The Red Horseman (42 page)

Two figures rose from a low place out on the
airfield and came slowly this way, bent at the
waist. They stopped and crouched occasionally.

They approached the car.

“Don’t shoot him,” Jake shouted during a
momentary lull in the gunship barrage going on just
behind him. “Take him into the hangar.”

With that he got up and opened the hangar
door.

Inside the foyer he wiped the perspiration from his
eyes, got a good grip on the submachine gun,
then jerked open the interior door and dived through.

He slid right into the body of an Iraqi
soldier. His throat had been cut. More bodies
lay near the eastern door, the one that led to where the
trader was parked. Jake inched forward and looked
carefully around.

A group of Iraqis was standing near the west wall
of the hangar with their hands up. Three missiles on
trailers sat against the north wall, and here and there,
several compact, cylindrical deviceswarheads.
Piles of wooden crates sat in one corner. A
Scud on its launcher sat against the west wall.

“Toad?” Jake made it loud, because the noise
from outside was reverberating inside this large metal
building.

“Over here, CAG.”

“Everything under control?”

“Seems to be.”

“Are you behind something?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stay there. I’m gonna take a look out this
east door.”

Jake walked across the hangar warily. He
didn’t take time to count the warheads, but there were a
lot of them.

Approaching the door he stepped to one side. The
door was ajar. He eased it open and inched his head
around the jamb for a look. This was, of course, an
excellent way to get his brains blown out, but right
now didn’t seem to be the time to play it safe.

Three bodies were lying near the door. Four more
were visible to the right, toward the south. And fifty feet
away the limo still sat, the two SEAL’S kneeling
behind it. Jake stepped out and walked toward them.

“There were about a dozen men here when I first saw
them. Did you guys see where the others went?”

“They went hoofing it toward the north. There’s a
network of trenches over there, I think. You’ll find
their bodies about fifty yards up that way. As
helicopters crossed above and the whuff of
Hellfire missiles and rockets being launched
washed over them, one of the SEAL’S seized the front
door of the car and jerked it open. The driver sat with
his hands on the steering wheel, offering no resistance.
“This guy’s been watching too many American cop
movies. Okay, Ahmad, outta there.”

The rear door on Jake’s side of the
car opened. He stood ready, the submachine gun
leveled, his f anger on the trigger.

First a leg came out, a leg clad in uniform
trousers. Then an arm and head, then the man was standing
there. He was bareheaded, wore a long-sleeved
uniform shirt without a tie or jacket, and had a
thin brush mustache on his upper lip.

Jake gestured with his gun. “Raise “em.”

The man obeyed.

“Okay, Saddam,” Jake said, stepping aside
and jerking his left thumb at the door, “let’s join
the others at the party.

Jake stopped outside the door and got out his
radio. He selected the proper channel and
checked in. “The weapons are here. The dance is
on.”

He waited for an acknowledgment, then turned down
the OEM volume of the radio to save the battery.
He kept it in his hand though.

Right now the SEAL’S were establishing a perimeter
around this budding and locating the remainder of the Iraqi
Republican Guard troops. The Apaches were
working over the Republican Guard camp and the
nearby barracks. Yet this was makeshift, a
temporary expedient until the
helicopters with the 101/ Airborne Air
Assault troops and their heavy weapons arrived.
Outside the base fighter-bombers would attack the
Republican Guard without mercy and hopefully
prevent Iraqi troops from amassing sufficient
combat power to retake the base or hinder the
American buildup. As usual in modern war,
timing, mobility, and firepower were the key.

Commander Lester Slick came striding in. His
radio was also squawking in his hand. “Admiral, we
have four dead that I know of and about twenty men unaccounted
for. One Of them is the reporter.”

Jake merely nodded.

“We’ve scouted out most of the base and
neutralized some of the opposition, but the bulk of my
men are setting up lights for helo landing zones. The
choppers should be here in about a minute, sir.”

“Runways intact?”

“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 redyellow
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
beyo the fence even blacker than before. nd 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 took 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
darkncss. 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.

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 fireI radar that they could locate.

contro 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 hould.

perfectly with all its equipment functioning as it
s ur legs up and tuck your hands under Still you draw
yo tick the flak vest and wait for random death. The
seconds 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, le)o 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.

There. He was no longer attached to the seat.

“Get him out!”

Rita grabbed his shoulders and puffed. Oh God,
he was heavy.

She braced herself and gave a mighty heave.

The pilot came half out of the seat but he still
kept his death grip on the cyclic stick.

His helmet, with the wires. She tore it off his
head.

She grabbed him again, two handfuls of harness,
braced her right leg against the back of the seat and
pulled with all her strength.

He came out of the seat and Rita kept pulling
and the two of them tumbled backward into the passenger
compartment, the wounded pilot on top.

She fumbled for her flashlight. The beam showed
blood.

He was shot in the face. His eyes were
unfocused, blood flowing.

“He took a bullet in the face,” she told
the copilot.

“Five minutes. We’ll be on the
ground in five minutes.

Keep him alive.”

How do you keep a man alive who has been
shot an inch under the right eye?

Then she realized that the convulsions had stopped.
He was limp. Rita Moravia found a wrist and
felt for his pulse.