Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (31 page)

 
          
“With
all due respect, Admiral, you don’t know shit,” Gaspar said. “You’re just
guessing.”

 
          
“And
all your guesses just happen to follow the party line
—your
party’s line,” Vincenti added. “You’re just as bad as Wilkes
and the rest of the Justice Department that are jumping in my shit.”

 
          
“I’m
trying to keep the government from completely dismantling the home-defense
infrastructure of this country,” Hardcastle said. “That’s the truth, and that’s
from the heart. You’re a career air defense pilot—you can tell if I’m bull-shitting
you or not. Now, you can just sit back and let the Justice Department and the
Air Force cut your nuts off and trash your career, or you can cooperate with me
and my investigation. If my agenda helps Vice President Martindale and the
Project 2000 Task Force, that’s fine, I believe in his candidacy and what the
Task Force is trying to achieve. You don’t have to. But I’m running my show the
way I want. I’m not a mouthpiece for anyone.”

 
          
“No,
but you want me to be your puppet, right?” Vincenti asked. “You want to use me
as the poor downtrodden sob story while you lambaste the White House and anyone
else who gets in your way.”

 
          
“I
want you to teach me what you know, Al,” Hardcastle said. “You know air
defense—I’ve been out of it for too long. Yeah, I’ve got a political agenda,
but I’ve also got specific ideas to help the system we have right now, no
matter who is in the White House. I need your help to finalize my ideas. In
return I can help put you back on flying status, keep your career intact, and help
your unit recover from the whitewashing job you’re undergoing right now. I’m
not saying you and your unit and maybe the entire air defense community will be
toast if you don’t help me, but you can read the handwriting on the wall just
as good as I can.”

 
          
Vincenti
and Gaspar remained silent, defiantly staring at Hardcastle as if trying to
recognize any hint of his hidden agenda. Hardcastle let them stare for a
moment, then he turned to his aide standing by the door and said, “Marc, show
the Colonel here who’s waiting to speak to him.”

 
          
Colonel
Marc Sheehan, Hardcastle’s aide, unlocked and opened the door behind him, and
immediately a throng of reporters tried to muscle their way inside, shouting
questions. A few point-and-shoot cameras were poked through the door,
rapid-firing at random for pictures.

 
          
“I’m
not talking to the press,” Vincenti said. “No comment.”

 
          
Hardcastle
motioned to Sheehan, who not-too-politely pushed back the reporters and closed
and locked the door again. “Sure, you keep on with your no-comment routine,
Colonel—without my help this time,” Hardcastle said. “You think you look bad on
TV now—by tomorrow night’s evening news, you’ll be called either Cazaux’s
accomplice or the biggest American military screwup since George Custer.”

 
          
“I
can take care of myself.”

 
          
“I’m
not talking about
you
, Colonel—I’m
talking about your career, your future, your retirement, the continued
existence of your unit, and everything regarding air defense you’ve ever
believed in. You can’t fight the Fourth Estate yourself.”

 
          
“So
now you’re blackmailing me, right?” Vincenti asked. “I either help you or swim
with the sharks myself.” “I’ve got work to do, Colonel,” Hardcastle said
simply. “You’re a big boy, an officer and a gentleman. You think you can fight
your own battles, go ahead and fight. I’ll be fighting too—I just wanted to be
fighting together with you, not separately. But I can do it separately. You
think you can?”

 
          
Vincenti
and Gaspar were silent once again. Hardcastle had had enough. He turned and
headed for the door. “Have a nice life, Colonel,” he said. “I’ll lead these
bozos away from the front door—slip out in a minute or two. But one last word
of advice—try not to make it look like you’re running from them. Believe me,
you can’t.”

 
          
Hardcastle
had just reached the door and was about to open it when he heard, “All right,
all
right.
I’ll help you.” The
retired Coast Guard and Border Security Force officer turned and nodded at
Vincenti and Gaspar. “Hangar Bravo, briefing room,
six
a.m.
tomorrow,” Hardcastle said. “Bring the original gun camera tapes.”

 
          
“There
are no original tapes. I told you, I told the board—the recorder was damaged.”

 
          
“Colonel,
save that rap for the flight evaluation board,” Hardcastle said. “I need your
honest inputs. Believe me, no FEB will see or hear those tapes—they belong to
the U.S. Senate as of right now, and no one in the military below the Secretary
of Defense has the authority to demand them.”

 
          
“I’ve
got to get permission to be excused from the FEB and released from quarters.”

 
          
“It’s
been done. You’re a special expert consultant and witness in a Senate
investigation—your flight evaluation board and your court-martial have been
suspended indefinitely.”

 
          
“What
court-martial? What in hell are you talking about?”

 
          
“Oh,
that’s right, you probably didn’t know,” Hardcastle said, a wickedly satisfied
smile on his face. “Tell him, Marc.”

 
          
“Air
Combat Command was directed by the Secretary of Defense and the President to
convene a court-martial,” Sheehan said. “Dereliction of duty, actions
unbecoming an officer, disobeying a direct and lawful order. Regardless of the
outcome of the flight evaluation board, you were going to be summarily
court-martialed, sentenced to four years restricted duty—probably as a
warehouse officer in Greenland—reduction in grade to captain, then given a
less-than- honorable discharge, maybe even a dishonorable discharge. We’ve seen
the paperwork—it’s been signed and approved.”

 
          
“And
you were going to just walk out of here and let this happen?” Vincenti moaned,
his eyes wide in utter disbelief. “You were going to let me get busted if I
didn’t cooperate with you?”

 
          
“You
seem to think this is a game we’re playing here, Colonel Vincenti,” Hardcastle
shot back. “You seem to think you can beat your chest and take everybody on.
Let me assure you, it’s not a game. I am deadly serious when I say that Henri
Cazaux is going to strike again; I’m serious when I say I’ve got a plan to stop
him; and I’m serious when I say I need your help. Now, I didn’t sign those
court-martial papers—your fellow blue-suiters did, the ones you dedicated your
life to almost twenty years ago. I stopped it from happening. Who are you going
to help now?”

 
          
Vincenti
stepped over to Hardcastle—followed closely by Gaspar, ready to intervene if he
was needed. But instead of venting his frustration and anger on Hardcastle or
Sheehan, Vincenti held out a hand, and Hardcastle took it. “Before I forget
what you did for me, before I remember you’re a fucking politician now,”
Vincenti said in a low voice, “thank you.”

 
          
“Thank
you for trusting me—and I hope I can keep your trust,” Hardcastle said. “Now,
listen up: you and Colonel Gaspar stand beside me—right beside me, not in back
of me. Don’t try to push your way through the crowd—Marc will do the pushing.
Colonel Gaspar, you give them the nocomment routine—after all, you’re the
military and you’re not on trial. Al, you try to answer every question they
throw at you—you won’t be able to, but you have to look like you’ve got nothing
to hide. Turn toward the reporter asking you questions, make eye contact but
ignore the cameras. Don’t
react
to a
question, don’t get pissed off. Think first, then go ahead and answer. Don’t
listen to what I’m saying. I’m not your lawyer, and we can’t look like we’re
conspiring against telling the truth. Don’t worry about what I’ll be
saying—believe me, we’ll be saying the same thing.”

 
          
“The
judge directed us not to talk to the press.”

 
          
“You
work for the U.S. Senate now, Al—and you’re fighting for your career, remember
that,” Hardcastle said. “We control the situation now. Defend your uniform
after
we get Henri Cazaux.”

 
          
Memphis
International
Airport
Three Days Later

           
“
Memphis
Tower
, Express-314 with you, GPS three-six left,”
the pilot of the Universal Express Boeing 727 reported.

           
“Express-314, good evening, ident,”
Bill Gayze, one of the six controllers on duty at Memphis International
Airport’s control tower, responded. By force of habit, he scanned outside the
slanted windows at the direction of the ILS (Instrument Landing System) outer
marker, about six miles to the south. He could see a string of lights in the
sky, all flying northward—airliners’ landing lights. Between
eleven
p.m.
and
one
a.m.
,
when the big overnight package company
Universal Express had its incoming flights (Universal’s huge package-sorting
“superhub” was located at the north part of Memphis International), it was
normal to have one aircraft landing every sixty to ninety seconds.

 
          
Gayze
checked the tower BRITE (Bright Radar Indicator Tower Equipment) scope, the
short-range three-dimensional radar mounted high up on the wall where everyone
could see it. An aircraft data block on the top of the BRITE scope in the
control tower of
Memphis
International illuminated briefly—the Delta flight was number seven for
landing. “314, radar contact, report five miles out, you’re number seven.”

 
          
“Express-314,
wilco.” The Universal Express flight was using one of the new GPS instrument
approaches, in which aircraft maneuvered from point to point on an instrument
approach by means of satellite navigation. The satellite approaches, coupled
with differential GPS signals from a nearby radio station, ensured incredible
precision for arriving flights—using GPS, an experienced airline captain- could
make a perfect landing and could even taxi most of the way to his gate, without
ever seeing the pavement. Except for an aircraft emergency like an unsafe
landing gear, going “missed approach” (where a pilot flies his plane within one
or two hundred feet of the ground but has to abort the landing because he or
she couldn’t see the runway) was almost a thing of the past here in
Memphis
. The added safety and reliability of the
GPS approaches meant that the airport managers and the FAA could safely
increase the traffic here at
Memphis
—every runway at
Memphis
, and indeed almost every runway in the
country, now could have its own precision instrument approach. The concept of
“blind flying” and “nonprecision approaches” had almost been eliminated, thanks
to GPS.

 
          
Gayze’s
thoughts were interrupted by a call on the interfacility interphone: “
Memphis
Tower
, Romeo-17.”

 
          
“
Memphis
Tower
.”

 
          
“Hi,
Bill, Doug on seventeen.” Doug Latimer, at the sector-seventeen console, was a
D-2 controller at Memphis TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach Control), located one
hundred and eighty feet below Gayze’s feet at the base of the tower at Memphis
International. The D-2 controller assisted the sector radar controller by
making phone calls to other air traffic control agencies, making radio calls as
necessary to back up the radar controller, and maintaining the computerized
tracking strips on each flight assigned to the controller. “Arrival report
visual three-six left for Universal Express 107, a Shorts 300, one-five miles
to the southwest at eight thousand. Can’t find his strip. Can you handle him?”