“Appear to be, sir.”
“So how are we doing?”
“We’re right on schedule. Less resistance than we anticipated from the Republican Guard, which is a blessing.”
“Let’s stay on schedule. When you can, send me a couple more men to guard these prisoners. And if you come across the reporter, send him in here.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The buildings of the town ended abruptly. Beyond was a sandy area, then the fence that encircled the airfield. And the fence had a hole in it, a fairly big hole that was just visible in the muted light from the town. The edge of the wire was curled and one post was awry. Beyond the hole was nothing, just darkness.
Jack Yocke lay against the side of a building facing the fence. From where he lay he could see the body of a man lying facedown, half-buried in the sand. Yocke could see the entire length of the body, which lay about twenty feet away. The U.S. style helmet was quite plain, the parachute pack on the back, the weapon, the desert camouflage trousers, the desert boots.
From the angle of the head against the shoulders, it was obvious that the man’s neck was broken. And probably half the other bones in his body.
Yocke shifted his gaze. He watched the muzzle blasts of the helicopters making runs on the Iraqi troops outside the base and the streaks the Hellfire missiles made.
To the east pulsing fingers of antiaircraft fire were rising into the night sky. The strings of tracers seemed to be probing randomly, without purpose. Even as he watched he saw the flashes of bombs exploding on the horizon, where the guns must be. The guns fell silent.
He picked up a handful of sand and idly let it run through his fingers. Then he studied the hole in the fence some more.
Well, there it was — a way into the air base. All he had to do was run for it.
It was too good to be true, really. And that was why he was lying here looking.
He concentrated on the problem, tried to think objectively about the hole in the fence. Why was it there? Perhaps the Iraqis were just sloppy. Well, that made sense. The streets and buildings he had come through were certainly Third World ratty.
He looked left. No one in sight.
Right. The same.
But…it didn’t feel right. Something was wrong.
His contemplation of the problem was interrupted by a chopper that came from over the city behind him and swept across the fence, merely a black, fast-moving shape, then laid into a right turn. He was watching as the streak came in from the right and intersected the chopper. Then it exploded. A white flash registered on his brain, then a red-yellow fireball, then the wreckage was angling downward. It hit the ground and fire splashed forward in the direction the machine had been traveling.
Even from this distance, Yocke could faintly feel the heat against his cheeks.
The fire burned fiercely for several minutes, then subsided. Finally it winked out, leaving the darkness beyond the fence even blacker than before.
Yocke looked right and left again, then began to crawl. Across the street onto the sand, toward the dead American sailor. Murphy. That was the name on his clothes.
After one more look around, Yocke got to his feet. Hunched over to present the smallest silhouette possible, he made for the fence.
He was twenty feet from the hole in the wire when he saw the helmet. He took two more steps before he saw that the helmet still had a head in it. And there on the wire, a piece of cloth. No, an arm, with a hand attached.
Jack Yocke froze.
Now he saw the hole in the ground under the tear in the fence.
Mines!
He was standing in a minefield.
He looked wildly around, trying to see the triggers. All he could make out in the gloom was sand and trash.
Off to the right — there, something moving. Only Yocke’s eyes moved. A soldier, coming this way. An Iraqi!
In front of him was the hole that led into the beckoning darkness. More pieces of the American sailor who must have tripped the mine. Fifteen feet. No more. Tracks.
Tracks! He could see where the doomed man had stepped.
Yocke moved. One step. Two. Three.
A bullet sang over his head. And another.
He ran. Straight through the hole in the wire and on for fifty or sixty feet as bullets cut the air near him and one tugged at the equipment on his back.
Finally he threw himself down and spun around facing back the way he had come. The land was so flat that through the fence he could still see the Iraqi who had been shooting at him. The helmeted man was bent over, working with the action of his rifle. A bolt action rifle!
Jack Yocke’s weapon was in his hands. He sighted it carefully, as carefully as he could as he struggled to control his breathing. Now he pulled the trigger. He held the trigger down as the weapon vibrated in his hands.
The last shell flew out and he wrestled the empty magazine out of the gun and slammed in a new one.
Now he saw that the Iraqi was down. Lying on the sidewalk, barely visible in the half-light.
Yocke sighted carefully at the prone figure. Again he pulled the trigger and held it down. He fired the whole magazine, then lay still in the darkness listening to his heart thudding. Only then did it come to him that the man he had just killed had probably been even more scared than he was. A bolt-action rifle — missing bang, bang, bang…at that range! Probably a recent draftee, maybe militia. Yocke began sobbing again.
25
Rita was wearing the headset and listening to the radio traffic and conversation between the two pilots as they approached the Samarra air base through the southern corridor. Two sanitary corridors had been hacked through the Iraqi defenses by the allied jets and attack helicopters, which had pulverized every antiaircraft weapon and fire-control radar that they could locate.
Still, there was no way that the gunships could kill every Iraqi with a rifle, so Rita and the people in the chopper with her were wearing flak vests and sitting on extra ones. They were also trying to make themselves very small.
You hunch up, move self-consciously into the fetal position, and you wait. You wait for that random bullet to find your flesh.
Those bullets were out there zinging through the darkness. Occasionally one struck the helicopter. Several times Rita thought she could feel the delicate thump and once the pilot commented. Fortunately the helicopter was flying perfectly with all its equipment functioning as it should.
Still you draw your legs up and tuck your hands under the flak vest and wait for random death. The seconds tick by. You become aware of the beating of your heart. Stimulated by adrenaline, your mind wanders uncontrollably.
Violent death happens to other people — it won’t happen to me. No bullet will rip my flesh or open arteries or smash bone or tear through that delicate mass of neurons and brain cells that makes me me. No.
She was focused inward, waiting, when she heard the pilot gag and felt the chopper pitch abruptly sideways. The copilot cursed.
“Let go of the stick, Bill! Goddamn, let go of the fucking stick!”
Standing in the door, Rita reached over the pilot slumped in the right seat. He had a death grip on the stick. The bucking chopper threw her off balance.
“Unstrap him,” the copilot urged Rita over the ICS. “Get him out of the seat. Bill, leggo the fucking stick!”
She released the shoulder Koch fittings of the pilot’s harness and leaned forward for the lap fittings. The cyclic stick and his hand were right there. The copilot was wrestling the cyclic with both hands. The chopper was bucking. Rita grabbed.
“Get him outta the seat,” the copilot demanded.
She released one lap fitting and fumbled for the other. The dying man was jerking the cyclic stick and the machine was obeying. Rita lost her footing. She regained it and hung herself over the back of the seat.