Now, in 1994, the Soviet Union was gone; the Russian long-range bomber threat was nonexistent. The Russians were still flying their heavy bombers, but now they were selling rides to wealthy Westerners in mock bomb runs out in Nevada, for God’s sake! The air defense forces of the United States had been cut down to only eighteen locations across the contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. With only two alert aircraft per location, that meant a total of thirty-six aircraft were defending approximately forty million cubic miles of airspace. True, many countries, including Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, still had bombers and cruise missiles aimed at the United States, but the real day-to-day threat had all but disappeared. Air defense had all but gone away as a mission.
America still had a need to protect and patrol its borders and maintain the capability to hunt down and identify intruders, but now the intruders were terrorists, hijackers, criminals, drug smugglers, and lawbreakers. In order to prove to the world that the United States was not becoming lax about national defense and readiness, it was important for America to demonstrate its capability to patrol its frontiers. The remaining air defense units were clustered in the south and the southeast instead of the north so that the fighters could better cover the Mexican and Caribbean regions, where drug smugglers, illegal alien movements, and fugitive flights were clustered.
Berrell was busy reviewing the postexercise checklist cleanup and working on the after-action critique when the deputy sector commander, Navy Captain Francine Tell man, came over and sat beside him. As part of NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command, the individual air defense sectors were under joint services command, representing all the branches of the U.S. military as well as the air defense forces of Canada. Tellman, a twenty-year Navy veteran of air traffic control and air defense operations, was the Navy’s representative at the Southwest sector. The fifty-two-year-old Navy veteran was not due to come on duty for another three or four hours, but it was typical of her to come in early when a big exercise or some other unusual event was underway. Divorced twice and currently unattached, the sector was the big part of her life now. “Evening, John,” she said to Berrell. “How did the Ham- merheads-7 surge exercise go?”
“It went fine, Francine. I need to schedule George on WCT three for a refresher on checklist discipline — he missed a couple coordination calls. Other than that…” The phone rang at Berrell’s console — the flashing button was the direct line between the sector and the chief of the Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center. Oakland ARTCC, or Oakland Center, was one of the busiest and most diverse air traffic regions in the world, covering northern and central California and Nevada. “Southwest Air Defense Sector, Senior Director, Lieutenant Colonel Berrell.”
“John, this is Mike Leahy,” the deputy director of Oakland Center replied. “I just got a call from a Special Agent Fortuna of ATF. They have a fugitive smuggling suspect that just launched out of Chico Airport, and they’re asking for assistance. He’s south westbound, not squawking. His ID code is seven-delta-four-zero-four.”
“Sure, Mike,” Berrell replied. “Stand by one.” Berrell put Leahy on hold and turned to his SD tech, Master Sergeant Thomas Bidwell. It was not unusual at all to get calls like that from the FA A — that’s what the hot line was for — but to get it directly from the deputy director of the Center was a bit unusual. ‘Tom, Oakland Center has a recent fugitive departure from Chico airport, ID number seven-delta-four-zero-four. Zero in on him for us. Don’t make him a pending yet, just an item of interest. Request for support from ATF.”
“Yes, sir,” Bidwell replied. He opened his checklist to the proper page, logged the time of the request in the correct block, and passed the information to the Surveillance and Identification sections — since this was a target already over land, and the Sector Operations Command Center usually only tracked targets penetrating the air defense identification zones, Bidwell had to get his technicians to break out the new target from the hundreds of others on the scope and display it to each section. On the phone, Berrell said, “Mike, I got your slimeball on radar. Do you want to make him a pending or just monitor him for you?”
“Monitor him for now,” Leahy said. “I don’t know what Treasury wants to do. You might want to get your flyboys up out of bed and thinking about heading toward their jets, though.”
“Is this an exercise, Mike?”
“ ’Fraid not, Colonel,” Leahy said. “The pilot of this one is apparently some hotshot gun smuggler. The suspect killed some ATF agents at Chico a few minutes ago. He’s got several tons of explosives on board his plane.”
Berrell rose out of his seat, pointed to an extra phone for Tellman to listen in on the call, and rang a small desk-clerk bell on top of his console with a slap of his left hand. Serious shit was going down. Technicians who were chatting and taking a breather hurried to their stations and began scanning their instruments. “What kind of plane is it, Mike?” Berrell asked.
“A Czechoslovakian LET L-600,” Leahy replied after retrieving some notes. “Twin-turboprop medium transport. Gross weight about thirty thousand pounds, payload with full fuel about six thousand.”
“What kind of explosives is he carrying?”
“You name it,” Leahy replied. “Ammunition, demolition stuff, pyrotechnics. Suspect might be connected with a National Guard armory heist a few years ago. You heard of the name Henri Cazaux before?”
“Oh, shit,” Berrell said, cursing under his breath. Had the world heard about Carlos the Jackal? The IRA? Abu Nidal? “I understand,” Berrell said. “Stand by one.” Fuck, he thought, this one’s going to happen. A night intercept, over a heavily populated area, with dangerous fugitives and someone like Cazaux on board. Berrell never wanted to see his sector’s pilots or anyone on the ground put in harm’s way, but if there was a way to gun down Henri Cazaux, Berrell wanted to do it.
Berrell turned to his SD technician, but Bidwell had been listening in and was ready with the information Berrell wanted: “Sir, I recommend we put Fresno in battle stations,” he said. “I’m betting he’ll make a run for Mexico, but we’ll have to wait and see. A cargo plane like an L-600 has plenty of legs — he can go either to Canada or Mexico. But I’ll put my money on Mexico.”
Sergeant Bidwell was seldom wrong — in fact, Berrell couldn’t recall when one of his predictions was off the mark. Bidwell was always tuned toward economizing their forces — predicting the flight path of the target and putting the closest interceptors on the target. But Berrell had a feeling that the Treasury Department and ATF weren’t going to care about economy on this one. They wanted every throttle jockey in the Air Force ready to jump the bastard that killed their agents. Cazaux was supposed to be as wily as he was psychotic, and Berrell didn’t want anyone in his sector to drop the ball if they had a chance to catch him. “All the same, get Kingsley and March suited up, too,” Berrell said. “I got a feeling Treasury or the ATF won’t want to let this guy go as long as he’s within radar range of the States. Let’s get Northwest sector geared up in case this turns out to be a relay marathon, too.” The Oakland Center phone rang again. “Senior Director Berrell.”
“We just got word from the Treasury Department,” Leahy said. “They want you to intercept the target, accomplish a covert shadow, and stand by for further instructions. It sounds like Treasury is leaning toward an intercept and force-down. Treasury would like to try to force him away from populated areas if possible, and then attempt to force him down at a less populated airport or over water.”