Deathrace (11 page)

“Make that Persian, Kurd, or Azerbaijani,” Franklin said.

“Whatever. We going to be able to pass?”

“We damn well better, or we’ll be dead meat.”

Douglas groaned. “We go in tonight as soon as it gets dark?”

“Yeah. What a kick. That great big bird for just the two of us. Think they would have used something smaller, faster.”

“Could, but we wouldn’t have any way to bail out. Hell, they say this plane has been prepped especially for runs like this. Covert as all hell.”

“Just so it gets us in without getting shot down. We’ll worry about how to get out.”

Douglas scowled. “You still have that map? Let’s take another look. Tehran is a humongous place, seven million bodies. We’ve got to find one certain apartment?”

“Yeah, if we’re gonna do any good.”

They both were surprised when Don Stroh, their CIA guardian, walked in the room two hours before flight time.

“Any problems?” he asked.

“Yeah, Stroh. I’d like to get some of your frequent flyer miles.” Franklin said. “You must have built up a few million by now.”

“No such luck, mostly military aircraft. Problems?”

“Yeah, the handguns they gave us. A piece of shit,” Franklin said.

“We got the Polish copy of the Makarov, the P-64. A nice light little nine-millimeter with six rounds. Best part is it can’t be traced to the U.S. Everything you have is sterile of any U.S. tie. We planned it that way.”

“Rather have fourteen rounds in my magazine,” Douglas said.

“Sure, and you’d rather take the MP-5 you brought, but no chance. Anything else?”

“We get out via Russia, right?” Franklin asked. “Baku?”

“Correct. First we need to know exactly where that nuke plant is. If our man in there can’t find it, you two will have to. I know you aren’t trained for this. Mostly it’s just common sense. Find the people who know what you need to know, and persuade them to tell you.”

“We’ll get the damn intel some way,” Douglas said. “Otherwise there can’t be a mission.”

“That’s the rub.” Stroh brightened. “But our man said he had a new lead, so maybe all you’ll need to do is be backup for him. Oh, he’ll have some more weapons for you when you get inside.”

“When do we leave?” Franklin asked.

“A half hour,” Stroh said. “Let’s get out to the plane. You’ll take off a half hour before dark. The plane will move north up through Kuwait, and then through the no-fly zone in Iraq. After that it turns to the right into Iran. This means we’ll have only about two hundred and fifty miles to penetrate into Iran before you drop.”

“How low?” Franklin asked.

“You’re set for eight hundred feet. Takes about three hundred feet for a round chute to open, then twenty seconds or so to the ground.”

“Damn, I feel naked going in like this. No weapons, no gear, almost nothing.” Douglas shook his head.

“This is the way that it should work best. Let’s get out to the flight line.”

Ten minutes later, they were in the big plane. The Hercules C-130 is a monster, especially for two passengers. It has four Allison T56-A-15 turboprop engines, good for 4,591 horsepower each. It has a high wing and has flown off aircraft carriers. It has a 132-foot wingspan, is 98 feet long, and the tail extends up 38 feet.

The C-130 has a crew of five, cruises at 375 mph, and with a maximum fuel load can cover 4,894 miles without gulping more juice.

Douglas looked at the cave-like interior of the big ship, and then at the Air Force sergeant who was the load master.

“How in hell do we get out of this thing?” Douglas asked.

“Easy. We lift the rear cargo door and you run down the wide ramp, and one step later you’re outa here. We’ve got you attached to static lines so you’ll have instant opening of the chutes. Nothing to get in the way except our prop wash.”

“How long we got, Sarge?”

“Our flight time to the DZ is an hour and twenty-three minutes. I’ll alert you fifteen minutes before drop time.”

They nodded, and the crew chief went back to the cabin. Douglas looked out the small round windows. It had grown dark quickly after they took off, and now he could see nothing but pure blackness.

The two men slumped in the bucket seats, and worked their own thoughts. Douglas had been restoring a 1931 Model A Roadster in a garage near his apartment in Coronado. It had yellow wire wheels, a rumble seat, and a cloth top. He wanted to keep it all original but soon found
that parts for a sixty-seven-year-old car were almost impossible to find. So he had been replacing some with remanu-factured parts from specialty houses. He’d keep it as pure as he could, especially the outside. He loved the gas tank that sat over the engine next to the inside of the fire wall. No fuel pump. Gravity flow.

He looked at the SATCOM radio he carried. It was much smaller than the multiple-use one that Ron Holt had for the platoon. This was a simple transceiver for the satellite only. He would turn it on to receive at midnight, and at noon. He could send at any time.

That was the one item that could tie the team to the U.S. If they faced capture, that was the first destroy job he had. He had been with the Third Platoon for almost two years now, had been through three big operations before. He’d get through this one if he had to walk every damn step to Baku.

First they had to find where the Iranian nukes were being made. South, somewhere south. At least this was something different from the shoot-and-scoot he’d been involved with so far.

He knew Iran was a mountainous place. One hill went over eighteen hundred feet, which was higher even than Mammoth Lake, where he came from in California. Mammoth was around eight thousand feet, in the middle of the Sierra Nevadas. He yawned—no time for a nap.

Colt Franklin took out the pistol again from deep inside his three layers of strange clothes. It wasn’t even in a holster, just nestled into some folds of cloth. Safer that way, they told him.

Skydiving and parachuting were not new to him, but this low jump would be a first. Sport jumping usually makes you go out at least twenty-five hundred feet. He thought of writing a letter, but didn’t have any gear. He’d write when he got back. He’d heard about the mountain near Tehran. They said it was 18,934 feet. Damn. He’d love to get a shot at climbing it. But not this tour.

Rock climbing was his passion, but he’d never seen a mountain almost nineteen thousand feet high. Maybe later he’d have a shot at it. If he didn’t get shot on this run. He looked out the window again, but there was nothing out there. Just blackness. Good. He’d hate to see the slash of a jet fighter slamming past them. Much prefer to be alone in the dark, and get to the damned DZ in one fucking piece.

Ten minutes later the load master came back and yelled.

“Time: We’re about fifteen away from the Drop Zone. I hate this low-level stuff. You probably felt us rolling around a little. So far we’ve not had any radar tracking us, which is great. About five minutes until drop, I’ll open the rear hatch and get you hooked up on the static line.”

He vanished. They tried the windows again. Nothing.

When the load master came back into the cabin, the two SEALs stood. He hit a switch somewhere and there was a grinding, whirling sound and the rear ramp section of the big transport swung down revealing a square of pure black space. For a moment Franklin thought he saw lights below, but he wasn’t sure.

The Air Force sergeant hooked up the SEALs to the static line, one on each side of the wide hatch. The static line would automatically pull the rip cord, and their round chutes would deploy as soon as they jumped out the door. Douglas had heard that it took a chute three hundred feet to fully deploy and start slowing a man’s decent. Then within a few seconds they would drop through the other five hundred feet to the ground.

They couldn’t use the rectangular steerable chutes this close to the ground. The round chutes would spill air on one side or the other for some control. But not much. Soon now. They were both hooked up to the static line and ready.

“Stand by,” the load master shouted against the roar of the wind behind the plane. They watched the red light on the bulkhead over the door. In a heartbeat it turned to green.

“Go, go go,” Douglas shouted.

The two SEALs ran the ten feet to the gaping hole in the back of the big transport and raced into space.

The slipstream of the big transport battered Douglas for a moment, then he felt the chute open behind him. The big round chute caught the wind with a shrilling crack. At the same time the parachute harness jerked at his legs, thighs, and shoulders. He’d been halfway upside down in the slipstream, the chute yanked him savagely upright. It was harder than Douglas had ever felt on a chute opening, even with sixty pounds of gear.

He shook his head, and looked above him. The glorious jet-black canopy billowed there, fully open, and cutting his rate of descent to a modest speed. He looked around, but couldn’t find the other chute.

The ground. He looked down, and in the faint moonlight he could see it. What appeared to be some kind of a road showed to the left maybe half a klick. That might be the highway they were to use to get to Tehran.

Suddenly there were trees ahead of him. He pulled the cord on the right side of the chute, spilling some air on that side and drifting him to the right of the trees.

Then the ground rushed at him. He took it the way he had dozens of times, with his knees slightly bent and his hands on the chute release. He hit the ground and ran, dumped the chute, and began pulling it into a big wad. For a moment he didn’t make a sound, and listened. He heard a grunt from his right.

“You okay?” he said, half aloud.

“Hell yes,” the short reply came.

The found each other a minute later. Franklin used the entrenching tool he carried to dig a hole for his chute and harness. He covered the spot with some branches and dead leaves. Douglas did the same with his chute and gear, then pushed the digging tool under the pile and looked around.

“Thought I saw a road when we came in,” Douglas said.

“To the left, half a klick,” Franklin said. “We better move.”

They found the road twenty minutes later. There was little traffic. It was paved and two lanes, looked like a main highway for this country. Half a dozen trucks sped by. The two SEALs moved down closer. The route ran generally northeast by southwest. From there they had to go northeast.

After a half hour’s wait near the road, they heard an older rig coming that had to be smaller than the others. Franklin watched it come through the darkness, then walked out near the side of the road and waved both arms in the glare of the headlights. The old, much used farm truck, with a stake body, slowed, then stopped.

Franklin chattered for a moment in Farsi with the man in the small truck, then waved at Douglas. They both crawled into the cab, They saw the rig had crates of live chickens in the back.

Franklin took some bills from his pocket and gave the farmer two 10,000 rial notes. The old man grinned, showing snaggle teeth, and then he nodded. He said something to Franklin. They both laughed.

“Told him we missed our bus to Tehran,” Franklin whispered.

They got to the big city before daylight. Franklin told the farmer where they wanted to go, and he explained how to get there. The farmer stopped at an open-air market that was almost filled already with merchant booths.

The sun had been up for two hours when Franklin knocked on a door in a falling-apart neighborhood. A small man answered, and stared at Franklin in surprise. Before he could say anything, the small man was pushed aside, and a tall man who looked remarkably American stepped into his place. He carried a huge-looking .45 automatic in his right hand and waved it at Franklin.

“George?” Franklin asked.

“Oh, God, yes,” the man said, and motioned them inside.

Douglas checked out the place. It was sparsely furnished—no modern appliances, a cot, a small cooking area, and a mattress on the floor.

They introduced themselves and George sighed.

“Am I glad to see you guys. The Secret Police have been hounding me the past two days, and I haven’t made any progress. I was afraid you’d get lost.”

“Okay, George, we’re here,” Franklin said. “Now what the fuck happens?”

12

“What are we going to do?” George asked. “We’re going to find out exactly where that damned Iranian nuke plant is. I’ve been on the phone this morning. The damned Secret Police can’t keep tabs on every one of the seven million people in town.”

“So?” Douglas asked.

“Peter, my last contact was a total bust. Now I have a noon meet with a guy who says he worked at the nuke plant. He may have; he may just be looking for some cash.”

“Or he may be ready to turn you in to the cops if you don’t pay him,” Franklin said.

“True. That’s why I’m glad for some backup. I’ve got this one laid out just right.”

“Stroh said you’d have some better firepower for us,” Douglas said.

“What are you packing?” George asked.

They showed him.

“Yeah, good for a hideout, not much on stopping power. I like a forty-five.”

“We saw it. Where’s ours?” Franklin asked.

George chuckled. “They told me you might be a little gung ho. Look, one thing I don’t need is a bunch of bodies around here. The cops here are tough as shit about that. I need security, not a couple of hit men. Understood?”

“Roger, that,” Douglas said. “So what do we do?”

“This is my last safe house. I want to keep it safe. The Secret Police don’t know a thing about it. My other two were raided. Two of my friends were killed. I don’t know about the third one, Tauksun.”

“Tauksaun?” Franklin asked. “Sounds like the Japanese word for big, large, a lot.”

“That he is, maybe six hundred pounds. The point is he’s compromised now and I can’t use him even if he is alive.”

“So, how close are you to getting the exact spot down south?”

“Not far enough. We know it’s inland somewhere from that port city down there. The satellite is supposed to get some better pictures of the area. We’re trying to follow roads. There has to be a big hairy road leading into the site. Unless they bulldozed it out after they got the place built, and all the structures in place.”