motion, he jerked the rifle from the nearest soldier, cocked it, leaned momentarily on the side of the tank, put the sights on the back of the youth’s head, and pulled the trigger. He saw the face blow outward, showering those on the other side of the gate. Then the body slumped and hung obscenely on the barbed wire.
For a moment there was an even vaster silence. Then, as one, Hussain leading, the mob surged forward, a roaring, senseless, mindless being. Those in front tore at the wires, careless of the barbs that ripped their hands to shreds. Urged on by those behind, they began to climb the wires. A submachine gun began to chatter among them. At that moment the colonel stabbed a finger at the officer in the tank.
At once a tongue of flame leaped from the barrel of the four-inch gun that was aimed just over the heads of the crowd and loaded with a blank charge, but the suddenness of the explosion sent attackers reeling from the gate in panic, half a dozen soldiers dropped their rifles in equal shock, a few fled, and many of the unarmed watchers scattered in fright. The second tank fired, its barrel closer to the ground, the shaft of flame lower. The mob broke. Men and women fled from the gate and the fence, trampling one another in their haste. Again the lead tank fired and again the tongue of flame and again the earsplitting detonation and the mob redoubled its effort to get away. Only the mullah Hussain remained at the gate. He reeled drunkenly, momentarily blinded and deafened, then his hands caught the stanchions of the gate and he hung on. Immediately, instinctively, many went forward to help him, soldiers, sergeants, and one officer. “Stay where you are!” Colonel Peshadi roared, then took the microphone on the long lead and switched to full power. His voice blasted the night. “All soldiers stay where you are! Safety catches on! SAFETY CATCHES ON! All officers and sergeants take charge of your men! Sergeant, come with me!” Still in shock, the sergeant fell into step beside his commander who went forward toward the gate. Scattered in front of the gates were thirty or forty who had been trampled on. The mass of rioters had stopped a hundred yards away and was beginning to re-form. Some of the more zealous began to charge. Tension soared.
“STOP! Everyone STAND STILL!”
This time the commander was obeyed. At once. He could feel the sweat on his back, his heart pumping in his chest. He glanced briefly at the corpse impaled on the barbs, glad for him - hadn’t the youth been martyred with the Name of God on his lips, and wasn’t he therefore already in Paradise? - then spoke harshly into the mouthpiece. “You three… yes, you three, help the mullah. NOW!” Instantly, the men outside the fence he had pointed at rushed to do his bidding. He jerked an angry thumb at some soldiers. “You! Open the gate! You, take the body away!”
Again he was obeyed instantly. Behind him, some groups of men began to move, and he roared, “I said, STAND STILL! THE NEXT MAN WHO MOVES WITHOUT MY ORDER’S A DEAD MAN!” Everyone froze. Everyone.
Peshadi waited a moment, almost daring someone to move. No one did. Then he glanced back at Hussain whom he knew well. “Mullah,” Peshadi said quietly, “are you all right?” He was standing beside him now. The gate was open. A few yards away the three villagers waited, petrified.
There was a monstrous ache in Hussain’s head and his ears hurt terribly. But he could hear and he could see and though his hands were bloody from the barbs, he knew he was undamaged and not yet the martyr he had expected and had prayed to be. “I demand …” he said weakly, “I demand this … this base in the name of Khomeini.”
“You will come to my office at once,” the colonel interrupted, his voice and face grim. “So will you three, as witnesses. We will talk, mullah. I will listen and then you will listen.” He turned on the loudspeaker again and explained what was going to happen, his voice even grimmer, the words echoing, cutting the night apart. “He and I will talk. We will talk peacefully and then the mullah will return to the mosque and you will all go to your homes to pray. The gate will remain open. The gate will be guarded by my soldiers and my tanks, and, by God and the Prophet on whose Name be praised, if one of you sets foot inside the gate or comes over the fence uninvited, my soldiers will kill him. If twenty or more of you charge into my base I will lead my tanks into your villages and I will burn your villages with you in them! Long live the Shah!” He turned on his heel and strode off, the mullah and the three frightened villagers following slowly. No one else moved.
And on the veranda of the officers’ mess, Captain Conroe Starke, leader of the S-G contingent, sighed. “Good sweet Jesus,” he muttered with vast admiration to no one in particular, “what cojones!”
5:21 A.M. Starke stood at the window of the officers’ mess, watching Peshadi’s HQ building across the street. The mullah had not yet come out. Here in the main lounge of the officers’ mess it was very cold. Freddy Ayre hunched deeper into his easy chair, pulling his flight jacket closer around him, and looked up at the tall Texan who rocked gently on his heels. “What do you think?” he asked wearily, stifling a yawn.
“I think it’ll be dawn in an hour odd, old buddy,” Starke said absently. He also wore a flight jacket and warm flying boots. The two pilots were in a corner window of the second-floor room overlooking most of the base. Scattered around the room were a dozen of the senior Iranian officers who had also been told to stand by. Most were asleep in easy chairs, bundled in their flight jackets or army greatcoats - heating throughout the base had been off for weeks to conserve fuel. A few weary orderlies, also in overcoats, were clearing up the last of the debris from the party that the mob had interrupted.
“I feel wrung out. You?”
“Not yet, but how come I always seem to draw duty on high days and holidays, Freddy?”
“It’s the Fearless Leader’s privilege, old chum,” Ayre said. He was second-in-command of the S-G contingent, ex-RAF, a good-looking man of twenty-eight, with sloe-blue eyes, his accent Oxford English. “Sets a good example to the troops.”
Starke glanced toward the open main gate. No change: it was still well guarded. Outside, half a thousand of the villagers still waited, huddled together for warmth. He went back to staring at the HQ building. No change there either. Lights were on in the upper floor where Peshadi had his offices. “I’d give a month’s pay to be kibitzing on that one, Freddy.” “What? What’s that mean?”
“To be listening to Peshadi and the mullah.”
“Oh!” Ayre looked across the street at the offices. “You know, I thought we’d had it when those miserable buggers started climbing the wire. Bloody hell! I was all set to hare off to old Nellie, crank her up, and say farewell to Kublai Khan and his Mongol hordes!” He chuckled to himself as he imagined himself running for his 212. “Of course,” he added dryly, “I’d have waited for you, Duke.” He used their nickname for Starke who was Texan like John Wayne and built like John Wayne and just as handsome. Starke laughed.“Thanks, old buddy. Come to think of it, if they’d bust in I’d’ve been ahead of you.” His blue eyes crinkled with the depth of his smile, his accent slight. Then he turned back to the window, hiding his concern. This was the base’s third confrontation with a mob, always led by the mullah, each more serious than the last. And now the first deliberate death. Now what? That death’ll lead to another and to another. If it hadn’t been for Colonel Peshadi someone else would have gone for the gate and been shot and now there’d be bodies all over. Oh, Peshadi would’ve won - this time. But soon he won’t, not unless he breaks the mullah. To break Hussain he’ll have to kill him - can’t jail him, the mob’ll bust a gut, and if he kills him, they’ll bust a gut, if he exiles him, they’ll bust a gut, so he’s onto a no-win play. What would I do?
I don’t know.
He looked around the room. The Iranian officers didn’t seem concerned. He knew most of them by sight, not one of them intimately. Though S-G had shared the base since it was built some eight years before, they had had little to do with the military or air force personnel. Since Starke had taken over as chief pilot last year, he had tried to expand S-G’s contacts with the rest of the base but without success. The Iranians preferred their own company.
That’s okay too, he thought. It’s their country. But they’re tearing it apart and we’re in the middle and now Manuela’s here. He had been overjoyed to see his wife when she had arrived by helicopter five days ago - McIver not trusting her to the roads - though a little angry that she had talked her way onto a lone incoming BA flight that had slipped back into Tehran. “Damnit, Manuela, you’re in danger here!”
“No more than in Tehran, Conroe darlin’. Insha’Allah,” she had said with a beam.
“But how’d you talk Mac into letting you come down here?” “I just smiled at him, honey, and promised to go on the first available flight back to England. Meanwhile, darlin’, let’s go to bed.” He smiled to himself and let his mind drift. This was his third two-year tour in Iran and his eleventh year with S-G. Eleven good years, he thought. First Aberdeen and the North Sea, then Iran, Dubai, and Al Shargaz just across the Gulf, then Iran again where he’d planned to stay. The best years here, he thought. But not anymore. Iran’s changed since ‘73 when the Shah quadrupled the price of oil - from $1 to $4 or thereabouts. It was like B.C. and A.D. for Iran. Before, they were friendly and helpful, good to live among and to work with. After? Increasingly arrogant, more and more puffed up by the Shah’s constant overriding message about the “inherent superiority of Iranians” because of their three thousand
