“How did it happen?”
“Artillery was chewing us up. The civil engineers worked all day to get enough runway open to launch our last F-4s. I was hoping we could get the C-130s in again and get some more of our people out. We got the F-4s launched but no luck on the C-130s. About three hundred of us were left. Mostly security police, some maintenance, wounded, and civil engineers … They wouldn’t evac out. Even when they could. Your husband ordered an intelligence officer out, Bill Carroll—”
“I know Bill,” Sara said. “He wouldn’t leave.”
“He didn’t.”
“And you didn’t either.”
Stansell shook his head. They walked in silence for a few moments. “Near the end he hadn’t slept for two days. He was dog-tired. There was a lull in the fighting. He told me to run the show and wake him up in an hour. I let him sleep for over three hours. When I did wake him he didn’t get on my case for letting him sleep so long, just asked for the current status. When I did he knew what he had to do — surrender, stop the waste. He was killed before he could do it …
“There was something about the man, I wanted to serve under him. I’m not easily led, certainly not given to hero worship, but I would have followed that man just about anywhere.”
“I followed him too,” she said.
After dinner Stansell stayed longer than he intended before heading back to Washington. He drove the Omni north, still preferring the old highway. Mado had outlined the plan after the meeting with Cunningham, and he had spent Saturday night in the Watch Center with an analyst going over intelligence from Iran. Eichler’s advice kept going around in his head. Pieces were fitting together. He could make it work—
A dark blue car flashed into his rearview mirror. “Looks like the same BMW I saw driving down,” he mumbled. As the BMW accelerated and overtook him Stansell glanced at the two men in the car. Both were dark-complected and wearing sunglasses. The BMW accelerated away, disappearing into the Sunday evening traffic, and Stansell found himself breathing hard. “You can’t get paranoid every time you see someone that looks like an Iranian,” he told himself.
“And you’ve got to stop talking to yourself.”
Stansell’s pencil traced the first two letters of the BMW’s license plate — AN — the only two numbers he had been able to read when it had briefly pulled abreast of his car. He crumpled the paper up and threw it in a corner, then sketched a diagram of the prison where the POWs were being held. His pencil seemed to move of its own accord, creating an oblique view of the compound, much like a pilot would see as he approached it from low level. The drawing skill that he’d always had allowed him to add surrounding vegetation and buildings, and his artist’s eye had no trouble changing the vertical reconnaissance photos the Watch Center had shown him to another angle with different perspective and details.
Why does this look so familiar? he thought. He was a military history buff from way back, did this come from a book or …? As though doodling, the pencil changed the flat roof on the three-story main building to a sloped roof. Something was moving deep inside his memory, emerging … He threw the pad to the floor beside the easy chair he was stretched out in, then got up and walked around the VOQ room, stopping at the window, staring into the night—
“My God,” he whispered, “it’s Amiens jail,” where the Gestapo in World War II held hundreds of French Resistance fighters and the RAF raided it to help break them out … Was it a farfetched leap from then to now, or a possible way out for those POWs?
CHAPTER 5
Simon Mado was standing in front of an easel in his office. Rough block letters at the top of the twenty-by-thirty-inch briefing charts on the easel spelled out “Top Secret.”
“The President wants the POWs out within a month.”
“A D-day within thirty days — that’s going to be tough,” Stansell said.
“I’ve worked up a milestone chart showing what’s got to be done if we’re going to be ready,” Mado said. “It’s D minus thirty today.” He pointed to the chart that was numbered from thirty down to one and filled with neatly printed notes showing what had to be accomplished by each day. It was an ambitious plan. “Use this week to get an intelligence and training section together, find a training site and complete the operations plan. While you’re doing that I’ll line up the C-130s and the army unit that will be going in. By D minus twenty-three, next Monday, I want you in place at the training site ready to bed down the C-130s and the army and start training. By Tuesday, D minus twenty-two, have the ops plan completed. After you talk to Allen Camm at the CIA today, touch base with Air Force Special Activities Center at Fort Belvoir. I’ve told them you’re coming.”
The meeting over, Stansell left, impressed by the general’s work. No wonder he’s a fast-burner and made general so fast, he thought as he headed for the Pentagon’s huge parking lot, hoping he could remember where he had left his car. Eventually he located it and was soon headed toward the exit that led to the George Washington Memorial Parkway and Langley, Virginia, home of the CIA. In spite of himself, he kept looking for a blue BMW in his rearview mirror.
Heavy traffic on the parkway turned the seven mile drive into a twenty minute ordeal, and a white Chevrolet sedan three cars back kept changing lanes with him. He was so intent on watching the Chevrolet that he almost rear-ended a car in front of him. A prominent sign over the parkway pointed to the CIA’s exit in plenty of time for him to make the turnoff. The Chevy sped by in the inside lane. You’re getting paranoid, he cautioned himself.
A bright, protypically eager-looking college girl was waiting for him at the security desk inside the main entrance. She looked all of twenty years. After signing him in, she led the way through the building, up to the third floor. Stansell noticed many of the hallways were next to the windows and that the offices were set inside, windowless.
“Worked for the company long?” he asked.
“We don’t call it that. Not long. I’m Mr. Camm’s gofer.” She beamed at him, then ushered him into Camm’s office and left.
“Well, Colonel Stansell, what can we do for the Air Force?”
The man extending his hand was clearly old school — establishment — tall and slender with a mane of carefully styled, graying hair. He wore a dark gray tailored suit and a regimental tie. His old, well-brushed shoes added to the image of understated refinement. Allen J. Camm was a member in good standing of the old Harvard-Yale-Princeton triumvirate at the CIA.
“General Cunningham suggested I contact you to open a channel for a special Air Force operation,” Stansell said.
“We prefer to funnel all our information through the DIA.” Camm’s accent was proper Bostonian.
“We’re going to need direct access, if possible. I talked to Brigadier Eichler yesterday and he stressed the need for current intelligence.”
“Ah, the POWs, no doubt. Sorry to hear about The Brigadier, he died yesterday evening.” Camm let the news sink in, gauging Stansell’s reaction.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” he said, but was hardly surprised. “You’re right about the POWs. General Cunningham seemed to think you’re the man to see …”
“It will take a major policy decision to open a new channel and my office can’t make that decision. I’ll have to take it to the Director, and Mr. Burke has a rather full plate right now. But if you forward your request in writing I’ll put it before him.” Camm pressed a button on his intercom panel. He was dismissing Stansell.