by Dale Brown
On the handheld GPS navigation system attached to the control yoke, he called up Flight Plan Nine, the flight plan he had developed and tweaked over the past several weeks for this mission. He had rehearsed it several times on a desktop-computer flight simulator, even using real-world satellite and three-dimensional street-level photographic images to get the most detailed preview of the final moments of the flight. But that was before the diseases ravaging his body began destroying his vision, lungs, and nervous system, and he wondered if he had the strength to do it after all his hard work. It would be so easy, he thought, so peaceful, to just let go of his sense of duty and responsibility, accept the horrible death that had been imposed on him, and let the inevitable happen.
But then, just as his spirit was waning to the point of surrender, he looked out the cockpit window. One of the soldiers had brought an American flag out onto the playa so Carl could see the wind direction and strength. He reached behind the copilot’s seat and withdrew his own flag: the flag of the Knights of the True Republic of America. It was a Stars and Stripes flag but with the coiled snake from the Gadsden flag, the original flag conceived by South Carolina army officer Christopher Gadsden and adopted by the colonial American Navy and Marine Corps, in the stripes field. But instead of a coiled timber rattlesnake shaking its rattle and warning others to stay away as on the Gadsden flag, the flag of the True Republic of America showed the rattlesnake striking. The symbology was plain: those who carried this flag would no longer be warning our enemies not to oppose us, but its followers were ready to attack.
The persons he was working for weren’t members of the Knights of the True Republic, but it was clear that they shared the same ideas and vision, and he was happy to contribute his flying skills for them. There were armies of men, women, and even children throughout the West, willing to risk their liberty and even their lives to stand under the Knights’ flag, willing to do whatever it took to wake up a comatose American public, warn them of the danger of those bureaucrats and politicians who wanted more government and more taxation, and call on others to follow them into battle against those who were driving the nation into the ground. But it was not enough to rally around the flag — someone had to carry it into battle.
This flag was special: he had fashioned it out of material from old uniforms. He hated to soil it with his own blood and vomit, but a flag carried into battle would naturally be soiled with the stain of battle. The important thing was not to make sure the flag stayed clean, but make sure that the world, and especially the enemy, saw the flag at the front of an advancing and angry army. That was his mission: to carry the flag in the Knights of the True Republic of America’s next and greatest offensive.
He started the right engine of the King Air, manipulating the controls more by rote memory and feel than by sight, then taxied forward onto the playa. It even seemed as if the winds cooperated and died down right at that moment so he had his choice of which way to go, so he decided to head directly northwest toward his objective. Making sure he didn’t apply any brakes so he wouldn’t drive the nosewheel into the sand, Carl smoothly advanced the throttles and pulled the yoke all the way back to his stomach with trembling muscles. The nosewheel popped off the playa, helping the big turboprop accelerate. As soon as the King Air left the ground at best-angle-of-climb airspeed, Carl pushed the nose forward, flying just a few feet above the playa in ground effect, being buoyed by the plane’s wingtip vortices reflecting off the ground. He retracted the landing gear, staying in ground effect until reaching normal climb speed, then raised the nose, incrementally retracted flaps, and performed a normal climb.
His mission was finally under way. It might be his final mission, but, he reminded himself, it was the first for the Knights of the True Republic of America.
Northwest of Battle Mountain, Nevada
That same time
“We lucked out — I’m still getting an ELT,” John de Carteret said on intercom. He had set the L-Tronics emergency beacon locator to search for both VHF and UHF beacon signals and was monitoring a tiny needle mounted atop the glare shield. The GPS navigator — an older model, not updated for several years, but with the essential CAP info still valid — showed a series of rectangles with numbers designating their grid identification. “Ten miles to the grid entry point.”
“Good deal,” Patrick said. He pressed the radio transmit button on his control yoke and spoke: “Battle Mountain Base, CAP 2722 on Romeo-Seventeen, five minutes to grid entry, still receiving an ELT. Do you want us to start homing or continue to the entry point? Over.”
“CAP 2722, Battle Mountain Base, start homing right away,” Rob Spara radioed back. “I’d hate to lose the signal and not get a good bearing to it. We’ll log you in the grid at this time and turning onto an ELT bearing.”
“CAP 2722, roger,” Patrick said. On intercom: “I’m descending to fifty-five hundred, crew, flaps ten, fifteen inches,” reciting the power settings and flight-control settings aloud for everyone’s information. “Let’s go get ’em, John.”
“Roger that,” John said. “Right fifteen degrees.” He copied the latitude and longitude readouts from the GPS receiver, marked the coordinates on her sectional chart, took the magnetic heading from the compass once Patrick rolled out, matched the magnetic heading to a nearby radio navaid compass rose, and drew a line on his chart. That was the first search bearing — their target was somewhere along that line on the chart.
Unfortunately, the ELT signal was not very strong, and the directional needle refused to stay steady. Patrick made a few course corrections, trying to average out the swings in the directional indications, but it still refused to stay in the center of the dial. He made a few adjustments in the signal gain and volume, trying to get the needle to stay steady, then shook his head in frustration. “I’m chasing that needle too much and not getting a true bearing,” he said. “Let’s try a wing shadow and see if we can get a bearing.” He made a slight right turn so Leo could clear for traffic on the left, then said, “Coming left.”
“Clear left,” Leo said.
Patrick began a fifteen-degree bank left turn, and they all listened to the emergency locator beacon’s PING!… PING!… PING! sound. Just before completing a circle, the signal stopped. As they continued the turn, the signal returned. The Cessna’s wing blocked the ELT’s signal from reaching the antenna atop the plane, which indicated that the ELT was somewhere off the right wing when the signal went dead. “Got it,” John said. “Bearing zero-five-zero.”
“Roger that,” Patrick said. “Zero-five-zero.” He turned to that heading, and both John and Leo searched out their windows. John punched up the GPS coordinates, marked the spot on his chart, then drew a line corresponding to the wing-shadow bearing to the ELT. “Let’s get this sucker, guys.”
But after ten minutes on that heading, nearing the edge of the grid, they hadn’t seen a thing. “I’ll go south and we’ll try another wing shadow before that ELT dies,” Patrick said. “Coming right.” He flew five minutes on a southerly heading, then set up another orbit.
The signal faded again — much quicker this time, indicating that the ELT’s battery was quickly dying — and John computed another bearing: “Now I have three-zero-zero bearing to the ELT, Patrick,” he said. He drew a large circle on his sectional chart where his two bearing lines crossed. “It’s there, plus or minus five miles.”
“Sounds like my early days in celestial navigation in the B-52,” Patrick said as he began a turn to the new bearing. “If I was within four miles of actual position after an hour of taking celestial sextant shots, I was ‘king of the wing.’ ”
“‘Celestial navigation’?” Leo remarked. “You mean, navigation using the sun, moon, and stars? Are you kidding me?”
“Long before the days of GPS, we flew bombers all over the world using nothing but a calibrated telescope shoved up a hole on top of a bomber or tanker, celestial precomputation tables, a watch, and a compass,” Patrick said. “Just two generatio
ns removed from Sir Francis Drake circumnavigating the globe, and one generation from Curtis LeMay in World War Two, leading hundreds of bombers across the Atlantic. The idea was to get close enough to your target to see it visually, or at least on radar, if you had it and it was working. We’re doing the very same thing now. Relay the coordinates of the center of that circle and we’ll have the Hasty team head that way.”
“Battle Mountain Hasty copies those coordinates,” Bellville radioed after John had transmitted the coordinates on the FM repeater channel. A moment later: “Looks like it’s at the southeastern edge of the Townsend ranch. Can you give them a call and get us permission to go on their land, Base?”
“Roger that,” Spara replied.
“We’ll get him this time,” Slotnick said as they rolled out on the new heading. Leo began a series of visual scans, starting at the top of the window he was looking out of, then traveling down toward the bottom of the window in a series of stop-look-scan, stop-look-scan segments, then starting at the top again but shifted slightly in the direction of flight. Stopping and looking at the ground for brief moments was the best way to spot a target, because in continuous scanning, the human brain would fill in fine details of the terrain, so important details such as debris could be missed.
But after thirty minutes of searching both bearings they had computed, Patrick could tell Slotnick was getting frustrated. “How’s it looking, Leo?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Leo said. “It’s clear as a bell, there’s no vegetation or anything blocking the view, but I don’t see anything — no smoke, no signs of disturbed ground, nothing.”
“We’re losing the ELT,” John said. “The needle on the DF is just flopping around. Maybe we should go to the center of the grid and search from there.”
“I’m not ready to give up on it just yet, John,” Patrick said. “I think we had a good position. It’s the best clue we’ve got. How are you doing back there, Leo? Need a break yet?”
“Five minutes would be good,” Slotnick replied, rubbing his eyes.
“I’ll start a right-expanding box search around the intersection of those two bearings,” Patrick said. “You got it, John.” John programmed the GPS receiver with the starting coordinates and a right-expanding-box-search pattern, then started his own search scan out the right window as Patrick reversed course and began flying the box-search pattern with shallow right-hand turns — Patrick had to make shallower turns because otherwise the lowered right wing would block John’s view out the window.
Meanwhile, the ground team was approaching the original search reference point. The ground was muddy but drivable using four-wheel drive. “Okay, guys, we’re coming up on the original intersection spot,” David Bellville said to the others in the van. “The air team reports that the ELT signal is fading and might not be reliable, so we’re going to proceed to the intersection spot and get ready to respond if the air team makes contact. While we’re waiting, we’ll search for any signs of a crash. Let’s get sunscreened up and ready to go fast and hard.”
Just then, they heard on the repeater radio: “Battle Mountain Hasty Team, this is CAP 2722, we’re starting an orbit over a possible objective sighting, stand by.” A moment later, John read off the geographic coordinates from the plane’s GPS navigation device.
Bellville quickly plotted the coordinates on his county map. “About seven miles northeast,” he said. “The Andorsen ranch. Do we have standing permission to go on their property, or do we need to give them a call first?”
“We have standing authorization,” Fitzgerald said. “He’s offered to lend us some of his ranch hands in the past — a stand-up guy. Want to head that way?”
“A-firm,” Bellville said. He checked his portable GPS receiver. “Need a steer to the nearest gate, Fid?”
“I know every inch of this desert, Dave — I don’t need no stinkin’ GPS.”
Bellville just shrugged and shook his head — he could never tell when Fitzgerald was kidding or not.
Several minutes later they reached the gate plotted on Fitzgerald’s chart, only to find it padlocked. “It’s locked!” Fitzgerald exclaimed. “Since when does Andorsen lock his remote gates?”
Bellville read the large sign mounted next to the gate. “It’s not just a ‘No Trespassing’ sign — he’s warning intruders of the use of deadly force! What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, but the CAP are not freakin’ trespassers,” Fitzgerald said. “We have standing permission to enter his property. Let’s just cut the lock off and get going.”
“We can’t cut locks, Fid, and you know it,” Bellville said. “But we do have standing permission, so I think we’ll be okay if we climb the gate and go in on foot. Meanwhile we can have Battle Mountain Base call the Andorsens and have one of their hands drive us to the crash site.”
“I’d rather just buy Mr. Andorsen a new padlock,” Fitzgerald grumbled. But he turned to the cadets in the back: “Looks like we’re going in on foot, guys. Let’s hustle.”
* * *
“Shallow up the bank angle a tad, Patrick… good, right there,” John said. He had drawn a circle on the window with a grease pencil and was directing Patrick’s orbit over his sighting so the object he was looking at stayed in the circle. Meanwhile, Leo had a pair of binoculars out and was scanning the area out the right-rear window in short cycles, being careful not to give himself vertigo. “Still can’t make it out, but it’s definitely not natural.”
“I’ll set up an orbit,” Patrick said. “If it’s a good target, your eyes will come back to it in the scan. Pick out details around it in case we have trouble picking it out.”
“Roger.”
“CAP 2722, this is Battle Mountain Hasty, we’re inside the gate and en route to the contact,” Fitzgerald radioed. “We had to go in on foot because the gate was locked, so we’re about thirty minutes out. What do you got?”
“Still trying to make it out, Hasty,” Patrick radioed back.
“Tell Slotnick to stop trying to superanalyze it and just report,” Fitzgerald radioed impatiently. “First impression is always the best. Is it a crash or not?”
“Leo?”
“It looks like an abandoned pickup or some farm equipment, not a plane,” Leo said, lowering the binoculars, clearing his eyes, then focusing again. “It’s too small to be a plane.” But his voice implied he still wasn’t sure. “Can you go lower, Patrick?”
“Sure. I’ll switch to a left orbit. John, eyes off the target, back me up on altitude and airspeed, and you got the radios. Report we’re going to five hundred AGL for a closer look.”
“Roger,” John said. On the repeater, he radioed, “Battle Mountain Base, CAP 2722 leaving one thousand AGL for five hundred for a closer look at a target.”
“Roger, 2722,” Spara radioed back. “Advise when you’re climbing back to patrol altitude.”
“Wilco.”
Patrick started a shallow descent while reversing the direction of orbit. He took a peek at what he was orbiting over every now and then while continuing to monitor his bank angle, altitude, and airspeed. “Still hard to tell,” he said, “but I think you might be right, Leo — I don’t think it’s a plane.”
“I’d expect our objective to not be busted up so bad if the ELT is still working,” Leo said.
“Try not to create any expectations,” Patrick offered. “We’re looking for evidence of a downed plane, not a downed plane. Don’t decide ahead of time what it’s going to look like. Crashed airplanes almost never look like airplanes.”
“Roger.” Leo used his telescopic digital camera to study the scene. “Nah, looks like an old hay baler or something, with pieces of tarps lying around,” he said. “We can go back up to patrol altitude, Patrick.”
“Roger,” Patrick said. “John, report that we’re—”
“Stand by!” Leo suddenly shouted. “I saw a glint of a reflection, like off a windscreen! Possible target contact, eight o’clock!”
“Keep it in
sight, Leo,” Patrick said, forcing himself to not get too excited and forget about flying the plane — every mission had dozens of false sightings. “I’ll do a shallow left turn and stay at five hundred.”
Leo was straining to keep the target in sight out of the left-rear window. “It’s about fifty yards south of the hay baler — I fixated on the hay baler and stopped scanning,” he said. “It’s lying on its left side. No wings, but the cockpit and cabin look in pretty good shape. Hot damn, I think we got it!”
“Everybody calm down and relax,” Patrick said. “Let’s stay heads-up and keep on doing our jobs until we set up an orbit around it. John…”
“Got it,” John said. On the repeater, he radioed, “Battle Mountain Base, CAP 2722, maneuvering to investigate a possible target contact, remaining at five hundred AGL.”
“Roger, 2722.”
“Battle Mountain Hasty copies, and we have 2722 in sight on the horizon,” Bellville radioed. “We’re about twenty minutes away.”
A few minutes later, Patrick had set up his orbit around a blue-and-white light aircraft. The belly was badly crumpled, as if it had pancaked in at a high rate of descent; the landing gear and wings were gone, and soon they saw that the engine and propeller were ripped off the fuselage too. “Call it in, John,” Patrick said. “Good job, Leo.”
“With pleasure, sir.” On the repeater, John radioed, “Battle Mountain Base, CAP 2722 has made target contact, fuselage of a white-and-blue light plane, undercarriage, engine, propeller, and wings missing, no evidence of fire, no sign of any persons yet.”
“I got one,” Leo said as he snapped pictures. He saw the grisly sight of a body half protruding from the right side of the windshield, bent backward along the right side of the fuselage at a very unnatural angle. “I see one victim sticking out through the windshield.” John called it in.
* * *
“Base, this is Hasty, we found a section of wing,” Fitzgerald radioed a few minutes later. They passed by the crumpled piece of aluminum without stopping. “Marking the position. We’re ten minutes out. We copy the report of a victim.”
