Reprisal in Black

by Dan Fox

  Technically the Vice President was in charge but practically that was like leaving a kid in charge of a sweet shop. No, anything that happened would be a committee decision taking the best advice from the most appropriate member of that elite group. All of them had hoards of special advisors to call upon. Soon they would be calling for their deputies as well.

  The second level hacks had gone into overdrive trying to raise anyone who would talk to them but again and again they were stone walled. It became totally apparent that at this moment no-one actually knew what had happened.

  On his way to the White House Broadhead called the CIA’s communications centre and the part that specifically controlled the whereabouts of the president at all times. ‘What do we know for certain and what do we think might have happened?’

  ‘We lost all communication with the president’s plane at eleven p.m. India time, that is one p.m. Washington time. The last fix we have puts the plane about eight hundred and fifty miles east of Sri Lanka on a parallel with its capital Colombo. It was due hang a right towards Chennai within its next few minutes of flight. We have tried everything. The automatic beacons are not working, we see nothing on satellite and if it’s hit the ocean there would be some debris but as yet we haven’t managed to search the entire area. We are running calculations to see if we can get a closer fix on where it might have come down but it would still be an area of several hundred square miles.’

  ‘Find the damn thing’ shouted Broadhead and hung up just as the vehicle approached the security gate.

  There was a very slight delay as they passed through. The Security Staff knew nothing. In the Situation Room the atmosphere was grim. It was grim because they mostly liked and respected the president and apart from one person in the group, the rest thought the Vice President would be a complete washout. As they were all political animals they thought to their food source and nobody wanted to be the victim of a Democrat landslide at the forthcoming election. The charitable view would be that they were beside themselves with worry.

  Broadhead spoke first as he at least had some factual information to share. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, we know that all contact was lost with Air Force One at one p.m. Washington time eight hundred and fifty miles east of Sri Lanka where the plane was about to turn towards Chennai. That manoeuvre was to keep it out of normal air traffic flight paths so that we would see if there was any attempt to intercept it. This is standard procedure. The aircraft was not accompanied which again these days is standard procedure and also impracticable. The Aircraft has the most sophisticated cloaking devices and would normally be able to fend off any attack by using that technology and its own advanced counter measures.

  I do not believe that the plane was hijacked because, one, the security is so tight and the people so well known, two, because the plane has a troop of armed special forces personnel on board who not only would kill for the president, but would die for him as well.’ He was proud of that last part and would weave it into another speech. ‘And three, because we would have picked something up via the satellite. I am certain that the crew would have been able to transmit an emergency signal.’ He continued, ‘That leaves only two other plausible options, the plane either suffered a catastrophic failure in mid-air which led to immediate and devastating disintegration, and resulted in it crashing in pieces into the sea, or the plane was blown up by terrorists.

  We need two parallel courses of action. The first priority is to find the plane or what’s left of it and the second is to find what might have gone wrong with it. I suggest that those appropriate put investigations under way and check the security arrangements for the aircraft and to double check all the personnel associated with it.’

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Rupert Browning, spoke next. ‘We need to bolster the search for wreckage and survivors’ although not believing there would be either by now. He spoke towards the Vice President and said ‘Sir, can we military people go and put our heads together to see what resources we have available and deploy them?’ The Vice President had little choice but to say yes.

  Browning then spoke to Broadhead and asked him to keep them in the loop. He nodded a yes and then said ‘Please let us know what you decide to do. My special communications team will be grateful.’ Browning nodded and walked off with the rest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  Ten minutes later the speaker in the situation room broadcast a message from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mario Foteggi told the group that Air Force One had a special beacon that would activate if immersed in water or sea water for more than a few minutes. It had the same resistance to impact and shock as the Flight Recorders or Black Boxes as they were known, although it’s a strange fact that they are indeed orange in colour.

  ‘The beacon signals at very low frequency and so will be able to be picked up across wide swathes of ocean in a lateral manner.’ A breakthrough. Everyone smiled a little. ‘However, we do not believe that the beacon will transmit clearly through the depth of water we believe that the plane would be in. Its normal operating range is five thousand feet whilst the sea depth where we think it may have gone down is closer to ten thousand. Nevertheless we’ll do our damnedest.’ That glimmer of hope was immediately shattered.

  After a couple of more minutes with bits and pieces of intelligence and rumour flying around the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced that they had deployed joint military task forces to search the area with every possible resource available, and then added that they could get deep sounding Hydrophones into the suspected area within four hours. They would operate at eight thousand feet which was plenty. All they had to be was in reasonable proximity to the Beacon. Everyone had ignored the fact that if the plane was on the sea bottom, whether in one piece or not, the president would be dead. Everyone on the plane would be dead. However, it was obviously important that they determine what had happened regardless.

  As would be expected there was an immediate and absolute clampdown on any media intervention. This would be kept totally under wraps until they knew for sure. Unfortunately there were interested parties from the world’s media who knew that a killing on any kind of secret would send their ratings soaring. The wolves were waiting at the door. They wouldn’t have too long to wait.

  For the next several hours intelligence was received effectively confirming that there was no discernible wreckage visible on the ocean surface. The ocean was relatively calm and there was sufficient light with which to see. The deployed Hydrophones had picked up no signals. As time went on those assembled in and around the Situation Room reluctantly began to fear that something else had happened.

  Chapter 30

  The Abduction

  At ten a.m. the following morning Washington time a video appeared on the Al Jazeera channel. At first it was out of focus and hazy and was overdubbed with a deep Arabic speaking male voice. It proclaimed that the President of the United States had been captured by an extremist group and was being held in ransom for the demands of the Islamist world. As the voice went on the fuzzy picture came into focus and an obviously drugged and dishevelled president came into view. He did not speak, indeed he didn’t look well enough to speak, but it was certainly him. No doubt. The demands were that all American military immediately vacate all Islamic Nations. The American government would have thirty-six hours to comply or the president would be executed on TV. He would be decapitated.

  Within seconds the World’s media was in a frenzy. The White House Press Office came up with a release which was sanctioned by the inner circle contained within the Situation Room.

  It said, ‘Earlier today contact with Air Force One was lost as it approached India. Despite a wide search of the ocean in that area no wreckage has been found. It was feared that the president and all on board had perished. Whilst we are trying to gain absolute confirmation, we now believe that the president has been kidnapped and is being held against his will. More news will follow as we have it. We have no information on the rest of the party accompanyi
ng the president.’ It followed with telephone numbers for concerned relatives.

  The shit had well and truly hit the fan. Broadhead was now under severe scrutiny because he had effectively said that kidnapping or abduction was an impossibility. This could terminate an otherwise promising career. The dogs of political war would be sharpening their teeth.

  However, there was perhaps one way for him to turn disaster into glory. He excused himself and went out into the corridor and found himself a quiet spot so he could make a very important phone call. When he’d done that he went back into the Situation Room in an aggressive mood.

  He got the room’s attention and said ‘We know roughly where Air Force One went missing. We know that there are only a couple of countries in that area that would even contemplate the landing of the president’s plane on their soil.’ He was on a wing and a prayer again now and continued ‘If the plane had flown anywhere over land it would have spotted. It would have come up on somebody’s radar. So the plane must have continued its journey over the sea and landed right near the coast in a deserted region. If somebody wanted to ransom the president they would have to ensure his safety or they would have no bargaining power. We have to examine all the coastal areas in a reasonable flying time where they have an airstrip big enough to take the plane.’ The assembly almost applauded. That made total sense.

  Broadhead then said ‘Mr Vice President I would like to initiate that search immediately. I hope we can have narrowed the possibilities down within a couple of hours.’ The Vice President looked at the rest of the assembly and nodded.

  Broadhead found himself in an outer office using a secure line to his intelligence people. He had three key people listening and would need all of their combined brain power and that of their teams to crack this one.

  ‘Okay, you know the president has been kidnapped and we have less than thirty-six hours in which to rescue him or he will be executed on TV. You need to examine the coastal areas of Pakistan and Iran and any other nearby countries for airfields big enough to land Air Force One. They could be operational or dormant. Check the satellite imagery over the last few days, compare it with now. Anything however small may be the solution. Get all your people on this now. If anybody protests, shoot them.’

  Intelligence headquarters then became a frantic hub with everyone keen to solve the riddle. Within a couple of hours a team of analysts had narrowed the likely landing places as Iran or Pakistan. This bearing in mind that the plane could be seen if travelling overland, but much less likely from the sea and particularly if flying at only two hundred feet which was well below any normal radar capability. At that height nothing more than sixteen miles away would be able to see it, and at six hundred miles an hour it would be a mile further away every six seconds. They were looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

  Further examination indicated that the best terrain for the shortest flight and a quick landing would be costal and very flat and exclusively at an airstrip that was at least a mile long and preferably more, but only in a terrorist sympathetic country like maybe some parts of Pakistan or Iran. Another hour brought a number of possible sites in South East Iran very close to the Pakistan Border.

  After an hour Broadhead received another call which meant that Pakistan had been ruled out of the equation. The coastal geography was not suitable for the safe landing of Air Force One or any other large plane as the contours of the terrain were too rocky and undulating or swampy. There was also the basic assumption that any plane would be flying higher than the under the radar ceiling of a few hundred feet. They were fortunate in this case that the small fact wouldn’t matter.

  Further analysis of the timings indicated that anywhere further away than Iran would be too far to fly due to estimated fuel reserves. He was told that all available resource was tasked with finding a suitable coastal location in Iran. As dozens of people poured over intricate satellite imagery, and other groups examined all the records they had for the location of any military bases whether they had runways or not. After another hour they had drawn a complete blank.

  The teams were disconsolate. Try again they were told. Part of their work was to superimpose one satellite image with another. This was normally used to track vehicle or tank movements. Dave Cooper, a senior grade analyst had worked on such details for some years now and had tuned his eye to look for the smallest discrepancy. He really believed that somewhere on that coastal line they would find the location and he trusted himself alone to find it. He began his task again with renewed vigour and concentration. Having worked his way across several Iranian military bases some of which were airfields, he came to a long disused base not that far into Iran from the Pakistan border. He superimposed the images one by one over the last few days and couldn’t see anything. He sighed in utter frustration as he prepared to re-check another location and then something caught his eye. There was a very minute difference in the images. He zoomed into the images again and placed them side by side on his huge monitor and then looked over them with a magnifying glass. He studied them very carefully for several minutes. The old and seemingly derelict truck parked half under the awning at the side of an old hangar was not in exactly the same place in the newer image. It may only have been a foot difference but if that were the case it must have moved. He checked the images again and made sure he was absolutely certain. Then he thought why would a derelict vehicle move on a long disused air base.

  He thought for a moment more and then shouted ‘Found it.’ Within seconds he was surrounded by key people looking for confirmation. He transferred the side by side images on to the huge display array on the far wall of the department. Those images were ten times the size of those on his computer. He grabbed a pointer from a desk as he passed by and then stood in front of the array.

  He said ‘Please look carefully at this image’ and pointed first to the older image which had been taken three days ago and onto the hangar in question and then drew the pointer down to the awning and then onto the wagon. ‘Look carefully at the position of the wagon under the awning. Notice that you cannot see the rear edge of the cab.’ Those assembled to watch the displays studied the image and nodded their understanding. Dave Cooper then moved across to the later image and did the same with pointer. ‘Look again at the position of wagon.’ It had indeed moved by at least a foot but certainly not more than two. You could now see the rear edge of the cab. Wagons didn’t move by themselves on disused airfields. He then pointed to another hangar further away and said ‘I have checked the dimensions of that hangar and it is well big enough to conceal Air Force One.’ The office went wild. Dave Cooper had found the location all by himself. Perhaps he was in for an improvement on his lowly pay grade. He would be forever known in the CIA as the man who had found the kidnapped president.

  Of course, no-one could be absolutely certain that a truck having moved a foot or so on a disused air base actually constituted the location of the missing president, but it was the best lead they had. Immediately instructions were given for the satellite pass over Iran to focus all its attention on that air base and its immediate surroundings. Within minutes unusual traffic movement had been picked up less than three miles away.

  Thermal imaging was then brought into play and there were a number of hot spots both on the base and in the surrounding area. Broadhead was called and told the information about the truck movement. He didn’t delay for a second in announcing to his peers assembled in the White House Situation Room that his team had found the likely location. The second call he received confirmed the thermal imaging results. The inner circle all congratulated him. Career preserved. The Satellite continued to feed snippets of information back to the CIA which were all used to gradually build up a picture. Re-running images of a couple of weeks ago showed that there had been more activity at the base. This had been missed and heads would roll for that.

  With satellites repositioned unusual but very subtle activity was quickly seen at the disused Al Gharam Iranian Air Forc
e Base. To say relations with the Iranian Government were bad was a severe understatement. They may not even know about the operation to kidnap the president, yet. But even if they did they would deny all knowledge and not lift a finger. A formal military operation was out of the question, even to rescue the president.

  Broadhead’s earlier call had been made to Harry Finch his deputy director, asking him to pinpoint the location of available Special Forces in the region and also whether he knew of any Black Ops teams in the vicinity. When he called Finch again, Finch told him of the training missions in north-west Pakistan and reminded him of Steve Black’s special ops team’s Kabul operation. Broadhead thought for a moment and then said ‘Harry this is absolute top priority. Throw anything else in the bin. Contact the Special Forces group and tell them we have the biggest emergency possible. Get a big company jet into Peshawar as soon as possible. Get Logistics to load the plane for a coastal rescue team of about twenty people. They’ll need fast boats to get in and maybe out again. Take no chances with the gear give them as full a range of weapons as possible. Get me Steve Black’s satellite phone number.’ Harry told him the number. ‘I want the Special Forces team and Steve’s team coordinated on this one with Steve taking the lead role. We’ll massage the offended egos later. Give me a few minutes to talk to Steve and explain the situation and then I want all available resources concentrated on getting them to the plane and keeping them up to date with all intelligence no matter how insignificant it appears. Do you read me?’