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Elayne was flying over the desert two miles north of the American base at al-Tanf. The American air controllers had picked her up the second she crossed the border from Iraq. Once ascertaining who she was, or rather who she said she was, they advised her with a tone of polite threat to avoid al-Tanf by a minimum of two miles and to remain above ten thousand feet—if she didn’t wish to be “accidentally” shot out of the sky.
She complied.
The planned crash zone for the US Senators’ plane was fifty kilometers to the north anyway. There, the Syrian and especially the Russian forces patrolled the edge of the American’s precious DCZ line in the desert sand.
She’d planned that point of impact most carefully. It would allow the Americans to feel safe investigating the crash inside the DCZ. A
