Brown, Dale - Independent 02

by Hammerheads (v1. 1)

  “Welcome to Naples Airport Executive Terminal, sir,” the obviously confused but determined young woman began. “I’m Jennifer. Can I. . . check your oil or something?” Jennifer was going to do her job, whether it was a rag-wing biplane or a Concorde jet that pulled up to her terminal. Hardcastle told her to stay away from the engine nacelles and the rear cargo ramp and ran to the executive terminal building.

  The evening airport manager at the terminal, less stunned by the Sea Lion’s arrival, had the phone out on the countertop and did not say a word as Hardcastle ran inside and dialed the line to the duty- controller’s desk at Border Security Force headquarters at Aladdin City.

  As Annette Fields answered the phone, Hardcastle could hear a confusion of voices in the background, the excited, tense voices of controllers talking with uncharacteristically loud voices. It had to be a madhouse out there. “Aladdin, duty controller. Stand by . . .”

  “This is Hardcastle, Annette.”

  “Ian, I’m glad you called on the land line. The radios are a mess. I see on the status board that you’re down, but where the hell are you? Are you okay?”

  “We landed at Naples Municipal. The crew and the plane are safe. I heard the SCATANA warning. Can you give me the situation? Where do you need Lion Two-Nine?”

  “I think the best place for you and the crew is back here at the Zoo,” Fields said. “Hammerhead One was hit. Bad. Reports from some of the Sea Lion birds that made it off said that the platform was hit by two missiles launched from high-speed fighters. The platform was heavily damaged and on fire.”

  Hardcastle was struck dumb by the horror of the news. He swallowed hard. “Casualties?”

  “No count yet.” The reply was wooden. Hardcastle could imagine what the answer was. “Two Sea Lions made it off. Each had five on board. They’re involved in rescue operations now.” What Hardcastle was expecting was left unsaid—the rescue crews had not recovered any survivors.

  “I’ll bring Two-Nine to the Zoo, drop off the crew and head on over to Hammerhead One. How many Sea Lions does Hammerhead Two have available?”

  “Four, plus two Dolphins. All their planes are airborne and ready.” “They’re all set in case of an attack,” Hardcastle said. “The bird I’ve got is in shuttle configuration only—it’s no good for rescue work. I'll go back to Aladdin with the crew, refuel, take out the seats and put on a winch, boats and a gun pod.”

  “All right, I’ll be expecting you. I’ll have a maintenance crew standing by to configure your plane.”

  “Any word from KEYSTONE or any marine units?” “KEYSTONE and Hammerhead Two are still on the air,” Fields said. “We’re expecting attacks on them but the air traffic situation is a nightmare. We’re trying to sort it out but—”

  “You’ve got to keep aircraft away from those sites, Annette,” Hardcastle said. “If they shut down NAPALM and KEYSTONE . . .”

  “I know, I know. We’ll be blind. But no one would be crazy enough to try to attack those two sites. KEYSTONE is on U.S. territory and Hammerhead Two is too far north.”

  Hardcastle thought about Salazar trying to kidnap their “Russian” fighter crew earlier that same day—hell, he’d try anything, especially if he felt threatened. “Don’t bet on it, Annette. What about the jets that attacked HIGHBAL? Are they headed toward KEYSTONE or Hammerhead Two?”

  “KEYSTONE tracked the four jets that hit CARABAL and HIGHBAL heading south by southeast at high speed and low altitude. It looks like they’re done for the day. We’re trying to get a fix on their destination.”

  “I can tell you what their damned destination is . . .” But Hardcastle paused. During his conversation a crowd had begun to gather around him, all wanting to know what was happening. “I’ll see you in twenty minutes,” he said abruptly and hung up.

  Over the Dry Tortugas, Eighty Miles South of the Hammerhead Two Platform.

  Even with weeks of planning, days of briefings and practice runs it would have been difficult for even the best-trained air crews to execute the two-pronged strike mission against the Hammerhead airstaging platforms precisely on time. Yet the Cuchillos were doing it with an outdated, untested plan, with a few hours of briefing and preparation and no practice runs. Having the two separate strike packages only ten minutes off was a minor miracle—a miracle that spoke well of the skills of the Cuchillo pilots and had an unexpected consequence.

  The four Cuchillo jets striking CARABAL and Hammerhead One had to fly fourteen hundred miles, much of it at low altitude, to destroy both radar sites and return to Verrettes; it was easy for communications to break down, route timing to deteriorate, corrections not to be made. In the heat of battle, especially if under attack, force-timing and strike-package integrity were sacrificed to survive. If the plan was discovered it was important to get your plane over the target, evade the defenders and worry about coordination and timing later. These pilots would be flying right down the barrel of the gun, directly at the heart of the Border Security Force’s center of operations.

  The second group of strike aircraft, another group of two MiG-21 fighters and Mirage F1C fighter-bombers, had to fly almost eighteen hundred miles to complete their mission, all but twenty minutes of the flight flown in relative safety. The second strike package had travelled from Haiti up along the north coast of Cuba, following established airways and talking with Cuban military flight controllers. With such routing the planes attracted almost no attention from the Border Security Force, who routinely monitored all such flights. When the planes suddenly turned northward, the attack on the aerostat site on Grand Bahama Island had been completed and the attack on Hammerhead One was underway. The confusion factor was very great as all attention was focused on events to the east.

  But the Cuchillo fighters were still several minutes from Cudjoe Key, the big island in the Florida Keys chain where the aerostat radar balloon was located; for obvious reasons—namely the Naval Air Station, Coast Guard and Border Security Force bases—the Hammerheads’ base itself was not a target: only the balloon-tether site itself, located fifteen miles away, was to be destroyed.

  But the first-strike package had hit early. The attacks on CARABAL and KEYSTONE were supposed to have been simultaneous; now American fighters were swarming over the skies even before the Hammerhead One platform had been hit, and the first target of the second group had still not been touched.

  The leader of the second-strike group swore into his oxygen mask as the radio messages and warnings began. They were nearly ten minutes behind time when the radar site on Grand Bahama Island was struck—the second group was not yet in American airspace, let alone in position to launch their attack.

  “Gold Group, this is Gold One,” the leader radioed to his group. “Silver Group has apparently struck his first target. Warning messages have been transmitted on the emergency frequencies.”

  “What will we do?” one of the other pilots asked in Spanish. They all had the same question, but only the youngest, the least disciplined, was scared enough to ask. The feeling was one of nakedness, helplessness. It was as if the whole world could see you, that every missile and every gun was pointed in your direction.

  “First, we will maintain radio silence, ” the leader replied angrily in English. Even though their transmissions were scrambled, it was an antiquated and easily broken mechanical scrambling routine. Non-tactical transmissions were supposed to be done in English in case of eavesdropping—a lot of military talk in English would be less suspicious to eavesdroppers than a foreign tongue. “Formation changes, fangs and claws, now.”

  The formation was originally in their strike-and-cover arrangement—the fang, who was the leader in the MiG-21 paired with the Mirage on his left wing, and the claws, the air-cover MiG and Mirage fighters on the leader’s right wing. At the leader’s command the air-cover Mirage took spacing on the strike MiG by flying a few hundred yards to the leader’s right; then the strike Mirage on the leader’s left wing slowed and passed underneath his comrades, joining on
the Mirage’s right wing. The formation was now broken up into two formations of similar aircraft, with one strike and one air- cover fighter in each group.

  “Leader’s group will take the platform, the rest take the radar site. Gold Three, monitor the Border Security Force tactical channel. We will meet on the rendezvous channel in fifteen minutes to plan a join-up. Good luck.” The leader with his MiG-21 banked left to get on course for the platform. The other group banked right to clear the formation and began their attack run on the KEYSTONE radar site.

  Border Security Force Headquarters Command Center,

  Aladdin City

  On the radar displays of west and southwest Florida it was a madhouse. Airplanes were everywhere. Airliners with hundreds of passengers were within a thousand feet, and sometimes within five hundred feet, of small single- and twin-engine planes; every pilot up there was calling in for instructions or clarification. The FAA controllers were overloaded with traffic-collision alerts as planes scrambled to find someplace to land before the shooting started. With radio navigation aids selectively blocked out by the Hammerheads, planes were reporting themselves lost or drifting out of their assigned corridors. Intruder as well as collision alerts were flashing on the boards.

  And now the Air Force was entering the picture. F-16 interceptors from the 125th Fighter Interceptor Group at Homestead Air Force Base were responding to the air-defense warning; a few fighters from the 56th Tactical Training Wing at MacDill AFB, an F-16 replacement training base near Tampa, were flitting around the area itching to get in on some action. And now fighters from the 125th Fighter Interceptor Group at Jacksonville, the parent group of the Florida- based fighters, were moving in to reinforce their detachment at Homestead AFB. Every civilian plane in the sky began expressing their concern about being the target of an F-16 attack, and several reported seeing bombs going off, missiles being launched, explosions rocking the sky. Military controllers of the Air Force Southeast Air Defense Sector at Tyndall Air Force Base in northwest Florida wanted to take charge of the situation now that the F-16s were airborne—even after nearly three years of operation, no one yet completely trusted the Border Security Force with anything but their own aircraft. It was bedlam.

  Annette Fields at the duty-controller’s desk at the Aladdin City command center had a big job—to sort out the legitimate air traffic, find the real intruders and keep everyone away from the NAPALM, KEYSTONE and ALADDIN radar sites. Each site had two major air-traffic corridors running across the aerostat’s restricted airspace spots. Alpha-758 and Alpha-39 from the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico to Miami ran just twenty miles south of Hammerhead Two and was widely travelled by Central American planes as well as planes from the west side of South America. Golf-448 ran from Venezuela to Marathon, Florida—the major north-south airway from the Caribbean and South America to the United States—and although it was thirty miles from the KEYSTONE site it was of real concern to Fields.

  The worst security threat came on Bravo-646, the major east-west route from South and Central America to the Bahamas—this one used the Key West VORTAC radio navigation facility as a major checkpoint, which placed the route almost directly over KEYSTONE; the northern edge of Bravo-646’s flight route corridor actually touched the edge of KEYSTONE’S protective restricted airspace. Overflights and collision alerts with the big KEYSTONE balloon, which at fourteen thousand feet altitude placed it very close to most air traffic on Bravo-646, were common.

  Fields’ only option was to keep all air traffic south of Bravo-646— that was the only way to insure that all aircraft would stay at least thirty miles from each site. Once clear of KEYSTONE, Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center would put them back on their flight plan routing or vector them for the approach into the Miami or Fort Lauderdale area. It sounded easy, but Fields’ order was creating havoc. On top of all this the Hammerheads still had to make sure that no smugglers used this opportunity of confusion to sneak past the radar cordon. Even with the radar-detection systems operating at full capability it was sometimes easy for a small fast plane to fly very close to an airliner and merge their radar returns.

  “Key West Approach, this is Aladdin, I need Mexicali one-seven- niner charlie vectored clear of Bravo-646,” Fields heard one of her controllers. Darrell Fjelmann, tell the FAA air-traffic controllers. “I don’t care if he’s not following your vectors. I need it right now ... do it immediately or there might be an accident ... I mean he might get a missile up the kazoo, sir, and you’ve received fair warning. Now clear that route.” Fjelmann pounded the button to cut off the channel, then spun wearily in his chair and rubbed his eyes.

  “Hang in there, Darrell, hang in there,” Fields told him.

  “Annette, Lion Two-Two is coming in from Hammerhead One,” another controller reported. “They might have a survivor.”

  After that announcement the Hammerheads on duty latched onto even the dimmest glimmer of hope out of that evening’s horror. “Tell Two-Two to head directly to Homestead,” Fields said. “Request clearance from Homestead for the AV-22 to land on the oval in front of the base hospital.”

  Suddenly Fjelmann cursed, and swung back to his control board and mashed the channel button. “Key West, where’s that Mexicali flight going? He’s supposed to turn right, not left ... You think he’s disoriented? I can see that. If he continues the turn he’s doing he's going to be face-to-face with our aerostat . . . well, talk to him. Convince this guy that unless he wants to spend the next year in jail or worse he’d better turn right and get the hell out of our airspace . . . no, you tell him. That’s your job, dammit.”

  “Ease up, Darrell,” Fields told him. “That’s a scheduled flight. We’re not going to bust the pilot because he panics. Keep them away from KEYSTONE as much as you can but don’t make threats, it won’t help.”

  “It’s like these pilots just woke up or something,” Fjelmann said irritably. “They take a long time to adjust if you suddenly bust them out of their routine. We give them a simple command and they all go to pieces. The only thing these guys seem to do right is turn the autopilot on.”

  “Well, don’t you go to pieces on me ...”

  “All right, all right, I’m just burning off steam.” Fjelmann took off his headset and rubbed his temples, trying to force away the pain growing in his skull behind his eyeballs. He put back his headset, swiveled his chair back to face his screen, took a deep breath and reconfigured his scope to monitor the errant Mexican airliner, which was drifting ever closer to the aerostat radar balloon suspended over Cudjoe Key. There was no stopping him now—he was going to cross into the aerostat’s protected airspace for sure. “Annette, I need to turn the lights on KEYSTONE. Otherwise this guy’s gonna go nose- to-nose with it.”

  Fields took a look at the monitor, nodded, then keyed her microphone: “Security, give me strobes on KEYSTONE for sixty seconds,” she ordered.

  Aboard the Lead Cuchillo Mirage F1C Fighter-Bomber

  Cruising down Bravo-646 at six hundred nautical miles per hour, Gold Three and his wingman, aboard the two Cuchillo Mirage F1C fighter-bombers, were sixty miles from their target. The sky appeared to be ablaze with slow-moving comets—airliners coming in from all directions, flying around with their anti-collision and landing lights on in the dense, confused air-traffic environment. The risk of a midair collision was so great that everyone had their lights on. The two Mirages had adjusted their altitude until they were squarely in the middle of the bright pearls of light, figuring it would make t that much more difficult to be pursued by military interceptors if they remained in among the civilian planes.

  Suddenly the pilot of Gold Three clicked his radio to get his wing- man’s attention. Far out toward the horizon they saw an astounding sight—a bright pillar of light, like a massive, shiny pin, had appeared from out of nowhere. The apparition began to blink once every two seconds. It was such an unearthly sight, grand and almost magical. It was as if God himself had used the Earth as His own pincushion, jabbing the globe
with a celestial pin that shone like a beacon far into the distance. A truly awesome sight.

  But the magic did not last long—it was soon replaced by happiness and a bit of relief that endured even after the unusual sight blinked into nothingness a few seconds later. The Cuchillo pilots knew that the heavenly object was KEYSTONE, their target, illuminated for a brief period undoubtedly because of all the air traffic swirling around it. They were right on course. In less than nine minutes, that stickpin from God should be a crushed and burned hulk in the ocean.

  Border Security Force Air Command Center

  “Key West Approach, that Mexicali flight looks clear of the aerostat,” Darrell Fjelmann said on the phone line to the FAA, “but I want him south of Bravo-646. I need him back on that southerly heading for another two minutes ... at least two minutes ... thanks. I appreciate that. Yes, I see him turning now. Thanks for putting a bug in that guy’s ear for me . . . yeah, things are still a mess. Thanks again.” Fjelmann reconfigured his scope for longer ranges. Things were starting to calm down a bit, traffic alerts were getting resolved and air traffic seemed to be moving along . . . Another alert. This one looked like a fast-mover, maybe a bizjet or military toad trying to beat out the airliners into line for approaches into south Florida. Fjelmann was about to reach for the channel button back to Key West Approach, but for once the FAA controller buzzed him first: