Major Linda McKenzie, one of the two F-16A ADF (Air Defense Fighter) pilots on duty at Fresno Air Terminal in central California, pushed herself away from the all-night poker game table at ten-thirty P.M. Channel fever was not too bad here at Fresno — alert was only three days, and families spent a lot of time with the crews at the alert facility. The anticipation was still real, however, and it usually manifested itself as an all-night poker game, attended by every available crewman at the facility. McKenzie had been playing for the past five hours, and she had finally gotten to the point where the need for sleep was numbing the excitement of getting off alert. “I’m out,” she said after the last hand had finished. She steeled herself for the simultaneous moans of disappointment from the crew chiefs and security guards around the table, gave everyone a tired and slightly irritated smile, then reached out to scoop up the small pile of coins and dollar bills on the table before her.
“C’mon, Linda, one more hand,” her flight leader, Lieutenant Colonel A1 “Rattler” Vincenti, pleaded. But even he could not stifle a yawn. Vincenti was a longtime veteran of air defense, flying with the 194th Fighter Squadron “Black Griffins” since 1978. He was a veteran command pilot with over seven thousand hours’ flying time, all in tactical fighters.
“Hey, I’m on a three-hop to Seattle in thirteen hours. You get to sleep in. Don’t give me this bull.” Like many Air National Guard pilots, McKenzie was an airline pilot, a first officer with American Airlines based out of San Francisco. Because of monthly flight duty day restrictions, the airlines gave each Guardsman plenty of time to spend on UTA, unit training assembly.
“Is this the same person who threatened to emasculate us all if we got up and left the game last week?” one of the crew chiefs asked. “Little bit different if you’re winning, isn’t it, Linda?”
“Damn right it is,” McKenzie said. “I’m outta here. See you clowns in the morning.” She traded in coins for bills, stuffed her winning into her left breast pocket, and headed for her quarters.
Once there, Linda McKenzie got undressed, taking the unusual risk of piling her clothes and survival gear in a heap rather than laying it out so she could easily find it all and dress quickly. The last scramble exercise was early that morning, which meant the odds of getting another one in the middle of the night on the night before changeover were slim, so she decided to risk a quick shower. No luxuriating in the shower while on alert — get in, get clean, and get out — but she was relaxed as she did so, confident that there would be no interruptions. Her shower took less than five minutes.
Perfect timing.
She heard voices in the hallway, then the door next to hers open. Wrapping a towel around herself, she peeked out her door just as A1 Vincenti was closing his. “Al? Come here a second.” He stepped over to her, and when he was in range she grasped the front of his flight suit and pulled him into her room.
“Linda, what in hell are you—” But he was interrupted as she wrapped her arms around him and gave him a kiss. He resisted at first, then relented. That only spurred her on, and she held him in her grasp even longer. She finally released him, but began kissing his neck and unzipping his flight suit. “Linda, it’s late.”
“Nobody will hear us, Al. The game will go on for another hour at least, and the crew chiefs all like to sleep in front of the TV.”
“Linda, I’m not going to do anything with you,” he said. His flight suit zipper was down to the top of his G-suit waistband, and she was reaching for the zippers on the sides of the device. He was not helping her, but he was not stopping her either. “Linda…”
“You don’t have to do anything,” McKenzie said in a whisper. “I’m doing the driving on this trip.” She stepped back from him, removed her towel, grasped his hands, and brought them to her breasts.
“Linda, this isn’t a good idea.”
“I won’t argue with that,” McKenzie said with a teasing smile, “but I should tell you, Colonel, that you have more animal sex appeal in your little finger than most guys half your age have in their entire bodies.”
“That include your husband Carl?”
“I’m referring to my husband Carl.” McKenzie laughed, running her hands inside his flight suit against his chest.
“You think just because I made a stupid mistake by screwing you at SENTRY EAGLE in Klamath Falls last summer that I think this is right or justified? I’m not going to sleep with you, Linda.”
Suddenly, the PA system blared, “For the alert force, for the alert force, active air scramble, active air scramble! All crews report to your combat stations! ” and an impossibly loud klaxon split the late-night quiet. Vincenti was zipped and out the door in seconds, leaving McKenzie cursing as she hurried to get into her flight suit and G-suit.
Al Vincenti had a fleeting vision of McKenzie’s flowing, wet red hair and big, round, firm breasts floating in his mind’s eye as he made the dash to his plane, but the thought quickly disappeared as he automatically ran down the alert scramble checklists and procedures in his head. She was nothing more than a wingman to him now, his backup, someone to watch his rear quadrant as they hunted down whatever was out there. Vincenti sprinted for the alert hangar. His crew chief, who had just come around a corner, had no chance to catch up. Vincenti reached the hangar first.
On the wall to the right of the small entry door were two large handles. Vincenti yelled, “Hangar doors coming open!” and pulled both handles down. The handles unlocked two sets of huge counterweights, whose weight began swinging both the front and rear hangar doors open. His backpack parachute was in a rack near the hangar door handles. Vincenti stepped into the parachute harness and fastened the crotch and chest clips, leaving the straps loose so he could run up the ladder and into his F-16 ADF Fighting Falcon fighter jet. Gloves went on, sleeves rolled down, zippers zipped, and collars turned up as Vincenti trotted toward his fighter.
Six steps up the ladder and a quick leap into the cockpit, and Lieutenant Colonel Al Vincenti was in his office and ready for work.
As soon as his helmet was on and fastened, he flipped the MAIN PWR switch to BATT, the JFS (Jet Fuel Starter) switch to START 1, cracked the throttle on the left side of the cockpit from its cutoff detent forward a bit to give the engine a good shot of gas, then moved it back into idle when the rpms reached 15 percent.
Sixty seconds later, the engine was at idle power and his crew chief had his seat belt, parachute, and G-suit hoses connected and tightened. The GPS system was feeding navigation information to the inertial navigation set, and he performed a flight control system and emergency power system check. He made a quick flight control check by moving the control stick in a circle, or “stirring the pot,” and his crew chief was standing in front of the hangar, ready to marshal him forward. He saw Major Linda McKenzie running past his open hangar door, carrying her boots and wearing nothing on her feet but white athletic socks, still zipping her G-suit zippers. She flashed her middle finger at him as she sprinted by.
“Should’ve showed me your tits after you put your gear on, Linda,” Vincenti said, chuckling. He completed his checklists, flipping through the radios as he waited for McKenzie to start engines and check in. His VHF radio, secondary UHF radio, and HF radios were set to the GUARD emergency frequencies, but there was dead silence. The silence meant that this was going to be a covert intercept — they were going to try to approach the unidentified aircraft without being detected.
Vincenti unstowed a canvas box from behind his ejection seat, opened it, and checked the contents. It was a set of AN/NVG-11 night-vision goggles which clipped onto his flight helmet and would provide near daytime-like vision with just a few ground lights, moonlight, or even starlight.