The communications area, consisting mostly of a huge console looking like something out of a science fiction movie. Most of this electronics gear was transistorized to save weight, including the radio teletype that could be patched into the Kremlin-Pentagon hot line or even the UPI, AP and IPS news printers in the White House. Next to the radio teletype a coding machine for handling incoming classified matter.
The main cabin, about the only conventional-appearing space on the plane. Two-abreast, airliner-type seats with a thirty-passenger capacity. The seats were pale green, the cabin walls a soft beige. At the head of the cabin, on one side a lavatory and on the other a galley. At the end of the main cabin, a lounge area with a television set. As on the predecessor Boeing, the seats faced rearward—not for safety (no one had ever proved that rear-facing seats were safer in a crash) but to provide the semblance of an auditorium or large conference room if the bulkhead dividing this area from the presidential quarters was removed.
Henderson was at the bulkhead now, an easily detachable plastic structure with a large door in the center. He opened the door and entered the really plush area of the plane.
There was the kidney-shaped desk first used by President Johnson and transferred, at Haines’s request, to the newer Air Force One. A big, comfortable swivel chair in back of the desk, resting flush against the cream-colored cabin wall. The desk was a rich walnut and the chair likewise, but upholstered in aquamarine that matched the sofa lounges and swivel lounge chairs scattered rather haphazardly throughout this section. Three phones were on wall racks, used by presidential staff members if they wanted to contact their White House offices.
Suspended from the overhead rack was a color television set—which seldom worked very well in flight—and Henderson noted with satisfaction that the small coffee tables placed strategically near the lounge sofas and chairs had vases filled with fresh-cut flowers, plus matchbooks bearing the gold presidential seal and the inscription “Air Force One.”
A larger galley and a lavatory were next. Henderson opened a galley compartment and smiled approvingly. There were several cans of chili—Haines’s favorite in-flight meal. All Presidents, the colonel mused, seemed to have culinary idiosyncrasies. Kennedy had to have his soup on a flight. LBJ always wanted tuna salad and cream cheese sandwiches placed aboard. Now there was Haines and his chili. Henderson also opened the compartment marked “liquor” to make sure it was stocked with bourbon, scotch and martini miniatures.
The galley inspection over, he looked back over the presidential quarters and thought that, as usual, the twelve-man cabin maintenance crew had done its superlative job. Everything was spotless, including the dark blue rug that stretched the length of the plane. He entered the final bulkhead door bearing the presidential seal, and gazed around the President’s private office, lounge and sleeping quarters.
This area was almost as large as the lounge space he had just left. Another, more conventional work desk, bearing two telephones—one white, the other red. The latter was an intercom to the cockpit, not that Haines used it much. Not as often as LBJ, Henderson recalled, who would call the flight deck at every change of altitude, wanting to know what was going on. The white phone was hooked to the communications console.
The commander knelt and lifted the blue and gold bedcover on the President’s berth. Under the bed was Air Force One’s only parachute—added to the emergency equipment at the suggestion of the Secret Service back in the days of Eisenhower, who had ’chutes for himself and any members of his immediate family aboard. Henderson privately considered this a useless precaution. If something went wrong at the normal cruising altitudes, it would be impossible to open the plug-type doors for a parachute jump unless the cabin were depressurized. And this would require activating the auxiliary oxygen masks, placing a portable mask over the President’s face, strapping an oxygen bottle on his back, and shoving him out of an exit accompanied by prayers that he wouldn’t suffer a heart attack or lose the mask on a jump involving thousands of feet.
If he had to jump from a lower altitude, Henderson reasoned, it still would be risky for any man the age of a President. Besides, no Air Force One commander wanted the responsibility of deciding when such a jump would be necessary. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it would be safer chancing an emergency landing, staying with the plane. Of course, if there were fatal structural failure, like the loss of a wing, the ’chute would have to be used to save the President’s life. But if a wing went, the plane probably would be in a spin generating centrifugal forces that would make an airborne exit nearly impossible.
But the parachute was there, just the same and just in case. Along with life jackets for every seat and four life rafts in the event Air Force One, even on a domestic flight, had to come down in water. Henderson pulled Haines’s single chute out from under the bed and checked it, as well as he could externally, for correct packing. It was repacked before every presidential flight, just one more precaution to protect the life of Air Force One’s most important passenger.
Henderson walked back through the cabin, stopping briefly to make sure all lavatories were equipped with fresh soap, clean towels and toilet gear. His inspection finished, he climbed down the steps, returned a guard’s salute and went back to Operations where he told the duty officer it was okay to roll out Air Force One and start fueling.
“Where’s Major Foster?” Henderson asked.
“In the snack shop, sir.”
That was typical of Foster, who never seemed to get enough to eat. Henderson once accused him in jest of taking a sandwich to bed with him on his wedding night, and Sam had confessed getting up at 1 A.M. on that occasion to order something from room service.
Well, let the major indulge in his one vice. Henderson opened his flight kit and took out the Jeppesen Standard Instrument Departure (SID) chart for the Andrews area. The Dahlgren Three routing was a convenient verbal condensation of a far more complicated transcontinental flight plan, involving careful vectoring through the Washington airway complex via various radio navigation points and rigid altitude restrictions before climbing to the assigned cruise level and hitting the jet airways. Henderson found Dahlgren Three and refreshed his mind on its details.
“. . . via Andrews 187-degree radial to Dahlgren intersection. Cross Brooke Vortac 071 degrees at or below four thousand. Cross Dahlgren intersection at or above nine thousand, then via Herndon direct to Brooke Vortac . . . J8 to Louisville, J78 to Palm Springs . . .”
Henderson folded the map, checked his watch and told the duty officer he was going to the crew briefing room. Here he would go over once again, complete with oral quizzing of individual crew members, the emergency procedures that were part of every presidential trip. Dull, repetitive, already memorized, but still essential. If something went wrong, there wouldn’t be time to open a manual and prod anyone’s memory.
Rod Pitcher took his wife along on tonight’s Andrews assignment. Nancy had seen presidential departures before (it was part of his courtship, impressing her enormously with the way he passed by the Secret Servicemen, casually flipping open his wallet to display his White House credentials). But she never failed to get a thrill out of what to her husband had come to be an outright bore. The twelve-man honor guard (she was halfway disappointed when Rod told her their rifles were empty, because they were there to honor and not to guard). The moment of excited anticipation when the helicopter from the White House whirled into view and squatted ten yards away from Air Force One, disgorging the President and his briefcase-carrying retinue. She was even freshly proud of Rod when he would pick up the field phone importantly, hamming it up slightly for her benefit, and give the desk the wheels-up or touchdown time.
Nancy Pitcher was a tiny, extremely pretty girl whose wide mouth was the only discordant note in her otherwise perfectly arranged face. Yet even her mouth did not detract from the over-all picture. It gave her a sensuous air, a hint of latent nymphomania parked incongruously in the middle of sweet young innoc
ence. Her honey-blonde hair was tossed with practiced carelessness over one eye. Her skirt, as they drove, had sneaked above her dimpled knees and who could blame Mr. Rodney Pitcher for thinking disloyal thoughts about Mr. Gunther Damon and his stinking night assignments?
They pulled into the parking area reserved for the press, the right sun visor on their car lowered to give the air policeman on duty a glimpse of the IPS card clipped to the visor. The glimpse, in truth, was unnecessary because the airman by now was most familiar with both Pitcher and his automobile. Nancy didn’t know this, however, and the lowering of the visor was just one more item of propaganda he felt was needed to convince her steadily that he was, indeed, an Important Man.
Air Force One was parked beyond the wire fence erected some twenty yards in front of the Andrews terminal building. A fuel truck was just pulling away, having completed its job of feeding the Condor with 22,256 gallons of JP-1 kerosene. The fuel had been pumped into the tank truck and sealed twenty-four hours earlier. When Henderson ordered fueling to start, an Air Force specialist had drained about a gallon from the truck and analyzed it for purity and the proper amount of water and octane. The fuel truck itself had been under armed guard since receiving its load for the flight.
And now the Condor sat docilely under the temporary floodlights hauled out for every presidential night departure, a drowsy beast of burden waiting to be prodded into powerful, pulsating life. The thin block letters UNITED STATES OF AMERICA gleamed above the long line of cabin windows, stretching almost the entire length of the fuselage. One of the stewards, slightly impatient, peeked out of the open rear fuselage door where the President would enter. The two security guards, pistols strapped to their sides, stood at the foot of the boarding steps conversing quietly.
“Why isn’t there a sign on the plane saying ‘Air Force One’?” Nancy inquired as they approached the fence. “I always meant to ask you that.”
“Air Force One is what Air Traffic Control calls any plane carrying the President,” Pitcher explained. “It’s Air Force One no matter what he uses—even a little Cessna would be Air Force One if the President was aboard.” Rod left his wife on the terminal side of the fence and walked through the gate after opening his wallet to the poker-faced Secret Serviceman stationed there. The field phones—one each for the three wire services—were only a few feet past the gate. In the old days the press phones were thirty yards past the fence, on the very fringe of Air Force One’s boarding area. LBJ had ordered them removed entirely, for unannounced reasons (the newsmen suspected that it was the Secret Service’s idea), forcing the reporters to use pay phones inside the terminal. Haines had relented to the extent of reinstalling the phones close to the fence, but still considerably distant from the presidential aircraft.
Likewise, Johnson had eliminated the traditional honor guard early in his Administration. Haines had restored it, but only for daytime arrivals and departures; there was no honor guard tonight, much to Nancy Pitcher’s disappointment.
“Press plane left yet?” Pitcher asked the UPI man. “About forty-five minutes ago, they tell me.”
“Who had it?”
“United. With a DC-8, they needed that much of a head start. Haines might still beat ’em in.”
Pitcher picked up the phone marked “IPS” and dialed the office—subconsciously resentful, as usual, that both the UPI and AP had direct lines to their offices and didn’t have to waste time dialing. Bill Utely, the night editor, answered.
“This is Pitch, Bill. I’m checking in at Andrews. Has he left the White House yet?”
“The chopper just took off.”
“Okay, I’ll phone back when he’s airborne. Hi, Mike.” The last was addressed to the Andrews public relations officer, Captain Michael Jenkins, who was present at Air Force One movements mostly to protect tardy wire service reporters. If they arrived too late, Jenkins would phone their offices. The newsmen liked him, even though his qualifications for dealing with the press consisted of a subscription to the Evening Star and a one-time stint selling ads for the Air Force Academy magazine. The boys kidded him because he had trouble identifying types of aircraft showing up at Andrews. He rode with their verbal punches, laughed at their jokes, and few ever found out that he had been decorated three times for bravery in Vietnam.
It took the helicopter only ten minutes to make the flight from the White House ’copter pad to Andrews. A Secret Serviceman got the word that the chopper had left at almost the same time that Pitcher did and waved toward Air Force One. Colonel Henderson, his leathery face halfway out an open cockpit window, nodded.
“Start three and four,” he told Captain Falk.
“Three and four,” the flight engineer said laconically.
The turbines on the side of the jet farthest from the fence stirred into life, whining softly at first and then building up an ear-torturing, screaming crescendo. A ground crewman unhitched the umbilical cord that linked the air-conditioning truck to the cabin, climbed into the truck and drove away.
A controller in the Andrews control tower pressed a microphone button.
“Attention, all aircraft. Andrews will be closed to traffic from now until fifteen minutes after Air Force One has departed. Stand by on this frequency for your clearances. Repeat. All aircraft . . .”
The reporters were looking skyward.
“Here he comes,” the AP man called out.
Out of the blackness appeared the winking red anti-collision lights of the White House helicopter, the sound of its own engines smothered by the howling turbines on Air Force One. The chopper approached closer, hovered momentarily, then with bulky dignity sat down to the right and rear of the giant Condor. Now the noise of its power plants joined with those of the jet for a few seconds, subsiding as the pilot cut his throttles. The huge blades, gleaming under the floodlights’ glare, slowed down and stopped. The ’copter’s door opened and small steps fell forward on their twin latches. An Army sergeant emerged, scrambled down the steps and stood stiffly at attention.
The newsreel and television network cameras whirred.
Out of the chopper came the presidential party. The President was the first one out. The cameras focused on his tall figure and trailed his short, quick strides toward the waiting jet. His graying hair looked almost metallic in the artificial light, plainly visible under the homburg Haines always wore on trips.
The security guards at the foot of the loading ramp stiffened and saluted as the President mounted the steps and disappeared into the softly lit cabin, followed by the burly figure of Sabath, Miss Nance, Rear Admiral Philips— dressed in civvies—and the three Secret Servicemen assigned to the flight.
The two guards ran up the stairs when the presidential party was aboard, one of them grasping the inner handle of the huge cabin door and swinging it shut. The engines on the left side loudly responded to Henderson’s “Start one and two” command.
“Confirm our clearance,” Henderson told Major Foster.
“Request clearance,” Foster said to the tower.
“Air Force One, cleared for taxi to Runway 19 Left. You are cleared to Palm Springs Airport via Dahlgren Three, repeat Three. Herndon transition. Jet 30 to Front Royal, then flight plan route. Maintain flight level two-three-zero, transponder code two thousand. Contact Departure Control on three-six-three-point-zero.”
“Air Force One,” Foster acknowledged.
Henderson advanced the throttles and the Condor, trembling slightly like a human being afflicted with nervous anticipation, waddled from the ramp area.
Ahead of her was an Air Force pickup truck, a big sign reading follow me hanging on its rear. Like a little poodle leading an elephant, the truck preceded Air Force One to Runway 19 Left. Overhead sputtered the rescue helicopter, carrying parachutists trained in fire fighting. If there was an accident resulting in fire, the crash ’copter would disgorge its personnel and then hover over the wreckage, its blades fanning the flames away from the fuselage. Moving slowly down Runway 19 Lef
t were two fire engines and a crash truck, part of the protective convoy.
The Condor poised on the runway threshold, an Amazon pausing to catch her breath before a long sprint into battle. Air Force One began to roll.
Pitcher dialed.
“Night desk, Utely.”
“Pitcher. Hang on. Just a second. Okay. He’s off at ten-oh-two.”
“Ten-oh-two,” Utely repeated. “Thanks, Pitch. Go on home.”
“I’ll do just that.”
He was walking toward his car, Nancy on his arm, when something jogged his brain.
“You go ahead,” he said. “I’ve got to ask Mike Jenkins something.”
Before she had a chance to say anything, he was trotting back toward the terminal. He found Jenkins outside the snack shop, sipping a Coke. “Mike, it just occurred to me. Where was the base commander tonight? He usually sees the President off.”
Captain Jenkins shook his head.
“Not tonight,” he said. “The White House called this morning and said it wouldn’t be necessary for General Blackwell to be here. Which was fine with General Blackwell. He’s got a poker game at the Officers’ Club. Why?”
“Just curious,” Pitcher said. “You know me—I come unglued at anything that doesn’t follow routine. Good night, Mike.”
On the way to his car, Pitcher decided the absence of the base commander was not worth phoning in.
Air Force One swam through a thin overcast, her 360,000-pound bulk appearing as a tiny blip on a radar screen in the Washington Traffic Control Center at Leesburg, Virginia. “Air Force One to Washington Center.”
“Washington Center, Air Force One. Squawk ident.”
“Roger, identing.”
Henderson pushed the transponder button that automatically put an “AF-1” and a “230” on the ground radar screen next to the Condor’s blip. This was the so-called Alpha Numerics system by which flights and their altitudes were identified on ATC radar screens. In the old days, radar could not distinguish the altitudes of targets. The new identifying transponders were hooked to the altimeter and thus the radar beacon aimed at an aircraft picked up not only its identity code but its height.
The President's Plane Is Missing Page 6