Rogue Forces

“The high terrain in your sector is twelve o’clock, twenty-two miles. You’ll be above everything else…well, most everything else. I’ll steer you around the high stuff until your moving-map terrain readout starts showing you the terrain.” The pilot gulped again but pushed the controls forward to start the descent. The moment they descended through fourteen thousand feet, the computerized female voice in the Terrain Advisory and Warning System blared, “High terrain, pull up, pull up!” and the GPS moving-map display in the cockpit started flashing yellow, first ahead of them and then to their left side, where the terrain was the highest.

“Good going, guys,” Luger radioed. “On your moving map you should see a valley at your one o’clock position. The floor is nine-seven. Take that valley. Stay at eleven thousand for now.” The pilots saw a very narrow strip of dark surrounded by flashing yellow and now red boxes, the red indicating terrain that was above their altitude.

“What’s the width, sir?”

“It’s plenty wide for you. Just watch the turbulence.” At that exact moment the crew was bounced against their harnesses by wave after wave of turbulence. The pilot was struggling to maintain heading and altitude. “It’s…getting…worse,” the pilot grunted. “I don’t know if I can hold it.”

“That valley should be good until you reach the border in about eighteen minutes,” Luger radioed.

“Eighteen minutes! I can’t hold it for—”

“Climb!” Luger interrupted. “Full power, hard climb to thirteen, heading two-three-zero, now!”

The pilot shoved the throttles to full power and hauled back on the controls with all his might. “I can’t turn! The terrain—”

“Turn now! Hurry!” The pilots could do nothing else but turn, pull on the controls until the plane hung on the very edge of a stall…and pray. The flashing red blocks on the terrain warning display were touching the very tip of the plane’s icon…they were seconds from a crash…

…and then at that moment the red turned to yellow, signifying that they were within five hundred feet of the ground. “Oh Jesus, oh God, we made it…”

And at that instant a flash of fire streaked past the cockpit windows, less than a hundred yards in front of them. The cockpit was filled with an eerie yellow burst of light like the world’s largest flashbulb had just gone off right in front of them, and the pilots could even feel a burst of heat and pressure. “What was that?” the copilot screamed.

“Heading two-three-zero, eleven thousand feet,” Luger said. “Everyone okay? Acknowledge.”

“What was that?”

“Sorry, guys, but I had to do it,” Luger said.

“Do what?”

“I flew you into the engagement envelope of a Patriot missile battery.”

“What?”

“It’s the only way I could get the datalink frequency for the Patriot and between the Patriot and the F-16s,” Luger said.

“Holy crap…we almost got nailed by a Patriot missile…?”

“Yeah, but only one—they must be trying to conserve missiles,” Dave said. “They may have just launched it as a warning, or it might have been a decoy missile.”

“How about a little warning next time you put us in the gun sights, sir?” Macomber snapped.

“No time for chitchat, Whack. I’ve got the Patriot’s datalink frequency locked in, and I’m waiting for them to start talking to the F-16. As soon as they do, I can shut both of them down. But I need to keep you high, right on the edge of the Patriot’s engagement envelope. If I keep you too low, the F-16 might switch to his infrared sensor and not use the Patriot radar. That means I’m going to have to give him another good look at you. Fly heading one-nine-zero and climb to twelve thousand. You’re fifteen minutes to the Iraq border.”

“This is loco,” the 767 pilot murmured, flexing knots out of his hands and fingers. He began a shallow climb and a turn to—

“Okay, guys, the Patriot’s back up, and he’s got you, seven o’clock, twenty-nine miles,” Dave said a few moments later. “Still in sector scan mode…now he’s in target-tracking mode…c’mon, boys, what are you waiting for…?”

“If he’s verbally vectoring in the F-16, he can get him within range of his IR sensor without using the datalink, right?” the freighter pilot asked.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t think about that,” Luger said. “Fortunately most Patriot radar techs aren’t air traffic controllers; their job is to get the system to do its job. Okay, descend to eleven thousand, and let’s hope as you go down they’ll…” An instant later: “Got it! Datalink is active. Couple more seconds…c’mon, baby, c’mon…got it. Quick turn to heading one-six-five, keep going to eleven thousand. The F-16 is at your six o’clock, fifteen miles and closing, but he should be turning off to your right. The Iraqi border is at your eleven o’clock, about thirteen minutes.”