“Someone just painted us, Captain,” his second-in-command shouted.
“What?”
Harris scanned his instrument panel. Sure enough, in all the chaos of dealing with the first two MiGs, the other two had come in behind them. One of them now had a radar lock on them. Harris tried to steady his nerves. Each of the Russian-built jets behind him carried six air-to-air missiles, not to mention a thirty-millimeter cannon with enough rounds of ammunition to blow the Cobra Ball out of the sky.
Harris instinctively took the plane into a dive, but the 275,000-pound bear was not exactly the most agile plane in the world to fly.
Forty-five thousand feet.
Forty.
Thirty-five.
Thirty.
Twenty-five.
They were descending fast and hard. One of the navigators behind Harris began to vomit. The g-forces were killing them all. At twenty thousand feet, Harris leveled out and broke right. But the MiGs were still there. They were still locked on. And the American F-15s were still several minutes away, at best.
“How bad is this, Captain?” asked his copilot, his knuckles white and his shirt soaked in perspiration.
“No problem,” Harris replied a bit too quickly. “It’ll be fine. Just do your job.”
Harris knew that typically when a North Korean fighter pilot intercepted an American spy plane, they’d shadow the American for fifteen, twenty minutes, bring in some colleagues, come in dangerously close — sometimes within forty or fifty feeT — and then make it clear it was time for the American to go home. He had seen it happen countless times. But rarely did the NK jets lock on. To do so was an incredibly hostile act, the prelude to actually firing one of their missiles. It had never happened to Harris in the past five years he had been stationed at Kadena and running these recon missions along the North Korean coastline. Indeed, he’d heard of it happening to only one other crew, and that had been years before he had even arrived in the Pacific theater.
But Harris wasn’t about to recount any of that. For one thing, his crew probably knew most of it, or ought to have, anyway. For another thing, Harris didn’t have the luxury of time to chat. Right now he needed to buy as much time as he possibly could until the good guys arrived. But how?
The second two MiGs were now inbound hot. Four on one wasn’t going to work, especially when he had no way to defend himself or his crew. Harris put the RC-135 into another dive. Soon they were rapidly descending below fifteen thousand feet, ten, five. The Boeing was shuddering violently as it dropped precipitously. Half his crew were retching their guts out. The other half wished they were.
When they reached two thousand feet, Harris pulled out of the dive, pushed for maximum speed, and began climbing as rapidly as he could. One moment, he was banking right. The next, he’d break left. None of it mattered. They were essentially sitting ducks if the North Koreans were going to blow them out of the sky. But at least they were taking whatever evasive measures they possibly could. And they were eating up the clock, and that was everything.
“Two more minutes, sir.”
That was his chief navigator. The cavalry was on their way. That should have felt comforting, but it seemed like an eternity. How was he supposed to outrun four MiG-29s for another 120 seconds?
The answer came fast and without warning. At six minutes after 8 p.m. local time, the lead MiG pilot fired two AA-10 “Alamos.” The missiles were armed from the moment they launched. Harris’s eyes went wide, but he had no time to react, no time to maneuver. They were too close.
Impact came an instant later. The American RC-135 erupted in a horrendous fireball. Wreckage rained down over several fishing trawlers operating in the Sea of Japan.
NORAD Commander Charlie Briggs received word ten minutes later. Captain Vic Harris and his fellow airmen had died instantly, and with them, Briggs realized, any chance for peace.
53
Marie Oaks slowly opened her eyes.
Seeing her husband sitting at her side was more comforting than she could express at the moment, but she squeezed his hand and tried to smile.
“Hey,” she said softly.
“Hey,” he whispered back.
“Are the boys okay?” she asked.
He nodded. “The Secret Service has them tucked away for the moment, safe and sound. If all goes well, they’ll bring them here tomorrow.”
“Can we call them? I want to talk to them.”
“Of course,” the president said. “But not right now, sweetheart. You need to rest. How are you feeling?”
It was a good question. She hadn’t really had time to think about it. On the flight from Jacksonville to Colorado Springs, she had feared she was having a heart attack. In the rush to leave their house, she’d forgotten to grab her pills. Now she could tell all kinds of medications were coursing through her veins. She felt light-headed, almost dreamy — peaceful and trying for the life of her to remember what had caused all that stress.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “I just need some more sleep.”
“You hungry?” he asked.
She thought about that for a moment. “No, not yet.”
“How about we have dinner together later?” the president asked.
She smiled. “It’s a date,” she sighed, her eyes slowly closing, her mind drifting again.
Word of the attack on the American RC-135 spread quickly through NORAD.
The mood was tense. Voices were quiet. The nation was already at war. But now, some were saying, at least they had a target. Lieutenant General Briggs asked Bobby Caulfield and Judge Summers to clear the conference room. The president would be back from the infirmary any moment for a top secret briefing.
“Is everything all right, Bobby?” Judge Summers asked as the two stepped into the corridor.
“Fine,” Caulfield said curtly.
“You sure?” she said kindly, “Because…”
“It’s really none of your business, ma’am,” Caulfield snapped. “I just… I don’t want to talk about it.”
Summers was taken aback. She hadn’t known Caulfield for long, but his behavior certainly seemed out of character. She was about to try one more time but just then the president came around the corner, Agent Coelho and a team of Secret Service agents at his side.
“How’s the First Lady?” the judge asked as the president passed.
He stopped for a moment. “That’s the first time anyone has called her that.”
“Will she be okay?”
“She will,” Oaks replied. “She’s under a lot of stress. I guess we all are. But yes, I think she’ll be fine.”
“I’m glad,” Summers said.
Agent Coelho apologized for interrupting but noted that the war council was waiting.
“Judge Summers, I’d like you to sit in on this meeting,” the president said.
“Of course, sir.”
Oaks turned to Caulfield, told the aide that he’d be at least an hour, maybe longer, then stepped into the conference room. Summers followed, and the room was immediately sealed off by Coelho and his team.