Special Access

by Mark A. Hewitt

  Hunter left the court right behind Swain and met a big, smiling Navy captain offered a bottle of water. “Are you guys done?”

  Nearly breathless, his chest heaving and shirt drenched, Hunter nodded and removed the racquet’s safety cord from his wrist before tossing his racquet and goggles onto a pile of his belongings. “Yes, Sir. He said he twisted his ankle, which should make me the winner. From my old flying days, a kill is a kill. That should also be $500.”

  Surprise showed on McGee’s weather-beaten, heavily lined face. “I guess you’re buying the beer.”

  Hunter drained the water bottle in four long slugs. “Hell, I’ll buy dinner as long as I don’t have to walk. You guys up for lunch or dinner?”

  “I really ought to get them home. Nicole needs to finish some homework, and I have a bunch of honey-dos to take care of.”

  “I have to study and work on my paper.”

  “I have to tell you that behind-the-back shot made me think you really are Master Yoda.” He almost added that his SEALs considered themselves Jedis but let it pass. There would be another time.

  “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then,” Hunter said. “It was all luck.”

  “From my vantage point, it wasn’t luck.” Moving closer and lowering his voice, he asked, “I wonder if we could talk about your paper.”

  “Sure. What about?”

  “I’d like to better understand what you’re working on.”

  “One idea I’m tinkering with is designed to demonstrate how special-purpose quiet aircraft can be employed in an interagency environment. That’s pretty straightforward.”

  “Can your airplane help my guys?”

  “I’d think your guys would be all over this technology.”

  “Not quite. Talk about weapons and other maritime-related capabilities, and yes. We nearly have an unlimited budget. Go against the Army or Air Force, and we’re SOL. I think your little airplane might be a game-changer.”

  “I think it is, and it has a history of doing so. Want me to call you when I get home, or maybe we can meet in the morning and go down to the SCIF and talk?”

  “Let’s meet in the morning before class. That was great stuff, Duncan.” McGee pointed to the open court.

  “Thanks, Bill. Safe travels home.” Hunter touched his fingers to his head.

  McGee waved in lieu of a salute. “See you tomorrow.”

  The drive back to Newport was uneventful. Hunter glimpsed the ratty Honda early in the return trip in his rearview mirror but didn’t know he was being followed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  0735 December 8, 2002

  Henry E. Eccles Library, Naval War College

  Hunter, a little early for his meeting with McGee, was about to stride into the spacious library in Hunter Hall when he noticed a new, shiny brass plaque left of the double doors. The large wooden sign over the doors announced it was the Henry E. Eccles Library. “Let me guess. Another admiral.”

  Duncan discovered Henry Effingham Eccles was a Rear Admiral and a major figure at the Naval War College from the late 1940s through the 1970s, a man recognized as a thinker and writer about naval logistics and military theory.

  “Who knew?” he wondered aloud.

  “Who knew what?” a voice asked from behind.

  Hunter always found McGee’s voice incongruous. It should sound like a hard, demanding drill instructor, but it was more like a radio announcer’s voice in tone and timbre.

  “Another famous admiral who made a name for himself. It says here Eccles was closely associated with the Naval War College and served as confidante and advisor to successive presidents of the College and got the library named after him.”

  “Ah. SEALs are difficult to impress. Ready?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  They entered the building and walked to the SCIF door just to the right inside the library. Ensuring they were free of any electronic devices, they entered.

  The clerk behind the counter recognized the civilian but not the captain. “Good morning, Mr. Hunter. You’re early this morning. What can I get you?”

  “Nothing this time, Tim, but I’ll be back later this afternoon. Will you be here?”

  “Sir, I’m always here. See you later.”

  Hunter smiled and waved to the classified-document librarian and led McGee to a desk with two chairs toward the back of the facility among rows of tightly shelved, classified documents. Hunter watched the SEAL rapidly scan the windowless room.

  McGee relaxed and sat first. “I still can’t believe you beat a racquetball pro. I swear, I rarely saw the ball. It moved that fast. You guys seemed to know exactly where it was or was going. That really was amazing, Duncan.”

  “Thank you, Sir. What’s up?”

  “Tell me about your quiet airplane project.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What’s so special about quiet airplanes?”

  Duncan grinned. “I’m not trying to be flippant, but they’re inaudible. I think when a SEAL asks, ‘What’s so special about quiet airplanes,’ you’re really asking, ‘How can a quiet airplane help my guys?’”

  “That’s it.”

  “Let me tell you how I thought quiet airplanes could help the Border Patrol, just to establish a frame of reference. Then I’ll tell you what my bud Greg and I have done and some of the history I found in this library. How about that?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “First if all, the problem of aircraft doing any kind of surveillance or reconnaissance work is that they’re noisy. It’s just not sufficient to muffle the engine of a piston-driven plane….”

  “…and jets are too noisy.”

  “Right. The only real solution is a glider, but they have no power, so you need something that can get you from point A to point B and back. The best solution is a prop. The secret is to make it quiet. Props are very efficient, but, like engines, very noisy. If you see a propeller-driven airplane, you hear the propeller and not the engine.

  “Back in the late ‘60s, the Army felt it needed a low-altitude surveillance airplane for reconnaissance over the battlefield, especially at night. The big SR-71s and U-2s had to work during daylight hours for their cameras to function. The problem the Army had in Vietnam was North Vietnam moved hundreds, if not thousands, of VC at night, fixing the bridges we blew up, digging tunnels, and what have you. With thick jungle canopies, the US didn’t know how to overcome the advantage the VC had when they hunkered down during the day and went to work at night.

  “The state of technology was such that the first-generation FLIRs and night-vision devices required not high-flying airplanes but something that could get low. Hence, the notion of a low-flying, acoustically quiet aircraft to take pictures or relay intelligence real-time was the ticket to success.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “The US Army Research Lab pushed several TS contracts to their contractors to make not only a quiet airplane, a motorized glider if you will, but amazing amounts of research went to quiet a propeller so it was virtually undetectable on the ground. A combination of a super quiet prop, a quiet engine, and airframe smoothing, like conformal antennas and such, provided an airplane that could fly low and not be heard at night by a human.”

  “How low we talking about?”

  “Believe it or not, that’s still TS. It’s in here.” Hunter pointed at a shelf of classified documents. I can tell you that, in open sources, guys flying these planes at night were able to get within a few hundred feet above the VC walking along a very noisy river without alerting them to their presence. Those guys also used the first-generation night-vision devices.

  “That leads me to the Border Patrol. I viewed the mission of detecting VC movement at night as the same problem as illegal aliens moving at night. Illegal aliens and drug smugglers typically move at that time. Anyone flying a regular plane at night would alert those on the ground to take cover or countermeasures. Some twin-blade helicopters can be heard at night five to s
even miles away. Even if the aircraft carry FLIR or low-light cameras, the problem becomes where to aim the sensor. The second problem is when you have a sensor, you have to deal with the soda-straw effect.”

  “Soda-straw effect?”

  “Yeah. Look through a straw, and what do you see? Only what you’re aiming at. FLIRs and night-vision devices are great, but if you alert your enemy, the ugly little secret is the bad guys are very adept at thwarting those devices when they hear the aircraft.

  “So what does the USAF do? It makes a Predator fly higher and uses better optics for definition. However, high-granularity intelligence goes right down the tubes. How many Afghani kids have been blown up by Predator missiles because of poor granularity of intelligence?”

  “Probably too many.”

  “All I want to do is kill or interdict bad guys. My suggestion to the Border Patrol leadership was, if you didn’t alert the bad guys, you increased your chances of locating and apprehending them, because they’d move without feeling they’d been detected. You could even look across the border with a FLIR, a low-light camera, or a moving-target-indicator radar to see what was coming. Couldn’t you monitor the actions of the bad guys and radio your ground forces to interdict them? If a bad guy got away at night, a quiet aircraft flying low overhead could easily detect what he was doing and guide an agent to his position.”

  “Makes sense. Too much sense.”

  “What little I know of your business, I can see where a quiet airplane would help SEALs when landing on a beach, getting on a ship, doing all kinds of things at night. You guys operate primarily at night, too, and you’d have a pair of eyes watching the battlefield or the ship, talking to you and your guys. I think magical things would happen.”

  McGee sat quietly, his mind racing over what to say next. “I tell you, Duncan, if I had access to your quiet airplane, we would have gotten bin Laden.”

  “Probably a long time ago.”

  “Yes, a long time ago. We went into Afghanistan with the right guys and the wrong equipment, like unarmored HumVees. The Air Force was hell-bent on flying Predators, and they didn’t help us find anyone. They blew up a lot of Taliban and al-Qaeda. That’s a good thing, but they weren’t helpful in our operations after detecting them.”

  “That’s really it. Low-flying aircraft see things in great detail, because bad guys don’t think they’re being watched, especially at night. High-flying aircraft, with sensors, lose sufficient detail that they’re only ten to twenty percent effective. Another area where a Schweizer comes into play is in the jungle arena. By flying at low altitude and checking for heat signatures at an angle, drug-lab heat signatures pop up like flares. Trying to look straight down, the canopy diffuses the heat signature so significantly that you can’t detect the lab.”

  Duncan looked at his companion. “What else, Sir?”

  “How do I get one of these airplanes?”

  “Such a deal I have for you, but we have to get to class first. Are you serious?”

  “As a heart attack.”

  “We need to talk to my bud Greg. Did your wife ever call him?”

  “She did.”

  “I think you could contact SOCOM and ask why the CIA couldn’t reprogram one of its Night Riders for you guys. I can tell you what I did for the Border Patrol. It resulted in Greg Lynche bringing a demo to Texas. That convinced the USBP leadership a quiet airplane was a complete game-changer for the border. I don’t think you’ll have a problem getting help, but a conversation with Greg or someone from his old place would be very helpful.”

  Hunter couldn’t tell if he saw fatigue or fire in McGee’s eyes. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m wondering why I didn’t know about these planes.”

  “I would’ve been surprised if you did. There are really only a handful out there, and they’re very special aircraft. Schweizer sells every one they build, and they don’t make many per year. They’re usually employed in a counterdrug role. When I was in the Border Patrol, the Democrats in the administration fought the INS at every corner to keep the Border Patrol from getting those planes.”

  “Say again?”

  “The Democratic administration in the mid-to-late 90’s wasn’t interested in curtailing illegal immigration, and they worked, or their lawyers did, to thwart Border Patrol agents from doing their jobs. The funding for the USBP was horrible. It was so bad, some Border Patrol agents siphoned gas from cars seized from drug smugglers so they could fuel BP trucks and chase illegal aliens.

  “You can imagine the conniption they had when the Chief Patrol Agent went to INS for additional funding for quiet airplanes. They laughed him out of the office. If it wasn’t for a Republican congressman, who got an earmark for three airplanes, the BP would never have received a dime.

  “The ultimate tragedy was that the administration killed the program. There was no way the Democrats wanted the Border Patrol to actually control the border. I found a way to get some money and the airplanes, and the BP leadership didn’t tell the shitheads in Washington. The bottom line, Sir, is you’ll need a high-power sponsor to reprogram one of these airplanes.”

  “Let’s discuss CONOPS and plan of attack after class.”

  “I’ll call Greg before I go upstairs to see what he thinks. If he can’t get you a Schweizer, there may be another solution or two.”

  “I thought you said these Schweitzers are unique.”

  “Schweizers. They are, but we have to run. It wouldn’t look good if the president was late to class. I’ll tell you more later.”

  “I have to tell you, Duncan, I’m going way out on a limb with this. SEALs have some bad history with the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA. We call them the Three Stooges, because they always failed us when we needed them. When they promised to be somewhere or deliver something, they weren’t or couldn’t. CIA failed us in Grenada. NSA failed us in Beirut, and 9-11? Hell. Drive by their building on the weekend, and the parking lot’s deserted. Don’t get me started on the FBI.”

  “Sounds like a typical bunch of ground guys. Aviation pukes are a little different. Trust me.”

  McGee looked at the grinning Hunter. “OK. Meet you back here at 1100?”

  “Aye, aye, my captain.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  0755 December 8, 2002

  Silent Aero Systems Vienna, Virginia

  “What are the chances you can get someone from your old place to demo a Schweizer for a bunch of SEALs?” Hunter asked.

  “Well, hello to you, too.” Lynche smiled and set down his cup of coffee.

  “I’m sorry. I’m late for class, and our class President and thirty-five-year SEAL just discovered what a quiet airplane could do for his guys in Afghanistan.”

  “I wonder how he found out. OK. I’ll make a couple calls. I’m not sure if there’s an agency asset in the country. I’ll call Nicky to see if there’s one in Elmira. Maybe someone can make a visit. Call me back after lunch?”

  “You’re a gentleman and a scholar.”

  “You’re the scholar.”

  “Thank you, Sir. Hello to Connie.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  0730 December 13, 2002

  Quonset State Airport Newport, Rhode Island

  Hunter arrived at the FBO thirty minutes before Lynche's ETA. At nineteen degrees Fahrenheit, he still wasn’t acclimated to the cold, moist New England air and hurried to get out of the cold whenever he was outside. The heater of the 1967 Corvette kept him nice and toasty, as he waited for McGee to arrive and Lynche to land. When an old Green Riviera pulled into the parking lot, Hunter momentarily thought, Is this the advance party of a car show? What a nice car!

  When McGee pulled up beside Hunter’s car, he looked at Duncan and waggled his eyebrows a couple times grinning like an idiot.

  Shutting off the idling two-seater, Hunter ignored the cold, as he climbed from his race car. “Holy shit, Batman!” he said, more dramatically than what was called for.

  McGee climbed out nonchalantl
y. “I hope these babies will still be here by the time we get back.”

  “She’s beautiful. Stunning, Bill. ’66-’67 Riviera?”

  “1965. It was my mom’s. I’ve had it for seven years. One of these days, I’ll restore it. Only 37,000 miles—all original. I heard someone brought a race car to school, but I had no idea it was you. My God, that’s an incredible car. Is it street legal?”

  “Oh, yes. One of my hobbies is this 1967 Corvette coupe. Aluminum block 427. It pumps out 600 ponies.” Duncan raised the hood. “There are several racetracks in this part of the country.”

  “Drag racing?” McGee saw more than a few big-block engines, but the motor under the hood was the most impressive he’d ever seen.

  “No, Sir. Grand touring, or GT. Get Ferraris, Jaguars, Porsches, and anything else with a ton of cubic inches and headers and chase each other over a two-mile track. There’s a famous track in Connecticut, Lime Rock. I had this out there a few weeks ago. Came in third in a classic challenge race. I was outdriven by a couple of Jags and a Ferrari. I’m still learning. You know behind every great Corvette…is a Ferrari, a Jaguar, and a Porsche.”

  McGee laughed. He was definitely in a good mood. Hunter said, “It was great fun and wild.”

  The sound of an approaching airplane interrupted the two men’s gushing over their cars. As they walked toward the FBO, McGee glanced back at the two vehicles—Beauty and the Beast.

  Three minutes later, a red and gold-trimmed airplane with twin-tail booms with engines fore and aft taxied in front of the fixed-base operator’s office. McGee suddenly recognized the aircraft. “Isn’t that the BAT-21?”

  “Yes, Sir. The civilian Cessna 337 Skymaster or the military’s O-2. It’s a 1967, one of the very first ones ever produced, and you’ll see it’s in great shape.”

  Lynche killed the front engine, set the parking brake, and opened the copilot’s seat for the SEAL. Hunter led by shedding his coat and throwing it behind the back seat. McGee took his cue and removed his coat before climbing into the rear of the airplane.