the sky even brighter than the decoy flares — two fat, red-hot, yet invisible columns of jet-engine exhaust. It was too irresistible a target. Both missiles headed right for the tubes of heat and exploded harmlessly more than a hundred feet underneath the MV-32.
Patrick didn’t see that. What he saw was the Iranian fighter still barreling directly at the MV-32. Either the Iranian was “target fixated”—so intent on watching his quarry die that he ignored his primary job of flying the airplane — or he was closing in for another missile attack or a gun kill. “Bandit’s at your twelve o’clock, five miles, slightly high, closing fast!” Patrick radioed. “Lock him up and nail him!”
The MV-32’s pilot immediately activated his own infrared targeting sensor and aimed it where Patrick told him. At less than six miles, the fighter was a huge green dot on the pilot’s targeting scope. He immediately locked up the fighter into the targeting computer, slaved the twenty-millimeter Gatling gun to the target, and at three miles opened fire.
The Iranian pilot decided to fire his own thirty-millimeter cannon at two miles — that was the last mistake he’d ever make. The MV-32’s shells sliced into the fighter’s canopy and engines a fraction of a second before the Iranian pilot squeezed his trigger. The jet exploded into a fireball and traced a flaming streak across the night sky until it plowed into the mountains below, less than a mile in front of the Pave Dasher.
“Good shooting, guys,” Patrick said when the fighter disappeared from his tactical display. “Now start heading southwest. Your tail’s clear. Nearest bandit is at your five o’clock, thirty-seven miles, not locked on.”
“Thanks for the help, boss,” Hal Briggs radioed. “See you back at home plate.”
“Don’t hold breakfast. We’re going to be up here awhile,” Patrick said. Rebecca Furness groaned but said nothing.
Five hours later, with the bomber still over three hundred miles from home, the Sky Masters support aircraft — a privately owned DC-10 airliner converted as a launch and support aircraft by the StealthHawk’s designer, Jon Masters of Sky Masters Inc. — maneuvered slightly above and ahead of the Vampire. The DC-10’s pilot, flight engineer, and boom operator, sitting in the boom operator’s pod in the rear looking out through the large “picture window” underneath the boom, all came to the same conclusion: “Sorry, Puppeteer,” the boom operator reported. “The whole left side of the slipway is pushed in, and the slipway door is crumpled up inside there.”
“Any way you can use the boom to pry the door away from the slipway?” Patrick asked.
“It’s worth a try,” the boomer said. Slowly, carefully, he used the refueling boom as a pick, trying to push and pull pieces of metal away from the receptacle at the bottom of the slipway. Twenty minutes later a large piece of metal bounced off the windscreen — thankfully, not cracking it. “Let’s give it a try, Puppeteer.”
Patrick had to do the flying — Rebecca’s eyesight was still too marginal for her to perform this delicate task. Patrick switched the flight-control computers to air-refueling mode and maneuvered the Vampire bomber up into contact position. The boom operator extended the probe. They saw the probe bounce and skid around the broken slipway, then finally ram against the receptacle. “No contact light,” the boomer said. “Toggles aren’t engaging. But I’m right in there.”
“Start the transfer,” Patrick said.
The boomer started the transfer pumps — and immediately the windscreen iced completely over as hundreds of gallons of jet fuel gushed out of the receptacle, streamed back across the windscreen, and froze. “I lost contact with you,” Patrick said, activating the windshield de-ice system. “But I think we took some gas. I’ll keep it as steady as I can — you just keep plugging me.”
It was the weirdest, scariest, and most violent aerial refueling Patrick had ever done. Time after time the refueling nozzle slammed into the damaged slipway; every time the probe reached the receptacle, the boom operator forced the nozzle tight against it, then turned the pumps on low. More fuel streamed out — but some
One hundred miles away from Diego Garcia, the small island in the Indian Ocean leased by the United States Navy from Great Britain as a forward operating air base, the DC-10 unplugged for the last time. “We transferred two hundred thousand pounds, guys — but I have no clue how much actually went into your tanks.”
“At least you stopped the needles from moving to ‘E’ for a while,” Patrick said ruefully. “Thanks. See you on the ground.”
“Good luck, Puppeteer.”
After putting the flight-control system back on its max endurance program, Patrick and Rebecca discussed the approach and landing. There was only one choice: a straight-in approach to the downwind runway. The winds near Diego Garcia would be pushing them toward the island, but the Vampire wouldn’t have the fuel to try to turn into the wind for landing. Patrick would have to do the flying — and he would get only one shot at it.
Patrick tuned the number-one radio to the Navy’s approach frequency. “Rainbow, this is Puppeteer.”
“Puppeteer, this is Charlie,” the U.S. Navy captain in charge of air operations at Diego Garcia Naval Air Station responded. “We’ve been monitoring your flight progress. State your intentions.”
“Straight-in approach to runway one-four, full-stop landing.”
“Will this landing be under full control?”
“Unknown, Charlie.”
“Stand by.” Patrick didn’t have to stand by long: “Request denied, Puppeteer,” the captain said. “Sorry, Puppeteer, but we can’t risk you shutting down the airfield with a crash landing — too many other flights rely on us for a dry strip of concrete. We can vector you to a ditching or bail-out zone and have rescue and recovery units standing by. Advise your intentions.”
“Charlie, we can make it,” Patrick replied. “If it looks like we won’t come in under control, we’ll divert away from the island. But I think we can make it. Requesting permission to land.”
“Request denied, Puppeteer,” the captain responded. “I’m sorry, but that answer comes from Hemingway.” “Hemingway” was the four-star commander of U.S. Central Command, who had overall operational authority over this mission.
“Sir, Puppeteer is declaring an emergency,” Patrick announced. “We have fifteen minutes of fuel and two souls on board. Our intentions are to attempt a full-stop landing on the downwind runway. Please have men and equipment standing by.”
Charlie was already talking — no,
“I copy, Rainbow,” Patrick said. He knew that the ops officer at Diego Garcia knew that Patrick was going to go over all their heads. He didn’t care. The Vampire was in trouble, big trouble, and they weren’t going to make it unless they got permission to land at Diego Garcia.
But a few minutes later Patrick got his answer from the secretary of defense himself — permission to land at Diego Garcia denied. It was too risky closing down that important Indian Ocean runway.
“What do we do now, General?” Rebecca said, remarkably calm for an aircraft commander who was going to lose her plane in just a few minutes. “We brief these contingencies for days before these missions. I can’t believe we actually have to do it.”
A pair of U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bombers rendezvoused with the Vampire bomber to look it over and take pictures. Patrick thought the fighter pilots would try to crowd the bomber off its final approach path — they were tucked in tight, but they weren’t going to try to bully the bigger jet away. “Puppeteer, don’t do it,” one of the Navy pilots radioed. “If you shut down that runway,
“General, think of your family,” someone else said. “Don’t risk your life with this. It’s just a machine. It’s not worth it.”
Patrick still did not reply. In fact, for most of the five-hour-plus flight out of Central Asia, that’s all Patrick had thought about — his son, Bradley, waiting for him back in Nevada. Bradley’s mother, Wendy, had been brutally murdered during a mission in Libya, along with Patrick’s younger brother, Paul. Patrick came home to see his son and bury his brother and then left again to try to rescue his wife when the exiled Libyan king located her in a Libyan prison.
The rescue mission was a failure: Wendy was killed, and Patrick barely made it out alive. He was finally able to bring her body home after the Libyan king set up a new constitutional government in Libya, and they cremated her remains and scattered her ashes in the Pacific Ocean. After that, Patrick vowed he would never leave Bradley’s
