Brown, Dale - Independent 02

by Hammerheads (v1. 1)

  The result was not long in coming. “Miss,” the pilot aboard the AV-22 reported, “I didn’t have a solid lock-on. I’m lining up on him again.”

  “The F-16 is at twenty miles, now at Mach one point two,” Mink reported. “He says he has a radar lock on both aircraft and he wants the V-22 to move away.”

  “What’s his ETA?”

  “Ninety seconds to intercept,” Mink said. “Same as the target’s ETTA to the platform.”

  Becker hesitated. The AV-22 was only miles away from the intruder but it would take him precious seconds to maneuver for a high probability of a hit—the AV-22’s weapons were not designed for long-range attacks but for rear-quarter attacks within visual range. By the time the AV-22 had a chance to really get into position to stop the intruder it could be too late.

  The F-16 had a long-range radar-guided missile—it was probably ready to strike right now at twenty-miles’ range. It could also close in quickly and finish the job with its murderous twenty-millimeter multibarrel air-to-air cannon. But if it missed on its high-speed head- on pass it would be too late to stop the intruder—an F-16 travelling at Mach one had a turn-radius of over thirty miles, especially with its restrictive fuel tanks, fuel load, and weapons load that prevented the pilot from pulling high-g turns. It could not reattack in time before the target reached the platform.

  And there was another problem nagging at his brain—what if this guy wasn’t an attacker at all? His records didn’t check out and he was certainly doing some very suspicious things, and it was happening at the same time their radar post in the Bahamas was apparently under attack. But records were known to be wrong, pilots often did weird and unexplainable things (especially at night, overwater and during confusing incidents such as this), and the attack (if it was an attack) in the Bahamas and this incident could be a monstrous coincidence . . .

  “Are there any responses to our warning calls?” Becker asked.

  “Nothing, Mike.”

  “I need clearance for the F-16 to move in, Mike,” Mink said. “Sixty seconds to intercept. He’s decelerated just above the Mach for weapons release but he’s coming in hot.”

  “Damn it,” Becker muttered, “keep making warning calls. Tell him he’s about to be blown out of the sky.” He knew he had just been paralyzed into indecision but he had no choice but to take the time to think this one through . . .

  The Border Security Force wasn’t supposed to strike at a target without visual identification and communication—that had been a Hardcastle concern when he was drawing up the Hammerheads’ lethal-intercept concept. They had always waited until they positively communicated with an intruder with visual hand or light signals before even considering an attack. Usually the sight of a Seagull drone flying off your wing, or a Sea Lion tilt-rotor airplane with guns and missiles was enough to scare most intruders into submission. Not all, but most. The one common denominator in all this was that they gave the intruder ample time to comply with warning signals before attacking—and that always meant positive visual signals. Without relying on radios, the intruders always knew they had been caught, and the ones that chose to ignore the warnings were the ones that got smoked . . .

  “Michael . . .”

  But, damn it, this time was different, wasn’t it? The situation with the terrorist group in Haiti, the attack in the Bahamas, the increased tension ... he couldn’t let anything happen to the platform. Fifty people on his platform were counting on him. He had a responsibility ... to protect the public, not just the Hammerheads. A wrongful death would destroy everything that Ian Hardcastle had worked so long to achieve. He couldn’t attack this guy without positive I.D. no matter what he was doing, no matter what the potential threat. He had to be sure . . .

  “Tell Two-One to intercept and identify that bastard,” Becker ordered. “Tell the F-16 to break off the attack and stand by.”

  “Trap One, Trap One, disengage and clear,” Mink called over the radio. On interphone she said, “F-16 is climbing . . . he’s clear.” Seconds later they heard a rolling rush of sound, then a sharp BOOM that rattled the windows of the command center as the sonic wave swept over the platform.

  “I want a standard intercept, light signals and warning flares,” Becker shouted. “Get on his ass, get a light in his cockpit but don’t attack until he sees your FOLLOW ME lights. Is that clear?”

  “Two-One copies. I’m turning and moving into position. My lights are on him and he’s not responding.”

  “Thirty seconds to arrival.”

  “Two-One has radar lock . . . Two-One has missile lock. Am I clear to engage?”

  “Get beside him, Two-One,” Becker ordered. “Close to gun range. Try a warning shot ...”

  “I can see the platform, Becker,” the pilot called out. “He’s heading right for the platform. He’s too close, I’ve got a missile lock. Am I clear to engage?”

  “Hold your fire. Get beside him. Make him turn away ...”

  “It’s too late for that, Mike. He’s going to hit. Am I clear to engage?”

  “Sound the platform alarm,” Becker ordered. “Remain on yellow alert but warn the crew of—”

  Suddenly, booming over the controller’s headphones, they heard: “Border Security, this is Sundstrand three-five-one.” The voice was high-pitched, almost a screech. Becker had never heard such terror in a man’s voice since Vietnam. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, can you hear me, don’t kill me ...”

  “Get him turned away from the platform, Angel,” Becker shouted. “Sundstrand three-five-one, this is the Border Security Force. If you can hear me, turn right immediately. Turn right forty degrees or you will be attacked . . .”

  The reaction was instantaneous. The target-aircraft veered at what appeared to be a tight hard bank angle and headed away from the platform. Mink took a breath as if it was her first in several minutes. “Target turning right, heading zero-four-zero, climbing. Well clear of the platform.” Several crewmembers allowed groans of relief. Becker found he had gotten to his feet and was leaning over the front edge of his commander’s console, then dropped back into his seat, removed his headphones and rubbed his eyes.

  “Have Two-One escort that sonofabitch Sundstrand Air flight to the Zoo,” Becker ordered. “I’d like personally to bust that guy right in the face. Tell the F-16 thanks for the assist and send him home.” “Roger,” Mink said. On the tactical frequency she announced, “Trap One, this is Hammerhead One. Our target is clear and responding. Thanks for the assist.” Mink reconfigured her scope back to its standard fifty-mile display and checked the traffic between the F-16 and Homestead Air Force Base to the northwest. “Clear on heading three-five-zero, take ten thousand feet, contact Homestead Approach on one-one-eight point one. Good night.”

  Mink saw the newcomers just as the pilot of the F-16 responded, “Stand by, Hammerhead One. I’ve got a—”

  On interphone, Mink called out, “I’ve got two targets bearing zero-seven-zero, ten miles, altitude five hundred feet, speed four- hundred knots. Closing on us fast. One more up high, near the F-16.” On the radio, she called out: “Trap One, I have traffic at your six o’clock, eight miles. His indicated air speed is—”

  Suddenly on the emergency GUARD channel they heard, “Mayday, mayday, mayday, Trap One, five miles southwest of the Hammerhead One platform. I am under attack. I am hit. I am hit.” The GUARD channel broadcasts overrode all others, and the pilot’s calls got more and more frantic—until they cut off completely.

  “I’m picking up an emergency locator beacon,” Mink said. “The F-16 ... I think the F-16 is down.”

  “What the hell is going on, Angel?” Becker said.

  “Three planes . . . no, I count four, four planes just appeared out of nowhere. I was in short range and never saw them. Two are up high around the F-16. Two more are off to the northeast, coming at us at high speed. No identification, no flight plans.”

  “Launch all available Sea Lions,” Becker shouted. “Broadcast warning messages on
all frequencies.” He looked up at the faces of the command-center crew, then, his attention directed at several who were standing at their consoles, he told them, “Sound the emergency alarm. Report to the rescue stations.” He motioned for Angel Mink to run for the exits, but she only turned in her seat, took olf her headphones and watched . . .

  A few of those crewmembers, the younger and less experienced ones, bolted for the emergency slide that would get them to the lifeboats on the lower level. Most stayed by their consoles, continuing to issue advisories and warnings as two AV-22 Sea Lion aircraft lifted off, followed by a third; the last AV-22 was being raised up onto the flight deck on the central elevator when the planes struck.

  “Splash one,” the radio message reported.

  “Very good, fangs, very good,” Agusto Salazar radioed to his wing- men from the lead fighter. “Claws engaging. Fangs, take the high CAP and be ready to run.”

  Because they were so close to the air-defense units of the United States, all four jet fighters of the Cuchillos’ strike team were heavily armed for air-to-air combat, even though that one F-16 would be the only fighter they would encounter. One MiG-21 carried two fuel tanks, two radar-guided missiles, two heat-seeking missiles and a 23 millimeter cannon. One Dassault-Breguet Mirage F1C needed only one fuel tank for the strike mission; it carried two 30-millimeter cannons and four missiles. These were the fangs, the Cuchillos’ fighters reserved for air cover for the other two jets.

  The other MiG-21 and Mirage F1C were also equipped for selfdefense, each carrying two medium-range radar-guided missiles along with their external fuel tanks in case a wave of air-defense fighters jumped the Cuchillos’ planes, which left room for only two air-to-ground strike weapons apiece. Salazar equipped these strike planes, the claws, with a single six-hundred-pound BL755 cluster- bomb unit to strike the Hammerheads’ aerostat radar site in the Bahamas. Each British-built BL755 CBU carried one hundred and forty smaller two-pound submunitions, which scattered all across the aerostat site and control center and devastated the entire area. That had left room for only one relatively small, lightweight weapon with which to strike the Hammerhead One platform itself.

  The Argentinian-made Martin Pescador, the Kingfisher antiship missile, was the most devastating strike weapon in the Cuchillos’ arsenal. It weighed only three hundred pounds but it could fly for two or three miles at a speed of well over Mach one, and even without its 88-pound high-explosive warhead, its destructive power was enormous. Thanks to the large numbers of Kingfisher missiles put on the international arms market after the Falklands War, when the world discovered the awesome power of the Exocet missile, the Kingfisher was a relative bargain by the time Salazar went shopping for weapons. The MiG and Mirage fighters designated for the strike each carried one Kingfisher missile.

  “Claws engaging, lead’s in first. Good hunting.” Salazar’s MiG-21 and the other Mirage F1C fighter slowed to below Mach 0.5 for weapons release, and launched the missiles in a shallow dive when just outside two miles from the platform. The Kingfisher missiles were radio-controlled, and even at night from two miles out and with the platform blacked out it was a simple target. The fighters had to continue flying toward the platform to aim the missiles all the way to impact, so, unlike the cluster bomb attack, they got the opportunity to watch the fireworks from start to finish . . .

  Both missiles hit the flight deck of the Hammerhead One platform at almost the same instant, one hitting near the aerostat-recovery pad and the other directly on the central elevator with the Sea Lion aircraft still on it. The nose of the Kingfisher missile was actually a titanium projectile designed to split open the skin of a vessel and allow the high-explosive warhead to penetrate inside the ship before exploding. That was exactly what occurred.

  The first missile ripped through the second level easily, the warhead piercing the roof of the second-story command center before detonating. The explosion shelled out the command center and most of the east half of the second and third levels of the platform, killing everyone remaining in the command center and buckling the flight deck on the east side. The control tower on the northeast corner collapsed into the crater, and the aerostat mooring and control systems ruptured from the blast, releasing the aerostat balloon and sending the two-mile long, four-thousand-pound mooring cable crashing back on deck.

  “Dead center, dead center!” Salazar announced over the radio.

  The second missile powered through the flight deck, sending the explosive warhead into the three-story maintenance hangar before detonating. One AV-22 aircraft and one Dolphin helicopter were destroyed in the blast and fire. Twenty people were killed instantly. The overpressure from the fuel explosion blew out the entire west side of the platform, shearing loose the connecting points of two of the four massive legs supporting the platform.

  Weakened and wracked by secondary explosions, the entire west side of the platform collapsed into the sea, and the two legs buckled, sagged, and toppled over. Four of the six legs did hold, but not enough to keep the entire platform from rolling onto its destroyed side. The remaining legs kept the structure from capsizing, but all of the lower decks and half of the flight deck hit the water and flooded.

  Fires burned out of control, and leaking fuel and oil spread across the ocean surface, setting the water on fire for a mile in every direction.

  In sixty seconds, the first Border Security Force air staging platform was destroyed, and the four fighters were at maximum speed heading south to safety. The AV-22 aircraft that were airborne at the time of the attack began rescue operations, but they would soon learn the grisly details—forty-one men and women on the platform had lost their lives, including Michael Becker and Angel Mink and Ricardo Motoika.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Aboard the AV-22 Aircraft Lion Two-Nine, in West Florida

  “Attention all aircraft, attention all aircraft, this is an air defense emergency warning message from the United States Border Security Force,” the radio transmission began. “Be advised, SCATANA is implemented immediately in the Jacksonville, Miami and eastern Houston air traffic control regions. Repeat, SCATANA procedures will be implemented immediately. All aircraft in receipt of this message stand by for emergency air-travel instructions.”

  Hardcastle felt a shudder through the V-22C Sea Lion aircraft as the pilots heard the warning message and accidentally nudged the controls, as if the airplane was expressing the fear the pilots felt at that moment, the fear that something you once thought was invulnerable and strong—namely, the continental United States itself— had been breached and attacked by an unseen, unknown enemy. SCATANA, the mouthful acronym for Security Control of Air Traffic and Air Navigation Aids, was the plan developed to control inbound and coastal traffic in the United States and to deny the use of U.S. radio navigation aids to enemy aircraft in the event of a wartime emergency. Except for infrequent exercises this was the first time SCATANA had been implemented in the continental United States since its inception during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

  “All IFR and VFR aircraft entering or transiting the United States on approved flight plans on all Alpha and Bravo corridors and on Victor routes 157, 539 and 225, stand by for divert instructions,” the message, broadcast on UHF and VHF GUARD emergency radio stations, continued. The message was also being broadcast on marine radio channels, high-frequency and short-wave stations and on satellite and TV networks that provided weather and information services to mariners and commercial pilots. “Be prepared for radio navigation aid interruption. All IFR aircraft, divert, and emergency instructions will be issued by your controller. All other aircraft, exit American airspace immediately or you may be fired on without warning. Contact the United States Border Security Force on VHF frequency 121.5 or UHF frequency 243.0 for assistance.” The message began to repeat, both in English and Spanish, and then instructions for aircraft in specific sectors or destinations began air.

  Hardcastle felt a knot tighten in his stomach as he listened to the broadcasts. SCATANA
procedures were designed way back in the early sixties to deny enemy bombers the use of America’s extensive air-navigation system during an attack. Under SCATANA, the Border Security Force and the military could shut down all radio transmitters that could be used as navigation or location markers—including commercial and private radio and TV stations located within a hundred miles of the coastline, as well as federal air-navigation facilities—and all for an indefinite period of time. In an age of diminished military budgets, nuclear disarmament and worldwide perestroika, SCATANA was considered by many to be almost an anachronism, a relic of the disappearing Cold War. An air attack against the United States was considered a fantasy.

  But someone had actually dared to do it. Someone had targeted the Hammerheads’ radar network for precise, coordinated air attacks

  Agusto Salazar, Hardcastle thought immediately. It had to be. The high-tech Cuban drug smuggler, the so-called district military commander of Haiti that commanded more concentrated firepower than several Caribbean nations combined, had actually dared attack the United States’ offshore drug-interdiction facilities.

  Salazar might be a fanatic, even crazy, but right now this man had the upper hand. Somehow, the attacking aircraft had sneaked through the radar coverage in the confusion over the report of an attack on the CARABAL aerostat station, and they had destroyed or disabled HIGHBAL. No transmissions and no radar data were available from that station. No messages except for the SCATANA warning messages had been received. The KEYSTONE, NAPALM (nickname for the Hammerhead Two aerostat unit located off the coast from Naples, Florida) and even the Navy radar sites at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and the Border Security Force sites in Puerto Rico and the Turks and Caicos Islands might be in imminent danger.

  Hardcastle and his AV-22 shuttle were now on the ground at Na- pies Municipal Airport on the west coast of Florida about fifty miles east of the Hammerhead Two platform. They had just pulled up near the small Airport Authority general aviation terminal, to the wideeyed shock of the teenagers in their golf carts who usually met the small single-engine airplanes, washed the windows and checked the fuel and oil. He undogged and opened the starboard-side hatch and was greeted by a teenage girl in yellow shorts and a blue satin jacket carrying a bucket with windshield cleaning supplies and another with cold soft drinks and a Thermos of coffee.