“Thank you.” Ostentatiously Kia said to McIver, “Pilot, be ready to take off at 10:00 A.M. tomorrow. I may want to go around some oil sites with Excellency Esvandiary before going back. Don’t forget, I have to be in Tehran for my 7:00 P.M. meeting with the prime minister.” He got out and was bustled off to inspect the choppers. Immediately Ayre, Lochart, and the others ducked under the blades and came quickly alongside McIver’s window. He disregarded their faces and beamed. “Hello, how’re tricks?” “Let me finish the shutdown for you, Mac,” Ayre said, “we’ve as - ” “Thanks, but I’m perfectly capable,” McIver said crisply, then into the mike, “HTX closing down.” He saw Lochart’s face and sighed again. “So I’m slightly out of whack, Tom. So?”
“It’s not that, Mac,” Lochart said in a rush, “Duke’s been shot.” McIver listened appalled as Lochart told him what had happened. “He’s in the infirmary now. Doc Nutt says his lung may be punctured.”
“Christ Almighty! Then put him aboard the 125, go on Johnny, get g - ” “He can’t, Mac,” Lochart overrode him with the same urgency: “Hotshot’s held up her departure till after Kia’s inspection - yesterday old Duke tried every which way to get her in and out before you arrived but Hotshot’s a sonofabitch. And that’s not all, I think Tehran’s rumbled us.” “What?”
Lochart told him about the telexes and the HF calls. “Siamaki’s been bending Hotshot’s ear, getting him worked up. I took Siamaki’s last call - Duke had gone to the mullah’s - and he was mad as a sonofabitch. I told him the same as Duke and sluffed him off saying you’d call when you got in, but Jesus, Mac, he knows you and Charlie’ve cleaned out your apartment.” “Ali Baba! He must’ve been a plant.” McIver’s head was reeling. Then he noticed the little gold St. Christopher that habitually he hung around the magnetic compass when flying. It was a present from Genny, a first present, a war present, just after they’d met, he in the RAF, she a WAAF: “Just so you don’t get lost, me lad,” she had said. “You don’t have much of a nose for north.”
He smiled now and blessed her. “First I’ll see Duke.” He could see Esvandiary and Kia wandering down the line of choppers. “Tom, you and JeanLuc see if you can chivy Kia along, butter the bugger up, flatter the balls off him - I’ll join you as quick as I can.” They went off at once. “Freddy, you spread the word that the moment we get the okay for the 125 to leave, everyone’s to board fast and quietly. Is all the baggage aboard?” “Yes, but what about Siamaki?”
“I’ll worry about that bugger, off you go.” McIver hurried away.
Johnny Hogg called out after him, “Mac, a word in your ear as soon as poss.”
The underlying urgency stopped him. “What Johnny?”
“Urgent and private from Andy: If this weather worsens he may postpone Whirlwind from tomorrow till Saturday. The wind’s changed. It’ll be a headwind now instead of a tail - ”
“You saying I don’t know southeast from northwest?”
“Sorry. Andy also said, as you’re here he can’t give you the overriding yes or no he promised.”
“That’s right. Ask him to give it to Charlie. What else?” “The rest can wait. I haven’t told the others.”
Doc Nutt was in the infirmary with Starke. Starke lay on a cot, arm in a sling, his shoulder heavily bandaged. “Hello, Mac, you have a good flight?” he said witheringly.
“Don’t you start! Hi, Doc! Duke, we’ll get you out on the 125.” “No. There’s tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow‘11 take care of tomorrow and meanwhile you’re on the 124 - 125! For Christ’s sake,” McIver said irritably, his relief at having made the flight safely and at seeing Starke alive peeled away his control, “don’t act like you’re Deadeye Dick at the Alamo!”
“He wasn’t at the goddamn Alamo,” Starke slammed back angrily, “and who the hell’re you to act like Chuck Yeager?”
Doc Nutt said mildly, “If you both don’t slow down, I’ll order the two of you bloody enemas.”
Abruptly both men laughed and Starke gasped as pain rocked him. “For crissake, Doc, don’t make me laugh…” And McIver said, “Duke, Kia insisted I accompany him. I couldn’t tell him to push off.”
“Sure.” Starke grunted. “How was it?”
“Grand.”
“What about the wind?”
“It’s not a plus for tomorrow,” McIver said carefully. “It can change back again just as quickly.”
“If it stays this way it’s a thirty-knot headwind or worse and we can’t make it across the Gulf. There’s no way we can carry enough fu - ” “Yes. Doc, what’s the poop?”
“Duke should be X-rayed as soon as possible. Shoulder blade’s shattered and there’s some tendon and muscle damage, wound’s clean. There might be a splinter or two in the left lung, he’s lost a pint or so, but all in all he’s been very bloody lucky.”
“I feel okay, Doc, I’m mobile,” Starke said. “One day won’t make that amount of difference. I can still go along tomorrow.”
“Sorry, old top, but you’re shook. Bullets do that. You may not feel it now but in an hour or two you will, guaranteed.” Doc Nutt was very glad he was leaving with the 125 today. Don’t want to cope anymore, he told himself. Don’t want to see any more fine young bodies bullet-torn and mutilated. I’ve had it. Yes, but I’ll have to stick to it for a few more days, there’re going to be others to patch up because Whirlwind’s just not going to work. It’s not, I feel it in my bones. “Sorry, but you’d be a hazard on any op, even a little one.”
“Duke,” McIver said, “it’s best you go at once. Tom, you take one - no need for JeanLuc to stay.”
“And what the hell you figure on doing?”
McIver beamed. “Me, I’ll be a passenger. Meanwhile, I’m just bloody Kia’s very private bloody pilot.”
IN THE TOWER: 4:50 P.M. “I repeat, Mr. Siamaki,” McIver said tightly into the mike, “there’s a special conference in Al Sh - ”
“And I repeat, why wasn’t I informed at once?” The voice over the loudspeaker was shrill and irritated.
McIver’s knuckles were white from the grip on the mike’s stem, and he was being watched intently by a Green Band and Wazari whose face was still swollen from the beating Zataki had given him. “I repeat, Agha Siamaki,” he said, his voice tidy, “Captains Pettikin and Lane were needed for an urgent conference in Al Shargaz and there was no time to inform you.” “Why? I’m here in Tehran. Why wasn’t the office informed, where are their exit permits? Where?”
McIver pretended to be slightly exasperated. “I already told you, Agha, there was no time - phones in Tehran aren’t working - and I cleared their exits with the komiteh at the airport, personally with His Excellency the mullah in charge.” The Green Band yawned, bored, non-English-speaking, and noisily cleared his throat. “Now if you’ll excu - ”
“But you and Captain Pettikin have removed your valuables from your apartment. Is that so?”
“Merely a precaution to remove temptation from vile mujhadin and fedayeen burglars and bandits while we’re away,” McIver said airily, very conscious of Wazari’s attention and sure that the tower at the air base was monitoring this conversation. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Minister Kia requires my presence!”
“Ah, Minister Kia, ah, yes!” Siamaki’s irritability softened a little. “What, er, what time do you both arrive back in Tehran tomorrow?” “Depending on the winds…” McIver’s eyes almost crossed as he had a sudden, almost overwhelming, desire to blurt out about Whirlwind. I must be going potty, he thought. With an effort he concentrated. “Depending on Minister Kia, the winds, and refueling, sometime in the afternoon.” “I will be waiting for you; I may even meet you at the airport if we know your ETA; there are checks to be signed and many rearrangements to be discussed. Please give Minister Kia my best wishes and wish him a pleasant stay in Kowiss. Salaam.” The transmission clicked off. McIver sighed, put the mike down. “Sergeant, while I’m here I’d like to call Bandar Delam and Lengeh.”
“I’ll have to ask base,” Wazari said.
“Go ahead.” McIver looked out the window. The weather was deteriorating, the southeaster crackling the wind sock and the stays of the radio mast. Thirty knots, gusting to thirty-five on the counter. Too much, he thought. The upended mud tank that had crashed through the roof was only a few yards away. He could see Hogg and Jones patiently waiting in the 125 cockpit, the cabin door invitingly open. Through the other window he saw Kia and Esvandiary had finished their inspection and were heading this way, toward the offices directly below. Idly he saw that a connector on the main roof aerial was loose, then noticed the wire almost free. “Sergeant, you’d better fix that right smartly, you could lose all transmission.” “Jesus, sure, thanks.” Wazari got up, stopped. Over the loudspeaker came: “This is Kowiss Tower. Request to call Bandar Delam and Lengeh approved.” He acknowledged, switched frequencies, and made the call.
“This’s Bandar Delam, go ahead Kowiss.” McIver’s heart picked up, recognizing Rudi Lutz’s voice.
Wazari handed the mike to McIver, his eyes outside on the faulty connection. “Sonofabitch,” he muttered,
