Jackie grimaced in pain and concentrated on the blazing truck as she slowed to a motionless hover.
“Stay down!” Scott said to Maritza as he struggled to latch his parachute harness to one of the D rings. He lurched toward the nearest snaplight and felt the exhilarating tug of success.
“Maritza,” he bellowed as he drew his weapon and fired twice at an unarmed terrorist who was running straight at them. One of the rounds knocked the man to his knees as Maritza holstered her weapon and lunged toward Scott. She leaped on him and held his neck in a death grip while she locked her legs around his waist.
“Go,” Dalton shouted to Jackie as the back of his body armor stopped a round, partially knocking the breath out of him. “We’re aboard!” he blurted in a hoarse croak. “Go, Go!”
Staggering to his feet, the bleeding terrorist charged Scott and Maritza as the rope became taut.
“I’m slipping,” Maritza exclaimed as they left the ground.
Before Scott could answer, the militant slammed into him. Screaming at the top of his lungs, the powerful man wrapped his arms around Dalton’s lower legs.
Scott struggled to get a leg free, but the crazed man held him in a viselike grip. Seconds later a round caught the terrorist in the head and he plummeted into the side of the burning truck.
Applying full power and a prodigious amount of collective, Jackie tripped the “Night Sun” searchlight. Petrified by cold fear, she hoped it would blind the militants long enough for her to escape being shot down. As the helo struggled to climb, she heard several rounds rip through the Long-Ranger’s thin aluminum-and-magnesium fuselage. Time seemed to stand still as another fusillade shattered the cockpit windshield and showered her with fragments of Plexiglas and aluminum.
Turning to avoid overflying the burning truck, Jackie was shocked and temporarily blinded when the truck exploded in another thunderous fireball. She blinked her eyes several times as she struggled to read her flight instruments, then realized that she had slung Scott and Maritza straight through the middle of the blazing inferno.
“Scott,” she frantically radioed, “do you read me?”
The radio remained silent.
Jackie killed the searchlight. “Scott, do you copy?”
The silence was deafening in the windy cockpit.
“Hang in there!”
Angered by knowing that someone had set them up to be ambushed, Jackie stared at the shattered instrument panel as she climbed away from the terrorist camp. A few heartbeats later she again triggered the powerful spotlight and rotated it downward, then leaned to her right to see if Maritza and Scott were still attached to the line. Although she could barely see them, they were hanging from one of the ropes. Jackie was ecstatic. “Give me a thumbs-up if you can read me.”
When the searchlight was directed downward, Dalton holstered his weapon and looked up at Jackie. His eyes conveyed a sense of urgency that bordered on desperation. Swinging in the wind, Scott repeatedly jabbed his thumb toward the ground.
Something’s wrong, Jackie told herself as she abandoned the plan to land at the original site to take them onboard. She switched off the searchlight and looked for an alternate place to set down.
“Charlie Tango,” Greg O’Donnell calmly radioed from the Caravan. “Do you read the umpire?”
“That’s affirm,” Jackie shot back. “They’re on the hook, but I’m going to have to stop short of the dock. Stand by.”
“Copy,” Greg said, glancing at his GPS. “I’m going to have to make my move soon.”
“Give me a couple of minutes,” she said loudly. “We’ve taken some hits, and I don’t know how much damage it’s caused.”
“Do you need assistance?”
“We may need some help,” Jackie said as she felt the helo shudder and start to vibrate. “Stay with us.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Scott was holding Maritza with both arms, but she was beginning to slip as the wind whipped them in tight circles. During the harrowing escape, his twin boom microphones had been ripped off by the rappelling rope, making it impossible for him to communicate with anyone.
“Hang on,” he said to Maritza. Jackie, get us on the ground! “We’re going to make it,” he continued in a soothing, calming voice. “Just another minute or two.”
“My arms are going numb,” she said, keeping her head buried against his neck. “I can’t feel them.”
Hanging by the upper right side of his parachute harness, Scott strained to hold Maritza next to him. If she lost her grip on him, it was going to be impossible for him to hold her very long. If they didn’t land soon, Maritza would fall to her death.
As the seconds passed, Maritza struggled to keep her legs around Scott’s waist. The more she strained, the more she slipped and the heavier she seemed to become.
Dalton gripped her with all his strength, but he was rapidly losing the battle. He closed his eyes and willed himself to keep her from falling, but it was useless. Land this thing!
Rapidly slowing and descending, Jackie triggered the bright spotlight, then adjusted the focus of the beam slightly ahead of the LongRanger. She brought the helo to a slow halt and gently settled toward a grassy knoll.
“We’re almost down,” she said to Dalton, hoping he could hear her over the beat of the main rotor blades.
Without warning, a shoulder-fired SAM missile flashed past the helo’s shattered cockpit.
“Oh, shit!” Jackie swore as she instinctively ducked her head. We’ve gotta get out of here.
A few seconds later Maritza lost her grip around Scott’s neck and her legs swung wildly downward. Another missile slashed by as Dalton caught her under the arms.
“Land this sonuvabitch,” he shouted as Maritza slowly slipped through his hands and fell.
20
Enjoying his notoriety as the killer of the American’s F-14 Tomcat reconnaissance plane, Major Ali Akbar Muhammud led three MiG-29 Fulcrums as they circled their airfield at Shiraz, then turned west toward the Persian Gulf. One of the pilots in the formation was Major Viktor Kasatkin, a renowned Russian fighter pilot and advanced tactics instructor. A graduate of the Kharkov Higher School of Pilots and the Gagarin Air Force Academy, Kasatkin was honing the skills of the Iranian pilots.
Muhammud, having received reliable up-to-the-minute information from the auxiliary patrol boat Gavatar and the Iranian corvette Naghdi, was prepared to confront the Americans if they attacked Iran.
Equipped with “Flash Dance” radars, air-to-air missiles, and thirty-millimeter cannons, the MiGs represented the most advanced of the flyable fighters in the Iranian Air Force. Major Muhammud adjusted his cockpit lights to enhance his night vision and darted a look at his Iranian wingman, who had been selected from the best the Iranians could muster. He was tucked in close to his leader’s wingtip.
Muhammud, the politically powerful son of an Iranian Air Force general who was killed in a 1995 JetStar crash, was considered by his peers to be one of the most talented fighter pilots in the Iranian Air Force. But then again, during mock dogfights, no one was stupid enough to seriously challenge the cocky and temperamental pilot.
Not far behind, three more MiG-29s joined in trail and followed Muhammud to their patrol sector between the coastline and Khark Island. The well-educated pilots came from Iran’s upper classes; however, their aviation training wasn’t up to the standards of the West. The Iranians could demonstrate passable displays of air combat maneuvering, but their basic dogfighting capabilities were considered to be limited at best.