by Jeff Kirkham
“Captain Spilinek,” Dutch said to his aide de camp, now running the comms center. “Please call ahead to Mountain Home Air Force Base and let them know we have a priority landing coming their way in about two hours. Tell them it’s a Code Raptor-300 event and request that three Strykers mobilize out of Boise with minimal crew, all single males, to meet us at Mountain Home. Do you copy the last?”
“Yessir. Radio Mountain Home AFB, let them know a Code Raptor-300 event is coming in one-two-zero minutes and to scramble three Strykers out of the armory in Boise with a skeleton crew, fully-equipped, all single males, to meet us at the airfield.”
“Correct. And, Captain,” the president said, “do not tell them we’re Air Force One or that the first family is aboard. You got that? Please let the pilot know to change course.”
“Roger, sir.”
Dutch hung up the phone, closed his laptop and headed into the presidential suite to check on his wife and daughter.
Both women were sitting on the edge of the bed talking when Dutch entered. Abigail had been crying.
“We’re heading toward southern Idaho, and we’ll land in about two hours. What do you think?”
Sharon nodded approval.
“Abigail was just telling me that Sam Greaney’s men had been preparing to take over the plane since we left Offutt. They had Abby and Teddy restrained in the security section, waiting for the signal from Greaney.”
It made sense. The new men Greaney traded out for his Delta security detail must’ve been plants who’d been on the airplane since D.C., probably sitting in the back posing as staff. That meant Sam had at least seven combat operators on board when they took off. The men must have been standing by since before the California nuke. There would be no other way Sam could’ve had them ready in time to board the plane.
“It makes me wonder if we were the only ones that didn’t see this collapse coming,” Dutch said. “How could Sam have known the threat was so serious?” He scratched his head.
Sharon thought about it. “We were hearing it on the news a few times a week for the last couple years. I couldn’t watch the news without seeing some kind of doomsday scenario: climate catastrophes, credit bubbles, solar flares, volcanos, flu and EMP threats from rogue nations.” She shrugged. “Maybe Sam Greaney was just playing the odds. He wasn’t picking up the tab for having a team of commandos standing at the ready. Why not invest in any possible outcome? Sam Greaney’s not the kind of man who would ever stand by and be happy with your successes, Dutch. I’m sure he always saw himself as the rightful leader of the country… the sociopathic, paranoid bastard.”
The hammering of gunfire echoed down the plane’s fuselage. Dutch motioned for his wife and daughter to stay behind the furniture, and he rushed down the hallway, drawing his handgun from the back of his belt and pulling up short at the cover provided by the bulge of the conference room. The shooting stopped. An eerie quiet descended over Air Force One, broken only by the whine of the engines and the whistle of air escaping through bullet holes.
31
“Report, Agent Brooks,” Dutch called around the corner.
“We’re all good here, sir. They just had a shootout back in the security section. From the sound of it, I believe one of the Army operators had a bone to pick regarding their loyalties and he dropped the hammer on his buddies.”
“Teddy,” Dutch yelled. “Are you okay back there.”
“He’s fine,” one of the operators yelled from the rear compartment. Someone muffled Teddy’s shouts, probably gagging him. “We’ve got things under control. Stay out of this section or the kid dies.”
Dutch rounded the corner and darted into the office staff section. His four secret servicemen crouched behind a desk that they had propped up as a barricade. Sam Greaney sat handcuffed to a chair in the corner, a blank look on his face.
“My moneys on someone having died back there, Mister President. Maybe more than one. Should we consider rushing them, sir?”
“Do we have a solid count?” Dutch asked.
“We did before the shooting,” one of the agents—Dutch didn’t know his name—answered. “There were four men, plus the one we killed on the staircase. Now it could be less. But we could be walking into an even gunfight. And they’re posted up on the hallway. We have to assume they’re some kind of SOF guys, maybe Delta. Maybe former SEALs. Even with only two operators back there, and even if they didn’t have a hostage, the odds wouldn’t be good.”
“Hold position,” Dutch ordered. “We play this out for more time. Has anyone checked on the hole in the plane?”
“I found it. It’s in the outside wall of the staff office,” the lead agent, Brooks, answered. “One of the nine millimeter rounds hit a seam in the aluminum and punched straight through. I tried to plug the hole with a plastic patch and it might’ve helped. But we can still hear the pressure escaping around the patch. The pilot says we can lose pressure like this for maybe an hour before we go hypoxic—maybe twice that if the pilot flies lower. After that, we’ll need to wear the O2 masks. If the bullet had blown out a window…that would’ve been a different story.”
“Someone moved Robbie’s body,” Dutch noted, his voice heavy.
“We moved he and the dead comms guy into the staff office until we can offload them.”
“Gentlemen,” a quiet voice interrupted. The Air Force aide de camp motioned for them to come forward on the plane. “Can I show you something?”
Dutch and the lead agent, Brooks, slipped around the dogleg in the hallway and quietly followed the young Air Force officer upstairs to the comms center.
The three men filed up the narrow staircase and entered a room packed with computer monitors. A few 1980s-era radio sets still held a place on the wall, but almost everything else had been converted into computerized communication transceivers. A door opened at the far end of the comms center and Sharon stepped through from the nose of the plane, the flight deck and the pilots behind her.
Just like Sharon, Dutch mused. Checking on everyone to make sure their needs are being met. She slipped past them while touching Dutch’s arm, and headed down the staircase.
“After the shooting, I poked around the wifi network on the plane and found not one, but two computers still on the network. Both the screens, fore and aft, in the security and passenger compartments aren’t actually television screens. They’re computer monitors. Somebody probably wanted to have more flexibility for presentations, so they installed full monitors. Check it out. That means they have built-in cameras.”
The young officer hit the return key and a rear-facing view of the aft security compartment appeared. Both Dutch and Agent Brooks leaned forward, gobbling up the new information.
“There’s only two of them,” Brooks pointed out. “See that foot on the floor,” he nodded toward a boot poking around a row of airplane seats. “That’s a dead man. Have you seen anyone but these two guys and the hostage?”
“I was only watching them for a minute before I went to get you, so I can’t be sure there isn’t another guy hiding out somewhere. He could be in the john.”
“There’s Teddy,” Dutch touched the screen. The back of his son’s head with his flyaway blond hair poked above a seat. “He’s in a back row, facing away.”
“Here,” the aide de camp hit another key and the view toggled to a head-on shot of Teddy, bound and gagged. “This is the other computer monitor and it’s facing the opposite direction.”
Other than appearing uncomfortable, Teddy seemed fine.
“Okay, gentlemen.” Dutch stood back and folded his arms. “How do we use this information to keep our nation out of the hands of a psychopath?”
32
“Sir. When you loaded the supplies from Offutt, did you requisition any M84 grenades?” Agent Brooks asked, excitement mounting in his voice.
“I have no idea what I grabbed. Are you former military, Agent Brooks?”
“MARSOC Marine, sir. An M84 is a flashbang grenade—it
looks like a V8 juice can with a big handle, a ring and a bunch of holes drilled in the sides.”
Dutch remembered the scene at the Air Force armory. “I recall a bunch of little baseball-looking grenades and then some skinny grenades with holes.”
“We can’t use the fragmentation grenades—the ones like baseballs. The overpressure and frag would compromise the hull of the aircraft. I’m pretty sure the flashbang won’t hurt the plane, though.”
“Don’t we want a grenade to cause damage?” Dutch asked.
“Yeah, but not so much that it’ll kill your boy or split a seam in the aircraft. And if those guys are Delta, or anything in that family of operator, we’ll need to do more than flashbang them to put them back on their heels. Those men will be dedicated adversaries. First things first. Did they load the grenades in the forward compartment or the rear?”
“I’m not sure. I think the food pallets got forklifted into the back. I’m guessing they loaded the other stuff up front to balance the load.”
“Good. The forward lower compartment is right down the stairs up front. Let me check to see if the grenades are up front where I can get at them. Maybe Jesus is smiling on us after all. How much time do we have?” the agent looked at his watch.
Dutch looked at his own watch and did the math. “I have to check with the pilot, but I think we’re about ninety minutes out from Mountain Home, which means we might be sucking thin air before then, depending on how good your patch worked. Best guess: we’ll be on the edge of passing out in less than an hour.”
“Why don’t we just wait until they pass out and then get Teddy?” the aide de camp offered.
“We don’t have mobile O2 units on this aircraft. If they pass out, we pass out. If we have O2 masks, they have O2 masks. We can breathe through our little masks hanging from the ceiling, but then we’re in no position to assault. They’d be breathing off their ceiling O2 masks and shooting from fixed positions. We’re the ones who need to be mobile. Not them.”
Everyone nodded, thinking through their complicated reality; fighting aboard an aircraft at 30,000 feet against trained commandos with a hostage. All that and they had a whistling clock ticking away their air.
Agent Brooks broke the reverie. “First things first. If we can get a couple M84s, we might have options. Meet up in the Oval Office in ten.”
33
Agent Brooks thunked down two grenades on the President’s desk. “We’re in business. We need to find something we can use to generate light fragmentation. Sixteen penny nails would be perfect.”
“I doubt there are any nails on the airplane, but I have a whole case of stainless steel Monte Blanc pens that we give away when we sign treaties.” Dutch stood, dug around in his credenza and came back with a cardboard box full of gleaming, steel pens.
“Perfect,” Agent Brooks grabbed one and twisted it into two metal tubes, dropping the ink insert back into the box. “We can tape a hundred of these around the grenades and they might act like flechettes. I think they’ll stick into anything and everything, including the operators. The airframe should be fine.”
“I didn’t think an airplane could tolerate the pressure from a grenade.” Dutch vaguely remembered something about a terrorist with a little bit of C-4 explosive in his shoe posing a serious threat to an airliner.
Brooks shook his head. “Air Force One is actually designed to withstand the M-84 flashbang. We bring them aboard when we have dodgy foreign nationals in the press section. There are four times as many overpressure valves on this 747 as on commercial models. We’re good. Also, I found more nine millimeter frangible ammo in the weapons locker left over from the last time we flew with Saudis aboard. Even frange can damage the hull and the electronics, but it’s better than shooting ball ammo.”
“How do we protect Teddy from getting hit?” Dutch looked at the camera’s view, Teddy’s head poking over the seat back.
“Your son studied French, right?” the aide de camp said. “I’ve started rotating photos of France from my iPhone on both screens, just like screen savers. I think they fell for it. The commandos haven’t paid any attention to the monitors. We’re so accustomed to screen savers, it’s not something we notice anymore.” The young officer smiled at his mental victory over the trained operators. “I can start running random phrases in French and then slip in a few warnings. If we can get your son to duck and cover when the grenades fly, he should be fine.”
“Look.” The young officer pointed to the screen as he flipped back to the rear monitor. “Teddy is paying attention to the screen saver.” The monitor showed Teddy looking directly at the camera, eyes wide.
“Do you know French?” Dutch asked.
“My family is Quebecois,” the young officer said and smiled.
Agent Brooks pointed at the rows of chairs behind Teddy. “The flechettes shouldn’t penetrate more than two rows of airplane seats, at most. Teddy’s four rows back. If he gets his head down, I don’t see how he’d get hit.” The agent held up his hands. “But, it’s your call, sir.”
Dutch considered his conflicting obligations: his country. His family. His son. Fathers across this once-great nation were watching their children starve. At least Dutch’s and Teddy’s risk might make a difference.
“Let’s do it,” he decided, leaving the outcome to fate.
“Sir, one more thing.” Agent Brooks cringed. “I’ll be going in first on the assault, and I’d like to use Secretary Greaney as a human shield. I know that probably offends your sense of honor, but those operators will think twice before they shoot their boss. At least I hope they’ll think twice—”
Dutch interrupted him. “—Fuck that guy. Pardon my French. He’s holding my son hostage. Cut off his head and stick it on a pole if you think it’ll help.”
34
Les grenades arrivent bientôt…Préparez-vous à vous couvrir la tête.
President McAdams, Agent Brooks and the Air Force aide de camp watched the words appear on the screen, then disappear. Teddy nodded emphatically into the camera, now fully aware of the scheme.
“They didn’t notice the text,” the young man rubbed his hands together. “They should’ve spent more time studying in high school, less time lifting weights.”
“They’re getting lax,” Agent Brooks observed. “They’ve been on-point for over an hour and they’re letting down a bit—assuming that we won’t come at them while they have a hostage. If we pitch the flashbangs just past the first row of seats, they should get a face full of stainless steel.”
“Is there any reason not to go right now?” Dutch asked.
“Yes, we should go now, but you misunderstand, Mister President. Under no circumstance will I allow you to participate in this assault.” Agent Brooks set his feet.
“Tell you what, Agent Brooks,” Dutch switched into negotiation mode. “I’ll be your backup if things go sideways. I’ll hang back in the office section unless I’m needed. That’s my final offer,” Dutch held up the Beretta to prove to the secret service agent that he was going in one way or the other. The agent would to have to wrestle the gun away from the president to stop him.
“Okay, then it’s five of us going in, the President in reserve and the secretary of defense out front. This should work,” Agent Brooks said.
At sixty-three years old, it had been almost fifty years since Dutch had been in a physical confrontation with another man. Even so, he remembered those schoolyard brawls and he wondered how he would respond to combat in the real world, with real bullets. With combat looming, Dutch had to ask, am I a coward?
Once, when Dutch had been walking his girlfriend home from middle school, her books in his arms, an older boy from high school confronted them on the sidewalk, smacked the books to the ground and taunted Dutch with insults against the girl’s maidenhood. Dutch feigned helplessness. Since the high school boy had fifty pounds and three inches of reach on him, acting helpless made sense. But in that moment, Dutch’s mind worked out a plan to inflict ma
ximum damage on the bigger boy.
Dutch acted as though he was turning away, and then he’d loaded every pound of force he could into his hips, and let loose the biggest haymaker of his life, directly into the center of the bigger boy’s face.
The high school boy had gone down hard on the sidewalk.
The boy had looked up at Dutch and his girlfriend, swiped away the blood gushing from his nose and said, “Now, I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”
Dutch had been too astonished at the success of his gambit to realize that he should’ve set to kicking the boy as soon as he’d hit the ground. Instead, he’d let him get up.
Just then a police car had rolled up to the curb and a sheriff’s deputy jumped out to break up the fight. Noticing the obvious size difference between the boys, and looking back and forth at the gushing blood coming from the high school boy’s face, the officer had fist-bumped Dutch on the shoulder.
“Nice job. Now get the hell out of here and quit fighting.”
To this day, Dutch didn’t know for sure if he had it in him to stomp a man on the ground. He yearned to know what he would do to win back his son, or to fulfill his duty to his country.
Dutch slide-checked the breach on his Beretta, already knowing there was a round in the chamber. He looked at the video screen one last time.
“Let’s get this done.”
35
Agent Brooks gagged the secretary of defense. The secret service agent had a death grip on the SecDef’s belt in his left hand, his Glock in his right. Behind him, another secret service agent held the two taped and bulging flashbangs, one in each hand. Behind him, the other two agents had their Glocks at the high ready. Looking rather small by comparison, the president’s aide de camp held a revolver, standing last in line. Everyone, including Sam Greaney, wore body armor.