“Maybe not for the time being.”
It was just after three when Lafayette led Crumwell into the war room. He’d half expected the group of seven to have become eight, but Finnerty had wisely abided by his counsel to keep Clara Gracey out of the mix.
The P.M. looked notably more blotched and pasty than usual, like an uncured fatty ham with a pink protrusion representing a nose. Lafayette sat well away from him so as not to endure his boozy scent.
“Nail-biting time,” said Thiessen beside him. A distasteful image. Lafayette’s own nails were tastefully manicured.
“T minus six minutes,” said Dexter McPhee, looking at the clock. All were seated on one side of the room’s massive circular table, watching the screens.
General Buchanan removed his headphones. “Gentlemen, CF-18 Hornets are descending on Igorgrad. From now to zero hour, we have radio blackout.”
“Let us pray,” said McPhee, bowing his head. Lafayette watched as several others dutifully followed this execrable example.
Several of the plasma screens were tuned to the major networks. At the hub of attention was the English service of Al Jazeera — the only network to have bribed its way into Bhashyistan. Other broadcasters were focused on the Security Council’s deliberations, finally under way.
Al Jazeera, with voice-over from an announcer with a Scottish burr, was showing daytime scenes of the placid streets of Igorgrad, a vegetable market, lineups for buses, the people sullen, restrained, uncomfortable under the gaze of cameras. Depicted also: the overblown statuary, the Revered Mother with axe, firewood, and swaddled infant. The state prison, from several angles. The crew had been forbidden access to the jailed Canadians, and it was impossible to know if theirs were among the hands waving from several barred, unshuttered windows.
These transmissions ended abruptly. Back to the Al Jazeera studio, a bulletin. The announcer, McKay, a long-faced Scot with implacable British cool, announced to the world that foreign forces were landing in Igorgrad.
Cheers went up. Buchanan rose and pumped his fist. “Go get ’em, boys!” Even Lafayette was having trouble maintaining his unflappable air, and found himself jostling for a position by the screen.
The only calm voice in the room belonged to the phlegmatic Scot. “It is the dead of night in Bhashyistan, and sirens are sounding throughout its capital city. Fighter jets are reported swooping over Igorgrad, their country of origin unknown, and parachutes have been seen south of the airport. As I speak, one of Al Jazeera’s mobile units is speeding to the scene of the action … One moment. It has now been learned that helicopters are approaching the western edge of the city, near the state prison. Please stay tuned, we will update these events as they unfold.”
The air in the room was electric as the announcer stalled with backgrounders and clips. The carnage on Colonel By Drive. Mad Igor’s declaration of war. Then Finnerty saw, through the fog of hangover and tension, an uncomfortably familiar face — his own damned face, straining to convince his countrymen he was not dithering. His flask weighed heavily in his suit pocket.
“We have just received word that explosions have been heard from the vicinity of the Igorgrad airport. The city has been blacked out, and … there … we can see it, flashes of light to the south, that must be the airport area. One second. Yes, we are now transmitting live from a mobile van racing through ominously deserted streets toward the state prison.”
Flickering images of darkened buildings swishing by, helicopter searchlights beaming from above, the clatter of their blades, excited words in Arabic from the camera crew. McKay: “Can we have some voice, please.”
“Ben Ahmed Husseini here. We are five minutes from Igorgrad prison … Yei-la-Hai!”
Finnerty gasped as the cameras swung in the direction of a tank barrelling toward the TV crew from a side road. “Almighty God,” said McKay, finally flustered. The Al Jazeera van swerved around a bend, courageously pressing on.
Suddenly the van was bathed in light from above, and there came a helicopter’s roar, swooping from on high. A flash, screams from the camera crew, and Finnerty was climbing from his skin expecting a horrendous international incident. But the target had been the pursuing tank — it veered from its path into a crevasse created by the copter’s missile, its occupants fleeing like ants.
Thiessen leaped, high-fiving with an air force general. The Al Jazeera van skidded around a corner into safety. People were on the streets now, running helter-skelter.
“We are still live on air,” said McKay. “And hopefully all are still alive. Are you there, Ben? Come in, Ben.”
“I’m … we … mother, holy shit. Sorry, are we transmitting?”
“You are on air, Ben. Is everyone okay?”
“I’m checking. All here.” Some words in Arabic to his crew, then: “We’re proceeding by foot.”
“Be safe.”
“Keep it down!” Buchanan shouted, silencing the gabble in the room.
“A seminal moment in history,” Lafayette announced.
The sound of helicopters lifting off. The crew’s camera peered around a concrete wall, at an opening blasted through the razor-wire fence, the darkened prison beyond. A tea house, two armed guards hiding behind it, three others sprawled nearby, still clutching automatic rifles. Prisoners were fleeing en masse through the front door, which had been blown open. No one tried to stop them.
All the ground troops had made it up to the roof now. A last helicopter was inching upwards from it, a woman being helped aboard. Then it grunted into the air. A woman? Finnerty thought that most odd, and found himself laughing as he eased himself into his chair.
Dexter McPhee began singing the national anthem, dreadfully off key.
It was nearly an hour later that Air Command began transmitting from the U.S. base in Kyrgyzstan. By then, the Al Jazeera unit had retreated from the prison, fleeing down back streets to avoid the rumbling tanks and troop carriers hurrying to the scene. The news crew’s efforts to interview Bhashyistani officials had been curtly rebuffed.
Other networks had finally caught up, but with only patchy details, and though it was assumed Canada had launched a successful rescue mission, nobody was saying so officially — including those closeted in the war room. All were smiling but enervated, gabbing restlessly, awaiting confirmation.
Buchanan said Colonel Thorne was coming on line — the commanding officer of Operation Beaver. “General Buchanan here. Do you read?”
“Sir? Is this a secure line?”
“Encrypted, decrypted. Let’s have the news, Colonel. We’re on tenterhooks here. What took you so long?”
“Well, uh, we had to so some intensive debriefing, sir. But it seems …”
“Seems what, Colonel?” A chill engulfed the room. Finnerty felt a sharp pain and bent over, tried to catch his breath. Gas — he’d downed that Reuben sandwich like a starving dogfish.
Colonel Thorne was having trouble finding words. “The, uh, good news: all military personnel safe and accounted for. Minimal enemy losses. We took aboard some of their political prisoners. However …”
“Yes? Yes? Spit it out.”
“The target wasn’t met. They weren’t there. The hostages.”
“Weren’t there?”
“Sir, we blasted through that joint, every sealed and locked door, all three floors and the dungeon below, and … well, the dissidents we took on board said no Canadians were ever in that lockup.”
Gasps. Dexter McPhee went down on his seat with a thud. Thiessen hurried off to the washroom, looking green. E.K. Boyes emitted only a mouselike squeak of despair. Finnerty turned as white as alabaster, and as cold. The room seemed to be closing in on him.
Only Lafayette remained still and voiceless, staring at Crumwell with venom, Crumwell, the brilliant international spy chief who’d interviewed the defector Globbo and got bullshit, corrupted information.