“I'll we survive,” Ysidro said. “Henri really is fuckin’ possessed, and I think we’re gonna need the Devil’s help to get out of this alive.”
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, Sunrise
Two Days Later
If you had to go to war, had to deploy at a moment’s notice, had to hump all night to get your unit set up and operational as fast as humanly possible, there were worse places to do it than Dallas, Texas.
Lieutenant Colonel Valerie Witt, U.S. Army, emerged onto the catwalk with a cup of coffee just as the first rays of sunlight peeked over the horizon, putting the skyline of the city of Dallas in stark profile. The dawn was hazy and cool, but she had ditched her field jacket back in her new office downstairs hours ago. She allowed herself the luxury of drinking in the sunrise, letting the brilliant yellow sun charge her batteries. For a moment, she was back in her hometown of Ogunquit, Maine, watching the sunrise from her parents’ home on the coast, or on the beach at Treasure Cay in the Bahamas on her honeymoon. Beautiful. Just beautiful…
But as she scanned the horizon an unusual sight brought her back to reality very quickly — and Avenger FAADS (Forward Area Air Defense System) unit parked a few hundred yards beyond the approach end of runway 35 Right. It was hardly more than a speck out there, but its two box launchers aimed skyward, each containing four Stinger heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles, could be seen. This was not her honeymoon. This was not home. Yes, it was Fort Worth, Texas, but it was also war.
Valerie Witt was the commander of Third Battalion, 43rd Regiment, and was the senior air defense artillery battalion commander deployed to the defense of Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. Her communications headquarters were on the second level of Dallas-Fort Worth’s multistory control tower, where she had a clear view of all her air defense units at DFW; but her weapon command center, the AN/MSQ-16 MICC (Master Information and Coordination Central), a large steel green-painted box crammed full of radar sets, radios, and air conditioners (for the electronics, not the humans who work inside), had been hoisted up onto the roof of terminal 2W of Dallas-Fort Worth. Beside the MICC was the AMG, or Antenna Mast Group, a truck carrying two UHF antennas that linked Witt’s MICC with all the air defense units surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth. Because DFW was one of the busiest and most important airports in the United States, there were a lot of air defense units deployed here to try to stop Henri Cazaux if he tried to attack here.
Eleventh Brigade, from Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas, had deployed six of Witt’s Third Battalion Patriot missile batteries in the area — two at Carswell Air Force Base, west of Dallas-Fort Worth, two at Naval Air Station Dallas to the south, and two batteries at Fort Worth-Alliance Airport, north of the city of Fort Worth. Each battery had four Patriot missile launchers — half the normal number, because so many airports in the nation had to be covered — and each launcher contained four missiles.
In addition, there were four platoons of Hawk medium- range surface-to-air missiles spread out on the outskirts of Dallas-Fort Worth, twelve launcher units for a total of thirty-six Hawk missiles; and eight Avenger units, stationed at each end of the four runways kept active at DFW, for a total of sixty-four short-range Stinger missiles. Patriot Communications Relay Groups scattered all across Tarrant and Dallas counties ensured tight coordination between the Patriot batteries and Witt’s battalion MICC, which controlled all the Patriot, Hawk, Avenger, and Stinger surface- to-air missile sites surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. In turn, Witt’s command center was tied directly into the overall Air Defense Force Commander, an Air Force officer she did not know, orbiting over El Dorado, Texas, in an E-3C Sentry AW ACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) radar plane. Although Witt could launch any of the missiles defending Dallas-Fort Worth, primary responsibility of launching missiles at any one of the major airports in the south-central United States — Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston-Intercontinental, Houston-Hobby, Memphis, Tulsa, Nashville, and New Orleans — or directing any fighters on intercepts, was in the Air Force officer’s hands.
Witt finished a walkaround of the catwalk around the control tower, checking the weather, checking the airport, and catching a glimpse of all the HAWK and Avenger units deployed around the huge airport. Far to the south, she could see two F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters leaping into the sky from Naval Air Station Dallas, then peeling away to the east with afterburners roaring. Air defense units, fighters — this was something you’d expect to see in Beirut, or Baghdad, or Tel Aviv — not Texas. What was going on in this world when a single terrorist could hold a nation hostage like this, force it to restrict the rights of its own citizens in order to defend itself?
Witt returned to her little headquarters — consisting of several banks of radios, computers, and radar repeater— just as the secure radio crackled to life: “All Tiger units, all Tiger units, stand by for a poll of the air defense force.”
Witt reached over and picked up a telephone, which was wired directly into her MICC van down below: “Tiger 100, report.”
It looked huge from the outside, but the Master Information and Coordination Central van was barely big enough for three persons inside. The Battalion Engagement Officer, Captain Jim Connor, sat on the left in front of a large twelve-inch digital radarscope, surrounded by switchlights, indicators, and a keyboard; he was responsible for making the decision on whether or not any missile unit in the battalion would fire on a hostile target, and for taking over as Battalion Force Commander if communications between the Air Defense Force Mission Commander on board the AWACS radar plane were lost. The Battalion Fire Unit Technician, Master Sergeant Mike Pierini, sat on the right, with a virtually identical radar setup as the Engagement Officer. Pierini was responsible for identifying all targets on radar and classifying them as friendly, hostile, or unknown (if the crews aboard the AWACS plane had not already done so), assisting the Engagement Officer, and maintaining communications with the battalion’s missile units.
Between them was a dot-matrix printer, and above that the LED readouts and status displays of all the rounds remaining of all the missile units under Witt’s command. Reading off the status display, Connor responded: “Ma’am, Tiger 100 shows all units in the green: Ninety-six Patriot, thirty-six HAWK, and sixty-four Avenger Stingers ready. All units acknowledging HOLD FIRE command.”
“Very well, Tiger 100, out.”
Aboard the E-3C Sentry AWACS Radar Plane
Orbiting Over El Dorado, Texas
Army Lieutenant Colonel Valerie Witt might have been incensed to learn that the overall Air Defense Force Mission Commander for the south-central United States was about ten years younger than she, had five years less time in the military, and was only an Air Force major, but that described William “Kid” Kestrel, the Mission Crew Commander (MCC) aboard Tiger Nine-Zero, the E-3C Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System radar plane. Kestrel was short, blue-eyed, fair-haired, and slight, and he looked even younger than age thirty-eight — he looked far younger than anybody else on the twenty-two-person AWACS crew, although he was probably the oldest.
Kestrel was one of eleven Air Defense Force Mission Commanders airborne at that moment aboard E-3C Sentry radar planes, covering the entire continental United States — the others were stationed over Elizabeth City, North Carolina, Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Indianapolis, Indiana, covering the northeast; Gainesville, Florida, covering the southeast; Des Moines, Iowa, covering the Midwest; Cimmaron, New Mexico, and Billings, Montana, covering the Rocky Mountain region; Mormon Mesa, Nevada, and Porterville, California, covering the southwest; and Lakeview, Oregon, covering the northwest. Flying one-hundred-mile racetrack patterns at twenty-nine thousand feet, the E-3C Sentry, with its powerful AN/APY- 2 Overland Downlook Radar mounted on a thirty-foot saucer rotodome atop the converted Boeing 707 aircraft, could detect and track any aircraft in flight for three hundred miles in all directions.