Medusa's Child

NINETEEN

As requested, the Air Force chief master sergeant in charge of the on-board communications systems summoned the President back to the Starsuite as soon as the multiple radio frequency monitors had been established from Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina. The exchanges between the on-scene Air Force commander, the FBI agent in charge, and Scot Air 50 had boomed through the suite for ten minutes as they waited for the Chief Executive to finish a vital phone call to the worried Canadian Prime Minister and return. Wide eyes and silence now greeted the President as he walked in moments after the Seymour-Johnson control tower tried to order ScotAir 50 back to the base.

The President looked at the electronic map covering the Starsuite's video wall and did a rapid scan of every face in the room.

"Okay, someone want to fill me in on what's happened? Everyone in here looks spooked."

The Secretary of State sighed and gestured to the map, speaking in a slightly hoarse and weary voice. "The bomb situation has taken precedence over our Hurricane Sigrid. The Air Force and the FBI just forced the pilot of that aircraft into a corner, and he apparently decided he had to solve the problem by himself. He took off without permission, and he's not responding to radio calls."

The President sat down carefully.

"How, exactly, did this happen?"

"By the FBI agent using the subtlety of a Nazi storm trooper in declaring his intention to arrest the woman with the bomb, and by the Air Force commander refusing to listen to the pilot's extreme concern that they can't just blow up the bomb without setting off a nuclear blast. The Air Force commander also lied to the pilot—as well as to you."

"Lied?"

"Lied. You told them to have a C-141 standing by, correct?"

"I did."

"The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs promised you he would do so, and a message fifteen minutes ago to us confirmed that everything was ready. The on-scene commander told the captain of the inbound 727 the C-141 was already on the ground, but instead, it has been kept circling at a distance. In fact, it was only fifty miles north of its base at Charleston. The fact that there was no C-141 there seems to have prompted the 727 captain, at least in part, to leave."

"What?"

"The captain obviously believes the only safe disposal method is to dump the bomb at sea. Oh, but there's more! I took a call a few minutes ago from the wing commander at Seymour, a brigadier general. He was very upset, and I told Signals to patch him in. Know what he told me?"

"No, but I can understand wanting to keep the 141 away until they're ready to load. The general who called is the commander who decided to keep the C-141 circling?" the President asked.

"No, this is the wing commander who was forced to let a colonel from Shaw zip in and take over as on-scene commander."

"Sour grapes, perhaps?"

"Perhaps. He said he's retiring soon anyway, and he knows he's jumping the chain of command just a tad to call the President, but he felt you needed to know immediately of a brief exchange he had on his ramp a little while ago with the colonel who took over his base. It seems our good colonel had no intention of using the C-141 or keeping the dumping option open, despite your orders. Want to hear the quote?"

"You bet I do!"

The Secretary of State consulted his notes.

"This is very close to verbatim. The colonel said to him: 'I am responsible for defusing and preserving this bomb. I'm not responsible for mind-reading the current political hack in the White House to try to figure out what he might think he wants. I only take orders from the Air Force.' "

The President was shaking his head from side to side and grinding his teeth as the Secretary of State continued.

"Ask and you may or may not receive, depending on whether the Pentagon thinks you know what you want."

"Goddammit!" The President lunged for the intercom as the Secretary leaned over to speak directly in his ear.

"This is exactly what I've been trying to tell you about for the past six months. They're out of control over there. They'll tell you anything. Remember what I taught you and your classmates several years ago at Georgetown? The civilian sector cannot remain in control of the military if the military thinks that its responsibility includes lying to and manipulating the civilian sector to further its own purpose, regardless of how noble that purpose might be."

The President nodded. "I remember clearly."

"They've become professional liars. You've refused to believe me on that point. But here's a classic example."

The communications sergeant answered the intercom.

"Jim? Switch us back to the Situation Room and find the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the commander of the Air Combat Command immediately."

The President leaned back with a ferocious look of anger on his face, his fingers drumming the table. "Dammit, where are those poor bastards going with that bomb? What do they think they're doing? And how can we salvage this in time? We've got to answer those questions, and then I'm going to relieve a few Air Force people of their ranks, their pensions, and their damned heads!"

The Secretary of State sat down quietly, carefully avoiding the look of satisfaction he so dearly wanted to wear.

Scott had the aircraft in a left bank on instruments.

"Jerry, I've got a question for you."

"Shoot."

"Any way you could jury-rig the main cargo door to open in flight?"

Scott was aware of Doc staring at him from the right seat, and aware of the deep silence from the engineer's seat.

Jerry found his voice at last.

"Even if I could, and I don't know for sure, the door would rip off and probably take the tail with it. It's part of the structural integrity of the fuselage when it's closed. I'm not even sure we could stay airborne with it open."

"Hey, if Aloha Airlines could fly a convertible 737 in 1987 with most of the top gone…"

Jerry nodded, a frightened look on his face.

"We couldn't open it in flight without major problems, Scott. We might be able to fly with it off, but I don't have the tools to get it off. That's a heavy door."

Scott looked at Doc. "Okay, get out the maps. See if there's an airport we can land at and maybe rig something up, take the door off, dump Linda's stuff out, anything. Jerry, try to figure out how we could get the door off the airplane fast and leave it behind."

"We don't have much time," Doc said. "You mentioned negotiating with them once we were in the air. Maybe that's best."

Scott nodded. "If I could get survival gear and a parachute, I could land long enough to dump all of you out somewhere, set the aircraft eastbound on autopilot, and bail out."

"You'd never get out the door," Jerry protested.

Scott was shaking his head vigorously. "Yes, I could. I wouldn't go out the side door, I'd go out the aft airstairs, and before you tell me we can't open that in flight, I know we'd need to sledge-hammer that in-flight lock off first, but it could be done. Jumping off the rear stairs is not a problem. If D. B. Cooper could do it, I can do it!"

"Who?" Linda asked.

"A hijacker," Doc explained, "back in the seventies. He took his loot and a parachute and jumped off the rear stairs of a Northwest Airlines 727 south of Seattle. That's why they put the in-flight lock on all 727 aft airstairs to prevent anyone from opening them in flight and jumping out. Worked, too. There was never another Cooper caper."

"Doc, what's the minimum safe altitude here?"

Doc pulled open one of the aeronautical maps and consulted several figures. "Twenty-eight hundred feet, Scott. Come up to three thousand and we'll clear everything."

"Right now I'm going down to the weeds."

"You think farm people down there won't notice a 727 at treetop level?"

"I'm not worried about farmers. I'm worried about those two F-16's back at Seymour. They were refueling after we landed. We caught them flat-footed, but they'll be after us in a few minutes."

"So what?" Doc asked.

"So what? Those were live Sidewinders they were carrying, Doc. Didn't you notice?"

Doc shook his head in mild shock. "Lord, no, I didn't."

Scott brought the big Boeing down through five hundred feet and held the speed to two hundred fifty knots in what felt like a barnstorming maneuver. Groves of trees and soggy fields and the occasional highway shot beneath them as he steered an easterly course and hand flew the jetliner through increasingly rough winds and growing rain showers. The ceiling ahead was getting lower. He would need to climb back into the weather shortly and navigate by radar, hoping the storm cells would mask the radar skin echoes of the 727.

"We should have thought to demand parachutes back there," Jerry said.

Scott shook his head. "They would've shot the tires or the engines or both. They wouldn't have complied anyway, and I couldn't threaten to set the thing off to force compliance without branding us all as terrorists."

"They'll brand us as terrorists now," Doc added.

"Scott." Linda's voice reached his ear. "They said they had a C-141 nearby. I know it's got a rear cargo door and they can dump cargo from it in flight. If they weren't lying —if there really is one around here somewhere—couldn't we divert him to a coastal runway and transfer the cargo? Couldn't we find somewhere they're not ready for us, somewhere they can't get a reception committee to in time? Even if we can't switch cargo, I'll bet they'd have parachutes aboard."

"Good idea, Linda," Doc said. Scott nodded in agreement.

Jerry raised his hand. "I've got their in-flight frequencies. Let me see if I can raise the guy if he's really out there."

"Using the UHF?" Scott asked.

"Yeah. Be right back."

"Someone needs to tell Vivian what's happening," Scott said.

"I'll do it," Linda volunteered. She threw off her seat belt and slipped out the cockpit door as Scott banked the jet sharply to the left and then back to the right to avoid a small series of hills.

The turbulence was getting worse by the minute as they flew deeper into the fringes of the hurricane. The bouncing and bumping was graduating from irritating to uncomfortable, an all-too-familiar sensation.

"Scott." Doc pointed to the windscreen and the scene ahead of them. "We're risking some nasty weather ahead at this altitude. Remember, we're flying back into the hurricane."

"I know it. But we need some distance before showing them a radar target."

"They'll know we're headed toward the ocean, Scott. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out."

Again Scott banked sharply, this time to the right, then brought the heading back to due east as he half-turned to Doc once again.

"Doc, hunt for an airfield on the coast, even something a little southeast along the coast in South Carolina. Anything with enough concrete to land for a few minutes. Jerry's still working the C-141 search."

Linda reentered the cockpit as Doc fought to unfold another map. Scott glanced at her and noticed that she was nursing her elbow. "What happened?" he asked.

"Nothing. It's just kinda hard to stay on your feet with a plane bouncing around like this. Anyway, Vivian's okay. Terrified as the rest of us, but okay. The screen back there says one hour, fourteen minutes remaining."

Scott nodded. ''Linda, we're going to find an airfield to land on. We're going to open the cargo door and shove your pallets out on the concrete and try to drop the door, if I can find two parachutes. Can your stuff take being dropped?"

She leaned forward and smiled thinly. "When compared to the potential of my equipment surviving a nuclear detonation, a mere ten-foot drop to concrete is nothing. Yes, it can take it."

"You're going to get off there, Linda. So are Doc and Jerry. I'll get the plane going east, and then parachute out with Vivian and hope the damn bomb will rant and rave at her in absentia long enough to put some distance between us before it blows. You can get the Coast Guard to come look for us. I'll steer exactly zero-nine-zero magnetic and try to jump no more than twenty miles out."

"Right! Let me get this straight, okay? You're going to bail out of a 727 in the midst of a hurricane in late afternoon without a raft. This is a plan, McKay?" Linda asked, chuckling sarcastically. "I thought you had a plan."

Scott looked around with a surprised, almost hurt expression, completely missing her humor.

"I… I'm sorry, Linda, you insisted…"

She rattled the back of his seat. "I'm kidding, Scott! But we've got to think of something less suicidal. I'm growing accustomed to the back of your head. I'd hate to see you lose it."

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States stood ramrod straight on the Situation Room side of the Starsuite as an angry Commander in Chief standing thirty-nine thousand feet over the Pacific Ocean read him the riot and sedition act in a tone of voice that hardly needed microphones to carry to Washington. When the President paused, his face crimson, the Chairman looked at the desk momentarily, then back at the President.

"May I speak candidly, sir?"

"You're going to be a goddamn civilian in the next ten seconds if you don't speak candidly, John!"

"Yes, sir. I relayed the orders precisely as given. I take full responsibility for our failure to get that C-141 on the ground, but, speaking to you personally, I'm as blind-sided and angry as you are, sir."

"Fix it, goddammit! The first priority is to win the heart and mind of that 727's captain before he blows our economy and himself—and God knows how many other Americans—off the map! I don't know how the hell you're going to do it, but do it, and keep me informed minute by minute. And, John?"

"Yes, sir?"

"When this is over, I don't want the hide of some first lieutenant. Remember I was an Air Force officer, too. I know how the secret brotherhood works, and how all the colonels and generals find lower-ranking scapegoats at the first sign of trouble."

"Sir…"

"Remember the Iraq helicopter shoot-down back in 1994? The President was lied to. He was told that one little captain in an AWACS was the only one responsible for the screwups and lies of a dozen or more senior officers. Bullshit! You're not pulling that on my watch! That colonel at Seymour is fired and retired and relieved as of this instant! Now, there's a wing commander who's going to get a commendation and a promotion for jumping the chain of coverup, but I want the professional scalp of each and every senior officer who had the slightest shadow of an idea that my C-141 order was going to be thwarted. Anyone who tries to cover for anyone else is going to be cashiered. Is that clear?"

"As crystal, sir."

The sound of Jerry's voice rising in excitement as he spoke to someone on the radio caught their attention. Scott looked around as Jerry flashed a thumbs-up. "I've got them!" he said quickly, returning to the radio. "Reach Two Six Six, this is ScotAir Fifty. Please listen closely."

Jerry gestured to the UHF radio. "Go ahead, Scott. They're listening."

Doc shot a puzzled look at first Scott, then Jerry.

"'Reach'? What in the world is that? C-141's are 'MAC,' aren't they?"

Scott shook his head. "Some idiot four-star general changed the call sign from 'MAC' to 'Reach' because he liked the slogan 'Global Reach.' "

Scott punched the transmit button. "Reach, you were heading to Seymour, right?"

"That's affirmative, ScotAir."

"Okay, we've changed that mission. You were to rendezvous with us, weren't you?"

There was a hesitation, and Scott bit his lip hard enough to draw blood while he waited for the reply.

"Ah yes, ScotAir, our mission did involve you."

"Roger, and you have a minimum crew on board to take our cargo and dump it airborne to the east, correct?"

Another hesitation, but the young pilot in the Lockheed C-141 obviously had accepted the fact that whoever he was talking to knew his mission.

"Affirmative, ScotAir."

"Okay, listen up, please, Reach. We don't have enough time or fuel to return to Seymour. I presume you're carrying parachutes and survival gear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. All we need is to get two of those chutes and survival gear, and we'll just head this bird over the water and parachute out of it. Can you suggest an appropriate airfield? We need creative thinking right now. Time is running out."

"Sir, the Myrtle Beach area isn't too far to the southeast."

Jerry was nodding. "There's a perfect civilian field north of Myrtle called Grand Strand. Runway's about six thousand feet long, and there are several ramps. It's right on the coast."

Scott keyed the microphone. "We'll take Grand Strand, if you know where that is."

"We know that one, ScotAir. Stand by, please. We'll call you back."

He'll now call his command post for orders, Scott realized. The next response should tell it all.