The conditions for icing on the outside of the aircraft existed when the air had in it droplets of supercooled liquid water. The perfect combination of droplet size, air temperature and water resulted in ice on an aircraft. In the aviation community, three main types can be found: clear ice, rime ice, and mixed ice.
Clear ice was clear and smooth, similar to freezing rain normally seen on the ground. Rime ice was opaque and rough. Lastly, mixed ice was a mishmash of both. Depending on the atmospheric temperature, which at high altitudes is easily below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, it would be not be an overstatement to say that any water found on the exterior of the aircraft would freeze to the airframe in mere seconds.
The chief waived his hand around. “Get it done. Get it done right. Bad duct work means icing, means this jet doesn’t make it home. One night. Keep going,” the chief told them, walking away.
The men, looking on and not turning wrenches, took to texting, faces down and thumbs moving.
Calvin had his office desk phone up to his ear. “Thanks, Rocko. Copy all. The team and I will be there. Will be good to see you again as well. Bye,” Calvin said, then hung up the phone.
Jason saw he was off the line, snickered, and told the gang near him in the waiting room that Calvin would yell in to him. “Watch this. One-one thousand, two-one thousand, and three…”
“Hey, Jason, have those guys come in here!” Calvin yelled out, like clockwork.
Mark, Jeanie, Robert, and Emily walked in, smiling from Jason’s antics. Arms full of folders, they stood in front of the table.
“Please, have a seat. Just hung up with our old friend, Rocko Cooper. Working these days as the new junior military assistant for SecDef. The secretary invited me, and you guys, to fly out to Las Vegas with him on his jet so we can brief him up on SANDY BEACH. I’ll be able to chat with him about the undersecretary position, too. Good?”
Smiles came across everyone at the table. Mark spoke first, “Yes, sir. That sounds terrific. We’ve never met him. What are you expecting our role to be?”
Calvin tiled his head down and looked over his glasses. “Tell him the truth. Keep nothing back. Standard brief of what we know, when we knew it, and what your recommendations are, if any. Me, too, actually. What do you have for today? Please, sit.”
Mark nodded in agreement. “Will do. We want to bring you up so speed on BEACH. Robert, you start.”
“Sir, Emily and I have been tracking some Black Scorpion maintenance crew social media texts from the hangar. We can read everything they are saying. Pretty funny, actually. If this wasn’t so real, it would be on a television show because it reads like a drama. Bottom line, most of the men hate Chen. They make fun of his drinking and girlfriends, and his weight. Some of the young airmen are friends with the two pilots, so they are involved in passing info on social media. Plenty of talk of girls and their travels. At times, the smartphone app What’s App is used to prevent outsiders from seeing their texts… but we can see it all. Weibo and Qzone are their most popular.”
“Like a reality TV show over there, eh?” Calvin said, smiling.
Emily was happy. “It is. Gossipy. Luckily, we can detect their flight schedule now. Seems the jet is delayed a bit. Sustained some engine damage from a bird strike, as well as the left wing. Looking at another two days’ delay, then take her airborne for more night flying for a functional check flight, which is standard, according to Mark. Of note, Chen is becoming more impatient with the chiefs of maintenance and engineering at the delay.”
There was a pause, then Mark started. “Here’s our plan; it will sound far out in left field, but here we go. We arranged with US Strategic Command to have Ford fly in a B-2 cockpit jump seat with a specially loaded laptop. The B-2, piloted with its usual US Air Force aircrew, will fly in Indian airspace in a holding pattern. At the appropriate time, we will cyber-hijack the jet remotely, and Ford will fly her to a landing in India.”
“What is that? Cyber-hijacking? No. No way,” Calvin told them. “That leaves a trace. You can forget that plan.”
Pinky knocked a third time on Ford’s hotel room door with the palm of her hand, but there was no answer still. Concerned he overslept, she continued to ring the doorbell, but nothing stirred inside. Pinky then took out her phone and dialed and listened. She could hear the phone ring inside the room, but no Ford.
All Pinky could think about was Ford being drunk last night at the poker and pai gow tables, even trying to kiss her on two different occasions. At the same time, he was telling me about how he loved his girlfriend, Emily. Get it together, Ford! she said to herself. “Pai gow, Chinese dominos, eh? He’s just got to be passed out in there.”
Pinky briskly walked down the hotel hallway to the end, and saw a young woman in her thirties standing in front of a housekeeping cart. Pinky looked at her nametag and saw her hometown was Colorado Springs, the same city that the Air Force Academy was located in. After a minute of small talk, Pinky asked for a favor in opening Ford’s door.
“Thank you so much,” Pinky told the housekeeper. “Yes, go Falcons!”
Pinky got into the doorway, looked inside, and leaned in to check the bathroom first. Nothing. Looked at the two beds, but no Ford. She put her purse on the table in the room and walked over to the window.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” Ford asked Pinky, startling her. Ford was wearing a tee shirt and running clothes, walking in from the hallway.
“Oh, sorry, Ford. I… I thought you might have overslept,” Pinky said, her oval face turning beet red. “You were pretty drunk last night. Like, you drank a lot. We need to get going. I’m sorry I came in here.”
“Yes, sir. Cyber-hijacking. We can elaborate,” answered Mark. Mark took out a paper PowerPoint slide he had previously made with upgraded stick diagrams. “The B-2 will fly in loose formation with the Black Scorpion after we eject the crew. From the laptop, Ford will remotely land her in Bangalore, India. The B-2 will then land and drop off Ford.”
“Hmm. I don’t know. First cyber-jacking. Now eject the crew? Wow, OK, got it. Heavy stuff. OK, keep going,” Calvin said, taking his glasses off. “Willing to listen.”
Jeanie smiled. “Sir, I’ll already have installed some malware to remotely cyber-hijack the aircraft, fly her using the autopilot, and navigate her to someplace like the Bay of Bengal for pilot ejection. I’ll lower the Chinese pilots’ oxygen levels to give them hypoxia, so they won’t follow what’s going on. Then, transfer the controls to Ford in the B-2, and Ford flies the jet remotely to landing at Yelahanka Air Force Station, Bangalore.”
The team still wanted to induce hypoxia in the Chinese Air Force pilots. If there was not enough oxygen in the aircraft system, as Jeanie would do when she lessoned the flow electronically, the pilots would not have enough of the vital air in their lungs and blood stream, and their brains would be temporally impaired.
The result would be dazed pilots who would feel off-balance and light-headed, not thinking clearly, and the drowsy feeling would be uncontrollable. The dizziness would be overwhelming, they would perhaps get a headache, and their lips and fingertips would turn blue. In this condition, the ejection timing would be perfect.
“Cyber. Reminds me of the newspaper clips from the missing Malaysian flight. And Mark, you and the team coordinated landing two large foreign stealth aircraft in India?” Calvin asked.