“Thank you much. Computer says we’re on course and ten minutes from your drop zone,” she said, trying to make her voice sound light.
RAZOR’S EDGE
215
Iraq Intercept Missile Station Two 1720
MUSAH TAHIR SAT BEFORE THE ENORMOUS, INOPERATIVE
screens, waiting. Kakii had called ten minutes ago, but Abass had not; it was possible that the planes had passed him by, but there had been no call from the airport at Baghdad, where the air traffic radar was still in full operation. The Americans might be attacking somewhere north or east of Kirkuk, but if so, it made no sense to turn on his units; they would be out of range.
Tahir envisioned himself as a spider, standing at the edge of a highly sensitive web, waiting for the moment to strike. He had been entrusted with great responsibility by the leader himself—indeed, by Allah. Turning on the radars, even for a moment, was a matter of great delicacy, since the American planes carried missiles that could home in on them; the decision to initiate the search and launch sequence was dictated by his sense of timing as well as his computer program.
Now?
No. He must wait. Perhaps in a few minutes; perhaps not today at all. Allah would tell him when.
Over Iraq
1720
ZEN TOOK HAWK ONE TO THE END OF THE SEARCH GRID, pulling up as he neared a cloud of antiaircraft fire from the Zsu-23. A pair of the four-barreled 23mm flak dealers had opened up just as he started his run; optically aimed and effective only to five or six thousand feet, they were more an annoyance than a threat. He came back south, running four miles parallel to Quicksilver. He would turn Hawk 216
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
One over to the computer while he launched Two.
“Anything, O’Brien?”
“Negative,” said the radar detector’s babysitter. “Clean as a whistle.”
“I have a cell phone cluster,” said Habib. “Several transmissions, coded. Twenty-five miles southeast of your position, Hawk One. ”
“Okay. Mark it and we’ll get down there later,” said Zen. “Jen? You see anything?”
“Nothing interesting,” said the scientist, who was monitoring the video feed from Hawk Two, which was being flown by the computer. “No buildings large enough for a radar. There were two trailers parked beneath the overpass we saw, that was it.”
“Yeah, okay, let’s check those trailers out. They used to hide Scuds under the overpasses during the war,” said Zen. He jumped into Hawk Two, which was flying approximately eight miles to the north of One. He started to descend, approaching a town of about two dozen buildings nestled in an L-shaped valley. The overpass was just south of the settlement.
“Major, we’re getting down toward bingo,” said Chris Ferris.
“Hawk leader. We have enough to get over to that area where O’Brien had the cell phones?”
“We should,” answered Ferris.
“I’m still trying to get a definite fix,” said the radio intercept operator. “Roughly thirty miles south of us. Map says there’s nothing there.”
“That makes it more interesting,” said Breanna.
“Roger that,” said Jeff, still flying Hawk Two. He dropped through two thousand feet, tipping his wing toward the overpass. The two trucks looked long and boxy, standard tractor-trailers.
Undoubtedly up to no good or they wouldn’t have been RAZOR’S EDGE
217
placed here, but he couldn’t just shoot them up—as Breanna would undoubtedly point out.
“Trucks look like they’re civilian types,” he said. “We can pass on the location to CentCom.”
Zen turned Hawk Two back toward Quicksilver and told the computer to take it into a standard trail position.
Then he jumped back into Hawk One, streaking ahead of the Megafortress as it angled southward toward the coordinates O’Brien had given. Breanna had pushed the throttle to accelerate, staying close to the U/MF.
“I believe you’re ten miles north of the source,” said O’Brien.
“Roger that.”
The Megafortress flight crew, meanwhile, prepared their missiles for a strike, in case Zen found something worth hitting. The large bomb bay doors in the belly of the plane opened and a JSOW missile—a standoff weapon with a two-thousand-pound warhead that guided itself to a GPS strike point downloaded from the flight deck—trundled into position.
“We’ll nail the son of a bitch if we have a positive target,” said Bree, talking to Ferris. Between the open bay doors and the uncoated nose, Quicksilver was now a fairly visible target to Iraqi radar, though at nearly thirty thousand feet and stuffed with ECMs and warning gear, she’d be tough to hit.
The pilot they’d rescued probably thought the same thing.
“Zen, do you have a target?” asked Bree.
“Negative,” he said, eyes pasted on the video feed. A series of low-lying hills gave way to an open plain crisscrossed by shallow ditches or streams. There were no buildings that he could see, not even houses.
“It’s exactly five miles dead on your nose,” said O’Brien.
“I’m still looking for the building,” said Jennifer.
218
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
Zen saw a large, whitish rectangle on his right at about three miles. He popped the magnification and began to tell Bree that they had something in sight. But he’d gotten no more than her name from his mouth before Quicksilver shuddered and moved sideways in the air. In the next moment it stuttered toward the earth, clearly out of control.
High Top
1750
MACK SMITH RESISTED THE URGE—BARELY—TO KICK THE
toolbox across the tarmac. “When is the plane going to be ready, Garcia?” he said.
“I’m working on it, sir,” said the technician, hunkered over the right engine. “You’re lucky I took this apart, Major. Big-time problem with the pump.”
“Just—get—it—back—together.”
“I shall be released.”
“And if I hear one more, just one more line that sounds like a Dylan song, that could be from a Dylan song, or that I think is from a Dylan song, I’m going to stick that wrench down your throat.”
“That’s no way to talk to anybody,” said Major Alou, walking over to see what the fuss was about.
“Yeah,” said Mack.
“Louis, I need you to look at Raven,” said Alou. “The pressure in that number three engine—”
“No way!” yelled Mack as Garcia climbed down off his ladder. “No fucking way. He’s working on my plane.”
“The Megafortresses have priority here,” said Alou.
“Garcia works for me. You’re a guest, Major. I suggest you start acting like one.”
“Yeah? A guest, huh? A guest?”
RAZOR’S EDGE
219
Mack booted the tool case in disgust. A screwdriver flew up and nailed him in the shin.
Aboard Quicksilver , over Iraq 1750
BREANNA FELT HERSELF THROWN SIDEWAYS AGAINST HER
restraints, the Megafortress plunging out from under her like a bronco machine on high speed. Pitched in her seat, she pushed her stick gently to the left, resisting the urge to jerk back and try to muscle the plane back level.
The plane didn’t respond.
She bent forward, right hand on the power bar on the console between the two pilots. The front panels looked like Christmas trees ablaze with caution and problem lights.
The engines were solid, all in the green.
Rudder pedals, stick, she thought. Stick, damn it.
“Computer, my control,” she chided.
The computer did not respond.