Two small gun-dish icons flashed on the left side of the threat screen, their legends showing they were about five miles closer than the SA-2 but well beyond their firing range. Smart enough to sort and prioritize the threats, the APR-47 concentrated on the long-range missile. Torbin, who could override the system, agreed.
“Got a Two,” he told Fitzmorris. They were about thirty miles away.
His gear flashed—an SA-8 had come up. It was flicking on and off, but his gear got a decent read anyway, marking it just beyond the SA-2 site, out of range for the admittedly nasty missile.
He’d take it after the SA-2. They were almost in position to fire.
The SA-2’s radar went off, but it was too late—Torbin had the location tattooed on his HARM’s forehead. But RAZOR’S EDGE
7
just then one of the Falcon pilots broke in. “I’m spiked!
An SA-8!”
No you’re not, thought Torbin; don’t overreact. The radar had just flicked off. There was a launch, but it was the SA-2—which now seemed to be running without guidance.
“Torbin!” said Fitzmorris. “Shit, twenty-five-mile scope. Shit.”
“Right turn,” Torbin said. “Relax. The F-16’s okay.
The only thing that can get him is the two, and its radar just went off. He’ll beat it.”
“Yeah.”
“All right, we have an SA-8 south. There are SA-9s well south,” said Torbin. His threat scope was suddenly very crowded. “Not players.”
“Shit.”
“Out of range. We’ll take my two, then the eight.”
Balls of black, red, gray, and white flak rose in the distance. More indications lit the screen, more radars.
Torbin had never seen so many contacts before. Radars were switching on and off throughout a wide swath of territory. The Iraqis were trying something new. The APR-47
hung with them all like a trooper, though the sheer number of contacts was pushing it toward its design limits.
“Torbin!”
“Fifteen miles. Start your turn in three,” Torbin told the pilot.
“The SA-8.” Fitzmorris’s voice was a loud hiss, pointing out another threat that had popped onto the screen.
“You fly the plane.” An SA-9 battery fired one of its short-range missiles well off to the west. Torbin concentrated on the SA-2, had a good read. “Target dotted!
Handoff. Ready light!”
“Shoot him, for chrissakes!”
“Away, we’re away,” said Torbin, handing off the SA-8
8
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
to a second HARM missile and firing almost instantaneously. The two radar seekers thundered away, accelerating past Mach 3 as they rushed toward their targets.
“Rolling right!” said Fitzmorris, jinking to avoid the enemy radars.
“Triple A,” warned Torbin, who could see a large patch of black roiling over the canopy glass as they tucked around.
“Shit.” Fitzmorris’s voice seemed calmer now.
“We’re clean,” said Torbin. He craned his head around as Fitzmorris spun to a safe distance. A white puff of smoke appeared on the ground off the left wing.
Bagged somebody. Meanwhile, the other Iraqi radars had flickered out. Their jinking cost him a shot at any of the smaller SA-9 batteries; they were too far north now to fire.
“Falcon Flight, what’s your status?” Fitzmorris asked the F-16s as they regrouped.
“Where the hell were you guys?” the Falcon leader snapped. “Two’s down.”
“Two’s down?” said Torbin.
“You have a parachute?” asked Fitzmorris.
“Negative. Fucking negative. He’s down.”
“What hit him?” Torbin heard the words coming out of his mouth, powerless to stop them.
“What the hell do you mean?” the F-16 pilot answered.
“You’re the damn Weasel. You should have nailed those motherfuckers, or at least warned us. Shit, nobody told us jack.”
“I nailed the SA-2. Shit.”
“Go to hell,” said the F-16 commander.
Torbin pushed back in his seat, staring at the now empty threat screen. He listened to the traffic between the AWACS and the F-16s as they pinned down a search area and vectored a combat air patrol toward it. The short-
RAZOR’S EDGE
9
legged F-16s would have to go home very soon; other airplanes were being scrambled from Incirlik to help in the search but it would be some time before they arrived. The Phantom, with its three “bags,” or drop tanks of extra fuel, had the search to itself.
“They launched at least three missiles,” said Fitzmorris over the interphone.
“The missiles that launched were well out of range,”
said Torbin. “They were SA-9s. No way they hit the F-16.
No way.”
“Tell that to the pilot.”
The Nevada desert
0832
THE WHIPLASH ACTION TEAM MADE IT OUT OF THE BUILDing with only minor injuries—Kevin Bison was dragging a leg and Lee “Nurse” Liu had been grazed in the arm.
Two of the three men they’d rescued from the terrorist kidnappers were in good enough condition to run, or at least trot, as they made their way down the hillside. Perse
“Powder” Talcom had the other on his back.
Captain Danny Freah, who headed the Special Forces squad, caught a breath as he reached the stone wall where Freddy “Egg” Reagan was holding down their rear flank.
“Action over the hill, Captain,” Egg told him, gesturing with his Squad Automatic Weapon. The SAW was a 5.56mm light machine gun that could lay down a devas-tating blanket of lead. It happened to be one of the few weapons the team carried that hadn’t been tinkered with by the scientists and weapons experts at Dreamland, where Whiplash was based. Some things just couldn’t be improved on—yet.
10
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
Danny flipped the visor on his helmet down and clicked into the target mode, which put a red-dot aiming cursor on the screen. The bulky visor looked like a welder’s shield and shifted the helmet’s center of gravity forward. The initial awkwardness was worth getting used to, since it offered four different viewing modes—unenhanced, infrared, starlight, and radioactive detection. The bulletproof carbon-boron helmet it was attached to provided not only GPS and secure discrete-burst, short-distance communications with the rest of the team, but linked into a combat system in Danny’s bulletproof vest that allowed him to communicate with the Dreamland Command Center—aka Dream Command—via purpose-launched tactical satellites. Once connected, Freah had virtually unlimited resources available at a whisper.
He didn’t need them here. What he needed was to reach the waiting MH-53J beyond the hill.
“Listen up,” he told the squad. “Powder and I go over the hill, make sure it’s clear. Egg, you got our butts.”
“Yo,” answered Egg.
“Sound off,” said Danny, more to give his guys a last breather than to make sure they were with him. As the team checked in alphabetically, the captain examined his MP-5, which was connected to the helmet’s targeting gear via a thin wire that plugged in at the rear. It had a fresh clip; he slipped a second into the Velcro straps at his wrist, not wanting to waste precious microseconds retrieving it under fire.
“Let’s go, Powder,” Danny said, hopping the wall and moving up the slope. A few feet from the peak he threw himself down shoulder first, raising his gun as he rolled just to the crown of the hill. He peered over with his visor at ten times magnification, quickly scanning to check the terrain.
The Air Force Special Forces helicopter sat on the level RAZOR’S EDGE
11
flat twenty yards from the foot of the sharp cliff, exactly where they had left it.
The six-man crew was there as well.
Except they were all dead.
“Shit,” whispered Powder, popping up behind him.
“All right, relax,” said Danny. The enemy was nowhere in sight but undoubtedly hadn’t gone far. He pointed to a small rock outcropping on the right. “They’ll be hiding there, waiting for us to hit the helicopter,” he told Powder.