Fallout

27

Luke and Vlad walked out of the hangar with Prekash, toward the squadron’s jets. They wore Indian flight suits and boots. Luke thought the Archers squadron patch on his flight suit was worthy of a MiG squadron, but he would have preferred to die with his NFWS flight suit and patch on, and the black star painted on the tail of his airplane.

The Indian MiG-29s were lined up on the tarmac in the bright sunshine. They were in beautiful shape, painted in a green-and-tan camouflage with Indian markings.

Vlad’s eyes took in the airplanes and the minutiae that only those who fly them can see. He spoke to Luke, who was walking beside him. “C models. Not much difference. All the latest electronic countermeasures. We should have no problem.”

“Sure hope you’re right.” Luke was too busy having an out-of-body experience, looking at himself walking toward an Indian MiG, wearing an Indian flight suit and boots, being led by an Indian Colonel and assisted by a Russian pilot. All to fly into combat in a Russian fighter in a soon-to-be war he didn’t care much about, to stop a lunatic Pakistani pilot. It was one of the more surreal moments in his life. Things were usually clear in Luke’s mind, but he found himself unable to recount how he’d gotten to where he now found himself. He could certainly trace the chronology well enough, but that didn’t seem to explain it. It was an inadequate way of looking at it. He was more in search of a “why” answer. He felt as Ulysses must have felt in his journey back from Troy to Penelope, when every event surpassed the previous in oddity or difficulty, every monster was bigger and meaner than the last, all calculated by the gods to prevent him from reaching his destination. All Luke had wanted was to fly fighters and start a family. Was that so much to ask? Had he been too greedy? Was there a God so mean-spirited that such a desire was to be met with destruction and death?

All around the base there was a hum of activity. It was clear to anyone watching that combat was imminent. Luke hoped that no such activity would be obvious to someone with a good vantage point to observe it and an inclination to tell Pakistan. He also hoped that if there was such a person, he didn’t have Raymond-size binoculars sufficient to identify Vlad and him. But it might not make much difference; Luke was convinced that Riaz Khan would go on his mission regardless of who was waiting for him. He was just afraid that knowing what they were up to might make Khan change something.

Luke stood at the top of the ladder and peered into the cockpit.

Vlad spoke to him from the bottom of the ladder, already having viewed the cockpit. “No problem, right? Just like we’re used to.”

Prekash walked over to them. “We have decided where you should base your airplanes.”

Luke was put out. “What’s the plan?”

“We think you should go now. We don’t know when he might launch. We should be ready.”

“I thought we were going to do a FAM hop first. Get used to your airplanes.”

“We don’t have time for a familiarization hop. We think you should be in place in case he goes now.”

“Okay,” Luke said, his uneasiness increasing. He hopped down the last step from the ladder. “When?”

“As soon as you can be ready.”

“Anything going on?”

Prekash nodded. “We have some signals intelligence. We have intercepted some communications from the ground.”

“I don’t see Khan talking on the radio before a strike.”

“Not him, others. Fuel trucks and other ground personnel.”

Luke nodded. “Where are you going to put us?”

“On a highway.”

Luke sat in his Indian MiG-29 beneath a large tree on the side of a two-lane highway. Vlad’s MiG was across the highway inside a large barn. There were a dozen Indian maintenance men around them to ensure that they got their jets started and that their takeoff was uneventful. They waited only for some word, some indication that Khan was actually going to try it.

Luke was uncomfortable with the idea of taking off from a dusty, poorly maintained highway. He’d never done anything even close to that, let alone in a jet. Vlad claimed to have done it several times, but Luke was beginning to wonder how many of Vlad’s amazing claims of experience were true. He’d never received any level of comfort on Vlad’s probably doctored flight records from Russia. But Luke had been impressed by Vlad’s tenacity against Khan at San Onofre. The man had nearly given his life to save an American nuclear plant. Still.

Luke had been sitting in the MiG cockpit so long his muscles ached. The afternoon had passed full of anticipation and excitement. Everyone was ready to launch, but nothing had happened. A telephone had been set up on a portable table for the critical communication. An order to launch would come through the phone, a landline that could not be intercepted by Pakistan’s signals intelligence. The plain black telephone looked stark against the high-tech gear all around—the testing equipment, a few spare parts, the hydraulic line charger, and the electric cart that provided nonstop power to the MiGs. Vlad had an identical setup across the road and down a hundred yards. The airplanes had been dispersed in case of attack. One attack couldn’t get more than one airplane at a time.

The night had brought strange noises and frustrated traffic from the closed road. The Indian ground crew had gone from unbounded enthusiasm to bored waiting. The hours passed slowly, punctuated only by the activity of Luke and Vlad unstrapping and climbing out of their jets every so often to relieve themselves behind the nearest structure.

Luke found himself fighting unconsciousness. He was exhausted, but he didn’t want to be found sleeping when the big call came. It was hard enough to get a jet ready for takeoff from an unimproved roadway. But the problem was magnified infinitely when one tried to get airborne while fighting the fog of recent, deep, satisfying sleep. The result was a fitful, restless existence for Luke, strapped into the confines of a Russian cockpit battling sleep every minute of the night. He would find himself drifting off and shake his head to just short of a headache. He would pinch himself just short of a bruise. Anything to stay awake.

Without any warning, the telephone rang.

Morrissey sat in his office with the NSA specialists, numerous transcripts of telephone conversations spread out in front of him. “What do we have?” Morrissey demanded impatiently.

“Several calls. Some from Russia, and a couple to Russia. The most interesting are from this man he identifies as Gorgov.”

“Who is he?”

The Russian linguist who had translated them and listened to the originals answered. “We’re not sure. He behaves like someone with a lot of power—the kind that comes from holding a gun to your head. He has some control over this Vladimir.”

“What about the others?”

“There is a call to a Colonel to apparently take care of this Gorgov. To get him off his back. The Colonel apparently is intending to take Gorgov out.”

“And?”

“And then there’s a call from Gorgov, telling Vlad his Colonel friend had failed in his attempt to kill Gorgov. He tells Vlad he’d better come through this time, basically. I think he was supposed to make sure the Pakistanis pulled off the attack on San Onofre. Turned out they got there too late to stop them anyway. But there’s some other event that’s going to happen, and Vladimir is supposed to be in a place to make sure it comes off. It is very unclear.”

Morrissey put his head in his hands as he realized what was happening. “Khan is going to strike India. We just sent an American pilot and Vladimir to India to stop them. And the request originated with Vladimir’s suggestion to the Russians, who passed it on… We are screwed,” Morrissey declared as he jumped up and grabbed the phone. He looked at a list and dialed a number, then waited for the international connection. Finally someone answered. “Sunil, please.”

“I’m sorry, he is not available.”

“Find him.”

“May I ask who is calling?”

“Bill Morrissey. This is an emergency. Put him on right away,” he said.

“Yes, sir, I’ll put you through.”

Morrissey heard an unusual set of clicks that sounded as if he was being forwarded through innumerable switchboards. Then the unmistakable voice of Sunil came on through what sounded like a digital cell phone. “Yes?” he said.

“Are you secure?”

“Yes,” Sunil replied. “Bill Morrissey?”

“Yes. Look, two pilots are on their way there. Luke Henry and a Russian—”

“Yes, I have met them.”

“We have reason to believe that the Russian is under the control of Khan, or the Russian Mafia who are helping Khan. He’s going to help the strike succeed, not stop it. We’ve got a lot of other things to do to confirm it, but he shouldn’t be on that mission. We can’t rely on him.”

“How do you know this?”

“We’ve got some phone conversations that are pretty clear.”

Sunil sounded distressed. “It may be too late. They are already in place at a remote road location.”

“You’ve got to stop them!”

“I’ll see what I can do, but I am not optimistic.”

“Then you’ll have to get the other Indian fighters to go after the two MiGs as well.”

“To shoot down our own airplanes? How would they know which one had this Russian in the plane?”

“They wouldn’t. They might have to take both of them out. Look, we have to stop Khan. If he succeeds, there will be a nuclear war, and you know it.”

Sunil was silent. “I will go there myself and inform your pilot. I will let him decide.”

“You must hurry!”