Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  General Armstead and Phil Carson sat on the forward-facing troop bench nearest the helicopter crew seats and the cockpit. Carson was on the left side, looking north through the window on the sliding troop bay door. There was space for twelve combat-loaded grunts on the ’Hawk, with four men on each pipe-and-canvas-frame seat, so there was plenty of room with just five passengers aboard. Boone, Doug Dolan and Ira Gersham sat just behind them on the rear-facing bench, sharing a common backrest. All of the passengers were wearing ACU field jackets with quilted liners to guard against the cold. Flight helmets protected their heads from the chill and their ears from the 140-decibel engine noise. Their blue Army Service Uniform coats were in slim hanging bags, their formal hats at the bottom of the bags. The numerous pins, insignias and ribbons on their jackets would never survive the chest straps and seat belts of the troop benches.

  ****

  In the Blackhawk’s right cockpit seat, CW4 Hugh Rogan saw the orange day marker in the clearing, almost exactly where he had told his brother to place it. His brother Pat had to drive all the way from New York to the middle of West Virginia because the Air Defense Identification Zones around Washington and Camp David were absolutely insane ever since 9-11. When aircraft accidentally strayed into the Washington D.C. or Camp David ADIZ, missile-armed jet fighters would be scrambled for a visual check. The further from these controlled air spaces that the Blackhawk’s bogus emergency occurred, the fewer eyebrows would be raised. Any declared emergency even near the Camp David or Washington ADIZ would get a rapid flyover. Not so much out here in Podunk, West Virginia, 150 miles away. Especially not when the emergency involved a low-and-slow Army helicopter on a scheduled flight between two military installations.

  On the cockpit intercom, Rogan told his copilot, “Thar she blows. I’ve got visual on our marker.” The clearing was flat and unobstructed, and it was shielded from ground observation in all directions by thick stands of trees. West Virginia Route 33 was visible only a half mile away, on the south side of the trees. Interstate 79 was a few miles to the west, behind them.

  “I’ve got it too,” replied the copilot. “Orange day panel at eleven o’clock.”

  “All right, I’m calling it in.” Rogan switched to transmit on VHF. “Clarksburg Approach, this is Army Two-Niner-Five, with you at 7,000.” “Good morning, Army Two-Niner-Five. Altimeter 29.94, maintain 7,000 feet.”

  “Clarksburg, Army Two-Niner-Five, we want to declare an emergency.”

  “Go, Army Two-Niner-Five.”

  “Sir, we have a chip warning light, and we need to get this thing on the ground right now.” Chip detectors were probes inside the engine that would sense a tiny bit of broken metal flying around. When the chip light went off, you set down immediately, before a tiny fragment of metal potentially led to an exploding turbine engine. Sometimes the detectors malfunctioned and false alarmed. It was a completely plausible reason for a rapid emergency landing.

  “Two-Niner-Five, do you have Clarksburg airport in sight?”

  “Negative, but we do have a clear grass field in sight, and we’re putting her down.”

  “Two-Niner-Five, state fuel and souls on board.”

  “Clarksburg, we’re a little busy. Will advise on the ground.”

  “Understood, Two-Niner-Five.”

  CW4 Rogan switched back to the intercom only. “Get the checklists, and tell the crew to make sure that our customers are ready to land.”

  “Roger that,” said his copilot.

  The Blackhawk flared out and set down between the orange square and the trees, and Rogan killed the power to both engines. As soon as it was quiet enough in the cockpit, he took out his cell phone and called the Clarksburg tower. The number was already written on a small notepad attached to his leg with velcro. After two rings, the call was picked up. “Clarksburg approach, this is Army Two-Niner-Five. We’re on the ground, safe and sound.” Rogan’s real intention with this cell phone call was to allay their fears, so they would not call out the cavalry to go searching for a smoking hole in the ground. The mountains between their landing site and the Clarksburg tower twenty miles to the north blocked line-of-sight VHF radio transmissions. If Clarksburg knew that the Army Blackhawk had landed safely, they would hold off on alerting the entire world. Hence the cell phone call.

  “That’s great. We’re glad to hear that you landed safely.”

  “We didn’t want you to get too worked up. This happens once in a while. My crew chief is going to take a look under the hood. Usually it’s a bad sensor probe. We can switch it out in a couple of minutes just to be sure. We’ll call you back in a few when we know our status.”

  “Roger that, Army. Good luck.”

  Rogan switched off his cell phone, and on the intercom he told his copilot, “I’m doing this one myself. I’ve waited twenty years to visit my brother like this.” He pulled off his helmet, unbuckled himself and opened his side door. Then he jumped down into the high brown grass and ran for the tree line a hundred feet away, his boots crunching through the frost. The four rotors were still turning, but were visible now and slowing down. His brother Pat had to stay in cover, on the off chance that somebody upstairs was taking pictures. If he ever needed to explain this run to the trees, he would say that he was merely answering an urgent call of nature of the sitting variety. To complete the charade, once the blades stopped, his crew chief would climb on top of the helo and open an engine cowling.

  Pat was wearing a blue padded goose down coat with a hood, and gloves. It was cold enough to see their exhaled breath. “About time you slackers showed up. I’ve been waiting for hours, freezing my ass off.” They grinned at one another and shook hands. The Rogan brothers were not touchy-feely hugging types, but their joy was nonetheless genuine and unbounded.

  “Where did you get the orange panel?” asked Hugh.

  “It’s a poncho from Wal-Mart. I staked it down like you said, so it wouldn’t blow away.”

  “You got the videotape?”

  “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” The VHS tape was in a brown paper bag, inside a gallon-size slide-lock plastic bag. He handed the package to his brother.

  “Did you check it? I mean, did you watch it?”

  “Hell yes! It’s going to knock your socks off. Jamal Tambor, unplugged. I don’t know what you’re planning to do with it, but it’ll screw that commie traitor but good.”

  “Did you see Waylen?”

  “See him? Hell, we killed him! We had to.” After this admission, Pat rapidly blessed himself. “May God forgive me, but I’m not sorry.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Me and my last partner, Joey Vellegio. Don’t worry about him.”

  “So, where’s Waylen now?”

  “Oh, just hangin’ around his house.” Pat Rogan cocked his head to the side, coughed, and with his hand he mimed a noose jerking him upward. “Suicide. He couldn’t stand the shame.”

  “Pat…thanks for doing all this. I owe ya, big brother.”

  “No problem, Hulkster. It’s great to see you in your pilot suit. Mom would have been so proud.”

  “Hey…one more thing. Listen to the radio on your way back. And you might want to watch TV today, when you get home.”

  “Seriously? What channel?”

  CW4 Hugh Rogan laughed. “Yeah, what channel. All of ’em!” Behind him, the Blackhawk’s turbine engines began to wind up again. “Hey, I gotta go—they tell me I’m the pilot!” He stuffed the tape into a leg pocket on his flight suit, turned and ran back to his helicopter, giving two thumbs-up signs to his waiting crew and teammates.

  ****

  After only five minutes on the ground, Hugh Rogan increased power and pulled pitch. The powerful Blackhawk helicopter dipped its nose in salute, and then hurtled forward and up. As the ground receded beneath them, he called in again on VHF.

  “Clarksburg, this is Army Two-Niner-Five, back with you at 2,500 feet. We’re okay.”

  “Army Two-Niner-Five, glad to hear it. Ident. Do
you wish to cancel the emergency?”

  “Yes sir, we just had a chip detector malfunction. Now we’re good to go. Squawking ident.” Rogan pushed the identification switch, giving the Clarksburg tower an enhanced radar image, plus digitally encoded information about his aircraft.

  “Understood, Two-Niner-Five. Radar contact. State intentions.”

  “If our flight plan hasn’t dropped out of the system, we’d like to proceed as originally filed to Poppa Four Zero.” This was the civilian call sign for Camp David.

  “Army Two-Niner-Five, turn right to a heading of 080, climb out and maintain 7,000. Stand by for a revised clearance to Poppa Four Zero.”

  “Army Two-Niner-Five, heading 080, climb and maintain 7,000.”

  ****

  Their flight path took them across the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, between Maryland and Virginia. An hour after landing to pick up the videotape, the Blackhawk left West Virginia’s air space, flew over the Potomac River and entered Maryland. Born in the Appalachian Mountains behind them, the river formed the jigsaw boundary between Maryland and the states of West Virginia and Virginia, all the way to Washington, D.C., and the Chesapeake Bay. Out here in the foothills and piedmont country the river was a brilliant snake, its coils shining like a quicksilver ribbon in the morning sunlight. Washington was sixty air miles southeast, more if you followed the meanderings of the Potomac. Harper’s Ferry, the easternmost point of West Virginia, was only a dozen or so miles south.

  A thought popped into Phil Carson’s mind as he mentally traced the course of the river. He wondered if Wally Malvone’s house on the Potomac below Washington had ever been rebuilt since he had burned it down, or if it was just a vacant lot. And he wondered if Brad Fallon had ever made it to the ocean, or if he was still down there somewhere, resting on the bottom of the river.

  Three miles past the Potomac, out of the left side windows, they saw the white X formed by the crossing of interstates 81 and 70 at Hagerstown, Maryland. The intersection marked a spot only seventeen miles from Camp David. The forests of West Virginia were increasingly giving way to a patchwork of small farms, woods, villages and towns. They were seven minutes out. It was D-Day, but instead of hitting the beaches or dropping into a jungle LZ, they were going to land inside one of the most highly secure military compounds on the entire planet.

  The two enlisted crewmembers on the Blackhawk had their own positions on each side, forward of the troop seats and just behind the cockpit. Their gun hatches were closed on this winter flight. They were not carrying machine guns for this cross-country hop from Fort Campbell to “Naval Support Facility Thurmont,” military-speak for Camp David. After leaving Hagerstown’s air space and flying over open country again, the crew chief on the left gunner’s seat began to talk to the pilots on his helmet intercom. He stood and scanned outside and behind the helicopter through the window on his gun hatch.

  Carson looked out his left bay door window and saw a Marine Corps Super Cobra attack helicopter only a hundred yards away, coming up parallel to the Blackhawk. They were close enough to see the two helmeted pilots, sitting one behind the other in the nose of the aircraft. The Cobra was missile armed, and had a three-barreled minigun jutting out from its chin. This modern Super Cobra didn’t look very different from the Cobras Carson had occasionally seen in Vietnam, when they were making close-air-support rocket and gun runs. He never saw them in Laos or Cambodia, though. “Over the fence,” they were always on their own.

  Camp David had a twenty-mile exclusion zone around it when the president was there. Any civilian aircraft wandering into this air space would receive a similar armed welcome, and then they would be forced to land at the Hagerstown airport to meet some very unfriendly federal agents. Faster intruding aircraft would be met by F-16 Falcon fighters. Army Blackhawk 295 was expected today, so after a minute, the deadly Cobra attack helicopter rolled away and quickly disappeared.

  ****

  Camp David occupies 180 acres and is shaped roughly like a diamond, one-half mile from tip to tip. It sits atop a hill in the middle of Catoctin Mountain Park, a 10,000-acre preserve overseen by the National Park Service. The camp is surrounded by thick stands of Eastern hardwood trees, and its perimeter is visible from the air because of the cleared security strip around it.

  The helicopter landing field takes up much of the bottom of the diamond, an area the size of several football fields. If you divided the camp into two halves from top to bottom, the western half of the diamond would contain most of the support facilities for the camp. These would be the barracks for the Naval support personnel and the Marine guards, the water works, staff parking, and a military road inside the western perimeter, from the helicopter landing zone at the south to the barracks at the north.

  The eastern point of the diamond contains the reason for the entire camp: the presidential residence called the Aspen Lodge. The rest of the eastern half of Camp David is composed of other residences for visiting dignitaries, meeting and dining facilities, and the Laurel Lodge conference center. All of these lodges and support facilities are connected by asphalt lanes exquisitely maintained by Camp David’s own contingent of Navy Seabees. They wind between thick stands of birch, hazel, locust, beech, ash and oak trees. In the summertime these trees make Camp David a shady realm with short viewing distances. In the winter, when the trees are devoid of leaves, it is possible to look through this forest and sometimes catch glimpses of the multiple rows of wire fencing surrounding the camp. Camp David’s fences, sensors and cameras would be the envy of any maximum-security prison, but here they serve to keep unwanted visitors out, instead of prisoners in.

  The Blackhawk banked and turned as it descended, giving Carson a good view of the landing zone. Three “white top” Marine One helicopters were parked on an asphalt apron that led into a single large hangar. There were always three, in order to confound any terrorists who might try to assassinate the president with a shoulder-launched missile. Several other VH-60 “Whitehawks” were parked on the grass landing field. Like the Marine Ones, these VIP helicopters were painted forest green up to the tops of their windshields and troop doors, and above that, they were gleaming white except for their black rotor blades. Most of today’s guests were being shuttled up from Washington on these VIP versions of the military Blackhawk. By contrast, the flat black and dark green MH-60K looked like an old combat boot coming down among polished wingtips and loafers. The refueling probe jutting out from under the right side of its chin identified it as a special operations “Pavehawk.”

  The Blackhawk landed as directed at the bottom of the field, nearest to the southern tip of the diamond. They waited until the engines had shut down and the rotors had stopped to slide open the troop doors, deplane and stretch their legs after the three-and-a-half-hour flight. The pilots and crew chiefs were out first, the crew chiefs immediately pretending to check the chip sensor again.

  Standing by the aircraft, they took off their insulated field jackets and put on their blue ASU coats with the insignias and ribbons attached. Last on were their blue officer’s combination covers. The helicopter pilots, the Camp David team and the Raven Rock team briefly conferred.

  “Well, gentlemen, this is it,” said General Armstead. “Everything is set to go. I’ll escort Boone and Carson to the conference center, and then we’ll pull the old switcheroo.” Next the general addressed CW4 Rogan. “How did the malfunction story go over with them here?”

  “Perfect. We can stay here for at least twenty minutes without any trouble. Longer if we need it, but I wouldn’t push it much more than that. After that, the helicopter maintenance people here are bound to get nosy, and come down to help.”

  The general looked at his watch. “It’s 0940. I’ll be back before ten, so you only have to stall for that long.”

  “No problem, sir, we can do that.”

  “All right, good. As soon as I’m back, we’ll fly to Raven Rock. Be ready to light the fires when you see me coming.” The next hop,
to Site R, followed their scheduled two-leg flight plan. What was not officially scheduled was that General Armstead would be slipping out of the Camp David conference center and reboarding the helicopter just before it departed. Once Armstead was back aboard the helo, the “engine problem” would be fixed, and they would take off. The point-to-point movements of the helicopter were carefully monitored and tracked, but just who would be aboard for each leg was not so easily checked. This was the essence of the shell game at the core of their plan today.

  General Armstead gave his two ersatz staff officers one more looking over. “Are you ready, General Harper?”

  “I’m ready, sir,” said Carson.

  “And is my aide-de-camp ready?”

  “Yes sir, I’m ready, General,” said Boone. “Let’s get her done.”

  “Okay then,” said General Armstead. “Hi-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle. Into the dragon’s lair we go.”

  A white vehicle like a golf cart came zipping across the grassy field and met them at their helicopter. The cart had a roof and windshield, two conventional seats in the front, and two rear-facing seats behind them. A Marine corporal in dress blues parked the electric car, stepped out, came to attention and saluted.

  Boone came to attention and briefly returned his salute. This type of “transportation coordination” was one of the functions of a general’s aide-de-camp. “Are you our driver?” he asked. Armstead and Carson stood by the helicopter’s open bay, their briefcases in hand.

  “Yes sir, Major. But only to security. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course.”

  Lieutenant General Armstead and “Brigadier General Harper” sat in the back of the electric cart, facing aft. Boone sat up front in the passenger seat beside the enlisted driver. The Marine drove across the grass field between the parked VH-60 Whitehawks, and then along the asphalt toward the big hangar. The three big Marine One choppers were parked in a row on the paved apron. Marines in dress blue uniforms stood guard around them. They were not visibly armed. Boone knew that the Marines to worry about were the ones he could not see, the ones hidden in the trees with their sniper rifles. They would not be wearing dress blues, but camouflaged ghillie suits that gave them the appearance of a clump of brush. As snipers they were his brothers, but he did not want to meet them today.