“Matba’s sister in America. You take Matba with you? Ten years since I see sister.”
Suddenly everything was making sense: the big-eyed little man’s cooperation, his refusal to leave even when he had the chance, and the risks he had taken. He saw Bogner, if the American was lucky enough to make it out of there, as his ticket. Bogner’s sweaty smoke-and smut-caked face furrowed into a half smile. How many times had he heard Packer say to plan it down to the last detail and then pray for a helluva lot of luck? In a hostile country halfway around the world, on an Northern Iraqi Military Force installation where they had orders to shoot him on sight, he had unwittingly stumbled onto what in all likelihood was the only man in Ammash who was willing to help him.
“You got yourself a deal, little man. If I make it out of here, you go with me.”
For once there was no need to repeat it a second time. Matba indicated he understood. He smiled back at Bogner, reached out, and timidly patted his ticket out of Ammash on the shoulder.
“Good, good,” he repeated.
“Before that happens, though, you and me still have a helluva lot of work to do. We’ve got to find a way to get across the clearing and out to where that engine is sitting. Understand?”
Matba mulled the words over, and finally the puzzled look on his face brightened.
“Ah, I get-you want Matba walk out to train and ask about boom at hangar.” Matba tried to repeat the word “understand.”
When Bogner acknowledged the attempt, Matba leaped down from the boxcar and started across the switch yards toward the engine. The little man was a born actor. He was playing it to the hilt, waving his arms and shouting. Behind him, the flames from the hangar fire, spurred on by continuing fuel-fed eruptions in the gasoline shed, was creating a choking pall of heavy, black, oil-saturated smoke. That smoke was now hanging over the entire Nasrat/Ammash facility.
Suddenly Bogner heard another sound, this one distinctly reminiscent of some kind of mortar fire, and the almost instantaneous explosion that followed.
The sounds seemed to be coming from the tarmac in front of the hangar. He moved back to the other side of the boxcar and looked out just in time to see one of the NIMF Hormones parked on the tarmac burst into flames. Then there was another.
He saw a fire-trailing mortar rip through the blanket of heavy smoke and claim still another of Fahid’s aircraft. Whoever or whatever it was coming from, someone had created all the distraction he was going to need. He leaped down from the boxcar, felt the pain shoot up his arm again, staggered momentarily, regained his balance, and raced across the clearing toward the switch engine.
By the time he got there, Matba had already crawled up into the cab and along with the engineer and fireman, was standing between the engine cab and the tender engrossed in the fireworks. Bogner managed to pull himself up into the cab, and shoved the muzzle of the Mk 2 in the engineer’s ribs. If the switch engine’s two crewmen had suspected anything, their reaction came too late.
“Ask them if they speak English,” Bogner snarled.
Matba repeated the question.
“Btah-ki/hal tatakallam inglesy?”
One of the crewmen squinted at Bogner; the other shook his head.
“Yes or no, damn it,” Bogner barked.
“Aiwa or la?” Matba repeated. Bogner thought it lost something in the translation, and he brought the Mk 2 up where the man could see it.
“Sagheer,” the men admitted.
This time it was Bogner who understood. He grabbed one of the crewman by the front of his shirt, spun him around, and shoved him off the platform. The man lit in a heap, let out what Bogner figured was some kind of obscenity, rolled over, managed to scramble to his feet, and started running.
“Now,” Bogner said, “tell your countryman that I want him to get this damn thing rolling and headed for the Nasrat loading docks.”
Matba hesitated just long enough to go through the deciphering process. Bogner pointed.
“Nasrat.
Dammit. Go. Now.”
There was another exchange between Matba and the engineer. The conversation was all in Arabic, during which Matba continually pointed to Bogner’s automatic in an effort to impress upon the man the seriousness of the situation.
“He say they closed gates,” Matba explained.
“Never mind the damn gates,” Bogner fumed.
“Just tell him to get a death grip on that throttle and get this chunk of steel rolling.”
Bogner held his breath, and watched the Iraqi engineer begin twisting valves and release the vacuum brake lever. He gripped the throttle, and opened the regulator to allow a flow of steam to the cylinders. Then Bogner heard the wheels begin to grind and the locomotive responded with an abrupt surge forward. They were moving.
“Faster!” Bogner shouted.
“Tell him to open that damn throttle all the way.”
Matba had trouble repeating the command.
Bogner leaned out of the window and watched as the locomotive began to gain momentum. The Nasrat gates were less than three hundred yards ahead of them.
“Now. Tell your Iraqi friend if he doesn’t want to go up in flames he better get the hell out of here — and now,” Bogner shouted.
Matba never hesitated. Instead of repeating Bogner’s command, he shoved the man. The Iraqi crewman stumbled backward, started to get up, and Matba kicked. He rolled over, slipped sideways and off, and Matba watched him hit the ground. “Now you,” Bogner screamed.
“Jump!”
Matba grabbed the handrail, glanced back, mumbled something in Iraqi, and jumped. Bogner hoped it was a prayer.
By the time Bogner got back to the controls, the old engine had worked up a head of steam. He was now less than 150 yards from the gates, and was digging through the aux pack for the two percussion grenades. He found them, pried open the door to the firebox, pulled the pins, and hung the grenades on the inside of the firebox door. Then he pulled the throttle into the full open position and jumped.
Bogner hit the ground hard, rolled over, again felt the searing pain in his left arm, but still somehow managed to spin himself around quick enough to see most of what happened. He saw it from the prone position in the gravel and dirt, lying beside the rails just outside the Nasrat gate, but it was all he hoped for and more. The aging switch engine plowed through the gate, and still gaining speed at the time of impact, rammed into the Nasrat shipping docks. The grenades did exactly what Bogner hoped they would. The firebox erupted, the superheated tubes inside the flue tube exploded, and the salvo that followed triggered one continuous chain of destruction. It had worked just like a giant shrapnel bomb. Chunks of jagged hot metal ripped through the walls of the building, and he watched parts of the roof of the structure erupt in flames while other sections collapsed on impact.
When the switch engine plowed into the docks it had taken out the entire shipping area and ignited an instant inferno. Whatever supplies Fahid had sitting on the docks only contributed to the fury of the fire.
Finally Bogner tried to get to his feet, and for the first time realized there was nothing left; the well had finally gone dry. His legs were rubbery, his knees buckled, and there was nothing to do but sink back to the ground. As he lay there he could hear the sounds of the chaos and the destruction.
He closed his eyes momentarily in a futile effort to rest, then opened them to see a man holding an automatic rifle — and it was pointed at him.
Carbonate ammonium, the way the military uses it, is devoid of the genteel fragrances used in more civilized circumstances. The military gives it to you straight up: no flowers, no pleasant aroma, just a sudden jolt. Bogner had been brought around that way more than once. He inhaled, once, twice, felt his head snap to one side, and began clawing his way out of the shapeless abyss where he had been mentally curled up in the fetal position trying to escape reality. He opened his eyes, recorded foggy, half-blurred faces, and heard the sound of a chopper rotor.