First Team (56 page)

Doubts and guesses crowded into her mind—what if the 747 crashed in a populated area? She pushed the questions away but hesitated a split second longer.

What would the president do, she asked herself. That’s why she was there—to make the decision he would and take the heat for it.

“I want to talk to the Russian commander,” said Corrine.

“There’s no guarantee he’ll listen,” replied the major.

“I understand that. In the meantime put enough F-15s between the MiGs and our ground force to protect them,” she said. “Tell the flight leader he has my permission to use whatever force he needs to protect our people. He can shoot the bastards down if he has to.”

“Yes, ma’am. But I’ll have to commit all four fighters to that intercept,” said the major. “The 747 is going to get away.”

“Send our escort to pursue the plane,” she said.

“We’re pretty far off, and that’ll leave us defenseless. If the Russians decide to come and get us—”

“Go!”

“They’re on their way.”

~ * ~

corpion flight leader Major Cliff Salerno put his hand to the throttle and selected afterburner, goosing his F-15C onto the new coordinates. Scorpion One’s Pratt & Whitney F100s punched out roughly twenty-four thousand pounds of thrust, rocketing the plane over the speed of sound. The fierce acceleration slammed Salerno back against his ejection seat, the laws of motion desperate to remind him that he was still under their domain.

The Eagle pilot checked his radar, sorting out what was going on in the air ahead. He was crossing over Armenia headed southeast; the assault team was striking a base to his left. The AWACS controller gave him an intercept vector for a 747-type aircraft, which ought to be roughly 150 miles off his right wing.

“Your instructions are to terminate its flight,” added the controller.

Salerno repeated the instructions, then double-checked with his wingmate, Captain Jed “Patsy” Klein, commanding Scorpion Two. Among the many calculations the two men now began was an assessment of their fuel status—they had to make sure they’d have enough to get back to a tanker or risk turning their multimillion-dollar interceptors into gliders. The 747, which was still too far ahead to be picked up by the Eagles’ APG-70 radars, was over the east coast of Lake Sevan.

Armenia, which had been part of the Soviet Union before the downfall of the Communists, had no air force to speak of and provided very little threat to the American planes. The Russians, meanwhile, were concentrating on the Chechen base; the 747 was theirs—if they could catch it.

The controller gave them fresh data for their intercept, adding that the 747 was flying exceptionally low in the mountains. At present course and speed they should have it on their screens within five minutes.

The two aircraft were at twenty-six thousand feet above sea level, pushing toward a mountain that rose roughly thirteen thousand feet. Both planes were carrying four AMRAAM AIM-120 medium-range air-to-air missiles and two shorter-range ATM-9 Sidewinders. The Eagles were also equipped with 20 mm cannons. Any of those weapons would suffice to take down the airliner.

“Be advised also we have a flight of Iranian MiG-29s operating on the northern border of Iran,” said the controller. “They haven’t reacted, but they’re there.”

“Scorpion One,” acknowledged Salerno.

~ * ~

erguson and Conners were tossed around the back of the plane like golf balls in a tumbling footlocker as the 747 zigged and zagged southward. Conners took his pistol out and fired wildly, but if the bullets made it through the heavy canisters of waste material strapped around the interior portion of the fuselage, they had no effect on the plane. Ferguson shouted at him to stop, but Conners kept firing until the clip ran out.

“Stop!” Ferguson yelled, crawling toward him in the pitch-black darkness. “Stop!”

“Ferg? What?”

Ferguson reached Conners and touched his arm. It was wet with blood from his head wound.

“Conners, stop shooting,” Ferg told him. “Let’s figure this out.”

“Where are you?”

“This is me holding your arm,” Ferguson told him. “What, you think I’m a ghost?”

The aircraft jerked hard left and descended sharply, then twisted on its wing back to the right. Ferguson fished in the pack and retrieved the flashlight. He shined the beam on Conners’s face; the SF sergeant was pale and disoriented.

“Fuckin’ cold, Ferg,” said Conners.

“Yeah. Let’s figure this out,” Ferguson told him. “We’ll have to find a way to climb up to the flight deck at the front. There ought to be a door there.”

~ * ~

alerno acknowledged the fresh vector from the AWACS, then took a long, steady breath, reminding himself to stay calm. His wingmate, offset a few thousand feet in altitude and about a mile to his right, reported that he had a contact on his radar.

It was too soon to be their target, Salerno knew, but he told him to query it anyway. Like all interceptors, the Eagles carried identification friend-or-foe gear that electronically “asked” another airplane who it was. Friendly aircraft and commercial flights were programmed to respond with a code that would tell the fighter pilot who they were. In this case, the IFF signal came back indicating that the plane was a civilian flight, which was confirmed by the AWACS controller. The aircraft was an innocent 767 en route to Iran from Russia; they let it go.

A minute later, the controller’s voice came back, now two octaves higher. “They’re asking for help—the Iranians are scrambling—their defenses—the MiGs are on an intercept. We have more planes coming off Tabriz.”

The controller took a breath of air, then resumed more calmly, updating the position of the 747. It had changed course and was now flying directly south.

“Very low,” added the controller. “He’s going to hit the mountains.”

“I think I have him,” said Salerno, the image flashing in his brain as well as the radar. He took another long breath. The big plane was a little over sixty miles away, too far to launch the AMRAAMS.

Salerno put his pedal to the metal. The Iranian MiGs were coming north, SAM radars were switching on, and the Russians were sending something south—he pushed his head forward, his fist locked around the stick, willing the fat 747 into the targeting reticule on his HUD. He needed more closure—he had to build momentum for the missile and get closer to the target to fire. He had the damn thing; it was a question of taking his time, hanging in long enough to fire.

His radar warning receiver picked up one of the approaching MiGs trying to target him. Salerno’s consciousness flicked away the threat, considering it irrelevant.

“I’m spiked, shit,” said Klein. He began defensive maneuvers.

The 747 moved into the box on the HUD, the aircraft’s avionics closing its fist on the fat target.

“Yes,” said Salerno, and he pushed the trigger on the stick, launching the AM-RAAM toward the plane. He dished a second and punched the mike button to tell his wingmate that the missiles were away, but the transmission was overrun by a new warning.

“Missiles in the air!” said the AWACS controller. “Break ninety.”

“I’m spiked!” said Klein again.

Everything ran together in Salerno’s head. Two Hawk missiles had been launched from a ground station near the border; the MiGs were firing Russian-made homers, long-range radar missiles. Klein turned to engage them. The 747, meanwhile, had disappeared from the screens. Salerno started to press toward the mountains where the aircraft had been flying, then heard Klein call for help.

“I’m coming,” he told his wingman, tucking hard in his direction.

~ * ~

s it down?” Corrine asked Major Gray.

“The AWACS thinks so; the missile was launched before the 747 disappeared from its screen. But we can’t confirm the kill; there’s too much else going on.”

“We need to know,” she said.

“Our Eagles have to get back, or they’ll run out of fuel over Iran. One of them is being targeted by the Iranians already. Believe me, that’s the last place we want a pilot,” said Gray.

“All right,” Corrine told him. “Alert CentCom to what’s going on. The
Nimitz’s
planes should extend their patrols around Iran just in case.”

Corrine leaned back in the seat. Things were actually going fairly well. The Russians were not happy about the appearance of the American assault team at the Chechen base, but were grudgingly holding off from firing at them. Van Buren’s people had secured the airstrip and all but one of the buildings; he was about to land and supervise the rest of the operation.

At that point, they could sort out exactly what they had. Hopefully, they’d find Ferguson and Conners hiding with broken telephones.

Corrine took a deep breath, trying to relax.

~ * ~

amman Bin Saqr struggled to hold the nose of the big aircraft level as the missile exploded a hundred yards away, sucked just off course by his defensive chaff and ECMs.

His decision to call on the Iranians for assistance was not without consequences, for the now the Iranians were hailing him with orders of their own—he was to change course and fly to their main airport near Tehran.

Samman Bin Saqr did not acknowledge. He was gambling that they would not shoot him down in the next ten minutes, and that was all the time his calculations showed he needed to fly out of their range. At that point, if his radar showed that he had no contacts following him, he would press the button on the altered Ident or identifier module. The black box would tell anyone who cared to ask—electronically, of course—that the plane was a duly registered Sri Lankan aircraft.

Bin Saqr would then swing onto the course that the plane which corresponded to that identifier routinely took. Assuming that his operatives had followed their orders—and at this point, he could only assume that—he would be free of pursuers.

A warning blared in the cockpit—he was precariously low. A mountain loomed ahead, its peak a hundred feet above his nose. Samman Bin Saqr touched the yoke, trying to squeeze through the pass on the right. He saw the rocks and closed his eyes, trusting that Allah would not let him die before his mission was complete.

~ * ~

alerno pulled the big F-15 through a hard turn, sending nearly seven gees slamming against his body. His pressurized suit compensated quickly, fighting to equalize the forces on his body and keep his brain swimming in just the right amount of blood. As the pressure began to ease, Salerno found himself twenty miles from one of the Iranian MiGs, and closing fast. His wingmate was ahead of the MiG, trying to shake it off before it could fire.

“Firing,” said Salerno calmly, pulling the trigger on the MiG.

An AMRAAM clunked off the rail, its engine igniting with a fiery flash. The missile’s onboard radar asked for an update from the Eagle as it closed in on its quarry at just over Mach 4. It made a slight correction, then sent the Iranian pilot to meet his maker.

In the meantime, Klein had turned the tables on a second Iranian, knifing downward, then using his superior engines to thrust himself onto the MiG’s tail before the other pilot could quite figure out where he was going. Klein closed the gap, his Sidewinder ready to launch. The MiG-29 jinked left, then rolled hard back the other way, the airplane cutting an almost-perfect Z in the sky. Klein hesitated, not quite in a good firing position but aware that juicing the throttle too much might send him flying in front of the Iranian. Finally, as the indicator on the Sidewinder growled at him to fire already, he realized he had the MiG nailed and goosed the Sidewinder into the air.