With the top of the canyon wall looming up in front of his cockpit, the Fulcrum pilot tried one last time to pull up his plane's nose, but it was like stirring a kettle of mush with his joystick and he knew he'd never make it in the second or two he had left.
A split-second after he yanked the ejection lever, the nose of the Fulcrum struck the side of the canyon, and the plane flipped back on its belly like a hooked marlin, crashing upside down into the reverse slope of the canyon. A massive fireball marked the spot where it exploded into a thousand fragments.
A few hundred feet slant-range of the crash, the pilot's chute opened and he floated to earth unconscious, never feeling the harsh impact with the ground that broke his collar bone in three places until he came to, much later, to find himself alone in a bleak and savage place.
The two Sea Stallions reached the Gulf coast over an hour later. Their auxiliary drop tanks had been sucked dry and jettisoned not long after dust-off, and their main tanks were now almost out of fuel. In addition, one of the choppers had been damaged by munitions strikes during the fight with the MiGs. The lead chopper made it in for a landing on Masirah island, but the second helo, its right GE turboshaft engine now noticeably trailing a plume of sooty black smoke, was forced to ditch in the sea.
Breaux was among those onboard who had to bail out and swim for the rescue boats that were sent out from the Eisenhower's support ships. As he dog-paddled to safety he heard a familiar voice shout a familiar refrain.
"Lord, how I just fucking luvvvvv the Army," Sgt. Mainline was bellowing as he stroked toward the boats. Breaux almost believed him.
Book III
Bloodbath
Chapter Fourteen
Like any true carrion-eaters the White House press corps knew when something rank was in the wind.
In the space of forty minutes three official limos, each bearing the flag of the SecDef, the CJCS and State, respectively, were seen rolling through the gates of the West Wing entrance. Wireless netbooks were instantly in hands and nanophones were quickly activated by rapid jaw muscle flexion.
Some reporters continued to stand vigil outside the White House, phoning in reports or sending emails to their respective White House news desks.
Others, wearing cellular ear or jaw sets, i-pens madly scribbling on beeping, chirping e-pads, hastened to the White House Press Room, where they hoped to both find explanations for the V.I.P. arrivals and find a seat for the press briefing they suspected was imminent. At the very least, Percy Higgins, the White House Press Secretary, could be relied on for some immediate off-the-record quotes on whatever the developing situation might involve.
Suddenly one of the newsmedia people who were crowding the West Wing entrance gate was heard to shout to his assistant that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was seen getting out of his limo carrying a number of charts and audiovisual aids.
A buzz immediately spread through the gathered journalistic throng. Those who had put away their cellular gear and wireless gadgets brought them out again.
Others who had been en route to the Press Room, stopped in their tracks and fed more breaking information to their headquarters. The sighting of the maps was significant. It always signaled an important briefing would soon be taking place in the Oval Office.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Buck Starkweather, was a green-suiter. No matter that the Pentagon's chiefs of staff were supposed to mentally clothe themselves in nonpartisan purple — a mixture of army green and air force and navy blue — the service chiefs could never escape the imperatives of service or the dictates of career.
Starkweather had arrived at the White House not very long after one of the regular morning meetings of the chiefs, this one held in the SecDef's third floor E-Ring office. While the chiefs do convene in the Tank for briefings, this famous Pentagon conference room is not by any means their sole place to discuss military affairs.
The chiefs have considerable latitude in where, when and how they will meet, and often convene at different places in the Pentagon at different times, and for different purposes. During times of intense crisis, a secure conference room overlooking the operations pit in the National Military Command Center might be utilized, for example.
For highly secret discussions the Tank, which is kept ultra-secure against electronic eavesdropping, might be used, but there are also various other sterile rooms available in the depths of the Pentagon that are far more secure than even the Tank or the NMCC's conference suite.
For most occasions, though, the private office of the Secretary of Defense is the meeting place of choice. Apart from other considerations, the SecDef's office is spacious and is located adjacent to a small but extremely well-stocked kitchen from which hot food, canapés, fresh-brewed coffee and other delicacies are always served to the chiefs.
The bottom line is that the US Defense Secretary is the boss of the Pentagon. The Building is the house over which he presides. Some SecDefs prefer to delegate functions to subordinates. Some, like the present one, do not, and so Lyle Dalhousie, wingtip Oxford-shod feet perched across the immense Pershing desk that had been a fixture of the third floor office since the end of World War I, presided over yet another morning meeting of the chiefs.
Although this morning's main topic of discussion continued to be the in the continuing Second Balkan War, a new situation of growing concern was where the Soviets might be moving next. The Soviets had begun to pull back from Bulgaria and the Romanian border, and Russian-backed insurgency into Kosovo and Macedonia in the former Yugoslavia had begun to evaporate.
The peace treaty that had been brokered by the UN at the Helsinki peace summit a few weeks before was being honored, and UN peacekeeping forces were monitoring the phased withdrawal of NATO and Warsaw Pact troops from the Balkan theater. Despite these positive signs, the mood was tense. The Bear was still in a very belligerent mood, and he was beginning to turn in a new direction, scenting the wind and baring his teeth.
The chiefs, their deputies, and their civilian counterparts at Defense closed the meeting with a consensus opinion that would be brought before the president later on that day. General Starkweather, armed with his charts, now began to relay that consensus to his commander in chief.
"Gentlemen… Mr. President," Starkweather began. "These digital images you now see on the screen represent an intelligence coup of the first magnitude. They came from an elite Army special operations unit that has recently returned from a mission in the Middle East.
"Operation Speedball was intended to both conclusively establish the nature of armament shipped to Iran and to interdict the clandestine channels of supply between Moscow and Tehran. The operation, conducted jointly by the CIA and the Pentagon, involved the insertion of a special unit into the Elburz mountain region bridging the northern borders of Turkey and Iran. The Russians were using the high mountain passes to transport planeloads of materiél to the Iranians."
The CJCS clicked his wireless remote and satellite photos of the Elburz region flashed across the screen. Taken from orbital space by multimillion dollar camera-eyes, they were of crystal-sharp resolution. The mountain pass that SFOD-O had staked out was clearly recognizable within a blue circle that drew the eye toward it.
"In this complex operation, our forces were able to get inside one of the transport planes in order to document and analyze the cargo it carried."
The CJCS clicked again, and again. Imagery of the cargo of the Antonov gathered by SFOD-O filled the screen.