself in the public eye and pressure the individual states to work out a solution. “We must remain vigilant at all times.”
“Yes, sir,” the pilot acknowledged in a hushed voice.
“You are not performing a maximum-performance approach, Captain?”
“Uh…no, sir,” the pilot responded. “The security condition is green, the ceiling and visibility are low, and the tower advised that we are cleared for a normal-category approach.” He swallowed, then added, “And I did not want to upset you or the other passengers with a max-performance descent.”
Ozek would have berated this young idiot pilot, but they had already commenced the instrument approach, and things would get very busy here shortly. Maximum-performance takeoffs and approaches were designed to minimize time in the lethal envelope of shoulder-fired antiaircraft weapons. The PKK used Russian-made SA-7 and SA-14 missiles against Turkish government aircraft on occasion.
However, the probability of such an attack today was small. The ceiling and visibility were fairly low, which restricted the time available for a gunner to attack. Also, most attacks occurred against large helicopters or larger fixed-wing aircraft during takeoff phase of flight because the heat signature that the missiles locked onto was much brighter—during approach, the engines were running at lower power settings and were relatively cooler, which meant the missiles had a harder time locking on and could be jammed or decoyed easier.