Whiplash

82

Iran

SEVERAL ARMY VEHICLES PASSED NURI AND FLASH AS THEY made their way to the field. Nuri ducked a little lower in the seat each time. A fatalism had settled over him; he was sure they were going to die now, apprehended probably by chance. He’d run his streak of luck too far into the ground for the result to be anything else.

Flash was too busy paying attention to the road to feel optimistic or pessimistic about anything.

“There,” said Nuri, pointing to the turnoff. “Stop in front of the gate. I’ll put some video bugs to cover the road before we go up.”

Da

“Put the car back on the other side, opposite the missile storage building,” Da

“What building?” asked Flash.

Da

“Help me with Tarid,” Nuri told him. “He’s a bit heavy.”

“How’d you knock him out?”

“Morphine, and lots of it. He’s probably due for another hit. He took a bullet in his leg, but I don’t think it’s too bad.”

They carried him to the van, where the Iranian they’d helped earlier was still clinging to life.

“How long before the C-17 gets here?” Nuri asked.

“Ten minutes now,” said Da

“You sure they can land here?”

“I’ve seen them land on smaller strips.”

“You’ve seen everything, huh?”

“Not everything.” Da

Neither one of them spoke for a moment.

“Where’s the warhead?” asked Nuri finally.

“It’s up by the wreckage.”

“How do we get it into the plane?”

“We’ll have to rig something to carry it,” said Da

“Why don’t we use the van to pull it in?” said Nuri. “If we can get it into the back.”

“Actually, we could just drag it,” said Da

“The one on the fence at the gate.”

“Good idea.”

They took Tarid and the wounded Iranian out, then drove down and got the chain. As the van backed up near the warhead, Da

“Sucker is heavy,” said Flash.

“Not as heavy as you’d think,” said Da

“Considering what it can do, it ought to weigh a million pounds,” said Nuri.

“Exactly.”

“You sure it ain’t going to blow us up?” said Flash.

Before Da

IT WAS NO HYPERBOLE TO SAY THAT THE MC-17 HAD NO peer among jet transports when it came to flying behind enemy lines. The stock version of the aircraft had been designed to operate under battlefield conditions, landing and taking off from short, barely improved airfields, and it did that job superbly. The MC-17/M shared those qualities, and added a few of its own. It could fly in the nap of the earth, hugging the ground to avoid enemy radar. It could maintain its course to within a half meter over a 3,000-mile, turn-filled route—no easy task, even for a GPS-aided computer. And it could land in a dust bowl without damaging its engines.

Actually, the latter was not part of the design specs. While the engines were designed and situated to minimize the potential for damage, especially from bird strikes, there was only so much the engineers could do. Their debates about where to draw the line had filled several long and surprisingly heated meetings at Dreamland, not to mention countless sessions after hours in the all-ranks “lounge,” aka bar.

Those discussions came back to Brea

“Let’s turn it around,” said Captain Dominick. “The tail will be right next to them.”

It was a narrow squeeze, but they managed to make it, pulling around in a three-point turn that even a driving instructor would have been proud of.

Boston, Sugar, and the loadmaster sprinted down the ramp. Nuri was already at the wheel of the van.

“You sure we ain’t go

“You glow already,” said Boston.

There wasn’t enough room for the van with the Ospreys in the rear. But the loadmaster improvised a chain and tackle and a pair of impromptu ramps, allowing them to bring the warhead into the bay and place it, without too much groaning, onto a pair of dollies. They wheeled the weapon alongside the Ospreys, chaining it to the side.

By that time, Greasy Hands had helped Hera bring Tarid and the wounded missile technician inside. They lay them on temporary stretchers behind the Ospreys in the seating area. The accommodations weren’t exactly first class, but neither was in a position to complain.

“Greasy Hands? What are you doing here?” asked Da

“Enjoying retirement,” said the chief, clapping him on the back.

“Social Security doesn’t stretch as far as it used to,” said Boston. “So he decided to moonlight. We pay him under the table.”

“Well I’m glad as hell to see you,” said Da

“Same here,” said Greasy Hands. “Next time you guys kidnap somebody, though, pick someone about fifty pounds lighter.”

THEY GOT OFF THE GROUND A FEW MINUTES LATER, THE aircraft shuddering as the wind kicked up, but lifting them up with plenty of room to spare.

Plenty of room being defined, in this case, as three and a half meters.

Brea

“Twenty minutes to Iraqi territory,” Brea

The MC-17 had come east without a direct escort, operating on the theory that they were safer if the Iranians had no idea they were there. The fighters tasked to protect it remained over southern and northern Iraq, ready to scramble if necessary, but otherwise attempting to look as if they were interested in something else.

The theory had proven correct on the flight in, but now reality injected complications. Because of the coup, the Iranian air force had scrambled several flights of MiGs. While they were slow to get in the air—the C-17 had already landed at the missile site before the first one took off—there were now a full dozen over the western half of the country, with more on the runways.

The AWACS detected one of the patrols flying up from the south on a rough intercept with the MC-17 shortly after it took off. Though it didn’t seem likely that the Iranians had spotted the cargo aircraft, the fighter group commander decided to take no chances. The group of F-15s to the south were told to intercept.

The fighters were picked up immediately by Iranian air defenses. Radars and missile sites began tracking them along the border area, trying to lock on and launch missiles. One of the antiaircraft sites was almost directly in the MC-17’s path. The northern group of interceptors, which included an F-16 Wild Weasel SAM suppressor, was ordered to take out the defenses. More MiGs came out for them as they started toward the site.