Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (53 page)

 
          
The
beam momentarily blinded him—not painfully, but irritating enough—but when
Mundy swung his head down and away to shield his eyes, he got an instantaneous
case of the leans. The F-16 seemed to do a tailflip right over onto its back.
In a reflex action, Mundy screamed on the radio and pulled the control stick
back hard before realizing that it was the leans, not an uncommanded flight
control pitch- down. He climbed nearly a thousand feet before he finally
regained control and started believing the attitude indicator again .. .

 
          
But
at the instant Mundy screamed on the radio, Tom Humphrey had reacted
reflexively as well. He hit the
dogfight
button on his throttle, which changed the F-16’s weapons and fire control
computer mode instantly from VID (visual identification) mode to “Air-to-Air”
mode, arming his AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles and his 20-millimeter
cannon, then flipped the
master
arm/simu- late
switch on his stores control panel to
master arm.
He immediately got an
rdy 4A-9LM
indication on his stores control panel, meaning that the
four missiles were armed. He then hit the large
uncage
button on his throttle, which unlocked the seeker heads of
his missiles. Seconds later Humphrey got a blinking diamond in the middle right
side of his heads-up display, indicating that the first-up Sidewinder had
locked on to the bizjet and was in the launch zone. He pressed the
weapon-release button on his control stick. The whole procedure took about
three seconds.

 
          
An
AIM-9L missile slid off the number-two-weapon- station rail in a brief burst of
light and hit the bizjet’s left engine a split second later.

 
          
Mundy
didn’t—couldn’t—see any of this. He saw a brief flash of light out of the comer
of an eye, then heard someone shouting “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” on the radios.
He heard a brace of loud static, then a brief “Oh, shit...” then nothing.

 
          
“641
flight, Liberty Control.”

 
          
“641,
go.”

 
          
“641,
was that your mayday? Say status.”

 
          
“641
is in the green,” Mundy said. “I got blinded by a spotlight from the Lear, and
I had to split from the intercept. I heard the mayday call. 641 has lost visual
contact with the target. 641 flight, check.” No response. “No-
vember-Juliet-642, check in on Liberty Control button nine.” Still no response.
Mundy searched out his cockpit canopy—pretty useless gesture at night—then said
urgently on the radio, “Tom, damn it, are you up?”

 
          
“Two’s
up,” Humphrey finally responded. “Shit, I thought you were under attack, lead.”

 
          
Mundy
heard the sheer panic in his wingman’s voice, and his throat turned as dry as
sand.
“Say again,
642?”

 
          
“I
thought he was shooting at you,” Humphrey said. Mundy could hear sobs coming
from his wingman—Jesus, he was
crying
... “I thought he was shooting at you, Greg,

 
          
I
thought you were hit...”

 
          
Mundy
finally realized what his wingman had done. “Tom, this is Greg, do you have a
visual on me? Do you see my lights? What’s your position?” There was no response.
“Tom, say your position.” He thought he’d try a more rigid, formal approach:
“641 flight,
check!”

 
          
“Two’s
... up ... oh God oh God ... I shot the fucking plane
down
...” Humphrey responded.

 
          
“Tom,
you were doing your job. Rejoin now, get back on my wing,” Mundy shouted.
“Where are you? Say your position? Do you have me in sight? Control, give me a
vector to 642. Tom, damn it,
answer. ”

 
          
A
sudden bright tongue of fire caught Mundy’s attention. He saw an F-16 in full
afterburner streak across the sky from his
nine o’clock
position, heading northward, then turn
suddenly in front of him and head eastbound, back out over the
Atlantic
. “Tom, I see your burner, I’ll be tied on
radar in a second, stand by . . . you can cut your burner now, Tom.” The
afterburner plume remained. At nearly one hundred thousand pounds of fuel
burned per hour at zone 5 afterburner, he would exhaust his fuel in less than
three minutes.

 
          
Mundy
turned eastward to follow his wingman. “642, I’ve got you tied on radar, cut
your burner and I’ll join on your right side ... cut your burner, I said!”
Mundy had to kick in afterburner himself to keep Humphrey on radar. “Tom ... Cut
your burner! I’ve got you in a descent, climb and maintain eight thousand, I’ll
be at your
five o’clock
position.”

 
          
Ninety
seconds later, November-Juliet-642 plunged into the Atlantic twelve miles east
of Longport, New Jersey, still in full afterburner, hitting the ocean at well
over the speed of sound. Vacationers on the Boardwalk at
Atlantic City
reported a streak of light across the sky
out over the ocean and wondered if it was a shooting star.

 
          
In
case it was, some made a wish.

 
          
New
Executive
Office Building
,
Washington
,
D.C.

           
Less
Than an Hour Later

 
          
Lieutenant
Colonel A1 Vincenti trotted into Hardcastle’s makeshift office in the
New
Executive
Office
Building
, across the street from the White House. He
had finally been convinced to keep his flight suit in the closet and put on a
class A uniform while working in the general proximity of the White House, but
it was obvious he was uncomfortable with it; it was also obvious that he had
shaved in the car on the way over, because he missed a few spots. Deborah
Harley, on the other hand, looked as scrubbed and as ready to go as she always
did, even though she arrived several minutes before Vincenti. “What’s happened,
Admiral?” Vincenti asked. “The operator said something about an accident.”

 
          
Hardcastle
handed him an electric razor and a desk mirror—obviously Hardcastle was an
expert at shaving on the run. “Clean up while I run it down for you,” he told
Vincenti. “About an hour ago, the
Atlantic City
fighter group intercepted a bizjet running
with its lights and transponder off, trying to race in off the
Atlantic
toward
Philadelphia
. Turns out it was a camera crew from that
trash TV show ‘Whispers.’ ”

 
          
“Don’t
tell me,” Vincenti said. “A midair?”

 
          
“Worse—a
Sidewinder up the tailpipe,
after
the
intercept and the ID,” Hardcastle said. Vincenti swore under his breath—it was
an interceptor pilot’s nightmare in the best of conditions, but under the
present emergency it was only a matter of time before it actually happened.
“Worse yet— the shooter decides he’s done a really bad thing and crashes his
F-16 into the ocean.”

 
          
“Oh,
God, no,” Vincenti exclaimed. “The President’s going to have a shit-fit.”

 
          
“We’II
find out,” Hardcastle said as his office phone rang. “Lifter’s calling in the
staff for a meeting in two hours; the President will be awakened at
four
a.m.
,
and the first meeting in the Oval Office
will probably be at five. We got a long day ahead of us.” Hardcastle’s
secretary was out—it was after
midnight
—so Hardcastle picked the phone up himself.
“Hardcastle ...”

 
          
“Is
this Admiral Ian Hardcastle, the one hunting down Henri Cazaux?”

 
          
Hardcastle
pointed to an extension line in the secretary’s alcove; Harley immediately ran
for it, checked to see if it had a dead switch—it did—and picked it up. The
dead switch would kill the mouthpiece unless the button was pushed. She also
started recording the conversation and starting a caller ID trace with the push
of one button on the secretary’s phone console. When she was on, Hardcastle
asked, “Who is this?”

 
          
“No
names,” the caller said. “Just listen. Henri Cazaux’s base of operations is a
three-story mansion on
Cottage Road
,
Bedminster
,
New Jersey
. It’s protected by heavily armed gunmen. He was there a few hours ago;
I don’t know if he’s there now. Cazaux is planning something big.” The line
went dead.

 
          
“Damn
it! He hung up,” Hardcastle said. To Vincenti he said, “Someone calling telling
us Cazaux’s whereabouts.” “Another one? This makes . . . what, the
one-thousandth ... ?”

 
          
“This
sounded more genuine to me.”

 
          
“Just
let the FBI have it, Ian, and let’s get back to—” Hardcastle ignored him.
“Deborah ... ?”

 
          
“Got
the phone number from caller ID,” Harley said. All phone calls going to any
federal government office are automatically traced, using caller ID, which instantly
reports the caller’s phone number, and by instantaneous computer phone-record
checks. “
Manhattan
exchange. I can run the address through the
FBI ... but let me take this one, okay?” Harley smiled. “It might tie into some
stuff I’ve heard. The Marshals Service interviewed a Wall Street investor at an
aircraft reclamation firm in Mojave who was acting as a third-party broker
buying several large aircraft for an aerial firefighting firm in
Montana
. He mentioned a part of their investigation
on this sent them to a secretarial service in north-central
New Jersey
. Their investigation dead-ended there—”

 
          
“But
maybe it’s just come alive again,” Hardcastle said. “Wonder why we never heard
anything about this investigation?”

 
          
“Because
the Marshals said they turned everything over to the FBI,” Harley said.
“Briefed Director Wilkes personally.” Hardcastle nodded. “Ian, if we dump this
on Wilkes, it’ll get pushed into the wacko pile. Let me have it. I’ll give it
to the Marshals Service. They deserve a try at Cazaux for what happened to them
in
California
.”

 
          
Hardcastle
looked decidedly uncomfortable. He said, “I’m not sure, Deborah. I’m not averse
to letting the Marshals redeem their reputation after the
Chico
raid, but I’m not winning any points
butting heads with Lani Wilkes and the President.”

 
          
“You
handed the wacko call to me and told me to notify the authorities,” Harley
suggested. “You meant the FBI; I took it to the Marshals Service. I can handle
the heat from the Justice Department, believe me.”

 
          
“I
believe you,” Hardcastle said. “Okay, you got it. Notify the proper authorities
about this call immediately, Miss Harley.”

 
          
^u
Yes,
sir,” she responded with a smile.

 
          
“As
long as I’m sticking my neck out, Deborah, I might as well stick it out all the
way,” Hardcastle said. He made two phone calls from his desk, quickly typed out
a letter on Office of the National Security Advisor letterhead, and handed it
to Harley. She read it quickly, her smile becoming brighter and wider by the
moment. “You’ve received blanket authorization from me to requisition some
hardware the ‘authorities’ will need for their operation. Take the Executive
shuttle to the Pentagon heliport—an NSC helicopter will take you. The crews at
Patuxent
River
Naval
Weapons
Center
are waiting.”