Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (63 page)

 
          
“This
man will be missed in two nights’ time, perhaps sooner—we must go tomorrow
night,” Cazaux said, wiping his blade clean and putting it back into its hidden
sheath.

 
          
“You
will leave as soon as you can get the Shorts loaded. I’ll see to the loading
and preflight here.”

 
          
“You’ll
take care of the flight plan, Henri?” Townsend asked. “Remember the FAA order
7210.3—we need sixteen hours.”

 
          
“I
remember, Townie, I remember,” Cazaux said, his mind racing several hours
ahead.

 
          
Since
Air Force One was a SAM, or Special Air Mission, military aircraft, a flight
plan for their flight to
Washington
could be filed only through a special teletype system. Fortunately,
they had access to such a terminal at Pease International Tradeport. The 157th
Air Refueling Group, a small New Hampshire Air National Guard aerial refueling
tanker unit, used the system for the Atlantic Tanker Task Force, which
coordinated all aerial refuelings for flights from
Europe
to
North America
, including for Air Force One. Also, Pease
Tradeport, when it used to be Pease Air Force Base, was a favorite vacation
stop for President George Bush and his family, so a terminal was installed and
kept at the airport. Cazaux’s organization had bribed several of the Guardsmen
at the airport to do a variety of things, such as alert them when any state or
federal inspectors were inbound, monitor the status of the state police
patrols, and procure fuel and other aircraft parts and supplies.

 
          
For
the flight of their fake Air Force One, they would have one of the Air National
Guard controllers input a military flight plan into the system, originating not
from
Portsmouth
,
New Hampshire
, but from
Manchester
,
New Hampshire
, the site of an upcoming and widely
publicized debate between the expected 1996 presidential candidates, organized
by the League of Women Voters. The flight plan, using the call sign SAM-2800
(SAM stood for Special Air Mission, the standard call sign for military flights
such as this; 2800 was the tail number of one of the two VC-25A Air Force Ones
in the inventory), had to be filed not earlier than sixteen hours from the
proposed takeoff time, although the exact takeoff time could not be recorded.

 
          
Immediately
after the counterfeit Air Force One was airborne, the Air National Guard
controller would issue an ALNOT, or Alert Notification message, to a special
office in the FAA Air Traffic Control Command Center known as ATM-200,
requesting special priority handling and revising SAM-2800’s call sign to
Executive One Foxtrot, signifying that a member of the President’s family or
White House staff (but not the President himself—that would be too easy to
verify) was on board the aircraft. The ALNOT would be retransmitted by ATM-200
to the various Air Route Traffic Control Centers along the route of flight as
well as the. Air Force Air Defense Sector Operations Command Centers, letting
everyone know that a member of the President’s entourage was airborne. The plan
after that was that the controller would be knocked unconscious so he could
claim that he was overpowered and his equipment used without his knowledge—of
course, Cazaux would see to it that he was executed to keep him quiet.

 
          
“I’ll
take care of all those details,” Cazaux was saying. “Now get moving.” Townsend
and Ysidro turned to leave, but Cazaux stopped them by adding, “And I want no
more slipups. Security will be tight and everyone will follow the plan to the
letter, or I will spend the rest of my days on earth hunting down and executing
each and every one of you. Now get going.”

 
 
          
Andrews Air Force Base,
Camp
Springs
,
Maryland
Early the Next Morning

 
         
Tomas
Ysidro had made his own green active-duty U.S. military ID card long ago—his
was Army, showing his home base as the Defense Language School,, the Presidio
of Monterey, California; he carried a set of orders showing him as a visiting
instructor in Farsi and Mandarin to the 89th Air Wing to teach some of the
aircrew members some basic foreign language skills for an upcoming presidential
trip. But getting onto Andrews Air Force Base, the place where the President of
the
United States
’ planes were kept, was child’s play, and he
didn’t need to show any of his carefully prepared credentials. The guards at
the
Virginia
Avenue
gate were still doing hundred-percent ID checks, but there were no
dogs, no searches, no questions asked. The smiling Air Force bitch in her
toy-soldier blue fatigues, silly black beret, white dickey, and pretty spit-
shined boots waved the car right on through after a quick flash of the card,
and four international terrorists were on a major military air base with ease.

 
          
“No
vehicle checks or searches,” one of the terrorists remarked after they were
well past the guard gate. “Not even a thorough check of your card.”

 
          
Ysidro
had been careful to scuff up his ID card and not make it look too new or too
perfect, but the apparent lack of diligence did puzzle him. Weren’t they
concerned about Cazaux any longer? “We can still be monitored electronically,”
Ysidro warned, “so everyone stay sharp.” That did not need repeating—driving
right into the jaws of the enemy, the ones that were out looking for them—was
not a comforting or casual activity at all. But the apparent lax security made
them breathe a bit easier and helped them concentrate on the tasks ahead.

 
          
They
drove north on Virginia Avenue and followed the signs about a half-mile to the
base golf course—and found, to their amazement, that it was open. It had been
closed for days because the Army had placed an entire Patriot missile battery
there, assigned to protect the Capitol, Andrews, Washington National, Dulles,
and other high-value targets in the D.C. area from air attack. Ysidro turned
right onto
South Wheeling Road
and there it was, right in front of them—an
entire Patriot missile battery, less than a thousand feet away on
Wyoming Road
. The Army Patriot missile encampment,
within sight of the end of runway 36 Left, was well in the process of being
dismantled—the back nine holes of the course were still not usable, but the
front nine were open, and golfers were out there just a good five- wood shot or
two away from some of the Patriot launchers.

 
          
“Well,
what the fuck . . .” Ysidro said, surprised and pleased by what he saw. “Maybe
we should’ve hidden our gear in fuckin’ golf bags.” They could see all eight
Patriot missile launchers lowered and configured for road march, and the large
flat “drive-in-theater” antenna array still raised but with soldiers working on
and in front of it—obviously it wasn’t radiating, because that man in front of
the array would be fried to a crisp by the amount of electromagnetic energy
that thing put out when it was radiating. The electrical power plant vehicle
was still running and the command vehicle was apparently still manned, but the
Patriot site itself was apparently decommissioned. Ysidro’s assignment had been
to destroy it.

 
          
“What
do we do now?” one of the commandos asked.

 
          
“We
do what we’ve been assigned to do—it’ll just be a hell of a lot easier,” Ysidro
said. “The electrical truck is still running, so this could just be a
maintenance period— the Patriot site at
Fort
Belvoir
or Dulles might be taking up the slack.”
Two other commando squads had been assigned to take out the Patriot sites at
Davison Army Air Field at
Fort
Belvoir
and at
Washington-Dulles
International
Airport
, but if those Patriot sites were closed
down as well, they would have a much easier time of it. At last check, the Hawk
missile sites at East Potomac Island Park Golf Course near
George
Washington
University
, Rock Creek Golf Course near
Walter
Reed
Hospital
, and the East Capitol Country Club golf
course were still operational; other teams were assigned to take out those
sites as well. But this Patriot site at Andrews was the
Integrated
Command
Center
, or ICC, which controlled all of the Hawk
and Avenger air defense units in the region.

 
          
The
terrorist group took a right turn on
Wisconsin Road
, a left onto
South Perimeter Road
, and headed for the housing area and east
runway side. Andrews Air Force Base had two, two-mile-long parallel runways,
with the main part of the base on the west and the enlisted and junior officer
housing area to the east. The fighter alert area was on the south side of the
east runway, with two fighters on alert with ladders attached, ready to go; two
more fighters were parked nearby, but neither appeared to have weapons loaded.
Surprisingly, the guards at the entrance to the housing area had been removed.
They doubled back onto
South Perimeter Road
, heading for the main base side. A small
lake south of the west runway had numerous creeks and ditches flowing into it,
all leading toward the airfield—that was the best way to approach the runways.

 
          
They
drove north on
Arnold Avenue
along the rows of hangars on the main base side. Every Air Force VIP
plane in the inventory was visible—small jets to big helicopters to a huge
white E-4 Airborne Command Post, a modified 747 resembling Air Force One but
specially designed for the President and military leaders to run World War III
from the air. They did not see an Air Force One itself. But then again, they
didn’t need to—they were bringing their own.

 
          
They
turned right on C Street and tried to go north on Eagle Road, the street right
in front of the newer hangars, but roadblocks ahead steered them back onto
Arnold Avenue—that told them that the hangars behind that section of Eagle Road
had the really valuable hardware. Still, there were no patrols, only
barricades. The two hangars that were accessible from the one block of
Eagle Road
they were allowed to drive on had a clear
view of the alert fighter area across the airfield, and by using binoculars
they could even see the upraised Patriot antenna array to the southwest,
pointing westward toward the capital.

 
          
“Let’s
remote-control everything from here—no use in risking exposure if it ain’t
necessary,” Ysidro said. “We’ll use the short-range radio detonators for
maximum efficiency, and we’ll station ourselves within missile range of the
runways in case we’re needed.”

 
          
“May
not be able to remote the Patriot stuff,” one of the other terrorists said. He
pointed to a red-and-white block building at the end of the runway. “ILS
transmitter. Could interfere with the radio signal, or it could activate the
detonator as soon as the mine is armed.”

 
          
“Fine—we’ll
do it face-to-face. I like it that way,” Ysidro said. “Security is a joke
anyway—this looks like a walk in the park. If this isn’t some kind of setup,
this will be the easiest job we’ve ever had to do.”

 
 
          
Atlantic
City
International Airport Later That Evening

           
At precisely sunset, the formation
leader radioed, “Ready, ready ... now. Three, clear to depart.”

 
          
“Three,”
Lieutenant Colonel A1 Vincenti acknowledged, gently pulled on the control stick
and put in a notch of power. He was flying the third F-16 ADF Fighting Falcon
in a V-formation of five, passing over the base headquarters building near the
Air National Guard ramp at
Atlantic City
Airport
. From the ground,- the V-formation stayed
intact but with a large gap between the leader and the number-five aircraft to
the right of the leader—the “Missing Man” formation, signifying that one of
their comrades had died in the line of duty. Vincenti, as the main fighter
representative to the Executive Committee on Terrorism in charge of the Cazaux
emergency, had requested and was given the honor, of flying as the “missing
man” in the 177th Fighter Group’s memorial-service flyover for Tom Humphrey, who
had died in the crash of his F-16.

 
          
Vincenti
climbed to two thousand feet, turned on his transponder so air traffic control
could pick him up on radar, then checked in with Atlantic City Approach
Control: “Atlantic City Approach, Devil Zero-Three, overhead Atlantic City
International, passing two for five thousand.”

 
          
“Devil-03,
radar contact, climb and maintain five thousand, expect twenty minutes holding
at NAADA intersection for arriving and departing traffic.”

 
          
The
delay made sense—in fact, he was hoping for it. Air Traffic Control had shut
down all traffic in and out of Atlantic City International for thirty minutes
so the New Jersey Air National Guard could do this memorial, so it was only
fair that all the civilian traffic be allowed to depart. “Roger, A-City,”
Vincenti radioed back. “Devil-03 cancel IFR, requesting radar flight following,
destination Atlantic City International via the Beltway tour, overfly if able.”

           
“Roger, -03, remain this squawk and
frequency, maintain VFR routes and altitudes on the Beltway tour, I’ve got your
request for an overfly clearance.”

 
          
“-03,
roger.”

 
          
It
was far more restrictive now than when Vincenti flew F-4Es out of
Atlantic City
Airport
a million years ago, but it’s still a
pretty good ride, even at dusk, he thought—that is, if the lights are on. He
knew that exterior illumination of most of the historic buildings and monuments
of Washington, D.C., had been turned off during the Cazaux terrorist emergency;
no announcement had been made, but rumor had it that the President was going to
order the National Park Service to lift this restriction. It was pretty lucky
for him to be flying at all, let alone as part of the Air National Guard unit’s
memorial flight. Few guys want to fly Missing Man formations—they believe it
tempts Fate to fly close formation in a high-performance bird in tribute to a
fellow pilot that. . . well, erred. Crashing and burning in combat is one
thing—getting excited and accidentally blowing away an identified civilian
plane, and
then
committing suicide,
was not cool. Everyone was sorry for Humphrey and his family, but no one wanted
to get too close to his bad jujus. That’s the way fighter jocks are.

 
          
Of
course, the Learjet shoot-down and Humphrey’s subsequent crash was not being
called a suicide or a screwup, at least not by the Air Force or the White
House. Along with the usual “the investigation is under way, I can’t comment on
that,” Hardcastle and Vincenti had explained to the press all about the TV
crew’s errors, about how they broke the law, stopping short of saying they
deserved to get shot. A few veiled hints about mechanical or electrical failure
on the F-16 because of the constant flying during the emergency, some more
hints about incorrect “switchology,” mixed with more comments like “if it had
been Cazaux, Atlantic City International would have been a smoking hole
otherwise.” The press needed massaging. More than most military men,
Hardcastle—once the leader of one of the most controversial paramilitary
organizations in American history, the Hammerheads—understood that it was
important not to tell the press the facts, but to meter information bit by bit,
letting them form their own conclusions that, not too coincidentally, were the
ones you wanted them to have. It didn’t always work, but it was an efficient
way to go.