7

Lajes Field, Azores

SOME TEN HOURS LATER TURK STOOD IN THE LIGHT rain outside a hangar at Lajes Field, trying to shake out the charley horse that had taken hold of his leg. He’d spent nearly the entire ten hours studying the data on the nano-UAVs and the mission. Contained on a slatelike computer, the information was considered so secret that the program displaying it automatically changed its encryption scheme every ten minutes; Turk had to reenter his password each time and press his thumb against the print reader to unscramble it.

The password was the same as his “safe word”—Thanksgiving. He was supposed to work the word into a conversation if there was a question about his identity.

He had never been on a mission where he needed a safe word. Whiplash command had various ways of identifying him, including a special ring on his finger that marked his location to within a third of a meter when queried through a satellite system. Thinking about the contingencies where the system might not suffice was somewhat unsettling.

He was wearing a plain khaki uniform, a bit frayed at the cuff and worn at the knee. He guessed it was an Iranian-style uniform, though he hadn’t bothered to ask.

A half-hour before, a Gulfstream had dropped him off in front of a hangar where an officer waiting in an SUV rolled down the window and said two words: “Wait here.” Then the truck sped off, leaving Turk completedly alone. The rain started a few minutes later. Fortunately, the hangar was open, and he’d waited at the doorway, just out of the storm. Even so, the spray seemed to weigh him down, washing away the surge of confidence that had built on the way there. He didn’t doubt that he could direct the nano-UAVs—it wouldn’t be much harder than any of a dozen things he’d done in the past two months. But surviving on the ground—was he really ready for that?

The whine of jet engines nearby shook away his doubts, or at least postponed them. Turk stepped up to the corner of the hangar doorway as an SUV approached. Right behind it he saw a C-17 cargo plane, a big, high-winged transport. He folded his arms, admiring the taxiing behemoth. He’d once shared the typical fighter jock prejudice against transports and their drivers, thinking the big planes were little more than buses requiring little skill to guide. A few stints in the cockpit of an MC-17R undergoing testing had disabused him of that misperception. On his first flight, the commander had made a turn tighter than a Cessna 182 might have managed on a good day, plopping down on an airfield that looked to be about the size of a bathtub. From that point on he had nothing but respect for Air Mobility jocks and their brethren in general.

Turk moved toward the hangar wall as the plane neared. The C-17 stopped about twenty yards past the hangar. The rear cargo bay opened and the ramp descended slowly, the four “toes” at the end unfolding to the ground. With the engines continuing to whine, two men trotted to the tarmac; both were armed with automatic weapons. The one closest to Turk eyed him quickly, then touched the side of his helmet and began talking into the headset. Meanwhile, a crewman checked the ramp and the sides, making sure they were secure. Moments later what looked like a fat torpedo came down the ramp, propelled by electric motors at the wheels and controlled by a crew chief holding a wired remote. He stopped at the base of the ramp, looked around quickly, then shouted something to the two men with the guns. One of them did something with his hand—a signal to proceed—and the torpedo began making its way to the hangar, flanked by the two guards.

Another man came down the ramp then, a rucksack on each shoulder. He was tall, and silhouetted in the light looked almost like a science-fiction robot rather than something of flesh and blood. Turk stared at him as he approached, then realized he’d seen the saunter before—it was Grease, the Delta Force sergeant he’d trained with. The sergeant ignored him, walking into the hangar behind the cart.

“Grease,” said Turk coming over.

“Captain.” Grease turned back and inspected the cart and its cargo.

“Here’s our chariot, huh?”

Grease’s expression was somewhere between contempt and incomprehension.

“You use the man bomb before?” Turk asked, trying to start a conversation. Danny had already told him that Grease had used the contraption three times.

“Idiotic nickname. Don’t call it that,” muttered Grease.

The man bomb—officially, SOC Air Mobile Stealth Infiltration Non-powered Vehicle JH7-99B—sat on its skid upside down, exposing the belly and a clamshell door. The outer skin was covered with radar absorbing material. If Turk were to touch it—neither he nor anyone else was supposed to do so unnecessarily—it would have felt like slick Teflon.

“We gonna fit in that?” Turk asked.

“One of us will.”

“Just one?”

Grease didn’t answer. The man bomb was designed to hold one person, but it could in a pinch hold two. The pressurized container fit into the bomb bay of a B-2 Spirit, once the aircraft’s Rotary Launcher Assembly was removed.

Contrary to the nickname, the device was not dropped from the aircraft. Instead, its passenger (or in this case, passengers) fell from the container when its target area was reached. After falling a sufficient distance they opened their parachutes and descended to their target in a standard HALO jump, if any High Altitude, Low Opening free-fall could be termed “standard.”

Turk had parachuted and was in fact officially qualified for HALO jumps, though he did not have extensive practice doing so. But because of the importance of the mission, the limited availability of B-2s, and the dangerous area they would be jumping into, the mission planners had decided he would jump in tandem with his Delta guide—Grease.

A tandem jump basically tied both jumpers together in a single harness. This was a fine practice when leaving a plane; there was plenty of room to maneuver to the doorway, and any feelings of paranoia because someone was standing over your shoulder were literally blown away by the rush of the wind as you stepped off. But the man bomb hadn’t been designed with tandem jumps in mind. The two men would have to cradle in each other’s arms during the flight, which even at best speed would take close to eight hours.

Grease dropped his packs a short distance from the hangar and hulked over their transport. He opened the top of one and took out a large, T-shaped metal key, which he inserted into a panel near the front of the man bomb. He turned it and the claw doors opened. He took out two large packs—their parachutes—and some bags of gear from the interior. Satisfied that everything was there, he turned to Turk.

“You have briefing data?” he asked.

“In here.” Turk patted his ruck.

“Hand it over.”

Turk gave him the slate computer. Grease went back to his packs. He took out what looked like a large padded envelope, put the computer inside, then walked to a trash barrel just outside the hangar.

“Hey!” managed Turk as Grease dropped the bag into the can.

Fire shot from the top of the barrel. Turk ran over to rescue the slate computer, only to be grabbed by Grease before he got near. He was pulled back as the can rumbled with an explosion.

“Can’t risk it,” Grease told him. “Had to be destroyed.”

“You gonna blow up the controls, too?”

“Not yet,” said the trooper.

FORTY MINUTES LATER THE TWO MEN SNUGGLED UNCOMFORTABLY together as the man bomb was twisted upside down and then locked in the bay of a freshly fueled B-2. Turk had never felt so claustrophobic in an airplane before.

“Get sleep now,” said Grease as the plane began to move. “We ain’t gonna have much chance once we’re in Iran.”

“Pretty hard to sleep like this.”