That was the “setup” call, probably the last radio call before the F-16’s AN/APG-66 radar would pick up the target, helping to get the pilots oriented. Once the radar locked on and the proper target identified, the fire control computer would present steering cues on the HUD, or heads-up display, a transparent electronic screen in front of the pilot that allowed the pilot to read flight, radar, and weapon information without looking down into the cockpit.
McKenzie’s radar was picking up several air targets at altitudes between five and twenty thousand feet, but there were not many aircraft flying around at eleven o’clock at night. About two minutes later, at a range of about forty miles, McKenzie locked on to an aircraft that met the last reported radar track information perfectly: “SIERRA PETE, Foxtrot Romeo has radar contact on a bogey at thirty-eight miles, angels nine-point-five, bearing zero-one- zero.”
“Foxtrot Romeo, that’s your bogey.”
“Roger. Foxtrot Romeo is judy, request clearance for the Special-9.”
“Foxtrot Romeo, this is SIERRA PETE, you are cleared for Special-9 procedures.”
“Foxtrot Romeo copies,” McKenzie said, the excitement spilling over in her voice. Vincenti had to smile to himself. This was certainly not McKenzie’s first intercept, or even her first night intercept, but it was one of her most important. He remembered his first no-shit real-world night intercept well, a Chinese airliner suspected of being a spy plane that was “drifting off course” and trying to fly over the Alameda Naval Base near Oakland. That was over fifteen years ago.
That was just one of the things Vincenti remembered in what had been, for him, a pretty good career. He got into flying back in the 1960s, after receiving his bachelor of arts degree in political science from West Virginia State University in 1967. He’d attended college on a football scholarship. The typical jock. But unlike a lot of jocks who went on to illustrious jobs like selling cars and getting flabby, Vincenti was unable to avoid the draft and ended up in Officer Candidate School, where he received a commission and attended pilot training in 1968. He flew 113 missions in Vietnam in the F-100 Super Sabre fighter-bomber and the F-4D Phantom II fighter-bomber from 1969 to 1973, as well as holding command positions in various tactical units.
Vincenti went on to the Air Command and Staff College upon returning from Vietnam and joined tactical and training units in New Jersey and Arizona, but was later involuntarily separated from the active-duty Air Force, after his second divorce. He got a position with the California Air National Guard in 1978. Except for a brief deployment to Germany in 1986 and 1987, Vincenti had been flying F- 106s, F-4Ds, and F-16 fighters from the Fresno Air Terminal for seventeen years.
And speaking of flying… his mind immediately returned to the situation at hand. In this intercept, McKenzie still had to remember her procedures and not get caught up in the excitement. Vincenti checked a plastic-covered decoder device strapped to his left leg, sliding a yellow plastic marker to the fifth row of characters, then keyed his mike button: “SIERRA PETE, Foxtrot Romeo flight, authenticate echo-echo.”
“SIERRA PETE authenticates india,” came the reply. It was the correct reply. All intercept instructions that might place a fighter within close proximity of another aircraft in a potentially unsafe manner had to be authenticated, whether or not weapons were expected to be employed, using the daily authenticator cards issued to every pilot. Hopefully, this one omission was going to be the last one for Linda McKenzie tonight, Vincenti thought ruefully. Well, that’s what wingmen were for — back up the leader at all times.
Unfortunately, there was one switch McKenzie did forget.
On a normal intercept, the 150,000-candlepower identification light on the left side of the nose was used to illuminate the target — on a Special-9 covert intercept, the light was supposed to be out. The large, bright beam, twice as bright as an airliner’s landing lights, was on full bright as McKenzie made her approach toward the target, and, because it was a crystal-clear night and he was flying five miles behind and to his leader’s right side, Vincenti didn’t notice the light was on.
It was the Stork who saw it first, high and far off in the distance, to the right rear of the LET L-600 and almost blocked from view by the right wing and engine nacelle. The horizon was dark, and the single, unblinking light was like a laser beam aimed right at them. He grasped Cazaux’s right sleeve and pointed. The Belgian mercenary had to get up out of his seat to get a glimpse of the light. “I see it,” Cazaux acknowledged. It was hard to judge distances at night, but the brightness of the light could mean that the aircraft, if it was an airliner, was pretty far off in both distance and altitude.
But it wasn’t an airliner — Cazaux knew it right away.
It was moving fast and turning with them, not crossing their path. It was intercepting them, no doubt about it. “Puta, Stork,” he said, “they found us already, the fuckers. I think they zeroed the Air Force in on us.”
The Stork pointed to the San Francisco sectional chart and chattered away in a strange mixture of Ethiopian, English, and Spanish.
“Relax. There is nothing they can do to us.”
“Say what?” Jefferson “Krull” Jones asked, staring out the windows with eyes so wide that the whites could be seen in the dark cockpit. “There’s an Air Force jet out there? Is it gonna gun us down?”
“Relax,” Cazaux said casually. “I have been intercepted dozens of times by the American Customs Service, the Coast Guard, and the Drug Enforcement Agency — even an Army helicopter. I have never been fired upon. I do not think they have the authority to kill anyone in peacetime without due process.”
“Was that before or after you blew up a bunch of cops and an entire airport, my man?” Krull asked. “Maybe this might be the time they let those flyboys ‘accidentally’ let a few missiles fly.” Krull motioned out the cockpit windscreen to the inky blackness of eastern California and the Sierra Nevada mountain range ahead. “Looks pretty black out there, Captain. A pretty good place to splash a bunch of gunrunners.”
“Shut the fuck up. You don’t know a damn thing.” The big black hoodlum had vocalized Cazaux’s own fear — this time, after so many close calls and so much death, the authorities might want Henri Cazaux out of the way for good. There was no one better to do it than the U.S. Air Force. Who would mourn his loss or condemn the United States for such an act? He had enemies all over the world, of every religion and nationality. The only ones to be sorry might be the bounty hunters who would be cheated out of the reward money.
No, he was not sure that the fighters would not open fire.
He thought about their route of flight. To try to stay away from ground radar, Cazaux had chosen to fly on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevadas, as low as he dared to go. The sectional aeronautical charts gave maximum elevation figures for each thirty-by-thirty-mile block of land, and he would simply add five hundred feet to each quadrangle elevation — that would put his plane well below radar coverage but safely above the terrain. But that wouldn’t faze an airborne radar, such as from a fighter. Without extensive jamming equipment or fancy flying, Cazaux had no hope of trying to break a radar lock. If ordered to fire, the fighters would have a clear shot — and flying along the Califomia- Nevada border, the area was desolate enough so as not to threaten citizens on the ground. They could simply pick their moment, and shoot.
‘They will not open fire on us,” Cazaux decided. “This is America, and they are the military — the military is forbidden to actively get involved in law-enforcement activities, except to assist in surveillance and to provide transportation. They cannot act as judge, jury, and executioner. Period.”