“Doubtful.”
The crew chief, a swarthy superior sergeant with a broadmustache, shrugged and went to retrieve his rifle. The MPT wasn’t Conza’s weapon of choice, but it was lethal enough. And it would definitely impress a truck driver.
Conza kept an eye on the tactical display as the Black Hawk swept into a wide arcing turn, its targeting pod rotating on gimbals to maintain lock.
The pilot said, “I will fly one mile ahead. Once the two cars pass, I will land on the road.”
Conza saw the helo’s searchlight snap on. The light slewed until it boresighted to align with the FLIR, a nice feature that illuminated their target. If the truck’s driver didn’t already know he was being watched, he knew it now. Conza thought,Maybe he’ll stop because he’s blinded.
The wide turn put the helo’s flight path directly over the leading vehicles. Conza guessed they were about five hundred feet above the ground. The Black Hawk’s engines powered back and they started to descend. He could easily make out the truck’s headlights through the front windscreen. Conza sensed the aircraft slowing, settling. And then everything went to hell.
“Missile launch!” the copilot shouted at a volume that didn’t need the intercom.
A warning light flashed on a circular cockpit display, a red triangle at the five o’clock position.
Right where those two cars must be, Conza thought fleetingly.
—
The missile was an SA-18, NATO code name Grouse. At five feet long and less than three inches wide, the Russians referred to it as “the needle.” By any name, the SA-18 was as ubiquitous a handheld surface-to-air missile system as existed in theworld, tens of thousands having been produced, sold, and licensed.
Like all MANPADs, the SA-18 had a maximum range. But at that moment, a few hundred feet over the E80, minimum range was more of an issue—the missile had to stabilize for a fraction of a second after launch to acquire its target. The nitrogen-cooled infrared seeker blinked its eye open milliseconds after leaving the tube and had no trouble locking on—the Black Hawk’s side-by-side exhaust plumes stood out like dual moons against the night sky. The SA-18’s two guidance fins worked furiously to track the helicopter. By design, the missile rolled to give the canards authority in multiple axes. With the helicopter less than a quarter mile away, the projectile never got near its maximum speed of Mach 1.9. Two seconds after launch, and before any countermeasures could be expended by the crew, the nose cone impacted the right-engine exhaust can.
At launch the missile weighed twenty-four pounds and, even after expending a portion of its rocket fuel, the combination of mass and velocity resulted in a jarring impact. The warhead did the rest. Just under one pound of high explosives detonated by a delayed contact fuse—the magnetic proximity fuse, a backup in case of a near miss—had not been necessary. A secondary charge in the missile’s rear body simultaneously set off the remaining rocket fuel.
An explosion on top of an explosion.
The propulsion system of a helicopter is an intricate array of machinery. Jet engines, mechanical hubs to translate power, giant spinning rotors. When a blast sends a disk of shrapnel in the middle of it all, shards traveling at thousands of feet per second, the only possible result is devastation.
—
The Black Hawk shuddered from the impact.
Conza was thrown to the deck, rolling to his left and nearly tumbling out the open door. He swept a hand out blindly and found the empty mounting bracket for a door gun. He held on for all he was worth as the aircraft gyrated wildly, the momentum of the rotors and fuselage slewing in different directions.
He heard shouting from the flight deck, mostly in Turkish. Then someone yelled, “Prepare for impact!”
Conza searched blindly for footholds and found one with his prosthetic left leg. He pried himself away from the open door, scrambling for purchase against the spiraling forces. He tried to claw his way toward his seat; if they were going to crash, he wanted to be strapped in. He caught a glimpse of the crew chief on the floor behind him. He wasn’t moving and there was blood on his flight helmet.
Conza reached the olive-drab webbed seat and pulled himself up into it. He saw the world spinning through the open side door, a scene from an out-of-control carnival ride. He had two points of the five-point harness latched when the aircraft slammed into the desert. Conza’s helmet struck something hard. He saw a brilliant flash.
And then everything went black.
22
DIA Headquarters
Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling
Washington, D.C.
1317 Local Time
The crash of the Black Hawk in eastern Turkey didn’t register immediately. To begin with, the area was extremely remote, the nearest population center being the tiny village of Tercan eight miles away. There was almost no traffic in the late evening, and the first car that approached the scene braked into an immediate U-turn and bolted away. It was a perfectly rational response—the road wasn’t far from the Syrian border, a place where flaming wreckage was always best avoided.
Mirroring the crash of SAM 719 two days earlier, an emergency locater transmitter on the Black Hawk activated when its accelerometer sensed the extreme forces of impact. A few airliners overflying the area heard the warbling ELT signal and reported it to air traffic controllers. Spurious activations, however, were common and usually inadvertent: careless mechanics or technical malfunctions. The busy sector controller promised that someonewould look into it, and shunted a message to a supervisor, who wasn’t yet on duty.
Also in the dark was the Turkish army tactical operations center that had been coordinating with the Black Hawk. The TOC had no live data link with the chopper, only a VHF radio relay. A lieutenant in the TOC sat waiting for a report on the latest interdiction effort, yet VHF coverage at low altitude, where Black Hawks lived and breathed, was spotty at best. As minutes passed with no word about the suspicious truck, he assumed no news was good news.
