“Foxtrot Romeo-01 requesting emergency descent through Class B airspace at five-zero-zero knots and MARSA operations with the suspect aircraft,” came the reply.
“Foxtrot Romeo Zero One . . . that’s the damn fighter again!” Jones said. “Man, he’s back on our tail!”
“They will never give him a clearance to descend at five hundred knots through dense airspace like this,” Cazaux said. “Impossible.”
“Roger, Foxtrot Romeo-01, you are cleared to descend through Class B airspace at your most expeditious airspeed to the block surface to two thousand feet within five nautical mile radius of San Francisco VOR, and you are cleared MARSA with the NORDO aircraft. Stay on this frequency.”
“Jesus, they just gave him carte blanche,” Cazaux said, stunned. “A tower controller is not authorized to give such a clearance!”
“Well, he just did it,” Jones sneered. “And now he’s gonna be gunnin’ for our asses. What the hell we gonna do now?”
Cazaux looked like a balloon that was pricked with a pin and was slowly losing air.
For the first time, Jones saw real depression, real defeat in his face. He stared out the open end of the L-600 as if he could see the F-16 diving down on them, could see the cannon muzzle flashing, could see the heavy 20-millimeter shells peppering him and his plane. “We can surrender, man,” Jones continued. “Tell him we give up. It’s better than dyin,’ man.”
“I will never give up!” Cazaux said emphatically. “I will never surrender!” He went over to the intercom panel and hit the mike button: “Stork, fly over San Francisco International Airport, right over the terminal buildings.” The L-600 banked left and descended in response. Cazaux switched the intercom switch to the VHF radio: “Attention, F-16 fighter, this is Henri Cazaux. I have several thousand pounds of explosives on board this aircraft, and I will release them on San Francisco International Airport unless you depart this area.”
“You’ll be dead long before you reach the airport, Cazaux,” a voice said over the frequency. “I show you two minutes to the airport, and I’m in missile range right now.” Vincenti hoped the bluff would work—he wasn’t carrying any missiles at all, and he wouldn’t be in optimum gun range for another thirty to forty seconds. “Jettison the explosives right now, into the bay, and then fly away from the airport straight down the bay. After that, I’ll direct you to make a turn over the bay north, and we’ll land at Alameda Naval Air Station.”
To Jones, Cazaux shouted, “Get that second pallet ready to drop.” On the radio, he asked, “How do I know you will not kill me after I do all that you order?”
“I’m not giving you any guarantees, you sonofabitch, except this—if I don’t see your course altered away from land, you’ll be dead in three seconds. What’s it going to be?”
“Very well, I am dumping the explosives overboard right now. Do not fire your missiles.” He motioned to Krull, and he and the big loader pushed the second pallet of military gear out the cargo ramp, just a few hundred yards east of Fullers Point, north of the airport. Cazaux then picked up the microphone and switched to intercom: “Stork, decrease speed and execute a turn back to the north . .. and then turn directly towards San Francisco International again and go to full throttle.” Back on VHF: “All right, I have done as you asked. I have dropped the explosives, and I am turning north. Hold your fire. I broadcast my surrender to all who can hear my voice on this frequency. I am surrendering to the United States Air Force, for assurances that I will not be fired upon. You are all my witnesses in case there is a so- called unfortunate accident.”
“You gonna do it?” Jones shouted over the windblast and the roar of the engines through the open cargo ramp. “You gonna drop the last pallet on San Francisco International? Holy shit! He’ll put a missile up our asses for sure . .. Jesus, mother of god ...”
“If he had missiles, he would have killed us long ago,” Cazaux decided. “He has only guns, like the first fighter. I believe he will wait until we fly down the center of San Francisco Bay, then open fire. I am hoping he cannot follow us if we slow down and turn. No one threatens me and gets away with it.” He dropped the microphone, then went over to a rack with several backpack-style parachutes and pulled one off. “We’ll drop the explosives on San Francisco International, then parachute to safety. The Stork will put the plane on autopilot and join us.”
“We’re not dropping anything,” Jones said. As Cazaux began fastening his parachute harness, Jones reached down and pulled a small automatic pistol from an ankle holster. “Hold your hands straight out from your sides and turn around.”
“What is this?” Cazaux asked, a trace of amusement in his eyes.
“U.S. Marshal, Cazaux,” Jones said. He retrieved a wallet from a back pocket, flipped it open to reveal a five- pointed star, and tucked the wallet in his belt. “You’re under arrest, motherfucker. I said turn around.”
“If you fire that gun in here, Marshal Jones, you will blow us all to hell.”
“It would be worth it to watch you die, Cazaux,” Jones said. “Step away from there, across the plane, facing the wall. Move.” As Cazaux moved slowly in front of the third pallet toward the left side of the cargo bay, Jones reached the intercom panel: “Stork, this is Jones. Don’t turn back towards San Francisco. Fly north down the middle of the bay. I’m a federal marshal, and you’re under arrest. If you turn towards land, I’ll—”
Suddenly the LET L-600 seemed as if it flipped completely upside down. Korhonen had thrown the plane into a steep left bank, causing Jones to lose his balance for just a few seconds—but that was more than enough time for Cazaux. With incredible speed, Cazaux knelt under Jones’s first bullet, withdrew a Walther PPK automatic pistol from his right boot, dodged a second shot fired at him by throwing himself aft toward the open cargo ramp, then opened fire on Jones. He missed his intended target—Jones’s heart—but he managed several shots into the big man’s chest and one in the head. The undercover U.S. marshal fired several more shots at Cazaux before he dropped, still fighting even as he was dying.
“I have got to get out of this damned business. The authorities are practically in bed with me.” Cazaux tried to clear his head and get to his feet. One bullet had hit him in the left leg, creasing across his calf and ankle. Walking on it was difficult, but he ignored the burning pain, made his way forward and said to Korhonen, “Good job, Stork. I knew I could depend on you. You’re one of the few in my organization I can trust.”
“Thank you, sir,” the Stork said, showing two grimy rows of teeth. “I am getting a fluctuating oil pressure on the number two engine, sir. I think one of your shots hit the right engine. We have perhaps ten minutes’ time before I have to shut down. What are your orders?”
“One last act of revenge, and we will get out of this place, take the money, and go into hiding in Mexico,” Cazaux said. He pointed at San Francisco International and said, “Fly right over the main terminal building, Stork. Dive right for it, then pitch up at the last moment. I will get the pallet ready to drop. After that, fly her south along the coast at medium altitude, set the autopilot, and we’ll bail out together. We will make our way to the central valley and make contact with our Mexican agents. Thank you again, old friend.” He clasped Korhonen on the shoulder once again, then returned to the cargo bay.
But it wasn’t going to happen, Cazaux realized. Jones’s body was lying across the rear deck, directly in the path of the one remaining pallet, blocking the cargo ramp opening, and as hard as he tried, he couldn’t move the three- hundred-plus-pound corpse. The explosives weren’t going anywhere.
He shrugged, checked that his PPK was secure in its boot holster, stuffed a few bundles of cash into his fatigue shirt, tightened up his parachute straps, and hefted two of the remaining hand grenades. “Thanks again, Stork,” he said to no one. “You were a good pilot.” He then popped the safety pins off the grenades, tossed them atop the last pallet filled with explosives, and ran out the open cargo ramp, pulling his parachut
e D-ring as he cleared the ramp.
Taddele Korhonen was well above redline on both engines and at the plane’s structural redline as he careened through three hundred feet, aiming right for the main commercial terminal at San Francisco International—what was the worry about overstressing the plane, he reasoned, when they were apparently going to ditch it? Coming in from the northeast, he was lined up with runways 19L and 19R and offset a bit to the north. The taxiways on the X-shaped airport were dotted with airliners waiting to depart, and the entire circular main terminal building was choked with airliners and service trucks. As the center of the largest part of the main terminal building almost touched the cargo plane’s nose, the Stork clicked twice on the intercom to let his master know they had arrived, then began to pull up into a steep climb ...
The first explosion did not seem too loud, and since Korhonen was concentrating on the pullout, he ignored it.
Then his ears registered a second loud bang! and then another explosion a hundred times louder and more powerful.
He had a brief sensation of intense heat on the back of his head before his body, and the rest of the LET L-600 cargo plane, was blasted apart by the sheer force of over two tons of high-explosives detonating at once.
Damn it, Vincenti cursed, he knew Cazaux was going to pull something like this. Shit! It was the same act he pulled with McKenzie: beg for surrender, then turn, attack, and run. Well, he wasn’t going to get away with it. He was determined to kill Henri Cazaux. Vincenti had bluffed a bit about how far away he was and about carrying missiles, but he wasn’t bluffing about wanting to see Cazaux dead. That was real.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t in the best position to attack.
When Cazaux turned away from San Francisco International, Vincenti found himself relaxing, momentarily confident that he’d won—and then he found himself high and fast, unable to stay with Cazaux’s slow-flying cargo plane without burying the nose and risking a crash into San Francisco Bay. He had no choice but to pull the throttle to idle, pop speedbrakes, and widen his turn beyond radar lock-on. Cazaux had turned his lights on when he dumped the cargo overboard—Vincenti did not believe for a moment that Cazaux had willingly dumped all his deadly cargo—so it was easy to keep him in sight as he closed in on him. But when Cazaux tightened his turn, shut off his lights, and headed back for San Francisco International again, Vincenti found himself ten seconds out of position and without a solid contact. He reacquired Cazaux’s plane a few seconds later, but by then Cazaux was over the airport at high speed. Just as Vincenti put his gun pipper on the radar return and got an IN RANGE readout on his heads-up display, the cargo plane’s nose began to pitch up, and ...
And then the LET L-600 disappeared in an immense blinding ball of fire. Vincenti had a brief glimpse of a small flash of light inside the cargo bay, like a flashbulb or the muzzle blast of a rifle, followed immediately by a huge explosion that completely obscured the main airport terminal and effectively blinded the veteran fighter pilot. Vincenti shoved in full military power, retracted speedbrakes, pulled the nose of his F-16 ADF up, fed in afterburner power, and climbed away from the fireball. He had no way of knowing in what direction he was headed or what his airspeed was, but altitude was life right now.
When Vincenti’s vision cleared a few moments later, he leveled off and set up an orbit over San Francisco International. He couldn’t believe the carnage. The flaming wreckage of the L-600 had hit the central terminal, showering the control tower and the entire western half of the terminal with fire and debris. The entire multistory central terminal looked as if it was on fire, just seconds after the impact. The wreckage had spread across the center of the circular terminal, engulfing hundreds of cars and buses in the inner departure and arrival area. The impact pattern formed a gigantic fiery teardrop covering several hundred feet, all the way across the inner-terminal circle to the south terminal. Burning aircraft at the gates were setting other nearby planes on fire with incredible speed, like a candle flame being passed from person to person by touching wicks. Soon Vincenti could count about a dozen planes on fire near the impact point. Several explosions could be seen through the dense jet-fuel smoke, with great mushrooms of fire billowing into the sky very close to Vincenti’s altitude over the airport...
And then he saw it, plainly illuminated by the intense fire below—a parachute, less than half a mile away and no more than a few hundred feet below his altitude.
Incredibly, someone had bailed out of that cargo plane seconds before it exploded . . .
Henri Cazaux! Without thinking, Vincenti turned toward the rapidly falling white dot, nearly going inverted to keep the parachute in sight. Cazaux obviously heard the fighter fly nearby, could probably see the position and anticollision lights, because the ’chute started falling even faster. Cazaux had grabbed the two right risers of his parachute and pulled them down, spilling air out the left side of his canopy, increasing his descent rate, and sending him into a wide, violent left spin.
Vincenti didn’t know if it was planned or not, but Cazaux was too late. The intense fire at the terminal, less than a thousand feet away, was buoying his parachute up in the air—he was a sitting duck. Vincenti had to shove his fighter’s nose to the ground to get lined up ... and just as he did line up his shot, a rescue or news helicopter popped up in the middle of his HUD, less than two hundred feet away. He had to bank hard left and pull to miss the helicopter, and he lost sight of Cazaux immediately. By the time Vincenti could roll out and look for Cazaux’s ’chute, the terrorist was on the ground and moving. Vincenti had a brief thought about trying a strafing run, but now the entire area near the crash site was choked with rescue aircraft and vehicles. Flying down into that melee would be very dangerous. He could do nothing else but climb above the San Francisco Class B airspace and head back to Beale Air Force Base, and the inquisition that he knew would face him there.
The two crewmen from the Coast Guard Air Station just north of San Francisco International Airport couldn’t believe their eyes as they watched the medium cargo plane plow into the central terminal—it looked like the aftermath of an oil-refinery explosion or a replay of a successful bomb strike during the Persian Gulf War. They heard the low-flying cargo plane as it buzzed their hangar, and they saw it explode and crash into the terminal as they watched. The entire airport seemed to be waist-deep in fire so hot that it could be felt from inside their pickup truck nearly a half-mile away.
But even the explosion and devastation itself were nothing compared to their surprise as a lone parachutist dropped into the grassy field bordering the airport’s outer security fence. “Jesus Christ... did that guy jump out of that cargo plane?” one of the Coast Guardsmen asked.
“He’s gotta be the luckiest sonofabitch in the world,” the other said. “He got out of the plane in time, and he missed that fence by inches. He looks pretty bad.” They drove over, found the man lying faceup in the grass, just a few feet from the security fence. One seaman went over to him while the other set to work deflating the parachute so it wouldn’t drag him into the bay. “Hey, Todd,” the first seaman shouted over the roar of the nearby explosions and fire, “we got a radio in the—”
The second seaman couldn’t hear his buddy over the sounds of sheer devastation at the airport. A few fire trucks from the Coast Guard base were racing toward the terminal, but they were too far away and moving too fast to flag down. “Say again, Will?” No reply. He managed to collapse the billowing parachute, then turned to his partner: “What did you say?”
His buddy Will was lying on the ground just a few feet away, the entire top of his head blown off. The parachutist was standing beside the second seaman, a gun pointed at his face. He saw a bright flash of light and barely registered a loud bang!, then nothing.
Henri Cazaux unbuckled his parachute harness, rolled up the parachute, and threw it into the storage area behind the seat of the pickup truck so it wouldn’t be easily spotted. He then collected the Coast Guardsmen’s ID cards, found
a jacket and cap that fit him, and started up the pickup truck. He followed the line of emergency vehicles heading toward San Francisco International via the parallel taxiways. Then, when he saw it was clear, he drove away off the airport. He was challenged once by an airport security guard who enlisted his help in trying to control traffic as thousands of persons tried to flee the carnage. The security guard was shot in the face as well.
Henri Cazaux’s killing spree did not stop at San Francisco Airport. He killed two more persons, stole two more cars, made his way undetected through central California, then risked taking an early-morning plane from Stockton to Phoenix. Sensing that federal marshals and security patrols would be screening everyone coming off the plane, Cazaux told the flight attendants he had lost some jewelry under the seats, waited until the airliner cleaning service workers arrived at the plane, executed two workers and slipped away out the rear exit dressed in their overalls and using their ID badges.
A few hours after sunrise, after stealing another car, he was safely across the border in Nogales. Shortly after that he could be in one of his many hideouts in Mexico, safe from all but a determined paramilitary assault—but he did not want to stop. Each time, the vision of his cargo plane crashing into San Francisco International’s central terminal flashed in his mind, and he smiled a sort of twisted, pathological smile. He knew he wanted to see that kind of pure destruction again very, very soon. It was one way to get even with the U.S. Air Force, the Marshals, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the entire United States fucking government. There was so much the Americans had to pay for: torture, false imprisonment, rape, assault, robbery, perjury—those were just the least of their crimes against Henri Cazaux over the years. And as those years went by, Cazaux could add murder, conspiracy, malicious prosecution, and numerous additional counts of perjury and contempt of court. And Cazaux knew the United States would never be formally charged and tried for any of these crimes, so he would issue the punishment himself.
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