Dale Brown - Storming Heaven

by Storming Heaven [lit]

  Then I want you to go to full throttle and climb over them.

  When we pass two hundred feet, signal me. Do you understand?" Cazaux didn't wait for a response--they would have only one shot at this, so either Korhonen would do it or he wouldn't. "After that maneuver, I want you to fly as low as you can go westbound. Stay over the interstate and keep the power up. Low altitude and speed is the only protection we'll have when they come after us." Linda McKenzie had never felt such an overwhelming sense of accomplishment as she did that night as they approached Mather Jetport.

  They had just assisted in the capture of one of the world's most wanted terrorists--and she led the intercept! Her minor switch slipup at the beginning of the intercept would certainly be forgotten.

  In fact, this seemed to be having a better result than a covert Special-9 intercept would have had.

  The feds and the cops were certainly out in force to put the suspect on ice. Both sides of Mather's two-mile-long runway were choked with flashing lights, and more were pouring onto the former military base--the entire parking ramp in front of the old base-operations building was bumper-to-bumper emergency vehicles.

  Streets were being cordoned off all around the facility. The five-mile exclusion zone around Mather had been breached years ago, but residential sprawl had not yet totally closed in on the base, so the area around the airport was only sparsely dotted with residences.

  "You're cleared to land on two-two left, Cazaux," McKenzie radioed to the L-600.

  "Stop straight ahead on the runway and don't try to turn off." "I understand," a strange voice replied. It wasn't Cazaux-probably the copilot. Could Cazaux have escaped? Once they went to radar tracking instead of visual tracking, someone could have parachuted from the aircraft without their noticing.

  Capturing the plane and the weapons on board was good, but Cazaux himself was the big prize.

  "Henri Cazaux, this is Special Agent Fortuna of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, U.s. Treasury Department," a voice cut in on the channel. "I'm the on-scene commander. We are tracking you with Stinger missiles and helicopter gunships. If you try to evade capture, we are authorized to open fire on your aircraft.

  Do you understand, Cazaux?" "Russ? Is that you? Ca va bien, mon ami?" a thick, French accented voice came on over the channel. "How is America's famous Nazi storm trooper doing?" It was Henri Cazaux's voice--he was still on the plane. This was going to be one sweet evening, McKenzie thought.

  "You wouldn't be so cheerful if you knew how many guns and missiles we got on you right now, Henri," Fortuna radioed back.

  "Make a nice pretty landing. You're on the news from coast to coast." "I would not want any of your gunners' fingers to twitch on the triggers, Russell," Cazaux said. "Would you please ask them to lower their weapons?

  I have decided to surrender--I will take my chances with the American justice system." "You might as well get used to the sight of guns pointed at you, Cazaux," Fortlma said, "because that's what you're going to see every waking minute of your life from now on. Now get off my radio frequency and do as you're ordered. We've got this entire area closed off, and we've got the green light to blow your ass out of the sky. Don't screw it up." "It will be good to see you again too, mon ami." Cazaux laughed.

  They were now less than two miles from the runway. McKenzie had made the decision to stay with the cargo plane for the entire approach, flying to the left and slightly behind the L-600--and she kept her 20-millimeter cannon armed and the pipper within a few mils of Cazaux's plane.

  If given the signal, she could squeeze off a one-second burst that would certainly shear off the L's left engine nacelle and propeller and send the cargo plane spiraling into the ground, away from the more populated areas of the town of Rancho Cordova north of the airfield and into the vacant tracts of land to the south. She was not sure where Vincenti was, but she assumed he would keep both aircraft in sight at all times and be ready to assist, track, or attack if something went wrong.

  "Keep it coming, Cazaux," Fortuna radioed again. "Keep that airspeed down--and if we hear the power come up on those engines, that'll be our signal to open fire." "I understand, Russ," Cazaux radioed. He switched quickly to intercom: "Stork--how far?" "One mile now, sir." Cazaux hit a switch on the aft cargo-bay bulkhead, and the cargo ramp began to lower and the upper ramp door began to retract upward into the cargo bay. The electrically actuated upper door was fully raised in just a few seconds; the ramp, powered by large hydraulic arms, took considerably longer. "Get on the front of that pallet, Mr. Krull," Cazaux said, wearing an evil grin, "and stand by on that last toucan clamp." Krull had just barely made his way forward to the front of the pallet when he heard the engines rapidly spooling up to full power.

  "Get ready!" Cazaux shouted. He switched to the comm channel on the intercom and shouted into the microphone, "Russell, my friend, hold out your hands and close your eyes--I'm going to give you a big surprise!" then dropped the microphone and grasped a bulkhead handhold.

  At that instant, the cargo plane heeled sharply upward.

  Korhonen's timing was perfect: when Cazaux looked out of the open cargo doors, all he saw was dozens of emergency vehicles clustered near the intersection of the main runway and the large midfield taxiway.

  "Nowff"...Cazaux shouted. "Release!" Krull pulled on the clamp lever, but nothing happened--it was jammed.

  He struggled with it, but the steeply angled deck had pulled the straps tight, and the curled toucan clamp would not budge. "It ain't going," man!" Krull shouted.

  But Cazaux was already moving. Struggling against the steeply sloped deck, Cazaux reached across the pallet, his large switchblade knife in his hands, and cut the remaining strap. The pallet did not need a push by anyone--sliding on the rollers embedded in the floor of the self-loading cargo hold, the pallet picked up speed rapidly and actually seemed to fly for several feet before it disappeared from view.

  Just as McKenzie thought i. was all coming to an end, when she could fly her F-16 back to Fresno and receive the warm congratulations of her friends and commanders, all hell broke loose.

  The LET L-600 heeled sharply right just a few feet from the ground, right over the biggest cluster of emergency vehicles lining the north side of the runway. The move took her by surprise--she was concentrating more on lining up with the south edge of the runway and keeping the Fighting Falcon in control as she followed the L-600 down the glide path.

  She applied right stick to follow, but the fighter wallowed and started to sink, and she goosed the power back up to 80 percent. Her next responsibility was to get the gunsight back on target, but at her present speed and angle of attack, that was impossible. Then the L-600 went into a steep climb, passing virtually directly in front of the pipper. "Control, this is Foxtrot Romeo Two, do I have permission to fire?" she radioed.

  "No! was a frantic voice shouted. "Don't fire! Hold your fire!" But McKenzie realized that the voice didn't identify himself, and it could be anyone giving that order --even Cazaux himself. She brought the landing gear handle up, then put the aux flap switch to EXTEND, which would keep the trailing-edge flaps down while the gear was up and allow her to fly slower and stay in control.

  "Control, do you want Foxtrot Romeo to attack? The target appears to be evading--do I have permission to attack?" "Linda, this is Also," she heard on the interplane frequency, "break left!" She could hear Vincenti's sudden warning, but she didn't dare try to look down into the cockpit to change radios--she was less than three hundred yards from the L-600. She had a momentary thought about turning--an order to "break" was not just a turn, it was a command to get the hell out of there. Instead, she stayed lined up on the left wing of the L-600 and said on the command channel, "I'm staying on the target! Control, what are your instructions? Do you want me to attack? Control, respond..." McKenzie caught a glimpse of a bright flash of light off to her right, but it was near the ground and she assumed it was one of the emergency vehicles" rotating lights or a photographer's flash.


  Then she saw a huge ripple of lights erupt all around her jet, heard a thunderous bang! and felt a gigantic ramming force smack her F's fuselage.

  The thirteen grenades shoved between the cases of Stinger missiles exploded well before the pallet hit the ground, which only Histo served to increase the devastation. The chain reaction created by the i exploding grenades was quick and furious--the shrapnel from the grenades tore through the battery unit cases, blowing apart the high pressure nitrogen-gas canisters, rupturing the battery cells, cooking off the chemicals and spraying superheated chemicals inside the missile coffins. The rocket motors went next. Normally they would slowly burn inside their cases, but the shock and hot chemicals , caused them to explode instead. Some of the missiles did cook off, sending white-hot spears of fire into nearby buildings and vehicles.

  The fragmenting pallet erupted into a blossom of fire when it hit the emergency vehicles on the ground, throwing petals of fire and explosive Stinger warheads out in all directions. The Stinger missiles seemed to have eyes, or active seeker heads--it seemed as if every one of the missiles that cooked off slammed right into a building or vehicle.

  "Oh, shit..." was all Jefferson Jones could say as he and Cazaux watched the maddening scene unfold below them. It was like watching a fireworks show's finale from above--the big explosion, followed by numero side explosions, and then the twinkling of burning debris scattered all across the airfield.

  "That... was... magnificent," Cazaux muttered. "That was.

  . incredible. Absolutely incredible..." As the L-600 began to level off, then point earthward to regain speed and begin evading pursuit, Krull moved aft and began motoring the ramp and upper cargo doors closed.

  azaux stumbled around on the right side of the cargo bay, leaning against the second pallet. He then eyed the forward pallet, the one containing the real explosives.

  "Move that second pallet aft to the edge of the ramp," he told Krull as he located the microphone, "and help me move that third pallet aft. I am going to deliver that last pallet on a target that no one will forget for a very long time." He clicked open the mike: "Stork, do exactly as I say, and your navigation had better be dead on." The large MASTER CAUTION light on the left eyebrow panel came on, along with the HYD/OIL PRESS warning light on the right eyebrow panel.

  It seemed as if the entire caution-light panel was illuminated--ELEC SYS, CADC, STBY GAINS, FUEL HOT, those were the biggies--and the oil and hydraulic pressure gauges were bouncing all over the place.

  It was time to jump out, she decided.

  She had never even come close to ejecting out of any aircraft before, not in ten years of flying the F-16. Air Force training always said, "Don't hesitate. Trust your equipment," and she was perfectly willing and ready to do so.

  McKenzie reached for her ejection seat lever and.

  ..

  "Linda! This is Also! How do you hear? It looks like you've been fragged, but there is no fire, repeat, negative fire. How do you hear?

  Over?" She was surprised to hear Vincenti on the radio --she had assumed, incorrectly, that everything in her stricken ship was out.

  She moved the throttle--no response, with fuel flow in the red but rpms below idle power. She moved the stick--aha, the controls were still but responding. Emergency power unit had turned on automatically. She raised the nose, and the jet responded by climbing.

  If nothing else, she was able to trade airspeed for altitude and get a little higher before ejecting, but she had a few seconds to try to work the problem.

  McKenzie took her hands off the ejection lever and back on the stick and throttle, then started to work on her caution-light analysis.

  The engine was stalled from a massive disruption of airflow through the engine, so she immediately pulled the throttle to idle, waited a few excruciating seconds as the airspeed bled off below safe engine restart speed, then slowly advanced the throttle ag.just as she was convinced the engine was not going to come back, the rpms eased from 55 percent to 65 percent and the fan-turbine inlet temperatures subsided out of the red zone. Quickly but carefully she advanced the throttle above 170 knots. She was safely flying again.

  She set the throttles to 80 percent and, one by one, began working on the other malfunctions. As soon as she could, she tried to reset the generators with the ELEC CAUTION RESET button--no go, it kept on tripping off. She placed the emergency power unit to ON, and checked the power-distribution lights. With only the emergency power unit providing power to the essential bus, she had the barest minimum equipment running--but she was still flying. Only the U.h.f radio on the interplane frequency was operating--that's how she could still hear Vincenti. "Also, how do you hear me?" "Fine, Linda," Vincenti said. "Roll out of your turn and get your nose down. I've got you at five thousand feet. How's your controllability?

  Check your engines." "I cleared a stall, and I've got partial generators and E.p.u on line," McKenzie said. She straightened her F's wings and found the controls very sluggish. "Looks like I lost my hydraulics--the E.p.u is the only hydraulics and power I got left." The E.p.u, or emergency power unit, used bleed air from the engine or hydrazine to power a simple power unit that supplied backup hydraulic and electrical power for about fifteen minutes.

  "System A pressure is good, and my essential bus is energized. What the hell happened?" "Cazaux," Vincenti replied simply. "He dropped something out the back end, a bomb or something.

  I can still see explosions.

  Just hold your heading. I'll come around on your left side. Hang tight, we'll be OK.

  Let's start a slow climb to ten thousand and start working out what we got. What's your fuel state?" "I can't tell--gauge is mop," McKenzie said. "Fuel low and fuel hot lights came on right away, and I think one of my wing tanks is gone." "That's confirmed, you lost one. You still got your right tank, and it's pretty beat-up," Vincenti said as he checked out McKenzie's fighter with his ID searchlight. "I don't think it'll do a normal jettison because of the damage, so you're going to have to land with it." It took Vincenti a few minutes to fly around McKenzie's jet and look her over. In that time, they had climbed up to ten thousand feet over the sparsely settled ranches and farms south of Sacramento. "I see lots of damage to your underside, Linda. You may or may not get a good landing gear. What do you think, Linda? How does she feel to you?" McKenzie knew what that question meant: did she want to eject or did she want to try for a landing?

  "I'm not jumping out of this plane, Also," McKenzie said. "Lead me over to Mcclellan." Mcclellan Air Force Base, just north of Sacramento, was a large military aircraft maintenance depot with lots of runways and crash equipment-McKenzie was going to need all the help she could get.

  It was only twenty miles across the top of the city of Sacramento to get to Mcclellan, but for McKenzie it was the longest flight of her entire life. Her approach speed when starting her descent into Mcclellans north-south runway was 220 knots, much faster than normal, and it was nearly impossible to maintain it without considerable control problems. Several times the engine did not respond to throttle movements. "Better get ready for a flameout landing, Linda," Vincenti told her.

  "We're looking for two hundred knots landing speed--it's gonna happen fast." "Just lost the engine, Also," McKenzie said.

  Her voice was wooden, as if she were talking inside a bucket.

  Vincenti knew that calm wouldn't last too long.

  The toughest fighter pilots in the world get high, squeaky voices when their air machines start to crap out on them. "Okay, Linda, forget it," Vincenti said.

  "We're committed for a flameout approach.

  Check your JFS switch on START 2. Turn off your FUEL MASTER switch.

  Got it... negative jfs RUN light, Also.

  "Okay, forget it. Turn the starter off--we'll try it again in a minute or so. We're six miles out." They were surrounded by the city of Sacramento, a vast shimmering expanse of lights below them.

  Mcclellan was dead ahead, its rotating beacon and runway lig
hts plainly visible. They had it made, but they still had a long way to go.

  "Check your air source knob on RAM and your defog lever forward.

  Keep your touchdown point eleven to seventeen degrees below the horizon. Stand by on the gear." "I'm ready, Also." Her glide path was steady, right on Vincenti's left wing. Her jet was a heavy toy glider right now. Actually, "glider" was a misnomer for the F-16 Fighting Falcon--with its short supercritical wings, the F-16 made a lousy glider. But as long as you had airspeed and a working E.p.u, though, a flameout landing was very doable. Her H.u.d, or heads-up display, was still operable, and the flight-path pipper was directly on the end of the runway--all she had to do was keep the pipper on the touchdown point and maneuver the fighter to keep the pipper within 11 to 17 of the horizon. So far it was going smoothly.

  "Five miles, Linda, lower the gear when you're ready." "Coming down." She pressed the gear-permission button and tried to move the gear lever downward-- nothing. "Gear handle won't move," she radioed.