“I’ve seen them land on smaller strips.”
“You’ve seen everything, huh?”
“Not everything.” Danny stared at Nuri. “I’m just as scared as you are,” he told him. “But we’ll get out of here.”
Neither one of them spoke for a moment.
“Where’s the warhead?” asked Nuri finally.
“It’s up by the wreckage.”
“How do we get it into the plane?”
“We’ll have to rig something to carry it,” said Danny. “They usually have a come-along and some other loading tools in the back.”
“Why don’t we use the van to pull it in?” said Nuri. “If we can get it into the back.”
“Actually, we could just drag it,” said Danny. “If we had a chain.”
“The one on the fence at the gate.”
“Good idea.”
They took Tarid and the wounded Iranian out, then drove down and got the chain. As the van backed up near the warhead, Danny realized they could tip it into the back if they could lift it just a little. The gear the Iranians had used to move it around had been destroyed by the fire, but Flash figured out how to use the van’s jack to push the nose of the warhead cone up just enough to get it onto the bed of the van. Pushing back slowly, they levered it far enough inside to get it in.
“Sucker is heavy,” said Flash.
“Not as heavy as you’d think,” said Danny. “Look at it. It fits in the back of the van.”
“Considering what it can do, it ought to weigh a million pounds,” said Nuri.
“Exactly.”
“You sure it ain’t going to blow us up?” said Flash.
Before Danny could answer, the high-pitched whine of the approaching MC-17’s engines broke over the hillside.
It was no hyperbole to say that the MC-17 had no peer among jet transports when it came to flying behind enemy lines. The stock version of the aircraft had been designed to operate under battlefield conditions, landing and taking off from short, barely improved airfields, and it did that job superbly. The MC-17/M shared those qualities, and added a few of its own. It could fly in the nap of the earth, hugging the ground to avoid enemy radar. It could maintain its course to within a half meter over a 3,000-mile, turn-filled route — no easy task, even for a GPS-aided computer. And it could land in a dust bowl without damaging its engines.
Actually, the latter was not part of the design specs. While the engines were designed and situated to minimize the potential for damage, especially from bird strikes, there was only so much the engineers could do. Their debates about where to draw the line had filled several long and surprisingly heated meetings at Dreamland, not to mention countless sessions after hours in the all-ranks “lounge,” aka bar.
Those discussions came back to Breanna as the wheels of the C-17 hit the ground. Dust flew everywhere. The dirt was packed down and hard, but it wasn’t asphalt, let alone cement. The plane shook violently, drifting to the right but finally holding to the runway area and slowing to a crawl well short of the cratered apron where the van and warhead were waiting.
“Let’s turn it around,” said Captain Dominick. “The tail will be right next to them.”
It was a narrow squeeze, but they managed to make it, pulling around in a three-point turn that even a driving instructor would have been proud of.
Boston, Sugar, and the loadmaster sprinted down the ramp. Nuri was already at the wheel of the van.
“You sure we ain’t gonna glow sittin’ next to this sucka?” asked Sugar.
“You glow already,” said Boston.
There wasn’t enough room for the van with the Ospreys in the rear. But the loadmaster improvised a chain and tackle and a pair of impromptu ramps, allowing them to bring the warhead into the bay and place it, without too much groaning, onto a pair of dollies. They wheeled the weapon alongside the Ospreys, chaining it to the side.
By that time, Greasy Hands had helped Hera bring Tarid and the wounded missile technician inside. They lay them on temporary stretchers behind the Ospreys in the seating area. The accommodations weren’t exactly first class, but neither was in a position to complain.
“Greasy Hands? What are you doing here?” asked Danny when he saw Parsons.
“Enjoying retirement,” said the chief, clapping him on the back.
“Social Security doesn’t stretch as far as it used to,” said Boston. “So he decided to moonlight. We pay him under the table.”
“Well I’m glad as hell to see you,” said Danny.
“Same here,” said Greasy Hands. “Next time you guys kidnap somebody, though, pick someone about fifty pounds lighter.”
They got off the ground a few minutes later, the aircraft shuddering as the wind kicked up, but lifting them up with plenty of room to spare.
Plenty of room being defined, in this case, as three and a half meters.
Breanna worked out a course that would bring them back to Baghdad International Airport, where they could refuel before continuing on. They would also be able to get a doctor for Tarid, who’d woken but remained dazed on a makeshift stretcher below. The other Iranian didn’t look as if he’d make it, though he was still alive.
“Twenty minutes to Iraqi territory,” Breanna announced. “We’ll be in Baghdad inside the hour.”
The MC-17 had come east without a direct escort, operating on the theory that they were safer if the Iranians had no idea they were there. The fighters tasked to protect it remained over southern and northern Iraq, ready to scramble if necessary, but otherwise attempting to look as if they were interested in something else.
The theory had proven correct on the flight in, but now reality injected complications. Because of the coup, the Iranian air force had scrambled several flights of MiGs. While they were slow to get in the air — the C-17 had already landed at the missile site before the first one took off — there were now a full dozen over the western half of the country, with more on the runways.
The AWACS detected one of the patrols flying up from the south on a rough intercept with the MC-17 shortly after it took off. Though it didn’t seem likely that the Iranians had spotted the cargo aircraft, the fighter group commander decided to take no chances. The group of F-15s to the south were told to intercept.
The fighters were picked up immediately by Iranian air defenses. Radars and missile sites began tracking them along the border area, trying to lock on and launch missiles. One of the antiaircraft sites was almost directly in the MC-17’s path. The northern group of interceptors, which included an F-16 Wild Weasel SAM suppressor, was ordered to take out the defenses. More MiGs came out for them as they started toward the site.
In the space of ninety seconds the sky became intensely crowded and angry.
The cargo aircraft, however, remained at very low altitude, undetected by either the SAMs or the Iranian interceptors.
“I think we can sneak by all this,” Dominick told Breanna. “We just stay on course.”
“Exactly.”
The word was no sooner out of her mouth than the AWACS announced a new warning: A pair of Iranian fighters had taken off from Tabriz and were heading south, in their direction. Two more aircraft were coming off the runway right behind them.
Breanna looked at the IDs, which were flashed over via a messaging system from the AWACS. The planes were Su-27s, older Russian aircraft recently sold to Iran. They were long in the tooth — but would have no trouble shooting down an unarmed cargo aircraft. Both were equipped with improved versions of Slotback radar; the “look- down, shoot-down” radar system made it easy for them to locate and destroy aircraft at low altitudes.
The MC-17 was a sitting duck. Even a Megafortress would have had trouble against them, if it didn’t have its Flighthawks.
“They’ll see us as soon as they come further south,” Breanna warned Frederick. “We need to get as close to that border as we can. I’m going to call the F-15s south. Maybe they can help.”
