“Medically, I don’t know. Psychologically he’s dangerous, very dangerous. I’d say manic-depressive, certainly paranoiac, probably caused directly by his prison experiences. Did he tell you what they did to him?” “No. No, he didn’t.”
“If it was up to me, I’d recommend he be under sedatives and absolutely nowhere near firearms.”
Great, Starke thought helplessly, how the hell do I get that organized? At least Genny and Manuela’re aboard and soon they’ll be in Al Shargaz which’s a paradise comp - A warning shout distracted him. Beyond the 125, coming from behind the main tower exit was the mullah Hussain with more Green Bands and they looked very hostile.
At once Zataki forgot the passengers, unslipped his machine gun, and, carrying it loosely in one hand, moved between Hussain and the airplane. Two of his men moved alongside him, and the others moved nearer the airplane into defensive positions, covering him.
“Stone the bloody crows,” someone muttered, “what’s up now?” “Get ready to duck,” Ayre said.
“Cap’n,” Roberts whispered brokenly, “I’ve got to get on that plane, I’ve got to, my little girl’s sicker than anything, can you do something with that bastard?”
“I’ll try.”
Zataki was watching Hussain, hating him. Two days ago he had gone to Isfahan, invited there to consult with their secret komiteh. All eleven members had been ayatollahs and mullahs, and there, for the first time, he had found the real face of the revolution he had fought so hard to achieve and suffered so much for. “Heretics will be stamped into oblivion. We’ll have only Revolutionary Courts. Justice will be quick and final with no appeal….” The mullahs were so sure of themselves, so sure of their divine right to rule and administer justice as they alone interpreted the Koran and Sharia. Carefully Zataki had kept his horror and his thoughts to himself, but he knew that he was again betrayed.
“What do you want, mullah?” he said, the word a curse word. “First I want you to understand that you have no power here - what you do in Abadan is up to the ayatollahs of Abadan - but here you have no power on this base, over these men, or this airplane.” Surrounding Hussain were a dozen armed, hard-faced youths, all Green Bands.
“No power, eh?” Contemptuously Zataki turned his back and shouted in English, “The airplane will take off at once! All passengers get aboard!” Angrily he motioned at the pilot, waving 493 him away, then faced Hussain again. “Well? What’s second,” he said as, behind him, the passengers hurried to obey and because the Green Bands were concentrating on Zataki and Hussain, Starke ordered Roberts to get aboard, then motioned to Ayre to help cover the escape of the mechanic. Together they helped Tyrer out of the jeep.
Zataki toyed with his gun, all his attention on Hussain. “Well? What’s second?” he asked again.
Hussain was nonplussed, his men equally aware of the guns trained on them. The jets came to life. He saw the passengers hurrying aboard, Starke and Ayre helping a man with bandages over his eyes up the steps, then the two pilots beside the jeep again, the jet engines building, and the instant the last man was inside, the steps came up and the airplane taxied away. “Well, Agha, what’s next?”
“Next… next the komiteh of Kowiss orders you and your men to leave Kowiss.”
Scornfully Zataki shouted to his men above die roar of the engines, his feet planted in the concrete, ready to fight if need be and die if need be, the superheated air from the fans passing him as the airplane moved toward the runway. “You hear, we are ordered to leave by the komiteh of Kowiss!” His men began laughing, and one of Hussain’s Green Bands, a beardless teenager on the far edge of the group, raised his carbine and died, at once, almost cut in half by the accurate burst of gunfire from Zataki’s men that neatly culled him. The silence was broken only by the distant jets. Momentarily Hussain was bewildered by the suddenness and by the pool of blood that flowed out onto the concrete.
“As God wants,” Zataki said. “What do you want, mullah?” It was then that Zataki noticed the petrified little boy peering out at him, hiding behind the mullah’s robes, clutching them for protection, looking so much like his own son, his eldest, that for a moment he was taken back to the happy days before the fire when all seemed right and there was some form of a future - the Shah’s White Revolution wonderful, the land reforms, curbing the mullahs, universal education, and other things - the good days when I was a father but never again. Never. The electrodes and pincers destroyed that possibility.
A violent stab of pain in his loins soared into his head at the remembrance and he wanted to scream. But he did not, just shoved the torment back, as usual, and concentrated on the killing at hand. He could see the implacability on the mullah’s face and he readied.
Killing with the machine gun pleased him greatly. The hot staccato, the gun alive in short stabbing bursts, acrid smell of cordite, the blood of the enemies of God and Iran flowing. Mullahs are enemy, and most of all Khomeini who commits sacrilege by allowing his photograph to be worshiped and his followers to call him Imam, and puts mullahs between us and God - against all the Prophet’s teachings. “Hurry up,” he bellowed, “I’m losing patience!” “I - I want that man,” Hussain said, pointing.
Zataki glanced around. The mullah was pointing at Starke. “The pilot? Why? What for?” he asked, perplexed.
“For questioning. I want to question him.”
“What about?”
“About the escape of the officers from Isfahan.”
“What should he know about them? He was with me in Bandar Delam hundreds of miles away when that happened, helping the revolution against the enemies of God!” Zataki added venomously, “Enemies of God are everywhere, everywhere! Sacrilege is everywhere, idol worship practiced everywhere - isn’t it?” “Yes, yes, enemies abound, and sacrilege is sacrilege. But he’s a helicopter pilot, an Infidel was the pilot of the escape helicopter, he could know something. I want to question him.”
“Not while I’m here.”
“Why? Why not? Why won’t y - ”
“You won’t, not while I’m here, by God! Not while I’m here! Later or tomorrow or the next day, as God wills, but not now.”
Zataki had gauged Hussain and saw in his face and eyes that he had conceded and was no longer a threat. Carefully he looked from face to face of the Green Bands surrounding the mullah but no longer detected any danger - the quick and sudden death of one, he thought without guilt, as usual controls the others. “You will want to go back to your mosque now, it is almost time for prayer.” He turned his back and walked to the jeep, knowing his men would be guarding him, beckoned Starke and Ayre, and got into the front seat, machine gun ready but not as overt as before. One by one his men retreated to their cars. They drove off.
Hussain was ashen. His Green Bands waited. One of them lit a cigarette, all of them conscious of the body at their feet. And the blood that still seeped.
“Why did you let them go, Father?” the little boy asked in his piping voice. “I didn’t, my son. We have more important things to do immediately, then we will return.”
Chapter 31
AT ZAGROS THREE: 12:05 P.M. Scot Gavallan was staring down the barrel of a cocked Sten gun. He had just landed the 212 after the first trip of the day to Rig Rosa delivering another full load of steel pipe and cement, and the moment he had cut the engines, armed Green Bands had rushed out of the hangar to surround him.