The beam momentarily blinded him — not painfully, but irritating enough — but when Mundy swung his head down and away to shield his eyes, he got an instantaneous case of the leans. The F-16 seemed to do a tailflip right over onto its back. In a reflex action, Mundy screamed on the radio and pulled the control stick back hard before realizing that it was the leans, not an uncommanded flight control pitch- down. He climbed nearly a thousand feet before he finally regained control and started believing the attitude indicator again…
But at the instant Mundy screamed on the radio, Tom Humphrey had reacted reflexively as well. He hit the DOGFIGHT button on his throttle, which changed the F-16’s weapons and fire control computer mode instantly from VID (visual identification) mode to “Air-to-Air” mode, arming his AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles and his 20-millimeter cannon, then flipped the MASTER ARM/SIMULATE switch on his stores control panel to MASTER ARM. He immediately got an RDY 4A-9LM indication on his stores control panel, meaning that the four missiles were armed. He then hit the large UNCAGE button on his throttle, which unlocked the seeker heads of his missiles. Seconds later Humphrey got a blinking diamond in the middle right side of his heads-up display, indicating that the first-up Sidewinder had locked on to the bizjet and was in the launch zone. He pressed the weapon-release button on his control stick. The whole procedure took about three seconds.
An AIM-9L missile slid off the number-two-weapon- station rail in a brief burst of light and hit the bizjet’s left engine a split second later.
Mundy didn’t — couldn’t — see any of this. He saw a brief flash of light out of the comer of an eye, then heard someone shouting “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” on the radios. He heard a brace of loud static, then a brief “Oh, shit…” then nothing.
“641 flight, Liberty Control.”
“641, go.”
“641, was that your mayday? Say status.”
“641 is in the green,” Mundy said. “I got blinded by a spotlight from the Lear, and I had to split from the intercept. I heard the mayday call. 641 has lost visual contact with the target. 641 flight, check.” No response. “No- vember-Juliet-642, check in on Liberty Control button nine.” Still no response. Mundy searched out his cockpit canopy — pretty useless gesture at night — then said urgently on the radio, “Tom, damn it, are you up?”
“Two’s up,” Humphrey finally responded. “Shit, I thought you were under attack, lead.”
Mundy heard the sheer panic in his wingman’s voice, and his throat turned as dry as sand. “Say again, 642?”
“I thought he was shooting at you,” Humphrey said. Mundy could hear sobs coming from his wingman — Jesus, he was crying… “I thought he was shooting at you, Greg,
I thought you were hit…”
Mundy finally realized what his wingman had done. “Tom, this is Greg, do you have a visual on me? Do you see my lights? What’s your position?” There was no response. “Tom, say your position.” He thought he’d try a more rigid, formal approach: “641 flight, check!”
“Two’s… up… oh God oh God… I shot the fucking plane down…” Humphrey responded.
“Tom, you were doing your job. Rejoin now, get back on my wing,” Mundy shouted. “Where are you? Say your position? Do you have me in sight? Control, give me a vector to 642. Tom, damn it, answer. ”
A sudden bright tongue of fire caught Mundy’s attention. He saw an F-16 in full afterburner streak across the sky from his nine o’clock position, heading northward, then turn suddenly in front of him and head eastbound, back out over the Atlantic. “Tom, I see your burner, I’ll be tied on radar in a second, stand by… you can cut your burner now, Tom.” The afterburner plume remained. At nearly one hundred thousand pounds of fuel burned per hour at zone 5 afterburner, he would exhaust his fuel in less than three minutes.
Mundy turned eastward to follow his wingman. “642, I’ve got you tied on radar, cut your burner and I’ll join on your right side… cut your burner, I said!” Mundy had to kick in afterburner himself to keep Humphrey on radar. “Tom… Cut your burner! I’ve got you in a descent, climb and maintain eight thousand, I’ll be at your five o’clock position.”
Ninety seconds later, November-Juliet-642 plunged into the Atlantic twelve miles east of Longport, New Jersey, still in full afterburner, hitting the ocean at well over the speed of sound. Vacationers on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City reported a streak of light across the sky out over the ocean and wondered if it was a shooting star.
In case it was, some made a wish.
New Executive Office Building, Washington, D.C
Less Than an Hour Later
Lieutenant Colonel A1 Vincenti trotted into Hardcastle’s makeshift office in the New Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House. He had finally been convinced to keep his flight suit in the closet and put on a class A uniform while working in the general proximity of the White House, but it was obvious he was uncomfortable with it; it was also obvious that he had shaved in the car on the way over, because he missed a few spots. Deborah Harley, on the other hand, looked as scrubbed and as ready to go as she always did, even though she arrived several minutes before Vincenti. “What’s happened, Admiral?” Vincenti asked. “The operator said something about an accident.”
Hardcastle handed him an electric razor and a desk mirror — obviously Hardcastle was an expert at shaving on the run. “Clean up while I run it down for you,” he told Vincenti. “About an hour ago, the Atlantic City fighter group intercepted a bizjet running with its lights and transponder off, trying to race in off the Atlantic toward Philadelphia. Turns out it was a camera crew from that trash TV show ‘Whispers.’ ”
“Don’t tell me,” Vincenti said. “A midair?”
“Worse — a Sidewinder up the tailpipe, after the intercept and the ID,” Hardcastle said. Vincenti swore under his breath — it was an interceptor pilot’s nightmare in the best of conditions, but under the present emergency it was only a matter of time before it actually happened. “Worse yet— the shooter decides he’s done a really bad thing and crashes his F-16 into the ocean.”
“Oh, God, no,” Vincenti exclaimed. “The President’s going to have a shit-fit.”
“We’II find out,” Hardcastle said as his office phone rang. “Lifter’s calling in the staff for a meeting in two hours; the President will be awakened at four A.M., and the first meeting in the Oval Office will probably be at five. We got a long day ahead of us.” Hardcastle’s secretary was out — it was after midnight — so Hardcastle picked the phone up himself. “Hardcastle…”
“Is this Admiral Ian Hardcastle, the one hunting down Henri Cazaux?”
Hardcastle pointed to an extension line in the secretary’s alcove; Harley immediately ran for it, checked to see if it had a dead switch — it did — and picked it up. The dead switch would kill the mouthpiece unless the button was pushed. She also started recording the conversation and starting a caller ID trace with the push of one button on the secretary’s phone console. When she was on, Hardcastle asked, “Who is this?”
“No names,” the caller said. “Just listen. Henri Cazaux’s base of operations is a three-story mansion on Cottage Road, Bedminster, New Jersey. It’s protected by heavily armed gunmen. He was there a few hours ago; I don’t know if he’s there now. Cazaux is planning something big.” The line went dead.