“And you were going to just walk out of here and let this happen?” Vincenti moaned, his eyes wide in utter disbelief. “You were going to let me get busted if I didn’t cooperate with you?”
“You seem to think this is a game we’re playing here, Colonel Vincenti,” Hardcastle shot back. “You seem to think you can beat your chest and take everybody on. Let me assure you, it’s not a game. I am deadly serious when I say that Henri Cazaux is going to strike again; I’m serious when I say I’ve got a plan to stop him; and I’m serious when I say I need your help. Now, I didn’t sign those court-martial papers—your fellow blue-suiters did, the ones you dedicated your life to almost twenty years ago. I stopped it from happening. Who are you going to help now?”
Vincenti stepped over to Hardcastle—followed closely by Gaspar, ready to intervene if he was needed. But instead of venting his frustration and anger on Hardcastle or Sheehan, Vincenti held out a hand, and Hardcastle took it. “Before I forget what you did for me, before I remember you’re a fucking politician now,” Vincenti said in a low voice, “thank you.”
“Thank you for trusting me—and I hope I can keep your trust,” Hardcastle said. “Now, listen up: you and Colonel Gaspar stand beside me—right beside me, not in back of me. Don’t try to push your way through the crowd—Marc will do the pushing. Colonel Gaspar, you give them the nocomment routine—after all, you’re the military and you’re not on trial. Al, you try to answer every question they throw at you—you won’t be able to, but you have to look like you’ve got nothing to hide. Turn toward the reporter asking you questions, make eye contact but ignore the cameras. Don’t react to a question, don’t get pissed off. Think first, then go ahead and answer. Don’t listen to what I’m saying. I’m not your lawyer, and we can’t look like we’re conspiring against telling the truth. Don’t worry about what I’ll be saying—believe me, we’ll be saying the same thing.”
“The judge directed us not to talk to the press.”
“You work for the U.S. Senate now, Al—and you’re fighting for your career, remember that,” Hardcastle said. “We control the situation now. Defend your uniform after we get Henri Cazaux.”
Memphis International Airport Three Days Later
“Memphis Tower, Express-314 with you, GPS three-six left,” the pilot of the Universal Express Boeing 727 reported.
“Express-314, good evening, ident,” Bill Gayze, one of the six controllers on duty at Memphis International Airport’s control tower, responded. By force of habit, he scanned outside the slanted windows at the direction of the ILS (Instrument Landing System) outer marker, about six miles to the south. He could see a string of lights in the sky, all flying northward—airliners’ landing lights. Between eleven p.m. and one a.m., when the big overnight package company Universal Express had its incoming flights (Universal’s huge package-sorting “superhub” was located at the north part of Memphis International), it was normal to have one aircraft landing every sixty to ninety seconds.
Gayze checked the tower BRITE (Bright Radar Indicator Tower Equipment) scope, the short-range three-dimensional radar mounted high up on the wall where everyone could see it. An aircraft data block on the top of the BRITE scope in the control tower of Memphis International illuminated briefly—the Delta flight was number seven for landing. “314, radar contact, report five miles out, you’re number seven.”
“Express-314, wilco.” The Universal Express flight was using one of the new GPS instrument approaches, in which aircraft maneuvered from point to point on an instrument approach by means of satellite navigation. The satellite approaches, coupled with differential GPS signals from a nearby radio station, ensured incredible precision for arriving flights—using GPS, an experienced airline captain- could make a perfect landing and could even taxi most of the way to his gate, without ever seeing the pavement. Except for an aircraft emergency like an unsafe landing gear, going “missed approach” (where a pilot flies his plane within one or two hundred feet of the ground but has to abort the landing because he or she couldn’t see the runway) was almost a thing of the past here in Memphis. The added safety and reliability of the GPS approaches meant that the airport managers and the FAA could safely increase the traffic here at Memphis—every runway at Memphis, and indeed almost every runway in the country, now could have its own precision instrument approach. The concept of “blind flying” and “nonprecision approaches” had almost been eliminated, thanks to GPS.
Gayze’s thoughts were interrupted by a call on the interfacility interphone: “Memphis Tower, Romeo-17.”
“Memphis Tower.”
“Hi, Bill, Doug on seventeen.” Doug Latimer, at the sector-seventeen console, was a D-2 controller at Memphis TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach Control), located one hundred and eighty feet below Gayze’s feet at the base of the tower at Memphis International. The D-2 controller assisted the sector radar controller by making phone calls to other air traffic control agencies, making radio calls as necessary to back up the radar controller, and maintaining the computerized tracking strips on each flight assigned to the controller. “Arrival report visual three-six left for Universal Express 107, a Shorts 300, one-five miles to the southwest at eight thousand. Can’t find his strip. Can you handle him?”
“Sure,” Gayze said. Every aircraft on an IFR flight plan has a “strip,” or a piece of paper used by air traffic controllers to monitor and log a plane’s progress. All Universal Express flights flew on IFR flight plans—company policy—and they were carefully tracked from start to finish by both the company and the FA A. A tracking strip was generated by a Flight Service Station or an Air Route Traffic Control Center and electronically passed from sector to sector as the plane progressed. Although it was not unheard of for a plane to lose its “strip,” it was pretty unusual these days.
A plane without a strip was not officially “in the system” and was handled on a workload-permitting basis. This guy was lucky—it wasn’t too busy at the moment. Right now there were almost one hundred and fifty planes of all sizes scattered around Universal Express’s “super hub,” loading up and preparing for departure—it was busy, but not too bad to handle this one straggler.
“Tell him he can have runway two-seven if he wants it,” Gayze said.
Runway two-seven lay across the northern part of the airport, right beside Universal Express’s freight and package delivery complex. Normally it was a mad race for Universal’s pilots to get to their cargo gates ahead of the others—this guy seemed to be taking it easy.
“Stand by,” Latimer said. Gayze could hear the controller’s conversation with the pilot over the phone line, then: “Okay, Bill, he’s taking vectors to two-seven at six thousand feet, two thousand inside ten, D.L.”
“Approved, B.G.,” Gayze responded, passing the information to the tower controllers handling arrivals to runway two-seven. “How’s it looking out there tonight, Doug? Busy?”
“I think every plane in Texas is heading your way tonight, Bill,” Latimer said.
“Great,” Gayze said wearily. “Ask your boys to vector the southwest arrivals south of Tunica, we’re starting to bunch up.” The string of lights aiming at runway three-six was starting to get longer and more tightly packed, and the flights were coming in faster. Each airplane under instrument flight rules in the airspace around Memphis International had a protective “cylinder” at least six miles in diameter and two thousand feet thick, with the plane in the center, which could not be violated under any circumstance. If the pilots could see the runway or a preceding aircraft and advised the controller of that, Gayze could tighten the spacing up to about two miles and five hundred feet, but most pilots flying at night were too busy scanning their instruments and running checklists to accept responsibility for separation. Things were going smoothly now, but one plane going too fast or too slow could create a whipsaw effect that could cause problems very quickly. Better to start extending the traffic now, rather than wait.
“You got it, Bill, vector
southwest arrivals south of Tunica, D.L.,” Latimer replied. “Talk at you later. ’Bye.”
“D.G., ’bye.” Gayze took a sip of coffee, laced with a little fat-free chocolate milk this time to boost the caffeine level. Things didn’t calm down in the tower until after one a.m., nearly four hours away, and it was looking like a busy night. He needed to stay sharp.
“He wants to take me over to runway two-seven,” the young pilot in the right seat of the Shorts 330-200 cargo plane said. “I said okay. He sounded like he was trying to help me out.”
Henri Cazaux was in the back of the Shorts, inspecting his deadly cargo, when he heard the call over his wireless intercom. He raised his microphone to his lips: “Follow his vectors, but do not accelerate,” Cazaux said. “I’ll be up there in a minute.” He then continued his inspection.
Although boxy and rather odd-looking, the Northern Ireland-built Shorts 330-200 was a popular short-range turboprop commuter/cargo plane—it had even been purchased by the U.S. Air Force, Army, and National Guard as a short-range utility aircraft. Over two hundred had been built for small airlines or major airline partners, carrying up to thirty passengers or 7,500 pounds of cargo. The twenty- year-old plane no longer flew for the U.S. military, and was now flown only by a handful of commuter and cargo services around the world. The used-airplane market was full of them, and it was easy and relatively inexpensive to build a small fleet of them and to train pilots to fly the small “trash-hauler.” Cazaux’s bird was a freighter version of the Model 300-200, called a C-23B “Sherpa” in the U.S. Air Force, modified with a rear cargo ramp and integral load rollers in the floor.
Tonight, the Shorts was a bomber.
Cazaux was inspecting three LD3 cargo containers, standard airline-use baggage, cargo, or mail containers, each filled with two thousand pounds of a mixture of waste ammonium nitrate rocket propellant, stolen from an industrial- waste storage facility in western Massachusetts, and TNT. The three containers were chained together, and the forward container was chained to a quick-release lever attached to the forward cargo-bay deck. A fourth pallet in the rear of the plane carried a six-foot-diameter pilot parachute and a forty-foot-diameter main cargo parachute, cabled to the LD3 containers.
This setup comprised a functional and tested parachute- extraction system, similar to the kind used by many tactical transport planes, including the Shorts 300. At the appropriate time, the pilot parachute would be released and inflated in the aircraft’s slipstream, applying tension to the three LD3 containers. Once over the target, the pilot parachute would be allowed to release the main parachute, and as soon as the main ’chute fully opened, it would drag the containers out of the Shorts’ cargo bay. Deceleration or G- sensors were installed in each container to set off the explosives one second after hitting the target, which would allow the containers to break through the roof of the target before detonating.
Satisfied that all was ready, Cazaux made his way back up to the cockpit and put on a headset. “Say again your last, Roberts?”
“I’m using the Universal call sign you gave me, Captain,” the young pilot responded, “and I asked for vectors to runway three-six right, as ordered. Approach Control asked me if I wanted the Universal runway instead, two- seven ...”
“You should have replied no,” Cazaux said. “I ordered you to approach on three-six.”
“Sir, in my judgment it would have appeared very suspicious to not accept vectors to two-seven,” the pilot said. “Approach Control said I would be number two for landing on two-seven, but number eight on three-six right. The winds are calm, so all runways are in use tonight. I felt I had no choice.”
“Get a clearance back to three-six right immediately, Roberts,” Cazaux hissed. “You are not paid to exercise your judgment, you are paid to fly as you are directed. Now get a clearance back on course.”
As Roberts got back on the radio, Cazaux checked the portable GPS satellite navigation receiver’s moving-map display. They were many miles off course now, almost beyond the extended centerline of three-six right. It might be too late to get two-seven now, and their mission timing was way off. “You had better check your timing, and do whatever it takes to get back on course and back on time,” Cazaux warned his young pilot. “I want no more errors in judgment or you’ll be a dead man.”
A few moments later, the interfacility interphone came alive again: “Bill, Doug, Sierra-12. Universal-107 changed his mind again and now wants three-six right.”
“Bless him,” Gayze said impatiently, being careful (after listening to his controller tapes many times with a supervisor present) not to swear. This was not the time for new pilots to be messing around with multiple requests and weird clearances. “Send him over to me. I’ll give him three-six left and try to fit him in on the right. At least I’ll get him out of your hair, B.G.”
“Thanks, Bill, I owe you. Here he comes. D.L. ’Bye.”
A few moments later, the pilot of the Universal Express Shorts 300 checked in: “Memphis Tower, Universal Express-107, with you descending to two thousand, crossing Arkabutla, requesting vectors ILS three-six right.”
“Express-107, radar contact,” Bill Gayze responded, double-checking the radarscope. “Turn left heading zero- four-zero, descend and maintain two thousand, slow to one- six-zero, vectors for the GPS three-six left approach course, repeat, left. I’ll work on a sidestep to the ILS three-six right.”
“Express-107, roger, zero-four-zero on the heading, leaving six for two.”
The pilot sounded dejected, maybe even pissed off, but he brought it upon himself. Gayze didn’t recognize the voice, but the pilot must be a new guy and the old head flying with him must not be paying attention. Most Universal Express flights didn’t jam themselves into the normal inbound traffic flow, but overflew or circumnavigated the Memphis Class B airspace direct to Holly Springs VOR or the Loosahatchie NDB, then got their radar vectors to runway two-seven. Even with a stiff crosswind, most Universal pilots took runway two-seven because it cut down on taxi time, and those guys at Universal had to account for every gallon of jet fuel.
Things were going along smoothly for the next few minutes, but a bottleneck was beginning to develop—no surprise who was causing it. The pilot of Universal 107 was still flying over two hundred nautical miles per hour groundspeed and was starting to overtake the slower traffic in front of him. “Express-107, I need you at your final approach speed,” Gayze radioed. Airspeed glitches like that would create a ripple effect for the next three hours, Gayze thought sourly. Express-107 would slow to one-twenty, which meant that planes behind him would be overtaking him, so Gayze would have to slow everybody down to avoid a “deal,” or a busted separation. This kid had probably just ruined what could have been a pretty good night, and Gayze punctuated his instructions with a curt “Acknowledge” to accent his displeasure.
“107 correcting, slowing to one-two-zero knots,” the pilot replied.
This guy sure sounded overly green, Gayze thought, and he wasn’t getting too much help from his captain. Maybe he better put a bug in Universal’s ear about him. Gayze hit a telephone button marked univ disp on his communications console, and a moment later he heard: “Universal Express, dispatcher, Kline.”
“Hey, Rudy—Bill Gayze up in Memphis Tower.”
“Hey, Bill how’s it goin’ tonight? What’s up? Not with any of our birds, I hope.”
“Minor problem, thought you might want to mention it to Mike.” Mike Chaswick was the chief pilot at Universal Express. He and Gayze were friends and had visited each other’s places of business many times on orientation tours. “One of your birds coming up on final approach now. No violations, but he’s skating on thin ice.”
“Sure, Bill... ah, which flight are we talking about?” “One-oh-seven.”
There was a very long pause, then: “107, you said?” “Yeah,” Gayze replied. “A Shorts 330, landing in about two minutes.”
“Our flight 107 landed four hours ago,” Kline said. “107 i
s a daily from Shreveport to Memphis, but it usually arrives at eleven p.m., not two a.m. Our last inbound is usually down around one-thirty—we start launching outbounds at three. What kind of plane you say it was? A Shorts?” “Yep. Tail number November-564W.”
“I don’t recognize that tail number,” Kline said. “We got three Shorts on the flight line, Bill, but we don’t use them for the inbound dailies—they’re for the short-haul last- minute outbounds. Used very little. I’m flipping through the schedule .. . nope, I don’t see any Shorts on the schedule yesterday or today, but that don’t mean too much because they come and go on short notice. He might be from the maintenance facility at DFW, but I sure as hell didn’t know about him. I’ll have to park him on the back forty— all my other gates are full.”
This was getting weirder by the second, Gayze thought—and the weird feeling was quickly being replaced by a feeling of fear. “Stand by one.” Gayze made a few radio calls for inbound flights, asked one of the other controllers a question, then turned back to the phone line: “We got another inbound Universal flight coming in on two- seven, flight 203 from Cincinnati, a 727.”
“We have a daily 203 from Cincinnati, Bill, and it’s a 727 usually, but he landed okay at eleven-fifteen. Yep, here’s the crew’s manifest on 107. Sure he’s a Universal flight?”
“Yep, that’s what he says,” Gayze replied, frowning. “I didn’t get a strip on my guy.”
“You got a strip on the 727?”
“Stand by one.” Sure enough, they did not. Well, he didn’t have any more time to work on this screwup, and besides call-sign screwups were common and not that important. Both planes would be on the ground in a few minutes. “Listen, Rudy, I gotta run, but I’ll call you back when I get a chance and we’ll sort this out after he’s on the deck. I’ll have Security escort them in. Talk to you later.” Well, whatever call sign he had didn’t really matter, Gayze thought as he punched off the phone button and returned to the radios.
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