Countdown to Midnight

Twenty

Flynn came out of the narrow band of trees and tall brush and slowed down, rising higher off his seat to see the ground ahead. The little path he’d been following joined with a wider trail here — one that ran along the base of this hill before disappearing east into a smaller valley. It stretched before him, open and empty and inviting.

Like the jaws of a trap, he thought coolly.

Instead, Flynn swung the bike into a hard right turn that left its nose pointed straight up the hill. He opened the throttle wide and accelerated. Dirt and rocks sprayed out from under his rear tire as he veered from side to side to avoid boulders half-buried in the slope and stretches of loose gravel.

Seconds later, he roared over the crest and onto the almost flat summit. And there, only a few dozen yards away, he saw the twin-engine Iranian helicopter sitting on its skids. Its rotors were still spinning slowly. The skyline on the other side of the hill was still empty. A quick, predatory grin flashed across his lean face. He’d won the race.

Still moving fast, Flynn sped through a tight curve to come in from behind the grounded helicopter. In a cloud of dust, he skidded to a hard stop right beside its open side doors. The crewman crouched there behind his door-mounted machine gun looked up in surprise. His mouth fell open. Frantically, he fumbled for the grips of his weapon — desperately trying to haul it around to bear.

Too late, pal, Flynn thought evenly. He drew his pistol, brought it on target with the same, smooth motion, and fired twice at point-blank range. Hit squarely in the chest by both rounds, the Iranian folded over his machine gun.

Then, still mounted on his motorbike, Flynn leaned in through the helicopter’s open door and aimed his pistol toward the cockpit. Startled, both pilots swung toward him. Their eyes widened in horror. Before they could react, he opened fire — squeezing off multiple 9mm rounds just about as fast as he could pull the trigger. Blood spattered across the cockpit canopy. Sparks flew wherever his shots punched through flesh and bone and tore into instrument panels. Hit several times each, the helicopter pilots slumped forward against their harnesses, already dead or dying.

Grimly satisfied, Flynn slid the Glock back into his shoulder holster. Scratch one Iranian helicopter, he thought coldly. Without its flight crew, this bird wasn’t going anywhere.

He looked up just in time to see the group of Revolutionary Guard troops charging over the far crest of the hill. He opened his throttle again and peeled out, slewing around to head back the way he’d come. More rifle rounds slashed past him at supersonic speeds. But then he was on the downslope and out of their line of fire.

Focused now on not crashing, Flynn sped downhill and came back out onto the trail heading east. Heedless of noise, he accelerated again and raced ahead, leaving a growing plume of dust in his wake. There was no longer any point in trying to hide. He’d knocked out one Iranian scout helicopter, but the other would be on his tail soon enough. Speed had quite literally become life at this stage of his mission.

He roared past another small village. Not far beyond it, the trail crossed a dry riverbed and petered out. He kept going east, bouncing and jolting along the rough, rock-strewn surface of the wadi itself. He resisted the urge to look back. If the Iranians reacted even faster than he’d feared, he was a dead man anyway.

A mile or so east along the wadi, Flynn spotted a shallower place along the mounded bank it had carved through this alluvial floodplain. He gunned the dirt bike up that easier slope, with loose sand flying out behind him, and climbed out onto more open ground. And there, not more than a couple of hundred yards away, he saw the high-winged shape of the BushCat light aircraft lined up for takeoff with its prop already turning.

His face creased in a huge, relieved grin. Just as promised, Laura Van Horn was in the exactly right place and bang on time.

Flynn slid to a stop next to the BushCat and jumped off, letting it topple sideways with the motor still running. Time was too short to waste wrecking the bike so that it wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. Off to the west, he heard the faint clatter of rotors. The surviving Iranian scout helicopter was on its way.

He darted across to the aircraft and scrambled up into its cabin. It smelled strongly of gasoline. On this trip out, without the weight of a passenger, Van Horn had been able to carry the extra fuel she needed for a return flight aboard her BushCat instead of relying on the Predator drone’s jury-rigged cargo capability.

From the pilot’s seat, she shot him a dry smile. “Hey there, stranger. Need a lift?”

“Why, yes. I surely do,” Flynn said, matching her tone. He took the headset she offered and plugged in. “It seems like the locals are mighty pissed off at me right now.”

Van Horn shook her head in mock disapproval. “This is becoming a really bad habit, Nick. Stacking up dead bodies behind you is no way to go through life, you know.”

“I take your point, ma’am,” he said with an apologetic shrug. “But I didn’t exactly have any choice this time… not if I wanted to go on living, anyway.”

She laughed. “Well, I guess it’s okay, as long as you’re really, really sorry.”

Still smiling to herself, Van Horn ran the BushCat’s throttle up to full power, released its brakes, and started her takeoff roll. Responding instantly, the little plane bounded forward, bouncing and swaying across the bumpy ground while it steadily picked up speed. They’d only covered a few hundred feet when she pulled back on her control stick. Eagerly, the BushCat broke free of the earth and climbed away. She leveled off just a couple of hundred feet above the ground. They were flying east at around ninety knots, the light aircraft’s preferred cruising speed.

Flynn checked the mirror mounted on his side of the plane. There, several miles away to the west, he spotted a quick flash of red-tinged sunlight glinting off a clear canopy. He squinted against the glare, just making out the distant shape of a helicopter as it turned toward them. “Well, that sucks,” he said somberly. He looked across the cabin. “We’ve got company.”

Van Horn nodded calmly. “Figured so.” She glanced back at him. “Fixed wing or whirlybird?” she asked.

“A helicopter,” Flynn replied. “Probably an Agusta Bell 212, from what I saw earlier.”

“A Bell 212? That’s a nice flying machine,” she said thoughtfully. She craned her head to check the mirror on her side. “Coming on fast, too. It’s probably got an edge of about forty knots on us.”

Flynn frowned. “Just swell.” For lack of anything better to do, he drew his Glock, hit the release button to drop out the spent magazine, and then inserted a fresh one from his jacket pocket.

“Whoa there, Top Gun Flynn,” Van Horn said with a thin smile. “That 9mm peashooter of yours won’t be much use in a dogfight if it comes down to that.” She raised an eyebrow. “And I’m betting that helicopter’s packing serious firepower, right?”

“It’s got a door-mounted machine gun,” he admitted. “Most likely a 7.62mm Russian PKT-type.” The idea of trying to take on a faster, more heavily armed rotorcraft with his pistol did seem pretty crazy, put that way. Then again, what other options did they have? He looked at her. “Can this crate of yours even dogfight anyway?”

She laughed. “Oh hell, no. Aerobatics are strictly forbidden. Remember, this little beauty is made out of fabric and thin aluminum. If I pull too tight a turn, I’m liable to rip our wings right off.”

“This just gets better and better,” Flynn said flatly. Then he noted her relaxed profile. He sighed. “Okay, Miss Van Horn, what’s your plan?”

“What makes you think I have a plan?” she asked innocently.

He snorted. “Because I don’t think you even go into the ladies’ room without a plan.”

Van Horn flashed him a winning smile. “Insulting, I guess, but basically accurate.” She spoke into her headset mike. “Tiger Cat to Tomcat. You see the situation?”

Through his headset, Flynn heard the voice of Sara McCulloch, the Predator’s remote pilot, responding from her station hundreds of miles away in southwestern Afghanistan. “I see it, Tiger Cat. Come right to one-three-five and climb to five hundred feet.”

Obeying, Van Horn banked the BushCat to the right, altering her course slightly until they were heading southeast. She pulled back a little on the stick. The aircraft’s nose came up and they gained some altitude. They were now flying straight toward a nearby ridge that rose a couple of thousand feet higher still above the valley floor.

Off to the west, the Iranian helicopter — rapidly closing the gap between them — matched her maneuvers. Suddenly, several miles behind them both, two bright, split-second flashes lit the darkening sky.

“Fox Two,” McCulloch called succinctly.

Trailing smoke and fire, two tiny shapes slashed toward the Revolutionary Guard helicopter at Mach 2.2 — more than seventeen hundred miles per hour. Eight seconds later, both missiles detonated within yards of their target. Dozens of fragments sleeted through the Agusta Bell 212. Wreathed in flames, the shattered helicopter spiraled down and smashed into the ground. A pillar of oily black smoke curled high into the air from the impact point.

Flynn gazed back at the crash site in silence for several seconds. Then he breathed out. He glanced across the cabin at Van Horn. “Unbelievable. You really brought that Predator drone along carrying air-to-air missiles?”

She nodded in satisfaction. “AIM-92 Stingers, to be precise. It seemed like a sensible precaution.”

Flynn stared at her. AIM-92s were the air-launched variants of the U.S. military’s shoulder-launched Stinger missiles. “Should I ask where you got them?”

Van Horn shrugged. “I think they fell off the back of a truck at some point. Maybe back in Alaska when I was up there doing one of my stints in the Air National Guard.”

He felt his eyebrows go up. “And you don’t think anyone’s going to notice that a couple of Stinger missiles have gone missing?”

She shook her head complacently. “Nope. Both were marked off as expended in training.” Her teeth flashed white in the darkened cabin. “Okay, so maybe that was a little premature.” Then she jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the smoke rising skyward behind them. “But it’s true now. The expended part, I mean.”

Flynn looked back at the burning wreckage of Iranian helicopter. No one could have survived that crash. He shook his head. “And what was that lecture I got earlier? About my bad habit of stacking up bodies behind us?”

Van Horn smiled serenely. “It must be the bad company I’m keeping.” She banked the BushCat back to the east — starting the long, arduous night flight through Iran’s mountains and across its vast deserts that would take them back to Afghanistan.

Sourly, Pavel Voronin prodded a twisted and blackened piece of debris protruding from the sand with the toe of one of his handmade boots. He turned to the gray-bearded Iranian brigadier general standing next to him. Mohsen Shirazi commanded the Revolutionary Guard’s Aerospace Force. That put him in charge of all of Iran’s military missile and space efforts — most important of all now, those committed to MIDNIGHT. “So now we know for sure that an enemy has uncovered some of our most prized secrets,” he commented coldly.

Shirazi frowned. “Some, perhaps,” he admitted. “But not all of them.”

“Thanks to your traitor Khavari, they know about the Gulf Venture,” Voronin retorted. “And now their agents have seen your Zuljanah rocket in transit. Which means they were tipped off to the convoy from Shahrud by someone.” He scowled. “All things considered, Jerusalem has already learned far more about our business together than I find comfortable.”

Shirazi looked narrowly at the dapper, well-dressed Russian. “You’re still convinced this was an Israeli operation?”

“It’s the logical assumption,” Voronin pointed out. The ambush carried out against Viktor Skoblin in Vienna had been straight out of the Mossad playbook. And so was this. Who else but the Israelis would have the courage, skill, and, indeed, the sheer ruthlessness to carry out such a daring covert operation so far inside Iran? Certainly not the Americans or even the British, he concluded dismissively. Judging by what he read, their intelligence agencies were much too focused on playing domestic political games right now to willingly risk trained agents and equipment in a high-stakes gamble like the one they’d just witnessed.

Moodily, he kicked at the burnt-out remains of the helicopter again. “If we can be grateful for anything,” he said harshly, “it ought to be that the Israelis had only a small reconnaissance unit deployed near the highway, and not a more well-equipped commando force. Judging by the results here, a full-fledged attack on your convoy might well have reduced all our hopes for MIDNIGHT to smoldering wreckage.”

Slowly, Shirazi nodded in bleak acknowledgement. “If the Israelis have been alerted by what they’ve learned here — and elsewhere — we can expect them to react even more violently going forward,” he warned.

“I am aware of that,” Voronin snapped. He fought to regain his composure. He had too much riding on this enterprise to see it end in failure. Zhdanov had given him a blank check so far. But Russia’s president would never forgive him if MIDNIGHT resulted in yet another humiliating defeat. If his nation’s autocratic ruler had one defining characteristic, it was his readiness to sacrifice anyone he believed had failed him.

“Perhaps we should provide an armed naval escort for Gulf Venture when it sails,” Shirazi suggested. “To protect the tanker against air attack or a commando raid.”

“You think so?” Voronin said acidly. He snorted in derision. “Why not just publish all our detailed plans for this secret operation in the New York Times or the Washington Post? It would certainly be simpler and cheaper than surrounding what is supposed to be an innocent civilian merchant ship with a flotilla of your fast-attack speedboats and other warships.”

The Iranian’s mouth thinned in anger. He folded his arms. “Then what do you propose we do?”

Voronin told him.

Shirazi frowned. “Your concept has merit,” he conceded at last. “But implementing your ideas will add several days and significant costs to the tanker’s fitting out process. My superiors in Tehran will not be pleased.”

“Better a minor delay now, than complete disaster later,” Voronin reminded the other man bluntly. “Especially since neither of us is likely to survive for long if this operation fails.”

“A persuasive argument,” Shirazi agreed at length. He nodded. “Very well, it shall be done.”