Strike Force Charlie s-3

by Mack Maloney

  “Where did you say this took place?” Audette asked him. His “knife wound” looked no worse than a minor shaving accident. A dab of tissue would have taken care of it.

  “Down at the area where the RVs are parked,” Cahoon told him. “You know, in the handicapped section ….”

  Audette’s walkie-talkie went nuts again. Porta Potties were overflowing; more electrical outages were happening; the base fire truck was having trouble getting to the cotton candy concession fire.

  He looked back at Cahoon. “Sir — I’ll pass this on to the police once I have a chance,” he said. “My advice to you is to go back to your rig and perhaps move away from these people to another parking space.”

  Cahoon thought a moment, then turned on his heel and left, without another word.

  The volunteer who’d first handled Cahoon and had overheard the conversation approached Audette.

  “I’d be glad to go report this to the police,” she told the Air Force officer. “If you think it’s necessary.”

  Audette thought a moment — the local Vegas cops on-site were already stretched pretty thin.

  “Only when one comes by,” he finally told the volunteer, getting up to go. “That guy looks like he cut himself shaving — after having a beer or two. And even if he is right, he said the ‘fight’ took place in the handicapped section, right? I mean, how bad could it be?”

  * * *

  There was a place on the lower part of the Nevada-Arizona border known as Stinky Valley.

  This was a made-up name; it was inscribed on most maps as the West River Wash. The valley was a couple miles wide and 10 miles long. It was surrounded by mountains and high desert, unseen from the nearby AMTRAK tracks. There were no highways within a hundred miles, no houses or towns, either. Few people outside this small county even knew the place existed.

  It was called an oil storage plant, but this was a misnomer. In reality it was a depository for oil, gasoline, and other refined petroleum products that for whatever reason were never used, had gone bad, had got old, or were simply not refined enough.

  These troublesome liquids would be quietly brought here and dumped, no questions asked. This scar across on the otherwise pristine if barren southeast Nevada landscape was highly polluted and had been for years. Yet due to legislation pushed through by the oil companies every few years, Stinky Valley was heavily subsidized by the federal government.

  The centerpiece of the plant was a tributary of the West River, which had been diverted and dammed into a huge pool of water, not unlike the cooling pools used by desert oil field refineries. Thousands of gallons of the toxic petro-fluids were poured into this pool every day to evaporate, thus making at least some of them disappear.

  The residue of this process leaked into the West River, making it one of the most polluted rivers in the country. But in a state that harbored the national radioactive materials repository and legalized prostitution, not to mention border-to-border gambling, a heavily polluted river was no big deal.

  * * *

  The strangeness began here about ten-thirty on this Fourth of July morning. There was just a skeleton crew working the holiday, five plant employees in all, plus a couple security guards who happened to work for Global Security, Inc., the same firm that watched over General Rushton. They’d all just finished their morning coffee break when they spotted a strange airplane circling the plant.

  It was a firefighting plane; they could tell by its shape and design. This put a scare into them, as they thought at first maybe a brush fire was heading their way. Stinky Valley was not the place you wanted to be if fire was nearby. If the plant ever caught fire, with all the flammable liquids on-site the resulting explosion would create a new, maybe even deeper Grand Canyon.

  But the plant employees were able to quickly check their surroundings via the many video surveillance cameras bordering the place. There was no fire anywhere near them, no smoke, nothing, So why then was a firefighting plane circling above?

  The company that ran Stinky Valley was headquartered in Houston. A phone call was immediately made to home base asking if this was a company plane of some sort. The answer came back quickly as no. By that time, though, the airplane was obviously getting lower.

  As the people in the plant’s high-tower control room watched, the plane came right down onto the evaporation pool and, in an expert maneuver, started skimming along its surface, scooping up hundreds of gallons of the oily water in its underbelly holding tanks.

  The plant employees couldn’t believe what they were seeing. When one of the security guards made a move to unleash his sidearm, a plant employee made sure the man’s gun stayed in his holster.

  “Are you nuts?” he reprimanded the guard. “If you hit that thing, it will go up like a bomb and so will we.”

  It was too late anyway, as the plane had streaked by them and was now starting to climb out, its belly full of a liquid that was more gasoline than water. In fact, it was so flammable, some of the spray that had been kicked up by the scooping technique had gone into the airplane’s two engines and now both of them were smoking fiercely.

  “I don’t know what forest fire that thing is going to fight,” one employee said. “But if he drops that stuff on it, the whole state will go up.”

  As the plane quickly departed, one of the security guards detached himself from the rest, took out a special cell phone, and punched in a secret number.

  “Put me through to Rushton’s detail,” he said harshly. “Something just happened out here that he might want to know about ….”

  * * *

  Thirty-five miles north of Nellis Air Force Base, there was a section of desert known as the Nevada Special Weapons Testing Range. It was a highly restricted airspace that included the skies above the top-secret Groom Lake aircraft testing facility better known as Area 51, as well as a number of other secret bases located much deeper in the Nevada desert.

  These no-fly skies were the ideal place for the airplanes taking place in the veterans’ flyby to assemble. At about 11:20 A.M., a confluence of aircraft began circling in a lower portion of the range.

  The big bombers had arrived first: the B-52s from Omaha, the B-1s from Texas, the B-2s from Missouri, then the F-15s, F-117s, the Raptor and the JSF, flying in from Edwards AFB in California. Next came the Navy planes, the S-2 Viking carrier bombers, and then the Marine Harriers. The Thunderbirds showed up absolutely on time, as did the Blue Angels, flying in from Florida. The small air fleet had been loitering over the southern part of the weapons range for a few minutes when finally the huge C-5 Galaxy appeared. It, too, was on time, after picking up veterans in such diverse places as Boston, Maryland, Chicago, and Dallas. It joined the merry-go-round of aircraft at 15,000 feet.

  There came now about five minutes of everyone getting on the same radio link. Unencumbered communications were essential if the massive flyby was going to be both safe and successful. Still circling, the various aircraft all switched to a preassigned VHF radio frequency, which had been designated Show Channel One. Each pilot had to check in on this channel and make sure that he could hear every other pilot

  This done, the pilots then did an instrument check with the emphasis on powering down any flight controls that would not be needed during their approach and eventual landing at Nellis. Of course things such as navigation suites, collision avoidance systems, and backup communication sets were kept on. But there was no need for any of the planes to run their air defense radar or electronic countermeasure systems for what they were about to do. The show planes — the T-Birds and the Blue Angels — didn’t have these kinds of combat systems onboard their planes anyway, but many of the other entries did. Many of these devices were now shut down.

  It was 1135 hours when the C-5’s pilot got the call from Nellis. The crowds were in place; the sky above the base was empty. The flyby group was cleared to head in. The pilot confirmed the message with the other escort planes; then looked back into the gigantic cargo hold behind him. Th
ere were 504 passengers back there, a huge number even for the mammoth C-5. They were sitting in both seats that lined the inner walls of the huge cabin and special “movie-house” seating that had been installed throughout the big plane.

  Most of the veterans were really just young kids — many were barely 20 years old, and few were over 30. They were all wearing their dress uniforms, more Army personnel than anyone else. Many were missing arms or fingers, but many more were missing legs, the telltale signature of a violent wound suffered in wars where the enemy was essentially too cowardly to stand and fight so just left roadside bombs behind instead. The pilot felt a bittersweet tinge in his throat. These guys are the real heroes, he thought. This should be their day.

  As one now, the air armada turned east, where they would fly for just a few minutes before turning around back to the west, lining them up perfectly for their final approach to Nellis.

  * * *

  Back at the air show, the PA announcer was going through a long list of people whom the organizers wanted to thank. This was the last announcement that had to be made before the flyby flight showed up. There were now more than 420,000 people on the base, an incredible number. They were spread along three miles of extended flight line in taped-off designated viewing areas, a pattern of crowd control reminiscent of New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Most people brought lawn chairs or cushions on which to sit. Many brought tents and grills and coolers. The crowd really was a cross section of America, too: young, old, black, brown, and white. Lots of retirees, lots of couples. Lots of kids. And there really wasn’t a bad seat in the house.

  The PA announcer, reading now from a script written in part by Captain Audette, began the run-up to the flyby’s arrival. He was doing this from the Nellis main control tower, this while a bevy of Air Force air traffic control personnel were keeping track of the veterans’ flight as it approached the base at a leisurely 150 knots. The PA announcer reminded the crowd of the sacrifices made by everyone in the U.S. military these troubling days. He asked that people support the armed services and keep them in their prayers. Then asked for a moment of silence for servicepeople killed in the line of duty over the past few years.

  Then, with the soaring voice of a carnival barker, the PA announcer began the buildup for the incoming veterans’ flight. Words such as: “never before seen,” “historic,” and “special surprise” echoed across the base.

  Finally, the big moment came. The PA announcer told the crowd to look off to the east, to “that big mountain over there, and be prepared to see something you may never have seen before or ever see again ….”

  The huge crowd did as instructed; all eyes now were looking east, ready for what they’d been promised would be a vast aeronautical spectacle. But instead of seeing a stately formation of both the latest and venerable U.S. military aircraft, they were shocked to see instead a lone firefighting airplane, painted bright yellow and red, approaching with its two engines smoking badly.

  Some in the crowd gasped, but others just laughed. The plane looked like it was out of control, just making it over the top of the mountain. Many on hand thought this was part of the show. Wacky-style private aerobatic acts were not unheard of at events like this.

  But there was great panic in the Nellis control tower. This plane had somehow stolen in under their radar net, undoubtedly by flying so low, and no one had any idea how it got where it was and what its intentions were. But it was definitely not part of the show.

  The first thing the control tower people did was warn the veterans’ flight approaching the base, saying they had a “situation unknown” at the moment. But at the same time, the control tower did not tell the flight to disperse. Too much effort and planning had gone into this; plus it was safer to keep the flyby flight together.

  So instead, the flight was told to reduce its combined airspeed to just 110 knots, delaying their arrival by just 30 seconds, but keep on coming.

  * * *

  It took just 10 seconds for the firefighting plane to cross the runway and roar over the crowd. It was flying very low, no more than 300 feet off the deck. Its engines were emitting twin trails of inky black smoke and backfiring wildly.

  Some people cheered as the plane flew over them; many believed this was the surprise act promised them, as lame as it might be. Meanwhile military officials on the ground didn’t have the slightest idea what to do. There were many unusual civilian planes already on the ground at the base, making up a lot of the static show that would be open to the public once the aerobatics above the base were over. Could this be a late arrival for the civilian part of the show? The Nellis tower crew scrambled for their entry lists, seeing if a firefighting CL-215 plane was among the exhibitors. But even if this was so, why had the plane approached without any contact with the tower?

  Meanwhile the red and yellow airplane started a low, ragged circle. It seemed intent on orbiting the area where the RVs and motor homes were parked. It started buzzing this particular area with such ferocity, that some spectators were getting concerned and began hurrying out of the area.

  Among them was Captain Audette. He was standing outside the volunteer tent, looking back at the RV holding area, watching the weird plane continuously dive on the motor homes and buses. Its engines now seemed to be on fire; they were trailing so much smoke.

  Audette knew this act was definitely not part of the show — and now many people around him were getting this message as well. What was moments before just a trickle became a stream of worried spectators, grabbing what they could carry and leaving the area on foot. Not quite a panic yet, but possibly just seconds away from one.

  Audette couldn’t take his eyes off the screwy airplane. What was it doing?

  Then suddenly he saw what apparently few others had. The CL-215 was a mess. It was dirty and oily and ragged. But there was something hanging out of its front hatch. What was it? Audette wondered as the plane continued its dangerous antics. Was that a Revolutionary War flag?

  Then it suddenly all came together for him.

  That flag. The rogue team ….

  “I thought these guys were dead!” he yelled to no one in particular.

  And what the hell were they doing? They continued buzzing the RV section now, and as a result people were running in panic for sure. Suddenly Audette realized this was a good thing. He started barking orders to anyone nearby — airmen, volunteers, Vegas cops — telling them to get as many people out of the RV holding area as possible.

  The CL-215 went over once again; now it was barely 50 feet off the ground. That’s when Audette realized the firefighting plane was actually concentrating on one vehicle in the front row of the holding area. Again something else suddenly made sense.

  The people the guy had complained about … in the big Greyhound bus ….

  In a heartbeat, just one word popped into Audette’s mind, this just as the veterans’ flight was approaching the field again.

  Terrorists ….

  * * *

  The CL-215 was out of control.

  Ryder was doing his best to keep the airplane airborne, but he knew it was a losing battle.

  It had to do with the toxic substances they’d sucked into the engines during their water-scooping adventure back in Stinky Valley. They’d been directed there by the mysterious radio message, well aware that what they would be taking into their belly tanks was not Perrier water but a highly flammable concoction. That was the whole idea. It was the closest thing resembling a bomb that anyone could think of on such short notice.

  It was the first kind of water-scooping maneuver Ryder had ever done of course. He wished more than once that Gallant was there with him; he would have made it look easy. Hitting the top of the evaporation pool, the plane not only sucked up the gas-laden water into its engines; it also took on the 1,200 gallons unevenly. There was more of the combustible water in one tank than the other, making the plane dangerously unbalanced. Combined with the engine problems, it was amazing that they’d made it more
than a few miles beyond Stinky Valley, never mind all the way to Vegas.

  But here they were, and now they had one last job to do before they crashed.

  They could see the Greyhound bus down below them — the same one described by Mann way back when. It was shiny and gleaming and new — and once you were looking for it, it stood out as if it had a spotlight on it. It looked very out of place.

  But there was a convergence of events happening now that the ghosts had no control over. The veterans’ flight was coming in, and it appeared it was going to do its fly-over no matter what. Of course, this had been the scenario the terrorists had wanted all along. Sneak 18 Stinger missiles into Nellis under the guise of a handicapped placard, launch those missiles at the veterans’ flight, hoping to hit anything and everything, from a huge C-5 full of American heroes, to one of the B-52s or a Thunderbird or one of the Blue Angels or the Raptor or the F-35. Eighteen missiles, all fired at once, into such a crowded sky? They were going to hit something — and probably something very big.

  And this was the most sinister aspect of the terrorists’ plan. Low-flying, slow-moving aircraft hit by ground missiles tended to crash immediately — that was a given. But what was worse, they frequently cartwheeled when they hit the ground, this due to factors that had to do with forward airspeed, suddenly interrupted. One fighter alone crashing into this crowd could kill hundreds, if not thousands. If one of the big bombers or even the C-5 was hit and went down anywhere in the throng, the death toll could be in the tens of thousands.

  And even in these eternal seconds, with Ryder trying to keep the CL-215 in the air just a few seconds longer, it all became very clear. It had been a typical Al Qaeda move. Do one thing, whether it be setting off car bombs in Europe or spreading germs in Israel or sending teams throughout the United States to shoot down individual American airliners, all to get U.S. intelligence agencies going one way, then do something bigger, deadlier, while you’re going the other way. Distraction, disinformation, deflection. It almost worked at Hormuz. Now it was close to working again.