“Nobody will hear us, Al. The game will go on for another hour at least, and the crew chiefs all like to sleep in front of the TV.”
“Linda, I’m not going to do anything with you,” he said. His flight suit zipper was down to the top of his G-suit waistband, and she was reaching for the zippers on the sides of the device. He was not helping her, but he was not stopping her either. “Linda ...”
“You don’t have to do anything,” McKenzie said in a whisper. “I’m doing the driving on this trip.” She stepped back from him, removed her towel, grasped his hands, and brought them to her breasts.
“Linda, this isn’t a good idea.”
“I won’t argue with that,” McKenzie said with a teasing smile, “but I should tell you, Colonel, that you have more animal sex appeal in your little finger than most guys half your age have in their entire bodies.”
“That include your husband Carl?”
“I’m referring to my husband Carl.” McKenzie laughed, running her hands inside his flight suit against his chest.
“You think just because I made a stupid mistake by screwing you at SENTRY EAGLE in Klamath Falls last summer that I think this is right or justified? I’m not going to sleep with you, Linda.”
Suddenly, the PA system blared, “For the alert force, for the alert force, active air scramble, active air scramble! All crews report to your combat stations! ” and an impossibly loud klaxon split the late-night quiet. Vincenti was zipped and out the door in seconds, leaving McKenzie cursing as she hurried to get into her flight suit and G-suit.
Al Vincenti had a fleeting vision of McKenzie’s flowing, wet red hair and big, round, firm breasts floating in his mind’s eye as he made the dash to his plane, but the thought quickly disappeared as he automatically ran down the alert scramble checklists and procedures in his head. She was nothing more than a wingman to him now, his backup, someone to watch his rear quadrant as they hunted down whatever was out there. Vincenti sprinted for the alert hangar. His crew chief, who had just come around a corner, had no chance to catch up. Vincenti reached the hangar first.
On the wall to the right of the small entry door were two large handles. Vincenti yelled, “Hangar doors coming open!” and pulled both handles down. The handles unlocked two sets of huge counterweights, whose weight began swinging both the front and rear hangar doors open. His backpack parachute was in a rack near the hangar door handles. Vincenti stepped into the parachute harness and fastened the crotch and chest clips, leaving the straps loose so he could run up the ladder and into his F-16 ADF Fighting Falcon fighter jet. Gloves went on, sleeves rolled down, zippers zipped, and collars turned up as Vincenti trotted toward his fighter.
Six steps up the ladder and a quick leap into the cockpit, and Lieutenant Colonel Al Vincenti was in his office and ready for work.
As soon as his helmet was on and fastened, he flipped the main pwr switch to batt, the jfs (Jet Fuel Starter) switch to start 1, cracked the throttle on the left side of the cockpit from its cutoff detent forward a bit to give the engine a good shot of gas, then moved it back into idle when the rpms reached 15 percent.
Sixty seconds later, the engine was at idle power and his crew chief had his seat belt, parachute, and G-suit hoses connected and tightened. The GPS system was feeding navigation information to the inertial navigation set, and he performed a flight control system and emergency power system check. He made a quick flight control check by moving the control stick in a circle, or “stirring the pot,” and his crew chief was standing in front of the hangar, ready to marshal him forward. He saw Major Linda McKenzie running past his open hangar door, carrying her boots and wearing nothing on her feet but white athletic socks, still zipping her G-suit zippers. She flashed her middle finger at him as she sprinted by.
“Should’ve showed me your tits after you put your gear on, Linda,” Vincenti said, chuckling. He completed his checklists, flipping through the radios as he waited for McKenzie to start engines and check in. His VHF radio, secondary UHF radio, and HF radios were set to the GUARD emergency frequencies, but there was dead silence. The silence meant that this was going to be a covert intercept—they were going to try to approach the unidentified aircraft without being detected.
Vincenti unstowed a canvas box from behind his ejection seat, opened it, and checked the contents. It was a set of AN/NVG-11 night-vision goggles which clipped onto his flight helmet and would provide near daytime-like vision with just a few ground lights, moonlight, or even starlight.
Vincenti saw McKenzie’s crew chief trot out to his marshaling position outside the hangar, and a second later he saw her fighter’s taxi light flash on and off, so he clicked on the microphone of his primary radio: “Foxtrot Romeo flight, check.”
“Two,” McKenzie replied breathlessly from exertion and excitement. “Foxtrot Romeo” was their unit call sign for their three-day tour; interceptor call signs were always a combination of two letters and a two-digit number, changed regularly by North American Air Defense Command.
“Fresno ground, Foxtrot Romeo flight ready to taxi, active air scramble.”
“Foxtrot Romeo flight, Fresno ground, taxi runway three-two, wind calm, altimeter three-zero-zero-six.” The traffic signal on the fence changed from a flashing red to green, Vincenti flipped the flight control/nav function knob to nav, armed his ejection seat, turned on the taxi light and released brakes, received final clearance from his crew chief, and shot out of the alert hangar, snapping a return salute and a thumbs-up to his crew chief. As soon as he was on the throat leading to the end of the runway, he radioed, “Foxtrot Romeo flight, button two, go.”
“Two.”
He switched to the tower frequency: “Foxtrot Romeo flight, check.”
“Two.”
“Fresno tower, Foxtrot Romeo flight, active alert scramble.”
“Foxtrot Romeo flight, Fresno tower, wind calm, runway three-two, cleared for takeoff, contact Fresno Approach.” “Foxtrot Romeo flight cleared for takeoff, Foxtrot Romeo flight, button three, go.”
“Two.”
Vincenti switched to the next preset channel, checked in McKenzie; then: “Fresno Approach, Foxtrot Romeo flight of two, takeoff roll Fresno, active air scramble.”
“Foxtrot Romeo flight, Fresno Approach, air scramble departure, climb unrestricted, contact Oakland Center passing ten thousand.”
“Foxtrot Romeo flight, wilco.” Without stopping or looking for McKenzie, he taxied quickly to the runway, lined up, gave his control stick one more experimental “stir,” moved the throttle to military power, twisted the throttle grip, and shoved it forward to full afterburner. At seventy knots he clicked off nosewheel steering, at ninety knots he rotated the nose to liftoff attitude, and at one hundred and twenty knots the F-16 Fighting Falcon lifted into the sky. He immediately lowered the nose to build up airspeed, retracted landing gear, made sure the trailing-edge flaps were up, accelerated to two hundred and fifty knots, then pulled the nose skyward. By the time he was over the end of the runway, he was two thousand feet above the ground. At four hundred and fifty knots he pulled the throttle out of afterburner and into military power, then clicked on his radio: “Foxtrot Romeo flight, button four, go.”
“Two.”
He switched radio frequencies. By that time he was passing ten thousand feet. “Foxtrot Romeo flight, check.”
“Two.”
“Oakland Center, Foxtrot Romeo flight of two with you out of ten thousand, active alert scramble.”
“Foxtrot Romeo flight, radar contact seven miles northwest of Fresno Air Terminal passing ten thousand feet, have your wingman squawk standby, cleared to tactical control frequency.”
“Foxtrot Romeo flight, squawk standby, button five, go.”
“Two.”
On March Air Force Base’s SIERRA PETE’s frequency now, Vincenti checked in McKenzie, then: “SIERRA PETE, Foxtrot Romeo flight is with you, passing sixteen thousand.”
“Foxtrot Romeo flight, radar contact, check
noses cold, turn left heading three-zero-zero, climb and maintain angels two-four block two-five.”
“Copy, heading three-zero-zero, climbing to two-four block two-five, Foxtrot Romeo flight, check.” Vincenti had to push the nose down to level off at twenty-four thousand feet—usually he was sent to thirty thousand feet or higher. He quickly accomplished his “After Takeoff’ and “Level- Off’ checklists, checking his oxygen, cabin pressurization, fuel feed, and all gauges and switches, especially checking that the arming switches for the 20-millimeter cannon were off—that was the “noses cold” check. The external tanks were empty, and he was already feeding from his wing tanks—about two hours of fuel remaining.
“Two’s in the green, twenty point nine, nose is cold,” McKenzie reported after her cockpit checks were completed, including her fuel and weapons status with her report.
“Copy. Lead’s in the green with nineteen, nose is cold.”
“Roger, Foxtrot Romeo flight, copy you are in the green and noses cold,” the Weapons Control Technician at March Air Force Base, call sign SIERRA PETE, replied. “Your bogey is now at your eleven o’clock, one hundred and fifty miles, a Czechoslovakian L-600 cargo plane at six thousand feet and climbing. These are vectors for a Special-9 intercept.”
“Foxtrot Romeo copies,” Vincenti replied. Pretty good guess, he thought, congratulating himself—a Special-9 intercept was a covert shadow, where the SOCC controller would put him on a one-mile rear-quartering vector on the bogey. From there, he would use his night-vision goggles to close in on the bogey. If they needed a tail number or other such positive identification, they could close in more—Vincenti had flown as close as ten meters to another plane, in total darkness, without the other plane ever knowing he was there—but normally they would stay within fifty to one hundred meters of the target and shadow him while the brass on the ground figured out what to do. “Foxtrot Romeo flight, take spacing and configure for Special- 9.”
“Two.” McKenzie would now move out to about five miles in trail, keeping her flight leader locked on radar, and put on and test her night-vision goggles. Vincenti turned off all the cockpit and external lights, reached into the canvas case for the AN/NVG-11 goggles, slid them into place entirely by feel, and snapped them into the slot on his helmet.
But when Vincenti lowered the goggles into place, all he got was black. He flipped the on-off switch, made sure they were turned on, and looked for the telltale green spot of light behind the lenses. Nothing. The battery was in place, and they were tested and replaced after every use and at the beginning of every three-day shift. These were dead. He clicked open his mike button in frustration: “Hey, Two,” Vincenti radioed to McKenzie, “did you check your NVGs yet?”
“Affirmative,” McKenzie replied. “They’re in the green.”
“My NVGs are bent. You got the lead and the intercept.”
“Roger that, Rattler.” The excitement in McKenzie’s voice was obvious. Except during exercises or when McKenzie was paired with a less experienced wingman, Vincenti was always the flight lead and always did the intercepts. “Take the bottom of the block, I got the top, and I got the radios. Take spacing. I have the lead.”
“Roger, you have the lead,” Vincenti replied, descending to twenty-four thousand feet and pulling power back to 80 percent. He tuned up his radar, preparing to lock on to her when she passed by.
“Foxtrot Romeo, your bogey is at eleven o’clock, ninety miles, turn right heading three-three-zero, maintain angels twenty,” the weapons controller at SIERRA PETE directed.
McKenzie acknowledged the call. She had pushed the power up to nearly full military power, anxious to get the intercept going, and Vincenti had to hit the afterburner to catch up once her fighter passed by and assumed the lead.
“Foxtrot Romeo, your bogey is heading southwestbound, altitude nine thousand five hundred, airspeed two-two-five knots, squawking VFR, call when tied on.”
That was the “setup” call, probably the last radio call before the F-16’s AN/APG-66 radar would pick up the target, helping to get the pilots oriented. Once the radar locked on and the proper target identified, the fire control computer would present steering cues on the HUD, or heads-up display, a transparent electronic screen in front of the pilot that allowed the pilot to read flight, radar, and weapon information without looking down into the cockpit.
McKenzie’s radar was picking up several air targets at altitudes between five and twenty thousand feet, but there were not many aircraft flying around at eleven o’clock at night. About two minutes later, at a range of about forty miles, McKenzie locked on to an aircraft that met the last reported radar track information perfectly: “SIERRA PETE, Foxtrot Romeo has radar contact on a bogey at thirty-eight miles, angels nine-point-five, bearing zero-one- zero.”
“Foxtrot Romeo, that’s your bogey.”
“Roger. Foxtrot Romeo is judy, request clearance for the Special-9.”
“Foxtrot Romeo, this is SIERRA PETE, you are cleared for Special-9 procedures.”
“Foxtrot Romeo copies,” McKenzie said, the excitement spilling over in her voice. Vincenti had to smile to himself. This was certainly not McKenzie’s first intercept, or even her first night intercept, but it was one of her most important. He remembered his first no-shit real-world night intercept well, a Chinese airliner suspected of being a spy plane that was “drifting off course” and trying to fly over the Alameda Naval Base near Oakland. That was over fifteen years ago.
That was just one of the things Vincenti remembered in what had been, for him, a pretty good career. He got into flying back in the 1960s, after receiving his bachelor of arts degree in political science from West Virginia State University in 1967. He’d attended college on a football scholarship. The typical jock. But unlike a lot of jocks who went on to illustrious jobs like selling cars and getting flabby, Vincenti was unable to avoid the draft and ended up in Officer Candidate School, where he received a commission and attended pilot training in 1968. He flew 113 missions in Vietnam in the F-100 Super Sabre fighter-bomber and the F-4D Phantom II fighter-bomber from 1969 to 1973, as well as holding command positions in various tactical units.
Vincenti went on to the Air Command and Staff College upon returning from Vietnam and joined tactical and training units in New Jersey and Arizona, but was later involuntarily separated from the active-duty Air Force, after his second divorce. He got a position with the California Air National Guard in 1978. Except for a brief deployment to Germany in 1986 and 1987, Vincenti had been flying F- 106s, F-4Ds, and F-16 fighters from the Fresno Air Terminal for seventeen years.
And speaking of flying ... his mind immediately returned to the situation at hand. In this intercept, McKenzie still had to remember her procedures and not get caught up in the excitement. Vincenti checked a plastic-covered decoder device strapped to his left leg, sliding a yellow plastic marker to the fifth row of characters, then keyed his mike button: “SIERRA PETE, Foxtrot Romeo flight, authenticate echo-echo.”
“SIERRA PETE authenticates india,” came the reply. It was the correct reply. All intercept instructions that might place a fighter within close proximity of another aircraft in a potentially unsafe manner had to be authenticated, whether or not weapons were expected to be employed, using the daily authenticator cards issued to every pilot. Hopefully, this one omission was going to be the last one for Linda McKenzie tonight, Vincenti thought ruefully. Well, that’s what wingmen were for—back up the leader at all times.
Unfortunately, there was one switch McKenzie did forget.
On a normal intercept, the 150,000-candlepower identification light on the left side of the nose was used to illuminate the target—on a Special-9 covert intercept, the light was supposed to be out. The large, bright beam, twice as bright as an airliner’s landing lights, was on full bright as McKenzie made her approach toward the target, and, because it was a crystal-clear night and he was flying five miles behind and to his leader’s right side, Vincenti didn’t notice the l
ight was on.
It was the Stork who saw it first, high and far off in the distance, to the right rear of the LET L-600 and almost blocked from view by the right wing and engine nacelle. The horizon was dark, and the single, unblinking light was like a laser beam aimed right at them. He grasped Cazaux’s right sleeve and pointed. The Belgian mercenary had to get up out of his seat to get a glimpse of the light. “I see it,” Cazaux acknowledged. It was hard to judge distances at night, but the brightness of the light could mean that the aircraft, if it was an airliner, was pretty far off in both distance and altitude.
But it wasn’t an airliner—Cazaux knew it right away.
It was moving fast and turning with them, not crossing their path. It was intercepting them, no doubt about it. “Puta, Stork,” he said, “they found us already, the fuckers. I think they zeroed the Air Force in on us.”
The Stork pointed to the San Francisco sectional chart and chattered away in a strange mixture of Ethiopian, English, and Spanish.
“Relax. There is nothing they can do to us.”
“Say what?” Jefferson “Krull” Jones asked, staring out the windows with eyes so wide that the whites could be seen in the dark cockpit. “There’s an Air Force jet out there? Is it gonna gun us down?”
“Relax,” Cazaux said casually. “I have been intercepted dozens of times by the American Customs Service, the Coast Guard, and the Drug Enforcement Agency—even an Army helicopter. I have never been fired upon. I do not think they have the authority to kill anyone in peacetime without due process.”
“Was that before or after you blew up a bunch of cops and an entire airport, my man?” Krull asked. “Maybe this might be the time they let those flyboys ‘accidentally’ let a few missiles fly.” Krull motioned out the cockpit windscreen to the inky blackness of eastern California and the Sierra Nevada mountain range ahead. “Looks pretty black out there, Captain. A pretty good place to splash a bunch of gunrunners.”
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