He had left the Hauptallee to allow his dog to do its business in the park away from the road.
She was in her neat gray tweed coat, with her hair in a bun behind her head, thick lisle stockings on her legs, and sensible flat-heeled shoes on her feet. The clothesline looped over the branch of the oak had not betrayed her, and the kitchen steps were a meter away.
She was quite still and stiff in death, her hands by her side and her toes pointed neatly downward.
Always a very neat lady was Edith Hardenberg.
February 28 was the last day of the ground war. In the Iraqi deserts west of Kuwait, the Iraqi Army had been outflanked and annihilated. South of the city, the Republican Guard divisions that had rolled into Kuwait on August 2 ceased to exist. On that day the forces occupying the city, having set fire to everything that would burn and seeking to destroy what would not, left for the north in a snaking column of halftracks, trucks, vans, cars, and carts.
The column was caught in the place where the highway north cuts through the Mutla Ridge. The Eagles and Jaguars, Tomcats and Hornets, Tornados and Thunderbolts, Phantoms and Apaches hurtled down onto the column and reduced it to charred wreckage. With the head of the column destroyed and blocking the road, the remainder could escape neither forward nor backward, and because of the cut in the ridge could not leave the road. Many died in that column and the rest surrendered. By sundown, the first Arab forces were entering Kuwait to liberate it.
That evening, Mike Martin made contact again with Riyadh and heard the news. He gave his position and that of a reasonably flat meadow nearby.
The SAS men and Walker were out of food, melting snow to drink, and bitterly cold, not daring to light a fire in case it gave away their position. The war was over, but the patrols of mountain guards might well not know that, or care.
Just after dawn, two long-range Blackhawk helicopters loaned by the American 101st Airborne Division came for them. They came from the fire base camp set up by the 101st fifty miles inside Iraq, after the biggest helicopter assault in history. So great was the distance from the Saudi border that even from the fire base on the Euphrates River, it was a long haul to the mountains near Khanaqin.
That was why there were two of them: The second had even more fuel for the journey home.
To be on the safe side, eight Eagles circled above, giving protective cover as the refueling in the meadow was carried out. Don Walker squinted upward.
“Hey, they’re my guys!” he shouted. As the two Blackhawks clattered the way back again, the Strike Eagles rode shotgun until they were south of the border.
They said farewell to each other on a wind-blasted strip of sand, surrounded by the detritus of a defeated army near the Saudi-Iraqi border. The whirling blades of a Blackhawk whipped up the dust and gravel before taking Don Walker to Dhahran and a flight back to Al Kharz. A British Puma stood farther away, to take the SAS men to their own secret cordoned base.
That evening, at a comfortable country house in the rolling downs of Sussex, Dr. Terry Martin was told where his brother had actually been since October and that he was now out of Iraq and safe in Saudi Arabia.
Martin was almost ill with relief, and the SIS gave him a lift back to London, where he resumed his life as a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Two days later, on March 3, the commanders of the Coalition forces met in a tent on a small and bare Iraqi airstrip called Safwan with two generals from Baghdad to negotiate the surrender.
The only spokesmen for the Allied side were Generals Norman Schwarzkopf and Prince Khaled bin Sultan. At the American general’s side sat the commander of the British forces, General Sir Peter de la Billière.
Both the Western officers to this day believe that only two Iraqi generals came to Safwan. In fact, there were three.
The American security net was extremely tight, to exclude the possibility of any assassin reaching the tent in which the opposing generals met. An entire American division encircled the airfield, facing outward.
Unlike the Allied commanders who had arrived from the south by a series of helicopters, the Iraqi party had been ordered to drive to a road junction north of the airstrip. There they left their cars to transfer to a number of American armored personnel vehicles called humvees and be driven by U.S. drivers the last two miles to the airstrip and the cluster of tents where they were awaited.
Ten minutes after the party of generals entered the negotiation tent with their interpreters, another black Mercedes limousine was coming down the Basra road toward the junction. The roadblock there was commanded by that time by a captain of the U.S. Seventh Armored Brigade, all more senior officers having proceeded to the airstrip. The unexpected limousine was at once stopped.
In the back of the car was the third Iraqi general, albeit only a brigadier, bearing a black attaché case.
Neither he nor his driver spoke English, and the captain spoke no Arabic. He was about to radio the airstrip for orders when a jeep driven by an American colonel and bearing another in the passenger seat pulled up. The driver was in the uniform of the Green Beret Special Forces; the passenger had the insignia of G2, the military intelligence.
Both men flashed their ID at the captain, who examined the cards, recognized their authenticity, and threw up a salute.
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bsp; “It’s okay, Captain. We’ve been expecting this bastard,” said the Green Beret colonel. “Seems he was delayed by a flat tire.”
“That case,” said the G2 officer, pointing at the attaché case of the Iraqi brigadier who now stood uncomprehending by the side of his car, “contains the names of all our POWs, including the missing aircrew. Stormin’ Norman wants it, and now.”
There were no humvees left. The Green Beret colonel gave the Iraqi a rough shove toward the jeep. The captain was perplexed. He knew nothing of any third Iraqi general. He also knew his unit had recently gotten into the Bear’s bad books by having claimed to occupy Safwan when it had not achieved that objective. The last thing he needed was to call down more of General Schwarzkopf’s wrath on the Seventh Armored by detaining the list of missing American aircrew. The jeep drove away in the direction of Safwan. The captain shrugged and gestured the Iraqi driver to park with all the others.
On the road to the airstrip the jeep passed between rows of parked American armored vehicles for up to a mile. Then there was an empty section of road, before the cordon of Apache helicopters surrounding the actual negotiation area.
Clear of the tanks, the G2 colonel turned to the Iraqi and spoke in good Arabic.