Cambridge-Dorchester Airport, Maryland That Same Time
The little airport on Choptank Bay in south-central Maryland was a busy and favorite destination for fishermen from all over the northeast United States, but at dusk it was as dark and as quiet as the countryside around it. The Patuxent River Naval Air Station was just thirty miles southwest, where the U.S. Navy trains all of its test pilots and conducts tests of new and unusual aircraft—it was the Navy equivalent of the Air Force’s Edwards Air Force Base—and the area just south of the little airport was often filled with Navy jets dogfighting or practicing aerobatics or unusual flight maneuvers. But promptly at nine p.m., at the very latest, the Navy jets went home. No one dared disturb the peaceful little Chesapeake Bay resort town in summertime unless you had a lot of political or financial pull...
... or unless you were an international terrorist, and you didn’t give a damn.
Inside a hangar rented for this mission, Gregory Townsend checked the attachment points of the devices under the wings of the single-engine Cessna 172. He had slung one BLU-93 fuel-air explosive canister under each wing, just outboard of the wing strut. It was a simple two- lug attachment, connected to a mechanical-pyrotechnic squib that used small explosive charges to pull the lugs out of the attachment points and let the bombs go. The charges were bigger than what was needed and would probably punch a hole in the Cessna’s thin aluminum wing, but that didn’t matter as long as the bombs were able to free-fall properly. As the bombs fell, a simple cable would pull an arming pin out of the canister. Three seconds later the canister would disperse the explosive vapor, and two seconds* after that three baseball-sized bomblets in the tail cone of the canister would detonate in the center of the vapor cloud, creating an explosion equivalent to ten thousand pounds of TNT. The fuel-air explosive blast would incinerate anything within a thousand feet of it and destroy or damage almost any structure within a half-mile.
Once the canisters were properly attached and checked, Townsend and two of his helpers threw tarps over the wings to hide the canisters and towed the aircraft south down the parking ramp and onto the parallel taxiway to a runup pad at the end of runway 34, using a rented pickup truck and a nylon tow strap. Cambridge-Dorchester Airport had a lot of airplanes parked there, but there was no fixed- base operator to service planes, so it was not unusual to see private autos towing them. There were a few onlookers outside the Runway Restaurant at the entrance to the little airport, the usual assortment of people that hung around airports day or night, but when they saw the airplane with the tarps over it, they assumed it was being fixed, so few paid it any more attention—onlookers came to see takeoffs and landings, not engine runups or fuel tanks being drained or scrubbed out. By the time Townsend and his soldiers reached the runup pad, they were away from most of the lights and the spectators.
Townsend towed the Cessna onto runway 34, then stepped into the cockpit and started its engine. His soldiers meanwhile moved the truck behind the plane, attached the tow cable to the rear tie-down bracket and the other end to the truck’s rear bumper, and pulled the nylon tow-strap tight so it held the plane in place.
Inside the cockpit, it took only fifteen seconds for the Global Positioning System satellite navigation unit to lock on to enough satellites for precision use. He checked the navigation data in the set. There were only three waypoints in the flight plan—an initial takeoff point about two miles off the departure end of the runway, a level-off point over Chesapeake Bay, and a destination: 38-53.917 North, 7727.312 West, elevation twelve feet mean sea level, the geographical coordinates of the Oval Office in the White House, Washington, D.C. programmed to the nearest six feet. Townsend checked that the GPS set was exchanging information with the Cessna’s autopilot, then activated the system. The GPS immediately inserted the first altitude into the system, which was one thousand feet, and its initial vertical velocity of three hundred feet per minute. The Cessna’s horizontal stabilizers moved leading-edge down slightly, ready to execute the autopilot’s commands. Townsend then stepped out of the cockpit and motioned to his soldiers to get ready for launch. He began to push in the throttle control for takeoff power and ...
The Cessna’s one VHF radio suddenly crackled to life— Townsend didn’t even realize he had it on: “Cambridge UNICOM, Cambridge UNICOM, Seneca-43-double Pop, ten miles northeast of the field at two thousand five hundred, landing information please, go ahead.”
Before Townsend could respond, someone else on the airport radioed back, “Seneca-43 Poppa, Cambridge UNICOM, landing runway three-four, winds three-one-zero at five, altimeter two-niner-niner-eight, no observed traffic. Airport is closed right now, parking available but no fuel or service available, over.”
“Shit,” Townsend swore, pulling the throttle on the Cessna back to idle until he decided what to do. “What in bloody hell is he doing here?” In the past few days, as. his men monitored activity at the airport, there had not been one takeoff or landing after nine p.m., not one. Their whole mission was in jeopardy, and he hadn’t even launched it yet!
As if to answer his question, Townsend heard, “Hey, Ed, this is Paul,” the Seneca pilot replied. “Yeah, it’s just me. I gassed up at Cape May this time—their gas is down thirteen cents from last week. I had dinner out at Wildwood, too—that’s why I’m late. Hope the condo association doesn’t give me too much grief. I’ll try to keep the noise down.”
Townsend grabbed the microphone and, trying to tone down his British accent as much as possible, radioed, “Cambridge traffic, this is Cessna-125-Bravo. I’m doing a little engine and brake maintenance at the end of runway 34. I’ll be done in about five minutes.”
“Hey, Cessna-125B, are you running engines out there?” the guy on the ground asked. “You know you ain’t allowed to run engines out here after eight p.m. County ordinance.”
“This is very important,” Townsend said. “I’ll be done in a minute.”
“You the one that got towed out there with the tarps on your wings, -125B?” the guy asked. ‘The homeowners’ association listens in on UNICOM. They’ll probably call the sheriff and complain. I’d pack it in for the night if I was you. Don’t dump any gas out of your sumps onto the dirt, either—county gets pissed off about that too.”
“Kiss my bloody ass,” Townsend said. He unplugged the microphone, then shoved in the throttle again, locked it tightly, closed the pilot’s side door, and motioned for his helper to remove the tarp on the right wing .. .
. . .- and, sure enough, by the time Townsend had removed the tarp on the left wing and gone back to the pickup truck, blinking red-and-blue lights could be seen back by the main part of the airport—a sheriffs patrol car. Also, by that time, the twin-engine Seneca was on downwind, just a few minutes from landing. As the soldiers got their suppressed MP5 submachine guns ready, Townsend released the pelican clamp on the tail of the Cessna, and the plane shot down the runway.
The Cessna didn’t look like it was going to make it. It pitched onto its left wheel as it accelerated, it skittered over to the left side of the runway precariously close to the VASI lights, and the left wingtip dipped so low that Townsend thought it was going to flip over and spin out. But just as he thought it was going to hit the dirt edge of the runway, it lifted off into the night sky, its wings leveling off as it gracefully climbed and proceeded on course. The GPS flight plan coordinates must’ve been off slightly, and the plane had immediately tried to correct itself. Luckily it had not run out of runway first.
The sheriff s patrol car looked as if it were going to drive down a taxiway and perhaps block the runway. It shined its floodlight at the plane, as if trying to read the registration number. “He’s going to see those FAEs under the wings, Mr. Townsend,” one of the soldiers reminded him.
“Well, let’s give the constable something else to think about, shall we?” Townsend suggested. He pointed to the Seneca, which was just turning final for landing. As the patrol car backed up to get back onto the main taxiway, the second s
oldier took cover behind the pickup truck, out of sight. As the Seneca came in over the approach end of the runway, flaps extended and engines at near-idle power, the soldier opened fire. He emptied one thirty-two-round magazine on it, reloaded, and fired again.
Nine-millimeter bullets raked across the left side of the plane, one bullet grazing the pilot’s head and knocking him unconscious. Most of the bullets chewed into the left propeller, breaking off huge pieces and throwing them in all directions. Unbalanced, the engine began to violently shake out of control. The Seneca skidded to the left, pirouetted around almost in a complete circle, and crashed. It skidded over across the parallel taxiway just a few feet from the patrol car, then flipped over and tumbled end-over-end into the south park of the parking ramp, destroying a half-dozen planes along the way before bursting into flame with a spectacular explosion.
The only clear way around the wreckage was down the runway, and that’s where Townsend and his soldiers sped away. The patrol car tried to pursue, but had to turn back to help the survivors in any way he could. There was no pursuit—it took the sheriffs patrol and fire department fifteen minutes to respond, and the call to find the men in the pickup was drowned out by the call for ambulances and doctors. Townsend and his men went north across the Cambridge Bridge to the town of Easton, picked up their Cessna-210 escape plane at Newnam Airport, and were already flying outside the state to safety less than thirty minutes after the crash.
Over Chesapeake Bay Near Annapolis, Maryland That Same Time
Vincenti was flying west into the beautiful yellow, then orange, then red sunset, still killing time until his scheduled landing time. Northern and central Maryland and Chesapeake Bay were dark except for the occasional farms and rural subdivisions and the white dots of vessels’ running lights on the Bay, but soon the lights of Baltimore and Washington could be seen, and they were spectacular. The city of Aberdeen was to the right, with the famous Aberdeen Army Weapons Proving Grounds nearby. The big splash of light to the right was Baltimore, and off the nose was Washington and the Virginia suburbs. He was headed right for the Annapolis-Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
Vincenti started a descent to fifteen hundred feet, only a thousand feet above the surrounding terrain and a thousand feet under the Class B airspace around Washington. It was a bit dangerous flying into such congested airspace at night, but flying was always a bit dangerous, and any chance he got to enjoy it, he took. He was still legal, taking advantage of all available assets to keep separated from other planes, and he was talking to air traffic control. The airspace structure around DC and Baltimore forced VFR (Visual Flight Rules) pilots either very high, above ten thousand feet, or very low. But he was still hoping for a friendly controller and a lot of luck to get a really good look at the capital area.
Of course, the reason he was allowed to be up here at all was because the Justice and Transportation Departments had recommended they do away with the air defense emergency, a move that puzzled and infuriated Vincenti. They had dismantled all the flight restrictions, fighter coverage, and Patriot missile protection in record time. The President wanted things back to normal so he could begin campaigning and tell everyone he had a handle on the situation, and the so-called Executive Committee on Terrorism okayed it.
Vincenti overflew the three-and-a-half-mile-long Annapolis-Chesapeake Bay Bridge, skirted south around the U.S. Naval Academy and the city of Annapolis, then turned westbound toward Rockville. Vincenti could see the Goddard Space Flight Center, Walter Reed Hospital, the Mormon Temple, ablaze in lights, and Bethesda Naval Hospital. After passing about five miles north of Bethesda, he heard, “Devil-03, are you familiar with Special Routes 1 and 4, sir?”
“Affirmative, Devil-03.”
“Devil-03, clear to Atlantic City International Airport via present position direct Cabin John intersection, Special Route 1, Hains Point, Special Route 4, Nottingham VOR, direct, at two thousand feet, do not overfly the observatory, the Capitol, or Arlington National Cemetery, keep your speed above two hundred knots, report passing the Wilson Bridge.”
“-03, copy all, thank you.” Vincenti pulled back power and used override to lower two notches of flaps, then thanked his lucky stars. Special Routes 1 and 4 are helicopter routes that generally follow the Potomac. It was going to be a quick but very spectacular tour.
And it was spectacular. Starting at the Taylor Naval Research Laboratory, he cruised over the Potomac south, with the entire expanse of Washington and the Virginia suburbs spread out before him in blazing glory. Vincenti saw the U.S. Naval Observatory, Georgetown University, Teddy Roosevelt Island, and then the Capitol came into view on the left. The memorials, monuments, and historic buildings were all brilliantly lit—he could not see the White House, but almost every building and monument along The Mall was clearly and beautifully visible, all the way to the Capitol itself. It felt as if he could reach out and touch the Washington Monument. He saw everything—the lights surrounding the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Reflecting Pools, the Jefferson Memorial... it was simply spectacular.
He cruised east of Arlington National Cemetery, and he could make out the Iwo Jima Memorial and could even see the lone dot of light that marked Kennedy’s gravesite—just follow the Memorial Bridge west and the bright-yellow glow of the Eternal Flame could be seen through the trees. The Pentagon was plainly visible, a definite five-sided out-line against the lights of Pentagon City. There was a helicopter landing on the Pentagon helipad, Vincenti noticed, and he wondered who was on board that helicopter and hoped everything was quiet down there at the Puzzle Palace.
Aboard an Air Force E-3C AWACS Radar Plane
Over Eastern Pennsylvania
The mission crew commander aboard the Airborne Warning and Control System radar plane, Major Scott Milford, diligently continued to scan all five of the vital sectors assigned to him—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C.—but he always came back to check out Executive One Foxtrot.
The modified Boeing 747, Air Force designation VC- 25A, commonly referred to as Air Force One (but actually only called that when the President of the United States was on board; its call sign tonight was Executive-One-Foxtrot, meaning that a member of the President’s family or some other very high-ranking White House official was on board), had been assigned a standard FAA air traffic control transponder code, and everything appeared to be normal. It was flying Jet Route 77, an often-used high-altitude •corridor used by flights from New England to transition routes into the Philadelphia and Baltimore areas. Usually the VC-25 A was cleared direct airport-to-airport, even if it would bust through dense or restricted airspace, but since the President was not on board, the crew was apparently taking it easy and following published flight routes to avoid totally messing up the air traffic control situation all over the eastern seaboard. The White House had learned from the Los Angeles haircut incident, when the President tied up air traffic at Los Angeles International Airport for an hour by having Air Force One block a taxiway while he was getting a $200 haircut from a famous Hollywood stylist, how sensitive the public was to the Chief Executive stomping on common people while using the privileges of the office.
The senior director on Milford’s crew, Captain Maureen Tate, turned and saw her MC scowling into his radarscope. “Still bugged about that VC-25 flight, sir?” she asked with a trace of amusement in her eyes.
“It’s not the VC, it’s the whole White House policy jerking us around,” Milford complained. “We set up this whole complex air defense system, and we get blamed when it fails, but when the President wants to go on the campaign trail, he dismantles the whole thing overnight. Now the White House is taking one of its heavies right through our airspace, and we didn’t hear word one from anybody until twenty minutes ago.”
“That’s FAA’s fault, not the White House’s fault,” Tate said. “We checked—they got the flight plan and the Alert Notification. The Northeast Air Defense Sector scrambled those two F-16s from Otis, too, and they got
a visual—it’s a VC-25 all right.” It was standard procedure for Air Force One to get a military fighter escort anytime it was in or near hostile airspace, and these days, with Cazaux on the loose, the airspace over the United States was definitely considered hostile. But the fighters’ standard operating procedure was not to come closer than three miles—close enough for a big plane like a 747—and there was to be no escort after sundown unless requested, so the fighters from the little base on Cape Cod had gone home shortly after the intercept. They probably got some dynamite pictures.
“I guess I’m bugged because usually we hear from Air Combat Command or the 89th before they launch a VC- 25,” Milford said. It was not standard or required procedure, but during most special operations and especially during an emergency situation such as this, the Support Missions Operations Center (SMOC) of the 89th Air Wing, the Air Force unit that flew the VIP jets from Andrews Air Force Base, usually notifies Air Combat Command and the Airborne Warning and Control Squadrons that they were going to fly a SAM (Special Air Mission) through their area. It was a simple “heads-up” that was encouraged to expedite VIP traffic. Milford saw Tate’s little amused grin, and added, “And I’m bugged I didn’t get my invitation to the President’s barbecue, either.”
“Situation normal, all fucked up,” Tate offered. “Want to call and raise some hell with Andrews? I can contact the SMOC.” Milford hesitated for a moment, not wanting to bug the VC-25’s crew unnecessarily, but Tate took his hesitation to mean yes. “Comm, this is the SD, get the 89th SMOC on button four for me, okay?”
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