Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (64 page)

 
          
Humphrey
was a victim of circumstance. Yes, he screwed up. Military jets did not have
cockpit voice recorders or flight data recorders, so everything was speculative
until the final accident board’s report. Hardcastle often used familiar “goofs”
to explain failures in multimil- lion-dollar military hardware: like causing an
accident while using a cellular phone in busy rush-hour traffic. Humphrey had
wanted to film the Learjet with his gun camera during the intercept; he saw the
floodlight hit his leader’s cockpit canopy, saw him go out of control
temporarily, assumed that it was an attack, and launched a missile. Under the
emergency situation, such a response was understandable. Of course, Hardcastle
explained, the deaths of the “Whispers” TV crew were unfortunate, but it was
probably avoidable—it wouldn’t have happened if the TV. and Learjet crews had
been following the law and not out for a scoop. For once it looked like blame
was going to be placed on the right party.

 
          
By
being up in
Atlantic
City
instead of in
Washington
, Vincenti was really just postponing the inevitable: the intensive
debriefing that Judge Lani Wilkes was giving Hardcastle and Harley right now in
Washington
. Vincenti’s turn was next. These all-day,
half-the-night sessions were nine- !tenths retribution and punishment and
one-tenth information. Wilkes was claiming that there were tons of evidence to
make everyone, including the President of the
United States
, believe the body of the motorcycle rider
shot by the V-22 crew was Henri Cazaux. The gun camera videotape from the third
V-22 of one of the two riders that escaped was inconclusive. It was a thermal
image, almost useless for trying to identify someone. But in Vincenti’s
opinion, any one of the two that got away could have been Henri Cazaux. Wilkes
and the rest of the Justice Department disagreed. To A1 Vincenti, it was all
just educated guesses and assumptions—and politics, of course. The more this
air defense emergency went on, the more uneasy it made the public. The
President needed this emergency over with soonest.

 
          
Vincenti
admired Harley for standing up to Wilkes and most of the rest of the FBI. She
was definitely someone he wanted to get to know better. He still wasn’t exactly
clear what her relationship to former Vice President Kevin Mar- tindale really
was, but Vincenti never liked to take a backseat when it came to the pursuit of
women. He could take on Martindale any day of the week. That aside, he wished
Harley would at least take some pride in knowing that Cazaux’s organization was
busted up, his sources of funds cut off and confiscated, his butt being chased
closer and closer every hour. Vincenti hoped Cazaux would dive back under
whatever rock he crawled out from—Harley didn’t believe he would. But the
U.S.
Marshals and the FBI were hot on Cazaux’s
organization’s heels, so if Cazaux’s wasn’t one of the bullet-riddled bodies
she pulled from the mansion in
New Jersey
, he was as good as captured anyway.

 
          
Cambridge-Dorchester
Airport
,
Maryland
That Same Time

 
          
The
little airport on
Choptank
Bay
in south-central
Maryland
was a busy and favorite destination for
fishermen from all over the northeast
United States
, but at dusk it was as dark and as quiet as
the countryside around it. The Patuxent River Naval Air Station was just thirty
miles southwest, where the U.S. Navy trains all of its test pilots and conducts
tests of new and unusual aircraft—it was the Navy equivalent of the Air Force’s
Edwards Air Force Base—and the area just south of the little airport was often
filled with Navy jets dogfighting or practicing aerobatics or unusual flight
maneuvers. But promptly at
nine
p.m.
,
at the very latest, the Navy jets went home.
No one dared disturb the peaceful little
Chesapeake Bay
resort town in summertime unless you had a
lot of political or financial pull...

 
          
...
or unless you were an international terrorist, and you didn’t give a damn.

 
          
Inside
a hangar rented for this mission, Gregory Townsend checked the attachment
points of the devices under the wings of the single-engine Cessna 172. He had
slung one BLU-93 fuel-air explosive canister under each wing, just outboard of
the wing strut. It was a simple two- lug attachment, connected to a
mechanical-pyrotechnic squib that used small explosive charges to pull the lugs
out of the attachment points and let the bombs go. The charges were bigger than
what was needed and would probably punch a hole in the Cessna’s thin aluminum
wing, but that didn’t matter as long as the bombs were able to free-fall
properly. As the bombs fell, a simple cable would pull an arming pin out of the
canister. Three seconds later the canister would disperse the explosive vapor,
and two seconds* after that three baseball-sized bomblets in the tail cone of
the canister would detonate in the center of the vapor cloud, creating an
explosion equivalent to ten thousand pounds of TNT. The fuel-air explosive
blast would incinerate anything within a thousand feet of it and destroy or
damage almost any structure within a half-mile.

 
          
Once
the canisters were properly attached and checked, Townsend and two of his
helpers threw tarps over the wings to hide the canisters and towed the aircraft
south down the parking ramp and onto the parallel taxiway to a runup pad at the
end of runway 34, using a rented pickup truck and a nylon tow strap.
Cambridge-Dorchester
Airport
had a lot of airplanes parked there, but
there was no fixed- base operator to service planes, so it was not unusual to
see private autos towing them. There were a few onlookers outside the Runway
Restaurant at the entrance to the little airport, the usual assortment of
people that hung around airports day or night, but when they saw the airplane
with the tarps over it, they assumed it was being fixed, so few paid it any
more attention—onlookers came to see takeoffs and landings, not engine runups
or fuel tanks being drained or scrubbed out. By the time Townsend and his
soldiers reached the runup pad, they were away from most of the lights and the
spectators.

 
          
Townsend
towed the Cessna onto runway 34, then stepped into the cockpit and started its
engine. His soldiers meanwhile moved the truck behind the plane, attached the
tow cable to the rear tie-down bracket and the other end to the truck’s rear
bumper, and pulled the nylon tow-strap tight so it held the plane in place.

 
          
Inside
the cockpit, it took only fifteen seconds for the Global Positioning System
satellite navigation unit to lock on to enough satellites for precision use. He
checked the navigation data in the set. There were only three waypoints in the
flight plan—an initial takeoff point about two miles off the departure end of
the runway, a level-off point over Chesapeake Bay, and a destination: 38-53.917
North, 7727.312 West, elevation twelve feet mean sea level, the geographical
coordinates of the Oval Office in the White House, Washington, D.C. programmed
to the nearest six feet. Townsend checked that the GPS set was exchanging
information with the Cessna’s autopilot, then activated the system. The GPS
immediately inserted the first altitude into the system, which was one thousand
feet, and its initial vertical velocity of three hundred feet per minute. The
Cessna’s horizontal stabilizers moved leading-edge down slightly, ready to
execute the autopilot’s commands. Townsend then stepped out of the cockpit and
motioned to his soldiers to get ready for launch. He began to push in the
throttle control for takeoff power and ...

 
          
The
Cessna’s one VHF radio suddenly crackled to life— Townsend didn’t even realize
he had it on: “Cambridge UNICOM, Cambridge UNICOM, Seneca-43-double Pop, ten
miles northeast of the field at two thousand five hundred, landing information
please, go ahead.”

 
          
Before
Townsend could respond, someone else on the airport radioed back, “Seneca-43
Poppa, Cambridge UNICOM, landing runway three-four, winds three-one-zero at
five, altimeter two-niner-niner-eight, no observed traffic. Airport is closed
right now, parking available but no fuel or service available, over.”

 
          
“Shit,”
Townsend swore, pulling the
throttle on the Cessna back to idle until he decided what to do. “What in
bloody hell is he doing here?” In the past few days, as. his men monitored
activity at the airport, there had not been one takeoff or landing after
nine
p.m.
,
not
one.
Their whole mission was in jeopardy, and he hadn’t even launched it yet!

 
          
As
if to answer his question, Townsend heard, “Hey, Ed, this is Paul,” the Seneca
pilot replied. “Yeah, it’s just me. I gassed up at
Cape May
this time—their gas is down thirteen cents
from last week. I had dinner out at Wildwood, too—that’s why I’m late. Hope the
condo association doesn’t give me too much grief. I’ll try to keep the noise
down.”

 
          
Townsend
grabbed the microphone and, trying to tone down his British accent as much as
possible, radioed, “
Cambridge
traffic, this is Cessna-125-Bravo. I’m doing a little engine and brake
maintenance at the end of runway 34. I’ll be done in about five minutes.”

 
          
“Hey,
Cessna-125B, are you running engines out there?” the guy on the ground asked.
“You know you ain’t allowed to run engines out here after
eight
p.m.
County ordinance.”

 
          
“This
is very important,” Townsend said. “I’ll be done in a minute.”

 
          
“You
the one that got towed out there with the tarps on your wings, -125B?” the guy
asked. ‘The homeowners’ association listens in on UNICOM. They’ll probably call
the sheriff and complain. I’d pack it in for the night if I was you. Don’t dump
any gas out of your sumps onto the dirt, either—county gets pissed off about
that too.”

 
          
“Kiss
my bloody ass,” Townsend said. He unplugged the microphone, then shoved in the
throttle again, locked it tightly, closed the pilot’s side door, and motioned
for his helper to remove the tarp on the right wing .. .

 
          
.
. .- and, sure enough, by the time Townsend had removed the tarp on the left
wing and gone back to the pickup truck, blinking red-and-blue lights could be
seen back by the main part of the airport—a sheriffs patrol car. Also, by that
time, the twin-engine Seneca was on downwind, just a few minutes from landing.
As the soldiers got their suppressed MP5 submachine guns ready, Townsend
released the pelican clamp on the tail of the Cessna, and the plane shot down
the runway.

 
          
The
Cessna didn’t look like it was going to make it. It pitched onto its left wheel
as it accelerated, it skittered over to the left side of the runway
precariously close to the VASI lights, and the left wingtip dipped so low that
Townsend thought it was going to flip over and spin out. But just as he thought
it was going to hit the dirt edge of the runway, it lifted off into the night
sky, its wings leveling off as it gracefully climbed and proceeded on course.
The GPS flight plan coordinates must’ve been off slightly, and the plane had
immediately tried to correct itself. Luckily it had not run out of runway
first.

 
          
The
sheriff s patrol car looked as if it were going to drive down a taxiway and
perhaps block the runway. It shined its floodlight at the plane, as if trying
to read the registration number. “He’s going to see those FAEs under the wings,
Mr. Townsend,” one of the soldiers reminded him.

 
          
“Well,
let’s give the constable something else to think about, shall we?” Townsend
suggested. He pointed to the Seneca, which was just turning final for landing.
As the patrol car backed up to get back onto the main taxiway, the second
soldier took cover behind the pickup truck, out of sight. As the Seneca came in
over the approach end of the runway, flaps extended and engines at near-idle
power, the soldier opened fire. He emptied
one thirty-two
-round magazine on it, reloaded, and fired
again.