He roared past another small village. Not far beyond it, the trail crossed a dry riverbed and petered out. He kept going east, bouncing and jolting along the rough, rock-strewn surface of the wadi itself. He resisted the urge to look back. If the Iranians reacted even faster than he’d feared, he was a dead man anyway.
A mile or so east along the wadi, Flynn spotted a shallower place along the mounded bank it had carved through this alluvial floodplain. He gunned the dirt bike up that easier slope, with loose sand flying out behind him, and climbed out onto more open ground. And there, not more than a couple of hundred yards away, he saw the high-winged shape of the BushCat light aircraft lined up for takeoff with its prop already turning.
His face creased in a huge, relieved grin. Just as promised, Laura Van Horn was in the exactly right place and bang on time.
Flynn slid to a stop next to the BushCat and jumped off, letting it topple sideways with the motor still running. Time was too short to waste wrecking the bike so that it wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. Off to the west, he heard the faint clatter of rotors. The surviving Iranian scout helicopter was on its way.
He darted across to the aircraft and scrambled up into its cabin. It smelled strongly of gasoline. On this trip out, without the weight of a passenger, Van Horn had been able to carry the extra fuel she needed for a return flight aboard her BushCat instead of relying on the Predator drone’s jury-rigged cargo capability.
From the pilot’s seat, she shot him a dry smile. “Hey there, stranger. Need a lift?”
“Why, yes. I surely do,” Flynn said, matching her tone. He took the headset she offered and plugged in. “It seems like the locals are mighty pissed off at me right now.”
Van Horn shook her head in mock disapproval. “This is becoming a really bad habit, Nick. Stacking up dead bodies behind you is no way to go through life, you know.”
“I take your point, ma’am,” he said with an apologetic shrug. “But I didn’t exactly have any choice this time… not if I wanted to go on living, anyway.”
She laughed. “Well, I guess it’s okay, as long as you’re really, really sorry.”
Still smiling to herself, Van Horn ran the BushCat’s throttle up to full power, released its brakes, and started her takeoff roll. Responding instantly, the little plane bounded forward, bouncing and swaying across the bumpy ground while it steadily picked up speed. They’d only covered a few hundred feet when she pulled back on her control stick. Eagerly, the BushCat broke free of the earth and climbed away. She leveled off just a couple of hundred feet above the ground. They were flying east at around ninety knots, the light aircraft’s preferred cruising speed.
Flynn checked the mirror mounted on his side of the plane. There, several miles away to the west, he spotted a quick flash of red-tinged sunlight glinting off a clear canopy. He squinted against the glare, just making out the distant shape of a helicopter as it turned toward them. “Well, that sucks,” he said somberly. He looked across the cabin. “We’ve got company.”
Van Horn nodded calmly. “Figured so.” She glanced back at him. “Fixed wing or whirlybird?” she asked.
“A helicopter,” Flynn replied. “Probably an Agusta Bell 212, from what I saw earlier.”
“A Bell 212? That’s a nice flying machine,” she said thoughtfully. She craned her head to check the mirror on her side. “Coming on fast, too. It’s probably got an edge of about forty knots on us.”
Flynn frowned. “Just swell.” For lack of anything better to do, he drew his Glock, hit the release button to drop out the spent magazine, and then inserted a fresh one from his jacket pocket.
“Whoa there, Top Gun Flynn,” Van Horn said with a thin smile. “That 9mm peashooter of yours won’t be much use in a dogfight if it comes down to that.” She raised an eyebrow. “And I’m betting that helicopter’s packing serious firepower, right?”
“It’s got a door-mounted machine gun,” he admitted. “Most likely a 7.62mm Russian PKT-type.” The idea of trying to take on a faster, more heavily armed rotorcraft with his pistol did seem pretty crazy, put that way. Then again, what other options did they have? He looked at her. “Can this crate of yours even dogfight anyway?”
She laughed. “Oh hell, no. Aerobatics are strictly forbidden. Remember, this little beauty is made out of fabric and thin aluminum. If I pull too tight a turn, I’m liable to rip our wings right off.”
“This just gets better and better,” Flynn said flatly. Then he noted her relaxed profile. He sighed. “Okay, Miss Van Horn, what’s your plan?”
“What makes you think I have a plan?” she asked innocently.
He snorted. “Because I don’t think you even go into the ladies’ room without a plan.”
Van Horn flashed him a winning smile. “Insulting, I guess, but basically accurate.” She spoke into her headset mike. “Tiger Cat to Tomcat. You see the situation?”
Through his headset, Flynn heard the voice of Sara McCulloch, the Predator’s remote pilot, responding from her station hundreds of miles away in southwestern Afghanistan. “I see it, Tiger Cat. Come right to one-three-five and climb to five hundred feet.”
Obeying, Van Horn banked the BushCat to the right, altering her course slightly until they were heading southeast. She pulled back a little on the stick. The aircraft’s nose came up and they gained some altitude. They were now flying straight toward a nearby ridge that rose a couple of thousand feet higher still above the valley floor.
Off to the west, the Iranian helicopter — rapidly closing the gap between them — matched her maneuvers. Suddenly, several miles behind them both, two bright, split-second flashes lit the darkening sky.
“Fox Two,” McCulloch called succinctly.
Trailing smoke and fire, two tiny shapes slashed toward the Revolutionary Guard helicopter at Mach 2.2 — more than seventeen hundred miles per hour. Eight seconds later, both missiles detonated within yards of their target. Dozens of fragments sleeted through the Agusta Bell 212. Wreathed in flames, the shattered helicopter spiraled down and smashed into the ground. A pillar of oily black smoke curled high into the air from the impact point.
Flynn gazed back at the crash site in silence for several seconds. Then he breathed out. He glanced across the cabin at Van Horn. “Unbelievable. You really brought that Predator drone along carrying air-to-air missiles?”
She nodded in satisfaction. “AIM-92 Stingers, to be precise. It seemed like a sensible precaution.”
Flynn stared at her. AIM-92s were the air-launched variants of the U.S. military’s shoulder-launched Stinger missiles. “Should I ask where you got them?”
Van Horn shrugged. “I think they fell off the back of a truck at some point. Maybe back in Alaska when I was up there doing one of my stints in the Air National Guard.”
He felt his eyebrows go up. “And you don’t think anyone’s going to notice that a couple of Stinger missiles have gone missing?”
She shook her head complacently. “Nope. Both were marked off as expended in training.” Her teeth flashed white in the darkened cabin. “Okay, so maybe that was a little premature.” Then she jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the smoke rising skyward behind them. “But it’s true now. The expended part, I mean.”
Flynn looked back at the burning wreckage of Iranian helicopter. No one could have survived that crash. He shook his head. “And what was that lecture I got earlier? About my bad habit of stacking up bodies behind us?”