Frederick Forsyth - The Afghan

The Eagle had attempted to fly for a few seconds after its crew had ejected it. It turned its nose up, wallowed, tilted over, resumed its dive and, as it entered the cloud bank, simply blew up. The flames had reached the fuel tanks. As the Eagle disintegrated, both its engines tore themselves from their housing and fell away. Twenty thousand feet below, each engine-five tons of blazing metal roaring down at five hundred miles per hour-hit the Cascades. One engine destroyed twenty trees. The other did more.

The CIA special ops officer who commanded the garrison at the Cabin took over two minutes to regain consciousness and pull himself off the floor of the chow room where he had been eating lunch. He was dazed and felt sick. He leaned against the wall of the log cabin amid the swirling dust and called out some names. He was answered with groans. Twenty minutes later, he had made his inventory. The two men playing pool in the game room were dead. Three others were injured. The lucky ones had been those outside on a hiking break. They had been a hundred yards away when the meteorite, as they thought, hit the Cabin. When they had confirmed that, of twelve CIA staffers, two were dead, three needed emergency hospitalization, the two hikers were fine and the other five badly shaken, they checked on the prisoner.

They would later be accused of being slow on the uptake, but the inquiry found in the end that they were justified in looking out for themselves first. A glance through the spy hole into the Afghan’s room revealed there was too much light in there. When they burst in, the door from the living area to the walled exercise court was open. The room itself, being of reinforced concrete, had survived intact.

The wall of the compound was not so lucky. Concrete or not, the falling Fioo jet engine had taken a five-foot chunk out of the wall before ricocheting into the garrison quarters. And the Afghan was gone.

AS THE GREAT AMERICAN sea trap closed around the Philippines, Borneo and eastern Indonesia, all the way across the Pacific to the U.S. coast, the Countess of Richmond slipped out of the Flores Sea, through the Lombok Strait between Bali and Lombok and into the Indian Ocean. Then she turned due west for Africa.

The distress call from the dying Eagle had been heard by at least three listeners. McChord AFB, of course, had it all on tape, because they had actually been talking to the crew. The Naval Air Station at Whidbey Island, north of McChord, also kept a listening watch on channel 16, and so did the U.S. Coast Guard unit up at Bellingham. Within seconds of the call, they were in contact, saying they were standing by to triangulate on the positions of the downed aircrew.

The days of pilots bobbing helplessly in a dinghy or lying in a forest waiting to be found are long gone. Modern aircrew have a life jacket with a state-of-the-art beacon, small but powerful, and a transmitter that permits voice communication.

The beacons were picked up at once, and the three listening posts had the men located within a few yards. Major Duval was down in the heart of the state park, and Captain Johns had fallen in a logging forest. Both were still closed for access due to the winter.

The cloud cover right on top of the trees would prevent extraction by helicopter, the fastest and the favored way. The cloud bank would force an old-fashioned rescue. Off-road vehicles or half-track vehicles would take the rescue parties in as near as possible; from there to the downed airman, it would be muscle and sweat all the way.

The enemy now was hypothermia, and in the case of Johns, with his broken leg, trauma. The sheriff of Whatcom County radioed to say he had deputies ready to move, and they would rendezvous in the small town of Glacier on the edge of the forest within thirty minutes. They were nearest to the Wizzo, Nicky Johns, with his broken leg. A number of the loggers lived around Glacier, and knew every logging road through the forest. The sheriff was given Johns’s exact position within a few yards and set off.

To keep up the injured man’s morale, McChord patched the sheriff right through to the communicator on the Wizzo’s life jacket so that the sheriff could encourage the airman as they came nearer and nearer. The Washington State Parks service opted for Major Duval. They had experience to spare; every year, they had to pull out the occasional camper who slipped and fell. They knew every road through the park, and, where the roads ran out, every trail. They went in with snowmobiles and quad bikes. Since their man was not injured, a full stretcher would not be necessary. But as the minutes ticked by, the body temperature of the airmen started slowly to drop, and faster with Johns, who could not move.

The race was on to bring the two men gloves, boots, Space blankets and piping-hot soup before the cold beat them to it. Nobody told the rescue parties-because nobody knew-that there was another man out in the wilderness that day, and he was very dangerous indeed.

The saving grace for the CIA team at the shattered Cabin was that their communications had survived the hit. The commander only had one number to call, but it was a good one. It went on a secure line to the desk of DDO Marek Gumienny at Langley. Three time zones east, just after four p.m., he took the call.

As he listened, he went very quiet. He did not rant or rave, even though he was being told of a major Company disaster. Before his junior colleague in the Cascade wilderness had finished, he was analyzing the catastrophe. In freezing temperatures, the two corpses might have to wait awhile. The three injured needed urgent CASEVAC. And the fugitive had to be hunted down. “Can a helo get in there to reach you?” he asked.

“No, sir, we have cloud right to the treetops, and threatening more snow.”

“What is your nearest town with a track leading to it?” “It’s called Mazama. It’s outside the wilderness, but there is a fair-weather track from the town to Hart’s Pass. That’s a mile away. No track from there to here.”

“You are a cover research facility, understand? You have had a major accident. You need urgent help. Raise the sheriff at Mazama, and get him to come in there for you with anything he has got. Halftracks, snowmobiles, off-roads-as near as possible. Skis, snowshoes and sleds for the last mile. Get those men to the hospital. Meanwhile, can you keep warm?”

“Yes, sir. Two rooms are shattered, but we have three sealed off. The central heating is down, but we are piling logs on the fire.” “Right. When the rescue party reaches you, lock everything down, smash all covert comms equipment, bring all codes with you, and come out with the injured.”

“Sir?”

“Yes.”

“What about the Afghan?”

“Leave him to me.”

Marek Gumienny thought of the original letter John Negroponte had given him at the start of Operation Crowbar. Powers plenipotentiary. No limits. Time the Army earned its tax dollars. He rang the Pentagon.

Thanks to years in the Company, and the new spirit of information sharing, he had close contacts with the Defense Intelligence Agency, and they, in turn, were best buddies with Special Forces. Twenty minutes later, he learned he might have had his first break of a very bad day.

No more than four miles from McChord Air Force Base is the Army’s Fort Lewis. Though a huge Army camp, there is a corner off-limits to nonauthorized personnel, and this is the home of the First Special Forces Group, known to its few friends as Operational Detachment (OD) Alpha 143. The terminal 3 means a mountain company, or A team. Its ops commander was Senior Captain Michael Linnett.

When the unit adjutant took the call from the Pentagon, he could not be very helpful, even though he was speaking to a two-star general. “Right now, sir, they are not on base. They are involved in a tactical exercise on the slopes of Mount Rainier.”