High Flight

by David Hagberg

  “Roger, Delta seven-five-six. Hold up at eight-left for an incoming American Airlines. You’ll be … ah, number four behind a Northwest seven-four-seven. Report to the tower on one-two-one-point-niner when you’re in position.”

  “Roger, ground control,” Rodwell said, and he gave the ground crew below the thumbs up. Immediately the big jetliner trundled away from the gate, pushed by a tractor on her nose gear.

  In Baltimore Special Agent Clifford Wiener walked back to his car and telephoned John Whitman at FBI headquarters. The manager of the self-storage facility where the bodies of the two CIA spooks had been found had positively identified Bruno Mueller from the photographs. Wiener had sent his partner, Stan Tarnowski, over to the airport to interview the chief of security about the photos they’d distributed several hours ago. He’d not heard back yet, but it was clear that Colonel Mueller had killed the spooks less than forty-eight hours ago.

  Aboard Air Force Two they were late starting up because a courier came with a last-minute dispatch for the Vice President from the White House. Edward Reid, who was to have flown with them, had a car accident on the way out of the city. He would not be able to make this flight. He’d fly on Wednesday with the President.

  It was nearly three by the time Lieutenant Colonel Wheeler ordered the starboard engine to be motored to speed. When the RPMS came up into the green, the fuel and ignition were switched on. Immediately the exhaust gas temperature came up, indicating that the engine had lit. Fuel and hydraulic pressures were in the green as well, and the start-up procedure was initiated on the port engine.

  Delta 756 moved up to the intersection as a Northwest Airlines Boeing 747 rolled out onto the main runway and majestically turned into take-off position. Captain Rodwell noted the time on the panel clock as 2:58. He keyed the aircraft’s intercom phone so that he could talk to the passengers. They were carrying a full load, only one seat in first class a no-show.

  “This is the captain. We’re next for take-off in just a minute or two, which will put us in the air at exactly three o’clock. Thanks again for flying the on-time airline. If there’s anything I or my crew can do for you during this flight, don’t hesitate to ask. Now just sit back and relax.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Wheeler picked up the intercom phone. “Are you all set back there, Mr. Vice President?” he asked.

  “We’re ready any time you are, Colonel,” Larry Cross answered.

  McGarvey had to hide in the electronics bay beneath the flight deck while the FBI and Guerin security checked the hypersonic jetliner’s main cabin, galleys, and heads before allowing the VIPs to board. Socrates came for him as they taxied away from the grandstands, out toward the active runway.

  “InterTech,” McGarvey said scrambling up from bay.

  “Are you sure about this?” Socrates asked.

  “It comes from the Russian spy network in Japan. They’ve got too much to lose to lie.”

  Socrates was working it out in his engineer’s mind. “It makes sense. But we never caught it.”

  “Do you know which units they manufacture? Can we get to them from here?”

  “You were standing right in front of them,” Socrates said, blinking.

  “What the hell is going on?” Captain Reiner demanded. “Do we fly or don’t we, George?”

  “If McGarvey is right, I think I know what the problem is.” Socrates yanked open the hatch to the electronics bay. “I’m going to pull the heat monitor /alarm panels. You’ll have to go to the override if the temperatures get critical.”

  “We might get a shutdown,” Reiner said. “Christ, we’ll be out over the water without engines.”

  “Just the port engine,” McGarvey said. “But stop the flight now, George.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “Then I’m wrong, and you’ll fly later.”

  “We’d be right back where we started from,” Socrates said, and he climbed down into the equipment bay.

  “Keep everybody out of here,” McGarvey told the pilots. “No matter what happens.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Bruno Mueller got back to Lafayette Square across from the White House a minute before three, and he placed a long-distance call to Tokyo Bank from a phone booth.

  It took fifty seconds for the call to go through, and a computerized voice, speaking Japanese, answered, giving the options for the system.

  Mueller entered three-four-eight, and in three seconds he was connected with the bank’s electronic international funds transfer system. A warbling tone indicated the program Louis had secretly installed was ready to accept an input.

  A tour bus rumbled past, and he waited for it before whistling a single-pitched note. The warbling was replaced by a high-pitched screech, and he hung up, his job finished.

  Everything else that happened took only two seconds.

  First the bank’s computer prepared a funds-available query from a special foreign account in the amount ¥ 2,707,750,000. The account verified that such an amount was indeed available, and Louis’s program made the electronic funds-transfer order, payable to InterTech Corporation of San Francisco, California, U.S.A. At the current exchange rate of ¥ 108.31 to the U.S. dollar, the order was automatically converted to $25,000,000 and sent via satellite to InterTech’s account at Wells Fargo.

  InterTech’s bank automatically relayed the information to the company’s mainframe computer in Alameda, and the second stage of Louis’s precisely crafted program kicked in.

  At 3:00:00 P.M. Washington time the encoded signal was simultaneously sent, via InterTech’s own communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit 22,500 miles over the equator to nine airports around the country.

  Portland, where Guerin’s America had just taken off.

  Oakland, where United Flight 425 was taking off.

  Los Angeles, where Delta’s 558 was just rotating.

  Chicago’s O’Hare, where American 228 was on the ground next for take-off.

  Minneapolis, where Northwest 142 was landing, Northwest 342 was eight miles out on final, and Northwest 1020 was on the ground waiting for a clear runway.

  La Guardia, where United’s 310 was on the ground waiting for Northwest 165, which had just taken off, and Lufthansa’s Flight 009 from Frankfurt was eleven miles out.

  JFK, where United’s 280 was on the ground, American 138 had just taken off, and British Airways 111 was nine miles out.

  Dulles, where Delta 756 had just taken off, and U.S. Air’s 1211 was stacked twenty-one miles southwest.

  Andrews, where Air Force Two, which had been late getting away from the apron, was just starting its takeoff roll.

  All the airplanes were Guerin 522s, equipped with the InterTech heat monitor/alarm subassembly and special wiring harness on the port engines.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Captain Bob Rodwell initiated a gentle climbing turn to the left, which would take them out of the pattern, while at the same time he reduced power because of noise-abatement regulations. There wasn’t an ATR pilot who didn’t grumble about the inherently unsafe procedure.

  The signal from the Dulles repeater reached the InterTech heat monitor/alarm subassembly as Delta 756 passed through 2,500 feet twelve degrees nose high. There were no indications on any of the cockpit instruments, nor did the jetliner’s sophisticated computer that monitored the performance levels of every system notice anything was wrong. But within the first ten milliseconds the fate of the airplane and her crew and passengers was irrevocably sealed.

  First to occur was the blockage of heat information from the port engine’s thermocouples, which caused internal temperatures to soar several times beyond design limits almost immediately. The Mintori Assurance engineers who had designed the method of sabotage correctly reasoned that in order to mask evidence of an explosion when the sensor frame ignited, there would have to be massive and legitimate heat damage to the engine. Three times out of ten the blocked thermocouples would have created sufficient overheating to cause the engine to
disintegrate on its own. But thirty percent was not good enough odds.

  The internal structure of the Rolls-Royce turbine blades began to change. In this instance several of them would have disintegrated on their own within four minutes. As it was the engine would be destroyed much sooner than that.

  The overheat also began to affect the fuel nozzles that metered heated kerojet into the combustion chamber. Much of the plumbing was already beginning to deteriorate. Soon the metal walls would be breached and a catastrophic amount of fuel would be dumped into the chamber, causing a massive explosion that in itself would seven times out of ten take not only the engine but the entire wing.

  Still there were no indications on any of the cockpit instruments. Nor were the designers satisfied with seventy-percent odds.

  Next out of the InterTech CPU was a modulated pulse that delayed GO-One by less than a quarter wave shift. At the end of the wiring harness the complicated signal spread resonantly across the engine-mounted harness frame, which erupted in a fireball as if an uncontrolled fuel flow had suddenly occurred, which it did a few hundredths of a second later.

  Now the cockpit crew knew that something very bad had happened. Alarms flashed and buzzed all over the panel as the Guerin 522 began its fatal roll to port.

  Captain Rodwell was the first to understand that what was happening was the same as the accident at Dulles. When the flight recorders, including the cockpit voice recorder, were recovered, the investigators’ first indication that something had gone wrong, was the single expletive from the captain: “Fuck!”

  Rodwell immediately powered back on the starboard engine in what he knew was a futile effort to bring the jetliner back to level flight.

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday,” his first officer, Carol Gerrard, radioed, her voice in reasonable control. “This is Delta seven-five-six, out of Dulles, calling mayday. We have lost our port engine and most of the wing. We are going down approximately four miles southwest of the airport.”

  They could hear the passengers screaming in abject terror as the airplane plunged toward a wooded knoll.

  Air Force Two accelerated down the runway past one hundred knots to VI, the point of no return at which the aircraft was committed to taking off. Everything in the cockpit showed normal. Lieutenant Colonel Bob Wheeler anticipated V Rotate and a smooth liftoff. He figured they would be on top of the overcast in just a few minutes, when they would turn northwest on the great circle route to their refueling rendezvous out in the Aleutians. Delta’s mayday call came over 121.5 and 243 MHz simultaneously. An instant later a huge fireball engulfed Air Force Two aft on the left. For just a moment Wheeler thought that the Delta flight had somehow collided with them, but that was impossible. Air Force Two lurched sharply to port and began to slide, helped in part because the starboard engine was still developing full thrust. Wheeler started to pull all power when he correctly guessed that they had completely lost their port engine. Instead he hit the starboard engine’s thrust reversal immediately slowing their rate of skid to the left, and averting a cartwheel, which would have been a much greater disaster. The airplane began to shudder, and the rate of slide again increased. Wheeler realized that his co-pilot, Major Larry Marthaller, was applying brakes, or they had locked. In either case it was exactly the wrong thing to do to avoid rolling. Their center of gravity needed to be reduced now. Barely thinking, most of his actions reflexive, Wheeler yanked the landing-gear retract control, and the jetliner sank onto its belly, its rate of slide still impressive, but definitely slowing. He cut all power, and then braced himself. There was nothing left for him to do except listen to his co-pilot’s mayday call override Delta’s.

  Viktor Yemlin had spent the morning packing the remaining books from his apartment. He was finally leaving for Moscow at eight this evening, and he’d already made the last of his courtesy calls on his American friends. He’d been in the U.S. for four years under the cover of cultural attaché, and he was going to miss a lot about the country. Not the high prices and the incredibly high murder rate, but he would never forget the quality of things.

  Through the morning he’d thought about what Kirk McGarvey was suggesting, and what Abunai seemed to confirm. It was insane. If it had been anyone other than McGarvey he would not have given the notion a second thought. As it was he drifted from his apartment down to the communications center in the embassy on 16th Street around 3:00. It was Sunday and eleven in the evening in Moscow. Except for emergencies most of the offices in the Lubyanka and the Kremlin were closed, so there were only three clerks on duty. But the new SUR rezident was probably still in the embassy.

  In addition to maintaining a communications link with Moscow, the center was a sensitive listening post. Its efforts were concentrated on intercepting transmissions from the White House, the State Department, and the FBI, in addition to police, fire, ambulance, and airport traffic. Pentagon communications were handled by military intelligence from a different location, although all information came back to the embassy for collation and analysis before being sent on to Moscow.

  One of the scanners stopped on the aircraft emergency frequency.

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Delta seven-five-six, out of Dulles, calling mayday.”

  “What the hell …” Yemlin said half to himself. He went across the room to the bank of radio receivers.

  “We have lost our port engine and most of the wing. We are going down approximately four miles southwest of the airport—”

  “Get this on a recorder,” Yemlin ordered one of the clerks.

  “It’s being done, sir.”

  The Delta transmission was overridden by another aircraft calling mayday, and for a second Yemlin did not want to believe what he was hearing. It was more than impossible, it was unthinkable.

  “ … Air Force Two, on the ground at Andrews. We have lost our port engine and wing, and are on fire. Eagle Two is on board. Repeat, Eagle Two is on board.”

  Yemlin grabbed a phone and called the SUR rezident’s emergency number. Whatever the man’s current location was he would be found.

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is U.S. Air twelve-eleven. We’re going down, we’re going down!”

  Yemlin stared at the scanner radio. What the fuck was happening?

  The scanner erupted in a babble of voices that lasted for several seconds, until the Delta transmission ceased. A moment later the Air Force Two transmission also stopped.

  Yemlin held the phone tightly against his ear, waiting for the rezident to come on the line.

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is U.S. Air twelve-eleven! We’ve lost our port engine and wing! We’re going down … ! Twenty-one miles ah … southwest of Dulles! Haymarket intersection!”

  “U.S. Air twelve-eleven, say again nature of your problem?”

  “We’ve lost our port engine …” The transmission abruptly ended.

  The rezident came on the line. “This is Soroshkin.”

  “Stanislas Ivanovich, this is Viktor Yemlin, this is an emergency.”

  “What is the nature of this emergency?”

  “Air Force Two has apparently crashed on takeoff with the Vice President aboard. You should come down to Communications.”

  “Is this the McGarvey operation?”

  “Yes, Mr. Rezident. Two other airplanes have also crashed. There may be others.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Amanda Lindsay poured her husband a glass of iced tea and passed it across the small table to him. They were having late lunch in the family dining room. It was a Sunday ritual that Mrs. Lindsay insisted on whenever matters of state did not interfere. It was the only time they had alone together. Whenever possible they dismissed their personal staff so that she could serve and sometimes cook for her husband. It was a homey tradition that suited everybody, and one which was never interrupted except for the most extreme emergencies. After lunch he would go to his office to catch up on his reading until five, when he would prepare for his “Sundays at Six” half-hour
radio broadcast over the NPR network. It was something FDR had started, and Reagan and Clinton had picked up. Since he had been scheduled to be enroute to Tokyo this evening, he’d taped his talk three days ago. But before it aired he wanted to review it again. There were a number of new points he wanted to bring up, among them the increasing civil unrest in Japan and what effects that would have on his upcoming talks in Tokyo. There was a commotion out in the corridor, and Lindsay turned as Justin Owen, chief of the Secret Service weekend detail, came in, a look of troubled concern on his face.

  “Mr. President, Air Force Two has crashed on takeoff, and there’s no word on survivors yet.”

  “My God,” Lindsay said, his hand shaking as he put his tea down.

  “Apparently one of the engines exploded during their takeoff roll. The rescue crews are on site now.”

  “Is there fire?”

  “Yes, sir, but there’s more. At least two other airliners both out of Dulles have crashed. Right now it looks like they had the same problem. Could be sabotage.”

  The color drained from Amanda Lindsay’s face. “You were supposed to be on that flight today,” she said.

  Operations for Air Force One and Two and other governmental VIP flights were conducted out of Andrews Air Force Base by the 89th Military Airlift Wing. Emergencies were handled by the Air Wing’s Search and Rescue squadron. Even before Air Force Two broadcast its mayday, the tower had notified SAR that the airplane was in serious trouble, and the crash teams were scrambled. Each GO truck was manned by seven SARTECH personnel in hot suits.

  In the first seconds of the crises, Captain Thomas Moore, 89th SAR commander, thought the U.S. was under attack. Moments before the Vice President went down, they’d monitored Delta 756’s mayday. Then came U.S. Air’s 1211. Airplanes all over the place were falling out of the sky.