by Andrew Watts
David interrupted. “We understand the risks, sir. I expressed that your company was not to blame if anything goes wrong.”
“Hey, I mean officially, Al, she’s not even built yet, right?” said the colonel, grinning.
David and his colleague shook hands with the colonel.
“Godspeed, sir. Fly safe.”
“Thank you, Mr. Manning. Good luck to you too.”
David and his colleague left and were taken to the CIA’s Gulfstream. They were airborne within minutes, headed to D.C.
Ninety minutes later, the SR-72 taxied to the approach end of the runway and took off into the night sky.
Most air defense systems didn’t even spot it on their radar scopes. The ones that did were immediately informed that it was a friendly and instructed not to communicate anything about it on open channels.
Colonel Wojcik flew at subsonic speed until feet wet over the Pacific. The cockpit was dark and tightly enclosed. A very small window a few feet in front of him gave him glimpses of the outside world, which would be dark until he crossed into daylight over the Pacific. Then he ran through his checklist, ensured he was strapped in tight, and said a quick prayer. That never hurt.
His gloved thumb and forefinger hovered over the final switch in his checklist before turning on the scramjet engine. He both loved and hated this part.
Flick.
Up went the switch.
The sound was the first thing he heard. A rhythmic booming sound emanated from the rear of the aircraft, each noise jolting him deeper into his seat, the digital airspeed indicator jolting up and up and up along with the noises.
A decade earlier, aviation enthusiasts had caught sight of the scramjet engine prototype aircraft’s contrail. Big puffs of cloud, separated thousands of feet from each other. That engine had been improved, and it was now getting warmed up behind him. The noises getting louder and louder.
WHOMP. WHOMP. WHOMP.
The scramjet engine continued to accelerate. The thick cockpit window in front of him began to lighten as he chased the setting sun into the previous day. His flight path would take him west almost six thousand miles, from Nevada to the Philippine Sea. At Mach 6, it would take him less than eighty minutes to get there. Then he would make a wide turn and tank near Hawaii before heading back to Nevada.
The rhythmic explosive noises coming from the engine continued, dulled by his hearing protection. But the speed had reached equilibrium. At an altitude of eighty-five thousand feet, the SR-72 was now traveling at forty-six hundred miles per hour.
Colonel Wojcik ran through his next checklist, reciting the steps out loud to himself out of habit as his fingers danced over an electronic keypad. The multipurpose display in front of him divided into three as the surveillance systems came online.
The SR-72’s surveillance and reconnaissance payload was the most advanced equipment in the US Air Force’s inventory. It included electro-optical and infrared cameras and synthetic aperture radar as well as a multispectral targeting system. Colonel Wojcik had to laugh at that name. He was traveling at Mach 6 with no weapons. What the hell was he supposed to target? There was also a signals intelligence payload that would collect a variety of data, which the NSA would pore over.
Wojcik looked at the left-most screen to make sure that the aircraft’s autopilot was navigating them on his intended track.
Twenty minutes until he was over the 144th east longitude line.
The rightmost screen displayed the images being captured by the optical camera. While the camera would record everything in its field of view, Colonel Wojcik had the ability to adjust the zoom and focus of his display with software, so he could zoom in on a subsection of the larger picture but still allow the equipment to record the entire scene for later. Wojcik moved a trackball and tapped a few keys to zoom in on a white dot on the ocean’s surface. Eventually the white dot increased in size until it transformed into a merchant vessel. Op check complete.
The aircraft started vibrating, and he checked the center panel. One of the scramjet engines’ internal cooling systems was right on the operational limits.
Come on, baby. Just a few more minutes and we’ll be able to slow you down.
The world sped by in a blur, and the rattle grew louder. Wojcik felt a twinge of fear in his chest. Or was that the vibrations of the aircraft? He checked the chart. They had just reached the checkpoint for the left turn. A slow one-thousand-mile arc over the Pacific. The turn would take them over the entire area of uncertainty where the southernmost Chinese fleet might be.
The engine noise grew louder. His eyes shifted to his instruments. Shit. Internal temperature was now out of limits in the scramjet engine.
He looked at the right-side screen. A large cluster of white dots was surrounded by a computer-generated red square. Wojcik tapped a key, and the image zoomed in and became clear. Dozens of white wakes.
It was the Chinese fleet.
A red flashing light came on, and a ringing tone sounded in his helmet earpiece.
WARNING: ENGINE TEMP
The master caution panel was telling him what he already knew. If he didn’t dial back the airspeed, the cooling system wouldn’t be able to keep up with the friction generated by the speed of air molecules entering the intake, and catastrophic engine failure could result.
Another flashing light, and a distinctly different tone in his earpiece.
WARNING: SAM RADAR DETECTED
The electronic sensors had detected the signature of Chinese surface-to-air missile radars.
His breaths came fast and heavy in his oxygen mask. Each WHOMP of the engine was like the flash of a moment in time. Colonel Wojcik’s decades of training forced him to take action.
WHOMP. His eyes scanning the navigational chart, heading, and altitude.
WHOMP. His mind calculating the time it would take for the Chinese ships to launch an attack on his aircraft if he kept his speed versus if he slowed to below Mach 1, as the emergency procedure prescribed.
WHOMP. His eyes darting back to the image of the Chinese fleet, now showing…
What the hell are those? For a brief moment, everything else fell away. The alarms, the flashing lights, his mind focused on a new and interesting riddle. Trying to place the giant whitish-gray shapes he saw clustered around the aircraft carrier. They almost look like…
BOOM.
His master caution panel lit up like a Christmas tree.
EJECT.
EJECT.
EJECT.
Everything seemed to go in slow motion. The gyro showed his aircraft was now banking hard to the left. His speed was bleeding down. Mach 4.2. Mach 3.8. The light sky and dark blue of the ocean began revolving in the tunnel of a window. Then everything went bright white as the aircraft disintegrated around him.
Colonel Wojcik felt his stomach flutter as negative Gs came on. He was being shoved downward, the aircraft’s safety system initiating bailout procedures. His pressure suit inflated, which was good. The pressure suit would keep his blood from boiling at almost eighty-five thousand feet above sea level, and act like an escape pod…as long as it held. It also gave him oxygen. A small kick near his back told him that the tiny parachute behind his seat had been activated. It was designed to slow him down and prevent tumbling motions.
He hurtled towards the ocean, wondering if he would live through the next few minutes.
19
Victoria Manning heard the familiar sound of an ELT in her headset. The emergency locator transmitter was checked before every flight. Every aircraft had one. It broadcast a high-pitched audio sound on Guard, the emergency radio frequency that aircraft and ships monitored at all times.
“Control, Cutlass, you guys hearing that ELT?”
“Affirm, Cutlass, stand by.”
Victoria sat in the right-side pilot’s seat of her helicopter, rotors spinning over the deck, the horizon moving slowly up and down with the rolls of the ship.
She glanced down at her fuel. They w
ere almost topped off. This was the second bag of her two-flight shift. Patrolling the ocean north of Guam, scanning the area with her radar and ESM, looking for any sign of the monstrous Chinese fleet everyone was talking about.
“Cutlass, Deck.”
She looked at the glass window of the LSO shack, behind which stood her maintenance officer, Spike.
“Go ahead, Deck.”
“Cutlass, Deck, I just got off the phone with OPS. Sounds like this ELT is a real SAR scenario. I called up to the AW shack, and your second aircrewman is throwing his gear on now. He’ll be out shortly.”
Victoria clicked the trigger on her cyclic twice, which transmitted two rapid clicks over the UHF, acknowledging that she understood.
“Control, Cutlass, please put the TAO on secure.”
“Roger, Boss.”
They switched to the secure communications channel, and the ship’s tactical action officer came on the radio.
“Boss, it’s CSO. We have a rough position of where the survivor is located. It’s about two hundred miles northwest of here…stand by…”
Victoria watched as the hangar door opened and her second aircrewman came out wearing a wet suit and carrying his rescue equipment.
“Two hundred miles? Boss, we aren’t supposed to go that far out, right?”
Victoria glanced at her copilot. “Let’s hear the scenario out first.”
Another voice on the radio. Commander Boyle. “Airboss, this is the captain. We just got notified by Seventh Fleet that this is a top-priority rescue mission. Operational necessity has been declared by the admiral. We’ll give you whatever support you need, but you’re the closest air asset.”
“Understood, sir. Please advise on the location.”
“Passing lat-long now.”
Victoria looked at the multipurpose display. An X popped up with the words “AF rescue” next to it.
“What’s the distance?” Victoria said on the helicopter’s internal comms.
Her copilot used the joystick to measure from their current position. They were having a hell of a time getting accurate navigation information without GPS, but since they’d just landed on the ship, it would be as accurate as they could make it.
“One ninety-seven nautical miles, Boss.”
Victoria said over external comms, “Captain, how accurate is that location?”
“It’s a bearing cut from us and the Michael Monsoor. There’s a P-8 that just launched and will help with the search, but…” He paused. “But that location is about twenty miles west of the one forty-fourth.”
Victoria looked back at the digital map on her display, flipping her visor up to see it better. “And they’re letting us go?”
The captain said, “Seventh Fleet says this is highest priority. You have been granted approval to go over the line.”
Victoria wondered who this crash survivor was, and if he was even going to be alive when they found him. “Roger,” was all she said to the captain. “Your controls,” she told her copilot.
“My controls.”
Victoria released her hands from the cyclic and collective and slid out her pen from the metal spiral on her kneeboard. She began scratching out the math. It would take her about eighty minutes to get there at one hundred and fifty-five knots, but that would burn up half her fuel. They would need time on station to locate the survivor, then rescue the survivor, and both of those evolutions would burn fuel. Call it five hundred pounds.
“Boss, we’re all set back here,” her aircrewman called over the internal communications system.
“Copy.” She switched to external. “Request green deck.”
“Cutlass, Deck, you have yellow deck for breakdown, green deck for launch.”
“Roger break, Captain, I’ll be crunching the numbers in flight. Request you proceed towards the survivor at best speed as soon as we’re airborne.”
“Already in the works, Airboss. Good luck.”
The flight deck team had removed the chocks and chains and held them up for Victoria and her copilot to inspect. She gave a thumbs-up and then turned back to her math. She decided to fly at their max range airspeed of one hundred and twenty knots. That would give her a little more fuel. If the ship traveled at twenty-eight knots…
“Ready, Boss?” her copilot said.
“You got it. Clear right. Gauges green.”
“Coming up.”
Victoria shoved her pen back into the metal spiral on her kneeboard and kept both hands hovering an inch away from the controls. Close enough that she could take them if her copilot made a mistake, but far enough away to let him do the flying. The aircraft sprang straight up and drifted aft. The feeling of the ship’s constant rolling in the sea ceased as the helicopter freed itself from the deck.
“Clear right.”
“Clear left, nose coming right.”
The copilot used his foot pedals to yaw the aircraft right forty-five degrees.
“Gauges green and clean, pulling power. One, two, three positive rates of climb. Safe single-engine airspeed, nosing it over. Radalt on, please.”
“Radalt on.”
Victoria tapped the square button that placed the helicopter’s computer-controlled radar altitude hold on. She inserted a fly-to point where the SAR survivor was supposed to be and observed with approval that her copilot had turned to that heading without her having to tell him to do so. Good aircrew chemistry like this saved time. At top levels, pilots, copilots, and aircrewmen practically read each other’s minds, anticipating commands and maneuvers, shaving precious seconds off time-consuming procedures.
“I’ll get the after-takeoff checks. Make your speed one hundred and twenty knots, please. AW2, please conduct the SAR checklist.”
“In progress, Boss.”
Twenty minutes later, the P-8 checked in with them. The P-8 Poseidon was the Navy’s version of a Boeing 737, outfitted for maritime reconnaissance, antiship and antisubmarine warfare.
“Cutlass 471, Mad Fox 436.”
“Mad Fox, Cutlass.”
“Mad Fox is on station over the datum, beginning circle search.”
“Roger, Mad Fox. Cutlass is twenty mikes out.”
“Copy.”
Victoria checked in with the ship again, verifying that the Farragut was indeed headed towards her helicopter at best speed. The entire scenario was one big math problem. Would they be able to find the survivor before Victoria’s helicopter ran out of fuel? And even if they could, would she have time to conduct the rescue and still keep enough fuel to make it back to the ship? She looked down at her math. The final number she kept coming up with had a negative sign in front of it. She erased it and then changed her bingo fuel calculation—the quantity of fuel she would use to trigger the return to her ship. The new number got her back on deck, but it didn’t give her much time to conduct a search.
“Cutlass, Max Fox, we have located the survivor. Stand by for coordinates.”
Victoria felt a jolt of elation. “Send ’em.”
The P-8 sent over the latitude and longitude of the survivor, which Victoria used to update their heading. The aircraft banked slightly to the left as her copilot made the adjustment. She relayed the update to her ship and recalculated the fuel problem.
“We should have about ten minutes to spare. How quick can you guys be, Fetternut?”
“Boss, we’ll be in and out,” the first-class petty officer replied through the internal comms. “You just watch.”
Victoria redid her fuel calculation for the third time in a row. Her voice went up an octave. “Good. Because we are very limited on fuel.”
“Understood, Boss.”
She knew that her rescue swimmers were good. She had conducted plenty of SAR training with them in the past. Enlisted aircrewmen were a unique breed of crazy. But when the game was on the line, there were no better men to be with. Navy helicopter aircrewmen prided themselves on being some of the best in the world at search-and-rescue operations. And her boys were no exc
eption.
Victoria could see the signal smoke now. She repositioned herself in her seat, hunching forward and placing her left hand over the collective, right hand on the cyclic, and the balls of her feet on the pedals.
“My controls.”
“You have the controls.”
“I have the controls,” Victoria replied. “Coming down to fifty feet. Smoke is at twelve o’clock.”
Her copilot said, “Boss, we just crossed the one forty-four line.”
“Copy.”
The P-8 pilot said, “Cutlass, Mad Fox is at your three o’clock high. We’ll be staying to the east of the line.”
“Roger, Mad Fox.”
“Boss, can you give us a fifteen and zero?” her aircrewman said.
“Fifteen and zero, roger. Survivor is at twelve o’clock, about one mile. Coming down to fifteen feet, zero knots.”
Victoria pulled aft on the cyclic with her right hand and lowered the collective lever with her left. The nose of the aircraft pitched up slightly as they descended and decelerated. Her eyes rapidly scanned outside and inside the helicopter, back and forth.
“Winds are out of the southwest, Boss.”
“Roger, I’m using the smoke. I’ll make my approach into the winds.”
Continuously updating her situational awareness. Feeding into her decision loop. Altitude, two hundred feet. Vertical speed indicator, five-hundred-foot-per-minute descent. The wisp of white smoke ahead of her began drifting to the left in her sight picture, so she moved the cyclic right for a beat to adjust her course. The aircraft responded by banking right. Then she leveled the nose to steady on her new heading and reevaluated her drift.
Now the survivor was visible. A floating white object under the smoke. No longer drifting, just growing larger in her windscreen. She checked the chop of the waves.
“Fifty feet,” said her copilot. “Radalt off?”
“Yes, please.”
He reached over and pressed the button. “Radalt is off. Setting the pipper for ten feet.”
“Roger.”
“We’re all set back here, Boss.”
“Roger.”