Rogue Forces

The convoy of Humvees drove around to the north side of the base on public highways. They passed a Turkish army checkpoint at one intersection, where they were stopped so soldiers could look inside the vehicles, but not detained or searched. They continued north for a couple more miles, then exited the highway and drove farther north through a muddy open field. Ahead they saw stakes pounded in the ground with yellow “Caution” and “Keep Out” tape strung between them, and a few hundred yards beyond that was the wreckage of Scion Aviation International’s XC-57 Loser. The Turkish missiles apparently hadn’t hit the plane directly, but proximity fuses exploded the warheads near the pod-mounted engines atop the fuselage, shearing two of them off and sending the plane hurtling to the ground. It had landed on its left front side, crumpling most of the left wing and left side of the nose, and there had been a fire, but the rest of the plane sustained what might be called moderate damage; most of the right side of the plane was relatively intact.

There was a lone Russian IMR engineer vehicle parked at the tape border, with two Turkish soldiers on guard duty with it. The IMR had a crane mounted on the back and a blade in front resembling a bulldozer. The soldiers discarded cigarettes and coffee and got on portable radios as they saw the convoy approach. “Hayir, hayir!” one of them shouted, waving his hands. “Durun! Gidin!”

Jon Masters got out of the Humvee and trudged through the mud toward the soldiers. “Good morning! Günaydin!” he shouted. “How’s it going? Any of you guys speak English?”

“No come here! No stay!” the soldier shouted. “Tehlikeli! Dangerous here! Yasaktir! Prohibited!”

“No, it’s not dangerous at all,” Jon said. “You see, that’s my plane.” He patted his chest. “Mine. It belongs to me. I’m here to take a few parts back with me and check it out.”

The first soldier waved his arms in front of his face in a crossing motion while the second picked up his rifle, not pointing it but making it visible to all. “No entry,” the first said sternly. “Prohibited.”

“You can’t prohibit me from examining my own plane,” Jon said. “I have permission from the Iraqi government. You guys aren’t even Iraqi. What right do you have to stop me?”

“No entry,” the first soldier said. “Go away. Go back.” He pulled out his portable radio and began speaking while the second soldier raised his rifle to port arms in an obvious threatening gesture. When the first soldier finished radioing his report, he waved his hands as if trying to shoo away a youngster, shouting, “Go now. Siktir git! Go!”

“I’m not leaving without looking at my plane…what you guys did to my plane,” Jon said. He quickly walked past both soldiers, then walked backward toward the plane. The soldiers followed him, shouting orders in Turkish, confused and getting angrier by the second. Jon held up his hands and walked backward quicker. “I won’t be long, you guys, but I’m going to look at my plane. Leave me alone!” Jon started to run toward the plane.

“Dur! Stop!” The second shoulder raised his rifle into firing position but not aiming it at Jon, obviously to fire a warning shot. “Stop or I will—”

Suddenly the rifle was snatched out of his hands in the blink of an eye. The soldier turned…and saw a person wearing a head-to-toe suit of dark gray, an eyeless helmet right out of a science-fiction comic book, a framework of thin flexible tubules all across its skin, and thick gauntlets and boots. “Aman allahim…!”

“Don’t be rude,” the figure said in electronically synthesized Turkish. “No weapons”—he reached out with incredible quickness and snatched the portable transceiver away from the second soldier—“and no radios. I’ll give them back only if you show me you can behave.” The Turks backed away, then started to run when they realized they weren’t going to be captured.

“C’mon, guys, let’s go,” Jon said, trotting toward the stricken XC-57. “See, I told you it wouldn’t so bad.”

“Rascal One, this is Genesis,” Patrick McLanahan radioed to Wayne Macomber. “You’ve got a couple vehicles headed your way, about ten minutes out.” Patrick had launched a small unmanned attack aircraft called an AGM-177 Wolverine, which had been brought in via the 767 freighter. It resembled a cross between a cruise missile and a surfboard. It was normally air-launched, but had the ability to be fired from a truck-mounted catapult. The Wolverine carried infrared and millimeter-wave imaging and targeting sensors so it could autonomously locate, attack, and reattack targets programmed for it. It had three internal weapons bays for attacks on different types of targets, and it could also attack a fourth target by flying into it kamikaze style. “Radar has a helicopter about ten minutes to the east,” he added. “We don’t know if it’s headed this way or just on patrol, but it’s close.”