Primary Target (1999) by Joe - Dalton Weber, Sullivan 01 Read Free Book Online Page B

kidnapping and assassinations of a number of political and religious leaders. Along with his record of murder, torture, and bombings, he proudly took credit for downing two U . S . airliners and a French corporate jet. Now, with the strong encouragement and considerable financial backing from Bassam Shakhar, Farkas was stalking new prey in the heart of America.
    Known as a merciless chameleon by his pursuers, Farkas lived for the banishment of American and French influence from the Middle East. An explosively bitter little man, his hatred of "Western imperialism" was a crippling emotion that sometimes blinded him from reality. His campaign of zeal and fury would not end until the Americans and their cultural "pollution" disappeared from the Persian Gulf.
    A thin, energetic man with dark, deeply set eyes, Farkas was a cruel, cold-blooded sociopath who could kill without compunction. At times he frowned and his eyes glazed over before he would suddenly smile so horribly that people would step back from him. The father of the "human bombs" suicide battalions, Khaliq Farkas was the frightening product of an extremist ideological culture.
    Farkas unsnapped his oxygen mask and took off his crash helmet. He rubbed his scalp to stimulate the blood flow and watched the scattered clouds rush under the compact fuselage of the single-engine, single-seat Skyhawk. Refreshed, he donned his helmet and snapped the mask in place.
    A moment later he grinned while he raised the Skyhawk's nose fifteen degrees above the horizon and completed an aileron roll to the left. Stopping precisely upright with the wings level, he then executed a snappy roll to the right. In his mind, there wasn't any comparison to the thrill of flying a military jet--except perhaps the thrill of flying one loaded with live ordnance.
    Farkas had flown the restored McDonnell Douglas A-4 attack jet from a short, narrow airstrip near Portland, Oregon.
    Even with the two auxiliary "drop tanks" empty, the departure from the restoration complex had required every inch of available runway and full power from the moment of brake release. A cold shudder ran down his spine when he remembered the charred wreckage of another jet that hadn't cleared the tops of the trees at the end of the less-than-adequate airstrip. The inexperienced pilot had overestimated the power of the jet fighter, and his own flying ability. He died a fiery death in the blazing cockpit of his F9F-2 Panther.
    Due to his light load of fuel on departure, Farkas had been forced to make an en route refueling stop at Casper, Wyoming. The gray and blue Skyhawk, complete with two operational Mk-12 cannons and wing stations for two heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles, had attracted unwanted attention at the airport.
    Outfitted in a dark gray flight suit, Farkas had made every attempt to be friendly to the curious onlookers at Casper Air Service. He tried to keep his distance whenever he could, but the immaculate warbird had piqued the curiosity of the local hangar fliers.
    Now, in less than a half hour, the airplane would be in the barnlike hangar at its new home. Checking his high-altitude navigation chart and the GPS, Farkas decided to wait a couple of minutes before he began his descent.
    His base of operations had been selected by drawing a boundary line from Washington, D . C ., to Seattle, then a line connecting the nation's capital and Mobile, Alabama. Approximately 300 miles west of Washington, D . C ., and close to equal distance from the parameters of the boundary lines, was the ideal place to set up a staging area to shoot down Air Force One. Although the president's 747 was equipped with electronics that could create false echoes to divert radar guided missiles, Air Force One remained vulnerable to heat-seeking missiles and twenty-millimeter cannon fire.
    The location of the airstrip was predicated on the range of the Skyhawk, and the necessity for the airplane to disappear as quickly as possible after the attack.