Shummari said, “I will fly this one myself, Ahmed.”
Within ten minutes, the first Mi-8 had rolled down the ramp, unfolded and locked its rotors, and the platoon embarked. Al-Qati tossed his CW gear aside, checked the magazine of his pistol, found a canteen, and climbed aboard.
Major Shummari strapped himself into the pilot’s seat and went through the sequence of starting the turbine engines.
They lifted off in a swirling cloud of hazy dust, and the nose swung around and dipped toward the south.
They would find the pilot, and al-Qati would soon know the names and nationalities of the people who had created so much havoc in his homeland.
He could be brutal when it was necessary.
Wyatt had first heard the welcome sound of C-130 engines, stood up, and turned to face the direction from which they came, the east.
The smoke from the burning Phantom was beacon enough, he had decided, and he had left the survival radio and the locater beacon in his survival pack.
He had then heard the blended roar of additional turboprops and considered that discretion might be in order. Slipping to the ground again, he eased his legs over the lip of the wadi, rolled onto his stomach, pushed backward, and let himself slide downward.
Pressing himself tightly against the side of the crevice, he waited. His back ached from the ejection. His face felt burned by the sun. He was getting thirsty again.
The thunder out of the east approached quickly, then washed over him.
Two Hercs, and both of them carried Arabic ID.
Not good, he thought.
They flew over the wreckage a mile away then banked toward the north.
They didn’t come back.
But surely they had seen his parachute canopy.
The sound of their engines died away, and he didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.
He did think that it might be better to make up his mind in another place.
Not closer to the wreck.
He turned to his left, stepped out to the middle of the wadi, and headed east, trotting even though the concussive jarring of his heels hitting ground was transmitted directly to his lower back.
The bottom of the wadi was irregular, catching his heels at odd moments, and forcing him to stumble. Its width varied, as he ran, from ten to fifteen feet wide. Dried-out armatures of old shrubbery clung to the sides of the trench. It was deep enough that he couldn’t quite see over it.
He couldn’t help remembering one of the first movies he had seen as a child. The Bridges at Toko Ri. William Holden and Mickey Rooney in a ditch, fighting off Chinese Communist soldiers.
There hadn’t been a happy ending.
And then he heard the thrupp-thrupp of rotors.
And picked up his pace.
The pilot placed the Mi-8 on the ground near the parachute canopy, and al-Qati and his first platoon spilled out of it.
They spread out in a loose circle, moving warily away from the helicopter, sensitive to some sniper in the wadi or the hills to the south.
Nothing moved in that barren landscape.
Al-Qati examined the canopy. Fresh dirt had been piled on it to hold it down. This pilot was expecting a rescue. The prospect held promise.
They might just greet the rescue party with open and tracer-spitting arms.
He went back to lean in the pilot’s side window and yell over the roar of the engines.
“Khalil, they might attempt a rescue. Go back to the transports and wait.”
Shummari nodded, and after al-Qati bent his head and trotted out of the rotor’s arc, lifted off. The helicopter was soon gone.
“Lieutenant Hakim, take the first and second squads and work your way toward the wreckage. Notify me immediately if you find anyone. He is to be taken alive.”
The platoon commander nodded, signalled his men into a skirmish line, and started toward the west.
The earth here was hardened into a surface that did not often leave the imprint of passage. In spots, however, there was a softness that gave way to heavy boots. In the area where the parachutist had landed, for instance. The ground was trampled there from the landing impact and, apparently, from where the man had fallen to the ground.
The wadi was, naturally, suspect. It offered the most cover in the near proximity. The man could have run for the low hills to the south, but if he had, he would still be there when the search teams reached the hills.
Al-Qati walked to the rim of the wadi, then along it until he found a place where the earth had crumbled and clods had fallen to the bottom. He saw no footprints, but he did not think they were necessary.
“Sergeant,” he said to the first squad leader, “take your men to the other side of the wadi. We will walk both sides of it to the east.”
“Right away, Colonel.”
He ordered three men from the remaining squad to walk the bottom of the dry streambed, and spread the remaining four out to his right.
They moved out at double time, assault rifles at the ready, with purpose, and with some urgency.
This intruder was not going anywhere very far or very soon.
They used the broken vertical tail plane from Hackley’s F-4 to lodge under the pair of nosewheels and form a ramp back to the level of the desert. It took quite a bit of digging under the wide fuselage in order to get it in place. They couldn’t dig a wide hole without endangering the track of the main gear.
Barr was getting anxious about the timers in the F-4s. Being thorough professionals, they had designed them so they couldn’t be shut off and so that, if someone messed with them, a premature detonation occurred. The closest Phantom, his own, was less than thirty feet from the left wing of the Hercules. If it went up, the debris would slice through the wing fuel cells, and it would be all over.
Winfield Potter said, “We aren’t going to get it better than that, Bucky.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
As the men scrambled back aboard, Bucky asked Demion, “Jim, would you take it as a personal insult if I wanted to take the controls?”
Demion stopped with his right foot inside the hatch. “What are you getting at, Bucky?”
“No criticism. This is a mission I want to fly. Need to fly.”
Demion shrugged. “No sweat. You want me in the second seat?”
“Damned right.”
They climbed inside and Borman was there to close the hatchway. As he passed behind Vrdla, Barr said, “Sam, as soon as I get a generator going, fire up the radar and see what we’ve been missing.”
“Roger that, Bucky.”
He climbed to the flight deck, eased around the control pedestal, and lowered himself into the left seat. Dennis Maal gave up the right seat in favour of Demion.
“Neil,” Barr said, “I know you like to look through the windows, but I want everyone down in the crew compartment, on the deck, backed up against the bulkhead, until after I get this mother off the deck.”
Formsby didn’t argue. He and Kriswell dropped down the ladder. Maal took the flight engineer’s position.
They went through the start-up procedure as fast as they had ever done before.
Barr checked his watch.
Nine minutes to detonation.
Hackley’s plane would go first. That was on his right, a quarter-mile down the makeshift airstrip. If the Herc was going to bog down again, he had to make damned sure he got way beyond Hackley’s crashed Phantom.
“You’ve got nice power,” Maal said over the ICS.
“How much can I have, Denny?”