As long as they stayed in the general area, they’d be OK. He’d have the Cessna fly a long, continuous circuit as close to the target as the pilot dared. Once he acquired the UAVs, things would happen pretty fast.

Turk checked his watch. They were four hours from the rendezvous time. The mission plan had called for the helicopter to take about two hours getting to the refuel site; the target area was another hour and a half away.

“Are we stopping to refuel?” Turk asked.

“Nonstop,” said the Israeli. “Straight line.”

Turk leaned forward, checking the gauges. The pilot had the throttle at max; they were pushing 140 knots.

“Set your speed to 110 knots,” Turk said, calculating their flight time. “One hundred and ten knots.”

The pilot made no move to comply.

“Tell him to drop his speed to 110 knots,” Turk told the Israeli. “Or I’ll strangle him.”

Grease glanced at Turk, then took out his pistol.

The Israeli said something to the pilot. The pilot disagreed, and they started to argue.

“Look, we don’t want to get there too soon,” said Turk. “If 110 knots is too slow for the aircraft, then we’ll have to change course and fly around a bit. But he’s heading straight for the target area. I don’t know what you’ve told him, or what you think we’re doing, but we don’t want to get there too soon. Do you understand? This isn’t a race. We have to be there in a precise window of time.”

“He says we have to maintain speed,” said the Israeli harshly.

“The pilot does exactly what the captain says,” Grease announced, raising the Iranian-made Sig and nudging it against the edge of the pilot’s neck, “or he dies.”

The pilot glanced back nervously. The plane edged with him, reacting to his hand on the yoke.

“Don’t be a fool,” hissed the Israeli. “You’ll kill us all.”

“He’s going too fast,” said Turk. “Tell him to relax. Tell him I’m a pilot, too. I know what I’m talking about.”

“He knows where he has to go and when to get there,” said the Israeli, only slightly less antagonistic. “He wants a cushion.”

“We can’t afford a cushion. This isn’t a transport. Tell him there’s a penalty for getting there too soon.”

The Israeli frowned.

“Does he know what we’re doing?” Turk asked. “Do you?”

“He knows the very minimum he needs to know. As do I.”

The pilot said something. His voice was high-pitched, jittery. A thick ribbon of sweat poured down the side of his face. Turk thought of finding a place for them to land and taking over flying the plane. But he couldn’t do that and guide the UAVs.

“Tell him I know that he’s nervous, but I trust that he can fly the plane,” said Turk. “Tell him I’m a test pilot. And I like his skills. Tell him to relax, just relax and fly. He’s a good pilot. A very good pilot.”

The last bit was a lie—a rather large one—but Turk’s goal was to get the man to trust him, and accurately evaluating how he was flying would not do that.

The pilot nodded, though there was no sign that he relaxed.

“Tell him that we’ll be flying a low figure eight when we get to the area,” said Turk. “Even if we get there when planned, we’ll have to do that for more than a half hour. That’s a long time. We don’t want to be detected. The longer we’re there, the more chance of that—that’s why we want to slow down. And it’ll conserve fuel.”

“I want him to know the minimum necessary,” answered the Israeli. “Telling him he has to orbit for a half hour isn’t going to calm him down.”

“Tell him whatever the hell you want,” said Grease, “but make him do what Turk says.”

“I think we should all calm down,” said the Israeli. “There’s no need for excitement.”

“Then let’s follow the captain’s game plan. To the letter,” said Grease.

8

CIA campus, Virginia

“THE CALL HAS BEEN MADE,” SAID REID, RISING. “That’s their plane.”

Relieved, Breanna looked at the large area map of Iran projected on the front wall. They had hours to go; she knew from experience the time would alternately drag and race, as if her perceptions were split in two.

“Breanna, could we speak?” said Reid, touching her elbow.

“Sure.”

Breanna got up and led Reid down the hall to her office. The lights flipped on as she entered. She saw the small clock on the credenza at the back, thought of her daughter, and wondered what subject she would be studying now.

Just starting English. They always did that before lunch at eleven.

Breanna stopped in front of her desk, standing at the side of the room. She’d been sitting too long; she felt like standing.

“Gorud made a call from the airport,” said Reid. He stood as well. The gray-haired CIA veteran seemed a little more tired than normal, but there was good reason for that. “After the plane took off.”

“Plane?”

“There was a problem and they had to substitute. There wasn’t enough space in the aircraft. Gorud opted to stay on the ground. It was either him or Grease.”

“I see.”

“He decided it was important enough to break the planned protocol. That’s why it took so long. I just wanted you to know. I’ve got to go back over to the big building,” Reid added, using his slang for the Agency’s administrative headquarters across the way. “I have to run back for a quick meeting. I’ll be here again in time for the actual show.”

“OK.”

“You’ll alert the President?” said Reid.

“Of course. I better get back inside. The WB-57 will be launching from Afghanistan soon.”

9

Iran

TURK RAN THROUGH ALL THE TESTS A THIRD TIME, RECEIVING one more confirmation that everything was in top order and ready. The main screen on the controller, which resembled a laptop, was currently displaying a situation map, with their location plotted against a satellite image. He tapped the window to the left, expanding it and then selecting the preselect for the target area. The image that appeared looked at first glance like a sepia-toned photo of capillaries crisscrossing a human heart. Only after he zoomed the image did it start to look something like it was: a synthesized image of the target bunker, taken in real time.

The image was being provided by a WB-57, flying at high altitude just over the border from Iraq. Owned by NASA but currently being flown by an Air Force pilot, the WB-57 was a greatly modified Cold War era B-57 Canberra. Originally designed as a bomber, the high-flying, ultrastable plane had proven adept at reconnaissance from the earliest days of its career. After their retirement from the bomber fleet, the planes continued to do yeoman’s service during the Cold War, snapping photos of missile sites and other installations. When no longer useful to the Air Force, a handful of planes were taken in by NASA, which made them into high-flying scientific platforms, gathering data for a number of scientific projects.

This WB-57 had been borrowed from NASA for a more ominous assignment. Inside its belly was an earth-penetrating system that could map deep-underground bunkers in real time. The gear would be used to monitor the nano-UAVs as they penetrated the target.

Related to the technology developed for the HAARP program, the complex monitoring system used the auroral electrojet—a charged-particle stream in the ionosphere high above the earth—to send a burst of dispersed ELF, or extremely low frequency waves, into the bunker. The WB-57 tracked the waves, using them to draw pictures of what was happening beneath the earth’s surface. The angle and direction of the waves meant the WB-57 could stay a considerable distance away from the bunker.

Even at 60,000 feet the plane was vulnerable to all manner of defenses, from Iran’s recently acquired Russian S-200s and even older Hawk missiles left from the Shah’s era. And while it could provide detailed images of what was underground, its sophisticated equipment could not provide even the fuzziest picture of the ground’s surface. For that Turk knew he would have to look at the video provided by the Hydras as they approached the target.