Stephen Coonts: The Disciple

“What is that noise I hear?”

“A firefight,” Aqazadeh replied. “Commandos have surrounded the bunker. I have a radio in my automobile. You must summon troops back to the city to kill them.” Aqazadeh didn’t realize that his limousine had been destroyed.

Of course that is what he would say , Ahmadinejad reflected. The military is staging a coup, and the loyal troops are being attacked by the traitorous ones. Aqazadeh is part of the plot to kill me. If we open the bunker door, we will be murdered by these traitors to Allah.

“You are Zionist swine,” the president of Iran told his general. “If you are alive after the war, we will execute you as the traitor you are.”

Then Ahmadinejad hung up the telephone.

“Bombs away.”

The words sounded in Quereau’s earphones. In front of him the MiG was flying straight and level-and slowing rapidly. This jock’s a real sport! He’s going to see if he can fly slower than I can.

Quereau grinned inside his oxygen mask, retarded his throttles and deployed his speed brakes. He let his fighter creep up onto the MiG’s right wing, where he could look over into the cockpit.

“Number Two, bombs away. And we’re RTB.” Return to base.

“Roger.” That was Quereau’s lead. “Outlaw Two, you copy?”

“Roger that,” Quereau responded. “I’ll watch the back door and be along shortly.”

The MiG-29 and F-22 were in close formation now, each pilot looking at the other, the throttles at idle. The guy who flies the slowest in this kind of game gets a free guns shot when his opponent moves into the lead. Quereau knew that, and knew that with his vectored thrust and a partial flap deployment, his fighter could fly level at a sixty-degree angle of attack. He doubted the MiG-29 could match it.

Gonna find out, by golly!

I left Larijani and went around the corner. Found the stairs down. Somebody fired a shot up the stairs, which spanged into the wall beside me.

I didn’t know what those guys were doing down there, didn’t know how much time we had before the bunker-busters landed, and I couldn’t afford the time to study my watch.

I pulled the igniter on the satchel charge and tossed it down the stairs. Then I ran around the wall back toward the entrance. I was pulling Larijani over against the wall when the floor turned to jelly, sweeping me off my feet. The trip-hammer concussions of the four five-thousand-pounders jackhammering their way into the earth demolished the mosque; the walls came apart and the ceiling fell in.

Davar was lying down, shooting at an Iranian near the mosque, when the bombs hit. The bombs were falling too fast to register on her retinas, and she never saw them.

As the first shock wave punched her, she scrunched her eyes shut and grabbed the shaking earth with both hands. The four bombs took about two seconds to detonate, from first to last, four vicious impacts that set the earth shaking. Davar held on tightly to the earth as dirt and rock rained around her. The small rocks hitting her were painful, and she knew that if a big one hit her she would be instantly dead, yet she couldn’t move. Only when the earth stopped moving and things stopped falling did she slowly, carefully, open her eyes and raise her head.

Although she didn’t know it, the entire first elevator shaft down to the intermediate chamber, and that chamber, had been destroyed and filled with rock. The lower elevators had been torn from their mountings by the vibrating earth and had fallen to the bottom of the partially collapsed shaft. It would take months with heavy excavation equipment to dig down to the bunker entrance.

Davar stood and wiped the dirt from her face.

She walked down the slope toward the smoking crater in the parking lot. The hole was almost a hundred feet in diameter, and it was surrounded by a debris field of loose dirt and stone that had been ejected from the hole. In places, the debris was over two feet thick.

She was almost to the edge of where the asphalt had been when she came across the first body. It was a dead Iranian soldier. Trickles of blood had come out his ears. He was lying on his side, half buried, staring lifelessly.

She walked on, past bodies that had been machine-gunned and bodies that had been crushed by falling stones and were now almost buried. She tried to see into the gigantic hole. The bottom of the crater was still smoking, giving off fumes and atomized dirt. She could see nothing.

She walked on across the debris field toward the pile of rubble that had been the mosque. Saw a head sticking out of the rubble. Carmellini, lying motionless.

“No,” she screamed and attacked the rubble with her bare hands. She threw rocks, pieces of masonry, dug through piles of plaster, trying to free him. “No,” she said, “no, no, no.”

Tommy stirred, looked into her face. Tears were streaking the dirt.

She saw his lips move. She couldn’t hear him. The concussions had temporarily deafened her. She bent down, kissed him, worked on getting the dirt out of his hair.

G. W. Hosein roared up in a technical. He leaped out and helped her pull Carmellini from the crumbled bricks and mortar.

“Larijani’s in there,” Carmellini whispered. “Get him out.”

Haddad Nouri and Ahmad Qajar were also there now. A stone had broken Qajar’s right arm, which he held with his left. G. W. told him to sit in the pickup’s passenger seat. Together, the other three burrowed into the rubble with their bare hands while Tommy crawled out.

Subtly adjusting his throttles and trying not to move the stick, David Quereau kept his F-22 in formation on the MiG’s right wing. Both planes flew with their noses pointed up at steep angles, riding their exhaust gases like rockets, teetering on the edge of stalls.

Yet the MiG pilot was not decelerating anymore. The pilot must have sensed that he was as slow as he could go, and the loss of another knot or two would result in a departure from controlled flight. He was at the far left edge of the performance envelope.

On the other hand, the American pilot had a few more he could scrub off, if he wished. If he did, he would fall behind the MiG and could eventually put a cannon burst into the Iranian, when he finally began to accelerate again.

The MiG pilot looked over at Quereau, who of course was looking at him as he flew formation. Quereau saluted with his throttle hand, then pointed east, repeatedly, jabbing his finger. Then he waved good-bye.

He saw the MiG pilot acknowledge the salute and gesturing. The MiG-29 accelerated smartly, and the nose dropped so altitude could be quickly converted to airspeed. Flaps coming up, both men stayed in formation a moment as their speed increased and wings and controls bit solidly into the air.

Then, with a little wave, the Iranian lowered his left wing to turn east and dropped his nose even more. He raced away in a descending left turn.

Quereau watched the MiG until it was lost in the vastness of the sky; then he turned a complete circle as he checked his radar picture and threat indicators. He saw the B-2s’ symbols and the lead F-22. With a grin he lowered his nose to help him accelerate and headed west.

He savored the past few minutes. Whatever else it is, squirting missiles is not dogfighting. The thought occurred to him that he might have been in the very last dogfight in the history of the world.

He and that Iranian pilot were the only guys who knew about it.

Cool.

Every muscle I had screamed in protest. I sat up, found that nothing was broken and slowly worked my way erect. The others were tearing bare-handed at the rubble. I joined them. We dug until we found a trouser leg, then dug more frantically until we finally uncovered Larijani’s head. He was dead, with dirt in his eyes and mouth. I kinda figured that the bullets killed him, but maybe it was the collapse of the building.