and communications satellite network in a matter of hours.
Today, however, Masters wasn’t under a government or commercial contract to launch NIRTSats over Iran— this he was doing for himself.
“Beghin Airport, near Kerman, Iran, about two hundred fifty miles north of Bandar Abbas,” Masters went on. “Two hours after the attack on the Lincoln carrier group, we photographed this.” He directed a laser-beam pointer on the screen, then clicked another button, which zoomed the image down around the laser-beam point.
Magnified in the image was the unmistakable outline of a B-1B Lancer-type aircraft, with a long, pointed nose, slender body, and thin wings swept back very close to its fuselage.
“There’s your Tupolev-22M bomber base, folks: Beghin Airport—at least it’s one of them.” Masters zoomed the image out until the entire airport could be seen. “With the wings folded, those hangars there can accommodate six Backfires, two per hangar, so we’re still missing at least six more. I’m setting up round-the-clock surveillance on Beghin, and I’m still beating the bushes for the other six bombers.”
“Thank you, Jon,” Major General Brien Griffith, Commander of the U.S. Air Force Air Intelligence Agency, said. “Good work.”
“My extreme friggin’ pleasure, sir,” Masters said acidly. “The data’s been relayed to McLanahan and Jamieson via Sheila MacNichol was just returning from the ladies’ room that afternoon—her sixth month of pregnancy seemed like one endless trip to the bathroom—and was returning to her desk in the 722nd Air Refueling Wing commander’s office, where she was “flying a desk,” grounded from her regular job as an Air Force Reserve KC-10 copilot and now acting as the wing executive officer, when she noticed the scared, almost panicked look on the face of the wing commander’s civilian secretary. Instantly her throat turned dry, and the baby kicked, and she felt as if her knees were going to give way.
Even before the secretary got to her feet and headed toward her; even before she saw the door to the wing commander’s office open and the general emerge, his face ashen and drawn; even before she saw the base chaplain and the squadron commander recognize her and open their mouths in surprise and dread—she knew Scotty was dead.
Sheila’s husband Major Scott MacNichol was one of the best, most experienced KC-10 Extender tanker pilots in the U.S. Air Force, a veteran of over four hundred sorties, some over enemy territory, in the “tanker war” during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, a dedicated, knowledgeable flight commander and instructor pilot.
No mission was too tough or impossible. The unspoken rule “never volunteer” was MILSTAR, fed right into their attack computers. They’ll be over the target in ten hours.”
Such ferocity looked so out of place for a young-looking guy like Masters, Griffith thought, but he had undergone much in the last few days—including nearly losing his life at the hands of the Iranian navy. This young man had the technology, the money, and the desire to make Iran pay dearly for what they had done.
RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA THAT SAME TIME First Lieutenant her sixth trip to unheard of in Scotty’s lexicon— he volunteered for everything. He enjoyed, relished, rejoiced, in putting his 600,000pound tanker-transport plane in the tightest spots, the most difficult missions, the shortest runways, the most hazardous jobs.
He had been awarded the Air Medal with two oak-leaf clusters for his service in Desert Storm—very, very unusual for an aircraft that was never supposed to be in enemy territory. Scotty would go in and get his receivers if there was the slightest hint of trouble. There were only forty KC-10 tankers in the world, but as a “force multiplier,” able to refuel both Air Force, Navy, Marines, and many foreign aircraft, it was worth a hundred times its number— too valuable to risk over Indian country. But Scotty went there.
Damn him, Sheila cursed silently, he did this on purpose! When the baby came, she thought, he knew he was going to be asked to give up all the TDY, all the long weeks of traveling to exotic foreign destinations, all the secret missions, the sudden midnight phone calls, the hastily packed mobility bags—packing cold-weather gear when it was ninety degrees out. She knew he wasn’t going to have fun in Hawaii while she stayed home with the backaches and swollen feet and hemorrhoids. He wanted to get all his excitement, all his heroics in before he was asked to settle down and be a regular dad, a regular guy, for the first time in his life.
The wing commander motioned her inside his office and helped her sit down. Sheila knew the chaplain and the squadron commander, of course, so she got right to it: “Scotty … is dead?”
“His plane suffered an unknown, catastrophic failure of some kind over the Gulf of Oman,” the wing commander said. “His plane was lost with all aboard. I’m so sorry, Lieutenant.
Sheila tried not to cry, but the tears came unbidden, and then the sobbing. She didn’t mean to do that, in front of the wing king and the squadron commander and the chaplain, but it was happening, and she couldn’t stop it until she heard the wing commander ask his secretary to call for an ambulance to stand by out front, and Sheila decided she wasn’t going to have any of that, so she stopped.
“A … a catastrophic failure, sir? What kind? A bird strike?
Compressor failure? Fuel-system malfunction?” Everyone in this room was an experienced KC-10 driver except for the chaplain, and even he had a couple hundred hours in one—why was he being so obtuse? Probably because the plane had crashed in the ocean—not much chance to do an accident investigation with the pieces scattered across the seabed. The wing king was in his “comfort the grieving survivors” mode, too, so maybe he wasn’t trying to be so evasive—he wasn’t accustomed to talking to widows about compressor stalls, center-of- gravity violations, or inflight emergencies.
“We don’t know yet, Lieutenant … Sheila,” the general said.
“An investigation is under way.”
“The Gulf of Oman? Why was Scotty out there?” Sheila asked. “I heard temporary flight restrictions were in effect for all airspace within five hundred miles of Iran. What was he doing over the Gulf of Oman?”
The wing commander looked at the chaplain, who let go of Sheila’s hand and stepped away. “Sheila, please, let’s not focus on where Scotty’s plane went down right now, all right? I just want you to know how sorry we are, and that we want to help you through this terrible tragedy.”
“This has to do with Iran, doesn’t it?” Sheila asked, the hurt turning into stone-cold anger. “All the things the government has been saying about how great, how wonderful everything is over in the Middle East, it’s not true, is it …?”
“Lieutenant ..
“The Iranians shot him down, didn’t they, sir?” Sheila asked hotly. “The Iranians shot down my Scotty, flying in an unarmed, vulnerable tanker.”
“Lieutenant, please, I know you’re upset, and I’m sorry, truly sorry, but I’m asking you to keep your opinions to yourself, please!”
“I hope we went in there to bomb the crap out of those rag-heads!” Sheila cried. The paramedics were rushing into the wing commander’s office with a gurney, trying to get her to relax, but Sheila’s heart felt as cold, as heavy, and as still as the child in her womb did right now, and the anger she was releasing felt good, felt right. “I hope my Scotty helped us get those damned Iranian terrorists, dammit. I hope they all burn in hell!”
BEGHIN REGIONAL AIRPORT, KERMAN PROVINCE, IRAN 27 APRIL 1997, 0206 HOURS LOCAL
According to law, all flights landing in Iran had to be on the ground and at their arrival gate by midnight; the last flight into Beghin Regional Airport in central Iran had arrived at ten P.m., and shortly thereafter the airport was all but shut down, leaving only maintenance crews at the airport until sunrise. By two A.M. the airport appeared totally deserted …
… except at the extreme southern end of the airport, south of the 11,000-foot-long, 150-foot-wide northwest-southeast running concrete runway that had been closed to commercial and civil traffic two years earlier. Three large and rather shabby-looking hangars and several smaller buildings sat near that closed runway, in front of a large, completely deserted aircraft parking ramp.
Weeds growing up through the cracks on that parking ramp suggested that the ramp had not supported an aircraft in quite some time.
This was the secret Iranian base for one squadron, six planes, of Iran’s most deadly military aircraft, the Tupolev22M bomber, NATO code-named “Backfire.” The Russian-made supersonic Backfire bomber could reach any target in the Middle East within an hour or, refueled from an Iranian C-707 aerial refueling tanker, could reach targets as far away as Italy or Germany in two hours. It carried a devastating 53,000-pound payload of gravity bombs, antiship missiles, or land or sea mines. The presence of Tu-22M Backfire bombers in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s air force had been rumored since 1993, but had been constantly refuted because no Backfires had ever been spotted in Iran.
