One such man was Hassan Karim Dulaym, a senior chieftain in Albuminr. Charismatic and popular, the former Special Forces commander who had made his reputation during 1984 when he had led a helicopter assault on Iranian troops that were atop a mountain in Kurdistan.
It was because of this popularity Saddam, fearing him to be a rival for the Presidency had tried to have him arrested as soon as Iraq invaded Kuwait. In response, Hassan along with his sons somewhat foolhardily, instead of escaping and leading an opposition, had tried to orchestrate a failed coup attempt against Saddam utilizing former members of his unit that the dictator had disbanded.
“Drink! My dear,” came the voice filtering through the blackness.
Immediately Thomas’s mind switched back on. His eyes tried to open.
The first thing that struck Thomas was his body was covered in wet clothes. He knew instantly this meant he had been captured and the captors were now talking to him as they tried to return moisture back to his body.
“Drink!” came the voice again.
This time Thomas opened his eyes as the firm hand lifted his head and forced the liquid onto his dried lips. His eyes focused. The face of a man of about sixty with a salt and pepper beard with dark eyes and Bedouin smock was staring back at him. Thomas’s eyes moved to left and right quickly. He tried to move his body but because he was still weak, he couldn’t. A searing headache attacked his brain. Then as he swallowed the water, he felt the urge to vomit.
“Slowly,” the man ordered this time.
Thomas’s mind, if not body, was fully alert and answered in Arabic, “Thank you.”
“You are welcome my dear,” came a voice in fluent English.
“I do not understand?” replied Thomas in Arabic, in an attempt to convince his captor that he was local tribesman.
The face smiled.
“You are a British Solider. Although I must say your Arabic is most excellent, my dear. Now rest,” the man ordered. Being still too weak to fight, Thomas obeyed.
Two hours later, Thomas awoke again. His head was still throbbing. But he was alert.
This time it was the face of a boy of about fourteen with the same eyes of the man who greeted him earlier.
Wearily, Thomas lifted his body. He took in his surroundings. It appeared as though he was in a tent.
“Baba,” cried the boy. Immediately the entrance to the tent opened.
“Good afternoon, my dear,” said the man using the Arabic term of endearment. Thomas eyed him with suspicion. His instincts told him he wasn’t a solider but more likely a tribesman of the area allied to Hussein.
“I am Brigadier-General Hassan Karim Dulaym,” he said offering his hand in friendship. “And like you, I am no friend of Hussein,” he said with narrowed eyes.
“Kismet is a funny thing my dear,” said Hassan to Thomas, referring to the term that means that events are as ordered or “inevitable” and unavoidable as the three of them made their way to the border and the emergency pick up point.
“Just a year ago I would have handed you over to Saddam without a second thought,” he said before explaining why he too was on the run from the IIS and how he had lost his two oldest sons a Major and a Captain, in an attempt to overthrow Saddam just two months previously. After being betrayed by one of his own men he was now trying to save the life of his youngest son, the same boy who that had stumbled across the near lifeless body of Thomas.
“But today our journey finds us on the same path,” he said. “So who am I to refuse the Qadar!” he said, referring to the decree of Allah.
“Hassan,” replied Thomas, making the effort to bond with the man. “Classical and European mythology features Kismet as three goddesses dispensing a fate, known as Moirai in Greek mythology,” he said in Arabic. “They determine the events of the world through the mystic spinning of threads that represent individual human fates.” He continued as the two men watched Saleem walk in front of them so he could act as their spotter.
The man looked at Thomas for a second.
“So that was the language you were speaking in your torment,” he said as he smiled.
In the three days since the General and his son had found him close to death through a mixture of hypothermia and, and while he recovered well enough to make the journey, both men had learnt a lot about each other.
Hassan had even ventured to suggest that he would be a suitable alternative to Saddam and that the United States should support him in his Jihad, despite Thomas trying to tell the General that he doubted the Americans would take him seriously. He had insisted that at he had at least tried.
“Consider it the price of my Dakhala,” said Hassan referring to the law of protection that the tribes of Iraq practiced. That translated meant “Once a person passes the pegs that hold the tent ropes taut, then that person is entitled to the protection of the owner of the tent.”
During this time Thomas had also come to terms with the knowledge that Stevie and Tony had to be dead, a conclusion he reached when the General had told him he had heard on his shortwave radio he was carrying that a patrol had come across the dead bodies of two soldiers, not more than twenty-five miles from where he had been found. Although he had been saddened by the news at the time, he didn’t dwell on it the time for mourning would come later once he made it back to Hereford.
Instead, he focused his thoughts on the CIA man the colonel had told him over the radio that had refused his request to lift him and his team out. Whatever happened, swore Thomas silently, the day would come when he would find and pay that man back in full. “His honor code demanded it!”
Suddenly the movement of Saleem into a crouching position quickly had both men alert and focused on what lay ahead of them instead of their discussion.
At a trot both made their way to the boy. Once reaching him they joined him in kneeling down in the thick grassland so to hide their position. Then they removed their binoculars.
“Looks like we have squatters on our family well,” replied the General in Arabic as both men focused on what looked a troop detail guarding the water well. The last place they planned to stop before the last twenty-five miles to the extraction point.
“They know this is one of my family’s wells,” said the General in disgust. “So I fear, my dear, they are looking for me and not you,” he continued.
“Maybe we can use that to our advantage?” offered Thomas, referring to the fact that he didn’t think Hassan would have a highly trained soldier with him.
The General looked at him for a moment. “What is your idea?”
“There are five of them.”
“What do you suggest?” he asked.
As the first rays of morning light illuminated, Hassan and Thomas moved covertly towards the two sleeping men guarding the tent that contained three remaining guards, while Saleem remained under cover in the thick brush.
In readiness, both men pulled their knives from their belts. In Thomas’s case, his weapon of choice was the fearsome gift he had once received from the men of his platoon known by the Gurkhas as a Khurki.
When the General had asked him why he carried such an unusual weapon earlier, Thomas had responded with the Ghurkha’s motto, “Better to die than live a coward,” and the circumstances behind the gift.
The General with acknowledgement of respect had replied, “I have heard of these fearsome warriors. This explains why the desert didn’t take you.” He had handed it back to him with a smile.
Creeping towards the two sleeping guards, Thomas could smell the breath of his sleeping target, he was that close.