system. Push it and you’re going to be lighting candles back there.”
“I don’t have candles.”
He eased the throttle back a notch, concentrating on making sure he was well inside the optimum control range. Then he clicked into the frequency the Navy plane had used to hail the Piaggio.
“Dreamland Playboy One, this is Hawk Leader. I am an American fighter monitoring your flight. Acknowledge, please.”
There was no answer.
“Dreamland Playboy One. Identify yourself and give your flight heading.”
“Hawk Leader, Dreamland Playboy One acknowledges. We are following on our filed flight plan. Stand by for compass headings and position, as requested.”
Son of a bitch. There was no mistaking that smooth, full-of-himself voice. Mack was flying the plane.
Jeff clicked the transmit button to dial into the JSTARS command frequency.
Jed had just reconnected with Ms. O’Day when the major did his arm waving thing routine again. Jed asked her to stay on the line this time, then clicked to find his cousin.
“We have Smith,” said Jeff.
“You’re shitting me.”
“Jed.”
“Hang on,” Jed told him, desperately trying to flag down the major so he could patch both lines together.
Turned out all it took was pushing a button near the switch.
“Hawk Leader, please repeat what you told me,” Jed told his cousin when the connection was set.
“We have Smith in a plane heading east over the Mediterranean. We’re not sure whether we can force him down or not, but we can try.”
“Jed, I need to talk to you alone, please,” said Ms. O’Day. “A single secure line. Now.”
He pushed the button quickly and got the knob back, holding on to the D.C. scrambled satellite transmission.
“The plane has to be stopped at all costs,” O’Day told him. “No pilot. No trial in Iran.”
“They’re on it,” he said.
“Jed, listen to what I said. No trial. And this does not come directly from e, do you understand? You’re not running tape.”
“Well, of course not.”
“Hawk Leader probably is.”
“Boss, are you telling me to terminate the pilot?” asked Jed, finally understanding what she had told him.
The National Security Advisor didn’t answer.
“Ms. O’Day?”
“Jed, a trial now will prolong a crisis that you know must be ended quickly.
“I –”
“Why do you think you’re there, Cascade?” she said.
Before he could say anything else, the line snapped clear.
Danny Freah and the rest of the Whiplash assault team practically whooped as they cleared the coast and headed out over the Mediterranean.
The ex-hostages didn’t seem too disappointed either.
“Yo, hold it down,” yelled the pilot. “We got a situation. I’m trying to hear what the hell Raven’s doing.”
Danny got up from the rack seat and made his way forward to the flight deck area. He leaned across the small bulkhead to speak to the pilot.
“We’re still available for SAR,” he told the lieutenant. It was a command, not a question.
“Raven and Hawk One are tracking a seaplane,” said the pilot. “They think Major Smith is aboard.”
“Shit,” said Freah. “Get us there.”
“Captain, hang on.” The pilot pressed his hand against his earphones. “Task force is directing us to an assault ship. It’s about ten minutes away, dead north.”
“Where’s the seaplane?”
“That way,” said the pilot, pointing back toward the coast. “Captain, seriously.”
“Seriously, get us there,” insisted Danny.
“Hey, cousin,” said Cascade, snapping onto the line.
The scrambled line gave voice a synthetic, machine-like sound. Even so, Jeff heard a tremble in his cousin’s voice.
“Hawk here, Cascade,” he said.
“Jeff, I got bad news. That seaplane. It has to be stopped.”
“We’re working on it. Can you verify there are Egyptian fighters en route? Raven has them now maybe thirteen, fourteen minutes away on their present course.”
“Yeah, we got that. they’re not on our side. They are, but not in the way we need them to be.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“We need the seaplane stopped. At all costs.”
“All costs how?”
“All costs.”
“Jed – you’re telling me to waste Mack Smith?”
“I’m telling you. I’m telling you there are four F-14 Tomcats en route with orders to shoot it down. I gave them the orders myself.”
“Shit. You gave orders?”
“Cuz, you have your orders.”
“Fuck. Jed what the hell is going on?”
There was no answer. Cascade had broken the circuit.
Mack tried to will his heart to slow down, afraid the thumping would tip off his captor.
Zen’s voice had sounded so foreign, so wild, it had seemed like a hallucination, a last dream before dying. But it was definitely real.
Fate? Allah?
Holy shit. Talk about luck.
Maybe. Could go the other way too. The Imam still had his aura. And his pistol.
Mack worked the controls calmly, frowning in the general direction of the fuel gauge. He’d build a pretense to land. Get down in the water, wait for the Navy to arrive. Or whoever was coming behind Stockard.
“What is the problem” demanded the Imam.
“The engine, the right engine sees a little flaky,”
Knife told him. “And I’m starting to run out of gas.”
The Iranian slid his neck back against the seat. “Both engines are fine. You have plenty of fuel. Continue on your course.”
“Good think you’re a pilot,” said Mack. “You can take over if I have a heart attack.”
“You will not die of a heart attack today. That I guarantee,” said the Imam, moving the pistol out so there was no doubt that it was aimed at Mack’s head.
“Didn’t think so,” said Smith. “I try to watch what I eat.”
By the time the Osprey had the Italian seaplane in view, they were barely ten minutes from Egyptian airspace.
“The Egyptian are scrambling planes,” Breanna told Danny. “They may try and shoot you down.”
“That’s the least of our problems,” said Zen, who was plugged into the same line.
“Easy for you to say,” Danny shot back.
“We have to take them down before the Egyptians get there,” said Zen. “And if we don’t, four Tomcats from the Nimitz will. You’re the only chance we have to get Mack out alive. I’ll make them ditch, you pick him up.”
“It’s a long shot, Major,” Danny told him. “They go down in the water, maybe we fish him out, maybe we don’t. better to have them surrender and follow us into Greece.”
