“Okay, Air Force One. We have you in radar contact at twenty-three thousand. Continue your climb to flight level four-three-zero. Your transponder code is two-one-zero above twenty-four thousand. Over.”
“Air Force One, roger.”
The blip crawled across the green radar screen, like a bug heading for suddenly glimpsed food.
“I’m glad that’s over,” the Leesburg controller remarked to the superviser standing behind him. “I always get the jitters handling that bird.”
“Just another airplane,” said the supervisor—mainly for the purpose of relaxing an awed trainee observing the operation. “But I’d hate to get a seven-seven-zero-zero from him.”
“What’s that?” the trainee asked.
“Memorize it well, chum. Seven-seven-zero-zero is the transponder code for an emergency if he loses radio contact.”
Air Force One streaked through the night, unerringly glued to the invisible aerial tracks that were high-altitude jet routes J8 and J78.
It had picked up J8 at Front Royal, Virginia, where J8 intersected with J30 from Washington, and flew on a slightly south-westerly course carved into six segments representing the Air Traffic Control Centers along its planned route.
The Indianapolis Center took over as the speeding Condor neared Charleston, West Virginia. Indianapolis handed the flight over to Kansas City Center on J78 just past Evansville. Another jurisdictional hand-off to Fort Worth Center near Oklahoma City. Albuquerque Center assumed control beyond Liberal, Kansas, and would monitor Air Force One until J78 knifed across Prescott, Arizona. Finally the Los Angeles Center, taking Air Force One by its gentle electronic hands, would help it down the airway steps into Palm Springs.
Position reports every fifteen minutes . . . “Air Force One, estimating Amarillo at. . .”
Transponder identification at Center hand-offs . . . “Air Force One, this is Albuquerque Center. Squawk ident, please . . .”
“Air Force One, identing.”
All routine.
The door of the private presidential compartment was closed. Judi Nance stirred uncomfortably as she napped on a couch in the rear lounge. She became half awake every time the Condor pitched slightly in mild turbulence, wings flexing slightly like coil springs on an automobile passing over a little road bump.
Two of the three Secret Servicemen were asleep. Sabath and Rear Admiral Philips played gin rummy with the two security guards.
Behind the cockpit, Captain Wameke, the radio officer, hooked the radio teletype into a news circuit so he could pick up some baseball scores.
FINAL AMERICAN NEW YORK 8 WASHINGTON 3. WP HUNTER,
LP . . .
Captain Wameke, a never-say-die fan of the Senators, kicked one foot in a gesture of angered exasperation. His shoe touched the padlocked briefcase parked under the communications console. Inside were the War Codes, to be used if the airborne President had to order the ICBMs and B-58s winging toward an enemy.
Baseball scores and War Codes.
All routine.
Major Foster rang a steward on the intercom.
“Any chance for a sandwich and some coffee, Sergeant?’
“Yes, sir. Ham and swiss okay?”
“Fine.”
The Condor bucked and trembled momentarily, absorbing the jabs of turbulent gusts. Marcus Henderson disengaged the auto-pilot, adjusted the trim to his liking, and gripped the yoke firmly.
“Air Force One, this is Albuquerque Center.”
“Air Force One.”
“Informatively, radar is picking up a big squall line seventeen miles northwest of Winslow and moving southeasterly at a very rapid pace. A TWA flight reports unable to get on top of it at forty thousand.”
“Albuquerque, did TWA give any turbulence report?”
“Affirmative, Air Force One. Moderate to severe.”
“Do you think you could vector us around it?”
“Negative, Air Force One. Unless you want to be vectored about a hundred miles to the south. It’s a big bastard, if you’ll pardon our language.”
“Okay, Albuquerque. We’ll turn on our radar and see if we can pick our way through.”
Henderson activated the weather-warning radar, setting the range to one hundred miles. The scanning line revolved slowly, reflecting the sweep of the nose antenna as it searched ahead for telltale turbulence.
“Nothing yet,” Henderson remarked. He looked at Foster, peacefully munching his just-delivered sandwich. “When you finish that goddamned sandwich,” the commander added with a touch of sarcasm, “keep your eyes on that scope.”
“I can do both at once,” the major said placidly. “I’m ambidextrous.” He hunched over the hooded scope.
In the darkened radar room of the Albuquerque Center, a controller watched the blip of Air Force One move steadily across his-screen. The watch supervisor picked up a phone connected directly to the Los Angeles Center.
“Los Angeles, this is Albuquerque. We’ll be handing Air Force One off to you a little later than expected. He’s got some thunderstorms ahead of him and he’ll probably have to slow down a bit.”
“Thanks, Albuquerque. Keep us posted.”
“Roger.”
All routine.
The Condor swept westward, swimming along in its huge cocoon of protected airspace. The jet trembled and pitched again, this time with more emphasis and prolonged duration. Henderson used the intercom and told the answering steward to put on Sabath.
“Phil, we’ve got some weather ahead of us. Is the President asleep?”
“Yep. He’s in his room.”
“Well, somebody should go in and make sure he’s strapped in even if he’s in bed. I’ll leave it to you.”
“Okay, Marcus.”
Henderson reached above him and flicked the fasten seat belts sign with his left hand. His right hand fondled the throttles, moving them back ever so slightly. With typical, inbred caution, as much a part of him as his uniform and his heart and his mind, he opened his flight bag and took out the Operating Manual of the Amalgamated Condor. He already knew what he was looking for but he still consulted the printed figures—Recommended Turbulence Penetration Speeds.
All routine.
Foster peered at the radar scope, adjusting it now down to the fifty-mile range.
“Storm cells ahead,” he said quietly. “Try two degrees left.”
Henderson gently turned the yoke. Foster brought the range down to twenty-five miles. The Condor was bucking harder.
“Any holes?” Henderson asked.
The major squinted, frowned and then sighed in an airman’s progressive surrender to the inevitable.
“Solid. Not even a sliver. How about climbing above it?”
“God knows how high the sonofabitch is. It isn’t supposed to be this high. But we’ll try. Albuquerque Center, this is Air Force One.”
“Albuquerque Center.”
“Our radar shows no path through that squall line. We’d like to climb above it if possible. Any traffic?”
“Negative, Air Force One. You’re cleared to climb. Please advise your altitude when you level off.”
“Roger. Informatively, we’re approaching Winslow and climbing.”
The yoke came back, sending hydraulic fluid coursing in a split second through the Condor’s tubing toward the tail. The massive elevators moved. The Condor began to climb.
All routine. . .
The Albuquerque controller was watching the blip. The little white blur seemed to waver, then slid off to the left.
“Al, something’s wrong with Air Force One,” he called out.
The watch supervisor hurried to the radar set and stared in horror as the target kept skidding toward the edge of the screen.
Faintly, with awful suddenness, like a plaintive cry for help out of the night, there appeared by the rapidly slipping blip the letters “AF-1”
Followed instantly by four figures.
“7700.”
The blip went of
f the scope entirely. The transponder code faded.
“Holy Mother of God,” breathed the controller.
“Try to raise him,” snapped the watch supervisor.
“Air Force One, this is Albuquerque Center. Do you read us? Air Force One, we’ve lost radar contact. Please acknowledge if you read us.”
The scanner on the screen swept its three hundred and sixty degrees, probing in vain for a target. It circled three more times before the watch supervisor could force four words out of his constricted throat.
“My God,” he whispered. “He’s gone.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Arthur Klockenheimer, known to his IPS comrades as Klocky, was a man blessed with infinite patience, considerable ability and an understanding wife. All were of immense importance in his job as assistant overnight editor, also known as the graveyard shift or lobster trick on other posts requiring an 11 P.M. to 7 A.M. schedule.
The patience was a weapon against the ire of reporters who swore that the overnight employed a careless butcher knife instead of a deft scalpel on their brilliant prose. As inevitable as the sun rising in the east was the anquished morning bellow from some IPS man: “Jesus Christ, look what the overnight did to my story!”
The required ability meshed neatly with the desired patience. A wire service overnight report is largely concerned with preparing copy for the first editions of afternoon papers. Thus it deals mostly with news of the previous day because news is scarce between midnight and 7 A.M. This, in turn, means the overnight is hard pressed (1) to get a fresh angle on stale news and (2) to try to compose copy that will stand up through part of the current day.
Mr. Klockenheimer’s difficulties with both his colleagues and clients were compounded by the IPS overnight desk in New York, which had a psychopathic aversion to any story running over three hundred words. Unfortunately, the IPS overnight copy from Washington was filed first on a private teletype to New York, which relayed it back on the main news wires. This meant that Washington’s output ran a daily gantlet through New York’s hatchet men, who invariably slashed down to their three-hundred-word yardstick by the simple process of chopping off the bottom paragraphs.
“The stupid chowderheads would cut Shakespeare,” Klocky once complained to Damon.
“Shakespeare occasionally deserves to be cut,” Damon commented. “Hell, reducing wordage isn’t our beef—it’s the way New York does the reducing. Not many stories are worth more than three hundred, but I agree with you. Those guys use a ruler instead of a pencil.”
Klockenheimer’s immediate supervisor was the overnight editor, Frank Jackson, who came in at 5 P.M., quarterbacked the organization of the report, and departed about 1 A.M.—leaving Klocky in charge of the entire overnight staff. This usually consisted of one Roger Melville, a lanky, eager and woefully inexperienced rookie fresh out of Missouri School of Journalism now learning even more under the Klockenheimer School of Journalism.
“Roger will be a great wire service reporter someday,” Klocky had explained proudly to Damon. “He’s not afraid to wake up a Cabinet officer at 4 A.M. with some asinine query.”
Klocky loved the overnight trick. He was a pudgy man in his late forties, with shaggy gray hair. His working hours were generally quiet, with only a fraction of the pressures that afflicted the day and night staffs. His schedule was not exactly conducive to a normal home life, but his wife never complained. She went to bed when he went to work, and was up getting their fOur children off to school when he came home. While he slept, she did the housework and this gave them most of the late afternoon and early evening hours together. When, on rare occasions, she would mention that he didn’t see much of the children, Klocky would remind her that the overnight differential—which earned him an extra fifteen dollars a week—was paying for a helluva lot of life insurance including some educational policies.
“Besides,” he added, “I’ll live longer than I would if I was working in that day-side boiler factory. Nothing ever happens on the overnight”
Nothing did, usually.
Until this particular heartbeat of history.
When, at precisely 4:38 A.M., EDT, Roger Melville had to put down the sex novel titled The Wife Swappers which he had swiped from the copy boys’ drawer and answer the phone.
“IPS, Melville.”
“This is the White House switchboard. Please stand by for a conference call.”
“It’s the White House,” Roger informed Klockenheimer. “Says they’ve got a conference call. What’s a—”
Melville’s question was choked off by the look on Klocky’s face as he picked up his own phone. It was a weird conglomeration of concern, anticipation and puzzlement.
“IPS standing by,” Klockenheimer said. Then he stared at his youthful assistant and muttered, “The first time I heard a White House conference call, it was the day FDR died. I was just a punk cub. I remember—”
The White House switchboard broke in.
“UPI ready?”
“Ready at UPI,” said a voice.
“AP?”
“Here.”
“All right, please stand by for Mr. Spellman.”
It must be something big, Klockenheimer thought. Newton Spellman was assistant White House press secretary, Phil Sabath’s able underling. Spellman’s voice invaded the IPS editor’s mental roll call of the awesome possibilities, such as a presidential heart attack or maybe even war. He was totally unprepared for what the voice was about to say —or even the voice itself. It was not that of the dapper, mercury-tongued Newt Spellman with his rapier repartee and dry humor. This was the voice of a man slugged groggy by shock, grief and disbelief in something that had to be believed because it was true. It was a hoarse voice, pitched two octaves lower than usual, so much lower that Spellman’s New York accent was the only way Klockenheimer could recognize it.
“This is Newt Spellman. I’m going to read a brief announcement. There’s no point in asking any questions when I’m finished because this is the only information we have right now. There will be a press conference at the White House at 7 A.M., at which time we hope to have more details. If you’re all ready, I’ll begin.”
Klocky snapped at Melville, “Put on a headset and take this down.”
The youngster donned the nearest headset. His long, tapering fingers poised over the typewriter. His own heart was thudding.
“IPS ready.”
“UPI all set.”
“Ditto AP.”
Spellman cleared his throat nervously and coughed twice. The effort seemed to brace him. His voice was more normal as he began to read.
“The White House announced today that Air Force One, the presidential aircraft, disappeared off a radar screen at the Albuquerque Air Traffic Control Center at two thirty-seven this morning, Eastern Daylight Time. All efforts to contact the plane have failed. The last communication advised that the flight was climbing to avoid thunderstorm activity. It’s last known position was some forty-five miles east of Winslow, Arizona. A search is underway by Air Force units from nearby bases. Further information will be disclosed as soon as it is available.”
Newton Spellman cleared his throat again. “That’s the end of the announcement,” he added almost apologetically.
“Wait a minute, Newt,” UPI broke in. “Do you know his fuel exhaustion time?”
“About an hour from now. The Air Force is computing the exact time. I’ll phone you later when I get it. Or maybe you’d all better send someone over.”
“That 7 A.M. press conference,” Klockenheimer asked. “Who’s going to be there besides you?”
“General Coston of the Air Force. Federal Aviation Administrator Bettway. That’s all I know of right now.”
“Newt,” said the AP with typical AP caution, “do you mind if we phone back and verify this conference call? You know—gotta be careful of hoaxes.”
“I wish to God,” said Newton Spellman slowly and distinctly, his voice cracking just a shade at the end, “that i
t was a hoax.”
Melville tore what he had typed out of the machine and handed it to Klockenheimer. The editor paused only a second before making his command decision.
“The hell with a verification call,” he said, turning to the lone operator on duty. He swallowed once, with difficulty, and then spoke the one word that paints goose pimples on the hide of every wire service man, from copy boy to brass. This and what was to follow would go on no private wire to New York. Its five letters would be punched on the A wire’s direct keyboard. No time to wait for it to be put into the usual perforated tape that runs through a teletype transmitter at a uniform rate of sixty words a minute. No time to wait with this word.
The operator slammed down the small key that broke off a murder trial story coming out of Chicago. He held the key down to make sure the wire was clear. Then he hammered out Klocky’s dictation.
FLASH
WASHINGTON PRESIDENTS PLANE MISSING
“Get Damon and DeVarian on the phone fast,” Klocky ordered Melville. His stubby fingers were sprinting over the keys of a typewriter.
Bulletin
Washington (IPS)—The giant jet carrying President Haines to a California vacation disappeared off a radar screen early this morning and all efforts to contact the plane have failed, the White House announced today.
more
Too long, Klocky thought as he handed the bulletin to the operator for transmission on the A wire. The hell with it. Get the facts out first and never mind the fancy stuff. A deadline every minute. That was the wire service creed. Literature under pressure—that was the wire service boast. But the literature would have to come a bit later when they knew more. Right now, facts as fast as possible. And the pitifully few facts were pouring from his typewriter in a torrent of terse, crisp writing.
add plane, washn x x x today
Assistant White House Press Secretary Newton Spellman made the startling disclosure in a conference call to the three wire services. He said the big Amalgamated Condor was being tracked by radar at the Albuquerque Air Traffic Control Center when it suddenly disappeared from the screen shortly after the pilot had radioed he was climbing to avoid a thunderstorm.
The President's Plane Is Missing Page 7
