Storming Heaven

Atlantic City International Airport That Night

“November-Juliet-641 flight, report altitude passing, radar contact, climb and maintain one-zero thousand.” A few seconds later, on the same frequency, he heard, “Lead, give me a few knots, okay?” followed by a loud feminine voice in his headset that seductively said, “Caution! Caution!”

Major Greg Mundy shook himself alert — as intended, Bitching Betty had that effect on guys. The feminine audio “caution” warning in his F-16 ADF Fighting Falcon air defense fighter was better known as Bitching Betty, a computerized female voice that calls the pilot’s attention to a problem in the aircraft; the warning was repeated visually in his heads-up display with a large flashing CAUTION message in the center. The male voice just before Bitching Betty’s was from Mundy’s wingman, Captain Tom Humphrey, who was apparently having trouble closing in on his leader and was asking Mundy to pull off a little power.

Mundy pinched his nose through his oxygen mask and blew against his nostrils to help clear his head — knowing full well that he was just blowing the shit in his head further in, which wasn’t going to help later on — and checked around the cockpit. He finally realized he was passing three hundred knots indicated airspeed in his F-16. still in zone- five afterburner — and he still had his landing gear down. He immediately flipped the gear handle up. pulled the throttle back to military power, and then flipped his oxygen panel supply lever to OXYGEN 100 % to get a shot of pure oxygen into his lungs.

“November-Juliet-641 flight of two departing A-City. passing five for ten thousand, check," he radioed, realizing he had not checked in with Atlantic City Approach Control either.

“Two,” Captain Tom Humphrey responded. “Tied on radar, three miles." Good wingmen rarely said more than their formation position on the radios; Humphrey was fairly new in the unit, having come directly from undergraduate pilot training. Fighter Lead-In. and F-16 Air Defense Fighter training directly to the New Jersey Air National Guard. Being a new guy, he was still a bit wordy on the radios — that would pass soon, Mundy thought.

It was a big, big mistake to do this flight. Mundy told himself. Members of the 119th Fighter Squadron “Red Devils" of the New Jersey Air National Guard, Mundy and five other F-16 ADF fighter crews had been flying six straight days of air defense alert since the terrorist emergency, pulling ’round-the-clock four-on, eight-off shifts out of Atlantic City International. But a flu bug was starting to make its way through the fighter group, and two pilots assigned to air defense duties in the Philadelphia Class B airspace had gone DNIF — Duties Not Involving Flying, which with this flu meant little more than stay in bed — so the other crews were on four-on. four-off shifts. In addition to feeling the first few chills and achiness of an oncoming bout of the flu, Mundy and his fellow Falcon pilots were just plain exhausted, and it was starting to show in his flying.

“November-Juliet-641,” Atlantic City Approach Control radioed, “have your wingman squawk standby when he gets within two miles of you. Passing ten thousand feet, contact Washington Center, button eight.”

“641 copies all, check.”

“Two.”

With the gear properly up and locked, it didn’t take long to climb through ten thousand feet on their way to fifteen thousand feet, and Mundy took his wingman over to Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center’s VHF frequency and checked in. They were almost immediately shuttled off to their UHF tactical frequency, and shortly made contact with Liberty-90, their AW ACS controller for the next four hours. The E-3C AW ACS radar plane was orbiting over Allentown, Pennsylvania, about one hundred miles to the north, providing enhanced low-altitude radar coverage for all airspace as far south as Richmond, Virginia, as far north as Boston. Having an AW ACS radar plane in the northeast United States was not as critical as in the midwest or western United States. Because of the sheer density of airports, ground-based radar coverage was so extensive in the northeast that any aircraft flying higher than two or three hundred feet aboveground was in radar contact with some FAA agency.

First order of business was an air refueling, out over the ocean about fifty miles east of Long Branch, New Jersey— the two F-16 Fighting Falcons would top off from the aerial refueling tankers at least three times during their four-hour patrol. The night was clear and beautiful, visibility about a hundred miles; the lights of New York City, Newark, Long Island, Trenton, Wilmington, Camden, Philadelphia, and even Allentown were all clearly visible. Mundy’s wingman picked out the tanker’s powerful recognition lights a few moments before the radar locked on, and they set up for the air refueling. They were going to refuel in an “anchor,” a small, tight oval pattern in which the aircraft would be in a turn for half of the contact time.

The flight of two F-16s approached the KC-135 Stra- totanker from one thousand feet below the tanker’s altitude, and as Mundy closed within five miles he made sure his precontact checklists were completed and turned all his attention to the rendezvous. He checked his blue RDY light to the right of the heads-up display, meaning that the slipway door was open, the fuel system was depressurized, the slipway lights were on, and the system ready for refueling. “November-Juliet flight, five miles,” he called. He had the tanker’s lights clearly in view, and there was no chance of flying through any clouds and losing sight of him, so he turned his attack radar to STANDBY to keep from spraying the tanker with electromagnetic energy.

“November-Juliet flight cleared to precontact position, One-Five ready,” the tanker’s boom operator radioed. Mundy, with Humphrey on his left wing, started a slow climb, following the tanker’s rotating beacon. “One-Five coming left.” The tanker’s wingtip lights rolled gently left. Mundy used the left turn to “cut the comer” and speed up the closure, and he carefully guided himself onto the white light at the tip of the air refueling boom trailing down below the tanker’s tail.

The left turn pointed them north toward Long Island. The lights of New York that were so beautiful just a few minutes ago were serious distractions now, and Mundy had to concentrate hard on the tanker’s wingtip lights to tell how much the tanker was turning — his visual horizon was gone. “Halfway through the turn,” the tanker pilot radioed.

Soon, Mundy and Humphrey had moved to within fifty feet of the aerial refueling boom, slightly low, and they rolled out of the turn heading south. “641 stabilized precontact, ready,” Mundy radioed.

“642’s cleared to the wing,” the boom operator radioed, and Humphrey moved away from Mundy and took a position just off to the left and behind the tanker’s left wing. “641, cleared to the contact position, One-Five ready.”

“641, contact,” Mundy responded as the nozzle clunked into the F-16’s air refueling receptacle. The director lights, which were two rows of colored lights along the tanker’s belly that graphically depicted the limits of the air refueling boom, came alive, showing him slightly low and slightly behind the center of the boom’s envelope. He began maneuvering to correct, not really moving the stick but “willing” the fighter to the correct position — the F-16 was far too nimble for a pilot to make any huge corrections, especially flying five miles per minute just a few feet from another aircraft. He stole a quick peek at the fuel quantity gauge to the right of his right knee and watched the forward and aft fuel quantity pointers creep clockwise and the fuel totalizer rolling upwards.

“One-Five coming left,” the tanker pilot again reported. Mundy turned his attention back to the tanker — and the world started to spin on him.

“641, down two… 641, down four… come left, 641…”

Mundy thought that he was in a tight left diving spiral, and he instinctively tried to compensate by rolling right and climbing. The combination of the left turn, no visual horizon, and his head movement to the right to check the fuel gauge caused the “spins.” He recognized it, hit the NWS A/R DISC MSL STEP button on the outside of his control stick, pushed the stick forward, and transitioned to his heads-up display to get his bearings back. “One-Five, disconnect,” the boom operator reported.

“641, disconnect,” Mundy confirmed. His first priority was separation. He descended a few hundred feet and pulled a little power back. His head was still telling him he was in a hard left diving death-spiral, but for now his hands were believing his eyes, and his eyes were watching the flight instruments, which were telling the truth. “Ah… roger, I got about three thousand pounds, fuel transfer looks good, let's get 642 on the boom to make sure he can get his gas, then I’ll cycle back on to top off.”

It was a pretty weak excuse — boom operators could recognize the onset of spatial disorientation and were usually quick to either call a disconnect or guide the receiver pilot back — but everyone allowed Mundy to keep his pride. “Rrrr… roger, 641,” the boom operator responded, his voice telling everyone that he knew what was really happening. “You’re cleared to the right wing.” When Mundy was out of view of the boom operator, he called, “642, cleared to the contact position, One-Five ready.”

It was a tremendous relief to climb safely away from the tanker. Once safely on the tanker’s wingtip, flying very loose relaxed formation, Mundy dropped his oxygen mask, found a handkerchief in his left flight suit leg pocket, blew his nose, then massaged his sinuses to try to clear his head. No damn good. He had no choice — he retrieved a tiny bottle of nasal spray from his left leg pocket. Right surgeons would argue, but the fighter pilot’s unwritten but widely followed credo was, “Don’t Hesitate: Self-Medicate.”

The secure-voice UHF radio crackled to life: “November-Juliet-641 flight. Control, say status.”

“641 in the green, eight-point-one,” Mundy replied. He was about three thousand pounds shy of a full fuel load. “642’s on the boom.” Actually, Humphrey was having just as much trouble as Mundy did staying on the boom, but that was part of the new-guy jitters as well. Humphrey was a good stick, a good wingman.

“We’re tracking a pop-up target about one hundred and twenty miles bull’s-eye,” the controller said. “Bull’s-eye,” the navigation reference point for the air intercepts, was Atlantic City International. “Too far out for a good track. We’re doing a manual groundspeed, and he’s gone from two-forty to about three hundred in the past few minutes. Better top off and stand by to go take a look.”

“641 copies.” Mundy knew that the AW ACS controllers had three minutes from first detection to decide if an unknown aircraft was a hostile or not — that’s how much time Mundy had to get his gas. He rocked his mike button forward to the VHF channel: “642, I need to cycle back on. What’s your status?”

At that moment the boom operator reported, “Forward limit disconnect, 642.” The boom nozzle popped free of the receptacle on the F-16’s spine behind the cockpit, the lights illuminating a brief spray of fuel vapor. Humphrey had slid in so far that his F-16’s vertical stabilizer was dangerously close to the Stratotanker’s tail. He descended slightly and quickly backed away.,

“I’m showing ten-point-one,” Humphrey radioed. “One more plug and I should be full.”

“Better let me get in there, — 42,” Mundy said. “We might have visitors.”

“Roger,” Humphrey acknowledged. “Clearing to the left wing.”

“Copy, 642, clear to the tanker’s left wing.” As Humphrey moved away from the boom, the boom operator said, “641, cleared to the contact position, One-Five ready.”

“641, moving in…”

“Taking fuel, 641, no leaks”

Mundy was doing pretty well this time — in fact, he was so steady, and concentrating so hard on staying that way, that a new problem cropped up: autokinesis. The green “forward/aft” director light suddenly seemed to move, not up and down along the row of director lights, but in a slow clockwise spiral. Mundy knew what it was — a form of spatial disorientation when a stationary point of light would appear to move by itself, following tiny movements of the eyeballs. He tried hard not to follow the light, but there was no way of stopping the slight, almost subconscious commands to go to the flight controls.

“641, stabilize… down four… ”

It was no use — the spinning was getting worse by the second. Mundy hit the disconnect button just as the director light hit the aft limit: “641, disconnect…”

“641, breakaway, breakaway, breakaway/” the boom operator shouted on the radio. Mundy’s reaction was automatic: throttle to idle, nose down, positive rate of descent. He glanced up and saw the boom operator’s observation window just a few scant feet away — he had come just a few milliseconds from hitting the tanker. The tanker pilot had cobbed his four throttles to military power and hauled back on the stick at the “breakaway” call, and they had still avoided hitting each other by less than a yard.

Get on the instruments, Mundy commanded himself. The sudden deceleration was causing his head to spin downwards, making him pull the F-16’s nose up, but he knew it would cause a collision if he let that happen. He choked back the overwhelming sensation of tumbling and spinning and focused on the attitude indicator, forcing it to stay at wings level and 5 degrees nose down. He saw the altimeter spinning downwards and applied a little power to level off. “641 is clear, One-Five,” he radioed. Mundy took his hands off the control stick momentarily, felt around his right instrument panel, and flipped on all the exterior lights.

“I’ve got a visual on you, 641,” the boom operator said. “Our next turn is coming up. Do you have a visual on us?” “I’ve got a pretty good case of the leans,” Mundy said, still staring at the attitude indicator but finally getting enough stability back to glance at the heads-up display and other indicators. “I’ll stay straight and level at the bottom of the block. Make your turn in the anchor. 642, come join on me after you’ve made the turn. I’ll let Liberty know what’s going on.” He pressed the mike button aft to the SECURE UHF position: “Control, 641 flight is rejoining, two in the green, about eleven apiece.”

“Copy, 641,” the weapons controller aboard the AW ACS radar plane responded. “641 flight, vector heading one-six- zero, your bogey is at one hundred bull’s-eye low, speed three-twenty, ID only, report tied on.”

“641 flight copies, check.”

“Two,” Humphrey replied.

“641 turning right,” Mundy radioed. His case of the leans was just about cleared up, but his congestion was as bad as ever and probably getting worse. The shit was starting to pile up, he warned himself… “642, I’m at zero-two- zero for seventy-five bull’s-eye at angels seventeen.”

“Tallyho.” Humphrey had visual contact on him, so Mundy pushed the throttle up to military power, got on his vector heading, and started his pursuit. Humphrey would catch up as he could, and report when he was back in formation with his leader.

With a closure rate of almost a thousand miles per hour, the intercept did not take long. Mundy’s radar found a lone blip on the screen about seventy miles from the New Jersey coast. Mundy used the radar cursor control on the throttle quadrant to move the cursor on the radar return, then hit his DESIGNATE TARGET button on his control stick and received an audio LOCK in his headphones and a LOCK indication on his heads-up display. He then hit the IFF INTERROGATE button on his control stick, and a row of code letters appeared on his radarscope, 1X 2X 3X 4X CX, which meant that the target he had locked on to was transmitting no air traffic control signals. With wackos like Cazaux flying around, this was definitely a hostile act, not to mention a really stupid thing to do — if I had an IFF or radio malfunction at night, Mundy thought, I wouldn’t fly anywhere near U.S. airspace these days.

“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.

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.

“Damn it! He hung up,” Hardcastle said. To Vincenti he said, “Someone calling telling us Cazaux’s whereabouts.” “Another one? This makes… what, the one-thousandth…?”

“This sounded more genuine to me.”

“Just let the FBI have it, Ian, and let’s get back to—” Hardcastle ignored him. “Deborah…?”

“Got the phone number from caller ID,” Harley said. All phone calls going to any federal government office are automatically traced, using caller ID, which instantly reports the caller’s phone number, and by instantaneous computer phone-record checks. “Manhattan exchange. I can run the address through the FBI… but let me take this one, okay?” Harley smiled. “It might tie into some stuff I’ve heard. The Marshals Service interviewed a Wall Street investor at an aircraft reclamation firm in Mojave who was acting as a third-party broker buying several large aircraft for an aerial firefighting firm in Montana. He mentioned a part of their investigation on this sent them to a secretarial service in north-central New Jersey. Their investigation dead-ended there—”

“But maybe it’s just come alive again,” Hardcastle said. “Wonder why we never heard anything about this investigation?”

“Because the Marshals said they turned everything over to the FBI,” Harley said. “Briefed Director Wilkes personally.” Hardcastle nodded. “Ian, if we dump this on Wilkes, it’ll get pushed into the wacko pile. Let me have it. I’ll give it to the Marshals Service. They deserve a try at Cazaux for what happened to them in California.”

Hardcastle looked decidedly uncomfortable. He said, “I’m not sure, Deborah. I’m not averse to letting the Marshals redeem their reputation after the Chico raid, but I’m not winning any points butting heads with Lani Wilkes and the President.”

“You handed the wacko call to me and told me to notify the authorities,” Harley suggested. “You meant the FBI; I took it to the Marshals Service. I can handle the heat from the Justice Department, believe me.”

“I believe you,” Hardcastle said. “Okay, you got it. Notify the proper authorities about this call immediately, Miss Harley.”

^uYes, sir,” she responded with a smile.

“As long as I’m sticking my neck out, Deborah, I might as well stick it out all the way,” Hardcastle said. He made two phone calls from his desk, quickly typed out a letter on Office of the National Security Advisor letterhead, and handed it to Harley. She read it quickly, her smile becoming brighter and wider by the moment. “You’ve received blanket authorization from me to requisition some hardware the ‘authorities’ will need for their operation. Take the Executive shuttle to the Pentagon heliport — an NSC helicopter will take you. The crews at Patuxent River Naval Weapons Center are waiting.”

“Yes, sir, ” Harley said. “I’m on my way. Thanks, Ian.”

New York City That Same Time

“Who the hell are you calling this time of night?”

Ted Fell nearly fell over backwards in his seat in surprise. Harold Lake never prowled the hallways and never stopped in Fell’s tiny office — until tonight. Fell could feel his heart hammering away in his chest, and he had to fight to control his tone of voice: “Jesus, Harold, what are you skulking around for?”

“I needed the option contract summary on the Isakawa house holdings — the Japanese markets open in thirty minutes. Who were you on the phone with?”,

“Kim,” Fell said. Lake briefly recalled that Fell had a somewhat steady girlfriend whom he brought on occasion to a cocktail party — that must be her. “Told her I wouldn’t be home tonight.”

“Thought you called her after we got back from Jersey.” Fell shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt to make her feel included, I guess.” It was ambiguous enough, and Fell hoped that would disinterest Lake enough to drop this line of questioning. Harold Lake never showed an ounce of interest in anyone else’s personal life — it was strange he was asking questions about it now. “I put the summary in your E-mail folder. We’re looking good, as long as Isakawa doesn’t think we’re on the ropes because we’re selling our portfolio. If he does, we’ll be down around the fifteen-percent range again.” Fell remembered when making 15 percent a day was considered incredibly good. Now it was one-half to one-third of what they were making, and would be considered a very bad day.

“We’re liquidating, but it doesn’t mean we gotta take any bullshit from the Japanese or from that asshole Quek Poh Liao in Singapore,” Lake said. He studied Fell for a moment, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “That crazy fucker Ysidro really rattled you, didn’t he?”

“I don’t see how you could just sit there and watch him play with that… that human heart,” Fell said, his eyes growing distant. “It was horrible, disgusting.”

“You gotta detach yourself from their world, Ted,” Lake said, but even as he said that, his mind’s eye was obviously replaying that gruesome sight. “Forget about it.”

That was the understatement of the year, Fell thought, remembering his bizarre encounter with the woman in Cazaux’s place. She obviously got her kicks out of setting men up to die. “How did you ever get involved with those animals, Harold?”

Lake shrugged, then leaned against the door as if the very thought had taken all his strength away. “The money, at first,” he replied. “Cazaux had a guy on his payroll whose job it was to launder money, except he was a jerk. He was openly skimming at least ten percent from Cazaux’s funds, I mean, he didn’t even try to account for the loss. Cazaux eventually caught him — you saw a heart, Ted, but my first meeting with Henri Cazaux, he was carrying this banker’s severed fucking head in a bag. I got the old ‘ploma o plata' offer then — lead or silver, a bullet in the head or wealth beyond reason, if I joined him. It’s a hard offer to refuse.

“Hey, I know who I work for. A bigger assassin than the Jackal, bigger terrorist than Abu Nidal, a bigger arms dealer than Adnan Khashoggi. It’s like being the chief designer for Lee Iacocca or Ralph Lauren. You’re working for the best—”

“Harold, think about what you’re saying,” Fell interrupted. “You’re working for a killer, a murderer, a terrorist. He kills without thinking, without caring. He kills for money.”

“So what? We all do something for money, one way or another. If I think about it, I’ll go fucking nuts.” Fell noticed that Lake had all but lost his sophisticated accent and speech pattern, and had digressed almost all the way back to his New Jersey accent. It was a fitting signal of how he had slid into the depths of the criminal world. “Check on the plane and the security setup again, Ted.”

“It’s too early, Harold.”

“I want them ready in twenty-four hours,” Lake said. “They’re ready when I say they’re ready. And no more calling your bimbos. We’ll be out of the damned country and out of her and everyone else’s life in just a few days. Ted… get used to the idea.” He stepped away from Fell’s door and back down the hallway, but glanced back at his attorney. Fell was staring blankly at the telephone again, as if trying to check on something — or someone — far away.

Lake couldn’t stand it any longer. He charged back into Fell’s office, reached Fell’s desk before the attorney’s eyes even registered that he was back in the room, and hit the REDIAL button on Fell’s phone. On the small LCD screen at the top of the phone, a number with a 202 area code popped up. “All right, Ted, what in hell’s going on? That’s Washington, D.C. Your girlfriend lives here in Manhattan. We don’t have any brokers in D.C. Whose fucking number is that?”

“It’s the forwarding number for the new deputy of the security team we hired, Ha—”

“Don't fucking lie to me!” Lake shouted. “What in hell did you do? Who did you call, Ted?” Fell appeared as if he were going to try his story one more time, but Lake grabbed his shirt collar in both hands and shouted, “Answer me!ⁿ

“Hardcastle,” Fell said in a weak voice. “National Security Council… the guy on TV, in charge of the air defense stuff…”

“Oh, shit, tell me you’re fucking kidding… oh, shit, oh shit,” Lake said. He unplugged the PBX cable from the phone, dumping the phone log memory from the unit, then left it unplugged. “You asshole — you didn’t use the secure exchange. Cazaux is bound to find_out.”

“I am out of this, Harold,” Fell said. “I am out of this entire operation. I’m getting the hell away from butchers like Cazaux and psychos like Ysidro, and if you had any brains you’d get out too.”

“But what did you say? What did you do?”

“I was going to leave a message on the NSC’s voice mail,” Fell said. “Hardcastle himself answered it. I told him the location of Cazaux’s mansion in Bedminster, and I told him about the hostage he’s got in there.”

“What hostage? What in hell are you talking about?” “He’s holding a woman in a third-floor apartment, Harold. He’s beating the hell out of her.”

‘ “Dark hair, exotic-looking, kind of spacey?” Fell’s expression told Lake that he had guessed correctly. “That’s Cazaux’s astrologer, you idiot. Varga, or Vega — I don’t know the bitch’s fucking name. She’s no hostage, Ted— she likes getting beat up. She gets off on it. You called the authorities to try to rescue her? She’s the one who’s probably been telling Cazaux to do all this in the first place! She’s as weird as he is. They’re like both out of a fuckin’ horror movie.”

“Oh, God…” It made sense now — he thought he was helping her, while all along the woman was going to get her kicks watching Cazaux slice him up into little pieces. Shit, Fell thought, what in the hell am I doing here? “Well, that doesn’t matter,” Fell said, thinking hard and fast. “I’m not doing this for her — I’m doing it for me. I’m tired of standing by and watching Cazaux rip this country apart.”

“So you ratted him out,” Lake said. “Jesus, Fell, our lives aren’t worth spit anymore.”

“We’ve got an escape plan worked out, Harold. Let’s do it. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“I’ve got forty million dollars in options contracts being executed in the next six to ten hours, Ted. I can’t leave. I’ll have to sign a proxy, pay someone to execute the contracts, sign for the cash. I can’t risk this operation with any of that.”

“Harold, I’m out of here,” Fell said. He told him about the woman, about how she had tried to get him to pull a gun on Henri Cazaux and then watch Cazaux kill him. “I told the authorities about Cazaux and how they can find him. If anyone escapes the raid, they’ll try to hunt us down. I want to be safely hidden long before that. I’ll help you get out, too, but if you want to stay I can’t help you.”,

Lake thought about it, but only for a moment — he knew that Fell was right. Cazaux and his cronies were completely out of control, and the slightest screwup would mean instant, deadly retaliation. Even if Fell hadn’t already made the decision for them, Lake knew it was time to get out. “All right, Ted, you’re right,” Lake decided. “Notify the flight crew and the security detail — we leave immediately. I’ll execute the contracts and the cancel orders and have the funds sent by the bank to Townsend at the mansion — he’ll know what to do with the cashier’s check. Jesus, I hope the FBI nails Cazaux, because he will hunt us down for sure.”

Bedminster, New Jersey Three Hours Later

The first guard heard it while it was still a long way off, a heavy, slow rhythmic beating against the sky. He raised his left hand to his ear until the cuff of his left sleeve was even with his lips and said, “Station three, chopper, south, big one.”.

“Copy,” the security shift officer responded. Everyone knew that Tomas Ysidro, the chief of security, would be listening in to the guard’s channel, so responses were quick.

The first guard withdrew a Russian-made monocular nightvision scope from a case at his side and scanned the sky. His line-of-sight visibility was extremely limited, but his job wasn’t to scan the sky, but the treeline, about seventy yards away, and the long gravel driveway leading to the main dirt road. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were thick, scuttling across the sky on strong low-level winds as the summer night storm passed. He could see the glowing yellow eyes of a small animal, a raccoon or possum, scurrying from tree to tree, doing some nocturnal hunting. The night-vision scope always revealed all sorts of animals — deer, foxes, rabbits by the bamful…

… and men. The guard chuckled as he watched one of the other guards emerge from the trees, about a hundred and fifty yards away, zipping up his fly after taking a piss in the trees. He saw a puff of smoke trickle from his mouth — the asshole was smoking on duty with the brass in the house. He was using a light shield around his cigarette so Ysidro or Cazaux wouldn’t see his glowing cig, but the night-vision equipment clearly showed the smoke. If Ysidro saw that, he’d kick his ass. It was a hell of a chance to take just for a lousy cigarette.

He lowered his night-vision binoculars and listened for the helicopter — nothing. “Station three, clear,” he reported.

“Copy.”

The guard relaxed a bit, letting the scope dangle on its neck strap and crossing the Colt AR-15 assault rifle, the semiautomatic version of the standard Army M-16, in his arms. Bedminster had very little air traffic at night, but the estate was just a few miles from Interstate 78 and State Route 206, so they got visitors once in a while. Interstate 78 was the main drag between Newark and Allentown, and choppers and light planes often followed the interstate at night when—

A sudden sound made the guard alert. He put the AR-15 in his hands and dropped to one knee, scanning the treeline for any hint of motion. He knew from Army training that at night the edges of the eye picked up motion better, so he carefully scanned the treeline. He was fully exposed where he was standing — too far away from the house, but close enough to be illuminated by the light from a few windows and too far from the trees to take cover. He reached for the scope…

“What the hell are you doing out in the open like this, asshole?” The guard was so startled he nearly fell over into the wet grass. Tomas Ysidro had succeeded in stepping out of the front door of the house right up beside him, and he didn’t hear a thing. The guard shot to his feet, swinging the AR-15’s muzzle around at Ysidro, who caught the barrel of the rifle and yanked it out of his hands. “Jesus, Vaccarro, what’s with you?” Ysidro asked, giving the rifle back- '

“Thought I heard a noise, sir.”

“Yeah, it was me, burping and farting all the way from the house,” Ysidro said. Cazaux’s third-in-command was carrying a sidearm holstered in a quick-draw shoulder rig, but his hands were full with a burger and a mug of coffee. “Now get the hell out of the light.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What about that chopper?”

“Heard it for about thirty seconds, well to the south,” the guard said. “Didn’t hear it approach. Big one.”.

“Good call — it helps to keep the whole detail on their toes,” Ysidro said. “I’ll send one of the new guys out to spell you in about—”

This time they both heard it — a loud snap! of a twig, on the treeline. Ysidro pushed the guard hard to the right to get him out of the light, the coffee and burger went flying, and a SIG Sauer P226 9-millimeter automatic was in his hands in the blink of an eye. “Call it in, damn it!” Ysidro said in a loud whisper.

“Station three, intruder east on the treeline,” the guard radioed. He took cover behind a tall bush and retrieved the nightvision scope, quickly scanning the—

He saw a lone figure, running toward the house beside the gravel driveway. The guard raised his AR-15, sighted with the scope — then recognized the runner. “Mick, damn it, what the hell are you doing?” the guard whispered into his radio. The running man dropped to the ground, waving his rifle at the treeline. “Mick, answer up!”

“What?” the second guard radioed back — the first guard could see him talk into his left sleeve while holding his earpiece in his left ear. “Was that you talking, Tommy, you asshole?”

“Was that you on the treeline?” the first guard radioed back. He saw the guard named Mick lower his head in nervous exasperation. He lifted his sleeve mike to his lips. “Station three, secure. Stand by and I’ll clear the treeline.” He saw the second guard start to get to his feet, angrily brushing himself off and shouldering his rifle on its strap. “Mick, stay put until I clear the—”

Tommy saw the second guard named Mick suddenly turn toward the treeline, and seconds later he heard another sound — but this one wasn’t a twig.

An unknown voice shouted, “Freeze! Federal agents!”

Mick fumbled with his rifle, but he didn’t get it up to his waist to try a shot from the hip before he heard three quick pop-pop-pop's from a suppressed automatic three-burst submachine gun, and Mick went down.

“Intruders, treeline east — federal agents!” Tommy radioed. He scanned the treeline and saw only one figure, dressed completely in black, with a military-style helmet, ballistic face mask under a pair of night-vision goggles, black fatigues, and black body armor with the words U.S. MARSHAL on the front under a combat harness. “I only see one, treeline east! I—”

The greenish image of the marshal suddenly disappeared in a puff of fire, and the guard dropped the night-vision scope and rubbed the pain from his eyes. The security supervisor inside the mansion had activated the motion-sensing land mines that ringed the compound, and the first marshal was history.

“Lost contact with Davis on the ground team at target thirteen,” the airborne assault leader reported. “I heard a challenge, then shots, then nothing.”

“I’d call that an ‘officer needs assistance,’ ” Deputy Chief Marshal William Landers said. “Should’ve known it would be target thirteen — my unlucky number.” Dressed in full body armor and protective headgear, Landers was aboard one of the three CV-22 PAVE HAMMER tilt-rotor aircraft just outside Cazaux’s Bedminster home. Landers was the number-two man in the U.S. Marshals Service, a twenty-one-year veteran, an experienced field agent, and former commander of the Marshals’ Special Operations Group, also known as SOG. “Let’s go in using assault plan Alpha.” The PAVE HAMMER, formerly one of the Hammerheads’ antismuggling aircraft and still sporting its distinctive Department of Border Security high-visibility orange markings, lifted off from the interstate rest-stop parking lot and leaped into the sky, rotating its wingtip engine nacelles so the two large rotors were pointing at a 45- degree angle for more forward speed.

From other staging areas nearby, two more CV-22 tilt- rotor aircraft lifted off at the same time and raced for the estate. There were several large homes in the Bedminster area described by the unknown informant during his brief phone call, so the Marshals Service had immediately dispatched several agents from the New York City, Philadelphia, and Newark offices into the area to start surveillance on each suspected residence. Unfortunately, it had taken the apparent death of a marshal to find the right one. Now, the three CV-22 aircraft, each carrying ten fully armed SOG agents, were encircling Henri Cazaux’s mansion in the hopes of capturing the world’s most wanted criminal.

Landers’ CV-22 took only two minutes to approach the estate. Flying low and slow, the hybrid airplane-helicopter slowed by swiveling the rotors to full helicopter position. When it was about five hundred yards from the mansion, it activated its bank of four 3,000-candlepower NightSun searchlights and turned them onto the front door of the mansion. Landers, standing between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats, watched their approach through the CV-22’s telescopic TV camera. At two hundred yards, Landers clicked on the public address speaker: “Attention. This is the U.S. Marshals Service. We have a federal search warrant and demand entry. Come out of the house immediately with your hands up.”

“U.S. Marshals, my ass,” Tomas Ysidro said to Henri Cazaux. “Let’s take care of those motherfuckers ourselves, Henri.”

The two terrorists finished donning their own assault uniforms — skin-tight protective black body suit, Reactor combat gloves, balaclava hood, black Hi-Tec trail sneakers, and a combat ALICE harness laden with pistols, knives, grenades, and other tools and devices. “Can’t risk it, especially not with assault aircraft out there,” Cazaux said.

“We play it right, one of those choppers could be ours.”

“I said, we cannot risk it,” Cazaux snapped. “The time to play action hero will come, Tomas, and I want you with me when it comes. But for now, we need to survive to execute the rest of our plan. Execute the escape plan and we will meet in the Catskill ranch in six hours. We’re going after a prize much greater than a few tilt-rotor aircraft,” Cazaux said, extending a hand. Ysidro took it, then they embraced. “Bonne chance, mon ami. ”

“Fuck you too, my friend,” Ysidro said in return. He pulled up his balaclava, then turned to his security supervisor. “Deactivate the land mines for ten seconds after you see the DOOR OPEN light, then turn ’em back on.” His eyes flared for an instant, punctuating his last order: “And I want to hear plenty of fireworks out here or I’ll come back and stuff your nuts down your throat. Hear me?”

“I heard an explosion, then lost contact with Davis,” one of the other ground agents reported. “I’m thinking the place is mined.”

“Shit,” Landers said. “That entire front lawn might be mined — that takes care of our landing zone.” He turned to another person watching the scene below next to him. “Thoughts, Agent Harley?”

U.S. Secret Service Agent Deborah Harley, wearing the same body armor and assault gear as the U.S. Marshals— except her body armor said TREASURY AGENT on the front— studied the TV image carefully. “I don’t see those guards on the rooftop anymore — we’re going to have to assume the roof and that balcony over the front entrance are booby- trapped too. Let’s—”

“Unit One, this is Three, four motorcycles leaving the house at high speed,” one of the other CV-22 pilots radioed. “One each cardinal direction.” Harley and Landers picked up one of the motorcycles barreling northbound, going at least sixty miles an hour straight for the woods.

‘Try to stop them without killing them!” Harley shouted.

“All units, clear to engage riders, try to interdict only, do not shoot to kill.” Landers knew it was a useless command — anytime a weapon was used during a mission like this, death was always a possibility, especially with the weapons the CV-22s had. Trying to wound someone with a weapon designed to destroy an armored vehicle or a building was sometimes just not possible.

The pilot of Landers’ CV-22 pulled the trigger on his control stick to the first detent, which activated the gun camera and slaved both the tilt-rotor aircraft’s Hughes Chain Gun and the thermal sight in the CV-22’s nose to the pilot’s line-of-sight — the forward-looking infrared sight followed the pilot’s head movements, and the Chain Gun slaved itself to the aiming crosshairs superimposed on a clear glass reticle in front of the pilot’s right eye. When the crosshairs settled on a spot just a few feet in front of the motorcycle’s tires, the pilot pulled the trigger to the second detent. A fifty-round burst of cannon fire that sounded like a chain-saw blade cutting through the aircraft’s aluminum skin rattled through the PAVE HAMMER aircraft.

The motorcycle rider obviously saw the Chain Gun’s muzzle flash, because he veered hard left as soon as the cannon fired. The motorcycle skidded on the slippery grass, and the rider threw himself clear as he went down. The motorcycle skidded straight ahead and was instantly turned into scrap metal by cannon fire.

The CV-22 pilot swooped lower. The rider rolled along the ground for several feet before coming to rest in a halfsitting, half-prone position, shaking cobwebs out of his head. He was wearing a dark skin-tight suit with a mask— Harley or Landers couldn’t recognize him. “Turn facedown and spread your arms and legs,” Landers shouted over the PA speaker when they hit the rider with the spotlight. To the pilots, Landers said, “Hover right over him, guys. We’ll fastrope right over him and haul him up with the rescue winch. We’d just better hope he’s not laying right on top of a mine or we’ll—”

“He’s moving… damn it!” the pilot swore. He was distracted enough to lose sight of him as the rider got up and ran underneath the PAVE HAMMER. “Aft gunners, keep an eye out for—”

There was a loud bang! and the CV-22 heeled sharply over to the left. The pilot corrected for the shove, gained a little altitude, and experimentally swung the tilt-rotor aircraft’s tail around so they were facing the forest. No caution lights illuminated, and the aircraft responded normally. “What happened?” he called on interphone. “Someone sing out.”

“Land mine,” one of the aft gunners called out. “The suspect had just reached the edge of the trees when he tripped it. He exploded like a rotten tomato.”

“Well, we know the land mines have been activated again,” Landers said. “Pretty sophisticated — a fucking remote-controlled perimeter defense system. Any doubt we got the right house?”

The guard named Tommy watched the whole thing— watched the motorcycle rider zoom away from the house toward the forest, watched the huge helicopter open up on him, watched the rider do a triple-flip through the air, then watched as he was blown into a hundred pieces by one of the land mines. The big boxy-looking twin-rotor helicopter with airplane wings was now hovering at the edge of the clearing, pointing not quite at the front door but a little off to the right, as if deciding what to do. Tommy had traded his semiautomatic AR-15 for a full-automatic M-16 with a fifty-round magazine and an M206 40-millimeter grenade launcher, and had taken his position at one of the bulletproof polycarbonate front windows inside the mansion.

Suddenly the big chopper’s blinding searchlights swung around and hit the house full force. Tommy lowered his night-vision goggles — they were useless with so much light. A voice came over the chopper’s PA. “Come out of the house with your hands in the air! This is your last warning!”

“Two more of those things, surrounding the house,” someone radioed.

“Did the boss make it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What do we do?” Tommy shouted back over his shoulder. “They got a damned big gun on that thing!”

“Sit tight,” the security supervisor said. “Everyone hold your fire. They won’t use the heavy stuff unless we—”

“What are you doing?” a female voice behind Tommy shouted. Tommy whirled around, pointing the M-16. It was “the witch,” as everyone called her — Cazaux’s squeeze, the crazy woman who lived upstairs. She was wearing a silky red robe. Her long dark hair like a lion’s mane was around her shoulders. The robe was not tied, and her breasts and crotch were exposed. “Why aren’t you attacking?”

“Shut up and get out of here,” Tommy said, pausing to get a good look at the witch’s body. Pretty nice rack, he thought, but she had to be as crazy as they come to be walking around half-naked like that in the middle of a fire- fight. “Go downstairs in the wine cellar until this is over.”

Jo Ann Vega saw the gunsel’s eyes roving over her body before turning back toward the window. Another typical male, she thought angrily. “Listen, you little son of a bitch, get out there and kill them. Avenge Henri.”

“Those are U.S. Marshals out there, and they got heavy stuff. We’ll wait them out until we know the boss is safe.” “Henri is already dead,” the witch said. “I saw him get hit out there.” Tommy swallowed, finding it hard to believe that Henri Cazaux was dead, but he stayed at his position. “You've got to avenge him,” the witch shrieked. “Get out there and kill those federals, now! ”

“I said, shut up, take your big tits downstairs and take cover, lady.”

That did it — the male pig deserved it now. Jo Ann Vega raised her Lorcin .380 automatic and fired three shots into the back of the man’s head from two feet away. There were a few other shots as other gunners nervously fired a few rounds. Vega reached down, pulled the M-16 out of the dead man’s arms, walked quickly to the front door, and swung it open.

“I’ll take care of them for you, Henri, my love,” Vega said aloud. “God how I loathe weak men.” She stepped outside, her robe flying open in the wind. As she emerged out from under the breezeway in front of the house, she leveled the M-16 at the searchlights on the big aircraft on the other side of the expansive lawn and pulled the trigger. Her first shot came the closest, missing the searchlights by only a few feet, but the other shots went high and to the right.

She had fired almost the entire magazine, most of it almost straight up in the air, and was trying to figure out how to launch one of the inch-and-a-half-diameter grenades from the launcher slung under the rifle when the marshals’ aircraft’s cannon opened fire. Three 12.7-millimeter shells hit, one in the head and two in the torso, and Jo Ann Vega was split apart as easily as a hammer hitting a banana. The cannon then sprayed the rest of the front of the house, hitting each and every window with a gunner in it. Then, a long cylindrical pod on the left side of the PAVE HAMMER aircraft popped out of the left sponson, and three rockets ripple-fired into the front of the house, blowing out the front door and creating two more man-sized flaming holes.

Skidding to the left to shield the right side of the aircraft from the gunners in the front of the house, the CV-22 flew toward it. A few shots of automatic gunfire from the upper floors were immediately answered by Chain Gun fire. The Chain Gun then fired a path into the front lawn toward the house, creating a terrific explosion as one of the shells found a land mine close to the house. Two more rockets blasted into the house near the front door, the CV-22 stopped about twenty yards from the front of the house with its nose high in the air, hovered for a few seconds, then veered sharply to the left and climbed over the house.

Leading six U.S. Marshals, Deborah Harley and William Landers jumped off the back cargo ramp of the PAVE HAMMER. Following the chewed-up path created by the Chain Gun, they were safe from land mines. Firing into the windows, most of which were ablaze, Harley and the seven Marshals burst into the house.

The ground floor was decimated. The walls were blackened by smoke and fire, furniture was upended and smashed, and smoking, crumpled bodies lay everywhere. Harley, wearing a gas mask, shot one armed guard running toward the stairs from the kitchen, then ran upstairs. She tossed two tear gas grenades upstairs, then, with more agents behind her, started clearing rooms. She shot two more gunsels stupid enough to have guns in their hand and turned over six more blinded and choking guards to the Marshals.

Clearing the entire mansion took only five minutes of careful searching by twelve U.S. Marshals, and the assault was over. A New Jersey National Guard ordnance-disposal team from nearby Picatinny Arsenal had to come out to create a safe ingress path toward the mansion, but within minutes the cleanup was under way.

Hardcastle arrived about an hour after the raid was over. He admired the large, lumbering PAVE HAMMER hovering nearby. “Good to see you boys back on the job,” he said half-aloud to the ungainly hybrid aircraft — they belonged to the U.S. Navy now, but he’d always think of them as his. Hardcastle then turned to Deborah Harley, checked her TREASURY AGENT body armor, and said with a smile, “It’s good to see you too, Agent Harley. I should have known you were Secret Service. It would explain why you seemed to have the run of the White House, and how you seemed to have access to a lot more intelligence information than the average executive assistant.”

“Vice President Martindale hates Secret Service around him, so I’m less of a bodyguard and more assistant,” Harley said. They were given the all-clear by the Army ordnance- disposal units to reenter the mansion, and Harley began shrugging out of her body armor.

“Have you ID’d the bodies yet?” Hardcastle asked. “Was Cazaux here? Did you get him?”

“Yes, yes, and I think so,” Harley said. She led Hardcastle to a line of corpses outside the mansion, where U.S. Marshals were taking fingerprints and photos of the bodies for identification. “Hired gunners, ex- and retired GIs, a few known felons and mercenaries — Cazaux recruited only the best.” She kicked aside a sheet high enough for Hardcastle to see a mass of blood-caked hair and bloodied but recognizable womanly features. “One woman, might be a local — we’re putting a rush on her ID.”

Harley unzipped a black body bag with three strips of tape on it. The badly bullet-mutilated body of a tall, well- built man was inside — he had been hit several times by cannon fire from one of the CV-22s. “This looks like him, Admiral. One of the Navy flyboys got a little antsy and hit him with his Chain Gun. Based on my best description, I think that’s Henri Cazaux.”

“Fingerprints? Dental records?”

“We’ve already called the FBI,” Harley said. She noticed Hardcastle’s disappointed expression at having the FBI called in, and Harley added, “The Marshals have printed and photoed the bodies, but the FBI Pictures and Prints lab has the best gear to do a positive ID, Ian, and they can do it fast. The only other place to get Cazaux’s ID records is from the Belgian Army or from Interpol, since Cazaux’s never been a guest in an American prison. I know you and Judge Wilkes are having this thing with each other, but you want an iron-clad positive ID, and so you’re talking FBI. The Marshals are working on it, top priority. But I might be able to give you something for the Executive Committee or the White House.”

Harley checked a notebook retrieved from a camouflage field briefcase, then knelt next to the corpse: “Cazaux was supposed to have had paratrooper tattoos on both his left and right hand between the thumb and forefinger.” She picked up the grisly bullet-shattered hands and removed the thin Reactor gloves. One of the nearby Marshals had to turn away at the sight of the mutilated body, but Harley handled it as casually as if she were giving a baby a bath. “Here’s one tattoo on his left hand… and here’s a scar on his right hand from laser surgery. It looked like he was having the tattoos removed. They were apparently executing a well- rehearsed escape plan — we’ve found vehicles, disguises, even a little two-man helicopter stashed nearby.”

“Damn,” Colonel Marc Sheehan said in admiration. “You got him. You actually got Henri Cazaux!”

“I’m not celebrating until those fingerprints and dental records match,” Hardcastle said. “In the meantime I’ve got some information on the guy who called with information on Cazaux.”

“Compare notes with this gent,” Harley suggested. She stepped over to one of the Marshals taking notes over the bodies. “Admiral Hardcastle, meet Timothy Lassen, chief deputy U.S. Marshal from Sacramento. He’s been tracking the money from an aircraft transaction a few days ago. I radioed him about the raid. Tim, the Admiral’s got a name for you.”

The Marshal checked a notebook, and before Hardcastle had a chance to speak, said, “Ted Fell. Works for a Wall Street greaser named Harold Lake.”

“Jesus,” Hardcastle exclaimed. As fast as things were happening, Hardcastle thought, the Marshals and people like Deborah Harley were moving even faster. “How in the hell did you know, Deputy Lassen?”

“Good ol’-fashioned pure dumb luck,” Lassen admitted.

“Lake brokered several large aircraft deals for buyers all over the country. At first blush they all checked out — aerial fire-fighters, corporate planes, parts, that kind of thing. But one buyer didn’t know it was Lake who was brokering the deal, and he told me some stories about Lake — about how he was in debt up to his chin, about how he was sure to get caught in some money-laundering scheme someday. I checked further. Turns out Lake’s financial fortunes changed right after Cazaux’s attack on Memphis.” “Changed? I thought you said he was already in debt.”

“I did,” Lassen explained. “He was bankrupt, worse than bankrupt. But two days before the attack on Universal Express, Lake writes this complicated and outrageous stock option deal, in effect betting that Universal Express stock is going to drop in value, and I mean really drop — he wants to trade hundreds of thousands of shares of stock.”

“Lake had that kind of money just lying around?”

“You don’t need a lot of cash to do one of these options deals,” Lassen said. “Four or five million was enough to get the ball rolling.”

“Where could he get that kind of cash?”

“You won’t believe it,” Lassen said. “He borrows the money from McSorley, Brennan McSorley — the president of Universal Equity Services, with whom he used to do business — they had a falling-out some time back. Talk about balls — Lake makes a bet that Universal Equity stock is going to take a hit, using Universal’s money! It’s like betting the ‘Don’t Come’ line with your mother rolling the dice.

“Anyway, two days after Lake makes this option deal, Cazaux blows up Universal Express. Universal stock falls through the floor. Lake now owns all this stock for pennies on the dollar, and he turns right around and sells it when the stock recovers. Lake is now rolling in money — something like seventy million dollars’ worth.”

“Maybe I’d better open an account with this guy,” Harley said.

“Maybe not, Debbie,” Lassen said. “Lake is flush now, but instead of going back to stocks and bonds, he goes into aircraft leasing — big aircraft, cargo aircraft. One of the planes he buys is from this place in Atlanta, where those two FBI guys were killed in that hangar. Another one of his planes is shot down over Fort Worth. And guess what — one of the unexploded bombs recovered from the Foil; Worth bombing matches a military lot-number of several cluster bomb units stolen from a Nevada Navy arsenal several days prior.”

“Christ — Harold Lake and this Ted Fell are the bankers for Henri Cazaux?”

“It’s looking that way,” Lassen agreed. “But apparently Fell had a change of heart — I guess working with a psychopath like Cazaux will do that to a man, no matter how good the money is. So Harold Lake dropped a dime on Henri Cazaux, eh, Admiral?”

“The phone call was made from Lake’s private office in Manhattan,” Hardcastle said. “I turned the information over to Judge Wilkes and the FBI before I came out here. As usual, I haven’t heard a thing. What about other aircraft that Lake and Fell purchased, Agent Lassen? Have you kept track of them?”

“Unfortunately, I dropped the aircraft line when they checked out in my initial investigation,” Lassen replied. “When I matched Lake with the Fort Worth plane, I tried going back to pick up their trails. One I found — it’s one of the smaller bizjets, going through an avionics refit up in Newburgh. So far I haven’t found the rest yet. They still might be legitimate.”

“And they might not,” Hardcastle said. “We’ve got to find those planes.”

“Newburgh might be the place to start,” Lassen said eagerly. “Maybe we can take one of your awesome birds up there. They’re surely a couple of mean-looking choppers.”

“Sounds good,” Hardcastle said. He had his aide Marc Sheehan radio for a CV-22 PAVE HAMMER to pick them up on the hastily prepared helipad on the front lawn. While Sheehan was on the radio, he received another message and gave it to Hardcastle, who turned to Lassen and Harley and said, “Guess what, guys? Judge Wilkes herself is on the way. She wants everyone to stop what they’re doing and wait until her and her team check in on the scene.”

“Well, I think things have just ground to a halt here,” Lassen said. “FBI’s in charge of a terrorist incident, not the Marshals or Secret Service.”

“Do you have enough to arrest Lake or Fell, Agent Lassen?”

“Definitely,” Lassen replied. “You gave me the caller ID with Lake’s number, telling us about Cazaux in this place — that makes him a witness. I’ve circumstantially linked Lake with the aircraft used in two of the bombings.”

“Then I’d suggest you go pick him up,” Hardcastle said. “We can explain things to the FBI later. Besides, you have to make room for Judge Wilkes’ chopper.”

“Gotcha,” Lassen said. He waited until the big white- andorange PAVE HAMMER touched down, then plugged his ears against the noise and trotted off. No sooner had the aircraft roared off out of sight than a small blue-and-white Bell JetRanger zoomed into view, circled the landing zone until a small smoke marker was set out for them, then rapidly touched down.

Judge Lani Wilkes, Director of the FBI, was the first off the JetRanger, and she was ready to explode with anger. Two agents followed her off, both armed with Uzi submachine guns. She didn’t wait for the screech of her helicopter’s turbine engine to subside before laying into Hardcastle: “You’re coming with me, Admiral. You and Agent Harley and Agent Landers there and anyone else who was responsible for this raid.”

William Landers, still wearing his body armor and still carrying his H & K MP5 submachine gun, asked, “Would you like a briefing on the operation before we depart, Judge?”

“Shut up, Bill,” Wilkes interjected. “You know damned well that SOG was involving itself in an FBI-directed investigation, yet you proceeded without my authorization. I’m responsible for all the casualties here, and I can assure you, I’m going to rake you over the coals for each and every one of them. Hardcastle, where was that… that thing, that tilt-rotor thing of yours going?”

“It doesn’t belong to me, Judge Wilkes,” Hardcastle — replied, yawning. “It belongs to the Navy. We borrowed it for this operation.”

“This operation?… This massacre, you mean!” Wilkes shouted. “Where the fuck was that aircraft going?” “Following up on the tip we got this morning.”

“We checked those offices in Manhattan. They look like they’ve been evacuated.”

“We think we know where Harold Lake and Ted Fell might’ve gone,” Deborah Harley said. “Agents of the Marshals Service are going to check it out.”

“I told everyone to stay put,” Wilkes seethed. “The FBI is in charge of this investigation, Hardcastle. You’re interfering. You’re not authorized to conduct any arrests or investigations without my office’s authorization. I’m going to bust all—”

“We think we got Henri Cazaux, Judge,” Hardcastle announced.

Wilkes stopped in midsentence, staring in complete shock first at Hardcastle, then at Landers and Harley, and finally at the line of body bags in front of the mansion. “Where is he?” she asked skeptically, her voice a weak gasp. “Show me.” She turned to one of her aides and said, “Get a P and P satellite ID unit in here and secure this area. Get everyone out of that house. Now! Move it, move it!”

Wilkes followed Harley and Landers over to the body bag with the bullet-shattered body of Henri Cazaux inside, and Landers explained how they made their identification. “It’s not confirmed,” Landers reminded her, “but from my operational notes, one of the bodies we recovered could be him. He was trying to escape in a motorcycle along with three others; we got one of the other riders. Two escaped. State Police and the sheriffs are out looking for them.” He then explained what happened to the fourth rider, and gave a thumbnail sketch of the raid itself.

When he was finished, one of his agents handed Landers a note. “We ID’d the woman killed in the raid,” he said. “Jo Ann Rocci, a.k.a. Jo Ann Vega, address, Newburgh, New York.”

“That’s where the Marshals are headed to see if they can find Lake and Fell,” Hardcastle said. “This place and Newburgh look like Cazaux’s entire U.S. base of operations.”

“I hope congratulations are in order,” Wilkes said as she examined the body, then ordered it to be zipped up and guarded, “but you still violated my procedures. I expected no less from you, Admiral Hardcastle, and I’m very disappointed with the Secret Service and the Marshals for letting themselves be led around by the nose by you, Admiral. Well, this will be your last cowboy stunt, Hardcastle, I promise you. We have a debriefing at the Justice Department, all of you. The Bureau takes charge of these bodies and this crime scene as of right now. Let’s go.”

Stewart International Airport, Newburgh, New York That Same Time

The roadblocks were still in place, but all cars were no longer being stopped and searched. The limousine driver simply showed the bored rent-a-cop an airport pass, and they were waved in. Things had definitely calmed down here at Stewart International Airport, and the commuter flights were flying again.

To Harold Lake, it made perfect sense — Henri Cazaux abandoned Newburgh, so why not use it? So what if it had State Police, Army, Air Force, and FBI swarming all around it? Evading the authorities was Cazaux’s headache, not his. The presence of all these uniformed men gave Lake great peace of mind.

Of course, being surrounded by his own personal security detail helped. Using a portion of the money he was skimming from the option contract deals he was doing for Cazaux, Lake had hired his own small, well-equipped army and air force. Starting with a new personal secretary — a beautiful statuesque redhead who could take Gregg dictation, type sixty words a minute, and had a Browning 9-millimeter automatic hidden in a holster beside her ample left breast — Lake had a new chauffeur and bodyguard, a new armored Lincoln sedan, inside and outside guards at his East Side apartment, a Gulfstream III jet with a six- thousand-mile range, and a ranch in central Brazil with yet another contingent of guards stationed there.

All this security had cost him one-third of all the money he had skimmed from Cazaux over the past few weeks, but it was well worth it. Henri Cazaux was relentless. Many of these guards were nothing more than trip wires — their quick, silent deaths would hopefully alert the inner guards that Cazaux was on the hunt and closing in. Lake had no illusions about evading Cazaux — he just hoped that the world’s law enforcement authorities and his own security force would get Cazaux before he got too close.

The first thing Lake had done when he bought the Gulf- stream was get the registration number changed and get it repainted, which guaranteed both that it would look different and would be out of sight until he needed it. He didn’t recognize the plane himself when they drove up to it, and he was about to question the driver when the chief of his security detail, a big, football-player tight-end-looking guy named Mantooth, emerged from it when the sedan pulled up..

The sedan stopped several yards away from the plane until it was quickly searched, then it pulled up right to the foot of the open airstair door. Mantooth stood in front of the sedan’s door, blocking the view of anyone from the main commercial air terminal, but he did not open it himself—‘Lake and Fell had to open their own doors. According to Mantooth, the bodyguards’ job was to stay on the lookout with their hands free to reach for their guns or subdue an attacker, not open doors or carry luggage. “Everything’s ready, Mr. Lake,” Mantooth said. “We’re ready to go.”

“Then let’s go,” Lake said and quickly stepped aboard the aircraft. The doors were closed as soon as Fell stepped aboard. The big, roomy VIP interior of the Gulfstream already made him feel safe, and the increasing snarl of the bizjet’s two big turbofans and the sweet, husky smell of jet fuel helped to soothe his jangled nerves. Lake met the ship’s stewardess, a brunette named Diane, who led him to the big, light-gray-leather, fully reclining master’s chair on the right center side, buckled him in, and fixed him a Bloody Mary as the jet began to move. Ted Fell busied himself at the desk behind Lake, checking that the phone and fax machine were working. “Forget all that, Ted,” Lake said. “No one is going to call or fax us — that stuffs not even hooked up.”

Fell looked at Lake as if he were surprised at his boss’s words; then, realizing he was right and that these phones had never been activated, fearing that Cazaux could easily find out about their escape plans that way, he averted his eyes to the richly carpeted floor and put his hands on his lap. “It… it doesn’t seem real,” Fell said. “We’re on the run. We’re never coming back.”

“At least not as long as Cazaux, Townsend, or Ysidro are walking the earth — which hopefully won’t be for too long,” Lake said. “Just think of it as an extended and very, very secluded vacation, Ted. We’ll start developing our offshore banking and brokerage ties in a year or so, making sure that everything is numbered and convoluted enough so no one can trace the trading activity to us. We’ll be back in the trading pits before you know it. Meanwhile we work on our tans while—” Just then the big Gulfstream came to a stop, the engines wound down to low idle power, and the intercom phone beeped. Fell reached for it, but Lake picked it up. “What’s going on…?”

“Orders from the tower, sir,” the pilot said. “Takeoff clearances have been canceled for all flights. They’re ordering everyone back to the ramp.”

“Why the hell are they doing that?”

“Don’t know, sir,” the pilot responded. “I don’t see any police activity.”

Lake knew why. He shot a murderous glare at Fell and said, “Damn it, Ted, the fucking FBI tracked us down.” “But how? I made the call from New York. No one knows about this plane or its location, Harold. Maybe we were followed from the city. What are we going to do?” “How the hell should I know? Let me think,” Lake said angrily. He searched out the large oval window near him, looking to see if any police were converging on them, but he was facing away from the main terminal. The Gulfstream was on the parallel taxiway approaching the end of the runway, with a United Airlines MD-80 the only plane ahead of them. On the intercom phone, Lake asked, “What are your instructions, pilot?”

“All aircraft were told to back-taxi on the runway back to their original locations, sir,” the pilot responded. “We’ll be back-taxiing shortly and be back on the ramp in about five minutes.”

“Are they blocking the runway?” Lake asked. There was a rather long, uncomfortable pause as the flight crew was obviously considering the possible ramifications of this question. Lake shouted, “Well… ?”

“No, sir, nothing is blocking this runway,” the pilot finally replied.

“Good. When that United Airlines plane gets out of the way, you will ignore all instructions from the tower and make the takeoff,” Lake said. “That’s an order.”

“Sir, I can’t follow an order like that.”

“If you don’t, I’ll come up there and shoot you in the back of the head,” Lake said as calmly and as truthfully as he could. He carried a gun, but he had fired it only once, several months ago, and wasn’t even sure if it was loaded. Mantooth, who was sitting in a seat near the airstair, heard Lake’s words but did not register any surprise at all — it looked as if it was okay with him if his employer shot the pilots.

“Then I hope you can fly this plane, sir,” the pilot said, “without a windshield. If you shoot or try to open the cockpit door, we’ll stomp on the brakes, bust open the wind-, screens, jump out, and run like hell.”

Lake obviously wasn’t very good at threatening anyone with bodily harm. “Okay, let’s try it this way,” Lake said. “Make the takeoff and I’ll give you twenty thousand dollars.”

“Fifty thousand,” the pilot immediately responded.

“Each,” the copilot chimed in.

“Carter, Luce, you boneheads are getting paid plenty to fly this machine — do as Mr. Lake instructs you, or I’ll shoot you myself,” a deep, menacing voice said behind them. It was the chief of the security company, the bodyguard named Mantooth. “Take your seat, Mr. Lake.”

“Are we taking off or not?”

“My job is to protect you, Mr. Lake,” Mantooth said. “You’re assuming it’s the FBI or some other law enforcement agency out there, but I’ve seen no evidence of that. This airfield has obviously been compromised — whatever’s going on, I think you’ll be safer in the air than on the ground. We’ll deal with the FA A later. Now sit down and strap in. And if there’s a problem, let me know — there’s no reason for you to talk to the pilots. Is that clear, Mr. Lake?” Lake was very unaccustomed to taking orders from anyone, but he could do nothing else but nod silently at the big bodyguard — he obviously knew what he was doing.

The Gulfstream moved up into the hammerhead, poised for takeoff as soon as the airliner ahead pulled off. Lake could just barely see the MD-80 leave the runway when the pilot lined the Gulfstream up on the centerline, spooled up the engines to takeoff power, and released the…

… but suddenly Lake could see a bright light shining on the wing’s leading edges and on the pavement beside his jet, and even before the pilot again chopped the power to idle, he knew they weren’t going to make it. On the intercom, he heard, “Emergency vehicles on the runway, sir. We’re blocked.”

Mantooth had drawn the biggest, meanest-looking automatic pistol Lake had ever seen from a shoulder rig, but Lake said, “Put it away, Mantooth, it’s the FBI out there. You have a permit for that, I assume?”

“Of course, Mr. Lake, but you’d better let me—”

“Put the gun in your holster and take off your jacket so they see your gun first thing,” Lake said. “Everyone stays. calm, everyone does as they’re told, no one resists, and no one, I repeat, no one says anything. Not a word. If they tell you you’re under arrest, you immediately say, ‘I want to speak with my attorney right now.’ Got it?” To the pilots behind the closed cockpit doors, Lake shouted, “Shut ’em down right here,” then he undogged the entry hatch.

“No! Shut only the left engine down!” Mantooth shouted to the cockpit. He turned to Lake angrily: “Sir, you stay put. I’ll see what they want.”

“This is my problem, Mantooth.”

“No, it’s my problem,” Mantooth said. “You hired me to protect you, sir. I’m a practicing attorney here in New York State as well as former military. We cooperate, but you don’t have to expose yourself to danger or get your rights violated. Now, stay out—”

“You’re a good man, Mantooth,” Lake said, “and your people are first-rate, but this shit started long before you came on board.”

“Sir, you may have gotten yourself in deep shit, but now your problems are my problems,” Mantooth said. “If you have to surrender to the police, we’ll do it in a controlled, orderly manner.”

“I need the government’s cooperation… their protection… to stay alive,” Lake said. “I have to give them whatever they want.”

“Why do you need government protection, sir?”

“It’s too complicated,” Lake said. “I… I’ve got to go out there.”

“I said, stay put, and that’s an order,” Mantooth said. He nodded to Diane, the stewardess, who had produced a 10- millimeter automatic pistol from nowhere and was guarding the emergency exits, making sure no one came in from behind them. “I’m your attorney in New York State, representing you. You don’t have to say a word. Understand me?” Lake nodded — for the first time in a long time, he felt as if things were truly under control. Mantooth deployed the airstairs and stepped outside.

A huge, boxy-looking aircraft with two huge helicopter rotors mounted on the tips of short fat wings — certainly not a standard little helicopter — hovered just a few hundred yards in front of the Gulfstream, shining a large searchlight right at them. It slowly began to descend onto the runway as a yellow-and-blue New York State Police cruiser with lights flashing sped onto the runway, turning around in front of the Gulfstream and parking about twenty yards in front of the jet’s nose. A lone trooper got out of the car_r right hand on the butt of his service weapon, partially shielding himself with his car door. On the car’s PA speaker, he asked, “How many others in the aircraft?”

“Five,” Mantooth shouted back.

“Any armed?”

“One, a private security employee.”

“Have him, Harold Lake, and Ted Fell step out, hands in sight.” Mantooth turned and motioned toward the entry door — but instead of anyone stepping outside, the airstairs retracted and the hatch closed tight. “I said I want Lake and Fell out here — right now!” the trooper shouted.

But Mantooth wasn’t watching the trooper — he was watching the approaching aircraft. He recognized it as a V- 22 Osprey, used by the Border Security Force for stopping drug smugglers a few years earlier. A door opened on the right side and several armed men got out… and at that same moment, both rear passenger doors on the State Police car burst open, two men rolled out carrying submachine guns, aimed their guns at the V-22, and opened fire.

Mantooth pounded on the side of the Gulfstream and shouted, “Get out of here, now!” He drew his sidearm, but it was too late — he saw the red glint of a laser aiming beam flash across his eyes, and then the whole world turned black.

The Gulfstream’s right engine roared almost to full power, and the nose did a tight pirouette to the right, the left wingtip barely edging over the roof of the sedan. Gregory Townsend, dressed as a New York State trooper, calmly reached into the front seat of the car, withdrew a LAWS (Light Antitank Weapon System) rocket, raised its sights, waited until the Gulfstream was about seventy yards away, aimed, and fired. The Gulfstream III bizjet exploded in a huge fireball, singeing the man’s hair and eyebrows with the heat. Townsend dropped the spent fiberglass launcher tube, ignored the heat, the destruction, and his two dead comrades behind him, calmly stepped into the sedan, and raced away. He was picked up by a waiting helicopter on the other side of the airport and was gone minutes later with no possible pursuit.

The White House That Same Time

The bedside phone was programmed with a gentle wakeup cycle: the ring started out soft and barely audible, and gradually rose in intensity, depending on the urgency of the call as determined by the White House operator. On all but a national defense-level emergency call, the President usually needed three or four good rings to wake up — but not the First Lady. At the first gentle buzz of the phone she was quickly and silently out of bed, her lean, agile body barely flexing the super-king-size mattress. By the second ring, without turning on a light, she had her Armani robe and slippers on and was all the way around to the President’s side of the bed. By the third Ting she had touched the ACKNOWLEDGE button on the phone and lightly touched her husband’s shoulder: “I’ll be outside,” she said simply, giving him a peck on the cheek as he struggled to shake out the cobwebs.

The First Lady walked briskly across the bedroom, opened one of the double doors, and stepped out into the outer apartment, leaving the door partially open. Theodore, the President’s valet, was just showing a steward inside, carrying a tray with a pot of strong black Kona and walnut- covered pastries for the President, a pot of Earl Grey tea and cold cucumber slices for the First Lady, and a small stack of messages for the President’s immediate attention. A Secret Service agent stood by the door, hands folded in front of his body, casually scanning the outer apartment and occasionally talking into the microphone mounted inside his left sleeve, reporting to Inside Security that everything was secure. “Good morning, ma’am,” Theodore greeted her pleasantly.

“Good morning,” the First Lady said distractedly. She immediately snatched the messages off the tray, sat down on the sofa, and began to read as the tray was placed on the table before her and her tea was poured. Theodore had been the White House valet for two Administrations now, and it was damned unusual to be greeted by the First Lady when these early-morning crisis calls came in. Most First Ladies stayed in the inner apartment and waited for the hubbub to die down in the outer apartment and their own personal staff to arrive and brief them — not this First Lady. She always got up ahead of her husband, never bothered to dress before coming out, always helped herself to the messages from the Communication Center, and rarely waited for her husband to come out before making notes or phone calls or even going out to the Yellow Oval Room, the main living room in the center of the second floor, to talk to the Chief of Staff or whoever else might be out there waiting for a reply.

“Anyone outside yet, Theodore?” the First Lady asked.

“No, ma’am,” the valet replied.

The First Lady picked up the phone beside the sofa. She heard the standard “Yes, Mr. President” from the operator, silently suffered the gender gaffe, and said, “Location of the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Attorney General.”

“One moment, ma’am… the Chief of Staff is en route, ETA five minutes. The Deputy Attorney General is also en route, ETA fifteen minutes.”

“Ask the FBI Director, the Attorney General, and the Communications Director to report to the White House immediately,” the First Lady said and hung up. The word “ask” was, of course, superfluous — it was an order, not a request. Besides, the First Lady thought angrily, if the President had to be awakened, the damned staff had better be wide awake and in their seats by the time he was up. “You can go in and see to the President, Theodore,” the First Lady said without looking up from her reading.

“Yes, ma’am.” The Secret Service agent reported that he was leaving the door, then walked briskly over to the door of the inner apartment, and went inside, followed by the valet. Another Secret Service agent, a woman this time, took his place at the outer apartment door and reported the room secure.

A few moments later, wearing a short-sleeved college sweatshirt, jogging pants, and running shoes without socks, his hair slicked back with cold water, the President emerged from the inner apartment. “I really could’ve used another four hours’ sleep today,” he said, yawning. “Is this a coffee call or not?”

“It’s a coffee call,” the First Lady said.

“Great,” the President muttered. “Coffee calls” meant he should have coffee because he probably wasn’t going to get any sleep the rest of the morning. “What’s the beef now? Not another Cazaux attack, I hope.”

“Bad news and not-so-bad news,” the First Lady said, handing her husband the messages. “A plane carrying a TV crew was accidentally shot down by the Air Force.”

The President shook his head in exasperation, reaching for his coffee and stuffing a pastry in his mouth. “Ah, jeez…” “It happened earlier this morning, but the staff decided not to wake you about it until later — I think that was an error in judgment. You should have been called.”

“I agree,” the President muttered, not really agreeing with her — he was thankful for every bit of sleep he was allowed to get these days. “What’s the not-so-bad news?” “The FBI thinks they got Henri Cazaux.”

“Hot damn!” the President crowed. “That ain’t not-so- bad news, honey, that’s great news! Dead, I hope?”

“Dead,” the First Lady said. “Killed in a shoot-out at an estate in northern New Jersey, in a raid organized by the U.S. Marshals Service and Admiral Hardcastle.”

“That Hardcastle is an arrogant sonofabitch,” the President said happily, “but I could kiss him on the damned lips if he engineered that raid.”

“The problem is, we didn’t engineer it,” the First Lady said coldly. “We weren’t briefed by Judge Wilkes or Deputy AG Lowe about the operation, so we can only assume that Hardcastle exceeded his authority and freelanced this raid.”

“Baby doll, I don’t really care,” the President said, “as long as that Belgian bastard is dead. We need to get confirmation on this, and they better do it quick — maybe we can get the morning news shows.”

“You are not going to show this kind… of glee on international TV,” the First Lady decided. “You are going to praise the FBI, the Justice Department, Governor Seale of New Jersey — I’m sure there were some New Jersey cops in on the raid too — and the Marshals Service for their efforts. No mention whatsoever of Hardcastle.” The First Lady paused momentarily, then added, “Except when it comes to an explanation of this accidental shooting of that civilian plane. The message stated the civilian plane was at fault and that the pilot who fired the missile killed himself by flying his plane into the ocean…”

“Oh, my…” the President exclaimed, reaching for a muffin now.

“… and we’ll put Hardcastle’s fingerprints all over that screwup,” the First Lady said, her mind turning to high gear. “This will prove that Judge Wilkes was right all along: the FBI was better suited to solve this Cazaux problem after all, and that Hardcastle’s plan to use military forces was a failure right from the start. You see, we’ve got to wipe your fingerprints off this military idea.”

“It ain’t gonna matter, sweetie,” the President drawled casually, sipping coffee. “It’s over. We can go back to normal now.”

“What matters, dear, is the political fallout. You approved using Hardcastle, so it’s your fault if innocent people got killed. We’ve got to portray that fucker Hardcastle as a loose cannon, a maverick… I know, we’ll put him up in front of a Congressional panel.” The First Lady’s legal

mind was turning; she was in full damage-control mode: “If Hardcastle’s a witness, he can’t talk to the press. You may have to strip him of his authority, maybe even fire him.” “That’s easy,” the President said, swallowing the last of the muffin. “No one likes him anyway. What I need to do is get back on the road, honey. I’ve got an election to win yet. Kemp and Bennett have been on the move in the east all during this Cazaux thing, Wilson and Brown have been slam-dunking me on the west coast, and Dole’s been in Kansas whipping up the midwest against me — I’ve been stuck here in Washington too long.”

“I told you before, hiding behind the trappings of power doesn’t look good,” the First lady said. “If you simply declare the emergency over, some might say it’s political. Let Lowe and Wilkes and the terrorism committee make a statement to the press declaring the air defense emergency over, and have Hardcastle’s office release a statement taking the fighters and the surface-to-air missiles off alert status pending the investigation of the accident. The press will listen to Lowe and Wilkes. When the press starts wondering why you haven’t gone on the road yet, suddenly they’ll find you on a six-state ‘fact-finding mission,’ beginning in California. But let the staff take the heat. I told you before.” “I know, I know… let public opinion make the tough decisions,” the President said. “Don’t make headlines — embrace them.”

“Right,” the First Lady said. “And we need to make our peace with the producers of the TV show that had their crew shot down by Hardcastle’s goons — we might have to feed them an exclusive interview from the White House or from Air Force One while we’re on the road.”

“Let’s do it on Air Force One — that always impresses the hell out of the media.”

“We’ll decide that later,” the First Lady said dismissively. “Again, it’s important to emphasize that Hardcastle’s mismanagement caused the accident — the Air Force crews were following orders. The pressure Hardcastle was creating with these ’round-the-clock patrols and missiles everywhere caused this terrible accident. Remember that.” “Gotcha,” the President said. “I’m gonna go take a nap for an hour while the staff gets their act together.”

“Let’s get the photos done first,” the First Lady reminded him.

“Photos?”

“Of you and me, up in the middle of the night, working after being notified of this terrible tragedy,” the First Lady said, reaching for the phone. “We’ve got to show the people we’re on the job, and need to show them ratty sweatshirts and unshaven faces. Remember: You’re concerned over the accident. Look concerned. You share their pain.” The President sighed but nodded okay. Sometimes even he had to admit his wife was a bit much.

U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Deputy Attorney General Washington, D.C Four Hours Later

“I’m glad this is over,” Deputy Attorney General Elizabeth Lowe said during the day’s first meeting of the President’s Executive Committee on Terrorism. “If this got any bloodier… well, I’m just glad it’s over.” Left unsaid were the. words “It might really hurt the President’s reelection chances,” but everyone present in the Oval Office knew what Lowe meant to say. To Ian Hardcastle, Lowe said, “Admiral, the President is meeting with the producers of that trash TV show ‘Whispers.’ What’s the final opinion as to the cause of the accident — and what happened to the pilot who fired the missile?”

“Captain Humphrey killed himself, plain and simple,” Lieutenant Colonel A1 Vincenti said to the Deputy Attorney General. “He was overcome with grief because of the accidental shoot-down, and he flew out over the ocean and crashed his plane where he wouldn’t hurt anyone else.”

The room got very quiet at that point — but not for very long. “Jesus, what a damned mess,” someone muttered. Vincenti angrily searched for whoever it was that spoke, but all he saw were averted eyes. Finally one of the Assistant Secretaries of Defense that Vincenti did not recognize said, “Did he have a family? A wife and kids?”

“Tom Humphrey was a newlywed,” Vincenti replied. ‘They’re — she’s — expecting her first.”

“How the hell could this happen, Admiral Hardcastle?” Ralph Mersky, the Secretary of Transportation, asked. “This was a tragic but avoidable accident, in my opinion. The Air Force has very specific procedures to follow during an intercept — and they weren’t followed.”

“It was an accidental missile launch. Secretary Mersky,” Admiral Ian Hardcastle responded. “He made a mistake, that’s all. They were chasing a hostile aircraft.”

“It was a TV news plane, for God’s sake! They identified themselves.”

“It was violating the law and flying like a hostile aircraft, with its transponder and lights off,” Hardcastle said. “The fighter leader got disorientated.”

“Screwed the pooch, you mean.”

“I mean, got disorientated, ” Hardcastle snapped. “You should know about spatial disorientation, Mr. Mersky— you”re a licensed pilot. Mundy lost control of his plane due to the sudden flash of light from the TV crew on board the Learjet and because of spatial disorientation, and Humphrey reacted as if his leader had just gotten hit by hostile fire. It was a mistake.”

“A damned costly mistake,” Lowe interjected. “Admiral, we’ve received word that Congress is going to begin an investigation of the shoot-down incident, and you’ve been subpoenaed to appear.” She nodded to one of her aides, who handed a document to Hardcastle. He did not open it, but handed it to Sheehan — he was so furious, he thought he would tear it up into tiny pieces if he even touched it. “Until the matter has been resolved, your duties and responsibilities with the Executive Committee on Terrorism have been suspended, effective immediately.”

“What?” Hardcastle retorted. “You’ve suspended me? Why?”.,

“We’ve been heavily criticized for your approach to solving this problem, Admiral,” Lowe said. “Your tactics regarding the air defense setup simply havn’t worked — the accident tonight near Atlantic City was a good example. In addition, your actions concerning the raid on that mansion in New Jersey, although probably successful, were beyond your authority.”

“Secretary Lowe, I did what I had to do.”

“As we all knew you would, Admiral,” Lowe said, averting her eyes so Hardcastle could not see the contempt in them. Yes, we all knew you’d come in with guns blazing and the Bill of Rights be damned, the Deputy Attorney General thought. I just wished we made a stronger connection between you and Martindale. There was still time to build that, Lowe reminded herself. “I’m sorry, Admiral. The Congressional investigation will commence shortly; we can assist you in obtaining legal counsel.” Lowe turned to Vincenti and said, “Colonel Vincenti, you’re under similar subpoena, as an expert witness, so like Admiral Hardcastle, you’re prevented from talking with the media'about the incident.

“The President has directed that the Air Force will make a statement about the accidental shoot-down,” Lowe told the rest of her advisers seated around her, “expressing our condolences to all the families of that TV crew who suffered a loss.” It was obvious that the President wanted to distance himself from that situation as well, Lowe thought — yes, the crew on that Lear screwed up, but if there was some political hay to be made out of his sorrow for the deaths suffered, the President wanted to do it. “General Skye…?”

“First of all, ma’am, if I may, we should offer condolences to the family of Captain Humphrey, the F-16 pilot lost after the accident,” General Charles Skye replied. Skye was the fifty-eight-year-old “triple-hat” commander of U.S. Space Command, U.S. Aerospace Defense Command, and the North American Air Defense Command, charged with the air defense of the continental United States, North America, and all U.S. assets in space. Tall, distinguished, and completely no-nonsense, Skye showed his exasperation at these endless meetings for the entire world to see. “It was obvious that the remorse and guilt he felt caused him to crash his aircraft into the sea.”

“General…”

“If you only offer condolences to the TV crew that violated the law and caused the accident to occur in the first place, ma’am, you and the President will lose a lot of faith from your military supporters,” Skye said. “Captain Humphrey, his wife and kid, and his unit deserve better.”

“I didn’t forget, General,” Lowe shot back angrily. “We weren’t only going to offer our condolences just to the TV crew. Thank you for reminding me.”

But there was not much chance of General Skye’s taking the hint. “I’ll go to Atlantic City and meet with the unit commander myself.”

“I’d like to accompany you, General,” Hardcastle said immediately.

“Same here, General,” Vincenti echoed.

“Permission granted, gents,” Skye said, “if the Justice Department or the Senate or whoever wants a piece of your ass lets you come out and pay your respects. Thank you. We’ll arrange to talk with the TV people later.”

“I’m so glad we got that settled,” Lowe said, rolling her eyes. “Now, about dismantling the air defense stuff…” “What?” Hardcastle retorted. “I think that’s a bit premature, Miss Lowe.”

“That’s a real stupid idea,” Skye said, not bothering to use polite words in this meeting. “Real big mistake. The fighters are the first line of defense — you’ve gotta have eyes up there to see who’s coming down on you.”

“General, perhaps you didn’t understand — we got Henri Cazaux,” FBI Director Lani Wilkes said. “The emergency is over.”

“Tell that to Lake, Fell, and that Gulfstream crew up in Newburgh,” Hardcastle said. “It was a summary execution all the way — maybe it wasn’t Cazaux, but it was probably one of his men.”

“Cazaux’s operation has been blown away, Admiral,” Wilkes said. “We got his mansion, several of his soldiers, his bimbo, and his banker. We’ve got a line on several million dollars belonging to Cazaux’s organization — he’s frozen, bankrupt.”

“We can’t account for several aircraft that Lake purchased,” Hardcastle said, “and several of the weapons stolen from Naval Air Station Fallon that have been linked to Cazaux. He’s still got to be considered dangerous.”

“Cazaux or not, Judge Wilkes, if the Commander in Chief orders me to take the air defense stuff down, I’ll do it,” Skye said. “I haven’t received such an order, so they stay. It’s that simple.”

“I’m concerned that there will be more accidents if we have all these missiles and fighters in the air, especially with air traffic controls lifted,” Transportation Secretary Mersky said. “Besides, the fighters didn’t help over Atlantic City or over Fort Worth, did they?”.

“You don’t turn these boys loose to do their jobs, Mr. Mersky, and the job won’t get done,” Skye said. “You set up an air cordon and tell civilians they can operate inside the cordon, they better understand that if they play games and dick around, they’ll get their asses shot off, pure and simple.”

“General, the President is afraid to publicly announce that the emergency is over, because he feels, and I concur, that such an announcement will only attract the copycat bombers or Cazaux’s lieutenants out there to blow up a terminal or airliner,” Deputy Attorney General Lowe said. “Instead, we want to recommend to the President to quickly but quietly take down the air defense network and return the air traffic system in this country back to normal. Airport security will still be at maximum levels, and we want to implement an air marshal program again, but we want to do away with the special air cordons, the military weapons in place around the airports under Class B airspace, and all military control of access to the air traffic control system.”

“The President wants a gradual increase in the number of flights,” Mersky added. “I’ll concede that giving access to uncontrolled or VFR air traffic should be phased in over a much longer time frame, but the President’s top priority is to do everything he can to encourage the airlines to start flying again.”

“General Lowe, Secretary Mersky, if all you propose is allowed to happen, the military won’t be able to stop a Cazaux type again,” Hardcastle said. “There are just too many aircraft out there doing suspicious or even downright illegal things.”

“The only way to make sure we can pick a terrorist flight out from all the rest of the inbound flights is to increase the number of interceptors and decrease the number of flights until the two balance out,” Colonel Vincenti added.

“And we’re telling you, Colonel, that’s not what the President wants, and that’s not what the American people want,” Elizabeth Lowe said finally. “Besides, it’s not the military’s job to find and stop these terrorists — it’s my job, and the FBI’s job.

“I’ll pass along your reservations, General Skye, Admiral Hardcastle, but I’m recommending to the President that we immediately ground all fighter patrols over the United States.”

“Maybe we should go tell the President our opinions together, General Lowe,” Skye suggested.

“General, the^purpose of having this committee is so a horde of people with a horde of different opinions aren’t marching in and out of the Oval Office all day,” Lowe said, refusing to let the four-star Air Force general bully her around. “My job as chairman of the Executive Committee on Terrorism is not only to coordinate day-to-day antiterrorist operations, but to analyze the threshold of danger existing in the country, determine what are the best possible options to deal with the danger, and present my opinions to the President. -

“In my opinion and in the opinion of the majority of members of this committee, the danger has subsided to a sufficient level, and the hazards of continued military interceptor and military air traffic control have increased to such! a dangerous level, that we feel we can recommend that the military’s involvement in this emergency can be substan- daily decreased.”

“General Lowe, I caution you about using the President’s wishes to form the basis of this committee’s policy decisions,” Hardcastle interjected. “The President wants everything back to normal — we all do. But we feel the time’s not right. At least let’s wait a few more weeks until the FBI analyzes Cazaux’s financial records from Lake’s computers, sifts through the debris at the mansion in New Jersey, tracks down whoever killed Lake and Fell in Newburgh, and bags more members of Cazaux’s organization.”

“This committee is not a Presidential rubber stamp, Admiral,” Lowe snapped. “Our respective staffs have been working overtime on this problem, and we’ve all come up with the same conclusion: we don’t need the military anymore.”

“In my opinion we never did,” FBI Director Wilkes said. “All we needed was a little more cooperation, and this situation probably could’ve been solved earlier.”

“We don’t want to totally dismantle the emergency system or cut out the military,” Mersky said. He opened his staff’s summary sheet and went on: “I propose the following: we keep all military surveillance in place except for the fighter interceptors. We keep the short-range ground-based air defense systems in place, namely the mobile Avenger Stinger systems, but deactivate all Patriot and HAWK systems. Airport and aircraft security will stay at maximum levels, with security situations reevaluated daily on a case- by-case basis. We deactivate all emergency air cordons in Class B airspace, but we mandate that all aircraft in Class B airspace must be on a flight plan — no aircraft allowed in Class B airspace with pop-up clearances.”

“Any other discussion?” Lowe asked.

“Discussion seems to be pointless,” Skye said.

“Very well,” Lowe said. “I move that Secretary Mer- sky’s and the Department of Transportation’s recommendations be adopted by the committee and presented to the President immediately.” The motion was seconded and approved. The Secretary of Defense’s representative voted in the affirmative for General Skye, and, because he had been suspended from the Executive Committee on Terrorism, Hardcastle’s negative vote was counted as an abstention. “Thank you all. Our next meeting will be tomorrow morning, unless the situation changes. General Skye, I don’t think we’ll require your presence unless a member of the committee requests it.”

“Fine with me, General Lowe,” Skye said. “This little game of power politics is a total waste of my friggin’ time anyway. But I’ll tell you this, Miss Lowe: I’m sending my strongest reservations about this committee’s actions up my chain of command. I’m advising the Chief of Staff of the Air Force that your recommendations do not reflect my opinion, and I’ll ask that he present my opinions to the Secretary of the Air Force and on to the White House— frankly, I don’t trust you to give the President the word for me. It’s nothing personal, General Lowe…” Skye paused, looked at Lowe, then shrugged and said, “Okay, it is personal. In my humble and insignificant opinion, any person who lets her people, even guys like Hardcastle, hang out to dry like you did and ignores all the danger signs around her is an asshole — ma’am. And any committee who allows all of the above to happen on their watch should be publicly kicked in the ass.”

“I encourage free expression in my meetings, General Skye,” Lowe said tightly, “but now I’m giving you fair warning — get control of your tongue and your attitude before they get you into serious trouble.”

“My comments are totally on the record, ma’am — I trust they’ll stay there.”

“Count on it, General,” Lowe responded bitterly.

“Then my apologies if I’ve offended anyone — you know who you are,” Skye said, collecting his papers and rising to depart. “I hope the President knows what he’s doing, that’s all.” He got to his feet and dismissed himself from the meeting; Hardcastle, Vincenti, and Sheehan followed.

“I hope you get around to busting Skye’s nuts when you get a chance,” Wilkes said after the rest of the committee had departed.

“Skye’s already dug himself a hole he can’t crawl out of,” Lowe said. “We’ve got a bigger concern to talk about — namely, the President’s fund-raiser in California.”

“Security will be airtight,” Lani Wilkes said. “The President will be perfectly safe, especially once we get those missiles and fighters put away.”

“I agree,” Lowe said. “But I need all your best efforts on making sure that the body you got in the morgue is Cazaux, and that his organization is shut down. I’m putting the President’s security in your hands because you said you could handle it.”

“It’ll be taken care of, General Lowe,” Wilkes assured her.

“It’d better be,” Lowe said. “The President’s advance team deploys in less than two days from now, and once they’re on the road, every crazy and nut case will be out there hunting the President down.” She silently looked at the FBI Director for a moment, then added, “Frankly, Judge, you’ve been one step behind the Marshals and Hardcastle this entire crisis. In case you’ve forgotten, there’s an election coming up next year, and how the President reacts to this crisis is important. He wants to be seen in the sky and on the road again, and he doesn’t want to be seen hiding behind F-16 fighters or Patriot missiles — or too many government agents.”

Pease International Tradeport Portsmouth, New Hampshire Two Nights Later

Pease International Tradeport was once Pease Air Force Base, a small but vital Strategic Air Command bomber base, closed in 1990 and converted to civilian use. The eight large hangars that once housed B-52 Stratofortress bombers and KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling tankers now housed a collection of small fixed-base operators servicing light civilian planes — one hangar now held two dozen light planes in the same space that once could house only one B-52. The base operations building had been converted into a Bar Harbor Airlines commuter terminal, flying passengers throughout New England.

The original company which gave Pease Tradeport its “international” designation was Lufthansa Airlines, who in 1992 built a modern office complex in nearby Kittery, Maine, and converted three of the large maintenance hangars at Pease to a jumbo aircraft refurbishment and inspection facility, one of the most modern facilities of its kind in the world. The location was perfect — within an hour’s flying time of six of the top ten busiest airports in North America, close to many European and Asian transpolar flight routes, good schools, generous tax incentives, no income tax, a rural atmosphere but close to Boston and the high-tech Route 128 Corridor of northeastern Massachusetts. Pease International Tradeport was on the verge of becoming a major American airport, a vital reliever to already crowded and expensive Boston-Logan International.

Its popularity and success soon became its number-one problem. There had been two major crashes per year since the facility was opened.

Seacoast-area residents, backwoods environmentalists, and perturbed rich Massachusetts vacationers with beach homes in the Vineyard and Narragansett kicked the golden goose and told Lufthansa to scale back; indignant Lufthansa did them one better and left for the open arms, tax breaks, and relative peace of Raleigh, North Carolina. Pease International Tradeport became a virtual ghost town practically overnight.

But there were still high-tech heavy jet maintenance facilities at Pease, so occasionally the three-thousand-pound Cessnas would get a visit from one of their three-hundred- thousand-pound cousins. The busiest destination was Portsmouth Air, which leased about a third of Lufthansa’s aircraft refurbishment facility at Pease but still struggled to stay in business.

The Boeing 747–200 jetliner with Nippon Air livery had been flown into Pease the day after its prepurchase inspection at Mojave, and since then was locked away inside one of the remodeled hangars, one big enough to house the entire plane instead of leaving a tail section sticking out through a hole in the hangar doors. The hangars were designed to allow environmentally safe aircraft painting, completely sealing toxic fumes in and allowing multiple painting crews to work at the same time. Tanker trucks filled with paint were brought in to repaint the airliner, and work continued on for several days.

Pease’s air traffic control tower closed at nine P.M., and by nightfall the airport was silent, but it was not unusual to get after-hours traffic. At several minutes past one A.M., a Piper Aerostar twin-engine plane self-announced on Pease’s tower frequency, entered right traffic for runway 30, and lined up to land. Since Pease was one of the pilot’s favorite and frequent destinations, he knew it was best to stay high and delay landing until after midfield, still with six thousand feet of runway remaining, in order to shorten the taxi time to the general aviation ramp on the northern half of the field. No problems with the landing, no problems taxiing clear of the runway and heading toward the dead-quiet transient parking ramp. The pilot noticed activity at the Portsmouth Air maintenance facility, but that was normal — those guys worked day and night on the few jumbo jets that came in these days.

Everything was going fine until the pilot, by himself in jthe Aerostar, decided to shut off the electric fuel-boost pumps after turning onto the parallel taxiway. Seconds later, both engines sputtered and quit, vapor-locked. He nearly drained his battery trying to restart an engine. Disgusted, he braked to a halt, shut his plane down except for the strobes to keep another plane from ramming his Aerostar, grabbed his briefcase, locked up, and headed toward the terminal to find someone to help him tow his six- thousand-pound plane to the ramp.

The general aviation FBO and the Bar Harbor Airlines terminals were long closed. The only other sign of life at the airport was Portsmouth Air, so he walked over to the huge hangar complex. The complex was surrounded by a twelve-foot fence topped with barbed wire, but a Cypher- Lock gate near the parking lot was not fully closed, so the pilot walked in. The front door to the main office was locked. He walked around the offices to the west side of the hangar itself and tried another door — locked too. But just as. he walked past it to find another door, the steel-sheathed l door banged open, someone loudly hawked and spit outside, then let the door go — whoever it was never saw the pilot behind it. The Aerostar pilot caught the door before it closed and stepped inside the hangar…

… and what he saw inside made his jaw drop in surprise — it was Air Force One, the President of the United States’ plane!

The huge Boeing 747 airliner completely filled the hangar. White on the top, light blue and black on the bottom, with a dark-blue accent running from the upper half of the nose section and sweeping along the mid-fuselage windows to the tail, it was an awesome sight to behold. The pilot, a professor at Dartmouth, knew that Air Force One used to come to Pease quite often when President Bush would fly here on his way to his family retreat in Kenneb- unkport years ago, but he never had the chance to see him or his entourage arrive — now he was getting a good firsthand look at one of the most distinctive planes in the world!

He could plainly see the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA on the side of the fuselage, although the lettering looked… well, a bit sloppy, not even or symmetrical at all. He was near the tail section, and he could see the Air Force chevron at the base of the vertical stabilizer, and the. serial number 28000 and the American flag midway up the vertical stabilizer, painted as if the staff side were forward and the flag were stretched taut and blowing aft. The smell of paint fumes was very strong — it looked as if Air Force One was getting a touchup or a good cleaning. Funny — the pilot never would’ve guessed they’d do maintenance on Air Force Ones up here in little Portsmouth, New Hampshire, although they’d obviously keep that kind of information se- i cret.

The pilot began walking toward the front of the plane, under the right wingtip. He passed a few workers, but they didn’t pay too much attention to him. He stood along the wall of the hangar, watching a guy painting the Seal of the President of the United States near the nose, and, like the lettering on top, the paint job on the seal was passable but not very professional. It looked okay from a distance, but up close it—

“Excuse me, sir,” he heard. The pilot turned and was confronted by a tall, very mean-looking guy with short- cropped hair, wearing a dark-green flight suit. He looked like a Marine Corps aviator. He looked mean and nasty enough to kill with his bare hands, but fortunately he seemed in a good — or at least a forgiving — mood. “This is a restricted area.”

“I’m sorry,” the Aerostar pilot said. “I’m Doctor Clemenz, professor of history at Dartmouth. “Clemens with a z, ” he added, as if often asked how to spell his last name to make it jive with the unusual pronunciation. “My Aerostar is stuck out there on the taxiway. I was looking for someone who might give me a tow.”

“No problem, sir,” the Marine said with a thick Brooklyn accent. “But I better get you out of this area before we all get our dicks in a wringer.” He escorted the pilot along the wall toward the front of the hangar. Workers saw the big Marine, wore shocked expressions on their faces, and stepped toward him but retreated after a few steps.

“You guys actually service Air Force One here?”

“Not much use in denying it, is there, sir?” the Marine said jovially. “But please keep it under your hat, all right, sir? I’ve already got a lot to explain — like how you got inside here.”

“Front gate was ajar, side door was opened by someone wanting to get a breath of fresh air… listen, am I under arrest? I probably shouldn’t say anything else if I am.”

“I’m not placing you under arrest, sir — unless you try to run.”

“I assure you, I won’t… uh, I'm sorry, your name…?”

“Captain Cook, Dave Cook,” the big guy said, extending a hand.

Clemenz accepted it. “Marines?” Cook nodded. “I always thought the Air Force took care of Air Force One.”

“The Air Force flies it — the Marines are supposed to guard it,” Cook said after a short, uncomfortable pause. Clemenz nodded, accepting that explanation — the Marines guarded the White House, why not Air Force One? “The operative words here are ‘supposed to.’ ”

“Shit happens,” Clemenz said, trying to console the soldier and sorry that his trespassing was probably going to get the friendly Marine into big trouble, maybe even ruin. his career.

“Yes, sir, it surely does,” the big Marine said. He led the doctor through a doorway into an office, past more startled men. Most of them wore civilian clothes but were very heavily armed. Cook waved them away before they could grab Clemenz, dismissing them with a sharp shake of his head — Clemenz could easily feel the daggers darting from Cook’s blazing eyes to the guards, silently admonishing them for their miss. He grabbed one man tightly by his upper arm and whispered something in his ear, then let him go. “Have a seat, Doctor Clemenz. Coffee? Tea?”

“Not unless I’m going to be here awhile, Captain,” Clemenz said with a wry smile, afraid that’s exactly \yhat was going to happen. ‘

“I don’t think so, Doctor Clemenz,” the soldier said, picking up a clipboard and finding a pencil in a desk drawer. He copied Clemenz’s Hanover, New Hampshire, address, employment information, and names and addresses of any relatives and friends nearby — no relatives in Portsmouth, only a few acquaintances. Clemenz enjoyed fishing and lobstering and came to Portsmouth often, but he was fairly new to the area and usually came only in the summer, so he knew few people in town. He said he shared a house with another professor up in York Harbor. “How were you going to get to the house, sir?”

“Airport car,” Clemenz said. “Airport lets us park a car here for fifty dollars a month. It’s just an old beat-up Dat- sun. It’s parked right over by the DOT building… is this going to take much longer, Captain? I left my strobes on so nobody would run over my Aerostar. Can you help me tow it to the main parking ramp? I don’t mean to rush you, since I was doing the trespassing, but it’s getting late and I—”

“Of course, sir,” Cook replied. “If you don’t mind, sir, we’ll follow you to your house in York Harbor, just to verify your destination. Will that be a problem, sir?”

“No… no, I suppose not…”

“Was there someone you needed to call? Leave a message at the FBO about your plane?”

“When they see the plane parked out front, they’ll know it’s, me.”

“Very well. I think we’re done here,” Cook said. “I would like to take some pictures for our files. Do you have any objections to that?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Good. And sir, I’ll probably say this two or three times before you leave, but you must be absolutely clear on this: what you’ve seen tonight must be kept secret. I’m sure you can easily imagine the danger if any terrorists, saboteurs, or kooks knew that Air Force One is serviced here. Our security is usually very good, but if an amateur can stumble into this place, imagine what a trained terrorist squad can do.”

“I understand perfectly,” Clemenz said earnestly.

“Good,” Cook said. “Let’s get some pictures and we’ll wrap this up. This way, sir.” Cook led the way through the door back out to the main hangar, allowing Clemenz to pass in front of him…

… and when the professor exited the office, he saw about three dozen men, the workers that had been working on Air Force One, standing a few paces outside the door, backdropped by Air Force One itself towering over them. They were looking at Clemenz with a collective expression mix of surprise and… What? Pity? until Captain Cook emerged from the office. Then their expressions changed to one of downright, undisguised, genuine fear.

Clemenz somehow knew he was a dead man even before he felt the hand grasp his hair, yank his head up and forward, and felt the sharp prick against the back of his neck at the base of his skull as the knife was driven up along the top of his vertebrae and into the base of his brain. He gave a short cry, not necessarily from the pain as much as from the surprise and the resignation. He did not feel anything else after that.

Henri Cazaux let the corpse dangle at the end of his knife for several seconds, letting all the workers and security men get a good look. No one dared avert his eyes, although one man mercifully fainted when he saw the body quiver in its last throes of death. “This man just walked in here!” Cazaux shouted. “He just walked in! No one bothered to stop him, challenge him, even look at him, although he is obviously not wearing an identification badge or the clothing code of the day. He is going to hang here in front of. the hangar as a reminder to every one of you to keep vigilant. Now get back to work — the timetable is going to be moved up. Move! ”

Armed guards were taking three men away in handcuffs as Tomas Ysidro and Gregory Townsend came up to Cazaux. Cazaux tossed the dead professor off his knife against the wall — the man had died so quickly that almost no blood seeped from the knife wound. “Sorry about that, Henri,” Ysidro said casually, kicking the corpse so the small trickle of blood from the wound dripped on the man’s clothes and not onto the hangar floor. “If I would’ve gotten here earlier I could have supervised these bozos better, but I can’t be at two places at once.”

“Can you be in position by tomorrow night?” Cazaux asked.

Townsend thought for a moment; then: “I think so, Henri. We’ll need the Shorts to move the guys and their equipment, but I think we—”

“Don’t think, Townsend,” Cazaux said menacingly. “Can you be in position by tomorrow night or not?”

“I’d prefer two nights to get everyone into proper position, Henri,” Townsend said, “but the answer is yes. I can be ready to go tomorrow night.”

“This man will be missed in two nights’ time, perhaps sooner — we must go tomorrow night,” Cazaux said, wiping his blade clean and putting it back into its hidden sheath.

“You will leave as soon as you can get the Shorts loaded. I’ll see to the loading and preflight here.”

“You’ll take care of the flight plan, Henri?” Townsend asked. “Remember the FAA order 7210.3—we need sixteen hours.”

“I remember, Townie, I remember,” Cazaux said, his mind racing several hours ahead.

Since Air Force One was a SAM, or Special Air Mission, military aircraft, a flight plan for their flight to Washington could be filed only through a special teletype system. Fortunately, they had access to such a terminal at Pease International Tradeport. The 157th Air Refueling Group, a small New Hampshire Air National Guard aerial refueling tanker unit, used the system for the Atlantic Tanker Task Force, which coordinated all aerial refuelings for flights from Europe to North America, including for Air Force One. Also, Pease Tradeport, when it used to be Pease Air Force Base, was a favorite vacation stop for President George Bush and his family, so a terminal was installed and kept at the airport. Cazaux’s organization had bribed several of the Guardsmen at the airport to do a variety of things, such as alert them when any state or federal inspectors were inbound, monitor the status of the state police patrols, and procure fuel and other aircraft parts and supplies.

For the flight of their fake Air Force One, they would have one of the Air National Guard controllers input a military flight plan into the system, originating not from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but from Manchester, New Hampshire, the site of an upcoming and widely publicized debate between the expected 1996 presidential candidates, organized by the League of Women Voters. The flight plan, using the call sign SAM-2800 (SAM stood for Special Air Mission, the standard call sign for military flights such as this; 2800 was the tail number of one of the two VC-25A Air Force Ones in the inventory), had to be filed not earlier than sixteen hours from the proposed takeoff time, although the exact takeoff time could not be recorded.

Immediately after the counterfeit Air Force One was airborne, the Air National Guard controller would issue an ALNOT, or Alert Notification message, to a special office in the FAA Air Traffic Control Command Center known as ATM-200, requesting special priority handling and revising SAM-2800’s call sign to Executive One Foxtrot, signifying that a member of the President’s family or White House staff (but not the President himself — that would be too easy to verify) was on board the aircraft. The ALNOT would be retransmitted by ATM-200 to the various Air Route Traffic Control Centers along the route of flight as well as the. Air Force Air Defense Sector Operations Command Centers, letting everyone know that a member of the President’s entourage was airborne. The plan after that was that the controller would be knocked unconscious so he could claim that he was overpowered and his equipment used without his knowledge — of course, Cazaux would see to it that he was executed to keep him quiet.

“I’ll take care of all those details,” Cazaux was saying. “Now get moving.” Townsend and Ysidro turned to leave, but Cazaux stopped them by adding, “And I want no more slipups. Security will be tight and everyone will follow the plan to the letter, or I will spend the rest of my days on earth hunting down and executing each and every one of you. Now get going.”