“Yes?” said the Turkish driver when Kelly slid in beside him. The back door banged and latched.
“Take me where we’re going,” Kelly replied in Turkish, giving the airman a lopsided smile.
Grinning back, the Turk hauled the van around in a tight, accelerating turn that must have spilled the occupants of the side benches in the back onto the floor and into one another’s arms. Kelly, bracing his right palm against the dashboard, smiled broadly.
To the veteran’s surprise, the two-vehicle entourage did not halt at one of the administration buildings. Instead they sped along access roads to the flight line, passing fuel tankers and firefighting vehicles. Men bustled over each of the aircraft in open-topped revetments which would be of limited protection against parafrags or cluster bombs sown by low-flying attackers.
Or, of course, the nukes that Nazis in orbit could unload here in the event they decided it was a good idea.
But that made him think about Gisela, and the blond dancer was one of the last things Tom Kelly wanted on his mind right now.
The van’s right brakes grabbed as the driver stepped on them hard, making the vehicle shimmy against the simultaneous twist on the steering wheel to swing them into a revetment. There was already a car there, a Plymouth, and the men waiting included some in Turkish and American dress uniforms besides those in coveralls servicing a razor-winged TF-104G.
“This one’s Kelly!” called Major Snipes, throwing open the back of the van before Kelly himself was sure that they had come to a final stop.
He opened his own door and got out. Two Turkish airmen, followed by a captain, ran up to him with a helmet and a pressure suit, the latter looking too large by half. “Who gave us the size?” the captain demanded. “Come on, we’ll take him back and outfit him properly.”
“Wait a minute,” an American bird colonel said as he grabbed Major Snipes by the coat sleeve, “how do we know this is the right guy?”
“Look I’ll pull it on over my clothes,” said Kelly, taking the suit from the now-hesitant airman. “So long as the helmet’s not too small, we’re golden.”
“Well, he had ID – ”
“No, the suit’s no good if it doesn’t fit,” insisted the Turkish captain.
“Any body could have ID – ”
“What the fuck do you expect me to do, Colonel?” Kelly roared as he thrust his right leg into the pressure suit, rotating a half step on the other foot to forestall the captain, who seemed willing to snatch the garment away from him. “Sit around for a fingerprint check? How the hell would I know to pretend to be me if I wasn’t?”
“He is not the man you wish?” asked a Turk with a huge moustache and what Kelly thought were general’s insignia. His English was labored rather than hesitant, suggestive of bricklaying with words.
“Robbie,” said Snipes to the colonel, “it’s all copacetic. The fat’s in the fire now, and the last thing we need is for a review board to decide it was all the fault of US liaison at Diyarbakir.”
“Colonel,” Kelly put in more calmly as he checked for torso fasteners, “I’m the man they’re looking for. It’s not the usual sort of deal” – he tried on the helmet which, for a wonder, fitted perfectly – “but it’s the deal we’ve been handed this time.”
He started walking toward the plane that had obviously been readied for him, hopeful that the colonel wouldn’t decide to shoot him in the back. Sometimes Kelly found it useful to remember that during the disasters of Ishandhlwana and of Pearl Harbor, armorers had refused to issue ammunition to the troops because the proper chits had not been signed. The military collected a lot of people to whom order was more important than anything else on Earth. Trouble was, the times you really needed the military, the only thing you could bank on was disorder.
No bullets. No shouts, in fact, though squabbling in Turkish and English continued behind him as he strode away.
The TF-104G was a thing of beauty, the two-seat conversion trainer modification of the aircraft which had seduced the top fighter jocks of the fifties and sixties and had killed literally hundreds of their less-skilled brethren. The F-104 was fast, quick, and maneuverable. It also had the glide angle of a brick and offered its crew no desirable options when the single J-79 turbojet failed on takeoff.