Tom Clancy's op-center_ acts of war - Tom Clancy [27]
Large embankment dams typically contain fifty million cubic meters of water. The volume of the Ataturk dam is eighty-five million cubic meters. Not that that mattered much to Mustafa. He couldn't see most of the water. The enormous reservoir twisted away behind artificial promontories and breakwaters. The end of it was lost in the hazy distance.
Twice each day, at eleven in the morning and at four in the afternoon, Mustafa left his two coworkers in the small control room at the base of the dam and went looking for kids. That was when they came there to dive from the wave wall into the cool waters.
"We know it is safe to dive here," they would always say. "There are no rocks or roots underwater here, Saa-Hib."
They always called him their Saa-Hib, their friend, though Mustafa suspected that they were laughing at him. And even if they were sincere, he couldn't allow them to stay here and swim. If he did, the wall would be lined with children. Then the tourists would come. Soon there would be more weight on the dam than it was designed to take.
"And then they would blame the collapse of the dam and the flooding of southern Anatolia on Mustafa Mecid," he said, running his fingers through his full brown beard.
The fifty-five-year-old Turk was happy that he had two grown daughters. Young men were so physical. He watched his sister's children and didn't know how she coped with them. Mustafa's own poor father had sent him to the Army when he was sixteen because he was always getting into trouble with neighbors and teachers and employers. Even when Mustafa was in the Army--stationed on the Greek border near the Gulf of Saros--he made life more difficult for smugglers and undercover operatives than any Turk since His Eminence Ataturk himself. And when he married, his poor wife could hardly keep up with him. More than once she accused him of having a twin brother who crept into their bed in the middle of the night.
Mustafa turned his face toward the skies. "I think, Blessed Lord, that you made Turkish men for the same reason you made hornets. To go here and there and to work. And in doing all of that, to stir up others and to keep them busy." Mustafa smiled brimmingly, proud of his gender and his nation.
He walked briskly, his hiking boots crunching loudly on the walkway. Its gravel surface had been designed to deter bare feet--designed by some college engineer whose soles weren't calloused from a childhood of walking barefoot. The radio hooked to his belt hung against his right hip. From under the brim of his forest-green cap he looked north, across the reservoir. He breathed deeply as the warm breeze washed over him. Then he looked down ten feet at the waves that slapped gently against the dam. The water was choppy, clear, soothing. He stopped for a moment and enjoyed the solitude.
And then, from the south, Mustafa heard what sounded like a motorbike. He turned and, squinted in that direction. There was no dust rising from the dirt roads of the surrounding hillsides. Yet the sound from behind the hillsides grew closer.
Suddenly, the drone became the distinctive beating of a helicopter rotor. He tugged down the brim of his hat and looked toward the rich blue sky. Recreational fliers regularly flew over the reservoir, though of late more and more helicopters had been coming this way. Kurdish terrorists had established a presence around Lake Van and on Mount Ararat to the east, on the border with Iran. According to the radio reports, the military kept track of them by air and sometimes attacked them as well.
Mustafa watched as a small, black helicopter shot up over the treetops. For a moment he was looking at the underbelly. Then he was staring at the front