“Linda, this is Al,” she heard on the interplane frequency, “break left! ”
She could hear Vincenti’s sudden warning, but she didn’t dare try to look down into the cockpit to change radios— she was less than three hundred yards from the L-600. She had a momentary thought about turning—an order to “break” was not just a turn, it was a command to get the hell out of there. Instead, she stayed lined up on the left wing of the L-600 and said on the command channel, “I’m staying on the target! Control, what are your instructions? Do you want me to attack? Control, respond ..
McKenzie caught a glimpse of a bright flash of light off to her right, but it was near the ground and she assumed it was one of the emergency vehicles’ rotating lights or a photographer’s flash.
Then she saw a huge ripple of lights erupt all around her jet, heard a thunderous bang! and felt a gigantic ramming force smack her F-16’s fuselage.
The thirteen grenades shoved between the cases of Stinger missiles exploded well before the pallet hit the ground, which only served to increase the devastation. The chain reaction created by the exploding grenades was quick and furious—the shrapnel from the grenades tore through the battery unit cases, blowing apart the high-pressure nitrogen-gas canisters, rupturing the battery cells, cooking off the chemicals and spraying superheated chemicals inside the missile coffins. The rocket motors went next. Normally they would slowly bum inside their cases, but the shock and hot chemicals caused them to explode instead. Some of the missiles did cook off, sending white-hot spears of fire into nearby buildings and vehicles. The fragmenting pallet erupted into a blossom of fire when it hit the emergency vehicles on the ground, throwing petals of fire and explosive Stinger warheads out in all directions. The Stinger missiles seemed to have eyes, or active seeker heads—it seemed as if every one of the missiles that cooked off slammed right into a building or vehicle.
“Oh, shit. . was all Jefferson Jones could say as he and Cazaux watched the maddening scene unfold below them. It was like watching a fireworks show’s finale from above—the big explosion, followed by numerous smaller explosions, then ripple after ripple of side explosions, and then the twinkling of burning debris scattered all across the airfield.
“That.. . was . .. magnificent,” Cazaux muttered. “That was ... incredible. Absolutely incredible ..
As the L-600 began to level off, then point earthward to regain speed and begin evading pursuit, Krull moved aft and began motoring the ramp and upper cargo doors closed.
Cazaux stumbled around on the right side of the cargo bay, leaning against the second pallet. He then eyed the forward pallet, the one containing the real explosives.
“Move that second pallet aft to the edge of the ramp,” he told Krull as he located the microphone, “and help me move that third pallet aft. I am going to deliver that last pallet on a target that no one will forget for a very long time.” He clicked open the mike: “Stork, do exactly as I say, and your navigation had better be dead on.”
The large master caution light on the left eyebrow panel came on, along with the hyd/oil press warning light on the right eyebrow panel. It seemed as if the entire caution-light panel was illuminated—elec sys, cadc, stby gains, fuel hot, those were the biggies—and the oil and hydraulic pressure gauges were bouncing all over the place.
It was time to jump out, she decided.
She had never even come close to ejecting out of any aircraft before, not in ten years of flying the F-16. Air Force training always said, “Don’t hesitate. Trust your equipment,” and she was perfectly willing and ready to do so. McKenzie reached for her ejection seat lever and ...
“Linda! This is Al! How do you hear? It looks like you’ve been fragged, but there is no fire, repeat, negative fire. How do you hear? Over?”
She was surprised to hear Vincenti on the radio—she had assumed, incorrectly, that everything in her stricken ship was out. She moved the throttle—no response, with FTIT and fuel flow in the red but rpms below idle power. She moved the stick—aha, the controls were stiff but responding. Emergency power unit had turned on automatically. She raised the nose, and the jet responded by climbing. If nothing else, she was able to trade airspeed for altitude and get a little higher before ejecting, but she had a few seconds to try to work the problem.
McKenzie took her hands off the ejection lever and back on the stick and throttle, then started to work on her caution-light analysis. The engine was stalled from a massive disruption of airflow through the engine, so she immediately pulled the throttle to idle, waited a few excruciating seconds as the airspeed bled off below safe engine-restart speed, then slowly advanced the throttle again. Just as she was convinced the engine was not going to come back, the rpms eased from 55 percent to 65 percent and the fan-turbine inlet temperatures subsided out of the red zone. Quickly but carefully she advanced the throttle, and the rpms responded. Airspeed climbed above 170 knots. She was safely flying again.
She set the throttles to 80 percent and, one by one, began working on the other malfunctions. As soon as she could, she tried to reset the generators with the elec caution reset button—no go, it kept on tripping off. She placed the emergency power unit to ON, and checked the power-distribution lights. With only the emergency power unit providing power to the essential bus, she had the barest minimum equipment running—but she was still flying. Only the UHF radio on the interplane frequency was operating—that’s how she could still hear Vincenti. “Al, how do you hear me?”
“Fine, Linda,” Vincenti said. “Roll out of your turn and get your nose down. I’ve got you at five thousand feet. How’s your controllability? Check your engines.”
“I cleared a stall, and I’ve got partial generators and EPU on line,” McKenzie said. She straightened her F-16’s wings and found the controls very sluggish. “Looks like I lost my hydraulics—the EPU is the only hydraulics and power I got left.” The EPU, or emergency power unit, used bleed air from the engine or hydrazine to power a simple power unit that supplied backup hydraulic and electrical power for about fifteen minutes. “System A pressure is good, and my essential bus is energized. What the hell happened?”
“Cazaux,” Vincenti replied simply. “He dropped something out the back end, a bomb or something. I can still see explosions. Just hold your heading. I’ll come around on your left side. Hang tight, we’ll be OK. Let’s start a slow climb to ten thousand and start working out what we got. What’s your fuel state?”
“I can’t tell—gauge is inop,” McKenzie said. “Fuel low and fuel hot lights came on right away, and I think one of my wing tanks is gone.”
“That’s confirmed, you lost one. You still got your right tank, and it’s pretty beat-up,” Vincenti said as he checked out McKenzie’s fighter with his ID searchlight. “I don’t think it’ll do a normal jettison because of the damage, so you’re going to have to land with it.”
It took Vincenti a few minutes to fly around McKenzie’s jet and look her over. In that time, they had climbed up to ten thousand feet over the sparsely settled ranches and farms south of Sacramento. “I see lots of damage to your underside, Linda. You may or may not get a good landing gear. What do you think, Linda? How does she feel to you?”
McKenzie knew what that question meant: did she want to eject or did she want to try for a landing? “I’m not jumping out of this plane, Al,” McKenzie said. “Lead me over to McClellan.” McClellan Air Force Base, just north of Sacramento, was a large military aircraft maintenance depot with lots of runways and crash equipment—McKenzie was going to need all the help she could get.
It was only twenty miles across the top of the city of Sacramento to get to McClellan, but for McKenzie it was the longest flight of her entire life. Her approach speed when starting her descent into McClellan’s north-south runway was 220 knots, much faster than normal, and it was nearly impossible to maintain it without considerable control problems. Several times the engine did not respond to throttle movements. “Better get ready for a flameout l
anding, Linda,” Vincenti told her. “We’re looking for two hundred knots landing speed—it’s gonna happen fast.”
“Just lost the engine, Al,” McKenzie said. Her voice was wooden, as if she were talking inside a bucket.
Vincenti knew that calm wouldn’t last too long. The toughest fighter pilots in the world get high, squeaky voices when their air machines start to crap out on them. “Okay, Linda, forget it,” Vincenti said. “We’re committed for a flameout approach. Check your jfs switch on start 2. Turn off your fuel master switch.”
“Got it... negative jfs run light, Al.”
“Okay, forget it. Turn the starter off—we’ll try it again in a minute or so. We’re six miles out.” They were surrounded by the city of Sacramento, a vast shimmering expanse of lights below them. McClellan was dead ahead, its rotating beacon and runway lights plainly visible. They had it made, but they still had a long way to go. “Check your air source knob on RAM and your defog lever forward. Keep your touchdown point eleven to seventeen degrees below the horizon. Stand by on the gear.”
“I’m ready, Al.” Her glide path was steady, right on Vincenti’s left wing. Her jet was a heavy toy glider right now. Actually, “glider” was a misnomer for the F-16 Fighting Falcon—with its short supercritical wings, the F-16 made a lousy glider. But as long as you had airspeed and a working EPU, though, a flameout landing was very doable. Her HUD, or heads-up display, was still operable, and the flight-path pipper was directly on the end of the runway— all she had to do was keep the pipper on the touchdown point and maneuver the fighter to keep the pipper within 11 to 17 of the horizon. So far it was going smoothly.
“Five miles, Linda, lower the gear when you’re ready.”
“Coming down.” She pressed the gear-permission button and tried to move the gear lever downward—nothing. “Gear handle won’t move,” she radioed. She hit the dn lock rel button, which mechanically allows the handle to be lowered—and she got no safe gear indications. “No green lights, Al.”
“I see your right gear, and a partial nose gear,” Vincenti said. “Cycle the gear handle.”
McKenzie raised the gear handle, waited a few seconds, pressed the dn lock rel button, and lowered the handle. “Did it,” she radioed. “No red light, no green lights.”
“Four miles out. Use alternate extension. Watch your airspeed, Linda, you’re sinking. Drop your nose a bit.”
“Copy.” She made the proper attitude correction. Three miles out—and the left landing gear came into view. “What’s it look like, Al?”
“I got two main gear, no nose gear,” he said. “Your nose gear might come down below 190. Let’s go to thirteen AO A and get ready for touchdown. Try your jfs to start 2 once more, and secure your throttle. Glide path looks good, and you’re cleared to land. Nice job, Linda. Little bit more nose up, you’re at eleven AOA.”
“She starts to get squirrelly below two hundred,” McKenzie said. “I want to keep my speed up until I’m over the threshold.”
“Okay, but remember you might not have all your brakes, and you have no speedbrakes,” Vincenti said. “Use aerodynamic braking all you can, and use every inch of the runway. Go get ’em, babe.”
“Thanks, Al,” McKenzie said; then she added, “We should’ve done it, Al, you know that, don’t you? It would’ve been sooo good.”
Leave it to Linda McKenzie to think about sex just seconds before making a 220-mile-per-hour flameout approach in the dark to a strange airfield in a damaged F-16 fighter, Vincenti thought grimly.
He did not reply, because there was no time. With Vincenti flying just a few feet above the right edge of the runway, McKenzie hit the pavement, traveling at 210 knots.
... and the worst-case scenario happened.
The nose gear never came down, but McKenzie held the fighter’s nose high in the air to let the jet’s fuselage create enough drag to slow down. A stream of fire trucks began their chase after her down the runway. Suddenly, Vincenti saw a flash of light—sparks caused by the damaged right fuel tank separating from the wing and dragging the runway. The fighter’s nose slammed hard into the runway, then began to spin clockwise. Fire erupted in the engine compartment and right wing—and then McKenzie ejected. Vincenti caught a glimpse of two full bums of her seat’s ejection motors before he passed the runway and began his climbout.
“Foxtrot Romeo Zero One, this is McClellan Tower, say your intentions.”
Vincenti knew the runways would be closed at McClellan and Mather, the two large military-capable airports in Sacramento. Metro Airport was just a few miles away— they might send him there, although the Air Force didn’t like to send armed combat aircraft to civil airports. Beale and Travis Air Force Bases were both less than fifty miles away, and he had plenty of fuel to make it all the way back to Fresno Air Terminal. He wanted to see Linda, wanted to stay with his flying partner. No doubt they’d be convening an accident board, and as the original flight leader and close chase plane he’d be the star witness.
Screw ’em, Vincent thought angrily. He jammed the throttle to MIL power and keyed the radio button: “Tower, Foxtrot Romeo-01 requesting handoff to Approach and vectors to the suspect aircraft that just overflew Mather.”
“Roger, Foxtrot Romeo, stand by.” The wait did not last long: “Foxtrot Romeo-01, your control requests you land at Beale as soon as possible. You can contact Sacramento Approach on one-one-nine point one.”
Vincenti turned his aircraft south westbound, not northbound, and began searching the skies with radar for a target.
“Foxtrot Romeo-01, did you copy? You are requested to land at Beale. Over.”
Vincenti cut off the tower controller’s insistent orders by tuning the radio to Sacramento Approach Control’s western sector frequency. “Sacramento Approach, Foxtrot Romeo- 01 with you climbing to six thousand, active air scramble, requesting vectors to the suspect aircraft that overflew Mather, over.”
“Foxtrot Romeo-01, Sacramento Approach, roger, last reported position of your target is at one o’clock, approximately fifty-three miles, altitude unknown. You are leaving my airspace, contact Travis Approach on one-two-seven point one-five.”
That wasn’t much of a vector, but it was enough. A minute later Vincenti picked up a low-flying aircraft thirty- two miles to the west, at the foot of the coastal mountains between Sacramento and San Francisco, traveling at two hundred knots at only a few hundred feet above the terrain.
That had to be Cazaux.
He was trying to sneak away under local radar, avoiding the TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach Control) center near Travis Air Force Base. “Travis Approach, Foxtrot Romeo-01 requesting clearance to intercept the aircraft at my twelve o’clock, thirty-one miles, with a three-hundred- knot closure rate. Over.”
Henri Cazaux’s characteristically ice-cold heart started to pump superheated lava through his veins as he listened in on the exchange between the Air Force fighter and the civilian radar controllers: “Foxtrot Romeo-01, Travis Approach, maintain two-fifty maximum airspeed, stay clear of Travis class D airspace, and stand by on your request.”
“The wingman is after us,” Cazaux said to the Stork. “I thought they’d both land after the bitch was hit.” He shrugged. “I was wrong.”
“He was ordered to land,” the Stork said incredulously. “He was ordered to land! Why is he disobeying orders?”
“Revenge,” Cazaux said simply. “Something I know all about. And this fighter jock, he smells revenge. This pilot is the real leader, not the other. She was the inexperienced one. This one ... will not let us live. He will try to kill us.”
“Oh, great!” Jones moaned. “You mean that Air Force jet’s gonna flame us? What the hell we gonna do?”
“Foxtrot Romeo-01, Travis Approach, sir, reduce speed and do not exceed two-five-zero knots indicated, do you copy?” they heard once again on the radio. “Reduce speed now. . . leaving my airspace, Foxtrot Romeo-01, contact Bay Approach on one-two-seven point zero. How do you copy, Foxtrot Romeo
-01?”
“He ain’t answerin’ back,” Jones said. “What’s he doin’?”
Cazaux switched the radio to the same frequency, which was the terminal radar controller for the dozens of major airports in the San Francisco Bay Area. Still no response, no check-in. “This man, he is no longer taking orders from either his superiors or the federal aviation authorities,” Cazaux said. “He is going to pursue us until... the end game.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Jones shouted.
“It means he’s a renegade, you idiot. He will put a two- second burst of cannon fire into this aircraft, whether or not he receives orders to the contrary,” Cazaux said calmly. “That will be approximately one hundred depleted uranium shells about twice the size of your thumb, weighing approximately one pound, hitting us with supersonic force. He will blow this plane apart as easily as a baby bursting a soap bubble ... get it?”
His eyes scanned out the window to the south, toward San Francisco, Oakland, Alameda Naval Air Station, Hayward, and San Jose—the San Francisco Bay region, busy even late at night. The landing lights of dozens of aircraft filled the skies. Like gigantic strings of Christmas lights, the airliners formed long sparking lines of light in the sky, strung out for nearly a hundred miles in all directions, all sequenced to land at their various air terminals. Finally Cazaux said, “That way,” and moved the control yoke hard left and pushed, descending even farther toward the dark, light-sparkled earth below.
“What now, man?”
“We cannot escape the pilot who pursues us,” Cazaux said. “So perhaps we can force him to retreat—if he will.”
“How you gonna do that?” But Krull soon realized how. In just a few minutes, the answer was obvious—they were heading right for San Francisco International Airport, the locus of the greatest number of those strings of light in the sky.
He was heading directly into the airspace of one of the busiest airports in the United States.
“Oh, shit . . . you’re gonna fly into the middle of all that?”
Brown, Dale - Independent 04 Page 10
