“Move it, move it!” Ysidro shouted to his partners. He should have set the explosives on the antenna array, but the array was still deployed and the electrical power plant was still operational. He unbuckled the last two grenades he carried, pulled the safety pins, and ran toward the antenna array truck when he heard, “Halt! Drop your weapon!” u Always playing cowboy, Ysidro thought. You're in combat, you idiot Americans — why do you insist on trying to order the enemy to halt? Ysidro threw the first grenade at the antenna array, then wheeled around and rolled the second grenade under the electrical power plant truck — just as three Army security guards opened fire, catching him in a murderous crossfire from their M-16s. His shattered body hit the ground just a few feet from where his partner lay, shot by another security guard as he tried to plant the remote-detonated mines around the antenna array and electrical power plant.
But the first grenade did the trick. Ysidro’s toss was perfect, bouncing off the back of the “drive-in theater” array and landing right on the waveguide horn on top of the unit. The explosion ripped the entire array and waveguide assembly off the top of the van. The second grenade rolled all the way under the EPP, but the force of the explosion toppled the vehicle on its left side, spilling diesel fuel and starting a fire.
Along The Mall
That Same Moment
When the alert went out from Major Milford aboard the E- 3C AWACS radar plane that Washington was under attack, the air defense ground units that had so very carefully been under wraps for the past several days immediately deployed to their fire positions.
From First Street, east of the Capitol, to the Lincoln Memorial, Avenger units rolled out of their parking garages and took up positions on The Mall, with one Avenger stationed every six thousand feet; at the same time, Avenger units deployed to positions around the approach ends of main runways at Dulles, National, Andrews, and Baltimore airports. Avenger was an HMMWV (High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, the Army’s new “Jeep”) truck with a rotating turret installed on it that contained two four- round Stinger missile launchers, a .50-caliber heavy machine gun, a laser rangefinder, and a telescopic infrared sensor. The gunner sat in a cab between the two Stinger launchers and electronically spotted and attacked airborne targets as far as three miles away. A driver/loader and two security troops completed the Avenger crew.
“All Leather units, Bandit-1 bearing zero-one-eight degrees magnetic, range thirty miles and closing. All units stand by for status poll.”
Sergeant First Class Paul Lathrop pushed open the bulletproof Lexan canopy of his Avenger FAAD (Forward Area Air Defense) unit to get a little fresh air into the cockpit, and stretched to try to smooth out the kinks in his muscles. He was the unit gunner, sitting in a tiny, narrow cockpit between two four-round Stinger missile pods. The cab was not made for anyone over six feet tall, nor anyone with any hint of fat — the turret steering column was right up against his chest, and his knees were bent all the way up practically to the dashboard. But even worse than sitting in the hot, confined cab was sitting in the cab when the vehicle was moving. He was wearing no tanker’s pads to protect himself, so every bone in his body ached from being thrown around in the bucking-bronco HMMWV.
Lathrop’s Avenger unit was stationed on the west side of the Washington Monument, with an almost unobstructed view of the sky in all directions — except, of course, for the sky blocked out by the monument. He could clearly see the front of the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and of course the Capitol itself. There was another Avenger unit east of the Washington Monument, near the Capitol, with a clear shot of most of the sky that Lathrop couldn’t see to the east; there were other units over at West Potomac Park guarding south D.C., Ft. McNair, Arlington National Cemetery, and the Pentagon, and east of the Capitol as well.
You don’t deploy units like Avenger in the middle of The Mall in Washington, D.C., and expect not to get noticed, and almost as soon as they rolled out of their hiding places near Union Station, West Potomac Park, the Navy Bureau of Medicine, and George Washington University, a crowd had gathered to watch. D.C. Police and Army security troops were trying to close off The Mall and chase all the bystanders away, but on a warm summer evening in D.C., with the lights of the monuments on for the first time in days, there were a lot of folks out wandering around. The lights had not yet been turned off, and Lathrop idly wondered who would have the switch to the lights of Washington, D.C. Certainly not the President — or the Steel Magnolia.
It was then he noticed that the poll of the air defense units had stopped. On interphone, he said, “Mike, how do you hear?”
“Loud and clear,” Specialist Mike Reston replied.
“What happened to the poll?”
“Dunno,” Reston replied. Lathrop heard a squeal in the radio as Reston deactivated the squelch control. “Radio still works. Hang on.” On the radio, Lathrop heard, “Control, Leather-713, radio check… Control, — 713, radio check.”
“-713, this is Leather-601, stand by.” That was from the lieutenant in charge of the four Hawk missile sites stationed around D.C., based out at East Potomac Island Park, south of the Capitol, along the Potomac.
“Control must’ve gone off the air,” Reston said.
That got Lathrop worried. With a bandit only a few minutes away, he needed radio contact with someone with a long-range radar to spot targets for him until the bandit got close enough. The passive infrared sensor on the Avenger was good out to a range of about five to eight miles, $o long-range spotting was crucial. The Patriot ICC (Integrated Command Center) stationed out at Andrews provided radar coverage for the Hawk and Avenger units — what a shitty time to have radio problems.
“All Leather-600 and -700 units, this is Leather-601,” the commander of the Hawk battalion said on the command net. “ICC is down, repeat, ICC is down, — 601 is taking operational control. Bandit-1 bearing zero-one-zero magnetic, twenty-eight miles, status is batteries released tight, repeat, status is batteries released tight, all units—”
And then that transmission stopped.
“What the fuck…?”
“Hey, guys… er, Leather-700 units, this is -711,1 see a fire over on East Potomac Island Park,” one of the crew members on the Avenger at West Potomac Park radioed. “I see… holy shit, man, I see big explosions south across the Inlet, over on East Potomac Island. I think the Hawk site just got wiped.”
“Say again, Winfield?” Lathrop radioed. “You say you saw explosions?”
When Lathrop released the mike button, the gunner on Leather-711 named Winfield was already reporting: “… and I see several guys headin’ this way… shit, man, * shit, they’re firing at me, all units… you motherfucker!”
“Win, what the hell’s going on?” But then Lathrop looked to his left and saw two men dressed in jogging shorts but carrying rather big knapsacks or duffel bags running down the long walkway to the west of the Washington Monument. He rose out of his seat and shouted to his security guard, “Hey, Kelly, watch those two guys to the west. Don’t let anyone near the unit! Some shit’s going down out there! We lost contact with Winfield in -711.”
The Army guard named Kelly moved over to the left rear comer of the Avenger unit and spotted the two guys trying to casually jog over toward them. Kelly shouted, “Hold it! Stop where you are!” The joggers didn’t stop. A D.C. Police cruiser on Seventeenth Street spotted the joggers and turned on its lights, trying to get them to stop. The first one hesitated, jogging in place a bit until the second guy caught up with him, then they continued. The Police cruiser jumped the curb and started down the walkway, issuing a warning to stop on their PA system. The joggers kept on coming. Kelly leveled his M-16 and shouted, “I said, halt! Last warning! Stop! ”