First Team [First Team 01] Page 36

  The aircraft jerked hard left and descended sharply, then twisted on its wing back to the right. Ferguson fished in the pack and retrieved the flashlight. He shined the beam on Conners’s face; the SF sergeant was pale and disoriented.

  “Fuckin’ cold, Ferg,” said Conners.

  “Yeah. Let’s figure this out,” Ferguson told him. “We’ll have to find a way to climb up to the flight deck at the front. There ought to be a door there.”

  ~ * ~

  S

  alerno acknowledged the fresh vector from the AWACS, then took a long, steady breath, reminding himself to stay calm. His wingmate, offset a few thousand feet in altitude and about a mile to his right, reported that he had a contact on his radar.

  It was too soon to be their target, Salerno knew, but he told him to query it anyway. Like all interceptors, the Eagles carried identification friend-or-foe gear that electronically “asked” another airplane who it was. Friendly aircraft and commercial flights were programmed to respond with a code that would tell the fighter pilot who they were. In this case, the IFF signal came back indicating that the plane was a civilian flight, which was confirmed by the AWACS controller. The aircraft was an innocent 767 en route to Iran from Russia; they let it go.

  A minute later, the controller’s voice came back, now two octaves higher. “They’re asking for help—the Iranians are scrambling—their defenses—the MiGs are on an intercept. We have more planes coming off Tabriz.”

  The controller took a breath of air, then resumed more calmly, updating the position of the 747. It had changed course and was now flying directly south.

  “Very low,” added the controller. “He’s going to hit the mountains.”

  “I think I have him,” said Salerno, the image flashing in his brain as well as the radar. He took another long breath. The big plane was a little over sixty miles away, too far to launch the AMRAAMS.

  Salerno put his pedal to the metal. The Iranian MiGs were coming north, SAM radars were switching on, and the Russians were sending something south—he pushed his head forward, his fist locked around the stick, willing the fat 747 into the targeting reticule on his HUD. He needed more closure—he had to build momentum for the missile and get closer to the target to fire. He had the damn thing; it was a question of taking his time, hanging in long enough to fire.

  His radar warning receiver picked up one of the approaching MiGs trying to target him. Salerno’s consciousness flicked away the threat, considering it irrelevant.

  “I’m spiked, shit,” said Klein. He began defensive maneuvers.

  The 747 moved into the box on the HUD, the aircraft’s avionics closing its fist on the fat target.

  “Yes,” said Salerno, and he pushed the trigger on the stick, launching the AM-RAAM toward the plane. He dished a second and punched the mike button to tell his wingmate that the missiles were away, but the transmission was overrun by a new warning.

  “Missiles in the air!” said the AWACS controller. “Break ninety.”

  “I’m spiked!” said Klein again.

  Everything ran together in Salerno’s head. Two Hawk missiles had been launched from a ground station near the border; the MiGs were firing Russian-made homers, long-range radar missiles. Klein turned to engage them. The 747, meanwhile, had disappeared from the screens. Salerno started to press toward the mountains where the aircraft had been flying, then heard Klein call for help.

  “I’m coming,” he told his wingman, tucking hard in his direction.

  ~ * ~

  I

  s it down?” Corrine asked Major Gray.

  “The AWACS thinks so; the missile was launched before the 747 disappeared from its screen. But we can’t confirm the kill; there’s too much else going on.”

  “We need to know,” she said.

  “Our Eagles have to get back, or they’ll run out of fuel over Iran. One of them is being targeted by the Iranians already. Believe me, that’s the last place we want a pilot,” said Gray.

  “All right,” Corrine told him. “Alert CentCom to what’s going on. The Nimitz’s planes should extend their patrols around Iran just in case.”

  Corrine leaned back in the seat. Things were actually going fairly well. The Russians were not happy about the appearance of the American assault team at the Chechen base, but were grudgingly holding off from firing at them. Van Buren’s people had secured the airstrip and all but one of the buildings; he was about to land and supervise the rest of the operation.

  At that point, they could sort out exactly what they had. Hopefully, they’d find Ferguson and Conners hiding with broken telephones.

  Corrine took a deep breath, trying to relax.

  ~ * ~

  S

  amman Bin Saqr struggled to hold the nose of the big aircraft level as the missile exploded a hundred yards away, sucked just off course by his defensive chaff and ECMs.

  His decision to call on the Iranians for assistance was not without consequences, for the now the Iranians were hailing him with orders of their own—he was to change course and fly to their main airport near Tehran.

  Samman Bin Saqr did not acknowledge. He was gambling that they would not shoot him down in the next ten minutes, and that was all the time his calculations showed he needed to fly out of their range. At that point, if his radar showed that he had no contacts following him, he would press the button on the altered Ident or identifier module. The black box would tell anyone who cared to ask—electronically, of course—that the plane was a duly registered Sri Lankan aircraft.

  Bin Saqr would then swing onto the course that the plane which corresponded to that identifier routinely took. Assuming that his operatives had followed their orders—and at this point, he could only assume that—he would be free of pursuers.

  A warning blared in the cockpit—he was precariously low. A mountain loomed ahead, its peak a hundred feet above his nose. Samman Bin Saqr touched the yoke, trying to squeeze through the pass on the right. He saw the rocks and closed his eyes, trusting that Allah would not let him die before his mission was complete.

  ~ * ~

  S

  alerno pulled the big F-15 through a hard turn, sending nearly seven gees slamming against his body. His pressurized suit compensated quickly, fighting to equalize the forces on his body and keep his brain swimming in just the right amount of blood. As the pressure began to ease, Salerno found himself twenty miles from one of the Iranian MiGs, and closing fast. His wingmate was ahead of the MiG, trying to shake it off before it could fire.

  “Firing,” said Salerno calmly, pulling the trigger on the MiG.

  An AMRAAM clunked off the rail, its engine igniting with a fiery flash. The missile’s onboard radar asked for an update from the Eagle as it closed in on its quarry at just over Mach 4. It made a slight correction, then sent the Iranian pilot to meet his maker.

  In the meantime, Klein had turned the tables on a second Iranian, knifing downward, then using his superior engines to thrust himself onto the MiG’s tail before the other pilot could quite figure out where he was going. Klein closed the gap, his Sidewinder ready to launch. The MiG-29 jinked left, then rolled hard back the other way, the airplane cutting an almost-perfect Z in the sky. Klein hesitated, not quite in a good firing position but aware that juicing the throttle too much might send him flying in front of the Iranian. Finally, as the indicator on the Sidewinder growled at him to fire already, he realized he had the MiG nailed and goosed the Sidewinder into the air.

  The Iranian tried jinking right, but the American air-to-air missile was nearly in his tailpipe when he started to turn. The explosion ripped the backbone out of the plane; the enemy pilot did well to bail out and escape the fireball.

  “We have two more planes to get by,” Salerno told his wingman. “Hang with me.

  “Two,” acknowledged Klein. He felt his heart pounding in his throat and tried to force the elation of his first kill away—they were a long way from home, with a gauntlet yet to run.

 
Salerno checked his fuel matrix once more. If they drove straight on through to the tanker, they’d get there with perhaps five minutes of airtime to spare—more than a little close for comfort. But flying on a direct path to the tanker meant flying right through the two Iranian MiGs, which were just turning to meet them about fifty miles ahead.

  “Let’s take it to them,” Salerno told his wingman. “I’m going to ask the tanker to come south.”

  “Roger that,” acknowledged Klein, his voice an octave higher than normal.

  ~ * ~

  3

  ON THE GROUND IN CHECHNYA

  Van Buren trotted off the ramp of the MC-130, an A-4 carbine under his arm. A captain in charge of the initial assault team was waiting for him a short distance away, ready to lay out the situation.

  “Talk to me,” yelled Van Buren as soon as he saw the officer. “Some sort of fabrication facility there,” said the captain, jerking his hand back toward the mountain. “Plane must’ve been in there. We have the two buildings on the north side of the base. Guerrillas in the southern one, holed up at the far end. First building is empty; we’re checking it out now. Looks like trace radiation only. Defensive position on the south was taken out by the Stealth fighters; same with the other SAM site at the north. We think there are a couple of people in the hills farther out,” he added, gesturing in the direction of the base’s external guard posts. “At the moment, we have the road secured, and we’re gathering prisoners. There’s one area I want you to see.”

  “Conners and Ferguson,” said Van Buren. “You find them?”

  “No, but that has to do with what I want to show you,” said the captain. “Prisoner of theirs, I think.”

  The SF troops had brought two small ATV-like vehicles in the Hercules to use as utility rovers and help with transporting captured material. One of the trucks—usually called a “Gator”—was just coming down the ramp of the aircraft. Van Buren commandeered it and rode with the captain toward the perimeter area where Conners and Ferguson had infiltrated. The fence had been flattened by the paratroopers, and the entire area, now secure, was lit by a searchlight confiscated from the Chechens. Several bodies were up in the rocks, mangled by large, bloody wounds. One of the men was handcuffed to a large piece of metal in the ravine.

  “The manacle on their hands, I think it’s a Russian manacle,” said the captain. “That’s one of our plastic jobs, holding him to the girder there.”

  “He must be their informer,” said Van Buren. “The guerrillas must have ambushed them here.”

  “Captain!” shouted one of the troopers. Van Buren turned and walked toward the soldier, who was trotting from the area of the runway. “Sat telephone, sir. Found it back over there by the runway.”

  Van Buren picked up the phone and slid open the antenna.

  “They might have gotten away,” said the captain. “Could be anywhere in those hills. Or they could be with the guerrillas in that other building.”

  Van Buren nodded. Knowing Ferguson, he was sitting back in the Hercules, smirking while Van and his men searched the area.

  God, he hoped that was the case.

  “Let’s secure the building and find out,” said Van Buren, closing the antenna on the phone and heading back for the Gator.

  ~ * ~

  4

  OVER IRAN

  The two American F-15s thundered over the mountains, nearly nose-on for the two MiGs and closing at a rate of roughly twenty-five miles a minute, which gave Jenkins about thirty seconds to decide on a strategy.

  The encyclopedic brief Jenkins had received before his mission had covered Iranian aircraft capabilities and declared that the MiGs would most likely be equipped with heat-seeking Russian-made R-73 missiles, known in the West as “AA-11 Archer.” These were potent weapons, and in theory they could be fired from any aspect in a dogfight. As a practical matter, however, the Iranians would probably choose between one of two strategies—either breaking and turning as the F-15s came close, spinning and trying to gain momentum for a close-quarters attack from the rear; or taking head-on shots as the Americans drove by.

  The MiGs were roughly three thousand feet below them and had to anticipate an attack as well as line up their own. The Iranians couldn’t carry a lot of fuel, which was likely to limit their ability to pursue at high speed. They would have to play for a single shot and make the most of it.

  Though flying superior planes with better weapons systems, the Americans had one disadvantage—they were very low on fuel. Their powerful radars and easily detected airfoils left no doubt about where they were. And by the time they reached firing range for the AMRAAMS, the enemy fighters would also be able to attack.

  “I have the one on the right,” Jenkins told his wingman. “If they break, just fire your AMRAAM and go on through—we don’t have the fuel to fuck with them.”

  “Two.”

  Technically, Jenkins’s ROE or rules of engagement allowed him to fire only if directly threatened; that clearly covered the first engagement, where he had been tracked by hostile fire-control radar. He might be open to second-guessing, as neither MiG had yet made an unambiguous move to shoot him down. But there was no way— no way in the world—that he was going to allow himself to be a sitting duck, much less paraded through the streets of Tehran as an American imperialist.

  As the planes closed to within forty miles of each other, the Eagle’s RWR blared. The two MiGs were carrying radar-guided R-77 series missiles, supported by an upgraded radar; known to NATA as the AA-10 Adder, the Russian-made air-to-air weapon was roughly the equivalent of an American AMRAAM—a little surprise for the intelligence folks back home, who had claimed the Iranians didn’t possess such missiles.

  Jenkins took it in stride. The next few seconds passed like a rap riff—the lead MiG launched two missiles; the other began to cut right; Klein fired an AMRAAM, then another; Jenkins fired his; the radio went crazy with static; Jenkins watched his MiG tack downward into a turn, trying to get behind him; Jenkins’s RWR whined; Jenkins dished chaff and flares but held to his course; the AWACS operator belatedly warned that they were being targeted; Jenkins leaned on the throttle for half a second; something exploded in the far corner of his canopy behind him; the air in his face mask suddenly felt heavy, reminding him of a summer afternoon before a storm.

  And then they were past the MiGs, Klein yelling that there were missiles in the air, Jenkins calmly unleashing the last of his decoy flares. Something exploded behind him; he heard a light pop, the sort of sound a cap gun might make. His plane stayed true, the emergency lights off.

  The AWACS controller scored two more MiGs down.

  Not a good day for the enemy. Just a routine ho-hummer for the U.S. Air Force.

  Even before he realized he hadn’t been hit, Jenkins worried about his wingman. He clicked the mike button twice, fear suddenly overwhelming him.

  “Patsy?” he asked, feeling his voice starting to edge toward a tremble.

  “I’m here. You?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “I fired a second missile,” said the wingman. “I got all juiced up and fired without even a lock. Shit.”

  “Yeah, roger that. We’ll take it out of your pay, cowboy. You got one.”

  “I got one,” said the wingman, not really believing it. Typically, Klein was focused on what he had done wrong rather than what he had done right.

  “I’ve had enough of this shit. Let’s go tank and go home,” said Jenkins.

  ~ * ~

  5

  BUILDING 24-442

  He knew it didn’t fit, though Thomas couldn’t quite decide why. The distance from Chechnya to Manila to LA was perfect, and yet, it just didn’t fit.

  He picked up a report a DI analyst had prepared a year before on possible terrorism targets in Los Angeles and the impact a 747 loaded with high explosives would have. It was horrible, of course, truly horrendous—but it didn’t fit.

  LA had been assumed to be the target because of the pho
tographs found on Kiro when he was apprehended.

  But Kiro wasn’t connected with this operation at all; they’d proven that in Iran.

  Thomas sat back from his computer, rubbing his eyes. It reminded him of the UFO sightings off Brazil in 1968—two totally different sightings believed to be connected, and only upon further analysis proven to be separate incidents altogether.

  Manila was right, but not LA, he decided. But the Philippines wouldn’t be the target if they were buying fuel there. And now that he looked again at the receipts, he saw that the amount of fuel purchased was extremely small—not nearly enough to fill a jumbo jet.