by Dale Brown
If everything went as planned, the men would have relatively limited contact with Iranian civilians, and none at all with the military. But nothing ever went as planned.
“All right, I think I have the gist of the thing,” said Turk finally. “When do we start practicing?”
“There’s not going to be any practice,” said Danny. “We have new intel from Iran. We have to move ahead immediately.”
“Right now?”
Danny nodded.
“You shouldn’t have to take over the aircraft,” said Rubeo. “We have maps and other data prepared. You’ll be able to study them on the plane to Lajes.”
“Lajes?” asked Turk.
“In the Azores,” said Danny. “You’ll fly from there to Iran. Direct.”
“Direct? What kind of commercial flight is it?”
“It’s not a commercial flight. It’s a B-2. You’ll parachute in a man bomb.”
7
Lajes Field, Azores
SOME TEN HOURS LATER TURK STOOD IN THE LIGHT rain outside a hangar at Lajes Field, trying to shake out the charley horse that had taken hold of his leg. He’d spent nearly the entire ten hours studying the data on the nano-UAVs and the mission. Contained on a slatelike computer, the information was considered so secret that the program displaying it automatically changed its encryption scheme every ten minutes; Turk had to reenter his password each time and press his thumb against the print reader to unscramble it.
The password was the same as his “safe word”—Thanksgiving. He was supposed to work the word into a conversation if there was a question about his identity.
He had never been on a mission where he needed a safe word. Whiplash command had various ways of identifying him, including a special ring on his finger that marked his location to within a third of a meter when queried through a satellite system. Thinking about the contingencies where the system might not suffice was somewhat unsettling.
He was wearing a plain khaki uniform, a bit frayed at the cuff and worn at the knee. He guessed it was an Iranian-style uniform, though he hadn’t bothered to ask.
A half-hour before, a Gulfstream had dropped him off in front of a hangar where an officer waiting in an SUV rolled down the window and said two words: “Wait here.” Then the truck sped off, leaving Turk completedly alone. The rain started a few minutes later. Fortunately, the hangar was open, and he’d waited at the doorway, just out of the storm. Even so, the spray seemed to weigh him down, washing away the surge of confidence that had built on the way there. He didn’t doubt that he could direct the nano-UAVs—it wouldn’t be much harder than any of a dozen things he’d done in the past two months. But surviving on the ground—was he really ready for that?
The whine of jet engines nearby shook away his doubts, or at least postponed them. Turk stepped up to the corner of the hangar doorway as an SUV approached. Right behind it he saw a C-17 cargo plane, a big, high-winged transport. He folded his arms, admiring the taxiing behemoth. He’d once shared the typical fighter jock prejudice against transports and their drivers, thinking the big planes were little more than buses requiring little skill to guide. A few stints in the cockpit of an MC-17R undergoing testing had disabused him of that misperception. On his first flight, the commander had made a turn tighter than a Cessna 182 might have managed on a good day, plopping down on an airfield that looked to be about the size of a bathtub. From that point on he had nothing but respect for Air Mobility jocks and their brethren in general.
Turk moved toward the hangar wall as the plane neared. The C-17 stopped about twenty yards past the hangar. The rear cargo bay opened and the ramp descended slowly, the four “toes” at the end unfolding to the ground. With the engines continuing to whine, two men trotted to the tarmac; both were armed with automatic weapons. The one closest to Turk eyed him quickly, then touched the side of his helmet and began talking into the headset. Meanwhile, a crewman checked the ramp and the sides, making sure they were secure. Moments later what looked like a fat torpedo came down the ramp, propelled by electric motors at the wheels and controlled by a crew chief holding a wired remote. He stopped at the base of the ramp, looked around quickly, then shouted something to the two men with the guns. One of them did something with his hand—a signal to proceed—and the torpedo began making its way to the hangar, flanked by the two guards.
Another man came down the ramp then, a rucksack on each shoulder. He was tall, and silhouetted in the light looked almost like a science-fiction robot rather than something of flesh and blood. Turk stared at him as he approached, then realized he’d seen the saunter before—it was Grease, the Delta Force sergeant he’d trained with. The sergeant ignored him, walking into the hangar behind the cart.
“Grease,” said Turk coming over.
“Captain.” Grease turned back and inspected the cart and its cargo.
“Here’s our chariot, huh?”
Grease’s expression was somewhere between contempt and incomprehension.
“You use the man bomb before?” Turk asked, trying to start a conversation. Danny had already told him that Grease had used the contraption three times.
“Idiotic nickname. Don’t call it that,” muttered Grease.
The man bomb—officially, SOC Air Mobile Stealth Infiltration Non-powered Vehicle JH7-99B—sat on its skid upside down, exposing the belly and a clamshell door. The outer skin was covered with radar absorbing material. If Turk were to touch it—neither he nor anyone else was supposed to do so unnecessarily—it would have felt like slick Teflon.
“We gonna fit in that?” Turk asked.
“One of us will.”
“Just one?”
Grease didn’t answer. The man bomb was designed to hold one person, but it could in a pinch hold two. The pressurized container fit into the bomb bay of a B-2 Spirit, once the aircraft’s Rotary Launcher Assembly was removed.
Contrary to the nickname, the device was not dropped from the aircraft. Instead, its passenger (or in this case, passengers) fell from the container when its target area was reached. After falling a sufficient distance they opened their parachutes and descended to their target in a standard HALO jump, if any High Altitude, Low Opening free-fall could be termed “standard.”
Turk had parachuted and was in fact officially qualified for HALO jumps, though he did not have extensive practice doing so. But because of the importance of the mission, the limited availability of B-2s, and the dangerous area they would be jumping into, the mission planners had decided he would jump in tandem with his Delta guide—Grease.
A tandem jump basically tied both jumpers together in a single harness. This was a fine practice when leaving a plane; there was plenty of room to maneuver to the doorway, and any feelings of paranoia because someone was standing over your shoulder were literally blown away by the rush of the wind as you stepped off. But the man bomb hadn’t been designed with tandem jumps in mind. The two men would have to cradle in each other’s arms during the flight, which even at best speed would take close to eight hours.
Grease dropped his packs a short distance from the hangar and hulked over their transport. He opened the top of one and took out a large, T-shaped metal key, which he inserted into a panel near the front of the man bomb. He turned it and the claw doors opened. He took out two large packs—their parachutes—and some bags of gear from the interior. Satisfied that everything was there, he turned to Turk.
“You have briefing data?” he asked.
“In here.” Turk patted his ruck.
“Hand it over.”
Turk gave him the slate computer. Grease went back to his packs. He took out what looked like a large padded envelope, put the computer inside, then walked to a trash barrel just outside the hangar.
“Hey!” managed Turk as Grease dropped the bag into the can.
Fire shot from the top of the barrel. Turk ran over to rescue the sl
ate computer, only to be grabbed by Grease before he got near. He was pulled back as the can rumbled with an explosion.
“Can’t risk it,” Grease told him. “Had to be destroyed.”
“You gonna blow up the controls, too?”
“Not yet,” said the trooper.
FORTY MINUTES LATER THE TWO MEN SNUGGLED UNCOMFORTABLY together as the man bomb was twisted upside down and then locked in the bay of a freshly fueled B-2. Turk had never felt so claustrophobic in an airplane before.
“Get sleep now,” said Grease as the plane began to move. “We ain’t gonna have much chance once we’re in Iran.”
“Pretty hard to sleep like this.”
Grease made a snorting sound. They were both in flight suits, wearing helmets and oxygen masks. Their sound systems were hooked into the plane’s interphone system; the crew could hear every word, so they were not supposed to talk about the mission.
“You do enough of this,” said Grease finally, “you learn to sleep anywhere, even on your feet.”
It was good advice, but Turk couldn’t take it. The bumps and the whine of the plane as it taxied, the sudden g forces as they rose, the strange sensation of being in a flying coffin—it all offended his innate sense of what flight was all about. He should be at the stick, and if not there, then at least able to sit upright and look around. He felt he needed to control some part of his destiny. Here, he was no more than a soon-to-be-dispensed part.
Turk tried to clear his mind as they flew, but this was futile, too. His thoughts drifted from the mission to Li, then back to the mission. He hadn’t quite memorized the maps; he didn’t realize they’d be destroyed.
As Grease slept, Turk felt as if he’d been packed into a bear’s den, and was stuck through hibernation season. The only thing worse than sleeping, he thought, would be waking up.
A HALF HOUR FROM THE DROP POINT THE PILOT SPOKE to them for the first time since takeoff, asking if they were awake.
“Yes,” said Grease, his voice thick and groggy.
“Captain Mako?”
“Uh—yeah.” Turk had drifted into a kind of fugue state, awake but not focusing his thoughts in a conscious way. He mumbled something in response, then began struggling to get his mind back in gear.
“We’re ready,” added Grease.
“Release point in twenty-nine minutes,” said the pilot. “We’re on course.”
“Thanks.”
“You sound cheery,” Turk told Grease. He meant it as a joke; there was no emotion in Grease’s voice. But Grease took it literally, and his voice sounded more enthusiastic than Turk could remember.
“I’m ready. We’ll do it.”
The next twenty-eight minutes passed so slowly they felt like days. Then time sped up. Turk braced himself as the bomb bay doors opened. The aircraft bucked—and then there was a whoosh, air rushing around him. His arms flexed involuntarily; Grease folded his own around him, cocooning Turk with his body as they fell.
“Arms out,” Grease reminded him.
Turk struggled to get his arms into the proper position, jerking them against the wind. It was as if something was holding them back—they were cramped and compressed, his muscles atrophied by the long wait in the hold of the plane.
“Just relax,” said Grease.
“Trying.”
“Do it.”
Opening the bay door made the B-2 visible to some radars, and while the flight plan had been designed to minimize the possibility of detection, there was still a chance that the bomber would be picked up by an alert Iranian crew. The plan, therefore, was to avoid opening the parachute until the plane was a good distance away. In effect, this meant waiting. And falling. It was dark, and stare as he might, Turk could not see anything on the ground, not even the little pinpricks of light the briefing had suggested he would see.
The altimeter on his wrist said they were at 17,000 feet.
“We using the chute?” he asked Grease.
“We’re not there yet.”
Turk closed his eyes, waiting.
Finally, it came: a sharp tug back into Grease’s chest as the chute deployed and the straps pulled him tight. His groin hurt where one of the straps pulled up sharp. He told himself it was better than the alternative, and tried to shift to relieve the pressure.
Now they were an airplane, flying to their drop spot. Turk was a useless passenger again, trying to stay as neutral as possible as Grease steered the chute with his togs.
There were lights in the distance, many lights. A city.
They turned in the other direction. Turk thought back to the satellite images of the landing zone, trying to see it in his mind. They were supposed to fall into a valley, right along a rarely used road.
Be just my bad luck to land when a car is coming, he thought.
But that didn’t happen. They hit the ground a fraction of a second sooner than he thought they would; he fell off to the side and Grease followed, thrown off by his passenger’s disarray. The sergeant quickly unbuckled the harness that held them together, unlatched the bags they’d jumped with, then began gathering up the chute.
By the time Turk had taken his helmet off, Grease had the nylon wing bundled and ready to hide. With their packs, they walked toward a rock outcropping about thirty yards from where they’d touched down. Turk remembered it from the satellite image—Grease had come down within millimeters of the planned spot.
As they started to dig, Turk heard a vehicle approaching in the distance.
“Our guys?” he asked Grease, clutching for the pistol in a holster under his jumpsuit.
“Should be. Stay behind the rocks.” The sergeant opened one of the large packs and took out a pair of rifle sleeves. He handed one to Turk. “AK. Don’t shoot me.”
The gun was an AK-47 assault rifle. The external furniture, folding paratrooper stock and all, was old and authentic; the guts of the forty-year-old weapon, however, had been refurbished with precise replacements.
Turk took the gun and ducked behind the rocks. He pulled off his jumpsuit, exposing his Iranian fatigues. The vehicle was still a decent distance away, coming from the south. It was a truck.
Not Delta, he thought. Not our guys. So relax. Just relax. It’s not real until our guys get here.
But it was very real. Grease perched near the road, gun ready. The truck’s lights swept the valley to Turk’s left as it came down the curve. It was a troop truck, an army transport of some sort, slowing as if the driver had seen something.
Turk’s finger tensed against the trigger guard.
The truck’s lights blinked as it approached. Grease stood up and ran to the vehicle. He spoke to the driver, then hopped on the side as the truck turned off the road and headed toward Turk.
Maybe it’s all been an exercise, Turk thought. Just a rehearsal, to make sure I’m ready. We aren’t really in Iran. We aren’t really in danger. I’m back in Arizona, still being tested.
He’d half convinced himself of that by the time the truck pulled up. Grease jumped off the running board and jogged over to him to get the packs. A man wearing plain green fatigues opened the passenger side door and hopped down.
“You’re the pilot?” he asked, holding out his hand to help Turk hook his left arm into the strap of the bag that had contained the guns; it was light now, filled only with ammo. He pulled the ruck for the control unit onto his other arm.
“Turk Mako.”
“Dome.” He said it as if it were the sort of name everyone used. “You’re right on time. Good work. I’ll take your packs.”
“No, no, I got them.” Turk had been told not to let the control unit out of his possession, and he wasn’t giving it up for anyone. His own gear was with Grease in a smaller ruck. He started walking slowly toward the truck.
Dome pushed him gently.
“Come on, we gotta run.
Don’t want to sit out here too long. Iranians got a little training unit just up the road. Sometimes the Guard does night maneuvers.”
“Revolutionary Guard?”
“Yeah, well, not the Coast Guard, right? You’re wearin’ their uniform,” Dome added. “We all are.”
Grease got in the cab while Dome helped Turk to the back of the truck, which was empty. They lifted the bags in, then scrambled up after them. The inside of the truck smelled like cow manure.
“Nice flight?” asked Dome.
“I had better.”
“Grease is a lot of fun, huh?”
“Cracked jokes the whole way. Are you two the only guys on the team?”
“The others are watching us, don’t worry.”
They drove for about a half hour. Turk used the time to check his pistol—an Iranian SIG-226 knockoff, known in Iran as a PC-9 ZOAF, with authentic furniture and substituted parts like the AK—then filled his pockets with ammo from his personal ruck. But otherwise the time passed like sand slowly piling up on a beach. His legs had stiffened during the long flight and now felt like they were going to seize up. He flexed them back and forth, then got up and walked around the back of the truck, trying to keep them from turning into steel beams.
“Getting spasms?” asked Dome.
“Yeah.”
“You oughta do yoga. Helps.”
“Really?”
“Shit, yeah. Every morning. Dread’s got some muscle relaxers if you need ’em,” he added. “Tell him.”
“Who’s Dread?”
“Petey Rusco.”
“How come he’s named Dread?”
Dome shrugged. “Not sure. Just is.”
“How come you’re Dome?”
“I used to shave my head. Plus my first name is Dom—Dominick Sorentino. Turk’s your real name?”