Ibrahim climbed from the seat. He tapped his knife in his open palm. "There's something wrong here," he said to Mahmoud.
Mahmoud sucked on his cigarette, then ground it out on the floor. "What could be wrong, other than the worm's pace of the American?"
"I don't know," said Ibrahim. "If I were to let my imagination go, I would say that the frame of that mirror appears to be a very small radio transmitter." He swept the knife point across the van. "And there are all of these computers and monitors. Suppose they are not used for finding buried cities. Suppose these people are not scientists and guards. Suppose all of this is a disguise."
Mahmoud stood up suddenly. The exhaustion seemed to leave him. "Go on, my brother."
Ibrahim pointed the knife at Rodgers. "That man didn't act like a scientist. He knew just how far to go when you threatened the girl."
"As if he'd done this before, you mean," Mahmoud said. "Aywa—yes. I had that same feeling but I did not know why."
"Everyone has even been very quiet," Ibrahim said. "No one has pleaded or asked for a drink." He pointed from Pupshaw to DeVonne. "Those two took their bondage without complaint."
"As though they had been trained," Mahmoud said. "And would security guards have secreted themselves as these two did?"
"Not security guards," said Ibrahim, "but commandos." Mahmoud looked around the dark van as though he were seeing it for the first time. "But if not for research, then what is this place?"
"A reconnaissance station of some kind," Ibrahim said tentatively. Then, more confidently, he said, "Yes. I believe it could be."
Mahmoud grasped his brother's arms. "Praised by the Prophet, we can use such a thing—"
"No!" said Ibrahim. "No—"
"But it can help to get us out of Turkey," Mahmoud said. "Perhaps we can listen to military communications."
"Or they to us," Ibrahim replied. "And not from the ground but from up there." He pointed at the sideview mirror with the knife. "It is quite possible that they are already watching us, waiting to see where we move."
Mahmoud looked from his brother to Rodgers, who was bent over the pit in the floor and had resumed working on the batteries. "Abadan!" the Syrian cried. "Never! One way or another I will blind them." He snatched Ibrahim's knife from him. Turning to Mary Rose, he bent and cut away the rope which held her to the chair. Her hands and feet were still tied together and he threw her forward, onto her face. Then he handed Ibrahim the knife and knelt beside the young woman. He grabbed her hair so tightly that she screamed. He pulled his.38 from its belt holster and pressed the barrel of the gun against the base of her neck.
Rodgers stopped working again. He didn't get up.
"Hasan!" Mahmoud shouted.. "Tell the American that I know what this vehicle is. Tell him I wish to know how it works." Mahmoud sneered, "And tell him that this time he has until I count to three."
TWENTY-FOUR
Lieutenant Robert Essex was waiting for Colonel August when the Striker chopper set down at Andrews Air Force Base. The lieutenant handed him a diskette with a pressure-sensitive piece of silver tape on top. Only August's thumbprint on the diskette, scanned by his computer, would allow him to access the data.
While August accepted the diskette, Sergeant Chick Grey hustled the sixteen-soldier Striker team onto the C-141B. A converted C-141A Lockheed StarLifter, the C141B had a fuselage which was 168 feet and four inches long — twenty-three feet, four inches longer than its predecessor. The retooling of the aircraft added flight-refueling equipment which increased the troop carrier's normal operating range of 4,080 miles.
The aircraft's crew of five helped the Strikers stow their gear. Less than eight minutes after the soldiers had arrived, the four powerful Pratt & Whitney turbofans carried the jet into the skies.
Colonel August knew that Lieutenant Colonel Squires used to chat with the crew about everything from favorite novels to flavored coffee. August understood how that could relax the team and make them feel closer and more responsive to the commander. However, that was not his style. And that was not the style he taught as a guest officer at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center. As far as he was concerned, one of the tenets of leadership was to make it impossible for the team to know you too well. If they didn't know which buttons to push, how to please you, then they had to keep trying. As his old Cong jailor used to tell him, "We keep together by keeping apart."
The poorly insulated cabin was loud and the bench was hard. That too was how August preferred things. A cold, bumpy plane ride. A landing craft in choppy waters. A long and exhausting march in the rain. These things were the tannin which toughened the soldier's hide.
Led by Private First Class David George, the Strikers began going through the inventory of what had been placed onboard the plane. Op-Center maintained an equipment depot at Andrews which was stocked with gear for any climate and equipment for any mission. Included in the cargo for this trip were the standard "takedown" fatigues with desert coloration, as well as desert-camouflage face scarves and flop hats. Equipment included bullet-proof Kevlar vests, rappelling belts, ventilated assault boots for hot climates, goggles with shatter-proof lenses, and gadget bags which were worn around the waist. There were compartments for additional ammo magazines, a flashlight, concussion grenades, flat-sided M560 series fragmentation grenades, a first-aid kit, rappelling rings, and Vaseline to apply to areas rubbed raw by walking, climbing, crawling, and tight straps. Weapons provided for the team were Beretta 9mm pistols with extended magazines and Heckler & Koch MP5 SD3 9mm submachine guns. The MP5s boasted a collapsing stock and an integral silencer. Since he'd first used them, August had found the weapon's sound suppresser to be both clever and effective. The first stage absorbed the gases while the second sucked up the muzzle blast and flame. The bolt noise was concealed by rubber buffers. Fifteen feet away, the gun was deadly silent.
Bob Herbert was obviously anticipating some close-in encounters.
The team had also been equipped with six motorcycles which had heavily muffled engines, as well as a quartet of FAVs. The Fast Attack Vehicles each carried three passengers and were designed to travel across the desert at speeds in excess of eighty miles an hour. The driver and one passenger sat up front, with an additional gunner in the elevated back seat. The FAVs were armed with.50-caliber machine guns and 40mm grenade launchers.
Colonel August already had a good idea where they were going when he pushed his thumb on the diskette. The tape recorded the thumbprint, the "A" slot of the computer read the print, and the diskette was booted up.
There was an overview of what had happened to the ROC, along with the photographs Herbert had shown to Hood. The evidence collected by Herbert pointed to Syrian Kurds as the perpetrators, possibly in league with Turkish Kurds. Apparent confirmation came less than an hour ago, when Herbert learned from a deep undercover operative working with the Syrian Kurds that there had been highly secret meetings between the two groups several times over the past few months. A dam assault had been discussed at one of those meetings.
As August had suspected, their own destination was either Ankara or Israel. If they went to Ankara, they'd be landing at the NATO base north of the capital. If Striker went to Israel, they'd be landing at the secret Tel Nef Air Base near Tel Aviv. August had been there just a year before and remembered it well. It was as low-tech and as safe a base as he had ever visited. The perimeter was surrounded by high barbed-wire fences. Outside the fence, every two hundred feet, was a brick outpost with a sentry and a German shepherd. Fifteen feet beyond them, also surrounding the perimeter, was five feet of fine, white sand. Buried within it were land mines. In over a quarter of a century, very few people had attempted to break into the base. None had been successful.