“Tango X-Ray-311 acknowledges weapon status HOLD FIRE, my nose is cold. Switching.” He punched up FTW on his navigation computer, got a heading to Fort Worth-Meacham Airport, just fifteen miles west of DFW, switched his radio frequency to simultaneous VHF and | UHF GUARD, the international aviation emergency chan- ' nels, and clicked open his mike. “Attention, 727 airliner November 357-Whiskey, this is the United States Air Force 1 fighter Tango X-Ray-311 abeam your right cockpit. You are in violation of emergency federal air regulations. All I previous ATC clearances are hereby canceled and continued flight toward Dallas-Fort Worth Airport is denied. You are hereby ordered to turn left and fly heading three-five- zero, descend and maintain two thousand feet, and lower your landing gear immediately. Prepare for a VFR approach and landing at Fort Worth-Meacham Airport. Acknowledge these instructions on VHF frequency 121.5 or UHF 243.0 now. Over.”
On the GUARD frequency, Himes heard, “Tango X-Ray-311, this is Westfall Air 357-Whiskey, I acknowledge your transmission.” The accent was typical Texas, smooth but firm, maybe a Houstonian. “Our destination is Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, we’ve got the field in sight, and Approach has cleared us to the field. Is there a problem?” ‘Westfall 357-W, this is Tango X-Ray-311, all previous clearances are canceled. You are ordered to land at Meacham Airport. Do not overfly Carswell Air Force Base. We will be escorting you for landing. Lower your landing gear and turn left heading three-four-five. Over.”
“Roger…” Himes was afraid he might argue some more, but just then the airliner banked left and settled on a three-four-zero heading, lining up almost perfectly with Meacham Airport. The landing gear then came down, and Himes had to lower flaps to stay in formation as the airliner decelerated. “Tiger, Westfall-357-W is slant-Romeo direct Meacham at this time, over.”
“Tango X-Ray-311 copies, descend and maintain two thousand, airport is twelve o’clock, twenty-one miles, contact Meacham Tower on 118.3. Acknowledge.”
“Switching to Meacham tower, Westfall… stand by one, Tango…” Oh shit, Himes thought. Here it comes. Obviously, when the landing gear came down, the charter client woke up — those VIP 727s had a bedroom that rivaled anything on the ground — and now he was undoubtedly being heard from. “Ah, Tango X-Ray-311, my client wants to know why we can’t land at DFW. We had a valid clearance from San Antonio. Over.”
“Westfall 357-W, I don’t have that information, sir, but you must comply with my instructions. All previous clearances have been canceled. You cannot land at Dallas-Fort Worth. Over.”
“Okay, Tango X-Ray, but I really need to know…” There was a momentary rustle on the frequency, like paper being crumpled. Himes looked over to the airliner’s cockpit and saw the copilot rising out of his seat and another man, in a white shirt, tie, and dark beard, drop into his vacated seat. Then, a definitely Middle Eastern voice came on the frequency: “Listen to me, Air Force fighter plane, we land at big Dallas airport. Right now. Right now. You understand…?” And at that, Himes saw the bastard grab the 727’s control wheel and turn it hard to the right — directly in the F-16’s flight path.
“Holy mother of God!” Himes pulled on his control stick and shoved in full military power. He caught a glimpse of the airliner’s nose rolling toward him, and then a hard slap! under his seat as the airflow buffet from the big airliner hit the F-16. They had missed by just a few feet. Himes continued his climb, raised his flaps, and fought to roll wings- level. When he finally got himself stabilized, he had climbed over five thousand feet above the airliner — it was no longer in sight. “Tiger flight, this is lead, check.”
“Two’s in,” McCallum reported. “I’ve got you in sight, Ron. I’m at your seven o’clock low.”
“Stay on the airliner, Jhani.”
“Thought you needed help, came to see if you needed help.”
“No, damn it, stay on the target.” Too late now, Himes thought angrily. He switched back to Tiger Controclass="underline" “Tiger Control, Tango X-Ray-311 flight, we had to break away from the target, he made a sudden turn across our flight path. Over.”
Aboard the E-3C AWACS Radar Plane Tiger Control
Without the fighters tailing the airliner, Kestrel and his weapons controllers had lost their “eyes” on the scene, and without visual contact they had only a two-dimensional radar image to use. “Lost visual contact on the ‘unknown,’ ” the weapons controller shouted to everyone in the weapons section of the radar plane.
Kestrel leaned closer to his screen. The airliner was fifteen miles out, over Lake Arlington, well outside the safe- fly corridor, five hundred feet below the programmed approach altitude, a little faster than normal, and still heading for Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. According to the rules of engagement, that bastard was dead right now. “Comm, broadcast warning message on GUARD, on all DFW tower freqs, and all DFW regional approach control freqs, try to get that unknown turned westbound.”
The assigned weapons controller was already back on his radio. “Tango X-Ray-311, this is Tiger Control, your bogey is at two o’clock, three miles, fly heading zero-six-five, descend and maintain angels two.”
“Tallyho, Tiger,” the lead F-16 pilot reported. “Descending.”
But it wasn’t going to happen fast enough, and Kestrel knew it. The sonofabitch was heading right for the west terminals of Dallas-Fort Worth. He looked up and saw Hardcastle and Vincenti carefully studying him. “All right, Admiral, Colonel,” he said. “I could use a little advice here.”
“You still got time to reacquire the intercept,” Vincenti said immediately. “He’s still five minutes from landing. Get on his ass and try to turn him away. If he doesn’t turn by five miles—”
“—nail him.”
“Admiral?”
Hardcastle hesitated. It was he who headed the Pentagon staff that designed the air defense parameters, not more than three days ago. A staff of over one hundred had pored over charts and diagrams of the thirty-three largest airports in the United States, deciding the safest and simplest way an airliner could approach the airport in a hostile situation. In the short space of time they had to work the problem, the staff had designed a plan that, even if a pilot screwed up every possible rule in the book and did everything wrong, there was still a margin of safety that would save a nonterrorist but still destroy a terrorist before he got close enough to bomb a terminal.
Well, that was theory, done on charts and diagrams and computers. This guy had busted every rule, exceeded every parameter. He could not look more hostile unless he was launching cruise missiles. He should have been dead sixty seconds ago, the minute he turned into the F-16…
But Hardcastle heard himself say, “Continue the intercept,” and all the planning and all the theory went right out the window — as it usually does in situations like this. “Get Approach Control and DFW Tower to divert all other flights. No one approaches DFW until this is sorted out.” Kestrel breathed a sigh of relief that could be heard over the roar of the engines in the AWACS’ cabin, and he had every free technician on board AWACS calling the airliner.
Aboard an Airtech CN-235 Twin- Turboprop Transport