Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (18 page)

 
          
Suddenly
the LET L-600 seemed as if it flipped completely upside down. Korhonen had
thrown the plane into a steep left bank, causing Jones to lose his balance for
just a few seconds—but that was more than enough time for Cazaux. With
incredible speed, Cazaux knelt under Jones’s first bullet, withdrew a Walther
PPK automatic pistol from his right boot, dodged a second shot fired at him by
throwing himself aft toward the open cargo ramp, then opened fire on Jones. He
missed his intended target—Jones’s heart—but he managed several shots into the
big man’s chest and one in the head. The undercover
U.S.
marshal fired several more shots at Cazaux
before he dropped, still fighting even as he was dying.

 
          
“I
have got to get out of this damned business. The authorities are practically in
bed with me.” Cazaux tried to clear his head and get to his feet. One bullet
had hit him in the left leg, creasing across his calf and ankle. Walking on it
was difficult, but he ignored the burning pain, made his way forward and said
to Korhonen, “Good job, Stork. I knew I could depend on you. You’re one of the
few in my organization I can trust.”

 
          
“Thank
you, sir,” the Stork said, showing two grimy rows of teeth. “I am getting a
fluctuating oil pressure on the number two engine, sir. I think one of your
shots hit the right engine. We have perhaps ten minutes’ time before I have to
shut down. What are your orders?”

 
          
“One
last act of revenge, and we will get out of this place, take the money, and go
into hiding in
Mexico
,” Cazaux said. He pointed at San Francisco International and said, “Fly
right over the main terminal building, Stork. Dive right for it, then pitch up
at the last moment. I will get the pallet ready to drop. After that, fly her
south along the coast at medium altitude, set the autopilot, and we’ll bail out
together. We will make our way to the central valley and make contact with our
Mexican agents. Thank you again, old friend.” He clasped Korhonen on the
shoulder once again, then returned to the cargo bay.

 
          
But
it wasn’t going to happen, Cazaux realized. Jones’s body was lying across the
rear deck, directly in the path of the one remaining pallet, blocking the cargo
ramp opening, and as hard as he tried, he couldn’t move the three-
hundred-plus-pound corpse. The explosives weren’t going anywhere.

 
          
He
shrugged, checked that his PPK was secure in its boot holster, stuffed a few
bundles of cash into his fatigue shirt, tightened up his parachute straps, and
hefted two of the remaining hand grenades. “Thanks again, Stork,” he said to no
one. “You were a good pilot.” He then popped the safety pins off the grenades,
tossed them atop the last pallet filled with explosives, and ran out the open
cargo ramp, pulling his parachute D-ring as he cleared the ramp.

 
          
Taddele
Korhonen was well above redline on both engines and at the plane’s structural
redline as he careened through three hundred feet, aiming right for the main
commercial terminal at San Francisco International—what was the worry about
overstressing the plane, he reasoned, when they were apparently going to ditch
it? Coming in from the northeast, he was lined up with runways 19L and 19R and
offset a bit to the north. The taxiways on the X-shaped airport were dotted
with airliners waiting to depart, and the entire circular main terminal
building was choked with airliners and service trucks. As the center of the
largest part of the main terminal building almost touched the cargo plane’s
nose, the Stork clicked twice on the intercom to let his master know they had
arrived, then began to pull up into a steep climb ...

           
The first explosion did not seem too
loud, and since Korhonen was concentrating on the pullout, he ignored it.

 
          
Then
his ears registered a second loud
bang!
and then another explosion a hundred times louder and more powerful.

 
          
He
had a brief sensation of intense heat on the back of his head before his body,
and the rest of the LET L-600 cargo plane, was blasted apart by the sheer force
of over two tons of high-explosives detonating at once.

 
          
Damn
it, Vincenti cursed, he
knew
Cazaux
was going to pull something like this. Shit! It was the same act he pulled with
McKenzie: beg for surrender, then turn, attack, and run. Well, he wasn’t going
to get away with it. He was determined to kill Henri Cazaux. Vincenti had
bluffed a bit about how far away he was and about carrying missiles, but he
wasn’t bluffing about wanting to see Cazaux dead.
That
was real.

 
          
Unfortunately,
he wasn’t in the best position to attack.

 
          
When
Cazaux turned away from San Francisco International, Vincenti found himself
relaxing, momentarily confident that he’d won—and then he found himself high
and fast, unable to stay with Cazaux’s slow-flying cargo plane without burying
the nose and risking a crash into San Francisco Bay. He had no choice but to
pull the throttle to idle, pop speedbrakes, and widen his turn beyond radar
lock-on. Cazaux had turned his lights on when he dumped the cargo
overboard—Vincenti did not believe for a moment that Cazaux had willingly
dumped
all
his deadly cargo—so it was
easy to keep him in sight as he closed in on him. But when Cazaux tightened his
turn, shut off his lights, and headed back for San Francisco International
again, Vincenti found himself ten seconds out of position and without a solid
contact. He reacquired Cazaux’s plane a few seconds later, but by then Cazaux
was over the airport at high speed. Just as Vincenti put his gun pipper on the
radar return and got an IN RANGE readout on his heads-up display, the cargo
plane’s nose began to pitch up, and ...

 
          
And
then the LET L-600 disappeared in an immense blinding ball of fire. Vincenti
had a brief glimpse of a small flash of light inside the cargo bay, like a
flashbulb or the muzzle blast of a rifle, followed immediately by a huge
explosion that completely obscured the main airport terminal and effectively
blinded the veteran fighter pilot. Vincenti shoved in full military power,
retracted speedbrakes, pulled the nose of his F-16 ADF up, fed in afterburner
power, and climbed away from the fireball. He had no way of knowing in what
direction he was headed or what his airspeed was, but altitude was life right
now.

 
          
When
Vincenti’s vision cleared a few moments later, he leveled off and set up an
orbit over San Francisco International. He couldn’t believe the carnage. The
flaming wreckage of the L-600 had hit the central terminal, showering the
control tower and the entire western half of the terminal with fire and debris.
The entire multistory central terminal looked as if it was on fire, just
seconds after the impact. The wreckage had spread across the center of the circular
terminal, engulfing hundreds of cars and buses in the inner departure and
arrival area. The impact pattern formed a gigantic fiery teardrop covering
several hundred feet, all the way across the inner-terminal circle to the south
terminal. Burning aircraft at the gates were setting other nearby planes on
fire with incredible speed, like a candle flame being passed from person to
person by touching wicks. Soon Vincenti could count about a dozen planes on
fire near the impact point. Several explosions could be seen through the dense
jet-fuel smoke, with great mushrooms of fire billowing into the sky very close
to Vincenti’s altitude over the airport...

 
          
And
then he saw it, plainly illuminated by the intense fire below—a parachute, less
than half a mile away and no more than a few hundred feet below his altitude.

           
Incredibly, someone had bailed out
of that cargo plane seconds before it exploded . . .

 
          
Henri
Cazaux! Without thinking, Vincenti turned toward the rapidly falling white dot,
nearly going inverted to keep the parachute in sight. Cazaux obviously heard
the fighter fly nearby, could probably see the position and anticollision
lights, because the ’chute started falling even faster. Cazaux had grabbed the
two right risers of his parachute and pulled them down, spilling air out the
left side of his canopy, increasing his descent rate, and sending him into a
wide, violent left spin.

 
          
Vincenti
didn’t know if it was planned or not, but Cazaux was too late. The intense fire
at the terminal, less than a thousand feet away, was buoying his parachute up
in the air—he was a sitting duck. Vincenti had to shove his fighter’s nose to
the ground to get lined up ... and just as he did line up his shot, a rescue or
news helicopter popped up in the middle of his HUD, less than two hundred feet
away. He had to bank hard left and pull to miss the helicopter, and he lost
sight of Cazaux immediately. By the time Vincenti could roll out and look for
Cazaux’s ’chute, the terrorist was on the ground and moving. Vincenti had a
brief thought about trying a strafing run, but now the entire area near the
crash site was choked with rescue aircraft and vehicles. Flying down into that
melee would be very dangerous. He could do nothing else but climb above the San
Francisco Class B airspace and head back to Beale Air Force Base, and the
inquisition that he knew would face him there.

 
          
The
two crewmen from the Coast Guard Air Station just north of
San Francisco
International
Airport
couldn’t believe their eyes as they watched
the medium cargo plane plow into the central terminal—it looked like the
aftermath of an oil-refinery explosion or a replay of a successful bomb strike
during the Persian Gulf War. They heard the low-flying cargo plane as it buzzed
their hangar, and they saw it explode and crash into the terminal as they
watched. The entire airport seemed to be waist-deep in fire so hot that it
could be felt from inside their pickup truck nearly a half-mile away.

 
          
But
even the explosion and devastation itself were nothing compared to their
surprise as a lone parachutist dropped into the grassy field bordering the
airport’s outer security fence. “Jesus Christ... did that guy jump out of that
cargo plane?” one of the Coast Guardsmen asked.

 
          
“He’s
gotta be the luckiest sonofabitch in the world,” the other said. “He got out of
the plane in time, and he missed that fence by inches. He looks pretty bad.”
They drove over, found the man lying faceup in the grass, just a few feet from
the security fence. One seaman went over to him while the other set to work
deflating the parachute so it wouldn’t drag him into the bay. “Hey, Todd,” the
first seaman shouted over the roar of the nearby explosions and fire, “we got a
radio in the—”

 
          
The
second seaman couldn’t hear his buddy over the sounds of sheer devastation at
the airport. A few fire trucks from the Coast Guard base were racing toward the
terminal, but they were too far away and moving too fast to flag down. “Say
again, Will?” No reply. He managed to collapse the billowing parachute, then
turned to his partner: “What did you say?”

 
          
His
buddy Will was lying on the ground just a few feet away, the entire top of his
head blown off. The parachutist was standing beside the second seaman, a gun
pointed at his face. He saw a bright flash of light and barely registered a
loud
bang!,
then nothing.

 
          
Henri
Cazaux unbuckled his parachute harness, rolled up the parachute, and threw it
into the storage area behind the seat of the pickup truck so it wouldn’t be
easily spotted. He then collected the Coast Guardsmen’s ID cards, found a
jacket and cap that fit him, and started up the pickup truck. He followed the
line of emergency vehicles heading toward San Francisco International via the
parallel taxiways. Then, when he saw it was clear, he drove away off the
airport. He was challenged once by an airport security guard who enlisted his
help in trying to control traffic as thousands of persons tried to flee the
carnage. The security guard was shot in the face as well.

 
          
Henri
Cazaux’s killing spree did not stop at
San Francisco
Airport
. He killed two more persons, stole two more
cars, made his way undetected through central
California
, then risked taking an early-morning plane
from
Stockton
to
Phoenix
. Sensing that federal marshals and security
patrols would be screening everyone coming off the plane, Cazaux told the
flight attendants he had lost some jewelry under the seats, waited until the
airliner cleaning service workers arrived at the plane, executed two workers
and slipped away out the rear exit dressed in their overalls and using their ID
badges.