Free Air Battle Force by Dale Brown Page A

the north side of the runway. The bomber skidded to a halt on its belly just a few dozen yards away from several parked military aircraft.
    The fire trucks were on the bomber within moments, dousing it with firefighting foam and water, but there was no fuel on the plane anyway, it didn’t break apart, and it had been shut down long before landing. It looked like a wounded duck shot out of the air by a hunter, but it was intact.
    â€œOh, God—we made it!” Rebecca said breathlessly. “I don’t believe it.”
    â€œWe made it,” Patrick breathed. “My God . . .” He made sure everything was switched off, then safed his and Rebecca’s ejection seats, unlatched the upper escape hatch, and climbed up on top of the fuselage. They were helped down by rescue personnel and taken to the base hospital. A huge crowd of sailors and airmen had come out to watch the bomber belly flop onto their little island.
    As they were being wheeled into the hospital, Patrick could see several naval officers striding toward him, all wearing the angriest, most chew-ass expressions he’d ever seen. Sailors and spectators quickly peeled out of their way as if they were radioactive. Patrick completely ignored them. Instead he looked up and spoke, “Patrick to Luger.”
    â€œGo ahead, Muck,” David Luger said. Their subcutaneous microtransceiver system gave them global communications and datalink capability anywhere in the world, even on a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. “Good to see you made it okay. Is Rebecca all right?”
    â€œYes, she’s fine.”
    â€œGood. The commander there wants to have a word with you. I’m sure CINCENT and SECDEF will be on the line soon, too.”
    â€œI copy,” Patrick said. “But put me through to home first.”
    â€œ Home? Patrick, the admiral wants—”
    â€œDave, put me through to my son, right now, and that’s an order,” Patrick said. “I’ve got to say hello to Bradley.”

NEAR THE VILLAGE OF TABADKAN, TWENTY KILOMETERS WEST OF ANDKHVOY, ON THE TURKMENISTAN-AFGHANISTAN BORDER
    That night
    Even with a new government in place in Afghanistan, the border-crossing points were not very well manned on the Afghan side—even on the larger highways there was usually only a small inspection and customs building, with a swinging counterweighted metal pole to delineate the border itself. Infiltrators never used the border crossings anyway; no one ever wanted to visit Afghanistan, and the country was certainly not going to keep anyone from leaving —why did Afghanistan need an armed border crossing?
    On the other side, however, it was a different matter. None of Afghanistan’s neighbors wanted any refugees or accused terrorists to cross the borders freely, so the border checkpoints were usually well manned and well armed. Thus it was with the Republic of Turkmenistan.
    Tabadkan was typical of almost all of the Turkmen border checkpoints—a small but heavily fortified Turkmen border-guard base with a few support buildings, a large tent barracks for enlisted men and a towable building for the officers, a supply yard with portable fuel and water tanks—and a detainment camp. The Republic of Turkmenistan routinely turned away anyone—refugees or rich folks, it didn’t matter—who did not have a visa and a letter of introduction or a travel itinerary drawn up by a Turkmen state travel bureau; but any people without proper identification papers or passports were placed in the detainment camp until their identities could be verified. The Afghan government usually sent officials to the border crossing to help in identifying its citizens and getting them released from Turkmen custody at least once a week, but in bad weather—or for a number of other reasons—it could sometimes take a month or more for anyone to come to this remote outpost.
    So it was