It was the oddest thing, Tuncay thought as he stared out the front windscreen in wonder. Through his years in the sky he had seen a great many sights. Shooting stars, continuous displays of lightning, the Star Wars effect of traveling through snowflakes at 300 knots with landing lights ablaze. He had seen the aurora borealis and St. Elmo’s fire. Never had he seen anything like this.
“Walid!”
He heard banging from the aft cabin, but got no reply.
He shouted a second time, “Walid!”
“What? Is it time for the release?”
Tuncay turned around and saw his copilot holding a Styrofoam cup with steam rising from the top.
“The coffeemaker still works,” Walid said. “Do you want some?”
“No!” Tuncay barked. “Come here!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Look out the window and tell me what you see.”
Walid took a cursory look out front. “I see a dark desert. Is it the oil field?”
“No, higher, just ahead in the sky. I see a light.”
Walid leaned forward, put his head over the glare shield. “Yes … I do see something. Turn down the lights.”
Tuncay rotated a series of knobs and the lights on the instrument panel dimmed. He too leaned forward and saw it more clearly—flashing lights and movement, as if a tiny motion picture were floating in the sky. Then he registered something more ominous, a counterpoint to the tiny square of light. A massive shadow all around it.
Tuncay said, “It looks like another—”
The last word of the revelation never escaped his lips. Behind an explosion of glass and a rush of air, the Turk flopped back into his sheepskin-covered seat. Walid froze in place, stunned to see his partner splayed motionless, his head a bloody mess.
Walid’s lower jaw dropped down, as if to speak. No words came before the second bullet arrived.
* * *
“Two down,” Slaton said evenly into his microphone.
Through his scope he scanned the cockpit back and forth. The man in the left seat was clearly hit, slumped and motionless, but the second target was no longer in view. The damage to the windscreens was as he’d predicted, two cleanly riveted holes, spiderweb cracks around each for a six-inch radius. There had been no explosive decompression. This point had also been discussed during the course of their eastbound chase—due to the low cruise altitude, it could be assumed that the pressure differential inside the cabin would be minimal. Indeed, according to Bryan, the MD-10’s cabin had likely been depressurized in order to vent the drop tank. Apparently, a valid assumption.
Everything seemed to have gone as planned, yet Slaton, ever the perfectionist, wanted confirmation. Had he struck the second target a lethal shot?
“Get me closer,” he said into the intercom, “I need to confirm the kill. Climb so I can see the cockpit floor.” The last thing Slaton wanted was a surprised but unharmed, or possibly wounded, copilot crawling to activate the drop release mechanism.
He heard the C-17’s engines again rise in pitch. The cockpit of the MD-10, backlit by its fight instruments in a jaundiced yellow hue, came gradually closer until the magnification of the scope was no longer necessary. Slaton gave a series of commands until Bryan had them flying no more than a hundred feet in front of the MD-10, perhaps fifty feet above. Finally, Slaton got his confirmation. He saw the second pilot sprawled motionless on the flight deck floor, his bloody face ghastly in the amber light.
“All right, two confirmed kills.” He was considering whether a follow-up was justified for either target when the MD-10 banked to its right. The geometry and closure suddenly changed, and the two jets began to merge.
“Climb!” Slaton shouted. “Climb now—their autopilot is maneuvering and we’re getting too close!”
Bryan reacted sharply on the controls, the frayed nerves of a pilot who was flying a heavy jet in formation with another he couldn’t see. The C-17’s engines whined to full power, and a surge of positive Gs pressed Slaton’s body to the deck as they bucked upward. He watched the MD-10 slide harmlessly underneath.
Bryan’s voice chimed over the intercom seconds later. “All right, gentlemen—job done. I’m relaying a report to headquarters. Now we sit back and watch—and hope to hell we’ve got this right.”
Behind Slaton, Sergeant Willis held up his iPad, which was still playing the animated Disney movie Frozen. “Can I turn this off now?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Willis did so, and said, “Man, I am not telling my daughter what I just did.”