“You know what, Doc, let’s just take it as it comes.”
“Danny—”
“That’s Captain Freah to you,” said Danny, hitting the kill switch at the bottom of his helmet.
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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
Aboard Raven , over Iran 1700
FENTRESS WATCHED AS ZEN FLEW THE FLIGHTHAWK JUST
above the hillside, barely six or seven feet from the dirt and rocks. The plane moved as smoothly as if it were at thirty thousand feet, and nearly as fast. Zen worked the controls with total concentration, jerking his head back and forth, rocking his body with the plane, mimicking the actions he wanted it to take.
Fentress knew he would never be able to fly as well.
Never.
The replay of the shoot-down showed he’d flown right into the antiaircraft fire. He’d been oblivious to it in his rush to help Major Smith.
Stupid. Completely stupid.
He could do better. He wasn’t going to give up.
“Two minutes to Quail launch,” said the copilot. The assault team was now ten minutes away from the nearest target.
THE SMALL, BLOCKY QUAIL 3/B FLUTTERED AS IT HIT THE
slipstream below the Megafortress’s bomb bay, its ramjet engines momentarily faltering. But then the scaled-down model of an EB-52 bobbed away, its engines accelerating to propel it above the mothership’s flight path.
Changes in doctrine as well as electronics and radars had rendered the original ADM-20/GAM-72 Quail obso-lete no later than the 1970s, though there were some circumstances under which the “kill me” drone proved useful. Mechanically, the Quail 3/B was an entirely different bird, though it remained true to the function of its predecessor—it gave the enemy something to look at, and hopefully fire at, other than the bomber itself. Where the original had been a boxy, stub-winged glider, the Quail RAZOR’S EDGE
327
3/B looked exactly like a Megafortress from above and below. Powered by small ramjets and carefully propor-tioned solid rockets augmented by podded flares on the wings, it had the same heat signature as an EB-52. Rather than being coated with radar-absorbing materials to reduce its return, the intricate facets on the Quail 3/B’s shiny skin amplified its radar return to make it appear to most radars almost exactly the size of a B-52. Fanlike antennas inside the drone duplicated the signals transmitted by a B-52H’s standard ALQ-155 and ALT-28 ECM and noise jammers. The Quail couldn’t fly for very long, nor could it be controlled once launched, but the decoy was a perfect clay pigeon.
The question was, would the Iranians go for it?
Zen watched the Quail climb from the Flighthawk cockpit, tagging along as the rockets quickly took it through ten thousand feet. By now it would be clearly visible on the Iranian airport control radars; even if the radars were being operated by civilians—something he doubted—they ought to be on the hot line by now.
“Quail is at twelve thousand feet, climbing steady, on course,” reported the copilot.
“Nothing,” said the electronic warfare officer. “All clear.”
“Laser detection gear is blank too,” said the copilot, who had the plot on his screen. Jennifer, Garcia, and some of the other techies had installed the tweaked device in Raven’s tail, replacing the Stinger antiair mines.
Zen tucked back down toward the mountains, joining the Megafortress in a valley that rode almost directly into the target area. They were no more than fifteen minutes from the farthest site.
“Quail is topping out at eighteen thousand,” said the copilot.
“Nothing,” said the radar operator.
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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
“We’re clean too,” said Fentress. “Are they missing it, or do they know it’s a decoy?” he asked Zen.
“Not sure,” he replied. “Should be pretty fat on their radar.”
“I told you we should have put a kick-me sign on the tail,” joked the copilot. No one laughed.
“We have to go to Plan B,” said Alou.
Zen pulled up the course he’d worked out earlier and pushed the throttle to the firewall, streaking toward the farthest site. The Flighthawk climbed away from the mountainside toward a patchwork of fields. A small village rose on his right, the center of town marked by the round spire of a mosque.
“Radar tracking Quail,” said the operator. “MIM-23
Hawk!”
“Confirmed,” said the copilot.
“Hey—this fits with the earlier profiles,” said the radar operator. “It shouldn’t have been in range—tracking the Quail!”
“That doesn’t fit the pattern,” said Alou.
“Radar is off the air. I have it marked,” said the operator. “Hind probably detected,” he added.
“Whiplash Hind, take evasive maneuvers!” said Fentress.
“Breaking the radar,” said the operator, beginning to explain that he had prodded the ECMs to keep the Hawk radar from locking on the helicopter.
“Laser!” yelled the copilot.
Aboard Whiplash Hind
1708
THE HELICOPTER LURCHED OUT FROM UNDER DANNY, twisting and falling at the same time. The helo’s 18,000
RAZOR’S EDGE
329
pounds hurtled sideways in the air, directly toward a sheer cliff. Unable to grip the slippery wind, and propelled by the violent centrifugal forces kicked up by the main rotor, the tail twisted, throwing the helicopter into a rolling dive so severe that about two inches at the tip of one of the blades sheered off. One of the two Isotov TV3-117 turboshafts choked, the severe rush of air overwhelming the poorly maintained power plant. The aircraft curled to the right but began to settle, its tail now drifting back the other way, a bare foot or two from the rocks. Danny clawed himself up the side of the cabin, steeling himself for the inevitable crash. He saw the door a few feet away; he’d go out there after they hit, assuming he could move.
But he didn’t have to. Somehow, miraculously, Egg had managed to regain control of the helicopter.
“Sorry,” he was saying over and over again. “Shit, sorry. Sorry, sorry.”
Danny looked across at the rest of his team, groaning and sorting themselves out.
“It’s okay, Egg. Settle down.”
“Sorry, Cap. I went to get down and I overdid it. Radar had us spiked.”
“It’s okay. Were we fired on?”
“I don’t know. I, uh, if we were, it doesn’t show up on the instruments, at least not what I can read.”
“Can we keep going?”
“I think so, sir. But, uh, I don’t have anything on my radio, I think.”
“Hang on.” Danny adjusted his own com set. They had lost communications with Dreamland Command, as well as Raven.
Had Raven been hit?
Helicopters often lost radio contact when they were flying very low to the ground. Even the Dreamland satellite connection was finicky.
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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
“Probably, we’re too low to get a good radio connection,” said Danny.
“Should I go up?”
“Let’s stay low for a while,” said Danny. “When we’re closer to the target areas, then we’ll pop up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Whiplash team, sound off. Give me your status,” said Danny.
One by one the team members gave a curse-laden roll call. Liu had a major welt on his arm and Jack “Pretty Boy” Floyd had a bloody nose, but none of the injuries were severe. “Powder” Talcom brought up the rear of the muster.
“I think I puked my fuckin’ brains out,” he said.
Everyone laughed, even Egg.
“Ought to fill a thimble,” said Bison. “If that.”
Aboard Raven , over Iran 1710
“LASER IS CONFIRMED AT SITE TWO,” SAID THE COPILOT.
“The rectangular building at the far end of the eastern block. Subgrid two. Near the animal pen. Marked now on GPS displays.”
“That’s where the Hawk radar is. I have the site marked,” said the radar operator. “They’re off the air.”