“You sent for me?” Andera asked.
Buk looked up. At the age of eighty-three, he suffered from a legion of infirmities, the most serious of which was the fact that he was bent with arthritis and his vision was hampered by cataracts.
He was regarded as a wise man, and he ruled the village with the vigor of a man less than half his age.
“Sit down there,” he said, pointing, “so I can see you.” His words were labored.
Andera did as she was bid, and the old man gestured at the bowl of tun sitting on the table. Andera declined. Despite her Kurdish heritage she had never acquired a taste for the small fig like fruit.
Buk’s affection and admiration for the woman, who had finally returned to her village after completing her education as a nurse in Nasiriya, was evident.
“Tell me what happened last night.”
“You have Aman’s report,” she said.
“Why do you need mine?”
“Because I want the truth,” he said with a sigh.
“Aman is a good man and someday he may even be a wise man. But wisdom will come only when he recognizes that his mind is poisoned by his hatred for the Iraqis.”
“Are you saying then that you consider me wise, old man?” On occasion she enjoyed teasing him.
Buk managed a half smile. It revealed the spaces where teeth had once been, and Andera smiled back at him.
“All right, where do you want me to start?”
“I want to know what happened,” Buk repeated.
“You are aware that for the last several nights, Aman has taken a number of men with him to watch the pass. Last night I went with them. Aman believes it is only a matter of time until the NIMF patrols find the pass and discover our village—”
“I am aware of Aman’s desire to protect the village,” Buk interrupted.
“Last night, as we waited, we heard a helicopter.
But something was different. It was not like the normal Iraqi gunship patrols. It seemed to be threading its way through the ravines and passes-as though it was trying to avoid detection.”
The old man turned his good ear toward her.
“Go on,” he urged.
“Then, all of a sudden, another helicopter appeared.
Without apparent cause it attacked the one we had been watching. It opened fire. And soon there was a crash, no more than three kilometers from where we were.”
Buk reached for his cup of soda as he listened.
His fingers were gnarled and he accomplished the feat with great difficulty.
“Aman claims that it was an Iraqi helicopter,” he said.
Andera frowned.
“It was,” she confirmed.
“That is what makes the incident so difficult to understand.
One Iraqi helicopter shoots down another Iraqi helicopter; it does not make sense.”
Buk closed his eyes.
“And the survivors?”
“Two men, neither with what I would term life-threatening injuries. Nevertheless, Aman was determined to bury them both along with the two men who died in the crash. I am sure he told you I disobeyed his orders. I was finally able to persuade him to bring the two survivors back to Koboli.”
“It is as I would have expected of you,” Buk said, nodding.
“It is my hope that someday Aman too will have a regard for human life.”
“Then you agree with what I have done?” Andera asked.
Buk did not answer her. Instead he reached for a small metal box that was sitting on the table. He fumbled with the latch, finally opened it, reached in, and produced two leather wallets.
“Who do you think these men are?” he asked.
“They are not Iraqis,” she answered with a shrug.
“I know this because the one with the more serious injuries has regained consciousness. I have spoken briefly with him. He does not’ have the look of an Iraqi and he speaks English.”
“And the other?”
Andera shook her head.
“Not seriously injured, and Aman has confined him to the pit.”
Buk opened the wallets and laid them on the table.
“One of the men is a Turk.” He squinted into the flickering light of the candle.
“His name is Taj Ozal. The other currently resides in Bucharest.
According to his papers he is a Canadian national.
His name is Bogner.”
Andera was smiling. She had been right.
“I was certain they were not Iraqis.”
The old man held up his hand. It was palsied.
“Perhaps we would be wise to exhibit prudence in this matter of determining whether or not they are a threat. The Canadian carries a business card that indicates he is with a firm called Jade Limited.
Aman informs me that Jade is a weapons supplier. If that is the case, perhaps they were on their way to sell more arms to Baddour.”
“Then why would the Iraqi gunship shoot them down?” Andera asked.
Buk smiled at her.
“There are many things that I do not have answers for. Perhaps we will know the answers when they are recovered sufficiently to interrogate.”
Salih Baddour managed to grope his way out of a night of unrewarding sleep an hour later than usual. He got out of bed, walked to the window, and stared out at a gray, overcast sky. Since childhood, Baddour had regarded the weather as an omen; he decided that, with slate being the dominant color, today would be a day of caution.
Baddour did not regard this as a coincidence because the vision that had troubled him in his sleep also decreed caution.
He stood appraising the day for several minutes before returning to his bed. He sat down and reflected on the disturbing apparition. Nayef’s report had troubled him even in his sleep. Now the apparition was materializing again as it had so many times during the course of his sleep. He could see men, unidentifiable by their garb and demeanor, milling around the wreckage of an aircraft.
There were bodies and shadows and conceits of the imagination that he did not understand. Even though he attempted not to, he found himself revisiting the vapory images again and again before he finally shook them off and decided to get dressed. Only then was he able to push the images from his mind.
It took almost an hour for Baddour to assemble the three men he knew would be able to diffuse the specter of his concerns: his chief of staff, Colonel Ishad Fahid; his security officer. Major Mustafa Jahin; and Captain Isaile Nayef, the highest-ranking flying officer at Ammash.
Fahid, the oldest of the trio, a bulky man with a prominent brow, was Baddour’s closest confident and a man considered unparalleled as a field tactician.
Mustafa Jahin was Fahid’s antithesis. He was the embodiment of the prototypical field commander, lean, hard, fearless, and dependable.
Nayef, the lowest-ranking of the three, was the man Baddour depended upon to both plan and implement the Ammash compound’s airborne border patrols.
The three officers waited while Baddour studied the map of the area where the encounter with the unidentified helicopter had taken place. When he finished he turned back to the table and looked at Nayef.
“Describe what happened. Captain.”
Isaile Nayef stood up, crossed the room to the wall map, and studied it for several moments before he pointed to a narrow pass between two four-thousand-foot mountains near Acrsya.
“We first picked the aircraft up on radar here,” he indicated.
“Our GTN-Q gave us a profile. We identified it as a type and nomenclature frequently flown by the Ba’thists. We made several attempts to establish contact, but there was no response.
However, our radar indicated that the target had begun to employ an evasive flight pattern after our initial attempts at contact.”
“You repeated your warning?” Fahid asked.