The corporal grinned. "Hey, you get to order what you want, and we'll bring it to you. How about that for service?"
The tension, the long flight, and the change in time all hit Douglas at the same instant. "Hey, if I drop facedown into my steak and go to sleep, just roll me over and let me snore. I've never been so damn tired in my life."
11
Franklin and Douglas had been outfitted with Iranian clothing an hour before. Now they looked over their I.D. and other papers that made them out to be Iranians. "We don't even look Arabic," Douglas said. "Make that Persian, Kurd, or Azerbaijani," Franklin said. "Whatever. We going to be able to pass?"
"We damn well better, or we'll be dead meat."
Douglas groaned. "We go in tonight as soon as it gets dark?"
"Yeah. What a kick. That great big bird for just the two of us. Think they would have used something smaller, faster."
"Could, but we wouldn't have any way to bail out. Hell, they say this plane has been prepped especially for runs like this. Covert as all hell."
"Just so it gets us in without getting shot down. We'll worry about how to get out."
Douglas scowled. "You still have that map? Let's take another look. Tehran is a humongous place, seven million bodies. We've got to find one certain apartment?"
"Yeah, if we're gonna do any good."
They both were surprised when Don Stroh, their CIA guardian, walked in the room two hours before flight time.
"Any problems?" he asked.
"Yeah, Stroh. I'd like to get some of your frequent flyer miles," Franklin said. "You must have built up a few million by now."
"No such luck, mostly military aircraft. Problems?"
"Yeah, the handguns they gave us. A piece of shit," Franklin said.
"We got the Polish copy of the Makarov, the P-64. A nice light little nine-millimeter with six rounds. Best part is it can't be traced to the U.S. Everything you have is sterile of any U.S. tie. We planned it that way."
"Rather have fourteen rounds in my magazine," Douglas said.
"Sure, and you'd rather take the MP-5 you brought, but no chance. Anything else?"
"We get out via Russia, right?" Franklin asked. "Baku?"
"Correct. First we need to know exactly where that nuke plant is. If our man in there can't find it, you two will have to. I know you aren't trained for this. Mostly it's just common sense. Find the people who know what you need to know, and persuade them to tell you."
"We'll get the damn intel some way," Douglas said. "Otherwise there can't be a mission."
"That's the rub." Stroh brightened. "But our man said he had a new lead, so maybe all you'll need to do is be backup for him. Oh, he'll have some more weapons for you when you get inside."
"When do we leave?" Franklin asked.
"A half hour," Stroh said. "Let's get out to the plane. You'll take off a half hour before dark. The plane will move north up through Kuwait, and then through the no-fly zone in Iraq. After that it turns to the right into Iran. This means we'll have only about two hundred and fifty miles to penetrate into Iran before you drop."
"How low?" Franklin asked.
"You're set for eight hundred feet. Takes about three hundred feet for a round chute to open, then twenty seconds or so to the ground."
"Damn, I feel naked going in like this. No weapons, no gear, almost nothing." Douglas shook his head.
"This is the way that it should work best. Let's get out to the flight line."
Ten minutes later, they were in the big plane. The Hercules C-130 is a monster, especially for two passengers. It has four Allison T56-A-15 turboprop engines, good for 4,591 horsepower each. It has a high wing and has flown off aircraft carriers. It has a 132-foot wingspan, is 98 feet long, and the tail extends up 38 feet.
The C-130 has a crew of five, cruises at 375 mph, and with a maximum fuel load can cover 4,894 miles without gulping more juice.
Douglas looked at the cave-like interior of the big ship, and then at the Air Force sergeant who was the load master.
"How in hell do we get out of this thing?" Douglas asked.
"Easy. We lift the rear cargo door and you run down the wide ramp, and one step later you're outa here. We've got you attached to static lines so you'll have instant opening of the chutes. Nothing to get in the way except our prop wash."
"How long we got, Sarge?"
"Our flight time to the DZ is an hour and twenty-three minutes. I'll alert you fifteen minutes before drop time."
They nodded, and the crew chief went back to the cabin. Douglas looked out the small round windows. It had grown dark quickly after they took off, and now he could see nothing but pure blackness.
The two men slumped in the bucket seats, and worked their own thoughts. Douglas had been restoring a 1931 Model A Roadster in a garage near his apartment in Coronado. It had yellow wire wheels, a rumble seat, and a cloth top. He wanted to keep it all original but soon found that parts for a sixty-seven-year-old car were almost impossible to find. So he had been replacing some with remanufactured parts from specialty houses. He'd keep it as pure as he could, especially the outside. He loved the gas tank that sat over the engine next to the inside of the fire wall. No fuel pump. Gravity flow.
He looked at the SATCOM radio he carried. It was much smaller than the multiple-use one that Ron Holt had for the platoon. This was a simple transceiver for the satellite only. He would turn it on to receive at midnight, and at noon. He could send at any time.
That was the one item that could tie the team to the U.S. If they faced capture, that was the first destroy job he had. He had been with the Third Platoon for almost two years now, had been through three big operations before. He'd get through this one if he had to walk every damn step to Baku.
First they had to find where the Iranian nukes were being made. South, somewhere south. At least this was something different from the shoot-and-scoot he'd been involved with so far.
He knew Iran was a mountainous place. One hill went over eighteen hundred feet, which was higher even than Mammoth Lake, where he came from in California. Mammoth was around eight thousand feet, in the middle of the Sierra Nevadas. He yawned — no time for a nap.
Colt Franklin took out the pistol again from deep inside his three layers of strange clothes. It wasn't even in a holster, just nestled into some folds of cloth. Safer that way, they told him.
Skydiving and parachuting were not new to him, but this low jump would be a first. Sport jumping usually makes you go out at least twenty-five hundred feet. He thought of writing a letter, but didn't have any gear. He'd write when he got back. He'd heard about the mountain near Tehran. They said it was 18,934 feet. Damn. He'd love to get a shot at climbing it. But not this tour.
Rock climbing was his passion, but he'd never seen a mountain almost nineteen thousand feet high. Maybe later he'd have a shot at it. If he didn't get shot on this run. He looked out the window again, but there was nothing out there. Just blackness. Good. He'd hate to see the slash of a jet fighter slamming past them. Much prefer to be alone in the dark, and get to the damned DZ in one fucking piece.
Ten minutes later the load master came back and yelled.
"Time We're about fifteen away from the Drop Zone. I hate this low-level stuff. You probably felt us rolling around a little. So far we've not had any radar tracking us, which is great. About five minutes until drop, I'll open the rear hatch and get you hooked up on the static line."
He vanished. They tried the windows again. Nothing.