by Dale Brown
The most likely effect was incomplete propulsion—they’d lose power too soon to complete the full mission.
“Aircraft 8 and Aircraft 23 forward,” Turk said. “Eight and 23 to lead.”
“Calculating. Confirmed. Complying.”
Turk watched the Hydras shuffle. Moving the problematic aircraft to the front would give them the role of blowing through the grill in the air exchange; their engines wouldn’t matter, since they wouldn’t be used.
Until this moment the UAVs had been barely guided missiles, with steering vanes rather than wings. Now the computer popped the vanes into wings, extending them and banking the robot planes in a series of circles, separating them into mission clusters and slowing them to a more controllable and maneuverable speed.
More red on the screen. Aircraft 5 was not responding.
Lost. Turk mentally wrote it off. The UAV would dive into the hills, exploding on impact.
Tapping the target area on the sitmap, he looked at the image of the bunker provided by the NASA plane. A small flag appeared at the side; he tapped the flag, and was presented with a three-dimensional wire-frame drawing in the center of the screen. He enlarged it with his index finger.
“Compare infrastructure to known. State deviations,” he told the computer.
“Congruency, one hundred percent.”
Nothing had changed since the mission was drawn up. They were good to go.
The computer provided an assortment of data on the bunker. One set of numbers in particular caught his eye: there were 387 people in the facility.
Turk hadn’t expected that many; the briefing had indicated a skeleton crew of guards, at best, given the hour. The number seemed very high, but there was no time to double-check it.
The UAVs dropped in twos and threes from the oval path they’d been flying, diving for the air exchanger opening. They were subsonic but still moving incredibly fast, just over 550 knots on average. He saw them in his mind’s eye falling above his shoulder, shooting stars on a fateful mission.
“Proximity warning,” buzzed the computer. “Control unit moving out of range.”
Turk jerked his head up and yelled. “Pilot, get the plane back into the right parameters. Put us where I told you. Now!”
12
Iran, near Natanz
CAPTAIN VAHID CHECKED THE LONG DISTANCE RADAR scan on his MiG-29 a second time, making sure it was clean before contacting his controller.
“No contacts reported,” he said. “I am zero-two minutes from Natanz.”
“Copy, Shahin One. You have no contacts reported.”
It took a moment to process the controller’s simple acknowledgment. Obviously excited, his Farsi had a heavy southeastern accent, and the words jumbled together with the static in Vahid’s headset.
Natanz was under blackout conditions and the pilot couldn’t see the faintest shadow of the facility to his left as he approached. Nor could he see any sign of its several satellites, or the support facilities arrayed around the region. Shrouded in literal darkness, the vast infrastructure of the country’s nuclear arms program Vahid was tasked to protect was as much a mystery to him as it was to most Iranians.
Vahid didn’t think much of the program. To him, it was a needless waste of resources—the air force could be greatly expanded with a hundredth of the funds, the navy could gain more submarines, the army strengthened. All would provide Iran with weapons that could actually be used, as opposed to the bomb no one would dare unleash, lest the retaliation result in the country’s death sentence.
And there would be money left over for food and gasoline, in chronic short supply these past few years.
Vahid was careful not to share these opinions. Even Jalil Zandi, the legendary ace and great war hero, had been jailed twice for saying things that contradicted the ayatollahs.
The controller called back with further instructions, alerting Vahid that he was sending two of the other three MiGs that had scrambled after him farther north. The third would patrol around Natanz.
So it was definitely a wild-goose chase, Vahid thought. But at least he was flying. The MiG felt especially responsive tonight, as if anxious to prove her worth.
“You are to proceed east in the direction of the original sighting,” added the controller. “Other aircraft are being scrambled. Await further instructions.”
Acknowledging, Vahid shifted to the new course. The air force was using a lot of its monthly allotment of jet fuel tonight, he thought; they’d pay for it in the coming weeks.
Banking toward Nain, his long range radar picked up a contact. It appeared only momentarily, the radar confused by the scattered returns of the hills. Vahid changed modes but couldn’t get it back.
Still, there had to be something there: very possibly the light plane he had been scrambled to find. He altered course slightly and readjusted the MiG’s radar to wide search. Reaching for the mike button, he was about to tell the controller that he’d had a contact then thought better of it. Send out a false alarm and he would be quizzed for hours about why he failed to turn anything up. Better to wait until he had something more substantial than a momentary blip.
13
Iran
THE PROXIMITY WARNING STAYED ON AS THE FIRST nano-UAV hit the mesh screen, the Cessna’s pilot fighting a rogue air current in the foothills to get back in the proper position. But Turk didn’t need to take over the swarm: the Hydra struck within two millimeters of the programmed crosshair, exploding perfectly and blowing a hole through the outer filter assembly. Two seconds later the second UAV hit the large grate positioned three meters deep in the shaft. The thick blades of steel crumbled, leaving the way clear for the rest of the swarm.
The proximity warning cut off a second later. By then the control unit had switched the video feed to UAV 1 inside the airshaft. Turk saw the seams whip by like lines on a highway pavement, the aircraft dipping down the five-hundred-meter tube that led to a Z-turn and the air exchanges.
There was no way Turk could have piloted the craft through the turn, even though its speed had slowed considerably. The computer puffed the nano-UAV’s wings, fired the maneuvering rocket, and spun the Hydra through the Z. Two more aircraft followed, forming an arrow-shaped wedge that hit the interior fan assembly like a linebacker barreling into an ill-protected quarterback. They blew a hole through the exchange mechanism large enough for a bus to squeeze through.
Unfortunately, they did their job a little too well: there was a hairline fissure in the wall directly below the fan assembly. Weakened by the shock of the explosion, the wall began to collapse within seconds.
Ten UAVs made it through, though two were damaged by debris. And now Turk went to work. He managed to save two Hydras that had not yet entered the complex. The rest were caught in the landslide as the upper portions of the bunker began to implode.
By the time he turned his attention back to the lead aircraft, it was within seconds of the targeted chamber in the basement of the complex. Maneuvers and air friction had slowed the aircraft below ninety knots, but that was still incredibly fast. Finishing a straight run nearly two miles into the heart of the complex, the lead Hydra slammed into the grill of an air vent and exploded, opening the way to a hallway in the cellar of the complex. This time there were no fatal flaws in the workmanship, and no debris to stop the nine aircraft that followed. Turk caught a glimpse of something on the ground as the next feed snapped in—an Iranian scientist or engineer had been close to the vent when it exploded; blood was pouring from his head onto his white lab coat.
There were people in the hall—he saw heads as the UAVs dashed down the corridor into an open space. There was metalwork ahead, the large, circular gridwork he’d memorized as the sign that they had reached the target room. The target itself was the cluster machinery below.
The UAVs orbited above, forming another wedge to strike.
/> And then there was nothing, the feed switching back to the two aircraft above.
Nothing?
God. We’ve failed, he thought. I failed—I lost it right at the end. Damn. Damn!
And then, trying to think what he would do next, how he might retrieve the situation somehow with only two aircraft and a blocked passage, he saw a puff of smoke in the right corner of the feed from Hydra 35. He grabbed the joystick and took control of the aircraft. As he did, the smoke blossomed into a vast cloud and then ocean. The ground in the distance shook. The earth seemed to drop, imploding with a vast underground explosion.
They hadn’t failed. They had succeeded beyond calculation. The bunker exploded and the ground swelled, then collapsed with a tremendous explosion.
Turk forced himself to concentrate. The mission wasn’t finished—he had two more aircraft to take care of.
“Thirty-six, trail leader 35,” he said, then put his hand over the microphone. “We’re done,” he told Grease. “We’re good. We’re good.”
A warning blared in his ear. An aircraft near UAV 36 was using its radar.
A Russian air-to-air radar. The nano-UAV’s radar detector identified the signal tentatively as coming from a Russian N-O19 unit, meaning it could be anything from an ancient MiG-23 to a much more capable MiG-29. But that really didn’t matter—anything the Iranians had would be more than a match for the unarmed Cessna.
“Get us out of here,” Turk told the pilot, looking up. “Get low and stay low. There’s a fighter in the air five miles west of us.”
14
Over Iran
THE ANALOG RADAR IN THE MIG WAS FAR FROM STATE of the art, but it was all Captain Vahid had ever known. The fact that his contact flickered on and off in the display didn’t alarm him, nor did he jump quickly to any conclusions about the unidentified aircraft he had on his screen. It was flying low and it was going very slow. The profile fit a small, civilian-type aircraft, but what would one be doing here and at night?
Most likely it was a drone, he thought, but there was also a (distant) possibility that it was a Stealth Fighter flying a very erratic pattern, its radar signal disguised.
He heard his breath in the oxygen mask. It was all in a rush; he must be close to hyperventilating.
Vahid slowed his breathing down, tried to conjure One Eye’s voice in his headset: Stay calm. Stay on your plan.
His eyes hunted for the enemy. It would be close, the return confused by the stealthy characteristics of the aircraft. A black shape floated by his right, about where the contact should be. Then there was another, and another—he was seeing and chasing shadows.
“UP! UP!” SCREAMED THE ISRAELI IN ENGLISH. THE Cessna’s nose jerked almost ninety degrees, the wings jostling as the windscreen filled with shadows of black and brown. Wings fluttering, the light plane cleared the barely seen peak, just missing disaster.
Turk flew the UAVs toward the Cessna, looking for the fighter. The sky was dark, but both planes were equipped with infrared sensors as their viewers. He saw a ridgeline ahead of Hydra 35. A cross rose from the rocks, a good hundred feet above the tip.
The Cessna.
“You have to stay low!” said Turk as they continued to climb. “We’re being followed by a MiG.”
“Any lower we’ll be dead,” muttered the Israeli before translating.
VAHID’S RADAR FOUND THE AIRCRAFT ONLY FIVE MILES away, rising through the mountain ridges on his left. He began a turn, planning to lock up the aircraft and fire one of his radar missiles. But the light plane disappeared from his radar, once more lost in the clutter of the reflected radar waves.
Vahid came level out of his turn, then reached to the armament panel and selected the heat-seekers. It would be easier to use the infrared system to take them down.
He found nothing for a few moments, then he realized what must have happened—he misinterpreted the other plane’s direction. It wasn’t flying toward Natanz at all; it was going east, flying away from the scientific site.
Unsure how to interpret this, he called the controller and reported the contact as he brought the MiG back to the point where he had first seen the other plane. The controller bombarded him with questions. Most of them were unanswerable.
“The contact has been extremely intermittent,” Vahid told the major. “I can’t get a good radar fix in the mountains—he’s very low.”
“Are you using your infrared?”
“Affirmative. Weapons are charged and ready. Do I have permission to fire?”
“Affirmative. You are cleared to fire. I thought I made that clear.”
“Affirmative. Do I need to visually identify it? If it’s a drone and—”
“Just shoot the damn thing down,” said the controller.
THE LITTLE PLANE JERKED FEROCIOUSLY AS THE PILOT yanked at the yoke, once more missing the side of the mountain by a few feet. Turk knew their luck wasn’t going to hold much longer. If they couldn’t get the MiG off their backs, they would either pancake into the side of the sheer rocks all around them or be blasted out of the sky by an Iranian air-to-air missile.
As they had just demonstrated, the small UAVs could fly a precise, preprogrammed course. But freelancing was a different matter entirely. They generally relied on outside radar to guide them to a target. Without that he would have to rely on their native sensors—which meant they would have to stay close to the Cessna until the MiG showed up on the infrared.
By then it might be too late.
Turk hit on the idea of widening the search area by putting the two aircraft into a long trail—the first UAV, 36, could stay within four miles of the Cessna, and 37 could stay four miles away from 36. That way they’d see the MiG before it got too close to escape.
Hopefully.
Several minutes passed as the Hydras stretched out behind them. Their air speed was starting to become critical.
There was the MiG, two miles from UAV 36.
A MiG-29 Fulcrum. Iran’s best.
“Control,” said Turk, putting both hands on a control stick and flying the planes simultaneously. “Designate unidentified contact oh-one as target.”
The computer complied, marking the Iranian with that legend. The computer analyzed the aircraft, using the library in the control unit—essentially the same database used by the Sabres and Flighthawks. It ID’ed two R-27 air-to-air medium-range missiles and six short-range heat-seeking R-73s.
The MiG was moving south about 5,000 feet above them, only a mile to the west. Their direction, eastward, was almost exactly abeam of it. Apparently it couldn’t see them.
Yet. It was only a matter of time.
The nano-UAVs were at 10,000 feet. He pushed both noses downward.
“Show intercept,” he told the computer. “Fuel full use.”
The computer plotted the course. Turk nudged the trail plane to the right, but otherwise he was dead on.
“Intercept in thirty seconds,” predicted the computer as the speed of the small aircraft increased.
As the MiG turned left, the computer began recalculating. Turk altered course as well, then realized why the MiG had made that maneuver.
“He sees us!” yelled Turk, raising his head as he yelled at the pilot. “Turn west. Tell him to turn west!”
“OK, OK,” said the Israeli, starting to speak in Farsi.
Turk ducked back down. “Contact range critical,” the computer told Turk.
“Complete intercept,” Turk told the computer. “Autonomous.”
The Hydra engines slammed to life. As UAV 36 twisted toward the MiG, Turk saw two flares light under the MiG’s wings, then two more. They’d just been fired at.
“TWO MISSILES LAUNCHED. REPEAT MISSILES launched,” Vahid told the controller. “I—”
He heard a sharp snap behind him. In the next moment the plane seemed to fall away
from him, the left wing veering down. Vahid forgot about everything else—the aircraft he was pursuing, the nuclear research facility, the missiles he had just launched—and fought to recover the plane.
The dive sent him earthward so quickly that he felt light-headed. His breathing was shallow and sharp, reverberating in his head.
One Eye spoke to him from beyond the grave, advising him to roll out, to get his nose attitude right and keep his power up. He recovered from the unexpected roll as if he’d planned it all along, except of course he would never have planned to go down to just barely 2,000 feet, lower than most of the peaks around him. He turned back west and felt the plane thumping. There was something wrong, definitely wrong.
Vahid cut his speed and adjusted his trim. It wasn’t clear what the problem was. He craned his head upward, staring down the side of the aircraft. He saw only jagged shadows.
“I have a flight emergency,” he told the controller finally. “I need to return to base.”
“What happened to your target?”
“I—I’m not sure. I need to land immediately.”
THE FIRST MISSILE MISSED SPECTACULARLY, FLARING IN the sky more than a mile away, its final arc a fiery, flamboyant semicircle above a nearby mountain.
They weren’t as lucky with the next.
The pilot turned sharply into a box valley as it approached. The missile continued straight, temporarily lost, then veered to follow. Either the maneuver caused a malfunction or the circuitry sensed a near miss and the warhead exploded, sending a small stream of shrapnel into the air.
Some of the spray hit the Cessna’s left wing, tearing jagged holes in the skin. Worse, bits of the shrapnel flew into the side of the fuselage. Two large pieces of metal struck the engine. A third barely grazed the windshield, etching a jagged line across a third of it, yet somehow leaving it intact.
Two more went through the pilot’s window, striking him in the head and neck. He slumped; as he did, his body hit the wheel and pushed the plane downward.
