A Time for Patriots (11 page)

“What the hell difference does that make?” Ron asked.

“He'll be favoring the other foot, which means he might start turning in that same direction,” Ralph said. “He'll be taking longer strides with his right foot, which means he'll be turning left.”

“Where'd you learn that, Marky—on a cornflakes box, or from a comic book?” Ron sneered.

Ralph looked hurt and didn't reply, which made Brad immediately come to his defense, although he had never heard of that theory either: “It makes sense,” Brad said. “Which is it, Ron?”

“The left one, O great white lucky-ass tracker,” Ron replied.

“Alter the track ten degrees to the left,” Ralph said. “New bearing two-five-zero. Sir, radio the search plane that we have found an artifact from a survivor, we are altering the search track to two-five-zero, and recommend they switch to a creeping-line search along that track.” The creeping-line search would fly one mile on either side of the track, going back and forth away from where the sneaker was found.

“Roger that, Sergeant,” Bellville said, after a slightly stunned nod of his head and an impressed smile.

“W
ay to kick butt, guys,” Patrick said cross-cockpit. On intercom he said: “We're switching to a creeping-line search, one mile each side of track, quarter-mile spacing—the ground team found a sneaker along the track they predicted.” John reprogrammed the GPS for the new search pattern. A creeping-line search was a series of turns perpendicular to the search bearing, moving outward along the search bearing from a known point such as a crash site, road, or runway—useful when a target's direction of movement or travel was known.

“Fitzgerald brought his A-game today,” Leo commented.

“It's not Fid—Cadet Sergeant Markham is leading this search,” Patrick said.

“You mean ‘Little Marky'?”

“You bet,” Patrick said. “He may act a little mousy now, but he's sharp as a freakin' tack. I predict ‘Little Marky' may be leading this squadron in a few years.”

Reno-Tahoe International Airport

That same time

“C
actus Two-Zero-Three-Three, Reno Approach, roger,” the air traffic controller radioed after receiving the check-in call from an inbound airliner. “Descend and maintain one-three-thousand feet, Reno altimeter three-zero-zero-one. There's VFR traffic inbound to Reno at your eight o'clock, six miles, primary target only, and I'm not talking to him yet, so I'll have to keep you a little high for now.”

“Three-three passing seventeen descending to thirteen,” the airliner first officer responded. “Negative contact on the traffic.”

The controller hit a button on his panel that connected him instantly to Oakland Center controllers: “Oakland, Reno Approach, I'm looking at a primary target fifteen miles southeast of Mustang. He's doing about two-sixty. Was he talking to you and missed a handoff?”

“Stand by, Reno,” the other controller responded. A moment later: “Negative, Reno, everybody's checked in.”

“Copy, thanks, JT,” the Reno controller said. He punched a button for his supervisor, and a moment later the shift supervisor came over and plugged his headset into the console. The controller pointed to his screen: “Ted, this guy is blasting straight in for the runway and he's not talking to anyone,” he said. “I'm going to have to send this Southwest flight into holding over Mustang and back up the other inbound GA flights until he's clear.”

“Did you try raising him in the clear and on GUARD?” the supervisor asked.

“That was my next move.” The controller hit a button on his console that allowed him to talk both on his assigned frequency and on the UHF and VHF GUARD emergency frequencies. “Aircraft on the one-five-zero-degree radial and fifteen DME from Mustang, airspeed two-six-zero, heading two-eight-zero, this is Reno Approach Control on GUARD,” he radioed. “If you can hear me, turn to a heading of one-eight-zero to remain clear of Reno Class-C airspace and contact me on this channel or switch to one-one-niner-point-two. There is traffic at your two o'clock position, less than four miles.” No reply; he repeated the instructions several times, in between vectoring other traffic away from the unidentified airplane. “No answer, Ted,” the controller told his supervisor. “He's going to bust right through the Class C.”

“Everyone out of his way?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think he'll do?”

“He's got to be NORDO or a pinch hitter,” the controller replied. NORDO meant “no radio,” meaning the pilot was unable to talk to anyone on the radios; a “pinch hitter” was someone other than a pilot at the controls. “I'm betting he'll see the runways Reno or Stead and try to make a landing, or just circle and decide what to do.”

“This is not good,” the supervisor said. “He could close us down for hours.” He punched a button on the console: “Tower, TF, we've got a NORDO inbound, about eleven miles to the southeast.”

“We've got him on the scope,” the Reno Tower controller responded. “He's at seven thousand eight hundred and level, just southeast of Dayton Valley.”

“We've got him at two-fifty knots airspeed now.”

“Same up here.”

“Okay, I've got the Southwest flight set up to orbit over Mustang, and I'll keep all of the other inbounds outside of the Class C until this guy either calls or zooms through,” the approach controller said. “I'm hoping he'll see a runway and go for it.”

“I'll activate the crash net here and at Stead, just in case,” the tower controller said. “This could be a mess.”

C
arl was relying on the King Air's autopilot and his extensive rehearsals for the last few minutes of this mission, because his vision was all but gone and the cramps in his stomach and back were making it impossible to concentrate on flying. He had flown this route a hundred times in the past couple months, using desktop-PC flight simulators and Google Earth to study the terrain and obstructions.

Once clear of the mountains around Virginia City southeast of Reno, Carl started a slow descent to 4,600 feet, just a hundred feet above the Truckee Meadows. Letting the autopilot handle the flying tasks for now, he used the socket wrench to start loosening the bolts atop the large canister in the aisle beside him. The ground crew must have already loosened the bolts, because they were easier to turn than he anticipated, especially in his weakened state. There were a dozen bolts securing the top; he managed to remove half of them before he had to turn his full attention to flying.

Only seconds to go now . . .

“H
oly shit!”
the tower controller cried, and he involuntarily ducked his head as the King Air zoomed past, missing the control tower by less than two hundred yards, flying no higher than the tower cab itself. It was in a slight left turn and appeared to be maneuvering to stay away from both the control tower and the Grand Sierra Resort casino just north of the field. “Is that pilot
insane
?” He picked up the telephone handset marked
CRASH
. “Aircraft is overflying the field at about a hundred feet AGL, heading northwest at two hundred knots, gear and flaps retracted. He missed the tower by less than a couple hundred feet! Somebody call the police and fire departments—if that guy doesn't climb, he's going to hit something right in downtown Reno.”

O
nce he was past the control tower, the Grand Sierra Resort, and the Peppermill Casino, there were no other tall buildings or obstacles around him until reaching his objective. The lid was loosened as much as he could loosen it on the canister, and he could feel something that felt like an exposed lightbulb being held close to the right side of his face.

The mission could not have gone better. All of his preflight preparation, study, and careful consideration of every possible problem ensured success. After the series of bad thunderstorms threatened to cancel the mission, the weather cooperated. Even the old autopilot on this bird worked. The Lord was indeed guiding him, endorsing this mission with great weather and working components, and allowing him to live long enough to see the mission's end.

The target was in sight. It was the first high-rise structure he would encounter on this heading in the downtown Reno area, so he wouldn't have to weave around other buildings, and its distinctive curved shape made it easy to spot. The coordinates he had programmed into the GPS—refined, remeasured, and triple-checked several times over the past few months—were dead on, but he still put his hands on the control yoke, not to correct for any errors but so he could feel the autopilot's servos making tiny corrections in the plane's heading . . .

. . . and then Carl noticed through his cataract-infested eyes the blinking yellow “AP” light on the instrument panel and realized that
the autopilot had disconnected itself
! He didn't remember doing it. But how in the world could the plane have flown so precisely by itself? He was certainly in no condition to sit upright, let alone fly an airplane!

It was as if God Himself were steering his weapon of war, he decided. This truly was a message that his was indeed a blessed mission, ordained by God. The war was on, and God was indeed on their side.

One last task. He switched to the Reno control tower frequency, pressed the “XMIT” button, and spoke: “Live free or die. The Lord has spoken.”

Northwest of Battle Mountain, Nevada

That same time

T
hey had walked another two hundred yards or so in the new direction without any more signs. “Whaddaya say, Marky?” Ron Spivey shouted. “We got nothing. We should've stayed on that original track. Now we need to start over.”

Brad looked at Ralph Markham. “Sergeant?”

Ralph appeared indecisive, but only for a few moments: “Another hundred yards,” he said. Ron groaned. Ralph made some quick calculations in his head. “Then we'll turn right to three-four-zero, go for . . . for forty paces, turn back to one-seven-zero, and search back toward the crash site.”

“Where in heck did you come up with all that, Marky?” Ron asked. “Why do we have to do all that?”

“He's putting us back on the reciprocal of the original search bearing,” Brad explained with a smile. “The one-in-sixty rule. We go out six hundred feet and change heading ten degrees, so we've offset ourselves one hundred feet, or about forty paces. Ralph's plan should put us right back to where we found the sneaker, on the original search bearing.”

“So why don't we just do that now?” Ron asked.

“Because I want to search another hundred yards on this bearing,” Ralph said. “Line up and let's go.”

Ron rolled his eyes in exasperation but did as he was told.

Brad was starting to get a little tired slogging through the damp, uneven ground, and he could feel the sunburn building on the back of his unprotected neck. The terrain was getting a bit more rolling, and now they came across a wide wash that had a thin rivulet of water flowing through it from the recent thunderstorms. This last hundred yards was going to be tougher than the previous two hundred.

“I say we jog now, before we have to cross this wash,” Ron said.

“It's not so bad,” Ralph said. “Just sixty more yards.”

Ron said something under his breath but pushed on.

Every now and then Brad would glance up at the search plane overhead. He was so close to becoming a senior member and flying that plane, he could almost taste it. Ground-team work was okay, but where he really belonged was . . .

Just as he descended from the wash's embankment and started to look for the best place to cross the water, something made Brad turn around . . . and there, half buried in the embankment, covered in dust, mud, and insects, was a young boy!

Reno, Nevada

A short time later

“W
e are at the scene of a horrible airplane crash here at the Bruce R. Thompson United States Courthouse and Federal Building in downtown Reno,” the female reporter began. “The crash happened about fifteen minutes ago and is the worst air accident in Reno's history. My cameraman Jerry Fleck is with me and he'll be providing you shots of this unfolding tragedy.”

The camera panned to the southeast face of the building. Thick smoke and flames were still shooting out of the hole in the building, and the entire structure appeared to be tilting away from the camera. “As you can see, the plane hit almost directly in the center of the ten-story building here on the four-hundred block of South Virginia Street,” the reporter went on. “We do not know who the pilot was, how many passengers he had on board, or what kind of plane hit the building, although some observers say it is a medium-size turboprop used mostly by small companies. We have a call in to air traffic controllers at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport to find out if they were in contact with the pilot and what could have caused this terrible accident.

“We have been told that the fire department has just upped the response to this accident with a fifth alarm. The plane did not appear to crash all the way through the building, but the force of its impact blew out its north and northwest sides, spreading fire and debris onto the Bank of America office complex across Virginia Street, the U.S. Bank office building across Liberty Street, and onto residents and visitors on the streets below. Fortunately, most workers were not in those buildings during the weekend. The police have cordoned off two blocks in all directions, and they ask that you should not try to come downtown for any reason and allow police, firefighters, medical personnel, and investigators to do their jobs.”

The reporter touched her earpiece to listen closer, then said breathlessly, “I have just been given word by my producer, John Ramos, in the truck that, according to a spokesman for the FAA air traffic control facility at the Reno airport, an aircraft called a Beech King Air, which is a medium-size civilian turboprop aircraft, overflew the airport minutes ago at very high speed and very low altitude. We must conclude that it was the same airplane that hit the Thompson Federal Building. There is no speculation from the FAA as to whether the plane was trying to land at the airport and the pilot became disoriented, or if this was a deliberate act. It is simply too early to—”