by Kurt Winans
In reviewing the events of her actions, Courtney came to a self-realization. The act of killing a man had been easier to carry out than she would have ever believed, and the release of some of the hate felt good. She wasn’t really sure how she had gotten to that point of needing such a release, but Samuel had obviously recognized the need for it. Courtney wondered if the hateful feelings were perhaps due to pent up frustrations over Mason, and whoever the woman was that she believed he was seeing on the side. Or perhaps it was because of the death of Chance many years before. He had been a wonderful brother-in-law during the early years of her marriage to Mason, and she, along with the rest of the family, missed him dearly. Maybe it was due to the fact of what Savanah had to face. She was such a sweet young girl with a love for life, but there was a chance that her life would end before she would be old enough to love a man with all her soul and bare children of her own.
Having been notified by the graveyard shift of the arrival the previous evening, no one during the transfer to day shift gave it much thought. As the men and women within the control tower at the Centennial Airport were either preparing to depart, or pouring a cup of coffee to begin their six o’clock Saturday morning shift, a helicopter parked at the extreme southern end of the facility requested clearance for departure. According to the log books, the helicopter had been parked overnight at the request of the local FBI section chief, as it was to be part of the planned celebration at the Air Force Academy in the coming hours. Also noted within the log was that two women wearing black suits had shown proper identification as federal agents, and had requested that a fuel truck top off the helicopter that night as opposed to waiting until morning.
As Travis Connor, the morning shift supervisor, read the log entry, he asked no one in particular, “Federal agents. Alright, but what agency were they from?”
The graveyard supervisor who was just about to exit heard the generalized question and said, “Well his entry said by the request of the local FBI section chief, so I assume the agents were FBI.”
“Well that would make sense, but he made no mention of that or the agents names. For that matter, there’s no information about an arrival time of the helicopter or a flight plan. I just wish he would leave more detailed log entries, so I wouldn’t have to ask him those questions the next time that I see him.”
“I agree that he should provide more detailed reports, but I’m afraid that’s just wishful thinking by the both of us. The helicopter probably came in not long before I started my shift, but when I tried to get some information, he seemed upset that I wanted to keep him a few minutes for questions after his shift had already ended. If he intended to stick with his regular pattern, then I was standing in the way of him going out to begin his weekend with some late night debauchery. Besides, he outranks both of us with his seniority and rarely lets us forget it. If he cleared the helicopter to be here overnight then who are we to argue, especially since we already cleared it for departure?”
What Travis Connor and his counterpart had overlooked, in spite of actually mentioning it during their conversation, was that the timing of both the arrival and the departure had been intentional. It was a well-known fact that the best time to pull something over on someone with regard to security measures was either at the very beginning, or at the completion of, their work shift. That was when most employees and supervisors, including those such as their high and mighty evening counterpart, were likely to suffer from their worst loss of focus.
After being granted clearance for departure moments before the discussion in the control tower had concluded, the MIL MI-8 HIP-C helicopter lifted off and was well on its way to being clear of the greater Denver area. According to the planned intent, it followed a southerly course set to the west of interstate-25 and hugged the foothills while flying low for added camouflage. From the crews perspective the easiest aspect of their mission had just been accomplished, and they were aware that things would get increasingly difficult before the day was through. When reaching the first of the intended rendezvous locations, the two pilots would need to top off the fuel tanks of their bird once again and take on some extra containers for when they were needed as accelerators. Then there was the human cargo element, and the need for all of them to gear up properly for the pending attack. Of course the vital and most challenging aspect of that first landing would be to remain undetected in that location for several hours.
Seated comfortably within the luxurious family suite at Kyle Field on the campus of Texas A&M University, Samuel and Savanah watched their beloved Aggies warm up forty-five minutes prior to the gridiron battle against the L.S.U. Tigers while Victoria conversed with some friends. As per the norm for all home games, Samuel and Victoria had arrived from their ranch the previous evening to enjoy dinner and comfortable hotel accommodations close to campus. Then several hours before kickoff they made the short drive over to their reserved parking spot, ascended to the confines of their stadium suite, and enjoyed the spoils of what multiple years of large donations to the university had helped to provide. A short time later other members of the Tillman family would arrive, with Savanah then usually occupying her current seat next to her grandfather during the game.
On this particular day, as it was the final home game of the season, Samuel once again flashed back to the fond memories of his youth when as a boy he attended all the home games with his parents. Then his thoughts shifted to a few years later when he proudly became a third generation student at the university. Throughout those four seasons he never missed a home game as the Aggies were one institution within the now defunct Southwestern Conference. Samuel passionately cheered them on while standing for the entirety of every game in true twelfth man tradition as a faithful member of the corps of cadets. It was during one such occasion that he had kissed his future wife Victoria for the first time, as another valued school tradition dictated that those cadets lucky enough to have female companionship during the game would kiss that young lady after an Aggie touchdown. Of course all of those visions in Samuel’s memory of time spent in and around College Station also included the witnessing of several pep rally bonfires, and the tragedy involving loss of life which forever changed how those celebratory events would be managed. Samuel, along with many others, also witnessed one entire side of the stadium being imploded for renovation purposes. As a result of that massive renovation project, the suite that his family currently occupied for the home Aggie games came into being before the 2015 season.
Samuel and Victoria were indeed proud to boast, like both sets of their parents before them, that they were native Texans and Aggies through and through. As alumni and major donors of both academic and athletic endeavors for Texas A&M University, they had developed long term relationships with the senior administrative teams and power brokers within the university structure. In recent years they had used their influential power with the athletic director to schedule a home game on this particular weekend, and then more recently, had parlayed that into another favor. From the perspective of Samuel, it was of vital importance to the overall plan that an earlier than usual morning kickoff of eleven o’clock central time for the contest would be scheduled. Eager to please the Tillman’s and a large group of substantial donors that had echoed that same desire, and having learned that a network would be willing to televise the contest, the university administration had complied with the request back in early March. They were easily caught up with the prospect of how much additional revenue would come from scheduling an earlier start time, so it never occurred to any of the administrative team to question why it had been requested.
With Savanah now moving about the suite and securing herself a pre-game snack, Victoria brought Samuel back from his thoughtful state into the reality of the present moment. She placed a hand on his shoulder and quietly asked, “Well dear, the day is finally here. Has anyone checked in yet?”
Returning the soft tone, he replied, “I have heard from number twenty three that number forty seven has
reported in.”
“That’s good, is everything on schedule?”
“Yes. The drop off in Pennsylvania went according to plan, and the warehouse and any evidence that it may have contained has burned to the ground. She also informed me that number forty seven has successfully returned home on a flight to Dallas. He awaits further instructions, but understands they are contingent upon what unfolds today.”
“That’s excellent news, and number forty seven has once again proved his worth.”
“Indeed it is, and yes he has. I’m confident that everything for today will go according to plan, or at least close to it, in the two eastern locations.”
“How do you feel about the west?”
“Not as confident. There are a lot of moving parts to mesh properly.”
“Has twenty three heard from forty three?”
“Yes and no, which is part of what concerns me. Forty three checked in on the first day of the month like he has been since I stationed him there in May, but he had been instructed by number twenty three to make additional contact a few times during these final two weeks.”
“And he hasn’t done so?”
“He made contact on the fourth and the seventh, but nothing since then. At this time we can’t be sure if he has been compromised or not, so we just have to wait and see.”
“What about our other contact there?”
“Beau has done well up to this point as was to be expected, and has reported that security measures have gone unchanged. We won’t hear anything from him today, but after things calm down and an accounting of the cadets has been taken, they will probably allow each of them to notify parents or a family member of their safety. He will surely contact Mason or Courtney sometime Sunday I should think.”
While the earlier than usual game at College Station had been under way for an hour, events that would define the success or failure of the planned attacks continued to unfold. At Camp Smith Military Reservation a few miles to the south and on the opposite side of the Hudson River from West Point, three black suburban’s with the combined cargo of fourteen passengers and their fortifications had been cleared to pass through the main entry gate. Each man had been asked to provide identification, and the falsified documents in their possession representing various government agencies easily passed inspection. The jet black vehicles with dark tinted windows had been fitted in the pre-dawn hours of that Saturday morning with counterfeit government license plates to complete the ruse, and the carefully hidden arsenal within each had gone undetected.
Once inside the gate, the suburban’s proceeded slowly toward the cluster of buildings near the parade field while those not driving began to remove the weapons hidden within seat cushions, adjoining backrests, and shallow floor compartments of the interior space. Those weapons included two Hawk MM-1 MGL semi-automatic grenade launchers for a pair of jumpers within the first wave, and Denel PAW-20 Neopup semi-automatic grenade launchers for the remaining twelve of both waves. The former was a cold war relic of American design that used 40x46mm ammunition in a twelve round rotating drum magazine, and the weapon had an effective range of nearly two hundred fifty yards. The South African made PAW-20 Neopup, at slightly over thirty-three inches in length was eight inches longer than the American Hawk, with the 20x42mm point detonated ammunition being delivered from a six round rotary drum. Although possessing the benefits of roughly three and a half times the effective range as the Hawk at eight hundred seventy five yards, and being much lighter when fully loaded, the rounds were not designed to create the same level of structural damage that the Hawk could produce. Their intent was to have more pinpoint accuracy with regard to the desired impact location, and spray out from that detonation point with a killing radius of about ten meters.
In addition to the grenade launchers, each of the fourteen assailants would also be carrying another shoulder holstered weapon. An American made semi-automatic AR-15 rifle had been selected over the Czech made AK-47 for the simple facts of having a more reliable and accurate range along with a lighter overall weight. Although the AK-47 had been widely used by various factions throughout the globe for many years, its limited range of precision at perhaps one hundred yards would not be good enough for the current undertaking. Along with the various weapons themselves, Samuel and his black market contacts had been able to procure thirty round magazines that could be emptied in about seven seconds for the AR-15’s as opposed to the standard issue twenty round clips. With a loaded magazine and eight more accessible reserve clips on their person, each man was equipped with two hundred seventy rounds of 5.56x40mm killing projectiles that were easily reloadable and could be fired in less than two minutes. As a final weapon, each of the fourteen would have a thigh rig for a handheld 45-caliber pistol containing a ten round magazine with an additional bullet in the pipe.
Once parked, the fourteen men dressed in black suits carrying large duffel bags of gear were hardly noticed as they moved toward the nearest building. Intelligence reports from a friend stationed inside the Pentagon had provided the organization with the location of which building would be used by the jumpers as they prepared for the upcoming drop, so with that knowledge, the black suited force quietly commandeered a large interior room that would be suitable for their purpose. Then they began a systematic attack on those men who were scheduled to jump in a few hours.
One by one each of the fourteen parachutists were singled out and distracted by a man posing as a government agent on a fact finding inspection tour, and subsequently taken from behind by another with a strong arm and a hand held rag full of chloroform. After being rendered unconscious and relieved of their respective jumpsuits, each was tied and gagged in the event that the drug wore off prematurely and moved into one of a series of small closets. No hoods were necessary to eclipse their vision of the attackers should they awaken, as none of those soldiers would ever see the light of day again. Once all fourteen had been accounted for, each man was injected with a lethal dose of nerve toxin. The toxin had been developed by United States government labs to shut down the human circulatory system within minutes, and the hope was that the claim would be accurate. If so, then the men would never be conscious of the injections effect on them. Unfortunately a few of them convulsed with open eyes near the bitter end, so a harsh truth was revealed.
All had gone well up to the present moment, as the early morning landing of the helicopter had either gone unnoticed or uncared about by any locals in the small town of Monument. The three black suburban’s then arrived at the remote rendezvous spot less than an hour later via dirt mountain roads to unload their cargo of the ten jumpers who hadn’t stayed with the helicopter, and some extra fuel containers. Each vehicle had long since departed, and if nothing kept them from their intent, the two driven by the women who had posed as federal agents the night before would already be a few hundred miles from the Monument area. One would have used the tracking device given to her in order to pinpoint the exact location of where the helicopter had been hidden Thursday night and most of Friday in the northwest corner of Kansas. That way she could retrieve all of the spent fuel containers that had been deposited at the landing site and the two discarded parachutes that were no longer needed by Mr. Capra and Mr. Fisk. Then after making her way slightly to the east, she would turn south onto highway-27 for the journey toward and through the panhandle region of Oklahoma and into Texas. The other would be in northern New Mexico heading for an observation point where she hoped to report the movement of aircraft later in the day. Remaining in Colorado, the plan called for the third Suburban to be repositioned to the southwest within visual range of the Fremont County Airport in Canon City.
Now hidden in a saddle between two rises of the foothills just west of town, the helicopter piloted by Mr. Capra and Mr. Fisk was ready to go and awaiting the call. One of the jumpers who had been stationed as a lookout roughly one-hundred yards away signaled once again that all remained clear. After relieving another man from an hours watch, he had been f
lat on his belly to stealthily peek over the top of the rise for half of that time. The continued absence of hikers, bikers, or off road enthusiasts coming up from Monument was a welcome relief, and was probably attributed to either the season, or the game that would soon transpire.
Glancing at his watch, Mr. Fisk, said, “We should be hearing something very soon. If not, we may have a problem.”
Mr. Capra nodded with confirmation without saying anything, and then a moment later, the burn phone that had been given to him a few days prior by number thirty one began to ring.
Each of the helicopter flight crews had been briefed several days earlier as to the specifications of this particular flight, and those specifications were much the same as those parachute drops they had piloted previously. There were a few differences though, as aside from needing two helicopters instead of one for the amount of jumpers and their gear, the major change for this mission was the destination of the flight after their cargo had bailed out. Now with all the pre-flight checks taken care of, the engines warmed up sufficiently, and having been cleared for departure from the parade field, all that was needed before the helicopters could liftoff were the fourteen jumpers.
Switching his microphone on, the pilot of the lead ship, Major Bates, radioed the other helicopter and asked, “Hey Scrib, do you know what’s keeping them?”
Captain Scribner replied, “No Major, we haven’t heard anything.”
Before Major Bates could contemplate the implications of the delay any further, his own co-pilot pointed toward the cluster of buildings and said, “There they are now sir.”
