Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (82 page)

 
          
But
the magic did not last long—it was soon replaced by happiness and a bit of
relief that endured even after the unusual sight blinked into nothingness a few
seconds later. The Cuchillo pilots knew that the heavenly object was KEYSTONE,
their target, illuminated for a brief period undoubtedly because of all the air
traffic swirling around it. They were right on course. In less than nine
minutes, that stickpin from God should be a crushed and burned hulk in the
ocean.

 
          
Border
Security
Force
Air
Command
Center

 
          
“Key
West Approach, that
Mexicali
flight looks clear of the aerostat,” Darrell Fjelmann said on the phone
line to the FAA, “but I want him south of Bravo-646. I need him back on that
southerly heading for another two minutes ... at
least
two minutes ... thanks. I appreciate that. Yes, I see him
turning now. Thanks for putting a bug in that guy’s ear for me . . . yeah,
things are still a mess. Thanks again.” Fjelmann reconfigured his scope for
longer ranges. Things were starting to calm down a bit, traffic alerts were
getting resolved and air traffic seemed to be moving along . . . Another alert.
This one looked like a fast-mover, maybe a bizjet or military toad trying to
beat out the airliners into line for approaches into south
Florida
. Fjelmann was about to reach for the
channel button back to Key West Approach, but for once the FAA controller
buzzed him first:

 
          
“I
think you might have an intruder, Aladdin,” the FAA controller said without
preamble. “One of my Delta flights got a good look at the plane that passed
close to him. He said it looked like a foreign jet to him. He said there might
have been two of them. I don’t have a squawk from this guy.”

 
          
“Annette,
we got an unknown, forty-eight miles west of KEYSTONE and coming in at six
hundred knots,” Fjelmann called over to her.

 
          
Fields
was beside his left shoulder in an instant. “What happened?”

 
          
“I
missed him, that’s all,” Fjelmann said. “With all the traffic alerts I’ve seen
in the past ten minutes I started tuning them out of my mind. These guys
slipped in right in the middle of the divert planes going south for Bravo-646
while I was watching the guy around KEYSTONE. I’m only picking up one, but a
pilot says he may have seen two foreign-looking jets—”

 
          
“Foreign-looking
jets? That’s the best I.D. they could come up with?” But Fields knew the answer
to that one—at night, in all this confusion, they were lucky to get any kind of
eyeball on anyone out there. “Okay, we treat them like hostiles until we get a
positive visual on them. If they’re bad guys they’ll break out of the
airliners’ pack and head right for KEYSTONE. Bring
Homestead
’s two F-16 fighters in as soon as you can.
You’ve got the intercept.”

 
          
But
the miss really hurt Fjelmann. He could feel the stares of his buddies around
him and felt he’d let them down. Fjelmann stared blankly at his screen and
muttered. “Maybe you should get someone else ...”

 
          
“We
don’t have anyone else. You’ve got the intercept.” On interphone Fields
announced: “Listen up, everyone. We got two intruders that are going to break
out of the pack in a few seconds and try a run on KEYSTONE. Get on the horn to
your approach controllers and move your planes away from the area.” To Fjelmann,
Fields said, “All right, get those F-16s in, and for God’s sake don’t miss.”

 
          
Aboard the Lead Cuchillo Mirage Attack Plane

 
          
It
was pitch black outside, calm and warm. Off in the distance out the left side
of the nose, a few lights could be seen on the horizon—the
Florida Keys
and Key West, just thirty miles away. A few
stars were sprinkled in—the sky was so clear that the stars seemed to touch the
horizon, and they felt so close that it seemed he could touch them all around
him in the cockpit. A few airliners could still be seen off in the distance,
but a lot of the confusion had subsided and the commercial jets were on their
way, although several miles south of their original course.

 
          
The
mission was going so smoothly ... Where were the air-defense fighters? The
target was right over there, seemingly within easy reach. Except for the
airliners all around him, the skies were peaceful and serene. It was going too
easy . . .

 
          
The
pilot of the lead Mirage F1C fighter-bomber felt his plane start to turn right
and climb. Had he actually drifted off to sleep? Lulled into complacency? He
shook himself hard to get his blood flowing, then depressed his left rudder
pedal and nudged his stick left to regain control.

 
          
Suddenly
he heard “Lead, get on your gauges,” on his radio and he quickly scanned his
flight instruments, fighting off the sudden vertigo when he realized that what
was happening in his brain really wasn’t happening to his plane. The plane
wasn’t turning right—his gauges confirmed that. He was experiencing spatial
disorientation, a sudden and sometimes uncontrollable loss of “up” and “down”
where the brain would interpret what the eyes were seeing in a perverse way.
The stars began to look like the lights of the
Florida Keys
, and those stars formed their own false
horizon that made it look as if he was in a climbing right turn.

 
          
Easy,
now, he coached himself. Light on the controls . . . roll back wings level . .
. merge with the airliners again. Now stop staring out the windows and
concentrate on the mission—

 
          
“Lead
. . .”

 
          
“I’m
okay,” he reported. “Got a little lopsided,” he muttered to himself. Be careful
or Salazar will make it permanent . . .

 
          
“We're
right on course,” the wingman reported.

 
          
The
lead pilot checked his heading with the airliners’ they were following. They
were heading farther south than before. Their distance to the target had
already increased to over thirty miles even though they were heading eastbound
at over eight miles a minute. Were the airliners being kicked out of the area?
If so, that could only mean . . .

 
          
His
suspicions were answered a moment later. A warning bleep on his threat-warning
receiver, a high-tech radar detector that searched for signals from enemy
fighters or ground-missile sites, told the real story—they had just been picked
up by enemy attack-radar. The airliners were clearing out before the shootout.

 
          
The
Cuchillo lead pilot turned left, got the heading direct to the target off the
Doppler navigation set and fine-tuned his heading to put them on course to the
aerostat radar site. He resisted the urge to push the power up any higher than
eight hundred kilometers an hour—five hundred miles an hour, about the same
speed as the airliners—and he resisted activating his EP-171 radar-jamming pod.
A jamming strobe would tell the whole world they were military planes, and he
didn’t want to do that, not yet. Time to play the final games, the one that
would decide whether they made it into the target area or not.

 
          
The
flight leader switched his radio to 121.5, the international emergency
frequency. He took a deep breath, keyed the mike, and in his best American
accent said, “Mayday, mayday, mayday, Challenger five-six mike-mike on GUARD.
Can anyone hear me?” The call sign was a last-minute inspiration from something
he had seen on an American television show—it was the well-known call letters
of one of the corporate jets of the Disney Corporation.

 
          
“Falcon
five-six mike-mike, this is the United States Border Security Force. We read
you loud and clear. Squawk emergency and go ahead.”

 
          
“Squawk
emergency,” the pilot knew, meant switch his identification encoder to code
7700, which would pinpoint his location on the American’s radar scopes. He made
sure that his encoder could not transmit any altitude data by turning the mode
C function of the encoder off, then set in the 7700 code and flicked it on. He
let it run a few seconds, then flicked it off.

 
          
The
Americans knew where they were now, but they would still need a few minutes to
sort it all out before deciding on a course of action—and he and his pilots
were now only three minutes away from their target.

 
          
Border
Security
Force
Command
Center

 
          
“We
got him,” Fjelmann called out. “He’s reporting in now on GUARD. His call sign
is Challenger five-six mike-mike. He . .. damn, I just lost his beacon.”

 
          
But
Annette Fields was too keyed up to consider any other possibility. “Continue
the intercept. Kick him out of our airspace and get him turned around.”

 
          
“He
transmitted a mayday—”

 
          
“I
don’t care. I want him heading south until we get an I.D. on him.”

 
          
“But
that call sign. Mike-mike. Mickey Mouse . . . ?”

 
          
“I
said kick him out and continue the intercept.”

 
          
Fjelmann
nodded, then switched to the F-16’s fighter-intercept frequency. “Trap Two
flight, this is Aladdin. We have an intruder alert, one, possibly two jets now
at your
two o’clock
,
seventy miles, ten thousand feet. Come right heading two-five-zero, take angels
twelve for intercept.”

 
          
There
was a slight pause, then: “Aladdin, this is Trap Two flight. We’re talking with
BUTCHER on this frequency. Stand by.” BUTCHER was the southeast military
air-intercept controller.

 
          
“Trap
flight, Border Security will handle the intercept. Turn right heading
two-five-zero and take angels twelve.”

 
          
“I
said stand by, Aladdin. We’re coordinating with our command post.”

 
          
Fields
had heard the interchange and was instantly on the phone to Homestead Air Force
Base. The throbbing in Fjelmann’s temples increased as he switched channels to
talk to the unidentified intruder.

 
          
Lead Cuchillo Mirage Strike-Fighter

 
          
“Challenger
five-six mike-mike, this is the United States Border Security Force, radar
contact. We have lost your beacon, primary target only. Recycle your
transponder, turn right and stay clear of Bravo- 646 until further notice. SCATANA
procedures are in effect. Acknowledge. Over.”

 
          
They
weren’t buying it, the lead pilot thought. Try once more, then forget the ruse.
“I’ve got an engine on fire and smoke in the cockpit,” the Cuchillo called out
over the radio. “I need to land immediately, I’m heading toward
Key West
for emergency landing. Over.”

 
          
“Five-six
mike-mike, unable your request. You must remain south of route Bravo-646 due to
an air-defense emergency. Turn right immediately and clear the area. We will
vector you to
Marathon
Airport
for emergency landing.”

 
          
“I
won’t make it to
Marathon
. I am landing at
Key West
. I am declaring an emergency and I wish
priority routing. Over.”