“Dark, I would guess. Don’t really know. Why don’t you come out with us?”
Zev pondered the offer. “I think this place is not very safe anymore. The Assassins who are left are now without a leader. They will respond by doing what he would have wanted them to do, and that is looking for you. It would be best to leave. I have a way to get out, but it would take some time. I will come. If there is room.”
Batman. The perfect name for an airfield in eastern Turkey. The Turks had initially refused to allow the Air Force Special Forces to stage out of their bases for the rescue. The Syrians had raised such a firestorm of protest everyone was lying low, not endorsing, or participating, or allowing the Americans to use their territory to conduct attacks. It had stymied the Air Force’s initial participation, but they had gone back to Turkey with the request. A simple one — let us conduct the rescue from Turkey. Through Turkey. The thing that had made the difference was that it was a rescue. They had agreed. The C-130s could launch out of their bases, and the Pave Lows could fly through their airspace on their way to Iran. Turkey had no love for the Sheikh and what he was doing. They saw him as creating terrible instability and jeopardizing peace in the Middle East. There was always someone to jeopardize peace.
Turkey’s decision had given the entire operation a boost. The idea of flying through Syria and refueling over the Syrian desert somewhere had not offered the Air Force great comfort. They would have done it, but it would have been more colorful.
The four dark gray Air Force C-130s shuddered next to the runway at Batman. They had made two flights earlier in the day, all routine, all intended to make sure that if anyone was watching, they would never know what exactly these airplanes were doing there other than flying randomly into the Turkish mountains and coming back.
The C-130s were the same dark color as the Pave Low helicopters: flat, blotchy dark gray with nearly indiscernible markings. They waited next to the runway as the sun set behind them. The first MC-130P Combat Shadow taxied onto the runway and ran up its four massive turboprop engines, the airplane straining against its brakes, longing to fly. The MC-130P rolled down the runway, starting slowly and picking up speed smoothly. As it reached rotation speed the pilot pulled back smartly on the yoke and the Shadow climbed steadily into the sky. As the first lifted off, the second MC-130P taxied onto the runway, and followed the first into the sky. The two tankers were the first airplanes airborne on the night’s mission. The Air Force Special Forces MC-130P Combat Shadows were designed for one thing — to refuel Special Operations aircraft on high-risk missions in difficult situations, the ones that flew too low to the ground. It was all they did, and they did it well. It wasn’t just anyone who could fly a C-130 at five hundred feet above the ground and refuel an invisible helicopter at night.
The next airplane to take the runway, an AC-130U, had unusual bulges and shapes, clearly not to make it fly better or have more lift. Someone who didn’t know the Spooky might have thought it was an electronic countermeasures airplane to jam enemy radars. But those who knew it and its predecessor the Spectre knew the bulges meant business. Gunfire. Three barrels projected out of the left side of the airplane. The largest barrel, farthest aft, was the 105-millimeter howitzer. Just forward of that was the 40-millimeter cannon, and farther forward still was the 25-millimeter Gatling gun. The Spooky had the most highly concentrated firepower in the world. More per square foot than any other fighting vehicle or ship. It could put as much firepower on a point on the ground as an entire battalion of infantrymen.
The targeting and firing solutions could be calculated immediately by computer and the guns trained by the Fire Control Officer sitting at a console in the BMC — the Battle Management Center. The Spooky could find its target through infrared sensors or ALLTV — All Light Level TeleVision, a television system that worked in all light, or radar — the same radar that was on the F-15E. The guns could shoot through clouds. They also had the capability of jamming anybody on the ground who tried to target them. The pilot simply flew in a left-hand circle around the ground target while the guns pounded away. It was a frightening sight.
The first Spooky rolled down the runway and was airborne in less time than the two tankers. It maneuvered quickly once airborne, more agile than the heavy MC-130Ps.
In the settling darkness, the second Spooky, its lights on, followed the first. It appeared to be taking off on a routine training mission. No one at Batman knew where it was going or why. It climbed up into the cloudless deep purple sky and headed toward the other three small dots in the sky. The four airplanes rendezvoused sixty miles south of Batman and headed east into the Turkish mountains.
Aboard the Saipan the lead Pave Low pilot, the mission commander, stepped up the ramp in the back of the helicopter and headed toward the cockpit. The Saipan had moved north of its original position off the coast of Syria. It was just south of Turkey off the northwestern corner of Syria.
The Captain had downloaded the latest satellite imagery, updated locations in the mission planning computer, and put the information on a 3.5-inch disk. Just behind the pilot’s seat, he placed the airplane’s computer — the DMU — into its cradle and the diskette into its drive. He and his copilot began their preflight checklist.
The power was connected and the pilot called for an intercom check from the rest of the crew. Everyone was ready. The six enormous blades started to turn slowly, then with greater speed. The second Pave Low matched the first as they both worked steadily through their start-up checklists. Several people watched from Vulture’s Row. They had observed thousands of helicopter takeoffs and landings on the Saipan, but they had never seen the Air Force Special Forces anywhere near them. They had never had men on their ship wearing flight suits with no markings, gently rejecting inquiries about who they were or what they were doing there. They had never had men with small automatic weapons and no insignia smile nicely at them and say nothing.
But the word had spread quickly through the ship at the scuttlebutts. Everyone in the fleet knew an F-14 had been shot down, and that it was the Air Force that had the mission of deep combat SAR. Word was that the F-14 was down inside Iran. The idea horrified most of the sailors. Being shot down was bad enough, but being shot down in Iran… they didn’t want to think about it.
When the lead Pave Low pilot was ready he eased the plane off the flight deck slowly. The long blades bent upward as they took on the weight of the helicopter and beat the air to lift it. Once aloft, the helicopter dipped over the side of the flight deck and down toward the water, the second Pave Low right behind him. Forty feet off the water, they turned and headed northeast toward Turkey. They had no intention of being high enough for any radar to pick them up more than a couple of miles away.
Inside the Pave Low, the flight to the coast of Turkey was quiet. The back of the helicopter was crowded with Air Force commandos sitting quietly, holding their weapons, passengers just for a while. They could only wait. The pilot had the multifunction displays — MFDs — adjusted to see the IR imagery in front of him, and the computerized map display in the middle. It was a full-color TV-like screen that displayed a detailed map of Turkey, with a computer-generated helicopter on it showing exactly where they were to one-hundredth of a mile.
The copilot pointed to the coast ahead of them. They were on course and on schedule. To the minute. The two Pave Lows descended as they crossed the beach at an obscure, unremarkable, and uninhabited point on the Turkish coast. With their lights out it was impossible to identify them in the gathering darkness unless someone was using a nightscope or infrared, highly unlikely at such a remote and unpredictable spot. One of the reasons the Special Forces went at night was because it often meant that the one with the best sensors won.