Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (10 page)

 
          
“
Fresno
ground, Foxtrot Romeo flight ready to taxi,
active air scramble.”

 
          
“Foxtrot
Romeo flight,
Fresno
ground, taxi runway three-two, wind calm, altimeter
three-zero-zero-six.” The traffic signal on the fence changed from a flashing
red to green, Vincenti flipped the flight control/nav function knob to
nav,
armed his ejection seat, turned on
the taxi light and released brakes, received final clearance from his crew
chief, and shot out of the alert hangar, snapping a return salute and a
thumbs-up to his crew chief. As soon as he was on the throat leading to the end
of the runway, he radioed, “Foxtrot Romeo flight, button two, go.”

 
          
“Two.”

           
He switched to the tower frequency:
“Foxtrot Romeo flight, check.”

 
          
“Two.”

 
          
“
Fresno
tower, Foxtrot Romeo flight, active alert
scramble.”

 
          
“Foxtrot
Romeo flight,
Fresno
tower, wind calm, runway three-two, cleared for takeoff, contact Fresno
Approach.” “Foxtrot Romeo flight cleared for takeoff, Foxtrot Romeo flight,
button three, go.”

 
          
“Two.”

 
          
Vincenti
switched to the next preset channel, checked in McKenzie; then: “Fresno
Approach, Foxtrot Romeo flight of two, takeoff roll
Fresno
, active air scramble.”

 
          
“Foxtrot
Romeo flight, Fresno Approach, air scramble departure, climb unrestricted,
contact
Oakland
Center
passing ten thousand.”

 
          
“Foxtrot
Romeo flight, wilco.” Without stopping or looking for McKenzie, he taxied
quickly to the runway, lined up, gave his control stick one more experimental
“stir,” moved the throttle to military power, twisted the throttle grip, and
shoved it forward to full afterburner. At seventy knots he clicked off
nosewheel steering, at ninety knots he rotated the nose to liftoff attitude,
and at one hundred and twenty knots the F-16 Fighting Falcon lifted into the
sky. He immediately lowered the nose to build up airspeed, retracted landing
gear, made sure the trailing-edge flaps were up, accelerated to two hundred and
fifty knots, then pulled the nose skyward. By the time he was over the end of
the runway, he was two thousand feet above the ground. At four hundred and
fifty knots he pulled the throttle out of afterburner and into military power,
then clicked on his radio: “Foxtrot Romeo flight, button four, go.”

           
“Two.”

 
          
He
switched radio frequencies. By that time he was passing ten thousand feet.
“Foxtrot Romeo flight, check.”

           
“Two.”

           
“
Oakland
Center
, Foxtrot Romeo flight of two with you out
of ten thousand, active alert scramble.”

 
          
“Foxtrot
Romeo flight, radar contact seven miles northwest of Fresno Air Terminal
passing ten thousand feet, have your wingman squawk standby, cleared to
tactical control frequency.”

 
          
“Foxtrot
Romeo flight, squawk standby, button five, go.”

 
          
“Two.”

 
          
On
March Air Force Base’s SIERRA PETE’s frequency now, Vincenti checked in
McKenzie, then: “SIERRA PETE, Foxtrot Romeo flight is with you, passing sixteen
thousand.”

 
          
“Foxtrot
Romeo flight, radar contact, check noses cold, turn left heading three-zero-zero,
climb and maintain angels two-four block two-five.”

 
          
“Copy,
heading three-zero-zero, climbing to two-four block two-five, Foxtrot Romeo
flight, check.” Vincenti had to push the nose down to level off at twenty-four
thousand feet—usually he was sent to thirty thousand feet or higher. He quickly
accomplished his “After Takeoff’ and “Level- Off’ checklists, checking his
oxygen, cabin pressurization, fuel feed, and all gauges and switches,
especially checking that the arming switches for the 20-millimeter cannon were
off—that was the “noses cold” check. The external tanks were empty, and he was
already feeding from his wing tanks—about two hours of fuel remaining.

 
          
“Two’s
in the green, twenty point nine, nose is cold,” McKenzie reported after her
cockpit checks were completed, including her fuel and weapons status with her
report.

 
          
“Copy.
Lead’s in the green with nineteen, nose is cold.”

 
          
“Roger,
Foxtrot Romeo flight, copy you are in the green and noses cold,” the Weapons
Control Technician at March Air Force Base, call sign SIERRA PETE, replied.
“Your bogey is now at your
eleven o’clock
, one hundred and fifty miles, a
Czechoslovakian L-600 cargo plane at six thousand feet and climbing. These are
vectors for a Special-9 intercept.”

 
          
“Foxtrot
Romeo copies,” Vincenti replied.
Pretty
good guess,
he thought, congratulating himself—a Special-9 intercept was a
covert shadow, where the SOCC controller would put him on a one-mile
rear-quartering vector on the bogey. From there, he would use his night-vision
goggles to close in on the bogey. If they needed a tail number or other such
positive identification, they could close in more—Vincenti had flown as close
as ten meters to another plane, in total darkness, without the other plane ever
knowing he was there—but normally they would stay within fifty to one hundred
meters of the target and shadow him while the brass on the ground figured out
what to do. “Foxtrot Romeo flight, take spacing and configure for Special- 9.”

 
          
“Two.”
McKenzie would now move out to about five miles in trail, keeping her flight
leader locked on radar, and put on and test her night-vision goggles. Vincenti
turned off all the cockpit and external lights, reached into the canvas case
for the AN/NVG-11 goggles, slid them into place entirely by feel, and snapped
them into the slot on his helmet.

 
          
But
when Vincenti lowered the goggles into place, all he got was black. He flipped
the on-off switch, made sure they were turned on, and looked for the telltale
green spot of light behind the lenses. Nothing. The battery was in place, and
they were tested and replaced after every use and at the beginning of every
three-day shift. These were dead. He clicked open his mike button in
frustration: “Hey, Two,” Vincenti radioed to McKenzie, “did you check your NVGs
yet?”

 
          
“Affirmative,”
McKenzie replied. “They’re in the green.”

 
          
“My
NVGs are bent. You got the lead and the intercept.”

 
          
“Roger
that, Rattler.” The excitement in McKenzie’s voice was obvious. Except during
exercises or when McKenzie was paired with a less experienced wingman, Vincenti
was always the flight lead and always did the intercepts. “Take the bottom of
the block, I got the top, and I got the radios. Take spacing. I have the lead.”

 
          
“Roger,
you have the lead,” Vincenti replied, descending to twenty-four thousand feet
and pulling power back to 80 percent. He tuned up his radar, preparing to lock
on to her when she passed by.

 
          
“Foxtrot
Romeo, your bogey is at
eleven o’clock
, ninety miles, turn right heading
three-three-zero, maintain angels twenty,” the weapons controller at SIERRA
PETE directed.

 
          
McKenzie
acknowledged the call. She had pushed the power up to nearly full military
power, anxious to get the intercept going, and Vincenti had to hit the
afterburner to catch up once her fighter passed by and assumed the lead.

 
          
“Foxtrot
Romeo, your bogey is heading southwestbound, altitude nine thousand five
hundred, airspeed two-two-five knots, squawking VFR, call when tied on.”

 
          
That
was the “setup” call, probably the last radio call before the F-16’s AN/APG-66
radar would pick up the target, helping to get the pilots oriented. Once the
radar locked on and the proper target identified, the fire control computer
would present steering cues on the HUD, or heads-up display, a transparent
electronic screen in front of the pilot that allowed the pilot to read flight,
radar, and weapon information without looking down into the cockpit.

 
          
McKenzie’s
radar was picking up several air targets at altitudes between five and twenty
thousand feet, but there were not many aircraft flying around at
eleven o’clock
at night. About two minutes later, at a
range of about forty miles, McKenzie locked on to an aircraft that met the last
reported radar track information perfectly: “SIERRA PETE, Foxtrot Romeo has
radar contact on a bogey at thirty-eight miles, angels nine-point-five, bearing
zero-one- zero.”

 
          
“Foxtrot
Romeo, that’s your bogey.”

 
          
“Roger.
Foxtrot Romeo is judy, request clearance for the Special-9.”

           
“Foxtrot Romeo, this is SIERRA PETE,
you are cleared for Special-9 procedures.”

 
          
“Foxtrot
Romeo copies,” McKenzie said, the excitement spilling over in her voice.
Vincenti had to smile to himself. This was certainly not McKenzie’s first
intercept, or even her first night intercept, but it was one of her most
important. He remembered his first no-shit real-world night intercept well, a
Chinese airliner suspected of being a spy plane that was “drifting off course”
and trying to fly over the Alameda Naval Base near
Oakland
. That was over fifteen years ago.

 
          
That
was just one of the things Vincenti remembered in what had been, for him, a
pretty good career. He got into flying back in the 1960s, after receiving his
bachelor of arts degree in political science from
West Virginia
State
University
in 1967. He’d attended college on a
football scholarship. The typical jock. But unlike a lot of jocks who went on
to illustrious jobs like selling cars and getting flabby, Vincenti was unable
to avoid the draft and ended up in Officer Candidate School, where he received
a commission and attended pilot training in 1968. He flew 113 missions in
Vietnam
in the F-100 Super Sabre fighter-bomber and
the F-4D Phantom II fighter-bomber from 1969 to 1973, as well as holding
command positions in various tactical units.

 
          
Vincenti
went on to the Air Command and
Staff
College
upon returning from
Vietnam
and joined tactical and training units in
New Jersey
and
Arizona
, but was later involuntarily separated from
the active-duty Air Force, after his second divorce. He got a position with the
California Air National Guard in 1978. Except for a brief deployment to
Germany
in 1986 and 1987, Vincenti had been flying
F- 106s, F-4Ds, and F-16 fighters from the Fresno Air Terminal for seventeen
years.

 
          
And
speaking of flying ... his mind immediately returned to the situation at hand.
In this intercept, McKenzie still had to remember her procedures and not get
caught up in the excitement. Vincenti checked a plastic-covered decoder device
strapped to his left leg, sliding a yellow plastic marker to the fifth row of
characters, then keyed his mike button: “SIERRA PETE, Foxtrot Romeo flight,
authenticate echo-echo.”

 
          
“SIERRA
PETE authenticates
india
,” came the reply. It was the correct reply.
All intercept instructions that might place a fighter within close proximity of
another aircraft in a potentially unsafe manner had to be authenticated,
whether or not weapons were expected to be employed, using the daily
authenticator cards issued to every pilot. Hopefully, this one omission was
going to be the last one for Linda McKenzie tonight, Vincenti thought ruefully.
Well, that’s what wingmen were for—back up the leader at all times.