Recall (23 page)

Cold wind swept through the door as the plane lurched forward. They weren't even on the runway yet. Red pointed Richards to the door, then ducked into the cockpit. Lori's fingers were stretched across the throttles as she pushed them forward. In front three security cars were headed onto the far end of the runway.

Crawler yelled from the back, “Jeeps are swarming the runway behind us.”

Red leaned over to Lori. “Maybe there's a cross runway.”

“Taxiway's empty. Should have enough to get us in the air.” She worked the rudder, weaving the plane back and forth like a drunk. Ahead was a break in the pavement, a thirty-foot grass strip.

“Stop there and make a run-up in the other direction,” he said. “More distance that way.”

Lori pushed a lever down and the flap gauge pinned out at forty. She shoved the throttles forward all the way. Red jumped into the other seat and punched his comm. “
Brace!
” She was going to try to make it across.

As they approached the grass strip, she pulled back on the wheel and the nose angled up. When the rear wheels reached the opening, Red was pressed forward in the harness as the earth clawed at the tires of the heavy plane. Metal utensils tinkled in the pantry. Wood snapped near the back as the crate crashed into Crawler's seat. The nose slammed back down, but the plane was already on the other side of the strip and they were accelerating again.

At one hundred ten knots Lori mumbled, “Close enough.” She pulled back on the wheel once more.

The rumbling of the taxiway fell silent. The plane lifted off. Lori held it on a shallow angle till the airport fence, then pulled into a steep climb, banking away.

The plane shuddered. “Look for a lever with a little wheel on the end,” she said. “Put the gear up!”

Red flipped the control and the vibrations stopped. The plane fell silent. Tension seemed to vaporize into the thinning atmosphere through the craft's metal skin.

Red reached across the console and kneaded Lori's shoulder. “You did good,” he said, smiling. Her traps were tight under his fingers, then softened as she relaxed her neck and breathed a sigh. Her cheeks bloomed pink and the paleness of her knuckles on the wheel disappeared.

They'd be out of Iran in less than an hour. All they had to do was land the plane.

* * *

Hope pressed Red's consciousness, asking to be let in. But they weren't out of danger yet. “Get distracted, and get killed,” Tom always said.

Red twisted as far as he could to look down the aisle. It was a private transport with plush lavender carpet and fuchsia paneling. Ten steel-blue seats and room for more. He unhooked himself and walked back. Marksman had his rifle across his lap, reloading, still smelling like the Pardis. Crawler pushed the crate back and righted the three market baskets, then lit a fresh cigar. Richards and Carter kept watch out the windows. Jim was still on the floor, one eye cracked open.

Red pointed at Crawler, about to tell him to put out his cigar, but noticed he was still holding the sat phone. Its clock said it had been on for four minutes.

He put it to his ear. Bitching Betty droned “
Altitude, altitude
.” He looked toward the cockpit. It wasn't coming from there. Must be from the phone.

Then a young female voice came through the mic, drowning out Betty's warning. “
Repeat, two bogies. Time to intercept, five minutes. Look like MIG 29s.
”

T
he wheel went slack in Lori's hands. The port wing dropped and slammed down, as if there was a pothole in the air. “Turbulence,” she said, remembering a rough landing once following a turboprop, not allowing enough time for the air to settle.

“How long?” Red yelled into the phone. His eyes were sharp and anxious. This couldn't be good. He stretched a leg over the throttles and jumped back into the copilot seat, fumbling with the straps. “We've got MIG 29s headed our way,” he said.

Pain cut through Lori's head, like a rod twisting from spine to temple.
MIGs?
There wasn't anything she could do about interceptors. They'd blow the Gulfstream out of the sky without even getting a visual. Or gun them down with one pass. How'd they get airborne so quickly? “Maybe we can tail a civilian plane. They won't be able to tell us apart.”

“The Iranians won't care,” Marksman said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

Lori flinched. She hadn't heard him slip up and kneel in the aisle behind them.

Red held up a finger, ear pressed to the phone.

“Can we put that on the radio?” she asked. “I need to hear.”

Red shook his head, finger still up.

“We could,” Marksman said. “But it wouldn't be secure.”

Red put the phone on speaker and held it between them. “This is the Navy. A Hawkeye, headed our way from the Gulf. She's tracking us and the MIGs.”

“I have escort from a Growler,” came a high-pitched female voice, full of static.
“I've sent him ahead. He'll jam the MIGs.”

“What the hell's a Growler?” Lori asked. “Can't it take out the MIGs?”

“Maybe. Shorter range,” Marksman said, voice low. “But Ali never had the chance to get out a message, back at Jannat's. Navy probably doesn't know what to make of us. Treat us like a threat till they know different. Won't be splashing any MIGs over Iran.”

“Can't
you
shoot them down?” Red asked into the phone.

“Negative. But if they threaten the fleet I'll send an SM up their ass. Same goes for you.”

Great. So all Lori could do—again—was wait. She had the wheel of the plane in her hand, yet nothing had changed.
Still stuck in a damn cell
. Maybe this Growler thing could jam them long enough to get out.

Her vertical velocity indicator was blurry. She rubbed her eyes with a cold, chapped knuckle.
Damn it. Never been farsighted before
. After a minute the gauge came into focus. It was angled so low she felt light in her seat.
Been yo-yoing up and down ever since takeoff. Where the hell's the trim tabs?
She eyed the multi-display in the center. Its green background glowed evenly, as if nothing was wrong. Two hundred more miles till the border. Then she had to get someone to talk her down into Balad. How the hell was that going to happen? How was she even going to know where it was? She never asked for this. Everyone would be killed if she augered the landing. What about the kids? Who were the godparents in the will? Was it the in-laws?

Red laid a hand on her knee. “You'll do fine. Keep the throttles down and the nose west. We'll get this other stuff straight.”

The voice on the phone squawked, “Growler will be close enough to jam in two minutes.”

“So they won't be able to shoot us down?” Red asked.

“Maybe,” said the voice. “Growler will jam radar. Fry their nuts like popcorn. Infrared's less reliable. If they've got heat seekers, they might be able to get you. Most of their stuff is old. Jamming should work.”

“But they could still ram us?” Lori asked.

Marksman switched his weight to his other knee. “Won't go kamikaze, but they've still got guns. Hell, they could make a supersonic pass and blow our plane apart with the shock wave. Even if the Growler jams everything, it's only buying time.”

Lori thought back to the summer her family had lived in Spain, when she was in seventh grade. Their hacienda had a swimming pool bordered in shiny blue and red mosaics. She'd played Marco Polo with her brothers and friends from school at her twelfth birthday party. Then opened presents, all wrapped in bright orange tissue paper. Maybe this could be like their pool game. The MIGs blind. If they hadn't gotten a visual, she might be able to sneak out.

She turned toward the Gulf.

“What're you doing?” Red asked.

“Headed to the carrier group. Calling Polo.”

“The Navy will blow us out of the sky.”

“I'm gonna break off when they start jamming. Maybe the MIGs will think that's where we're headed. With any luck, they'll do something stupid. Then the Navy can deal with them.”

A minute later, the phone shouted again. “Growler reports jamming in operation.”

Lori dropped the nose and banked right. The ground came up faster than expected. She was pressed back hard into her seat, pulling level, just off the deck. She licked salty perspiration from above her lip, then leaned forward and looked out the window, searching for the planes. Tehran stretched across the far horizon. Visibility was good, but a brownish haze capped the distant skyline, like what you'd see over Denver. Out the other window rose the Zagros Mountains, jutting rugged from the tan plains. Red's eyes were pinned forward. “Still don't like my driving?”

He mumbled something about the Pennsylvania turnpike.

“Ha. Wasn't too long ago you called
me
a control freak.” His face went blurry, like the gauges. Outside, tan earth streaked with orange veins gave way to an ice-blue lake.

“Keep us out of the drink,” he said.

“They didn't follow,” bubbled from the phone in tones of girlish excitement.

Red covered the mic with his thumb. “Won't be long till they figure out what's going on. Stay low. Keep the throttles open.”

Lori looked at the multi-display again. Its green glow was blank. She tapped it, then grabbed the wheel like she was going to lose balance. “See if you can get that thing fixed.”

Marksman pounded on the gauge. “It's jammed. Have to wait to see if it comes back. Don't worry, the Hawkeye won't let us get lost.”

On cue, the phone voice said,
“We've got approval for armed response. Launching soon. We'll vector to intercept. Escort you out.”

“Thank God. How long?”

“Seventeen minutes.”

The rod twisted and the console blurred again.

* * *

“We'll be dead by then!” Red shouted, realizing too late his voice carried beyond the cockpit. How'd the Navy get the approval for armed response anyway? The Det's Navy liaison? No, not that fast. Maybe someone in the command center. But with the rush and the firefight, he hadn't put in any request. So, how'd they know?
Oh, the tags
.

He leaned into the aisle. “Now that they know we've picked up their assets, we're politically safe again.”

Lori had dropped even lower once they were over the lake. Seemed to him the mast of a sailboat would slap their belly. He remembered his uncle Art telling how once he'd run into a SAM nest in Vietnam. He'd turned and burned, dropping his Phantom low and punching the throttle. Followed his wingman out through a valley and over a lake, their shock waves exploding the grass huts along the shore.

Red forced his mind back into the cockpit. Airspeed was four hundred fifty. He struggled to do the math in his head. “Fifty minutes,” he said. “That should get us to Balad.”

“MIGs are changing course,” the sat phone announced. Her voice was too calm for the situation, like a doctor saying,
It's cancer
. Red stared at the rubber-coated demon in his hand. Its battery warmed his palm as the words vibrated down his forearm, distorted from the speaker's volume. He wanted to crush the girlish voice inside, tell it to go to hell, to get some balls next time it opened its mouth.

Lori glanced at him, a quick shot, but long enough to see the fear in her widened eyes.

“How far away are they?” he asked into the phone.

“About seventy miles,” came the voice.

Relief.
He leaned back into the seat. “No way they'll find us. Needle in a haystack.”

“Then why are they turning toward us?” Lori asked, voice tight.

“Probably figure we're headed for Iraq. By the time they find us, we'll have an F-18 escort.”

“Unless they've got eyes on the ground,” Marksman said. “We were headed to the Gulf when they started jamming. If they were trying to get a visual on us, that's the direction they'd fly. Someone's tracking us. We're not out of this yet.”

From the phone came “MIGs
on course to intercept.”
Now the device felt like a chunk of ice in his palm.

“Can you jam their guns?” Red asked it.

The radar operator's voice was professionally eager, as if she was taking an order for a hamburger. “Parts of them. The laser range finder and the radar tracking. But we can't keep them from gunning you down freestyle.”

A heavy New York accent called from the rear of the cabin. “Lookee what I found!”

Smoke circled Crawler's head. He sat on an opened crate like a guy on the john. A fat green tube lay across his lap. He rose and strutted to the front of the plane, petting it like a
Price Is Right
model showing off the next prize. He butted Marksman in the chest with one end. “You owe me an apology for bustin' me while I hefted these on the plane, man.”

Marksman's smile was gratuitous.

“My parents
were
married,” Crawler said.

“We don't have time for this shit,” Red yelled. “What the hell's that?”

Crawler ground the hot ashes of his cigar into the stainless-steel sink. “Russian issue, heat seeker. A shoulder-launched SAM.”

But it wouldn't work air to air, would it?
“You know how to use it?”

“You kiddin'? Russian grunts are dumber than shit. Damn thing doesn't even have a safety. You point this end at an airplane and squeeze this trigger. Last time I did that, a helicopter blew up.”

Red had been on that op, in South Africa. Crawler'd shot an old Huey out of the sky, but the missile had locked onto the wrong helo, leaving the gunship to deal with.

“You are
not
lighting that torch in my aircraft!” Lori shouted. “You can't just bust out a window and squeeze the trigger. That thing's an open tube. All the exhaust goes out the back and will blow the plane apart!”

“Can't we slow down and open the door?” Red asked.

“Even if you shoot out a few windows so the air escapes, you'll set us on fire,” Lori said, scowling.

Marksman waved a hand. “Lori's right. He'd still be dumping liquid hot exhaust into the plane.”

Crawler looked at the door, then across from it at a coffeemaker built into the side wall. He ripped it off and tapped the aluminium behind it with a knuckle. “We pressurized?”

“No,” she said. “Why?”

“Where the wires run? The controls. Through the walls?”

“Don't know.”

Marksman tapped a boot on the floor. “Below the deck.”

Crawler swung his M4 and pointed it where the coffeemaker used to be.

Marksman grabbed his arm. “Hey.”

Red lifted his thumb from the phone mic. “MIGs still on a course to intercept?”

“They'll pass a couple miles behind you,” the high voice advised.

He covered the mic again. “Let him go.”

Pressure waves smacked Red's chest as Crawler auto-stitched a semicircle, like an upside-down smiley. He loaded a fresh clip and finished the loop. It reminded Red of the old carnival booth game where he used to try to shoot out the star from a piece of paper with a BB gun. Crawler pried at the middle with his knife, bending it inward and leaving a hole the size of a small melon. Wind howled through, launching paper napkins into the air like oversized confetti. Crawler stuck the butt-end of the SAM into the hole, pushing hard until it went through. The gale stopped then, replaced by a hum like a vuvuzela's, turning the SAM into a huge musical pipe. Crawler hugged the tube between cheek and shoulder, pointing the business end toward the door. He peered over at Red and flipped up a thumb.

Red ducked back into the cockpit. “Slow us down as much as you can,” he told Lori.

She frowned. “But they'll catch up faster.”

“Our escort's still fifteen minutes away. The MIGs are almost on us. Go slow now so we can drop the door. If they see us, I'll give the word and you turn broadside to them. Got it?”

The whine of the engines lowered. The nose pointed up and leveled. The flap actuators under the grass-length lavender carpet droned like an electric mole trying to eat its way through.

“Thirty seconds to intercept,” advised the radar operator.

Red held the phone to his mouth. “Turn off jamming, on my mark.”

“Jamming off, on your mark,” she agreed, girlishness gone now.

“Call out their position.”

“Four o'clock and twenty seconds out. They'll cross two miles behind and high. They're at your five o'clock . . . six . . . seven . . .”

“I see them!” shouted Marksman, peering through the small window on the door. “They're headed away.”

The rest of the team moved to the port side of the aircraft and pressed their cheeks to the windows. The planes were like two tiny arrowheads above the horizon, flying like racehorses with ears pinned back. They kept going till almost out of sight. A flash of reflected sunlight came from both.