Dennis was the first of the presidential party to climb on board. “The weather is perfect,” he said. “It’s hard to believe Christmas is only five days away.”
“Is Maura here?” Noreen asked.
“She’s already at the rally,” Dennis replied. “Along with Sarah, Richard, and most of the press corps.”
The pilots started the engines, a sign that the president was only minutes away. Dennis stood by the door and waited for her arrival. Moments later, Madeline Turner stepped through the entryway and made her way to her seat. “Dennis,” she called, pointing to the seat facing hers, “please join us.” Dennis beamed as he sat down in the rear-facing seat. “We need to talk,” she said as the steward buttoned up the cabin. It was amazingly quiet for a helicopter. “Noreen, you’re looking quite glamorous today. Have you lost weight?”
Noreen’s laugh was silky smooth. “I got rid of that no-good man.” She strapped in and the helicopter lifted off, heading for the park in San Luis Obispo, forty miles due north. “Don’t say it, you warned me.” Their laughter joined as the helicopter turned out of the pattern. As always, it received priority clearance and Air Traffic Control diverted all traffic.
On a side street just off Highway 101, a white panel van pulled out of a ramshackle garage. The woman sitting in the passenger seat listened to a VHF radio scanner. She turned to the man in the back. “Leon, the helicopter is airborne.” Leon zipped up his fire-retardant Nomex suit and pulled the hood over his head. He bent over the aluminum case that resembled a small coffin and unsnapped the cover. The driver wheeled onto the on ramp and headed north toward San Luis Obispo. The woman checked her stopwatch. “Eleven minutes.”
“We’ll be there,” the driver promised.
Leon checked the battery pack.
Dennis leaned forward in his seat and handed Turner the final draft of her speech. “It’s the same except for the introduction. We punched up the hometown angle.”
Turner read the speech. It was short, perhaps twenty minutes, not counting applause. She read it again, this time half aloud. She made one correction to the opening statement; it sounded too much like Shaw. “Schedule,” she said. Dennis handed her and Noreen a detailed listing of the day’s events following the rally. Turner leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. Her hand reached out for Noreen’s. “Thank you for coming.”
“Girl, I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
The white van approached the last bridge on Highway 101. The front-seat passenger duly noted the two Secret Service agents standing at the rail checking traffic. “Not enough,” she muttered to herself. “Leon,” she said to the man in the back, “check the back side of the bridge for scanners.”
Leon moved against the windows in the rear door as they passed underneath. “Yeah. Two shits on this side. One’s got a camera. The other, a radio, I think.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the woman said.
“I can see it,” Leon said, the calm in his voice not matching what he felt.
The woman checked her watch. “Right on time. Go.” They started the routine they had practiced more than fifty times. Leon moved into the center of the cargo compartment and dropped the panel that had been cut in the roof. He looked up, checking his field of view. He could see the helicopter off to their rear left. “It’s at our seven o’clock coming to four o’clock.” The woman picked up her laser range finder and held it in her lap as she rolled down her window and focused intently on the van’s side rearview mirror. “Four o’clock,” Leon said. He adjusted his oxygen mask and blast goggles. He bent over the aluminum case and extracted the deadly shoulder-held, surface-to-air missile.
“I’ve got it,” she replied, her words coming more quickly. She raised the laser range finder and aimed it at the mirror. She didn’t want to be seen aiming anything directly at the president’s aircraft. The moment the helicopter was in the crosshairs, she pulled the trigger. The LED window flashed and she immediately lowered the range finder out of sight. “Two point four klicks,” she read. The helicopter was in the heart of the envelope. The woman drew the blast curtains sealing Leon in the rear and placed her hand on the release lever to the back doors.
Leon dialed 2.4 into the Strela and raised the missile to his shoulder, aiming it through the open roof. He placed the crosshairs on the helicopter and pulled the trigger to the first detent. The cryogenically cooled infrared seeker head locked on. The tracking light flashed and he pulled the trigger to the second detent. “FIRE!” Leon shouted. The solid-propellant booster filled the cargo compartment with smoke and flame as the four-and-one-half-foot missile leaped skyward. At the same time the woman pulled the release lever and the rear doors snapped open. The powerful fan they had installed in the van switched on and vented the cargo compartment, laying a smoke screen behind them. The doors slammed shut and the van raced for the next exit.
The sustainer rocket ignited as the missile reached its max speed of 1.76 Mach. The Secret Service agent on the bridge a mile back saw the rocket plume and yelled into his radio. “MISSILE! ON YOUR LEFT, NINE O’CLOCK!”
The cameraman focused his Betacam on Liz Gordon, CNC-TV’s star political reporter covering the rally. They did a sound check and she started to talk. “It’s a gorgeous December day here in San Luis Obispo and I can see the president’s helicopter as it approaches to land. There is an unconfirmed rumor that Madeline Turner will announce… OH, MY GOD THERE’S A MISSILE HOMING IN ON THE PRESIDENT’S HELICOPTER!” She pointed to the sky and the cameraman swung his camera around.
It was a contest between the Russian-built Strela-3 and the Sikorsky S-61V helicopter. On one side, was a missile with advanced guidance and the capability to defeat flares and infrared jammers. The 4.4-pound high-explosive warhead had both contact and graze fusing. On the other side, was a specially built helicopter equipped with flare dispensers and a new reticulated light infrared jammer. But the critical factor was the skill of the Marine pilot.
Without acknowledging the radio call, the pilot turned into the missile and saw it. He pulled on the collective lever and the helicopter shot skyward, forcing the missile into an upward trajectory. Then he slammed the collective to the floor and the big helicopter dropped like a rock as he turned through the missile. Flares streamed into the helicopter’s wake.
The missile’s warhead briefly acquired the flares and then rejected that heat signature. It reacquired the heat from the helicopter’s intake and arched downward just as the pilot called for autorotation. The copilot reached up and retarded the throttles to flight idle, reducing the heat signature coming from the engines. Now a little ruby-red cupola mounted on the side of the helicopter flashed and a stream of conflicting heat signatures burned into the missile’s guidance head.
The missile went ballistic in the last 200 feet and passed over the helicopter. But the fuse sensed a shift in mass and exploded, the graze function working as designed.
A hail of expanding core shrapnel cut into the rear of the helicopter, slicing into the top-mounted engines, chipping at the rotor blades, and rupturing hydraulic lines. But the lightweight ceramic armor plate surrounding the passenger compartment held. The engines burst into flame as a savage vibration from the damaged engines shook the helicopter. The copilot’s hands were a blur of action as he reached up, pulled the throttles to the off position, and pulled the T-handles that shot the fire bottles, extinguishing the fire. With the power off, the vibration stopped. The helicopter plummeted earthward as the pilot set up for an autorotational landing.