The Red Horseman

25

Rita was wearing the headset and listening to the radio traffic and conversation between the two pilots as they approached the Samarra air base through the southern corridor. Two sanitary corridors had been hacked through the Iraqi defenses by the allied jets and attack helicopters, which had pulverized every antiaircraft weapon and fire-control radar that they could locate.

Still, there was no way that the gunships could kill every Iraqi with a rifle, so Rita and the people in the chopper with her were wearing flak vests and sitting on extra ones. They were also trying to make themselves very small.

You hunch up, move self-consciously into the fetal position, and you wait. You wait for that random bullet to find your flesh.

Those bullets were out there zinging through the darkness. Occasionally one struck the helicopter. Several times Rita thought she could feel the delicate thump and once the pilot commented. Fortunately the helicopter was flying perfectly with all its equipment functioning as it should.

Still you draw your legs up and tuck your hands under the flak vest and wait for random death. The seconds tick by. You become aware of the beating of your heart. Stimulated by adrenaline, your mind wanders uncontrollably.

Violent death happens to other people — it won’t happen to me. No bullet will rip my flesh or open arteries or smash bone or tear through that delicate mass of neurons and brain cells that makes me me. No.

She was focused inward, waiting, when she heard the pilot gag and felt the chopper pitch abruptly sideways. The copilot cursed.

“Let go of the stick, Bill! Goddamn, let go of the fucking stick!”

Standing in the door, Rita reached over the pilot slumped in the right seat. He had a death grip on the stick. The bucking chopper threw her off balance.

“Unstrap him,” the copilot urged Rita over the ICS. “Get him out of the seat. Bill, leggo the fucking stick!”

She released the shoulder Koch fittings of the pilot’s harness and leaned forward for the lap fittings. The cyclic stick and his hand were right there. The copilot was wrestling the cyclic with both hands. The chopper was bucking. Rita grabbed.

“Get him outta the seat,” the copilot demanded.

She released one lap fitting and fumbled for the other. The dying man was jerking the cyclic stick and the machine was obeying. Rita lost her footing. She regained it and hung herself over the back of the seat.

There. He was no longer attached to the seat.

“Get him out!”

Rita grabbed his shoulders and pulled. Oh God, he was heavy.

She braced herself and gave a mighty heave.

The pilot came half out of the seat but he still kept his death grip on the cyclic stick.

His helmet, with the wires. She tore it off his head.

She grabbed him again, two handfuls of harness, braced her right leg against the back of the seat and pulled with all her strength.

He came out of the seat and Rita kept pulling and the two of them tumbled backward into the passenger compartment, the wounded pilot on top.

She fumbled for her flashlight. The beam showed blood. He was shot in the face. His eyes were unfocused, blood flowing.

“He took a bullet in the face,” she told the copilot.

“Five minutes. We’ll be on the ground in five minutes. Keep him alive.”

How do you keep a man alive who has been shot an inch under the right eye?

Then she realized that the convulsions had stopped. He was limp. Rita Moravia found a wrist and felt for his pulse. Still a flicker.

Since there was nothing else to do, she cradled him in her arms and hugged him.

How long Jack Yocke lay in the sandy dirt he didn’t know. The noise of the helicopters and the explosions and concussions that reached him through the earth finally subsided, so he levered himself from the ground and began walking. He walked until the exhaustion hit him, then he sat down in the sand beside a runway. He was sitting there unable to summon the energy to move when he heard the crunch of a boot in the sand.

Yocke grabbed his weapon and ran his fingers over the action, trying to brush off the sand.

“Hey, shipmate! What’re you doing out here?”

“Uh…” Relief flooded Yocke and he tried to collect his thoughts. He gestured toward the fence, back there somewhere behind him. “His chute didn’t open. Murphy. His name was Murphy.”

The man came over for a look.

“You’re one of the SEALs, right?”

“No, but I jumped with them.”

“Better get over to the hangar. We’re setting up a perimeter along the fence.”

“There’s mines on the other side.”

“You came down in town?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How bad are you hurt? You got a lot of blood on you.”

“Most of it isn’t mine.”

“Medic over by the hangar. Move along now, buddy.”

“Where?”

The sailor pointed.

“Thanks.”

Yocke placed his weapon in the crook of his arm and began walking. He had gone about ten paces when the man behind him called, “Better move it on out, shipmate, because the main wave of Blackhawks are overdue. They’re going to land right here. Fact is, I can hear ’em now.”

In spite of his exhaustion and all the gear he was still wearing, Jack Yocke dutifully broke into a trot. When he too heard the swelling whine of the oncoming engines his gait became a run.

Yocke paused by the door of the hangar and watched four Blackhawks settle in and disgorge more troops. The men came pouring out just before the wheels hit the runway, then the choppers were gone in a blast of rotor wash and noise. Choppers with underslung artillery pieces were next. When the slings were released, these machines also kissed the earth and more men came out running, then they were gone.

The choppers brought machine guns, ammo, artillery, antitank weapons, com gear, and men, many men. By the time the fourth wave came in, the artillery pieces from the first wave were banging off rounds toward the east.

Above him three huge choppers materialized in the darkness — Sky Cranes, with pallets under their bellies.

Jack Yocke turned his back and went through the hangar door.

The first things he saw inside were the missiles. The long, white pointed cylinders still wore red stars on their flanks. He stood for several seconds staring before he saw the warheads — yes, those things were warheads — sitting on wooden forklift flats. He began to count.

Thirty-two of them. And missiles sporting red stars.

And against the far wall, a missile on another truck, but this one was different — it had Arabic script on the side near the nose and sported a black, white and red flag. A Scud!

In front of the Scud launcher stood a row of Iraqis with their hands up. Several SEALs and U.S. soldiers guarded them.

He was still standing there inspecting the warheads, taking it all in, when a group of people came trotting through the door with Captain Collins in the lead. Yocke recognized the British soldier, Jocko West, who was carrying a box of something. Another of the men was Rheinhart. West and Rheinhart immediately opened and began unpacking the box they had slung between them. Jack stayed behind Collins and watched as the muffled noise of war thudded through the hangar.

“The hot stuff is still in these warheads,” Collins said to Colonel Galvano, who was busy with a radiation counter.

“There is much background radiation, Comandante.”

“I’ll bet these idiots didn’t even hose down these weapons when they brought them here,” Jocko West muttered, then added, “Let’s open the hangar doors and start loading these things.”

Yocke wandered over to look at the prisoners. Most of them were Iraqis, but several were Russians. They didn’t look happy. One of the Russians was trying to talk to an American soldier in English. “I go, da? With you? You take us?”

“Keep your hands where I can see them, Boris.”

“Seen Admiral Grafton, soldier?” Yocke asked.

“He’s in one of those offices behind the missiles,” the soldier said.

Yocke thanked him and walked in the indicated direction. One of the office doors was open. Yocke stepped in.

“Didn’t fit. They’re too big,” Spiro Dalworth was telling Jake Grafton. Three Russians sat in chairs. “They cannot be made to fit without completely altering the structure of the missile.” More Russian. “Hussein shot two of our men. Shot with a pistol, one bullet each. In the head. He told us we would make the warheads fit.”

“Are these all the warheads and missiles? Have the Iraqis taken any of the warheads anywhere else?” Jake asked this question and Dalworth spewed it out in Russian.

“Nyet.”

“All the weapons are here.”

Toad moved over beside Yocke. “You look like one of Dracula’s afternoon snacks,” Toad whispered. “If all that blood is yours you must be a couple quarts low.”

Jack Yocke just shook his head. “What’s happening?”

“It was screwed up from the beginning,” Toad muttered. “The warheads are out of bigger, heavier Soviet missiles. Saddam wanted them installed in the Scuds but they wouldn’t fit. World-class problem solver that he is, he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“So he shot two Russians?”

“To motivate the others. Terrific leadership technique, huh?”

“How about the missiles they have sitting out there? Why didn’t he roll them out and tell the world to kiss its ass good-bye?”

Toad leaned closer to Yocke’s ear. “Those missiles don’t have any guidance systems. Oh, the warheads are there, the fuel and all the rest of it. But without guidance systems…”

And Jack Yocke nodded. Russia, the land where nothing works, where shortages are endemic. It was sort of funny, really. Saddam, The Awesome, makes a sharp deal and the Russians give him the shaft.

“Can I print this?”

“That’s up to the admiral.”

“This whole…thing, a goddamn fuck-up?”

“Sometimes the best-laid plans…”

A half-million Russians dead, another half-million or million or two million doomed, Americans dying outside, Iraqis…all because some Russian politicians desperately needed money and Saddam Hussein wants to be the Arab Stalin!

And he himself had just killed two men. So he could go on breathing and write the big stories…about how fucked up the world is!

Yocke walked over to a corner and plopped down. Suddenly he had a raging thirst. He got out his canteen and took a long drink, then another. He was nursing the water and listening to the translators when the first television crew arrived. The camera man was dragging the end of a cable, which went out the door. Another man set up some lights.

“Can we film in here?” the reporter asked Grafton.

“Have right at it,” the admiral said, and got out of his chair. “Interview these Russians.” Jake gestured at Toad. The two of them left the room together.

There was a massive steel beam that formed an angle with one of the upright supports on the wall. Staring at it and listening to the CNN reporter’s breathless delivery into the camera, Jack Yocke got an idea. He removed the magazine from his weapon. Then he wedged the silencer and barrel of the piece into the junction of the beam and angular support. Now he pulled with all his might. He paused, braced his feet, then put his weight into it. The barrel bent. With sweat popping on his forehead he made a supreme effort. The bend got bigger. When the barrel had bent about thirty degrees the stock shattered. Yocke removed the remains of the submachine gun from the joint, inspected it, then tossed it on the floor.

Everyone was watching the television reporter interview the Russian technicians.

Jack Yocke wandered out of the room with his hands in his pockets, lost in thought.

The air base was secure. For the moment. Approximately a hundred casualties, about thirty of them fatal. The 101st Airborne assault commander wanted to be gone in three hours, at least an hour before he estimated that the Iraqis could put together an armored assault. Although he had real-time communications via satellite with headquarters in Arabia and thought he had the air power available to stop any conceivable Iraqi military effort, he didn’t want to take any more chances or casualties than he had to.

Jake Grafton listened to the report and nodded. He had no questions. The little knot of officers stood in one corner of the hangar watching technicians load the warheads onto pallets with forklifts. Through the open doors came the whine of helicopter engines at idle and the pulsating thud of turning rotors. This noise almost drowned out the distant bark of artillery, which was shelling known remnants of Iraqi forces to prevent their concentration. Almost drowned it out, but not quite.

Someone handed Jake Grafton a paper cup full of coffee. Beside him someone else lit a cigarette.

“Can you spare the rest of that pack of cigarettes?”

“Sure, Admiral.”

“And the lighter.”

The staff officer handed it over. “I didn’t know you smoked, sir.”

“I don’t.”

As he walked across the hangar Jake saw Jack Yocke standing with his hands in his pockets. He looked tired and pensive, the flesh of his face tightly drawn across the bones. “You okay?” Jake asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Come with me,” Jake said and walked on.

“I’ve seen enough,” Yocke told the admiral’s back. Jake Grafton acted like he hadn’t heard. Yocke quickened his pace to catch up. “I’ve had enough.”

The admiral didn’t even look at him. “Who hasn’t?” he muttered.

The marine guard outside the door of the room where General Yakolev and Marshal Mikhailov were being held saluted Jake as he approached. Rita Moravia was standing beside him, and she also saluted.

“Are you injured?” Jake Grafton asked. She had blood on the front of her flight suit.

“No, sir. We arrived fifteen minutes ago. Our pilot was killed by small-arms fire.”

“Is the machine airworthy?”

“I think so, sir. We took a couple of other hits, but nothing vital. They’re refueling now from a bladder that one of the Sky Crane’s brought in. We’ll be ready to leave in another fifteen minutes or so.”

“Fine. Have the Russians had anything to say?”

“No, sir. Lieutenant Dalworth is inside with them now, just in case.”

Jake nodded and opened the door. Jack Yocke followed him into the room. Dalworth stood up. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Let me have a few minutes alone with these gentlemen.”

“Yessir.”

When the door closed behind Dalworth, Jake sat down at the table across from Yakolev and passed him the pack of cigarettes and the lighter. Yocke took a chair in a corner.

“A last cigarette, Admiral?” Nicolai Yakolev muttered. He took one and offered the pack to Mikhailov, who also stuck one in his mouth.

“Perhaps. We’ll get to that.”

“At least these aren’t Russian cigarettes.”

Yakolev glanced at Yocke, who was getting out his notebook. Mikhailov concentrated on savoring his cigarette and ignored Jake. He looked exhausted, shrunken, the lines around his eyes and mouth now deeply cut slashes. He looked old. The marshal didn’t speak English, Jake remembered.

“Who is he?” Yakolev inclined his head an eighth of an inch at Yocke.

“A reporter.”

“A reporter?”

“That’s right. His specialty is news that isn’t fit to print.”

Yakolev closed his eyes. He took an experimental drag on the cigarette, sucked the smoke deep into his lungs, then exhaled through his nose.

“So explain to me, General,” Jake said, “how the hell you got yourself into this fucking mess.”

“You want the history of Russia in the twentieth century? For an American newspaper? Will this be deep background or a Sunday think-piece?”

“Just curious.”

“Another philosopher,” Yakolev said heavily. “I give you some good advice, Admiral. While you wear that uniform you cannot afford to be a philosopher, to ponder the nuances of good and evil. You do the best for your country that you can and live or die with the results. That’s what the uniform means.”

“Blowing up a reactor? Poisoning hundreds of thousands of your own countrymen? You did that for your country?”

Yakolev smoked the first cigarette in silence, then lit another off the butt of the first one and puffed several times to ensure it was lit. Under his heavy eyebrows his eyes scanned Jake Grafton’s face carefully.

“Russia is disintegrating,” the Russian general said finally. “Very soon it will be like Somalia, without government, without law, without civilization, without food for its people. We are not talking about a return to the Dark Ages, Admiral, but a return to the Stone Age. Roving bands of armed thugs, mass starvation, epidemics, a complete breakdown of the social order — to survive, future Russians will become vicious, starving rats fighting on the dung heap.”

Yakolev glanced at Mikhailov, then continued. “Already it has begun in the countryside, in the republics, in little towns in Russia that your news media does not cover, on the farms where there is no one to see the babies and old people starve, no one to watch or care as people die of pneumonia and tuberculosis. No agriculture, no food, no fuel, no transportation, no medical care, no electricity, no one to protect those who cannot protect themselves, violence leading to ethnic warfare, feuds building toward genocide — it is here now!

“In Moscow the ministries are corrupt from top to bottom. A small number of bureaucrats trade in dollars and live well while the rest of Russia — the rest of the Soviet Union — sinks deeper and deeper into the morass of starvation. This is what the future looks like when this grand scheme you call civilization collapses.”

He shifted his weight in his chair. Mikhailov said something, to which Yakolev gave a short reply. Then he turned his attention back to Jake. “You Americans, with your television eyes. You look at Yeltsin and expect him to create miracles with his mouth! Those political swine — hot air is all they are good for.”

Yakolev leaned forward and reached for another cigarette. “That is why.”

In the silence that followed, the sounds of a helicopter going overhead penetrated the room, followed by distant explosions.

“Do you have any regrets?” Jake Grafton asked when it became obvious Yakolev felt his explanation was sufficient.

“Regrets?” Yakolev said the word bitterly. “Oh, yes!” His head bobbed. “I wish the God the Communists swore did not exist had given this stupid sack of shit sitting beside me some balls. If he had had some balls we would have shot Yeltsin. We would have thrown the selfish swine out of the Congress of People’s Deputies. We would have gone through the ministries and shot every corrupt bastard that we could lay hands on. We would have hunted down the thugs terrorizing the countryside and slaughtered them like rabbits. Then we would have made the farmers grow food and the trains run and people would have had food to eat. Regrets? To watch your country die while the politicians argue and the cowards wring their hands? Yes, Admiral, I have regrets.”

“Why didn’t you shoot him first?”

“That is what I should have done.” Yakolev leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face. “Ahh, I am old and tired. I have lived too long. I have seen too much. I am ready to die.”

“The world is going to hell, so you played God.”

“You Americans have a phrase that seems a perfect reply to sanctimonious comments like that: fuck you.”

“You won’t get off that easy,” Jake Grafton said. His voice had an edge to it. “Russia is in the mess it’s in because of people like you, because czars and dictators and administrators used pens to authorize murder. ‘It had to be done.’ ‘I had to do it.’ ‘I am responsible and I know the way things have to be, so they have to die!’

“You Commie messiahs think your people are pigs. For them you have the profoundest contempt. They are too ignorant, too stupid, too blind to see what’s good for them, so they must be taken care of by wise men like you. You feed, clothe, and house them, keep them warm in the winter, and slaughter them when necessary. All for their own good. It’s just too goddamn bad they don’t understand how wonderful it is that learned, wise, responsible men like you are willing to get their hands dirty running the hog farm.”

Jake Grafton leaned forward in his chair. “What if you’re wrong?”

“We weren’t wrong.”

“Don’t give me that shit!” Grafton roared. “Lenin was wrong, Stalin was wrong, you’re wrong! I’m sick to death of you self-anointed messiahs willing to murder half the people on earth to save the other half, the half you’re in. You make me want to vomit!”

Yakolev said nothing, merely reached for another cigarette.

“We have another one out there”—Jake pointed toward the hangar bay—“ready to slaughter everyone alive who doesn’t agree with him. Now I tell you this — it’s time for all of us little people to take a page from the book of you prophets of doom and damnation.” He stared at Yakolev.

The Russian sneered. “So you brought two Russian villains to Iraq to parade in front of your cameras. The folks at home can see the dirty devils on CNN, prisoners of the victorious, virtuous Americans.”

“No. I brought you here to help me solve a problem. I need your help.”

“Help?” Yakolev laughed, a dry, vicious bark.

“As one soldier to another.”

The laughter died. Nicolai Yakolev’s face twisted again. “You tell me I have no honor, then you appeal to it.” He spit on the table, in Jake’s direction. “I am not a coward! I am not afraid of death. I do not fear a bullet.”

“I know that,” Jake said gently.

“I have two sons and a daughter. They have children.”

“A trial…”

“When?”

“You’ll know when the time comes.”

Yakolev glanced again at Jack Yocke, then shrugged. “I’ll think about it. For you personally I would do nothing.”

Jake Grafton rose from the chair and started for the door. “Come on, Jack.”

Out in the hangar bay Yocke wanted to know, “What was that all about?”

“About doing the right thing, for a change.”

“Like what?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

The room had a table in it about eight feet long. And chairs. At one end of the table sat Saddam Hussein, who glowered at Jake Grafton and Jack Yocke when they came in. He roared something in Arabic. The translator said to Jake, “He wants to know if you are in charge, sir.”

“I’m one of the officers in charge, yes,” Jake said as he motioned to the two soldiers on guard duty to leave the room.

Hussein ignored Yocke, who leaned against the wall opposite the translator, and directed his remarks at Jake. “The United States makes war upon Iraq,” the translator said. “You meddle in affairs that are none of your business.”

Hussein’s hands were bound with a single plastic tie in front of him, so he waved them, now stopped and shook his doubled-up fists: “How long, how long, until you nonbelievers stop raping our daughters? How long until you stop defiling the sacred places? How long until you leave the children of God to worship as the Prophet taught us?”

Toad came over to Jake and handed him a pistol, a 9mm automatic. “We took this off him.”

Saddam thundered on: “You violate the sovereignty of this nation, of this people. You shoot down Iraqi airplanes over Iraq, you send inspectors to hunt through our offices, you—”

Jake Grafton fired the pistol into the ceiling. The deafening report stopped the flow of words.

The spent casing slapped against the wall and fell to the floor with a tinny, metallic sound.

“I have a question,” Jake said softly to the translator. “Ask him how many Iraqis he has killed with this pistol.”

The translator did so.

Hussein sat in silence, saying nothing.

“How many Iranians?”

Silence.

“How many Kuwaitis?

“How many Kurds?

“How many Shiites?”

Unbroken silence.

“If you don’t know or can’t remember how many men you have personally murdered, perhaps you can tell me how many have died at your orders?”

Saddam Hussein’s eyes were mere slits.

“When you are dead will they hold a great funeral, or will they drag your corpse through the streets and burn it on a dung heap?”

When he heard the translation Saddam Hussein opened his mouth to speak, then apparently decided not to. He looked at the translator, at Jack Yocke, then let his gaze return to Jake Grafton.

The automatic was heavy. Jake Grafton stared at it, examined the safety, the hammer, the maker’s name stamped into the metal. Then slowly he removed his own pistol, a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver, and hefted it thoughtfully.

He laid the revolver about a foot from his right hand, then gave the automatic a gentle shove with his left. It slid down the table and came to rest about a foot or so in front of the Iraqi dictator, the barrel pointing out to one side.

“Let’s settle this right here,” Jake said. “You have killed many men — one more certainly won’t matter on Allah’s scales. And an unbeliever to boot. Go ahead! You grab for yours and I’ll grab for mine and we’ll kill each other.”

As the translator rattled this off Jake studied the Iraqi’s face. It had gone white. Beads of sweat were coalescing into little rivulets that ran down beside Hussein’s nose and dripped off his mustache. Stains were rapidly spreading across his shirt from under each armpit.

“You’ve seen cowboy movies, haven’t you? Let’s shoot it out, you simple, filthy son of a bitch.”

Hussein sat frozen. He didn’t even glance at the automatic within his grasp.

“Pick it up,” Jake Grafton roared.

Hussein sat silently while Jake regained his composure. He took several deep breaths, then said, “This is your last chance to go out like a man. The next time you will get the same chance you gave your minister of health, the same chance you give the people you send your thugs to kill, the same chance you were going to give the people those bombs out there were meant for, which is none at all. This is your only chance!”

Seconds passed. A tic developed in Hussein’s left eyelid. As the twitching became worse, he raised his hands and rubbed his eye. Finally he lowered his hands back to his lap.

Jake reached for the revolver. As he grasped it the Iraqi started visibly. The admiral rose from his chair, and holding the revolver in his right hand, retrieved the automatic. He stuck it into his belt.

After one last look at the dictator, Jake Grafton turned and left the room.

Jack Yocke had stood throughout this exchange. Now he pulled a chair away from the table and dropped into it. He got out his notebook and mechanical pencil and very carefully wrote the date on a clean sheet of paper. Beside it he wrote the dictator’s name.

He looked at Hussein, who was staring at the open door. An armed American soldier stood there gazing back at him.

Jack Yocke cleared his throat and caught the attention of the interpreter, who had also pulled up a chair. “I was wondering, Mr. President,” Yocke said, “if you’d care to grant me an interview for the Washington Post.”

Fifteen minutes later Jake Grafton came back through that door, followed by the two Russian generals. Captain Iron Mike McElroy was behind them, cradling a submachine gun in his arms. Then came a television reporter and cameraman and two technicians with lights and cables in coils over their shoulders.

Jack Yocke got out of his chair and leaned against a wall. Toad Tarkington eased in beside him, but he said nothing. Then Jack realized that Toad was holding a pistol in his hand, down beside his leg, hidden from sight.

Spiro Dalworth was also there. As the television reporter gave orders to his cameraman and the technicians discussed where to put the lights, Yocke heard Jake say to Dalworth, “Ask General Yakolev if Lieutenant Vasily Lutkin is still alive.”

“Lutkin?”

“Lutkin, the helicopter pilot. Ask him.”

Dalworth stepped over to where the general sat and asked the question in a low voice. Yakolev glanced at Jake, then shook his head from side to side. Mikhailov, Yocke noted, sat staring at the top of the table in front of him.

The television types opened a discussion of lighting and camera angles. Later, when he tried to recall exactly what had happened, Jack Yocke was never sure of the sequence. He remembered that someone else from a television crew came in carrying a floodlight and several people began looking for plugs. Another cameraman came in and his helper began unrolling cable.

The television reporter was talking to Admiral Grafton about the possibility of moving the news conference out into the hangar bay so they could use one of the missiles for a backdrop when Toad went over to where General Yakolev sat. Yocke caught that out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t pay much attention.

Toad must have laid the pistol on the table in front of Yakolev, because he was standing there opening a pocketknife — probably to cut the plastic ties around the Russian’s wrists — when Yakolev elbowed him hard and he fell away, off balance.

“No!” Yocke yelled, almost as the first shot hammered his eardrums. Mikhailov’s head went sideways — a bullet right above the ear. Then Yakolev was shooting at Saddam Hussein.

Boom, boom, boom — the pistol’s trip-hammer reports were painfully magnified in the confines of the room.

The Iraqi dictator came half out of his chair on the first shot into Mikhailov, so he took the next three standing up, at a distance of about ten feet. A burst of silenced submachine gun fire followed the pistol shots almost instantly. Yakolev went face forward onto the table as Saddam Hussein fell back into his chair and the chair and the body went over backward with a crash. The whole sequence didn’t take more than three or four seconds.

“Shit, I think they’re all dead.” Tarkington’s voice. He stood and slowly looked around.

Jake Grafton got up from the floor and examined the Russians. Yocke tried to recall when Jake went down and couldn’t.

“Yakolev is dead,” Jake said. “Mikhailov is still breathing. One right above the left ear. I don’t think he’s gonna make it, but…Dalworth, go get a medic.”

Yocke pushed by the horrified Iraqi interpreter, who stood frozen with his hands half-raised. Toad was bending over the body of the dictator, which was lying on its side. Toad rolled him over. Saddam had three holes in his chest, one in the left shoulder, one dead center, and the other a little lower down. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling. Toad released a wrist and announced, “No pulse.”

Saddam Hussein was as dead as Petty Officer Murphy…and that Iraqi Jack Yocke had knifed in Samarra, the soldier with the rifle he had mowed down. Dead.

Toad Tarkington stood looking down at Saddam’s face as he folded his pocketknife and dropped it into a pocket. He held the pistol Yakolev had used with his left hand wrapped around the action, so the barrel and butt were both visible. That looks like Saddam’s pistol, Yocke thought, but he couldn’t be sure.

Toad glanced up and met the reporter’s gaze.

Jack Yocke took a last look at the Iraqi dictator, then walked for the door. McElroy was replacing the magazine in his weapon. He didn’t bother to look at Yocke as he went by.

Out in the hangar bay the reporter ran into another television crew, this one still shooting footage of soldiers loading nuclear warheads onto pallets and the pallets into helicopters.

“Were those shots we heard in there? What happened?” The reporter shoved a microphone at him.

“Saddam Hussein is dead,” Jack Yocke said slowly. “A Russian general killed him.”

“Holy…! C’mon, Harry, grab the lights. Ladies and gentlemen, we are broadcasting live from the Iraqi base at Samarra and we have just learned that Saddam Hussein is dead! Stay with us while—”

Yocke walked on through the hangar and went outside. One of the Sky Cranes was lifting off with a Russian missile slung beneath.

The rotors created a terrific wind that almost lifted Yocke’s helmet off. He watched the machine transition into forward flight and disappear into the darkness.