“Is that all? You’re sure?”
“Yes. Look,” Ayre said, pointing out of the window, “there she is.” The 206 was coming out of the sun nicely. Behind her the Zagros Mountains reached skyward. Below were the chimney stacks of the vast refinery, plumes of fire from waste gases perpetually burning off. She touched down in the exact center of Landing Pad One. “HXB shutting down,” Marc Dubois said over the radio.
“Roger, HXB,” S-G’s duty tower operator, Massil Tugul, a Palestinian and longtime employee, replied. He switched to the main base frequency. “Base, we have no birds in the system now. I confirm HVU and HCF will return before sunset.”
“Okay, S-G.” There was a moment of quiet, then over the main base channel, they heard a voice cut in harshly in Farsi, transmitting from the 206. It went on for half a minute, then ceased.
Massil muttered, “Insha’Allah!”
“Who the hell was that?” Ayre said.
“The mullah Hussain, Agha.”
“What the hell did he say?” Ayre asked him, forgetting Manuela could speak Farsi.
Massil hesitated. Manuela answered for him, her face white. “The mullah said, ‘In the Name of God and in the Name of the Whirlwind of God, strike!’ over and over, just ov - ” She stopped.
From the other side of the airfield came the muted sound of gunfire. At once Ayre took the mike. “Marc, a la tour, vite, immediatement,” he ordered, his accent excellent, then squinted at the base, half a mile away. Men were running from their barracks now. Some carried guns. Several fell as other men opposed them. Ayre opened one of the windows to hear better. Faint shouts of “Allah-u Akbarr” mixed with the coarse thrangg-thrangg-thrangg of automatic rifles.
“What’s that? Near the gate, the main gate?” Manuela said, Massil on his feet beside her, equally shocked and not a little frightened. Ayre reached for the binoculars and focused them. “Christ Almighty, soldiers’re firing into the base and… and trucks’re storming the gate… half a dozen of them… Green Bands and mullahs and soldiers jumping out of them …”
Over the base channel came an excited voice shouting in Farsi that was abruptly cut off. Again Manuela translated: ‘“In the Name of God, kill all officers who oppose Imam Khomeini and take possession - ‘ It’s revolution!” Below they saw the mullah Hussain and his two Green Bands pile out of the 206, guns unslung. The mullah motioned Dubois out of the cockpit, but the pilot just shook his head and pointed at the whirling blades, continued shutdown procedure. Hussain hesitated.
All over the S-G compound work had stopped. People were leaning out of windows or had come out onto the tarmac and were standing there in silent little groups, looking across the field. Sounds of gunfire increased. Nearby, the jeep and fuel truck that were to service the 206 had skidded to a halt the moment the guns had started. Hussain had hailed the jeep, left one man to guard the chopper. The driver saw him coming, jumped out, and took to his heels. The mullah cursed him and, with a Green Band, got into the driving seat, gunned the engine, and tore off down the boundary road, heading for the far barracks.
Dubois came up the steps, three at a time. He was thirty-six, tall and skinny, with dark hair and a roguish smile. At once he stuck out his hand and shook with Ayre. “Madonna, what a day, Freddy! I… Manuela!” He kissed her fondly on both cheeks. “The Duke is fine, cherie. He just had a row with the mullah who told him that he would no longer fly with him. Bandar Delam’s not…” He stopped, very conscious now of Massil, not trusting him. “I need a drink, eh? Let’s go to the mess, eh?”
They did not go to the mess. Marc led them out onto the tarmac and into the lee of a building where they could watch with safety and not be overheard. “There’s no way of telling which side Massil’s on, eh, or even most of our staff - if they even know themselves, poor people.”
On the other side of the field there was a loud explosion. Fire gushed from one of the sheds and smoke billowed. Mon Dieu, is that the fuel dump?” “No, just near it.” Ayre was filled with disquiet. Another explosion distracted him, then mixed with sporadic gunfire came the heavy, deep-throated detonation of a tank’s big gun.
The jeep with the mullah in it had disappeared behind the barracks. Near the main gate, the army trucks had stopped haphazardly; their attacking soldiers and Green Bands vanished into hangars and barracks. A few bodies lay in the dust. Tank soldiers guarding Camp Commandant Peshadi’s office block crouched near the doorway, their guns ready. Others waited at the second-floor windows. One of the men there let off a burst of automatic fire as half a dozen screaming soldiers and airmen charged in attack across the square. Another burst of fire and they were all dead or dying or badly wounded. One of the wounded half crawled, half scrambled for safety. The tank guards let him get almost to safety. Then they filled him with bullets. Manuela moaned and they both took her deeper into the lee of their building. “I’m all right,” she said. “Marc, when’s Duke coming back?” “Rudi or Duke will call tonight or tomorrow, guarantee it. Pas problcme! Le Grand Duke is fine. Mon Dieu, now I am ready for a drink!” They waited a moment, the firing lessening. “Come on,” Ayre said, “we’ll be safer in the bungalows.”
They scurried across the compound into one of the fine bungalows surrounded by whitewashed fences and tidy gardens. There were no married quarters at Kowiss. Usually two pilots shared the two-bedroom bungalows. Manuela left them to get the drinks. “Now, what really happened?” Ayre asked softly.
Rapidly the Frenchman told him about the attack and Zataki and Rudi’s bravery. “That old Kraut really deserves a medal,” he said admiringly. “But listen, last night the revs shot one of our day laborers. They tried him and shot him in four minutes for being fedayeen. This morning other bastards shot Kyabi.”
Ayre was appalled. “But why?”
Dubois told him about the pipeline sabotage, then added, “When Rudi and the mullah got back, Zataki paraded us all and said it was correct Kyabi had been shot as ‘a supporter of the Shah, a supporter of satanic Americans and British who had despoiled Iran for years and was therefore an enemy of God.’”
“Poor old Boss. Christ, I liked him a lot, he was a good fellow!” “Yes. And openly anti-Khomeini, and now those bastards have guns - never seen so many guns and they’re all stupides, crazy.” Dubois tightened. “Old Duke began raving in Farsi at them all; he’d already had a confrontation with Zataki and the mullah last night. We don’t know what he said but it all became ugly, the bastards fell on him, started to kick and scream at him. Of course we all began to charge, then there was an explosion of automatic fire and we froze. Them too, because it was Rudi. Somehow he’d taken a gun from one of them and let another short burst into the air. He shouted, ‘Leave him alone or I’ll kill you all,’ keeping the gun trained on Zataki and the group near Duke. They left him. After cursing them - ma foi, quel homme - he made a deal; they leave us alone, we leave them to their revolution, I was to fly the mullah here and Duke was to stay, and Rudi keeps the gun. He made Zataki and the mullah swear by Allah not to break the contract, but I still wouldn’t trust them. Merde, they’re all merde, mon ami. But Rudi, Rudi was fantastic. He should be French, that one. I tried to call them all day but no answer….”
The other side of the field, a Centurion tank came charging out of one of the streets in the far barracks complex, whirled across the open, and went into the main street opposite base HQ and the officers’ mess. It stopped there, engines growling, fat, squat, and deadly. The long gun swiveled, seeking a target. Then suddenly the tracks spun, the tank twirled on its axis and fired and the shell decimated the second floor where Colonel Peshadi had his offices. The defenders reeled from the sudden treachery. Again the tank fired. Great slabs of masonry tore off and half the roof collapsed. The building began to burn.
Then from the ground floor and part of the second story a fusillade of bullets surrounded the tank. At once two of the loyalists charged, out of the main door with grenades, tossed them through the tank slits, and fled for cover. Both men crumpled under a hail of automatic fire from across the roadway, but there was a terrible explosion inside the tank and flames and smoke gushed forth. The metal top flipped open and a burning man tried to clamber out. His body was almost ripped out of the tank by the hail of automatic fire from the broken building. On the wind that blew from across the base there was the smell of cordite and fire and meat burning. The battle continued for more than an hour, then ended. The lowering sun cast a bloody hue and there were dead and dying throughout the base, but the insurrection had failed because they had not killed Colonel Peshadi or his chief officers in the first sneak attack, because not enough of the airmen and soldiers went over to their side - and only one of three tank crews. Peshadi had been in the lead tank, and he held the tower and all radio communications. He had gathered loyal forces and led the ruthless drive that gouged the revolutionaries out of the hangars and out of the barracks. And once the cautious majority, the fence-sitting, unsure - in this case airmen and troops - perceived that the revolt was lost, they hesitated no longer. Immediately and zealously they declared their undying and historic loyalty to Peshadi and the Shah, picked up discarded weapons, and, equally zealously, in the Name of God, began firing at the
