More pieces to the puzzle, Lassen thought — a little patience and determination, and eventually the pieces of this puzzle would start fitting together. Harold Lake was being evasive, and Lassen’s instincts told him Lake was dirty. Meanwhile, there were still a thousand more pieces of the puzzle to examine.
PART 4
Atlantic City International Airport
That Night
“November-Juliet-641 flight, report altitude passing, radar contact, climb and maintain one-zero thousand.” A few seconds later, on the same frequency, he heard, “Lead, give me a few knots, okay?” followed by a loud feminine voice in his headset that seductively said, “Caution! Caution!”
Major Greg Mundy shook himself alert — as intended, Bitching Betty had that effect on guys. The feminine audio “caution” warning in his F-16 ADF Fighting Falcon air defense fighter was better known as Bitching Betty, a computerized female voice that calls the pilot’s attention to a problem in the aircraft; the warning was repeated visually in his heads-up display with a large flashing CAUTION message in the center. The male voice just before Bitching Betty’s was from Mundy’s wingman, Captain Tom Humphrey, who was apparently having trouble closing in on his leader and was asking Mundy to pull off a little power.
Mundy pinched his nose through his oxygen mask and blew against his nostrils to help clear his head — knowing full well that he was just blowing the shit in his head further in, which wasn’t going to help later on — and checked around the cockpit. He finally realized he was passing three hundred knots indicated airspeed in his F-16. still in zone- five afterburner — and he still had his landing gear down. He immediately flipped the gear handle up. pulled the throttle back to military power, and then flipped his oxygen panel supply lever to OXYGEN 100 % to get a shot of pure oxygen into his lungs.
“November-Juliet-641 flight of two departing A-City. passing five for ten thousand, check," he radioed, realizing he had not checked in with Atlantic City Approach Control either.
“Two,” Captain Tom Humphrey responded. “Tied on radar, three miles." Good wingmen rarely said more than their formation position on the radios; Humphrey was fairly new in the unit, having come directly from undergraduate pilot training. Fighter Lead-In. and F-16 Air Defense Fighter training directly to the New Jersey Air National Guard. Being a new guy, he was still a bit wordy on the radios — that would pass soon, Mundy thought.
It was a big, big mistake to do this flight. Mundy told himself. Members of the 119th Fighter Squadron “Red Devils" of the New Jersey Air National Guard, Mundy and five other F-16 ADF fighter crews had been flying six straight days of air defense alert since the terrorist emergency, pulling ’round-the-clock four-on, eight-off shifts out of Atlantic City International. But a flu bug was starting to make its way through the fighter group, and two pilots assigned to air defense duties in the Philadelphia Class B airspace had gone DNIF — Duties Not Involving Flying, which with this flu meant little more than stay in bed — so the other crews were on four-on. four-off shifts. In addition to feeling the first few chills and achiness of an oncoming bout of the flu, Mundy and his fellow Falcon pilots were just plain exhausted, and it was starting to show in his flying.
“November-Juliet-641,” Atlantic City Approach Control radioed, “have your wingman squawk standby when he gets within two miles of you. Passing ten thousand feet, contact Washington Center, button eight.”
“641 copies all, check.”
“Two.”
With the gear properly up and locked, it didn’t take long to climb through ten thousand feet on their way to fifteen thousand feet, and Mundy took his wingman over to Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center’s VHF frequency and checked in. They were almost immediately shuttled off to their UHF tactical frequency, and shortly made contact with Liberty-90, their AW ACS controller for the next four hours. The E-3C AW ACS radar plane was orbiting over Allentown, Pennsylvania, about one hundred miles to the north, providing enhanced low-altitude radar coverage for all airspace as far south as Richmond, Virginia, as far north as Boston. Having an AW ACS radar plane in the northeast United States was not as critical as in the midwest or western United States. Because of the sheer density of airports, ground-based radar coverage was so extensive in the northeast that any aircraft flying higher than two or three hundred feet aboveground was in radar contact with some FAA agency.
First order of business was an air refueling, out over the ocean about fifty miles east of Long Branch, New Jersey— the two F-16 Fighting Falcons would top off from the aerial refueling tankers at least three times during their four-hour patrol. The night was clear and beautiful, visibility about a hundred miles; the lights of New York City, Newark, Long Island, Trenton, Wilmington, Camden, Philadelphia, and even Allentown were all clearly visible. Mundy’s wingman picked out the tanker’s powerful recognition lights a few moments before the radar locked on, and they set up for the air refueling. They were going to refuel in an “anchor,” a small, tight oval pattern in which the aircraft would be in a turn for half of the contact time.
The flight of two F-16s approached the KC-135 Stra- totanker from one thousand feet below the tanker’s altitude, and as Mundy closed within five miles he made sure his precontact checklists were completed and turned all his attention to the rendezvous. He checked his blue RDY light to the right of the heads-up display, meaning that the slipway door was open, the fuel system was depressurized, the slipway lights were on, and the system ready for refueling. “November-Juliet flight, five miles,” he called. He had the tanker’s lights clearly in view, and there was no chance of flying through any clouds and losing sight of him, so he turned his attack radar to STANDBY to keep from spraying the tanker with electromagnetic energy.
“November-Juliet flight cleared to precontact position, One-Five ready,” the tanker’s boom operator radioed. Mundy, with Humphrey on his left wing, started a slow climb, following the tanker’s rotating beacon. “One-Five coming left.” The tanker’s wingtip lights rolled gently left. Mundy used the left turn to “cut the comer” and speed up the closure, and he carefully guided himself onto the white light at the tip of the air refueling boom trailing down below the tanker’s tail.
The left turn pointed them north toward Long Island. The lights of New York that were so beautiful just a few minutes ago were serious distractions now, and Mundy had to concentrate hard on the tanker’s wingtip lights to tell how much the tanker was turning — his visual horizon was gone. “Halfway through the turn,” the tanker pilot radioed.
Soon, Mundy and Humphrey had moved to within fifty feet of the aerial refueling boom, slightly low, and they rolled out of the turn heading south. “641 stabilized precontact, ready,” Mundy radioed.
“642’s cleared to the wing,” the boom operator radioed, and Humphrey moved away from Mundy and took a position just off to the left and behind the tanker’s left wing. “641, cleared to the contact position, One-Five ready.”
“641, contact,” Mundy responded as the nozzle clunked into the F-16’s air refueling receptacle. The director lights, which were two rows of colored lights along the tanker’s belly that graphically depicted the limits of the air refueling boom, came alive, showing him slightly low and slightly behind the center of the boom’s envelope. He began maneuvering to correct, not really moving the stick but “willing” the fighter to the correct position — the F-16 was far too nimble for a pilot to make any huge corrections, especially flying five miles per minute just a few feet from another aircraft. He stole a quick peek at the fuel quantity gauge to the right of his right knee and watched the forward and aft fuel quantity pointers creep clockwise and the fuel totalizer rolling upwards.