“Hello, Cleo,” Jerry said quietly as he slid intoMary Lou ’s cockpit.
“Father!” Cleo cried joyfully. “Where’s mother?”
“She’s back at Groom,” Jerry said in a dour tone. He settled into the pilot’s couch. “Hopefully, we can both see her in a couple of days. However, in the meantime, we have a job to do.”
“Yes, Colonel,” Cleo answered formally in response to the tone of Jerry’s voice. “I understand.”
“What have they told you?” he queried.
“Not much yet, Colonel,” Cleo responded. “Just that we are going to fly into Iraq and take a look in a valley for a super cannon of some sort. Colonel Kelder told me that they’ll update my memory later today with the topological data I’ll need.”
“How’sMary Lou ?”
“Just fine, now that they’ve got her wings back on,” Cleo replied. “She’s just fine.”
Cleo paused and then tentatively asked, “Colonel?”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t pretend like inMary Sue , is it? This is for real?”
“Yes, Cleo, it is,” he acknowledged; he leaned back into the couch and closed his eyes. “Very much so.”
The mission briefing was delayed for almost an hour while General Winslow spoke in private over the secure communications channel to the Pentagon. At 1600 hours, he called Fred Kelder, Jerry Rodell, and Major Don Foster into one of the secure conference rooms in Incirlik Air Base’s main administration building. Guards stood outside by the door and patrolled the adjacent rooms and hallways to make certain that they weren’t overheard.
“Okay, gentleman.” General Winslow waved for them to sit around the table. “We have a ‘go’ from Washington.” He faced toward Fred Kelder. “AreMary Lou and Cleo ready?”
“Yes, sir,” Fred replied. “We had no difficulty in reassembling the wings, and Cleo checks out perfectly.”
“Has she been briefed?” the general inquired.
“Not completely,” Fred answered, “not until this briefing is over.”
“Good,” Winslow replied. After a moment, he turned to Major Foster. “Major, I understand that you’ve already discussed the proposed route with Colonel Rodell. Is that so?”
“Yes, sir,” Foster acknowledged as he unfolded a map. Blue and red lines had been drawn on the map.
“The blue lines are the inbound route,” Foster told them while running his finger along the line from Incirlik on the south coast of Turkey. “They go east to Diyarbakir, Turkey for refueling, and then to the Iraqi border.”
The major paused to make certain that everybody saw the location of the point that the line crossed the border. “Once Colonel Rodell is across the border and into Iraq, he’ll follow this line of valleys to this point only five kilometers from the target. From there, he’ll run in at treetop level to the valley and make a single pass through it. Once the reconnaissance is done, he’ll follow the path shown by the red lines, north to the edge of their flak zones and back to Turkey.”
“I’d rather take a less obvious route,” Jerry argued. “I’m going against some of the most formidable antiaircraft defenses I’ve ever seen.”
“But the route outlined here takes you around most of the positions we know about,” the major responded.
“It’s the defenses that you don’t know about that kill you, Major,” Jerry retorted. “What happens if they have radar watching the airspace in these valleys?”
“But they don’t, …” the major started to reply before falling silent when he realized that he was merely working with estimates, not facts.
“What defensive armament will I have?” Jerry asked while he studied the map. The room fell quiet as nobody answered. He glanced up and saw that both Fred Kelder and Foster were staring at General Winslow.
“That’s one of the things that just came through from Washington, Jerry,” Winslow uttered as though embarrassed by the situation. “They want you to use laser-guided weapons to bomb the target. You’ll have two GBU-27s configured with BLU-109 penetrators so you can blast through the armored doors we believe they have protecting it. They are the laser-guided versions since you have a laser illuminator.”
“You want me to bomb that cannon?” Jerry uttered in disbelief. “I’d be lucky to get pictures. Now they want me to find the target, then turn around and bomb it. Do you know what kind of chance I have of surviving that? And even if I survive that, what happens if some of those MiG-39s jump me? I can’t carry two bombs and missiles. At least give me some goddamn missiles so I can defend myself.”
“You’ll still have your cannon.”
“Fat lot of good that’s going to do if they stand off and start lobbing long-range missiles at me. I’ll need some missiles to fight my way out. Trade off one of the bombs for the four AMRAAMs.”
“Apparently the president insisted,” Winslow answered. “He wants that cannon taken out at all costs and as soon as possible. You’re it.”
“Then let him fly it!” Jerry snarled angrily. “What the hell am I, a goddamn target? This is one of the most goddamn insane missions I’ve ever seen.”
“You don’t have a choice as to whether you fly the mission or not, Lieutenant Colonel Rodell,” General Winslow growled. “This is a military mission, and you are under direct orders to fly it. And, by god, you will.”
Hyperventilating, Jerry glared at General Winslow before speaking. “Okay, General,” he replied in a very low voice
Ten minutes later, after the briefing was over, Jerry walked alone down the main corridor of the base’s administrative building. Suddenly, he stopped at a pay telephone. He took a moment to find a number in the phone book and then dialed.
“Hello, is this Incirlik Travel?” he inquired. “Good! I want to make some airline reservations for tonight.”
Chapter Forty-one
“Okay, Cleo,” Jerry announced as he folded the prestart checklist and put it away, “let’s do it.”
“Do what?” Cleo sounded bewildered.
“Go!” Jerry snapped. “You know—leave. Call the security folks and have them tow us outside.”
“Oh,” Cleo replied. The tone of her voice was like ice water, cutting through Jerry who immediately regretted his sarcasm.
“Cleo, I’m sorry” he apologized. “I’m just edgy.”
Cleo, for her part, seemed to be happy to let the incident pass, for she immediately called security and demonstrated her new vocabulary. “Okay, security,” she called heartily on the radio in her male voice, “this is Hummer Two-three. Prestart checklist complete. Let’s do it!”
Unlike their hangar at Groom, the hangar they were using at Incirlik lacked such amenities as electric motors to open the doors. Several men ran to the doors and began tugging on them. With a creak, the doors started to open, revealing the darkness outside. The towing tug, painted Air Force blue instead of the international orange they were used to, rumbled in and, in a few moments, hadMary Lou , Cleo and Jerry outside. Five minutes later, they were airborne.
“It’s pretty here,” Cleo remarked softly. “I like flying in Turkey.”
She changed the visual system’s mode of operation from opaque to transparent so that Jerry could enjoy the view too. Hundreds of thousands of lights blinked beneath them, some from small villages, others from large cities, making the ground below appeared like one vast Christmas tree.
“I guess you’ve never seen cities before,” Jerry murmured. “They are pretty, at least at night,” he added. “We don’t have many lights out in the desert, do we?”
Cleo didn’t reply but seemed to be enjoying the experience. He heard her hum for the first time in weeks, and it reassured him as he thought about how much Madeline would have enjoyed the view.
Their flight plan was fairly simple. They were to fly at an altitude of twenty-five thousand feet from Incirlik to Diyarbakir, about two hundred and fifty nautical miles east, where they would refuel from a tanker. From there, they’d head southeast, descending as
they went until they reached the area where the borders of Iraq, Iran and Turkey came together. The final leg was a hundred-nautical-mile low-level dash across the hills and valleys of northeastern Iraq to the Gomazal Valley and the cannon.
A half-hour later, they had completed the first leg of their journey. Jerry glanced at his wristwatch as they pulled away from the tanker. “Damnit, we’ll have to step on it, Cleo. We’re a few minutes behind schedule. We have a plane to catch.”
“What?”
Cleo’s response made Jerry laugh. He had never heard her sound so human before.
“Step on what?” she begged. After a brief pause, she added, “And catch what plane?”
“I meant speed up,” he explained. “I want to you to fly northeast to Van Golu—it’s that big lake—and catch an airplane.”
Although Cleo increased their airspeed, her silence betrayed her confusion. Jerry grinned and waited for her to react to his last statement.
“Ah, catch what airplane?” Cleo asked at last.
“The one that’s going to take us to Khvoy.”
“Khvoy?”
“Yes,” Jerry said, “It’s a small city in western Iran.”
“I know that,” she replied in a huff. “Why are we going to catch a plane to go to Khvoy when I can simply fly there?”
Jerry couldn’t help but laugh. Cleo had taken him literally, assuming the phrase “catch a plane” meant get on one, which wasn’t unreasonable, for she had just flown from Groom Lake to Turkey inside a C-5 transport.
“Well,” he explained, “I’m afraid that I didn’t make myself completely clear. We’re going to follow an airplane, an Iranian airliner flying from Istanbul to Tehran, Iran, with at stop at Tabriz.”
“But that’s not in our flight plan.”
“Screw the flight plan,” Jerry sneered. “If they want me to fly this mission, I’m going to do it my way. Given what has happened in the last few weeks, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole damn Iraqi army isn’t sitting under our planned route waiting for us.”
“Chto-nibud?Anything?” Captain Nikolai Fyodorovich Vorontsov demanded as he stalked up and down the narrow aisle behind the radar operators. They were in a fifteen-meter-long truck trailer parked in the middle of a cluster of radar and communications radio antennas installed on a hilltop overlooking the Turkish border. It was the control center for a string of some thirty radar sets placed strategically along both the Turkish and Iranian borders. Nothing could get by their radars, or so the scientists claimed. Privately, Nikolai wasn’t so certain.
“Nyet,” they replied one by one.
“Keep your attention on your screen,” Vorontsov insisted. “The American airplane is due any moment. It should be coming right down from the Turkish border, but that could be a ruse. If it gets by any of you, you’ll all be freezing your asses off in Siberia.”
What made him so edgy was the general’s warning of what might happen to him should his unit fail to spot the American. It would make Siberia look like a pleasant vacation.
“Iran Air flight 728, cleared to enter air defense buffer zone. Contact Tehran Center on one-thirty-five, decimal thirty-five,” Jerry listened as the Ankara control center passed the Iranian 747 from their control to the Tehran control center. The buffer zone was a remnant of the Cold War when the Soviet Union bordered Turkey. Now it remained in place more from habit than necessity.
“That’s our flight, Cleo,” he said. “Do you see it? It should be straight ahead of us.”
“There’s a 747 flying over the lake headed east. Is that it?”
“That’s got to be it. Okay, let’s get right behind it,” he said. “I mean up tight, as close as you safely can. I want whatever echo we give those radars on the border to blend into the one from that airliner.”
“That’s against Air Force regulation 143.45-008.…”
“Goddamnit, Cleo! DO IT!”
Cleo accelerated to catch the jetliner. In only a few minutes, she hadMary Lou tucked tightly twenty feet behind and beneath the 747, following every move as though they were its shadow.
“Whee,” Cleo cried out in delight. “This is fun. Why didn’t we do this before?”
“Because it’s against regulations,” Jerry grumbled.
“But we’re doing it now,” Cleo replied, obviously confused.
“Because, because, er,” Jerry struggled for an answer and eventually gave up. “Because I say it’s okay. Okay?”
Cleo fell silent and moved slightly closer to the large airliner. Jerry wasn’t sure whether she was taking out some of her pique on him or not. He cringed while he watched the tail of the 747 looming over his head. Just one little mistake or miscalculation and they’d all be dead.
“Cleo,” he muttered, remembering his first ride with her through that canyon in the simulator, “you have a weird sense of humor.”
“Gde on?Where is he?” Captain Nikolai Vorontsov worried as he looked at his wristwatch. The American plane was supposed to be there by now.
No,he corrected himself,about a half-hour ago.
Vorontsov continued his frantic pacing up and down the line of radar operators checking each screen for the slightest hint that the American airplane was trying to sneak by his radars. His orders were strict; his punishment for failure would be severe.
“Okay, Cleo,” Jerry called nervously as the 747 began turning. “Don’t make any mistakes now.”
“Would you prefer to fly?” she huffed.
“No!” Jerry replied instantly. Flying in tight formation with other pilots you knew and trusted was one thing. Sneaking behind a jetliner filled with innocent people and flown by unsuspecting pilots was quite another.
“You’re doing just fine,” he added with a nervous chuckle. “Just keep it up.”
“They’re descending for their landing in Tabriz,” she observed. “Do you want me land too?”
“Hell, no,” he answered. “Follow them down until we’re over Khvoy and then turn south toward our objective. Then go in as low as you can.”
“There’s a string of hills between us and the Iraq border,” Cleo commented with a twinkle in her voice. “According to the mapping data they loaded into my memory this afternoon, we should be able to get within twenty miles of the border without being exposed to their radar.”
“There wouldn’t just happen to be a pass or two in those mountains you’re hoping to fly through?” Jerry inquired suspiciously.
“How did you know?” Cleo queried, mystified by his prescience.
“Oh,” he said, remembering her predilection for flying through passes instead of over them, “just a lucky guess.” He closed his eyes, reliving his first experience with her in the simulator.
“Okay, Cleo, do it,” he ordered. His voice had an air of resignation reminiscent of a condemned prisoner telling the executioner to proceed.
Cleo turned and descending rapidly toward the lake below. A few seconds later, the shoreline rushed at them. Beyond was the first line of hills.
“Look out!” Jerry warned as Cleo dived into the little valley. “There’re power lines down there!”
“I know,” she grumbled, sounding miffed by his back-seat driving. A moment later, she flew under the high-tension cable and easily cleared the pine trees beyond.
“How much more of this?” Jerry demanded.
“Five point three miles to the ridgeline.”
“Oh, god!” Jerry moaned when he spotted the bridge ahead. Cleo dived.
“Kapitan!” one of the radar operators called. “It’s here!”
“Gde on?” Captain Nikolai Vorontsov shouted as he ran to the radar operator’s side and studied the screen. At first, he saw nothing unusual.
“It was here a second ago.” The operator pointed to a nearly faded blip on the screen. An instant later, another blip appeared.
“He’s flying low,” the operator told him. “I’m not getting a good enough return to lock-on the missiles onto him, but you can see him.”
“They’ve seen us!” Cleo called as they rocketed over the top of the chain of mountains and entered the area covered by the Iraqi radars for the first time.
“Are you sure?” Jerry demanded.
“Hell, yes,” Cleo replied. “Their radar signal is far too strong for some of it not to reflect back.”
“Are they locked-on?”
“Not if I can help it!” Cleo ducked into a valley with a road in it. Dodging and twisting, she followed the road, roaring only a few feet over the tops of the occasional cars and trucks on the road below.
“What was that?” Jerry asked when he saw the flash of the first exploding rocket. His heart sank when he spotted the second and third.
“They’re firing those damn smoke rockets!” he exclaimed.
“I can’t see through that smoke,” Cleo warned.
“We’re only ten miles away,” Jerry said. “We didn’t come all this way just to turn around now. We have to find a way in.”
“The wind is blowing that smoke away from the rim of the valley,” Cleo responded. “Maybe we.… Yes, I think I can do it.”
Jerry glanced around as they roared over the hilly ground. Large red umbrellas representing the antiaircraft defenses surrounding them began to light up as the radars were turned on. So far, none had locked- on to them.
It’s just like in the simulator,he thought.And sometimes we got shot down . Jerry’s mouth went dry.
Chapter Forty-two
“Da, Kapitan!Yes, Captain,”Starshina , Master Sergeant, Roman Borisovich Zubilin replied. He tried to click the heels of his bare feet together. “Right away. I understand—even though the radar is broken. Yes, Captain.” He waited a moment before stuffing the field telephone in the canvas bag hanging on the wall.
The Espionage Game Page 35
