“We do have a plan, sir,” Qank started. “It involves a purchase. In South Yemen, I believe…”
Zim thought about this for a moment.
“Ah, yes!” he finally exploded with a laugh. “The Three-Card Monty plan…”
Qank rolled his eyes involuntarily. “Exactly, sir,” he said. “Shall we proceed?”
Zim took another mouthful of his disgusting food. “Do we have the time, though?” he asked with a burp.
“I believe we do,” Qank replied.
“Then make it so!” Zim called out with a laugh. The guards laughed too.
Qank looked around at them and wondered for a moment what was so funny. Then he began backing up.
“As you wish, sir,” he said, heading for the door in reverse. “As you wish…”
South Yemen
2200 hours
It was very hot in Sayhut-ru.
The sun had baked the city all day; the temperature at noon was 122 degrees. Now that night had fallen, it had cooled off—to 103. And more hot weather was expected for at least the next two weeks.
The small city was actually a military air base with a few hundred houses around it. The base housed one unit of the Yemeni People’s Air Defense Force and functioned as a civilian port of entry as well. But civilian or military, there was no activity at the base on this sweltering evening. No flights were scheduled to fly into this little piece of Hell. No flights were scheduled to leave either.
That was why Captain Rez Bata was so surprised when he saw a Learjet land unannounced on the main runway. He checked the time. It was 10 P.M.; he was just getting ready to go home for a bath. Who was this coming to disrupt his plan?
Bata was the air base night manager, one of only twenty captains in the tiny YPADF. In addition to his duties watching over the civilian part of the airport, Bata also ran the base’s air defense squadron, which consisted of exactly one rather broken-down airplane.
Oddly, it was that airplane that the man in the Learjet had come to see him about.
He heard the footsteps coming up the stairs and finally into his office. Bata took one look at the man and instinctively knew who he was right away. Though he had never seen the man before, his gut instinctively told him he was a representative of Azu-mulla el-Zim. He had that look about him. Bata straightened up; his heart began pounding. This was the Middle East equivalent of getting a visit from a lieutenant of a Mafia Godfather. Bata knew it would be important for him to say the right things, and do whatever this man wanted.
“My employer sends his greetings,” the man said as Bata offered him a seat. There were no introductions; there was no need.
“And mine to him,” Bata managed to croak.
The man put a briefcase onto Bata’s desk and snapped it open. Inside the case were twenty packets of money held together with rubber bands.
“This is two million American cash,” the man said. “We believe it is sufficient payment.”
Bata was totally confused. “Two million? What for?”
The man pulled back the drawn curtain. In the fading light they could just barely see the base’s one and only military plane. It looked very old, standing out on the tarmac, rusty, with pools of oil and other fluids dripping from it. It was obvious it hadn’t been flown in a very long time.
“For that,” the man said simply. “My employer wants your airplane.”
Bata looked at the man, then at the airplane, and then at the briefcase full of money.
“But I can’t sell that airplane,” he stuttered. “Certainly not for two million.”
The man just smiled and said, “But you see, you have no choice in the matter. My employer wants the plane. Now. Tonight. And he always gets what he wants.”
Bata was sweating now. His superiors would never go for this. No matter who was making the offer.
He told the man as much.
“But you misunderstand,” the man replied. “This is not a payment from my employer to your government for the airplane. This is a personal payment. To you. To do with what you wish.”
The man looked at the case full of thousand-dollar bills. “And with money like this, I think my first instinct would be to resign my commission.”
With that, the man stood up, made a courteous, heel-clicking bow, and went out the door.
Bata sat for a long time looking at the money. Then finally, he took out a pen and paper and wrote out a very hasty letter of resignation. There would be no time to collect his family, of course. They would have to stay behind. But if he could get a car service tonight to carry him to Alwar, he could be anywhere—the Bahamas, South America, Monaco—by morning.
He took a handful of valuables from his desk, threw them in the briefcase, and then closed it and grabbed his hat. He looked out the window again to see that the airplane he’d essentially just been bribed for had a team of mechanics already swarming over it. He took a closer look. What were they doing?
It seemed like they were attaching some kind of elongated snout to the airplane, hastily riveting it in place. They were also painting it in an odd charcoal-gray color. One man was busy painting numbers on the underside of the fuselage. Another was standing up on the tail wing, doing the same thing.
What was this about? Bata wondered. Maybe Zim’s people were preparing the plane for an arms shipment, or for a drug run. Or maybe for a pickup of young girls for the white slavery market.
But in the next instant, Bata knew that it didn’t make a whit of difference to him what they were doing to the airplane. He took one last look around his office, sighed, shut off the lights, and left, the briefcase full of money tucked safely under his arm.
Yes, they could fly the airplane to the North Pole for all he cared.
Though he had heard that C-130’s were good for that sort of thing too.
Chapter 19
Considering everything involved, the takeoff from Heaven 2 went well.
The platform was just long enough to fulfill the need for a running start for all five helicopters. The Halos went up first, followed by the Hinds, and then finally, the gas-laden Hook. Once airborne, they formed up at one thousand feet and headed west.
During the day, Heaven 2 had inched its way up the Persian Gulf so that by launch time, it had positioned itself just off of Bubiyan Island, a lonely spit of land near the coast of northeast Kuwait. From there, it was only a matter of thirty-five miles to Iraq. The flight plan called for them to pass over land north of Basra, in a sector known as Khorra-sul-el. It was rugged, mountainous country, with few radar sites and known to be a slice of airspace rarely traveled by Iraqi aircraft because of its proximity to the very hostile border of Iran.
Once over this region, the five choppers turned north. They stayed in the same formation they’d practiced endlessly back over the Florida Straits. The two Hinds out front, the Halos next in line, with the Hook bringing up the rear. If all went well, they would reach the mountain hiding place just before midnight.
Both Hinds were equipped with a medium-range air-threat-warning radar. They were crude setups, but enough to tell Norton and Delaney if there were any other aircraft up there with them. There wasn’t—and that was not unexpected. First of all, the Iraqi Air Force didn’t fly very much, mostly because they had so very few airplanes to fly. Secondly, nearly two thirds of the country was covered by two U.S. patrolled No-Fly zones. Only helicopters could fly in these zones, so if they were to meet anyone up here, it would most likely be another chopper. But thirdly, the Iraqis rarely flew anything—choppers or warplanes—at night. Too superstitious, was how this was once explained to Norton.