was going on near Ar Raqqah, and since Syria is refusing to allow inspectors to visit suspected nuclear sites, we were to use a more covert approach.
—Did this surreptitious inspection involve anything other than collecting air samples?
—No. We were to fly in and out. They brought in some pretty big equipment with us to detect signs of nuclear activity from the air samples we’d bring back. We left Incirlik Air Base at 02:00 as planned. We went east along the border for about an hour and turned south into Syria. We flew nap-of-the-earth for about twelve minutes with an AGL of eighty feet. We reached the designated coordinates around 03:15, collected air samples, and headed back the way we came.
—Were you nervous?
—You’re funny. I get nervous if I forget to pay my phone bill. This is a little different. You’re ground-hugging at 160 miles an hour over possibly hostile territory, at night, with night-vision goggles. If that doesn’t get your heart pumping, I don’t know what will. So yeah, we were both on edge. You can’t see anywhere but straight ahead with the NVGs on. It feels like flying through a narrow green-lit tunnel at an incredible speed.
—Did everything go as planned?
—Like clockwork. We were back in Turkish airspace in less than twenty-five minutes. I climbed up to eight hundred feet while we put some distance between us and the border. We were approaching Harran when we noticed some light directly below us. It wasn’t city lights. We were over farmland, and the color wasn’t right. Then out of nowhere, the engine stopped, and the entire cockpit went dark.
We could hear the rotors slowing down, then nothing. There was this turquoise glow emanating from the fields below. Countless small bush-like trees planted thirty feet apart with nothing but dirt in between. We just sat there, staring. It was surreal, very…peaceful. Then we dropped like a rock.
The air bag slammed into my visor and knocked me out when we hit the ground. I woke up a few minutes later. I was alone in the helicopter. An old man in a white cotton tunic was trying to undo my restraints. He must have been at least sixty. He had dark, leathery skin. He looked at me and mumbled something he must have known I couldn’t understand. Then he just smiled. Some of his lower teeth were missing, but he had very kind eyes. I regained my composure and helped him unstrap me from the seat.
He helped me out slowly, putting my arm over his shoulder. Someone grabbed my other arm, a young girl, maybe sixteen years old. She was very pretty. She kept looking down, spoke only a little bit when the man addressed her. He could have been her father, maybe her grandfather. They sat me down about a hundred feet from the helicopter and the man gave me some water out of a canteen. The young girl showed me a piece of cloth and gestured toward my forehead. As I didn’t object, she put the wet cloth over my right eye. She removed it and quickly put it away, probably hoping I wouldn’t notice the blood.
—Where was your co-pilot?
—I didn’t know at first. It took a minute or two before I noticed several people gathered a few steps behind the helicopter. I couldn’t make out any of their faces, only their shadows against the turquoise light. I got up. The young woman kept repeating the same few words—“don’t get up,” I suppose. I started walking toward the light. I made it to the edge of this huge crater that defaced the pistachio field. The light was so bright.
Mitchell was there with some locals. He grabbed my arm and put it around his shoulder, then held me to his side. He seemed genuinely happy to see me. I’m not quite sure what we were staring at, but it was the most awe-inspiring thing I’ve ever seen.
It looked like a whale made of dark metal—maybe a ship, or a submarine, though it seemed a little small. It was sleek and curvy, like the body of a 747, but with no apparent opening, no propeller. It looked more like an Italian work of art than it did anything practical. Turquoise veins were running through the surface at regular intervals forming a weblike pattern.
—How long were you there?
—I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes. We were distracted by the sound of other helos and the wind blowing sand in our faces. Four Blackhawks landed around