Текст книги "Razor's Edge"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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“You awake, Captain?” asked the lieutenant when he finally opened the door.

“Yeah. Uh, maybe we can grab some joe in the lobby.”

Two Army MPs stood behind the lieutenant in the hall.

Two other soldiers with M-16s were standing a short distance away. They all followed as Torbin and the lieutenant walked to the elevator, where two Air Force sentries were stationed. No one spoke, either in the elevator or in the lobby, where Torbin sniffed out the boiled grinds in the overheated carafe next to the front desk. Then, cup in hand, he followed the lieutenant to a staff car outside.

The soldiers followed in a Humvee as they raced through the security perimeter and then back to the base.

Torbin thought several times of telling the driver to slow down; five minutes one way or another wasn’t going to make much difference. But at least he managed not to spill his coffee.

Security at Incirlik was ordinarily very strong; even when Iraq was quiet, it probably ranked among the most heavily guarded facilities outside of the U.S. During the past few weeks, the troops guarding it had been doubled, with a number of high-tech snooping and identity-checking devices added to prevent saboteurs and spies from getting in. And now the security had been heightened further.

Two companies of heavily armed soldiers stood outside RAZOR’S EDGE

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the fence; another platoon of men and a pair of tanks stood along the access road. A short line of vehicles waited at the gate to be searched. The fact that a two-star had summoned him didn’t allow them to cut in the line either.

“Wasn’t this crazy before,” said Torbin when they were ordered out of the vehicle for the security check.

“What’s up?”

The lieutenant didn’t say anything, nor did the MPs looking them over. Finally cleared, the lieutenant didn’t wait for their escorts. He took the wheel himself and drove toward a hangar area at the far tip of the base. As they approached, Torbin realized why the security had been tightened—a huge Megafortress sat in the middle of the access ramp. Passing through yet another security cordon, they approached the plane slowly, having been warned that the guards in front of the aircraft had orders to shoot any suspicious vehicle.

Torbin had never seen a Megafortress in person before.

The aircraft seemed very different from a B-52, even though it had supposedly been built from one. Its long nose—silver, not black like the rest of the plane—extended toward the car as they approached; the aircraft seemed to be watching them. Perhaps the shadows made the plane seem bigger than it actually was, but the Megafortress definitely stood several feet higher than a stock B-52. Its wings seemed longer, sleeker. Her engines were single rather than double pods; with fins along the underside, they looked more like rockets than turbofans. The plane’s V-shaped rear stabilizer or tail rose above the nearby hangar, a pair of shark’s fins waiting to strike.

A soldier dressed in camo and wearing a green beret walked to the center of the roadway as the car approached, holding out his hand. The lieutenant immediately stopped and got out. Torbin followed, trailing along 242

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as several other Special Forces soldiers appeared. The lieutenant presented credentials; the soldier nodded grimly and stepped back, allowing them to pass toward the tail area of the plane. A figure in a flight suit approached; Torbin was surprised to find it was a woman.

And a very beautiful one at that. Five-six maybe, 120

or so—could be a little less.

Eyes like heat-seekers.

“You’re Dolk?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m Captain Stockard. Breanna.” She held out her hand. She gripped his more firmly than any hand that smooth had a right to grip. “I understand you’re an electronic warfare officer, a pitter. You fly in Weasels?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We need some help,” she told him. “You had an engineering degree too.”

“Well, uh, yes ma’am.”

“I realize you don’t have clearances. We’ll backtrack later. If there’s any reason you can’t help, you tell me now. If you don’t—well, if you don’t want to get involved right now for any reason, any reason at all, turn around and go back to bed. No questions asked. If you come with us and something comes up—you’ll be fried. No one will bail you out. You understand?”

Her eyes held him. What was she talking about?

God, she was beautiful.

“Captain Dolk?” she said. “Staying or going?”

“I, uh—I want to help.”

“Good.” She smiled. “We’re trying to get things put back together, and we need someone to help our technical person. She’ll tell you what to do.”

Breanna started walking away, then spun back toward him.

RAZOR’S EDGE

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“Yo—get your butt in gear, Dolk,” she barked. “Onto my plane. We have work to do.”

Dolk hadn’t been spoken to like that since basic training, perhaps not even then. He snapped to quickly, breaking into a full run but failing to catch her as she disappeared up the ladder of the black Megafortress.

CentCom HQ, Florida

1330

“BARCLAY, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING OUT IN THE

goddamn lobby when I need you in here?”

“General Clearwater, I was—”

“Get your butt in here, Barclay, without back lip.”

Jed Barclay had been told to wait in the outer office by Clearwater’s chief of staff, who had conveniently melted away before the four-star general appeared. But he’d been dealing with the head of Central Command a great deal over the past few months—he’d been told about not using back lip at least ten times already—and so he took the ad-monition in stride, following along as the general walked briskly down the hallway of his Florida headquarters.

“You see that report from Elliott?” asked Clearwater.

The general was in his early sixties and looked at least ten years older. But he walked fast and was rumored to work around the clock.

“Yes, sir,” said Jed.

“Well?”

“Uh, I agree. The damage to the first plane was almost certainly a laser. And since the Iraqis don’t have the technology—”

“Who says they don’t?”

“Uh, everyone says they don’t.”

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“Everyone’s the CIA. Those spooks couldn’t read the writing on a billboard at twenty paces. Why in hell would the Iranians be attacking our planes?” continued the general. “We’re in Iraq. Why would Iran attack us?”

“I didn’t say they did. I said the Iraqis—”

“Brad says they did. Iranians, not Iraqis.”

“He thinks they may have sold it to them. The Iranians as well as the Chinese have shown interest in Razor, and as a matter of fact—”

“Lasers. Fancy Dan Bullshit.” Clearwater practically spit. He was a foot soldier at heart; last week he had lectured Jed for ten minutes on the value of a rifle that never jammed. But while he claimed he didn’t go for “fancy Dan bullshit,” the record showed that he’d made sure his men and women were equipped with the latest technology, including hand-held GPS devices, satellite phones, and laser-dot rifle scopes.

“If there’s a laser, why haven’t the satellites seen it?”

Clearwater asked, echoing the CIA’s main legitimate argument against the laser.

“There’s only one launch detection satellite near enough to cover that part of Iraq,” said Jed. “And it’s not designed to detect laser bursts.”

“Fancy Dan bullshit.”

Clearwater turned the corner and entered a conference room. Jed followed along. There were six other people inside, none lower than a brigadier general.

“You boys know Jed,” said Clearwater. “NSC sent him down to keep our noses clean.”

“Well, uh, that’s not exactly my, uh, job, sirs,” said Jed.

Admiral Radmuth, sitting next to Jed, gave him a wink.

The men, who headed different commands organized under CentCom, apparently knew that Clearwater himself had asked to borrow Jed for his technical expertise—not RAZOR’S EDGE

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to mention his backdoor access to the White House.

“Gentlemen, let’s get this donkey cart in motion.”

Clearwater slapped his hands on the table. “I want a full update, starting with what we’re hitting this axlehead Saddam with, and what we can expect in return. You have ten minutes. Then Boy Wonder and I are on the plane for Incirlik.”

“On the plane?” Jed’s voice squeaked involuntarily.

“I’m going to Turkey?”

Clearwater turned and smiled at him, probably for the first time ever. He clicked his false teeth, then turned back to his lieutenants. “Gentlemen, I believe pride of place belongs to the Air Force. We have nine and a half minutes left.”

Aboard Raven , over Iraq 2345

CAPTAIN FENTRESS LEANED TO THE RIGHT WITH THE

Flighthawk as he came out of the turn, nudging the throttle slide to max. The Flighthawk picked up speed slowly at first, but once it got through 330 knots, it seemed to jump forward, slicing toward the target building. The metal warehouse sat to the left; as he approached, Fentress saw that the sides were missing from one of the two trailers, revealing what looked like a pair of generators. The Flighthawk whipped past, following Fentress’s prompts as it slid above the empty roadway parallel to the building. He backed off the thrust and began to turn, misjudging his speed and ending up far wider than he’d planned for the next, lower run over the area.

Piloting a Predator typically took four people, and that 246

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was a slow-moving, low-flying aircraft, relatively forgiving of mistakes. Light-years more complicated, in some ways the Flighthawk was actually easier to fly—its sophisticated flight control computer, C3, did myriad things for the pilot. But in other ways piloting the U/MF at speeds close to Mach 1 was as demanding as doing a bi-nomial equation in your head while pushing a tractor-trailer through an uphill maze. His thoughts were consistently a half second behind the plane, and his reactions another second or two behind that.

Not bad for a rookie, maybe, but the six men in the Bronco needed him to be a hell of a lot better.

He’d die if he screwed up. Just die.

C3 noodled him, showing how far off course he’d gone with a dotted red line. Fentress brought it back, kept his speed low, getting a look at things.

“Whiplash team is ninety seconds away,” said Alou.

“We’re patching your feed through.”

Fentress felt his heart pound.

“Hawk leader, this is Whiplash,” said Danny. “The vehicles on the east side beyond the parking area of that second building—can you take a pass so we can find out what they are?”

Vehicles? He hadn’t seen any.

“Roger that.” Fentress slammed the Flighthawk into a turn so abruptly that the computer gave him a stall warning. He eased off, took a breath—it wasn’t a big deal; Zen got those warnings all the time. The computer was just a big sissy.

He knew that Zen would have fried his ears off for that.

But Zen wasn’t here.

Concentrate, he told himself.

Fentress told the computer to switch the viewing mode on the main screen from starlight to IR, which would RAZOR’S EDGE

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make the vehicles easier to spot. He found his course, following the dotted line drawn up by the computer, and dropped through five thousand feet, nudging his speed back until he was just under 200 knots. Running toward the site from the northeast corner, he saw nothing but a flat field and a torn fence, but as he pulled overhead and began to turn he spotted two tanks dug into the ground about a hundred yards from the building, right near the road the Bronco was supposed to land on.

He’d have to take out the tanks.

“Hawk leader, this is Whiplash.”

Fentress could get them both in one pass, but it would be easier, surer, to take them out one at a time. Go for the sure thing.

Zen would agree.

He was already lined up.

“Weapons,” he told the computer. The screen changed instantly, adding crosshairs, targeting data, and a bar at the bottom that could automatically indicate whether he should fire or not once he designated the target.

“Hawk leader?”

Something buzzed into the top left of his screen.

Fentress felt the blood drain from his head directly to his legs. He was nailed, dead.

No—it was the Bronco!

“Captain Fentress?” said Alou.

“Tanks, two tanks, on the road, dug in,” he said.

Tanks? Or the Razor clone?

Tanks—he could see the lollipops on top.

By the time he had it sorted out, he’d overflown them.

He started to bank.

“They’re definitely tanks,” said Fentress. “Nothing else down there, nothing big enough for Razor, at least outside of the building. I’m going to take the tanks.”

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“Whiplash copies,” said Danny. “We’ll hold for your attack.”

Fentress banked to the right, sliding toward the warehouse to get it in view of the sensor. As he did, a yellow light erupted from a low hill on the right.

“Flak!” yelled a voice he hadn’t heard before. It had to be the Bronco pilot, also plugged into the circuit.

Flak, a Zeus firing 23mm slugs. Not even—something lighter, a machine gun.

Take that out too, after the tanks. People there, another vehicle.

Razor? Razor?

Calm down, damn it. Just a pickup.

Fentress pushed on, scanning the warehouse through his turn before starting for the tanks. He got his nose onto the first one, tried to ignore the pounding of his heart. His target bar flashed red.

Fire, he thought. Fire.

His fingers cramped. He couldn’t move them.

He was beyond the tank.

“What’s going on, Hawk leader?” demanded the Bronco pilot.

“Targeting tanks,” said Fentress. He cut southward, came back quickly—too fast. The tanks blurred.

Just fire!

He pressed the trigger and bullets spewed from the front of the Flighthawk. Extended bursts took quite a bit of momentum from the small aircraft, but the computer compensated seamlessly.

Beyond it. He was beyond it. Had he missed?

Get the other one.

“Hawk leader?”

“Keep your damn shirt on,” he told the Bronco as he looped back to get the second tank.

RAZOR’S EDGE

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Aboard Wild Bronco , over Iraq 2350

DANNY GRABBED THE SIDE OF THE COCKPIT AS THE PLANE

wheeled away from the gunfire. He tried to ignore Mack’s voice over the interphone and concentrate on the view in the smart helmet, which showed bullets flaring and then erupting in a fire.

“Any day now, Fentress,” said Mack.

“Relax,” Danny told him, watching the screen as the Flighthawk circled back over the road. Both tanks had definitely been hit. There was no one near the building, as far as he could see.

“Let’s get down,” Danny told Mack.

“About fuckin’ time. Hold tight—there’ll be a bit of a bump before we stop.”

THE ENGINES REVVED, THEN DIED. THE PLANE PITCHED

forward and seemed about to flip over backward.

Powder was sure he was going to die. Someone began to scream. Powder opened his mouth to tell him to shut the hell up, then realized it was him.

The aircraft stopped abruptly. There was a loud crack on the fuselage and the rear hatch slammed open. Bison fell out of the plane and Powder followed, slapping down the visor on his smart helmet so he could see.

“Let’s go!” yelled Captain Danny Freah. “Let’s go—the building’s there. Two tanks, road behind us—they’re out of commission. Come on, come on—Liu, Egg, Bison—run up the flank like we planned, then hit the door. Powder—you’re with me. This ain’t a cookout! Go!”

Powder trotted behind the captain, his brain slowly un-scrambling. His helmet gave him an excellent view of the hardscrabble parking area near the building. A small 250

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white circle floated just below stomach level, showing where his gun was aimed.

“Okay, flank me while I check the back of the building,” said Danny.

Powder trotted wide to the right like a receiver in motion, then turned upfield. The building sat on his left. It looked a bit like the metal pole barn one of his uncles had built for a car shop back home, though a little less faded and without the exhaust sounds. Powder scanned the field behind it, making sure it was empty. He turned to the right, looking down in the direction of the road and the tanks.

“Looks like we’ve got the place to ourselves, Cap,” he said.

“For ten minutes, tops. Watch my back.”

Danny began making his way toward one of the two doors they’d spotted on the side of the building. Powder saw something move near the road out of the corner of his eye; he whirled quickly, then realized it was the airplane they had landed in, taxiing for a better takeoff position.

Bastard better not leave them. Then again, considering the ride down, walking home might be a better option.

“Powder?”

“Yes, Cap?” Powder turned back toward the building, spotting the captain near the wall.

“Flash-bangs. Window halfway down,” said Danny, who gestured toward it. “I’ll take the window. You go in the door on the left there. See it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t move until I give the word.”

“Wouldn’t think of it.”

RAZOR’S EDGE

251

On the ground in Iraq

2355

DANNY TOOK THE TAPE OFF THE GRENADE AS HE LOOKED AT

the window. Best bet, he thought, would be to knock the glass out with the stock of his gun, toss, jump in after the explosion.

Not a tight squeeze. Landing would be rough, though.

He could hear Rubeo talking to someone back at Dreamland in the background on his satellite channel.

The scientist had warned him that there ought to be at least a dozen technical types running the laser, maybe even more. Danny didn’t expect much resistance from them, but you could never tell. Some of the people at Dreamland could be pretty nasty.

“Front team ready,” said Bison, who had come out around the corner to liaison.

“Powder?”

“Hey, Cap, this door isn’t locked. We might be able to sneak in.”

“Bison, what about the front?”

“Hold on.”

As he waited, Danny switched to infrared mode and tried to see beyond the window inside. He couldn’t make out anything.

Might be a closet. Would there be a window in a closet?

How about a john?

A top-secret facility without much security and an open back door?

No way the laser was here. Danny felt his shoulders sag.

“Front door’s locked, Cap. We’re going to have to blow it.”

“All right, the way we rehearsed it.” Danny slid the 252

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window open and readied his grenade. “One, two—go!”

he said, breaking the glass. He popped the grenade through, then hit the side of the building as the charge flashed. In the next second he rose and dove inside. A burst of gunfire greeted him. He leveled his MP-5 and nailed two figures about fifty feet away. As they fell, he realized the gunfire had come from the other direction; he whirled, saw he was alone—another automatic weapon went off. He was hearing his own guys, firing up the enemy.

A pair of tractors for semitrailers sat alone in a large, open area. Otherwise this part of the warehouse was empty.

Danny slapped his visor to maximum magnification.

The tractors were just tractors.

No laser.

No stinking laser.

Powder was on the floor to his right, working toward him on his hands and knees. They couldn’t see the others—there was a wall or something between them.

Empty. Shit.

“Wires all over the floor,” said Powder. “Phone wires and shit.”

“Cut ’em,” said Danny. “Cut the fuckers. Two guards up there, maybe someone else beyond the wall.”

THE EXPLOSIONS HAD PIERCED MUSAH TAHIR’S DREAM AS

he slept on the cot not far from his equipment, but his mind had turned it into an odd vision of water streaming off the side of a cliff. He saw himself in the middle of a large, empty boat on a bright summer day. A calm lake stretched in all directions one second; the next, the water turned to sand. But the boat continued to sail forward. A large pyramid came into view, then another and another.

RAZOR’S EDGE

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It began to rain, the drops suggested to his unconscious mind by the gunfire outside.

Tahir bolted straight up. Gunfire!

His AK-47 was beneath the bench near the computer tubes. He needed to get to it.

There were charges beneath the desk. He could set them off if all else failed.

As Tahir pushed out of bed, something incredibly cold and hard slammed into his chest. As he fell backward onto the cot, he saw two aliens in spacesuits standing before him. They held small, odd-looking weapons in their hands; beams of red light shone from the tops of them.

The alien closest to him said something; too frightened to respond, Tahir said nothing. One of the men grabbed his arm and pulled him from the bed, and the next thing he knew he was running barefoot outside, pushed and prodded toward God only knew where.

“GOT AN IRAQI, CAPTAIN,” DANNY HEARD LIU SAY. “THREE

guards, dead. Doesn’t seem to be anyone else. Screens, black boxes, whole nine yards. This must be the computer center.”

“Record everything you see, then pull whatever you can for the plane. Computers especially. Look for disk drives, uh, tape things, that sort of stuff. Go!” said Danny.

“What do we do with the Iraqi?” asked Liu.

“Bring him with you. We’ll take him back and question him.”

“Hey, Cap, no offense but where’s he going to sit?”

“On your lap. Go!”

254

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Dreamland Command Center

1600

“WHY TAKE A PRISONER?” SAID RUBEO. “IS HE SUPPOSED

to be our consolation prize?”

The others stared at Dog from their consoles. The feed from Danny Freah’s smart helmet, relayed through the tactical satellite and the Whiplash communications network, played on the screen at the front of the situation room. It showed him searching the large warehouse behind the scientist.

“He can tell us what they’re doing there,” Dog said.

“If he’s not the janitor,” said Rubeo. “It’s a parking garage.”

“I believe it’s a covert communications facility,” said one of the scientists. “The trenches outside indicate large cables. The work stations—”

“We have more complicated systems working the lighting,” said Rubeo. “Obviously, we made a mistake—this isn’t a laser site.”

“The section at the left of the bench area included two radar screens. This must be where they’re coordinating the missile launches from,” insisted the other scientist.

“Don’t be so dismissive.”

“I’m being a realist,” hissed Rubeo. “Missiles didn’t bring down those planes. They’re merely wasting them, just as we are wasting our time here.”

“Bull.”

“All right, everybody take a breath,” Dog said. “We’ve got a ways to go here. We’re not even off the ground.”

RAZOR’S EDGE

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Aboard Wild Bronco , on the ground in Iraq 2400

MACK LEANED DOWN FROM THE PLANE AS DANNY FREAH

ran up, the props still turning slowly. He had what looked to be the CPU unit of a personal computer in his arms.

“So?” he yelled to him.

“We got a prisoner and some gear. We’re grabbing all the computer stuff we can grab. I’m going to throw this on the floor of my cockpit.”

“You have to secure it or it’ll shoot around the cockpit when we take off.”

“I’ll sit on it.”

Shit, thought Mack. These Whiplash guys were all out of their minds. “So are we taking the laser or what?”

“There’s no laser here. It may be some sort of communications site, maybe not even that. Can you get the plane closer?”

“Yeah, I guess. Wait—what do you mean, a prisoner?”

demanded Mack.

Freah ignored him, tossing the computer piece into his end of the cockpit.

Two of the assault team members ran up with pieces of equipment. They looked like looters who’d hit an electronics store during a power blackout.

“Where we going to put this prisoner?” Mack shouted.

“Shove him in the back with the guys,” said Danny.

“That’s too much weight.”

“We’re taking him back, Major. One way or the other.

I’ll strap him to the wing if we have to.”

“Shit, Danny—”

“You’re telling me you’re not a good enough pilot to get this crate off the ground, Major?”

“Hey, fuck yourself,” said Mack, but Freah had already 256

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disappeared. He kicked the dirt once, then turned back to the airplane.

This wasn’t like driving a truck. Weight was critical, especially if they were going to make it over the mountains. He’d worked it out to the pound before the flight, figuring they’d carry away only two hundred pounds of gear.

No way they were going to hold it to two hundred.

Shit. They could start an electronics shop with this stuff.

Grousing to himself, Mack reached into the cockpit for his flight board. An experienced Bronco pilot would know where he could cheat, but he had to rely on the specs.

The Iraqi added how much? Another 150.

Hopefully.

The tanks were another problem. The explosion had pockmarked part of his runway. Stinking idiots did that on purpose, just to make his life difficult.

Mack worked over the numbers, trying to make sure he could make the takeoff on the small runway. The problem was, he had to climb almost right away, and had no face wind to help. He wasn’t going to make it. Had he screwed up his calculations before? He was close to 500 pounds too heavy.

There had to be more margin for error. Somewhere.

Drop the Sidewinders. That’d do it.

Shit, fly naked?

Who was he kidding, though? The only thing he could use the heat-seekers for was as booster rockets.

Mack turned back to see two of the Whiplash people hauling a sack forward. They were almost on top of him before he realized the sack was a person.

“Hold,” he said, walking to them. “How heavy is he?”

The two troopers were wearing helmets and apparently RAZOR’S EDGE

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couldn’t hear him. He grabbed hold of the Iraqi, whose eyes were so wide and white they looked like flashlights.

He held him up, shaking him a bit.

A hundred fifty, maybe a little more.

“You’re lucky,” he told the EPW after dropping him on the ground. “Few more pounds and we woulda had to cut your leg off to get airborne.”

Aboard Raven , over Iraq 30 May 1997

0012

THE COMPUTER FLEW HAWK ONE IN THE ORBIT AROUND

the area at eight thousand feet as Fentress took a break.

His heart wasn’t beating so crazily anymore and he felt good, damn good—the ground team confirmed that he had nailed the tanks.

Actually, they’d turned out to be armored personnel carriers. Same difference.

Zen would be proud of him.

“Bronco is ready to take off,” said Alou.

Fentress retook the stick and began to come back north. Smith grumbled something over the open circuit about wanting wind. Fentress banked, watching as the Bronco struggled to get airborne, its nose bobbing up and down violently as it approached a curve in the road. Fentress felt a hole open in his stomach—he’d never seen an airplane crash before, not in real life.

He didn’t now. The Bronco kept going straight, apparently airborne, though just barely.

“Bronco is up,” he told Alou.

“Good. How’s your fuel?”

He checked his instruments, running through a quick 258

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scan before reporting back that they were right on the mark as planned. They traded course headings, double-checking the positions the computers plotted out for them as the Bronco slowly began picking up speed.

“I didn’t think he’d make it,” Fentress told Alou. “Take off I mean.”

“Mack Smith always cuts it right to the bone,” said Alou. “That’s the way he is.”

“A little like Zen.”

“In a way.

“Mack helped develop the Flighthawks,” Alou continued. “He’s never flown them, but I’d guess he knows them as well as anyone, except for Zen. He helped map the tactics sections.”

“Why didn’t he fly them?”

“Doesn’t like robots.”

Fentress had Hawk One flying above and behind the OV-10, following the slow-moving plane much as he would follow a helicopter. He would arc behind at times to maintain separation, while still keeping close to his escort. At the same time, he had to stay relatively close to Raven, which was flying a kind of spiraling oval back toward the base at high altitude.

“Mack was in the air when Jeff had the accident that cost him his legs,” said Alou. “Not that they got along too well before that. But, uh, I’d say there’s still some bad blood there.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. Not the sort of thing you want to bring up in ca-sual conversation with either one of them, I think.”

“Yes, sir.”

Alou laughed. “Hey, relax, kid. You’re one of us now.

You kicked ass down there. Zen’ll be proud of you.”

“Yes, sir. I mean, uh, right.”

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259

Alou guffawed.

Fentress tucked the Flighthawk’s wing toward the ground, rolling around and back to the south before circling back. He scouted the valley as he flew; at eight thousand feet, he was lower than many of the mountain peaks ahead. The Bronco, weighed down with its passengers and climbing to get through the hills, continued to lag behind. Just as Hawk One drew back into its trail position, the RWR blared.

“Zeus ahead,” Alou warned Mack. “Can you get higher?”

“Not without divine intervention.”

A green and yellow flower blossomed in the darkness before him, then another, then another. An upside-down cloud rose from the ground—there were a half-dozen Zsu-23s down there. Fentress accelerated over the exploding shells. “I’ll take out the flak dealer,” he told Mack.

“I’m counting on you, Hawk boy,” said Mack. “Get

’em quick—I don’t want to waste any more gas turning around.”

Fentress tucked left, zigging as another emplacement opened up. He was about two thousand feet over the effective range of the guns—though probably close enough for a lucky shot to nail him. The radar operator on the flight deck warned that there were at least two other guns farther up the valley that hadn’t started firing yet.

Shells exploded above him—heavier weapons, Zsu-57s maybe. Unguided but nasty, their shells could reach over twelve thousand feet, about twice as high as the Zsu-23s.

Fentress realized he was boxed in by the antiaircraft fire. He started to dive on his first target anyway.

“I’m going to run right past them, real low,” said Mack.

“Keep their attention and—”

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The rest of his sentence was drowned out by the warning tone of the RWR. A new threat screen opened up—the passive receiver had found a helicopter radar ahead.

“Bogey,” Alou told Mack. “Low. Closing on you. It just came out of nowhere.”

“I’ll get it,” said Fentress, flicking his stick left as C3

marked out the contact as a Russian-made Hind helicopter. He began to accelerate, but as he went to arm his cannon, his screens went blank.

Aboard Wild Bronco , over Iraq 0042

THE MUSHROOMING ARCS OF GREEN-TINTED ANTIAIRCRAFT

fire suddenly flared red. There was a flash of light so bright that Danny Freah thought a star had exploded.

“Jesus, what was that?” he said.