“Who else we got, Maureen?” Milford asked.
“Next-closest units we have are F-16 ADF interceptors at Atlantic City and tactical F-15s at Langley,” Tate responded. “ADFs at Atlantic City are on ready five alert, but their ETE is at least ten minutes at zone 5. The F-15s at Langley can get there in five minutes, but they’re not on ready five alert.”
“Call Langley and tell them to get anything they can airborne,” Milford said. “Put A-City on engines-running cockpit alert at the end of the runway in case Bandit-1 tries to bug out or if the fighters at Andrews are bent. Get a tanker from Dover or McGuire airborne and put him over Nottingham VOR for refueling support — all the out-of-towners are going to need gas if they arrive over DC on full afterburner.”
“What’s the order for Alpha-Whiskey flight, sir?” Tate asked.
Milford checked his radarscope. The now-unknown 747 was only forty miles out; at his airspeed, traveling six to seven miles per minute, he would be over the Capitol in five minutes. “If Bandit-1 turns away and does not enter Class B airspace, the order is to intercept, ID, and shadow,” Milford said. “If Bandit-1 enters Class B airspace, the order is to engage and destroy from maximum range. Comm, get the National Military Command Center senior controller on button four.”
Milford then reached up to his primary radio channels and selected the common channel linking the fifteen Hawk missile sites and the twenty Stinger man-portable shoulder-fired missile platoons assigned to Washington-Dulles, Washington-National, Andrews Air Force Base, Baltimore International, and the Capitol district, and said, “All Leather units, this is Leather-90, air defense emergency for Washington Dulles, National, and Baltimore Tri-Cities Class B airspace, radar ID P045Y is now classified ‘unknown,’ target designate ‘Bandit-1,’ stand by for engagement, repeat, stand by for engagement.”
For the moment, the slow-moving VFR flight was forgotten…
Andrews Air Force Base
That Same Time
“Andrews Tower, Alpha-Whiskey-11 flight, active air scramble, taxi and takeoff northwest.”
“Alpha-Whiskey-11 flight, Andrews Tower, taxi runway three-six right, wind one-seven-zero at five, altimeter three- zero-zero-one, expect immediate takeoff clearance crossing the hold line, intersection Bravo takeoff approved, seven thousand five hundred feet remaining.”
It took considerably less than five minutes for the two F- 16A crews from the 121st Fighter Squadron “Guardians,” District of Columbia Air National Guard, to run to their jets, start engines, and begin to taxi. No matter what someone at the Department of Justice said, they knew they were the last line of defense for the nation’s capital. Not only did the Guardians refuse to revert back to normal air defense operations, but they kept themselves in advanced states of readiness in order to cut down on response times. All idletime crew activities had been moved from the alert facility to the aircraft shelters, so crews were no more than six ladder steps from their cockpits, and runway 36 Right had been designated the “alert runway,” so it was always clear and unused except for absolute emergencies. By the time the echoes of the three long klaxon blasts were gone, immediately the roar of two Pratt & Whitney F100-P-200 turbofan engines replaced them.
Both planes — not ADF (Air Defense Fighter) F-16s, but standard battlefield combat models — carried four AIM-9L Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles, ammunition for the 20- millimeter cannon, and one centerline fuel tank. They reached the hold line in less than a minute, performing last- second flight-control checks and takeoff checklist items on the roll. “AW flight, clear for takeoff to the northwest unrestricted, contact approach,” Andrews Tower radioed.
“AW flight, clear for takeoff, go button three.”
“Two.”
For safety’s sake at night, the fighters performed a standard in-trail takeoff instead of a formation takeoff. The leader turned onto the runway, not bothering to set his brakes but plugging in the afterburner as soon as he was aligned with the runway centerline. The wingman started counting to himself when he saw his leader’s fifth-stage afterburner light, and although he was supposed to wait ten seconds, he started his takeoff roll on eight. Smoothly he pushed his throttle to military power, checked his gauges, cracked the throttle to afterburner range, watched the nozzle swing, and checked the fuel flow and exhaust pressure ratio gauges, pushed the throttle smoothly to zone five, and…
There was a bright flash of light ahead, like a lightning strike on the horizon or a searchlight sweeping down the runway. The pilot heard no abort calls, either from his leader or the control tower, so he continued his takeoff, clicking off nosewheel steering and shifting his attention from the gauges to the runway when he passed decision speed. He then…
There was another bright flash of light, and then the pilot saw a ball of flames tumbling across the runway, spinning to the left across the infield, then back to the right across his path. He was already past his decision speed — he was committed for the takeoff because he no longer had enough pavement if he tried to stop now. He still considered pulling the throttle to IDLE, but his training said no, you’ll never stop, take it in the air, continue, continue…
The second F-16 plowed directly into the fireball that was his lead F-16. He thought he had made it through safely, but his engine had ingested enough burning metal and debris to shell it out in seconds. The pilot tried for a split second to avoid the fireball by turning left toward the other runway, but when he saw the FIRE light, saw his altitude as less than a hundred feet above ground and sinking rapidly, he did not hesitate to pull the ejection handle.
“Shit the bed, we got both those motherfuckers!” one of Cazaux’s soldiers shouted gleefully.
“Damn straight,” his partner responded. They were in a hiding place between two maintenance hangars on the west side of the western parallel runway, in clear view of both runways and especially the alert fighter ramp. They wore standard military fatigues and combat boots, except both wore no fatigue shirts — that was common during after-duty hours in the summer. After nightfall, they had successfully planted a series of radio-activated claymore mines along both runways, which they activated when they heard the klaxon and were tripped when the hot engines of a plane were detected by infrared sensors. “Now let’s get the hell out of here. We got thirty seconds to get to the rendezvous point or Ysidro will go without us.” The terrorists activated switches on the radio detonators, which would set off small explosives in the devices several minutes later or if they were disturbed so investigators wouldn’t be able to use them as evidence or as clues to their whereabouts.
They tried to leave their hiding place on the street side near a dark parking lot, but the explosion on the runway had attracted a lot of attention faster than they anticipated, and they had to wait for several security police cars to whiz past. But as they crouched in the shadows waiting for the cars to pass, there was a sharp bang! right behind them, followed by the sputtering and sizzling of burning wire and circuitry. One of the self-destruct devices in the mine detonators had gone off early — and it had attracted the attention of a security police patrol on the ramp side of the hangars. The blue-and-white patrol car skidded to a stop, and the security police officer saw the smoking and burning box and shined a car-mounted floodlight in between the hangars, immediately impaling the two men hiding on the other side in the powerful beam.