310 yawed to the right. The left-side gear snapped with a cannon-shot report, and the twin-jet bellied out. For a second, it appeared that it might pinwheel onto the grass, but then a wingtip caught, and the plane started turning over. The fuselage broke into three uneven sections. There was a gout of flame when the left wing separated— mercifully, the forward bit of fuselage shot clear, as did the after section, but the middle section stopped almost cold in the middle of the burning jet fuel, and all the efforts of the racing firefighters couldn't change that. It would later be determined that the 127 people killed quickly asphyxiated. Another 104 escaped with varying degrees of injury, including the flight crew. The TV footage would be uplinked within the hour, and a fullblown international incident was now world news.
CLARK FELT A slight chill as his aircraft touched down. Looking out the window, he imagined a certain familiarity, but admitted it was probably imaginary, and besides, all international airports looked pretty much alike in the dark. Forward, the French aviators followed directions, taxiing to the air force terminal for security, instructed to follow another business-type jet which had landed a minute ahead of them.
'Well, we're here,' Ding said, with a yawn. He had two watches on, one for local time and one for Washington, and from them he tried to decide what time his body thought it was. Then he looked outside with all the curiosity of a tourist, and suffered the usual disappointment. It might as easily have been Denver from what he could see.
'Excuse me,' the brunette attendant said. 'They've instructed us to remain in the aircraft while another is serviced first.'
'What's a few more minutes?' Secretary Adler thought, as tired as the rest of them. Chavez looked out the window. 'There, he must have gotten in ahead of us.'
'Kill the cabin lights, will you?' Clark asked. Then he pointed at his partner.
'Why—' Clark cut the SecState off with a gesture. The attendant did as she was told. Ding took his cue and pulled the camera out of his bag.
'What gives?' Adler asked more quietly, as the lights went off.
'There's a G right in front of us,' John replied, taking his own look. 'Not many of them around, and he's going to a secure terminal. Let's see if we can tell who it is, okay?' Spooks had to be spooks, Adler knew. He didn't object. Diplomats gathered information, too, and knowing who had access to such expensive official transport could tell them something about who really rated in the UIR government. In a few seconds, just as their own wheels were chocked, a parade of cars rolled up to the Gulfstream fifty meters away from them on the Iranian—UIR-ian— air force ramp.
'Somebody important,' Ding said.
'How you loaded?'
'ASA 1200, Mr. C.,' Chavez replied, selecting the tele-photo setting. The whole aircraft fit into the frame. He couldn't zoom any closer. He started shooting as the steps came down.
'Oh,' Adler said first. 'Well, that shouldn't be much of a surprise.'
'Daryaei, isn't it?' Clark asked.
'That's our friend,' SecState confirmed.
Hearing this, Chavez got off ten rapid frames, showing the man getting off, to be greeted by some colleagues, who embraced him like a long-lost uncle, then guided him into the car. The vehicles pulled off. Chavez fired off one more, then put the camera back in his bag. They waited another five minutes before they were allowed to de-plane.
'Do I want to know what time it is?' Adler asked, heading for the door.
'Probably not,' Clark decided. 'I guess we'll get a few hours of rack time before the meeting.'
At the bottom of the steps was the French ambassador, with one obvious security guard, and ten more locals. They would travel to the French embassy in two cars, with two Iranian vehicles leading and two more trailing the semi-official procession. Adler went with the ambassador in the first one. Clark and Chavez bundled into the second. They had a driver and another man in the front seat. Both would have to be spooks.
'Welcome to Tehran, my friends,' the guy riding shotgun said.
'Merci,' Ding replied, with a yawn.
'Sorry to get you up so early,' Clark added. This one would probably be the station chief. The people he and Ding had sat with at Paris would have called ahead to let him know that they were probably not State Department security types. The Frenchman confirmed it.
'Not your first time, I am told.'
'How long have you been here?' John asked.
'Two years. The car is safe,' he added, meaning that it probably wasn't bugged. 'We have a message for you from Washington,' the ambassador told Adler in the leading car. Then he relayed what he knew about the Airbus incident at Taipei. 'You will be busy when you return home, I'm afraid.'
'Oh, Christ!' the Secretary observed. 'Just what we need. Any reaction yet?'
'Nothing I know of. But that will change within hours. You are scheduled to see the Ayatollah Daryaei at ten- thirty, so you have time for some sleep. Your flight back to Paris will leave just after lunch. We will give you all the assistance you request.'
'Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.' Adler was too tired to say much else.
'Any idea what happened?' Chavez asked in the trail car.
'We have only what your government has told us to pass along. Evidently there was a brief clash over the Strait of Taiwan, and a missile hit an unintended target.'
'Casualties?' Clark said next.
'Unknown at this time,' the local DGSE station chief said.
'Kinda hard to hit an airliner without killing somebody.' Ding closed his eyes in anticipation of a soft bed at the embassy.
THE SAME NEWS was given to Daryaei at exactly the same time. He surprised his fellow cleric by taking it without a visible reaction. Mahmoud Haji had long since decided that people who didn't know anything couldn't interfere with much.
FRENCH HOSPITALITY WAS not disgraced even by its transplantation to a place which could hardly have been more different from the City of Light. Inside the compound, three uniformed soldiers collected the Americans' bags, while another man in some sort of livery conducted them to their quarters. The beds were turned down, and there was ice water on the nightstands. Chavez checked his watches again, groaned, and collapsed into the bed. For Clark, sleep came harder. The last time he'd looked at an embassy compound in this city… what was it? he asked himself. What was bothering him so much about this?
ADMIRAL JACKSON DID the brief, complete with videotape.
'This is the upload from Port Royal. We have a similar tape from The Sullivans, no real differences, so we'll just use the one,' he told those in the Sit Room. He had a wooden pointer and started moving it around the large- screen TV display.
'This is a flight of four fighters, probably Jianjiji Hongzhaji-7s—we call it the B-7 for the obvious reason. Two engines and two seats, performance and capabilities like an old F-4 Phantom. The flight departs the mainland, and comes out a little too far. There's a no-man's-land right about here that neither side had violated until today. Here's another flight, probably the same aircraft and—'
'You're not sure?' Ben Goodley asked.
'We've ID'd the aircraft from their avionics, their radar emissions. A radar can't directly identify an airplane by type,' Robby explained. 'You have to deduce types by what they do, or from the electronic signatures of their equipment, okay? Anyway, the lead group is coming east, and crosses the invisible line here.' The pointer moved. 'Here's a flight of four Taiwanese F-16s with all the bells and whistles. They see the lead PRC group come too far and vector in on them. Then the lead group turns back west. Soon thereafter, right about… now, the trailing group lights off their radars, but instead of tracking their own lead group, they're hitting the F-16s.'
'What are you saying, Rob?' the President asked.
'What this looks like, the lead group was simulating a dawn attack on the mainland, and the trail group was supposed to defend against the simulated attack. On the surface, it looks like a fairly standard training exercise. The trail group, however, lit up the wrong people, and when they shifted radar modes to the attack setting, one of the Taiwanese pilots must have thought he was under attack and so he pickled off a missile. Then his wingman did the same. Zap! Right here, a B-7 eats a Slammer, but this one evades it—damned lucky for him—and he gets off a
