Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (81 page)

 
          
But
the Cuchillo fighters were still several minutes from Cudjoe Key, the big
island in the Florida Keys chain where the aerostat radar balloon was located;
for obvious reasons—namely the Naval Air Station, Coast Guard and Border
Security Force bases—the Hammerheads’ base itself was not a target: only the
balloon-tether site itself, located fifteen miles away, was to be destroyed.

 
          
But
the first-strike package had hit early. The attacks on CARABAL and KEYSTONE
were supposed to have been simultaneous; now American fighters were swarming
over the skies even before the Hammerhead One platform had been hit, and the
first target of the second group had still not been touched.

 
          
The
leader of the second-strike group swore into his oxygen mask as the radio
messages and warnings began. They were nearly ten minutes behind time when the
radar site on
Grand Bahama
Island
was struck—the second group was not yet in
American airspace, let alone in position to launch their attack.

 
          
“Gold
Group, this is Gold One,” the leader radioed to his group. “Silver Group has
apparently struck his first target. Warning messages have been transmitted on
the emergency frequencies.”

 
          
“What
will we do?” one of the other pilots asked in Spanish. They all had the same
question, but only the youngest, the least disciplined, was scared enough to
ask. The feeling was one of nakedness, helplessness. It was as if the whole
world could see you, that every missile and every gun was pointed in your
direction.

 
          
“First,
we will
maintain radio silence,
” the
leader replied angrily in English. Even though their transmissions were
scrambled, it was an antiquated and easily broken mechanical scrambling routine.
Non-tactical transmissions were supposed to be done in English in case of
eavesdropping—a lot of military talk in English would be less suspicious to
eavesdroppers than a foreign tongue. “Formation changes, fangs and claws, now.”

 
          
The
formation was originally in their strike-and-cover arrangement—the fang, who
was the leader in the MiG-21 paired with the Mirage on his left wing, and the
claws, the air-cover MiG and Mirage fighters on the leader’s right wing. At the
leader’s command the air-cover Mirage took spacing on the strike MiG by flying
a few hundred yards to the leader’s right; then the strike Mirage on the
leader’s left wing slowed and passed underneath his comrades, joining on the
Mirage’s right wing. The formation was now broken up into two formations of
similar aircraft, with one strike and one air- cover fighter in each group.

 
          
“Leader’s
group will take the platform, the rest take the radar site. Gold Three, monitor
the Border Security Force tactical channel. We will meet on the rendezvous
channel in fifteen minutes to plan a join-up. Good luck.” The leader with his
MiG-21 banked left to get on course for the platform. The other group banked
right to clear the formation and began their attack run on the KEYSTONE radar
site.

 
          
Border
Security
Force
Headquarters
Command
Center
,

           
Aladdin
City

 
          
On
the radar displays of west and southwest
Florida
it was a madhouse. Airplanes were
everywhere. Airliners with hundreds of passengers were within a thousand feet,
and sometimes within five hundred feet, of small single- and twin-engine
planes; every pilot up there was calling in for instructions or clarification.
The FAA controllers were overloaded with traffic-collision alerts as planes
scrambled to find someplace to land before the shooting started. With radio
navigation aids selectively blocked out by the Hammerheads, planes were
reporting themselves lost or drifting out of their assigned corridors. Intruder
as well as collision alerts were flashing on the boards.

 
          
And
now the Air Force was entering the picture. F-16 interceptors from the 125th
Fighter Interceptor Group at Homestead Air Force Base were responding to the
air-defense warning; a few fighters from the 56th Tactical Training Wing at
MacDill AFB, an F-16 replacement training base near
Tampa
, were flitting around the area itching to
get in on some action. And now fighters from the 125th Fighter Interceptor
Group at
Jacksonville
, the parent group of the
Florida-
based fighters, were moving in to reinforce
their detachment at Homestead AFB. Every civilian plane in the sky began
expressing their concern about being the target of an F-16 attack, and several
reported seeing bombs going off, missiles being launched, explosions rocking
the sky. Military controllers of the Air Force Southeast Air Defense Sector at
Tyndall Air Force Base in northwest
Florida
wanted to take charge of the situation now
that the F-16s were airborne—even after nearly three years of operation, no one
yet completely trusted the Border Security Force with anything but their own
aircraft. It was bedlam.

 
          
Annette
Fields at the duty-controller’s desk at the
Aladdin
City
command center had a big job—to sort out
the legitimate air traffic, find the real intruders and keep everyone away from
the NAPALM, KEYSTONE and ALADDIN radar sites. Each site had two major
air-traffic corridors running across the aerostat’s restricted airspace spots.
Alpha-758 and Alpha-39 from the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico to Miami ran just
twenty miles south of Hammerhead Two and was widely travelled by Central
American planes as well as planes from the west side of South America. Golf-448
ran from
Venezuela
to
Marathon
,
Florida
—the major north-south airway from the
Caribbean
and
South America
to the
United States
—and although it was thirty miles from the
KEYSTONE site it was of real concern to Fields.

 
          
The
worst security threat came on Bravo-646, the major east-west route from South
and
Central America
to the
Bahamas
—this one used the Key West VORTAC radio
navigation facility as a major checkpoint, which placed the route almost
directly over KEYSTONE; the northern edge of Bravo-646’s flight route corridor
actually touched the edge of KEYSTONE’S protective restricted airspace.
Overflights and collision alerts with the big KEYSTONE balloon, which at
fourteen thousand feet altitude placed it very close to most air traffic on
Bravo-646, were common.

 
          
Fields’
only option was to keep all air traffic south of Bravo-646— that was the only
way to insure that all aircraft would stay at least thirty miles from each site.
Once clear of KEYSTONE,
Miami
Air
Route
Traffic
Control
Center
would put them back on their flight plan
routing or vector them for the approach into the
Miami
or
Fort Lauderdale
area. It sounded easy, but Fields’ order
was creating havoc. On top of all this the Hammerheads still had to make sure
that no smugglers used this opportunity of confusion to sneak past the radar
cordon. Even with the radar-detection systems operating at full capability it
was sometimes easy for a small fast plane to fly very close to an airliner and
merge their radar returns.

 
          
“Key
West Approach, this is Aladdin, I need
Mexicali
one-seven- niner charlie vectored clear of
Bravo-646,” Fields heard one of her controllers. Darrell Fjelmann, tell the FAA
air-traffic controllers. “I don’t care if he’s not following your vectors. I
need it right now ... do it immediately or there might be an accident ... I
mean he might get a missile up the kazoo, sir, and you’ve received fair
warning. Now clear that route.” Fjelmann pounded the button to cut off the
channel, then spun wearily in his chair and rubbed his eyes.

 
          
“Hang
in there, Darrell, hang in there,” Fields told him.

 
          
“Annette,
Lion Two-Two is coming in from Hammerhead One,” another controller reported.
“They might have a survivor.”

 
          
After
that announcement the Hammerheads on duty latched onto even the dimmest glimmer
of hope out of that evening’s horror. “Tell Two-Two to head directly to
Homestead
,” Fields said. “Request clearance from
Homestead
for the AV-22 to land on the oval in front
of the base hospital.”

 
          
Suddenly
Fjelmann cursed, and swung back to his control board and mashed the channel
button. “
Key
West
,
where’s that
Mexicali
flight going? He’s supposed to turn right, not left ... You think he’s
disoriented? I can see that. If he continues the turn he’s doing he's going to
be face-to-face with our aerostat . . . well, talk to him. Convince this guy
that unless he wants to spend the next year in jail or worse he’d better turn
right and get the hell out of our airspace . . . no,
you
tell him. That’s your job, dammit.”

 
          
“Ease
up, Darrell,” Fields told him. “That’s a scheduled flight. We’re not going to
bust the pilot because he panics. Keep them away from KEYSTONE as much as you
can but don’t make threats, it won’t help.”

 
          
“It’s
like these pilots just woke up or something,” Fjelmann said irritably. “They
take a long time to adjust if you suddenly bust them out of their routine. We
give them a simple command and they all go to pieces. The only thing these guys
seem to do right is turn the autopilot on.”

 
          
“Well,
don’t you go to pieces on
me
...”

 
          
“All
right, all right, I’m just burning off steam.” Fjelmann took off his headset
and rubbed his temples, trying to force away the pain growing in his skull
behind his eyeballs. He put back his headset, swiveled his chair back to face
his screen, took a deep breath and reconfigured his scope to monitor the errant
Mexican airliner, which was drifting ever closer to the aerostat radar balloon
suspended over Cudjoe Key. There was no stopping him now—he was going to cross
into the aerostat’s protected airspace for sure. “Annette, I need to turn the
lights on KEYSTONE. Otherwise this guy’s gonna go nose- to-nose with it.”

 
          
Fields
took a look at the monitor, nodded, then keyed her microphone: “Security, give
me strobes on KEYSTONE for sixty seconds,” she ordered.

 
          
Aboard the Lead Cuchillo Mirage F1C
Fighter-Bomber

 
          
Cruising
down Bravo-646 at six hundred nautical miles per hour, Gold Three and his
wingman, aboard the two Cuchillo Mirage F1C fighter-bombers, were sixty miles
from their target. The sky appeared to be ablaze with slow-moving
comets—airliners coming in from all directions, flying around with their
anti-collision and landing lights on in the dense, confused air-traffic
environment. The risk of a midair collision was so great that everyone had
their lights on. The two Mirages had adjusted their altitude until they were
squarely in the middle of the bright pearls of light, figuring it would make t
that much more difficult to be pursued by military interceptors if they
remained in among the civilian planes.

 
          
Suddenly
the pilot of Gold Three clicked his radio to get his wing- man’s attention. Far
out toward the horizon they saw an astounding sight—a bright pillar of light,
like a massive, shiny pin, had appeared from out of nowhere. The apparition
began to blink once every two seconds. It was such an unearthly sight, grand
and almost magical. It was as if God himself had used the Earth as His own
pincushion, jabbing the globe with a celestial pin that shone like a beacon far
into the distance. A truly awesome sight.