But the plains were neither smooth nor green – at least this early in the year; Kelly knew from experience that by early summer the oats and barley planted in some of the unfenced fields would have grown high enough to hide the rocks.
The soil of Mesopotamia had been cultivated for millennia, for virtually as long as any area of the Earth’s surface. Every time a plow bit, it sent a puff of yellow-gray dust off on the constant wind and diminished the soil by that much. The rocks, from pebbles to blocks the size of a man’s torso, remained . . . and from a slight distance, from a road, those rocks were all that remained of what had been the most fertile lands on Earth. One could still cultivate with care and hardship, however, and pasture sheep.
“We – concentrated here in Diyarbakir, when the Plan was developed,” Gisela said deliberately, “in part for recruitment’s sake – the Kurds.” She looked over to make sure her student was following. Kelly nodded obediently.
“But more because it is, you see, not developed,” the woman continued, “but still there are the airbase and the tracking station. Competing jurisdictions, do you see?” The tutor looked over again.
“So that if things should be seen that neither understands, your NSA or Turk Hava Kuvvertli” – Gisela used the indigenous words for Turkish Air Force within the English of her lecture – “both blame the other … but not blame, because of security.”
She smiled toward the windshield as, downshifting the long-throw gearbox, she passed a horse-drawn wagon in a flapping roar. Communication among friendly forces was a more necessary ingredient of success than was intelligence of the enemy, but it was notable that whenever military bureaucracies set priorities, information flow came in a bad second to security. Perhaps that was a case of making a virtue of necessity, since it was almost impossible to pass data through a military bureaucracy anyway.
“So each thinks the other responsible and says nothing, so as not to embarrass an ally and to poke into what is not their own business,” Gisela concluded. “Bad practice of security.”
The road off to the right, past a small orchard of pistachio trees, could have been a goat track save that it meandered in double rather than single file. Gisela found the brakes were spongy and downshifted sharply to let the engine compression help slow the truck. They made the turn comfortably, though the pickup swayed on springs abused by too many rutted roads like this.
“Reach into my right coat pocket,” the woman directed. She had crossed right arm over left to take the turnoff, and even in the moment it took her to reposition her hands afterwards, the steering wheel jibbed viciously.
Kelly obeyed, expecting to find sunglasses or something similar. Instead there was a round-nosed cylinder that could have been a lipstick, save that it was clicking against three others like it – and a fifth, buried deeply in a corner of the lining.
He drew out the handful of .38 Special cartridges, a full load for the cylinder of the snubbie now nestled empty against his spine. “Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch,” said the veteran softly as he drew the weapon to load it.
The rounds were US Government issue, bearing Lake City Arsenal headstamps and 130-grain bullets with full metal jackets. They were really intended for 9-mm autoloaders and would literally rattle down the bore of most .38 Special revolvers. When fired, however, they upset enough to take the rifling.
They weren’t a perfect load for the aluminum snubbie, but they were a hell of an improvement over an empty cylinder . . . and the fact that Gisela had procured them for him, just before he was to be introduced to her associates, was a sign more valuable than any real protection that the weapon gave him.
“I got them from the pilot,” Gisela said needlessly. “I thought you wouldn’t ask, to call attention. So I asked, and it won’t be reported.”
Kelly hunched forward to replace the little revolver. He’d carried it a lot of years and never used it before the previous night, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t need it again soon. Lightning was liable to keep striking the same place so long as the storm raged and the tree still stood in its path.