The pilot who’d been on watch until now was standing on the tarmac outside the building. He shook his head as Vahid approached.
“You’re late, Parsa,” said the pilot.
“Five minutes,” insisted Vahid. “I needed to eat.”
“You’re so busy in the day that you couldn’t eat earlier?”
Vahid shrugged. “If there had been a call before now, it would have been yours.”
“Phhhh. A call. The dead will rise before we fly in combat,” said the other pilot disgustedly, starting for the pickup truck. “The Israelis are cowards.”
“And the Americans, too?”
“Worse.”
“Good evening, Captain,” said Sergeant Hami, the night crew chief. “We are ready to fly tonight?”
“Ready, Chief. My plane?”
“Ho-ho,” said Hami, his jowls shaking back and forth. “We are in top shape and ready to fly when the signal comes.”
“So it’s tonight, then?”
“With God’s will.”
Vahid walked over and put his gear down on a table at the side of the hangar. A pair of metal chairs flanked the table; he and Hami would customarily play cards there for most of the watch. But first he would inspect the aircraft.
“A nice night to fly,” said Sergeant Hami, waiting as he set down his helmet and personal gear. His accent was thick with Tehran, reminding Vahid of the city’s many charms. “You will shoot down some Americans, yes?”
“If I have the chance.”
The nights were always like this: bravado and enthusiasm at first, then dull boredom as the hours dragged on. The first night, Vahid had sat in the cockpit, waiting to take off in an instant. Even the base commander now realized that was foolish. The U.S. forces in the Gulf were paper ghosts, strong in theory but never present. They kept well away from Iranian borders.
Of course, the same might be said of the Iranian air force, even Vahid’s squadron. The four MiG-29s, the most advanced in the Iranian air force, had been moved to Omidiyeh air base six weeks before. The base had been largely abandoned in the years following the Iran-Iraq war; while still theoretically open for commercial traffic, the only civilians Vahid had seen were the members of a glider club, who inspected but did not fly their planes the first week of the squadron’s arrival. Since then the base had been empty, except for military personnel.
He began his walk-around at the MiG’s nose, touching her chin for good luck—a superstition handed down to him by his first flight instructor. The instructor had flown in the Iran-Iraq war, where he had served briefly as a wingman to Jalil Zandi, the legendary ace of the Iranian air force.
Even without the connection to greatness, Vahid would have venerated the instructor, Colonel One Eye. (The nickname was not literally accurate, but came from his habit of closing one eye while shooting on a rifle range.) The colonel could fly everything the Iranian air force possessed, from F-86 Sabres, now long retired, to MiG-29s. Like Zandi, One Eye had flown Tomcats during the war against Iraq, recording a kill against an Iraqi Mirage.
Vahid stopped to admire the plane. The curved cowl at the wing root gave it a sleek, athletic look; for the pilot, it evoked the look of a tiger, springing to the kill. The export-version MiG was one of thirty acquired by Iran in the mid-1990s; the air force now had just over a dozen in flying condition.
A siren sounded in the distance. Vahid froze.
A fire?
No.
No!
“The alert!” yelled Sergeant Hami. “The alert!”
Vahid grabbed his helmet from the table, then ran to the ladder at the side of the plane. As he climbed upward, a van with the rest of the ground crew raced across the concrete apron, jerking to a stop in front of the hangar. Hami helped Vahid into the cockpit, while the arriving crewmen began pulling the stops away from the plane and opening the rear door of the hangar.
Two nights before, a false alert had gotten Vahid out of the hangar, but he was called back before reaching the runway, some 1,000 meters away: the radars had picked up an Iranian passenger flight in the Gulf and, briefly, mistaken it for an American spy plane. He expected this was something along the same lines. Still expecting the flashing light at the top of the hangar to snap off, he powered up the MiG, turning over one engine and then quickly ramping the other. Hami, back on the ground, shook his fist at him, giving him a thumbs-up.
Vahid began rolling forward. The tower barked at him, demanding he get airborne. Ignoring them for a moment, he took stock of his controls. Then, at the signal from Sergeant Hami, he went heavy on his engines. The plane strained against her brakes. The gauges pegged with perfect reads. The MiG wanted to fly.
“Shahin One to Tower, request permission to move to runway,” said Vahid calmly.
“Go! Go!” answered the controller.
The MiG jerked forward, overanxious. At the other end of the base three pilots were running from the ready room. Their planes would be a few minutes behind. It was Vahid’s job to sort things out before they were committed to the battle.
“Cleared for immediate takeoff,” said the controller.
Vahid didn’t bother to pause as he came to the end of the runway—there were no other flights here, and it was clear he was under orders to get airborne immediately. Selecting full military power, he started the MiG down the runway. The screech of the engines built to a fierce whine. He felt himself starting to lift.
Airborne, he made a quick check of his readouts, then cleaned his landing gear into the aircraft. The MiG leapt forward, rocketing into the night.
Moments later the local air commander came over the radio, giving him his instructions directly.
“You are to fly north by northeast,” said the general, “in the direction of Natanz. There are reports of a low-flying airplane near the Naeen train station. We will turn you over to Major Javadpour for a vector.”
“Acknowledged.”
Vahid had to look at his paper map to find Naeen. It was a dot in the mountains north of the city of Nain, a small town camped at the intersection of several highways that transcribed the Iranian wilderness. He was some five hundred kilometers away.
Major Javadpour directed Vahid to the west of the sighting—he wanted him to fly close to Natanz, one of the country’s main nuclear research sites.
Gravity pushed Vahid against the seat as he goosed his afterburners. At full speed he was just over ten minutes away.
“We have no radar contacts at this time,” said Javadpour.
“No contacts?”
“We have two eyewitnesses who saw and heard planes. But no radar.”
“What sort of aircraft did they see?” asked Vahid.
The controller didn’t answer right away, apparently gathering information. Vahid pictured a flight of American B-2 Stealth Bombers, flying low over the terrain. They would pop up before the attack.
He might be too late to stop them. But he would surely destroy them. He had two R-27 air-to-air medium-range missiles and six R-73s, all Russian made, under his wings. The R-27s were radar missiles; he had been told they would have trouble finding B-2s unless he was relatively close, but this didn’t bother him at all. The B-2 was slower than his plane, and far less maneuverable. As for the R-73s, they were heat-seekers, very dependable when fired in a rear-quarter attack.
They might have escorts. If so, he would ignore them—the bombers were the far more important target.
Vahid continued to climb and accelerate.
“We still have no contacts at this time. Negative,” said Javadpour, coming back on the line. “The eyewitnesses describe a small plane, possibly a drone, very low to the ground.”
“A small plane?”
“Single engine. It may be civilian. That’s all the information I have at this time,” added the controller. “Maintain your course. I show you reaching the area in six minutes.”