River, it was a long haul to the mountains near Khanaqin.
That was why there were two of them: The second had even more fuel for the journey home.
To be on the safe side, eight Eagles circled above, giving protective cover as the refueling in the meadow was carried out. Don Walker squinted upward.
“Hey, they’re my guys!” he shouted. As the two Blackhawks clattered the way back again, the Strike Eagles rode shotgun until they were south of the border.
They said farewell to each other on a wind-blasted strip of sand, surrounded by the detritus of a defeated army near the Saudi-Iraqi border. The whirling blades of a Blackhawk whipped up the dust and gravel before taking Don Walker to Dhahran and a flight back to Al Kharz. A British Puma stood farther away, to take the SAS men to their own secret cordoned base.
That evening, at a comfortable country house in the rolling downs of Sussex, Dr. Terry Martin was told where his brother had actually been since October and that he was now out of Iraq and safe in Saudi Arabia.
Martin was almost ill with relief, and the SIS gave him a lift back to London, where he resumed his life as a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Two days later, on March 3, the commanders of the Coalition forces met in a tent on a small and bare Iraqi airstrip called Safwan with two generals from Baghdad to negotiate the surrender.
The only spokesmen for the Allied side were Generals Norman Schwarzkopf and Prince Khaled bin Sultan. At the American general’s side sat the commander of the British forces, General Sir Peter de la Billiere.
Both the Western officers to this day believe that only two Iraqi generals came to Safwan. In fact, there were three.
The American security net was extremely tight, to exclude the possibility of any assassin reaching the tent in which the opposing generals met. An entire American division encircled the airfield, facing outward.
Unlike the Allied commanders who had arrived from the south by a series of helicopters, the Iraqi party had been ordered to drive to a road junction north of the airstrip. There they left their cars to transfer to a number of American armored personnel vehicles called humvees and be driven by U.S. drivers the last two miles to the airstrip and the cluster of tents where they were awaited.
Ten minutes after the party of generals entered the negotiation tent with their interpreters, another black Mercedes limousine was coming down the Basra road toward the junction. The roadblock there was commanded by that time by a captain of the U.S. Seventh Armored Brigade, all more senior officers having proceeded to the airstrip. The unexpected limousine was at once stopped.
In the back of the car was the third Iraqi general, albeit only a brigadier, bearing a black attache case. Neither he nor his driver spoke English, and the captain spoke no Arabic. He was about to radio the airstrip for orders when a jeep driven by an American colonel and bearing another in the passenger seat pulled up. The driver was in the uniform of the Green Beret Special Forces; the passenger had the insignia of G2, the military intelligence.
Both men flashed their ID at the captain, who examined the cards, recognized their authenticity, and threw up a salute.
“It’s okay, Captain. We’ve been expecting this bastard,” said the Green Beret colonel. “Seems he was delayed by a flat tire.”
“That case,” said the G2 officer, pointing at the attache case of the Iraqi brigadier who now stood uncomprehending by the side of his car,
“contains the names of all our POWs, including the missing aircrew.
Stormin’ Norman wants it, and now.”
There were no humvees left. The Green Beret colonel gave the Iraqi a rough shove toward the jeep. The captain was perplexed. He knew nothing of any third Iraqi general. He also knew his unit had recently gotten into the Bear’s bad books by having claimed to occupy Safwan when it had not achieved that objective. The last thing he needed was to call down more of General Schwarzkopf’s wrath on the Seventh Armored by detaining the list of missing American aircrew. The jeep drove away in the direction of Safwan. The captain shrugged and gestured the Iraqi driver to park with all the others.
On the road to the airstrip the jeep passed between rows of parked American armored vehicles for up to a mile. Then there was an empty section of road, before the cordon of Apache helicopters surrounding the actual negotiation area.
Clear of the tanks, the G2 colonel turned to the Iraqi and spoke in good Arabic.
“Under your seat,” he said. “Don’t get out of the jeep, but get them on—fast.”
The Iraqi wore the dark green uniform of his country. The rolled clothes beneath his seat were in the light tan of a colonel of the Saudi Special Forces. He quickly exchanged trousers, jacket, and beret.
Just before the ring of Apaches on the tarmac, the jeep peeled away into the desert, skirted the airstrip, and drove on south. On the far side of Safwan, the vehicle regained the main road to Kuwait, twenty miles away.
The U.S. tanks were on every side, facing outward. Their job was to forbid the penetration of any infiltrators. Their commanders, atop their turrets, watched one of their own jeeps bearing two of their own colonels and a Saudi officer drive out of the perimeter and away from the protected zone, so it did not concern them.
It took the jeep almost an hour to reach the Kuwait airport, then a devastated wreck, gutted by the Iraqis and covered by a black pall of smoke from the oil field fires blazing all over the emirate. The journey took so long because, to avoid the carnage of the Mutla Ridge road, it had diverted in a big sweep through the desert west of the city.
Five miles short of the airport, the G2 colonel took a hand-communicator from the glove compartment and keyed in a series of
The makeshift airport control tower was a trailer manned by Americans. The incoming aircraft was a British Aerospace HS-125.
Not only that, it was the personal airplane of the British Commander, General de la Billiere. It must have been; it had all the right markings and the right call-sign. The air traffic controller cleared it to land.
The HS-125 did not taxi to the wreckage of the airport building but to a distant dispersal point, where it made rendezvous with an American jeep. The door opened, the ladder came down, and three men boarded the twin- jet.
“Granby One, clearance for takeoff,” the traffic controller heard. He was handling an incoming Canadian Hercules with medicines for the hospital on board.
“Hold, Granby One. ... What is your flight plan?”
He meant: That was damn fast—where the hell do you think you’re going?
“Sorry, Kuwait Tower.” The voice was clipped and precise, pure Royal Air Force. The controller had heard the RAF before, and they all sounded the same—preppy.
“Kuwait Tower, we’ve just taken on board a colonel of the Saudi Special Forces. Feeling very sick. One of the staff of Prince Khaled.
General Schwarzkopf asked for his immediate evacuation, so Sir Peter offered his-own plane. Clearance takeoff, please, old boy.”
In two breaths the British pilot had mentioned one general, one prince, and one knight of the realm. The controller was a master sergeant, and good at his job. He had a fine career in the United States Air Force.
Refusing to evacuate a sick Saudi colonel on the staff of a prince at the request of a general in the plane of the British commander might not do that career any good.
“Granby One, clear takeoff,” he said.
The HS-125 lifted away from Kuwait, but instead of heading for Riyadh, which has one of the finest hospitals in the Middle East, it set course due west along the kingdom’s northern border.
The ever-alert AWACS saw it and called up, asking for its destination.
This time the pukka British voice came back explaining that they were flying to the British base at Akrotiri in Cyprus to evacuate back home a close friend and fellow officer of General de la Billiere who had been badly wounded by a land mine. The mission commander in the AWACS knew nothing of this, but wondered how exactly he should object. Have it shot down?
