TURK WAITED UNTIL HE SAW THE PILOT GESTURING FOR him to follow. The man seemed almost desperate, moving his hands vigorously.
He needed to wait until the last possible moment. It was a contest of time now; time and distance.
The odds were not in his favor. But when had they ever been?
Turk rode the Phantom steady, watching the indicated airspeed carefully. He felt a little light-headed, but was sure that had nothing to do with the plane—they were at 4,000 feet now, and even if the cabin were wide-open he ought to be able to breathe normally. So it was nerves, a problem he could handle. He slowed his breathing, relaxing his muscles as best he could. He leaned gently on the stick, nudging the Phantom so it seemed like he was turning in the direction the MiG wanted.
His other hand settled onto the ganged throttle, waiting.
The MiG pilot saw him moving and began his bank, aiming to lead him wherever it was he wanted to go. Turk started into the turn very slowly, then, as the MiG started to pull ahead, he killed his throttle, practically stalling the Phantom. The MiG floated into the middle of his windscreen. Turk hit the trigger, spitting a burst of 20mm rounds out from the plane’s centerline.
The stream of fire missed, but he hadn’t counted on knocking her down. What he did want was what happened: the MiG pilot, seeing tracers blaze by his windscreen, rolled out of the way. By the time he recovered, Turk had the Phantom’s afterburners screaming. The F-4 jumped through the sound barrier, surging northward and moving as fast as she had gone in years.
VAHID’S INSTINCTS TOOK OVER AS THE TRACERS FLEW past. He ducked and rolled, spinning away from his enemy. Even though he calculated that he was too close for a successful missile shot from the Phantom, he let off flares, then jerked the MiG hard to the west. Right side up, he expected to see the F-4 pulling in front of him, caught outside of the tight turn as it moved in for the kill.
He couldn’t spot it. He practically spun his head off his neck, making sure the Phantom wasn’t on his six somewhere he couldn’t see. What the hell?
The other plane was way out in front, moving north at a high rate of speed. Vahid armed his air-to-air R-27s, got a strong tone in his helmet indicating he was locked, and fired both. Only after the second missile was away did he radio the controller to tell him what was going on.
TURK EXPECTED THE MIG WOULD FIRE ITS RADAR MISSILES almost immediately. Under most circumstances in a modern American plane, that wouldn’t be a problem: the weapons would be easily fended off by the ECMs.
In the Phantom, things were a little different. He had to rely on his guile.
He pushed lower to the ground, still picking up speed. The plane was equipped with a radar warning receiver, which ordinarily would tell the crew when it was being tracked by a radar. But the receiver hadn’t worked earlier, when the MiG was coming up from behind, and it remained clean now, either malfunctioning or not activated correctly.
Turk assumed there was a problem with the RWR and decided to ignore it. He saw the encounter in his head, playing it over as if it were one of the scrimmages he routinely did with his UAVs. He saw the Iranian pilot recover, then launch the first missile. He’d look back at the radar, check for another strong lock, then fire again.
Or maybe he would wait and see what the first missile did. But that wasn’t going to work now.
He counted to three, then pushed the stick hard and rolled into an invert, turning at the same time to beam the Doppler radar in the MiG and confuse the missile. He drove the Phantom lower, pushing so close to the ground that the scraggly brush threatened to reach up and grab the plane as it passed. A small city lay ahead; Turk went even lower, coming in over the rooftops. He kept counting to himself, knowing that the missile was behind him somewhere, and hoping it would run out of fuel.
The R-27 had a semiactive radar; it rode to its target on a beam provided by the MiG’s radar. Turk’s maneuvers had confused the radar momentarily, and his very low altitude made it hard for the enemy radar to sort him out of the ground clutter.
He saw a canyon coming up and decided to turn with it, hoping the close sides would shield him from the guiding radar. But the Phantom was now moving well over the speed of sound, and she wasn’t about to turn easily or quickly. Worse, he felt a punch in his stomach as he tried to turn—the g forces were quick to build up. He had to ease back, and gave up his plan. Instead he stayed as low as he could over the open terrain, running toward the buildings ahead.
Sweat poured from every pore of his body, including the sides of his eyes; he could barely keep his hand on the stick.
Seconds passed, then a full minute. He let off on the gas and banked, more gently this time, aiming north.
Something shot in front of him, maybe a mile away. It was one of the missiles.
“Shit,” he muttered.
Then he felt the tail of the Phantom lifting out of his hand, pitching his nose sideways.
The other missile had exploded behind him.
19
CIA campus, Virginia
BREANNA WATCHED AS THE SIGNAL INDICATING TURK’S position jerked back northward.
“What the hell is he doing?” Reid asked.
“I don’t know. Assuming he’s in a plane, they may be ducking a missile.” They could only guess what was going on; there’d been no word from Turk, or Stoner for that matter. It was clear from the intercepted Iranian radio transmissions that the Iranians had not captured them. The Iranian air force was scrambling after a Phantom that had left Manzariyeh without authorization; Breanna guessed that must be Turk, trying to fly to safety.
“Try to contact Stoner again,” Reid told the communications aide. “Get him.”
“Sir, I just tried. There’s been no answer.”
“Try again.”
“He’s heading north,” said Breanna. “I bet he’s going to Baku.”
“Can he make it?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at the screen. The maneuvers indicated he was under attack. Off the top of her head she wasn’t sure what the Phantom’s range might be, and there was no way of knowing how much fuel it had. “We need to talk to the Azerbaijan air force,” she told Reid. “He’s going north—he’ll be heading toward their air space.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. They have MiGs—can we scramble them?”
“I don’t know if that will be doable, Breanna.”
“Try.”
20
Iran
VAHID CURSED HIMSELF. HE’D FIRED TOO SOON, SURE that the F-4 pilot wasn’t much of a flier. Now he saw that was a mistake; the man was smarter than he’d thought, and at least knew the basics of dodging radar missiles.
No matter. He’d drive up close and put a heat-seeker in his fantail.
Once he found him. The radar was having trouble locating the Phantom in the ground clutter.
Maybe he crashed after all.
No. There he was—twenty kilometers away. Running north toward the Caspian.
Vahid juiced his throttle, opening the gates on the afterburners. The sudden burst of speed slammed him back into his seat.
He’d close on the F-4, get tight, then fire. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
STONER SAT IN THE REAR SEAT OF THE AIRCRAFT, watching with detachment as the plane bucked and turned, jerking sharply in the sky.
They weren’t particularly high. He could see the ground clearly out the side of the windscreen.
If we crash, he thought, Turk Mako will die, and my mission will be accomplished.
TURK STRUGGLED WITH THE CONTROLS, TRYING TO muscle the Phantom back level after the shock of the missile explosion behind them. If he’d been higher, he could have simply sorted things out in a long, sweeping dive, but he was far too low for that. He pulled the stick, straining as the plane skidded in the air. His airspeed had bled off precipitously; the Phantom was very close to a stall.