Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (36 page)

 
          
This
was by far the riskiest operation Weston’s crew had ever flown as special ops
crews: deploy from the U.S. Special Operations Command detachment based at
Batman Air Base in eastern Turkey across the Black Sea and the Republic of
Ukraine, refuel at low level with an MC-130P aerial refueling tanker over
eastern Ukraine near Char’kov, then fly another five hundred miles across
southwestern Russia to the outskirts of Moscow itself.

 
          
But
that twelve-hundred-mile trip was only the beginning of Weston’s extraordinary
mission. Dodging civilian and military air defense radar coverage around
Moscow
and Zhukovsky Air Base, Weston and his crew
had to search four different contact points around Zhukovsky Air Base, looking
for a single agent who was probably in hiding. The MV-22’s infrared scanner was
the primary search sensor; if the sensor showed any individuals in the area,
Weston would drop off Briggs and Wohl, who would search the area near each
contact point for the agent. They had less than an hour loiter time to find her
before fuel would run low and they’d be forced to return to the MC-130P
Hercules tanker flying in northeastern Ukraine to refuel. They had enough
daylight for only two such searches before they’d have to return to Batman Air
Base before sunrise.

 
          
Their
only advantage: they knew that the agent would be at one of those four contact
points.

 
          
The
thirty-two year-old aircraft commander, married and father of two, had been
briefed on the importance and dangers of this mission, but he had volunteered
anyway. As shitty as he felt his job was sometimes, being a spy for the
United States
government had to be an even shittier job
If he had the skills to attempt to save this spy's life, he had an obligation
to use them. And with the MV-22E Pave Hammer I special operations transport, he
definitely had the gear to do the job. The MV-22E was modified with more
powerful engines and stronger wings for low-level flying; an air refueling
probe for extended range; rugged landing gear for landing on unimproved
surfaces; ultraprecise satellite and inertial navigation systems, night vision,
forward-looking infrared scanners, and terrain- and obstacle-avoidance radar
for treetop-level flying in any weather, day or night; and threat
countermeasures equipment such as radar jammers, radar warning receivers, and
decoys to protect the crew from hostile antiaircraft fire.

 
          
Of
course, Weston would never ask his family the question about whether or not he
should go. His wife was especially accustomed to the bliss of ignorance that
surrounded her husband’s job. The ISA deployed year-round to every comer of the
globe. The wives and families never knew any details. The cell’s rotation came
up, they were gone, and sometime later— days, weeks, months later—they would
return. The families watched the news and speculated about whether their
husbands or wives were involved in that particular crisis, but they never knew
for sure. The only indications that they might have been involved in something
horrible were the faraway stares and wandering attention at the dinner table.

 
          
Sometimes,
they didn’t come back. Instead of reunions with loved ones, there were
condolences, tears, and a flag folded up into a triangle. If they were lucky,
they got the body back. Even then, no explanations. Never any explanations.

 
          
Quite
unabashedly, Weston believed one other thing: the ISA picked the right guy for
the job. John Weston, an ROTC cadet and high school chess champion from
Springfield, Illinois, was pretty much a book-loving stay-at-home-with-the-
kids ex-farm boy nerd most of the time, but he did have one quality absolutely
no one disputed: he could make an MV-22 Pave Hammer transport plane dance.

 
          
Right
now, however, he wasn’t sure if all the dancing in the world could get them out
of this mess. “How’s it look, Flex?” Weston asked.

 
          
“Like
shit, boss,” Master Sergeant Ed “Flex” Fratierie, the senior loadmaster,
responded. The big amateur bodybuilder and Air Force special ops veteran was
standing in the port-side doorway of the MV-22, strapped to the interior of the
fuselage with a safety harness and wearing night-vision goggles. “I don’t see
Tin Man. But I do see more heavy military vehicles coming down the road, ETA
about five minutes.”

 
          
“Tin
Man, Hammer, we’ve got company,” Weston radioed. “Four minutes out. Better
hustle.”

 
          
“Exfils
inbound from the southeast and east, crew,” Fratierie radioed on the secure
intercom channel, watching Briggs and Wohl through his NVGs. “Identity confirmed.”

           
“Security out!” Weston ordered.
Fratierie directed his three commandos to deploy around the MV-22 Pave Hammer
tilt- rotor as guards during the evacuation. “Get ready to—”

           
“Heavy weapons fire west!” one
loadmaster shouted. “Coming from one of the inbound vehicles. Range four
klicks!”

           
“Aces will be coming in hot in
twenty seconds,” Deverill reported. “Can you catch him, Tin Man?”

 
          
“Roger,”
Chris Wohl responded. “I need a range and bearing to the inbound, sir,”

           
Hal Briggs stopped, then turned to
the west and scanned the area with his helmet-mounted sensors. He pointed away
down the highway. “Three point five K meters, Stan,” he radioed. “Fast-moving,
big—might be a wheeled APC.”

 
          
“Finally
got it right, sir,” Wohl said. He raised a large weapon that resembled a cross
between an M60 machine gun and a ray gun, sighted through a large electronic
multispectral scope, aimed, and Fired toward the highway. A hypervelocity
projectile about the size of a cigar, but traveling five times faster than a
bullet, hissed out of the weapon’s muzzle with a sound resembling a loud
buzzing cough. There was no recoil— the same electromagnetic impulses that sent
the projectile on its way also dampened out the tremendous recoil.

 
          
Exactly
three thousand and seventeen yards away, the depleted uranium hypervelocity
railgun projectile shot through a half-inch of steel plating on a Russian
BTR-27 wheeled armored command post vehicle racing down the highway, proceeded
unimpeded through the six-hundred-horsepower diesel engine, through the fuel
tank, out the back end, and into the engine compartment of a police car
traveling fifty yards behind the BTR, before it finally stopped. The BTR’s
engine exploded, then the diesel fuel exploded. The police car was knocked
sideways into the ditch as if it were a toy.

 
          
Wohl
continued to scan the area with his electronic scope. “I’ve got infantry moving
in,” he reported. ‘Three klicks out. They might be setting up a mortar or
getting ready to shoot in grenades. We better move.”

 
          
“Pop
smoke, pop smoke!” Weston ordered. Soon, thick clouds of gray infrared-blocking
smoke wafted across the windscreen, covering every direction except the one in
which they intended to take off. Hopefully the smoke would make it a bit more
difficult for the mortar crews to range in on them. C’mon, Weston breathed,
c’mon,
hurry!

 
          
“More
mortar fire!
Incoming
/” That time, Weston felt the explosion rattle his
plane’s fuselage, clumps of dirt, snow, and tarmac pinging off his props and
fuselage. Despite the clouds of smoke swirling around the plane, the rounds
were being quickly, expertly walked in. Another one or two rounds, and they’d
have their range. Weston could almost feel the bad guys loading that deadly
round into the tube, letting it slide down, hearing its ballistic charges light
off with a loud
KA-BLAM!
The MV-22 rocked on its wheels, and two engines
coughed and rattled as the overpressure from a large explosion forced air
backward through the turbine engines.

 
          
But
as he watched, one by one, Fratierie saw the oncoming Russian military vehicles
blasted apart by some unseen force. The last to die caused a tremendous
explosion as its magazine of antivehicle mortars was hit and detonated. But the
nonmilitary vehicles—a police car and a second ambulance—were untouched.

 
          
“What
was that?"
Weston shouted on the secure intercom. “Sing out!”

 
          
“Looks
like our guardian angel took care of our newcomers,” one of his loadmasters
responded. “Lots of secondaries. Road’s clear right now except for a police
cruiser and an ambulance.”

 
          
Good
shooting by someone out there, Weston thought. The driving rain and winds were
dissipating the cover smoke quickly—there was no more time to waste. “How long
until our ex fils get on board?”

 
          
“All
exfils under the tail. Wounded coming aboard.”

 
          
“Roger.”
Weston revved the throttle, starting to feed in takeoff torque. “Security, pull
in. Let’s get the hell out of here!”

 
          
The
loadmasters acting as security forces started pulling back toward the
plane—when suddenly they stopped, then dove for the ground. Weston couldn’t
hear anything over the roar of the engines until the last moment. It was the
scream of an inbound mortar round. And as he looked on helplessly, one of his
loadmasters disappeared in a blinding flash of light and an earsplitting
explosion, just thirty yards from the plane.

 
          
“Jesus!”
the copilot shouted. “Candy got hit! Triggerman, Flex, check east, see if you
can help Candy!”

 
          
“Negative,”
Weston interjected, his words acidity in his throat. It was the hardest
decision he had ever had to make, but one he made without any hesitation.
“Candy took a direct hit. Get in the plane. Let’s go.”

 
          
“Cap,
we can’t leave our men behind—”

           
“We don’t have any choice,” Weston
said. “Security, pull in.
now.
Flex, where did that mortar come from?”

 
          
“More
inbound from the north on the other side of the river,” Fratierie responded.
“Can’t pinpoint their location, but the round came from the north, probably the
other side of the bridge. Aces, Aces, can you see the newcomers north of our
position?”

 
          
“Flex,
give me a countdown for when everyone’s on board.”

 
          
“Twenty
seconds, Cap ... fifteen ... ten seconds .. . cargo ramp’s moving, everyone on
board!
Go! Go!”

 
          
Weston
poured in power right to the redline, and the MV-22 lifted off. He thumbed the
nacelle control knob, which rotated the engine nacelles downward a few degrees,
increasing their forward speed. As their forward speed increased, the MV-22’s
wings produced more lift, but because Weston held the nose down and kept the
tilt-rotor aircraft at treetop level, speed increased dramatically. As speed
increased more, Weston eventually rotated the nacelles to full horizontal
position, changing the Pave Hammer from helicopter to airplane mode. He
activated the terrain-following radar and low-light TV sensors so he could see
and avoid all terrain and obstacles outside in the darkness.

 
          
“Holy
shit, we made it,” the copilot breathed. “I thought we’d never—”

 
          
At
that instant, the threat-warning receiver in the cockpit emitted a shrill
DEEDLEDEEDLEDEEDLE!
tone, an A symbol appeared near the top of the display, and an instant later
the electronic warfare officer shouted, “Radar-guided triple A, four o’clock,
break left
now!”
A ripple of antiaircraft fire erupted just to the right
of the nose, tracers sweeping in their direction. Weston banked hard left, but
not quickly enough. The twenty- three-millimeter shells of a mobile ZSU-23-2
antiaircraft artillery unit belonging to the Russian Federation Air Force’s
Troops of Air Defense detachment based at Zhukovsky Air Base ripped into the
MV-22’s forward fuselage. The force of the big shells piercing the plane’s
belly and hitting the copilot’s body nearly pushed him right out of his seat
and made him look as if he was trying to stand up and turn around to escape his
bloody fate. Weston heard sounds of explosions, popping, and snapping of
electrical circuits behind him; most of the electronic readouts and
multifunction displays on the forward instrument panel extinguished, and a thin
layer of blue electrical smoke filled the cabin. There was a loud squeal in the
intercom, and Weston had to rip his helmet off because he couldn’t shut it off.
The cabin instantly got fifty degrees colder, with swirls of icy, rainy air
penetrating the cabin. Ice immediately began to form on the windshield on the
inside—soon it would ice over completely.