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“Deputy
Landers, you’re with me. You two, I’ll talk to later,” she said, and hurried
off. Landers gave Harley a friendly squeeze on the arm and followed Wilkes to
the underground
FBI
Emergency
Operations
Command
Center
.

 
          
Suddenly,
outside the open conference room windows, they saw a flash of light, like a
huge flashbulb going off, followed seconds later by a loud rumble that was like
a short, sharp crash of thunder. They all went to the window. The flash had
come from the south, in the direction of The Mall, but they could see nothing.

 
          
Hardcastle
was reaching for the phone to call his assistant Marc Sheehan: “That wasn’t
thunder—it reminded me of a bomb attack in
San Salvador
I witnessed once,” he told Harley.
“Something’s going on out there near The Mall.”

 
          
“Forget
the phone call—let’s get out of here,” Harley said. “Talk on the way. We’ll
take my car.”

 

 
          
Aboard the E-3C AWACS Radar Plane
Leather-90

 

           
“MC, Comm, we just lost contact with
the Hawk unit at East Potomac Park.”

 
          
Milford
was dumbfounded. The fake Executive-One-
Foxtrot was less than thirty miles away from the Capitol, and at the exact
point where the medium-range air defense units would have engaged, they went
off the air. First the fighters launching from Andrews were destroyed, then the
Integrated Command Center at Andrews that had overall control of the Hawk and
Avenger units around the city, now the close-in Hawk radar system.

 
          
The
Avenger units—if there were still any Avenger units down there—were virtually
blind. The gunners on the Avengers had IFF (Identification Friend or Foe)
interrogators, so they could pick out any aircraft that was not squawking air
traffic control codes, but the tracking sensors on the Avengers had limited
range. Even if they spotted the fake Executive-One at the absolute maximum
range, they would have only a few seconds to attack before the plane got within
range. The Stinger missile was designed to attack targets flying less than two
hundred knots airspeed— the fake Executive-One was flying almost twice that
speed.

 
          
“Status
of the runway at Andrews?”

 
          
“Closed,
sir,” Tate reported. “There are only two other fighters assigned there; neither
are ready to fly.”

 
          
“Status
of the Patriot batteries? Any of them operational?”

 
          
‘The
Patriot site at Dulles was destroyed by commandos,” the Senior Director
responded. “The site at
Fort
Belvoir
is not damaged, but it was decommissioned
this morning and was ready to road-march in the morning. It won’t be able to
respond.”

 
          
Milford
checked the radar display with an almost
feverish feeling of helplessness and dread. He had nothing to respond with,
nothing.
A single F-15C fighter carrying
one Sparrow radar-guided missile had launched only moments ago from Langley Air
Force Base, near Hampton, Virginia, but even at fuel-sucking afterburner power
it would take about ten minutes to fly within missile range of the fake
Executive-One. Two fighters had launched from
Atlantic City
, but they would not be in range for almost
fifteen minutes.

 
          
Not
only that, but now they had a new concern. That VFR slow-moving plane from
Maryland
was right on the outskirts of Andrews Air
Force Base’s Class B airspace, about sixteen miles southeast of the capital. It
had not announced itself on any emergency frequency, was not squawking any
transponder codes, and it had not deviated from course one bit to try to avoid
any restricted airspace. It was dead on course—for the capital. It had been
marked now as “Bandit-2,” but like the fake Executive-One, they had no way of
stopping it.

 
          
“Comm,
MC, get me the White House, Capitol, and Pentagon communications centers, Flash
priority alert,”
Milford
said. “If you need to get their damned attention, tell them the capital
is under attack.”

 
          
“MC,
Comm, National Command Authority Joint Emergency Communications Network, call
sign ‘Palisade,’ button four,” the communications officer said just seconds
later. “No problem at all convincing them something’s going on.”

 
          
“Go
ahead, Leather-90, this is Palisade.”

 
          
“Palisade,
this is
Milford
, Mission Force Commander Leather northeast
sector, we have an unidentified aircraft inbound, about four minutes north ...
make that three minutes north of the capital.”
Milford
found himself hyperventilating, and he
consciously slowed his breathing and got his voice back under control. “I have
declared an air defense emergency for the Washington and Baltimore Class B
airspace. Be advised, all of my air defense systems have come under
simultaneous terrorist attack in the past few , minutes, and I have no aircraft
or ground-based systems left-. | to respond. I recommend the Leadership be
notified and I they evacuate to underground shelters. I am also tracking a j
slow-moving target sixteen miles southeast of the capital at li fifteen hundred
feet, groundspeed one hundred knots, ETA to the capital about twelve minutes.
We have not been able to contact either aircraft; they are hostile, repeat,
hostile aircraft. How copy?”

 
          
“Leather,
I copy all, stand by.”

 
          
The
response was almost instantaneous: “MC, SD, Marine Two and two other
helicopters airborne from Anacostia,” Tate reported. “Three aircraft launching
from
Quantico
.” The Anacostia Naval Station, just a few
miles south of the capital, is a satellite base for HMX-1, the Marine Corps
unit that flies VIP-configured helicopters from Quantico Marine Corps Air
Facility, including Marine One and Marine Two, which carry the President and
Vice President, to reduce their response time to the capital. Obviously, the
senior director at the National Command Authority Joint Emergency Network
command post was trained not to take any warning or threat lightly. The
helicopters would touch down on the south lawn of the White House to take the
President or Vice President; other helicopters would land on the east side of
the Capitol to take any members of Congress or any justices of the Supreme
Court to safety, if it was necessary. Others would land near the FBI Building,
Justice Department, State Department, and the Pentagon, all to ensure that the
most senior members of government, if they were still in the capital, would be
safe.

 
          
“Give
those choppers full priority, SD,”
Milford
said as he studied the sudden flurry of
aircraft over the capital and the surrounding area. “Get their tactical
frequency from ‘Palisade,’ or use GUARD to vector them around Bandit-1 when
they’re ready to—”

 
          
Then
he stopped, and his jaw dropped open in surprise. Washington Approach and
National Tower was clearing out the airspace around the city—inbound air
traffic was stacking up as high as forty thousand feet in orbit areas all i
around the Class B airspace—and Milford was mentally I dismissing the outbound
flights . . . all but one . . . “My I God . . . Jesus, Maureen—Devil-03. He’s
an F-16, isn’t
1
lie?”

 
          
“Devil
. . .” The senior director had completely dis- U missed the flight from her
mental catalog of aircraft around D.C. after the mission commander kicked him
out of the airspace, but now it was coming back... She punched up his call sign
and expanded her scope until she saw the blinking datablock: “God .. . Weapons
One, you still got Devil-03? He’s three miles west of
Nottingham
.”

 
          
“I
got him,” the weapons controller said.

 
          
“Take
Devil-03 on—no, disregard, take him on GUARD channel, don’t bother with a
discrete channel. Maybe whoever is flying Bandit-1 will hear what’s going on
and get the hint.”

 
          
“I
got him, I got him,” First Lieutenant Ed Flynn, flying the Weapons One control
station, repeated excitedly. He switched his radio to 121.5, the GUARD
international emergency channel, and radioed, “Devil-03, this is Leather
Control on GUARD, how do you read?” To himself, Flynn and everyone else on that
AW ACS radar plane were praying that the pilot of Devil-03 would respond ...

 
          
.
. . and Vincenti was praying that someone would call, him, because air traffic
control or anyone at Andrews Air Force Base command post was not taking his
radio calls. He had been trying frantically to contact someone,
anyone
, and offer his assistance ever
since he heard the air defense emergency declared. “Leather Control, this is
Devil-03 on GUARD, I read you loud and clear, how me?”

 
          
“Devil,
I need you to turn left to a heading of two-niner- five and descend and
maintain three thousand feet, right
now,
acknowledge.”

 
          
Vincenti
had racked his F-16 ADF into a tight, seven-G turn and was on the new heading
in three seconds. H$ began feeding in throttle until he was at full military
power. “I’m on your heading, Leather,” Vincenti reported. “Is this a vector to
the bandit?”

 
          
“That’s
affirmative,” the controller replied, trying to keep his breathing and voice as
normal as he possibly could. “Your bandit is
one o’clock
, forty miles low. I need your best speed to
the intercept, Devil, what can you give me?”

 
          
Checking
his fuel gauge, Vincenti made a quick mental calculation, then turned the
throttle past the detent and clicked in zone 3 afterburner. The airspeed gauge
slowly eased upward, the Mach meter hovering very close to 1.0, the speed of
sound. “That’s it, Leather,” Vincenti said. “Are we going over to tactical
frequency?”

 
          
“Negative,
Devil,” another, slightly older voice cut in. “No time for that now—besides, I
want our bandit to hear all this. Devil, we believe your target is a Boeing
747. It may be painted to resemble a VC-25 or some other VIP aircraft, but it
is not, I repeat, it is
not
a VC-25.
This has been verified by numerous independent sources. It is not carrying any
VIPs or any government officials—it is believed to be carrying hostiles. We are
tracking a second aircraft south of the capital, slow-moving, tracking toward
the capital. Whoever they are, they have not responded to our radio calls to
turn away from Class B airspace. Both aircraft are definitely hostile. I want
you to keep both aircraft away from the entire area, but especially Prohibited
Areas P-56, Washington-National and Dulles airports. Your priority is Bandit-1
west to the north; we have other interceptors inbound that might be able to
catch the guy to the south. Take Bandit-1 west or north if you can do a visual
intercept on them; take Bandit-2 south. Are you familiar with the prohibited
areas, Devil?”

 
          
“Affirmative,”
Vincenti responded. P-56A and -B was prohibited airspace over The Mall and the
U.S. Naval Observatory.

 
          
Vincenti checked his weapons status, which
was a joke. He carried no weapons or ammunition, just videotape for the gun
camera. At least I’ll get some great pictures of the chase, Vincenti thought
wryly. Of course, maybe the bandit is really radio-out, or maybe a passenger is
flying the thing and can't answer, or maybe he'll turn away when he sees me or
he 'll give it all up and follow me out of the area.

           
Just then, a large yellow
master caution
light illuminated on
Vincenti’s eyebrow panel, and he heard a female voice on interphone saying,
“BINGO . . . BINGO ... BINGO.” It was a reminder that he had enough fuel to get
back to
Atlantic
City
.
Plenty of airfields out here,
he
thought.
No way Pm turning back.
But
it was a bad sign. At afterburner power, he was burning fuel at fifty thousand
pounds per hour—he was going to be running on fumes very soon.

BOOK: Brown, Dale - Independent 04
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