Rogue Forces

“You’re cleared to preposition on Delta.” The supervisor hung up the phone. He then made a similar call to base security and to the hospital. If there was going to be an attack—and this was the perfect opportunity for one—the more alerts he could issue, the better.

Through his binoculars, the tower supervisor searched for the aircraft. He could see it on his tower radar display, but not yet visually. It was about six miles out, coming straight in but offset to the west, appearing to line up for the downwind leg for Runway 29—and he was ridiculously slow, as if configured for landing while still several minutes from touchdown. Did this guy have some sort of death wish? He relayed the aircraft position to security and crash responders so they could move to a better position…

…or get out of the way of the wreckage, in case the worst happened.

Finally, at three miles he saw it—or rather, saw part of it. It had a broad, bulbous fuselage, but he could not make out the wings or tail. It had no visible passenger windows and a weird paint color—sort of a medium bluish gray, but the shading seemed to change depending on background clouds and lighting levels. It was unusually hard to maintain a visual on it.

He checked the BRITE tower radar display, a repeater of Mosul Approach Control’s local radar, and sure enough the plane was flying only ninety-eight knots—about fifty knots slower than normal approach speed! Not only was the pilot making himself an easy target for snipers, but he was going to stall the plane and crash. In these winds, a sudden errant gust could flip that guy upside down fast.

“Scion One-Seven, Nahla Tower, are you experiencing difficulty?”

“Tower, One-Seven, negative,” the pilot replied.

“Copy. You are cleared to land. We are in FPCON Bravo. Acknowledge.”

“Scion One-Seven copies FPCON Bravo and cleared to land.”

Stupid, just plain stupid. The supervisor watched in amazement as the strange plane executed a standard left downwind pattern on the west side of the runway. It resembled an American stealth bomber, except its engines were atop the rear fuselage and it appeared much larger. He expected to see RPG or Stinger missiles flying through the sky any second. The aircraft rocked a few times in the gusty winds, but mostly maintained a very stable flight path despite its unbelievably slow flight speed—it was like watching a tiny Cessna in the pattern instead of a two-hundred-thousand-pound airplane.

Somehow, the plane managed to make it all the way around the rectangular traffic pattern without falling or being shot from the sky. The tower supervisor could not see any wing flaps deployed. It maintained that ridiculously slow airspeed all the way around the pattern until short final, when it slowed to precisely ninety knots, then dropped as lightly as a feather on the numbers. It easily turned off at the first taxiway; he had never seen a fixed-wing plane land in such a short distance.

“Tower, Scion One-Seven is clear of the active,” the pilot reported.

The supervisor had to shake himself from his shock. “Roger, One-Seven, stay on this frequency, report security vehicles in sight straight ahead, they will lead you to parking. Use caution for fire trucks and security vehicles on the taxiways. Welcome to Nahla.”

“Roger, Tower, One-Seven has the security vehicles in sight,” the pilot responded. Several armed Humvees with gunners in turrets manning .50 caliber machine guns or forty-millimeter rapid-fire grenade launchers had surrounded the aircraft, and a blue Suburban with flashing blue lights and a large yellow “Follow Me” sign pulled out ahead. “Have a nice day.”

The convoy escorted the plane to a large aircraft shelter north of the control tower. The Humvees deployed around the shelter as the Suburban pulled inside, and an aircraft marshaler brought the plane to a stop. A set of air stairs was towed out to the plane, but before it was put into position a hatch opened under the cockpit behind the nose gear, and personnel began climbing down a ladder.

At the same time, several men exited the Humvee and stood at the plane’s left wingtip, one of them visibly upset. “Man, they weren’t kidding—it’s hot out here!” Jon Masters exclaimed. He looked around at the aircraft shelter. “Hey, this hangar has air conditioning—let’s crank it up!”

“Let’s check in with the base commander first, Jon,” the second man out, Patrick McLanahan, suggested. He nodded to the Humvee below them. “I think that’s Colonel Jaffar and our contact right there.”

“Jaffar looks pissed. What did we do now?”

“Let’s go find out,” Patrick said. He stepped over to the Iraqi colonel, bowed slightly, and extended a hand. “Colonel Jaffar? I’m Patrick McLanahan.”