A siren sounded in the distance. Vahid froze.
A fire?
No.
No!
“The alert!” yelled Sergeant Hami. “The alert!”
Vahid grabbed his helmet from the table, then ran to the ladder at the side of the plane. As he climbed upward, a van with the rest of the ground crew raced across the concrete apron, jerking to a stop in front of the hangar. Hami helped Vahid into the cockpit, while the arriving crewmen began pulling the stops away from the plane and opening the rear door of the hangar.
Two nights before, a false alert had gotten Vahid out of the hangar, but he was called back before reaching the runway, some 1,000 meters away: the radars had picked up an Iranian passenger flight in the Gulf and, briefly, mistaken it for an American spy plane. He expected this was something along the same lines. Still expecting the flashing light at the top of the hangar to snap off, he powered up the MiG, turning over one engine and then quickly ramping the other. Hami, back on the ground, shook his fist at him, giving him a thumbs-up.
Vahid began rolling forward. The tower barked at him, demanding he get airborne. Ignoring them for a moment, he took stock of his controls. Then, at the signal from Sergeant Hami, he went heavy on his engines. The plane strained against her brakes. The gauges pegged with perfect reads. The MiG wanted to fly.
“Shahin One to Tower, request permission to move to runway,” said Vahid calmly.
“Go! Go!” answered the controller.
The MiG jerked forward, overanxious. At the other end of the base three pilots were running from the ready room. Their planes would be a few minutes behind. It was Vahid’s job to sort things out before they were committed to the battle.
“Cleared for immediate takeoff,” said the controller.
Vahid didn’t bother to pause as he came to the end of the runway—there were no other flights here, and it was clear he was under orders to get airborne immediately. Selecting full military power, he started the MiG down the runway. The screech of the engines built to a fierce whine. He felt himself starting to lift.
Airborne, he made a quick check of his readouts, then cleaned his landing gear into the aircraft. The MiG leapt forward, rocketing into the night.
Moments later the local air commander came over the radio, giving him his instructions directly.
“You are to fly north by northeast,” said the general, “in the direction of Natanz. There are reports of a low-flying airplane near the Naeen train station. We will turn you over to Major Javadpour for a vector.”
“Acknowledged.”
Vahid had to look at his paper map to find Naeen. It was a dot in the mountains north of the city of Nain, a small town camped at the intersection of several highways that transcribed the Iranian wilderness. He was some five hundred kilometers away.
Major Javadpour directed Vahid to the west of the sighting—he wanted him to fly close to Natanz, one of the country’s main nuclear research sites.
Gravity pushed Vahid against the seat as he goosed his afterburners. At full speed he was just over ten minutes away.
“We have no radar contacts at this time,” said Javadpour.
“No contacts?”
“We have two eyewitnesses who saw and heard planes. But no radar.”
“What sort of aircraft did they see?” asked Vahid.
The controller didn’t answer right away, apparently gathering information. Vahid pictured a flight of American B-2 Stealth Bombers, flying low over the terrain. They would pop up before the attack.
He might be too late to stop them. But he would surely destroy them. He had two R-27 air-to-air medium-range missiles and six R-73s, all Russian made, under his wings. The R-27s were radar missiles; he had been told they would have trouble finding B-2s unless he was relatively close, but this didn’t bother him at all. The B-2 was slower than his plane, and far less maneuverable. As for the R-73s, they were heat-seekers, very dependable when fired in a rear-quarter attack.
They might have escorts. If so, he would ignore them—the bombers were the far more important target.
Vahid continued to climb and accelerate.
“We still have no contacts at this time. Negative,” said Javadpour, coming back on the line. “The eyewitnesses describe a small plane, possibly a drone, very low to the ground.”
“A small plane?”
“Single engine. It may be civilian. That’s all the information I have at this time,” added the controller. “Maintain your course. I show you reaching the area in six minutes.”
Damn, thought Vahid, another false alarm.
11
Iran
TURK WATCHED THE TRAIN OF TRIANGLES AS THEY flowed steadily from the northwest. They were two minutes from the target, traveling at nearly Mach 4, gliding with the momentum of the ship they’d launched from.
He looked up. Grease was sitting stone-faced next to him. The Israeli and the pilot in the front were silent, staring straight into the darkness. They were just over three hundred feet above the nearby slope, with the target area six miles away off the right wing.
“Keep the plane steady,” Turk said softly, picking up the small headset. “The words I say will have nothing to do with us, unless I address Grease directly. Grease, if you need me, tap on my leg. But don’t need me.”
He turned his attention back to the screen, hunching his head down to isolate himself from the others. He was used to distractions, used to splitting himself away from his immediate surroundings to concentrate, but this was a challenge even for him.
The small plane tucked up and down as it came across the mountain slope, buffeted by the wind and twitching with the pilot’s nervous hand. A light beep sounded in the headset.
“Ten seconds to acquisition range,” the computer told him.
A quick kick of doubt tweaked Turk’s stomach: You can’t do this. You haven’t trained properly. You will fail.
You are a failure.
Red letters flashed on the screen before him.
“Establish link,” Turk told the computer calmly.
Doubt and fear vanished with the words. The UAVs, still moving with the momentum of their initial launch and the gravity that pulled them to earth, came into his control in quick succession.
It wasn’t exactly control. It was more like strong influence. He could stop them or turn them away, goose them ahead or push them down, but for the most part now he was watching as the thirty-six aircraft, each the size of the sat phone sitting in his pocket, plummeted toward the air exchanger hidden in the cluster of rocks on the hillside.
Turk tapped his screen, bringing up the status window where he quickly checked the roster of aircraft. Two were flashing red—the monitors had detected problems. He tapped the names, opening windows with the details. The computer highlighted the difficulties. Both had abnormal heat sensors, suggesting their shields had failed. That would likely degrade the solid Teflon propellant, though with the engines not yet ignited, it was impossible to tell what the actual effect would be.
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.