“Shut the fuck up!” Aplen countered. The men simultaneously broke into a chorus of “woos” at Recht’s expense.
“Okay, okay, settle down,” Slange barked, bringing order back to his briefing. “The room was developed by the whiz kids in Anaheim. And I’m not talking Disneyland. It’s all Boeing. You don’t penetrate this place without passing through a combination of retinal scans, fingerprint and voice identification. And you don’t get to try unless you’ve got the highest clearance.” Slange left out a few extra particulars. There were even more he hadn’t been told.
“At the center of the far side wall is a fifteen foot-high television screen. It’s got multiple images including incredibly clear down-looking satellite views, moving geometric shapes of triangles representing the four Apaches equipped with air-to-surface Longbow Hellfires missiles and air-to-air Stinger missiles that’ll give us support enroute to the arena, squares for the Black Hawks carrying us, and circles with wings for the F-18C’s overhead. There’s a big fat Capital “X” in a circle, too. That’s for the AWACS recon at 39,000 feet.”
Roarke had been through enough situtation rooms to get the picture. Computer terminals everywhere. Command, which could, with a basic key stroke, change disparate weapon systems, satellite views, and other real-time data on the large screen. But IBCC was clearly leaps beyond what he’d ever seen.
Slange continued. “They’ve got eighteen engineers out of MIT and Stanford overseeing everything. Three are there to track the audio communications between us and our taxis and escorts.” He was intentionally sarcastic. “Another four are glued to screens programmed to follow personal infra-red cameras mounted on our helmets. Two doctors have consoles where they’ll monitor real time blood pressure and vital sign readings and even tell if you peed in your pants. And another four techs are assigned to reading personal-space radar. So ladies, smile a lot. You’re gonna be stars of the show back home.”
“Personal space radar, sir?” Jones asked.
“It’s laser tag to the max,” Colonel Langeman explained. “Each of us will instantly know if an unfriendly, not identified by the computer program as a team member, is approaching.”
“And we can count on it?” This was Roarke’s first question.
“Do you get the right number when you call information?”
Roarke laughed.
“Use your instincts first, boy. Then go for the toys.”
The toys included C41SR processors which create 2-D and 3-D views of the battlespace. These pictures are routed to the large screen television at command and transmitted to the USS Carl Vinson where the president would be.
The result was an array of real time eyes and ears that put American forces at quite an advantage. In truth, Slange never placed undo confidence in the technology. Training and teamwork meant everything to him. They had run the plan in the dark, in driving rain and heavy winds, surrounded by explosions and smoke and under real fire. If the “toys” worked, so much the better. But they were ready if all of the electronic eyes went blind on them.
“We’ll get our ATO through McGill.” The ATO was their Air Tasking Order. “Then tomorrow, the next day, the day after that, or whenever it is, we’ll have more people watching us with their tongues hanging out than Trixie gets at a fuckin’ peep show.”
Not so many years earlier, Norman Schwarzkopf had to move an entire command and control center to Saudi Arabia to direct fighting in the Gulf War. But in more recent years, command supervised the battle field via tele-commuting. The Bush White House even watched live television feeds of strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan, transmitted by unmanned spy drones, satellite relayed to the Florida command center, then fiber-optic linked to Washington.
This was the digital battlefield, fostered by George W. Bush’s Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfield. “And today,” explained Slange, “it’s the pride and joy of our boss. And we’re connected right through hand-held PDA’s. Pretty fucking amazing.”
Roarke aptly added a hyphen into the description. “Gives new meaning to the word super-vision.”
“Here, play with this tonight.” Slange reached into a knapsack and tossed each of his men a hand-held PDA. “Your very own connection to IBCC. We’ll run a full systems check at eleven-hundred. You could even send dirty e-mails to your girlfriends in the middle of the maneuver through these things. But don’t.”
The “don’t” put it all in perspective. Slange had given them a flyover of the technology. Silicon Valley had indeed come to Valley Forge. But there was no substitution for teamwork, training and the human component.
“The point of all this is you’ve got help you’ll never see. But help yourself and the guy next to you. If you do that, we’ll all get out alive.”
Roarke let his mind drift to Katie for a moment. Her eyes, her lips, her body. Moving with her. Kissing and loving her.
“Here, Junior G-man!” Slange said. “Catch.” He tossed a PDA to Roarke. The Secret Service agent snatched it in the air and Katie was instantly gone. He had his Special Forces face on now. He needed it to survive. Roarke was back in the game.
CHAPTER
57
Monday 12 January
“Are you counting the days, Congressman?” the host quipped over the fiber optic link between New York and Washington.
Teddy Lodge was determined to look completely in charge during this Today Show appearance. “I think I’ve got fifty days of work to fit into just eight. I’ve got a cabinet to finalize and decisions to make. So I’m counting the days and adding the nights. I need every second.”
“You’re a Democrat and you’ll have a Democratic majority in Congress. It’s been years since a chief executive from your party has enjoyed that luxury. How will your administration use that kind of power?”
“It’s not a function of power, it’s the American political system at work. Sometimes the president has the benefit of a supportive Congress. Sometimes not. The job doesn’t change, just the number of votes across the street and the number of laws that get passed. And the legacy you leave behind.”
“And your legacy, Congressman?”
“Oh, heck, I haven’t even been sworn in yet. And aren’t legacies for you guys to assess? But if you’re asking about what I’d like to accomplish?”
“All right,” the host agreed.
“I’d like America to be viewed with understanding around the world. And America needs to see the rest of the world as the rest of the world sees itself.”
The anchor, long the nation’s favorite morning host, asked the natural follow up. “And that would be?”
“A world where we understand and respect the differences among people and nations. A world not bound by old treaties.”
“Are you declaring a shift in American foreign policy?”
“American foreign policy is always shifting.”
“Anything more specific, Congressman?”
“That’s a question for a president,” he said with a smile. “Ask me again in a few days.”
By now Michael O’Connell knew the heavy knock. It was his very own Secret Service agent at the door of his well-appointed room at the Hay Adams.
“Coming, coming.”
He turned off his TV set. He’d been watching the Today Show interview with Teddy Lodge. Funny what a difference a few days makes, he thought. He made a mental note of the moment. He’d write about it later.
“Wheels up, Mr. O’Connell,” the man on the other side of the door said with a deep, no nonsense voice.
O’Connell stopped short. Oh my God! It’s really time.
“There’s a car waiting. You’re already checked out,” said the voice from the hallway.
The reporter tried to walk, but he was suddenly immobile. It was as if the weight of the past few days had finally settled right in his feet. He literally couldn’t move. Now his heart raced and his breathing accelerated. He ordered himself to calm down, if only in recognition that the worst was yet to come.
“Exact
ly where are we going?” was the best he could manage. And what was it that the president said? He remembered. “Bring clothes for all sorts of weather.”
“I don’t have that information, sir. Do you need any help?”
“No, no. Just give me a few more moments.” O’Connell managed.
When the agent didn’t hear anything after two minutes he knocked again.
“I have specific orders, Mr. O’Connell.”
With five deep breaths he filled himself with enough confidence to get through the door. “Look. Just tell me what I need to take?”
There was a long pause. Finally, a cryptic answer. “I think you could use your raincoat.”
“Mr. Newman, it’s nice to meet you,” Bob Mulligan said, leading Lodge’s chief of staff into his office. “I’m sure we both have a great many questions for one another.”
“That’s why I thought we should get together,” Newman said acting as aloof as possible.
“Have a seat then and say hello to Special Agent Bessolo. He’s been heading up the investigation into the…” he chose his words carefully, “…the assassination attempt on Congressman Lodge.”
“Yes, we’ve met. But it’s the death of Mrs. Lodge that I’d like to talk about.” He nodded, but didn’t extend his hand.
“Yes, Mr. Newman, I’m sure you do,” Bessolo said matching Newman’s iciness.
“Well I damn well hope you’ve finally got some news for me! It’s been almost eight months and you don’t have anyone in custody.”
“Oh not yet, Mr. Newman,” Mulligan said closing the door. “But soon. I believe very soon.”
Mulligan was convinced he saw Newman’s eye twitch.
O’Connell expected to see the president’s 747-200B waiting at the tarmac. Instead there were five Navy jets with a complement of missiles under their wings. The engines on four were idling.
The car was hardly stopped when the trunk flew open, an agent reached in for his backpack and ran it over to one of the jets at the rear.
A pilot wearing a flight helmet climbed down the ladder of the nearest jet. Over the rising roar of the lead jets which were rolling forward, the man’s voice bellowed. “I suggest you take a good long piss right now. The next chance you’ll have will be in nine hours.”
The flier removed his head gear.
“Oh my God!” O’Connell managed. He was completely shocked to see it was Morgan Taylor.
“Christ Almighty! You’re flying me in this thing? You can’t do that, you’re the president.”
“Oh, Mr. O’Connell. Rest assured. Your plane is over there.” He pointed to an identical two-seater. “I’m in this one. Officially, it is Air Force One but for security reasons, you might say we’re flying under the political radar. However, if you’d rather come with me….”
“No thanks.”
“Thought that’d be the case. While I prefer the fact not be for public consumption, I do get to fly these things when nobody’s looking. And a tad better than George Dubya, I’ll have you know,” he added the reference to President’s Bush’s celebrated landing on the Abraham Lincoln off the coast of Southern California in 2003.
O’Connell forced a smile, however his rattled nerves couldn’t hold it in place.
“Like I said, Mr. O’Connell…” The president pointed to the writer’s crotch. “Now’s the time.”
After pushing out every last drop of pee and getting into a flight suit, O’Connell stood in for the basic pre-flight instructions—a lecture on what not to touch in the cockpit and how to eject.
His pilot, Lieutenant Commander Rico M. Rupp, explained the flight plan over the comm, “We’ll be up to 44,000 feet real fast.”
“Will my stomach be far behind?” O’Connell managed.
“It’ll be along anytime, sir,” Rupp laughed over the headset. “And once we level off, I’ll give you a smooth ride. Sorry about the lack of in-flight services. There’s not much available up here except the gas station.”
“Gas station?”
“We’ll get topped off in a bit for the long haul and again about two hours out from the deck.”
“Good. Some stops.”
“I didn’t say that, sir. Air Force is sending KC-10 tankers to rendezvous inflight. The first is already over the Atlantic. It goes on the company card.”
Oh shit! O’Connell swore under his breath.
“Any questions sir?”
“Yeah. What do they call this thing?”
“This baby’s a Super Hornet. The F/A-18F. The most advanced high-performance strike fighter in the world. The single seater version is the E. Both of ’em pack a wallop.” Rupp got his clearance on the radio. “Here we go.”
At first the F/A-18F moved forward slowly. Then Rupp fired the after-burners and O’Connell felt like he was strapped to a rocket. The Hornet accelerated at an enormous rate, pressing the reporter into the back of his seat.
After two minutes of bone-crushing acceleration the pilot asked O’Connell if he was all right.
“Yes,” O’Connell forced out, feeling like a ton of bricks was still lying across his chest.
“You said the plane packs a wallop. Did you mean this or weapons.”
The pilot laughed again. “I meant our stores. Part of the Navy’s portable arsensal. We’ve got an alphabet soup full of goodies. AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, and a few other little surprises. Not a full load cuz of the distance we’re covering tonight, but I guarantee you, it’s enough.”
“Enough?” The reporter didn’t need to add for what. He looked out at the wings, first one side, then the other, and saw the twin drop tanks loaded with extra fuel. But O’Connell couldn’t see any of the armaments. “Where?”
“Just a fingertip away,” Rupp, a combat veteran, coldly explained.
“That’s comforting.”
“It doesn’t get much better than this, Mr. O’Connell. The Super Hornet is built for the future. We’ve got seventeen cubic feet of ‘growth space’ for advanced avionics. As newer technology becomes available, we’ll be ready with room to spare.”
“Tell them to put in a First Class compartment,” O’Connell joked.
“Yes sir.”
O’Connell was mesmerized by the cockpit. A touch-sensitive control display responded to Rupp’s simple commands. Tactical information, none of which the reporter could comprehend, came to life on a larger multi-purpose liquid-crystal color screen. The cockpit also contained two additional monochromatic displays, an engine fuel readout, and color digital map night vision goggles. O’Connell had the wits to keep his notepad on his lap and commit this undeniably exhilarating experience to paper.
Five minutes later, he turned his attention to the planes in formation around him. One flew ahead in lead position. Two planes were behind. He was flanked by another. Just off his starboard wing he could clearly see the President, no more than 175 feet away. Was he actually piloting the thing?
Morgan Taylor intuitively looked out, as casually as a driver on the Interstate. But it was his flying instinct that told him O’Connell was watching. He tipped his right hand to his forehead in a salute. His Super Hornet, slicing through the morning sky at 458 mph, was fully in his control, even if the events that lay ahead were not.
The realization actually calmed the reporter. For the next few days, he would probably be one of only a handful of people in the entire world who knew the whereabouts of Morgan Taylor. It made him smile.
Michael O’Connell relaxed in his seat and decided to enjoy the ride.
CHAPTER
58
Nothing could have prepared O’Connell for what came next. A nighttime landing. He doubted if that was even the right term. How can you land on something floating?
“It’ll be fast and hard,” warned Rupp. “Just like the hired girl likes.”
The writer tried to laugh, but couldn’t. He tightened his body, bracing himself for the shock ahead. He felt strong gusts buffet the plane and watched as the g
reat ship in front of him heaved up, then down in the ocean’s swell.
“Just like the hired girl likes,” he whispered over and over trying to give his mind a way to relax. “Any more words of wisdom?” he managed louder.
But Rupp had no more jokes. Not right now. He had to concentrate on the signal lights ahead.
Directly in the center of the shortest runway O’Connell ever saw—no more than 200 feet—were amber and red lights. The writer looked at the gauges and heads up display in front of him and was amazed that the Super Hornet was still flying at 150 knots. And with every slight pitch one of the lights seemed to glow. When the lights appeared above a green horizontal bar in the cockpit, O’Connell noted that Rupp nosed the plane down. When it was red, he arced it up.
A Super Hornet equipped for carrier-based operation has a hook bolted to an 8-foot bar extending from the after part of the plane. This tailhook drops with the landing gear. It must catch one of four heavy steel cables across the deck, each forty feet from the next. Miss one, the plane has to hook the next. Miss them all and the pilot has barely a blink of an eye to add enough power to stay aloft.
They were seconds away from touching down on one of the most dangerous places on the earth and O’Connell wished he’d never learned to diagram a sentence.
If O’Connell was concerned about his stomach on take-off, he was in for an even greater surprise as the plane’s tailhook caught. At that precise moment, gigantic hydraulic pistons below the deck absorbed the forward energy of the speeding aircraft, letting out just enough cable to stop the Hornet safely on deck. All of this as Rupp had his plane at full throttle, just in case they missed a wire. The F/A-18F jerked to a stop, O’Connell’s restraints pulled his chest with such force that he thought he would black out and his eyes would shoot right through the cockpit window like a cartoon character. O’Connell saw a ballet of lights, like a field of lightening bugs wavering around the aircraft. Only a moment later he felt another sensation. He seemed to be floating in a vast darkness. Before he even realized it, his plane was going down on an elevator, one of four lifts.
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