Page 183

Chapter 22

“It’s there,” said Mike Martin two hours later.

“Where?” asked Colonel Beatty with genuine curiosity.

“In there somewhere.”

In the conference room down the corridor from the Black Hole, Martin was leaning over the table studying a photograph of a larger section of the Jebal al Hamreen range. It showed a square five miles by five miles. He pointed with his forefinger.

“The villages, the three villages—here, here, and here.”

“What about them?”

“They’re phony. They’re beautifully done, they’re perfect replicas of the villages of mountain peasants, but they’re full of guards.”

Colonel Beatty stared at the three villages. One was in a valley only half a mile from the middle of the three mountains at the center of the frame. The other two occupied terraces on the mountain slopes farther out.

None was big enough to support a mosque; indeed, they were little more than hamlets. Each had its main and central barn for the storage of winter hay and feed, and smaller barns for the sheep and goats.

A dozen humble shacks made up the rest of the settlements, mud-brick dwellings with thatch or tin roofs of the kind that can be seen anywhere in the mountains of the Middle East. In summer there might be small patches of tilled crops nearby, but not in winter.

Life in the mountains of Iraq is harsh in winter, with slanting bitter rain and scudding clouds. The notion that all parts of the Middle East are warm is a popular fallacy.

“Okay, Major, you know Iraq, I don’t. Why are they phony?”

“Life-support system,” said Martin. “Too many villages, too many peasants, too many goats and sheep.

Not enough forage. They’d starve.”

“Shit,” said Beatty with feeling. “So damn simple.”

“That may be, but it proves Jericho wasn’t lying, or mistaken again. If they’ve done that, they’re hiding something.”

Colonel Craig, commanding officer of the 22nd SAS, had joined them in the basement. He had been talking quietly to Steve Laing. Now he came over.

“What do you reckon, Mike?”

“It’s there, Bruce. One could probably see it—at a thousand yards with good binoculars.”

“The brass wants to put a team in to mark it. You’re out.”

“Bullshit, sir. These hills are probably alive with foot patrols. You can see there are no roads.”

“So? Patrols can be avoided.”

“And if you run into any? There’s no one speaks Arabic like me, and you know it. Besides, it’s a HALO

drop. Helicopters won’t work either.”

“You’ve had all the action you need, so far as I can gather.”

“That’s crap, too. I haven’t seen any action at all. I’m fed up with spooking. Let me have this one. The others have had the desert for weeks, while I’ve been tending a garden.”

Colonel Craig raised an eyebrow. He had not asked Laing exactly what Martin had been up to—he would not have been told anyway—but he was surprised one of his best officers had been posing as a gardener.

“Come back to the base. We can plan better there. If I like your idea, you can have it.”

Before dawn, General Schwarzkopf had agreed there was no alternative and given his consent. In that cordoned-off corner of the Riyadh military air base that was the private preserve of the SAS, Martin had outlined his ideas to Colonel Craig and had been given the go-ahead.