“Well, no kidding, Stevens,” Zeke announced with a chuckle, taking another sip of coffee.
Jeanie was monitoring the flight on her screen and could see that the Black Scorpion was flying the purple line on their moving map display with the autopilot. They would soon be approaching the only southwestern portion of the night’s flight, which meant this was her new window for hypoxia and ejection.
The Black Scorpion was in level flight, twenty thousand feet mean sea level, and was near six hundred knots inbound to the range. She wasn’t aware of what was being said in the cockpit, but she knew things were going to change rapidly.
Jeanie looked at the screen and verified she had the connection still, which she did, and moved her mouse around. She lowered the pilot’s oxygen levels to give them the hypoxia feelings as briefed. Jeanie figured this was good for about ten minutes or so, then ejection.
The next step was a slow reduction in their airspeed, remotely. Jeanie again maneuvered her mouse to the autopilot portion of the screen and remotely reduced the airspeed to 590 knots. Her plan was to reduce it by just a few knots for the next ten minutes, then down to 190 knots for the ejection.
Jeanie also masked the transmission of the oxygen data outside the aircraft, making it more erratic than it truly was for maintenance. Ford had written out a cheat sheet for Jeanie describing the types of airspeed that would be optimum for aircrew ejection. Some in the aviation community had discussed rumors of SR-71 pilots ejecting at over seventy thousand feet and 1,800 miles per hour, and with the thinner altitude at that height, maybe it was possible.
What would be impossible to determine is what Dai and Chung were wearing on this flight, so Ford recommended lower and slower. Without getting into ground speed and all the other technical airspeed stuff for pilots, Ford made it simple.
Now at 430 knots, the jet was slowing down nicely, and nothing else in the cockpit was touched, according to her screen. Perfect.
Rex had a headset on and sat in front of the table, listening to ham radio operators talking from Asia, Europe, South America, and even Antarctica. His father did not allow him to talk without him being there, but Rex’s hobby of placing pins on their basement wall map was fun.
Looking at the five-by-seven-foot National Geographic world map on the basement wall, he must have had eighty or ninety colored pins sticking out. It was colorful and impressive to see, and no one was more impressed than Rex that he could hear people talk from all over the world while sitting in his basement in Hawley, Pennsylvania, population 1,178.
Rex made a mark in his logbook that he was missing ham radio operators from the Middle East, and over to the east in places such as Korea and Japan. He would bring it up to his dad later.
“Dai, Dai, I feel weird… I am… out… of breath…” Chung said to Dai, attempting to take in deep breaths. Chung then looked over to Dai, and his head was down with his chin buried in his chest.
Chung looked outside the aircraft at the slight curvature of the earth on the horizon, the sun ready to rise soon, and mountainous terrain below.
The airspeed indicator slowly rolled back, but it wasn’t registering in Chung’s brain that it was not supposed to happen. His lack of oxygen was lowering his attention to detail and decision making, and his cockpit scan was no longer valid.
Dai woke up and looked at Chung, then started laughing. He took off his flight gloves and saw that the tips of his fingers under his fingernails were purple, but he was so out of it consciously that he didn’t do anything about it. No decision to flip the oxygen lever to 100 percent, which would not work anyway even if he tried, nor an attempt to grab air from the emergency canister embedded in his survival vest.
Airspeed indicator was now reading 250 knots, as orchestrated by Jeanie.
This was it, her moment to shine. Jeanie remotely sent the electronic signal to the aircraft, starting a unique sequence. Without warning in the cockpit, the combined electric signal and chemical process of combustion releasing light and heat had begun.
PEEEROO, PEEEROO was heard and felt inside Black Scorpion. Two small explosives that attached to the roof of the aircraft were heard and felt as the hatch was blown off vertically and clear of the aircraft. This allowed glacial, cold air to enter the cockpit. Then, a delay of 0.6 seconds, when another set of actions occurred.
From her Washington, DC, position, mouse and keyboard at the ready, Jeanie transmitted the signal, which took only one breath to reach the Black Scorpion. In sequence, the roof hatch directly above the two pilot’s heads was blown clear of the jet and fell into the Yunnan Mountains down below.
Next, the signal sent down from the satellite to the electrical bus transmitted to the electrical switch a simple “on” command. Upon receiving the signal, the seat motors launched each seat out at twelve G’s, or G-force. SHHHHEEEEEEEFFF was heard inside the cockpit, then a small delay of 0.4 seconds, and another SHHHHEEEEEEEFFF: the two sounds were both pilots’ ejection seat rockets being fired, throwing both pilots from the aircraft. There were many factors that went into the calculation, such as temperature and the body mass of the pilots, but since the aircraft was not in a high-G maneuver or out-of-control flight, it was as normal an ejection as one could get.
Each seat model performed differently since technology kept improving, and the Black Scorpion was no different. Chen’s pursuit of the famous Russian ejection seat K-36D used in the Su-27 and MiG-29 allowed him to improve upon them. This new seat and ejection would provide enough separation between the aircraft and the pilots so they would hopefully never collide. The pilots would come out of the jet sitting in the seat, but would eventually be separated by their parachute deployment. This drag of the chute filling up with air yanked each pilot out of the seat. Dai and Chung landed near each other in a valley down below, along with their ejection seat full of survival gear.
Jeanie immediately cut off all electronic ties between the Black Scorpion and ground maintenance crews, who were now receiving zero data on all their accounts. Nothing transmitted off the jet except to US government assets.
She moved the mouse again, increasing the airspeed on the empty jet to six hundred knots and made a left-hand turn to the south to one-nine-zero. Jeanie expanded the rings of distance of the flight display map a bit and made the jet’s destination to a waypoint over the water for the B-2 intercept.
She started typing now, sending a Peanut message to the rest of the team over their secure satellite communications link:
BOTH PILOTS EJECTED. REROUTED TO THE SOUTHWEST FOR AERIAL INTERCEPT.
FORD, AT DESIGNATED WAYPOINT, I WILL TRANSFER CONTROLS TO YOU. STAND-BY FOR WAYPOINT INFORMATION AND DESTINATION WEATHER. LANDING TO THE WEST AT BANGALORE. REPLY WHEN RECEIVED.
Jeanie continued to scan the FAA document labeled “Pacific Resource Guide for US Operators” to ensure she flew the jet to the right locations. All the data was apparently checked quarterly, so she shrugged her shoulders, hoping that data was accurate.
Mark wrote: “RECEIVED. NICE WORK.”
About thirty seconds later, Ford came up on line: “TRACKING ALL. GOOD COMMS AND WATCHING ON LAPTOP. BEAUTIFUL.”
Jeanie located the NAVAID information she was looking for and found it was better located than the original plan of Burma.
Located in Bangladesh, the Shah Amanat International Airport, airport identifier VGEG, was on the coast in Chittagong and would be a good area to have an airborne rendezvous. While both aircraft involved in the linkup had radar, internal navigation systems and GPS from satellites, it was important to provide backup NAVAID data.