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Alou guffawed.
Fentress tucked the Flighthawk’s wing toward the ground, rolling around and back to the south before circling back. He scouted the valley as he flew; at eight thousand feet, he was lower than many of the mountain peaks ahead. The Bronco, weighed down with its passengers and climbing to get through the hills, continued to lag behind. Just as Hawk One drew back into its trail position, the RWR blared.
“Zeus ahead,” Alou warned Mack. “Can you get higher?”
“Not without divine intervention.”
A green and yellow flower blossomed in the darkness before him, then another, then another. An upside-down cloud rose from the ground—there were a half-dozen Zsu-23s down there. Fentress accelerated over the exploding shells. “I’ll take out the flak dealer,” he told Mack.
“I’m counting on you, Hawk boy,” said Mack. “Get
’em quick—I don’t want to waste any more gas turning around.”
Fentress tucked left, zigging as another emplacement opened up. He was about two thousand feet over the effective range of the guns—though probably close enough for a lucky shot to nail him. The radar operator on the flight deck warned that there were at least two other guns farther up the valley that hadn’t started firing yet.
Shells exploded above him—heavier weapons, Zsu-57s maybe. Unguided but nasty, their shells could reach over twelve thousand feet, about twice as high as the Zsu-23s.
Fentress realized he was boxed in by the antiaircraft fire. He started to dive on his first target anyway.
“I’m going to run right past them, real low,” said Mack.
“Keep their attention and—”
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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
The rest of his sentence was drowned out by the warning tone of the RWR. A new threat screen opened up—the passive receiver had found a helicopter radar ahead.
“Bogey,” Alou told Mack. “Low. Closing on you. It just came out of nowhere.”
“I’ll get it,” said Fentress, flicking his stick left as C3
marked out the contact as a Russian-made Hind helicopter. He began to accelerate, but as he went to arm his cannon, his screens went blank.
Aboard Wild Bronco , over Iraq 0042
THE MUSHROOMING ARCS OF GREEN-TINTED ANTIAIRCRAFT
fire suddenly flared red. There was a flash of light so bright that Danny Freah thought a star had exploded.
“Jesus, what was that?” he said.
“Something just nailed the Flighthawk,” said Mack Smith.
“Shit.”
“We got other problems. Hang tight. This is going to be a bitch.”
“We’re flying through the flak?”
“Close your eyes.”
IT WAS A WORTHLESS GESTURE, BUT MACK POUNDED THE
throttles for more speed, hoping to somehow convince the lumbering aircraft to get a move on. The air percolated with the explosions of the antiaircraft guns; the wings tipped up and down, and the tail seemed to want to pull to the right for some reason. Cursing, Mack did his best to hold steady, riding right through a wall of flak.
The helicopter was dead ahead, four miles, and coming RAZOR’S EDGE
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at him, fat and red in the Bronco’s infrared screen.
Served him right for leaving the damn Sidewinders on the ground, he thought. Son of a bitch.
“Bronco, stand out of the way so we can nail that Hind,” said Alou.
“Thanks, Major, but where exactly do you want me to go?”
“Circle.”
“Fuck off. I can’t afford the gas, and sooner or later these bastards are going to nail me.”
The Bronco bucked upward, riding the currents into a clear space beyond the flak. Another ball of tracers puffed about a mile ahead.
“Take out the guns,” said Mack.
“Helo’s first,” said Alou. “They’re stopping the flak—they don’t want to hit him.”
“How sweet,” said Mack, tucking his wing to the left as sharply as he dared, then back the other way as the helicopter closed. He could feel the plane’s weight change dramatically and tried to compensate with his rudder, but the plane slid away from him. They flopped back and forth, the OV-10 alternately threatening to spin, stall completely, or roll over and stop dead in the air. The helo began firing, barely a mile from his face.
Aboard Raven , over Iraq 0050
SOMEWHERE FAR ABOVE HIM THE FLIGHT CREW TRADED
snippets of information on the location of the helicopter and the triple A. There was a warning—an AMRAAM
flashed from the belly of the Megafortress.
Fentress had only a vague sense of the world beyond 262
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
the small area around him. His eyes were focused on the gray screen in front of him, his consciousness defined by the two words in the middle:
CONTACT LOST.
He was dead, nailed by the flak dealer.
Aboard Wild Bronco , over Iraq 0050
MACK SMITH SAW THE GAUGE FOR THE OIL PRESSURE IN
the right engine peg right and then spin back left. It could have been tracking the weight distribution of his plane—he could feel the assault team rolling back and forth in the rear with his maneuvers.
“Tell your guys to stop screwing around back there,”
Mack told Danny.
The captain made a garbled sound in reply, either cursing or puking into his mask.
Mack wrestled the stick to try to get back level. The Hind passed off to his right, its gunfire trailing but missing.
The stinker was probably going to fire heat-seekers next.
So where the hell was Alou and his magic missiles?
They weren’t that stinking close, for cryin’ out loud.
Mack pushed the stick forward to throw the Bronco into a dive. He tossed diversionary flares. A second later something whipped past his wings, trailing to the right after a flare. Something else exploded well off to his left.
A fresh volley of tracers kept him from gloating. The helicopter was still on his butt.
Mack slapped the stick and jammed the pedals, pushing the plane almost sideways. The Hind shot past, arcing to the right so close that Mack could have taken out his RAZOR’S EDGE
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handgun and shot the bastard through the canopy. Instead he lurched left, figuring the helicopter was spinning for another attack. He tucked his wing and picked up a bit of speed and altitude north before tracers flared on his right once again. He thought he heard something ting the aircraft, but it could have been one of the Whiplash crew kicking against the side.
“Hey, Alou—any fuckin’ time you want to nail the raghead is okay with me,” he said, slapping the plane back left.
As he did so, a sharp downdraft pitched his nose toward the rocks. An AMRAAM from the Megafortress had found the Hind.
“Hey, there’s two more helicopters on the ground down there,” said Freah.
“We’ll save them for next time,” said Mack, pulling the plane level.
Incirlik
0100
JENNIFER TURNED FROM THE EQUIPMENT CONSOLE AND
put her head down to the laptop screen, rechecking the sequence she had to enter. She typed it without looking, cursed as she made a mistake, backspaced, then reentered. The others on the flightdeck—Breanna, General Elliott, the handsome but somewhat stuck-up colonel from CentCom, and the RIO they’d borrowed to help work the gear—all stared at her.
“Just a second,” she told them.
“We’re waiting for you, young lady,” said the CentCom colonel.
General Elliott looked like he’d strangle him. She’d always liked him.
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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
Jennifer studied the map again, then entered the last set of coordinates. She hit Enter; the laptop spit back the numbers without hesitation.
“So?” asked Breanna.