Flash Point (62 page)

They passed out of Iraq into northern Syria. He couldn’t stay as low as he wanted anymore. His Tomcat was too hard to handle. It felt unhappy with three feet of its left wing gone. It wanted to roll left and yaw. He’d been able to control it with trim so far, but he couldn’t hug the ground all the way back in his condition. He climbed to three thousand feet and slowed to three hundred knots, there for any competent radar operator to see from a hundred miles away. They needed protection and help. They had to risk being heard and located by the Syrians.

Sedge called the E-2. “
Blue Door 32, this is Watchmaker 09
.”

“09. Blue Door 32. Go ahead.”

“
Go secure
,” Sedge said.

“Roger, secure.”

Sedge looked down to his left and turned the dial on his secure UHF encryption box. “
32, you up
?” Sedge asked.

“32’s up. Go ahead, 09.”

“
They were waiting for us. They got our wingman. He went down at the target site, just southwest of the mountain. He landed in the valley — the airplane crashed just short of the base of the mountain. Alert whoever is in charge of SAR
.” Search and Rescue.

“Roger, 09. Say your posit.”

Sedge looked at his PTID and read off the bearing and range to where the carrier was when they left. “
We’re 083 for 230 from home base
.”

“Roger. You inbound?”

“Affirmative, but we’ve been hit. We may not make it.”

“You need assistance, 09?”

“Just have a SAR chopper near the coast in case we can’t make it to the ship. We’re missing about three feet from our left wing.”

“Wilco. You see any chutes at the target?”

“Affirmative. Two good chutes, and positive radio contact with them on the ground.”

“Roger. We’ll check on what SAR assets are available.”

“Roger, 09 out.”

Wink rubbed his knee. “We can’t stay on this hill with the ZSU on the other side. When they find our chutes, this’ll be the first place they look. We’ve got to get to the hills on the north end of the valley. Probably a mile across. It’s our only chance.”

Woods hated the idea of walking across the floor of a valley with no trees, no rocks to speak of, and some unknown number of people looking for them. But Wink was right. If they stayed where they were, they would certainly be caught. His desire for self-destruction had faded as quickly as it had come.

They headed across the small valley floor to the hill north of them. Their intention was less to ease their chance of getting picked up than to find a place to hide. Elevation seemed to indicate safety for some reason.

Woods thought back to his SERE school days. They had thrown him out into the California desert at Warner Springs in northern San Diego County, and made him — and forty or fifty others — survive with nothing. No food, no shelter, and no chance of being rescued. They taught you to eat prickly pear cacti, and live in the desert, and where to find water in dried-up riverbeds. They taught you to move at night and stay hidden during the day. They taught you to be able to resist torture and how to be an effective prisoner of war. He had really hoped never to have to use that part of his training.

Woods whispered to Wink over his shoulder. “Didn’t the parachutes blow this way?”

“Yeah,” Wink said quietly, looking around. “But they won’t expect us to go in the same direction.”

They walked as quickly as they could, Wink wincing on every other step, and crossed the dusty valley floor to the distant hill where they hoped to find a place to hide out until whenever they were supposed to be picked up. Woods didn’t like not knowing the plan. As impulsive as he could be, he always operated on a plan, even if it had been his plan only for a few minutes.

They reached the base of the hill and Woods stopped to look at it. His eyes ran over the entire visible face of the hill, checking for anything unusual, or any signs of life. He saw nothing. He took off his helmet and breathed the cool air deeply. “You think the ZSU was here all the time?” he asked Wink. “Think the intel people just missed it?”

“They weren’t on the satellite photos. We looked at them ourselves.”

“They may have just been camouflaged.”

“No way. They weren’t there.”

“That means they were brought in last night.”

“Right.”

Woods put his skull cap in his survival vest to keep from dropping it. “That means they knew we were coming.”

“How would they know that?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

“What about the SA-6?”

“We never saw an SA-6, did we? Just the radar.”

That had never even occurred to Wink. “A radar but no SAMs? Why?”

“Cheaper. And to drive us down. We’d have been above the ZSU’s range otherwise. If we see a SAM radar, we stay low and fly right into the heart of the ZSU envelope.”

“That’s pretty shitty,” Wink said, grimacing. His right knee was swelling up from the impact with the ground.

“Come on,” Woods urged. They started up the hill. It was steeper than they had expected and there were large boulders over the entire face that made an assent in the dark very tricky. Woods pulled himself through a crevice between two rocks and stood up straight on the uphill side.

They both glanced over their shoulders toward Alamut, which remained silhouetted against the night sky. “Looks intact.” Woods said, disheartened. He continued to climb the rocks heading for the top. The hill turned out to be more of a mountain than a hill. It was twice as high as Woods had thought when he’d seen it from across the valley floor. He looked back down from where they had come. Where they had been standing, Woods saw flashlights. He squinted. He could see several men standing around examining the ground for tracks. “They’re onto us.”

“Shit,” Wink said.

“We gotta find us a hiding place right now,” Woods said, surveying the surrounding area quickly. There were hundreds of boulders, but not one tree or large bush. Just hard ground, and harder rocks.

“At least they don’t have dogs,” Wink said. “At least I hope they don’t.”

Woods stood looking at a rock formation above them. He stepped toward it tentatively. “This way,” he directed.

Wink limped along behind him. They knew if they didn’t find some place to hide in the next five minutes they’d be dead in ten.

Big tossed his helmet bag in the ready room chair and searched the room quickly for Bark. He saw him standing by the SDO desk on the phone.

“Big!” Bark said, covering the receiver with his hand, still listening to the telephone. “What happened?”

“ZSUs were waiting for us.”

“E-2 says Trey and Wink got out.”

“Yes, sir. Two good chutes. I talked to them on the ground.”

“Admiral wants to see you. Sedge, you come too.”

Sedge threw his helmet bag onto the chair next to Big’s. They both had sweat running down their chests and their hair was matted and sweat-filled. They had never been through anything like what they had just experienced, the best and worst of flying. Bark finished his phone call and motioned them to follow him out the back door of the ready room, turning left to walk up the starboard side of the carrier to the blue tile — Admiral’s country.

Bark banged hard on the steel-reinforced door into SUPPLOT — Supplemental Plot — where the Admiral operated and monitored what was going on. A Petty Officer opened the door and ushered them in. The three Jolly Rogers stood next to each other behind Admiral Sweat, who was watching his three large projection screens showing the entire Middle East and every airplane, ship, and submarine in the area. The Air Wing Commander was next to him.

The Admiral had dark circles under his eyes and had clearly been up all night. He had gotten as little sleep as anyone on the ship over the last three days. The entire operation and all the implications were on his shoulders. He turned around in his high-backed leather chair and studied the three of them. He was in no mood for small talk. What was supposed to be an easy mission had turned into a possible POW problem, the worst possible result. “What the hell happened?” he demanded.

“The low level and the approach to the target were no problem,” Big said. “No hostile forces, no AAA, and no SAMs. The airplanes were sweet, although there was more drag with the GBU-28 than we—”

“Tell me about the shoot-down.”

“Yes, sir. When we broke across the Iranian border everything was fine. We were going through the valleys. As we got closer, and pulled up over a hill, we started getting tickled by an SA-6 radar—”

“I didn’t think Iran had SA-6s.”

“We didn’t either. Woods was in the lead, and did what I would have done. We were to do a gradual climb to a high-altitude drop — above any ground fire threat. But if we had pulled up high and cruised in, we’d have been in the heart of the SA-6 envelope. So we stayed low and did a pop-up mid-altitude attack. We looked for the laser designator from the ground, but he wasn’t there. We did it ourselves.” Sedge picked up the story.

“And just kind of did the best we could at aiming, did our own laser,” Sedge said awkwardly.

Big continued. “The SA-6 radar was on us, but no missile. We were releasing our bomb, heading back down to get out of the SAM radar. All of a sudden we got lit up by a ZSU radar. They tore into Trey. His wing folded over and his tail came off. Burst into flames and headed down to the desert floor. They jumped. The ZSU then tried for us and got three feet of our left wing, but we made it out. We raised Trey and Wink on the radio when they were on the ground. They’re okay, Admiral.”

“How come we didn’t know they had ZSUs protecting this fortress?” he asked of no one in particular. “Did the satellite imagery show anything?”

Big responded quickly. “No, sir, we reviewed all the photos before taking off. There was no hint. They knew we were coming. They moved some air defenses around the fortress at the worst possible time.”

The Admiral considered the implications of that statement for a moment. “We’ll get them out.”

Big volunteered. “I’d like to fly cover for the SAR effort, sir. I owe him.”

“Relax,” the Admiral said. “We’ve been in touch with the Air Force Special Operations Command. They’ve got some people at Aviano who are ready to go.”

“The Air Force?” Big asked.

“It’s their mission, and they’re ready.”

“When would they go?”

“That’s one of the things they wanted us to ask you. Do you think they can survive out there until nightfall?”

“They don’t have much choice. They’ll find somewhere to hide until dark. But I don’t know how you just fly in and pick up two guys sitting right next to a ZSU-23 that will be waiting for a SAR effort.”

“That’s the Air Force’s problem.”

“Let us fly fighter cover. Let’s put ten F-14’s overhead Trey and take on all comers.”

“That’s not the way we’re going to do this,” the Admiral said. “It’s out of our hands. You guys go get some rest.”

“Aye aye, sir,” they replied. They turned to leave the darkened room when the Admiral stopped them.

“Did you get the Sheikh?”

Big shrugged. “Not a chance. The laser wasn’t there. We had to do it ourselves. We had to jink away to keep from getting our asses shot. I don’t know if they even hit where we were aiming.”

“They did,” Sedge said. “But we don’t have any idea if we aimed right. Probably just blew up a bunch of dirt.”

The Admiral’s response had a flinty edge to it. “That’s the problem with declaring war against one person. If you bomb him and blow him into the next reality, how do you ever know for sure you got him? How the hell are we going to prove we got this guy?”

“We’ve got to get out of sight,” Woods said, thinking of the Assassins making their way toward them.

Wink sat on a boulder and rubbed his knee. “I sure hope I don’t have to get arthro. My knee is killing me.”

“What’d you do to it?”

“I’m not sure. I just hit the ground hard. You know they tell you to look straight ahead so you don’t know when you’re going to hit and you don’t brace for the impact?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d like to meet the guy who had that idea. I’d probably have been fine if I’d been able to prepare for the impact . . .”

Woods suddenly noticed an overhang behind them that seemed to curl around and underneath a large boulder. He quit listening to Wink and scrambled onto the boulder to examine the crevice. It might be big enough for a man to get into, but it would be tight. He looked up into the sky. The stars were disappearing. Sunrise was approaching.

He slid down the boulder and sat next to Wink. “I think we’re going to have to get in between these two rocks. It’ll be tight.”

“Think we can fit?”

“We’ll have to take off all our flight gear—”

“We can’t leave it out—”

“No, we’ll drag it in with us.”

Wink was skeptical and crawled onto the boulder and stuck his head into the crevice. He pulled his Maglite out of his survival vest and shined it into the crack.

“Are you out of your mind?” Woods cried. “Shut that off! They can see that for ten miles!”

Wink quickly turned it off and put it back where it had been. Not only had he just told everyone where they were, he had ruined his own night vision.

“So, now that you’ve illuminated it, can we fit in it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Great,” Woods said, feeling a quick flash of nausea. “You’d better try. Otherwise, we’re going to be sitting ducks.” He looked for the men crossing the valley. He couldn’t see anybody. “They’re already at the base of this hill,” he announced to Wink’s back as he watched him try to slide into the crevice.

Wink struggled to slide into the hole, fearful he would get into a position where he couldn’t get back out.

Woods watched him anxiously. Woods never saw the hand come around his head from his right that quickly covered his mouth. His arms flailed as he was dragged backward off the boulder and onto the hard ground.

Two enormous, dark gray MH-53J Pave Low helicopters came over the horizon. They slowed as they approached the USS
Saipan
and positioned themselves for a vertical descent. The
Saipan
was a helicopter and VTOL — Vertical Takeoff and Landing — carrier that carried the Marine amphibious helicopters and Harrier jets.