Thomas Craig
Winter Hawk
DEDICATION
In Memory of my Mother, who died on January 4, 1985
EPIGRAPH
The fact is that one side thinks that the profits to be won outweigh the risks to be incurred, and the other side is ready to face danger rather than accept an immediate loss.
PROLOGUE
We come in the age's most uncertain hours, And sing an American tune.
"Two minutes, and they're nervous already."
"How many Russians?"
Anders had seen one fair-skinned face behind the tinted cockpit glass of the nearest helicopter. He continued holding the pocket-scope nightsight to one eye, studying the two Mil-24s in the hollow beyond him. The temperature had dropped below freezing as soon as the sun set, and there was a sliver of new moon amid the hard, bright stars. A thin, cold wind pattered fine sand against the shoulders of his sheepskin jacket and insinuated the stuff between collar and hairline. Below the crest of the dune, the thick barrellike lens of the night observer lay between Colonel Itzhak Jaffe and himself.
Anders could hear the murmur of an occasional voice in the silence, but often the noises might have been the wind calling and chasing around the hollow; and besides, the murmurs were much less clamorous than the remembered voices in his head and the urgency they demanded. His skin prickled on the back of his hands with nerves rather than the stinging of the blown sand. Jaffe pressed an earphone to the side of his head. The hollow had been sown with tiny microphones before the MiLs arrived. He could, with difficulty, overhear parts of the conversation between the occupants of the two helicopters — mostly the Farsi from the terrorists in one of the main cabins rather than the Russian from the pilots.
"Two, three," he finally replied. "Maybe two or three Iranians also." He shrugged expressively. "What were using — it isn't the best system."
"They might have noticed a listening post, don't you think?" Anders murmured. "Where are your boys?"
'"They're coming." Jaffe looked down the slope of the long dune.
A hand waved to him, palm-white, from the darkness below. 'They're coming," he repeated. He raised the bulky nightscope to his eye, then added when he saw the lieutenant's signal clearly: "A couple of minutes. From the west."
Anders felt his body twitch with anticipation as he raised the elevation of the pocketscope. A ghostly cliff opposite slid through the lens.
We have to have those helicopters… even now it isnt too late…
The director's voice, even in memory, possessed a quiet desperation. Anders saw that one man had left the helicopters — one of the Iranians, armed with an AKM rifle and tensely alert. Combat jacket, baggy trousers, bournoose. But not an Arab, rather an Islamic fanatic. Anders scanned the jumbled landscape beyond the man but could catch no glimpse of Jaffe's Sayeret Matkal reconnaissance commando unit moving toward the hollow and the helicopters.
A penetration mission, we have to mount one… we have to have two Russian gunships to do it…
… there isnt any leeway for a mistakey none at all….
Anders had asked the director how much time, how long do we have?
The reply echoed in his head, as if it an earphone were clamped to the side of his face and a tinny, broadcast voice penetrated his tension, excitement, fears.
You have to get it right this time — three days. There's only one opportunity — that gives Gant maybe two weeks to learn, to get ready…
Anders swallowed quietly, dryly. Then he jumped, his whole frame seeming as if it had been electrocuted, as Jaffe's voice announced:
'They're in touch." The colonel's hand was holding the earpiece once more against his head. Anders thought he could catch the scratching of a radio from the hollow, and trained the pocketscope on one of the tinted cockpits.
Both MiLs, a 24D gunship and an older 24A, were in full desert camouflage, but Syrian markings were nowhere in evidence.
"Are their verbal IDs holding?" Anders asked, studying both of the helicopters now, as if he expected to see some sudden realization, some sudden activity that would whisk the MiLs up and away from the trap.
Desperation… the word came back with the force of a blow. A month earlier, the only serviceable Mil that Chameleon Squadron possessed, at least that could pass the closest of inspections, had crashed on a reach-and-recover inside East Germany. The crew had died. For the CIA, the loss of the helicopter was far more critical. It had been one of the pair defected to Pakistan by Afghan army pilots in 1985. One had been cannibalized under examination, the other had been employed ever since on CIA missions. Their only Mil-24.
"They're holding, John, don't worry. We found out everything from our little group of Shiite friends." Anders shivered, but not from the chill of the desert night. "They're being told to hurry now. These Russian pilots don't like hanging around." Traces in Jaffe's accent of the New York he had emigrated from as a youth, more than twenty years before. "OK."
The Iranian on the clifftop was standing more erect. He waved briefly, then turned and waved more vigorously toward the two helicopters. Anders felt the tension tighten like cramps in his calves and buttocks, shiver in his arms as if he were stripped of his clothes. He realized he was still breathing hard from their brief, exhausting struggle to the crest of the dune. Or from tension; he could not tell.
"It's in your hands," he said with a dry little cough.
"Your people know almost all there is to know about these machines," Jaffe commented as he nodded in acceptance of responsibility. He gestured down into the hollow where electrics, pumps, machinery whispered. The two MiLs were like nervous, grazing animals, ready for flight at the first hint of danger. "We even sent you wrecks, bits and pieces before this. You don't want these for evaluation, am I right?"
"Right," was all Anders offered in reply.
"Forgive me for asking. Something like reach-and-recover, I guess?"
"Don't ever say that again, to anyone."
"Apologies. Will I get to read it in the newspapers?"
"I hope not."
Anders raised the pocketscope again. Jaffe rested the weight of the nightscope on the dune's crest. Men had emerged from the darkness and the folds of the landscape. Anders drew in his breath. Seven of them.
"Do they know?"
"You know the answer — yes. We estimate no more than five in the Mil-A, just the crew of two in the D escort. I hope those two babies are just what you want — this bazaar is closing down after tonight." Jaffe grinned; white teeth in the hard moonlight.
… it's the only way in. The President has to have the agent and his proof — now; we have to have two helicopters — any other way and Cactus Plant will be discovered missing and they'll start looking for him before he can cross any border anywhere… bring in those helicopters…
Anders shook his head as if to loosen the burrlike grip of the words on his memory and awareness. His body was weak with tension, as if he were lying in sexual exhaustion, spread-eagled on the sand.
Slowly, the alien, dangerous corner of southern Lebanon became itself again as he watched Jaffe's unit, in Arab disguises and speaking Arabic, their officer with enough Farsi to initially beguile the Iranian waiting for their return; enough to converge without alarm with the waiting terrorist.
Two of the unit appeared to be wounded, leaning heavily against others of the group. Anders had seen some of the final rehearsals, but there was no sense of deja vu. Only danger, the possibilities of error multiplying with every step.