“It’s cargo on a cargo plane, Boomer. What else are you going to do with it?” Martindale asked.
“Maybe it’s a cargo plane in one configuration, sir,” Boomer replied, “but move the cargo around and slip a modular container through an opening in the belly, and now the cargo plane becomes a tanker or a surveillance platform. It’s based on the same concept as the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship that’s all the rage now—one ship that can do different missions depending on which hardware modules you put on board.”
“Plug and play? That simple?”
“It wasn’t easy to get the weight and balance, fuel system, and electrical systems to integrate,” Boomer admitted, “but we think we have the bugs worked out. We pump fuel around between the various tanks to maintain balance. Without the mission-adaptive system, I don’t think it would’ve been possible at all. The Loser can lift cargo or the mission modules inside through the cargo hatch or belly hatch—”
“Belly hatch?” Martindale interrupted him with a wink. “You mean the bomb bay?”
“It’s not a bomb bay, sir, it’s a
“So it became a ‘cargo access hatch,’” the former president said. “Got it, Doc.”
“Yes, sir,” Jon said, feigning exasperation at having to continually remind people of his point. “Boomer’s system automatically arranges the modules as necessary for the mission, plugs them in, and turns them on, all by remote control. It can do the same while in flight. When a module is needed or one is expended, the cargo handling system can replace it with another one.”
“What modules do you have available, Jon?” Martindale asked.
“We’re making up new ones every month, sir,” Jon said proudly. “Right now we have boom aerial refueling modules along with hose-and-drogue wingtip pods, which are installed on the ground and can refuel probe-equipped planes. We also have laser radar modules for air and ground surveillance with satellite datalink; infrared and electro-optical surveillance modules; and the active self-defense module. We’re pretty close on a netrusion module and a Flighthawk control system—launching, directing, and perhaps even refueling and rearming FlightHawks from the Loser.”
“Of course, we would
“Boomer is highly motivated to say the least,” Jon added. “He won’t be happy until he gets a Loser into space.”
Martindale and McLanahan looked at each other, each instantly reading the other’s thoughts; they then looked at the otherworldly sight of the massive Loser aircraft gliding down the runway in that flying-saucer slow- motion pace.
“Dr. Masters, Mr. Noble…” President Martindale began. Just then, the XC-57 Loser suddenly accelerated with a powerful roar of its engines, climbing out at an impossibly steep angle and disappearing from sight within moments. Martindale shook his head, amazed all over again. “Where can we go to talk, boys?”
CHAPTER TWO
The road to Hades is easy to travel.
“Close the damn door before I start bawling like a damned baby,” Kurzat Hirsiz, president of the Republic of Turkey, said, wiping his eyes once again before putting away his handkerchief. He shook his head. “One of the dead was a two-year-old. Completely innocent. Probably couldn’t even pronounce ‘PKK.’”
Thin, oval-faced, and tall, Hirsiz was a lawyer, academic, and expert on macroeconomics as well as the chief executive of the Republic of Turkey. He’d served for many years as an executive director of the World Bank and lectured around the world on economic solutions for the developing world before being appointed prime minister. Popular throughout the world as well as in his homeland, he’d received the largest percentage of the vote of the members of the Grand National Assembly in the country’s history when he was elected president.
Hirsiz and his top advisers had just returned from a press conference in Cancaya, the presidential compound in Ankara. He had read the list of names of the dead that had been given to him a few moments before the televised briefing, and had then taken some questions. When he was told by a reporter that one of the dead was a toddler, he suddenly broke down, openly weeping, and abruptly ended the presser. “I want the names, phone numbers, and some details about all the victims. I will call them personally after this meeting,” Hirsiz’s aide picked up the phone to issue the orders. “I will attend each of the families’ services as well.”
“Don’t feel embarrassed breaking down like that, Kurzat,” Ayse Akas, the prime minister, said. Her eyes were red as well, although she was known in Turkey for her personal and political toughness, something to which her two ex-husbands would certainly attest. “It shows you’re human.”
“I can just hear the PKK bastards laughing at the sight of me crying in front of a roomful of reporters,” Hirsiz said. “They win twice. They take advantage of both a lapse in security procedures and a lapse in control.”
“It just solidifies what we have been telling the entire world for almost three decades—the PKK is and always will be nothing but murderous slime,” General Orhan Sahin, secretary-general of the Turkish National Security Council, interjected. Sahin, an army general, coordinated all military and intelligence activities between Cancaya, the military headquarters at Baskanligi, and Turkey’s six major intelligence agencies. “It is the most devastating and dastardly PKK attack in many years, since the cross-border attacks of 2007, and by far the most daring. Fifteen dead, including six on the ground; fifty-one injured—including the commander of the Jandarma himself, General Ozek—and the tanker aircraft a complete loss.”
The president returned to his desk, loosened his tie, and lit a cigarette, the signal for everyone else in the office to do so as well. “What is the status of the investigation, General?” Hirsiz asked.
“Well under way, Mr. President,” Sahin said. “The initial reports are disturbing. One of the deputy heads of security for the airport has not responded to orders to return to his post and cannot be located. I’m hoping he’s just on vacation and will check in soon after he hears the news, but I’m afraid we’ll find it was an inside job.”
“My God,” Hirsiz muttered. “The PKK infiltrates into our units and offices higher and higher every day.”
“I think it is a very good possibility that PKK agents have infiltrated into the very office of the Jandarma, the organization tasked with defending the country against those murderous bastards,” Sahin said. “My guess is that Ozek’s travel plans were leaked and the PKK targeted that plane specifically to kill him.”
“But you told me Ozek was going to Diyarbakir on a surprise inspection!” Hirsiz exclaimed. “Is it possible they’ve infiltrated so deeply and are organized so well that they can dispatch a kill squad with a shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile so quickly?”
“It has to be an inside job, but not just one man—that base must be infested with insurgents in deep cover, in highly trusted positions, ready to be activated and deployed within hours with specific attacks tasks.”
“It’s a level of sophistication we’ve dreaded but have been expecting, sir,” General Abdullah Guzlev, chief of staff of the Turkish military forces, said. “It’s time we reacted in kind. We can’t be content to just play defense, sir. We need to go after the leadership of the PKK and wipe them out once and for all.”
“In Iraq and Iran, I suppose, General?” Prime Minister Akas asked.
“That’s where they hide, Madam Prime Minister, like the cowards they are,” Guzlev snapped. “We’ll get an update from our undercover operatives, find a few nests with as many of the murderous bastards as possible in them, and eliminate them.”
“Exactly what will that accomplish, General,” Foreign Minister Mustafa Hamarat asked, “except further angering our neighbors, the world community, and our supporters in the United States and Europe?”
“Excuse me, Minister,” Guzlev said angrily, “but I’m not much concerned about what someone on another continent thinks while innocent men, women, and children are being murdered by—”
