Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (33 page)

 
          
“I
don’t recognize that tail number,” Kline said. “We got three Shorts on the
flight line, Bill, but we don’t use them for the inbound dailies—they’re for
the short-haul last- minute outbounds. Used very little. I’m flipping through
the schedule .. . nope, I don’t see any Shorts on the schedule yesterday or
today, but that don’t mean too much because they come and go on short notice.
He might be from the maintenance facility at DFW, but I sure as hell didn’t
know about him. I’ll have to park him on the back forty— all my other gates are
full.”

 
          
This
was getting weirder by the second, Gayze thought—and the weird feeling was
quickly being replaced by a feeling of fear. “Stand by one.” Gayze made a few
radio calls for inbound flights, asked one of the other controllers a question,
then turned back to the phone line: “We got another inbound Universal flight
coming in on two- seven, flight 203 from Cincinnati, a 727.”

 
          
“We
have a daily 203 from
Cincinnati
, Bill, and it’s a 727 usually, but he landed okay at eleven-fifteen.
Yep, here’s the crew’s manifest on 107. Sure he’s a Universal flight?”

 
          
“Yep,
that’s what he says,” Gayze replied, frowning. “I didn’t get a strip on my
guy.”

 
          
“You
got a strip on the 727?”

 
          
“Stand
by one.” Sure enough, they did not. Well, he didn’t have any more time to work
on this screwup, and besides call-sign screwups were common and not that
important. Both planes would be on the ground in a few minutes. “Listen, Rudy,
I gotta run, but I’ll call you back when I get a chance and we’ll sort this out
after he’s on the deck. I’ll have Security escort them in. Talk to you later.”
Well, whatever call sign he had didn’t really matter, Gayze thought as he
punched off the phone button and returned to the radios.

 
          
“Tower,
-107, seven miles out, request sidestep for ILS three-six right.”

 
          
“107,
stand by.” Gayze canted the strip holder for Universal Express 107, which would
remind him that he had something to check on with him, then checked the
arrivals counter, which held all the strips for arrivals and departures on the
three runways. All counters were absolutely full. The traffic from the east was
starting to pile up, so a sidestep maneuver—in which a pilot flies an
instrument approach to one runway, then must be prepared to immediately
transition to another instrument approach, usually on a parallel runway such as
Memphis—was probably not going to be an option. “Unable at this time, -107.
Continue on the GPS three-six left, you’re number seven, report the outer
marker. And give the tower a call on a landline after you land.” So it would take
the new guy ten extra minutes to taxi to his cargo gate—an extra fifty gallons
of jet fuel, about a hundred bucks. Knowing the Scottish tightwad that owned
Universal Express, he was probably going to make the poor pilot pay it back.
“Break. United Express- 231, right on intersection golf-golf without delay,
ground point seven when clear.” Gayze made a mental note to keep an eye on the
Universal Express flight until they made it to their terminal—being new on the
job, pissed off at the world, and with a not-so-dynamic captain, on a busy
night, this had all the ingredients for trouble.

 
          
“You
are going to be thirty seconds late, Roberts!” Cazaux shouted. Ken Roberts was
one of Cazaux’s best pilots, and had been with Cazaux almost as long as Taddele
Korhonen had been, but he was much younger and far less experienced. He had
been with Cazaux for about a year, and was one of his most capable and
experienced pilots, but all he had done prior to this had been cargo missions,
hauling drugs or weapons or troops to some dirt strip somewhere and back out.
He had never done an aerial assault like this before. Further, Roberts was an
American, one of the few Americans on Cazaux’s payroll. There had never been
any doubt about his loyalty or commitment to following orders—until now. “Push
your power up and get back on force timing
now!
”

 
          
“But
Captain, I was told by the tower to—”

 
          
“The
tower is not in command of this flight, / am!” Cazaux snapped. The kid was a
nervous wreck—Cazaux had to take the plane back. He slid back into the pilot’s
seat, strapped in, took the controls, and slid the throttles up to 85 percent
power. “Get back there and stand by on the fucking release mechanism,” Cazaux
told Roberts. “And be prepared to release the payloads manually if the automatic
system fails. Go!” The kid did as he was told, leaping out of his seat.

 
          
The
terrorist switched radio channels to a discrete, scrambled UHF frequency, and
keyed the mike: “Number Two, say status?”

 
          
“In
the green and ready, lead,” Gennady Mikheyev, one of Cazaux’s newest and most
promising pilots, responded. Mikheyev, a former Russian bomber pilot, was in
absolute hog heaven at the controls of a Boeing 727-100, a very old but still
reliable airliner, one of several aircraft leased from Valsan Partners, a
Norwalk
,
Connecticut
, company that specialized in re-engining and refurbishing Boeing 727s.
“I wish I could feel more positive about this release system, Captain. It is
giving us a lot of problems.”

 
          
“I
want results, not excuses, Mikheyev!” Cazaux shouted on the scrambled radio
channel. “You wanted this mission—you begged me to let you fly the 727 on the
primary strike—and your partners were paid to devise a release system.”

 
          
Mikheyev
and several of his fellow Russian aviators devised a complex but clever system
to drop their explosives on the primary target—Universal Express’s huge
packagehandling facility at Memphis International. The release system was
similar to the one designed by Cazaux for the Shorts 300, but ten tall, skinny
C08 cargo containers, each carrying fifteen hundred pounds of explosives, would
be rolled out of the rear airstair door of the 727.

 
          
But
preceding the main explosives string, six Mk 80 five-hundred-pound bombs would
be automatically dropped out of the baggage compartments on the starboard side
of the 727—these would hit and explode a few seconds before the main explosive
charges, ripping off most of the thirty-acre roof of the Universal Express
terminal and creating a nice hole for the main explosives containers to pass through.

 
          
Over
twelve thousand pounds of explosives would explode inside the building,
ensuring maximum destruction.

 
          
The
system used a handheld computer and GPS navigation unit to roughly compute
ballistics for the drop. Mikheyev had guaranteed fifty-foot accuracy on the
string of containers from any altitude and at any airspeed, even though the
term “ballistics” that he had used with Cazaux for selling his plan was a real
stretch because no actual computations had been done on the ballistic flight
path of the cargo containers. Mikheyev had been paid handsomely for the
ambitious plan, and now, just minutes from his drop, he was trying to back away
from his promise. “I will accept
no
excuses for failure,” Cazaux warned.

 
          
“Captain,
the target is too small,” Mikheyev complained. The intended target was not the
super hub, or aircraft parking and package-handling facility—that was mostly
open ramp space, conveyor belts, and packages being sorted for delivery, all
easily replaceable in relatively short time. The intended target was the
westernmost part of the super hub that housed Universal Express’s complex of
communications and package-delivery control computers, as well as its main
corporate headquarters. The computers cost a whopping three billion dollars to
install and modernize over the years—replacing them would cost two to three
times that much. Of the entire thirty-acre complex, the target area was about
fifteen thousand square feet. With an airliner flying at four hundred feet per
second, using a sophisticated but untested release system, there was very
little room for error. “I will do my best, but I cannot guarantee—”

 
          
“You
will ensure that your drop is
precisely
on target,” Cazaux shouted on the radio, the anger in his voice barely
attenuated by the crackle and warbling of the frequencyhopping system, “or I
will personally hunt you and your family down. I know where your family resides
in
Belize
, and I know about your eighteen-year-old mistress. I know the license
plate number of the Land-Rover your wife drives. I know which Catholic school
your twin daughters go to, and I know that your lovely daughters have just
become women .. .” Cazaux let up on the mike button, and sure enough, Mikheyev
was letting loose a stream of epithets in Russian.

 
          
“If
you fail, I will drag your wife, your mistress, and your daughters before you,
have my soldiers sodomize them, then strip their skin off, one by one. You will
watch them all die, slowly and painfully.”

 
          
“You
bastard!” Mikheyev shouted. He said something unintelligible in Russian, but it
was obvious that the force of his anger was subsiding. He knew full well that
Cazaux would carry out his threat.

 
          
You
are a professional soldier,” Cazaux added in a softer tone after Mikheyev had
ceased his protests. “You know the price of failure—death, to you and your
family. That is the law of the mercenary. My laws were well known to you before
you signed up and before you took your very generous payment for this mission.
Failure is not allowed.

 
          
On
the other hand, if you succeed, I will see to it that your family is paid the
full amount of what is owed to you. They will be made comfortable for the rest
of their lives. I give you my word as a soldier, and I have never broken faith
with a comrade-in-arms. Failure will be severely punished. Success will be
rewarded—even if you do not survive.”

 
          
Cazaux
was not going to say anything else to Mikheyev, but the Russian pilot did not
reply anyway. He had his choice perfect accomplishment of his mission, or the
undignified, horrible death of every woman close to him, then himself.

 
          
Of
course, there was only one way Mikheyev could ensure that the target was
totally destroyed . ..

 
          
At
exactly four miles out, the call came in: “Express- 107, outer marker.”

 
          
Aha,
Gayze thought,
a new voice!
Definitely older, definitely more professional
sounding, with a trace of a foreign accent. The Captain was finally awake ...
“107, roger, traffic ahead is a MetroLiner one mile descending, you’re number
five.”

 
          
“107,
contact on the Metro, cancel IFR.”

 
          
This
flight was finally starting to sound like they really had a professional pilot
at the controls, Gayze thought with relief. Canceling IFR erased the cylinder
of protected airspace around his aircraft and really helped to expedite traffic
flow, especially since Universal-107 was the one responsible for gumming it up
in the first place by keeping his speed up so high. Gayze could now tighten the
spacing up on the arrivals and clear out the airspace that much faster. He
didn’t know for sure if the Universal pilot could really see the much smaller
Fairchild Metro commuter airliner, but he was committed to following it now:
“Roger, 107, maintain visual contact with the Metro, squawk 1200, you’re number
four now behind the MetroLiner, cleared to land.”

 
          
“Universal-107
cleared to land on the left,” the Universal pilot responded.
Couple more minutes,
Gayze thought, and
this flight would be out of his hair for the night, or at least until it was
time for him to turn and depart. Maybe he would be off on break by then.

 
          
“
Memphis
Tower
, American-501, with you level seven.”

 
          
“American-501,
good evening, winds three-zero-zero at three, you’re number six, report
established on GPS inbound course.”

 
          
“501,
wilco.”

 
          
Things
were busy, but not too bad. To an air traffic controller, spacing was the name
of the game. After ten years, Gayze could look at the lights in the sky and
accurately determine a plane’s altitude, speed, and spacing—radar was the best
way, but a quick glance at the landing lights usually told him what he needed
to know the fastest—