Acts of War oc-4 Page 7

  Large embankment dams typically contain fifty million cubic meters of water. The volume of the Ataturk dam is eighty-five million cubic meters. Not that that mattered much to Mustafa. He couldn't see most of the water. The enormous reservoir twisted away behind artificial promontories and breakwaters. The end of it was lost in the hazy distance.

  Twice each day, at eleven in the morning and at four in the afternoon, Mustafa left his two coworkers in the small control room at the base of the dam and went looking for kids. That was when they came there to dive from the wave wall into the cool waters.

  "We know it is safe to dive here," they would always say. "There are no rocks or roots underwater here, Saa-Hib."

  They always called him their Saa-Hib, their friend, though Mustafa suspected that they were laughing at him. And even if they were sincere, he couldn't allow them to stay here and swim. If he did, the wall would be lined with children. Then the tourists would come. Soon there would be more weight on the dam than it was designed to take.

  "And then they would blame the collapse of the dam and the flooding of southern Anatolia on Mustafa Mecid," he said, running his fingers through his full brown beard.

  The fifty-five-year-old Turk was happy that he had two grown daughters. Young men were so physical. He watched his sister's children and didn't know how she coped with them. Mustafa's own poor father had sent him to the Army when he was sixteen because he was always getting into trouble with neighbors and teachers and employers. Even when Mustafa was in the Army — stationed on the Greek border near the Gulf of Saros — he made life more difficult for smugglers and undercover operatives than any Turk since His Eminence Ataturk himself. And when he married, his poor wife could hardly keep up with him. More than once she accused him of having a twin brother who crept into their bed in the middle of the night.

  Mustafa turned his face toward the skies. "I think, Blessed Lord, that you made Turkish men for the same reason you made hornets. To go here and there and to work. And in doing all of that, to stir up others and to keep them busy." Mustafa smiled brimmingly, proud of his gender and his nation.

  He walked briskly, his hiking boots crunching loudly on the walkway. Its gravel surface had been designed to deter bare feet — designed by some college engineer whose soles weren't calloused from a childhood of walking barefoot. The radio hooked to his belt hung against his right hip. From under the brim of his forest-green cap he looked north, across the reservoir. He breathed deeply as the warm breeze washed over him. Then he looked down ten feet at the waves that slapped gently against the dam. The water was choppy, clear, soothing. He stopped for a moment and enjoyed the solitude.

  And then, from the south, Mustafa heard what sounded like a motorbike. He turned and, squinted in that direction. There was no dust rising from the dirt roads of the surrounding hillsides. Yet the sound from behind the hillsides grew closer.

  Suddenly, the drone became the distinctive beating of a helicopter rotor. He tugged down the brim of his hat and looked toward the rich blue sky. Recreational fliers regularly flew over the reservoir, though of late more and more helicopters had been coming this way. Kurdish terrorists had established a presence around Lake Van and on Mount Ararat to the east, on the border with Iran. According to the radio reports, the military kept track of them by air and sometimes attacked them as well.

  Mustafa watched as a small, black helicopter shot up over the treetops. For a moment he was looking at the underbelly. Then he was staring at the front of the craft as it nosed toward him. The helicopter skimmed the green canopy, agitating the leaves as it passed over them.

  As the chopper descended, the orb of the sun was reflected in the dark cockpit windshield. Mustafa was blinded for a moment, but he could hear the drone growing louder.

  "What are they doing?" he wondered aloud.

  When the sunlight finally rolled off the windshield, Mustafa saw what they were doing. He saw, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  The helicopter had cleared the trees and was flying directly toward the center of the dam. He saw a man raise the machine gun so that it was pointed in his direction, On the pilot's side of the helicopter, the rotary cannon was pointed lower.

  "They are out of their minds!" Mustafa yelled.

  The Turk turned and started running back the way he'd come. The helicopter was less than two hundred yards away and moving in fast. He could feel the gun on him. He felt it the way any battle-seasoned soldier felt danger, by God whispering into his ear and fear tightening his groin.

  Without breaking his stride, Mustafa suddenly threw himself to his right, toward the water. He hit it hard and his boots quickly filled with water. But even as he'd jumped he'd heard the machine gun spit death. As he brought his knees toward him and struggled to undo the laces, Mustafa thanked God for having spoken to him.

  His lungs ached as he worked on his shoes. His eyes were open, and he saw the bubbly trails of the bullets as they slashed around him. A few came perilously close, and Mustafa gave up on the shoes. He swam to the wall of the dam, dug his fingers into the spaces between the stones, and crept up the sloping side. He stopped just below the surface and lay with his belly against the wall. He heard the muffled roar of the guns as the helicopter bore down. The dam shook beneath him, but at least he felt safe here. He wondered how his coworkers were doing. The fire didn't seem directed at them, and he hoped they were all right. He also hoped that the men in the helicopter didn't make a second pass. He didn't know what they hoped to accomplish with this attack, and he began to fear for the security of the dam.

  When he could hold his breath nn longer, he turned his face upwards and poked his mouth from the water. He sucked down air — and immediately lost it as something punched him hard in the belly.

  TEN

  Monday, 4:35 p.m.,

  Sanliurfa, Turkey

  Mike Rodgers began to doubt that the attack would ever materialize.

  The assault of watermelon and manure that the Turkish Security Forces had warned about was probably a fiction. Rodgers's sixth sense told him that the TSF had invented the warning in order to send Seden out here to observe them. Not that the colonel was a fraud. The colonel had asked his headquarters for aerial reconnaissance of the chopper. The request had been rushed through channels, and the Air Force was getting ready to launch a pair of F-4 Phantoms from a base east of Ankara. What Colonel Seden told Rodgers coincided exactly with the clandestine translation Rodgers had run.

  Of course, the whole thing could be a setup, Rodgers thought with an intelligence officer's natural and healthy skepticism. The TSF might just want to see how the helicopter and F-4s registered on state-of-the-art ROC equipment. Perhaps they'd report their findings to the Israeli military, with whom they had a partnership. In exchange for mutual naval support and continued upgrades of aging Turkish jet fighters, the Israelis would have access to Turkish air space. The two nations would also share intelligence. Knowing the capabilities of the ROC, Tel Aviv might deny Op-Center the freedom to use it there. Or conversely, they might press to have access to it. First, however, they had to know what it could do.

  Not that any of this would change the way Rodgers conducted his business. To the contrary. There was nothing in the Regional Op-Center that Rodgers worried about Seden seeing. The general had erased the translated conversation the colonel had had with TSF headquarters, and the On-Line Mole program had been shut down before he arrived. The ROC capacities on view were sophisticated but not revolutionary. Indeed, Rodgers would welcome a report from Seden to his superiors that TSF secrets and military data were safe. That would make it easier to bring the ROC back into Turkey and get the facility into other NATO countries. As Rodgers had told Mary Rose while they waited for Seden to arrive, being informed enabled a team leader to craft an appropriate intelligence, military, or diplomatic response. It allowed a leader to feed the party line to an enemy or even to an ally. It was being caught by surprise that was dangerous.

  And now they waite
d for the F-4s to report back. Though Colonel Seden had been offered the relatively comfortable driver's seat up front, he graciously declined. He stood at ease and spent most of the time gazing out the front window. Only occasionally did he wander over to check the helicopter's progress. Rodgers noticed that when he did he no longer looked vaguely put out to be there. His eyes were alert and very interested.

  Because he is a loyal Turk, Rodgers wondered, or because he is not?

  For her part, Mary Rose clearly wished that Seden would leave. Rodgers knew that she had other programs to test-run. But Rodgers had E-mailed her from his station and told her to wait. Instead of working, she brought up one of the war simulations Mike Rodgers kept on file for relaxation. In alarmingly quick succession, the young woman lost the Battle of San Juan Hill for Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders in 1898, helped El Cid bungle the siege of Valencia during the war with the Moors in 1094, and enabled the formerly victorious George Washington to be defeated by the Hessians at Trenton in 1776.

  "That's the value of simulations," Rodgers told her. "It lets you appreciate how large the shoes of those giants really are."

  Seden watched Mary Rose fight the last battle during her "break," and seemed vaguely amused. Then he turned. He happened to glance at the helicopter display on Rodgers's monitor when the green screen began turning blue. The color was changing from the center out. The helicopter remained an orange silhouette in the center of the screen.

  "General?" Seden said with real urgency.

  Rodgers looked over. "Temp flux," he said urgently. "Something just happened out there."

  Mary Rose turned around as the blue spread to the corners of the monitor. "Whoa," she said. "Something that's generating a lot of cold in a hurry. This grid is over a mile square."

  Seden bent closer. "General, are you sure it's cold and not heat?" he asked. "Could the helicopter have dropped a bomb?"

  "No," Rodgers said. He was bent over the keyboard, quickly punching keys. "If it had dropped a bomb, the screen would have gone red."

  "But what could have chilled so much air so quickly?" Mary Rose asked. "That's gone down from seventy-eight to fifty-odd degrees. A cold air mass wouldn't move in that fast."

  "No, it wouldn't," Rodgers said. He consulted his meteorological database, then looked at a computerized geophysical chart. He called up a four-mile-square view of the region and asked the satellite to give him specific heat readings.

  The helicopter was a step-five AHL — average heat level. That meant it generated a heat signature where the engine was one hundred degrees, plus or minus five. Anything at that heat level showed up orange on the monitor. Above it was a step-six red or a step-seven black. Below it was a step-four green, a step-three blue, a step-two yellow, or a step-one white, which was freezing.

  According to the geophysical chart, the mean ground temperature of this region around the Euphrates was sixty-three degrees. That fell within the step-four levels they had been showing. Step three started at fifty-three degrees. Whatever was happening out there was pulling the temperature down at least ten degrees at a speed of forty-seven miles an hour.

  "I don't understand," Seden said. "What is it that are we seeing?"

  "A massive cooling around the Euphrates," Rodgers said. "According to the anemometer simulation, that's almost strong gale speeds. Are gales possible out there?"

  "I've never heard of any," Seden said.

  "I didn't think so,"said Rodgers. "Besides, a wind like that would've taken out the helicopter."

  "But if it isn't air, " Seden said, "what is it?"

  Rodgers looked at the screen. There was only one explanation, and it made him sick to contemplate it. "My guess is it's water," he said. "I'm going to notify Op-Center. I think, Colonel, that someone just punched a hole in the Ataturk Dam."

  ELEVEN

  Monday, 4:46 p.m.,

  Halfeti, Turkey

  As they swept along the Euphrates, Ibrahim had peered through the waves of heat rising from Mahmoud's busy 20mm cannon. The ripples had distorted the reservoir and its mighty dam as their attack ravaged it.

  The Syrian's hands had been resting on the stock and trigger of the side-mounted machine gun. It hadn't been time for him to act, so he'd watched chunks of stone explode inward along the center of the dam, chewed up by the barrage. Though Walid kept the chopper steady, Ibrahim kept his legs braced firmly on either side of the backpack, which lay between them.

  As the helicopter flew over the dam, Ibrahim had seen one large piece of stone strike the dam engineer as he tried to surface. The blow probably hadn't been enough to kill him, though that wouldn't matter. In just a few moments the engineer would be dead.

  The helicopter had come in low over the dam, and Walid swung it around sharply for another pass. As they'd flown toward the control house, Ibrahim had peppered the structure with fire from his machine gun. Though one Turk died in the doorway, Ibrahim's task had not been to kill the occupants. It had been to keep them crouched under tables or chairs, away from the windows and from the radio. Walid hadn't wanted anyone to see is which direction they were headed when they left. If they couldn't get back to Syria, they wanted to get as close as possible before they were pursued.

  In the back seat, Hasan was tossing out strips of aluminum to jam signals from the control house. At the same time he was monitoring military communications on a radio headset. If someone in the control house did manage to get a message out, perhaps by telephone, and they were pursued, the plan was to land the helicopter and scatter. Then they would make their way individually to one of two safe houses. The huts were located in southern Anatolia on the Syrian border, run by Kurdish sympathizers.

  The helicopter had swung around for another pass. Once again Mahmoud's powerful 20mm shells had slammed against the center of the dam. Shards of stone flew in all directions as the cannon fire pounded down. The attack wasn't designed to weaken the dam. It was being used to create a foothold for the package between Ibrahim's legs.

  Now that the moment was nearly upon them, Ibrahim unzipped the backpack to make sure that everything was in order. He looked down at the four sticks of dynamite bound neatly in a pack with electrical tape. There was a timer hooked to an ignition cap on top. He ran his finger along each of the wires and fuses to check the connections. They were secure. The nails were also fast, the heads taped to the inside of the bag. The entire package would sit firmly in place when lodged amid the bullet-shattered stones.

  Walid lowered the helicopter to just a foot above the dam. Ibrahim hopped out, placed the bag in the largest crevice, and set the timer for one minute. Then he climbed back into the chopper and it soared off.

  The young Syrian pulled off his sunglasses and looked back. He saw the sun rippling along the top of the water. Birds pecked at the fish, and the sky behind them was unusually clear. Then, in an instant, the tranquility was rudely destroyed.

  Ibrahim winced as a yellow-red burst of flame grew quickly from the top of the dam. The sound reached them a moment later and caused the helicopter to shudder. Hasan and Mahmoud also looked back as the long stone expanse folded outward at the center. As it did, it pulled the sides of the sweeping structure with it. The reservoir came cascading over the crumbling top of the dam, swallowing the fireball and turning it to steam. The giant wave disgorged the stones it had swallowed, spilling them over the shattered top of the wall. The flood pushed down the center of the dam in a giant V shape that reached almost to the base. Water poured through the breach, easily brushing aside the ends of the earthen dam and crashing onto the trees below. The steam quickly dissipated as churning white breakers slapped away the control house and carried its shattered remains into the valley beyond.

  The sound of the deluge filled the cabin, dwarfing the roar of the rotor. Ibrahim couldn't even hear his own shout of triumph. He saw but did not hear Mahmoud praise Allah.

  As the helicopter raced south over the thundering waters, Hasan suddenly tapped Walid on the shoulder. The pilot hal
f turned. Has an held his hand out, palm down, and swooped it forward. Then he held up two fingers. Two jets were on their way.

  Hasan was clearly annoyed. The helicopter had been flying too low to be spotted by radar, and he'd apparently heard no transmisison from the control house radio. Yet somehow the Air Force knew what had happened here.

  "I am sorry, my akhooya, my brother!" Hasan shouted.

  Walid held up his hand. "We put our trust in the word of God!" he shouted back. "It is written, 'He that flees his homeland for the cause of God shall find numerous places of refuge.' "

  Hasan did not appear consoled, though the other members of the team seemed exultant. The mission had been a success and their place in Paradise was secured.

  Still, no one was quite ready to give up. As Walid guided the helicopter over the vast, swelling Euphrates, Mahmoud began loading another belt into his cannon. Ibrahim turned to his left to help him. Paradise notwithstanding, they would fight for their lives and for the privilege of continuing to do the work of Allah in this world.

  Suddenly, Walid shook his head. "Saa-Hib!" he shouted. "Friend! You will not need that."

  Mahmoud leaned toward him. "Not need?" he yelled back. "Who will do battle for us?"

  Walid replied, "He who is the Sovereign of the Day of Judgment."

  Ibrahim looked at Mahmoud. Both men believed in Allah and they had faith in Walid. But neither of them believed that the strong hand of the Lord would reach down and protect them from the Turks.