PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller

by J. T. Brannan

  Cole swung back toward the headquarters wall, shoving the Colt into his waistband before catching hold of the tiny gap with his second hand, providing blessed relief for the first.

  But, knowing that the word would be out now, and that armed guards would surely be rushing toward the roof to intercept him, he didn’t wait around but instead started to climb again immediately, edging slowly toward the top.

  Eventually Cole was there, just under the parapet of the roof, waiting to climb up.

  But he had to do it the right way, couldn’t just pop up; what if there were people up there waiting for him already?

  He considered the Colt, counted his rounds – one for Younesi, four toward the door, two more for the guards in the window. Six down, which – given the size of the round, and the pistol’s near-ancient design – meant that he didn’t have a hell of a lot left. Three if it had the eight-round magazine and had started with an extra round up the pipe, but only one if it was the standard seven-round mag and hadn’t started out with the extra round in the chamber..

  But even a single round would, he decided, have to be enough.

  And so – summoning the reserves of his energy after the sapping climb up the face of the building – Cole gripped tight onto the parapet and rolled himself up onto the roof, Colt up and aimed.

  But there was nobody there at all, just an empty, flat rooftop.

  Empty, that is, except for the single black helicopter that sat, shiny and new like a Christmas present, waiting for him on the helipad.

  Cole raced toward the chopper and saw that it was a HESA Shahed 278, a light utility model developed in Iran.

  He had never flown one before, but he knew that it was based upon the Bell 206, a model he was familiar with, and assumed it would operate pretty much the same way.

  He made it to the aircraft just as the door to the stairwell burst open and two men with submachine guns opened fire toward him, causing him to drop to the floor.

  As he crashed down, the two men raced out further onto the roof, as two more men pushed up into the stairwell doorway, covering their partners as they moved.

  Cole frowned.

  It wasn’t good – fire and maneuver, especially if there were more following behind, would enable the guards to exit the stairwell and spread themselves around until they totally dominated the rooftop.

  With no time to spare, Cole aimed the Colt at a series of power lines just above the stairwell door and pulled the trigger.

  He watched as one of the heavy electrical cables came loose with a spray of sparks and swung in a fast arc right into the doorway, striking the first man in the chest and passing its current into him, sending him into convulsions that knocked his partner back inside the stairwell. The broken end of the cable stayed on the rooftop, sparking wildly, the rest of its length helpfully blocking the doorway.

  From the cover of the chopper, Cole fired a second time, knowing that he had at least one more round left as the first shot hadn’t left the slide back in the empty position.

  The bullet tore through the neck of one of the guards who had made it out onto the rooftop, and Cole was about to press the trigger again when he heard the dead-man’s click and saw the pistol was locked, open and empty.

  But he was already on the move as the second guard turned toward him, and threw the gun at the man’s face.

  The guard, his submachine gun tracking toward his target, flinched reflexively at the heavy metal object flying toward him and let the barrel of his weapon come up with his hands, the shots going high above Cole’s head as he ran.

  And then Cole was there, grabbing the rifle and keeping it high above the man’s head while kicking him hard in the groin.

  The man’s grip weakened and Cole snatched the gun away, propelling the guard away from him with a thrusting front kick that sent him stumbling back over the edge of the parapet and then – screaming wildly – all the way down to the parking lot below.

  Cole turned back toward the stairwell, where the guards seemed to be recovering from their initial confusion, and let rip with a hail of bullets from the submachine gun that pinned them back.

  Cole used the opportunity and rushed forward to the Shahed, pulling open the door and climbing inside, firing one more blast toward the stairwell to keep them back before he closed the door behind him.

  He went through the checks quickly, not having any time to spare, getting the rotors powered up and spinning as he ran through the instruments.

  He took one more look toward the stairwell, saw that the guards were making another attempt to emerge, and then ignored them, concentrating on controlling the throttle to get the power up while pulling on the collective until the helicopter made its first tentative movement off the rooftop.

  Cole soon gained a few feet of height and – unable to ignore the rounds being fired toward the lightweight aircraft from the stairwell – he pitched to the right, swinging the Shahed’s tail toward the doorway, forcing the men back inside to escape the violently spinning tail rotor.

  And then finally, the guards pinned down, he lifted the chopper fully skyward and launched himself away from the rooftop, away from MOIS headquarters and into the skies above Tehran.

  10

  Cole piloted the chopper south away from the headquarters building, and was soon well out of range from the small arms fire coming from the rooftop.

  He didn’t really know the best course of action, in terms of where he should go. The fastest way out of the metropolitan area would be north, and just a little further north still would put Cole over the Caspian Sea, where it would be west to Azerbaijan or east to Turkmenistan.

  But Cole knew that all of Tehran’s air defences would be located on the outskirts of the city, and he would risk flying right over them. Even if he got past the city defenses, there would definitely be further defenses at the border which the little chopper would surely be unable to avoid. Added to which, the bird only had a range of a couple of hundred miles, and he wasn’t entirely sure that would be enough to get him to safety anyway – and he certainly didn’t want to crash land in the coastal mountains.

  East and west were equally problematic, putting him over the city border air defenses, and with hundreds of miles to fly across in either direction, an easy target for the air force.

  That left south, back toward the city itself, where air defenses would be less likely to be used due to the threat of a damaged aircraft destroying buildings or killing civilians.

  The Force One rescue team was already en route, and all he really had to do was get the chopper somewhere relatively quiet, abandon it, and hole up until the team was ready to get him. The daylight was fading already, only remnants visible on the far horizon, and so at least they would be coming in under cover of darkness.

  He kept the chopper low, flying across the rooftops of office blocks and apartments, houses and schools, mosques and civic buildings, the majority of the city a built-up urban sprawl with a maze of tightly-packed buildings and very few open spaces.

  Except . . .Except . . .

  He saw a long, narrow strip within the city out of his left-hand window, to the southeast, and angled the helicopter immediately toward it.

  A place to land . . .

  He stopped short.

  A place to land?

  Realization hit him, and he wondered, aghast, at how he could have been so stupid.

  A long, narrow strip surely indicated only one thing, and Cole was surprised he had not remembered sooner.

  It was a runway; and not just any runway, either.

  It was the runway for the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force Main Headquarters.

  Cole cursed as he steered away, hoping that he had not been seen.

  But it was a forlorn wish, and only moments later he saw two ominous shapes arising from the long strip between the built-up housing.

  Cole recognized the shapes from a distance as Bell AH-1 SuperCobras, the twin-engine attack helicopter that had been used for years
by the US Marine Corps; but then he realized that this was the Iranian version, the IAIO Toufan. Used by the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, they must have been stationed at the Air Force base, and Cole cursed his bad luck.

  But it made no real difference which country manufactured them – they still had enough firepower to blow Cole out of the sky a hundred times over.

  Its wing pylons could hold Sidewinder missiles, Hydra rocket pods, or Hellfire missiles, but its 20mm cannon alone was more than sufficient to destroy the lightweight Shahed.

  The aircraft moved toward him, above the rooftops of the city, and Cole banked right away from the airfield, accelerating quickly to the chopper’s top speed of 130 knots, all too aware that the Toufans could do 150 knots, up to 190 at a push.

  He knew he was going to lose the encounter; all he could try and control was how badly, and so he started scanning the ground below him, frantically searching for somewhere to land the bird, to crash land it if he had to.

  In the waning light of dusk, Cole saw the lights of the aircraft come on, ultra-bright searchlights which blanked even the outlines of the attack choppers from his view but which he knew must have lit him up like a Christmas tree.

  He immediately started a series of evasive maneuvers, slipping right and left, up and down, in a frantic bid to throw off the aim of the aircrew in the Toufans.

  But it was too little, too late, and Cole could hear the terrifying sound of the Toufans’ 20mm cannons ripping across the sky, could hear it even above the sound of his rotors; could feel it too as the huge rounds sliced straight through his tail rotor assembly, sending him into a flat spin toward the rooftops below him.

  Cole knew that the tail rotor controlled direction, and that without it, the entire helicopter would rotate in the opposite direction to the main rotor. The only answer was autorotation, to throttle back the engine and lower the collective pitch to try and glide the aircraft down, and Cole tried that now, but there wasn’t enough time, the city was coming toward him too fast and all he could see was rooftop upon rooftop, spinning wildly, sickeningly, beneath him and – knowing that he would die if he stayed inside – instead of trying to control the chopper’s descent he decided to do the only thing he could.

  He unbuckled, opened the door, and jumped.

  Barrington felt her stomach threatening to empty its contents over her as the chopper lurched violently this way and that over the Iranian landscape, and she regretted eating back in Ashgabat.

  But she hadn’t known when they’d be going into action, and she hadn’t wanted to go hours without food and then be weakened when it mattered the most. If there was anything she’d learned over the years, it was to eat and rest whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  This Night Stalker pilot, however, was quickly making her change her mind about that; but he knew what he was doing – keeping them safe – and that was all she could really ask for.

  Word had come down that Cole was mobile, his location being tracked via cell phone. It was a hard situation to deal with, as it meant the Force One team wouldn’t know where they would be landing, or what they would be up against when they got there.

  But the good news was that if Cole was on the move, it meant that he’d escaped; and if he’d escaped, then at least they wouldn’t have to fight their way through the headquarters of MOIS.

  But the uncertainty troubled her, even with a live feed coming through of the cell phone’s location, which Barrington was able to cross reference with online satellite maps.

  Cole had been moving fast across the city for a few minutes, and it looked like he must have been in an aircraft of some sort; but then he went static, and that was how he’d remained ever since.

  His lack of movement might mean anything, but Barrington hoped the man wasn’t injured or – even worse – already dead.

  But as the Black Hawk raced toward Tehran at insane speed, she knew it wouldn’t be long before she found out.

  11

  Cole’s head ached, and his body ached even worse.

  He could hear shouting around him, and as consciousness returned, he could also see light over to his right, the sensation of warmth on his skin.

  He wondered if the light meant that it was already dawn, had he been out of it for so long? He remembered the fall from the helicopter as it was hit with the cannon, hitting the ground, the sound of the chopper crashing, exploding; and then he had passed out, and remembered nothing else.

  He started to panic, knowing that if dawn was coming, then the rescue team must have missed him, gone back to their base in Ashgabat; and they wouldn’t try again until darkness had fallen once again, by which time it would be too late – Younesi’s secondary attack, in whatever form it took, would have already happened.

  But then he realized that the light wasn’t the rising sun, but something different altogether.

  Flames.

  It was the light of flames, flickering across the dark sky, and he suddenly understood that it must be the helicopter, on fire from when it crashed, and he was filled with hope as he realized that maybe he wasn’t too late after all.

  But the flames were coming from a lower point than where Cole lay, and he propped himself up onto an elbow to look around.

  He was on a rooftop, he saw immediately, which meant that he’d bailed out, the chopper must have continued on to the streets below before crashing and exploding.

  He tested his joints and muscles one by one, satisfied that he was just bruised and battered but hadn’t actually broken anything. Possible concussion, but it was just one more to add to the list.

  He pulled Younesi’s cell phone from his pocket, glad to see that it still seemed to be working, despite the fall. The clock on it said it was nearly seven o’clock in the evening, and Cole knew that the Force One team would surely almost be in Tehran by now.

  He would make contact and guide them in, but not before he’d checked the area, to advise them of what – if any – enemy forces they might face.

  He pulled himself across the rooftop to the edge, careful to keep himself low, and peered over the parapet toward the location of the flames.

  He immediately saw the wreckage of the Shahed 278, although it was no longer recognizable, burnt down to a hollowed-out shell. It was stuck in a narrow alleyway, crammed between two buildings which had also caught on fire from the explosion, and the street had fire engines stationed at either end, lights flashing as the officers struggling to contain the blaze with their hoses.

  There was no sign of the Toufans, and Cole assumed they’d returned to base; but in the light of the flames, Cole saw an army truck parked further down the alley, at the junction with the next street along. At the other end, meanwhile, he could just about make out three police cruisers, and knew that the entire area must be crawling with armed men, all looking for him.

  He pulled out the cell phone and dialed Michiko’s number.

  ‘Michiko,’ he said when she answered, ‘where are they?’

  ‘Thank Heavens you’re alive,’ she replied quickly, before regaining control and answering his question, recognizing that now wasn’t the time for emotion. ‘They’re ten minutes out,’ she said. ‘I’ll patch you through.’

  Julie Barrington took the call on her personal radio, relieved to hear Mark Cole’s voice on the other end of the line. Despite the silenced rotors and engines of the MH-60 stealth helicopter as it passed over the deactivated air defenses of Tehran and into the city itself, it was still hard to hear her commander, but she strained against the noise and did her best.

  ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘what is the situation there?’

  ‘I’m on a rooftop, location as per this cell phone,’ came the reply. ‘You’ll ID it from the flames nearby. Be warned though, there will be major law enforcement and military presence here.’

  ‘Copy that,’ Barrington said, ‘we’re coming in with no lights, nearly no sound. Just make sure you’re ready to go, we’ll pluck you right off that rooftop, sir.’


  ‘You got it,’ Cole replied, and then Barrington heard shouting in the background, then gunshots.

  ‘Shit,’ Cole’s voice said over the radio, ‘they’ve found me. Change of plan, just keep monitoring this cell!’

  And with that, he was gone; and as Barrington exchanged looks with her team, they all instinctively started to re-check their weapons, ready for the fight ahead.

  If the choppers had been just a minute out, he might have been able to wait; but with ten minutes, that simply wasn’t an option.

  There were four armed soldiers, and from the uniforms which they wore, lit up bright by the flickering flames from the street, Cole could see that they were from the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps.

  They’d spotted him already, and had opened fire with their H&K G3 battle rifles; but mercifully, the play of light from the alleyway beyond them was messing up their aim and all the rounds missed their target.

  But Cole was already on the move, ignoring the pain in his body as he raced toward the edge of the roof, on the far side from the crash site, and leapt across the narrow alleyway.

  He rolled as he hit the opposite rooftop, and came back up into a run, accelerating off. He could hear shouts behind him, and knew that the Guards would be informing their colleagues of his location via radio.

  He continued to follow the rooftops away from the blaze, jumping from one to another, legs exhausted but still propelling him strongly as he went. The shots that followed him were becoming gradually less, and Cole knew that the soldiers would have less of a target, the further they got from the light of the flames.

  But he could hear them continuing the chase behind him, the grunts as they jumped, the impacts as they hit the next rooftop and carried on, their shouts of mutual support to one another.

  Cole had increased his lead, and was looking to jump again, when he realized that the next alleyway was really a street, and much wider, the next set of roofs simply too far away to have a chance of making it.