“Any notion of what’s going on?” Kelly said to the airmen, primarily to make conversation; people don’t let their guns point at folks with whom they’re holding a friendly conversation.
“It’s a full alert, sir,” one of the Turks responded. “They’re fueling and arming everything that’ll fly.”
The lieutenant, watching Kelly through the glass of the guardpost, hung up the phone and barked an unheard order. Six airmen trotted past the officer as he strode toward Kelly. They grabbed crossbars extending from the concertina wire and began to drag the barricade to one side.
“You may come in, sir,” the lieutenant said, a little less dourly hostile than he had seemed before. Perhaps he had just been afraid of being chewed out by his superiors for reporting something nonstandard. Now he handed back the two identification cards. “Your pass permits that, and for the rest – it will be as God wills. The Officer of the Day says he will report your presence to General Tergut, as you requested.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” the American said as he got back into the truck. The rain had stopped by the time he made it out of the walled city, but the vehicle’s heater had not even begun to dry his soaked clothing. He sneezed as he put the pickup in gear, wondering whether after everything he had gone through he wasn’t going to wind up a casualty from pneumonia. Inshallah – as God wills it.
That was about as good a philosophy for a soldier as any Kelly had heard. And right now, it might be as much as you could say for the world itself.
Kelly saw the lights at the same time the phone rang in the guard post beside which he was parked. There were two vehicles speeding toward the gate from the heart of the installation, both of them flashing blue lights and crying out the hearts of their European-style warning hooters. The road was asphalt-surfaced, but the vehicles raised plumes of surface dust to reflect the headlights of the follow-car and the rotating blue party hats of both.
It hadn’t been a long wait, but Kelly found as he stepped out of the truck that his muscles had stiffened. The Turkish lieutenant ran to him, leaving his rifle behind this time. “Sir!” he shouted to Kelly, “they’re sending a car for you!”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” the veteran said as he twisted some of the rigidity out of his torso. “I thought that” – he nodded toward the oncoming flashers – “might be me being paged.”
Wun was on top of things for sure, Kelly thought as the vehicles – a van followed by a gun jeep, both of them blue and marked HP for Air Police – skidded to a halt with their hooters still blaring.
Of course, it was just conceivable that this was a result of the shootings in Istanbul and hadn’t a damn thing to do with Fortress.
Kelly jogged to the passenger side of the van even before the doors unlatched. There was an empty seat in the jeep, but he had no intention of being carried any distance in it if there were an alternative. A short wheelbase and four-wheel independent suspension made jeeps marvelously handy; but that also made them flip and kill hell outa everybody on board when the driver turned sharply at speed. There was nothing about the way the Hava Polis driver had approached the guard post to make Kelly trust his judgment.
The man who jumped from the van was heavyset and wore a US Air Force uniform with rosettes on the epaulets. In the colored light of the flashers, Kelly could not be certain whether the rank insignia were the gold of a major or a lieutenant-colonel’s silver.
“Thomas Kelly?” the Air Force Officer shouted through the chest-cramping racket of the hooters. He thumbed toward the doors at the back of the van being opened by a Turkish airman. “Hop in, we’ve got a flight for you to Incirlik.”
“Colonel Kelly,” said the veteran. “And you can ride in back if you need to come along, Major Snipes.” The name tag over the officer’s pocket was clearly visible, and he obeyed Kelly without objection.