High Flight

by David Hagberg

  Air Force Two lay tilted to port off the end of the runway. Flames and greasy black smoke rose from where the engine and wing had been torn off. Debris from the wreckage was spread for five thousand feet along the runway. Moore watched the television monitors as the first crash team neared the site. It didn’t look good.

  “Any comms from the aircraft?” he asked one of his Mission Communications System specialists.

  “Negative. They’re off the air on all bands, except for their EPIRB.”

  “Cockpit’s intact.” Moore picked up the red phone direct to the Air Wing Commander’s locator. It only took a few seconds. “Sir, this is SAR. We have Air Force Two down at the end of the runway with Eagle Two aboard. Our units are rolling.”

  “I just heard,” Lieutenant Colonel Brian Skeggs replied. “How does it look, Tom?”

  “Not good.”

  “What about backup?”

  “The Secret Service is scrambling a VH-3 chopper, and a second is coming down from Bethesda Medical with the ER team. ETA about seven minutes.”

  “Fire?”

  “Some, but if we can get to it before it spreads we’ll have a chance.” Moore watched the television monitors. The first crash team had arrived on site and was spraying fire retardant foam from its main nozzles. “But Colonel, something else is going on. Air Force Two lost a port engine. It exploded. In the last ninety seconds two other aircraft have gone down out of Dulles with exactly the same problem. Delta seven-five-six, and U.S. Air twelve-eleven.”

  “Have you talked to intelligence?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Do it now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Marine helicopter carrying the Secret Service personnel touched down near the end of the runway and six agents, wearing flak jackets and armed with assault rifles disembarked and took up defensive positions.

  Smoke was everywhere. Emergency lighting aboard the downed Air Force Two cast a pale orange glow through the jumbled main cabin. People moaned, others cried for help. Outside, sirens seemed to be converging on them, and something that sounded like a waterfall was striking the side of the fuselage. Vice President Larry Cross, his left arm, hip, and legs crushed, lay wedged beneath one of the desks and two aircraft seats. They’d crashed. He knew that much, but he was having trouble focusing his thinking.

  “Larry?” a woman cried weakly.

  Cross knew the voice. He managed to turn his head toward the sound. His wife, blood spurting from a huge gash in her right side, the sweater she’d been wearing torn off her body, lay beneath one of the communications consoles that had somehow been thrown aft from near the front of the airplane.

  “Sally,” he called, and he tried to reach out for her, but his arms were pinned.

  Her cries stopped, although her eyes remained open.

  A half-dozen Secret Service agents surrounded the President as he was hustled to the situation room beneath the White House. His wife was escorted in a different direction.

  “Your chopper is ready, Mr. President,” Owen said.

  “Recommend that you leave for White Mountain immediately.”

  “Not till we see what’s going on,” Lindsay replied curtly. He stepped off the bombproof elevator. Already much of the weekend duty staff had arrived, and his NSA Harold Secor had just entered the building.

  “Mr. President, two more civilian airliners have gone down,” the situation room operations officer said. “Both in New York, out of JFK. A British Airways nine miles out, and an American Airlines on takeoff.”

  “What’s the word on Larry?”

  “Nothing yet,” Owen said. He wore an ear piece. “They’ve got the fire out. There’s a good chance there’ll be survivors.”

  At Secret Service headquarters in the Treasury Building across from the White House, special investigator Don Huberty telephoned his boss Burt Anderson, Assistant Director of Investigations, at his home in Bethesda and explained the developing situation.

  “Where is Eagle One?” Anderson demanded.

  “In the White House situation room. He wants to stay there for the moment.”

  “Any word on Eagle Two? Have we got him out of the plane yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “All right, listen up, this is important,” Anderson said. “If Air Force Two was sabotaged, they might try again. Eagle One was supposed to be on that plane. I want as many of our people out there as possible. In the meantime I’ll call the director and see if we can’t get Eagle One over to White Mountain.”

  “Are you calling to tell me that you have finally located Mr. McGarvey?” Arimoto Yamagata asked, careful to keep his voice free of fear and anger.

  “No, but another situation has arisen,” Yozo Hamagachi reported from the secure telephone in the Japanese embassy in Washington.

  “Is it about the air crash in Oakland? The United Airlines crash? We know about that.”

  “Iie, Yamagata-san, that makes seven crashes so far.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A Lufthansa flight coming into La Guardia Airport in New York City crashed just moments ago eleven miles from the runway. Four other civilian airlines have gone down within the past two minutes. Plus, Air Force Two, carrying the Vice President, crashed on takeoff from Andrews Air Force Base. Yamagata-san, he was on his way to Tokyo in place of the President. What is happening?”

  “I do not know,” Yamagata admitted. “But it is very important that you locate McGarvey. Do you have any leads?”

  “None.”

  “What about the other man, Edward Reid? Has he disappeared as well?”

  “We concentrated our efforts on McGarvey.”

  “Follow Reid. See where he goes, what he does, who he meets with. Find out everything you can about him. He may be a key to finding McGarvey before it’s too late. This must be contained.”

  “It may already be too late. The Ambassador’s staff has sent a flash-designated message to Tokyo. They are preparing more messages.”

  “Stop them,” Yamagata said, fighting to maintain control.

  “We will try.”

  Yamagata broke the connection, a sour taste in his mouth. He called Kamiya in Tokyo.

  “Hai,” the old man himself answered.

  “Are you hearing about the airplane crashes?”

  “Yes,” Kamiya hissed the single word. “You have gone ahead with Morning Star without my authorization.”

  “I have not, Kamiya-san. I thought it was you.”

  “You lie!”

  “lie, there is no reason for me to lie. Someone has found out about the computer chips and is using them.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not know at this time, Kamiya-san. But I believe McGarvey is behind this.”

  “What would he have to gain?” Kamiya paused.

  “Unless it was to help the Russians. He is working with them. He was in Moscow. The world makes strange bedfellows, Yamagata-san.”

  “There is another problem. Our embassy is sending traffic to Tokyo about this incident. It may be monitored.”

  “I will take care of that. Find Mr. McGarvey and kill him. Immediately.”

  “Hai,”Yamagata promised, not quite sure how he was going to do either.

  Japanese Prime Minister Ichiro Enchi, an early riser, was seated in his private study watching CNN when the first bulletin about the crash of Air Force Two, with the Vice President aboard, came on the screen. He watched in stunned disbelief for a full minute before he reached for his telephone. It was a few minutes after five in the morning in Tokyo. It rang before he could pick it up. His Deputy Director General of Defense Tadashi Ota was on the line.

  “Mr. Prime Minister, apparently it has begun.”

  “I’m watching CNN now. Is it that fool Kamiya and his Morning Star?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “But why kill the Vice President?” Enchi asked confused.

  “There’s more, Prime Minister. So far seven airplanes have crashed.
There may be others.”

  “Arrest Kamiya and Kobayashi. Immediately!”

  America’s take-off roll and lift-off were beautiful and went without a hitch. Dominique was relieved that McGarvey was wrong. “Thank God,” she murmured. It had all been a nightmare, nothing more.

  She went into the kitchen to fix a sandwich and make a cup of tea when an announcer broke in on the CNBC live broadcast from Portland with a news bulletin. Air Force Two, carrying the Vice President, had crashed on takeoff from Andrews Air Force Base. Seven and possibly more civilian airliners had gone down in what was already being described as the worst air disaster in history.

  She stood in the kitchen doorway, a hand to her mouth, as she watched the first reports.

  McGarvey and Socrates had braced themselves as best they could in the cramped electronics bay beneath the cockpit during the take-off and initial climbout. Their official departure time was 11:58 A.M. PST, two minutes earlier than scheduled.

  The InterTech heat monitor/alarm subassembly lay in Socrates’ lap. He’d left the input cable connected, but had disconnected the output jack.

  “It seems to be functioning as normal,” he said. “If it were in the loop it’d be working within parameters.” He looked up. “I don’t see anything wrong here, McGarvey.”

  “Nothing that would cause an engine overheat?”

  “This is the computer that could do the damage. But we’ve checked it a dozen times, a hundred times …” the engineer hesitated.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” Socrates muttered. He took a screwdriver out of his pocket and quickly undid the fasteners holding the unit’s top cover in place. He set it aside, switched on a penlight, and studied the circuit boards and components.

  “How’s it going down there?” Their pilot, Pete Reiner, called from topsides through the open hatch.

  “Fine,” Socrates answered absently. “How are the port engine temperatures holding up?”

  “In the green for now.”

  “I know this,” Socrates said slowly. He looked at McGarvey again. He was frightened. “I don’t do the hands-on engineering anymore, otherwise I might have seen it.” He shook his head in wonderment. “This is exactly the same subassembly that’s in every 522 flying. But it should be different.”

  “That’s it,” McGarvey said.

  “But nothing’s wrong with it, Mac. Nothing.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Reiner said.

  “Is it the engine temperatures?” McGarvey started up the ladder.

  “A United flight out of Oakland just went down! It’s one of ours!”

  “Wait,” John Callahan, the co-pilot, overrode him. “Air Force Two is down. What the hell?”

  At the National Security Agency’s tightly secured eleven-acre Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters, Marvin Amundson, chief analyst on duty, picked up his secure telephone from North American Intercept Section. NSA, in cooperation with Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ, was capable of monitoring virtually every form of electronic communications anywhere in the world. Radio, telex, teletype, microwave, satellite, as well as private telephone calls by the military, diplomatic, and commercial sectors, were automatically intercepted, tested for value of information, and either dumped, recorded for later analysis, or brought to human attention.

  “We have a partial decryption and translation of the Japanese embassy burst to Tokyo,” the intercept intelligence officer reported.

  Amundson brought it up on his computer display. Data streamed across the screen as their computers continued to decode the material. But the substance of the text was already becoming obvious.

  “They’re definitely involved with the downing of Air Force Two,” the intelligence officer said.

  “I concur,” Amundson replied. “Looks as if they know something about the other crashes too. We show the total now at nine, with Delta 558 at Los Angeles International and Northwest 342 inbound to Minneapolis International.”

  “Sir, what the hell is going on?”

  “Don’t know yet,” Amundson broke the connection, and switched consoles, entering a FLASH-designated message for the White House, Pentagon, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Federal Aviation Administration. Then he picked up the phone to call a friend of his at Andrews.

  Amundson’s call caught 89th Air Wing Commander Lieutenant Colonel Brian Skeggs in his car on the way to Andrews. “The Japanese are behind this?” the Air Force officer demanded. It was hard to believe. What were they thinking?

  Navy Captain Tom Eddington was the senior duty officer at the Pentagon’s Crisis Management Command Center when the flash arrived from NSA. He was eating a sandwich and drinking a Coke at his console. It took him several moments to realize that it wasn’t a test message, nor was it one of the practice alert scenarios. The authenticator codes were for real this time.

  He glanced at the locator board. CINCPAC Rear Admiral Warren Talbot was the flag officer on duty. This would be right up his alley since it involved the Japanese. He hit a button on the secure phone and got Talbot upstairs just as the admiral was leaving his office.

  “This is Eddington in the Crisis Management Command Center.”

  “I heard,” Talbot answered sharply. “I’m raising the Pacific Fleet to DEFCON THREE. Prepare a message to that effect.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Eddington hung up and switched to another console. The Pacific Fleet had been raised to DEFCON FOUR last week because of the trouble between the Japanese and Russians. Admiral Talbot’s order would considerably increase tensions over there. Anything beyond THREE was tantamount to war. Only the President could take that step.

  Sam Varelis was home in Chevy Chase when the first bulletins started coming over CNN. At least six civilian jetliners were down in addition to Air Force Two. But no one seemed to be making the connection that every one of those airplanes were Guerin 522s. McGarvey was right after all, but it didn’t give him any satisfaction.

  He didn’t bother calling NTSB operations in the Department of Transportation building on Independence Avenue until he was in his car and heading downtown. He got John Horn, the duty officer.

  “This is Varelis, I’m on the way in. Has the FAA issued the grounding order yet?”

  “Nobody knows what’s going on, Mr. Varelis, but all hell is breaking loose. The count is up to twelve with the latest three.”

  “What aircraft? Where?”

  “A United exploded on the ground, and a Northwest went down on takeoff at La Guardia. And another United over at JFK exploded on the ground.”

  Varelis was having trouble keeping a grip on it. “What kind of equipment were those three?”

  “Sir?”

  “What kind of airplanes were they, goddammit?”

  The line was silent a moment. When Hom came back he was subdued. “Sonofabitch. They were all Guerin 522s. Mr. Varelis, what’s happening?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  Most of the fire was out, but SARTECH team leader Technical Sergeant Roy Halvorson, covered in foam, was so hot inside his suit that he could barely think straight. He’d gone directly into the fire before it was completely extinguished so that he could set up his cutting equipment to get inside the twisted wreckage. He knew it would take several minutes before the heat he’d absorbed would bleed off. He would just have to endure it. Eagle Two was inside.

  His SawsAll cut through the aluminum pressure hull of the Guerin 522 like a hot knife through soft butter. His partner, Staff Sergeant Mike Salo, was beside him with the big pry bar, and together they wedged out a door-sized section of hull aft and above where the port wing had connected. Dense smoke billowed out of the opening. But the emergency lights were still on. The interior of the aircraft was a mess. About as bad as Halvorson had seen.

  “Going in,” he said into his helmet mike.

  Captain Don Moody, Jr., Chief 7th Fleet Navy Intelligence, was having a nightmare in w
hich he was stumbling along a hot jungle road. All around him were American POWs, many of them half dead. It was World War Two on Luzon’s Bataan Peninsula. In spite of the dream he wasn’t surprised when he was awakened by his beside telephone.

  “Captain, this is McCarty. We’ve been ordered to DEFCON THREE.” Lieutenant, j.g., Michael McCarty was Intelligence Staff OD.

  Moody glanced at his nightstand clock. It was a few minutes after 5:00 A.M., Tokyo time. “I’ll be over there in five minutes. Has Admiral Ryland been notified?”

  “In the process, sir. We’ve sent the twixt out to the fleet.”

  Moody was completely awake now, as if someone had stuck an electric probe up his ass.

  FAA Administrator Jay Hansen refused to make the decision to ground all air traffic within the continental U.S. until he got to his office and could personally assess the situation. “Cool heads will prevail,” was his motto.

  “The number stands at thirteen now, sir,” Byron Swanson, his associate administrator for operations said. “American Airlines Flight 228 exploded on the ground at O’Hare just two minutes ago.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The storm continued to grow into the night and early morning hours. For the first time Stan Liskey feared for his and Carol’s lives. Problems had started to pile up within hours after they’d rounded the southwestern tip of Tokuno Island. The weather, which had cleared Saturday morning, had closed in on them that afternoon, the wind shifting viciously out of the northeast. It made the rock-strewn west coast of the island a dangerous lee shore. Their Magellan satellite navigator had developed a problem and was no longer reliable. The LORAN chain, operated by the Japanese, had mysteriously stopped transmitting. The roller-furling gear on their headsail had jammed, forcing him to cut the sail away, leaving them with a double-reefed main and staysail. It was a good running rig, but having no way to accurately determine their position, they were sailing blind. Their only option was to stand farther out into the East China Sea, to windward, to gain as much sea room as possible. If they crashed into the island, or onto the off-lying rocks, they would not survive. Thank God the Aires windvane was still working. If they had to hand steer in these conditions he didn’t think they would make it. They would wear down before the storm was over, and they would be driven back onto the island, or they would be broached and sink.