back his glasses he caught Lochart’s eye, nodded and smiled. Lochart smiled back. At Ahwaz, while they were all pushing their way onto the bus, one of the Japanese had said to Lochart in passable English, “Follow us, sir, at rush hour Tokyo buses and trains are much worse.” With a great display of politeness the two quickly cleared a path, found him a seat and places at the back for themselves. During the noon stop they had chatted briefly, telling him they were engineers coming back from leave, heading for Iran-Toda.
“Ah,” the mullah said happily, seeing the driver squeeze back into his seat, “now we continue, thanks be to God.”
With a great flourish the driver started the engine and the bus lumbered on its way. “Next stop Bandar Delam,” he called out. “God willing.” “God willing.” The mullah was very content. Once more he turned his attention to Lochart and shouted above the noise, “Agha, you were saying about the Great Satan?”
Lochart had his eyes closed and he pretended not to hear. The mullah touched him. “You were saying, Agha, about the Great Satan?” “I was saying nothing, Agha.”
“What? I didn’t hear you.”
Lochart kept his face polite, knowing the danger he was in, and said louder, “I was saying nothing, Agha. Traveling is tiring, isn’t it?” He closed his eyes again. “I think I will sleep a little.”
“Why say nothing?” a young man standing alongside in the aisle shouted down at him over the grinding engine. “America is responsible for all our troubles. If it wasn’t for America, there’d be peace in the whole world!” Grimly Lochart kept his eyes closed and tried to shut his ears, knowing he was near snapping - half of him wishing he had the automatic in his pocket, the other half thankful it was in his bag. He felt the mullah shake him. “Before you sleep, Agha, don’t you agree the world would be much better without the American evil?”
Lochart fought down his anger and just kept his eyes closed. Another shake, much rougher, this time from the aisle, and the man shouted in his ear, “Answer His Excellency!”
He was suddenly sick to death of all the anti-American propaganda and lies continually fed to them. White with rage, he opened his eyes and shoved the man’s hand away and exploded in English. “Well, I’ll tell you, mullah, you’d better thank God America exists because without it there’d be goddamn nothing in the world and we’d all be in a goddamn gulag or under the goddamn ground, you, me, this jerk, and even Khomeini!”
“What?”
He saw the mullah gaping at him - and realized he had been speaking English. Taking a tight rein on his mouth, he said in Farsi, knowing there was no way he could explain logically, “I was quoting the Holy Bible in English,” he said, making it up. “I was quoting Abraham when he was very angry. Didn’t Abraham say: ‘Evil stalks the earth in many guises - it is the duty of the Believer to… to guard against evil, any evil - all evil!’ Isn’t it?” The mullah was looking at him strangely and quoted from the Koran: ” ‘And God said to Abraham, I will make you a leader to mankind, and Abraham said, of my offspring also! God said, My covenant embraceth not the evildoers.’” “I agree,” Lochart said. “And now I must think about God - the One God, the God of Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Mohammed, whose Name be praised!” Lochart closed his eyes. His heart was pounding. Any moment he expected the angry youth’s rifle butt in his face or the mullah to shout for the bus to stop. He expected no mercy. But the moment passed and they left him to his supposed prayers.
The mullah sighed, lack of space pressing him against this Infidel. I wonder how an Infidel prays, he was thinking. What does he say to God - even a person of the Book? How pitiful they are!
AT BANDAR DELAM AIRPORT: 12:32 P.M. The Iranian Air Force car swung past the sleepy guards on the gate, its green Khomeini flag fluttering, and pulled up in a swirl of dust outside Rudi’s office trailer. Two smartly uniformed officers got out. With them were three Green Bands.
Rudi Lutz went out to meet the officers - a major and a captain. When he recognized the captain, his face lit up. “Hello, Hushang. I’ve been wondering how you were do - ”
The older officer interrupted him angrily. “I’m Major Qazani, Air Force Intelligence. What’s an Iranian chopper under your control doing trying to leave Iranian airspace, repeatedly disobeying instructions from an intercept, and totally disregarding orders from ground control?” Rudi stared at them blankly. “There’s only one of my choppers airborne, and she’s on a CASEVAC requested by Abadan radar control.”
“What’s her registration?”
“EP-HXX. What’s this all about?”
“That’s what I want to know.” Major Qazani walked past him into the trailer and sat down. His Green Bands waited. “Come on!” the major said irritably. “Sit down, Captain Lutz.”
Rudi hesitated, then sat at his desk. A few bullet holes in the wall let in light behind him. The Green Bands and the other officer came in and shut the door.
“What’s HXX? A 206 or 212?” the major asked.
“It’s a 206. What’s th - ”
“How many 212s have you here?”
“Two. HXX and HGC. Abadan radar cleared HXX on a CASEVAC yesterday to Kowiss with wounded from the fedayeen attack at dawn yester - ”
“Yes, we heard about that. And that you helped the Guards blow them to the hell they deserve, for which many thanks. Is EP-HBC an S-G 212 registration?”
Rudi hesitated. “I don’t know offhand, Major. I don’t have records here of all our 212s, but I could find out - if I can raise our base in Kowiss. Radio’s been out for a day. Now, please, I’ll help all I can, but what’s this about?”
Major Qazani lit a cigarette, offered one to Rudi who shook his head. “It’s about a 212, EP-HBC, we believe an S-G-operated 212, with an unknown number of persons aboard that went over the Iraqi border just before sunset last night - with no clearances, disregarding, as I’ve said, disregarding explicit radio orders to land.”
“I don’t know anything about it.” Rudi’s mind was racing. Got to be someone making an escape, he thought. “She’s not our bird. We can’t even start engines without Abadan Control’s okay. That’s SOP.”
“How would you explain HBC then?”
“She could be a Guerney aircraft taking some of their personnel away, or Bell, or any one of the other chopper companies. It’s been hard, sometimes impossible, to file a flight plan recently. You know how, er, how fluid radar’s been the last few weeks.”
“Fluid’s not a good word,” Captain Hushang Abbasi said. He was a lithe, very handsome man with a clipped mustache and dark glasses, and wore wings on his uniform. All of last year he had been based at Kharg where he and Rudi had got to know each other. “And if she was an S-G aircraft?” “Then there’ll be a correct explanation.” Rudi was glad that Hushang had weathered the revolution - particularly as he had always been an outspoken critic of mullahs meddling in government. “You’re sure she was illegal?” “I’m sure legal airplanes have clearances, legal airplanes obey air regulations, and legal airplanes don’t take evading action and rush for the border,” Hushang said. “And I’m almost sure I saw the S-G emblem on my first pass, Rudi.”
Rudi’s eyes narrowed. Hushang was a very good pilot. “You were flying the intercept?”
“I led the flight that scrambled.”
The silence grew in the trailer. “Do you mind if I open a window, Major. The smoke - it gives me a headache.”
The major said irritably, “If HBC’s an S-G chopper someone’s going to have more than a headache.”
Rudi opened the window. HBC sounds like one of our registrations. What the hell’s going wrong? We seem to be under a spell the last few days - first it was that psychopath Zataki and the murder of our mechanic, then poor old Kyabi, then the God-cursed leftist fedayeen dawn attack yesterday, damn nearly killing us and wounding Jon Tyrer - Christ, I hope Jon’s all right! - and now more trouble!
He sat down again, feeling very weary. “Best I can do is to ask.” “How far north do you operate?” the major asked.
“Normally? Ahwaz. Dezful’d be about our extreme ra - ” The base phone intercom rang. He picked it up and missed the look between the two officers. “Hello?”
It was Fowler Joines, his chief mechanic. “You okay?”
“Yes. Thanks. No sweat.”
“Shout if you need help, old sport, and we’ll all come arunning.” The phone clicked off.
He turned back to the major, feeling better. Since he had stood up to Zataki, all of his men and pilots had treated him as though he were Laird Gavallan himself. And since yesterday when the fedayeen were beaten off, even the komiteh Green Bands had been deferential - all except Base Manager Yemeni who was still trying to give
