“Control, 641, radar contact, twelve o’clock, thirty miles low, no paint.”
“That’s your bogey,” the weapons controller confirmed, “641 flight, check noses cold, ID only.”
Mundy checked the weapons status readouts on his left multifunction display. He carried two AIM-120 Ram radar- guided missiles and four AIM-9P Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles, plus two hundred rounds of ammunition for the gun and two external fuel tanks. Right now he had no weapons selected, none armed. “641 confirms nose cold for the ID pass, check.”
“Two,” Humphrey responded. He was supposed to do a complete weapons status check and report, but, Mundy thought as he tried to clear his head and ears, for now the less said on the radios, the better.
The last ten miles to the intercept turn passed very quickly. The bogey was screaming now, almost four hundred miles an hour, and he had descended to barely three thousand feet above the ocean. This was not a smuggler or a terrorist — this guy appeared on a military attack profile! Mundy remembered that the Cuban drug smugglers. stopped by the Hammerheads a few years earlier had used military aircraft to deliver drugs — maybe Cazaux had turned to military aircraft as well. That thought didn’t cheer Mundy up one bit.
Well, it was time to see what the story was. At fifteen miles distance, high and slightly to the left of the unknown aircraft’s nose, Mundy started a tight left turn and a rapid descent. He was passing twelve thousand feet on his way to four thousand…
… when suddenly a red-hot jab of pain spiked through his sinuses like a knife driven into his head, threatening to blow out his eyeballs. Mundy’s vision and hearing both disappeared in the incredible pain, and his entire face seemed to creak and pop like a slowly collapsing building. Mundy knew what it was, and he was fully expecting it — what he had not been expecting was the enormous amount of pain it caused. With a head cold and sinus infection, the rapid climb during takeoff forced mucus tightly into the Eustachian tubes of Mundy’s inner ear, reducing the air pressure inside the sinuses and inner ear and jamming the sinuses and inner ear closed. As the ambient air pressure increased during the rapid descent, the outside air rushed in and tried to fill the partial vacuum in the inner ear and sinuses. The few extra pounds of air pressure on the delicate sinus membrane and eardrums caused intense pain. Mundy tried rolling his head, tried a Valsalva maneuver, tried swallowing, but the pain only continued. He dropped his mask and tried to squirt more nasal spray into his impacted sinuses.
Suddenly, the pressure in his left ear went away, followed shortly by relief in his right ear, and he could see his instruments again as most of the pain washed away. But as he felt a warm trickle of fluid running down his neck, he knew the relief wasn’t because of the nasal spray — it was because he had just ruptured both eardrums. He had to turn the radio volume up all the way to hear it. Mundy ran his finger up into his helmet’s earcups to scoop out sticky blobs of blood, but it didn’t help much.
Somehow, through all that, he managed to stay on the bogey, and now Mundy and Humphrey were closing in within three miles of the unknown aircraft. It had no exterior lights on — another sign of a hostile. As he moved closer, Mundy could start to make out its shape and size— commercial, not military, at least no military aircraft Mundy was familiar with. “Control, 641 flight, I have visual contact on a commercial aircraft, two engines, possibly three engines, aft-mounted. No exterior lights, no interior lights visible from the windows. It appears to be a Hawker or Gulfstream-class bizjet. Activating ID light.” Mundy could barely hear himself talking through the radio, like listening to a conversation going on in another room. The pain in his head was tolerable, but now his loss of hearing and an occasional bout of the spins and the leans made it difficult to concentrate.
“Copy, 641.”
If the AW ACS weapon controller responded, Mundy didn’t hear him, but he went ahead anyway. By the time he had moved within one mile of the bandit — he had stopped considering him just an “unknown” and now thought of the aircraft as a “hostile”—they were over the coast of New Jersey just north of Sea Isle City, heading northwest. They had climbed slightly, to about four thousand feet, but were still traveling about six miles per minute. The bright lights of the Philadelphia metropolitan area were dazzling on the horizon, only fifty miles away.
“Control, 641 has a visual ID on a Falcon- or Learjet-se- ries twin-engine turbojet aircraft, tail number November- 114 Charlie Mike. Color appears silver or gray over dark blue. Still no exterior lights. No visible external weapons, no open doors. Moving forward. Acknowledge.” Mundy heard a faint “Clear, 641,” from the AW ACS controller, so he activated his ID searchlight on the left side of his F-16 ADF fighter and started forward, maneuvering the agile fighter so the searchlight trained along the right side of the bandit’s fuselage and across the row of windows.
Mundy reached a point where the searchlight was shining inside the right side of the bandit’s cockpit, then switched his VHF radio to 121.5, the international GUARD frequency, and said, “Unidentified bizjet-Nl 14CM, this is the United States Air Force fighter off your right side. You are in violation of emergency federal air regulations. You are hereby ordered to decrease speed, turn left immediately to a heading of one-seven-zero direct to the Sea Isle City VOR, and lower your landing gear. Respond on 121.5 immediately. Over.”
“Welcome, Air Force F-16,” came the response. “This is Barry Kendall of the TV news program ‘Whispers.’ I’m speaking to you on the international aviation emergency frequency. Can you hear me? How are you tonight?” The Gulfstream’s exterior lights popped on, and its airspeed began to decrease. “Can you tell us your name, please, and where you’re from?”
“November-114CM, you are in deep shit.” Mundy had to restrain himself from coming completely unglued at this point. He recognized the TV show, of course, one of a series of trashy “tabloid TV” shows that liked to bring cameras into the most unlikely places to videotape people in compromising positions. Why the hell they’d risk their lives to pull this stunt, Mundy couldn’t figure. “I mean, 114CM, you are in serious violation. If you proceed any farther you may be fired upon without warning. Turn left immediately towards Sea Isle City VOR and prepare for ah approach and landing at Atlantic City International. Over.”.
“Air Force pilot, this is Barry, we’re live right now on national TV, and about twenty million viewers are watching this intercept. I must say, it took you boys longer than I expected to find us. Did you have us on radar the whole time, watching us, or did it take some time to track us down?” Mundy was going to repeat his warning, but the bastard continued, “Now that you have us identified, my cockpit crew is going to reactivate our flight plan and we’ll proceed up the coast to our destination at Newark Airport. We’re going to switch off the low-light camera and take some footage with the regular camera. Thanks for your cooperation, guys.” At that, a blinding beam of light stabbed out from the bizjef s cockpit, aimed right at Mundy.