Dick Couch - Out of the Ashes

“Mr. President, we’ve seen a hell of a lot of change in the last twenty-four hours, haven’t we?”

“Almost more than any of us can absorb, Trevor, both good and bad.”

“Yes, sir, but on the good side of the equation, we now are all but certain that Syria is not going to move against us and we are not going to attack them. And that is a great relief.”

“It is. We came damn close to doing just that.”

“I know we did, Mr. President,” Harward replied. “Chase Williams’s counsel was spot on. We owe him and his organization a great deal.”

“Did you listen in on my call to President Shaaban of Syria. I hope I handled it properly. We didn’t want to come across as overly apologetic.”

“No, sir, I think you handled that well. We were misled. You conveyed that without surrendering our right to protect our forces in international waters. Also I think putting Secretary of State Green on an airplane to Syria as early as you did will go a long way toward mending that fence.”

“I’d be a damned sight better off if we knew why this ruse got pulled in the first place. When we actually get inside that blockhouse where we think the missiles are and get our two people out of Saudi Arabia, I’ll breathe a lot easier.”

“I know, Mr. President, Chase has briefed me on their operation to rescue them.” Harward paused to look at this watch. “His JSOC team will be on target soon. We’ll know more shortly, but until then, there’s nothing we can do but focus on what the Iranians might be doing.”

“Tell me again why we don’t have our forces stop the Iranians from mining the Strait of Hormuz.”

“They haven’t done anything yet, Mr. President. If we blasted those Islamic Revolutionary Guard dhows in their ports, Iran would just say they were conducting an exercise.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good enough answer, Trevor.”

“That’s the Central Command commander’s assessment, Mr. President. Would you like me to set up another VTC with him?”

“Yes, but not yet. One thing at a time; let’s hold off until Chase’s people are on the ground and we have some resolution in Saudi Arabia.”

For a moment, it didn’t look like it was going to happen. Laurie had waited until the Saudis were within forty yards of their position before she took her first shot. That got their attention. The fact that at least one of the two women was armed caused Jawad Makhdoom to change his strategy. Caution was now the watchword and he deployed his men in a large circle around the women, preventing any chance of escape as well as dividing their attention.

Laurie had fired several more times. She never scored a hit, but the men now advanced more cautiously. The fact that she didn’t hit them frustrated her. Every Marine a rifleman was the mantra she had lived by in the Corps. However, it had been years since she had fired a weapon, and at the range she was dealing with, a rifle was the weapon of choice, not a pistol. The armed men crawled and dashed toward the two women as one or the other of them provided covering fire. Laurie rose again to fire but all she heard was click . She was out of ammo, and she thought they knew it.

The CH-130H Combat Talon II streaked across the desert floor at one hundred feet at its top speed of three hundred miles per hour. The terrain-following radar kept the SPECOPS aircraft off the deck, but it was a rough ride. Volner and his team were alternately pushed into their seats or lifted into their restraints. They had just crossed into Saudi airspace and were trying to stay under the prying eyes of the Saudi’s radar warning system.

Volner was on the aircraft’s internal comm system and heard the pilot tell him they were ten minutes out. He turned to the sixteen men, eight strapped to each side of the aircraft’s cabin just forward of the tail ramp, and keyed his KY-152 team radio. “Ten minutes. Ten minutes!”

Each man held up ten fingers, indicating they knew and understood.

Jawad Makhdoom was no hero. He was anything but heroic. However, he was close enough to where Laurie and Sandee crouched behind the sand dune to see Laurie rise and aim her pistol without firing. He had also seen the panicked look on her face. He stood, raised his right arm, moved it in an emphatic circle, and as he did, charged the small dune. His men followed suit.

It wasn’t a fight; it was little more than a scuffle. Seven armed men against two unarmed women, one of whom had a broken arm. Soon Laurie and Sandee were bound, gagged, and being marched at gunpoint toward the blockhouse.

My God, Laurie thought as she felt the muzzle of a rifle dig into her back, what have you done now?

Mike Volner’s men lined up in two files of eight, both facing the rear of the Combat Talon II C-130H. On command they clipped their static lines to the wire cable that ran down each side of the aircraft. The C-130H had climbed to nine hundred feet, as low as they dared to safely make the jump with their modified, low-altitude parachutes.

“Check equipment!” shouted the Combat Talon jumpmaster above the din of the aircraft’s four Allison T-56-A-15 turboprop engines. Each man checked the man in front of him.

The top door and lower cargo ramp at the rear of the C-130H yawned open. As they did, the howling wind competed with the bird’s engines to envelop them in ear-splitting noise. The sixteen men inched forward toward the end of the ramp, awaiting the jump order.

“GET READY!” the jumpmaster shouted. Then he yelled, “GREEN LIGHT! GO! GO! GO!”

The two files of jumpers raced toward the open bay of the aircraft and leapt into space, each jumper in a tight body position. In the wake of the Combat Talon, two strings of parachutes blossomed above the desert floor below.

Inside the blockhouse, Jawad Makhdoom and one of his men, the only other man who spoke English reasonably well, were trying to extract information from their two captives. “I will ask you again. Why were you flying over our desert?” Makhdoom barked at Sandee Barron. He was sitting just inches away from where she was bound in a straight backed chair.

“I told you already. We got lost on a flight back to USS Ship. ”

“What is the name of this ship,” shouted the other man. “What ship is it?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Sandee replied, determined to hold her ground. “As you can see from my flight suit, I am a U.S. Navy pilot and our country is allied with yours. In the spirit of friendship and our alliance, I demand you contact the American embassy.”

Sandee had determined the “name, rank, and serial number” answer prescribed in the U.S. Code of Conduct wasn’t the right response for this situation. She would give them something, but not everything.

“You demand! You had no right to fly over our country,” Makhdoom shouted, and as he did he slapped Sandee, hard, across her face.

“And you had no right to shoot us out of the sky!” Sandee shot back.

“We have every right. This is our country; now tell us what we want to know. Why were you flying over us?”

“Are you a Saudi soldier? Do you serve in the Saudi armed forces? If so, I demand to speak with your commanding officer.”

Makhdoom paused a moment, not knowing how to answer this, then hit her hard across the mouth. “My commanding officer will be here very soon,” he spat, and hit her again.

The Saudis were not trained interrogators and clumsy in their demands, but Jawad Makhdoom wanted to extract as much information as he could before Ali al-Wandi arrived, and the prince could only be minutes away. Makhdoom knew Sandee’s right arm was broken. He grabbed her just above the right elbow and squeezed. “Tell me!” he shouted. The pain nearly overwhelmed her, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. A thin rivulet of blood ran down her chin and onto her flight suit.