THE CONTRACTOR Page 7

  “Piece of cake. They actually pay these guys big bucks for this? It’s easy—anyone can do this.”

  Merlin raised an eyebrow and looked at me like I was out of my mind—which, of course, I was soon to find out I was.

  Okay, so we had level flight. And we were… somewhere. I looked out of the windows to the front and the side, as did Merlin. “Anything?” I asked him.

  “No friggin idea.”

  Saadi came to the destroyed door and peered into the cockpit. “Jesus Christ!” For Saadi to say Jesus Christ meant he was really shocked. “What the hell went on here?”

  The Ambassador called from his seat, where he had been instructed to stay, asking what was happening.

  So do you be really professional and politically correct and choose your words carefully, or do you just blurt it out?

  “We’re pretty screwed, Sir,” I told him. Yes, just blurt it out. “Both the pilots are dead. We are flying level, but I have no idea where we are, and nobody here has ever landed a Learjet.”

  He was silent. Merlin was looking at me like I had just told his kid there was no Santa Claus.

  “Does anyone have any idea where we are?” Magyar calmly asked.

  We all looked out the various windows to try to find something familiar. There were no distinguishing landmarks like lakes or towns. Mainly snowcapped mountains and some large flat areas to the south.

  “No, Sir. None of us recognize this area.”

  We looked at the GPS Map screen, but it was primarily green with no specific landmarks or towns showing.

  “Can you radio into the nearest air traffic control?” Saadi asked.

  That was a great question. One I hadn’t even thought of. Dumbass. Merlin, Saadi and I looked across the dashboard array and at all the buttons and switches on the ceiling overhead. This was going to be a wild-ass guess.

  “I’m not sure which knobs or switches control the radio,” I told the TL.

  “Put the headphones on, and we will try a few that look like they make sense, and you can tell me if you hear anything.”

  Okay, so the Team Lead was gonna step up. His clear thinking was much appreciated at that point.

  I reached down and removed the bloody headphone set from the dead pilot. I wanted to wipe the potentially virus-filled headset down first, but there was no time, and I slipped it over my head. I could feel the wetness in my hair but just sucked it up and tried to ignore the blood.

  “Let’s try these,” I said as I began to twist knobs and flick switches. Nothing. Not a sound.

  Both Merlin and I tried several combinations without luck. We had thought this was going to be much easier.

  “Didn’t you take an aircraft security course, Jim?”

  Jim just looked at me, waved his magical fingers at the array and said, “Yessir, but we didn’t go over all the fucking buttons on the instrument panel.”

  This wasn’t going to work. And it wasn’t going to work because, stupidly, I had forgotten about the uninvited passenger on the plane—Mr. Murphy.

  There was a repeated loud beeping, and Merlin looked at me. “Nick, it’s the fuel.”

  Of course it was the fuel. What else could it be? We were in the middle of nowhere and nobody knew how to land, and we couldn’t figure out the comms—so of course we were almost out of fuel. That made sense. I was really flipping off Mr. Murphy in my head. (For those of you who don’t remember, old Mr. Murphy gave his name to Murphy’s Law, which states: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”)

  Saadi suggested we try to bring the aircraft as low as possible and head toward the large flat areas to the south before we ran out of fuel and plunged into the crags below. That seemed to make sense.

  Now, believe it or not, I had learned a valuable lesson while playing in the fighter-jet simulators at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington: a craft aloft has an instant and severe response to large changes in its position. I knew I had to gently push the steering… thingy… forward, or we would nosedive. The hundred or so dollars I had spent riding that amusement paid off that day. We began to descend in a controlled manner.

  “We may want to slowly reduce our speed too,” Saadi suggested. “It will save what little fuel we have left.”

  I was thinking Do you want to fly the damn plane? in my head, but I realized we were all just stressing and decided to listen for a change. I pulled back slightly on the throttle, which in turn helped me find the air speed gauge. Merlin and I smiled at each other, reveling in our brilliance as we soared through the friendly skies... over IRAN!

  It only took a second to recognize the flag of Iran painted on the side of the desert-camouflaged F-14 Tomcat that went screaming past us. I was a bit pissed because Iran doesn’t build F-14 Tomcats, it buys them—from us! We started selling the fighter jets to Iran back in the 1970s, and they have remained Iran’s most popular fighter aircraft. And now one was here, trying to burn my ass.

  “Ooops, I think we have discovered where we are,” Merlin said.

  “Ya think?” I responded.

  “You better get down fast before they blow us out of the sky.”

  It was an excellent suggestion, and I pushed a little harder on the U-shaped control. We descended quickly.

  “I think you all better grab a seat and strap in” was all I could tell the rest of the team. I had no idea what was going to happen next, where exactly we were going to try to land, or if we would even get the chance. I wish there had been someone there who could have told me, but there wasn’t. Except Mr. Murphy. The fuel light went completely red—yes, stopped blinking—and an alarm blared. Oh goody. We were out of fuel. A glance at the altimeter told me pretty much nothing. We were at two thousand feet, but I had no idea how high or low we needed to be. And where did the Tomcat go? Maybe we got below radar. I had no idea. Ahead lay a wide plain with what looked like scattered molehills and rocks. I was going for it.

  A thousand feet lower, the molehills looked like small mountains rising above the flat sand. A glance over at Merlin did not inspire confidence. He was looking about as white as the ex-pilot and firmly gripping the armrests of his seat.

  “Don’t worry buddy,” I told him, trying to reassure him. “We are warriors. If it’s our time, it’s our time.”

  He looked over at me and squinted with disapproval at my statement. “I’m not worried about dying, you dumbass. I am worried about living.”

  He had an excellent point. It would only take a second to die. There would be an instant of realization at the moment of impact, but it would be way too fast for the brain to register pain as the aircraft and one’s body became a single entity in a fraction of a second. It was living that would suck beyond all comprehension—for several reasons. First, if you didn’t die in the crash, you would more than likely be injured enough to die sometime after the crash. During that period, you would suffer horribly from gashes and burns. You would pray for death, but it would take its sweet time coming. Or you may find yourself surviving relatively unscathed, and then have to go about escaping and evading Iranian forces under blistering sun or in the deadly chill of the desert night. Merlin definitely had a point.

  The loud cracks and hair-thin vapor trails whizzing from back to front around the nose of the jet answered my question as to where the Tomcat had gone. My natural reaction was to push forward on the yoke (yeah, I knew the name of the steering device) and dive. Dive we did. But nobody screamed—a sign of true warriors. I felt the blood rushing to my head as I did everything in my power to avoid being shot down. The F-14 screamed out in front of us and well over our head. I leveled a bit and banked hard to the left. The Gs were pushing hard, but what choice did I have? For a moment the reality, and my mortality, left my mind. Everything felt more like a video game. The aircraft was incredibly nimble and responsive.

  “You gotta get this thing down or we are toast!” Merlin yelled to me.

  He was right. We were not going to outmaneuver the Tomcat, and I had no idea what I w
as doing. I saw two huge rock formations jutting out of the sand ahead. There was a long, narrow natural runway between the outcrops that was now my new target. From where I sat, it looked fairly smooth.

  “Any idea what I’m supposed to do to land?” I asked Merlin.

  “No, but let’s think for a second. You are gonna have to back off on the speed, get the landing gear down, and come in with the nose slightly raised.”

  I was dumbfounded. “How the hell do you know that?”

  “Haven’t you ever paid attention as a passenger? That’s what you do—just trust me. Okay?”

  I had to trust him because there were no other answers. I pushed the throttle forward a little and raced toward our makeshift runway.

  “Fuck!” we yelled simultaneously as the Tomcat reappeared out of nowhere and headed right toward us. I again jammed the yoke forward, and we dropped like a stone. But it was too fast. We were suddenly no more than two hundred feet off the ground and moving way too fast toward our runway—which, by the way, now looked as rough as a moonscape. There were rocks the size of trash cans, which only moments ago had looked like pebbles.

  “Find the landing gear and get it down,” I told Merlin, which he amazingly did. That changed the dynamics of the plane quickly. I pulled back on the throttle and a bit on the yoke, heading straight for the rock-strewn floor of the desert. I glanced at the altimeter. We were less than one hundred feet.

  “Here we go, boys!”

  But I never got my chance to be the friggin’ hero pilot that day. Crack, crack, crack, and then Boom! My brain figured out that we had been hit by some big rounds and that something had exploded, but the severe wrenching of the aircraft and the instant force of the Gs put me near unconsciousness as we spun like an old LP. I wish I had lost consciousness—slamming into the desert floor at over a hundred miles an hour is no fun. It all went too fast for me to describe what happened, but in an instant, there was no more movement, and the entire cockpit was filled with acrid, lung-searing smoke.

  I went into survival mode, unbuckling my harness to crawl through the dangling wreckage and over the center console toward the hatch. I wasn’t sure whether Jim was dead or alive. I couldn’t see a thing through the smoke. Light streamed through the billowing smoke at points, and my eyes caught the flicker of flames, but mostly I didn’t pay attention. I was only interested in getting the hell away from the burning wreckage. I had no idea how I was alive, and seemingly uninjured, and I didn’t care. I felt around for Merlin as I scrambled past the co-pilot’s chair, but he wasn’t there. Once I reached the hatch to find there was no door and very little fuselage, I jumped out onto the rocky sand. I scrambled to my feet and ran until I escaped the smoke.

  Adrenaline dump! My knees buckled, and I flopped to the ground—first laying on my back choking black soot out of my lungs, and then sitting up to observe the scene from hell.

  I saw a figure stagger out of the smokescreen and move toward me. We had another survivor. It was Merlin.

  “Well, fuck you very much for helping me outta there, buddy,” he said, then suddenly realized his jacket was aflame and did a little Riverdance as he wrestled the burning cloth from his body.

  I couldn’t respond; I was still coughing. Merlin sat down next to me with a “Hrrump.”

  “You’re bleeding, mate,” I told him when I noticed the gash on his forehead sending rivulets of blood down his face. I pointed at his head. He didn’t respond.

  We both stared for a moment at what was left of the once lavish aircraft. The cockpit remained intact, sheared from the rest of the plane at the hatch. The center of the craft was crushed, shredded and barely recognizable. I didn’t see any wings. The rear section was also relatively intact but sat some distance from the rest of the wreckage. Black smoke, fueled by burning electrical equipment, jet fuel, and plastics mushroomed into the air.

  In a moment the shock subsided, and my mind screamed Saadi! and The Ambassador!

  I jumped to my feet, grabbing Merlin by the shirt, and we both stumbled toward the inferno. Saadi had been in the central section with Magyar in the tail area. I was sure they were gone, but we had to look anyhow.

  Waves of heat from swirling flames pummeled us as we attempted to get to the wreckage. We both could see there was nothing left of the center section. Nothing had survived there. We did our best to jog around the main wreck to the tail section. It lay close to one of the large rock outcrops.

  Merlin yelling “Hit the deck!” and the simultaneous sound of the Iranian jet screaming toward us elicited an instant reaction from my body. I dove toward a bolder in an attempt to conceal myself from the approaching bird of death. The Tomcat strafed the wreckage, sending shards of aluminum and plastics raining out from the fuselage. I could do little more than cover my head and hope I didn’t feel the searing pain of molten metal entering my body. The sound was intolerable as the huge rounds disintegrated the center of the plane. Luckily for us, the tail section was out of the line of fire.

  The moment the jet soared away, Merlin and I broke into a run toward the tail section to check for our compadre and our “package.” Wires, hydraulic lines, cables and strips of aluminum hung like a curtain over the opening to the tail section. It must have broken away from the craft on impact, as there were no signs of fire.

  “Ambassador Magyar!” I yelled into the tail section. There was no answer.

  CHAPTER FIVE - Betrayal

  Magyar was there, but he couldn’t answer. The sheer forces generated during the crash had killed him. Although there were no obvious injuries, a broken neck, severe internal injuries or a battered brain had surely taken him out. He sat, still strapped in his seat, head dangling forward, arms limp.

  There still was no sign of Saadi. Merlin stood shaking his head at our situation.

  “I think we’re in trouble,” Merlin said in a disheartening voice.

  It was an understatement. We had lost our TL and our Principal. We were in the middle of nowhere without any transportation. We had accidentally crossed into Iranian air space, probably causing an international incident, and it could be quite a while before the good guys would start looking for us—if they ever did. They could simply assume we were dead, or the Iranians could find us first. They weren’t going to listen to one minute of our story of woe. Surely we would be labeled as spies, and then life would become a shit-storm. And it was late afternoon in the desert. That meant darkness and cold was coming soon.

  Other than that, it was a good day.

  Merlin and I discussed our situation and what we should do to remedy it. There were some options, but no good answers. We could stay with the tail section, using it for shelter, and take the chance that hostile troops were not on the hunt for the crash. Or we could determine direction and try to head toward the border. Umm, that was about it.

  Although heading toward the relative safety of the Turkish border sounded appealing, taking our chances with hypothermia, wild dogs, and potentially becoming completely lost made that option lose its appeal. Staying out of the elements was our only real shot.

  From our prior training and experience, we both knew that nature could be bigger and badder than even the angriest opposing forces. So we got a small fire going using combustible materials and some dry scrub brush, gathered some of the clothing that laid scattered across the sand from when the hold had been torn apart—and our damned expensive Travel Pro suitcases had been destroyed—and snuggled down with the dead Ambassador and the spirit of our compatriot.

  Just before settling down for our long desert nap, we both checked our firearms. We had one pistol each. I had one mag in the weapon and two extended capacity mags that I had used to weight my jacket pockets. Merlin only had what was in his piece.

  We really didn’t sleep. One eye or the other refused to completely close all night. No matter what the body wanted, the brain knew it had to stay somewhat alert in our situation, so we didn’t feel at all rested or ready to rumble when the sun began to peek over the sn
owcapped mountains in the east. I know I was shivering my ass off when I finally became fully alert. Just when the sun begins to rise seems to be the coldest part of the night in the desert. We both knew we had to get out of that AO and head west.

  After shivering our way back to life, Merlin and I looked at each other and had to laugh. He had dried blood on his face, and half the hair on the back of his head had been torched away. I had black soot all around my mouth and nose, looking like some evil clown. After a chuckle, we donned two jackets that had somewhat survived the wreck, wrapped our heads with partially scorched t-shirts, put on our shades and moved out, pistols in hand.

  We jogged to the nearest outcrop of rock and scrambled up the jagged face, coming to a stop near the top that afforded us a decent view of the surrounding terrain. There was a wide plain to the east leading to distant mountains. To the south, ragged outcrops melded into steep terrain. To the north lay high mountains, and to the west was a mix of desert sands and craggy hills. I had no way to determine the exact direction, but the sun was rising in the east, and we knew we had to go west, so that made things easy, so to speak.

  It looked like we could move in and out of wadis and conceal ourselves among the rocks when needed. There were some semi-flat areas we would need to be careful crossing, as we would be totally exposed.

  “What about the rest of the team, Nick?”

  Merlin had a point. We had been scheduled to meet up with Rusty and Big Dave yesterday afternoon. By now they would know something was terribly wrong. Most certainly there would have been something on the news about a missing aircraft with the Turkish ambassador on it. They probably wouldn’t reveal he had a protective team but would just mention a crew of five.

  It was at that moment I thought about Miss. Oh shit, she was going to see that report, too. I knew she would be freaking out. No matter how many times I had gone into harm’s way, and no matter how many times I had come home with one kind of scar or another, I know she never really thought I could get killed. To her, I was larger than life in that way: exempt from the rules, a superhero of sorts. Of course, she would never admit that, and certainly didn’t treat me like that, but I knew how she felt. Unfortunately, it wasn’t reality. My ass was on the line every day. I was just lucky.