“It says let’s get the fuck out of here, go home, and have a beer,” Wickland quipped. He turned to Tanaka, smiled, and corrected himself, saying, “Nah, that was me—but I’ll do what the computer says: descend to computer-generated lowest altitude, replot the DP to bypass the first SAM, and attack the second SAM with one antiradar missile. It’ll take the first SAM at least thirty seconds to acquire us, and by that time we’ll be just a few seconds out of detection range and within a minute of flying out of lethal range. We save one antiradar missile for later.” He punched up instructions on the touchscreen. “Center up on the bug to the new DP. I’ve got COLA terrain-following mode selected, minimum safe altitude is on the barber pole.”

“Roger, MC,” Tanaka said. Yep, he thought happily, he’s back. “Here we go.”

Grumble, this is Lion Seven,” the Mi-24 pilot radioed. “I copy you have declared an air defense emergency. Do you need us to reverse course and reenter the security approach? We are five minutes from bingo fuel, and we have wounded on board. We must land immediately. Over.”

The S-300 battery commander had a decision to make. The proper procedure was to kick all aircraft out of the airspace and have them reenter the restricted area, usually on a different ingress route to be sure they were familiar with all the routes, not just the one they filed for. But this guy was bingo fuel, and he obviously saw some kind of action.

Well, the lieutenant thought, all that wasn’t his fault. That hot prickly sensation was still hammering away on the back of his neck—no time to ignore it now. “Lion Seven, reverse course and reenter through checkpoint one-one-nine at three hundred meters.”

He heard the pilot radio a muttered “Insha’allah” which in this case probably more closely meant “Who do you think you are, God?” rather than “If God wills it.” But the pilot responded curtly, “Roger, Grumble Twelve. Reversing course.”

“He sounded pretty mad, sir,” the radar operator observed.

“If he runs out of fuel and crashes, I’ll take the blame for it,” the lieutenant said. “But as long as we follow procedures, we can’t be faulted too badly. Clear your screens and report.”

The radar operators switched their radar briefly from short-range tracking and identification to long-range search. The short-range tracking gave altitude information and more precise tracking information, but sacrificed range, so the radar had to be manually reset for longer- range scans on occasion. The Mi-24 helicopter briefly disappeared from the radar display when the mode was changed. “Radar is clear, sir.”

“Very well. Continue tracking Seven to the ingress point.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Comm, ask him his fuel state again. If we need to, we’ll have to coordinate an off-base refueling.”