High Flight

by David Hagberg

  They’d gone over this on the flight down. “I’ll give you the time if you think you can do it.”

  “I can. But if something goes down it could blow the whole deal.”

  “Leave that consideration to me,” Mueller said calmly.

  Zerkel glanced over at him. “I mean it. If we have to fight our way out of there, they’ll check to see what’s missing.”

  “Not every component of every airplane.”

  “That’s right …”

  “Leave no outward traces.”

  “I see what you mean,” Zerkel said. He should never have doubted the German’s ability or judgment. Mueller was a professional. It gave Glen pause thinking about going head to head with the man if and when the need arose. But for the moment he was glad to have Mueller on his side.

  Commander Hanrahan returned to the bridge after a quick lunch alone in the officers’ mess. The sky was covered with a thick overcast, and the wind and seas were beginning to build.

  “What’s our friend doing, Red?” he asked his exec.

  “Same as before. Drift and run.”

  “Still nothing from Yokosuka?”

  “It’s only been six hours since our last radio contact.”

  “Shit,” Hanrahan grumbled. He stepped closer to the windows and watched the bow rise and fall on the increasing waves. Meteorology was not predicting any weather more serious than this. Yet he was uneasy. “Same baseline since the strait?”

  “He runs in a random zigzag pattern, and when he drifts it’s back toward us. But his baseline is still south-southwest.”

  “Okinawa. What’s his SOA?”

  “About two knots. Maybe a little less.”

  “Two weeks, Red, before he crosses Okinawa’s inner defense perimeter. Unless he speeds up. In the meantime we babysit.”

  “Not much we can do about it, Skipper.”

  Hanrahan faced his XO. “I told you before that I wasn’t going to stay out here following that bastard all over the East China Sea indefinitely.”

  “I hear you. But if he doesn’t want to play, there’s not much we can do about it. Seventh has set the rules of engagement.”

  “That they have,” Hanrahan picked up the growler phone and called Sattler in CIC. “What are you painting, Don?”

  “He’s six thousand yards off our starboard bow, making ten knots, course two-seven-zero.”

  “Straight west this time. What’s his depth?”

  “Two hundred feet. But when he drifts he comes up about fifty feet. Soon as he goes active we pick him up at about one-fifty. Takes him fifteen minutes to level off at what he’s using as a cruise depth.”

  “We lose him in drift.”

  “About a half-hour each time.”

  “He’s going to have to come up to recharge his batteries sooner or later.”

  “That’s the point, Skipper. He should’ve done that by now. He’s not a nuke. Whatever he’s using for electricity must be damned good. Better than anything I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Me too,” Hanrahan replied, thinking about it. The days were long gone since the U.S. shared its technology with the Japanese, and even longer since Japan shared with the U.S. The Samisho was state of the art. He wondered how good her weapons were.

  “When’s he due to drop off our scopes again?”

  “About an hour from now.”

  “Half-hour duration each time?”

  “That’s been the pattern so far, Skipper.”

  “Next time he shuts down I want to continuously ping him. Set up a firing solution for a pair of harpoons, and we’ll close the range to a guaranteed no miss.”

  “That’ll get his attention. How long do we keep it up?”

  “Until he makes a move, or until he comes out of the drift mode.”

  “Half-hour of that racket will drive him nuts. You know how he reacted last time.”

  Hanrahan chuckled. “That’s the idea, Don. We’ll go to battle stations each time. Give the crew some practice—”

  “Wait!” Sattler interrupted. “Skipper, we have two incoming jet aircraft from the northeast about three miles out, just subsonic! Altitude four hundred feet! Right on the deck!”

  Hanrahan put it on the speaker. The targets were showing up on the bridge radar. “What type of aircraft?”

  “Looks like fighter/interceptors. F/A-18 Hornets. I think they’re Japanese out of Tanegashima. We’re being lit by their radars.”

  “Switch our after Phalanx to automatic,” Hanrahan ordered.

  “Mike, these are not enemy aircraft,” Ryder objected.

  “Then they better stay the hell out of my envelope,” Hanrahan turned on his XO. “Do it now!”

  “Aye, aye,” Ryder replied, and he gave the order.

  Moments later the jets responded to the threat, climbing sharply out of the limited range of the Thorn’s Phalanx system radar, one left and the other right. Then they passed directly overhead, standing on their tails, the noise from their engines aimed directly at the bridge.

  “Bastards,” Hanrahan shouted. The bridge radar showed their tracks converging as they swung back to the northeast. He got back on the growler to Sattler. “What’d they get from us, Don?”

  “They covered every frequency range we monitor, including infrared. Probably took pictures too. We did.”

  “We’re showing them out of here.”

  “Us too, but they’re dropping back to the deck, so they’ll be over our radar horizon in about a minute and a half. Should we send up a chopper to see where they’re headed?”

  “We couldn’t see any markings. Were they definitely Japanese Air Self Defense jets?”

  “We got a good look up their tails. Definitely F/A-18JDs. Only country in the world has that class of Hornet is Japan.”

  “No need for the chopper. We know where they’re going. What about Chrysanthemum?”

  “Still ten knots on two-seven-zero.”

  “Did he launch a comms buoy by any chance?” Hanrahan asked.

  “If he did we missed it, Skipper.”

  “Any chance of that?”

  “Not at this range.”

  “Keep a sharp eye, Don. I think they just sent us a message.”

  “What’s going on?” Ryder asked.

  Hanrahan smiled knowingly. “Someone just told us that the Samisho’s skipper is probably not a rogue after all. They’re starting to pay attention in Yokosuka.”

  “Maybe in Tokyo too.”

  Hanrahan ignored the comment. “Message Seventh. I think the rules have changed.”

  They parked the van behind a small school off Valencia Road a half-mile from the Pima Air Museum on the extreme south edge of Davis Monthan Air Force Base. To the northwest the lights of Tucson were bright in the night sky, and directly north, the tower beacon rotated white and green. Here, however, they were in darkness. The school could have been abandoned. Shutters covered the windows. In any case no one was likely to come around until morning.

  In addition to the 9 mm silenced Beretta, Mueller carried a long, razor-sharp stiletto in a sheath across his chest. Zerkel carried his tools, including insulated wire cutters and a set of battery jumper cables, as well as a sling to carry the sensor frame and harness.

  They headed across the desert, keeping well away from the road that went up to the museum. They had to cross a concrete-lined drainage ditch and then the Southern Pacific railroad tracks to reach the tall, electrified fence that marked the air force base boundary.

  Mueller dropped down behind some low bushes and motioned for Zerkel to do the same. They were less than twenty-five yards from the fence. Directly north they could see the end of the main runway, but in the distance to the east Mueller could see row after row of vague shapes that could have been buildings in a darkened town.

  “Is that it?” he asked.

  “Just the edge of it, I think,” Zerkel whispered. “There’s ten thousand airplanes parked here.”

  Mueller looked sharply at him, trying to gau
ge from the expression on his face whether he was joking. But he was serious. “That’s a significant portion of your air force.”

  “Some of those planes are World War II vintage.”

  “Why haven’t they been scrapped?”

  “The article didn’t say.”

  “But they’re guarded.”

  “Probably,” Zerkel said.

  “Incredible. There must be tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment out there.”

  “Yeah. Impressive, ain’t it?”

  Mueller didn’t reply, turning inward to what he’d learned since joining Reid. Even in the early days of the Cold War he’d been enough of a realist to know that the Soviet Union’s military strength was being exaggerated in the West. They’d all assumed that Soviet estimates of NATO’s strength were similarly overestimated. That was not the case.

  At 11:30 P.M., the lights of a vehicle worked its way up and down the rows of mothballed aircraft. It turned back to the north a half-hour later.

  “Might be another before dawn,” Zerkel said.

  “We’ll watch for it.”

  At the fence Zerkel connected the jumper cables across a five-foot section, and carefully cut it away with the insulated wire cutters. If there were security alarms on the fence the break would not show up. And they were far enough away from the nearest road that the opening likely would not be spotted by a passing patrol.

  They headed in a brisk pace across the desert to the nearest rows of parked airplanes, keeping a wary eye for approaching lights from the north. The night was utterly still. Even the light breeze earlier had died to nothing.

  Airplanes of all sizes, shapes, and vintages were parked in orderly ranks and files for as far as the eye could see. Some had their engines removed, others were propped up on cradles, their landing gear missing, but most were intact.

  It was after 1:00 A.M. before they chanced upon a row of twenty-seven Guerin 522s, which the Air Force had designated C-7C Globelifters. The engines were in place, but sealed, as were the windshields and windows along the sides.

  “Keep your eyes open,” Zerkel whispered. “If someone comes, knock twice on the hull. I’ll hear it.”

  “Four hours,” Mueller warned. “If you’re not finished by then we’ll return tomorrow.”

  “Right,” Zerkel said, and he scrambled up onto the nose wheel and disappeared into the landing-gear well.

  Mueller moved back into the shadows and took up position behind the main gear on port side of the big jetliner. From where he stood he could see the road, but he would be practically invisible from anyone passing in a vehicle.

  There was the sound of metal scraping against metal from inside the airplane, and then a muffled thump. Mueller waited for more noise, or for Zerkel to call out for help, but there was nothing.

  When these planes started falling out of the sky it would be the most devastating single day in the history of the United States. Mueller knew that he would probably spend the next several years on the run, and that he would be lucky to survive. The authorities would not soon give up the chase, unless they were misdirected from the start.

  He turned that thought over. If Reid and the Zerkels were found dead, the search would be concentrated on one man. Their murderer. But if they were found dead by suicide or by accident, and if his name were to be removed from Louis’s computer programs, he might have a head start. ,

  Mueller had no illusions about the FBI or the CIA. They had the money, the expertise and, after the button was pushed, they would have the motivation. As did the French.

  Over the past few years the SDECE had become more aggressive, emboldened by the end of the Cold War. Yet he thought the French would have been more cautious because of the reunited Germanies.

  It was a different world. And it would be made even more different by what Reid had set them to do.

  That was the other thing. After this was over he was going to have to retire. Reid had made good on his promise by depositing one million dollars in Mueller’s account. The question was where could he go? The Caribbean? The South Pacific? Perhaps South America? Wherever, he needed to begin making his arrangements.

  Zerkel climbed down from the wheel well a half-hour later.

  Mueller moved out of the shadows. “Something wrong?”

  “No. Help me up on the wing, and then watch for company, I’ve got to open the engine cowling.”

  Mueller boosted him up onto the wing, then tossed the tools up. “Did you get the harness?”

  “Just the plug. There’s nothing between the panel and the frame except wire.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Zerkel looked down at him. “I think so.”

  “Do it correctly, Glen. I don’t wish to return here.”

  “I’ll do what I can. But to get the entire harness out I’d have to tear the wing apart. Watch for the patrol.”

  Zerkel undid a dozen fasteners and lifted a section of engine cowling up on its hinges.

  Mueller saw the problem at once. “How long are you going to be up there with the engine open?”

  “I don’t know.” Zerkel shined a dim red light inside the cowling. “An hour, maybe less if I’m lucky.”

  “Hurry,” Mueller said, and he headed down the road in the direction from which the patrol had come. At the first intersection he looked back. Just as he thought, the upraised cowling broke the orderly line of silhouettes. It was out of place and would be noticed even at a distance if another patrol came by.

  From the number of airplanes and the size of the area, Mueller doubted that more than three patrols would be mounted each night: one at dusk, one in the middle of the night, and one at dawn. With luck they’d be okay here for several more hours.

  He settled down to wait in the shadows of a Boeing 727 from where he would see an approaching patrol before it reached the airplane Glen was working on. If one did come he would have no time to warn Zerkel. He would have to flag them down, kill however many guards there were—one or two, he suspected—and move their bodies to another area of the mothballed fleet. He thought about this without any emotion, only a detached interest in the technical difficulties of such an action.

  Looking back again the cowling still jutted above the wing. But an hour later it was gone, and Mueller trotted back to the jetliner.

  “Where the hell were you?” Zerkel whispered urgently.

  “Making sure you were not disturbed. Are you finished?”

  “Yes.” Zerkel handed down a stamped metal frame in the shape of a capital A about three feet long, and two feet wide at the base. Several dozen single wires, plus a thick bundle tied in a harness, dangled from the sensor frame. It was lighter than Mueller thought it should be if it were made out of aluminum. Titanium, possibly.

  Zerkel tossed down his tools, and then eased himself off the wing. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  “Are you finished up there, and inside?” Mueller asked calmly.

  “I said I was—”

  “You left no outward traces? Nothing that a casual inspection would uncover?”

  “Christ.”

  “Think about it.”

  Zerkel started to say something, but then he looked up at the engine cowling, and back to the nose gear well, and nodded. “It’s cool, man. They’d have to tear this plane down to find out what happened. I even tucked the loose wires out of sight.”

  “Then it’s time to go.”

  “What about the hole in the fence?”

  Mueller smiled. “As you say, they’d have to tear this aircraft apart to find out what you did. I don’t think they’ll do ten thousand.”

  Air Force One, the Presidential seal on her tail and the American flag on her fuselage, was trundled out of her hangar at Andrews Air Force Base. At two hundred eighteen feet in length, she was nearly as large as Boeing’s 747, and in her various configurations could carry up to four hundred passengers. Except for the two accidents in seven years, the 522’s safety record was per
fect. The engines had been replaced by a Guerin AOG team three days ago, and no one this morning expected any trouble. Yet everyone on the maintenance team and flight crew was nervous.

  The pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Bob Wheeler, went through the extensive pre-flight checklist one meticulous step at a time with his co-pilot, Major Larry Marthaller. On this flight the maintenance crew aboard would backstop every move that was made on the flight deck. Test equipment monitored every electrical, hydraulic, mechanical, and electronic function of the jetliner’s 3.7 million parts. A crew on the ground would monitor everything from their vantage point. As the saying went, the President was a hundred times safer aboard Air Force One than he was riding out to the base on his chopper, and ten times safer than in his limousine.

  “That line of thunder bumpers to the southeast isn’t breaking up as fast as we thought it would,” Chief Master Sergeant Mazorsky said.

  Wheeler looked up from the checklist. “What’d meteorology say?”

  “They’ll hang around a couple of hours. You might swing that way. Tops at less than forty thousand.”

  Wheeler shrugged. “We’ve got the time if you’ve got the stomach, Chief.”

  “I hate these goddamned things, Captain, but I want to see what shakes loose. We’ll tear the airframe apart when we get back.”

  “Scuttlebutt is that we might fly in two weeks. President may be moving his Tokyo trip up.”

  “We’ve got plenty of time. I just want to make sure.”

  Major Marthaller had been talking to ground control. He looked up. “You know something we don’t, Chief?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “But?”

  Mazorsky hesitated a moment. “After the incident at Dulles I want to make sure about this bird.”

  “Has anything turned up?”

  “Nada. I just want to make sure about her.”

  “So do we, Chief,” Wheeler said. “One thunderstorm coming up.”

  Getting off the base was no problem. By ten in the morning they had driven the one hundred twenty miles to Phoenix where they rented a Ford Taurus at the airport. They transferred the frame and harness plugs to the car, and turned the van in where they’d rented it at the Hertz counter downtown. By lunch they were headed north on Interstate 17.