“Now tell me, what helicopters do we have in the area?”
Milton Blake looked puzzled. “In the area?”
“In the Med. Something near the Ukraine.”
Blake thought for a moment and then said, “The U.S.S. Ticonderoga is on duty in the Med. She has a small contingent of choppers. She is probably the closest thing that we have.”
Allen smiled. The Ticonderoga. He was familiar with the ship. “Okay, here’s what I want you to do.… ”
THIRTY-THREE
Richard Ammon was staring through the thick plexiglas, out the right side of his windscreen. From this altitude, he could just barely make out the dim lights that dotted the Azore Islands, fifty-seven miles to the south. The bright white lights were dimmed to a soft yellow glow as they filtered through the water-soaked atmosphere. They looked comforting and inviting as they twinkled in the distance.
Ever since passing over the forested beach line of southern Mississippi and out into the Gulf, Ammon had seen nothing but deep water and hazy gray skies. Just north of the Bahamas, he had counted six or seven tiny islands beneath him, but since then, he had seen no land at all. For seven hours he had watched the endless waves and open nothingness, feeling more lost and isolated with every mile that passed beneath him on his way out into the enormous Atlantic Ocean.
His day was short, flying east as he was, and it wasn’t long until the blue water and white-capped waves began to darken into a deep black of shadowy water. Then, in the late evening, as the sun slipped rapidly down behind him and darkness settled in, he lost even that much of a view, leaving him only an occasional glimpse at the moon as it broke from behind the high stratus clouds.
When he finally caught a view of the Azores, the tiny island chain that dotted the Atlantic almost 1,000 miles west of Portugal, it seemed like he had been over the open ocean for a very long time. After hours of empty water, it seemed good to see at least a reminder of dry earth.
He raised his eyes and glanced at the glistening moon as it shimmered above the deep waters of the North Atlantic. It had been dark for nearly an hour and the moon was now high on the eastern horizon. At this altitude, the sky looked like a huge platter, round and full, sparkling and blinking with stars.
He looked down at his navigation computer and read its digital display. 28.15.10W 41.12.07N. Without referring to his chart, Ammon mentally plotted his position in the North Atlantic. It was only a rough guess, but he figured they were at least nine hundred miles from the closest shore.
For the hundredth time he checked his total fuel remaining readout. His pulse quickened again. Six thousand pounds of jet fuel! Six thousand pounds! They had started out with just over two hundred thousand. Now they were down to just six!
Another twenty minutes of flying. Maybe twenty-two minutes. If he was careful. And if they were lucky.
And landfall was almost two hours away.
He sucked in a chestful of air and held it, trying to calm himself down. He reached down and pulled on his parachute harness, making certain it was strapped tightly to his back. He stared outside, forcing himself to look away from the fuel readout. He listened as Morozov called out desperately on the radio.
“Wolf five-three. Wolf five-three. Do you read? Do you read?”
Nothing. No response. The radio was deadly quiet.
In the rear cockpit, Morozov fiddled with the radio squelch. He positioned the switch for better long-distance reception, then pressed his radio switch once again.
“Wolf five-three, Heater four-one.”
Again he waited. Nothing came back. Morozov checked for the third time to make sure that he had dialed up the proper frequency. It was the right one. His voice thickened and a heavy sweat beaded across his upper lip.
Ammon listened for as long as he could stand it, then shaking his head, he finally said, “Okay, Morozov. Less than six thousand pounds.”
Morozov didn’t respond. The radio remained very quiet.
“Less than six thousand pounds, now ol’ buddy. Less than twenty minutes. Let’s see… just about nine hundred miles to landfall. How far do you think you can swim?”
“Shut up!” Morozov commanded. “I haven’t got time for your mouth!”
“Okay, okay,” Ammon replied in his humblest tone. “Sorry, I’ll try to be a bit more discreet.”
Morozov slammed his microphone switch down once more.
“Wolf, Wolf, how do you read?”
Ammon listened intently to the radio, hoping like he had never before. But still, there was only the static. And his four jet engines continued to suck down the fuel.
Three hundred miles to the east, and cruising toward the B-1 at its highest speed, was an enormous KC-10 refueling tanker. The tanker crew had taken off late, for most of the entire northern coast of Spain was socked in with horrible weather, and they were now more than thirty minutes late for the air refueling. In fact, they were lucky to have made it at all. But the weather had broken just enough for them to get off. Now they needed to make up some time. They were scheduled to refuel a B-1 that was being deployed from the States. And the bomber would be very thirsty. So they hurried to get back on time.
The pilot pushed at his throttles once again, adjusting them to just below his max-limit speed. The copilot looked at his watch, then, nodding his head to the pilot, reached down to dial up the air refueling frequency on his UHF radio.
“Twenty minutes now to air refueling,” he said. “We’re still a few minutes late.”
“The bomber shouldn’t complain,” the pilot replied. “Not with the weather we plowed through to get here. I’ve never seen so much lightning in my life. And I’m telling you now, if he gripes even once, I’ll make him beg us before we pass on any fuel.”
The copilot smiled and agreed. “Yeah,” he laughed. “It’s kind of cool when you’re the one with the gas.”
Three days earlier, a forged message had been sent from Headquarters, ACC, to the Tanker Task Force that was deployed at Torrejon Air Base in Spain, requesting them to refuel a B-1 that was going to be enroute to a forward operating location, some where in Germany. The message gave a time and a refueling location. It appeared to have been run through the appropriate channels. It appeared to have the appropriate codes.
But the message had originated not from any Headquarters office, but from a home computer that had hacked its way into the Department of Defense’s message network.
It hadn’t been a complicated process. The message network that carried such routine requests as asking for air refueling support had never been very well-protected, and hackers had broken its code dozens of times. But because the network only dealt with routine and unclassified information, the Department of Defense had never felt it a high priority to spend the money to upgrade the network’s security systems.
Morozov’s people had broken into the system twice before, and although it had been several years, still, nothing had changed.
So, four hours after putting the request into the computer, Morozov’s people had his reply. The Task Force would support the B-1 deployment. They would refuel the B-1 in the air, just northeast of the Azore Islands. The times, headings, altitudes, coordinates, and pre-assigned radio frequencies all checked out.
And that was it. Everything was set.
Morozov shook his head. It had been a very good plan. It was going to be tight, he knew that from the very beginning, but it should have worked out. They had burned a lot more fuel than he had ever planned on, thanks to that F-16 episode back in the States. But even still, he had expected to meet the tanker with just enough fuel.