13
Iran
THE PROXIMITY WARNING STAYED ON AS THE FIRST nano-UAV hit the mesh screen, the Cessna’s pilot fighting a rogue air current in the foothills to get back in the proper position. But Turk didn’t need to take over the swarm: the Hydra struck within two millimeters of the programmed crosshair, exploding perfectly and blowing a hole through the outer filter assembly. Two seconds later the second UAV hit the large grate positioned three meters deep in the shaft. The thick blades of steel crumbled, leaving the way clear for the rest of the swarm.
The proximity warning cut off a second later. By then the control unit had switched the video feed to UAV 1 inside the airshaft. Turk saw the seams whip by like lines on a highway pavement, the aircraft dipping down the five-hundred-meter tube that led to a Z-turn and the air exchanges.
There was no way Turk could have piloted the craft through the turn, even though its speed had slowed considerably. The computer puffed the nano-UAV’s wings, fired the maneuvering rocket, and spun the Hydra through the Z. Two more aircraft followed, forming an arrow-shaped wedge that hit the interior fan assembly like a linebacker barreling into an ill-protected quarterback. They blew a hole through the exchange mechanism large enough for a bus to squeeze through.
Unfortunately, they did their job a little too welclass="underline" there was a hairline fissure in the wall directly below the fan assembly. Weakened by the shock of the explosion, the wall began to collapse within seconds.
Ten UAVs made it through, though two were damaged by debris. And now Turk went to work. He managed to save two Hydras that had not yet entered the complex. The rest were caught in the landslide as the upper portions of the bunker began to implode.
By the time he turned his attention back to the lead aircraft, it was within seconds of the targeted chamber in the basement of the complex. Maneuvers and air friction had slowed the aircraft below ninety knots, but that was still incredibly fast. Finishing a straight run nearly two miles into the heart of the complex, the lead Hydra slammed into the grill of an air vent and exploded, opening the way to a hallway in the cellar of the complex. This time there were no fatal flaws in the workmanship, and no debris to stop the nine aircraft that followed. Turk caught a glimpse of something on the ground as the next feed snapped in—an Iranian scientist or engineer had been close to the vent when it exploded; blood was pouring from his head onto his white lab coat.
There were people in the hall—he saw heads as the UAVs dashed down the corridor into an open space. There was metalwork ahead, the large, circular gridwork he’d memorized as the sign that they had reached the target room. The target itself was the cluster machinery below.
The UAVs orbited above, forming another wedge to strike.
And then there was nothing, the feed switching back to the two aircraft above.
Nothing?
God. We’ve failed, he thought. I failed—I lost it right at the end. Damn. Damn!
And then, trying to think what he would do next, how he might retrieve the situation somehow with only two aircraft and a blocked passage, he saw a puff of smoke in the right corner of the feed from Hydra 35. He grabbed the joystick and took control of the aircraft. As he did, the smoke blossomed into a vast cloud and then ocean. The ground in the distance shook. The earth seemed to drop, imploding with a vast underground explosion.
They hadn’t failed. They had succeeded beyond calculation. The bunker exploded and the ground swelled, then collapsed with a tremendous explosion.
Turk forced himself to concentrate. The mission wasn’t finished—he had two more aircraft to take care of.
“Thirty-six, trail leader 35,” he said, then put his hand over the microphone. “We’re done,” he told Grease. “We’re good. We’re good.”
A warning blared in his ear. An aircraft near UAV 36 was using its radar.
A Russian air-to-air radar. The nano-UAV’s radar detector identified the signal tentatively as coming from a Russian N-O19 unit, meaning it could be anything from an ancient MiG-23 to a much more capable MiG-29. But that really didn’t matter—anything the Iranians had would be more than a match for the unarmed Cessna.
“Get us out of here,” Turk told the pilot, looking up. “Get low and stay low. There’s a fighter in the air five miles west of us.”
14
Over Iran
THE ANALOG RADAR IN THE MIG WAS FAR FROM STATE of the art, but it was all Captain Vahid had ever known. The fact that his contact flickered on and off in the display didn’t alarm him, nor did he jump quickly to any conclusions about the unidentified aircraft he had on his screen. It was flying low and it was going very slow. The profile fit a small, civilian-type aircraft, but what would one be doing here and at night?
Most likely it was a drone, he thought, but there was also a (distant) possibility that it was a Stealth Fighter flying a very erratic pattern, its radar signal disguised.
He heard his breath in the oxygen mask. It was all in a rush; he must be close to hyperventilating.
Vahid slowed his breathing down, tried to conjure One Eye’s voice in his headset: Stay calm. Stay on your plan.
His eyes hunted for the enemy. It would be close, the return confused by the stealthy characteristics of the aircraft. A black shape floated by his right, about where the contact should be. Then there was another, and another—he was seeing and chasing shadows.
“UP! UP!” SCREAMED THE ISRAELI IN ENGLISH. THE Cessna’s nose jerked almost ninety degrees, the wings jostling as the windscreen filled with shadows of black and brown. Wings fluttering, the light plane cleared the barely seen peak, just missing disaster.
Turk flew the UAVs toward the Cessna, looking for the fighter. The sky was dark, but both planes were equipped with infrared sensors as their viewers. He saw a ridgeline ahead of Hydra 35. A cross rose from the rocks, a good hundred feet above the tip.
The Cessna.
“You have to stay low!” said Turk as they continued to climb. “We’re being followed by a MiG.”
“Any lower we’ll be dead,” muttered the Israeli before translating.
VAHID’S RADAR FOUND THE AIRCRAFT ONLY FIVE MILES away, rising through the mountain ridges on his left. He began a turn, planning to lock up the aircraft and fire one of his radar missiles. But the light plane disappeared from his radar, once more lost in the clutter of the reflected radar waves.
Vahid came level out of his turn, then reached to the armament panel and selected the heat-seekers. It would be easier to use the infrared system to take them down.
He found nothing for a few moments, then he realized what must have happened—he misinterpreted the other plane’s direction. It wasn’t flying toward Natanz at all; it was going east, flying away from the scientific site.
Unsure how to interpret this, he called the controller and reported the contact as he brought the MiG back to the point where he had first seen the other plane. The controller bombarded him with questions. Most of them were unanswerable.
“The contact has been extremely intermittent,” Vahid told the major. “I can’t get a good radar fix in the mountains—he’s very low.”
“Are you using your infrared?”
“Affirmative. Weapons are charged and ready. Do I have permission to fire?”
“Affirmative. You are cleared to fire. I thought I made that clear.”
“Affirmative. Do I need to visually identify it? If it’s a drone and—”
“Just shoot the damn thing down,” said the controller.
THE LITTLE PLANE JERKED FEROCIOUSLY AS THE PILOT yanked at the yoke, once more missing the side of the mountain by a few feet. Turk knew their luck wasn’t going to hold much longer. If they couldn’t get the MiG off their backs, they would either pancake into the side of the sheer rocks all around them or be blasted out of the sky by an Iranian air-to-air missile.