Drone Strike: A Dreamland Thriller (Dale Brown's Dreamland) Read Online Free Page B

overhead.
    Someone grabbed him. Someone else took the admiral from him.
    “I’m all right,” protested Turk.
    “Move back,” said the airman who’d grabbed him. He was a parajumper, an Air Force special operations soldier trained as a medic. “Come on now. Get in the ambulance.”
    “I’m OK,” said Turk. He turned back to look at Old Girl. As he did, one of the fuel tanks exploded, sending a fireball nearly straight up into the sky. Flames erupted from the fuselage, and two more fireballs shot from the sides.
    “Old Girl’s going out with a bang,” he muttered, turning to find the ambulance.

2
    Iran
    C APTAIN P ARS A V AHID RAISED HIS A RMS UPWARD AS he walked between the two mounds of sand, stretching his upper body in a vain attempt to unknot the kinks coagulating his muscles. He had been sitting in his MiG on high alert for hours, waiting to fly. It was a ritual he had repeated for weeks now, the government worried that the Americans and Israelis would finally carry out their threats to attack Iran.
    Or more specifically, the secret bases in the area of Qom, which lay many miles to the north. The fact that work on a nuclear bomb was being conducted was perhaps the worst kept secret in the world.
    Vahid had never been to Qom itself. In fact, though his unit was specifically charged with protecting it, he hadn’t so much as overflown it—the government had laid down very strict rules some months before, closing an Iranian air base there and warning that any aircraft in the vicinity was likely to be shot down.
    Besides, given the shortage of jet fuel plaguing the air force, Vahid rarely got to fly at all these days.
    Qom was an ancient city, dwarfed in size by Tehran but still among the ten largest in Iran. More important than its size was its history. It was sacred to Shi’ites, long a center for religious study, and a site for pilgrims since the early 1500s. Though he was a Muslim, a Shi’ite by birth, Vahid did not consider himself devout. He prayed haphazardly, and while he kept the commandments, it was more for fear of punishment than belief in afterlife or even earthly rewards.
    His true religion was flight. Vahid had dreamed of flying from the time he was three. Becoming a pilot had been a pilgrimage through the greatest difficulties, his barriers even higher because he had no connection with either the service or the government. His love had not diminished one iota. Even today, with the service’s chronic fuel shortages, problems with parts, poor repairs, bureaucratic hang-ups, and political interference—Vahid could put up with them all as long as he got a chance to get in the air.
    The pilot paused at the crest of the hill. Two hours would pass before the faithful would be called to prayer with the rising sun. The words would stretch across the bleak, high desert air base, with its dusty hangars and dorms.
    “Captain, you must be careful,” said a voice in the darkness. “You are very close to the perimeter.”
    Startled, Vahid jerked back. A soldier was standing nearby, rifle at the ready. Vahid stared, then realized it was Sergeant Kerala, a man whom he knew vaguely from an earlier assignment. His Farsi had the accent of the South.
    “I hadn’t heard you,” said Vahid. “But why are you working at night?”
    “I made the wrong comment to someone.”
    “Ah.” Vahid nodded. The wrong remark heard by any one of the half-dozen political officers assigned to the base, and the consequences could be quite severe. “I was just taking a walk. My legs are stiff.”
    “Do you think there will be an attack?”
    Vahid was taken off guard by the question. His first thought was that it was a trick, but there was little chance of that.
    “I don’t honestly know,” he told the sergeant. “We are ready for whatever happens.”
    “I don’t think the Americans will be so insane,” said Kerala. “The Israelis, them I am not sure about.”
    “We will defeat them. Whoever it is,” Vahid assured