Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (51 page)

 
          
“The
damned system cost well over a thousand dollars a month to operate—it better
work,” Lake said. “I need the bank to cut a replacement check for Fennelli, and
I want to make sure the taps on Universal’s branch offices and to Worthington
Enterprises brokerage are in place—if Fennelli tries to contact them directly,
I need to know about it. Get on it, Ted, right
now.
”

 
          
Lassen,
in a Piper Cheyenne II turboprop plane shuttling northward to visit another
airport, was undoing another button of his shirt to try to get a bit cooler
when his transportable phone insistently beeped at him. He plugged his headset
into the unit, pressed the green
sync
button,
and waited until the scramble-synchronization circuits between the caller and
his unit agreed and allowed the call to connect. When it did a few seconds
later, he heard a tone and responded, “Sweeper.”

           
“Sweeper, this is Peepshow,” came
the reply. “Peepshow” was the tactical mission commander aboard an RC-12K
Guardrail communications and intelligence aircraft. Because cellular and radio
communications were difficult to maintain so far out away from large cities,
federal agents involved in special investigations in remote areas often set up
communications relays, which allowed them to maintain constant contact. One
such communications relay system was the U.S. Army’s Guardrail system, which
was a modified Beech Super King Air turboprop plane loaded with communications
and signals intelligence equipment. Along with providing a secure, efficient
communications link, Guardrail could also eavesdrop on radio, TV, cellular,
telephone, and data communications for a hundred miles in any direction, and
could break in on conversations or broadcast on civil channels or frequencies.
“We got some information on your subject.”

 
          
“Stand
by one.” Lassen pulled out a personal digital assistant computer, created a new
note file, and readied his electronic stencil. “Go ahead.”

 
          
“Your
target filed an IFR flight plan direct Santa Monica Airport,” the tactical
mission commander reported. “Normal air traffic control communications. We
monitored three separate radiotelephone calls via ARINC Mojave to a WATS
number. Do you need the number? Over.”

 
          
“Let
me guess,” Lassen said, retrieving another note file from the PDA and reading
off an 800 number.

 
          
“The
same,” Peepshow responded. “The conversation was scrambled, but the ARINC
transmission was garbled and they had to repeat the password sequence several
times. Finally, your target ordered the WATS operator to turn off the scrambler
so he could log on to the service. We copied the ID number and password.”
Peepshow passed Harold Lake’s service ID number and password to Lassen. It
would - probably not do too much good—Lake would undoubtedly change the
password at his first opportunity. “We copied several phone numbers, account
numbers, and what appear to be code names before they scrambled the
transmission again.” The tactical mission commander passed that information to
Lassen. “In addition, we got a good analysis of the scrambler algorithm routine
as they shut it off and then turned it back on again, so we can probably give
you their scrambler’s algorithm to plug into your descrambler once we get back
on the ground. That’s about all. Over.”

 
          
“Great
work, Peepshow,” Lassen said. “Sweeper out.” Well, it didn’t prove too much,
but it was a start. Using blind phone drops was not illegal—blind or dead drops
prevented someone from knowing what number was called— although it looked very
suspicious. It was going to take time to check out all these names, and he had
six other airports between Mojave and Reno to check out. He decided to transmit
his notes from the PDA via his radiotelephone back to his office in Sacramento
so his staff could get to work on it; using Guardrail, the task took only a few
moments.

 
          
Harold
Lake and Ted Fell were two new names in this investigation, so this trip may
not have been a total bust. Two guys from New York who admitted not knowing
that much about planes, traveling all the way out to Mojave, California, to buy
two very large transport planes. It might take a warrant for Fennelli to give
him any information on Lake, his company, his financial institutions, and the
persons he worked for. With a little push and some carefully veiled threats,
Lassen was sure that Fennelli would easily roll on Lake or anybody else and
hand over the files on Lake. But if Fennelli was smart and called in his
attorney, Lassen would get into hot water with the U.S. Attorney, that avenue
of information would snap shut, and, if he was dirty, Lake would disappear.

 
          
More
pieces to the puzzle, Lassen thought—a little patience and determination, and
eventually the pieces of this puzzle would start fitting together. Harold Lake
was being evasive, and Lassen’s instincts told him Lake was dirty. Meanwhile,
there were still a thousand more pieces of the puzzle to examine.

 
 
          
Atlantic
City
International Airport That Night

           
Wovember-Juliet-641 flight, report
altitude passing, radar contact, climb and maintain one-zero thousand.” A few
seconds later, on the same frequency, he heard, “Lead, give me a few knots,
okay?” followed by a loud feminine voice in his headset that seductively said,
“
Caution! Caution!”

 
          
Major
Greg Mundy shook himself alert—as intended, Bitching Betty had that effect on
guys. The feminine audio “caution” warning in his F-16 ADF Fighting Falcon air
defense fighter was better known as Bitching Betty, a computerized female voice
that calls the pilot’s attention to a problem in the aircraft; the warning was
repeated visually in his heads-up display with a large flashing
caution
message in the center. The male
voice just before Bitching Betty’s was from Mundy’s wingman, Captain Tom
Humphrey, who was apparently having trouble closing in on his leader and was
asking Mundy to pull off a little power.

 
          
Mundy
pinched his nose through his oxygen mask and blew against his nostrils to help
clear his head—knowing full well that he was just blowing the shit in his head
further in, which wasn’t going to help later on—and checked around the cockpit.
He finally realized he was passing three hundred knots indicated airspeed in
his F-16. still in zone- five afterburner—and he still had his landing gear
down. He immediately flipped the gear handle up. pulled the throttle back to
military power, and then flipped his oxygen panel supply lever to
oxygen
100% to get a shot of pure
oxygen into his lungs.

 
          
“November-Juliet-641
flight of two departing A-City. passing five for ten thousand, check," he
radioed, realizing he had not checked in with Atlantic City Approach Control
either.

 
          
“Two,”
Captain Tom Humphrey responded. “Tied on radar, three miles." Good wingmen
rarely said more than their formation position on the radios; Humphrey was
fairly new in the unit, having come directly from undergraduate pilot training.
Fighter Lead-In. and F-16 Air Defense Fighter training directly to the New
Jersey Air National Guard. Being a new guy, he was still a bit wordy on the
radios—that would pass soon, Mundy thought.

 
          
It
was a big, big mistake to do this flight. Mundy told himself. Members of the
119th Fighter Squadron “Red Devils" of the New Jersey Air National Guard,
Mundy and five other F-16 ADF fighter crews had been flying six straight days
of air defense alert since the terrorist emergency, pulling ’round-the-clock
four-on, eight-off shifts out of Atlantic City International. But a flu bug was
starting to make its way through the fighter group, and two pilots assigned to
air defense duties in the Philadelphia Class B airspace had gone DNIF—Duties
Not Involving Flying, which with this flu meant little more than stay in bed—so
the other crews were on four-on. four-off shifts. In addition to feeling the
first few chills and achiness of an oncoming bout of the flu, Mundy and his
fellow Falcon pilots were just plain exhausted, and it was starting to show in
his flying.

 
          
“November-Juliet-641,”
Atlantic City Approach Control radioed, “have your wingman squawk standby when
he gets within two miles of you. Passing ten thousand feet, contact Washington
Center, button eight.”

 
          
“641
copies all, check.”

 
          
“Two.”

 
          
With
the gear properly up and locked, it didn’t take long to climb through ten
thousand feet on their way to fifteen thousand feet, and Mundy took his wingman
over to Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center’s VHF frequency and checked
in. They were almost immediately shuttled off to their UHF tactical frequency,
and shortly made contact with Liberty-90, their AW ACS controller for the next
four hours. The E-3C AW ACS radar plane was orbiting over Allentown,
Pennsylvania, about one hundred miles to the north, providing enhanced
low-altitude radar coverage for all airspace as far south as Richmond,
Virginia, as far north as Boston. Having an AW ACS radar plane in the northeast
United States was not as critical as in the midwest or western United States.
Because of the sheer density of airports, ground-based radar coverage was so
extensive in the northeast that any aircraft flying higher than two or three
hundred feet aboveground was in radar contact with some FAA agency.

 
          
First
order of business was an air refueling, out over the ocean about fifty miles
east of Long Branch, New Jersey— the two F-16 Fighting Falcons would top off
from the aerial refueling tankers at least three times during their four-hour
patrol. The night was clear and beautiful, visibility about a hundred miles;
the lights of New York City, Newark, Long Island, Trenton, Wilmington, Camden,
Philadelphia, and even Allentown were all clearly visible. Mundy’s wingman
picked out the tanker’s powerful recognition lights a few moments before the
radar locked on, and they set up for the air refueling. They were going to
refuel in an “anchor,” a small, tight oval pattern in which the aircraft would
be in a turn for half of the contact time.

 
          
The
flight of two F-16s approached the KC-135 Stra- totanker from one thousand feet
below the tanker’s altitude, and as Mundy closed within five miles he made sure
his precontact checklists were completed and turned all his attention to the
rendezvous. He checked his blue
rdy
light
to the right of the heads-up display, meaning that the slipway door was open,
the fuel system was depressurized, the slipway lights were on, and the system
ready for refueling. “November-Juliet flight, five miles,” he called. He had
the tanker’s lights clearly in view, and there was no chance of flying through
any clouds and losing sight of him, so he turned his attack radar to
standby
to keep from spraying the
tanker with electromagnetic energy.

 
          
“November-Juliet
flight cleared to precontact position, One-Five ready,” the tanker’s boom operator
radioed. Mundy, with Humphrey on his left wing, started a slow climb, following
the tanker’s rotating beacon. “One-Five coming left.” The tanker’s wingtip
lights rolled gently left. Mundy used the left turn to “cut the comer” and
speed up the closure, and he carefully guided himself onto the white light at
the tip of the air refueling boom trailing down below the tanker’s tail.

 
          
The
left turn pointed them north toward
Long Island
.
The lights of
New York
that were so beautiful just a few minutes ago were serious distractions
now, and Mundy had to concentrate hard on the tanker’s wingtip lights to tell
how much the tanker was turning—his visual horizon was gone. “Halfway through
the turn,” the tanker pilot radioed.

 
          
Soon,
Mundy and Humphrey had moved to within fifty feet of the aerial refueling boom,
slightly low, and they rolled out of the turn heading south. “641 stabilized
precontact, ready,” Mundy radioed.

 
          
“642’s
cleared to the wing,” the boom operator radioed, and Humphrey moved away from
Mundy and took a position just off to the left and behind the tanker’s left
wing. “641, cleared to the contact position, One-Five ready.”

 
          
“641,
contact,” Mundy responded as the nozzle clunked into the F-16’s air refueling
receptacle. The director lights, which were two rows of colored lights along
the tanker’s belly that graphically depicted the limits of the air refueling
boom, came alive, showing him slightly low and slightly behind the center of
the boom’s envelope. He began maneuvering to correct, not really moving the
stick but “willing” the fighter to the correct position—the F-16 was far too
nimble for a pilot to make any huge corrections, especially flying five miles
per minute just a few feet from another aircraft. He stole a quick peek at the
fuel quantity gauge to the right of his right knee and watched the forward and
aft fuel quantity pointers creep clockwise and the fuel totalizer rolling
upwards.

 
          
“One-Five
coming left,” the tanker pilot again reported. Mundy turned his attention back
to the tanker—and the world started to spin on him.

 
          
“641,
down two ... 641, down four... come left, 641 ...”

 
          
Mundy
thought that he was in a tight left diving spiral, and he instinctively tried
to compensate by rolling right and climbing. The combination of the left turn,
no visual horizon, and his head movement to the right to check the fuel gauge
caused the “spins.” He recognized it, hit the
nws a/r disc msl step
button on the outside of his control stick,
pushed the stick forward, and transitioned to his heads-up display to get his
bearings back. “One-Five, disconnect,” the boom operator reported.

 
          
“641,
disconnect,” Mundy confirmed. His first priority was separation. He descended a
few hundred feet and pulled a little power back. His head was still telling him
he was in a hard left diving death-spiral, but for now his hands were believing
his eyes, and his eyes were watching the flight instruments, which were telling
the truth. “Ah . . . roger, I got about three thousand pounds, fuel transfer
looks good, let's get 642 on the boom to make sure he can get his gas, then
I’ll cycle back on to top off.”

 
          
It
was a pretty weak excuse—boom operators could recognize the onset of spatial
disorientation and were usually quick to either call a disconnect or guide the
receiver pilot back—but everyone allowed Mundy to keep his pride. “Rrrr . . .
roger, 641,” the boom operator responded, his voice telling everyone that he
knew what was
really
happening.
“You’re cleared to the right wing.” When Mundy was out of view of the boom
operator, he called, “642, cleared to the contact position, One-Five ready.”

 
          
It
was a tremendous relief to climb safely away from the tanker. Once safely on
the tanker’s wingtip, flying very loose relaxed formation, Mundy dropped his
oxygen mask, found a handkerchief in his left flight suit leg pocket, blew his
nose, then massaged his sinuses to try to clear his head. No damn good. He had
no choice—he retrieved a tiny bottle of nasal spray from his left leg pocket.
Right surgeons would argue, but the fighter pilot’s unwritten but widely
followed credo was, “Don’t Hesitate: Self-Medicate.”

 
          
The
secure-voice UHF radio crackled to life: “November-Juliet-641 flight. Control,
say status.”

 
          
“641
in the green, eight-point-one,” Mundy replied. He was about three thousand pounds
shy of a full fuel load. “642’s on the boom.” Actually, Humphrey was having
just as much trouble as Mundy did staying on the boom, but that was part of the
new-guy jitters as well. Humphrey was a good stick, a good wingman.

 
          
“We’re
tracking a pop-up target about one hundred and twenty miles bull’s-eye,” the
controller said. “Bull’s-eye,” the navigation reference point for the air
intercepts, was Atlantic City International. “Too far out for a good track.
We’re doing a manual groundspeed, and he’s gone from two-forty to about three
hundred in the past few minutes. Better top off and stand by to go take a
look.”

 
          
“641
copies.” Mundy knew that the AW ACS controllers had three minutes from first
detection to decide if an unknown aircraft was a hostile or not—that’s how much
time Mundy had to get his gas. He rocked his mike button forward to the VHF
channel: “642, I need to cycle back on. What’s your status?”

 
          
At
that moment the boom operator reported, “Forward limit disconnect, 642.” The
boom nozzle popped free of the receptacle on the F-16’s spine behind the
cockpit, the lights illuminating a brief spray of fuel vapor. Humphrey had slid
in so far that his F-16’s vertical stabilizer was dangerously close to the
Stratotanker’s tail. He descended slightly and quickly backed
away.                                                          
,

 
          
“I’m
showing ten-point-one,” Humphrey radioed. “One more plug and I should be full.”

 
          
“Better
let me get in there, -42,” Mundy said. “We might have visitors.”