“Well, you can kiss that recon pod good-bye,” Kelly radioed. “It’s departed the aircraft completely. Both bomb bay doors caved in, your nose gear door looks damaged, looks like a few actuators hanging in the breeze. Looks like hydraulic fluid or coolant streaks underneath— better double-check that the pod is powered down and isolated.”
“Checked, power off, bomb door switch off, circuit breakers pulled,” Fogelman told Furness.
“We got it, Zero-Four,” Furness radioed Kelly.
“It looks like the nose gear door might have gotten hit,” Kelly continued, “so we’ll have to keep an eye on it when you bring the gear down. Moving to the left wing.” Kelly eased his bomber over the left wing: “Looks like a possible rupture or break in the skin, Zero-One — I suggest you start transferring fuel out of the right wing, if you got any left, or you’ll end up with a heavy wing.”
“We’re burning off body fuel only.”
“Copy. Your left weapon pylon is gone, and you’ve got a lot of damage on the pylon root. About four feet of the trailing edge of the center flap assembly is ripped off. Some pieces are landing in the slipstream, but not much. Anything else you want us to check?” “Couldn’t stand any more happy news, Zero-Four.”
“Roger that. Moving back to fingertip.”
Just as Rebecca watched Kelly slide under and out of sight, she looked up and saw four F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters, behind and to Johnson’s left about a quarter of a mile. “Company, eight o’clock, Thunder Flight,” she called on interplane. “Green Mountain boys returning to the scene of the crime.”
“The four buttheads who buzzed us, no doubt,” Ted Little chimed in. “You guys are from Burlington? Why the hell did you make a pass at us like that?”
“Hey, Thunder, we didn’t know it was you,” one of the 134th Fighter Interceptor Squadron Patriot’s F-16 pilots radioed back. “We were scrambled against a Backfire bomber from Cuba that NORAD had been tracking all morning.” NORAD, or North American Air Defense Command, call-in sign WINDJAMMER, was the joint U.S. and Canadian military agency responsible for the air defense of the entire North American continent, from the North Pole to Panama. “WINDJAMMER must’ve thought you guys were the bogey and vectored us right on top of you.”
No wonder Boston Center and the military command posts were so weird on the radios, Furness thought — they had Russian bombers off the coast to deal with! Well, this wasn’t a topic for discussion on an open radio. “Patriots, how about leading us back to Plattsburgh? We’ve got two birds close to emergency fuel, and now we’ve got structural damage. Tell Boston Center we’ll need weapons-on-board clearance and that we’ll be declaring an emergency. Or are you still out chasing Bears?”
“We’re heading back to the barn too,” the lead F-16 pilot replied. “We’ve been rotating these intercepts for days now. And after our little close encounter back there, I’m going to need a fresh flight suit — right before I go downtown and get plastered.”
TWENTY-THREE
“Two green — correction, nose gear green light out, red light in the gear handle still on,” Fogelman called out. Normally he read the checklists very mundanely, with little interest, and recited the usual “two green no red” verbatim without hardly looking — but not this morning. He paid attention to every checklist step and double-checked each light and indicator as if his life depended on it — which, of course, it did.
Rebecca’s damaged RF-111G Vampire bomber was handling pretty well as they descended through the clouds and prepared for landing at Plattsburgh, and up until now things had been fairly routine. There were a few snow showers in the Plattsburgh area, and it was overcast and cold, but the runway was open and the ice and snow had been scraped off. The Air Battle Wing had a strip alert tanker ready to launch and refuel the incoming bombers, but the other three bombers had enough fuel to land without an emergency aerial refueling, so the tanker stayed on the ground. Thunder Zero-Two and Zero-Four landed first and Zero-Three last, with Paula Norton taking the approach end arresting cable just in case her aircraft had experienced any serious structural or landing gear problems.
Because Rebecca would be landing without flaps, slats, or spoilers, she needed to burn down fuel before landing in order to get the lowest aircraft gross weight and the shortest landing roll possible. Her plan, as long as the weather cooperated, was to enter the visual pattern into Plattsburgh, being careful to keep the base and the runway in sight at all times, and do a series of low approaches until they were down to five thousand pounds of fuel remaining. Meanwhile, the approach and departure end arresting cables were being reconfigured for her.
Again, it was wall-to-wall checklists — no flap — no slat landing checklist, asymmetrical spoiler checklist, brake energy limit check, approach or departure-end-cable arrestment checklist in case the runway was too icy to stop, plus the normal approach and landing checklists. Now they had an unsafe-gear indication — either the speed brake (the forward main gear door) was not in its proper in-trail position or the nose gear was not fully down and locked. With the damage to the nose-gear-door area, Furness had to assume the worst — the nose gear was not fully locked.
“Delta, this is Zero-One, nose gear indicating unsafe condition, and I’m picking up increased vibration in the nose,” Furness radioed on the command post frequency. Delta was the call sign for the Maintenance Group commander, who would coordinate all the recovery efforts for the damaged bomber.
“Copy that, Zero-One,” the group commander responded. Furness didn’t know the new maintenance group commander — he had just recently arrived — and she was a little skittish about turning over this recovery to a new guy, but the operations group commander, Colonel Greg McGwire, call sign Charlie, and the wing commander had both deferred to the new guy’s experience and had turned this recovery over to him. “What are your light indications?”
“Delta, the nose gear light is out, repeat out, the main-gear green light is on, and the red light in the gear handle is on, repeat, on, Thunder Zero-One.”
“Okay, Zero-One, leave the gear handle where it is, check your circuit breakers, clean up your checklists … and clear me in to your left wing.”
“Zero-One cop— Say again, Delta? Clear you in …?” Furness searched out her left side and to her amazement saw an F-16B Fighting Falcon fighter, the two-seat trainer version of the supersonic interceptor from the 134th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in Burlington, climbing and turning to join on them. “Delta, are you in the F-16 closing on me?”
“Affirmative, Zero-One,” Lieutenant Colonel Daren Mace said. While the other three RF-111Gs were landing, Mace had requested a two-seat F-16 from Burlington to take him up to inspect the damage personally. “Give us a right turn toward the base. We’ll be underneath you looking at your damage.”
“Copy, Delta,” Furness replied. Somewhere in the back of her mind she thought that voice sounded familiar.
The F-16 reappeared on her left wing a few minutes after she rolled out of her turn. “Okay, Zero-One, your nose gear is not down and locked, and it looks like the wheels are castering in the slipstream. Looks like you’re going to take an approach-end cable. Hang in there about fifteen more minutes to get down and get ready. See you on the ground.”
It took more like thirty minutes before Delta called up and cleared her for the cable pass. Furness had only fifteen minutes of fuel remaining — she had this try and one more, and then they’d have to take it out over the Atlantic and eject. She was determined not to miss.