Don Walker’s thumb was poised over his missile controls. He had two choices: the longer-range AIM-7 Sparrow, which was radar-guided from the Eagle itself, or the shorter-range AIM-9 Sidewinder, which was a heat- seeker.
At fifteen miles he could see it, the small black dot racing up toward him. The twin fins showed it was a MiG 29 Fulcrum—arguably one of the best interceptor fighters in the world in the right hands. Walker did not know he faced the unarmed trainer version. What he did know was that it might carry the AA-10 Soviet missile, with a range as long as his own AIM-7s. That was why he chose the Sparrows.
At twelve miles he launched two Sparrows dead ahead. The missiles flashed away, picking up the radar energy reflected from the MiG and obediently heading straight toward it.
Abdelkarim Badri saw the flashes as the Sparrows left the Eagle, giving him a few more seconds of life unless he could force the American to break off. He reached down to his left and pulled a single lever.
Don Walker had often wondered what it would be like, and now he knew. From the underside of the MiG’s wings came an answering flicker of light. It was like a cold hand gripping his entrails, the icy, freezing sensation of pure fear. Another man had launched two missiles at him. He was staring certain death straight in the face.
Two seconds after he launched the Sparrows, Walker wished he had chosen the Sidewinders. The reason was simple: The Sidewinders were fire-and-forget missiles, they would find the target no matter where the Eagle was. The Sparrows needed the Eagle to guide them; if he broke away now, the missiles, without guidance, would “gimbal,”
or wander off across the sky to fall harmlessly to earth.
He was within a fraction of a second of breaking off when he saw the missiles launched by the MiG tumble away toward the ground. In disbelief he realized they were not rockets at all; the Iraqi had tricked him by releasing his underwing fuel tanks. The aluminum canisters had caught the morning sun as they fell, glittering like the ignited fuel of launching missiles. It was a trick, and he, Don Walker, had damn nearly fallen for it.
In the MiG Abdelkarim Badri realized the American was not going to break off. He had tested the man’s nerve, and he had lost. In the rear seat Osman had found the Transmit button. He could see by looking over his shoulder that they were climbing, already miles above the ground.
“Where are we going?” he screamed. The last thing he heard was the voice of Abdelkarim, quite calm.
“Peace, my brother. To greet our father. Allah-o-Akhbar.”
Walker watched the two Sparrows explode at that moment, great peonies of red flame three miles away, then the broken fragments of the Soviet fighter tumble down to the landscape below. He felt the sweat trickling down his chest in rivulets.
His wingman, Randy Roberts, who had held his position above and behind him, appeared off his right wingtip, the white-gloved hand raised with the thumb erect. He replied in kind, and the other two Eagles, having abandoned their fruitless chase of the remaining MiGs, swam up from below to reform and went on to the bridge above Al Kut.
Such is the speed of events in fighter combat that the entire action, from the first radar lock-on to the destruction of the Fulcrum, had taken just thirty-eight seconds.
The spotter was at the Winkler Bank on the dot of ten that morning,
accompanied by his “accountant.” The younger man bore a deep attache case containing one hundred thousand American dollars in cash.
The money was actually a temporary loan arranged by the banking
When he saw the money, Herr Gemutlich was delighted. He would have been less enthusiastic had he noticed that the dollars occupied only half the thickness of the attache case, and he would have been horrified to see what lay beneath the false bottom.
For the sake of discretion, the accountant was banished to Fraulein Hardenberg’s room while the lawyer and the banker arranged the confidential operating codes for the new account. The accountant returned to take charge of the receipt for the money and by eleven the matter was concluded. Herr Gemutlich summoned the commissionaire to escort the visitors back to the lobby and the front door.
On the way down the accountant whispered something into the American lawyer’s ear, and the lawyer translated it to the commissionaire. With a curt nod the commissionaire stopped the old grille-fronted elevator at the mezzanine floor, and the three got out.
The lawyer pointed out the door of the men’s room to his colleague, and the accountant went in. The lawyer and the commissionaire remained on the landing outside.
At this point there came to their ears the sounds of a fracas in the lobby, clearly audible because the lobby was twenty feet along the corridor and down fifteen marble steps.
With a muttered excuse the commissionaire strode along the corridor until he could see from the top of the stairs down to the hallway. What he saw caused him to run down the marble steps to sort the matter out.
It was an outrageous scene. Somehow three rowdies, clearly drunk, had entered the lobby and were harassing the receptionist for money for more liquid refreshment. She would later say they had tricked her into opening the front door by claiming they were the postman.
Full of indignation, the commissionaire sought to bustle the hooligans outside. No one noticed that one of the rowdies, on entering, had dropped a cigarette pack against the doorjamb so that, although normally self-closing, the door would not quite shut.
Nor did anyone notice, in the jostling and pushing, a fourth man enter the lobby on hands and knees. When he stood up, he was at once joined by the lawyer from New York, who had followed the commissionaire down the stairs to the lobby.
They stood to one side as the commissionaire hustled the three rowdies back where they belonged—in the street. When he turned around, the bank servant saw that the lawyer and the accountant had descended from the mezzanine of their own accord. With profuse apologies for the unseemly melee, he ushered them out.
Once on the sidewalk, the accountant let out a huge sigh of relief.
“I hope I never have to do that again,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” said the lawyer. “You did pretty well.”
They spoke in Hebrew, because the accountant knew no other language. He was in fact a bank teller from Beershe’eva, and the only reason he was in Vienna, on his first and last covert assignment, was that he also happened to he the identical twin of the cracksman, who was then standing immobile in the darkness of the cleaning closet on the mezzanine floor. There he would remain motionless for twelve hours.
Mike Martin arrived in Ar-Rutba in the middle of the afternoon. It had taken him twenty hours to cover a distance that normally would take no more than six in a car.
On the outskirts of the town he found a herdsman with a flock of goats and left him somewhat mystified but quite happy by buying four of them for his remaining handful of dinars at a price almost twice what the herdsman would have secured at the market.
The goats seemed happy to be led off into the desert, even though they now wore halters of cord. They could hardly be expected to know that they were only there to explain why Mike Martin was wandering around the desert south of the road in the afternoon sun.
His problem was that he had no compass—it was with the rest of his gear, beneath the tiles of a shack in Mansour. Using the sun and his cheap watch, he worked out as best he could the bearing from the radio tower in the town to the wadi where his motorcycle was buried.
It was a five-mile hike, slowed by the goats, but they were worth having because twice he saw soldiers staring at him from the road until he was out of sight. But the soldiers took no action.
He found the right wadi just before sundown, identifying the marks scored into the nearby rocks, and he rested until the light was gone before starting to dig. The happy goats wandered off.
It was still there, wrapped in its plastic bag, a rangy 125-cc. Yamaha cross-country motorcycle, all black, with panniers for the extra fuel tanks. The buried compass was there, plus the handgun and ammunition.
He strapped the automatic in its holster to his right hip. From then on, there would be no more question of pretense; no Iraqi peasant would be riding that machine in those parts. If he were intercepted, he would have to
