Brown, Dale - Independent 02

by Hammerheads (v1. 1)

  “Let go, Admiral. C’mon, sir, wake up.”

  Hardcastle’s eyes snapped open. Lee Tanner, the oncoming duty controller on the Hammerhead Two platform, had one hand around Hardcastle’s left arm, trying to shake him awake, and Hardcastle had a tight grip around Tanner’s hand trying to pull it off. Hardcastle was huddled down in his seat. He quickly uncoiled himself and straightened up. “What the hell is it, Lee?”

  “Sorry, sir, you were having a bad dream.”

  “Sorry, it’s been one long damned day. What’s going on?” Tanner held out a hand to ask for quiet as he listened intently on his headset. “Tanner, what the hell is going on?”

  “No ...” Tanner paused again and Hardcastle was about to rip the headset from the controller when Tanner rolled his eyes skyward and shook his head with exaggerated exasperation. “Those damned Dolphins,” he said, “they’re getting hosed—”

  “One of our Dolphins? We lost a chopper? Who . . . ?”

  “No, sir. The Miami Dolphins. The Buffalo Bills are kicking their butts all up and down Joe Robby Stadium—”

  Hardcastle wanted to kill him. “That’s what you got me up for?" “Well, I . . . you were having a bad dream, sir, and I thought . . .” He paused, looked at Hardcastle’s murderous expression, muttered an apology, then made his way to the front of the cabin. The amused expressions of crewmembers around Hardcastle had disappeared as well.

  A few minutes later Hardcastle made his way forward to accept a cup of coffee from a contrite Lee Tanner. But as he returned to his seat he had the same feeling he’d had before he dreamed off into a nightmare. Only now the bad feeling was about a reality yet to come . . .

  Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center, Miami, Florida

  “Miami Center, this is Sun and Sand three-fifty-one, with you at one-two thousand. Good evening.”

  The air traffic controller in charge of frequency 127.30, the southern sector of Miami Air Route Traffic Control, hit the frequency- control button. “Sundstrand Air Three-Five One, ident.” The controller, who had already received the flight’s overw'ater flight plan filed several hours earlier from Willemstad Airport on the island of Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles had already picked out the newcomer’s radar blip as it inched its way across the Santaren Channel, now one hundred fifty miles south of Miami and heading toward Fort Lauderdale. He watched the blip with the altitude readout and the code for an unknown target light up with a bright yellow box around the data block, indicating that the pilot had hit his ident button. There he was, dead on time, dead on course.

  “Sundstrand three-five-one, radar contact at one-two thousand. Good evening to you.”

  The pilot replied by two friendly clicks on his transmitter. These pilots liked to call themselves “Sun and Sand” instead of Sundstrand—they were the principal air-shuttle service from Florida, Georgia and Texas to the Netherlands Antilles with their casinos and beaches. Lucky devils. They spent their off days either in the casinos in Curacao or the beaches in Miami. Real tough life.

  An outside network radio channel suddenly beeped to life with an insistently flashing button on the main keyboard channel. The controller knew that call was from the Zoo—the Border Security Force controllers in south Miami. The Hammerheads—or as the air traffic controllers sometimes called them, the HammerZ?ram,y—had a direct line with every agency with a radar scope in the entire southeast United States, and they used it a lot, too much, the controllers felt, with questions and orders for the pilots under FAA control.

  FAA air-traffic controllers might be responsible for traffic separation and sequencing, but the new air-traffic regulations said that the Border Security Force had final authority over who was allowed into American airspace at all times. And they used their authority frequently and sometimes at the most inopportune moments. Usually seconds after assigning a pilot a certain altitude or heading to clear traffic the Hammerbrains would call and ask the controllers to check the guy’s identification and flight plan, tell the controllers to issue a different heading or altitude, even make the guy orbit or divert to a different destination. It didn’t matter that there were a dozen jets lined up behind the guy waiting to get in, or that the guy was low on fuel or didn’t speak English that well. The Hammerbrains didn’t have to deal with the pilots. No. It was the Miami Center controllers who got the complaints about clearance changes and deviations, not Border Security.

  And their machines ... It was not unusual for the Hammerbrains to send out a half-dozen planes into a crowded approach-corridor or intersection without a word of coordination or acknowledgement. And the unmanned planes, the ones controlled from dozens, sometimes hundreds, of miles away, were the scariest. One day one of those ten-thousand-pound remote-controlled mosquitos was going to fly through the cockpit of a 747 for sure.

  Border Security planes also would soon stop acknowledging calls from anyone other than their own controllers when the action was getting hot. The FAA controllers would then have to get on the direct phone line and relay critical traffic advisories and warnings to the Border Security controllers. Even that broke down sometimes, and the FAA controllers had no choice but to clear the airspace for a hundred miles around a Border Security fur-ball intercept to avoid collision alerts with civil traffic.

  The Miami Center controller, Kravitz, put down his coffee cup. If he waited too long, he thought, the damned Hammerbrains would ring his supervisor. He hit the flashing button. “Kravitz, southeast seven. Good evening, Aladdin,” Aladdin being the call-sign of the Border Security Force headquarters unit located in south Miami near, very appropriately, he thought, the Miami Zoo.

  “I need a verification on Sierra-Alpha three-five-one,” a no-nonsense female voice said.

  No “hello,” no “good evening,” no nothing. Typical Hammerbrain. “What exactly do you need, ma’amP”

  “We show his altitude as one-two thousand. Does that check?” “Yes, it does. One-two-point zero-five—he’s fifty feet off his altitude. Want me to bust him for you?” That was not wise, he told himself. The brass on both sides reviewed these running transcript tapes. Stop with the humor, Kravitz.

  No appreciative reaction, though, from the lady. "That’s a bit low for a commercial plane so far off shore. We need to know why he’s flying at twelve thousand and if he’s going to stay at that altitude.” Kravitz wondered what the big deal was. “I’ll ask him, if you really need the information. May I ask why the inquiry?”

  “Our records show the Sundstrand planes are normally higher until crossing the ADIZ. They’re equipped with speed brakes, so their pattern has been to fly high and do a steep idle-power descent in the terminal area. He is not following the profile.”

  Kravitz shook his head. Border Security bitches with their superpowered computers could be a real bite in the ass. “You want me to quiz this pilot because he’s flying a few thousand feet lower than normal?”

  “He’s flying within three thousand feet of HIGHBAL’s altitude,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  “He’ll be passing forty miles west of restricted airspace, ma’am,” Kravitz said. “I think your beautiful blue balloon is safe.” The HIGHBAL radar balloon was flying near its maximum altitude tonight, protected by thirty miles of restricted airspace and by routes that were at least twenty miles outside that restricted zone. Besides, it was lit up like a sausage-shaped Christmas tree. No one ever went near it and its nearly two-mile-long tether—hitting them could ruin a pilot’s whole day real fast.

  “I need to know the reason, Mr. Kravitz.” Boy, this one really had a stick up her ass.

  “Stand by, please, ma’am,” Kravitz said with exaggerated politeness. He hit the ground-to-air frequency button. “Three-five-one.. Miami Center with a request.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “State the reason for your present altitude, sir.”

  “Say again?”

  “Border Security requests the reason for your present altitude and how long you intend on staying at on
e-two zero, sir.” Mention Border Security this time, so maybe they’ll take the heat.

  “I didn’t know I needed a reason to stay at this altitude, Center,” came the confused reply.

  “You don’t need a reason to stay at one-two-zero, sir. You’re clear of traffic. Border Security requests a reason why you decided to fly at that altitude and how long you intend on staying there. Over.”

  “I intend on staying there until it’s time to land,” came the reply that Kravitz w7as expecting. The pilot’s raised voice emphasized a much stronger Latino accent this time—no doubt the guy was a Latino pilot who worked at masking his normal-accented English, a common practice, since a lot of controllers, employers and customers w'ere prejudiced against Latino pilots, believing them to be not as well trained as Anglos.

  “I copy, three-five-one. Any reason why you chose this particular altitude, sir?”

  “What is this, Center? I pick an altitude, and you tell me if I’m cleared to fly that altitude. That’s how it always goes. Would you like me at a different altitude?”

  “Negative, three-five-one. You’re cleared on course at one-two thousand. This request originated from U.S. Border Security Force controllers in Miami. If you wish you can speak with them on frequency one-one-two point five-five.”

  “I don’t wanna talk to no goddamn Border Security. I’m following the rules. Why I bein’ hassled?” The Latino accent was very strong now, and for the first time Kravitz felt a touch of apprehension. This pilot seemed to be losing it. There was a slight pause, then: “Sorry about that, Center. I lost my head. We’ll flip over to one-one two point five-five.”

  “Three-five-one, cleared off Center frequency, monitor GUARD, report back up on my frequency,” Kravitz said.

  “Three-five-one.”

  Kravitz immediately dialed up the Border Security’s flight common frequency and put it on his headset, loud enough to hear the transmissions but not loud enough so his assigned calls would be drowned out; then he leaned over and told the controllers near him about the interchange that was about to take place. Boy, this, he thought, is going to be good , .

  Hammerhead One Air Staging Platform

  “Border Security, this is Sundstrand Air three-fifty-one on one-one- two point five-five.”

  Angela “Angel” Mink—a name she had tried to live down by joining the Coast Guard ten years earlier before transferring to Border Security—was the controller in charge of the southern sector of Hammerhead One’s area of responsibility. Her sector extended from Puerto Rico to the center of Cuba and as far south as Hispaniola. Although the Hammerheads could only engage targets inside the boundaries of the Air Defense Identification Zone, which was very narrow in Mink’s sector, she routinely tracked and studied radar targets throughout her area.

  With her long blond hair, sculptured face and athletic figure, Angel Mink looked like her name sounded. Both her name and appearance were the opposite of her personality—shy, introverted, intellectual and all business on the platform. Her specialty, as Kravitz had guessed, was using the extraordinary power of the Border Security Force’s computer network on nearly every radar target on sea or air within her sector.

  The altitude readout of Sundstrand Air Flight 351 got the computer database’s attention right away, and she had put it up on the duty controller’s attention-list. With Geffar still on the beach recovering from her injuries, Michael Becker was in command of Hammerhead One; Becker had a trainee, Ricardo Motoika, in the duty controller’s seat and was giving him a continuing lesson on how to keep track of the three main screens and the dozens of other messages and events going on in the command center.

  Becker stepped away now from the raised commander’s platform over to Angel Mink’s station, moved his headset’s microphone away to prevent eavesdropping over the command center’s interphone and leaned over behind her left shoulder. “What’s so interesting?” he asked.

  “Sun and Sand flight coming back from Curacao,” Mink told him, swiveling her microphone out of the way and wetting her lips with a sip of water. “I think that’s where you should take me when we go on leave together next month.”

  “We’re going on leave together? Since when?”

  “Since I just fantasized it,” she replied. “You and me, on the white sand beaches, skinny-dipping at midnight with a bottle of champagne.”

  “All this time, I thought you were working over here.”

  “I am a woman, Commander Becker ...”

  “Prove it, Technician Mink.”

  “... We women can recall mountains of information on a suspected smuggler or terrorist, plan a romantic vacation and fantasize about a wildly passionate night with a gorgeous tight-assed hunk all at once. Too bad you men can think of only one thing at a time.”

  “Then think about this, woman,” Becker told her. “The beaches in Curacao have pink sand, not white. You fall asleep after one glass of champagne. And I already made reservations for us at the Barra Palace in the Barra da Tijuca. Look that up on your computer when you get some free time, Technician.” He moved his microphone back to his lips. “Tell Ricardo what you got, Angel.”

  “Ricardo, I’ve got Sundstrand three-five-one on flight common,” Mink reported. He nodded an acknowledgement as he searched the three high-definition screens for the plane’s data block.

  “Use your console screen to get the story on the event you want first,” Becker told him. He demonstrated how to call up Mink’s screen onto the duty-controller’s console and how to dial in the proper radio frequencies. “Some other things you should be thinking about: notifying the commander if he or she is around, ascertaining the status of your flight deck and aircraft and thinking about how much time you have from the target’s present position to when you need to make an intercept. That means thinking about the Seagull’s performance factors, available crew, maintenance status of your Sea Lion planes—”

  “All that just because Angel buzzed me about a scheduled inbound?” Ricardo Motoika interrupted. “Nothing’s happened yet and you’re saying that I should be planning to take the guy down.” “C’mon, Ricardo, you’ve been a radar controller for the Navy,” Becker said. “When you buzzed the CIC deck officer with a target that looked flaky, what was his usual reaction?”

  Motoika nodded, remembering back to his eight years as a combat air controller aboard the now-decommissioned U.S.S. Coral Sea. “You’re right. He got the flight boss or the OOD on the horn and got the word on the status of the flight deck and alert lines.”

  “Your controllers here are the same breed. They see so many targets that when one really stands out it’s usually serious. Okay. On your other screens you should have the video of the drone-catapult area called up, maybe with the ready status of the Seagulls superimposed on the same screen, and on the other you might want the flight status of the Sea Lion crews or deployed vessels in the area. Be able to brief the platform commanders on the situation when they check in. You buzzed Angel, you better be able to explain why. Meanwhile, have your controller talk to the target and find out what his story is.” Becker nodded to Mink, who turned to her radios:

  “Sundstrand Air three-five-one, this is the Border Security Force, radar contact, one-zero-five miles south of Miami at one-two-thousand feet. Sir, verify your intentions to stay at your present altitude. Over.”

  “Yes, ma’am, three-five-one would like to stay at twelve thousand until cleared to descend into Fort Lauderdale. I’m in an entry corridor, I’m at the minimum enroute altitude, I’ve got a flight plan and I’ve got clearance. Is there a problem?”

  “We thought you might be having difficulty maintaining your normal cruise altitude, three-fifty-one,” Mink replied. She was making this up as she went along. Something was wrong there, but so far everything the guy was doing was legal. “Are you encountering any problems, adverse flight conditions?”

  “Negative, we’re fine . . . We heard reports about rougher air higher so we decided to stay down here and enjoy the view. Over
.” “Bingo,” Mink said half-aloud. She called up the National Weather Service’s upper-air weather charts for south Florida and the Caribbean. High pressure dominated the entire region, with a southerly flow of air. She clicked on her interphone to the duty controller: “NWS says negative turbulence at his normal cruise altitude, and no pilot reports of any turbulence all night, Ricardo. He’d have a thirty- five-knot tailwind at his normal cruise altitude. Where he is, he’s got a twelve-knot tailwind.”

  Ricardo paused, then shook his head. “So he’s not flying at the most economical altitude. He’s dead on course, dead on time, and he’s following all the rules. What do we have on him? Nothing.” He turned to Becker. “Right?”

  Becker said nothing. Technically the guy was legit—but if he had a controller who was suspicious it was best not to drop things until everyone was satisfied. “Play it out, Ricardo. You’re the duty controller.” He motioned to Mink, who had turned around in her seat watching their exchange. “Work with your controllers.”

  Ricardo nodded, then said, “Angel, I want you to piss this guy off again. Tell him we’re going to divert him. Get his passenger list, home base, cargo, all that stuff and compare it with the flight plan he filed.”