The Disciple by Stephen Coonts

Author:Stephen Coonts [Coonts, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, General, Thrillers, Espionage
ISBN: 9781429963732
Google: Z6zvERMfxVYC
Amazon: B002VOGQRE
Goodreads: 7315527
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2009-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Two days later Janos Ilin, of the Russian SVR, stood in the desert looking at the Hornet’s wreckage from a distance of about fifty feet. He was certainly no expert on airplane crashes, but this one looked remarkably intact. It seemed to have struck the ground in a flat attitude, skipped and plowed along shedding bits and pieces, then went up a little hill and got airborne again. On the other side of the hill the nose hit hard, almost crushing it; then the thing turned ninety degrees and skidded sideways to a stop. The remains of the crushed belly tank could just be seen about two hundred yards away.

Two of the men Ilin had brought with him did indeed specialize in the examination of crashed planes, and they began poking and prodding the wreck as the Iranians conducted their own examination. There were a dozen or more Iranian air force technicians, armed with a variety of tools and test equipment. The workers were supervised by at least a half dozen officers, who conferred, moved to another portion of the wreck and conferred again.

Habib Sultani and his nephew Ghasem stood beside Ilin, watching the entire evolution.

The most obvious thing about the plane was the shattered canopy and the missing ejection seat. The next thing Ilin noticed was that there were no bullet or cannon holes in it that he could see. Or holes made by shrapnel.

He turned so he could look back up the path the airplane had plowed as it decelerated, a path that pointed almost straight east. Not a trace of fire.

The airplane didn’t burn.

He looked at the wings. One of them had been nearly wrenched away from the fuselage and was bent at an angle.

There was no fuel in the plane when it crashed.

Ilin sighed and got out his cigarettes. He lit one and took a deep drag. The smoke from the cigarette zipped away on the stiff breeze.

“Would you like to inspect more closely?” Ghasem asked.

“No, thank you. This is close enough. Where is the pilot?”

“Not here,” Ghasem said abruptly.

“Obviously. The ejection seat is missing. Is he still running around out here in this desert, or do you people have him in custody?”

Ghasem said nothing.

“How far are we from the ocean?” Ilin asked.

Ghasem knew the answer to this one. “One hundred and sixty kilometers.”

Ilin nodded and puffed on his cigarette. He was on his third one when the two Russian experts came over to him. “No fuel in the plane. The engines were only windmilling when it struck. They are essentially intact.”

“Why did the plane crash?”

“The pilot ejected. Without a pilot . . .”

Ilin frowned at the man. “Why did the pilot eject?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to have any battle damage, no sign of fire, no airframe failure that might have occurred in the air. Perhaps the pilot got lost and ran out of fuel. Perhaps he had a total electrical failure, although we saw no obvious damage to the electrical system in our quick inspection.

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