“Tell him thank-you from my men and myself.”
“He can hear everything you say and has been monitoring this battle, and he will continue to monitor what you’re doing from now on,” Briggs said. Buzhazi’s eyes drifted up to the sky as if he was searching for the eyes watching them. “He convinced a lot of very powerful people that you were going to bring down the theocratic regime and help stabilize the region. If he’s found wrong, he will be extremely embarrassed, and I will take great pleasure in removing the source of that embarrassment — you.”
“He shall have no fear — the theocracy will die, or I shall,” Buzhazi said. “Iran is done sponsoring death and destruction in the name of the religion of peace. If I am successful, I shall pursue peace with the rest of the world — Arab, Westerner, Zionist, Asian, and European, as well as Persian, I swear it. Again, I thank you for your help.”
“We’re done helping you, General — we’re outta here,” Briggs said. “Your promises don’t mean shit to me — only your actions matter. Make sure no one tries to follow us east of this place, or we’ll come back and finish the Pasdaran’s job.”
“No one will follow you, I swear.”
“Better pray that’s so, General. If you have any friends in the regular armed forces who aren’t friends with the clerics, I suggest you give them a call and get them out here to give you a hand against any other Pasdaran forces who might try a counterattack. And I’ve got one more promise for you, Generaclass="underline" The next time I come back here, it’ll be to finish the job — on you.” With that, the four figures ran off, and in the blink of an eye were gone — last seen jumping over the walls of the compound and bounding across the farmlands to the east.
“Those were the American armored commandos you called, sir?” Mansour Sattari asked breathlessly. “But that is impossible! You called them just last night! How could they have gotten out here so quickly?”
Buzhazi stood dumbstruck for a few moments, then shook himself out of his shock and smiled. “I would imagine that’s the secret east of here they don’t wish to share,” he said. “No matter. The Americans did the impossible, and they have delivered to us a miracle and turned the tides in our favor. Now it is time to push forward and take the clerical regime down once and for all!”
It took the team thirty-seven minutes to run twenty miles east of the Khomeini Library — they attracted a lot of incredulous stares from farmers and townspeople, and Hal Briggs was sure there were going to be some frantic phone calls to local gendarmerie, but they continued on without any interference. For safety, they changed their main battery packs for fresh ones before moving into the target area — their batteries were almost depleted, and it would not be prudent to have to defend their destination area with spent batteries installed. Eight miles west of the Kavir Buzurg dry salt marsh and three miles north of a smaller dry lake bed, on the very western edge of the Dasht-e Kavir wastelands, they came across a stretch of paved construction highway in the center of a narrow valley. There were dozens of natural gas wells along the road, and Hal remembered passing a large industrial complex several miles back that had to be the natural gas processing plant for these wells.
In the center of the highway, just east of a bend, sat their objective: an XR-A9 Black Stallion spaceplane, the “magic carpet” that took them from Dreamland to north-central Iran in less than two hours.
“I was starting to get worried, sir,” Captain Hunter “Boomer” Noble said as the four Tin Men approached.
“We radioed you we were on our way,” Hal said.
“Not about you, sir — I was worried we’d miss lunch back at the Lake,” Boomer deadpanned. “Sounds like it went well.”
“We got lucky, Boomer,” Hal said.
“That Iranian commander sure has balls of steel, eh, General? Not one, not two, but six truck bombs — and he decides he’s going to drive one of them? Gutsy.”
“The man’s a coward, Captain,” Hal said acidly. “He probably said he’d drive one because he’d rather die in a blaze of glory than be tortured or killed by the same bastards he trained to torture and kill.”
“Still, you gotta admit his timing couldn’t have been better. He initiates his attack just before the Pasdaran forms up to attack, and right when you…”
“You want to go back there and give him a big wet sloppy one, Captain, go right ahead,” Briggs snapped. “Otherwise, let’s mount up and get the hell out here. Briggs to McLanahan.”
“I’ve been listening, Hal,” Patrick responded via their subcutaneous global transceiver system. “Good job. We see a possible sign of pursuit — several small vehicles heading your way, about fifteen minutes out. No general defense alert yet, just a lot of confused radio traffic from your area, but I expect they’ll issue a nationwide mobilization order soon. The regular military’s got to get involved sooner or later.”
“We’ll be out of here in ten, if only your boy Noble would just shut his face for a second,” Hal said.
After taking one more security scan of the area to be sure there was no pursuit, the four commandos climbed inside the passenger module in the Black Stallion’s cargo bay. Boomer and his copilot started the engines, and in less than ten minutes they were racing down the highway-turned-airstrip and airborne.
“Just airborne, and we’re already close to emergency fuel,” said the Black Stallion’s copilot. The spacecraft flew east, but only long enough to just clear the Alborz Mountain range on the coast of the Caspian Sea, then they headed north, not more than sixty miles east of Tehran.
“No such thing as ‘emergency fuel’ on this flight, Dr. Page — there’s no friendly place to abort to within range,” Boomer said. “We either reach the tanker or we jettison the passenger module, then punch out.”
“Hey, I signed for this aircraft — no one is ‘punching’ or ‘jettisoning’ anything,” the copilot, Ann Page, said.
“I second the senator’s remark,” Hal Briggs said.
“I told you boys to call me ‘Ann,’” Page said. “Remember it’s costing you a shot of top-shelf tequila at the Bellagio every time you call me something other than ‘Ann.’”
“Crossing the coastline now,” Boomer said. “The computer will start the pre-contact checklist automatically when we’re within fifty miles of the tanker’s Mode Four transponder. You can follow along on the MFD if you’d like; the checklist routine will prompt you when you come to a check and response step.”
“Computers running checklists…what is the world coming to?” Ann mused. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I feel naked without a library full of paper checklists in a cubby around me.”
“You’ll get over it, ma’am,” Boomer said.
“You owe me another shot of tequila when we get home, Boomer — that’s the fifth time you’ve called me ‘ma’am’ on this flight,” Ann said. “By the time we’re back on the ground, I won’t have to buy myself another drink long past I retire.”
“Double or nothing if I plug the tanker on the first try,” Boomer said.
“You’re on — and no using any computers,” Ann said, laughing. She found it incredibly easy to relax with this crew. Although she sounded like a rookie, Ann Page actually had more miles in space than anyone on board the Black Stallion — in fact, she had three times as many miles in space as all of the men and women who wore astronaut’s wings in the U.S. armed services combined.
A native of Springfield, Missouri but a Navy brat who had traveled the world with her father, a nuclear guided missile cruiser skipper who had lost his life in a battle with the Russians in the Persian Gulf over a decade ago, Ann Page had never served in the military but had always been considered just as much a part of the armed forces as anyone who wore a uniform. Thin and athletic, with large green eyes and auburn hair she was unabashedly letting turn gray, Ann could have easily been confused with any female senior general officer — and in fact she was regularly treated as such by military and civilian leaders who knew her.