Nightwatch

by Richard P. Henrick

  “Major Foard, this is Strike Eagle Leader. Roger that, sir. My wingman in Eagle Two will be joining me off your nose for the flight to Langley. Over.”

  Seconds later, the red and green strobes of the F-15 that had been trailing them could be seen through the cockpit window, taking up a position to the right of Eagle One. No further radio transmissions emanated from the overhead speakers, the only sound that filled the flight deck being a new outburst of warning tones from the collision-avoidance radar.

  “The Tomcats are continuing their approach,” noted Lucky.

  “Those idiots appear to be painting us with their attack radar!”

  “Surely they wouldn’t shoot at us,” Jake said uncertainly.

  “I warned you that they had an attitude,” the Chairman reminded them, a sly grin on his face.

  “Commander Cooper, put down that damned flare gun, and I’ll act to defuse this ridiculous situation before it gets further out of control.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Brittany,” Red urged.

  Hewlett racked his pistol’s slide, chambered a round, and diverted his aim to include Red before returning to Brittany.

  “You make one threatening move toward the Chairman, and I swear I’ll blow the two of you away.”

  The collision-avoidance radar continued chiming, and Lucky was the first to spot the flashing strobe lights of the flight of three swiftly approaching U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcats.

  “Oh, shit!”

  he cursed, as two of the swept-wing jet fighters flared out to take up an outer position beside the F-15s, and the remaining Tomcat initiated an incredibly tight arcing turn to position itself directly ahead of them.

  “Nightwatch six-seven-six, this is Tomcat Leader. I’ve just been informed by the Truman that Strike Eagle’s orders are unauthorized.

  You are to immediately come around to course three zero-four, at an altitude of three-zero-one-five-zero feet. Over.”

  “Tomcat Leader, this is Major Foard aboard Nightwatch six seven-six.

  Be advised that I don’t intend to alter our current flight plan. You are to break formation and clear our airspace. Over.”

  “Nightwatch six-seven-six, this is Tomcat Leader. I have been authorized to use any means at my disposal to get you to alter course to Andrews. Do you copy? Over,” Foard was tiring of this foolish game of chicken, and there was a definite tone of finality to his voice as he spoke into his chin mike.

  “Tomcat Leader, this is Nightwatch six-seven-six. I intend to land this aircraft at Langley Air Force Base, as ordered by General Spencer, and that’s final. Over.”

  The line went dead, and all the occupants of the flight deck watched as the three Tomcats abruptly broke formation and roared off into the night, the red-hot plume of their afterburners clearly visible in the crystal-clear black sky. While Lucky tried his best to follow them on radar, Jake vented his nerves with a long sigh of relief.

  “Thank goodness that’s over with,” he remarked, a thin sheen of perspiration gathered on his brow.

  “I mean, it’s not like they were gonna shoot us down for not changing our destination airfield.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that, son,” said the Chairman heavily.

  “Major Hewlett,” said Brittany, after transferring the flare gun to her left hand, “it’s time to end this impasse as well. I’ll lower my weapon if you do likewise. I’m certain that we can come to some sort of mutual understanding for the remainder of this flight.”

  The Marine nodded in agreement, and both of them tentatively lowered their pistols. A sense of relief was shared by all, and Coach addressed them collectively.

  “There will be plenty of time to sort this whole mess out once we’re on the ground. If the winds continue to cooperate, that will be in approximately ninety minutes. So please, keep those guns stashed away, and try to get along until then.”

  “Coach,” interrupted Lucky, “we’re not out of the woods just yet. The Tomcats have broken formation, and we’ve been once more painted by their attack radars.”

  This tense revelation was followed by the unexpected arrival of a blinding volley of tracer rounds that streaked past the cockpit, parting the narrow void between Nightwatch and its P-15 escort.

  “Are those guys nuts?” screamed Lucky, who couldn’t believe that the Tomcats had the audacity to shoot at them.

  “Tomcat Leader!” Coach forcefully exclaimed into his chin mike.

  “You are to refrain from further firing at once! Do you read me. Tomcat Leader?”

  There was an ominous silence, broken only by the urgent chiming of the collision-avoidance radar.

  “Incoming bogey directly ahead of us!” warned Lucky.

  “Break left. Coach! Break left!”

  Without a moment’s hesitation. Coach turned his steering yoke hard to the left, and the sudden, steeply banked turn that followed caused the four occupants of the flight deck who were not restrained by seat belts to go crashing to the floor. Coach had no time to worry about them, his attention focused instead on the F-14 Tomcat that appeared to be headed toward them on a direct collision course.

  He ignored the bite of his shoulder harness, and with the yoke still fully engaged, he looked on with horror as the Tomcat soared directly over the cockpit, so close that he feared the afterburners might have scorched the E-4B’s upper fuselage.

  “That crazy son of a bitch!” cursed Coach, trying his best to pull out of the turn as smoothly as possible.

  He ignored a frantic intercom page from Colonel Pritchard, who wanted to know the reason for this sudden turn, and reached up to activate the seatbelt warning sign.

  “The Tomcats appear to be coming around for another intercept,” said his badly shaken copilot.

  “We’re a damned sitting duck up here!”

  “Major Foard!” shouted Red from the upper-deck rest area.

  “Major Hewlett has just grabbed the Chairman, and they’re headed down the stairway!”

  “Let them go!” Coach replied, his eyes riveted on the Primary Flight Display.

  The fixed bar representing the plane’s wings gradually evened itself out against the green-tinted artificial-horizon display representing the earth’s surface. This indicated level flight, and before Coach could express his relief, the Tomcats returned — this time with tragic consequences.

  The F-14s were attempting to divert the Eagles with a crossing pattern, with two fighters coming in from the right and one from the left. The startled occupants of the E-4B’s cockpit were seated at center stage, and looked on with shocked horror as the trailing Tomcat appeared to clip the wing of Eagle Two. There was a blinding fireball as both aircraft exploded, with only a single parachute spotted amongst the fiery debris that proceeded to shower from the skies.

  “Goddamn it!” Coach cursed, jerking the yoke hard to the right to miss striking the remnants of the two doomed aircraft.

  “I knew this was going to get totally out of control.”

  They watched the remaining F-15 peel off to engage the unlikely enemy that was responsible for taking out its wingman, and seconds later, the E-4B’s radio crackled alive.

  “Nightwatch six-seven-six, this is Tomcat Leader, and I’m smack on your tail. Now come around to course three-zero-four, at an altitude of three-zero-one-five-zero, or next time you’ll be the one going down!”

  “Somebody sure wants this plane either on the ground, at Andrews, or blown out of the fucking sky,” said Jake.

  “Which means they probably intend to continue orchestrating their coup from Nightwatch once we return home,” Coach surmised.

  Lucky looked at Coach, his frustration obvious.

  “We’ve got to get that fucking Tom off our tail.”

  Coach returned his copilot’s supportive glance, and he flashed the slightest of grins as an idea suddenly came to mind.

  “Wire operator!” he shouted into his chin mike.

  “I need you to initiate an immediate wire-out.”

  “But
, sir,” countered the amplified voice of the perplexed airman manning the antenna operator’s station behind the aft lower equipment area, “there’s another aircraft directly behind us.”

  “Son,” retorted Coach, “deploy the goddamn wire!”

  “Wire is deploying,” Jake reported.

  “Ten feet… twenty feet… thirty feet …”

  “Nightwatch six-seven-six, this is Tomcat Leader. You’ve got ten seconds to change your course as ordered before I begin shooting. Ten… nine… eight …”

  Coach breathlessly waited until the countdown reached five, then grabbed for the emergency wire cutaway lever, which was positioned on the far left portion of the flight control console.

  “Tomcat Leader, up yours!” he cried into his chin mike, engaged the lever, and called out, “Wire away!”

  The horrified wire operator provided the blow-by-blow commentary that followed. From the glass-enclosed confines of the wire port, he described how over seventy-five feet of drifting wire antenna got ingested into one of the Tomcat’s GE-400, augmented turbofan engines. There was an explosive flash, and the last thing he reported seeing was the F-14’s canopy being jettisoned, the pilot’s frantic attempt to bail out.

  There were no celebratory high fives traded inside the E-4B’s cockpit, the crew instead refocusing their attention on the furious air battle that was taking place in the skies to their right. Fiery tracers and eerily glowing missile contrails indicated that the sole remaining Tomcat and the last of the Eagles were engaged in a winner-takes-all battle between fellow countrymen. It was a bizarre sight to behold — this initial engagement of America’s second civil war, fought not with huge armies, but with a couple of highperformance jet fighters over the mid-Atlantic.

  “Coach,” warned Red from the upper-deck rest area, “we’ve got Major Hewlett and a security team headed up the stairway!”

  “Shit!” cursed Coach.

  “They’re not going to be happy until all of us are dead. Lower the fire door at the top of the stairs, Sergeant. And then you’d better reseal that access way we crawled out of earlier.”

  The collision-avoidance radar began chiming once more, but nothing was showing up on the screen. Puzzled, Lucky scanned the skies, in the direction where the air battle was still taking place. And then he saw the oncoming contrail, and the pinprick, fiery plume of a single, misdirected Sidewinder air-to-air missile, headed directly toward them out of the pitch-black sky.

  “Break left! Break left! Incoming missile!” he shouted.

  Coach once more yanked the yoke hard aport. Unlike Air Force One, Nightwatch had no chaff dispensers, or any other defensive countermeasures, and all he could do was get them as far away as possible from the oncoming missile.

  Just as the restraint harness began biting into his upper torso, indicating that Nightwatch was in the midst of the turn, the Sidewinder detonated. A massive shock wave caused the entire aircraft to violently shudder, with the majority of the blast directed to the plane’s underside. Thousands of pieces of shrapnel pierced the lower fuselage, the damages immediately indicated on the flight panel displays.

  “I’m showing power anomalies in engines one and three!”

  Jake informed them.

  “Hydraulic pressure is dropping across the line, and we’re rapidly losing fuel from the main bladder. Initiating emergency fuel crossover procedures.”

  Alarms were sounding throughout the cockpit, and both Coach and Lucky summoned their every last bit of strength to pull back on their yokes in a desperate effort to counter the rapidly falling altimeter. The lights flickered, and when smoke began pouring into the flight deck. Coach realized that his command had taken a lethal hit.

  “Hang on!” he cried.

  “We’re going down!”

  Chapter 54

  Friday, July 2, C.D.T.

  Beneath Freeman Hollow

  Vince pounded the bars in frustration, and Andrew Chapman grabbed his bruised fist and kept him from inflicting further punishment upon himself.

  “Easy does it, Kellogg. Since it’s apparent that you’ll never smash your way through those bars, chill out, and quit blaming yourself for our predicament.”

  “The more I think about it, the more it makes sense,” whispered Vince bitterly.

  “Those bastards intentionally left that MRE in here so I’d have an opportunity to escape, and lead them right to you.”

  The VP shook his head in disagreement.

  “Look, Kellogg, it was my decision alone to reenter the hollow when we heard that claymore detonate, and whatever happens, that’s something I can live with.”

  “But what about them?” said Vince, referring to their four cellmates, who were huddled on the floor behind them.

  “That boy is gonna bleed to death unless we get him some medical attention, and I should never have allowed them back into the hollow after learning what kind of animals we were up against.”

  At the rear of the cell. Junior was sprawled out on his back, fading in and out of consciousness. His father and sister were doing their best to attend to the tourniquet that Chapman had helped rig up. Tiny was nearby, his pride hurting more than his bruised skull.

  It had been nearly an hour since one of their captors had checked on them. This was only a cursory visit, and the green faced commando refused their urgent request for water and medical supplies. It appeared that they had been abandoned altogether, and just as they were about to give up hope of ever getting any help, a pair of BDUclad men holding M16s and ammo-laden LBEs rushed past the detention cell.

  “Hey, stop!” pleaded Vince.

  “We need a first-aid kit!”

  They disappeared into the cavern’s black recesses without so much as a flicker of recognition, and once again Vince pounded his fist into the iron bars.

  “You know, it looks like some kind of alert is coming down,” remarked the VP.

  “Perhaps our rescuers are on their way even as we speak.”

  Vince greeted this hopeful comment with a pessimistic grunt, and he listened as Chapman added, “This Mariano character seems to be a bit of a psychopath. If he’s indicative of the type of individuals the leaders of this supposed coup are relying on, they don’t stand much of a chance.”

  “A soldier like Mariano has his place, sir,” returned Vince.

  “Every army needs its trained assassins, and as for Mariano’s psychopathic personality, it’s the nature of the beast. After all, we created and trained his type to fight a guerrilla war that we never intended to win. And now we have to learn to live with the consequences.”

  “The latest diagnostic indicates that it definitely isn’t our equipment that’s at fault,” reported the technician, ever afraid that this news would generate yet another angry outburst from the bearded veteran anxiously pacing the floor of the Op Center behind him.

  Dick Mariano accepted this revelation with a disappointed shake of his head, and there was an uncharacteristic timidity in his voice as he glanced at the overhead clock and calmly replied, “Then there’s nothing we can do but continue to wait for his call. Why don’t you try another digital page. Chief? I’m beginning to wonder if something bad hasn’t happened to the man, and I’m tempted to give ole spit-and-polish Warner a buzz to get the skinny.”

  Mariano’s two-way activated with a burst of static, and he readjusted his cranial headset and spoke into the miniature chin mike.

  “Mariano … I expected as much. Doc. Pass on a “Job well done’ to the boys, and get your keisters back to the inner perimeter.

  I want you sealed up inside the compound in ten minutes’ time.

  “Cause at midnight, all hell’s gonna rain from the sky, and those pussy-eating Sappers will be nothin’ but overdone barbecue.”

  Chapter 55

  Saturday, July 3, 0453 Zulu

  U.S.S. Rhode Island

  “Captain, the weapons system is at 1SQ. Missiles number one and twenty-four are ready to launch.”

  The amplified
intercom announcement echoed through the missile magazine, and Benjamin Kram and the five SEALs gathered at his side looked out pleadingly to the armed group of sailors who continued to face them. Captain Terence McNeil Lockwood appeared to ignore the intruders as he reached up for the nearest intercom handset.

  “COB, I want that sonar up within the next two minutes, at which time I intend to ascend to launch depth.”

  Lockwood lowered the mike and listened as Kram reinitiated his argument.

  “At the very least, ask your weapons officer to access the target coordinates from the EAM. I realize it’s a breach of the protocol, but this situation is unlike any other that we’ve ever faced.”

  “Damn it, Kram,” replied Lockwood, his disgust obvious.

  “We’ve been going over this for the last half hour, and it just won’t sink into that thick skull of yours. We received a properly formatted, duly authorized EAM from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been trained to consider such an EAM as gospel, and nothing you say can convince me otherwise.”

  “But I’m not doubting the EAM’s legitimacy, Terence,” Kram retorted.

  “What I’m questioning is its validity. General Spencer was absolutely convinced that, for whatever reason, Nightwatch intentionally conveyed to you an EAM ordering a surgical nuclear strike against a target inside the continental United States.

  It’s not our responsibility to determine the reason behind this unprecedented occurrence, only to ensure that such an unthinkable event doesn’t come to pass.”

  “Captain,” interjected the relieved voice of the Rhode Island’s COB over the intercom.

  “Sonar is up and fully operational.”

  Lockwood immediately put the intercom handset to his lips.

  “Conn, this is the Captain. Ascend to one-five-zero feet, and prepare to launch as ordered.”