Rogue Forces

There were a lot of crossed fingers, but the XC-57 did make it back. “Good job, Jon,” Patrick said from his Humvee, parked near the approach end of the runway, as he peered at the aircraft through binoculars. He and Jon watched as the Loser set up for a straight-in approach. The crippled bird was trailing a long, dark line of smoke, but its flight path was fairly steady. “Didn’t think she would make it.”

“Neither did I,” Jon admitted. “This landing is not going to be pretty. Make sure everyone is clear—I don’t know what kind of braking or directional control we have left, and it could…”

“Scion, this is Three!” Boomer shouted on the command channel radio. “Incoming aircraft from the south, extreme low altitude!” Patrick swung around and searched the sky…

…and at that instant Jon yelled, “Holy shit!” Two massive clouds of fire erupted on the front of the XC-57. The plane seemed to simply hang in midair for several moments; then another explosion, and the plane nosed over and dove straight into the ground. There was not enough fuel in the tanks to start a large blaze.

Jon Masters’s eyes were practically bugging out of their sockets in confusion. “What happened to my—”

“Get down, Jon!” Patrick shouted, pulling him down to the ground. Two American-made F-15E Eagle fighter-bombers streaked overhead at low altitude, heading north toward Turkey.

Jon tried to struggle to his feet. “Did those bastards shoot down my—”

“I said, get down!” Patrick screamed. An instant later, a string of eight massive explosions rippled directly down the center of the runway, the closest just a few hundred yards away. Both men felt as if their Humvee had rolled over on top of them. They were showered with debris and smoke, and they screamed and pressed their hands to their ears as the tremendous concussions shoved the air out of their lungs. Pieces of concrete zinged past them like bullets, then began to rain down on them. “Get inside the Humvee, Jon! Hurry!” Both men scrambled inside just as bigger and bigger pieces of concrete peppered them from above. They could do nothing else but crawl as far as they could on the floor and hope the roof held. Windows shattered, and the big Humvee rocked on its wheels before they, too, exploded.

Several minutes later, Jon was still writhing on the floor of the Humvee, covering his ears and swearing loudly. Patrick could see a small trickle of blood oozing from between the fingers covering Jon’s left ear. Patrick got on his portable radio to ask for help, but he couldn’t hear a thing and could only hope his message got out. He crawled up onto the roof of the Humvee to inspect the damage.

Pretty good bombing, he thought. He saw eight blast marks, probably thousand-pounders, each no more than five yards from the runway centerline. Fortunately they hadn’t used runway-cratering penetrating bombs, just general-purpose high-explosive ones, and the damage wasn’t too bad—the detonations made holes but didn’t heave large pieces of the steel reinforcement up to the surface. This was relatively easy to repair.

“Muck?” Jon was struggling out of the Humvee. “What happened?” He was shouting because his head was ringing so badly he couldn’t hear himself speak.

“A little payback,” Patrick said. He climbed down from the Humvee and helped Jon to sit down while he inspected his head for any other injuries. “Looks like you burst an eardrum, and you got some pretty good cuts.”

“What in hell did they hit us with?”

“F-15E Strike Eagles dropping high-explosive GPs—more war surplus stuff purchased from the good ’ol U.S. of A.,” Patrick said. Even though it was one of the world’s premier fighter-bombers, capable of both bombing and air superiority roles on the same mission, the F-15E couldn’t land on an aircraft carrier, and so they had been mothballed or sold as surplus to American-allied countries. “They tagged the runway pretty good, but it’s repairable. Doesn’t look like they hit the Triple-C, the hangars, or any other buildings.”

“What’s Turkish for ‘damned pricks’?” Jon Masters asked, slamming a hand against the Humvee in sheer anger. “I think I’ll borrow Boomer’s phrase book and learn me some choice Turkish swear words.”

A few minutes later Hunter Noble drove up in a Humvee ambulance. “Are you guys okay?” he asked as the paramedics attended to Patrick and Jon. “I thought you were goners.”

“Good thing those crews were good,” Patrick said. “A quarter second longer and a quarter-degree heading error and we would’ve been right under that last one.”

“I don’t think it’s over,” Boomer said. “We’re tracking several slow movers throughout the area; the closest one is twenty miles to the east, heading this way.”