The Disciple

He turned from the television and studied the reports. Apparently all twenty-five of the missile sites had been the targets of U.S. Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles. While many cruise missiles and a few Ghadar ICBMs remained in the tu

Nor could he contact the president in the executive bunker. His staff had tried repeatedly. That was certainly odd. The president and other national leaders had taken shelter in the bunker in case the Americans retaliated after a nuclear burst. They hadn’t yet done it, even though at least two Ghadars with nuclear warheads were in the air heading toward Israel. Aqazadeh didn’t know that one of his own nukes was targeted on Tehran; Ahmadinejad hadn’t shared that tidbit with him.

Aqazadeh realized that Iran had probably lost the shooting war and was in danger of losing the political war, even if the Jihad missiles obliterated Israel. The president should know of this, he thought, so that he can make a statement to counter American propaganda efforts. He decided to personally go to the bunker and appeal to the president to come out and lead his nation.

The blip blossomed on Chicago O’Hare’s radar scope. Hell, it was still almost a hundred miles away, over the Gulf, and would pass ten miles to her left. She glanced at her fuel gauge. Five hundred pounds remaining. There was water in her immediate future.

She turned west on a course to intercept, resisted the temptation to advance the throttle now. She would have to wait until the very last moment to increase her speed to match the missile’s.

“Black Eagle, War Ace Three Oh Seven has the target and is intercepting. Hope you have that chopper on the way.”

“It’s airborne and crossing the coast.”

“Roger that.”

She checked her switches, then eyed the radar as the target marched down the scope, coming closer. She had to accelerate and turn before she got to the missile so she wouldn’t end up in a tail-chase. Not enough fuel for that happy crap.

Finally she advanced the throttle. Her speed began to build. O’Hare timed her turn well and ended up closing from the missile’s port side. Looking for the missile through the HUD and not seeing it, she realized she had made a mistake. Couldn’t find it against its background. She was almost on top of the thing. She popped her speed brakes and pulled up in a yo-yo, then lowered her nose and checked her radar as she dropped into trail behind it. There, at a half mile.

Closing deliberately from astern, Chicago crept up until she saw the exhaust glow and centered that in the gunsight. Her breath was coming in quick gasps, as if she were ru

She checked the range. Less than a hundred yards. Pulled the trigger. Felt the ca

She yanked hard on the stick to avoid a collision. Found herself going almost forty degrees nose up. Stuffed the nose and turned so that she could again acquire it on the scope. Halfway through the turn she saw a little plume of fire, then a splash.

Amen.

When she was again heading to Qatar and climbing, she called the E-2. “Splash one nuke. Give me a heading to intercept the chopper.”

“One-seven-five. It’s twenty-five miles from you.”

“Have a nice life,” she said.

She sat staring at her fuel gauge, which read zero. Maybe the gauge is wrong. Maybe there is more juice in there than you think. Even she didn’t believe that. She pushed the button on the IFF to squawk 7700, Mayday.

The altimeter read six thousand feet. She was still doing five hundred knots. She pulled the throttle back to max conserve, and the airspeed bled off.

Oddly, her next thought was about the skipper, Fly Burgholzer. He is going to be so pissed.

Then her right engine died. She had arrived at the end of her rope.

“War Ace Three Oh Seven is flaming out. Ejecting.” Even as she said it the left engine died and the cockpit went dark and silent.

Sitting in that black coffin that the cockpit had become as the plane decelerated, O’Hare took a deep breath and pulled the ejection handle over her head. She yanked the face curtain all the way down and the seat smacked her in the ass and whoom! she was out and tumbling through the black night sky.

The opening of her chute almost split her pelvis.

She fumbled with her oxygen mask bayonet fittings, got it off, then threw it away as she drifted down toward the black ocean. She could see the surface now. The first traces of dawn were arriving. Just another navy day, she thought as the water rushed up toward her boots.

Betsy “Chicago” O’Hare was sitting in the little one-man raft that had been in her seatpan waving a flare when the chopper found her.

My handheld radio squawked to life. “Tommy Carmellini?” a ti

“Yes. This is Carmellini.”

“We’re fifteen minutes from drop.”

I looked at my watch, which I could see quite plainly in the early dawn. “Got it,” I said. “Make some bull’s-eyes.”

“Oh, we will, we will. You can bet on it.”

That was the problem. I was betting on it. Betting my ass and the ass of everyone here with me. I didn’t tell him that, though.

“Thanks,” I said.

He didn’t reply.

As I put the radio back in my pocket, I looked around. Joe Mottaki and his tank were sitting on the ridge to the left, on top of the bunker. G. W. was behind us, across the access road, nearer the gate to the prayer grounds. Larijani, Davar and I were still at the base of the trees, where we could see the boulevard behind us. Haddad Nouri and Ahmad Qajar had a machine gun set up on our right. They had gone back to the boulevard, then crawled forward until they found a slight depression where an old tree had been. They set up the gun there, about a hundred yards from the entrance to the mosque, where the two Iranian soldiers stood a sloppy guard. One was sitting in the dirt, his weapon across his knees; the other was smoking at the corner of the building. Obviously, there were no officers or NCOs about to check on them.

Behind us, civilian traffic packed the boulevard, all of it going one way-out of town. The military was already gone, and the civilians were doing their best to get gone, too.

“Go

The kids in that bunker were still on my mind. I lowered my forehead onto the cold steel of the rifle receiver and tried to think of something else. Like going home. I didn’t give a damn what Grafton wanted; first chance I got, I was going home.

Deep in the bunker, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a worried man.

After the computers, telephones, televisions and camera equipment for television broadcasts went dead, instantly, all at the same instant, he had sat in his command room in silence, watching the three technicians attempt to figure out what was wrong and restore communications. After about ten minutes, one had brought a computer that he had taken apart over to him. “Excellency, we have no electrical power on the circuits, and the computers have been destroyed.” He pointed to the circuit board, which was black in places. “The whole thing is burned up from a voltage overload.”

Ahmadinejad walked out, went to his private office. That was several hours ago.