Brown, Dale - Independent 04

by Storming Heaven (v1. 1)

  Somehow, through all that, he managed to stay on the bogey, and now Mundy and Humphrey were closing in within three miles of the unknown aircraft. It had no exterior lights on—another sign of a hostile. As he moved closer, Mundy could start to make out its shape and size— commercial, not military, at least no military aircraft Mundy was familiar with. “Control, 641 flight, I have visual contact on a commercial aircraft, two engines, possibly three engines, aft-mounted. No exterior lights, no interior lights visible from the windows. It appears to be a Hawker or Gulfstream-class bizjet. Activating ID light.” Mundy could barely hear himself talking through the radio, like listening to a conversation going on in another room. The pain in his head was tolerable, but now his loss of hearing and an occasional bout of the spins and the leans made it difficult to concentrate.

  “Copy, 641.”

  If the AW ACS weapon controller responded, Mundy didn’t hear him, but he went ahead anyway. By the time he had moved within one mile of the bandit—he had stopped considering him just an “unknown” and now thought of the aircraft as a “hostile”—they were over the coast of New Jersey just north of Sea Isle City, heading northwest. They had climbed slightly, to about four thousand feet, but were still traveling about six miles per minute. The bright lights of the Philadelphia metropolitan area were dazzling on the horizon, only fifty miles away.

  “Control, 641 has a visual ID on a Falcon- or Learjet-se- ries twin-engine turbojet aircraft, tail number November- 114 Charlie Mike. Color appears silver or gray over dark blue. Still no exterior lights. No visible external weapons, no open doors. Moving forward. Acknowledge.” Mundy heard a faint “Clear, 641,” from the AW ACS controller, so he activated his ID searchlight on the left side of his F-16 ADF fighter and started forward, maneuvering the agile fighter so the searchlight trained along the right side of the bandit’s fuselage and across the row of windows.

  Mundy reached a point where the searchlight was shining inside the right side of the bandit’s cockpit, then switched his VHF radio to 121.5, the international GUARD frequency, and said, “Unidentified bizjet-Nl 14CM, this is the United States Air Force fighter off your right side. You are in violation of emergency federal air regulations. You are hereby ordered to decrease speed, turn left immediately to a heading of one-seven-zero direct to the Sea Isle City VOR, and lower your landing gear. Respond on 121.5 immediately. Over.”

  “Welcome, Air Force F-16,” came the response. “This is Barry Kendall of the TV news program ‘Whispers.’ I’m speaking to you on the international aviation emergency frequency. Can you hear me? How are you tonight?” The Gulfstream’s exterior lights popped on, and its airspeed began to decrease. “Can you tell us your name, please, and where you’re from?”

  “November-114CM, you are in deep shit.” Mundy had to restrain himself from coming completely unglued at this point. He recognized the TV show, of course, one of a series of trashy “tabloid TV” shows that liked to bring cameras into the most unlikely places to videotape people in compromising positions. Why the hell they’d risk their lives to pull this stunt, Mundy couldn’t figure. “I mean, 114CM, you are in serious violation. If you proceed any farther you may be fired upon without warning. Turn left immediately towards Sea Isle City VOR and prepare for ah approach and landing at Atlantic City International. Over.” .

  “Air Force pilot, this is Barry, we’re live right now on national TV, and about twenty million viewers are watching this intercept. I must say, it took you boys longer than I expected to find us. Did you have us on radar the whole time, watching us, or did it take some time to track us down?” Mundy was going to repeat his warning, but the bastard continued, “Now that you have us identified, my cockpit crew is going to reactivate our flight plan and we’ll proceed up the coast to our destination at Newark Airport. We’re going to switch off the low-light camera and take some footage with the regular camera. Thanks for your cooperation, guys.” At that, a blinding beam of light stabbed out from the bizjef s cockpit, aimed right at Mundy.

  The beam momentarily blinded him—not painfully, but irritating enough—but when Mundy swung his head down and away to shield his eyes, he got an instantaneous case of the leans. The F-16 seemed to do a tailflip right over onto its back. In a reflex action, Mundy screamed on the radio and pulled the control stick back hard before realizing that it was the leans, not an uncommanded flight control pitch- down. He climbed nearly a thousand feet before he finally regained control and started believing the attitude indicator again .. .

  But at the instant Mundy screamed on the radio, Tom Humphrey had reacted reflexively as well. He hit the dogfight button on his throttle, which changed the F-16’s weapons and fire control computer mode instantly from VID (visual identification) mode to “Air-to-Air” mode, arming his AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles and his 20-millimeter cannon, then flipped the master arm/simu- late switch on his stores control panel to master arm. He immediately got an rdy 4A-9LM indication on his stores control panel, meaning that the four missiles were armed. He then hit the large uncage button on his throttle, which unlocked the seeker heads of his missiles. Seconds later Humphrey got a blinking diamond in the middle right side of his heads-up display, indicating that the first-up Sidewinder had locked on to the bizjet and was in the launch zone. He pressed the weapon-release button on his control stick. The whole procedure took about three seconds.

  An AIM-9L missile slid off the number-two-weapon- station rail in a brief burst of light and hit the bizjet’s left engine a split second later.

  Mundy didn’t—couldn’t—see any of this. He saw a brief flash of light out of the comer of an eye, then heard someone shouting “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” on the radios. He heard a brace of loud static, then a brief “Oh, shit...” then nothing.

  “641 flight, Liberty Control.”

  “641, go.”

  “641, was that your mayday? Say status.”

  “641 is in the green,” Mundy said. “I got blinded by a spotlight from the Lear, and I had to split from the intercept. I heard the mayday call. 641 has lost visual contact with the target. 641 flight, check.” No response. “No- vember-Juliet-642, check in on Liberty Control button nine.” Still no response. Mundy searched out his cockpit canopy—pretty useless gesture at night—then said urgently on the radio, “Tom, damn it, are you up?”

  “Two’s up,” Humphrey finally responded. “Shit, I thought you were under attack, lead.”

  Mundy heard the sheer panic in his wingman’s voice, and his throat turned as dry as sand. “Say again, 642?”

  “I thought he was shooting at you,” Humphrey said. Mundy could hear sobs coming from his wingman—Jesus, he was crying ... “I thought he was shooting at you, Greg,

  I thought you were hit...”

  Mundy finally realized what his wingman had done. “Tom, this is Greg, do you have a visual on me? Do you see my lights? What’s your position?” There was no response. “Tom, say your position.” He thought he’d try a more rigid, formal approach: “641 flight, check!”

  “Two’s ... up ... oh God oh God ... I shot the fucking plane down ...” Humphrey responded.

  “Tom, you were doing your job. Rejoin now, get back on my wing,” Mundy shouted. “Where are you? Say your position? Do you have me in sight? Control, give me a vector to 642. Tom, damn it, answer. ”

  A sudden bright tongue of fire caught Mundy’s attention. He saw an F-16 in full afterburner streak across the sky from his nine o’clock position, heading northward, then turn suddenly in front of him and head eastbound, back out over the Atlantic. “Tom, I see your burner, I’ll be tied on radar in a second, stand by . . . you can cut your burner now, Tom.” The afterburner plume remained. At nearly one hundred thousand pounds of fuel burned per hour at zone 5 afterburner, he would exhaust his fuel in less than three minutes.

  Mundy turned eastward to follow his wingman. “642, I’ve got you tied on radar, cut your burner and I’ll join on your right side ... cut your burner, I said!” Mundy
had to kick in afterburner himself to keep Humphrey on radar. “Tom ... Cut your burner! I’ve got you in a descent, climb and maintain eight thousand, I’ll be at your five o’clock position.”

  Ninety seconds later, November-Juliet-642 plunged into the Atlantic twelve miles east of Longport, New Jersey, still in full afterburner, hitting the ocean at well over the speed of sound. Vacationers on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City reported a streak of light across the sky out over the ocean and wondered if it was a shooting star.

  In case it was, some made a wish.

  New Executive Office Building, Washington, D.C.

  Less Than an Hour Later

  Lieutenant Colonel A1 Vincenti trotted into Hardcastle’s makeshift office in the New Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House. He had finally been convinced to keep his flight suit in the closet and put on a class A uniform while working in the general proximity of the White House, but it was obvious he was uncomfortable with it; it was also obvious that he had shaved in the car on the way over, because he missed a few spots. Deborah Harley, on the other hand, looked as scrubbed and as ready to go as she always did, even though she arrived several minutes before Vincenti. “What’s happened, Admiral?” Vincenti asked. “The operator said something about an accident.”

  Hardcastle handed him an electric razor and a desk mirror—obviously Hardcastle was an expert at shaving on the run. “Clean up while I run it down for you,” he told Vincenti. “About an hour ago, the Atlantic City fighter group intercepted a bizjet running with its lights and transponder off, trying to race in off the Atlantic toward Philadelphia. Turns out it was a camera crew from that trash TV show ‘Whispers.’ ”

  “Don’t tell me,” Vincenti said. “A midair?”

  “Worse—a Sidewinder up the tailpipe, after the intercept and the ID,” Hardcastle said. Vincenti swore under his breath—it was an interceptor pilot’s nightmare in the best of conditions, but under the present emergency it was only a matter of time before it actually happened. “Worse yet— the shooter decides he’s done a really bad thing and crashes his F-16 into the ocean.”

  “Oh, God, no,” Vincenti exclaimed. “The President’s going to have a shit-fit.”

  “We’II find out,” Hardcastle said as his office phone rang. “Lifter’s calling in the staff for a meeting in two hours; the President will be awakened at four a.m., and the first meeting in the Oval Office will probably be at five. We got a long day ahead of us.” Hardcastle’s secretary was out—it was after midnight—so Hardcastle picked the phone up himself. “Hardcastle ...”

  “Is this Admiral Ian Hardcastle, the one hunting down Henri Cazaux?”

  Hardcastle pointed to an extension line in the secretary’s alcove; Harley immediately ran for it, checked to see if it had a dead switch—it did—and picked it up. The dead switch would kill the mouthpiece unless the button was pushed. She also started recording the conversation and starting a caller ID trace with the push of one button on the secretary’s phone console. When she was on, Hardcastle asked, “Who is this?”

  “No names,” the caller said. “Just listen. Henri Cazaux’s base of operations is a three-story mansion on Cottage Road, Bedminster, New Jersey. It’s protected by heavily armed gunmen. He was there a few hours ago; I don’t know if he’s there now. Cazaux is planning something big.” The line went dead.

  “Damn it! He hung up,” Hardcastle said. To Vincenti he said, “Someone calling telling us Cazaux’s whereabouts.” “Another one? This makes . . . what, the one-thousandth ... ?”

  “This sounded more genuine to me.”

  “Just let the FBI have it, Ian, and let’s get back to—” Hardcastle ignored him. “Deborah ... ?”

  “Got the phone number from caller ID,” Harley said. All phone calls going to any federal government office are automatically traced, using caller ID, which instantly reports the caller’s phone number, and by instantaneous computer phone-record checks. “Manhattan exchange. I can run the address through the FBI ... but let me take this one, okay?” Harley smiled. “It might tie into some stuff I’ve heard. The Marshals Service interviewed a Wall Street investor at an aircraft reclamation firm in Mojave who was acting as a third-party broker buying several large aircraft for an aerial firefighting firm in Montana. He mentioned a part of their investigation on this sent them to a secretarial service in north-central New Jersey. Their investigation dead-ended there—”

  “But maybe it’s just come alive again,” Hardcastle said. “Wonder why we never heard anything about this investigation?”

  “Because the Marshals said they turned everything over to the FBI,” Harley said. “Briefed Director Wilkes personally.” Hardcastle nodded. “Ian, if we dump this on Wilkes, it’ll get pushed into the wacko pile. Let me have it. I’ll give it to the Marshals Service. They deserve a try at Cazaux for what happened to them in California.”

  Hardcastle looked decidedly uncomfortable. He said, “I’m not sure, Deborah. I’m not averse to letting the Marshals redeem their reputation after the Chico raid, but I’m not winning any points butting heads with Lani Wilkes and the President.”

  “You handed the wacko call to me and told me to notify the authorities,” Harley suggested. “You meant the FBI; I took it to the Marshals Service. I can handle the heat from the Justice Department, believe me.”

  “I believe you,” Hardcastle said. “Okay, you got it. Notify the proper authorities about this call immediately, Miss Harley.”

  uYes, sir,” she responded with a smile.

  “As long as I’m sticking my neck out, Deborah, I might as well stick it out all the way,” Hardcastle said. He made two phone calls from his desk, quickly typed out a letter on Office of the National Security Advisor letterhead, and handed it to Harley. She read it quickly, her smile becoming brighter and wider by the moment. “You’ve received blanket authorization from me to requisition some hardware the ‘authorities’ will need for their operation. Take the Executive shuttle to the Pentagon heliport—an NSC helicopter will take you. The crews at Patuxent River Naval Weapons Center are waiting.”

  “Yes, sir, ” Harley said. “I’m on my way. Thanks, Ian.”

  New York City That Same Time

  “Who the hell are you calling this time of night?”

  Ted Fell nearly fell over backwards in his seat in surprise. Harold Lake never prowled the hallways and never stopped in Fell’s tiny office—until tonight. Fell could feel his heart hammering away in his chest, and he had to fight to control his tone of voice: “Jesus, Harold, what are you skulking around for?”

  “I needed the option contract summary on the Isakawa house holdings—the Japanese markets open in thirty minutes. Who were you on the phone with?” ,

  “Kim,” Fell said. Lake briefly recalled that Fell had a somewhat steady girlfriend whom he brought on occasion to a cocktail party—that must be her. “Told her I wouldn’t be home tonight.”

  “Thought you called her after we got back from Jersey.” Fell shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt to make her feel included, I guess.” It was ambiguous enough, and Fell hoped that would disinterest Lake enough to drop this line of questioning. Harold Lake never showed an ounce of interest in anyone else’s personal life—it was strange he was asking questions about it now. “I put the summary in your E-mail folder. We’re looking good, as long as Isakawa doesn’t think we’re on the ropes because we’re selling our portfolio. If he does, we’ll be down around the fifteen-percent range again.” Fell remembered when making 15 percent a day was considered incredibly good. Now it was one-half to one-third of what they were making, and would be considered a very bad day.

  “We’re liquidating, but it doesn’t mean we gotta take any bullshit from the Japanese or from that asshole Quek Poh Liao in Singapore,” Lake said. He studied Fell for a moment, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “That crazy fucker Ysidro really rattled you, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t see how you could just sit there and watch him play with that. .
. that human heart,” Fell said, his eyes growing distant. “It was horrible, disgusting.”

  “You gotta detach yourself from their world, Ted,” Lake said, but even as he said that, his mind’s eye was obviously replaying that gruesome sight. “Forget about it.”

  That was the understatement of the year, Fell thought, remembering his bizarre encounter with the woman in Cazaux’s place. She obviously got her kicks out of setting men up to die. “How did you ever get involved with those animals, Harold?”

  Lake shrugged, then leaned against the door as if the very thought had taken all his strength away. “The money, at first,” he replied. “Cazaux had a guy on his payroll whose job it was to launder money, except he was a jerk. He was openly skimming at least ten percent from Cazaux’s funds, I mean, he didn’t even try to account for the loss. Cazaux eventually caught him—you saw a heart, Ted, but my first meeting with Henri Cazaux, he was carrying this banker’s severed fucking head in a bag. I got the old ‘ploma o plata' offer then—lead or silver, a bullet in the head or wealth beyond reason, if I joined him. It’s a hard offer to refuse.

  “Hey, I know who I work for. A bigger assassin than the Jackal, bigger terrorist than Abu Nidal, a bigger arms dealer than Adnan Khashoggi. It’s like being the chief designer for Lee Iacocca or Ralph Lauren. You’re working for the best—”

  “Harold, think about what you’re saying,” Fell interrupted. “You’re working for a killer, a murderer, a terrorist. He kills without thinking, without caring. He kills for money.”