‘First light,’ Hunter said. ‘Beer and chocolate do for you?’
‘Guess it’ll have to,’ Reilly said, lay down and closed his eyes.
Chapter Sixteen
Saturday
McCarran Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada
Roger Ketch had also initiated a dedicated radar watch at McCarran AFB to try to detect the duster as it approached Las Vegas, as he was sure it was going to. It was a monumentally boring and probably fundamentally pointless task, which was one reason why the most junior air traffic controller on watch was given the job. The Chief Controller had attempted to explain to Ketch exactly why it was going to be a complete waste of time.
‘Unless these two guys fly at above three thousand feet within thirty miles of our radar head here at McCarran,’ he’d said, ‘we’re not going to see them. And from what you’ve told me, they’re definitely not going to be that stupid. If this guy’s an ex-military aviator, he’ll be real used to flying at low level – that’s not going to faze him at all – and anyway he won’t bring the duster anywhere near Vegas. He’ll put it down somewhere out in the sticks, steal a car and drive in. You know it, I know it, and he knows it, so why are you wasting my time?’
The lack of sleep was beginning to tell on Ketch, and his notorious short temper was even less controlled than usual.
‘I don’t give a flying fuck about your time, or your opinions. You’ll do what I say, or I’ll have you out of McCarran and permanently out of work in twelve hours, and that’s not a threat – that’s a promise.’
‘OK, OK, I’ll set up a watch. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for a call from us.’
Northwest Colorado/Southern Nevada
In fact, they were both right. Hunter was flying the duster the way anybody who saw it would expect a duster to be flown – low. But Las Vegas lies more or less in the centre of a valley virtually surrounded by high ground, so ‘low’ was actually nothing like as low as Hunter would have liked.
The map he was using for this last leg of the flight wasn’t the best, by a long way. In fact, it was an A3 format road map of the United States that Reilly had produced from his voluminous bag – fine for a motoring tour, a lot less helpful in the cramped cockpit of a crop-duster. Before take-off that morning Hunter had spent some minutes studying the depiction of the Las Vegas area on the map and the mapping app on his phone, and hadn’t much liked what he’d seen.
He’d realized immediately that his landing options were fairly limited. He didn’t want to get closer than thirty miles to Las Vegas, precisely because he was worried about the duster being detected on McCarran’s radar. Landing points north and west of Vegas were few because of, respectively, the Sheep Range and Spring Mountains, and to the south lay the McCullough Ridge, which only left an approach from the east, over the fairly well-populated area around Lake Mead.
Finally, Hunter had decided to dog-leg south of the Virgin Mountains, then turn west, crossing the northern arm of Lake Mead to pass between Muddy Peak and Overton, and look for a landing site somewhere between Crystal and Moapa. That would avoid the duster flying over or close to most of the populated areas, and still get them to within thirty or forty miles of Las Vegas.
It would also keep them at least thirty miles clear of the McCarran radar head, and hopefully below radar cover.
McCarran Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada
The height/range equation for most radar equipment is simple enough: it’s roughly ten miles per thousand feet, a ratio which is a function, primarily, of geography, of the curve of the Earth’s surface. This means that an aircraft will have to be at two thousand feet above ground level to paint on a radar set twenty miles away; four thousand feet to be detected at forty miles, and so on.
The radar equipment at McCarran is typical of most airfield radars, except that it has one or two more suppression circuits than normal to eliminate the returns from the high ground surrounding Las Vegas. The principal suppression tool is MTI – Moving Target Indicator – which is both simple and effective. It electronically compares each radar return from a target with the subsequent return from that target, and if there is no detectable movement either towards or away from the radar head, the return is deemed to be stationary, and so is not displayed. That very effectively eliminates all ground returns.
Unfortunately, MTI suffers from a problem well-known to air traffic controllers – tangential fade. If an aircraft’s track is at a precise tangent to the radar head, there is no relative motion for the MTI circuitry to detect. The return is moving, but neither towards nor away from the head, and so will be eliminated. This is only a minor problem, because most aircraft radiate secondary surveillance radar, or SSR, which constantly displays the aircraft’s position.
Crop-dusters don’t carry SSR, and the McCarran Chief Controller knew that the aircraft would be actively trying to avoid detection, so he’d instructed his junior controller to deselect the normal processed radar display and revert to a raw picture. Of course, MTI had to be selected, otherwise the picture would have been completely swamped by ground returns.
As the duster emerged from behind Muddy Peak, thirty-seven miles northeast of Las Vegas, and began tracking northwest at a little over three hundred feet above ground level – but at nearly four thousand feet above the radar head at Las Vegas – the McCarran radar detected it. The return painted twice, then vanished, but the junior controller was keen and enthusiastic – both traits that would vanish with experience – and noticed it. He immediately marked the position and exact time of each paint on the radar screen with a chinagraph wax pencil. He’d done exactly the same thing thirteen times previously that morning, and in each case nothing further had appeared.
He took a plastic ruler, aligned it as accurately as he could with the two marks, and drew a faint dotted line across the screen in the direction the return had been traveling. Then he watched the screen intently, his eyes roaming along the faint line, looking for any indication of another radar return. He noted that the short track was almost exactly at right angles to the rotating time-base, so tangential fade was to be expected.
Twenty-three seconds later the return reappeared, slightly to the left of the line he’d drawn, and about three miles southwest of Moapa. It painted three times, then vanished completely. As before, the controller marked the location of each return, and watched the radar tube intently for a further two minutes, in case it reappeared. When it didn’t, he pressed one of the buttons on the telephone panel to his right.
Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada
‘Give me the grid references,’ Roger Ketch snapped. ‘First contact and last contact, the times of both and the direction of travel. Right. Thanks,’ he added, somewhat grudgingly.
Roger Ketch replaced the telephone handset. He hadn’t seriously expected that the radar watch at McCarran would yield any positive results: putting it in place had just been prudent, another base which he’d covered. And, of course, there was no proof that the contact the controller had so fleetingly detected was the crop duster, but Ketch had a gut feeling that it was.
And, right or wrong, he was going to act on the assumption that it was Hunter and Reilly. If nothing else, the contact was in pretty much the right place, and at pretty much the right time. Ketch had earlier spent some fifteen minutes with a piece of paper, a map of the United States and the calculator on his desktop computer, working out the time envelope within which they could reasonably expect the duster to reach Nevada. It looked as if Hunter had made slightly better time than he had expected.
The pigeons, as it were, were coming home to roost. All Ketch had to do was to make sure that the two men never left Nevada, and that, on his home turf, shouldn’t be difficult.
Ketch smiled briefly, reached for the desk telephone and punched in a speed-dial code that he’d got written on a slip of paper in front of him. His call was answered in less than ten seconds.
‘Briefing room.’
‘Scramble,’ Ketch sna
pped, and immediately depressed the button to end the call. He glanced down again at the piece of paper and dialled a second number. When the call was answered Ketch dictated the information he’d been given by the McCarran controller and then put the phone down.
He smiled again, looked up a mobile phone number in his desk diary, and reached out once more for the telephone.
McCarran Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada
The sudden high-pitched whine of a jet engine spooling up cut across the silence of the hardstanding, and a few people walking along one of the nearby paths stopped to look at the unfamiliar sight. The US Marine Corps AH-1W Super Cobra looked ugly, dark, mean and threatening, and that was before it was even airborne.
Ketch had requisitioned the tank-busting helicopter the previous evening, and it had flown over, together with a chase C-130 Hercules carrying spares and ammunition, as well as a second flight crew, from the New River Marine Corps base at Jacksonville in North Carolina late the previous night.
He’d thought about using one of the F-15 or F-16 fighters based at Groom Lake, but he’d rejected them, because the duster flew too slowly. The Cobra carried pretty much the same armament as the fighters but, more importantly, it could match speed with anything below a hundred and forty knots, which meant it was the ideal weapon to take out the duster.
The rotors began to turn, slowly at first, then swiftly picking up speed until the disk became just a blur. In the tandem cockpit, the pilot obeyed the ground marshaller’s waved batons, lifted off and turned northeast, towards the active runway.
‘McCarran Tower, Cobra Three is airborne.’
‘Cobra Three, roger. Break, break. Janet Two Six Two, line up and hold. Helicopter traffic crossing the active runway. Acknowledge.’
‘Two Six Two, roger.’
The white-painted Boeing 737 with a red horizontal stripe along the fuselage turned slowly off the taxiway and onto the end of the active runway, and then braked to a halt.
‘Cobra Three is clear to cross the active. Your initial vector is zero four zero. Climb to two thousand feet and call your discrete frequency when clear of the airfield boundary.’
‘All copied, Cobra Three,’ the gunship pilot responded, then pulled up on the collective and accelerated the helicopter across the airfield towards the northeast.
Crystal, Nevada
When Hunter switched off the duster’s engine for the last time, he heaved a long sigh of relief. It had been, by any standards, a tremendously tedious and nerve-wracking journey. The better part of three thousand miles in an entirely unsuitable aircraft, numerous refuelling stops, each fraught with the possibility of detection: it was an experience he had no wish to repeat – ever.
Behind and below him, Reilly emitted a long low groan. ‘Is that it?’ he muttered.
‘Yes,’ Hunter replied. ‘That’s it. We’re a mile or so outside Crystal, if your road map’s accurate. You’ll appreciate that I didn’t actually stop and read the road signs on the way over the highway.’
‘I dunno why the hell not,’ Reilly countered. ‘You was certainly low enough.’
The two men clambered stiffly out of the tiny aircraft and looked around cautiously. Hunter had circled the area twice before picking his landing spot, and he was satisfied that the aircraft was invisible both from the road and from any sign of habitation. Of course, somebody could have seen the duster descending, but that was always going to be a risk. And, even if somebody had seen it land, that’s what dusters did. Hunter just hoped that country people were sufficiently familiar with the aircraft to effectively ignore it. That, after all, had been the main reason for choosing the duster in the first place.
‘So now what?’ Reilly demanded.
Hunter didn’t reply immediately, but looked carefully at a group of scrubby trees about fifty yards from where they were standing.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘I’ll just tuck this baby into those trees over there. Just in case anybody’s had the bright idea of sending up a reconnaissance aircraft to look for us.’
Hunter climbed back into the duster’s cockpit for what he fervently hoped would be the last time, started the engine and taxied the aircraft across the rutted ground. Ten feet short of the clump of trees he stopped, turned off the engine but didn’t apply the brakes. With Reilly shoving on the starboard wing, the two men eased the duster close in amongst the trees.
‘That should do it,’ Hunter said. ‘Now a short walk to loosen you up a bit, then we find a car or truck and borrow it for the ride into Las Vegas.’
They pulled their bags out of the duster, checked that their pistols were loaded, holstered them, picked up their bags and set off in the general direction of Crystal. As they walked, they munched on the last of the chocolate bars.
‘Easier to eat ’em than carry ’em,’ Reilly said.
They were less than a quarter of a mile from the duster when Reilly suddenly stopped.
‘What is it?’ Hunter demanded.
‘Chopper,’ Reilly said. ‘Heading this way. Best we get out of sight.’
There were no trees anywhere near them, but plenty of low bushes, and the two men ran swiftly across to a group lying off to their left. In less than a minute, both had burrowed under the branches and were invisible from above.
The distinctive sound of the helicopter’s rotor blades slicing the air was louder, and within seconds both men could see the aircraft.
‘Cobra,’ Reilly called out. ‘That’s one serious mother of a chopper. If they spot us we’re coyote meat.’
The Cobra was flying at about two hundred feet, moving slowly, the crew obviously searching the ground below. As Hunter peered at it through the covering of branches above him, the helicopter suddenly accelerated.
‘They must have seen the duster,’ Hunter said.
‘Yup,’ Reilly replied, squinting after the retreating aircraft. ‘Guess they’ll –’
His words were drowned by a sudden roar, followed by an explosion that both men felt through the ground as well as heard.
‘They’ve used a missile,’ Hunter shouted. ‘Probably a Hellfire, in which case the duster’s going to be nothing more than a pile of scrap metal.’
‘Jesus! Are these guys playin’ for keeps or what?’ Reilly demanded, looking at a plume of black smoke ascending vertically upwards from the clump of trees where the duster had been parked. Squinting into the glare, Hunter could clearly see a section of one wing lying on the ground.
‘Yup,’ Hunter replied, nodding. ‘I guess Dave Charles is going to be really pissed about this.’
They watched the Cobra circle the clump of trees twice, then land about fifty yards away from the remains of the duster. One of the crew got out and walked cautiously, a pistol held in his right hand, towards the wreckage. Thirty seconds later he ran back to the helicopter and climbed into his seat. The Cobra lifted off almost immediately, and began flying slowly around the area at low level, searching.
‘Guess they know we weren’t still sitting in it,’ Reilly said.
‘Right. Let’s hope they don’t spot our footprints heading this way.’
‘Not on this soil they won’t,’ Reilly said.
Eight minutes later the Cobra flew directly over them. Reilly and Hunter stayed absolutely still, their faces turned towards the ground, until the rotor blade downwash had passed, then cautiously looked up. The helicopter was receding, heading towards Crystal. As they watched, it suddenly began to accelerate and climb away from the area.
Reilly peered around until he saw the reason. ‘Cops,’ he said, ‘and a fire truck.’
Hunter raised himself on his elbows and looked towards Crystal. A black-and white, roof lights flashing, was heading towards the plume of smoke, followed by a fire truck. Behind them, a handful of cars and utility vehicles were also making the trip. Obviously somebody had seen the fireball and had raised the alarm, and a section of the population of Crystal obviously had nothing better to do than drive out into the desert to see what it
was all about.
‘OK,’ Hunter said. ‘We’ll just stay here nice and quiet until they’re behind us, then we’ll move.’
Five minutes later they were on their feet and walking as quickly as the rough and hard-baked ground would allow. It took them almost twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of Crystal, and another fifteen to find a suitable vehicle. Most cars were parked directly in front of the shops, bars and diners, and they couldn’t take the risk that they would be seen taking one.
They found the Ford pickup parked down a side street. It was old, but looked in good repair, and it had obviously been standing in the same spot for a while, judging by the layer of fine dust covering the windshield. Better still, the driver’s door wasn’t locked, and Reilly found the ignition key in the glove compartment.
‘Just too easy,’ he muttered. ‘Takes all the fun out of it.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Hunter said, as Reilly started the engine and pulled the Ford away from the curb. ‘You’ll have plenty of chances to demonstrate your talents before we’re done with this.’
Reilly drove slowly through Crystal, following the signs for Interstate 15 and Las Vegas. At the outskirts of the township, and well before the I-15 interchange, he pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.
‘What is it?’ Hunter asked.
‘Just had a thought,’ Reilly said.
Hunter nodded encouragement.
‘We’re about thirty miles outside Vegas, right, and I guess that Roland Oliver or whatever the hell the outfit’s called will be expecting us to pitch up there real soon?’
Hunter nodded again.
‘Well, maybe just tooling on down the Interstate, getting to Vegas and asking for directions to McCarran might not be such a bright idea.’
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