Even if the way was clear, there was still the matter of driving the Mt-4 over Koboli Pass. It presented as much of an obstacle as the cold and wind. What’s more, the pass lay straight ahead and meant a climb of another thousand feet or so before the patrol reached the crest and started down again.
Husri Aman’s small Kurdish contingent consisted of five men including himself. The oldest was twenty-two, the youngest was Haja, age fourteen.
They were armed with outdated weapons Aman had been able to purchase from a dealer in Dohuk, a small predominantly Kurdish town some sixty miles north of Mosul. The arms dealer, a man with the unlikely name of Arbil, had often expressed sympathy for the Kurd cause. Aman suspected that Arbil’s allegiance to the Kurd cause was more a matter of expediency, and that a far more likely reason for his willingness to deal with the Kurds was that the antiquated nature of the equipment determined the man’s market. The generally obsolete weapons were the only arms the Kurds could afford.
In the makeshift Kurd arsenal, Aman could count one Russian-made 7.62mm SGM medium machine gun, two Russian 7.62mm SGM Goryunova MMGs, a Tokarev Model 40 semiautomatic, and three bolt-action Mosins. He was the only one who carried a pistol, a Model 30 Tokarev Service Automatic, with an eight-shot magazine, that could easily have been fifty years old. The limited inventory of both arms and ammunition in large part determined how Aman handled situations.
Now, from a rocky outcropping a hundred feet or so above the pass itself, he watched the NIMF two-man patrol pick their way through the rock-strewn pass. Directly ahead of them, no more than fifteen hundred feet on the downslope of the trail, was the wreckage of the Aerospatiale Gazelle with the red, white, and black Iraqi markings. Aman doubted that the NIMF patrol could see the wreckage from its current vantage point.
He was equally aware that if the patrol was not already aware that the burned-out chopper was carrying Iraqi insignia, they soon would be. When they discovered that, they would doubtless assume it was the work of the Kurds — and be forced to renew their efforts to dispose of the remaining Kurdish settlements along the border.
Aman had been following the progress of the patrol for more than an hour. Their movement had been slower than he had anticipated, and now darkness was rapidly becoming his ally. When full darkness occurred, it would be easier for Aman and his men to maneuver among the rocks. At the same time, it would be more difficult for the NIMF patrol; they were obviously unfamiliar with the Koboli Pass terrain.
Despite that fact, Aman remained cautious.
Even though he could use the darkness to his advantage, the two-man patrol presented him with somewhat of a quandary. It would be a simple matter to take both of them out now. That could be easily accomplished with a minimum of risk.
Then the odds would be even; Aman’s five against the five remaining members that had remained on the downslope. But the rest of the patrol would become alarmed — and alerted, if and when the two men failed to return.
Aman had not yet made his decision when he realized that Mahmud, the youngest of his three brothers, had scaled down from his vantage point on an outcropping high over the pass.
“Now?” the youth asked.
“It would be easy. There are only two of them.”
Aman held his finger up to his lips.
“Keep your voice down,” he cautioned.
Mahmud frowned.
“If not now, when? They are close enough that I could spit on them.”
“Where are the others?”
“They are all in position.” Mahmud began pointing out the positions of each of Aman’s guards in the rocks above the pass.
“They are ready to attack. All I have to do is give the signal.”
“The very sound of your signal would warn them,” Aman noted.
Mahmud was shaking his head and smiling.
“They will hear no sound.” He reached inside his jacket, and his hand emerged clutching a small dove.
“When I release it, it will flutter away. The NIMF patrol will pay no attention. It will be the signal.” Mahmud was pleased with himself.
Aman was aware that time was running out and darkness was setting in — but it would make no difference because he had made his decision.
They would wait until the two scouts returned to their base unit — and they would wait until morning when they would launch their attack in the daylight — when all seven men in the patrol reached the crest of the pass.
“What is your answer? Soon it will be too dark for them to see the signal.”
Aman continued to wait. Finally the last rays of the sun lingering on the mountaintops to the west began to fade and the horizon began to darken.
“Now you may release you dove,” Aman said.
“But it is too late,” Mahmud protested.
“No one will see it.”
“As I intended,” Aman said. He turned his attention back to the two-man patrol. They had given up on their search and were turning back.
One of them had already started down the hill.
Somewhere behind him, he heard Mahmud release the dove. His brother was right, it would have made a good signal.
Sharif Khaldun leaned against the fender of the Mt-4 and spread his map out on the hood of the vehicle. The beam of his flashlight slowly traced the route they had taken from Ammash to the Koboli region. He had checked his position twice since arriving at the base of the narrow pass, each time attempting to verify he was precisely where Nayef had indicated he would find the wreckage.
“The patrol is returning,” one of his men shouted.
Khaldun turned off the flashlight and waited.
He knew now that even if his men had spotted the wreckage, it would be too dangerous to attempt taking the Mt-4 over the pass in the darkness. He had been in the business of eradicating Kurds far too long to walk into one of their traps. Unlike most of his fellow officers, he harbored no deep-seated anomosity toward the Kurds — and he had learned to respect their willingness to die for their cause. He had confronted them before, he knew how they thought and how they fought, and that was enough to convince him that Kurd guerrillas would be guarding the pass. He had made his decision; he would wait until the pass was bathed in sunlight.
Clancy Packer had reached that stage in his life where it had become more important to get a good night’s sleep than it was to laugh at David Letterman’s monologue. His nightly ritual now included watching the ten o’clock news on one of the local stations, putting out the cat, and sitting down for a late cup of herbal tea with his wife, Sara, before going to bed.
He was on his way into the bedroom when the phone rang. Sara answered, put her hand over the mouthpiece, and motioned him to the phone.
“It’s Lattimere Spitz.”
Packer glanced at the clock and took the phone.
“You’re as bad as Robert Miller,” he chided.
“Don’t you have a life either?”
“Sorry, Pack, I hate getting calls myself at this hour, but I’m afraid I got caught with my pants down. I spent the entire day with a damn Chinese trade delegation and just got back to the office. I was going over tomorrow’s agenda, and the first thing I see is an eight o’clock meeting with the Main Man. I know one of the first things he’s going to ask about is what kind of progress we’re making on that situation in Ammash. He’s been getting some heat from the human rights people…”
Packer carried the phone into the bedroom with him and sat down on the edge of the bed.