nothing he could do about it.
The helicopter had cleared the trees and was flying directly toward the center of the dam. He saw a man raise the machine gun so that it was pointed in his direction, On the pilot's side of the helicopter, the rotary cannon was pointed lower.
'They are out of their minds!' Mustafa yelled.
The Turk turned and started running back the way he'd come. The helicopter was less than two hundred yards away and moving in fast. He could feel the gun on him. He felt it the way any battle-seasoned soldier felt danger, by God whispering into his ear and fear tightening his groin.
Without breaking his stride, Mustafa suddenly threw himself to his right, toward the water. He hit it hard and his boots quickly filled with water. But even as he'd jumped he'd heard the machine gun spit death. As he brought his knees toward him and struggled to undo the laces, Mustafa thanked God for having spoken to him.
His lungs ached as he worked on his shoes. His eyes were open, and he saw the bubbly trails of the bullets as they slashed around him. A few came perilously close, and Mustafa gave up on the shoes. He swam to the wall of the dam, dug his fingers into the spaces between the stones, and crept up the sloping side. He stopped just below the surface and lay with his belly against the wall. He heard the muffled roar of the guns as the helicopter bore down. The dam shook beneath him, but at least he felt safe here. He wondered how his coworkers were doing. The fire didn't seem directed at them, and he hoped they were all right. He also hoped that the men in the helicopter didn't make a second pass. He didn't know what they hoped to accomplish with this attack, and he began to fear for the security of the dam.
When he could hold his breath nn longer, he turned his face upwards and poked his mouth from the water. He sucked down air — and immediately lost it as something punched him hard in the belly.
TEN
Mike Rodgers began to doubt that the attack would ever materialize.
The assault of watermelon and manure that the Turkish Security Forces had warned about was probably a fiction. Rodgers's sixth sense told him that the TSF had invented the warning in order to send Seden out here to observe them. Not that the colonel was a fraud. The colonel had asked his headquarters for aerial reconnaissance of the chopper. The request had been rushed through channels, and the Air Force was getting ready to launch a pair of F-4 Phantoms from a base east of Ankara. What Colonel Seden told Rodgers coincided exactly with the clandestine translation Rodgers had run.
Of course, the whole thing could be a setup, Rodgers thought with an intelligence officer's natural and healthy skepticism. The TSF might just want to see how the helicopter and F-4s registered on state-of-the-art ROC equipment. Perhaps they'd report their findings to the Israeli military, with whom they had a partnership. In exchange for mutual naval support and continued upgrades of aging Turkish jet fighters, the Israelis would have access to Turkish air space. The two nations would also share intelligence. Knowing the capabilities of the ROC, Tel Aviv might deny Op-Center the freedom to use it there. Or conversely, they might press to have access to it. First, however, they had to know what it could do.
Not that any of this would change the way Rodgers conducted his business. To the contrary. There was nothing in the Regional Op-Center that Rodgers worried about Seden seeing. The general had erased the translated conversation the colonel had had with TSF headquarters, and the On-Line Mole program had been shut down before he arrived. The ROC capacities on view were sophisticated but not revolutionary. Indeed, Rodgers would welcome a report from Seden to his superiors that TSF secrets and military data were safe. That would make it easier to bring the ROC back into Turkey and get the facility into other NATO countries. As Rodgers had told Mary Rose while they waited for Seden to arrive, being informed enabled a team leader to craft an appropriate intelligence, military, or diplomatic response. It allowed a leader to feed the party line to an enemy or even to an ally. It was being caught by surprise that was dangerous.
And now they waited for the F-4s to report back. Though Colonel Seden had been offered the relatively comfortable driver's seat up front, he graciously declined. He stood at ease and spent most of the time gazing out the front window. Only occasionally did he wander over to check the helicopter's progress. Rodgers noticed that when he did he no longer looked vaguely put out to be there. His eyes were alert and very interested.
Because he is a loyal Turk, Rodgers wondered, or because he is not?
For her part, Mary Rose clearly wished that Seden would leave. Rodgers knew that she had other programs to test-run. But Rodgers had E-mailed her from his station and told her to wait. Instead of working, she brought up one of the war simulations Mike Rodgers kept on file for relaxation. In alarmingly quick succession, the young woman lost the Battle of San Juan Hill for Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders in 1898, helped El Cid bungle the siege of Valencia during the war with the Moors in 1094, and enabled the formerly victorious George Washington to be defeated by the Hessians at Trenton in 1776.
'That's the value of simulations,' Rodgers told her. 'It lets you appreciate how large the shoes of those giants really are.'
Seden watched Mary Rose fight the last battle during her 'break,' and seemed vaguely amused. Then he turned. He happened to glance at the helicopter display on Rodgers's monitor when the green screen began turning blue. The color was changing from the center out. The helicopter remained an orange silhouette in the center of the screen.
'General?' Seden said with real urgency.
Rodgers looked over. 'Temp flux,' he said urgently. 'Something just happened out there.'
Mary Rose turned around as the blue spread to the corners of the monitor. 'Whoa,' she said. 'Something that's generating a lot of cold in a hurry. This grid is over a mile square.'
Seden bent closer. 'General, are you sure it's cold and not heat?' he asked. 'Could the helicopter have dropped a bomb?'
'No,' Rodgers said. He was bent over the keyboard, quickly punching keys. 'If it had dropped a bomb, the screen would have gone red.'
'But what could have chilled so much air so quickly?' Mary Rose asked. 'That's gone down from seventy-eight to fifty-odd degrees. A cold air mass wouldn't move in that fast.'
'No, it wouldn't,' Rodgers said. He consulted his meteorological database, then looked at a computerized geophysical chart. He called up a four-mile-square view of the region and asked the satellite to give him specific heat readings.
The helicopter was a step-five AHL — average heat level. That meant it generated a heat signature where the engine was one hundred degrees, plus or minus five. Anything at that heat level showed up orange on the monitor. Above it was a step-six red or a step-seven black. Below it was a step-four green, a step-three blue, a step-two yellow, or a step-one white, which was freezing.
According to the geophysical chart, the mean ground temperature of this region around the Euphrates was sixty-three degrees. That fell within the step-four levels they had been showing. Step three started at fifty-three degrees. Whatever was happening out there was pulling the temperature down at least ten degrees at a speed of forty-seven miles an hour.
'I don't understand,' Seden said. 'What is it that are we seeing?'
'A massive cooling around the Euphrates,' Rodgers said. 'According to the anemometer simulation, that's almost strong gale speeds. Are gales possible out there?'
'I've never heard of any,' Seden said.
'I didn't think so,'said Rodgers. 'Besides, a wind like that would've taken out the helicopter.'
'But if it isn't air, ' Seden said, 'what is it?'
Rodgers looked at the screen. There was only one explanation, and it made him sick to contemplate it. 'My guess is it's water,' he said. 'I'm going to notify Op-Center. I think, Colonel, that someone just punched a hole in the Ataturk Dam.'
