While the engine RPMs slowly wound down, Maxwell steered the Hornet along the gently twisting road. In the eerie quiet outside the cockpit, he could hear the tires crunching through the loose gravel.
Ahead, a Hummer was parked at the roadside. As Maxwell brought the fighter to a smooth stop, he opened the canopy.
The cool mountain air swept through the cockpit. His flight suit was soaked with perspiration. He removed his helmet and let the dry wind blow over him.
Before he shut off the switches, he glanced at his engine fuel display. The totalizer indicated two hundred pounds. Less than two minutes’ worth.
An officer with a dirt-streaked face and disheveled BDUs dismounted from the Hummer and strolled over to the side of the cockpit. “Welcome to Al-Fasr International Airport.”
“Hey, Gus, has anyone told you that you look like shit?”
He followed Gritti into the tin building.
“Look at this,” said Gritti. He was standing in the middle of the large room. An array of electronic devices lined two entire walls. “Radios, scanners, monitors, SatComm — you name it. Enough gear in this room to run a country. The entire complex is networked with computers, all fed by that jumbo server over in the corner.” Gritti shook his head. “Incredible, when you consider that most of the peasants out here have never even seen a television.”
He moved from rack to rack, peering at each device. He stopped in front of a black-paneled console. “This is pure gold. You know what it is?”
Maxwell leaned close. “Looks like some kind of disc player.”
“An optical data storage unit. A damn big one. I’ll bet this thing holds more secrets than the Kremlin.” He turned to Hewlitt. “Make sure that sucker leaves with us.”
Gritti checked his watch again. “We have to be airborne by dusk. Let’s check the rest of this joint out.”
They walked through each of the buildings, finding more communications equipment. In the last of the tin-roofed structures, they discovered a bank of file cabinets. “More goodies,” said Gritti. He called for a squad of marines to load the cabinets into one of the Super Stallions.
At the northern end of the complex, six earth-covered mounds rose twenty feet above the ground. A hard-surfaced ramp sloped downward to the entrance of each mound.
Gritti went down the ramp of the first mound and opened the sliding overhead door. A light came on automatically, illuminating a cavernous space beneath the ground. The space was empty.
They walked inside, peering around at the concrete-reinforced walls and ceiling. The interior of the mound was even larger than it appeared from the outside.
“Guess what they kept in here,” Gritti said.
Maxwell nodded. “So this is it.” He looked at the gray-painted tug vehicle in the back of the space; then he walked over to the wall where a collection of hoses and tools was hanging. “The mystery MiG base.”
“It didn’t show up in the TARPS photos you guys took,” said Gritti. “Even the recon satellite missed it.”
Maxwell was shaking his head. “Another intelligence breakdown. They kept telling us the MiGs came from Eritrea or Chad.”
“All Al-Fasr had to do was come roaring out these bunkers, take off on the road, and he was on you like a dirty shirt.”
Maxwell kept looking at the empty bunker. Something kept nagging at him. The MiG base should have been obvious, but it went undetected.
Why?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SPY CATCHER
Maxwell counted six destroyers weaving in a crisscross pattern across the Gulf. A squadron of sub-hunting helicopters was working fore and aft of the Reagan as the carrier cruised eastward into the Arabian Sea. Several miles away, two P-3 Orion patrol planes were skimming the ocean ahead of the battle group.
At the far end of the conference table sat Admiral Fletcher. Next to him sat Captain Stickney, and on the opposite side Spook Morse and Guido Vitale. Col. Gus Gritti, haggard and shaking from fatigue, had given his account of the campaign, then gone to bed, promising to rejoin them in the morning.
Fletcher looked directly at Maxwell. “What makes you so sure it was Al-Fasr?”
“I’m a fighter pilot. I saw the way he flew, the fact that he was in the lead, the tactics he used.”
“Was there any chance that he could have survived the crash?” asked Fletcher. “Could he have ejected?”
“Not likely,” said Maxwell. “It would have to have happened in a split second before the MiG exploded.”
“I haven’t seen the HUD tape yet,” said Boyce. The Hornet’s cockpit video recorder taped everything the pilot saw through the heads-up display. “Let’s have a look.”
Maxwell reached into the zippered leg pocket of his flight suit and pulled out a cassette. “It was running the whole time.” He handed the tape to Morse, who inserted it in the VCR mounted behind the conference table.
The flickering, grainy image shot through the windscreen of Maxwell’s Hornet appeared on the wall-mounted screen. Morse fast-forwarded the picture until the shape of a MiG- 29 flitted into the HUD’s field of view. “That was the first engagement,” said Maxwell. “I took an AIM-9 shot, but he beat it.”
They watched the view change to the narrow walls of the canyon. Maxwell was chasing the MiG through the narrow ravine.
“Jesus,” muttered Boyce. “It looks like a video game.”
Suddenly the canyon bridge — the eye of the needle — appeared in the HUD. They saw the MiG roll up on its side and vanish through the hole.
The HUD view abruptly tilted sideways, and the eye of the needle zipped past the camera.
Several audible gasps came from around the table. “You’re either crazy as a bedbug,” said Boyce, “or you’re the world’s hottest fighter pilot.”
For the next several seconds, the MiG was gone from the HUD view. When it appeared again, it was in a high scissors, diving again toward the ground.
A SHOOT message appeared in the HUD. “That’s when I took the second AIM-9 shot,” said Maxwell.
The gray smoke trail of a missile could be seen aiming toward the rolling MiG. The missile exploded into the earth just behind the hard-turning MiG-29.
Again the MiG vanished from the screen. Not until several seconds later, after the Hornet had completed a reversal turn, did the terrain reappear. Scattered pockets of smoke and flame marked the crash site of the Fulcrum.
Morse pushed the STOP button. “The impact with the ground was out of the HUD’s field of view,” he said.
None of the officers at the table spoke.
Finally Fletcher rose. “Gentlemen, if the man flying that MiG was Al-Fasr, then this unholy war is over. The marine unit has finished culling all the intelligence material from the terrorist base and the complex has been destroyed. I will report to CNO and the Joint Chiefs that our campaign in Yemen is concluded and all our personnel have been extracted. the Reagan has suffered major battle damage and will be heading through the Strait of Hormuz to Bahrain.”
“What about the submarine threat, Admiral?” Boyce asked. “Do you have a fix on him?”
“I wish we did. SUBLANT has tagged the sub — a Project 636 boat named Ilia Mourmetz — the only Kilo class unaccounted for in this part of the world. It was sold to Iran, but it seems that it never arrived.”
“So who’s crewing it?” Boyce asked. “Who put the torpedoes into us?”
“Best guess is the Russian crew that was supposed to be delivering the boat to Iran and who most likely were bought out by Al-Fasr. The Russian government has been very forthcoming with data about the sub and the crew, mainly because they don’t want us to think they did it.”