Incredibly, someone had bailed out of that cargo plane seconds before it exploded…
Henri Cazaux! Without thinking, Vincenti turned toward the rapidly falling white dot, nearly going inverted to keep the parachute in sight. Cazaux obviously heard the fighter fly nearby, could probably see the position and anticollision lights, because the ’chute started falling even faster. Cazaux had grabbed the two right risers of his parachute and pulled them down, spilling air out the left side of his canopy, increasing his descent rate, and sending him into a wide, violent left spin.
Vincenti didn’t know if it was planned or not, but Cazaux was too late. The intense fire at the terminal, less than a thousand feet away, was buoying his parachute up in the air — he was a sitting duck. Vincenti had to shove his fighter’s nose to the ground to get lined up… and just as he did line up his shot, a rescue or news helicopter popped up in the middle of his HUD, less than two hundred feet away. He had to bank hard left and pull to miss the helicopter, and he lost sight of Cazaux immediately. By the time Vincenti could roll out and look for Cazaux’s ’chute, the terrorist was on the ground and moving. Vincenti had a brief thought about trying a strafing run, but now the entire area near the crash site was choked with rescue aircraft and vehicles. Flying down into that melee would be very dangerous. He could do nothing else but climb above the San Francisco Class B airspace and head back to Beale Air Force Base, and the inquisition that he knew would face him there.
The two crewmen from the Coast Guard Air Station just north of San Francisco International Airport couldn’t believe their eyes as they watched the medium cargo plane plow into the central terminal — it looked like the aftermath of an oil-refinery explosion or a replay of a successful bomb strike during the Persian Gulf War. They heard the low-flying cargo plane as it buzzed their hangar, and they saw it explode and crash into the terminal as they watched. The entire airport seemed to be waist-deep in fire so hot that it could be felt from inside their pickup truck nearly a half-mile away.
But even the explosion and devastation itself were nothing compared to their surprise as a lone parachutist dropped into the grassy field bordering the airport’s outer security fence. “Jesus Christ… did that guy jump out of that cargo plane?” one of the Coast Guardsmen asked.
“He’s gotta be the luckiest sonofabitch in the world,” the other said. “He got out of the plane in time, and he missed that fence by inches. He looks pretty bad.” They drove over, found the man lying faceup in the grass, just a few feet from the security fence. One seaman went over to him while the other set to work deflating the parachute so it wouldn’t drag him into the bay. “Hey, Todd,” the first seaman shouted over the roar of the nearby explosions and fire, “we got a radio in the—”
The second seaman couldn’t hear his buddy over the sounds of sheer devastation at the airport. A few fire trucks from the Coast Guard base were racing toward the terminal, but they were too far away and moving too fast to flag down. “Say again, Will?” No reply. He managed to collapse the billowing parachute, then turned to his partner: “What did you say?”
His buddy Will was lying on the ground just a few feet away, the entire top of his head blown off. The parachutist was standing beside the second seaman, a gun pointed at his face. He saw a bright flash of light and barely registered a loud bang! then nothing.
Henri Cazaux unbuckled his parachute harness, rolled up the parachute, and threw it into the storage area behind the seat of the pickup truck so it wouldn’t be easily spotted. He then collected the Coast Guardsmen’s ID cards, found a jacket and cap that fit him, and started up the pickup truck. He followed the line of emergency vehicles heading toward San Francisco International via the parallel taxiways. Then, when he saw it was clear, he drove away off the airport. He was challenged once by an airport security guard who enlisted his help in trying to control traffic as thousands of persons tried to flee the carnage. The security guard was shot in the face as well.
Henri Cazaux’s killing spree did not stop at San Francisco Airport. He killed two more persons, stole two more cars, made his way undetected through central California, then risked taking an early-morning plane from Stockton to Phoenix. Sensing that federal marshals and security patrols would be screening everyone coming off the plane, Cazaux told the flight attendants he had lost some jewelry under the seats, waited until the airliner cleaning service workers arrived at the plane, executed two workers and slipped away out the rear exit dressed in their overalls and using their ID badges.
A few hours after sunrise, after stealing another car, he was safely across the border in Nogales. Shortly after that he could be in one of his many hideouts in Mexico, safe from all but a determined paramilitary assault — but he did not want to stop. Each time, the vision of his cargo plane crashing into San Francisco International’s central terminal flashed in his mind, and he smiled a sort of twisted, pathological smile. He knew he wanted to see that kind of pure destruction again very, very soon. It was one way to get even with the U.S. Air Force, the Marshals, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the entire United States fucking government. There was so much the Americans had to pay for: torture, false imprisonment, rape, assault, robbery, perjury — those were just the least of their crimes against Henri Cazaux over the years. And as those years went by, Cazaux could add murder, conspiracy, malicious prosecution, and numerous additional counts of perjury and contempt of court. And Cazaux knew the United States would never be formally charged and tried for any of these crimes, so he would issue the punishment himself.
Cazaux’s justice was in his heart, his mind, his weapons, and his aircraft.
The Americans had worked to almost put him out of business, permanently. That was going to end. America had yet to feel the fury of a full-scale attack by Henri Cazaux. Now it was time. Cazaux wanted to see America bleed, and attacking its most important and yet most terrifying institution — its air traffic and air travel system — was going to be the way to do it. It was so easy, and yet it was going to be so devastating…
It had been a long time since Henri Cazaux had be£n in an American commercial airport terminal — international terrorists rarely travel by commercial air unless speed is a necessity — and what he saw surprised him. No one, he thought, would consider spending one second longer than necessary in a bus station, or taxi stand, or train station, but modem airports seemed to cater to travelers who obviously spent a great deal of time there. Even relatively small Phoenix-Sky Harbor International Airport had fancy restaurants, video arcades, bookstores, hotels, an art museum, meeting and exercise rooms, even a small amusement park with putt-putt golf and miniature movie theaters right on the airport premises. While Cazaux was busy moving from one restroom to another every fifteen minutes until his flight was called, trying to stay incognito, he noticed people that seemed to hang around, enjoying themselves like tourists. It was crazy…
… but what an inviting target. This place was packed! There were dozens of planes parked at the gates, with thousands of persons choiring the terminal. One bomb in the center of this place could kill hundreds, injure hundreds, destroy perhaps billions of dollars of airplanes and property. But it would take a thousand pounds of explosives, maybe more, to do the kind of damage he needed to do, and he couldn’t truck that much nitro all the way into the heart of the terminal…
… but he could drop the explosives on the terminal, just like he did at Mather Jetport and San Francisco International. The Americans had no defense against an aerial assault. Yes, there were air defense fighters, but they were only a few units scattered around the periphery of the country. The FBI, perhaps even the military, would eventually crack down on all unidentified or unauthorized flights, but it would take many days to shut down America’s enormous air traffic system, and once shut down it would surely crush the American way of life. Until then, he could take an incredible toll on these mindless Americans. Three attacks, all in less than a week, and he was certain that America would fall to its knees.