Whirlwind Page 59

  Great, Starke thought helplessly, how the hell do I get that organized? At least Genny and Manuela’re aboard and soon they’ll be in Al Shargaz which’s a paradise comp—

  A warning shout distracted him. Beyond the 125, coming from behind the main tower exit was the mullah Hussain with more Green Bands and they looked very hostile.

  At once Zataki forgot the passengers, unslipped his machine gun, and, carrying it loosely in one hand, moved between Hussain and the airplane. Two of his men moved alongside him, and the others moved nearer the airplane into defensive positions, covering him.

  “Stone the bloody crows,” someone muttered, “what’s up now?”

  “Get ready to duck,” Ayre said.

  “Cap’n,” Roberts whispered brokenly, “I’ve got to get on that plane, I’ve got to, my little girl’s sicker than anything, can you do something with that bastard?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Zataki was watching Hussain, hating him. Two days ago he had gone to Isfahan, invited there to consult with their secret komiteh. All eleven members had been ayatollahs and mullahs, and there, for the first time, he had found the real face of the revolution he had fought so hard to achieve and suffered so much for: “Heretics will be stamped into oblivion. We’ll have only Revolutionary Courts. Justice will be quick and final with no appeal…” The mullahs were so sure of themselves, so sure of their divine right to rule and administer justice as they alone interpreted the Koran and Sharia. Carefully Zataki had kept his horror and his thoughts to himself, but he knew that he was again betrayed.

  “What do you want, mullah?” he said, the word a curse word.

  “First I want you to understand that you have no power here—what you do in Abadan is up to the ayatollahs of Abadan—but here you have no power on this base, over these men, or this airplane.” Surrounding Hussain were a dozen armed, hard-faced youths, all Green Bands.

  “No power, eh?” Contemptuously Zataki turned his back and shouted in English, “The airplane will take off at once! All passengers get aboard!” Angrily he motioned at the pilot, waving him away, then faced Hussain again. “Well? What’s second,” he said as, behind him, the passengers hurried to obey and because the Green Bands were concentrating on Zataki and Hussain, Starke ordered Roberts to get aboard, then motioned to Ayre to help cover the escape of the mechanic. Together they helped Tyrer out of the jeep.

  Zataki toyed with his gun, all his attention on Hussain. “Well? What’s second?” he asked again.

  Hussain was nonplussed, his men equally aware of the guns trained on them. The jets came to life. He saw the passengers hurrying aboard, Starke and Ayre helping a man with bandages over his eyes up the steps, then the two pilots beside the jeep again, the jet engines building, and the instant the last man was inside, the steps came up and the airplane taxied away.

  “Well, Agha, what’s next?”

  “Next…next the komiteh of Kowiss orders you and your men to leave Kowiss.”

  Scornfully Zataki shouted to his men above the roar of the engines, his feet planted in the concrete, ready to fight if need be and die if need be, the superheated air from the fans passing him as the airplane moved toward the runway. “You hear, we are ordered to leave by the komiteh of Kowiss!”

  His men began laughing, and one of Hussain’s Green Bands, a beardless teenager on the far edge of the group, raised his carbine and died at once, almost cut in half by the accurate burst of gunfire from Zataki’s men that neatly culled him. The silence was broken only by the distant jets. Momentarily Hussain was bewildered by the suddenness and by the pool of blood that flowed out onto the concrete.

  “As God wants,” Zataki said. “What do you want, mullah?”

  It was then that Zataki noticed the petrified little boy peering out at him, hiding behind the mullah’s robes, clutching them for protection, looking so much like his own son, his eldest, that for a moment he was taken back to the happy days before the fire when all seemed right and there was some form of a future—the Shah’s White Revolution wonderful, the land reforms, curbing the mullahs, universal education, and other things—the good days when I was a father but never again. Never. The electrodes and pincers destroyed that possibility.

  A violent stab of pain in his loins soared into his head at the remembrance and he wanted to scream. But he did not, just shoved the torment back, as usual, and concentrated on the killing at hand. He could see the implacability on the mullah’s face and he readied. Killing with the machine gun pleased him greatly. The hot staccato, the gun alive in short stabbing bursts, acrid smell of cordite, the blood of the enemies of God and Iran flowing. Mullahs are enemy, and most of all Khomeini who commits sacrilege by allowing his photograph to be worshiped and his followers to call him Imam, and puts mullahs between us and God—against all the Prophet’s teachings. “Hurry up,” he bellowed, “I’m losing patience!”

  “I—I want that man,” Hussain said, pointing.

  Zataki glanced around. The mullah was pointing at Starke. “The pilot? Why? What for?” he asked, perplexed.

  “For questioning. I want to question him.”

  “What about?”

  “About the escape of the officers from Isfahan.”

  “What should he know about them? He was with me in Bandar Delam hundreds of miles away when that happened, helping the revolution against the enemies of God!” Zataki added venomously, “Enemies of God are everywhere, everywhere! Sacrilege is everywhere, idol worship practiced everywhere—isn’t it?”

  “Yes, yes, enemies abound, and sacrilege is sacrilege. But he’s a helicopter pilot, an Infidel was the pilot of the escape helicopter, he could know something. I want to question him.”

  “Not while I’m here.”

  “Why? Why not? Why won’t y—”

  “You won’t, not while I’m here, by God! Not while I’m here! Later or tomorrow or the next day, as God wills, but not now.”

  Zataki had gauged Hussain and saw in his face and eyes that he had conceded and was no longer a threat. Carefully he looked from face to face of the Green Bands surrounding the mullah but no longer detected any danger—the quick and sudden death of one, he thought without guilt, as usual controls the others. “You will want to go back to your mosque now, it is almost time for prayer.” He turned his back and walked to the jeep, knowing his men would be guarding him, beckoned Starke and Ayre, and got into the front seat, machine gun ready but not as overt as before. One by one his men retreated to their cars. They drove off.

  Hussain was ashen. His Green Bands waited. One of them lit a cigarette, all of them conscious of the body at their feet. And the blood that still seeped.

  “Why did you let them go, Father?” the little boy asked in his piping voice.

  “I didn’t, my son. We have more important things to do immediately, then we will return.”

  AT ZAGROS THREE: 12:05 P.M. Scot Gavallan was staring down the barrel of a cocked Sten gun. He had just landed the 212 after the first trip of the day to Rig Rosa delivering another full load of steel pipe and cement, and the moment he had cut the engines, armed Green Bands had rushed out of the hangar to surround him.

  Hating the fear that possessed him, he tore his gaze off the gun and looked at the black, malevolent eyes. “What’s—what d’you want?” he croaked, then said it in halting Farsi, “Cheh karbareh?”

  A flood of angry incomprehensible words came from the man with the gun.

  He pulled off his headset. “Man zaban-e shoma ra khoob nami danam, Agha!” he shouted over the whine of the engines—I don’t speak your language, Excellency—biting back the obscenity he wanted to add. More angry words and the man motioned him out of the cockpit. Then he saw Nasiri, the IranOil base manager, disheveled and bruised, being frog-marched out of the office toward the 212 by more of the Revolutionary Guards. He leaned out of the window a little. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “They—they want you out of the chopper, Captain,” Nasiri called back. “They—please hur
ry!”

  “Wait till I shut down!” Nervously Scot finished the procedure. The barrel of the Sten gun had not moved, nor had the enmity around him lessened. The rotors were slowing fast now, and when it was correct to leave, he unbuckled and got out. At once he was half shoved out of the way. Excited, shouting men pulled the cockpit door open farther, peered in, while others hauled the main cabin door open and scrambled aboard. “What the hell happened to you, Agha?” he asked Nasiri, seeing the extent of the bruises.

  “The—the new komiteh made an error,” Nasiri said, trying to maintain his dignity, “thinking I was…a Shah supporter and not a man of the revolution and the Imam.”

  “Who the hell’re these men—they aren’t from Yazdek.”

  But before Nasiri could answer, the Green Band with the Sten gun elbowed through the pack. “In office! NOW!” the man said in bad English, then reached out and grabbed Scot by the flight jacket sleeve to hurry him up. Automatically Scot jerked his arm away. A gun went into his ribs. “All right, for crissake,” he muttered and stalked off toward the office, his face grim.

  In the office Nitchak Khan, kalandar of the village, and the old mullah stood alongside the desk, their backs to the wall beside the open window. Both were set-faced. He greeted them and they nodded back, ill at ease. Behind him, many Green Bands crowded into the room after Nasiri.

  “Cheh karbareh, Kalandar?” Scot asked. What’s happening?

  “These men are…claim to be our new komiteh,” Nitchak Khan replied with difficulty. “They are sent from Sharpur to take over our…our village and our…airfield.”

  Scot was perplexed. What the village leader had said didn’t make any sense. Though Sharpur was the nearest town and had nominal jurisdiction over the area, custom had always left the Kash’kai tribesmen of the mountains to govern themselves—so long as they acknowledged the suzerainty of the Shah and Tehran, obeyed the laws, and remained unarmed and peaceful. “But you always govern—”

  “Quiet!” the leader of the Green Bands said, waving his Sten gun, and Scot saw Nitchak Khan flush. The leader was bearded, in his thirties, poorly dressed, with dark eyes that had something bad about them. He dragged Nasiri to the front of the group and rattled off more Farsi.

  “I—I am to interpret, Captain,” Nasiri said nervously. “The leader, Ali-sadr, says you are to answer the following questions. I’ve answered most but he wants…” Ali-sadr cursed him and began the questioning, reading from a prepared list, Nasiri translating.

  “Are you in command here?”

  “Yes, temporarily.”

  “What is your nationality?”

  “British. Now what the h—”

  “Any Americans here?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” Scot said at once and kept his face bland, hoping Nasiri, who knew that Rodrigues, the mechanic, was American with a false English ID, had not been asked that question. Nasiri translated without hesitation. One of the other Green Bands was writing down his answers.

  “How many pilots are here?”

  “At the moment I’m the only one.”

  “Where are the others, who are they, and what is their nationality?”

  “Our senior pilot, Captain Lochart, Canadian, is in Tehran—he’s on a charter out of Tehran, I think, expected back any day. The other, second in command, Captain Sessonne, French, had to go on an urgent charter for IranOil today to Tehran.”

  The leader looked up, his eyes hard. “What so urgent?”

  “Rig Rosa’s ready to log a new well.” He waited while Nasiri explained what this meant and that the oil drillers needed the urgent help of Schlumberger experts, now based in Tehran. This morning Jean-Luc had called their local ATC at Shiraz on the off chance for clearance to go to Tehran. To his astonishment and delight Shiraz ATC gave an immediate approval. “The Imam has decreed that oil production will begin,” they had said, “so it will begin.”

  Jean-Luc had been airborne within minutes. Scot Gavallan smiled to himself knowing the real reason why Jean-Luc did three cartwheels into the 206’s cockpit was that now he could sneak an overdue visit to Sayada. Scot had met her once. “Has she got a sister?” he had said hopefully.

  The leader listened impatiently to Nasiri, then cut in again and Nasiri flinched. “He, Ali-sadr, he says in future all flights will be cleared by him, or this man—” Nasiri pointed at the youthful Green Band who had been writing down Scot’s answers. “In future all flights will have one of their men aboard. In future no takeoffs without advance permission. In about one hour you will take him and his men to all the rigs in the area.”

  “Explain to him that it’s not possible to do that because we have to deliver more pipe and cement to Rig Rosa. Otherwise when Jean-Luc comes back tomorrow they won’t be ready in time.”

  Nasiri began to explain. The leader interrupted him rudely, and got up, “Tell the Infidel pilot to be ready in about an hour and then…even better, tell him to come with us to the village where I can watch him. You come too. And tell him to be very obedient, for though the Imam wants oil production started quickly, all persons in Iran are subject to Islamic law if they’re Iranian or not. We don’t need foreigners here,” The man glanced at Nitchak Khan. “Now we will return to our village,” he said and strode out. Nitchak Khan flushed. He and the mullah followed.

  “Captain, we are to go with him,” Nasiri said, “to the village.”

  “What for?”

  “Well, you’re the only pilot here and you know the countryside,” Nasiri said readily, wondering what the real reason was. He was very afraid. There had been no warning of any impending changes, nor were they even aware in the village that the road was open from the last snowfall. But this morning the truck with twelve Green Bands had arrived in the village. At once the leader of the “komiteh” had produced the piece of paper signed by the Sharpur Revolutionary Komiteh giving them jurisdiction over Yazdek and “all IranOil production and facilities and helicopters in that area.” When, at Nitchak Khan’s request, Nasiri had said he would radio IranOil to protest, one of the men had started beating him. The leader had stopped the man but had not apologized, nor had he shown Nitchak Khan the respect due to him as kalandar of this branch of the Kash’kai. More fear rushed through Nasiri and he wished he was back in Sharpur with his wife and family. God curse all komitehs and fanatics and foreigners and the Great American Satan who caused all our problems. “We’d…we’d better go,” he said.

  They went outside. The others were already well down the track that led to the village. As Scot passed the hangar, he saw his six mechanics collected under the watchful gaze of an armed guard. The guard was smoking and a twinge went through him. Signs in Farsi and English were everywhere: NO SMOKING—DANGER! To one side their second 212 was in its final stages of the fifteen-hundred-hour check, but without the two 206s that made up their present complement of airplanes the hangar seemed empty and forlorn. “Agha,” he said to Nasiri, nodding back at their own guards, “tell them I’ve got to make arrangements about the chopper, and order that bugger not to smoke in the hangar.”

  Nasiri did as he was asked. “They said all right, but to hurry up.” The guard who was smoking lazily flicked his cigarette onto the concrete. One of the mechanics hastily ground it out. Nasiri would have stayed but the guards motioned him onward. Reluctantly he left.

  “Tank up FBC and ground-check her,” Scot said carefully, not sure if any of the guards understood English. “In an hour I’m to take our komiteh for a state visit to the sites. It seems we’ve a new komiteh from Sharpur now.”

  “Oh, shit,” someone muttered.

  “What about the gear for Rig Rosa?” Effer Jordon asked. Beside him was Rod Rodrigues. Scot could see his anxiety.

  “That’ll have to wait. Just tank FBC, Effer, and everyone check her out. Rod,” he said to encourage the older man, “now that we’re getting back to normal, you’ll soon get your home leave in London, capito?”

  “Sure, thanks, Scot.”

  The guar
d beside Scot motioned him to go on. “Baleh, Agha—yes, all right, Excellency,” Scot said, then added to Rodrigues, “Rod, do a careful ground check for me.”

  “Sure.”

  Scot walked off, his guards following. Jordon called out anxiously, “What’s going on, and where’re you going?”

  “I’m going for a stroll,” he said sarcastically. “How the hell would I know? I’ve been flying all morning.” He trudged off feeling tired and helpless and inadequate, wishing that Lochart or Jean-Luc were there in his place. Bloody komiteh bastards! Bunch of bloody thugs.

  Nasiri was a hundred yards ahead, walking quickly, the others already vanished around the bend in the track that meandered through the trees. It was just below freezing and the snow crunched underfoot, and though Scot felt warm in his flight gear, walking was awkward in his flying boots and he clomped along moodily, wanting to catch Nasiri but unable to. Snow was banked beside the path and heavy on the trees, clear skies above. Half a mile ahead, down the curling pathway was the village.

  Yazdek was on a small plateau, nicely protected from the high winds. The huts and houses were made of wood, stone, and mud bricks and grouped around the square in front of the small mosque. Unlike most villages it was prosperous, plenty of wood for warmth in winter, plenty of game nearby, with communal flocks of sheep and goats, a few camels, and thirty horses and brood mares that were their pride. Nitchak Khan’s home was a two-story, tile-roofed dwelling of four rooms, beside the mosque and bigger than all the others.

  Next door was the schoolhouse, the most modern building. Tom Lochart had designed the simple structure and had persuaded McIver to finance it last year. Up to a few months ago the school had been run by a young man in the Shah’s Teaching Corps—the village was almost totally illiterate. When the Shah left, the young man had vanished. From time to time Tom Lochart and others from the base had given talks there—more question-and-answer sessions—partially for good relations and partially for something to do when there was no flying. The sessions were well attended by adults as well as by children, encouraged to do so by Nitchak Khan and his wife.