Razor's Edge

Chapter 80

Danny Freah pried himself out of the Bronco’s cockpit and walked to the back of the plane, where several Marines were already helping with the prisoner. The Iraqi had to be held upright; while he offered no resistance, the flight had turned his legs to jelly, and even with help he moved across the old asphalt like a toddler taking his first steps. The man kept looking to the sky, obviously unsure of where he was.

Then again, the same might be said of the Whiplash team, shuffling gear back and forth tipsily as they got out of the plane.

“You’re green, Powder,” Danny said.

“I ain’t never flying in an airplane ever again, Cap.

Never. No way. Not unless I’m pilot.”

“That’ll be the day,” said Nurse.

“Inventory and tag the gear; we’re routing it to the NSA,” said Danny, who’d already received the order to do so from Colonel Bastian. “Isolate the prisoner in an empty tent, then find out if the Marines have an Arab speaker. I’d like to see what the hell he does before we hand him over to CentCom.”

“As soon as the place stops spinning, I’m on it,” said Powder.

High Top Base now looked like a small city, albeit one made almost entirely from tents. Whiplash’s two bulldozers, along with a small Marine vehicle, were working on the southern slope, grinding it down into a depot area to accommodate some of the supplies two C-130s had brought in for the Marines. Gators — revved-up golf carts with military insignia — charged to and fro with stacks of gear. Two platoons of Marines were extending the defensive perimeter along the road below; another company was erecting a temporary metal building twice the size of the Whiplash HQ trailer at the far end of the aircraft parking area to be used for maintenance work on the planes.

The runway would soon total three thousand feet; CentCom was hoping to use it as an emergency strip. In the meantime, air elements of the MEU(SOC) — six Harriers and six Cobra gunships — were due in late tomorrow or the next day to provide support for any Marine ground action in the Iraqi mountains to the south.

That might come soon. The rumble of artillery could be heard in the distance. The Iraqis were moving against their civilian population in the north. Unlike 1991, there had been no exodus of Kurds from the towns — an ominous sign.

Besides the Marines, a dozen technical people from Dreamland were due; they had been rerouted to Incirlik on the MC-17 to look after Quicksilver. As Danny understood it, the damage to the plane was much less than it might have been; the laser had managed to catch it with only a short burst, probably at the far edge of its range.

The experts believed this confirmed that it was using a barrage pattern to saturate an area based on minimal or primitive radar coverage. They also said it was possible that the laser had been thrown off by the partly stealthy profile of the big plane, or even the presence of the Flighthawks. In any event, Quicksilver would be back at High Top and available for action within a few hours.

Danny made his way to the medical tent, blinking at the bright lights inside. The EPW, or enemy prisoner of war, stood before the empty cot, eyes shifting nervously around. He either didn’t understand the corpsman’s gestures or declined to take off his clothes so he could be examined.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Danny told the prisoner.

The man gave no indication that he understood anything Danny was saying; it wasn’t entirely clear that he could even hear.

“Can you examine him like that?” Danny asked the corpsman.

“I guess. He doesn’t seem to be hurt.”

“Get him something to eat and drink. Try and be as friendly as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you guys have an Arab speaker?” Danny asked the corpsman.

“Not that I know of, sir.”

“All right. Go easy with him.” The man looked like he was in his late thirties or forties, but Danny suspected he was somewhat younger; he clearly didn’t eat well and probably didn’t have much opportunity to take care of himself. Danny had seen in Bosnia how war and malnu-trition aged people.

The man held up his shirt gingerly as the corpsman approached with his stethoscope. His ribs were exposed; he had several boils on his back.

“Take pictures,” Danny told the Marines. “I don’t want anybody accusing us of torture.”

“Yes, sir,” said the corporal in charge. “What do we call him?”

“Call him ‘sir.’ Be as nice to him as possible. Nicer.

Treat him like your brother.”

“I thought I was supposed to be nice.”

Danny left the tent, heading toward his headquarters to update CentCom and then Dreamland Command on their arrival back at the base. He had just checked on the arrangements for a Pave Low to evacuate the parts and prisoner when the lieutenant he was talking to was interrupted. Another officer came on the line, identifying himself as a Major Peelor, an aide to CinC CentCom.

“Are my people hearing this right?” said the major.

“You have an Iraqi?”

“That’s right,” said Danny. “We’re shipping him to Incirlik so you and the CIA can debrief him. It’s all been arranged through—”

“You went into Iraq and kidnapped an Iraqi citizen?”

“I captured a prisoner. We believed he was part of the laser operation. Our guys think his site may have been coordinating the radar operations, but it’s too soon to—”

“Did you clear this with the lawyers?”

“Lawyers?”

“Taking the citizen.”

“He’s a soldier.”

“Did you clear it with the lawyers?”

“Why the hell would I do that?” asked Danny. “What lawyers?”

“Who approved this mission?”

“Look, Major, you don’t have the clearance for this conversation.”

Danny punched out the connection.

Chapter 81

“Don’t worry about it,” Dog told Danny. “I’ll handle CentCom. The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing over there. Send the prisoner to Incirlik as we said.”

“But what’s this bullshit about lawyers?”

The colonel stared at Danny Freah’s face on the screen at the front of the situation room. It was a tired, drawn face, one barely capable of suppressing the anger he obviously felt. “I haven’t heard anything about lawyers,” Dog told him honestly.

“Major Heller or Peelor, or whatever his fucking name, is accusing me of kidnapping an Iraqi citizen. Are we fighting a war here or what? What is it with these guys?”

Dog reached down to the console for his coffee. The cold, bitter liquid did nothing to relieve his own fatigue, but the pause let him consider what to tell his captain.

The absurdity of modern warfare — you needed a legal brief before taking prisoners. And all sorts of sign-offs and findings and cover-my-ass BS.

“I don’t know what Peelor is talking about,” said Dog.

“You don’t have to worry about it. You work for me, not CentCom. You proceeded on my authority, and you followed a lawful order.”

It was the mildest response Dog could give him, but Freah still looked like he’d been punched in the stomach.

“The prisoner goes to Incirlik to be debriefed and processed,” said Dog. “Quicksilver has been patched up and should be en route shortly. We’re pulling together everything we have on the site you hit. We’re pretty sure it was networking the radars, but we won’t be positive until the NSA analyzes the gear you took. Whether it’s related to the laser or not, at this point no one knows. You did a good job, Danny. Go get some sleep.”

Dog clicked the remote control in his hand, cutting the connection.

“Better get me General Magnus,” Dog told the specialist at the com board.

Chapter 82

Jed Barclay thumbed through the pages of satellite photos on his right knee, looking for the latest batch from the sector north of Baghdad. Finding what he was looking for, he pulled the sheets to the top, then compared them to radio intercepts culled by Raven the previous day and balanced on his left leg. Under his chin were troop reports provided by CentCom, but what he really wanted now was the preconflict CIA assessment listing likely commanders and their call signs; that was somewhere in the briefcase near his feet, unreachable without sending a flurry of papers through the cabin of the C-20H Gulfstream.

“Son, you look like you’re cramming for an exam,”

said General Clearwater, looming over him from the aisle.

“No, sir, just trying to work out some things.”

“And?”

“Well, sir—” A sheaf of papers fell from his left knee onto the seat next to him, starting a chain reaction of cascading paper as they knocked several files and an awkward pile of maps onto the floor. Jed looked up from the mess helplessly; the general stared at him as if he didn’t notice.

“Well, first of all,” Jed began again, “the barrage tactics had to have been carried out with the help of a network of spotters. The radars only come on after the aircraft pass two points in northern Iraq. I would guess that there’s at least one source in Incirlik, even though the NSA hasn’t filtered the intercept yet. The barrage spread of SAMs includes a Chinese missile based on the S-3, at least if the telemetry is to be believed. But given all that, the damage to the first plane and the Megafortress — at least those two, maybe the others — had to have been caused by a laser. And on the Megafortress, assuming the preliminary information from the AWACS is correct, it seems clear that the laser was operating independently. I’d like to speak to the Dreamland people once we’re down, but from everything I have here, there’s definitely a laser.”

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know. Razor works with a dedicated radar, similar to a traditional SAM site. But that’s not the only way to do it. From what I understand — and it’s not my area of expertise — the laser could fire through a gridded arc after an aircraft is detected by a long-range radar or some other system.”

“Run that horse at me again,” said Clearwater.

“Think of it this way,” said Jed. “You have a one-out-of-five chance to win a poker hand. You play a hundred rounds, you’d expect to win twenty times. Well, if the laser could cycle quickly enough — in other words, reload — it could fire one hundred shots into an area where it expected the plane to be. One shot out of X would hit.”

“I’ve known lucky poker players in my time,” said the general. “Played like they stepped in shit.”

“Yes, sir. The point is, you could fire through a grid where you thought the plane was and expect to get a hit a certain number of times. Of course, we have no idea how many times they’re firing. We don’t record the misses, just the hits. They may be really lousy shots.”

“We’ll keep your point in mind while we peek at the cards,” said Clearwater, clicking his false teeth.

“Sir?”

“How’s your Arabic?”

“Uh, well, my top tier languages are German and Russian and of course—”

“Do you speak Arabic or not, son?”

“Well, I do, I mean at my last proficiency exam, I had a 4.2 out of five but there are different dialects. See, spoken standard Arabic, that’s one thing—”

“Good enough,” said the general. “Your friends at Dreamland have found us someone they think may be a radar operator. He’s inbound at Incirlik right now. CIA’s going to handle the debrief with some of our people, but I’d like you to take a shot at it as well. CIA officers with language skills are all south of the border at the moment.”

“We, uh, we’re—”

“They’ll hold the horse until we get there.”

“Uh, I was, uh, thinking I might, uh, sleep, sir. I haven’t slept in—”

“You have twenty minutes before we land. Hop to it, son.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chapter 83

In theory, Brigadier General Mansour Sattari commanded the Iranian Air Force and its nearly five hundred aircraft. In theory, the click of his fingers could summon four fully equipped squadrons of MiG-29U Fulcrums and six slightly less capable F-5E Tiger IIs, two dozen MiG-27 fighter-bombers, a handful of F-14As and Phantom F-4D and F-4Es, a host of support aircraft, and nearly forty helicopters.

In reality, Sattari’s command came down to a single Fokker F.28 Friendship VIP transport, which was actually listed under a French registry. True, he could count on the loyalty of several squadron commanders if called upon to fight — but only if he could reach the men personally.

Brigadier General Mansour Sattari, a veteran of the re-volt against the Shah, a decorated fighter pilot who had personally led attacks against Baghdad during the Martyrs’ War, had come to symbolize the demise of the once great Iranian Air Force, and Iran itself. A few short weeks before, his mentor and friend General Herarsak al-Kan Buzhazi, the supreme commander of the Iranian armed forces, had been outmaneuvered in a power struggle with the imams; he had been assassinated just minutes after meeting with the Ayatollah and learning the full depth of his humiliation. Even worse than Buzhazi’s ignoble death were the Chinese troops that had entered the country at the Ayatollah’s invitation; those troops now effectively controlled the country.

And so as he bent toward Mecca to say his morning prayers, he did so with honest humility, knowing first-hand how the God of all could show his overwhelming power even to the most just of men. Sattari did not pre-sume to know why Allah did what He did, nor would he dare question the path the world took. He knew only that he must act according to his conscience and not his fear.

His actions must ultimately be judged not by those on earth or even those who claimed to know God’s will, but by God Himself.

Sattari was also a realist. And as he rose at the end of his prayers, still in a contemplative mood, he looked briefly in the direction of Iraq, the lifelong and enduring enemy of the Iranian people. For it was there that hope lay for his people. If the infidel Chinese were to be removed, if the cowards who hid behind their black robes in Tehran were to be taken from the stage, the Iraqi devils must play their role.

Thus far they had done so even better than Sattari had hoped. Seeking a solution to the Kurdish problem once and for all — a problem largely encouraged by Buzhazi before his demise — Saddam Hussein had em-barked on a typically reckless plan of simultaneously tweaking the Americans and attacking the Kurdish Pesh-marga, or “freedom fighters,” in their homeland. Kicking out UN inspectors, aggressively launching surface-to-air missiles — the Iraqi actions were so well-timed that Sattari had considered holding back his own plan to use the stolen laser. Unfortunately, the Iraqi tactics had proved inadequate to provoke a large American response; it was only when Sattari began shooting down the American and British aircraft that the westerners had become sufficiently enraged to launch an all-out attack. Sattari had to carefully coordinate his attacks with the Iraqi radar and SAM launches to make it seem as if they were responsible. This had limited his target possibilities and made his timetable beholden to the Iraqis as much as the Americans. Still, the first phase of his plan had met its objectives. American troops were streaming into the region; more significantly, American diplomats were sounding the Iranian government out about a tentative rapprochement.

The next step involved his few allies in the diplomatic corps, who must strike a deal worth kicking the Chinese out for. Sattari did not feel that would be too difficult; the Chinese were not liked, even by the black robes, and they had already brought the country considerable pain. Nor did the Americans want much from Iran, beyond the assurance that they would not help Saddam — an assurance very easily given. Some small thing might move the talks along — an American air crew downed near the border and recovered, turned over after being treated as honored guests.

With the Chinese gone, Sattari could move on to the third and final phase of his plan — restoring the military, and the air force, to its proper place.

Sattari did not want power in the government. Nor did he necessarily believe that his plans would succeed. Ever the realist, he saw them as fulfilling his duty rather than his ambition. For the alternative — the Chinese, the black robes — meant quasi-servitude, if not death for his country.

And certainly death for himself. The ayatollahs blamed the Americans for Buzhazi’s death. It was possible—

Sattari had flown with them during the early days, and knew their cunning. They had certainly helped foil General Buzhazi’s plans. But it was just as likely that the black robes themselves had killed the general, or at least allowed the Americans to do so.

Sattari did take some satisfaction in the fact that his country’s enemies would be used to liberate it. He hated Iraq beyond rational measure. It was not enough that Sattari’s younger brother died in the Martyrs’ War; the bastard Saddam had killed his mother and father with a Scud missile attack against their city. The day the American President Bush had stopped the so-called Gulf War without killing the dictator even now rated among the saddest of Sattari’s adult life.

The general walked back to his Range Rover, nodding at the driver before getting in. Two other SUVs with handpicked bodyguards sat twenty yards back on the road, waiting. Another was traveling about a quarter mile ahead.

“To Anhik,” he told the driver, using the name of the village near the laser compound. “As planned.”

The driver nodded and silently put the truck in gear.

Sattari turned his attention to the countryside over the course of the next hour, studying the mountains as they shrugged off the last of the winter snow. Ice mingled with bursts of green. A small herd of animals — goats, most likely — moved along the side of the road, prodded by a pair of young women dressed in heavy peasant garb, except for their boots. As a child, General Sattari had heard stories that made the Kurds out to be demons. As a young man he had looked down on them as ethnically inferior louts. But his experience with them following the Martyrs’ War had shown they were at least as competent and brave as any other Iranian soldier — high praise, in his mind. The fact that his complex at Anhik was staffed pri-marily by Kurds was in fact something of a comfort; he knew the men could not be corrupted by either the Chinese or the black robes.

The two men at the gate waited until they saw him nod before stepping back to let the Rovers pass. They held stiff salutes despite the wind-strewn dirt.

The site had been built during the Shah’s last years, with the intention of constructing a tractor factory; it had in fact been used to construct some mowing equipment but had lain idle for at least two years before Sattari acquired it as one of the air force’s top-secret warehouse sites. It had housed a stockpile of Russian air-to-air missiles. These were now long gone, some expended in the futile Persian Gulf action, and more, Sattari suspected, stowed aboard the Chinese vessels that had sailed from the country after the struggle that brought Buzhazi down.

A debt to be paid, along with many others.

They had started building the laser here nearly eighteen months before, when overtures by the Chinese made it clear that the hills kept it shadowed from American spy satellites. It was not completely bereft of coverage, of course — no place on earth seemed to be — but the Chinese intelligence had made development possible.

The laser had been Buzhazi’s most closely guarded secret and his prized weapon. It was based largely on plans for the American “Razor,” an antiaircraft weapon which, at least according to the specifications Sattari had seen, was considerably more accurate at a much farther range than his device. Razor was also considerably smaller, and mobile. It wasn’t just that the Americans had better computer technology; they had found a way to propagate the energy beam much more efficiently and with different gases. And their superior manufacturing abilities undoubtedly played an important role.

But his scientists were doing well, better even than they had expected. The laser was housed in a long shed-like building with roof panels that could be slid open to target an aircraft. The mechanism looked as if it had been pilfered from a planetarium — and a sewage treatment plant. Pipes ran in two large circles and from both sides of the plants. Wires crisscrossed thick cables. Computer displays stood in two banks on steel-reinforced tables; more work stations were said to be networked here than in all the rest of Iran, outside the capital.

Sattari, not a particularly scientific man, had been somewhat disappointed on his first inspection. He’d expected to see something more like the devices in the American Star Trek movies. When the inventors described the use of the chemical gases to create a focused beam, they sounded more like cooks than weapons specialists.

Nonetheless, he could not be happier with the results.

His caravan passed a small battery of Hawk missiles and headed toward the main building. Hidden under camo netting, the missiles dated from the Shah’s era, and the crews manning them had never been able to launch one, even in training; they were too precious. Their best protection was stealth and the Americans’ obsession with Iraq. The laser could not be protected against a concentrated air attack, and he had quartered a hundred-odd men here to guard against the Chinese and black robes, not the Americans, who in any event wouldn’t attack by ground.

Because of the secrecy of the project — and also because some of the scientists who worked here were not as en-lightened about Kurds as Sattari — the soldiers were kept from the main compound by a double row of barbed-wire fence.

Sattari’s vehicle stopped near the underground tunnel that led to the laser shed as well as a bomb shelter off to the side. He liked to start his inspections here, as it allowed him to get into the very heart of the laser shed almost immediately, in effect taking the scientists there by surprise. But today it was his turn to be surprised, for as he got out of his vehicle, two figures stepped from the underground steps. One was Sattari’s commander here, Colonel Kaveh Vali. The other, considerably more ominous though nearly a foot shorter than the colonel, was Shaihin Gazsi, Ayatollah Khamenei’s personal representative to the air force.

Sattari felt the blood vessels in his neck pop as Gazsi approached. Khamenei had shown his considerable disdain for Sattari by appointing a woman to represent him.

“General, I see you have finally arrived,” said Gazsi.

Barely thirty, she seemed to rise above the traditional feminine garb, her veil and headdress fluttering behind her as if struggling to catch up. Her nose might be a half centimeter too long, but otherwise she would be a perfect beauty.

If she weren’t such a bitch.

“And you? Why are you here?” he said. He was, of course, surprised to discover that his secret was no longer secret, though this was the best he could do to hide his shock.

“You will address me with respect,” said Gazsi. “I am the Ayatollah’s representative.”

His whore, perhaps, though Sattari doubted the old bastard could get it up.

“Why are you here?” he repeated.

“The Ayatollah wishes to speak with you immediately.”

“I am at his service,” said Sattari. “I will leave in the evening.”

“You will leave now,” she said. “My helicopter is prepared for you.”

“I will leave this evening,” said Sattari. He caught the worried look on Colonel Vali’s face. “Or sooner, if my business here is completed before then.”

“I suggest you conclude it within twenty minutes. I will wait,” said the horrible woman as he descended the stairs, Vali in tow.

Chapter 84

Zen unhooked his chair from the elevator mechanism on Quicksilver’s access ladder and began wheeling himself slowly toward the Whiplash HQ trailer. He kept looking for Fentress, dreading seeing him yet knowing he had to talk to him.

But what would he say?

No more time to rehearse — he was standing just outside the Whiplash trailer, nursing a cup of coffee.

“Yo, Fentress, rule number one, don’t break my plane.”

Zen meant it, or wanted to mean it, as a joke, something to break the tension. But Fentress looked down at the ground and seemed nearly ready to cry.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Zen said, wheeling over to him. “I’m busting your chops. It wasn’t your fault. Right?”

“Major Alou wanted me to take the mission,” mumbled Fentress.

“You did okay. Really.” Zen knew his words sounded incredibly phony. But what else could he say?

Well, for starters, that he shouldn’t have flown. But like the kid said, that had been Alou’s call.

Alou should have checked with him — a point Zen had already made, though Alou had dismissed it. The kid had done damn well under the circumstances, Alou had argued.

Bullshit, Zen said. He’d been shot down.

Alou hadn’t answered.

Water over the dam now. Zen knew his job was to encourage the kid, get him going.

Kid — why the hell was he thinking of him as a kid?

Guy was pushing thirty, no?

“Come on, Curly,” Zen said, wheeling ahead to the ramp. “Let’s get back on the horse. These things are flown by remote control for a reason, you know?

Could’ve happened to anyone. You did okay.”

Inside, Danny was laying out plans for an operation to hit a laser site in Iran — once they had a good location.

Merce Alou and the others, including Breanna, were nodding as he spoke.

“This’ll work,” Danny said. “I haven’t gone to the colonel with it, and we’ll need CentCom to come along, but it’ll work. Hey, Zen.” He leaned over the table, pointing his long black forefinger toward a lake and mountains in northeastern Iran. “According to what Jennifer figured out, the laser has to be somewhere inside this twenty-five-mile square. Mahabad is just to the north, there’s a major highway right along this corridor. The Dreamland mini-KH covered most of that area yesterday. The resolution’s limited, as you know, but we can ID the major structures.”

Zen pulled over the Iranian map while the others looked at the photos. Using a pen and his fingers as a crude compass, he worked an arc from the target square.

“How sure are we of this?” asked Zen. “All of the shoot-downs were within two hundred miles of the edge of your box. Razor’s range is close to three hundred.” Zen slid the map back so the others could see.

“Rubeo says it’s likely this laser isn’t as effective,” said Danny.

“That’s where it was fired from,” said Jennifer. “Where in that area, I don’t know, but it’s there somewhere.”

“Radar?” asked Zen.

“There’s airport-type radar in the vicinity. The laser would be there, or simply wired into it,” said Jennifer.

“I’ve checked with our people — it looks like they’re using barrage firing.”

“Like the Iraqis with their missiles?” asked Zen.

“Except it works,” said Major Alou.

“The way to find out what they’re doing is to hit the site,” said Danny. “You missed this, Zen. There are five possible targets, X’d out on that map. We draw people from the MEU. Two Cobras or more on each possible site. Assault teams follow. The Megafortresses provide intelligence and fuzz the radar, that sort of thing.”

“Air defenses?” asked Zen.

“The Iranians have missiles near all of the sites, though it’s not clear what’s operational and what isn’t. There are three air bases within range to intercept. You know their situation, though — it’s anybody’s guess what they can get off the ground. The one break I see is that the Chinese aren’t this far north, so we don’t have to worry about them.”

“The Marines up for this?” Zen asked.

“I don’t know,” said Danny. “I imagine they will be, but I can’t talk to them until Colonel Bastian gives the word.”

“He has to go to CentCom to get them cleared for the mission,” said Alou. “We can’t just chop them.”

“We have to do a quick hit,” said Danny. “Dr. Ray says it’s possible the thing is mobile and might be moved.”

“So when are we talking to the colonel?” asked Zen.

“Now,” said Alou.

Chapter 85

“The Pentagon legal people are raising holy hell about taking the prisoner,” said Magnus. “And CentCom’s furious that they weren’t told about the mission.”

“We saw an initiative and we took it,” said Dog, who decided he didn’t want to parse whatever boneheaded argument the lawyers raised. “I stand by both actions.”

“That won’t affect the political reality,” said Magnus.

“And going into Iran will only make it worse.”

“We have to destroy the laser, no matter where it is.”

“Have you been looking at the satellite data?”

“Of course.”

“Then you realize that Saddam is launching an all-out assault on the Kurds in the north. There are rumors he’s loading Scuds with anthrax to fire at the Kuwaitis as well as the Kurds.”

“I don’t put much stock in rumors,” said Dog.

“That’s not the point, Tecumseh. This is becoming an extremely complicated situation — a geopolitical situation. If things escalate, we may need Iranian help.”

“You’re telling me the Iranians are our allies now?”

“I didn’t say that at all.”

“There’s a laser in Iran shooting down our aircraft,”

said Dog. “We can get it.”

“If your data is correct.”

“Given the number of aircraft that have been shot down, it’s worth the risk.”

“Not if it encourages the Iranians to ally themselves with the Iraqis. And not if it pushes the Chinese to declare war in support of the Iranians.”

“The Chinese are paper tigers,” said Bastian.

“Paper tigers with the world’s third largest army. Think of the impact of a nuclear strike on Saudi oil, Tecumseh.

Talk to your friend Brad Elliott about them.”

“I have the authority under Whiplash to stop whatever is shooting down the planes,” said Dog, making his voice as calm as possible. “That means the laser, and that means going into Iran. Are you withdrawing that authority or reversing the order?”

“You know I can’t do that,” said Magnus.

Only the President could.

“Are you saying that I shouldn’t proceed?”

Magnus stared at the screen but said nothing.

“We have a good plan,” said Dog softly. “All we need is support from CentCom. My people there have outlined a good plan.”

“CentCom doesn’t have authority to engage in ground operations in Iraq, let alone Iran.”

“We have to attack the laser quickly,” said Dog. “My scientists say there’s a good chance it’s mobile or at least can be made mobile. Even if it stays right where it is, no plane flying over northeastern Iraq is safe. Let alone one flying over Iran.”

A thin red streak, so bright it could have been paint, had appeared across Magnus’s forehead. “You know, Dog, you sound more and more like Brad Elliott every fucking day.”

The screen flashed and went blank.

Dog had never heard Magnus use a four letter word before.

“So what now?” asked Major Cheshire, whom Dog had asked to sit in with him.

“We find a way to go ahead without CentCom,” Dog said.

“Magnus seems against it.”

Dog thought back to his conversation with Knapp. Not exactly something to hang a career on.

“The Whiplash order hasn’t been revoked,” he said.

“We have to proceed.”

“Do we destroy the laser, or try and send Danny in?”

said Cheshire.

He hadn’t anticipated using her as a sounding board when he’d kept her at the base, and until now she hadn’t been. But Cheshire did fill the role of alter ego admirably.

Mid-thirties, a career officer with a wide range of experience — a woman with the perspective of someone who’d had to fight her way into what was essentially a closed club, in reality if not in theory.

A good alter ego. A good wife, in a way.

Jennifer was the one he wanted. This would put her in more danger — she’d barely escaped the laser strike on Quicksilver.

Not a factor in his decision.

“If we can’t use CentCom, we can’t send Danny,” said Dog finally. “But we have to proceed.”

“What about the Chinese?”

“Questions, always questions,” he said with a laugh.

“Well? Are we risking World War Three here?”

Dog began to pace in front of the mammoth view screen at the front of the room. At the time the Whiplash order had been issued, the threat was largely thought to be a new radar system or a technique involving radar. The President had probably put Whiplash in motion as insurance for CentCom, intending them to augment the conventional forces. He hadn’t foreseen this development.

But the fact that the threat turned out to actually be a directed energy weapon did not change the essential nature of the orders — something was still shooting down American planes, and he was empowered, ordered, to stop it if possible.

The orders were predicated on the threat being in Iraq, not Iran.

It wasn’t hard to guess why Magnus hadn’t volunteered to take the matter to the President. If things went wrong, and even if things went right, the mission could plausibly and legally be described as a rogue adventure by a mis-guided underling — Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh Bastian. His head could be offered up to whomever wanted it: Congress, CentCom, the Iranians.

They had to proceed with the mission. If they didn’t, more Americans would die. The laser might be refined and sold to other countries, beginning with the Chinese — who might even already have it. It might be used to threaten commercial air flights or against satellite systems.

But proceeding might very well mean the end of his career.

And the death of his lover, daughter, and friends.

“Colonel?” asked Cheshire.

“Open the channel to High Top,” Dog told the lieutenant on the com panel. Then he turned to Cheshire.

“We’re moving ahead.”

Chapter 86

For all his experience in combat, for all his bravado, General Sattari still felt awe as he stepped into the chamber of the Council of Guardians in the capital. He might have no respect for the robed men who sat here, he might think that the Ayatollah Khamenei was essentially a coward and a traitor to his people, but he could not forget that these men, for all their failings, were teachers with a special relationship with God. Perhaps they abused their power, perhaps they made decisions motivated by greed or expedience rather than piety — but they nonetheless contemplated the Creator with a depth of attention that he could only admire.

The marble floors, the large open room, the rich tapes-try — all reinforced the humility of his position. His steps faltered; he felt his fingers beginning to tremble and his heart pumping faster, adrenaline mixing, accentuating his nervousness. When he saw Ayatollah Khamenei sitting calmly before him, he felt his tongue grown thick. He had been wrong to proceed without his blessing; he had been wrong to underestimate the religious leader’s skill and control.

He considered saying nothing. He considered, even, running from the building.

A glance to the Chinese guards flanking the door steeled his resolve.

“You have caused us great difficulty,” said Khamenei in a voice so low Sattari practically had to stop breathing to hear.

“The difficulties are with our enemies,” Sattari said. He reminded himself he was not without leverage. Nor was his weapon unguarded — before leaving Anhik he had deployed most of his men on the highways south of the base to guard against any move by the Chinese; spies at the air bases they used would warn if any bombers or transports took off. While Sattari did not believe Khamenei would order such an attack against him — he would have done so already, rather than summoning him here — the Chinese could well choose this time to move unilaterally.

“How does the American attack on the dog Saddam help us?” asked the Ayatollah.

“Because, your excellency, it takes their attention away from us, and at the same time weakens our enemy. Our people in Basra pray for deliverance.”

The continued suppression of Shiites in the southern Iraqi city had been the subject of many of Khamenei’s edicts, but the Ayatollah showed with a frown that he would not be so easily persuaded. Sattari felt an urge to shout at him that they must take advantage of the American preoccupation and push off the Chinese; they could rearm with American help as long as the Americans were obsessed with Iraq. American weapons were far superior to the Chinese hand-me-downs; this had been proven time and time again. And even if the Americans offered no aid, they could be used to cow the Chinese into a better arrangement.

Surely Allah was against the pagan Communists as well as the demon Christians.

Did it matter that American planes were destroyed? Did it matter that Iraqis were killed? These were good things.

Sattari remained silent.

“We were not informed that the weapon was ready to be used,” said the Ayatollah when he spoke again.

“Reports of the tests six months ago were delivered in this very hall,” said Sattari. “At that time, readiness was discussed.”

And projected as being five years away, if not more.

Sattari had helped coach the scientists on what to say, and listened carefully. The laser’s actual location had also been carefully left out of the report.

Khamenei stared at him, not bothering to point out the contradiction.

“You wish your power restored,” said the black-robed imam instead. “You feel that by these actions you will restore yourself to a position of eminence.”

“My interest is Iran, and the glory of God.”

“That does not rule out your own glory, does it?”

He thought to supply a formula from the Koran to the effect that personal glory means nothing except as it contributes to salvation, but the stirring of some of Khamenei’s cohorts in the row behind him diverted him.

“My interest is Iran, and the glory of God,” he repeated.

“So be it,” said the Ayatollah. “But I will be the judge of the success of your action.”

Sattari considered the words. Khamenei had conceded nothing — but neither did he order Sattari to stop what he was doing.

He was willing to play the game. Perhaps he detested the Chinese and the Iraqis as much as Sattari. Or perhaps he had his own plans; his face gave nothing away.

It occurred to Sattari that he might be stronger than he realized. He didn’t have to angle for power — he had it. If he could arrange for a purge of some of the more religious junior officers in the air force, he might combine them with his Kurd allies and control the northwest provinces on his own.

It was not among Sattari’s plans, but the idea did warm his chest against the coldness of the hall as he took his leave.

Chapter 87

The American’s Arabic was clear enough, though he seemed an odd bird, limbs and legs constantly in motion as he stumbled for the right phrase. Neither he nor any of the other Americans seemed to realize that Tarik spoke English, or that he had spent several years in America. He believed that was very much for the good, especially since he had overheard his captors say several times that he must be treated with care. Certainly they had been good to him so far.

They wanted to know how he managed the radar network. They asked of a laser, and missiles, but to every question he feigned ignorance.

He would say nothing. That was his duty.

Chapter 88

Torbin had trouble concentrating on the radar screen as Jennifer Gleason reviewed the settings for him.

If the plane’s captain was the most beautiful woman Torbin had ever seen — and she was — Jennifer was number two.

Very different, though. Not military. Long hair, thinner.

Cursed like a stinking sailor. Smarter than any ten people he’d ever met.

“So you hit this sequence here, that just tells the computer to screw over its normal programming,” she told him. “Then you manually move the cursor to prioritize, or use verbal commands, like this.”

The scientist began speaking in a calm, almost quiet voice, using the screen ID codes to identify the targets.

“The thing to remember is that you have to precede instructions with the word ‘Computer.’ ”

“Got it,” said Torbin.

“Okay. You run through the simulation program I just set for you. I have to help install the laser detection gear in Raven, so I’m going to download some programming while you’re practicing. Then you’re going to come over to Raven with me and help calibrate it.”

Jennifer bent down to examine something on the screen of her laptop, exposing a small bit of flesh near her waist-band.

“Okay,” said Torbin, wrestling his eyes away with great difficulty. “Okay, okay.”

Chapter 89

Without the Marines or other CentCom support, the best they could do was blow up the laser. Even then, it might be tricky — they had only six JSOWs left, to use against the three likely sites.

“We can get there in the Bronco,” insisted Mack, who had suddenly become enamored of the turboprop plane.

“In and out.”

“Your loaded radius just won’t cut it,” said Zen. “Especially if it turns out to be that site out near the lake. I’m sorry, Danny. Colonel Bastian’s right. This is the way we have to go.”

“I’m worried that we don’t even have all the possible sites,” said Alou. “From what Rubeo says, those four smaller buildings could be it too.”

“Once they fire at the Quail, we’ll know for sure,” said Bree.

“If they fire at the Quail.”

“They will.” The Quail was a decoy drone, essentially a cruise missile with a profile and “noisemaker” that made it appear to be a B-52 on radar scopes.

“I think they’ll go for it,” said Zen. “And Rubeo’s wrong about it fitting in a small building. Jennifer says it has to be one of those three sites.”

“She’s not an expert on lasers,” said Alou.

“She’s an expert on everything,” answered Zen.

Danny listened as they continued to discuss the contin-gencies, pondering how effective the JSOWs would be against a hardened site, even though Rubeo said it would be impossible to place the director or firing mechanism behind one.

In a perfect world, a massive strike by F-15Es would cover any possibility. But if it were a perfect world, Danny thought, he would have CentCom support.

He glanced at the map. If it made sense to survey the laser site when they thought it was in Iraq, it made even more sense now.

Two of the three most likely sites were within the Bronco’s radius, albeit just at the edge.

So maybe they should be in the air, just in case.

“What?” Zen asked him.

“Listen, if you’re going to use the Quail to try and find the site, then I’ll take a team in the Bronco in case it turns out to be one we can hit,” Danny told him.

“Now you’re talking,” said Mack.

“Iraqis’ll shoot you down before you get to the border,”

said Zen. “They’re running Zsu-23s up north like ants rushing to a picnic.”

“It’s an awful long shot,” said Bree.

“Granted. But the payoff would be high.”

“Not if you’re shot down,” said Alou.

“Hey, screw that,” said Mack. “I’m not getting shot down.”

“You almost got shot down by a helicopter,” said Alou.

“Not even close. And this time I won’t leave my Sidewinders behind.”

“Then you’ll never make it into Iraq,” said Zen. “It’s too far, Mack.”

“Don’t wimp on me, Zen boy.”

The back and forth might have been amusing if so much weren’t riding on it. Danny wondered if he sounded like Mack — willing to take enormous risks just to get in on the action.

Was that what he was doing?

Chapter 90

The face that flashed onto the screen surprised Dog so much he found himself momentarily speechless.

“I hear you’ve been looking to chew my ear,” said General Clearwater, CentCom CinC. “Fire away.”

“Well, actually, it’s academic now,” said Dog, who’d just come back to the command center after catching a few hours sleep. “I wanted to inform you of a mission into Iraq.”

Clearwater moved his closed mouth, as if shifting his teeth around. “Well, your boys pulled that off very well, Colonel. Congratulations. Were you looking for assistance?”

“Just wanted to keep the lines of communication open, sir. A heads-up.”

“Very good.” The general seemed ready to sign off.

“General Clearwater, I wonder if we might have your support on another mission.”

“What’s that?”

“We believe we know where the laser is that’s been shooting down our aircraft. We want to hit it right away.”

“It should be a target. Have you talked to Jack?”

Jack meant Jack Christian, the Air Force general in charge of target planning for CentCom.

“It’s in Iran,” said Dog. “What I’m looking for—”

“Iran’s out of bounds,” said the general. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes, sir.”

Clearwater moved his jaw again. The deep lines on his forehead grew even deeper. “How sure?” he asked.

“Very.”

“My orders at the moment are very explicit, and I’ve gone over similar ground with the Defense secretary twice. I understand your orders may be different,” added Clearwater before Dog could say anything else. “But for the moment at least, my hands are tied.”

The screen blanked before Dog could say anything else.

Chapter 91

The idea had formed in Danny’s mind even before the Marine Corps major came to see him. It was outrageous and even far-fetched — which made it perfect.

“I know you’re busy,” said the Marine commander, helping himself to some of the coffee on the trailer counter near the worktable. “I was wondering if I could arrange a briefing on the valley you flew through on your way back from the Iraqi radar site. We have a mission just north of there. We’re going to pick up some Kurd leaders and bring them to Turkey for a conference. I’m authorized to take out anything that gets in the way.”

“I’ll give you the whole rundown,” said Danny.

“There’s a helicopter base down there that you ought to wipe out along the way. They have at least two Mi-24

Hinds on the ground.”

“We’ll nail them,” said the Marine.

“Wait. I’d like one of the helicopters,” said Danny.

“What for?” said the major.

“You don’t want to know,” said Danny.

The Marine, who knew only that Whiplash was not part of the normal chain of command, nodded. A few minutes later Danny and he had worked out a plan to snatch one of the Hinds.

Zen and Alou were considerably more skeptical than the Marine.

“We take the helicopter into Iran. The Iraqis won’t shoot at it, because it’s theirs,” said Danny.

“The Iranians will,” said Zen.

“Not before we hit them.”

“I don’t know, Danny.”

“It’ll work,” he insisted. “It has the range, even without extra fuel. And we’ll take plenty. Payload’s there. It’s low risk.”

“Bullshit on low risk,” said Alou, and even Zen rolled his eyes.

A small part of him said to back off — he and the team were tired, this was way out there. But another part of him, the much larger part, pushed ahead.

They could do it.

“Who’s going to fly the helo?” asked Alou.

“I got a guy,” Danny told him.

“Who?”

“Egg Reagan. He has a pilot’s license and everything.”

“He’s flown Hinds?” Zen asked.

“He can fly anything,” said Danny. “We can take the chopper, no sweat. As long as the Marines can get us there, we can do this. Egg flew a Pave Low just the other day. He can do this.”

“We can’t go without Colonel Bastian’s approval,” said Alou.

“He’ll approve it,” said Danny.

Chapter 92

“Very risky, Danny. I don’t know if Sergeant Reagan can fly the aircraft.”

“I know he can, Colonel. He’s been sleeping or I’d have him here to tell you himself.”

Dog started pacing. He knew as well as Danny what the sergeant would say; the word “No” didn’t seem to be in the Whiplash vocabulary.

But could he really do it?

“He flies the Pave Lows,” added Danny. “They’re more complicated, I guarantee.”

The payoff was immense. Pull it off, and they’d have a treasure trove of information.

But this was far riskier than the earlier plan.

He played back the conversation he’d had earlier with Clearwater. The general wasn’t opposed to hitting the laser. On the contrary, it seemed. But he clearly wouldn’t go against his orders, and clearly wouldn’t directly support a mission into Iran until the orders were changed.

That could take days. If the laser were mobile, it’d be gone then.

“Colonel?”

“CentCom needs one of the Megafortresses to help suppress antiair on a mission south about the time this is supposed to go off. We’re going to have to work that in,”

said Dog.

“Okay,” said Danny.

“I’ll talk to CentCom about the action inside of Iraq.”

“Hot dog.”

“I haven’t authorized the ground mission,” said Bastian quickly. “Let me think about it.”

“But—”

“I’ll get back to you,” said Dog, punching the End Transmit.

Chapter 93

“Knock, knock,” said Egg, outside Danny’s personal tent. “Hey, Captain, you wanted to see me?”

“Come,” said Danny.

Powder and Bison came in with Egg, filling the tent with an odd odor.

“Enjoy your nap?” Danny asked Egg.

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant.

“What the hell?” said Danny. “You guys smell like baby powder.”

“Hey, just checking on the kid, Cap,” said Powder.

“You know. We’re like uncles.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Listen, Egg, we have something a bit hard to tackle and I’m wondering if you’d be up to it.”

“Hard’s his middle name, Cap,” said Powder. “Just before ‘on.’ ”

“Yeah, and Powder would know,” said Bison.

Danny ignored them. “Egg, would you be up to flying a helicopter?”

The sergeant shrugged. “Yeah, no problem.”

“Good. It’s an Mi-24 Hind.”

“A what?”

“A Hind. Commie helicopter. Think you can handle it?”

“Jeez, I don’t know. I don’t know that I’ve ever flown one of those before.”

“A helicopter’s a helicopter, right? Jennifer Gleason says there’s a database on the controls and performance aspects in the Megafortress database,” Danny added.

“She’s setting it up so you can review it. And I talked to Dr. Ray at Dreamland. He’s going to dig around for an expert to talk you through it. We can set up a direct line.”

“Jennifer, the babe scientist,” said Powder. “Jeez, I’ll do it.”

“I volunteer,” said Bison.

“I don’t know, Cap,” said Egg. “I mean, I probably could figure it out if I have a little time.”

“I’ll do it,” said Powder.

“Screw yourself,” said Egg. “This isn’t a bulldozer we’re talking about.”

“I can learn it, Cap,” insisted Powder. “Will she whisper in my ear?”

“All right, guys, back off,” said Danny. “Outside the tent.”

He watched Egg as they left. The normally self-assured sergeant wore a worried face.

“We can come up with something else,” Danny suggested.

“I can do it.” Egg flexed his shoulders back. Danny worried that he was pushing too hard — he didn’t want Egg to say he could do it just to please him.

On the other hand, a helicopter was a helicopter, commie or not, right?

“Where is it?” asked Egg.

“We passed it on the way home,” Danny told him. “The Marines are going to help us steal it.”

“Shit, I’ll do it, Cap,” said Powder outside.

“Fuck off,” said Egg.

“Go play with the kid,” yelled Danny.

Powder and Bison moved a few feet away from the tent, though he could tell they were still nearby.

“I’ll figure it out, Captain,” said Egg. “If I get some help. When are we leaving?”

“Half an hour too soon?”

Egg just scratched his head.

Chapter 94

Dog watched the CNN feed, his mind drifting blank.

The connection with High Top was pending; he intended to give Danny the go-ahead to use the Hind, long shot though it was.

He’d double-checked the sergeant’s piloting credentials, gone over the sat pictures, reviewed the flight plans.

He’d listened to the scientists debate the value of the intelligence. He’d spoken once more to Clearwater, who personally approved the Marine involvement in the helo snatch, but set the limits there. Dog knew he was making the right decision; the odds were against the mission, but it was exactly the sort of long shot they’d put Whiplash together to undertake.

And yet, he was still searching for some signpost, some indication that he was right to put his people at so much risk.

It wasn’t there. Even on an easy mission, nothing could guarantee everything would fall in place.

There were no easy missions. On the other hand, if they completely screwed up, if things went totally wrong, the implications were enormous.

Worse than the situation if they did nothing?

No.

The CNN footage showed Iraqi tanks continuing their attacks against the Kurds. Didn’t we fight this war already? Dog wondered.

“Captain Freah is on his way,” said the lieutenant at the com panel. “He should be on in five minutes, maybe less.”

“Okay. Where’s Jed Barclay?” Dog asked.

“Incirlik.”

“Get him, would you?”

The operator punched his keys. He spoke to someone on the other end of the line in Turkey, then told Dog they wouldn’t have video.

“Not a problem.”

“Colonel?” Jed’s voice boomed so loudly in the room the techie had to squelch the volume.

“Jed, can you get me to General Elliott?”

“He’s left to go back to Europe.”

“You can get me in touch with him, can’t you?”

“Uh, yeah. Take a minute.”

Two minutes later the technician said they had an in-coming transmission from Class Two — General Elliott aboard a VIP Gulfstream.

“How are you, Colonel?” boomed Elliott.

“Personally, not so good.” Dog laughed, facing the blank screen. “Want your old job back?”

Elliott laughed. “I’d take it in a heartbeat.” His tone grew serious. “It’s a little different being a colonel. You don’t have the perks to go with the responsibility.”

“I still have to do what I think is right.”

“It’s not always easy to figure out what that is,” said Elliott.

Dog didn’t intend on asking him what to do, and he’d known Elliott wouldn’t volunteer advice. So why had he contacted him?

Moral support? Word of encouragement?

Not even that. Talking to him, though — it was like making a pilgrimage to a sacred shrine or a battlefield. Looking out over the hills at Gettysburg made you understand something, even though you couldn’t put it into words.

Elliott as Gettysburg — he’d roar at that.

“Thanks, General,” said Dog. “I have to go.”

“That’s all you want?”

“That’s all I need, sir.”

Dog bent to the console and picked up the land-line phone, punching in his office. Ax answered immediately.

“Ax, how are we doing with that expert on Russian helicopters?”

“Should be aboard the Dolphin by now, sir,” answered the chief master sergeant.

“Hustle him down here as soon as he clears security.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dog put down the phone and turned to the lieutenant.

“I’d like that connection to High Top today, son.”

“The connection’s there, sir. It’s Captain Freah we’re waiting on.”

Dog straightened and looked at the screen. When Danny Freah’s tired face finally appeared, Colonel Bastian said only one word: “Go.”

Chapter 95

Danny Freah stood near the door of the Marine helicopter, watching as the CH-46 Sea Knight dubbed Fork One whipped across the landscape roughly twenty feet over the ground. The Marines liked the old helicopters, claiming they were more dependable than Pave Lows or even Chinooks, their look-alike big brothers. Danny wasn’t so sure. If he had to pick a Marine transport, he would have much preferred an Osprey or even a Super Stallion, the Corps’ three-engined version of the MH-53

Pave Low, ferociously quick monster choppers with plenty of power to spare.

On the other hand, he didn’t think he could do better than the Marines accompanying them. If it went well, the whole operation would last maybe fifteen minutes: Flighthawk hits the two Zsu-23-4s protecting the approach, followed closely by the Cobras, which would strike the two BMPs at the base and a pair of machine guns near the buildings. The troops would then fast-rope into the complex. One group of Marines and the Whiplash team would land near the helicopters; the Marines in the second chopper would hit the buildings.

Two of the eighteen men squeezing into the rear of the aircraft with Whiplash carried Shoulder-launched Multipurpose Assault Weapons — SMAW 83mm rockets — to be used against the fortified position near the Hinds and anything else that came up. The others carried standard M-16s and a variety of grenades. Two of Danny’s boys, Powder and Bison, had SAWs, or light machine guns, to lay down support fire at the start; the others carried MP-5s for close work at the finish.

Boom, boom, boom, assuming it went according to plan. Then the real fun would begin.

Egg fingered his gun nervously. The expert who was supposed to help him fly hadn’t shown up in the Dreamland command center yet, but Jennifer had downloaded several pages worth of data, and one of the Marine helo pilots had offered plenty of advice. Every so often Egg would look up from his notes toward Danny and nod confidently.

It had the opposite effect from what he intended. Egg looked about as self-assured as a kid coming off the bus for basic training.

It would work, Danny told himself. And if it didn’t — It would work.

Chapter 96

Through the preflight, takeoff, and launch of the Flighthawks, Zen tried to think of something to say to Fentress, who’d come along on Raven to act as an assis-tant. Frankly, he would have preferred to have Jennifer, but she was too exhausted. And besides, there was no reason not have Fentress there, helping — the kid had proven he could handle the U/MFs, even if he’d been shot down.

He wasn’t a kid, Zen told himself again.

He wasn’t out after his job either.

Zen lifted his helmet visor as the Flighthawk settled onto the course toward the target area. He glanced over at Fentress, trying to think of what to say. The kid — the other U/MF pilot — was studying the latest photo relay from the mini-KH, orienting himself. There was a little less than five minutes left before fun time.

Zen felt he should say something, but all he could think of was generic bullshit about how he knew Fentress would do a good job. Finally he simply slid his visor back and said they were ready.

“Yup,” said Fentress.

Zen cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck on his head, loosening his muscles. Then he took the robot back from the computer. “Hawk to Whiplash leader. Danny, you got me?”

“Loud and clear,” replied Danny, who was in one of the Marine helos.

“We’re getting ready to dance,” Zen said. “Captain Fentress will feed you the visuals.”

“Ready to rock.”

Zen tipped his nose forward, and the Flighthawk screamed toward the earth, lining up on its first target.

The Iraqi facility looked more like a strip mall than an airport; the two Hinds were located at one side of a short span of hard-packed dirt. Across the way were two buildings, guarded by a pair of Zsu-23-4 antiaircraft weapons mounted on mobile chassis. What appeared to be the entrance to a bunker sat just beyond the weapons at the north end of the field; it looked to be either a bomb shelter or a storage facility. At the other end of the field there were three small buildings that probably garrisoned the troops assigned to work with the helicopter. There were two BMPs, Russian-made armored personnel carriers, parked on a ramp halfway between the buildings and the runway. Zen would nail the antiair; as he finished with the second, the Marine Cobras should be just getting in range to knock out the BMPs and then scald the barracks.

His weapons bar began to blink red as the preprogrammed target grew fat in the crosshairs.

Too soon to fire. He held steady, speed picking up steadily—450 knots, 460 … A black plume appeared on the left side of his screen — the other set of guns had already begun to fire.

At two and a half miles to target, Zen pressed the small red button that triggered the 20mm cannon in the chin and belly of the Flighthawk. Adapted from the venerable M61A that had served in every frontline American fighter from the F-15 to the F/A-18, the six-barreled gat spat slugs out at a rate of six thousand a minute. About a second and a half later the shells began grinding through the torrent of the mobile flak dealer, chewing a curlicue into the Russian-made steel. One of the Zsu barrels flew off the top of the chassis into the second emplacement, detonating the fuel tank in its carrier. Before Zen could get his nose on that target, it was enveloped in flames. He fired anyway, then quickly rolled his wings, powering the robot plane into a high-speed turn so hard he could practically hear the carbon wings groan.

“Video feed to Whiplash headset,” he told Fentress.

“They’re on board already,” he replied.

“Cobras are zero-two away, Hawk leader,” said Alou.

“Copy that. I’m going to run over the landing area and stand out of the way for the helicopters.”

Zen pushed on, riding the Flighthawk across the compound toward the barracks area.

“Two more vehicles than we planned on,” said Fentress, watching the ground scan. “Missile launcher on the right, your right, as you come in!”

A squat, pudgy vehicle with two rectangular boxes sat beyond the machine-gun emplacements near the barracks area. Either an SA-8 or SA-9—Zen didn’t have time to examine it, much less get off a shot; his momentum carried him beyond it before he could get more than a glimpse.

“Computdr, identify antiair missile vehicle,” he said as he threw the Flighthawk into a turn.

“Which vehicle?”

Which one? There were more than he’d seen?

“All,” he said. “Highlight on the sitrep.”

The computer’s synthesized acknowledgment was drowned out by a radar warning.

“Yo, Alou — LZ is hot. I’m spiked!” he said. The SA-8

radar had latched onto the Flighthawk. A launch warning followed.

“We’re jamming!” said the pilot.

“Jam better. Hold the assault package.”

“Too late,” answered Alou.

“Hold them!” Zen tucked and rolled, zigging back to -

ward the launcher he’d seen. It was an SA-8B mounted on a six-wheeled amphibious vehicle, capable of launching missiles using either semiactive radar or IR homing devices. Zen lit his cannon as the missile launcher swung its rectangular nose toward him. His first few shots missed high, but he stayed on the launcher; a stream of lead poured through the near box containing a missile.

The SA-8B exploded — but not before a long, thin pipe popped from the box farthest from his cannon.

Chapter 97

The Flighthawk Sitrep map on his visor blinked red, indicating that a missile had been fired from one of the SAM trucks. Danny cursed, and shouted a warning to the helicopter crew. A second later the helo twisted downward, one of the wheels whining as it dashed against the ground. Danny clutched his MP-5 against his carbon-boron vest and hunkered down in his seat, sure that the next thing he’d see would be flames. But instead the helo bolted nearly upright, then whipped forward again.

Danny switched from the Whiplash frequency that tied into the Flighthawks to the general radio band used by the attackers; unfortunately, there wasn’t a way to use both at the same time.

“Missiles in the air,” warned one of the pilots.

“Hold off,” said Alou over the circuit somewhere.

“We’re committed,” answered the pilot blandly.

“Relax.”

The Marine AH-1W Super Cobras charged their targets at nearly 200 miles an hour. The first ship unleashed a barrage of five-inch Zuni rockets that peppered the emplacement area. Half a tick behind him came a Whiskey Cobra armed with Hellfire laser-guided missiles; despite the heavy smoke, he zeroed out both BMPs in rapid succession, then unleashed the chain gun on the barracks.

Both helicopters wheeled off, spraying decoy flares and smoke bombs as they did.

“Fork, come on in, the water’s perfect,” said the Cobra leader.

“Assault team up!” said Danny. “Fentress — how are those Hinds?”

“Here’s the visual,” he replied, punching in a replay showing the helicopters.

They were being armed and fueled.

Chapter 98

Zen saw the nose of the missile as it flashed toward him, a blurred spoon of white. He’d already slammed the U/MF’s nose downward, rolling the U/MF into a twist so hard that the plane fluttered uncontrollably for a second, caught between the conflicting forces of momentum and gravity. A hole opened in his stomach; acid rushed in, searing a spot beneath his ribs. But he hadn’t lost the plane — the missile streaked away, and by the time it self-detonated, Zen had full control of the Flighthawk and begun to climb. He recovered well south of the target area, restoring his sense of the battlefield as well as speed. The Cobras had started their run despite the warnings; the missiles the Iraqis had launched had all missed, probably because they had been aimed at the U/MF and not the throaty whirlybirds.

Zen climbed in an arc eastward as they’d planned, feeding video from behind the smoke screen the Cobras laid as the two CH-46s came in. His radar warning gear was clean and there seemed to be no more antiaircraft fire, though a smart commander would keep his head and hold back until the ground troops appeared.

“Can you get real-time images of those Hinds?” Fentress asked. “I’ve been feeding Whiplash the shots you took coming in.”

“Yeah,” said Zen, changing course. “Almost lost it there,” he added.

“Nah.”

“Yeah, really, I thought I did,” he said. “You did okay.”

“We got a long way to go,” said Fentress.

Zen laughed, realizing that was something he usually said.

Chapter 99

Danny threw his body around the rope, hands pumping. He worked down six or seven feet, then jumped — a little too soon for his right knee, which gave way as soon as he hit the ground.

Cursing, he pushed himself back upright, moving out of the way of the others as they did a quick exit from the Sea Knights. An acrid scent ate at his nostrils. The two large Russian-made helicopters sat maybe forty yards ahead, just beyond a thick wall of smoke. As he reached to flick his visor viewer into IR mode he felt something ping his right shoulder. The gentle tap felt familiar, an old friend catching him in a crowded street, but it was hardly that — a half-dozen bullets had just bounced off his vest.

Danny spun to his right, bringing his gun up. But he had no target on his screen. The area was thick with smoke and dust, swirled furiously by the helicopter blades.

“Whiplash team, we have small arms fire from the direction of the buildings,” he told his men as he dropped to one knee.

The knee screamed in pain, twisted badly or sprained in the jump. Danny ignored it, pushing his MP-5 left, then right. IR mode was hampered by the smoke; he flicked back to unenhanced visual.

“They’re in the buildings,” said Liu over the team radio.

“All right. I’m going to get the Cobras on it,” said Danny. He hit the radio, piping his voice to the attack ships. “Small arms in the buildings opposite the Hinds.”

The lead Cobra pilot acknowledged. A second or two later the ground began to shake; a freight train roared overhead and flames shot from the area where the building had been.

Danny was already running toward the Hinds. He broke through the smoke and saw one of the two Iraqi helicopters sitting about twenty yards ahead. There was a weapons trolley near it, a man lying on the ground.

Danny pulled his submachine gun level at his waist and laid two bursts into the figure before it fell away.

“Vehicles!” said Bison. His SAW began stuttering to Danny’s left. Danny looked over and saw two of his men throwing themselves down; Bison had already crouched a few feet beyond them, his gun blaring at two pickups tearing out from behind the helicopters.

Red flickered from the trucks. Bison hosed the first. As Danny put his own cursor on the second, it morphed into a massive fireball, axed by a Marine SMAW. Debris rained around them. Danny got up, ignoring the pops against his chest as he ran toward a brown-shirted body a few feet ahead. The Iraqi didn’t move, but Danny gave him a burst of gunfire anyway. He leaped nearly chest first into the machine-gun fisted nose of the Russian attack bird, rolling left around the fuselage as he eyed the gunner’s station and cockpit, making sure they were empty. As he turned toward the belly of the craft he saw a flicker above the wing; he tried ducking but it was too late — three bullets from an AK-47 hit the top of his helmet and threw him to the ground. Instinctively, the captain shoved his gun in the direction of the gunfire as he fell, pressing the trigger for a brief second before his head smacked the ground.

Bullets flew overhead. The ground vibrated so hard he felt his head jumping upward. Voices screamed in his ears. It was all chaos, unfathomable chaos.

Danny had lost the ability to sort it out, lost the ability to do anything but fight to his knees — his right one screaming again — and fire another few rounds in the direction of the stubby wing strut.

White heat flashed in front of him. Danny gulped air and threw himself down a millisecond before the shock wave as the helicopter exploded. The dirt turned molten.

He gulped the hot air, tried to get away, finally saw that he had somehow crawled under the burning chassis. He kept going, enveloped by blackness. A sudden rush of heat stopped him.

“The other Hind,” he heard himself say calmly. “Secure it.”

“Two guys, crew compartment, side facing the buildings,” said Powder.

“All right. Get their attention.”

Danny had only the vaguest notion of where he was or where he was going — he wasn’t even sure whether he’d gotten out from under the burning helicopter. Nonetheless, he began to crawl. After a few feet he got up and began running in what he thought was the direction of the buildings, intending to make a long flanking maneuver and get at the Hind from the back while his guys kept the defenders busy. As he ran — it was more like a limp, thanks to his knee — he clicked back and forth between the IR and enhanced video views in his visor; the thick smoke defeated both. Finally he pushed the screen upward, preferring his own eyes.

The main building sat off on his right. He assumed the second helicopter would be about ten yards on his left.

“Hey, Cap, how we doin’?” asked Powder.

“I’m getting there. Make sure no one blows this one up.”

“They won’t,” said Powder.

Danny finally saw the helicopter on his left, farther away than he’d expected. He took a few tentative steps and saw the aircraft bob.

Shit. The rotor at the top began to spin.

“Powder — there’s someone in the cockpit!” he yelled.

A gun burst followed. Danny ran forward, the rotor still winding.

“The cockpit’s armored!” Danny shouted.

“Fucking shit,” cursed Powder, even as his bullets bounced off the side.

The helo lurched forward. Danny ran as fast as he could, spitting bullets from his gun at the same time. The tail started to whip around; he threw himself to the ground, just missing the wing stub. He jumped up and ran again, hoping for some sort of opening he could shoot through.

A blank, puzzled face appeared in the window next to him, a ghost transported to earth where she didn’t want to be.

His wife.

The Iraqi pilot.

The cockpit handle was a clear white bar. Danny fired a few bursts at it, but the bullets all missed or bounced harmlessly away. His knee flamed with pain. The rotors spun hard and the air became a hurricane. Danny dropped his MP-5 and with a scream threw himself forward, fingers grasping the small metal strip where the windscreen met the edge of the metal on the canopy. He could feel the pilot inches away, felt something pound against the side of the helicopter — maybe the pilot, maybe Powder’s bullets, maybe just the vibration of the motor. He reached for his Beretta, lost his grip, found himself rolling on the ground, saw the face again — his wife’s face, definitely his wife — then realized he was running. He couldn’t get into the cockpit, he was too slow, he was going to fail. A black space appeared alongside him, a dark tunnel opening up — he pitched into it, fell into the helicopter.

What kind of lunatic fate was this, to die in Iraq on an impossible mission?

As he started to push back toward the door to jump out, Danny saw a head bobbing beyond the passage on his left — there were no doors on the Hind between the crew area and cockpit.

A small ax hung on the wall near the passage.

Jump.

He threw himself toward the ax as the aircraft stuttered and turned again, still on the ground. His hand grabbed the handle but the ax stayed on the wall, held by a thick leather strap. Danny pulled, and as he screamed he felt himself rushing through the bulkhead, shoulders brushing hard against the side.

The Iraqi’s blood didn’t spurt or gush or stream. It seeped from each of the three places Danny struck, like a stream lapping the shore, an eddy probing the sand.

The helo slammed down, the engine stuttering dead.

A moment later strong hands grabbed Danny from behind.

“Hey, way to go, Cap,” shouted Powder. “Guy must not’ve been a pilot, huh, cause he couldn’t get off the ground. Uh, can I have the ax if you’re done with it?”

Chapter 100

“All systems are in the green,” Chris told Breanna as they finished their preflight checklist.

“You ready?” she asked him.

“This’ll be a piece of cake after what we’ve been through,” said Ferris.

Breanna nodded. He was right. Quicksilver’s mission was easy, detecting radars and fuzzing them for a group of attack planes flying over the central part of Iraq, well out of range of the Iranian laser. Between the repairs and her uncoated nose, Quicksilver’s radar signal was nearly as large as a standard B-52’s, but the jamming gear was working fine and they’d be escorted by a pair of F-15Cs.

At 35,000 feet they’d be as safe as if they were flying over France. Maybe even safer.

But Zen wasn’t with her, watching her back. Nor was she watching his.

“You with us, Captain Dolk?”

“Uh, call me Torbin.”

“Torbin. What is that? French?”

“Swedish,” said Torbin. “I was born near Uppsala. We came over when I was three.”

“Sounds like a nursery rhyme,” said Ferris.

“Generations of Swedish kings were crowned there,” said Torbin.

“And will be again,” said Breanna. “Gentlemen, let’s roll.”

Chapter 101

Danny leaned against the tail boom of the mammoth helicopter as his men finished topping off the fuel tanks.

He could hear Egg talking to himself in the cockpit, obviously going over each of the controls, checking and rechecking them. The helicopter expert had still not arrived in Dreamland Command. Danny’s knee had swollen so stiff he almost couldn’t move it, despite the fact that he kept trying to.

“Ready, Cap,” said Bison, who’d been overseeing the refuel. “Got rockets, machine gun. Wingtip pods are empty.”

“Yeah. Good.” Danny tried bracing his injured leg against the other. It didn’t help, but he was going to have to fake it. “Powder?”

Powder had insisted on taking the weapons operator slot, claiming that he had attended some sort of training session in Apaches. Danny was too beat-up to argue; the controls for the nose gun and rockets were fairly straightforward — select and fire.

God, his knee hurt.

“Okay, saddle up,” Danny told his team over the com system. He pushed off the helicopter, right hand tightened around the MP-5 against the pain. “Egg, our expert with you yet?”

“Uh, no, sir.”

“Well, whenever you’re ready, we’re good to go.”

The weird thing — or the first weird thing — was the blue panel. The Hind’s dash was painted a weird blue turquoise that physically hurt Egg’s eyes.

The Pave Low the other day had seemed complicated as hell, even though he’d flown a slightly earlier version before. This just seemed like hell.

He knew where everything was, knew what everything did — the important stuff, anyway. On some basic level, all helicopters were alike.

They were, weren’t they?

Egg felt his brain starting to break into pieces.

He grabbed the control yoke, steadied his feet on the rudder pedals.

Come on, Egg, he told himself. Come on come on come on.

No way in the world he could do this. No way.

The collective felt almost comfortable in his hand. His fingers wrapped easily around it, and damn it, this was just another helicopter whirlybird rig, as his instructor would say.

Engine panel on right.

Checklist.

Where the hell was the checklist Jennifer had given him?

“Sergeant Reagan — before you begin, please cinch your belts. The g forces can be considerable during maneuvers.”

God was whispering in his ears. With a Polish accent.

“Yes,” he said.

“Sergeant, my name is Robbie Pitzarski. I’m going to help you fly the Hind,” said the expert, speaking from halfway across the world in the Dreamland Command Center bunker. “Before we begin, let me emphasize that if you get in trouble, stick to the basics. It’s a helicopter, first and foremost. The Russians place things in odd places, but the blades are on top and the tail’s in the back.”

“You sound like my old flight instructor,” Egg told him.

“Very good. To the right of your seat, almost behind you, there is an emergency shut-down lever that connects to the fuse panel. It has a red knob and looks rather con-torted. Let’s make sure that has not been thrown inadver-tently. It would make it most difficult to proceed.”

Powder had to squirm to get his body into the gunner’s cabin, slamming half the gear on the way. The hatch stuck for a moment, and he nearly broke the shock-absorber-like strut getting it closed. There were grips and gauges and pipes and all sorts of crap all over the place; it reminded him of the bathroom in his grandmother’s basement apartment. Luckily, Jennifer the goddess had given him a very good paper map of the cockpit, pointing out the key shit — her word, not his. The optical sight ocular for the missile system was on the right, the armament panel was in an almost impossible to reach position at his right elbow, the delicious gunsight with its well-rounded wheels sat at his nose, her perfect hand-sized mammaries at full attention.

Jennifer hadn’t given him those. But he wouldn’t need a map to find them.

Rumor was, she and the colonel had a thing. Rank had its privileges.

But hell, she was here, and he wasn’t. Dogs got to run.

Truth was, she was so beautiful — so beautiful — he might not make it out of the kennel for all his slobbering.

With great difficulty the Whiplash trooper turned his attention back to the weapons.

The rotors slipped around four or five times before the Isotov turboshafts coughed, but within seconds the engines wound up to near takeoff speed, the helicopter straining to hold herself down. Egg took a breath, then went back over the dashboard, making absolutely sure — absolutely one hundred percent sure — he had the instruments psyched.

He knew the whole damn thing. He knew it, he knew it, he knew it.

Stop worrying, he told himself.

“Very good so far, Sergeant,” said Pitzarski. His accent garbled some of his vowels, so the words sounded more like “vrr-ee gd sfar, surg-ent.”

“You can call me Egg.”

“Egg?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And myself, Robbie.”

“Cool.”

“Hey, we takin’ off or what?” demanded Powder, breaking in.

“Excuse me, sir,” said Egg. “Shut the fuck up, Powder, or I’m hitting the eject button.”

“There ain’t no damn eject button.”

“Try me.”

“Ready?” asked Pitzarski, but Egg had already thrown the Hind forward, stuttering, bouncing on the stubby wheels, bucking, pushing forward too fast without enough juice, gently backing off, revving, going — airborne, he was airborne.

Two men came rushing at the aircraft’s open bay as they started to move. Danny cursed; he’d thought everyone was aboard already. He started to reach to help them but the pain in his leg hurt too much. The helo lurched forward and up and he fell against the floor. He lay there for three or four seconds, not sure if Egg was going to fly or crash. Finally he pulled himself up, struggling into one of the fold-down seats, pushing up his leg.

“Liu, wrap my knee, okay?” he said. “I sprained it or something.”

A building passed in the cabin window, replaced by sky, all sky. Liu took hold of his leg and began poking it, not gently.

“It ain’t broke,” Danny managed. “Just fucking wrap the knee.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ligament torn?” Danny asked.

“At least,” said Nurse.

Danny looked up. Two Marines were grinning at him through their face paint. One of the two looked vaguely familiar — the gunnery sergeant who’d come on the rescue mission the other day.

“We thought you girls could use some help,” said the Marine.

“What are you doing here?” Danny said.

“I’m sorry, Cap — you looked like you wanted to pull them in,” said Bison. “So I helped them in when you fell.”

“You.” Danny pointed at the gunnery sergeant, a short man with a face like a worn catcher’s mitt. “You look damn familiar. Before yesterday.”

“Melfi,” said the sergeant. “You saved my butt in Libya couple months back. Last year, remember? You didn’t recognize me the other day.”

Now he did — he was one of the guys they’d rescued when they were looking for Mack.

“You’re gonna get in shitloads of trouble,” Danny told him. “But I ain’t dropping you off.”

“Life’s a bitch,” said the Marine.

“All right,” said Danny. “Let me tell your commander not to look for you.”

“Not necessary,” said the Marine. “Let’s just say we showed up here accidentally on purpose. Whole platoon would have come with you if they could, sir. But the major kinda figured they’d be missed. Besides, two Marines are worth a dozen Air Force fags. Hey, no offense.”

“Jarhead shits,” said Bison.

“Bison, give Sergeant Melfi the rundown,” said Danny.

“Call me Gunny,” said the Marine. “Just about everybody does.”

“No they don’t,” said the lance corporal behind him.

“They call you fuckin’ Gunny.”

“And they duck when they say that,” said the sergeant.

Chapter 102

The gear in front of Torbin had exactly one thing in common with the unit he was used to handling in the Phantom Weasel — it dealt with radars.

The computer handled everything; it probably even had a mode to make coffee. The large flat screen on the left projected a map of the area they were flying through; the map had presets to display radiuses of 200, 300, and 500 miles out, but could zoom in on anything from five to five hundred. Radar coverage and sources were projected on the coordinate grid, each type color-coded. The screen on the right contained information on each of the detected radars. The computer could not only show whether they had detected an aircraft, but how likely that would be for any given plane in its library. Highlights of the radar’s likely function could be hot-keyed onto the screen, along with the preferred method of confusing it. Targeting data could be automatically uploaded to the air to ground missiles in the Megafortress’s belly. Under normal circumstances the plane’s copilot handled the jamming and bombing details, but the operator’s station was also fully equipped to do so. There were several other capabilities, including a mode that would allow the Megafortress’s fuzz busters to pretend to be an enemy ground radar, though he hadn’t had time to learn all of the details.

Torbin felt like he had gone from the twentieth to the twenty-third century. Any second Captain Kirk was going to appear behind him and tell him to beam up Mr. Spock.

“You all right back there, Torbin?” asked Captain Breanna Stockard.

The equipment was blow-away, and the pilot was a knockout. Somehow, some way, he was going to make this into a permanent assignment.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Thank you, Captain Stockard.”

“You can call me Bree,” she said.

Thanks.

“All right, crew.” Captain Stockard’s — Bree’s — voice changed slightly, becoming a little deeper, a little more authoritative. “I know everyone’s disappointed that we didn’t draw the laser assignment. But what we’re doing, protecting our guys, is still damn important. I know everybody’s going to do their best.”

As they flew over Iraq carrying out their mission, the rest of the crew seemed almost bored, punching buttons, checking the progress of the attack groups they were helping. Torbin concentrated so hard on his gear that he didn’t even have time to fantasize about the pilot.

Much.

“That Spoon Rest radar — is it up?” Bree asked as they hit the halfway point on their mission chart. It was now 1730.

“No,” he said tentatively, eyes jumping from his screens to make sure he had the right radar. The unit had come on briefly but then turned off. It was nearly a hundred miles south from the attack planes’ target; Quicksilver would splash it at the end of the mission, assuming they didn’t find anything of higher priority.

The Phantom wouldn’t even have detected it. Nor would the Weasel have given him the option of spoofing the radar with a variety of ECMs, ordinarily the job of a Spark Vark F-111 or a Compass Call electronic warfare C-130.

This was definitely the future, and he liked it very much.

A warning tone sounded in his ear. A purple blob materialized on the left screen sixty-six miles ahead of their present position; beneath the blob was a legend describing the enemy radar and its associated systems as a point-defense Zsu-23-4 unit mapped on previous missions. A color-coded box opened on the right screen with a list of options for dealing with it. The computer suggested NO ACTION; the radar was too limited to see the Megafortress and the gun too impotent to strike the attack package, which was flying well above its range.

Torbin concurred.

“Gun dish,” Torbin told the pilots. “Twelve o’clock, fifty miles out. It’s in the index,” he added, meaning that it had been spotted and identified previously by CentCom.

“Copy,” said Ferris. “Mongoose flight is zero-two from their IP. Watch them closely.”

Torbin got another tone. This time a red cluster flared right over Mongoose’s target.

“Flat Face,” he said, “uh, unknown, shit.” He glanced at the right screen, where the option box had opened.

“Location,” prompted Ferris.

Torbin went to center the cursor on the target, nail it down with a HARM.

He wasn’t in a Weasel, though.

“Jam the radar,” said Breanna calmly.

“They’re being beamed,” reported Ferris.

Torbin moved his finger to the touch screen, then froze.

He wasn’t sure what the hell he was supposed to do.

He had about ten seconds to figure it out — otherwise he was going to lose one of the planes they were protecting. And this time, it would be his fault.

Chapter 103

On Zen’s map the border between Turkey, Iraq, and Iran ran sharp and clear, curling through the mountains that swung down from the Caspian Sea and up from the Persian Gulf. On his view screen as he passed overhead, the border was indistinguishable; even in the few places where there were actual roads, the checkpoints tended to be a kilometer or more away from the border, where they could be better fortified. Unrest among the Kurdish population had struck Iran as well as Iraq, and the Iranian army had bolstered its forces near the borders and in the north in general. But the reinforcements appeared to have included almost no air units beyond a few helicopters; the radar in Hawk One located a pair of Bell Jet Rangers flying in a valley about ten miles southeast as it passed over the border ahead of Raven.

“Civilian airport radar at Tabriz is active,” said the radar operator. “We’re clean. No other radars in vicinity. Hamadian, Kemanshah, Ghale Morghi, all quiet,” he added, naming the major air bases within striking distance.

The Flighthawk and Raven were a hundred miles from the first of the three possible targets; Whiplash and its pilfered Hind were running about five minutes behind them.

At their present speed, the ground team could reach the closest target in thirty-five minutes, the farthest in forty-five. Alou would launch the Quail in thirty minutes.

Zen kicked his speed up, tucking the Flighthawk close to a mountain pass. As he shot by, his camera caught a small group of soldiers sitting around a machine gun behind a stack of rocks; he was by them so fast they didn’t have time to react, though it would have been next to impossible for them to hit the Flighthawk with their gun.

A helicopter would be a different story.

Zen flew up the pass about a mile and a half, making sure there were no reinforcements. In the meantime, Fentress marked the spot for him, giving him a straight-line course to target when he turned back.

“Whiplash Hind, this is Hawk leader. I have a pimple to blot out.”

“Whiplash Hind copies.” The roar of the helicopter engines nearly drowned out the pilot’s voice. “Should we change course?”

“Negative,” said Zen as his targeting screen began to flash. “He’ll be in Ayatollah heaven in thirty seconds.”

Chapter 104

Danny peered out at the nearby mountain uneasily, watching their shadow pass on the brown flank. Bits of snow remained scattered in the hollows; water flowed in the valleys in blue and silver threads, sparkling with the sun.

Under any other circumstances, he’d look at the scenery with admiration; now it filled him with dread.

They were big, easy targets flying low in the middle of the day.

He should have insisted on a proper deployment at the very beginning, brought his Osprey here, more men. He wasn’t working with a full tool chest.

What was he going to do if he got his butt fried? Go back East and into politics like his wife wanted?

Hell, he’d be dead if this didn’t work.

Was that why he’d gone ahead with it? Or was it the opposite — was he thinking he’d be a hero if he grabbed the laser?

Danny looked around the cabin at his men, fidgeting away the long ride to their target. Was blind ambition the reason he was risking these guys lives?

No. They had to pull this off to save others. That had nothing to do with ambition. That was his duty, his job.

“Hawk One to Whiplash. Pimple’s gone,” said Zen on the Dreamland circuit. “Clear sailing for you.”

“Whiplash Hind,” acknowledged Egg in the cockpit.

“Thanks, Zen,” added Danny.

“Bet you didn’t know Clearasil comes in twenty mil-limeter packages, huh?” joked Zen.

“Well, I must say, your code words are exceedingly clever.” Rubeo’s sarcastic drone took Danny by surprise, even though he knew the scientist would be in Dreamland Command. “I wish I could be there for the fun and games.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Danny, too tired at the moment even to be angry.

“We have some new ideas about the laser,” said Rubeo.

“Our friends at the CIA now believe it is part of a project initiated at least a year ago called Allah’s Sword. If they’re right, it’s largely based on technology nearly a de-cade old.”

“Reassuring.”

“My sentiments exactly,” said the scientist, the disdain evident. “Nonetheless, the spy masters have given us some things to consider. First of all, we’re looking for something larger than a tank chassis. Your pilots have already been briefed. As far as you’re concerned, our wish list remains essentially the same. Concentrate on the software and analyzing the chemical composition. A physical piece of the mirror in the director would be useful as well.”

“You know what, Doc, let’s just take it as it comes.”

“Danny—”

“That’s Captain Freah to you,” said Danny, hitting the kill switch at the bottom of his helmet.

Chapter 105

Fentress watched as Zen flew the Flighthawk just above the hillside, barely six or seven feet from the dirt and rocks. The plane moved as smoothly as if it were at thirty thousand feet, and nearly as fast. Zen worked the controls with total concentration, jerking his head back and forth, rocking his body with the plane, mimicking the actions he wanted it to take.

Fentress knew he would never be able to fly as well.

Never.

The replay of the shoot-down showed he’d flown right into the antiaircraft fire. He’d been oblivious to it in his rush to help Major Smith.

Stupid. Completely stupid.

He could do better. He wasn’t going to give up.

“Two minutes to Quail launch,” said the copilot. The assault team was now ten minutes away from the nearest target.

The small, blocky Quail 3/B fluttered as it hit the slipstream below the Megafortress’s bomb bay, its ramjet engines momentarily faltering. But then the scaled-down model of an EB-52 bobbed away, its engines accelerating to propel it above the mothership’s flight path.

Changes in doctrine as well as electronics and radars had rendered the original ADM-20/GAM-72 Quail obso-lete no later than the 1970s, though there were some circumstances under which the “kill me” drone proved useful. Mechanically, the Quail 3/B was an entirely different bird, though it remained true to the function of its predecessor — it gave the enemy something to look at, and hopefully fire at, other than the bomber itself. Where the original had been a boxy, stub-winged glider, the Quail 3/B looked exactly like a Megafortress from above and below. Powered by small ramjets and carefully propor-tioned solid rockets augmented by podded flares on the wings, it had the same heat signature as an EB-52. Rather than being coated with radar-absorbing materials to reduce its return, the intricate facets on the Quail 3/B’s shiny skin amplified its radar return to make it appear to most radars almost exactly the size of a B-52. Fanlike antennas inside the drone duplicated the signals transmitted by a B-52H’s standard ALQ-155 and ALT-28 ECM and noise jammers. The Quail couldn’t fly for very long, nor could it be controlled once launched, but the decoy was a perfect clay pigeon.

The question was, would the Iranians go for it?

Zen watched the Quail climb from the Flighthawk cockpit, tagging along as the rockets quickly took it through ten thousand feet. By now it would be clearly visible on the Iranian airport control radars; even if the radars were being operated by civilians — something he doubted — they ought to be on the hot line by now.

“Quail is at twelve thousand feet, climbing steady, on course,” reported the copilot.

“Nothing,” said the electronic warfare officer. “All clear.”

“Laser detection gear is blank too,” said the copilot, who had the plot on his screen. Jennifer, Garcia, and some of the other techies had installed the tweaked device in Raven’s tail, replacing the Stinger antiair mines.

Zen tucked back down toward the mountains, joining the Megafortress in a valley that rode almost directly into the target area. They were no more than fifteen minutes from the farthest site.

“Quail is topping out at eighteen thousand,” said the copilot.

“Nothing,” said the radar operator.

“We’re clean too,” said Fentress. “Are they missing it, or do they know it’s a decoy?” he asked Zen.

“Not sure,” he replied. “Should be pretty fat on their radar.”

“I told you we should have put a kick-me sign on the tail,” joked the copilot. No one laughed.

“We have to go to Plan B,” said Alou.

Zen pulled up the course he’d worked out earlier and pushed the throttle to the firewall, streaking toward the farthest site. The Flighthawk climbed away from the mountainside toward a patchwork of fields. A small village rose on his right, the center of town marked by the round spire of a mosque.

“Radar tracking Quail,” said the operator. “MIM-23 Hawk!”

“Confirmed,” said the copilot.

“Hey — this fits with the earlier profiles,” said the radar operator. “It shouldn’t have been in range — tracking the Quail!”

“That doesn’t fit the pattern,” said Alou.

“Radar is off the air. I have it marked,” said the operator. “Hind probably detected,” he added.

“Whiplash Hind, take evasive maneuvers!” said Fentress.

“Breaking the radar,” said the operator, beginning to explain that he had prodded the ECMs to keep the Hawk radar from locking on the helicopter.

“Laser!” yelled the copilot.

Chapter 106

The helicopter lurched out from under Danny, twisting and falling at the same time. The helo’s 18,000 pounds hurtled sideways in the air, directly toward a sheer cliff. Unable to grip the slippery wind, and propelled by the violent centrifugal forces kicked up by the main rotor, the tail twisted, throwing the helicopter into a rolling dive so severe that about two inches at the tip of one of the blades sheered off. One of the two Isotov TV3-117 turboshafts choked, the severe rush of air overwhelming the poorly maintained power plant. The aircraft curled to the right but began to settle, its tail now drifting back the other way, a bare foot or two from the rocks. Danny clawed himself up the side of the cabin, steeling himself for the inevitable crash. He saw the door a few feet away; he’d go out there after they hit, assuming he could move.

But he didn’t have to. Somehow, miraculously, Egg had managed to regain control of the helicopter.

“Sorry,” he was saying over and over again. “Shit, sorry. Sorry, sorry.”

Danny looked across at the rest of his team, groaning and sorting themselves out.

“It’s okay, Egg. Settle down.”

“Sorry, Cap. I went to get down and I overdid it. Radar had us spiked.”

“It’s okay. Were we fired on?”

“I don’t know. I, uh, if we were, it doesn’t show up on the instruments, at least not what I can read.”

“Can we keep going?”

“I think so, sir. But, uh, I don’t have anything on my radio, I think.”

“Hang on.” Danny adjusted his own com set. They had lost communications with Dreamland Command, as well as Raven.

Had Raven been hit?

Helicopters often lost radio contact when they were flying very low to the ground. Even the Dreamland satellite connection was finicky.

“Probably, we’re too low to get a good radio connection,” said Danny.

“Should I go up?”

“Let’s stay low for a while,” said Danny. “When we’re closer to the target areas, then we’ll pop up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Whiplash team, sound off. Give me your status,” said Danny.

One by one the team members gave a curse-laden roll call. Liu had a major welt on his arm and Jack “Pretty Boy” Floyd had a bloody nose, but none of the injuries were severe. “Powder” Talcom brought up the rear of the muster.

“I think I puked my fuckin’ brains out,” he said.

Everyone laughed, even Egg.

“Ought to fill a thimble,” said Bison. “If that.”

Chapter 107

“Laser is confirmed at site two,” said the copilot. “The rectangular building at the far end of the eastern block. Subgrid two. Near the animal pen. Marked now on GPS displays.”

“That’s where the Hawk radar is. I have the site marked,” said the radar operator. “They’re off the air.”

“The laser got the Quail,” said the copilot. “But I can’t find the Hind.”

“Scanning,” said the radar operator.

“Go to active radar,” said Major Alou. “Just a burst, then kill it.”

“Nothing,” said the copilot.

“I’m dropping back to look for them,” said Zen, turning the Flighthawk south.

“Hold on, Zen,” said Alou. “The laser is our priority.

We have to take it out. Then we’ll go back for Whiplash.”

“They may be dead by then.”

“They may be dead already.”

Chapter 108

The helicopter had been out of contact for more than five minutes now. Dog did nothing, continuing to stare at the sitrep screen showing Raven over Iran.

They had a good location on the laser. Alou was almost in position to strike it. Should he tell them to turn back and find his men?

No way. The laser was a potent weapon that had to be erased. His men aboard the Hind were expendable.

So were the ones on Raven, for that matter. And his daughter in Quicksilver. And his lover on the ground at High Top.

“Contact with Captain Freah is still lost,” said the lieutenant at the console. “Major Alou wants to know whether to proceed with the attack or hold off for Whiplash.”

“Hold off,” said Rubeo. “The information is invaluable.”

“You’re assuming the helicopter hasn’t been destroyed,” said Major Cheshire, sitting at the console next to the scientist.

“It hasn’t,” said Rubeo. “It’s out of communication range because of the ground clutter. The laser struck the Quail, that was all. It’ll take them a half hour to recycle and fire again. I see the pattern now.” The scientist jumped up and went over to the com console. “The Hind is just very low and the signal is distorted by the rotor. Let me see those controls.”

“We’ll give it five more minutes,” Dog said. “Then we’re going ahead with the attack.”

Chapter 109

Danny tried connecting again. “Dreamland command? This is Whiplash Hind. Can you hear me?”

“Captain Freah — where are you? Are you okay?”

It was Fentress.

“We’re on course,” Danny said. “We went into evasive maneuvers. We’re very low.”

“We thought you were shot down.”

“We thought the same thing happened to you.”

“No, the laser got the decoy. Listen — there’s a battery of Hawk missiles right near the laser. Hold off until we nail it.”

“Okay. Where’s the laser?”

“Site two. The rectangular building in subgrid two.

We’re about ninety seconds away — we’ll feed you video once we’ve got it. The air force may scramble jets,” Fentress added. “We haven’t seen them yet.”

“Site two. Got it.” Danny punched up the map visual on his combat helmet screen. Two was the northernmost site, a set of agricultural buildings. There were farm animals, a big warehouse or barn. “We’re five miles away.”

“Okay, good. We’re targeting the Hawks now. Stand by.”

“You hear all that, Egg?” Danny asked his pilot.

“Pretty much.”

“All right,” Danny told the others. “Five minutes.”

“About time,” said Powder. “It’s getting dark.”

Danny downloaded the diagram of the site into his helmet. “We land at the north end of the building. The barracks are just beyond that, across the double barbed-wire fence. Powder, when Egg gives you the word, hit the barracks with the rockets. Don’t hold anything back.”

“That’s my middle name,” said Powder.

“You see anything when we come in, give it everything you got.”

“What I’m talkin’ about, Captain.”

Chapter 110

Anticipating that their new radar operator would have trouble with the equipment if things got hot, Breanna had preset her configurable display to bring up the duplicate radar interception screen on her voice command. Now that the attack planes they were shepherding were being probed by the Iraqis, she moved quickly, bringing up the screen and preparing to attack.

“Chris, open bay doors. Target radars.”

“Bay open.”

“Our shot, Torbin,” she said, overriding his panel.

“Take a breath. Fire at will, Chris. I have the ECMs.”

“Tacit has target. Launching,” he said.

There was an ever so soft clunk deep within the plane as the AGM-136X pushed off the rotary launcher, tracking toward the Iraqi radar. Unlike the original — and canceled — Tacit Rainbow missiles designed to take the place of HARMs, the Dreamland Tacit Plus had a GPS

guidance system augmenting the radar homing head. This allowed it to operate in two distinct modes: it could fly straight to the radar site, switching to GPS mode if the radar went off. Or, like Tacit Rainbow, it could orbit an area, waiting for the radar to come back on. The ramjet made it reasonably quick, and gave it a range somewhere over seventy miles, depending on the mission profile.

“They’re jammed,” said Breanna.

“Yeah, I’m on it,” said Chris. “Tacit has gone to GPS

mode. Sixty seconds from target.”

“Torbin, go ahead and track for more radars,” said Breanna.

“Missiles in the air!” warned Chris. “SA-2, SA-9s, a Six — barrage tactics again. They’re firing blind.”

“Everybody hang tight,” said Breanna. “Torbin, maintain the ECMs. Torbin?”

“I’m on it.”

“Shit — we’re being tracked. More radars,” said Chris.

“Tacit is thirty seconds from impact — they’re just firing everything they got, in case they get lucky.”

“Not today,” said Breanna. “Brace yourselves.”

She put the Megafortress on its wing, rocking back in the other direction as electronic tinsel and flares spewed from the large plane. One of the missiles the Iraqis had launched sailed about five hundred feet from the nose, its seeker thoroughly confused. It had been launched totally blind and had no idea how close it was to its target.

Neither did the SA-9 that strode in on the Megafortress’s tail. But that didn’t make much difference — sucking on one of the flares, it veered right, then exploded about twenty yards from the right rear stabilizer.

Chapter 111

Zen rode the Flighthawk south, aiming to make his cut north as the first JSOW hit the SAM batteries guarding the base. Raven, meanwhile, stayed in the mountain valley, where the clutter would keep the Hawk radars from picking her up if they were turned on again.

The computer kept giving him connection warnings as he maneuvered. He still couldn’t see the site on his viewer.

“I need you to come south, Raven,” he told Alou.

“Can’t do it,” said Alou.

Zen began climbing back. As he did, the Hawk radars came back on. He tucked left but too late; the RWR

screen blinked red as the computerized voice told him he was being tracked.

“Come on! Nail those mothers,” he told Alou.

“Ten seconds to launch,” said the copilot. “Area at the far end, near the livestock pen. Must be camo’d well.”

With ECMs blaring and his disposables disposed, Zen plunged the Flighthawk toward the radars, zigged hard and pulled down, trying to both beam the Doppler radar and line up for his attack run. But this was physically impossible — the Hawk targeting radar spiked him. A half second later, the battery launched a pair of SAMs.

Fuck it, he thought, thumbing the cannon screen up. If he was going out, he was going out in style. The barracks building at the south end was just coming into view at the top of his screen.

It disappeared behind a cloud of white steam.

It took him a second to realize it was antiaircraft artillery, firing from inside a pen of milling animals near the building. A thick hail of lead rose from Zsu-23s or possibly M-163 Vulcans in netted pits below the animals, perhaps tied into the Hawk radar. Zen had to break his attack, and he twisted south. Clear, he turned back in time to see the Hawk battery explode.

“Bull’s-eye on the SAMs!” said the copilot. “Kick ass.”

“Triple A in the pig pen,” Zen told Alou. “Kind of figures. I got it.”

“Yours,” said Alou. “We have three AGMs left. Fentress, get Whiplash in as soon as the flak’s gone.”

Bullets spewed from the guns as Zen rocked northward. As the closest torrent began to separate into two distinct streams, Zen pressed the trigger on his own cannon. The Flighthawk spewed shells into the dirt and panic-stricken animals in front of the triple-A pit; he rode the torrent into a low wall in front of it and then through the sloped turret. The cloud of gunfire parted and then cleared; Zen turned to the east beyond the target, trying to sort out the battlefield before making another pass.

Flames spewed from the Hawk battery. Men were running from the barracks. Two of the flak guns were continuing to fire, one east, one west. The Hind was about ninety seconds away.

And the building with the laser?

It sat at the north end of the complex. The roof panels on the west side were folding downward. There was movement inside but Zen couldn’t tell what was going on.

“I think the laser’s getting ready to fire,” he warned.

“I’m going to grease it.”

“We’ll get a missile on it,” said Alou.

“No time,” he said, pushing over.

Chapter 112

Danny went to the door as the hind glided into a hover, preparing to launch its missiles. Black smoke curled on the other side of the complex, and he could see men running in different directions, some to take defensive positions, others to save themselves.

“Watch the Flighthawk!” he barked, but the warning was drowned out by a thundering succession of whoops from the rocket launchers. The rockets left the wing pod with a furl of white smoke and a hard shake; Danny felt as if a giant had grabbed hold of the Hind’s wings and was systematically trying to empty its stores on the enemy. Zen said something about targeting the laser building, then warned about flak, but in the rush of noise and fire and smoke it was impossible to figure out what he was saying. Danny wanted only one thing — to get down on the ground and complete their mission.

“Let’s go, Egg, let’s go!” he yelled as the rockets stopped. The Hind whipped right, but then twisted backward, away from the target. “What the hell?” he asked Egg.

“Flighthawk is firing!” warned the pilot. “He wants us to stay back.”

“Get us into the complex now!” said Danny. “Just do it!”

“Yes, sir. Hold on.”

The helicopter lurched eastward. Danny saw the small robot plane pass almost in slow motion, smoke erupting from its mouth. Steam enveloped the side of the target building.

“Down! Down!” said Danny.

As if in response, the nose of the helicopter pitched hard toward the earth.

Chapter 113

They were nearly two hundred miles from Anhik, more than six or seven hours away by car, when the call came on his satellite phone. The connection was poor, but General Sattari understood immediately what had happened.

“Repulse the attack at all costs,” he told Colonel Vali, though the command was completely unnecessary. “Reinforcements will be sent.”

The general told the driver to go up the road to a high point. When they reached it, he got out of the car with the telephone and walked off the road to a pile of rocks, more for privacy than to ensure good reception. The driver the black robes had supplied was undoubtedly a spy. The bastards hadn’t even let him fly back in the helicopter.

No wonder. Thoughts of treachery ran through his head. Khamenei had tipped off the Americans or the Chinese somehow — it wasn’t clear who exactly was attacking.

Sattari emptied his mind and calmly began dialing the squadron commanders he knew would be loyal to him.

Smoke rose between the distant hills.

His imagination? Surely he could not see the attack from here.

“Anhik is under attack,” Sattari said into his phone when the connection went through. “Send assistance.”

He repeated the words six times; each time the man on the other line said nothing more than “Yes” or “Right away.” As he clicked the End Transmit button after speaking to the last commander, Sattari turned toward Anhik, as if perhaps he might at least witness the battle there.

The smoke was gone.

His experts had told him the laser was undetectable.

Khamenei must have betrayed him somehow.

He remembered getting the news of his parents’ death.

The message read only, “Your parents have become mar-tyrs.”

Had he not expected his dream to end this way?

Sattari walked back to the Rover. “Anhik,” he said.

“Go.”

Chapter 114

Zen kept his finger on the trigger, riding the stream of bullets through the laser director, across the building and into the flak dealer nearby. The gun rattled and burst like an overheating steam engine, but he was too busy to admire his handiwork. The last gun turned nearly straight up, unleashing its shells at point-blank range. The Flighthawk stuttered momentarily, then tipped right, one of its control surfaces nicked by a shell. The computer immediately compensated and the plane responded to Zen’s push on the throttle slider, galloping south.

He took a breath as he banked back to finish the job. As he looked to his left to try and locate the Hind, the antiaircraft battery began firing again, its shells arcing off to his left. Zen thought it must be trying to nail the chopper.

Anger welled inside him; driven by instinct and emotion, he rushed to protect his friends, pushing the throttle to the firewall and mashing his trigger even though he was out of range. The ground and smoke and dust parted, replaced by a red tunnel of flame; he pushed the cannon shells into the antiair gun like a knife into the heart of an enemy.

Clearing, he banked left and began to climb. As he rose, he saw Raven two miles away to the northwest. It was a shock to realize he was actually sitting back there in relative safety, not dodging through the bullets and fire at the battlefield.

Chapter 115

The helicopter’s front end bucked back upward as the tail spun hard left. Then the nose and one of the wings crashed through a fence near the laser building. Danny heard Egg and Powder cursing but there was no time to sort out exactly what was going on. The helicopter bounced twice, the first time gently, the second time hard enough to shake Danny’s helmet back on his head. He heard a sound like a load of pebbles shooting down the ramp of a large dump truck. There was no time to figure out what it was — they were down.

“Out! Out!” Danny yelled, pushing toward the door.

Something hit his face; it was one of the Marines, losing his balance as he tried to get out. Danny pushed the man to his feet and managed to follow onto the ground, running for the gray aluminum wall of the laser building only five or six yards away. One of the Marines was a few feet ahead. The helicopter revved behind him. A shell or rocket landed well off to the right.

There were no defenders between them and the building. Total and complete surprise.

Hot shit.

Between the satellite pictures of the target and the visuals Zen had fed them, the team had an incredible amount of real-time intelligence. Still, no matter how well-prepared or rehearsed, there was always a moment of hesitation and doubt, a split second when the mind had to storm through the adrenaline and gun smoke to find its balance. Danny struggled through that moment now. His lungs coughed dust and burned dirt as he spotted the small trench they’d mapped near the rear wall of the building. It was their first rendezvous point, the spot they’d launch their final assault from.

The difference between a good commander and a great one wasn’t the amount of adrenaline coursing through his veins, but the ability to control it, to use it to sharpen his judgment rather than dull it. The process was unconscious; Danny was no more aware of it than he was aware of what his little toes were doing.

“All right, we’re good. Bison, open up the wall for us,” Danny said as he ran. “Like we planned. Everyone else, remember the dance card. Liu, you’re too far left.

Go! Go!”

Bison slid in next to the back of the building while Nurse and Hernandez took the left and right flanks, respectively. Bison put two small charges of plastique explosive on the metal then furled back to the ditch.

“Down!” Danny yelled to the Marines. “Go, Bison.”

“Three, two—” Bison pushed the detonator at two; as the shock of rocks and shrapnel passed overhead, he bolted forward to leap through the eight-by-ten-foot hole his charges had made in the wall. Floyd followed; they rolled through the jagged gap, MP-5s blazing. Danny and the Marines followed a few seconds behind, Gunny and the corporal watching the flanks as Danny moved inside.

Then everything slowed down.

The building was dark and quiet. Egg and Floyd were on Danny’s right and left, respectively, crouching as they scoped out the layout. Two thick tubes covered in white and looking like large pieces of a city sewer system ran the length of the hangar on the left. Black bands extended around several sections, and in three or four places thick hoses like lines from a massive dry vac hung down to the floor, where they met metal boots. The base of the mirror system stood about twenty feet away, surrounded by metal scaffolding and bracing pieces not unlike a child’s Erector set. Beyond it stood a collection of devices stacked on metal tables; from his angle in the unilluminated shed it looked like a collection of table saws and TVs.

“People at the far end,” hissed Egg over the com link.

“Scientists or what?” asked Danny.

“Unknown.”

Probably just technical people or they’d be shooting, Danny reasoned. “How are we outside?”

“Activity at the barracks,” said Liu. “Powder’s got them pinned down.”

“All right. Marines up. They’ll cover us.” He waved the Marines in, directing them left and right, where they would take over from his men.

“Are you ready, Captain?” said a high-pitched, tinny voice in his headset.

“Thought you’d never get here, Doc,” Danny told Ray Rubeo.

“Remember, please, that I am not where you are.”

“Hard to forget.”

“Please scan the area with the hand camera,” Rubeo told him. “The images captured from your so-called smart helmet are practically worthless.”

“Just a minute.” Danny had unhooked the small rucksack from his back and opened it on the floor. He picked up the small camera — it shot high-resolution still pictures in rapid succession, transmitting them back to Dreamland — and plugged the thick wire connector into his helmet.

Then he held up the camera as he rose tentatively. Egg and Pretty Boy meanwhile had removed their torches and were making their way with the Marines toward the Erector set.

“Humph,” growled Rubeo.

“Well?”

“Please hold.”

“Hold?”

Rubeo spoke to someone in the background, then came back on the line. “The control area. Can you get some pictures of it? And then the accelerators — the double-tube arrangement seems unique.”

“I’m going to have to go forward,” said Danny, starting to do so.

“Don’t get shot,” said Dog.

“Agreed,” said Danny.

“There are people in there with you?” Dog asked.

“We believe there are, Colonel. But I haven’t seen them.”

“Two guys, far corner,” said Egg. “They’re squatting down like they’re hiding. Gunny’s got them covered. No weapons we can see.”

“Leave ’em for now,” said Danny. He had reached the scaffolding. He put one strap of the ruck over his shoulder and then began climbing gingerly. A pair of what looked like long, flexible drain pipes rose from a pair of cylindri-cal containers on his right. Three small control panels sat beyond them, a monitoring or control station of some sort.

“You want me to plug the sniffer into one of those pipes?” he asked Rubeo.

“Just feed us pictures for now, please,” said Rubeo.

“Pan as much of the facility as you can. We’ll tell you the next move when — Captain, please check the settings. You just changed the resolution.”

Danny reset the camera, trying not to let the scientist’s tone annoy him.

“Better?”

“Much. Your men are at the chemical bag, not the mirror. Tell them not to touch anything until we’ve finished photographing it. This isn’t a toy store.”

“No shit, Doc. You’re going to have to lighten up,” said Danny. “Bison, Pretty Boy, what’s going on?”

“Guy here,” said Bison. “Dead. Flighthawk must’ve nailed him on the way in. Two more bodies over there.”

“Come back and get ready to take out part of the mirror, okay? The ragheads aren’t going to leave us alone forever.”

As if in answer, the ground shook with a heavy explosion.

“All right, Captain. Now, take your chemical sniffer and begin getting samples,” said Rubeo. “You’ll want to move to the tube monitoring station. The others can dis-mantle the mirror at the director assembly. We only need a cross section.”

“What’s the monitoring station?” Danny asked.

“The stations are directly ahead of you with the control panels. Slit open one of the collector tubes and run the sampler.”

“Which one?”

“Any one. This is very much a work in progress. We’ll look for the disk arrays while you’re doing that. Those will be our next target.”

The ground rumbled again. Danny had to climb up and over one of the equipment benches. As he did, Rubeo told him to stop and take more pictures. Balancing on a long steel pipe, Danny curled one arm around a flexible tube that ran to the ceiling as he panned with the camera. The tube bounced violently as a pair of fresh explosions shook the ground outside.

“Hey, listen, Doc, things are getting exciting here. You better move us along the priority list.”

Rubeo sighed. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. Do we have the mirror section from the director yet?”

“This fucker is bolted in about twenty places,” said Bison. “It’s huge.”

“We need only a cross section,” replied Rubeo. “Two people should be able to carry a piece away from the building.”

“You think it’s so fucking easy, you do it,” replied Bison.

“Relax, Sergeant,” sighed the scientist. “We’re all in this together.”

“Yeah, well, some of us are more in it than others.”

“What’s going on outside, Nurse?” Danny asked Liu.

“Two BMPs came up. Flighthawk just popped ’em.”

“I see some vehicles starting south now,” said Fernan-dez. “Uh, tank I think.”

“Captain?” said Rubeo. “Are you still with us?”

“I’m going to take my samples, then we’re blowing the whole thing up.”

“It would be useful if you could remove the small computer units at the base of the platform first,” said Rubeo. “That Sun workstation especially. There is a disk array near it. Take that as well. The units will slide out.”

“If we have time,” said Danny.

One of the Marines shouted. Danny threw himself down as a flare shot to the top of the building and the interior lit.

“There’s a tunnel,” said Bison. “A dozen ragheads!

More!”

After that all Danny could hear was machine-gun fire.

Powder blasted away in the Hind, spitting 12.7 bullets everywhere but at the truck he was aiming at. Part of the problem was Egg, who kept flinging the helicopter left and right.

“We’ll be an easy target. Get the pickup in front and the rest will be trapped.”

“Well, I would if you’d hold steady for a second. This isn’t the easiest gun in the world to aim.”

“It’s a fucking Ma Deuce.”

“It’s a Russian Ma Deuce. Big difference,” said Powder, once again pressing the trigger and once again missing.

“Tanks,” said Egg.

The helicopter bolted forward. Powder put his other hand on the gun handle, still pressing the trigger. The stream of bullets swam over and past the pickup, through the animal pen where the flak dealers had been, and toward the barbed-wire fences on the south perimeter. A pair of medium tanks — possibly T-54s or even American M48s — were rumbling along the roadway parallel to the fences.

“You’re wasting ammo and you’re going to burn out the barrel,” said Egg.

“Yeah, no shit,” said Powder, though he kept firing.

“Stand back and let the Flighthawk hit them.”

“You’re the one flying the damn thing.” Powder finally let up on the trigger.

The helicopter continued moving forward. Powder could see one or two people on the ground but they were moving too quickly for him to aim. As they banked and came north, the small robot plane swooped nearly straight down on the lead tank. The U/MF’s mouth frothed and the aircraft seemed to stutter in the air, skipping along and disappearing in the billowing cloud. The tank kept going.

“Shit,” said Powder. “He hit the motherfucker too.”

The U/MF’s cannon fired shells nearly twice as large as the ones in the Hind’s mouth, but Powder unleashed his weapon anyway. He got about six or seven into the vehicle with no apparent effect before the gun clicked empty.

“We’re empty,” he told Egg.

“I told you not to waste your fuckin’ bullets.”

“Maybe we should ram it.”

“Just hang on,” said Egg, throwing open the throttle.

Chapter 116

“You’re going to have to hit the tank with one of the JSOWs,” Zen told Alou. “My bullets bounced off the turret.”

“We’re down to three missiles, Zen. We have to make sure we can take out the laser.”

“If we don’t stop the tanks, they’ll reach Whiplash.

They’re firing.”

Zen poked the nose of the Flighthawk around as the tank recoiled from its shot. The shell from the 105mm gun, which had been retrofitted to the upgraded M48, sailed well over the laser building. As the gun started to lower for another shot, Zen dropped Hawk One down for a low-level run, hoping his bullets might find a soft spot at the tank’s rear. He gave his trigger two quick squeezes and broke right as the tank fired again. Recovering, he spotted a small cement structure that looked like a tunnel entrance at the edge of the barbed wire. Ducking around to get a better view, he saw several troops running toward it.

“Targeting lead tank,” said Alou.

“Hold on, hold on,” said Zen. “We got some sort of underground entrance, bunker or something. May lead to the laser. Men inside,” he said, unleashing thirty or forty rounds before swooping away. He could see another knot of men coming from the shadow of one of the buildings.

He tucked his wing and dove back immediately, but they’d made the tunnel before he could get a shot.

“All right, stand clear,” said Alou.

Two JSOWs popped out from the Megafortress’s belly and nosed toward the tank and the tunnel entrance. Their rear steering fins made minor mid-course corrections about a third of the way home; two seconds later their warheads detonated precisely on their targets, stopping the Iranian counterattack cold.

“Whiplash, we have one lollipop left,” Alou said over the shared circuit. “Time to saddle up.”

Chapter 117

When the missile hit the entrance to the tunnel, the concussion blew into the building with enough force to knock over a good part of the laser gear, including the director assembly. But it also killed or dazed most of the Iranians near the entrance, who, unlike Whiplash, hadn’t been forewarned. The Marines took care of the rest, spraying their SAWs from a platform on the left side of the building. The metal walls reverberated with the loud rattle of light machine guns, the roar several times louder than a case of firecrackers going off in a garbage can.

The acrid smell of the flare, still burning on the ground, stung Danny’s nostrils as he made his way down from the platform toward Bison and Pretty Boy, who were wedged down behind some equipment on the right side of the building.

“Two more guys, back behind that row of cabinets,” said Bison, pointing.

“Flash-bang,” said Danny. “You go left, I’ll go right.”

Bison ducked and began moving. Danny took one of the grenades in his hand, tucking his thumb beneath the tape he’d safed the pin with. As he got ready to toss it, Bison shouted a warning and began firing. Danny pitched the grenade over the barrier, then dove to the floor. The loud pop was almost lost in the roar of gunfire. Crawling, Danny managed to reach the end of the row, then hesitated, not sure exactly where Bison was and not wanting to get caught by his cross fire.

“Bison, where are you?”

“Pinned down,” said the sergeant.

“Stay there,” said Danny. He pitched another grenade over the top of the cabinet and threw himself around the corner a millisecond after it popped. There were bodies everywhere, at least a dozen of them. Two Iranians with heavy weapons were crouched at the far end of the row; Danny’s bullets caught them chest high as they began to turn toward him. He ran through his clip, then jerked back behind the row of metal as someone behind them popped up and returned fire.

“There’s a million of these fuckers,” said Bison.

“Just seems that way,” shouted Gunny, who’d come down and around to cover them. “Advance. I got your ass.”

Danny rammed home a new clip. When the Iranians’

bullets stopped hitting the wall near his head, he threw himself around the barrier again, once more emptying his weapon before ducking back. But this time as he reloaded there was no answering fire.

“Secure,” said Bison.

“Let’s grab that shit and get the hell out of here,” said Danny, scanning the pile of dead before retreating.

The smoke was so thick in the building that even with his low-light mode on he could see only a few yards ahead. When the Marine corporal rose in front of him, Danny cringed for a second, not sure who it was. Then he recognized him.

“This comes with us,” he told the Marine, pointing to the disk array. A stack of drives sat on top of each other in a plastic cabinet about five feet high. “Grab whatever you can. Just tear it out and get it into the helo. Go.”

The Marine began prying out the disk units with his knife, sliding them out past the flimsy locks that secured them. Danny climbed back onto the platform and retrieved his gas analyzer. He took out his knife and cut open a hole in one of the plastic tubes.

“Put the sensor right on the interior of the tube,” said Rubeo in his headset.

“Hey, Doc, I thought you’d gone for coffee.”

“Hardly. This is probably an exhaust manifold, Captain.

Not optimum. Move to the last pipe in the second row.”

“We’re tight on time.”

“I understand that.”

Danny walked to the edge of the platform. His knife made it through the inside layer of plastic, but there was another plastic pipe inside that the point could reach but not quite cut.

“Shit,” he said.

“Very good,” said Rubeo. “Open the pipe.”

“How?”

Rubeo didn’t answer. Danny took his pistol and fired through.

“That was expedient,” said the scientist. “Please take your sample now.”

Danny pushed the modified sniffer probe into the hole.

As he stood there he could see the Marine corporal running toward the hole in the wall with an armload of gear.

“Enough,” said Rubeo. “Now we would like a measure on the reaction chambers, the large tube structures directly behind you. Do not fire at those,” added the scientist. “While puncturing the inner piping is unlikely, if you did succeed, the concentration of chemicals could be quite sufficient to kill you and the rest of your team.”

Danny took the ruler from his pocket — a laser unit not unlike those used on some construction sites. He made his way to the end of the tube and shot the beam down to the other end, then struggled to get a good read as the numbers kept jumping on the screen.

“Close enough,” said Rubeo. The handheld ruler didn’t have a transmit mode, but Danny realized that Rubeo had read it through his helmet inputs. “Now, one of those junction boxes would be very useful. Do you see it beneath the third band?”

“Why don’t I just take the whole damn chamber?”

“That would be infinitely preferable,” said Rubeo. “An admirable solution.”

Danny had to pick his way over two piles of debris to get to the box; as he climbed off the second he realized there was a boot sticking out. He bent down and saw that the pant leg above the boot was tan.

The boot moved slightly. He heard, or thought he heard, a groan from the pile.

Not one of my guys, he thought. Still, he found himself fighting an urge to stop and help the man.

“Do not damage the circuitry if possible,” said Rubeo as Danny pried the cover of the box off with his knife. The last two screws shot away and the metal cover fell away.

“Looks like a bunch of wires.”

“Yes,” said the scientist.

“You sure you want them?”

“Do you want me to explain how the probable current can be determined from the size and composition of the wires, and what other suppositions could be made — or should I skip to the math involved in determining the propagation of electromagnetic waves?”

“Fuck you, Doc,” said Danny, hacking at the thick set of wires.

Chapter 118

“Much more primitive than razor,” said Rubeo, turning away from the console.

“In the matter of size, yes,” said Matterhorn, one of the laser experts.

“In everything.”

“I disagree,” answered Matterhorn. “The size of the mirror array and the lack of mobility in the aiming structure indicates to me that they’ve found a way to target it by focusing individual frames at the reflective site.

They’ve obviously gone operational too soon, but that undoubtedly was a political decision.”

“Piffle,” said Rubeo. “Razor is several times more powerful.”

Dog took a step away from them, turning his attention back to the image from Dreamland’s miniature KH satellite. The high-resolution optics on the satellite could not be sent as video, but in rapid burst mode it updated every twenty seconds. The effect was something like watching dancers move across a strobe-lit stage.

Except, of course, the dancers were his people under fire.

“The mission has been invaluable,” Matterhorn said, probably sensing Dog’s annoyance.

The colonel ignored the scientist. More vehicles were starting from the barracks area. “Danny. Let’s get the hell out of there, okay?” he said, pushing the talk button on his remote.

“I’m with you, Colonel.”

Chapter 119

Torbin felt himself starting to relax as the last of the attack jets checked in, hooking onto the course for home. His fingers hurt and his neck was stiff.

“Crew sound off,” said Captain Breanna Stockard.

“Torbin, how are we looking?”

“Good,” he said. “Thanks for picking me up back there. I appreciate it.”

“Not a problem. Chris?”

Torbin tried to stretch away some of his cramps as the others joked. Had he screwed up? Normally the copilot handled the missile shots, but he should have taken the radars down himself.

Nobody else thought he’d messed up, though.

Ironic — on the other missions, he’d been the one convinced he hadn’t failed, and everyone else pointed the finger. Now it was the other way around.

So was he a screw-up?

The computer snapped a warning tone at him.

“Radars, airborne,” he relayed to the captain. “Three, four — helicopters coming north.”

“They’re not ours?” asked Breanna.

“Negative, negative. ID’d as Mi-8 Hips,” he said, reading the legend on the panel. “Assault ships. I have a bearing.”

“Hang tight everyone,” said Breanna. “Torbin, give the heading to Eagle Flight. Chris will punch you through.”

“They’re on a direct line for High Top,” said Chris Ferris.

“The fighters will take care of them,” replied Breanna.

Chapter 120

The Hind bucked as they threw the captured gear inside. The rotors revolved at low RPM, their wash making it difficult to move in a straight line. The part of the mirror assembly they’d cut away proved so heavy that the two Marines had to help Egg and Pretty Boy get it out of the building; even then they dragged it most of the way.

“Something moving beyond the fence,” warned Liu.

“Can’t see through the smoke.”

“Okay,” said Danny. “Liu, Hernandez, fall back. We’re buggin’ out.”

“Two more of those disk things inside,” yelled the Marine corporal.

“All right,” said Danny. “I’ll get the last array and then we’re gone.”

He tossed his plundered CPU unit inside the Hind, then ran back to the building, heading toward the arrays. Light filtered through the smoke; a fire flared in fits near the tunnel entrance at the other side of the building. Danny moved through the red and gray shadows like a goblin slithering through a haunted house. As he jumped up onto the raised metal platform of the control area his knee gave way; as he sprawled off the side he managed to snag his arm on a metal railing, but then lost it. He fell face first to the ground without getting his hands out to break his fall.

He cringed, expecting to hit hard and on his face; instead his chest and face landed on a large, soft pillow.

Not a pillow, but the stomach of a dead Iranian soldier.

Danny turned his head to the side, his helmet’s visor magnifying the dead man’s green eyes. Wide open in the dim light, they stared at him as if to ask why he had come.

Danny pushed himself upward, ignoring his throbbing knee. The disk array sat on the floor a few yards ahead.

He moved toward it, meanwhile scanning the interior.

Two large suitcaselike arrays sat next to a small screen; he slung his gun over his shoulder and hoisted them from the floor. They were lighter than he thought but hard to hold in his hands as he began picking his way back outside.

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 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. Danny pushed forward, sliding against a piece of mangled machinery, ducking to his right. An automatic weapon popped outside.

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 Danny Freah knew what heaven would be like. For all his years of protesting that he was not religious, for all his poor churchgoing, his in-frequent prayers — in the moment that bullets flew toward his chest, he felt the warmth of unending rest. Something soft and feminine whispered in his ear, a voice not unlike his wife’s, telling him he had nothing to fear forever more.

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 Gunny, who’d somehow materialized over him. He had his arm wrapped around Danny’s chest — Gunny had pulled him down — and began dragging him outside. “Beat shit hell outta your pizza boxes.”

“Yeah,” said Danny, still dazed.

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

“Yeah,” said Danny. He paused at the wall, then leaped back to grab the mangled disk arrays, pulling them with him outside.

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, running up to grab one of the boxes from Danny’s hands. “The whole Iranian air force is coming for us.”

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

“Try a dozen MiG-29s and six F-5s for starters,” said Liu, physically pushing Danny into the helicopter. “The Megafortress is going to blow up the building — we don’t need charges. Let’s go!”

Chapter 121

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 running behind the Flighthawk by seven miles; even if the primitive radars in the F-5E Tigers would have difficulty spotting it, by the time Hawk One closed on them the black plane would probably be visible, at least as a disconcerting speck in the distance.

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 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 cannon working at such speeds. His goal, however, wasn’t to nail them but simply break their approach.

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 scanned,” warned the computer as he crossed to within ten miles of the easternmost MiG.

“MiGs are coming for us,” warned the copilot. “We’re inside Aphid range — they don’t seem to have us yet.”

“Go to ECMs,” said Alou.

“If you go to ECMs you’re going to cut down my ma-neuverability,” warned Zen. While the Flighthawk and C3 used uninterruptible bands, its backup circuits were limited by the fuzz, and as a precaution the Flighthawk had to stay within five miles of the mothership. “Wait until they lock.”

“Full ECMs,” insisted the pilot.

Cursing, Zen pulled his stick to the right, looping back to get closer to Raven. Breanna would never have punched the panic button that quickly; Raven hadn’t even been spiked.

“Still coming. Looking for us,” said the copilot.

“Prepare AMRAAMs,” said Alou. “Open bay doors.”

“That’s going to increase the radar profile five hundred percent,” said Zen. “They’ll see us for sure.”

“Hawk leader, fly your own plane.”

Zen pushed his stick hard left, rolling his wing around and gunning for the two MiGs. The closest was now within seven miles of Hawk One—easy range if he’d had a radar homer. C3, anticipating him, gave a plot for an attack that featured a deflection shot on the close plane with a quick jink that would put him head-on-wing to the second.

“Fuel is down to ten minutes,” warned Fentress.

“Hawk,” said Zen, acknowledging.

“Being scanned. Target aircraft are locking on Hawk One,” warned the computer.

Good, thought Zen. Get me, not Raven.

“Scan broken. Thirty seconds to intercept.”

“We’re spiked!” warned the copilot. “Shit.”

“Fire missiles,” said Alou. “Brace for evasive maneuvers.”

Zen leaned forward into the attack as his cue flashed red. The Iranian MiG pitched downward as Zen began to fire; he followed through a curving arc, aiming ahead of the enemy’s nose, in effect firing his bullets so they and the MiG would arrive at the same point at the same time.

The copilot and radar operator were screaming about missiles in the air, Fentress told him the other MiG was trying to get on his tail, and Alou ordered chaff as Zen fought to keep his attention on the glowing pipper in the middle of his head, the bright red triangle that doomed the MiG to destruction. The Iranian squirmed and flailed, now left, now right, up then down. And then its nose fell away and the wings shot upward, the Flighthawk’s bullets sawing it in half.

“On your butt!” warned Fentress. “Missiles!”

Zen tucked left. A large shadow zipped past his windscreen cam — a missile. He turned right, couldn’t find his prey, kept coming, finally saw the large-nosed bird tilting its wing over in an evasive maneuver. Something seemed to pop from the right wing — one of Raven’s AMRAAMs hitting home.

“Yeah,” said the copilot.

Alou’s congratulations were cut short by a thunderclap and the shudder of a volcano releasing its steam. Zen felt himself weightless and then thrown against his restraints so hard one of the belts sheered from its bolt at the base, leaving him hanging off the side as Raven rolled into an invert, then plunged into a fifty-degree dive toward the earth.

Chapter 122

Breanna heard the AWACS alert and knew immediately what had happened.

“Chris, get us a course to the Iranian border.” She didn’t bother to wait, turning the plane immediately to the east.

“We’re almost twenty-five minutes away,” said the copilot.

“Understood.” The throttles were already at max, but she tapped them nonetheless.

“Whiplash Hind is about zero-two from the border,”

said Chris, plotting their position. “Raven is engaging MiGs and F-5Es.”

“Okay.”

“They’ll make it, Bree.”

“I know that. What’s our ETA now?”

Chapter 123

Fentress felt the air punch out of his lungs as the big plane flipped through an invert. A fist welled in his diaphragm, pounding up into his throat.

They’d been hit by one of the missiles. The pilot and copilot were yelling at each other, trying to pull the big plane level.

His job was to help Zen with the Flighthawk. He put his right arm down on the control panel, pulling himself upright, getting back in the game. The main video panel display had a warning across the top portion of the screen declaring a fuel emergency. The aircraft had under five minutes of gas in the tanks.

“Zen?”

Fentress turned. Zen sagged off the side of his seat against his restraint straps. Fentress reached to undo his own seat belt, then stopped. He had to take care of the Flighthawk first or it would go down. He reached to the manual override; the computer listened as he recited his name and the command codes to take over. The fuel emergency shortened the protocol — he only had to give two different commands to take the helm.

By the time the transfer was complete, the Megafortress had stuttered into level flight. Fentress, flying behind it, could see damage to the right tail surface and some rips and dents in the fuselage; one of the engines seemed to be out.

“Hawk leader to Raven. I need to refuel,” he said.

“We’re still assessing damage,” said Alou.

“Raven, I need to refuel now,” said Fentress.

“You’ll have to wait.”

“Fuck you,” said Fentress. “I’m coming in now.”

The computer calculation showed he had exactly three minutes and thirty-two seconds before going dry. He’d never completed the tricky refuel in less than seven, and even the automated routine took five.

“All right. Don’t panic,” said Alou.

“I’m not panicking,” he said, his voice level.

He’d never spoken to a commanding officer — hell, to practically anyone — this way. But the shit was on the line. He needed fuel now. And he’d have to gas manually.

Zen could. He could.

“I’ll climb,” said Alou.

“Just get the boom out,” he said.

“Raven.”

Fentress pushed in as the straw emerged from the rear of the plane. The director lights flashed red; he was too fast and too far right. He knocked his speed down, felt his diaphragm cramping big-time.

“Zen, come on, come on,” he muttered to himself.

“Tell me I can do it.”

Zen said nothing. The Flighthawk chuttered in the harsh vortices of the Megafortress. The computer struggled to help Fentress hold it steady.

Zen would tell me to relax it all the way home, Fentress told himself. He resisted the urge to push the small plane onto the nozzle.

As the last gallon of fuel slid from the Flighthawk’s tanks through its lines to the engine, the nozzle clicked into the wide mouth of the receptacle at the top of the plane. He was in.

Fuel began flowing.

“Computer, fly. Complete refuel,” he said. As C3 grabbed the plane, he tossed off his belt and went to help Zen.

Chapter 124

Danny pushed his leg flat on the floor of the helicopter, looking up at Nurse as the medic worked over his knee. They had just crossed back into Iraqi airspace; another half hour and they’d be home.

Home, home, home.

“You want some morphine?” said Nurse.

Danny shook his head. His sergeant didn’t take his eyes off him.

“I’ve hurt my knee before.”

“It’s not your knee. Your shin’s busted,” said Nurse.

“Something hard slammed the body armor. Would’ve sliced right through your leg except for the boron inserts.

You didn’t feel it?”

“I don’t think I did.” Danny looked down at his pants leg. Nurse had pulled off the lightweight body armor, but Danny couldn’t quite see his leg.

“I really think you should take some painkiller, Cap.”

“Yeah, when we’re on the ground,” said Danny. He leaned back, resting against some of the stolen laser parts.

“Sure will feel good to be home.”

Chapter 125

Jed sipped from his cola, listening while the translator the Turks had supplied repeated the stock questions about the prisoner’s unit and deployment. The prisoner glared. His attitude seemed infinitely more hostile toward the Turk than toward Jed — though the results were exactly the same.

Two CIA agents had seen the man. They thought but could not confirm that he wasn’t a native Iraqi. What significance that had, if any, wasn’t clear.

Jed watched the Turk’s frustration grow. Outside, the interrogator had assured Jed that he had conducted many interviews; Jed suspected torture was among his regular techniques, and he made it clear he would not be permitted to employ them.

After a few more minutes of questions met only by stares, the Turk slammed his hands on the table. He said something that sounded like a threat involving the prisoner’s mother and sisters — Jed’s Arabic still wasn’t fast enough to decipher it all — then made a show of leaving in a huff, probably thinking he was setting Jed up as the

“good cop” in the old interrogation routine.

Jed took another sip from his soda. The Turk would go down the hall and watch the surveillance feed from the wide-angle pinhead video cam in the top corner of the room. He was as much a spy as a translator, but Clearwater had already made that argument to the State Department, which insisted that he be allowed to meet the prisoner.

“So when you were in America,” said Jed after a few minutes of silence, “where did you go to school?”

“RPI,” said the prisoner — in English.

“That’s in upstate New York?” said Jed, trying to act as if he’d expected the man to answer his question.

“Troy. An ugly city.”

“Never been there,” said Jed. He scratched the back of his neck, slid his elbow on the table — he could be talking to a guy sitting next to him in a bar after work, except that he never went to bars after work. “That near Albany?”

“Very close.”

“What did you think of New York City?”

“A wondrous place,” said the Iraqi. “But a place of temptation.”

“I’ve been in the Empire State Building three times,”

said Jed.

The Iraqi didn’t reply.

“Why did you decide to join the army?” asked Jed, trying to keep the rapport up.

Nothing.

“But you’re not from Iraq, right? You come from—

Egypt?”

Jed waited for an answer. He was still waiting when an aide came to tell him the general wanted to talk to him.

Musah tahir watched the American leave the room. He felt a twinge at being left alone — he suspected the Turk would now return and begin to threaten him.

He told himself he must be strong. He must remember that he was doing his duty. He would persevere. He would be rewarded.

The wealth and power of America seemed overwhelming, but it was corrupt power, the reward of the devil for a man’s soul. Millions and millions of souls.

He would not surrender his.

The door to the small room opened. He pulled himself upright, braced himself for the assault. But it wasn’t the Turk; it was Barclay, the American.

“I’ve got good news for you,” he said. “You’re going home. The Red Cross has arranged an exchange.”

A trick.

“You can stay if you choose, you know. Stay with us,” said the American.

Tahir smiled. Protect me, God, he thought.

Chapter 126

He knew it was a dream, because he could feel his legs.

He was playing football, wide receiver, like high school. Zen ran down the field, looking back toward the quarterback — Kevin Fentress. The kid had faded back under the heavy rush of Zen’s cousin Jed Barclay and a few of his other old friends.

Zen was wide open. “Throw me the ball!” he yelled.

“Throw me the ball!”

The brown pigskin darted upward just as Fentress was swamped. The ball sailed high, but it wasn’t far enough to reach him. Zen began running back toward the line of scrimmage.

Running. It felt so damn good. He knew it was a dream.

What he didn’t know was where he was having it. He thought he was in bed, pushed to feel Breanna snuggled beneath the covers next to him.

A cold hiss of air shot into his face. Something wet dropped down the side of his temple. He shook his head, felt pain shooting up the side of his neck.

“Zen! Zen!”

“Fentress?” Zen pushed to the right, felt his arm fly in front of him.

Raven. They were in Raven. His helmet was off.

The Flighthawk! She was nearly out of fuel.

“We have to refuel!” said Zen. He went to grab the control stick. His hand seemed to move in slow motion for a second, then caught up so quickly he couldn’t keep it from smashing into the bottom of the console. He cursed with the pain then stared at his limp hand.

His hand wasn’t what hurt him. It was his legs.

His legs? He hadn’t felt them for more than a year and a half.

But they hurt like hell. He must still be dreaming.

Chapter 127

Even the sophisticated gear in Quicksilver had trouble sorting everything out. Iraq had launched helicopters and MiGs against Kurdish positions north of Kirkuk; two F-16s had moved to engage them. Farther east two Iraqi helicopters were flying either a supply or an attack mission on a vector almost exactly due north. Beyond that, the Iranians had at least a dozen aircraft in the sky over or at the border with Iraq. Raven, struck but not disabled by an Iranian missile, was just coming over the border now.

Whiplash Hind was flying so low not even Quicksilver could see her, but she was somewhere ahead of Raven.

“Border in ten minutes,” Chris Ferris told Breanna.

“What are we doing?”

“We’ll escort anyone who needs escorting,” she said.

“Hang on,” said Ferris. “F-15s are engaging the Iraqi helicopter.”

“Which one? Tell them to stop,” she said without waiting for an answer. “That’s ours. That’s ours!”

Chapter 128

Fentress gave up trying to revive Zen and jumped back into his seat, taking the Flighthawk from C3 just as it finished refueling. He dropped down and began scouting ahead. The Iranian MiGs began to retreat as a flight of F-15s approached.

They’d lost contact with Whiplash Hind, though by now it would be between twenty and thirty miles ahead, undoubtedly skimming the snowcapped mountains. Fentress popped the Flighthawk’s nose skyward, accelerating to find the helicopter.

Those guys had kicked ass on this, big-time, he thought. Gonna be a full round of beers and attaboys to last a lifetime, or at least a week and a half.

Some for him too. He’d done okay. He was doing okay.

He hoped Zen was okay. Blood had curled from his ear. One of his straps seemed to have broken; his head had probably slammed against the panel, and Fentress guessed he had a concussion. But he was breathing, at least.

The U/MF picked up the powerful radars of a pair of F-15s, screaming over from Turkey.

“Eagle Flight, this is Dreamland Hawk One,” he said.

“Hawk, we need radio silence. We are engaging an enemy aircraft,” replied one of the planes.

Where?

“No!” he shouted. “No! No! No!”

“Fox One!” said the lead pilot.

Chapter 129

Danny pulled his MP-5 next to him on the bench. He could see white through the helicopter window across from him — snow from the mountains.

Home, almost home. It’d be warm there now, almost spring.

Egg was flying low enough to stop for traffic signals.

Hopefully he didn’t kick into a goat or something — the CentCom lawyers would be peeved.

Lawyers. Holy shit. What would Major Pee-liar say about stealing a laser from the Iranians? Give it back.

The Iranians had probably stolen it from the U.S. somehow. He had merely returned the favor, Danny thought.

His guys were sharing some MREs with the Marines.

They must be really, really hungry.

He started to laugh. His leg twinged.

Then it pounded.

“Hey, Nurse, maybe I will have that morphine,” he said, pushing upright again. He twisted toward Liu, but his view was blocked by a flash of bright red and yellow flames. He felt himself falling backward and realized home was even farther away than he’d thought.