Rogue Forces

“On course, on glideslope,” the copilot said. “Two thousand feet to decision height.” The copilot reached across and discreetly tapped his airspeed indicator, a silent warning for the pilot that his airspeed had dropped a bit—with a general in the cockpit, he didn’t want to highlight even the tiniest mistake. Their speed had dropped only five knots, but tiny errors seemed to snowball on an instrument approach, and it was better to catch and correct them right away than let them create bigger problems later.

“Tesekkur ederim,” the pilot responded, acknowledging the catch. A simple “roger” meant the pilot had found his own mistake, but a thank-you meant the copilot had made a good call. “One thousand to go.”

Filtered sunlight began to stream into the cockpit windows, followed moments later by sunlight filtered through widely scattered clouds. Ozek looked out and saw they were dead centered on the runway, and the visual approach lights indicated they were on glideslope. “Runway in sight,” the copilot announced. The ILS needles began to dance a bit, which meant the pilot was peeking out the window at the runway instead of watching his horizontal situation indicator. “Continue the approach.”

“Thank you.” Another good catch. “Five hundred to decision height. Stand by on the ‘before landing’ checklist and…”

Ozek, focusing out the window and not on the gauges, saw it first: a white curling line of smoke coming from a street intersection ahead and off to the left, inside the airport perimeter fence, heading straight for them! “Strela!” Ozek shouted, using the Russian nickname, “Star,” for the SA-7 shoulder-fired missile. “Break right, now!”

To his credit, the pilot did exactly as Ozek ordered: he immediately jammed the control wheel hard right and shoved all four throttles up to full military power. But he was far, far too late. Ozek knew they had just one chance now: that it was indeed an SA-7 missile and not the newer SA-14, because the older missile needed a bright hot “dot” to home in on, while the SA-14 could track any source of heat, even sunlight reflecting off a canopy.

In the blink of an eye, the missile was gone—it had missed the left wing by scant meters. But there was something else wrong. A horn blared in the cockpit; the pilot was trying desperately to turn the KC-135 to the left to straighten it out and perhaps even line up on the runway again, but the plane was not responding—the left wing was still high in the sky and there was not enough aileron authority to lower it. Even with the engines at full throttle, they were in a full stall, threatening to turn into a spin at any moment.

“What are you doing, Captain?” Ozek shouted. “Get the nose down and level the wings!”

“I can’t get turned around!” the pilot cried.

“We can’t make the runway—level the wings and find a place to crash-land!” Ozek said. He looked out the copilot’s window and saw the soccer field. “There! The football field! That’s your landing spot!”

“I can fly it out! I can do it…!”

“No you can’t—it’s too late!” Ozek shouted. “Get the nose down and make for the football field or we’re all going to die!”

The rest happened in less than five seconds, but Ozek watched it as if in slow motion. Instead of trying to wrestle the stalled tanker back up into the sky, the pilot released back pressure on the controls. As soon as he did, and with the engines at full military power, the ailerons immediately responded, and the pilot was able to bring the plane wings-level. With the nose low, airspeed built up rapidly, and the pilot had enough smash to raise the nose almost into a landing attitude. He pulled the throttles to idle, then to “cutoff,” moments before the big tanker hit the ground.

Ozek was thrown forward almost into the center console, but his shoulder and lap belts held, and he ruefully thought that he had felt harder landings before…and then the nose gear slammed down, and the Turkish general felt as if he had been snapped completely in half. The nose gear collapsed, and mud and turf smashed through the windscreen like a tidal wave. They plowed through a soccer goalpost, then crashed through a fence and a few garages and storage buildings before coming to a stop against the base gymnasium.

CHAPTER ONE

WHITE SANDS MISSILE TEST RANGE, NEW MEXICO

THE NEXT MORNING

“Masters Two-Two, this is White Sands.” The portable radio squawked to life, splitting the still, early-morning air. “You are cleared for takeoff, runway one-zero, winds calm, altimeter two-niner-niner-seven. Threat condition red, repeat, red, read back.”

“Roger, Masters Two-Two copies, cleared for takeoff, runway one-zero, threat condition red.”