She told herself that Turk was going to make it. Against all odds, he was going to make it. She hadn’t sent him to his death.
22
Over the Caspian Sea
TURK FELT THE PLANE SHUDDER SEVERELY AS HE JINKED left and right, barely ducking the fire from the MiG. Between the old metal and whatever damage the Iranian had done to him earlier, the plane was starting to strain.
The MiG and the F-4 were still locked in a death dance, neither able to get an advantage. The MiG slid behind him, but Turk managed to push the Phantom just enough to stay away from his bullets.
Their speed dropped, moving through 220 knots. While the MiG was a nimbler airframe, Turk thought he must have done some damage to it, at least enough to keep it from trying anything too fancy. But its pilot was tenacious, clinging tightly.
Even if the MiG didn’t nail him, the more maneuvers he did, the better the odds that he’d run out of fuel before reaching a safe airport. And parachuting wasn’t an option. He needed to get away quickly.
Turk racked his brain for a way to get the MiG off his back. The only thing he could think of was a low altitude spin and a crash—not a particularly pleasant solution, even if the plane could take the g’s.
Unless it didn’t actually happen.
As another burst of rounds flashed over the canopy, Turk jerked the Phantom’s stick, trying to make the plane look as if it had been hit. He backed off as his plane began to yaw, then pushed in on his left, tipping his wing down and holding his breath.
By now the MiG had stopped firing. He was still back there somewhere, though.
When the blue sea filled his windscreen, Turk held the Phantom’s nose down for a three count. Then he pulled up on the stick, muscling it back as hard as he could while giving the plane throttle.
His head floated in the sudden rush of blood. The Phantom didn’t like the maneuver either, threatening to fall backward in the sky. The control surfaces, confused by the contradictory forces working on them, bit furiously at the air, trying to follow the pilot’s crazed instructions. The engines, suddenly goosed with fuel, roared desperately, pushing to hold the plane in the air despite the heavy hand of gravity.
And there was the MiG, right in front of him.
Turk fired, lying on the trigger even as he fought to get the Phantom stable. He got off a burst and a half, then the goosed engines pushed the Phantom ahead, whipping over the MiG close enough to scorch the paint.
He’d put a dozen bullets into the MiG’s airframe, and this time there was no way they wouldn’t have an effect: Turk saw a bolt of flame in the cockpit mirror.
If he’d been more confident of his fuel, he might have turned around to watch his enemy burn.
VAHID FELT THE BLOOD DRAINING FROM HIS HEAD AS the MiG began to disintegrate around him. Victory had been snatched from his hand in an instant. Not just victory—the tables had been completely turned, the pilot in front suddenly behind, the predator now the victim.
He needed to pull the ejection handle. He needed to get out of the plane.
Why? He’d been defeated. He was not the best, and would never be. He couldn’t stand the humiliation.
Could he go home to his father, the war hero, and look him in the eye?
Get out of the aircraft, he heard his old instructor say.
One Eye’s voice screamed at him.
Save yourself. Fly and fight another day.
Vahid’s hand wavered over the handle as his mind battled. He thought of his mother, who would love him no matter what. He saw his father again, as he had known him as a young man, before the injury.
And then it was too late: a fireball erupted, consuming the MiG-29 and Iran’s finest pilot.
STONER FOLDED HIS ARMS, WATCHING OUT THE SIDE of the cockpit as the Phantom leveled off and continued north over the sea. The plane flew steady; bullets no longer coursed over the wings or exploded in the distance. Whatever had been chasing them was gone.
So they were getting out. That was all right, wasn’t it? He didn’t have to kill Turk if he got him home.
The memories poking Stoner earlier had receded. They were like booby-traps in the jungle, waiting to swallow him if he stepped wrong. But he didn’t know how to excise them.
Maybe one of the shrinks back home would.
The mission had been a good one. He liked it tremendously. Everything about it, the sensation of adrenaline in his body, the feeling in his stomach when he ran, the crush of his fist against an enemy.
He hated the enemy. He hated people who wanted to hurt him, or hurt his people.
That was who he was. Whatever else they had done to him, whatever the drugs and biomechanical devices they’d put into him, that part was definitely his.
CLEAR OF THE ENEMY PLANE, TURK TOOK OUT THE SAT phone. He pushed the power button. Nothing happened. The damn thing was dead.
He reached into his pants pocket for Grease’s. He remembered taking it from Grease’s ruck. But he found the GPS, not the sat phone.
He reached into his other pocket, feeling a little desperate. The phone was there.
But it was a cell phone. Grease had the sat phone in his pocket or somewhere else, and he had missed it.
Have to do something else. Don’t fall apart now.
Turk held his course due north for another five minutes before turning westward. He had only the vaguest notion where he was. While he still had a reasonable amount of fuel, he began to prepare a mental checklist of what he would do if Baku didn’t turn up very soon. He would hunt for another airstrip. If he didn’t see one, he could land on a highway—supposedly the Russians had built them long, straight, and wide for just such a contingency.
Better to find Baku. Much, much better.
A small fishing boat bobbed in the distance. The coast was just beyond it.
Another plane was coming down from the north. It looked like a civilian aircraft, an airliner. As it came closer, he saw that it had four engines—an MC-130.
Oh baby, he thought, changing course to meet it.
SURVIVOR
1
The White House
CHRISTINE MARY TODD PUT DOWN THE PHONE AND looked over at her visitor.
“Our last operatives are out of Iran,” she said. “It’s a great day.”
“Yes.”
“We had to make the strike,” continued the President. “It’s too bad that so many Iranians had to die, but they were all involved in the program—the vast majority were involved in the program,” she added, correcting herself. A handful of people had died on the ground during the team’s attempts to get out. Some were undoubtedly civilians.
A number of Americans had also died—the entire team that had escorted Captain Mako, who by some miracle and his own ingenuity, along with the heroic efforts of Mark Stoner, managed to survive.
Truly, considering all that was at stake, the toll was extremely light.
“Are you going to explain how we did it?” asked her visitor.
“Absolutely not. Some will figure it out eventually. The Chinese, I’m sure, will have their suspicions. And the Russians. They’ll be doubling their investment in nanotechnology, and UAVs, I’m sure. The Iranians, though—they haven’t a clue. Why they wasted their resources in this way, building weapons they not only can’t use but can’t completely perfect—”
“I meant are you going to explain it to us.”
“Eventually.” Todd smiled. “Yes. In general terms, of course.”
“There will be blowback,” said her visitor.
“I expect it. We’ve already seen an uptick in communications traffic among the usual suspects.” Todd glanced at the phone on her desk. Nearly every button was lit, even though she had told her operator and the chief of staff that she wouldn’t be taking calls for an hour. The world, it seemed, was determined to spin on, with or without her.