Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (67 page)

 
          
“Yes,
sir,” Tate responded immediately. “Two F-16s— tactical birds, not
interceptors—on ready five alert at Andrews.”

 
          
“Scramble
them,”
Milford
ordered.

           
“Yes, sir,” Tate acknowledged. She
had her finger on the
scramble
button
as soon as she heard there was something wrong with Executive-One-Foxtrot. On
aircraft-wide intercom, Tate announced, “All stations, all stations, active air
scramble Andrews, unknown target P045Y designate as ‘Bandit-
V
... MC, Alpha-Whiskey One-One and
One-Two acknowledging the klaxon; Weapons One, interceptors coming up to you on
button two.”

 
          
“Who
else we got, Maureen?”
Milford
asked.

 
          
“Next-closest
units we have are F-16 ADF interceptors at
Atlantic City
and tactical F-15s at
Langley
,” Tate responded. “ADFs at
Atlantic City
are on ready five alert, but their ETE is
at least ten minutes at zone 5. The F-15s at
Langley
can get there in five minutes, but they’re
not on ready five alert.”

 
          
“Call
Langley
and tell them to get anything they can
airborne,”
Milford
said. “Put A-City on engines-running
cockpit alert at the end of the runway in case Bandit-1 tries to bug out or if
the fighters at Andrews are bent. Get a tanker from
Dover
or McGuire airborne and put him over
Nottingham VOR for refueling support—all the out-of-towners are going to need
gas if they arrive over DC on full afterburner.”

 
          
“What’s
the order for Alpha-Whiskey flight, sir?” Tate asked.

 
          
Milford
checked his radarscope. The now-unknown 747
was only forty miles out; at his airspeed, traveling six to seven miles per
minute, he would be over the Capitol in five minutes. “If Bandit-1 turns away
and does not enter Class B airspace, the order is to intercept, ID, and
shadow,”
Milford
said. “If Bandit-1 enters Class B airspace,
the order is to engage and destroy from maximum range. Comm, get the
National
Military
Command
Center
senior controller on button four.”

 
          
Milford
then reached up to his primary radio channels and selected the common channel
linking the fifteen Hawk missile sites and the twenty Stinger man-portable
shoulder-fired missile platoons assigned to Washington-Dulles,
Washington-National, Andrews Air Force Base, Baltimore International, and the
Capitol district, and said, “All Leather units, this is Leather-90, air defense
emergency for Washington Dulles, National, and Baltimore Tri-Cities Class B
airspace, radar ID P045Y is now classified ‘unknown,’ target designate
‘Bandit-1,’ stand by for engagement, repeat, stand by for engagement.”

 
          
For
the moment, the slow-moving VFR flight was forgotten ...

 
          
Andrews Air Force Base That Same Time

           
“Andrews Tower, Alpha-Whiskey-11
flight, active air scramble, taxi and takeoff northwest.”

 
          
“Alpha-Whiskey-11
flight, Andrews Tower, taxi runway three-six right, wind one-seven-zero at
five, altimeter three- zero-zero-one, expect immediate takeoff clearance
crossing the hold line, intersection Bravo takeoff approved, seven thousand
five hundred feet remaining.”

 
          
It
took considerably less than five minutes for the two F- 16A crews from the
121st Fighter Squadron “Guardians,” District of Columbia Air National Guard, to
run to their jets, start engines, and begin to taxi. No matter what someone at
the Department of Justice said, they knew they were the last line of defense
for the nation’s capital. Not only did the Guardians refuse to revert back to
normal air defense operations, but they kept themselves in advanced states of
readiness in order to cut down on response times. All idletime crew activities
had been moved from the alert facility to the aircraft shelters, so crews were
no more than six ladder steps from their cockpits, and runway 36 Right had been
designated the “alert runway,” so it was always clear and unused except for
absolute emergencies. By the time the echoes of the three long klaxon blasts
were gone, immediately the roar of two Pratt & Whitney F100-P-200 turbofan
engines replaced them.

 
          
Both
planes—not ADF (Air Defense Fighter) F-16s, but standard battlefield combat
models—carried four AIM-9L Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles, ammunition for the
20- millimeter cannon, and one centerline fuel tank. They reached the hold line
in less than a minute, performing last- second flight-control checks and
takeoff checklist items on the roll. “AW flight, clear for takeoff to the
northwest unrestricted, contact approach,”
Andrews
Tower
radioed.

 
          
“AW
flight, clear for takeoff, go button three.”

 
          
“Two.”

 
          
For
safety’s sake at night, the fighters performed a standard in-trail takeoff
instead of a formation takeoff. The leader turned onto the runway, not
bothering to set his brakes but plugging in the afterburner as soon as he was
aligned with the runway centerline. The wingman started counting to himself
when he saw his leader’s fifth-stage afterburner light, and although he was
supposed to wait ten seconds, he started his takeoff roll on eight. Smoothly he
pushed his throttle to military power, checked his gauges, cracked the throttle
to afterburner range, watched the nozzle swing, and checked the fuel flow and
exhaust pressure ratio gauges, pushed the throttle smoothly to zone five,
and...

 
          
There
was a bright flash of light ahead, like a lightning strike on the horizon or a
searchlight sweeping down the runway. The pilot heard no abort calls, either
from his leader or the control tower, so he continued his takeoff, clicking off
nosewheel steering and shifting his attention from the gauges to the runway
when he passed decision speed. He then ...

 
          
There
was another bright flash of light, and then the pilot saw a ball of flames
tumbling across the runway, spinning to the left across the infield, then back
to the right across his path. He was already past his decision speed—he was
committed for the takeoff because he no longer had enough pavement if he tried
to stop now. He still considered pulling the throttle to
idle,
but his training said no, you’ll never stop, take it in the
air, continue, continue ...

 
          
The
second F-16 plowed directly into the fireball that was his lead F-16. He
thought he had made it through safely, but his engine had ingested enough
burning metal and debris to shell it out in seconds. The pilot tried for a
split second to avoid the fireball by turning left toward the other runway, but
when he saw the
fire
light, saw his
altitude as less than a hundred feet above ground and sinking rapidly, he did
not hesitate to pull the ejection handle.

 
          
“Shit
the bed, we got
both
those
motherfuckers!” one of Cazaux’s soldiers shouted gleefully.

 
          
“Damn
straight,” his partner responded. They were in a hiding place between two
maintenance hangars on the west side of the western parallel runway, in clear
view of both runways and especially the alert fighter ramp. They wore standard
military fatigues and combat boots, except both wore no fatigue shirts—that was
common during after-duty hours in the summer. After nightfall, they had
successfully planted a series of radio-activated claymore mines along both
runways, which they activated when they heard the klaxon and were tripped when
the hot engines of a plane were detected by infrared sensors. “Now let’s get
the hell out of here. We got thirty seconds to get to the rendezvous point or
Ysidro will go without us.” The terrorists activated switches on the radio
detonators, which would set off small explosives in the devices several minutes
later or if they were disturbed so investigators wouldn’t be able to use them
as evidence or as clues to their whereabouts.

 
          
They
tried to leave their hiding place on the street side near a dark parking lot,
but the explosion on the runway had attracted a lot of attention faster than
they anticipated, and they had to wait for several security police cars to whiz
past. But as they crouched in the shadows waiting for the cars to pass, there was
a sharp
bang!
right behind them, followed
by the sputtering and sizzling of burning wire and circuitry. One of the
self-destruct devices in the mine detonators had gone off early—and it had
attracted the attention of a security police patrol on the ramp side of the
hangars. The blue-and-white patrol car skidded to a stop, and the security
police officer saw the smoking and burning box and shined a car-mounted
floodlight in between the hangars, immediately impaling the two men hiding on
the other side in the powerful beam.

 
          
“You
two between the hangars!” the SP shouted on the car’s loudspeaker. “Security
police! Kneel down with your hands on your head,
now!
” The two men ran off, together at first and then in diverging
directions.

 
          
As
they bolted from their hiding spot, another security police cruiser passing by
saw them running and heard the other officer’s alert on the radio, hit his
brakes, and stepped out of the car. He shouted a perfunctory “Halt! Security
police canine unit! Stop!” but he was already opening up the right rear
passenger door of his cruiser. He shouted a few instructions to his German
shepherd partner, pointing out one of the fleeing suspects until the dog barked
that he had the suspect in sight, and then commanded the dog to pursue.

 
          
Spurred
on by the wail of sirens all around him, the first terrorist ran north on
Arnold Avenue
as fast as he ever recalled running in his
life. The fire trucks from the base fire station at
Arnold Avenue
and
D Street
were rolling, heading for the flight line,
and for a moment the terrorist thought he could lose himself in the confusion
of vehicles if he could just make it to
D Street
. Beyond the fire station was the base
exchange, commissary, and theater, with plenty of places to hide, cars to steal,
hostages to capture.

 
          
But
the chase did not last long. Trained to be perfectly silent throughout the
chase, the terrorist didn’t hear the animal, not even a growl, until he felt
the dog’s teeth sink into his upper-left calf muscle. The terrorist screamed
and went down, rolling across the ground with the dog’s incisors still buried
in his leg. As he tried to rise, the dog released the man’s leg and went for
the right wrist, the main appendage a K-9 patrol dog is trained to clamp down
on, and began pulling in any direction possible, trying to keep the suspect
off-balance until his human partner arrived. Teeth struck bone several times,
and dog and man went down together. The dog was a dynamo, never staying still,
but twisting in several directions, shaking his head as if trying to rip the-
suspect’s arm free from his torso.

 
          
But
the terrorist was left-handed. He drew a 9-millimeter Browning automatic, and,
before the dog spotted the gun and went for the other wrist, put it up to the
big furry body and pulled the trigger. The one-hundred-pound bundle of teeth
and muscle blew apart in a cloud of blood and hair, still trying to keep hold
of his suspect until life drained out of his body—even so, the terrorist had to
use the muzzle of his Browning to pry the animal’s teeth out of his mangled
right arm so he could ...

 
          
Headlights,
squealing tires, a furious, high-pitched voice shouting, “Freeze! Don’t move or
you’re dead!” It was too late. He was already dizzy from the exertion and the
loss of blood—there was no resistance possible. Capture was not an option. If
the cops didn’t kill him, Cazaux would. Failure was inexcusable; capture
automatically meant betrayal, punishable by death. He would rather have the
cops do it quick than watch Henri Cazaux rip his beating heart out from his
chest.