Brown, Dale - Independent 04

by Storming Heaven (v1. 1)

  Hoover FBI Building That Same Time

  It was the closest thing to an interrogation any of them had ever been subjected to. Deborah Harley, Ian Hardcastle, and the Deputy U.S. Marshal of the United States, William Landers, along with several Marshals Service agents and U.S. Navy pilots had been questioned in the Director’s conference room for the past nine hours on the CV-22 raid at Cazaux’s estate in Bedminster, and the attempted intercept of Harold Lake and Ted Fell in Newburgh. They had been subjected to “tag-team” questioning by a small army of investigators—asked to draw detailed maps of their route of flight and movements in the mansion once the attack was under way, describe all of their communications routines, and provide exhaustive records of everything concerning the mission, from where they bought fuel for the PAVE HAMMER tilt-rotor aircraft to a full list of all the weapons used.

  Finally, Judge Lani Wilkes, the Director of the FBI, came to visit the group. While staffers and other witnesses had been shuffling in and out all day retrieving records that the FBI requested, Harley and Hardcastle had been there the entire time, and they were stiff and tired as they got to their feet when Wilkes entered the conference room. “Good evening, Agent Harley, Admiral Hardcastle,” she greeted them. “I appreciate your assisting the Bureau in preparing our report to the Justice Department and the White House. I’m told you’ve been here since early this afternoon.”

  . “You know damn well we’ve been here all day,” Hardcastle snapped angrily. He had ditched his coat and tie long ago and had changed into a short-sleeve shirt and comfortable loafers* Harley was in a business suit but had removed her jacket—she still looked as calm and fresh as she did when she began the marathon “debriefing” session.

  “Something wrong, Admiral?” Wilkes asked sweetly.

  “We should have been allowed to submit our reports on the incident first before all this began,” Hardcastle said. “I think it would’ve been more efficient to take our report and then fill in the details later. We’re essentially duplicating our reports and being kept here like prisoners. We should—”

  “Admiral, I’ve been FBI Director for three years, and I’ve been involved in thousands of criminal and interagency investigations in my thirty years of law enforcement,” Wilkes interrupted crisply, “so I think I know a thing or two about how to conduct an investigation and how to take a report. Frankly, judging by your actions in the raid on the Bedminster estate, I question whether you have any idea on proper or legal law-enforcement actions. Do us both a favor, Admiral, and let the Bureau do its job—for a change.” She surveyed the room, noticing empty drink cups and sandwich boxes in the trash cans. “I see you’re being taken care of here. This shouldn’t take too much longer. I’m sure you agree that it’s better if we just get this whole thing over with.”

  “Judge Wilkes, do you still think the body recovered at the mansion was Henri Cazaux?” Harley asked, a hint of annoyance in her voice.

  Wilkes narrowed her eyes in irritation at the question. “I’m sorry,” Wilkes replied icily, “but I can’t talk about an ongoing investigation with you, Agent Harley.”

  “She’s as much a part of the investigation as you are, Judge Wilkes,” Hardcastle announced. “Perhaps much more so.”

  “Just because you flagrantly disregarded Justice Department policy and procedures and shot up a nest of terrorists doesn’t give you a need-to-know,” Wilkes hissed. “If we weren’t talking about Henri Cazaux, I’d see to it that you had your stars yanked, you and Deputy U.S. Marshal Landers. You don’t seem to care or realize that you interfered with the biggest Bureau investigation since the World Trade Center bombing. However, I will say that the cannon you used to kill him and the eleven other persons inside the place really did a good job in obscuring their features and making identification more difficult—”

  “So this whole interrogation is your way of getting back at us, right, Judge Wilkes?” Landers asked, refusing to be cowed by the Director of the FBI or anyone else. “You don’t have to lock us up—just ‘debrief us for the next six weeks until the press is done raking us over the coals for the ‘brutal’ attack on the estate and the ‘incompetent’ way we handled Harold Lake’s capture.”

  “Deputy Landers, all these little problems you’ve encountered have nothing to do with me—you caused them all, you and Admiral Hardcastle’s damn-the-torpedoes, full- speed-ahead and attack-dog solutions to every problem that crops up,” Wilkes said. “You interfered with an FBI investigation, and I’ve got to clean up your mess. Congress is going to question us next week on what happened, and I’m going to be ready, and frankly, if you’re inconvenienced by this, I don’t really care. Now, I’ve asked for your cooperation. If you refuse to give it, I’ll have no choice but to schedule a deposition and compel you to attend.”

  “And make sure that such a summons is made quite public,” Hardcastle interjected.

  “All such summonses are a matter of public record, Admiral,” Wilkes said, not bothering to hide her contempt. “Now, if you’ll excuse me . ..” Just then her pager went off, and she went over to a nearby office phone on the conference room table. “Director Wilkes ... a what? When . .. ? I’ll be right down ... no, I don’t want to deploy BLACK TI.. . I said, I’ll be right down.” She slammed the phone down and hurried to the door.

  Both Hardcastle and Harley were on their feet—by the look on Wilkes’ face, they both knew something terrible was wrong. “What is it, Judge?” Hardcastle asked.

  . “Nothing ... I’ll brief you later.”

  “Receiving a recommendation from your command center to deploy BLACK TIGER is not exactly ‘nothing,’ Judge,” Deputy Chief U.S. Marshal Landers pointed out. “What’s BLACK TIGER?” Hardcastle asked.

  “That’s none of your concern” Wilkes warned.

  “BLACK TIGER is the classified code name for the joint federal and military team designed to protect the capital,” Harley said to Hardcastle. “In peacetime, it’s mostly to protect against rioters and civil unrest. The Attorney General is the commander; senior representatives are from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service—Bill here is the Marshals’ rep—the Secret Service, and the two-star commanding general of the Military District of Washington, plus other military reps. There was an attack somewhere in the capital—wasn’t there, Judge Wilkes?”

  “Deputy Landers, you’re with me. You two, I’ll talk to later,” she said, and hurried off. Landers gave Harley a friendly squeeze on the arm and followed Wilkes to the underground FBI Emergency Operations Command Center.

  Suddenly, outside the open conference room windows, they saw a flash of light, like a huge flashbulb going off, followed seconds later by a loud rumble that was like a short, sharp crash of thunder. They all went to the window. The flash had come from the south, in the direction of The Mall, but they could see nothing.

  Hardcastle was reaching for the phone to call his assistant Marc Sheehan: “That wasn’t thunder—it reminded me of a bomb attack in San Salvador I witnessed once,” he told Harley. “Something’s going on out there near The Mall.”

  “Forget the phone call—let’s get out of here,” Harley said. “Talk on the way. We’ll take my car.”

  Aboard the E-3C AWACS Radar Plane Leather-90

  “MC, Comm, we just lost contact with the Hawk unit at East Potomac Park.”

  Milford was dumbfounded. The fake Executive-One- Foxtrot was less than thirty miles away from the Capitol, and at the exact point where the medium-range air defense units would have engaged, they went off the air. First the fighters launching from Andrews were destroyed, then the Integrated Command Center at Andrews that had overall control of the Hawk and Avenger units around the city, now the close-in Hawk radar system.

  The Avenger units—if there were still any Avenger units down there—were virtually blind. The gunners on the Avengers had IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) interrogators, so they could pick out any aircraft that was not squawking air traffic control codes, but the tracking sensors on the Avenge
rs had limited range. Even if they spotted the fake Executive-One at the absolute maximum range, they would have only a few seconds to attack before the plane got within range. The Stinger missile was designed to attack targets flying less than two hundred knots airspeed— the fake Executive-One was flying almost twice that speed.

  “Status of the runway at Andrews?”

  “Closed, sir,” Tate reported. “There are only two other fighters assigned there; neither are ready to fly.”

  “Status of the Patriot batteries? Any of them operational?”

  ‘The Patriot site at Dulles was destroyed by commandos,” the Senior Director responded. “The site at Fort Belvoir is not damaged, but it was decommissioned this morning and was ready to road-march in the morning. It won’t be able to respond.”

  Milford checked the radar display with an almost feverish feeling of helplessness and dread. He had nothing to respond with, nothing. A single F-15C fighter carrying one Sparrow radar-guided missile had launched only moments ago from Langley Air Force Base, near Hampton, Virginia, but even at fuel-sucking afterburner power it would take about ten minutes to fly within missile range of the fake Executive-One. Two fighters had launched from Atlantic City, but they would not be in range for almost fifteen minutes.

  Not only that, but now they had a new concern. That VFR slow-moving plane from Maryland was right on the outskirts of Andrews Air Force Base’s Class B airspace, about sixteen miles southeast of the capital. It had not announced itself on any emergency frequency, was not squawking any transponder codes, and it had not deviated from course one bit to try to avoid any restricted airspace. It was dead on course—for the capital. It had been marked now as “Bandit-2,” but like the fake Executive-One, they had no way of stopping it.

  “Comm, MC, get me the White House, Capitol, and Pentagon communications centers, Flash priority alert,” Milford said. “If you need to get their damned attention, tell them the capital is under attack.”

  “MC, Comm, National Command Authority Joint Emergency Communications Network, call sign ‘Palisade,’ button four,” the communications officer said just seconds later. “No problem at all convincing them something’s going on.”

  “Go ahead, Leather-90, this is Palisade.”

  “Palisade, this is Milford, Mission Force Commander Leather northeast sector, we have an unidentified aircraft inbound, about four minutes north ... make that three minutes north of the capital.” Milford found himself hyperventilating, and he consciously slowed his breathing and got his voice back under control. “I have declared an air defense emergency for the Washington and Baltimore Class B airspace. Be advised, all of my air defense systems have come under simultaneous terrorist attack in the past few , minutes, and I have no aircraft or ground-based systems left-. | to respond. I recommend the Leadership be notified and I they evacuate to underground shelters. I am also tracking a j slow-moving target sixteen miles southeast of the capital at li fifteen hundred feet, groundspeed one hundred knots, ETA to the capital about twelve minutes. We have not been able to contact either aircraft; they are hostile, repeat, hostile aircraft. How copy?”

  “Leather, I copy all, stand by.”

  The response was almost instantaneous: “MC, SD, Marine Two and two other helicopters airborne from Anacostia,” Tate reported. “Three aircraft launching from Quantico.” The Anacostia Naval Station, just a few miles south of the capital, is a satellite base for HMX-1, the Marine Corps unit that flies VIP-configured helicopters from Quantico Marine Corps Air Facility, including Marine One and Marine Two, which carry the President and Vice President, to reduce their response time to the capital. Obviously, the senior director at the National Command Authority Joint Emergency Network command post was trained not to take any warning or threat lightly. The helicopters would touch down on the south lawn of the White House to take the President or Vice President; other helicopters would land on the east side of the Capitol to take any members of Congress or any justices of the Supreme Court to safety, if it was necessary. Others would land near the FBI Building, Justice Department, State Department, and the Pentagon, all to ensure that the most senior members of government, if they were still in the capital, would be safe.

  “Give those choppers full priority, SD,” Milford said as he studied the sudden flurry of aircraft over the capital and the surrounding area. “Get their tactical frequency from ‘Palisade,’ or use GUARD to vector them around Bandit-1 when they’re ready to—”

  Then he stopped, and his jaw dropped open in surprise. Washington Approach and National Tower was clearing out the airspace around the city—inbound air traffic was stacking up as high as forty thousand feet in orbit areas all i around the Class B airspace—and Milford was mentally I dismissing the outbound flights . . . all but one . . . “My I God . . . Jesus, Maureen—Devil-03. He’s an F-16, isn’t 1 lie?”

  “Devil . . .” The senior director had completely dis- U missed the flight from her mental catalog of aircraft around D.C. after the mission commander kicked him out of the airspace, but now it was coming back... She punched up his call sign and expanded her scope until she saw the blinking datablock: “God .. . Weapons One, you still got Devil-03? He’s three miles west of Nottingham.”

  “I got him,” the weapons controller said.

  “Take Devil-03 on—no, disregard, take him on GUARD channel, don’t bother with a discrete channel. Maybe whoever is flying Bandit-1 will hear what’s going on and get the hint.”

  “I got him, I got him,” First Lieutenant Ed Flynn, flying the Weapons One control station, repeated excitedly. He switched his radio to 121.5, the GUARD international emergency channel, and radioed, “Devil-03, this is Leather Control on GUARD, how do you read?” To himself, Flynn and everyone else on that AW ACS radar plane were praying that the pilot of Devil-03 would respond ...

  . . . and Vincenti was praying that someone would call, him, because air traffic control or anyone at Andrews Air Force Base command post was not taking his radio calls. He had been trying frantically to contact someone, anyone, and offer his assistance ever since he heard the air defense emergency declared. “Leather Control, this is Devil-03 on GUARD, I read you loud and clear, how me?”

  “Devil, I need you to turn left to a heading of two-niner- five and descend and maintain three thousand feet, right now, acknowledge.”

  Vincenti had racked his F-16 ADF into a tight, seven-G turn and was on the new heading in three seconds. H$ began feeding in throttle until he was at full military power. “I’m on your heading, Leather,” Vincenti reported. “Is this a vector to the bandit?”

  “That’s affirmative,” the controller replied, trying to keep his breathing and voice as normal as he possibly could. “Your bandit is one o’clock, forty miles low. I need your best speed to the intercept, Devil, what can you give me?”

  Checking his fuel gauge, Vincenti made a quick mental calculation, then turned the throttle past the detent and clicked in zone 3 afterburner. The airspeed gauge slowly eased upward, the Mach meter hovering very close to 1.0, the speed of sound. “That’s it, Leather,” Vincenti said. “Are we going over to tactical frequency?”

  “Negative, Devil,” another, slightly older voice cut in. “No time for that now—besides, I want our bandit to hear all this. Devil, we believe your target is a Boeing 747. It may be painted to resemble a VC-25 or some other VIP aircraft, but it is not, I repeat, it is not a VC-25. This has been verified by numerous independent sources. It is not carrying any VIPs or any government officials—it is believed to be carrying hostiles. We are tracking a second aircraft south of the capital, slow-moving, tracking toward the capital. Whoever they are, they have not responded to our radio calls to turn away from Class B airspace. Both aircraft are definitely hostile. I want you to keep both aircraft away from the entire area, but especially Prohibited Areas P-56, Washington-National and Dulles airports. Your priority is Bandit-1 west to the north; we have other interceptors inbound that might be able to catch the guy to the south. Ta
ke Bandit-1 west or north if you can do a visual intercept on them; take Bandit-2 south. Are you familiar with the prohibited areas, Devil?”

  “Affirmative,” Vincenti responded. P-56A and -B was prohibited airspace over The Mall and the U.S. Naval Observatory.

  Vincenti checked his weapons status, which was a joke. He carried no weapons or ammunition, just videotape for the gun camera. At least I’ll get some great pictures of the chase, Vincenti thought wryly. Of course, maybe the bandit is really radio-out, or maybe a passenger is flying the thing and can't answer, or maybe he'll turn away when he sees me or he 'll give it all up and follow me out of the area.

  Just then, a large yellow master caution light illuminated on Vincenti’s eyebrow panel, and he heard a female voice on interphone saying, “BINGO . . . BINGO ... BINGO.” It was a reminder that he had enough fuel to get back to Atlantic City. Plenty of airfields out here, he thought. No way Pm turning back. But it was a bad sign. At afterburner power, he was burning fuel at fifty thousand pounds per hour—he was going to be running on fumes very soon.

  “Devil, your bandit is one o’clock, thirty miles low.”

  There were lots of radar targets out there—dozens of planes were stacked up over Washington-National and Dulles—but only one at that azimuth and range. Vincenti locked the radar blip up, using the F-16 ADF’s IFF interrogator to see if the target was transmitting any air traffic control codes or signals—nothing. This had better not be. another fucking hot dog TV show crew, Vincenti said to himself. “Devil-03, judy,” he reported to the AW ACS controller.

  The fire control computer put the bandit at two thousand feet, just a few hundred feet above ground. His ground- speed was 360 knots and his closure speed was 250 knots. He was going to intercept the bandit only about ten miles north of the capital, so he nudged the throttle to zone 5 afterburner. The airspeed indicator went over 1.0. There was no sddden sound as he broke the speed of sound, no jolt, no vibration, nothing except the ground was going by real damned fast. “One o’clock, twenty-eight miles.”