"C'mon, Jazz," he was saying. "Nappies are over. Time to go to work."
It was dinner time at Zim's palace.
As usual, Zim was eating alone, perched high above his chamber on his mountain of pillows. There were no young Japanese girls around to watch him eat or to wipe his mouth clean after an exceptionally messy bite. There were some things the little nubile ones just would not do.
Even his personal guards preferred to wait outside the chamber while Zim was dining. He wasn't sure why. His fare was always so appetizing, if a bit regional and esoteric.
Zim had a huge bowl before him with two forks as his only utensils. In the bowl was a combination of raw lamb's brains, horse's eyes, and salmon guts, all mixed together in plain yogurt.
Truth was, Zim loved to eat alone and in peace, as he was loath to share his meal with anyone. That was why he was surprised when just into his second bite, the doors to his chamber opened.
Two guards came in, followed by a man on his knees. Zim looked up and immediately frowned.
It was Major Qank.
"I am eating," Zim said with a wave of his hand, dismissing his intelligence officer.
Qank bowed deeply and took a deep breath.
"A thousand pardons, sire, but . . . this is very important."
"What could be more important than my meal?" Zim asked Qank as if he was actually awaiting an answer.
Qank was stumped for an adequate reply.
"Well, this is
equally
important, my sire," he finally replied.
This answer gave Zim pause.
Finally he said: "OK, get up. And what is so urgent?"
"A note, sir, from the man in Room 6 . . ."
Qank tiptoed to the bottom of the pillow pile. He was just tall enough to hand the note up to Zim.
Zim finished chewing an elongated fish intestine, slurping the last few inches as one would a spaghetti strand, and finally opened the note.
Again the message within was simple. It read: "They are here."
Zim read the note several times, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve and stared down at Qank.
"Is he being intentionally vague here, do you think?"
Qank just shook his head. "No, sir. I think he's being quite clear. The Americans have somehow managed to sneak by the Third Ring and they are now in the area."
Zim put his hand to his chin and pretended to be in deep thought.
"Hmmm, what shall we do then?"
Qank had anticipated this question. They actually had a contingency if the Americans ever got this close. He just hoped Zim's memory was as good as his.
"We
do
have a plan, sir," Qank started. "It involves a purchase. In South Yemen, I believe . . ."
Zim thought about this for a moment.
"Ah, yes!" he finally exploded with a laugh. "The Three-Card Monty
plan . . ."
Qank rolled his eyes involuntarily. "Exactly, sir," he said. "Shall we proceed?"
Zim took another mouthful of his disgusting food. "Do we have the time, though?" he asked with a burp.
"I believe we do," Qank replied.
"Then make it so!" Zim called out with a laugh. The guards laughed too.
Qank looked around at them and wondered for a moment what was so funny. Then he began backing up.
"As you wish, sir," he said, heading for the door in reverse. "As you
wish . . ."
*****
South Yemen
2200 hours
It was very hot in Sayhut-ru.
The sun had baked the city all day; the temperature at noon was 122 degrees. Now that night had fallen, it had cooled off—to 103. And more hot weather was expected for at least the next two weeks.
The small city was actually a military air base with a few hundred houses around it. The base housed one unit of the Yemeni People's Air Defense Force and functioned as a civilian port of entry as well. But civilian or military, there was no activity at the base on this sweltering evening. No flights were scheduled to fly into this little piece of Hell. No flights were scheduled to leave either.
That was why Captain Rez Bata was so surprised when he saw a Learjet land unannounced on the main runway. He checked the time. It was 10 P.M.; he was just getting ready to go home for a bath. Who was this coming to disrupt his plan?
Bata was the air base night manager, one of only twenty captains in the tiny YPADF. In addition to his duties watching over the civilian part of the airport, Bata also ran the base's air defense squadron, which consisted of exactly one rather broken-down airplane.
Oddly, it was that airplane that the man in the Learjet had come to see him about.
He heard the footsteps coming up the stairs and finally into his office. Bata took one look at the man and instinctively knew who he was right away. Though he had never seen the man before, his gut instinctively told him he was a representative of Azu-mulla el-Zim. He had that
look
about him. Bata straightened up; his heart began pounding. This was the Middle East equivalent of getting a visit from a lieutenant of a Mafia Godfather. Bata knew it would be important for him to say the right things, and do whatever this man wanted.
"My employer sends his greetings," the man said as Bata offered him a seat. There were no introductions; there was no need.
"And mine to him," Bata managed to croak.
The man put a briefcase onto Bata's desk and snapped it open. Inside the case were twenty packets of money held together with rubber bands.
"This is two million American cash," the man said. "We believe it is sufficient payment."
Bata was totally confused. "Two million? What for?"
The man pulled back the drawn curtain. In the fading light they could just barely see the base's one and only military plane. It looked very old, standing out on the tarmac, rusty, with pools of oil and other fluids dripping from it. It was obvious it hadn't been flown in a very long time.
"For that," the man said simply. "My employer wants your airplane."
Bata looked at the man, then at the airplane, and then at the briefcase full of money.
"But I can't sell that airplane," he stuttered. "Certainly not for two million."
The man just smiled and said, "But you see, you have no choice in the matter. My employer wants the plane. Now. Tonight. And he
always
gets what he wants."
Bata was sweating now. His superiors would never go for this. No matter who was making the offer.
He told the man as much.
"But you misunderstand," the man replied. "This is not a payment from my employer to your government for the airplane. This is a
personal
payment. To you. To do with what you wish."
The man looked at the case full of thousand-dollar bills. "And with money like this, I think my first instinct would be to resign my commission."
With that, the man stood up, made a courteous, heel-clicking bow, and went out the door.
Bata sat for a long time looking at the money. Then finally, he took out a pen and paper and wrote out a very hasty letter of resignation. There would be no time to collect his family, of course. They would have to stay behind. But if he could get a car service tonight to carry him to Alwar, he could be anywhere—the Bahamas, South America, Monaco—by morning.
He took a handful of valuables from his desk, threw them in the briefcase, and then closed it and grabbed his hat. He looked out the window again to see that the airplane he'd essentially just been bribed for had a team of mechanics already swarming over it. He took a closer look. What were they doing?
It seemed like they were attaching some kind of elongated snout to the airplane, hastily riveting it in place. They were also painting it in an odd charcoal-gray color. One man was busy painting numbers on the underside of the fuselage. Another was standing up on the tail wing, doing the same thing.
What was this about? Bata wondered. Maybe Zim's people were preparing the plane for an arms shipment, or for a drug run. Or maybe for a pickup of young girls for the white slavery market.
But in the next instant, Bata knew that it didn't make a whit of difference to him what they were doing to the airplane. He took one last look around his office, sighed, shut off the lights, and left, the briefcase full of money tucked safely under his arm.
Yes, they could fly the airplane to the North Pole for all he cared.
Though he had heard that C-130's were good for that sort of thing too.
Considering everything involved, the takeoff from
Heaven 2
went well.
The platform was just long enough to fulfill the need for a running start for all five helicopters. The Halos went up first, followed by the Hinds, and then finally, the gas-laden Hook. Once airborne, they formed up at one thousand feet and headed west.
During the day,
Heaven 2
had inched its way up the Persian Gulf so that by launch time, it had positioned itself just off of Bubiyan Island, a lonely spit of land near the coast of northeast Kuwait. From there, it was only a matter of thirty-five miles to Iraq. The flight plan called for them to pass over land north of Basra, in a sector known as Khorra-sul-el. It was rugged, mountainous country, with few radar sites and known to be a slice of airspace rarely traveled by Iraqi aircraft because of its proximity to the very hostile border of Iran.
Once over this region, the five choppers turned north. They stayed in the same formation they'd practiced endlessly back over the Florida Straits. The two Hinds out front, the Halos next in line, with the Hook bringing up the rear. If all went well, they would reach the mountain hiding place just before midnight.
Both Hinds were equipped with a medium-range air-threat-warning radar. They were crude setups, but enough to tell Norton and Delaney if there were any other aircraft up there with them. There wasn't—and that was not unexpected. First of all, the Iraqi Air Force didn't fly very much, mostly because they had so very few airplanes to fly. Secondly, nearly two thirds of the country was covered by two U.S. patrolled No-Fly zones. Only helicopters could fly in these zones, so if they were to meet anyone up here, it would most likely be another chopper. But thirdly, the Iraqis rarely flew anything—choppers or warplanes—at night. Too superstitious, was how this was once explained to Norton.
Either
way, the combination of these three factors gave the small helicopter force an open sky through which to infiltrate.
Norton just couldn't help wondering during the flight, though, if the Iraqis knew something about flying at night that he didn't.
*****
The unit flew for exactly ninety-three minutes, over flooded marshes, rugged hillsides, vast desert.
At 2340 hours, Norton's GPS scope began beeping. They were nearing their landing zone. He flipped down his NightScope eyepiece and sure enough, he could see the huge mountain of Ka-el looming in the distance.
But there was a problem.
A big problem.
On the other side of the mountain was a cloud of sand so large, it looked like a tidal wave rolling in on a beach.
Norton began blinking his navigation lights madly—and soon saw Delaney flying right beside him start blinking his in return. Now the other three choppers were signaling as well. They all saw the gigantic sandstorm. The question was, what to do now?
But this really wasn't a question at all. There were no other options. They didn't have enough gas to turn around and go back—not without a risky nighttime air-to-air refueling.
So they had no choice.
They had to keep going.
*****
Norton was the first one to descend through the sandstorm.
His heart was beating right out of his chest. The love affair with the Hind was on hold for the moment. High winds were buffeting the Russian chopper all the way down. It sounded like he was being hit with a million rocks, especially around the canopy. He hoped the much-ballyhooed protection for the Hind's power plants would prove true. Just one gust of sand sucked up into the copter's engines, and it would be lights out forever.
Four hundred feet from landing and he was fighting the controls mightily. The Hind was great at going forward, but hovering was not one of its fortes. He was doing his best to keep the chopper level, but his biggest problem now was not the fiercely blowing sands, but something more devious: disorientation.
Keeping an airplane steady in relation to the ground was a hard enough job. Holding a chopper level in zero visibility was a real chore. It was really a mind-over-matter thing. The eyes won't believe what the instruments are telling them, and the pilot puts the aircraft in a position he
thinks
is level. Trouble is, the instruments are almost always right—and the pilot's instincts almost always wrong. There were recorded instances of chopper pilots running into sandstorms or heavy rain and actually turning themselves upside down—until they tried to land or went into a mountain. Disorientation was like breathing. If you thought too much about it, you got all fucked up.
At that moment Norton was trying his best not to think about either.
The chatter from his radio was not helping. All attention to security gone, the Army Aviation pilots were calling out numbers and positions to one another in breathlessly clipped fashion, a sure sign the pilots were getting stressed. Even Delaney was sounding a little nervous, yelling out his altitude readings as if the very sound of his voice was enough to will his chopper to the ground in one piece.
But finally, just like that, Norton broke through the bottom of the storm. He caught a quick, glimpse of the cliff face, and knew that he was much lower than he'd thought and going way too fast. He immediately gave the stick a yank and increased power. The front of the chopper bucked upwards, slamming his helmet against the top of canopy.
A second later, there was a mighty bump, a bounce, and a large crashing sound. And then nothing.
He was down.
Norton began frantically shutting down all the crucial systems aboard the Hind, lowering his electrical exposure as quickly as he could. His headphones were filled with the stern relief of the other pilots as they too broke free of the sandstorm and came down on the deck— hard, but at least in one piece.
"Truck One down!"
"Truck Two down . . . copy."
"Pumper down . . . and breathing . . ."
"Damn! Ouch ... Hound Dog Two here ..."
Norton smiled a moment. The last report was from Delaney. His chopper bounced in not a hundred feet from Norton's own. His partner was just barely visible through the continuing swirl of sand.
Then the radios went silent again.
The wind got louder; the sandstorm was descending on top of them now. All sight of Delaney and the other choppers was quickly gone. Norton rechecked his control panel; everything that had to be shut down was off. Only the bare minimum of instruments were still lit.
He did a quick GPS check and confirmed that they had come down in the middle of the grid they had planned for. They were on the vast cliff halfway down the high mountain. The satellite systems never lied.
He killed the GPS screen, and found himself suddenly surrounded by complete darkness. The sand swirling, the wind screaming the aircraft rocking back and forth. Darkness . . .
He hated it.
But then an idea hit him. He turned on his NightScope and sure enough, he could see the Marines, pouring out of the choppers, some of them going into their defensive ring despite the howling winds. Others he could see running up to the waterfall of vines and pulling them aside. Thank goodness, there was a cave behind them.
"Hot damn!" Norton heard himself say for the first time in his life.
The next thing he knew, he was moving. He pressed his face against the cockpit window and saw two ghostly faces staring back in at him. They were air techs, two of the dozen who were part of the mission. All twelve were all around his chopper now. They were pushing it toward the cave opening. Just as they were supposed to.
Once inside the cavern, Norton could finally see again. He just stared out at the place. It was enormous, as big as if not bigger than Hangar 2 back at Seven Ghosts Key. The Marines already had a generator hooked up, and now some very dim bulbs were burning within. It gave everything, and everyone, a very ghostly appearance. And true enough, he could see bats fluttering around on the ceiling of the place.
Norton could hear voices and lots of banging. Finally he reached over and undid the clasp on his cockpit window. Someone on the other side flipped the glass door upwards. It was Delaney.
"Welcome to Bat Cave," he said.