Among the aftereffects of the induced neural incapacitation was no memory of missing time for those affected. The Hind aircrew, and the Antonov flight crew, both believed that they had set their aircraft down only moments before.
"Juliet Bravo, this is X-Ray Lima One. Report your status please."
The pilot of the lead chopper had radioed the crashed Antonov, requesting its crew to state its condition.
"X-Ray Lima One, we have experienced massive systems failure of unknown origin which has crippled our navigational and propulsion systems. We retain marginal systems function, including radio and satcom. Fortunately, the crew seems unhurt."
"I copy, Juliet Bravo," said the Hind flight leader. "Do you believe that the aircraft can be made operational again so that a takeoff can be attempted?"
"Negative," replied the Antonov's pilot. "The plane not only sustained systems damage, but damage to the airframe on landing, including nose-gear. This bird isn't going anywhere."
"I copy," said the gun ship pilot. "In that case we must fall back on our emergency instructions," he went on. "Am I correct that you have no injured requiring medical evacuation assistance?"
"Yes. We can all make it under our own power. Have you enough room onboard?"
"We'll manage," replied the helo pilot, glad at least that the capacious Hinds were as much troop transport as gun ship. "How soon can you evacuate? The damned dushman — hill bandits — might have seen something and start nosing around. The sooner we leave the better."
"I have already begun to evacuate. As soon as we destroy code books I and my copilot will follow. Out."
The Soviets aboard the two Hind gun ships could already see crew members exiting from the Antonov. Fortunately there were not many personnel aboard this flight for security and other reasons. Also fortunately, the big gun ships had a great deal of extra carrying capacity.
The lead pilot checked his flight manifest, quickly punching calculations into the onboard computer for the increased rate of fuel consumption due to the extra weight the two helos would have to carry all the way to Kharkov. He nodded as he saw that there would be a slim but acceptable margin for safety, even enough to compensate for some additional delay in flight time.
As the pilot continued to watch the rest of the Antonov aircrew emerge from the stricken plane, he made further calculations, which showed that the helos would be well inside Soviet airspace before their fuel reserves had run two-thirds dry.
Here too the results looked encouraging. The new Hinds were equipped for air-to-air refueling. Immediately upon reentering Soviet airspace, he would radio for a fuelbird to meet the inbound flight and refill their tanks. The plan seemed workable.
He informed his frontseater — like many combat helos, including the US Cobra, the pilot sat behind and above the weapons systems officer — of the good news over helo interphone and again broke radio silence to inform his wingman.
Knowing that further radio communications would be necessary to coordinate the liftoff anyway, he also informed the wingman of what needed to be done per the emergency evacuation plan.
The helos would take on their passenger load and then lift off. At their translation altitude of approximately sixty feet, the helos would move into attack formation and fire rocket salvos down into the Antonov, reducing it and its cargo to burning wreckage.
They would then get the hell out of there as fast as possible, knowing that the dushman would certainly come to investigate after that, if they were not on their way already.
In darkness and silence, the hidden forces waited and watched. Breaux had been assured by Rempt that the indigenous fighters, the Peshmerga, the Mujahideen, and the other categories of rebels, guerillas and true-believers, had been put in their place and would not panic.
To make sure of this, the Breaux's forces had divested their mostazafin allies of all rocket launchers prior to moving out to the Elburz. Breaux still had strong misgivings about permitting them to be in on the mission at all, no matter what Rempt's assurances.
They were loose cannons, all of them, stoned on religion or hashish or Marxism or the revolutionary flavor of the week. Still, they hadn't yet made a false move, and it would all be over soon.
Breaux turned his full attention to the activities taking place at the flat, sandy floor of the steep-walled gorge. The main rotors of the Hind gun ships were dishing now, as the last of the evacuated Antonov aircrew got onboard the two attack helos. They remained stationary as final preparations, including a last-minute flight check, were conducted.
And then, almost in tandem, the two heavily-laden helicopters rose sluggishly up off the valley floor and straight up into the air.
Breaux glanced sidelong at Rempt as the Hinds reached their translation altitudes and then changed the rotor pitch to move slightly apart, pivoting their noses in the direction of the downed airframe.
As Breaux had expected, Rempt's face was again transfigured by a form of twisted rapture, the mouth contorted into a strange, rictus-like smile, the eyes focused on the screen of the battlefield computer station as Rempt's hands hovered over the tactical computer's keyboard.
The Soviet helos continued to hover slant-range of the Antonov, and Breaux knew that the battle management systems onboard were reading sensor input and calculating firing solutions for the AT-2 Swatter missiles carried on rails at the tips of their stub wings. Moments continued to pass, and then the first of the missiles cooked off the rails, coming off the helos belching contrails of dense white exhaust smoke as they vectored in on their target.
The first salvo hit with a wallop. Striking the airframe fore and aft, and exploding immediately, the warheads caused a massive double explosion that vaporized much of the plane in a balloon of flame and smoke that rose up in a mushroom cloud over the top of the bluffs.
The helos fired another two-rocket salvo into the burning wreckage, completing the job of destruction. After the fires died out, there would be little left of the Antonov and its secret cargo except a debris field of shattered fragments strewn across the rift valley floor.
The AN-72 transport now destroyed on the ground, the two Hinds rose still higher, soaring toward the top of the bluffs from which they would fly nap of the earth on a north-northeast bearing back toward Soviet airspace.
Would have flown, more precisely, because the Hinds never got farther than the crest of the bluffs.
Just before they would have changed main rotor pitch and translated to forward flight, Rempt used the computer's integrated pointer to click on the detonator button. Instantaneously, a powerful microwave beam activated the miniature radio-actuated detonator-ignitors inserted into the sheets of plastic explosive with which Rempt had earlier lined the flight helmets of the Hind pilots.
The small explosive charges imploded the skulls of the pilots of both gun ships, spattering the cockpits with blood, bone matter and optical gore from eyeballs which had been blown clear out of their sockets due to intra-cranial overpressure. Death spasms induced by traumatic shocks to the central nervous systems wrenched the cyclical and collective controls, making the helos career wildly through the sky.
In any event they would have crashed against either the steep walls of the bluffs or the rift valley floor — computer projections run on the NSA's massive arrays of blade server clusters had demonstrated this result with nearly a hundred percent certainty. But the best outcome was what the analysts had dubbed "the Rice Bowl scenario," referring to the debacle elsewhere in the Iranian desert at another secret LZ known as Rice Bowl.