The Disciple

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Dick Hauer and JoAnne Rodgers were still flailing around in the darkness over western Iran in their F-15E, trying to find their target, Tunnel November, even though they were twelve minutes past their target time. Rodgers refused to give up, and Hauer wasn’t about to abort the mission unless his WSO suggested it first.

Both of them were startled when a missile plume came up out of the darkness several miles off to their right. Their first reaction was that the Irani ans had launched a surface-to-air missile at them, but they quickly realized that wasn’t the case. The exhaust plume illuminated the thick air with a dull glow as the ballistic missile rose on its pillar of fire, going straight up, accelerating.

“They just fired that thing from our goddamn target,” Dick Hauer said heatedly over the ICS. “Our fucking target is right down there, right where they launched that thing!”

His positive statement did little to help Rodgers. The INS was worthless, the radar was only usable in an area search mode, and even with the position inputs she was getting via data-link from AWACS, she couldn’t get the system to update her current position. She was doing everything right, she thought, but tonight, in the darkness and turbulence, flying with Mr. Major Asshole, the system had taken a shit.

“Turn toward that spot,” she told her pilot, who dumped the right wing and pulled, which caused the radar picture to go blank for a second or two as the gimbel limits were exceeded. As he was turning, another ballistic missile came up out of the gloom, following the first into the heavens.

“I’m going to fly over those shitheads and dump the load, armed,” Hauer said. As good as his word, within twenty seconds, all his bombs were on their way.

Even as the bombs were falling, he keyed the radio and reported the two ballistic missile launches to the AWACS, who already knew about them from sensor data and had yet to give him the word.

Cussing silently to himself, Hauer turned the Strike Eagle westward. “Think you can find our goddamn base?” he asked his WSO, who didn’t reply.

Behind him in the darkness the bombs exploded on a hillside about a mile from Tunnel November, injuring no one, hurting nothing.

The F-15 was fifteen miles away heading west when the first of the Tomahawks fired at November exploded right in front of the tunnel, killing the launch crew and destroying the empty missile launchers. Within three minutes, three more Tomahawks arrived to flail the area with blast and shrapnel.

Approaching the Iranian border, the missile launch light began flashing on the instrument panel in front of Hauer, and an audible warning assaulted their eardrums. According to the threat indicator, the missile was coming from the left. Hauer jammed the left wing down and turned hard toward it as he manually pumped off chaff, just in case the automatic system was malfunctioning.

In the soupy darkness, the missile’s exhaust plume was starkly visible as it rose toward them.

“What the fuck happened to the ALQ-199?” Hauer demanded of Rodgers, who didn’t have time to answer before the missile hit.

Neither crew member managed to eject from the out-of-control, flaming plane as it plummeted from the sky.

The Iranians had scored their first kill of the night.

Aboard United States, the incoming Yakhont missiles were not picked up by the carrier’s surface search radar. Nor did Columbia see the three aimed at her.

One of the Super Aegis cruisers four miles north of United States, USS Hue City, picked up the incoming missiles on its radar, and the tactical action officer rippled off a salvo of four SM-2 missiles, hoping they would connect with something. But the Yakhonts were too low and traveling too fast-over fourteen hundred knots-and all but one of the Standard missiles failed to find its target. That Standard struck its Yakhont a glancing blow and failed to explode; still, the forces of impact were so great both missiles disintegrated.

USS Hue City failed to get a firing solution on any of the three incoming Yakhonts. They were too low and too fast, and their flight path was too erratic.

Aboard United States, Admiral Bryant watched the computer symbols that depicted the incoming ship-killers with a growing sense of horror. He knew these symbols were merely computer estimates of the Yakhonts’ position because none of the radar systems airborne or shipboard had managed to get a sustained lock. The computer derived a theoretical position, course, speed and time to impact based on very fragmentary data.

Twelve seconds, eleven… the missiles were traveling at 2,341 feet per second, moving a statute mile in a little over two seconds. Bryant fumbled for the microphone on the wall and pushed the button for the ship’s loudspeaker system. “Incoming missiles,” he roared, “forward, aft, amidships! Brace for shock.”

He felt the two port-side Phalanx Gatling guns open fire. Those 20 mm weapons were directed by their own radar and internal computer, which aimed and fired them automatically whenever the system detected an incoming target. Each gun vomited out three thousand depleted uranium bullets a minute, a river of heavy metal. They made the deck vibrate at a high frequency, so inside the ship they were felt rather than heard. Bryant’s heart threatened to leap from his chest. Maybe, just maybe…

Then a missile hit. In the flag spaces, Bryant felt a dull thud. The Yakhont arrived at an eighty-degree angle from the bow and hit United States fifty feet above the waterline, below the flight deck, almost exactly amidships. It punched through the steel side of the ship and buried itself deep in the aluminum bulkheads under the flight deck, almost reaching the Number Two Elevator, before it detonated. The explosion blew a hole in the flight deck and blasted a cavern in the offices, bunkrooms and passageways. It also blew a hole in the ceiling of the hangar deck. The blast wrecked two planes on the flight deck, blowing one thirty feet into another plane and collapsing its gear, and smashed three on the hangar deck. And it ignited a thousand square feet of aluminum within the ship. Bodies and body parts were quickly consumed by the flames.

Columbia’s Phalanxes knocked down one of the incoming missiles. The first one to hit crossed above the flight deck too fast for a human eye to follow and smashed into the island superstructure, doing catastrophic damage and killing over fifty men outright. The other went through the opening for Number Four elevator, crossed the hangar deck and blew a hole in the starboard side of the ship. The explosions of both warheads started fierce fires.

Columbia’s bridge was shattered; half the men there were dead or disabled, and the helmsman lost control of the rudders. The massive carrier began a gentle turn to port. She did a complete 180-degree turn, almost colliding with a destroyer, before Damage Control Central managed to get the helm shifted and regain control of the rudders from the after steering room. Fortunately, aboard both ships, the propulsion systems were still intact and functioning flawlessly. The nuclear reactors, also sited below the waterlines, were also undamaged.

Like the well-trained professionals they were, the crews of the giant ships responded immediately to the disasters. On the flight decks, men began moving aircraft forward to escape the fires while other men flaked out fire hoses. Flames, poisonous fumes and severe battle damage to all systems near the blast sites wreaked havoc with ships crammed with explosive ordnance and jet fuel. The battles to save the carriers would last almost twelve hours before the fires were brought under control.

Chicago O’Hare had fired her last Sidewinder and had declared to her flight leader, who was at least forty miles away, that she was Winchester and Bingo fuel. She had to head back to her tanker rendezvous now or she was going to be swimming home. Fortunately the sky seemed empty of cruise missiles. She stuck her hand up under her oxygen mask and wiped the perspiration from her face. Then she wiped her eyes and eyebrows. Her flight suit and underwear were soaked with sweat.

Holy mother!

The E-2 controller came up on the radio. “Ninety-nine Battlestar aircraft, ninety-nine Battlestar aircraft, divert to Qatar.” Ninety-nine was the jargon for all, and Battlestar was the call sign of United States.

O’Hare laid her plane into a lazy turn in the general direction of Qatar and worked on her nav computer while she climbed. Oh, joy, Al Udeid Air Base at Doha was only 110 nautical miles away. She had plenty of fuel for that little jaunt. She looked up the frequency for Al Udeid Approach on her Bingo cards and dialed it into the ready position on her radio.

She wondered how many cruise missiles she and her fellow Hornet pilots had failed to intercept. Well, in life there is always an accounting. She hadn’t seen a nuclear explosion light up the night to the south, so if any got through, they had conventional warheads.

Her next thought was more practical. Were there any more missiles crossing the Gulf?

Just to be on the safe side, Chicago ran her radar scope out to max range and began a slow 360-degree turn.

She was pointed toward Iran when she saw them, two blips heading south. Low. Making about five hundred knots.

She didn’t even pause to think about her fuel; she advanced the throttles, lowered the nose and turned to intercept. Using her thumb on the stick, she selected gun.

Dear God, don’t let these two be nukes.

Now the Hawkeye controller called these targets out to her. “Tally,” she replied.

O’Hare came in on the nearest one in a classic high-side bounce. She wanted to get behind it, so she could see the glow of its exhaust pipe. Without that she would have to fire on radar, would probably use more ammo, and she needed to stretch her supply to ensure she got them both.

As she approached, she realized she could see the missile through the HUD, cruising at about three thousand feet, a dark little cigar shape against a darker ocean. The sky was just light enough. It was a while before dawn, but with the sliver of moon in the east and the brightening sky, she could see it.

She didn’t bother to slacken her speed-just closed, put the gunsight pipper on it, waited until the last possible moment, then waited another second and squeezed off a tiny burst. As she went over the missile she saw it begin to tumble. Must have hit the autopilot.

The next enemy missile was already well ahead and above her at five thousand, so she had to use the afterburner to catch it.

As she closed she was aware of the fuel pouring into her exhausts to give her extra power. Well, she had a little extra; she could make Qatar.

Somehow she missed with her first burst. Fired too soon, she thought and kept closing. This time she waited until she was way too close before she pulled the trigger. The missile exploded, and she yanked on the stick to go through the top of the fireball. Whump, and she was through.

Checked the engine instruments and came out of burner. Everything seemed okay. She pulled the nose into a max range climb and told the Hawkeye dude she had splashed these two.

“War Ace Three Oh Seven, roger that.” His voice sounded tight. “We think we have a nuke headed toward Al Udeid. We want you to go to max conserve and intercept it.”

Uh-oh. The low fuel light was already illuminated.

“How far out is it?” she asked.

“It’s still over land, and we don’t yet have it on the display. Wait.”

She had only a few minutes to stooge around if she planned on bringing back the navy’s jet. She told the controller that and got no answer. She throttled back anyway and turned slowly right, inscribing a circle in the sky.

A minute passed, then another.

“Hey, man, War Ace Three Oh Seven. I am about outta gas. Don’t you have anybody else?”

“War Ace, the tactical commander requests that you intercept.”

As she honked the plane around, she said, “I go in the drink, buddy, and you’re going to be buying me beer until you retire.”

So she flew northward, away from Qatar, at max conserve. After a couple of minutes, she decided to just wait until the nuke came to her. She pushed the stick over, and the autopilot held it there. She began circling again. At least after I drop it, she thought, I won’t have so far to swim.

“War Ace Three Oh Seven, Black Eagle. Bogey will be along in ten minutes if you hold your position.”

It was only then that she realized most of the other planes she had launched with were no longer on the frequency. The silence was broken only occasionally by pilots telling Black Eagle that they were switching to Al Udeid Approach.

Each of the minutes seemed to take an hour to pass. Desperately thirsty, Chicago took a baby bottle full of water, now warm, from her survival vest and chugged it. When it was all gone, she recapped the bottle and replaced it in the vest.

The fuel gauge told the story. She wasn’t going to make dry land. No way, José!

Chicago wondered how many cannon shells remained. Not many, that’s for sure. Maybe one good squirt. She was going to have to be right behind this guy, sticking her nose up his tailpipe, when she pulled the trigger. Every shell had to count.

What if it goes nuclear when I shoot it?

Well, she would be dead before she realized the warhead had detonated, even if she gunned it from half a mile away. She took a ragged breath and exhaled explosively. Took off her oxygen mask and swabbed her face, then replaced it.

What if a bullet punctures the warhead and it squirts out a cloud of radioactive plutonium, and I fly through it?

Hell, it won’t explode. I won’t get slimed. The missile will go into the water, and a few minutes later, so will I. I’m probably going to drown.

“War Ace Three Oh Seven, Black Eagle. Say your fuel state.”

She told him.

In a few seconds the controller said, “Qatar is launching a rescue chopper your way. After engagement, look for him and try to rendezvous.”

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Roger,” she managed.

General Martin Lincoln called the president. As he was waiting for the call to go through, someone turned on the television mounted high in the corner of the Ops Room. Lincoln caught the picture out of the corner of his eye. The face he saw was the president’s, talking to an interviewer! Christ, he was on CNN. He watched, mesmerized, with the phone against his ear. CNN was broadcasting from Baghdad! The president was in Baghdad!

Now someone off-camera spoke to the president, and he took off his mike. The camera followed him as he walked to a table to the camera’s left and picked up a telephone. The president’s voice sounded in Lincoln’s ear. “Yes, General.”

“Mr. President,” the general began. “The Iranians launched two ICBMs, which probably have nuclear warheads. They are apparently on their way to Israel. We’re tracking them.”

“All right,” was the president’s response. Looking at his back on television, Lincoln could see that he had taken the punch well. His posture didn’t change. The man had ice water in his veins.

“Another nuke is on its way to Qatar aboard a cruise missile. We’ve shot three down. Those six seem to be all they launched. About a hundred and seventy cruise missiles total. We think we have taken out all the launch sites. There haven’t been any more launches in the last five minutes. Our two carriers in the Gulf of Oman have been hit by conventional antiship missiles-they are fighting fires.”

The president didn’t ask a single question. “Thank you, General,” he said, and the connection broke.

Lincoln slowly replaced the telephone on its cradle as he watched the president walk back to his stool beside the interviewer and someone pin his mike back on.

Unable to look away, Lincoln listened as the president talked about the future of Iraq and Iran. These countries had to join the international community, he said, and build their nations as members of the world family. They owed that to all their citizens.

Another general was mesmerized by the CNN broadcast and the sight of the president of the United States talking to a CNN reporter in Baghdad as a handful of cruise missiles assaulted the town. As General Aqazadeh, the Iranian chief of staff, watched from the Ops Room of the Defense Ministry, a room untouched by the recent assault by Zionist terrorists with a howitzer, an aide told him that two of the six missiles that had reached Baghdad had been shot down by American forces, one had hit a runway at Baghdad International, and the other three had crashed into the city’s suburbs.

An ineffectual assault, Aqazadeh thought dejectedly. And now the American president is in Baghdad, making political hay of the Iranians’ best efforts.

He turned from the television and studied the reports. Apparently all twenty-five of the missile sites had been the targets of U.S. Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles. While many cruise missiles and a few Ghadar ICBMs remained in the tunnels, the crews refused to push them out onto the launch areas for launching, according to those people who had reported. Some of the missile sites could not be raised on landline or by radio. Whether the communications had been destroyed or the crews had panicked and refused to answer HQ’s calls, Aqazadeh didn’t know. Not that it mattered, he thought. Regardless, the result was the same.

Nor could he contact the president in the executive bunker. His staff had tried repeatedly. That was certainly odd. The president and other national leaders had taken shelter in the bunker in case the Americans retaliated after a nuclear burst. They hadn’t yet done it, even though at least two Ghadars with nuclear warheads were in the air heading toward Israel. Aqazadeh didn’t know that one of his own nukes was targeted on Tehran; Ahmadinejad hadn’t shared that tidbit with him.

Aqazadeh realized that Iran had probably lost the shooting war and was in danger of losing the political war, even if the Jihad missiles obliterated Israel. The president should know of this, he thought, so that he can make a statement to counter American propaganda efforts. He decided to personally go to the bunker and appeal to the president to come out and lead his nation.

The blip blossomed on Chicago O’Hare’s radar scope. Hell, it was still almost a hundred miles away, over the Gulf, and would pass ten miles to her left. She glanced at her fuel gauge. Five hundred pounds remaining. There was water in her immediate future.

She turned west on a course to intercept, resisted the temptation to advance the throttle now. She would have to wait until the very last moment to increase her speed to match the missile’s.

“Black Eagle, War Ace Three Oh Seven has the target and is intercepting. Hope you have that chopper on the way.”

“It’s airborne and crossing the coast.”

“Roger that.”

She checked her switches, then eyed the radar as the target marched down the scope, coming closer. She had to accelerate and turn before she got to the missile so she wouldn’t end up in a tail-chase. Not enough fuel for that happy crap.

Finally she advanced the throttle. Her speed began to build. O’Hare timed her turn well and ended up closing from the missile’s port side. Looking for the missile through the HUD and not seeing it, she realized she had made a mistake. Couldn’t find it against its background. She was almost on top of the thing. She popped her speed brakes and pulled up in a yo-yo, then lowered her nose and checked her radar as she dropped into trail behind it. There, at a half mile.

Closing deliberately from astern, Chicago crept up until she saw the exhaust glow and centered that in the gunsight. Her breath was coming in quick gasps, as if she were running. This was it!

She checked the range. Less than a hundred yards. Pulled the trigger. Felt the cannon vibrating… and the missile’s engine glow disappeared. She kept the trigger down, but the cannon stopped abruptly. Out of ammo.

She yanked hard on the stick to avoid a collision. Found herself going almost forty degrees nose up. Stuffed the nose and turned so that she could again acquire it on the scope. Halfway through the turn she saw a little plume of fire, then a splash.

Amen.

When she was again heading to Qatar and climbing, she called the E-2. “Splash one nuke. Give me a heading to intercept the chopper.”

“One-seven-five. It’s twenty-five miles from you.”

“Have a nice life,” she said.

She sat staring at her fuel gauge, which read zero. Maybe the gauge is wrong. Maybe there is more juice in there than you think. Even she didn’t believe that. She pushed the button on the IFF to squawk 7700, Mayday.

The altimeter read six thousand feet. She was still doing five hundred knots. She pulled the throttle back to max conserve, and the airspeed bled off.

Oddly, her next thought was about the skipper, Fly Burgholzer. He is going to be so pissed.

Then her right engine died. She had arrived at the end of her rope.

“War Ace Three Oh Seven is flaming out. Ejecting.” Even as she said it the left engine died and the cockpit went dark and silent.

Sitting in that black coffin that the cockpit had become as the plane decelerated, O’Hare took a deep breath and pulled the ejection handle over her head. She yanked the face curtain all the way down and the seat smacked her in the ass and whoom! she was out and tumbling through the black night sky.

The opening of her chute almost split her pelvis.

She fumbled with her oxygen mask bayonet fittings, got it off, then threw it away as she drifted down toward the black ocean. She could see the surface now. The first traces of dawn were arriving. Just another navy day, she thought as the water rushed up toward her boots.

Betsy “Chicago” O’Hare was sitting in the little one-man raft that had been in her seatpan waving a flare when the chopper found her.

My handheld radio squawked to life. “Tommy Carmellini?” a tinny voice asked.

“Yes. This is Carmellini.”

“We’re fifteen minutes from drop.”

I looked at my watch, which I could see quite plainly in the early dawn. “Got it,” I said. “Make some bull’s-eyes.”

“Oh, we will, we will. You can bet on it.”

That was the problem. I was betting on it. Betting my ass and the ass of everyone here with me. I didn’t tell him that, though.

“Thanks,” I said.

He didn’t reply.

As I put the radio back in my pocket, I looked around. Joe Mottaki and his tank were sitting on the ridge to the left, on top of the bunker. G. W. was behind us, across the access road, nearer the gate to the prayer grounds. Larijani, Davar and I were still at the base of the trees, where we could see the boulevard behind us. Haddad Nouri and Ahmad Qajar had a machine gun set up on our right. They had gone back to the boulevard, then crawled forward until they found a slight depression where an old tree had been. They set up the gun there, about a hundred yards from the entrance to the mosque, where the two Iranian soldiers stood a sloppy guard. One was sitting in the dirt, his weapon across his knees; the other was smoking at the corner of the building. Obviously, there were no officers or NCOs about to check on them.

Behind us, civilian traffic packed the boulevard, all of it going one way-out of town. The military was already gone, and the civilians were doing their best to get gone, too.

“Gonna be over soon,” I whispered to Davar and Larijani, neither of whom replied.

The kids in that bunker were still on my mind. I lowered my forehead onto the cold steel of the rifle receiver and tried to think of something else. Like going home. I didn’t give a damn what Grafton wanted; first chance I got, I was going home.

Deep in the bunker, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a worried man.

After the computers, telephones, televisions and camera equipment for television broadcasts went dead, instantly, all at the same instant, he had sat in his command room in silence, watching the three technicians attempt to figure out what was wrong and restore communications. After about ten minutes, one had brought a computer that he had taken apart over to him. “Excellency, we have no electrical power on the circuits, and the computers have been destroyed.” He pointed to the circuit board, which was black in places. “The whole thing is burned up from a voltage overload.”

Ahmadinejad walked out, went to his private office. That was several hours ago.

He had waited there for the jolt of the nuclear burst over Tehran, which hadn’t happened. Waited and waited and waited.

Now he wondered who had severed the communications line with the bunker. Zionists? Or his political enemies? The possibility that his political enemies had staged a coup after he went into the bunker could not be overlooked or discounted. The entire leadership of the Party of God was in the bunker, all the prominent clerics and leading citizens.

His enemies couldn’t get into the bunker, of course; all the bombproof doors were sealed from this side. What if they were up there now, patiently waiting for him to emerge… to assassinate him? Of course, if they decided not to wait, they could call him on the telephone beside the entrance door in the basement of the mosque. Thus far, no one had called.

So he sat by himself in his office, very much alone, waiting for the airburst that would flatten Tehran, wondering if the Jihad missiles had destroyed their targets and pondering the venality of his enemies, of whom he had many.

The B-2s were already over Tehran, thirty thousand feet up, making practice runs on their targets. Painted repeatedly by search radars that never locked on them, the stealth bombers cruised back and forth undetected in the sky as it lightened to the east. The pilot of the lead bomber was certain that the Iranians didn’t even know they were there.

Since the mission resembled a training exercise, they did a complete practice run and a simulated drop, then circled back to do it again for real.

The bomber was on autopilot, which was slaved to the computer, which the copilot was monitoring. The pilot didn’t have to do anything except turn on the master armament switch at the proper moment and be ready to take over if the autopilot refused to obey the computer.

This is like flying the simulator, the pilot thought, without all the failures the sim operator likes to create.

The two ICBMs launched at Israel had reached apogee and were now hurling downward toward their target. Steaming slowly toward the Israeli coast, just offshore of Tel Aviv, USS Guilford Courthouse was at battle stations, and had been for hours. She picked up the two small missiles on her radar while they were still almost five hundred miles away. This technical feat was only possible because the missiles were so high above the earth.

The tactical action officer, a commander, was in charge of the ship’s weapons systems. He telephoned the bridge. “Two targets inbound, sir. One behind the other.”

“You are cleared to engage according to plan, Commander,” the captain told his TAO.

The ship was equipped with six SM-3 antisatellite missiles. Using one, a Super Aegis cruiser had successfully destroyed a failed satellite in orbit 110 miles above the earth. Hitting a target that high traveling at eighteen thousand miles an hour was a stupendous technical feat, one that many scientists and physicists said couldn’t be done. Yet it had been done, just a few years before.

Still, the commander was nervous. Theoretically, the incoming ICBMs should be within the SM-3’s capabilities. Yet the angle wasn’t ideal. In fact, head-on was the worst possible angle of approach to the target; the slightest angular error in the missile’s radar and computer would result in a miss. Consequently, he and the captain had decided to shoot three Standard-3 missiles at each incoming ICBM, all they had. If they missed, the accompanying cruiser, USS Stone’s River, would launch her SM-2 missiles at them.

General Lincoln said the Iranians had only launched two ICBMs, but certainty in war isn’t possible. Besides, they could launch another in a few hours. Or two or three. Yet rather than wait for the blow that might not fall, the TAO and captain had decided a few minutes ago to give these first two their knockout punch. And pray.

The clock hands in Combat swept mercilessly on as the ICBMs raced downhill toward their target. Actually, the lead one was slightly off course. It appeared to be headed for Gaza. The angle differential might actually help, the commander thought as he watched the blips that were the missiles race toward the center of his presentation, which was this ship.

When the ICBMs were two hundred miles away, the SM-3s came out of their vertical launchers riding a plume of fire. Their exhaust blasts shook the ship. Away they blazed into the lingering night, until they became stars racing away into the brightening eastern sky. One by one they departed, six of them, and when they were gone the sea was dark and silent again.

A Flash message was immediately sent to General Lincoln. “SM-3s launched.”

The ship was in shallow water, actually too close to the coast for comfort, but the captain dared not turn her. The best radar reception was in the forward quadrant. He ordered the ship slowed to two knots and heard the bells as the engine room responded. Ten knots would be better-the ship more stable-but it wasn’t possible.

The captain wondered if he should tell the crew to prepare for a nuclear blast. He reached for the 1-MC mike, then changed his mind. No.

He was sitting there, staring at the lights of Tel Aviv on the horizon, when the squawk box came to life. “TAO, sir. First missile missed.”

The captain didn’t acknowledge.

When the squawk box spluttered again, he jumped. “TAO, sir. Direct hit on the first enemy missile.”

Automatically his eyes rose and probed the darkness to the east. The sky was cloudless; he saw all those stars… but no explosion. Too far away.

He waited, feeling every thud of his heart. Scratched his forehead, wondered if there was something he should have done but failed to do.

“Captain, TAO. Fourth missile, a direct hit.”

As relief washed over the captain, he said to the OOD, “Right full rudder. Five knots through the turn. Steady on course two-seven-zero and work up to twenty knots. I want to get away from this coast.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

As the giant warship slowly heeled into the turn, he picked up the 1-MC microphone and spoke to the entire ship’s crew. “This is the captain speaking. We have just destroyed two ICBMs targeted at Israel. Well done, shipmates.”

He hung the mike in its bracket. For some reason he felt a vibration. And heard a noise. What was that? Several seconds passed before he realized that every man and woman on the ship was stomping their feet and cheering, even the bridge crew.

The captain put one hand over his forehead and wiped his eyes.

Five minutes later he was down in Combat looking at a map. The locations of the two missile kills were plotted on it. Both were destroyed over Jordan. He wondered whether the warheads had broken up in the air or when they hit the ground. Either way, radioactivity was going to be released.

The captain sent a Flash message to Washington with the coordinates of the kills.

David Quereau was at fifty thousand feet, flying at just above Mach 1, in a slow turn, letting his radar sweep the sky over and around Tehran. He shouldn’t be this slow-he well knew that in combat speed is life-but the silent sky had seduced him into this gas-saving measure.

The stealth B-2s at thirty thousand feet were giving him their position by encrypted data-link, so they were on his tactical screen, as was his lead, who was at thirty-five thousand feet over the city, providing close top cover. He watched the bombers in trail make their turns and begin their bomb runs.

He was thinking about death, about the two pilots and two back-seaters he had shot down earlier in the evening, just a few minutes ago. He wondered if any of the four men had gotten out of their planes. Since he was a young cynic, he thought probably not. AMRAAM warheads do horrible things to fighter planes.

He had killed them. Oh, they would have killed him if given the chance, but the aircraft designers and technical wizards in the States had given him a superior airplane, so he lived and the other fellows died for their country. Just like that.

Now he had to live with it.

Quereau was thinking about that, about living after killing, when his peripheral vision picked up something on his left. Something moving… He looked. A fighter, coming in on a bounce! Now a missile streaked from under a wing.

He slammed the left wing down and lit the burners at the same time. He manually triggered his chaff dispenser, which included flares to attract heat-seekers, which is probably what this guy launched.

He watched the missile as he turned a five-G corner. The incoming heat-seeker went behind the F-22, perhaps decoyed by a flare, perhaps because it couldn’t hack the turn.

He kept the turn in. The other fighter was creeping forward on the canopy, so he was out-turning him. He could see vapor trails off the other fighter’s wingtips.

He was canopy to canopy with the other fellow now, who was about a mile away. He was looking at its planform. MiG-29.

The F-22’s vectored thrust made this a lopsided contest. As maneuverable as the MiG was, the F-22 was even more so. The MiG was in his forward quadrant now. He was winning, getting behind the guy.

It would have to be a gunshot. He had only AMRAAMs aboard, and the MiG was too close for them to arm. Yet his thumb didn’t move to the gun button on the stick.

Turning, turning, the MiG pilot knew he was dead if he tried to dive away. The G was bleeding off the MiG’s airspeed, so the F-22 appeared to be closing. Quereau pulled the throttles back out of maximum burner, so he wouldn’t overshoot, kept the G on.

He also stole glances at his threat indicator and tactical screen. If this guy had a wingman, Quereau couldn’t afford to play. Apparently he didn’t. Or if he did, Quereau hadn’t seen him yet.

Now the MiG pilot reversed his turn, half a roll, and jammed the stick forward, going into serious negative G, the classic escape maneuver. He had waited too long-Quereau was directly behind him and followed his every move.

Normally, in fighters of roughly equal performance, the lead fighter could escape with this gambit. But the fighters weren’t equal. The F-22’s superior roll rate and responsiveness more than made up for the lag due to the pilot’s reaction time.

Quereau couldn’t believe this encounter was happening. The F-22 was an artifact left over from the Cold War, or so the politicians said. And every living expert had solemnly pronounced the dogfight dead as dollar gas, yet here he was in one.

The MiG pulled positive and negative G, turned and rolled and climbed and did a Split-S. Quereau stuck to him like glue, even closing on him a little; less than fifty yards separated them now.

This guy doesn’t have a wingman. He’s out here solo looking for a fight. The realization hit like a hammer. Even if there were another Iranian fighter up here stooging around, the guy would never get a weapons solution on a target maneuvering this wildly or risk a missile shot with his victim this close to an Iranian fighter.

Quereau grinned under his oxygen mask. The ride was vicious, but the experience was sublime.

“Uh-oh! We got company,” G. W. said on the tactical net.

I looked behind us. Dawn was here, and I could see fairly well. Two vehicles were coming down the access road toward the mosque. The lead vehicle looked like a limo. For sure, it was a long, low car. Behind it was an army truck with an open bed. I could see helmets in the bed. Troops.

“Can the door to the upper elevator chamber be opened from the outside?” I asked Davar, who was hunched down beside me.

“No,” she said, “but there is a telephone by the door, a direct line to the bunker command center. They can talk to the people inside, and they can take the elevator up and open the door.”

I thought about that as the vehicles drove toward the mosque. What if the B-2s didn’t drop their bombs, or the bombs missed the elevator shaft? What if Ahmadinejad came out?

One thing I knew for certain-Jake Grafton didn’t want that to happen, and he had told me to prevent it.

I glanced at the infrared designator lying in the grass beside me. A Hell-fire or two on the mosque would lock Ahmadinejad in, but there wasn’t time.

“Haddad,” I said on my tactical radio, “we gotta take these people down.”

The vehicles stopped in front of the mosque. As the rear passenger door closest to the mosque opened and someone got out, troops came pouring out of the truck and raced away in all directions to set up a perimeter.

Nouri and Qajar opened up with the machine gun, cutting them down. Still, some of the troops escaped the kill zone. At least four of them ran into the mosque behind the limo passenger. Our guys concentrated on taking down the exposed troopers.

I keyed the tac net radio again. “Joe, take out the vehicles. Don’t let them escape.”

“Okay,” he said.

The limo blew up, literally disintegrated right before my eyes, with pieces going everywhere. Then the booming report of the 100 mm tank gun reached me.

The truck driver wasn’t waiting to see what happened next. He popped the clutch and floored the accelerator. He managed to get the truck turned and pointed toward the access road before the second shell from the tank blew the cab clear off the truck. The carcass rolled forward for about fifty feet, then came to rest with the fuel tank ablaze. Smoke boiled up.

“Get those soldiers,” I roared into the mike and grabbed the satchel charge.

“No,” Davar screamed and grabbed my arm. “No. Don’t go down there. Wait for the bombers!”

“They might miss,” I told her, shrugging out of her grasp. I put my hand on Larijani’s shoulder. “Give me cover.”

Then I started running, bobbing and weaving, trying to keep low, carrying that satchel charge in my left hand. My AK was on a strap over my shoulder, flopping around. I had the pistol grip and trigger with my right, and the strap was so loose I might even be able to shoot the thing one-handed.

I lengthened my stride and ran like the wind toward the mosque. Bullets snapped in the air around me. The machine gun was vomiting bursts, I could hear several AKs going… I was going to get it any second.

For some reason I didn’t care. I had reached the combat plateau and no longer gave a damn.

I quit jinking and just flat-out sprinted. I went through the door with the AK going. One soldier was inside, maybe one of the guys who had sat outside the door for hours. He was just a mite too slow, and I gave him a burst right in the chest.

I slammed my back against the wall and waited for my eyes to adjust. The entrance to the bunker was in the basement, Davar had said-but where were the stairs down?

I heard running feet and turned just in time to see Larijani come flying through the door. He landed on his face. I rolled him over and saw he had been hit twice.

“You don’t run fast enough,” I said.

In the basement of the mosque, General Aqazadeh grabbed the telephone on the wall adjacent to the entrance to the bunker, which was sealed with a steel bombproof door. “The president,” he shouted at the man who answered. “This is General Aqazadeh.”

In two seconds Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came on the line.

Against the background noise of machine-gun bursts and random bursts from AK-47s, the general tried to tell the president how the war was going. “We couldn’t communicate with you,” he said, “and thought you might not be aware of events. The Americans have attacked all the sites. The American president is in Baghdad, on television, making political propaganda of our efforts. We have two missiles on the way to Israel. You must come out of the bunker and talk to believers worldwide.”

“What is that noise I hear?”

“A firefight,” Aqazadeh replied. “Commandos have surrounded the bunker. I have a radio in my automobile. You must summon troops back to the city to kill them.” Aqazadeh didn’t realize that his limousine had been destroyed.

Of course that is what he would say, Ahmadinejad reflected. The military is staging a coup, and the loyal troops are being attacked by the traitorous ones. Aqazadeh is part of the plot to kill me. If we open the bunker door, we will be murdered by these traitors to Allah.

“You are Zionist swine,” the president of Iran told his general. “If you are alive after the war, we will execute you as the traitor you are.”

Then Ahmadinejad hung up the telephone.

“Bombs away.”

The words sounded in Quereau’s earphones. In front of him the MiG was flying straight and level-and slowing rapidly. This jock’s a real sport! He’s going to see if he can fly slower than I can.

Quereau grinned inside his oxygen mask, retarded his throttles and deployed his speed brakes. He let his fighter creep up onto the MiG’s right wing, where he could look over into the cockpit.

“Number Two, bombs away. And we’re RTB.” Return to base.

“Roger.” That was Quereau’s lead. “Outlaw Two, you copy?”

“Roger that,” Quereau responded. “I’ll watch the back door and be along shortly.”

The MiG-29 and F-22 were in close formation now, each pilot looking at the other, the throttles at idle. The guy who flies the slowest in this kind of game gets a free guns shot when his opponent moves into the lead. Quereau knew that, and knew that with his vectored thrust and a partial flap deployment, his fighter could fly level at a sixty-degree angle of attack. He doubted the MiG-29 could match it.

Gonna find out, by golly!

I left Larijani and went around the corner. Found the stairs down. Somebody fired a shot up the stairs, which spanged into the wall beside me.

I didn’t know what those guys were doing down there, didn’t know how much time we had before the bunker-busters landed, and I couldn’t afford the time to study my watch.

I pulled the igniter on the satchel charge and tossed it down the stairs. Then I ran around the wall back toward the entrance. I was pulling Larijani over against the wall when the floor turned to jelly, sweeping me off my feet. The trip-hammer concussions of the four five-thousand-pounders jackhammering their way into the earth demolished the mosque; the walls came apart and the ceiling fell in.

Davar was lying down, shooting at an Iranian near the mosque, when the bombs hit. The bombs were falling too fast to register on her retinas, and she never saw them.

As the first shock wave punched her, she scrunched her eyes shut and grabbed the shaking earth with both hands. The four bombs took about two seconds to detonate, from first to last, four vicious impacts that set the earth shaking. Davar held on tightly to the earth as dirt and rock rained around her. The small rocks hitting her were painful, and she knew that if a big one hit her she would be instantly dead, yet she couldn’t move. Only when the earth stopped moving and things stopped falling did she slowly, carefully, open her eyes and raise her head.

Although she didn’t know it, the entire first elevator shaft down to the intermediate chamber, and that chamber, had been destroyed and filled with rock. The lower elevators had been torn from their mountings by the vibrating earth and had fallen to the bottom of the partially collapsed shaft. It would take months with heavy excavation equipment to dig down to the bunker entrance.

Davar stood and wiped the dirt from her face.

She walked down the slope toward the smoking crater in the parking lot. The hole was almost a hundred feet in diameter, and it was surrounded by a debris field of loose dirt and stone that had been ejected from the hole. In places, the debris was over two feet thick.

She was almost to the edge of where the asphalt had been when she came across the first body. It was a dead Iranian soldier. Trickles of blood had come out his ears. He was lying on his side, half buried, staring lifelessly.

She walked on, past bodies that had been machine-gunned and bodies that had been crushed by falling stones and were now almost buried. She tried to see into the gigantic hole. The bottom of the crater was still smoking, giving off fumes and atomized dirt. She could see nothing.

She walked on across the debris field toward the pile of rubble that had been the mosque. Saw a head sticking out of the rubble. Carmellini, lying motionless.

“No,” she screamed and attacked the rubble with her bare hands. She threw rocks, pieces of masonry, dug through piles of plaster, trying to free him. “No,” she said, “no, no, no.”

Tommy stirred, looked into her face. Tears were streaking the dirt.

She saw his lips move. She couldn’t hear him. The concussions had temporarily deafened her. She bent down, kissed him, worked on getting the dirt out of his hair.

G. W. Hosein roared up in a technical. He leaped out and helped her pull Carmellini from the crumbled bricks and mortar.

“Larijani’s in there,” Carmellini whispered. “Get him out.”

Haddad Nouri and Ahmad Qajar were also there now. A stone had broken Qajar’s right arm, which he held with his left. G. W. told him to sit in the pickup’s passenger seat. Together, the other three burrowed into the rubble with their bare hands while Tommy crawled out.

Subtly adjusting his throttles and trying not to move the stick, David Quereau kept his F-22 in formation on the MiG’s right wing. Both planes flew with their noses pointed up at steep angles, riding their exhaust gases like rockets, teetering on the edge of stalls.

Yet the MiG pilot was not decelerating anymore. The pilot must have sensed that he was as slow as he could go, and the loss of another knot or two would result in a departure from controlled flight. He was at the far left edge of the performance envelope.

On the other hand, the American pilot had a few more he could scrub off, if he wished. If he did, he would fall behind the MiG and could eventually put a cannon burst into the Iranian, when he finally began to accelerate again.

The MiG pilot looked over at Quereau, who of course was looking at him as he flew formation. Quereau saluted with his throttle hand, then pointed east, repeatedly, jabbing his finger. Then he waved good-bye.

He saw the MiG pilot acknowledge the salute and gesturing. The MiG-29 accelerated smartly, and the nose dropped so altitude could be quickly converted to airspeed. Flaps coming up, both men stayed in formation a moment as their speed increased and wings and controls bit solidly into the air.

Then, with a little wave, the Iranian lowered his left wing to turn east and dropped his nose even more. He raced away in a descending left turn.

Quereau watched the MiG until it was lost in the vastness of the sky; then he turned a complete circle as he checked his radar picture and threat indicators. He saw the B-2s’ symbols and the lead F-22. With a grin he lowered his nose to help him accelerate and headed west.

He savored the past few minutes. Whatever else it is, squirting missiles is not dogfighting. The thought occurred to him that he might have been in the very last dogfight in the history of the world.

He and that Iranian pilot were the only guys who knew about it.

Cool.

Every muscle I had screamed in protest. I sat up, found that nothing was broken and slowly worked my way erect. The others were tearing bare-handed at the rubble. I joined them. We dug until we found a trouser leg, then dug more frantically until we finally uncovered Larijani’s head. He was dead, with dirt in his eyes and mouth. I kinda figured that the bullets killed him, but maybe it was the collapse of the building.

I straightened up as I looked at him. Another unnecessary death. I felt tired and sore. I turned and walked slowly, painfully, over to the technical. I felt like I was a hundred years old.

In a moment Davar joined me. She was trying to wipe the tears and dirt from her face. “Why did he follow me?” I asked her.

“He didn’t want to live anymore,” she said. “Couldn’t you see that?”

We left him there and piled into the technical. I didn’t even look into the massive hole, which was still giving off visible smoke with an acrid odor. G. W. got behind the wheel and fed gas.

He didn’t waste any time getting us going. Nobody wanted to be here when the Iranian army eventually showed up to see what happened.

I leaned forward and shouted, “Give us a look at the secondary tunnel on the other side of the ridge.”

A helicopter went right over us as we roared up the access road toward the boulevard, a Hind. It circled the crater, then landed beside it. A figure stepped out and walked over to the edge.

Grafton!

I reached though the gap where the rear window in the pickup used to be and grabbed G. W.’s shoulder.

“Go back. Go back,” I shouted. “It’s Jake Grafton!”

G. W. slammed on the brakes, made the turn and roared back.

Grafton watched us come. He must have recognized us, because he waved at the Hind pilot, who lifted his machine off and flew away. Grafton threw his duffle bag into the back of the technical and climbed in. G. W. peeled out.

Grafton grinned at me, grabbed my hand and said, “Jesus, you look bad, Tommy.”

I lay down in the bed of the pickup and tried to sleep. Amazingly, I dropped right off. It had been a long night.

General Martin Lincoln called the president to report that all the Iranian missiles had been shot down and all the launch sites seemed to be out of business. “We have drones over the sites monitoring them, and the people inside the tunnels have been dribbling away. Most of the tunnels seem to be abandoned, and both entrances to the executive bunker in Tehran have been sealed.”

“So it’s over,” the president said, his voice pregnant with relief.

“The shooting, anyway,” Lincoln admitted. “The Israeli missiles were destroyed over Jordan, so there may be a serious fallout problem there.”

“Bomb the Iranian reactors,” the president told him.

“Radioactivity will be released. The environmentalists will howl.”

“That’s unavoidable, but we’re not doing this again. Bomb the reactors.”

“Yes, sir,” said General Lincoln. After he hung up, he gave the appropriate orders.