Primary Target (1999) (20 page)

"Hurry," she coaxed with a no-nonsense edge to her voice. She preceded him into the room, then closed the door. "Look out the other window," she whispered with determined urgency.

While he cautiously approached the window, Maritza reached under her pillow and quietly retrieved the Glock. Gripping it tightly, she raised the semiautomatic high above her head and slammed the butt of the weapon against his temple. He dropped to his knees and fell forward, smashing his face into the cement wall. Maritza quickly grabbed the TEC-9 and tossed it on the wooden table.

Stepping out of her cumbersome Islamic-style clothes, she slipped the Glock into a baggy hip pocket of her fatigues. She struck a match and set fire to the large bundle of dry sticks and paper stuffed under her bed, then scooped up the assault weapon and hurried to the door.

Squaring her shoulders, she stepped outside and immediately heard the reverberating sound of helicopter rotor blades. Holding the TEC-9 at the ready, she listened for a moment as the sound grew louder. Moving slowly and silently along the perimeter wall, Maritza was startled when a diaphanous ghost suddenly appeared out of the inky darkness. She felt a sudden chill as Dalton flared his parachute for a flawless landing in the middle of the courtyard.

Simultaneously, a trio of militants caught sight of Scott as he quickly released his canopy risers from his harness. The silence was shattered when the three men opened fire at the same instant Dalton spotted Maritza.

Running toward Scott, she sprayed a steady stream of rounds at the startled Shiites. Two of the shadowy figures crumpled to the ground while Dalton drew his weapon and dropped the third man in his tracks.

"Get down," Scott shouted to Maritza.

She sprawled in the dirt and kept firing.

Indoor and outdoor lights flicked on as the beat of the helicopter's mainrotor blades grew louder and louder. Scott dropped to a prone position and fired at two men who were scrambling for cover behind an empty flatbed truck. Dalton scrambled toward a stack of wooden boxes as he fired at three other men.

Ignoring the blinding hurricane of dirt and debris being sucked up by the LongRanger's powerful downwash, Scott pumped three rounds into a side-mounted fuel tank on the flatbed. Without warning, Dalton's discarded parachute canopy swirled overhead as Maritza low-crawled the final few yards to join him.

"We don't have time to get you into a harness," he shouted as rounds kicked up dirt and ricocheted around the compound. He shoved his Sig Sauer into his nylon holster, then yanked the pin from a grenade and lobbed it close to the truck. The vehicle exploded in a huge fireball.

"Cover me till I get a ring hooked," Scott yelled above the swirling dust storm. "When I've got it latched, throw your arms around my neck and your legs around my waist and hang on!"

"Got it," Maritza shouted as she fired the last rounds from the TEC-9. She reached for her Glock at the same time Scott lobbed his last grenade at two men who were charging them from behind the main barracks. The terrorists were cut down by the violent blast.

Muzzle flashes began to twinkle as Jackie slowed the helo to a crawl while she trolled for Scott and Maritza. With the element of surprise gone, she listened to Dalton as he instructed Maritza and fired at the militants. While Jackie attempted to maintain the proper altitude to allow Scott to see the glow of the snaplights, an AK-47 round pierced the helo's chin bubble and grazed her ankle. The sensation was akin to having a branding iron sear her bare flesh.

"Hold it," Scott yelled over the radio as he crawled toward the rappelling ropes. "Hold it! Hold it! Stop!"

Jackie grimaced in pain and concentrated on the blazing truck as she slowed to a motionless hover.

"Stay down!" Scott said to Maritza as he struggled to latch his parachute harness to one of the D rings. He lurched toward the nearest snaplight and felt the exhilarating tug of success.

"Maritza," he bellowed as he drew his weapon and fired twice at an unarmed terrorist who was running straight at them. One of the rounds knocked the man to his knees as Maritza holstered her weapon and lunged toward Scott. She leaped on him and held his neck in a death grip while she locked her legs around his waist.

"Go," Dalton shouted to Jackie as the back of his body armor stopped a round, partially knocking the breath out o
f
him. "We're aboard!" he blurted in a hoarse croak. "Go, Go!"

Staggering to his feet, the bleeding terrorist charged Scott and Maritza as the rope became taut.

"I'm slipping," Maritza exclaimed as they left the ground. Before Scott could answer, the militant slammed into him. Screaming at the top of his lungs, the powerful man wrapped his arms around Dalton's lower legs.

Scott struggled to get a leg free, but the crazed man held him in a viselike grip. Seconds later a round caught the terrorist in the head and he plummeted into the side of the burning truck.

Applying full power and a prodigious amount of collective, Jackie tripped the "Night Sun" searchlight. Petrified by cold fear, she hoped it would blind the militants long enough for her to escape being shot down. As the helo struggled to climb, she heard several rounds rip through the Long-Ranger's thin aluminum-and-magnesium fuselage. Time seemed to stand still as another fusillade shattered the cockpit windshield and showered her with fragments of Plexiglas and aluminum.

Turning to avoid overflying the burning truck, Jackie was shocked and temporarily blinded when the truck exploded in another thunderous fireball. She blinked her eyes several times as she struggled to read her flight instruments, then realized that she had slung Scott and Maritza straight through the middle of the blazing inferno.

"Scott," she frantically radioed, "do you read me?" The radio remained silent.

Jackie killed the searchlight. "Scott, do you copy?" The silence was deafening in the windy cockpit. "Hang in there!"

Angered by knowing that someone had set them up to be ambushed, Jackie stared at the shattered instrument panel as she climbed away from the terrorist camp. A few heartbeats later she again triggered the powerful spotlight and rotated it downward, then leaned to her right to see if Maritza and Scott were still attached to the line. Although she could barely see them, they were hanging from one of the ropes. Jackie was ecstatic. "Give me a thumbs-up if you can read me."

When the searchlight was directed downward, Dalton holstered his weapon and looked up at Jackie. His eyes conveyed a sense of urgency that bordered on desperation. Swinging in the wind, Scott repeatedly jabbed his thumb toward the ground.

Something's wrong, Jackie told herself as she abandoned the plan to land at the original site to take them onboard. She switched off the searchlight and looked for an alternate place to set down.

"Charlie Tango," Greg O'Donnell calmly radioed from the Caravan. "Do you read the umpire?"

"That's affirm," Jackie shot back. "They're on the hook, but I'm going to have to stop short of the dock. Stand by." "Copy," Greg said, glancing at his GPS. "I'm going to have to make my move soon."

"Give me a couple of minutes," she said loudly. "We've taken some hits, and I don't know how much damage it's caused."

"Do you need assistance?"

"We may need some help," Jackie said as she felt the helo shudder and start to vibrate. "Stay with us."

"I'm not going anywhere."

Scott was holding Maritza with both arms, but she was beginning to slip as the wind whipped them in tight circles. During the harrowing escape, his twin boom microphones had been ripped off by the rappelling rope, making it impossible for him to communicate with anyone.

"Hang on," he said to Maritza. Jackie, get us on the ground! "We're going to make it," he continued in a soothing, calming voice. "Just another minute or two."

"My arms are going numb," she said, keeping her head buried against his neck. "I can't feel them."

Hanging by the upper right side of his parachute harness, Scott strained to hold Maritza next to him. If she lost her grip on him, it was going to be impossible for him to hold her very long. If they didn't land soon, Maritza would fall to her death.

As the seconds passed, Maritza struggled to keep her legs around Scott's waist. The more she strained, the more she slipped and the heavier she seemed to become.

Dalton gripped her with all his strength, but he was rapidl
y
losing the battle. He closed his eyes and willed himself to keep her from falling, but it was useless. Land this thing! Rapidly slowing and descending, Jackie triggered the bright spotlight, then adjusted the focus of the beam slightly ahead of the LongRanger. She brought the helo to a slow halt and gently settled toward a grassy knoll.

"We're almost down," she said to Dalton, hoping he could hear her over the beat of the main rotor blades.

Without warning, a shoulder-fired SAM missile flashed past the helo's shattered cockpit.

"Oh, shit!" Jackie swore as she instinctively ducked her head. We've gotta get out of here.

A few seconds later Maritza lost her grip around Scott's neck and her legs swung wildly downward. Another missile slashed by as Dalton caught her under the arms.

"Land this sonuvabitch," he shouted as Maritza slowly slipped through his hands and fell.

Chapter
20

Shiraz, Iran
.

Enjoying his notoriety as the killer of the American's F-14
Tomcat reconnaissance plane, Major Ali Akbar Muhammud led three MiG-29 Fulcrums as they circled their airfield at Shiraz, then turned west toward the Persian Gulf. One of the pilots in the formation was Major Viktor Kasatkin, a renowned Russian fighter pilot and advanced tactics instructor. A graduate of the Kharkov Higher School of Pilots and the Gagarin Air Force Academy, Kasatkin was honing the skills of the Iranian pilots.

Muhammud, having received reliable up-to-the-minute information from the auxiliary patrol boat Gavatar and the Iranian corvette Naghdi, was prepared to confront the Americans if they attacked Iran.

Equipped with Flash Dance radars, air-to-air missiles, and thirty-millimeter cannons, the MiGs represented the most advanced of the flyable fighters in the Iranian Air Force. Major Muhammud adjusted his cockpit lights to enhance his night vision and darted a look at his Iranian wingman, who had been selected from the best the Iranians could muster. He was tucked in close to his leader's wingtip.

Muhammud, the politically powerful son of an Iranian Air Force general who was killed in a 1995 JetStar crash, was considered by his peers to be one of the most talented fighte
r
pilots in the Iranian Air Force. But then again, during mock dogfights, no one was stupid enough to seriously challenge the cocky and temperamental pilot.

Not far behind, three more MiG-29s joined in trail and followed Muhammud to their patrol sector between the coastline and Khark Island. The well-educated pilots came from Iran's upper classes; however, their aviation training wasn't up to the standards of the West. The Iranians could demonstrate passable displays of air combat maneuvering, but their basic dogfighting capabilities were considered to be limited at best.

In addition, the aviators weren't as young and proficient as they once were. A lack of flying time had eroded their skills and prevented the training of new pilots. Almost to a person, the Iranian pilots dreaded the thought of pitting themselves against the highly competent, younger, and better-trained Americans. A bootlegged video of the movie Top Gun had added to their anxiety, especially the scenes of "fangs out" aggression that unfolded during combat training engagements.

From the first briefing after Washington and her battle group neared the Strait of Hormuz, there had been a strange sense of foreboding among the Iranian pilots. Something seemed different from previous alerts. Most of the younger aviators sensed that their superiors were also more tense than usual. Thanks to the Russian fighter instructor pilots, the Iranian aviators were improving. However, they knew they were up against some of the best-trained fighter pilots in the world. With both flights in close proximity, Muhammud entered their assigned patrol area and waited for further instructions. The mission plan was highly modified from the usual sorties they flew, which heightened Muhammud's sense of anticipation. If nothing happened in the next twenty minutes, they would begin cycling planes to a coastal airstrip for refueling. Seventy-three miles south of Muhammud's position, seven additional MiG-29s were steering a circuitous course toward Hendorabi Island. The American carrier battle group was steaming southwest of the island. Eight miles behind the MiG fighters, three cruise-missile-equipped Dassault Mirage F1 s were prepared to attack the carrier if ordered to do so. Slightly above and a mile behind the F1 s, two agin
g
Bushehr-based F-4 Phantom jets were positioning themselves to attack. Both fighters were equipped with Chinese-made C801 Sardine antiship cruise missiles.

If hostilities erupted, the Iranians' strategy would be to lure the U
. S
. aviators close to their homeland, or over any of the seven Houdong-class guided-missile patrol craft, where surface-to-air missiles would be used to make the fight more deadly. Few of the Iranian pilots were willing to discuss the fact that Iran's SAMs couldn't identify friend from foe. A senior pilot who had questioned the tactics disappeared from the base. No one would openly speculate as to his whereabouts.