Razor's Edge

He’d gotten about a third of the way when a fresh explosion rocked the building. He stopped, regaining his balance, then began again. He could hear the helicopter revving outside, felt his own adrenaline surging.

This is why I’m here, he thought. How could he tell RAZOR’S EDGE

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Jemma that? How could he explain it to her friends or politicos, to anyone who wasn’t right in the middle of things?

It was more than the rush. Part of it had to do with pa-triotism, or fulfilling your duty, or something difficult to put exactly into words, even to your wife. Da

A hand grabbed him from the side, a hard clamp that whipped him around and threw him down. An AK-47 appeared over him as he fell, the gun barrel flaring.

In that moment Captain Da

Then hell opened up with a violent thunderclap, light-ning shrieking in a violent arc. Debris fell around him, clumps of dirt and sod as he was buried alive.

Hands pulled him up, warm hands, old hands.

“Shittin’ fuckin’ hell, that raghead almost got you point-blank,” shouted Gu

“Yeah,” said Da

“Well come the fuck on,” said the Marine sergeant. His machine gun still smoked in his hands.

“Yeah,” said Da

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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

The sun washed everything pure and white—even the three bodies of Iranian soldiers who had tried to cut off their escape.

“Let’s go!” yelled Liu, ru

“What’s that, a pair of fuckin’ crop dusters?” said Gu

“Try a dozen MiG-29s and six F-5s for starters,” said Liu, physically pushing Da

Aboard Raven , over Iran 1903

ZEN HAD TO CHECK HIS FUEL AS HE ROSE TO CONFRONT

the jets scrambling from Tabriz. The two planes, ID’d as F-5Es, were relatively primitive, unlike the MiGs coming off the concrete at Hamadian and Kemanshah. But they were more than a match for the Hind and close enough to intercept them.

“I’m zero-two on the lead plane,” he told Alou.

“Copy that. Launching JSOW on laser site,” replied the pilot.

Raven was ru

There was a dull clunk from somewhere far behind Zen as the smart bomb popped off the rotary launcher in the rear bay.

“I’m going to head-on the son of a bitch,” he said, as RAZOR’S EDGE

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much a note to himself as a piece of intelligence for the Raven pilot. “Break north. Stay with me.”

“Copy that.”

“Impact at three, two …” said the copilot, counting down the bomb hit on the laser.

Zen lost track of the conversation on the flight deck as the weapon scored a direct hit on the director assembly. Gray and black smoke furled and then mushroomed from the hole in the center of the building. A concussion shook the building, shattering five of the supports and causing the north wall to implode.

Then things got nasty.

As the explosion vaporized the metal tube and stand at the heart of the director, shrapnel from the smart bomb shot through a four-inch gas pipe near the side of the building. A second or so later the escaping gas was ignited by a fire that had licked its way out from one of the control units. The flames flew back into a large, pressur-ized reservoir tank. This exploded so brightly it set off the IR warning in the Megafortress’s tail, even though by now they were a good distance away. The building’s roof vaporized into a skyrocketing fireball, which burned so quickly that it blew itself out—though not before rising nearly a thousand feet and incinerating everyone who had been in the shed when the bomb hit.

Zen turned his attention back to his own targets. The Iranian jets, flying at just over the speed of sound, were at twelve and fourteen thousand feet, respectively, separated by about a half mile. They were traveling much too fast to engage the Hind; belatedly, they began to slow. The computer plotted Zen’s attack for him, and diplomati-cally didn’t post the odds of a heads-on attack with a ca

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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

The computer cued him to fire before he could even see the first aircraft. He waited an extra second, squeezed the trigger, then corrected right to get a quick shot on the second aircraft. As he started to bank, something red flew through it; one of his bullets had managed to rip through the fuel lines of the lead aircraft, turning it into a fireball.

It was a one in a thousand shot—Zen thought to himself that he should have played the lottery that day.

The second airplane turned hard to the north, accelerating away and taking itself out of the equation. Zen didn’t care—he threw the Flighthawk south and began hunting for the MiG-29s.

“Good shooting,” said Alou.

“Thanks.”

“Bandits are accelerating,” reported the copilot. “Positive IDs—Fulcrum Cs. You have two bearing one-niner off your nose.”

“Slot Dance radar is active. Velocity-search mode,”

added the radar operator. “Should we jam?”

“Let’s hold that off as long as possible,” said Alou.

“They may not know we’re here. Zen?”

“Yeah, roger that. Working on an intercept,” he said.

“Fentress?”

“Boss?”

“Keep an eye on my fuel.”

“Yes, sir.”

Actually, the computer would do so, but Zen suddenly felt he wanted Fentress in the mix.

“Hawk One is being sca