The Mingrelian (26 page)

“Seems like more often than that.”

Boyd turns to Rick Shands and Ekaterina, standing nearby as they pull the parkas out of the box in which they’d been stowed for years.

“They have an annual checklist, and when your time for survival training comes, they send you a postcard with the date and time,” Boyd says.“Miss the briefing, and get grounded the next day. They’ve told us over and over, the first thing you do when you go down is inventory what the Life Support shop has included in whatever emergency package you manage to hold on to. Take some time, think about what you’ve found and where you are. Then make some plans. I’ve heard lectures about distilling water in the desert, catching rain in a lifeboat, building fires, signaling with a mirror and making a tent out of a parachute.”

“And, using this,” Emmet says, proudly holding up a survival radio. “UHF, VHF, GPS with encrypted position information, and satellite Cospas-Sarsat beacon enabled. Raybon made sure all the survival gear was included in the sale when he bought this crate, and we checked it before we flew any missions in Sudan. We thought we’d be going down in the desert, not on top of a mountain.”

He turns it on and makes some adjustments.

“JUBA to PECOS.”

“PECOS, read you loud and clear JUBA.”

“JUBA to PECOS, do you have our location?”

“PECOS to JUBA, affirmative.”

“OK, so they know we’re here. Now what?” Davann asks.

“The last authoritative word I had from my boss in Washington was that our president had assured the Russian president we wouldn’t violate Iranian air space,” Boyd says. “They hired you guys so they could maintain plausible deniability that we hadn’t done that, even though we did. That leaves us in a vague status, not legal combatants, but agents of the U.S.”

Boyd frowns and steps away from the parkas.

“My guess is there is a discussion going on now about how to rescue us.”

The night sky lights up with a flash that lasts a full 20 seconds before it fades. A

thunderous blast wave follows half a minute later.

Chapter 47:
The Thunderbolt

t is inevitable,” Ayatollah Mashadi says sadly in response to Emmet asking if he were worried about his countrymen.

The night sky has been illuminated three more times with nuclear flashes, and each time the earth trembled with the blast waves. This while the soldiers, evacuees and refugees shelter in the darkness of the busted carcass of a 40-year-old aircraft on the side of a mountain in northern Iran.

They have tried and failed to make a space heater that would burn JP8 jet fuel; tried and failed to stitch together enough blankets and plastic sheets to close off the gaping rear of the aircraft; tried and failed to make effective tents to shield them from the frigid wind. Now they are huddled together at the front of the cargo bay, using inflated seven man life rafts as insulation between their bodies and the metal bulkhead and floor, and covered with all the blankets and parkas they have. They sit together in a pile shivering while watching the fireworks of nuclear Armageddon.

“The Holy Quran says, ‘He will be sent at a time of intense disputes and differences between people and earthquakes,’ ” Mashadi says, seated in front of Emmet Boyle with his arms around one of the wounded insurgents, warming him. Ekaterina is seated next to him, Boyd’s arms and legs encircling hers and a Marine in front. One wounded Marine is sandwiched between two comrades, while Davann, Rick Shands and the other wounded insurgent embrace for warmth on the end.

“He?” a Marine asks.

“Imam Mahdi, the return of the Prophet, the end of days,” Mashadi’s eyes are on the horizon, fixed, distant. He is wistful, not fully engaged with his present company or conversation.

“How can we know?” asks, Emmet, a nonreligious man now confronted with something he struggles to comprehend.

This snaps the Ayatollah out of his reverie. He is a teacher; patiently, he explains.

“The Holy Quran tells us that the Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him, was tempted with wealth and power to forsake Allah and form an earthly kingdom. But, the Holy Prophet recited, ‘I have warned you of a thunderbolt like the thunderbolt of the Ad and the Thamud.’ Man cannot anoint the leader with absolute command of the Muslims in all religious and secular affairs, only Allah can do that.”

There is silence.

“Was the Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, selected by the people to speak for God? Of course not. You are Christians, you are brothers in the Book. God sent Jesus. Do you not read that in the Bible?”

Mashadi turns to face the others. He is frustrated. It is the second coming, and these people don’t understand.

“It is written that false prophets will take the name Mahdi and build worldly kingdoms. The so called Supreme Leader in Iran is a false prophet, and now he has his thunderbolt.”

Chapter 48: The White House Situation Room

K, the president has told the Israeli prime minister that we would get 5,000 tons of relief supplies on the ground in Israel by the end of the week. Does this airlift you’ve described accomplish that?”

The national security adviser is coming to the end of the daily summary brief. The president is not present. She will brief him later in the Oval Office.

“Yes, ma’am, it does.” An Air Force colonel is standing in front of a Power Point presentation on one of the flat screens.

“We have an air bridge set up over the Azores and aircraft loading at Joint Base McGuire-Dix, New Jersey, and Charleston, South Carolina, are refueling over the Atlantic and going all the way to Palmachim, Hatzor and Tel Nof in Israel.”

“Wait, what’s an air bridge?”

"We’ve sent a tanker squadron to Lajes Field in the Azores. They refuel the C-17s en route to Israel so they don’t have to stop. It’s a very efficient way to move a lot of aircraft quickly. Our biggest problem is getting the supplies into Joint Base McGuire and Charleston. We’re drawing supplies from FEMA depots all the way to the Mississippi River. It’s a major undertaking.”

“OK, he’ll be happy with that. Get me some numbers for tomorrow.” She looks down at the agenda. “Now, last item. Plane crash on Mount Damavand. Who’s got that?”

“That’s me,” says Maj. Gen. Ferguson, raising his hand but remaining seated. “Global Strike Command’s rescue package was successful in breaking out Ayatollah Mashadi from Evin Prison in Tehran, but they were damaged by Iranian fighter aircraft and crash landed on Mount Damavand in northern Iran. We have communicated with them, and most of them survived the crash, but they are in very remote territory and cannot move by themselves.”

“I thought that was a contractor.”

“The aircraft is owned and operated by a contractor, to maintain plausible deniability that we hadn’t violated Iranian airspace, but there are six active duty Marines and one Air Force officer on the aircraft.”

“We can’t go in there.”

“Ma’am, we can’t just leave them there. We sent them in, we owe them a rescue.”

“The president has said we wouldn’t violate Iranian air space. Already, Congress is second-guessing our actions in the Persian Gulf, where three of our aircraft were shot down in fights with the Iranian Air Force and two of our ships were sunk. I don’t think he wants to risk any further confrontations. If they’re captured, we could negotiate for their release later.”

“They won’t be captured. They’re 12,000 feet up an 18,000-foot mountain, half buried in snow. Nobody can get to them. If they didn’t freeze to death last night, they will tonight.”

“We lost 90 sailors when the Normandy went down on the first day of the war. There are casualties in a war.”

“Ma’am, the president sent them into Tehran.”

“The president was leery of that mission.”

“Ma’am, he signed the order to send a rescue mission into Tehran!”

The room is silent.

“That does it, then. Same time tomorrow.” The national security adviser stands; the rest of the room stands. The meeting is over. She leaves.

Ferguson looks at the other uniformed officers in the room, incredulous at what has just happened. He packs papers into his briefcase, barely containing his anger, the desire to grab that woman by the throat and explain to her in language that she could understand that you don’t order service members into harm’s way and then deliberately leave them there. Missions can be planned, but not launched without the president’s permission.

Maybe Boyd Chailland can keep his little band of combatants and evacuees alive for another night. Ferguson will call CINCSTRAT, the four-star commander of Strategic Command and his immediate boss. CINCSTRAT could call the secretary of defense, who could call the president and lobby for reconsideration. Cumbersome way to do what should have been automatic at this level, but sometimes you have to work an objective harder than you should. He isn’t going to leave Boyd on that mountain.

Ferguson is talking to himself as he exits Interstate 395 in northern Virginia on his way back to Fort Belvoir and his command center. If he’d been more forceful, maybe she would have understood.

“The White House is on the line,” his secretary says as he walks in the door to his office.

“What?”

“They just called. It’s a question.”

“Major General Ferguson,” he says, picking up the phone.

“Hold for the national security adviser,” a secretary says.

“General Ferguson?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He is standing at attention without realizing it, mind spinning to find an opening to ask again for a rescue mission.

“Who is the pilot on that plane that’s crashed on the mountain in Iran?”

“Captain Boyd Chailland, United States Air Force. He was the commander of the mission, ma’am. We can’t just leave them on that mountain.”

“Is that the same man who saved the Russian president’s life last fall?”

“Yes, and the man who brought us the information about the Iranian nuclear weapons, and about the resistance wanting to break Ayatollah Mashadi out of Evin Prison, and …”

“The Russian president just called and asked if it were Chailland on that mountain, and expressed an interest in getting the Ayatollah out of Iran. The Russians must be monitoring our communications over there. He suggested to the president that we launch a rescue mission, and the president agreed.”

*****

“PECOS to JUBA.” It is morning. The wind has stopped, and the sun is emerging over the east side of Mount Damavand.

“JUBA, over,” Emmet says, scrambling to pull the rescue radio from his parka.

“Care package at six hundred hours ZULU(Greenwich Mean Time) , over.”

“JUBA to PECOS, care package at six hundred ZULU, roger.”

“PECOS to JUBA. Have your beacon on.”

“Beacon, roger.”

“All right! The rusty cogs of the United States military finally begin to move,” Boyd says, struggling to wriggle out from behind Ekaterina and the Marine.

During the next three hours, the Marines fashion snow shoes out of the springs in the navigator’s seat and webbing from the web seats in the cargo bay. They have another funeral, as one of the wounded insurgents has died.

“Combat air patrol,” Boyd says, standing on the wing watching the sky. He points to the contrails of four aircraft spaced evenly across the sky, high above them. It is exactly 0600 hours Zulu, which is 9:30 AM Tehran time.

“I love working with active duty. Having fighters overhead is so reassuring,” Emmet says, head sticking out of the emergency hatch in the top of the aircraft. He is using the rescue radio to communicate with PECOS and their delivery aircraft.

“There’s a C-130 crossing the beach 30 miles north. Care package inbound.”

The Marines have slogged out a hundred feet on either side of the aircraft and begin waving bright orange signal banners from the life raft emergency packs. Boyd has one as well.

The C-130 is a new J-model Combat Talon with four Rolls-Royce engines, 4,500 horsepower each, and each turning six scimitar-shape Dowty composite propellers. The cold little band of warriors watch it with fascination as it appears as a speck at the bottom of the hill and glides toward them, suddenly passing over with a throaty roar. The ramp is open and the loadmaster, tethered to the paratroop line like Davann had been, throws out a package. Only a hundred feet above when pitched out, the package hits the top of their aircraft and bounces to the side. The Marines rush to retrieve it.

The C-130 pulls up and circles around to the north of the mountain, still just above them. It levels out and comes back,
this time higher and to one side. The ramp is still open and a drogue parachute pops out the back, blossoms open and pulls a heavily wrapped pallet that jerks the parachute down, then swings two or three times before landing softly in the snow a hundred yards away. The C-130 turns again and comes in for another run. Again a drogue chute opens and pulls out a pallet, which lands almost on top of the first one.

“They practice that,” Boyd says proudly. He sees Ekaterina’s head protruding from the escape hatch to watch.

The Combat Talon crew turn near the top of Mount Damavand and come roaring back down the mountain. They pass only 200 feet overhead, and Ekaterina and Boyd can see the pilots wave as they pass. In another minute they are gone. The contrails of the fighters high overhead have turned, crossed each other’s paths to create two large X’s in the sky and head back north. Soon, they, too, are gone.

“Snowshoes!” yells one of the Marines, who has opened the package the loadmaster pitched out.

Chapter 49: Marivan, Iran

ou may have some water, and these dates,” Farhad Shirazi tells Dabney as they exit the limo. He is struggling to maintain civility. They have stopped to wash for midday prayers at a government building that sits dark and unoccupied in this medium-size town in western Iran. Snowcapped mountains surround them. Their guards blow the locks to let the group enter. Their food and water are almost gone. The guards spread out in tactical formation facing down curious onlookers forming in the streets.