“I’m listening,” Land said.
“We’re going to have to go into Iraq. An airborne assault. We’ll go into Hussein’s backyard, take or destroy the missiles and warheads, and leave as quick as we can. We’re going to have to do it before he uses those weapons.”
Silence. “That won’t be easy.”
“Yes, sir. I know that.”
“Saddam may bag the whole lot of you.”
“That’s a possibility. But we’ll destroy the missiles first. General, we’re going to have to pay a little now or pay a lot later — there are no other options. Any way you cut it, we’ve got to get the jump on him. We have to take the initiative while there is still time.”
“I don’t like it. It’s too risky. Too many things can go wrong, then you’ll be stuck on the ground with a lot of casualties. The Iraqis may bag the whole lot of you, then we have a political prisoner situation. No, the way to do this is an air strike. We’ll bomb that base into powder and that will be the end of Saddam’s nuclear arsenal. We might lose a few pilots, but not a whole bunch of people.”
“If destroying the missiles were the only objective, I would agree with you,” Jake told the chairman. “But it’s not. We must prove to the world that Saddam has the weapons. We’ve got to show the world these missiles and warheads. Here’s what I want to do.” Jake laid it out. His explanation took almost five minutes.
When Jake was finished, Land didn’t say anything for several seconds. Finally he said, “Well, maybe. I’ll think about it. Present it to the president. As a soldier, I’ll tell you right now that all that is too complicated.”
“It’s our best shot, sir.”
“I’ll think about it. What time frame are you thinking about for this operation?”
“As soon as humanly possible, sir. As soon as we can plan it. The sooner the better. I’m going to be flying one of these Russian jets down to Petrovsk tomorrow. We’re flying out of the Lipetsk air base. We leave here in about an hour. I figure we’ll get a checkout on the planes tonight, then fly first thing in the morning. Tomorrow night I can go to Arabia.”
“The weather people say that you can expect scattered to broken stratocumulus in the Petrovsk area, maybe fifty percent coverage, bases around three or four thousand feet, occasional rain showers.”
“That’ll be good enough.”
“Who is the other pilot?”
“Lieutenant Commander Moravia, sir.”
“Okay. Take your scrambler with you and call me from Lipetsk before you take off. I’ll go back to the White House and see what they think about Saddam Hussein.”
“Yessir.”
“Good luck, Jake.”
“Thanks, General.”
Only two options left to stop Saddam Hussein — an air strike or an airborne assault. Jake thought about that after he broke the connection. When you are down to just two options in this dangerous world, you are in deep and serious trouble. He knew that and Hayden Land knew it, but did the president?
* * *
She was in the apartment rolling her hair into a bun, with her mouth full of bobby pins. She was already wearing her flight suit and steel-toed flight boots.
“Gertrude Murgatroyd Tarkington,” Toad told her. “Or Tarkington-Moravia or Moravia-Tarkington. Do you want the kid hyphenated?”
“Tarkington is okay,” she said, grinning around the bobby pins and eyeing him in the mirror.
He rammed his hands into his pockets and stood looking at this and that, avoiding meeting her eyes. “Have you told your folks?” he asked finally.
“Of course not. Just you. We’ll wait until the rabbit dies before we tell anyone.”
“Does a rabbit really die?”
“Not anymore. Used to though.”
Toad thought about that for a moment, about rabbits giving their lives to let women know they were pregnant — really! There was a whole lot about this baby business that he didn’t know.
He glanced at her reflection in the mirror and said, “You be careful out there.”
“I will.”
“Be ready for anything.”
“I will.”
He came over and stood right behind her. “This is supposed to be a little day jaunt down to Petrovsk, roll in and make a couple of runs with live ordnance, then back to the barn. But it may not go like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“The other night we were sitting in a park when people started shooting. Some people here and there would probably like to see Jake Grafton dead. Somebody wants those missiles pretty badly. Keep your head on a swivel. Watch your six. If anybody looks cross-eyed, blow ’em out of the sky.”
Rita got her hair the way she wanted it and inserted bobby pins.
“Grafton’s been shot at by experts,” he told her. “Anybody that straps him on is in big trouble. Just stick to him like glue. Stay with him. No matter what, fly your own airplane.”
“I will, Toad.”
She finished with her hair and turned around to face him. He put his hands on her shoulders. “I want you back in one piece.”
“I know, lover.”
“We’re in a helluva fix when we send pregnant women to fight our battles.”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
* * *
Jake took Spiro Dalworth along because he spoke Russian. Unfortunately he knew next to nothing about aviation or airplanes or weapons, so the terms didn’t translate very well. Yet somehow Jake and Rita found out what they had to know. They took turns sitting in the cockpit of an Su-25 asking questions. Dalworth translated and a Russian pilot supplied the answers.
The pilot was young, a lieutenant. He was in culture shock. “Who flies?” he asked Dalworth.
Spiro pointed to Jake and Rita.
“The woman?”
“Yes, she will fly.”
“A woman? She will fly?”
“Yes.”
When Rita asked a question, the answer was short, curt. When Jake asked one Dalworth had trouble finding a pause to translate amid the Russian’s verbal flood. Rita saw the problem and addressed her comments to Jake, who then asked the questions. The process seemed to work better that way.
The olive-drab airplane with a red star on the tail seemed an excellent piece of military equipment. With two internal engines generating over eleven thousand pounds of thrust each, ten external weapons pylons under a wing designed to haul a big load of ordnance, an adequate fuel supply, and a twin-barrel 30mm cannon mounted internally, the airplane seemed just what the doctor ordered for ground attack. The avionics were not state-of-the-art, however. The plane lacked a radar and had no computer to assist the pilot, who had to do his own navigation with a minimum of electronic help. Jake and Rita would have to find the target with their Mark I, Mod Zero eyeballs and attack it with dumb weapons. The plane contained a laser ranger and could deliver laser-guided weapons, but it lacked a laser designator. The bombsight was strictly mechanical.
The cockpit and pilot chores were straightforward enough, yet the switches and gauges were scattered throughout the cockpit with apparently no forethought given to ease of operation or minimizing the pilot’s workload.
Visibility from the cockpit wasn’t great either. Although the pilot sat well forward of the wing, the view aft was nonexistent and the view downward was restricted by the sides of the airplane.
The electronic warfare (EW) panel was simple and passive. Lights illuminated when the plane was painted by radars on certain bandwidths, but after receiving that quiet warning the pilot was on his own.
“It’s no A-6 or F/A-18,” Rita remarked.
“More like an A-7,” Jake muttered.
The only officer they met was the lieutenant who had led them to the hangar for their briefing. The CO of the base and the CO of the air wing were conspicuously absent. They were cooperating on orders from Moscow, but that was all.
The officers’ quarters were a barracks. Rita tossed her stuff on a bunk and stared back at the Russi
an pilots, who were whispering among themselves.
They were offered food. Jake declined for everyone — he didn’t want to risk a case of the trots. Hunger was preferable.
After Jake had used his satellite com gear for another long talk with General Land in Washington, he sat on a bottom bunk with Rita and examined the charts they had brought from Moscow. With only these charts they had to find the Petrovsk base, then find their way back here. Most of the Russian nav aids were inoperable and the Su-25 might not reliably receive the ones that were transmitting.
There was a minor flurry in the bathroom when Spiro insisted all the Russians depart so that Rita could use it, but the lights went out without fanfare after Rita disappointed a little knot of onlookers by crawling under her blanket fully dressed.
Jake Grafton lay under his blanket staring into the darkness, tired but not sleepy. The hangar where the missiles and warheads were housed was priority number one tomorrow morning. Then, if there were any bombs or cannon shells left, they would attack the clean room with its warhead parts stacked everywhere. And they had to do it on the first flight. There was no way they could ask Yeltsin to let them fly another mission, not with the outstanding cooperation and friendly attitude these uniformed folks here had displayed.
And then there was the problem of the missiles in Iraq. Just how long did mankind have before Saddam Hussein decided his new arsenal was operational? Had the dictator reached that point already? How could the Americans plan an airborne assault into Iraq that minimized the hundreds of possible things that could go wrong and yet gave them a reasonable chance of grabbing or destroying the weapons before the Iraqi military massively retaliated? Were the odds good enough to order people into action, or should they be asked to volunteer? They would volunteer to a man, Jake was convinced, but he wanted no part of asking anyone to commit suicide. Nor did he plan on doing it himself.
What was Herb Tenney up to these days? Did the CIA tell him of this bombing mission? What could he do about it? Why would he do anything? More to the point, what could Yakolev and his cohorts do, assuming they were so inclined?
Dozens of questions, no answers. But first things first. The mission tomorrow — Jake knew how tough it would be. Using contact navigation to get to Petrovsk would be tough enough. Flying there in a type of aircraft he had never flown before was a helluva challenge. The task would be huge even if he were current on jet aircraft, which he wasn’t. How long had it been since he had flown a tactical aircraft? Three years? No, four. Actually four years and three months.
And Rita had never been in combat. Oh, this wasn’t supposed to be combat, but what if someone started shooting? How would Rita handle it?
Maybe he should have said something to her.
What? Knowing Rita Moravia, anything he could come up with would wound her pride. Oh, she wouldn’t let on, would say yessir and nosir with the utmost respect, but…
So what could go wrong tomorrow?
Only a couple million things. He began to list them, to sort through the possibilities and try to decide now what he would do if and when he was faced with real problems.
He was still mulling contingencies an hour later when he finally drifted into a troubled sleep filled with blood and disaster.
* * *
He was preflighting the ejection seat and removing the safety pins when he realized that one pin was already out. This one here, attached to the others with this red ribbon, that went where? He looked. Must be somewhere here on the side of the seat, to safety the drogue extraction initiator mechanism.
He found the place. A steel pin protruded from the hole. He tried to pull it out with his fingers.
Nope. It was in there to stay.
Someone hammered this steel rod into that hole. Oh, the ejection seat would still fire, but the drogue chute would not deploy and so the main chute would stay in its pack as he sat in the seat waiting, all the way to the ground.
Jake Grafton climbed back down the ladder to the concrete. Spiro Dalworth was standing there with the Russian lieutenant, the only officer on the base who had talked to them.
“Spiro, tell this clown to take me to the base commander.”
Dalworth fired off some Russian. When it didn’t take, he repeated it.
The Russian pilot’s eyes got large, but he whirled and started walking. Jake Grafton and Spiro Dalworth stayed two steps behind him.
The base commander had his office in a crumbling concrete building with the Russian flag on a pole out front. He was a rotund individual with a lot of gold on his epaulets. A general, probably.
“Someone sabotaged my airplane, hammered a steel pin into the ejection seat so that it will not function properly. Tell him.”
Dalworth did so. The general looked skeptical.
“I want two different airplanes. And I want his people to arm them while we watch.”
This time the general fired off a stream of Russian and gestured widely.
“He says that you are mistaken. You know nothing of this airplane, which is a fine airplane. Combat-tested in Afghanistan. His men are all veterans and take excellent care of their equipment. This is a frontline fighting unit, not—”
“Pick up his telephone. Call the Kremlin in Moscow. Ask for Yeltsin.”
To his credit, Dalworth didn’t hesitate. He reached for the telephone as if he were going to order a pizza. When he asked the operator in Russian to get him the Kremlin operator, the general came out of his chair with a bound.
Jake was ready. He pulled the .357 Magnum revolver from his armpit holster and fired a round through the top of the general’s desk. The gun went off with a roar that the walls of the room concentrated into a stupendous, soul-numbing thunderclap. The bullet punched a nice hole in the top of the wooden desk and a long splinter came loose. Dalworth almost dropped the telephone.
The general froze, staring at Jake, who looked him straight in the eye as he returned the pistol to the holster under his leather flight jacket.
The door flew open and a soldier with a rifle appeared. Dalworth said something to the general and made a shooing motion to the soldier, who finally backed out of the room and closed the door.
Dalworth started talking on the telephone. After three or four sentences and a wait, he looked at Jake expectantly.
“Tell them that this general doesn’t understand that he is to cooperate.”
“Tell them that the two airplanes he wants us to fly have been sabotaged.”
“Tell them that I want two good airplanes armed to the teeth, and I want them now, as President Yeltsin promised the president of the United States.”
Dalworth translated each sentence in turn and listened a moment, then held out the instrument to the Russian general, who accepted it reluctantly.
When the general finally hung up the phone, he stood, straightened his uniform jacket as he snarled something at Dalworth, jerked his hat on and headed for the door.
“We are to follow him, Admiral. From what I could tell, he was bluntly told to cooperate or face the music.”
Jake grunted and strode after the general.
* * *
The Russian general stood in the middle of the parking mat and gave orders fast and furiously. He pointed, first at the planes Jake and Rita were to fly, then at the row of Su-25s still sitting in their revetments.
The general was in fine form, with officers and enlisted saluting and trotting obediently when Rita approached Jake. She held out her hand. In it were five coins, rubles.
“I found these glued to the stator blades inside the intakes of the plane I was to fly.”
Jake nodded. The coins would have stayed glued while the engines were at idle, but when the engines were accelerated to full power for the takeoff roll the coins would have come unstuck and been sucked through the compressors, which would have started shedding blades seconds later. The predictable result would be catastrophic engine failure and perhaps fire just as the aircraft lifted from the runway with a full load of wea
pons. It would be a spectacular way to die.
The airplane switch took an hour. New planes were pulled forward with a tractor and topped off with fuel. Two arming crews took the 250-kilogram bombs off the sabotaged planes and manhandled them onto the racks of the new ones. Another arming crew serviced the 30mm cannon on each plane with belts of ammo. While all this was going on, Rita inspected each aircraft, examined the fuses on the bombs, looked at each arming wire.
She was still at it when the general told Dalworth the planes were ready, and he translated this message for Jake. Grafton turned his back on the airplanes and stood looking toward the office building. The telephone lines went to a pole that also carried the lines from the hangars. These lines went off to the east until they disappeared behind some buildings that looked like enlisted barracks.
Above them clouds floated southeast. Patches of blue were visible in the gaps. The clouds were puffy, full of moisture.
When Rita was finished, she came over to Jake. “Whenever you’re ready, sir.”
The Russians had G-suits, torso harnesses, oxygen masks and a variety of helmets arranged upon the hood of a tractor. The two fliers donned the flight gear carefully and tried on helmets until they found ones that fitted snugly.
“I’ll lead,” Jake told Rita. “You follow me as soon as I begin my takeoff roll and rendezvous in loose cruise. I want you above me. We’ll spend the day below two hundred feet and only climb when the target is in sight. The radio has four channels — we’ll use channel one. Get a radio check on the ground and then stay off the radio except for emergencies.
“When we’re airborne, I’m going to arm my gun and shoot out the telephone box on the edge of the base. Once you arm your weapons, don’t de-arm them. Our old equipment would always chamber a round on arming and leave the round in the chamber when you disarmed it, so the gun jammed the second time you hit the arming switch. I don’t know how these guns are wired but let’s take no chances.”
“Yessir.”
“Got any advice on how to fly this thing?”
“Be smooth,” Rita Moravia said. “Let the plane fly itself. No sudden control inputs — don’t force it to do anything. Stay in the center of the performance envelope as much as possible. Visually check every switch before you move it. Be ready every second. Don’t ever relax.”
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