Storming Heaven

Andrews Air Force Base, Camp Springs, Maryland Early the Next Morning

Tomas Ysidro had made his own green active-duty U.S. military ID card long ago — his was Army, showing his home base as the Defense Language School, the Presidio of Monterey, California; he carried a set of orders showing him as a visiting instructor in Farsi and Mandarin to the 89th Air Wing to teach some of the aircrew members some basic foreign language skills for an upcoming presidential trip. But getting onto Andrews Air Force Base, the place where the President of the United States’ planes were kept, was child’s play, and he didn’t need to show any of his carefully prepared credentials. The guards at the Virginia Avenue gate were still doing hundred-percent ID checks, but there were no dogs, no searches, no questions asked. The smiling Air Force bitch in her toy-soldier blue fatigues, silly black beret, white dickey, and pretty spit- shined boots waved the car right on through after a quick flash of the card, and four international terrorists were on a major military air base with ease.

“No vehicle checks or searches,” one of the terrorists remarked after they were well past the guard gate. “Not even a thorough check of your card.”

Ysidro had been careful to scuff up his ID card and not make it look too new or too perfect, but the apparent lack of diligence did puzzle him. Weren’t they concerned about Cazaux any longer? “We can still be monitored electronically,” Ysidro warned, “so everyone stay sharp.” That did not need repeating — driving right into the jaws of the enemy, the ones that were out looking for them — was not a comforting or casual activity at all. But the apparent lax security made them breathe a bit easier and helped them concentrate on the tasks ahead.

They drove north on Virginia Avenue and followed the signs about a half-mile to the base golf course — and found, to their amazement, that it was open. It had been closed for days because the Army had placed an entire Patriot missile battery there, assigned to protect the Capitol, Andrews, Washington National, Dulles, and other high-value targets in the D.C. area from air attack. Ysidro turned right onto South Wheeling Road and there it was, right in front of them — an entire Patriot missile battery, less than a thousand feet away on Wyoming Road. The Army Patriot missile encampment, within sight of the end of runway 36 Left, was well in the process of being dismantled — the back nine holes of the course were still not usable, but the front nine were open, and golfers were out there just a good five- wood shot or two away from some of the Patriot launchers.

“Well, what the fuck…” Ysidro said, surprised and pleased by what he saw. “Maybe we should’ve hidden our gear in fuckin’ golf bags.” They could see all eight Patriot missile launchers lowered and configured for road march, and the large flat “drive-in-theater” antenna array still raised but with soldiers working on and in front of it — obviously it wasn’t radiating, because that man in front of the array would be fried to a crisp by the amount of electromagnetic energy that thing put out when it was radiating. The electrical power plant vehicle was still running and the command vehicle was apparently still manned, but the Patriot site itself was apparently decommissioned. Ysidro’s assignment had been to destroy it.

“What do we do now?” one of the commandos asked.

“We do what we’ve been assigned to do — it’ll just be a hell of a lot easier,” Ysidro said. “The electrical truck is still running, so this could just be a maintenance period— the Patriot site at Fort Belvoir or Dulles might be taking up the slack.” Two other commando squads had been assigned to take out the Patriot sites at Davison Army Air Field at Fort Belvoir and at Washington-Dulles International Airport, but if those Patriot sites were closed down as well, they would have a much easier time of it. At last check, the Hawk missile sites at East Potomac Island Park Golf Course near George Washington University, Rock Creek Golf Course near Walter Reed Hospital, and the East Capitol Country Club golf course were still operational; other teams were assigned to take out those sites as well. But this Patriot site at Andrews was the Integrated Command Center, or ICC, which controlled all of the Hawk and Avenger air defense units in the region.

The terrorist group took a right turn on Wisconsin Road, a left onto South Perimeter Road, and headed for the housing area and east runway side. Andrews Air Force Base had two, two-mile-long parallel runways, with the main part of the base on the west and the enlisted and junior officer housing area to the east. The fighter alert area was on the south side of the east runway, with two fighters on alert with ladders attached, ready to go; two more fighters were parked nearby, but neither appeared to have weapons loaded. Surprisingly, the guards at the entrance to the housing area had been removed. They doubled back onto South Perimeter Road, heading for the main base side. A small lake south of the west runway had numerous creeks and ditches flowing into it, all leading toward the airfield — that was the best way to approach the runways.

They drove north on Arnold Avenue along the rows of hangars on the main base side. Every Air Force VIP plane in the inventory was visible — small jets to big helicopters to a huge white E-4 Airborne Command Post, a modified 747 resembling Air Force One but specially designed for the President and military leaders to run World War III from the air. They did not see an Air Force One itself. But then again, they didn’t need to — they were bringing their own.

They turned right on C Street and tried to go north on Eagle Road, the street right in front of the newer hangars, but roadblocks ahead steered them back onto Arnold Avenue — that told them that the hangars behind that section of Eagle Road had the really valuable hardware. Still, there were no patrols, only barricades. The two hangars that were accessible from the one block of Eagle Road they were allowed to drive on had a clear view of the alert fighter area across the airfield, and by using binoculars they could even see the upraised Patriot antenna array to the southwest, pointing westward toward the capital.

“Let’s remote-control everything from here — no use in risking exposure if it ain’t necessary,” Ysidro said. “We’ll use the short-range radio detonators for maximum efficiency, and we’ll station ourselves within missile range of the runways in case we’re needed.”

“May not be able to remote the Patriot stuff,” one of the other terrorists said. He pointed to a red-and-white block building at the end of the runway. “ILS transmitter. Could interfere with the radio signal, or it could activate the detonator as soon as the mine is armed.”

“Fine — we’ll do it face-to-face. I like it that way,” Ysidro said. “Security is a joke anyway — this looks like a walk in the park. If this isn’t some kind of setup, this will be the easiest job we’ve ever had to do.”

Atlantic City International Airport Later That Evening

At precisely sunset, the formation leader radioed, “Ready, ready… now. Three, clear to depart.”

“Three,” Lieutenant Colonel A1 Vincenti acknowledged, gently pulled on the control stick and put in a notch of power. He was flying the third F-16 ADF Fighting Falcon in a V-formation of five, passing over the base headquarters building near the Air National Guard ramp at Atlantic City Airport. From the ground, — the V-formation stayed intact but with a large gap between the leader and the number-five aircraft to the right of the leader — the “Missing Man” formation, signifying that one of their comrades had died in the line of duty. Vincenti, as the main fighter representative to the Executive Committee on Terrorism in charge of the Cazaux emergency, had requested and was given the honor, of flying as the “missing man” in the 177th Fighter Group’s memorial-service flyover for Tom Humphrey, who had died in the crash of his F-16.

Vincenti climbed to two thousand feet, turned on his transponder so air traffic control could pick him up on radar, then checked in with Atlantic City Approach Control: “Atlantic City Approach, Devil Zero-Three, overhead Atlantic City International, passing two for five thousand.”

“Devil-03, radar contact, climb and maintain five thousand, expect twenty minutes holding at NAADA intersection for arriving and departing traffic.”

The delay made sense — in fact, he was hoping for it. Air Traffic Control had shut down all traffic in and out of Atlantic City International for thirty minutes so the New Jersey Air National Guard could do this memorial, so it was only fair that all the civilian traffic be allowed to depart. “Roger, A-City,” Vincenti radioed back. “Devil-03 cancel IFR, requesting radar flight following, destination Atlantic City International via the Beltway tour, overfly if able.”

“Roger, — 03, remain this squawk and frequency, maintain VFR routes and altitudes on the Beltway tour, I’ve got your request for an overfly clearance.”

“-03, roger.”

It was far more restrictive now than when Vincenti flew F-4Es out of Atlantic City Airport a million years ago, but it’s still a pretty good ride, even at dusk, he thought — that is, if the lights are on. He knew that exterior illumination of most of the historic buildings and monuments of Washington, D.C., had been turned off during the Cazaux terrorist emergency; no announcement had been made, but rumor had it that the President was going to order the National Park Service to lift this restriction. It was pretty lucky for him to be flying at all, let alone as part of the Air National Guard unit’s memorial flight. Few guys want to fly Missing Man formations — they believe it tempts Fate to fly close formation in a high-performance bird in tribute to a fellow pilot that… well, erred. Crashing and burning in combat is one thing — getting excited and accidentally blowing away an identified civilian plane, and then committing suicide, was not cool. Everyone was sorry for Humphrey and his family, but no one wanted to get too close to his bad jujus. That’s the way fighter jocks are.

Of course, the Learjet shoot-down and Humphrey’s subsequent crash was not being called a suicide or a screwup, at least not by the Air Force or the White House. Along with the usual “the investigation is under way, I can’t comment on that,” Hardcastle and Vincenti had explained to the press all about the TV crew’s errors, about how they broke the law, stopping short of saying they deserved to get shot. A few veiled hints about mechanical or electrical failure on the F-16 because of the constant flying during the emergency, some more hints about incorrect “switchology,” mixed with more comments like “if it had been Cazaux, Atlantic City International would have been a smoking hole otherwise.” The press needed massaging. More than most military men, Hardcastle — once the leader of one of the most controversial paramilitary organizations in American history, the Hammerheads — understood that it was important not to tell the press the facts, but to meter information bit by bit, letting them form their own conclusions that, not too coincidentally, were the ones you wanted them to have. It didn’t always work, but it was an efficient way to go.

Humphrey was a victim of circumstance. Yes, he screwed up. Military jets did not have cockpit voice recorders or flight data recorders, so everything was speculative until the final accident board’s report. Hardcastle often used familiar “goofs” to explain failures in multimil- lion-dollar military hardware: like causing an accident while using a cellular phone in busy rush-hour traffic. Humphrey had wanted to film the Learjet with his gun camera during the intercept; he saw the floodlight hit his leader’s cockpit canopy, saw him go out of control temporarily, assumed that it was an attack, and launched a missile. Under the emergency situation, such a response was understandable. Of course, Hardcastle explained, the deaths of the “Whispers” TV crew were unfortunate, but it was probably avoidable — it wouldn’t have happened if the TV. and Learjet crews had been following the law and not out for a scoop. For once it looked like blame was going to be placed on the right party.

By being up in Atlantic City instead of in Washington, Vincenti was really just postponing the inevitable: the intensive debriefing that Judge Lani Wilkes was giving Hardcastle and Harley right now in Washington. Vincenti’s turn was next. These all-day, half-the-night sessions were nine-!tenths retribution and punishment and one-tenth information. Wilkes was claiming that there were tons of evidence to make everyone, including the President of the United States, believe the body of the motorcycle rider shot by the V-22 crew was Henri Cazaux. The gun camera videotape from the third V-22 of one of the two riders that escaped was inconclusive. It was a thermal image, almost useless for trying to identify someone. But in Vincenti’s opinion, any one of the two that got away could have been Henri Cazaux. Wilkes and the rest of the Justice Department disagreed. To A1 Vincenti, it was all just educated guesses and assumptions — and politics, of course. The more this air defense emergency went on, the more uneasy it made the public. The President needed this emergency over with soonest.

Vincenti admired Harley for standing up to Wilkes and most of the rest of the FBI. She was definitely someone he wanted to get to know better. He still wasn’t exactly clear what her relationship to former Vice President Kevin Mar- tindale really was, but Vincenti never liked to take a backseat when it came to the pursuit of women. He could take on Martindale any day of the week. That aside, he wished Harley would at least take some pride in knowing that Cazaux’s organization was busted up, his sources of funds cut off and confiscated, his butt being chased closer and closer every hour. Vincenti hoped Cazaux would dive back under whatever rock he crawled out from — Harley didn’t believe he would. But the U.S. Marshals and the FBI were hot on Cazaux’s organization’s heels, so if Cazaux’s wasn’t one of the bullet-riddled bodies she pulled from the mansion in New Jersey, he was as good as captured anyway.

Cambridge-Dorchester Airport, Maryland That Same Time

The little airport on Choptank Bay in south-central Maryland was a busy and favorite destination for fishermen from all over the northeast United States, but at dusk it was as dark and as quiet as the countryside around it. The Patuxent River Naval Air Station was just thirty miles southwest, where the U.S. Navy trains all of its test pilots and conducts tests of new and unusual aircraft — it was the Navy equivalent of the Air Force’s Edwards Air Force Base — and the area just south of the little airport was often filled with Navy jets dogfighting or practicing aerobatics or unusual flight maneuvers. But promptly at nine P.M., at the very latest, the Navy jets went home. No one dared disturb the peaceful little Chesapeake Bay resort town in summertime unless you had a lot of political or financial pull…

… or unless you were an international terrorist, and you didn’t give a damn.

Inside a hangar rented for this mission, Gregory Townsend checked the attachment points of the devices under the wings of the single-engine Cessna 172. He had slung one BLU-93 fuel-air explosive canister under each wing, just outboard of the wing strut. It was a simple two- lug attachment, connected to a mechanical-pyrotechnic squib that used small explosive charges to pull the lugs out of the attachment points and let the bombs go. The charges were bigger than what was needed and would probably punch a hole in the Cessna’s thin aluminum wing, but that didn’t matter as long as the bombs were able to free-fall properly. As the bombs fell, a simple cable would pull an arming pin out of the canister. Three seconds later the canister would disperse the explosive vapor, and two seconds* after that three baseball-sized bomblets in the tail cone of the canister would detonate in the center of the vapor cloud, creating an explosion equivalent to ten thousand pounds of TNT. The fuel-air explosive blast would incinerate anything within a thousand feet of it and destroy or damage almost any structure within a half-mile.

Once the canisters were properly attached and checked, Townsend and two of his helpers threw tarps over the wings to hide the canisters and towed the aircraft south down the parking ramp and onto the parallel taxiway to a runup pad at the end of runway 34, using a rented pickup truck and a nylon tow strap. Cambridge-Dorchester Airport had a lot of airplanes parked there, but there was no fixed- base operator to service planes, so it was not unusual to see private autos towing them. There were a few onlookers outside the Runway Restaurant at the entrance to the little airport, the usual assortment of people that hung around airports day or night, but when they saw the airplane with the tarps over it, they assumed it was being fixed, so few paid it any more attention — onlookers came to see takeoffs and landings, not engine runups or fuel tanks being drained or scrubbed out. By the time Townsend and his soldiers reached the runup pad, they were away from most of the lights and the spectators.

Townsend towed the Cessna onto runway 34, then stepped into the cockpit and started its engine. His soldiers meanwhile moved the truck behind the plane, attached the tow cable to the rear tie-down bracket and the other end to the truck’s rear bumper, and pulled the nylon tow-strap tight so it held the plane in place.

Inside the cockpit, it took only fifteen seconds for the Global Positioning System satellite navigation unit to lock on to enough satellites for precision use. He checked the navigation data in the set. There were only three waypoints in the flight plan — an initial takeoff point about two miles off the departure end of the runway, a level-off point over Chesapeake Bay, and a destination: 38–53.917 North, 7727.312 West, elevation twelve feet mean sea level, the geographical coordinates of the Oval Office in the White House, Washington, D.C. programmed to the nearest six feet. Townsend checked that the GPS set was exchanging information with the Cessna’s autopilot, then activated the system. The GPS immediately inserted the first altitude into the system, which was one thousand feet, and its initial vertical velocity of three hundred feet per minute. The Cessna’s horizontal stabilizers moved leading-edge down slightly, ready to execute the autopilot’s commands. Townsend then stepped out of the cockpit and motioned to his soldiers to get ready for launch. He began to push in the throttle control for takeoff power and…

The Cessna’s one VHF radio suddenly crackled to life— Townsend didn’t even realize he had it on: “Cambridge UNICOM, Cambridge UNICOM, Seneca-43-double Pop, ten miles northeast of the field at two thousand five hundred, landing information please, go ahead.”

Before Townsend could respond, someone else on the airport radioed back, “Seneca-43 Poppa, Cambridge UNICOM, landing runway three-four, winds three-one-zero at five, altimeter two-niner-niner-eight, no observed traffic. Airport is closed right now, parking available but no fuel or service available, over.”

“Shit,” Townsend swore, pulling the throttle on the Cessna back to idle until he decided what to do. “What in bloody hell is he doing here?” In the past few days, as. his men monitored activity at the airport, there had not been one takeoff or landing after nine P.M., not one. Their whole mission was in jeopardy, and he hadn’t even launched it yet!

As if to answer his question, Townsend heard, “Hey, Ed, this is Paul,” the Seneca pilot replied. “Yeah, it’s just me. I gassed up at Cape May this time — their gas is down thirteen cents from last week. I had dinner out at Wildwood, too — that’s why I’m late. Hope the condo association doesn’t give me too much grief. I’ll try to keep the noise down.”

Townsend grabbed the microphone and, trying to tone down his British accent as much as possible, radioed, “Cambridge traffic, this is Cessna-125-Bravo. I’m doing a little engine and brake maintenance at the end of runway 34. I’ll be done in about five minutes.”

“Hey, Cessna-125B, are you running engines out there?” the guy on the ground asked. “You know you ain’t allowed to run engines out here after eight P.M. County ordinance.”

“This is very important,” Townsend said. “I’ll be done in a minute.”

“You the one that got towed out there with the tarps on your wings, — 125B?” the guy asked. ‘The homeowners’ association listens in on UNICOM. They’ll probably call the sheriff and complain. I’d pack it in for the night if I was you. Don’t dump any gas out of your sumps onto the dirt, either — county gets pissed off about that too.”

“Kiss my bloody ass,” Townsend said. He unplugged the microphone, then shoved in the throttle again, locked it tightly, closed the pilot’s side door, and motioned for his helper to remove the tarp on the right wing…

…- and, sure enough, by the time Townsend had removed the tarp on the left wing and gone back to the pickup truck, blinking red-and-blue lights could be seen back by the main part of the airport — a sheriffs patrol car. Also, by that time, the twin-engine Seneca was on downwind, just a few minutes from landing. As the soldiers got their suppressed MP5 submachine guns ready, Townsend released the pelican clamp on the tail of the Cessna, and the plane shot down the runway.

The Cessna didn’t look like it was going to make it. It pitched onto its left wheel as it accelerated, it skittered over to the left side of the runway precariously close to the VASI lights, and the left wingtip dipped so low that Townsend thought it was going to flip over and spin out. But just as he thought it was going to hit the dirt edge of the runway, it lifted off into the night sky, its wings leveling off as it gracefully climbed and proceeded on course. The GPS flight plan coordinates must’ve been off slightly, and the plane had immediately tried to correct itself. Luckily it had not run out of runway first.

The sheriff s patrol car looked as if it were going to drive down a taxiway and perhaps block the runway. It shined its floodlight at the plane, as if trying to read the registration number. “He’s going to see those FAEs under the wings, Mr. Townsend,” one of the soldiers reminded him.

“Well, let’s give the constable something else to think about, shall we?” Townsend suggested. He pointed to the Seneca, which was just turning final for landing. As the patrol car backed up to get back onto the main taxiway, the second soldier took cover behind the pickup truck, out of sight. As the Seneca came in over the approach end of the runway, flaps extended and engines at near-idle power, the soldier opened fire. He emptied one thirty-two-round magazine on it, reloaded, and fired again.

Nine-millimeter bullets raked across the left side of the plane, one bullet grazing the pilot’s head and knocking him unconscious. Most of the bullets chewed into the left propeller, breaking off huge pieces and throwing them in all directions. Unbalanced, the engine began to violently shake out of control. The Seneca skidded to the left, pirouetted around almost in a complete circle, and crashed. It skidded over across the parallel taxiway just a few feet from the patrol car, then flipped over and tumbled end-over-end into the south park of the parking ramp, destroying a half-dozen planes along the way before bursting into flame with a spectacular explosion.

The only clear way around the wreckage was down the runway, and that’s where Townsend and his soldiers sped away. The patrol car tried to pursue, but had to turn back to help the survivors in any way he could. There was no pursuit — it took the sheriffs patrol and fire department fifteen minutes to respond, and the call to find the men in the pickup was drowned out by the call for ambulances and doctors. Townsend and his men went north across the Cambridge Bridge to the town of Easton, picked up their Cessna-210 escape plane at Newnam Airport, and were already flying outside the state to safety less than thirty minutes after the crash.

Over Chesapeake Bay Near Annapolis, Maryland That Same Time

Vincenti was flying west into the beautiful yellow, then orange, then red sunset, still killing time until his scheduled landing time. Northern and central Maryland and Chesapeake Bay were dark except for the occasional farms and rural subdivisions and the white dots of vessels’ running lights on the Bay, but soon the lights of Baltimore and Washington could be seen, and they were spectacular. The city of Aberdeen was to the right, with the famous Aberdeen Army Weapons Proving Grounds nearby. The big splash of light to the right was Baltimore, and off the nose was Washington and the Virginia suburbs. He was headed right for the Annapolis-Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

Vincenti started a descent to fifteen hundred feet, only a thousand feet above the surrounding terrain and a thousand feet under the Class B airspace around Washington. It was a bit dangerous flying into such congested airspace at night, but flying was always a bit dangerous, and any chance he got to enjoy it, he took. He was still legal, taking advantage of all available assets to keep separated from other planes, and he was talking to air traffic control. The airspace structure around DC and Baltimore forced VFR (Visual Flight Rules) pilots either very high, above ten thousand feet, or very low. But he was still hoping for a friendly controller and a lot of luck to get a really good look at the capital area.

Of course, the reason he was allowed to be up here at all was because the Justice and Transportation Departments had recommended they do away with the air defense emergency, a move that puzzled and infuriated Vincenti. They had dismantled all the flight restrictions, fighter coverage, and Patriot missile protection in record time. The President wanted things back to normal so he could begin campaigning and tell everyone he had a handle on the situation, and the so-called Executive Committee on Terrorism okayed it.

Vincenti overflew the three-and-a-half-mile-long Annapolis-Chesapeake Bay Bridge, skirted south around the U.S. Naval Academy and the city of Annapolis, then turned westbound toward Rockville. Vincenti could see the Goddard Space Flight Center, Walter Reed Hospital, the Mormon Temple, ablaze in lights, and Bethesda Naval Hospital. After passing about five miles north of Bethesda, he heard, “Devil-03, are you familiar with Special Routes 1 and 4, sir?”

“Affirmative, Devil-03.”

“Devil-03, clear to Atlantic City International Airport via present position direct Cabin John intersection, Special Route 1, Hains Point, Special Route 4, Nottingham VOR, direct, at two thousand feet, do not overfly the observatory, the Capitol, or Arlington National Cemetery, keep your speed above two hundred knots, report passing the Wilson Bridge.”

“-03, copy all, thank you.” Vincenti pulled back power and used override to lower two notches of flaps, then thanked his lucky stars. Special Routes 1 and 4 are helicopter routes that generally follow the Potomac. It was going to be a quick but very spectacular tour.

And it was spectacular. Starting at the Taylor Naval Research Laboratory, he cruised over the Potomac south, with the entire expanse of Washington and the Virginia suburbs spread out before him in blazing glory. Vincenti saw the U.S. Naval Observatory, Georgetown University, Teddy Roosevelt Island, and then the Capitol came into view on the left. The memorials, monuments, and historic buildings were all brilliantly lit — he could not see the White House, but almost every building and monument along The Mall was clearly and beautifully visible, all the way to the Capitol itself. It felt as if he could reach out and touch the Washington Monument. He saw everything — the lights surrounding the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Reflecting Pools, the Jefferson Memorial… it was simply spectacular.

He cruised east of Arlington National Cemetery, and he could make out the Iwo Jima Memorial and could even see the lone dot of light that marked Kennedy’s gravesite — just follow the Memorial Bridge west and the bright-yellow glow of the Eternal Flame could be seen through the trees. The Pentagon was plainly visible, a definite five-sided out-line against the lights of Pentagon City. There was a helicopter landing on the Pentagon helipad, Vincenti noticed, and he wondered who was on board that helicopter and hoped everything was quiet down there at the Puzzle Palace.

Aboard an Air Force E-3C AWACS Radar Plane Over Eastern Pennsylvania

The mission crew commander aboard the Airborne Warning and Control System radar plane, Major Scott Milford, diligently continued to scan all five of the vital sectors assigned to him — Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C. — but he always came back to check out Executive One Foxtrot.

The modified Boeing 747, Air Force designation VC- 25A, commonly referred to as Air Force One (but actually only called that when the President of the United States was on board; its call sign tonight was Executive-One-Foxtrot, meaning that a member of the President’s family or some other very high-ranking White House official was on board), had been assigned a standard FAA air traffic control transponder code, and everything appeared to be normal. It was flying Jet Route 77, an often-used high-altitude corridor used by flights from New England to transition routes into the Philadelphia and Baltimore areas. Usually the VC-25 A was cleared direct airport-to-airport, even if it would bust through dense or restricted airspace, but since the President was not on board, the crew was apparently taking it easy and following published flight routes to avoid totally messing up the air traffic control situation all over the eastern seaboard. The White House had learned from the Los Angeles haircut incident, when the President tied up air traffic at Los Angeles International Airport for an hour by having Air Force One block a taxiway while he was getting a $200 haircut from a famous Hollywood stylist, how sensitive the public was to the Chief Executive stomping on common people while using the privileges of the office.

The senior director on Milford’s crew, Captain Maureen Tate, turned and saw her MC scowling into his radarscope. “Still bugged about that VC-25 flight, sir?” she asked with a trace of amusement in her eyes.

“It’s not the VC, it’s the whole White House policy jerking us around,” Milford complained. “We set up this whole complex air defense system, and we get blamed when it fails, but when the President wants to go on the campaign trail, he dismantles the whole thing overnight. Now the White House is taking one of its heavies right through our airspace, and we didn’t hear word one from anybody until twenty minutes ago.”

“That’s FAA’s fault, not the White House’s fault,” Tate said. “We checked — they got the flight plan and the Alert Notification. The Northeast Air Defense Sector scrambled those two F-16s from Otis, too, and they got a visual — it’s a VC-25 all right.” It was standard procedure for Air Force One to get a military fighter escort anytime it was in or near hostile airspace, and these days, with Cazaux on the loose, the airspace over the United States was definitely considered hostile. But the fighters’ standard operating procedure was not to come closer than three miles — close enough for a big plane like a 747—and there was to be no escort after sundown unless requested, so the fighters from the little base on Cape Cod had gone home shortly after the intercept. They probably got some dynamite pictures.

“I guess I’m bugged because usually we hear from Air Combat Command or the 89th before they launch a VC- 25,” Milford said. It was not standard or required procedure, but during most special operations and especially during an emergency situation such as this, the Support Missions Operations Center (SMOC) of the 89th Air Wing, the Air Force unit that flew the VIP jets from Andrews Air Force Base, usually notifies Air Combat Command and the Airborne Warning and Control Squadrons that they were going to fly a SAM (Special Air Mission) through their area. It was a simple “heads-up” that was encouraged to expedite VIP traffic. Milford saw Tate’s little amused grin, and added, “And I’m bugged I didn’t get my invitation to the President’s barbecue, either.”

“Situation normal, all fucked up,” Tate offered. “Want to call and raise some hell with Andrews? I can contact the SMOC.” Milford hesitated for a moment, not wanting to bug the VC-25’s crew unnecessarily, but Tate took his hesitation to mean yes. “Comm, this is the SD, get the 89th SMOC on button four for me, okay?”

“Copy,” the communications officer responded. A second later he responded, “SMOC on button four, SD. Call sign ‘Midnight.’ ”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, who’s that?” Milford asked. He had flipped over to the Washington, D.C., sector radar display, where a large electronic arrow was pointing at a low-flying, fast-moving radar target flying right through the middle of D.C., just a few miles from the Capitol. “Jesus, who is that? Who gave him clearance to fly down there?”

“Washington Approach has him, sir,” Tate reported after checking with the Comm section. “It’s an F-16 from Atlantic City, Devil Zero-Three. Looks like he’s on a Beltway tour.”

“Who gave him that?”

“Washington Approach cleared him, sir,” Tate responded. “National Tower is talking with him too. He’s VFR.”

“I don’t believe it, I just don’t believe it,” Milford said angrily. “Two days ago we were ready to blow planes like that out of the sky twenty, thirty miles away — now we’re letting them fly practically up to the front door of the White House. And he’s not even under a proper flight plan! What are we doing up here if ATC keeps on clearing guys to cruise around anywhere they want? Are we supposed to be able to stop this guy if he turns out to be a terrorist?”

Milford switched his comm panel to Washington Approach’s direct phone line. The reply came: “Washington Approach, Poole.”

“Mr. Poole, this is Major Milford, aboard Leather Niner- Zero, the radar plane assigned to your sector,” Milford responded. “You’ve got a Devil-03 flying VFR through the center of National’s Class B airspace — I’d like him out of there as soon as possible.”

“Any particular reason, Major?”

“Any particular reason…? Sir, we’re in the middle of an air defense emergency/” Milford shouted, trying to keep his composure on the landline. “The FAA may have taken down the special flight restrictions and approach funnels; but we’re still responsible for stopping possible terrorist aircraft from entering Class B airspace. It really complicates our job having unauthorized VFR traffic flying through the middle of one of the most vital airspaces in the country. Is that good enough for you, Mr. Poole, or do I need to talk with the TRACON supervisor?”.

“All right, all right, Major, I get the point,” the controller responded, clearly exasperated at the threat but not wanting to make waves. “How about we give him present position direct Nottingham direct Atlantic City International, and no more Beltway tours unless we coordinate with you first?” “That sounds fine, Mr. Poole, thank you,” Milford said. “Leather-90 out.” He punched off the phone line, stripped off his headset, and wearily rubbed his eyes and face. “Man, what is it with these controllers?” he murmured. “It seems like every one of them believes it’s not going to happen to them, so they treat everything like situation-normal. I’m sick and tired of FAA controllers giving these pilots anything they ask for, and then us getting blamed when the pilot turns out to be a terrorist… look, there’s another VFR flight, busting the Class B airspace.” Milford pointed at a new target just marked as UNKNOWN by the Surveillance section. It was a slow-moving target flying northwest toward Washington Executive Field or Potomac Airport, traveling less than two miles per minute — a light plane doing some sightseeing. “We ought to blow that guy away just as a warning.”

“Executive-One-Foxtrot’s been cleared to descend,” Tate reported. “He’s twenty miles northeast of Pottstown VOR.” “He’s going to have to get his tail down if he wants to make RONNY intersection by eight thousand,” one of the weapons controllers behind Tate remarked as he watched the VC-25 make its descent. RONNY intersection, fifty miles north of Andrews Air Force Base, was the usual turn- point for VIP planes landing at Andrews — it gave the pilots a nice long straight-in approach, with little traffic and few turns to disturb the passengers.

“Good thing the President’s not on board,” another WC said. “I heard the Steel Magnolia pitches a fit and tries to shit-can the whole flight crew if her ears do so much as pop while she’s in Air Force One.”

“She’s got bigger things on her mind these days… like how to keep her and the President from being indicted.” Everyone chuckled.

“There he goes,” the first weapons controller reported, monitoring Executive-One-Foxtrot’s data block and mentally calculating the descent rate by watching the altitude readout. “He’s doing at least fifteen hundred feet a minute in the descent. I think heads are going to roll tonight.”

“Just everybody settle down and monitor the transponder changeover up here,” Tate said. Before passing through ten thousand feet, Air Force VIP aircraft like Executive-One- Foxtrot switched their transponders to a discrete code, usually 2222, used only in the terminal area to alert controllers so they can give the plane expedited service. When the changeover occurred, the target usually disappeared off the radarscreen for about twelve seconds until the new code was picked up by the radar computers — if the controllers weren’t ready for the changeover, they got very frantic and sometimes pushed the panic button.

Milford went back and scanned his other four vital sectors. Everything seemed to be running smoothly. Air traffic had not returned to normal by any means, but in the past few days travel at night had virtually disappeared, and now it was making a comeback. Fewer restrictions on flight routing, more controller discretion, and less reliance on published arrival and departure procedures really helped to clear things up. That newcomer, the slow-moving VFR flight that had originated somewhere in eastern Maryland, was now over Nottingham VOR, still headed northwest— its course would take it south of Andrews Air Force Base, but it was definitely on its way to busting the Class B airspace. That idiot deserved to get his license pulled, Milford thought.

“Any ID on that VFR flight out there, AS?” Milford asked the Airborne Surveillance section.

“Still checking, MC.”

Jesus, Milford thought, what an asshole. The air defense emergency had not been officially canceled, although the FAA did announce that flights were not required to follow the special-arrival corridors into the nation’s busiest airports anymore. It was also not hard to hide all of the long- range Patriot missile sites being taken down all over the country.

“MC, no IFF changeover on that Executive-One-Foxtrot flight.”

Milford immediately flipped back to the Washington, D.C., Class B airspace radar display and zoomed his presentation in, putting the VC-25 A on the top of the scope and Andrews Air Force Base, the plane’s destination, on the bottom. His heart immediately started to beat a bit faster. Executive-One-Foxtrot was at RONNY intersection, inbound on the ILS approach to runway one-eight left, passing through eight thousand feet — and still no transponder code changeover.

The crews flying those VIP jets never made mistakes like that, never.

The next question was how to notify the crew of their omission. Although it was certainly not required that the VC-25 crews change their transponder codes or accept any expedited service, it was generally not a good idea for any of the President’s jets to be delayed in the air, especially when the President was on the road. But blabbing it on an open-frequency was probably not a politic idea, either. Milford flipped his radio panel over to the 89th Air Wing’s Special Mission Operations Center, the ones that were in constant contact with all of their VIP planes: “Midnight, this is Leather-90 on SMOC common, over.”

“Leather-90, this is 89th Wing SMOC, stand by.” There was a lengthy pause, probably so the senior controller at Andrews could look up in his call-sign book to see who “Leather” was. Then: “Go ahead, — 90.”

“I’m tracking your SAM-2800, Executive-One-Foxtrot, fifty-two miles north of ADW inbound. Can you ask him to change over his IFF? Over.”

“Say again, — 90?”

“I repeat, I am tracking Executive-One-Foxtrot inbound to ADW, and he has not changed over his IFF to terminal procedure codes. Can you notify him to change his transponder code? Over.”

There was another slight pause, probably so the senior controller could ask the VC-25 crew if they were squawking the right code and to change it immediately if they had forgotten. Milford watched his radar display, expecting the code to change at any moment… but it did not. “Ah… Leather-90, sir, we can’t verify the location of our SAM flights to you on this channel. You’ll have to contact us on a secure landline or secure datalink. Over.”

“What the hell is this guy talking about?” Milford muttered. “The whole friggin’ world knows that this plane’s up there.” On the radio, he said, “Midnight, I’ve got a valid military flight plan for SAM-2800 and an FAA ALNOT on Executive-One-Foxtrot, IFR from Manchester, New Hampshire, to Andrews. He’s less than fifty miles north of Andrews inbound for landing. He’s been airborne for well over an hour. I think it’s a little late to play hide-and-seek games with this one. All I want is to have him change over his IFF. Over.”

After another interminable pause that was about to drive Milford nuts and had now gotten the attention of the entire. AW ACS crew, the SMOC controller came back: “Leather- 90, I’ve been directed to tell you by the senior controller here that there is no SAM-2800 or Executive-One-Foxtrot inbound for landing at Andrews. All of our assets are accounted for, and none are inbound to Andrews at this time. You have a faker on your hands.”

Milford felt the blood drain out of his face, and his stomach muscles tensed so tightly that he felt as if he were going to throw up. “Shit, shit, shit, ” he cursed loudly. On the radio, he shouted, “Midnight, are you sure?”

“I can’t tell you on this channel where the VC-25s are, Leather,” the SMOC controller said, “but I can tell you they’re not inbound to Andrews. All of our other assets are nowhere near ADW. Closest one departed a half-hour ago, destination Langley.”

“Damn it, I can’t believe this,” Milford said. Tate and the * other weapon controllers were waiting for their instructions — he had to act now… “Comm, this is the MC, contact Washington Approach and Washington Center, advise them we’re declaring an air defense emergency for the Bal- timore-Washington Class B airspace. I need the airspace cleared out and instructions issued to that 747 to stay out of Class B airspace. Surveillance, MC, mark radar target P045Y as ‘unknown.’ Maureen, do we have anybody suited up? Do we have a chance to get this guy?”

“Yes, sir,” Tate responded immediately. “Two F-16s— tactical birds, not interceptors — on ready five alert at Andrews.”

“Scramble them,” Milford ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Tate acknowledged. She had her finger on the SCRAMBLE button as soon as she heard there was something wrong with Executive-One-Foxtrot. On aircraft-wide intercom, Tate announced, “All stations, all stations, active air scramble Andrews, unknown target P045Y designate as ‘Bandit- V… MC, Alpha-Whiskey One-One and One-Two acknowledging the klaxon; Weapons One, interceptors coming up to you on button two.”

“Who else we got, Maureen?” Milford asked.

“Next-closest units we have are F-16 ADF interceptors at Atlantic City and tactical F-15s at Langley,” Tate responded. “ADFs at Atlantic City are on ready five alert, but their ETE is at least ten minutes at zone 5. The F-15s at Langley can get there in five minutes, but they’re not on ready five alert.”

“Call Langley and tell them to get anything they can airborne,” Milford said. “Put A-City on engines-running cockpit alert at the end of the runway in case Bandit-1 tries to bug out or if the fighters at Andrews are bent. Get a tanker from Dover or McGuire airborne and put him over Nottingham VOR for refueling support — all the out-of-towners are going to need gas if they arrive over DC on full afterburner.”

“What’s the order for Alpha-Whiskey flight, sir?” Tate asked.

Milford checked his radarscope. The now-unknown 747 was only forty miles out; at his airspeed, traveling six to seven miles per minute, he would be over the Capitol in five minutes. “If Bandit-1 turns away and does not enter Class B airspace, the order is to intercept, ID, and shadow,” Milford said. “If Bandit-1 enters Class B airspace, the order is to engage and destroy from maximum range. Comm, get the National Military Command Center senior controller on button four.”

Milford then reached up to his primary radio channels and selected the common channel linking the fifteen Hawk missile sites and the twenty Stinger man-portable shoulder-fired missile platoons assigned to Washington-Dulles, Washington-National, Andrews Air Force Base, Baltimore International, and the Capitol district, and said, “All Leather units, this is Leather-90, air defense emergency for Washington Dulles, National, and Baltimore Tri-Cities Class B airspace, radar ID P045Y is now classified ‘unknown,’ target designate ‘Bandit-1,’ stand by for engagement, repeat, stand by for engagement.”

For the moment, the slow-moving VFR flight was forgotten…

Andrews Air Force Base That Same Time

“Andrews Tower, Alpha-Whiskey-11 flight, active air scramble, taxi and takeoff northwest.”

“Alpha-Whiskey-11 flight, Andrews Tower, taxi runway three-six right, wind one-seven-zero at five, altimeter three- zero-zero-one, expect immediate takeoff clearance crossing the hold line, intersection Bravo takeoff approved, seven thousand five hundred feet remaining.”

It took considerably less than five minutes for the two F- 16A crews from the 121st Fighter Squadron “Guardians,” District of Columbia Air National Guard, to run to their jets, start engines, and begin to taxi. No matter what someone at the Department of Justice said, they knew they were the last line of defense for the nation’s capital. Not only did the Guardians refuse to revert back to normal air defense operations, but they kept themselves in advanced states of readiness in order to cut down on response times. All idletime crew activities had been moved from the alert facility to the aircraft shelters, so crews were no more than six ladder steps from their cockpits, and runway 36 Right had been designated the “alert runway,” so it was always clear and unused except for absolute emergencies. By the time the echoes of the three long klaxon blasts were gone, immediately the roar of two Pratt & Whitney F100-P-200 turbofan engines replaced them.

Both planes — not ADF (Air Defense Fighter) F-16s, but standard battlefield combat models — carried four AIM-9L Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles, ammunition for the 20- millimeter cannon, and one centerline fuel tank. They reached the hold line in less than a minute, performing last- second flight-control checks and takeoff checklist items on the roll. “AW flight, clear for takeoff to the northwest unrestricted, contact approach,” Andrews Tower radioed.

“AW flight, clear for takeoff, go button three.”

“Two.”

For safety’s sake at night, the fighters performed a standard in-trail takeoff instead of a formation takeoff. The leader turned onto the runway, not bothering to set his brakes but plugging in the afterburner as soon as he was aligned with the runway centerline. The wingman started counting to himself when he saw his leader’s fifth-stage afterburner light, and although he was supposed to wait ten seconds, he started his takeoff roll on eight. Smoothly he pushed his throttle to military power, checked his gauges, cracked the throttle to afterburner range, watched the nozzle swing, and checked the fuel flow and exhaust pressure ratio gauges, pushed the throttle smoothly to zone five, and…

There was a bright flash of light ahead, like a lightning strike on the horizon or a searchlight sweeping down the runway. The pilot heard no abort calls, either from his leader or the control tower, so he continued his takeoff, clicking off nosewheel steering and shifting his attention from the gauges to the runway when he passed decision speed. He then…

There was another bright flash of light, and then the pilot saw a ball of flames tumbling across the runway, spinning to the left across the infield, then back to the right across his path. He was already past his decision speed — he was committed for the takeoff because he no longer had enough pavement if he tried to stop now. He still considered pulling the throttle to IDLE, but his training said no, you’ll never stop, take it in the air, continue, continue…

The second F-16 plowed directly into the fireball that was his lead F-16. He thought he had made it through safely, but his engine had ingested enough burning metal and debris to shell it out in seconds. The pilot tried for a split second to avoid the fireball by turning left toward the other runway, but when he saw the FIRE light, saw his altitude as less than a hundred feet above ground and sinking rapidly, he did not hesitate to pull the ejection handle.

“Shit the bed, we got both those motherfuckers!” one of Cazaux’s soldiers shouted gleefully.

“Damn straight,” his partner responded. They were in a hiding place between two maintenance hangars on the west side of the western parallel runway, in clear view of both runways and especially the alert fighter ramp. They wore standard military fatigues and combat boots, except both wore no fatigue shirts — that was common during after-duty hours in the summer. After nightfall, they had successfully planted a series of radio-activated claymore mines along both runways, which they activated when they heard the klaxon and were tripped when the hot engines of a plane were detected by infrared sensors. “Now let’s get the hell out of here. We got thirty seconds to get to the rendezvous point or Ysidro will go without us.” The terrorists activated switches on the radio detonators, which would set off small explosives in the devices several minutes later or if they were disturbed so investigators wouldn’t be able to use them as evidence or as clues to their whereabouts.

They tried to leave their hiding place on the street side near a dark parking lot, but the explosion on the runway had attracted a lot of attention faster than they anticipated, and they had to wait for several security police cars to whiz past. But as they crouched in the shadows waiting for the cars to pass, there was a sharp bang! right behind them, followed by the sputtering and sizzling of burning wire and circuitry. One of the self-destruct devices in the mine detonators had gone off early — and it had attracted the attention of a security police patrol on the ramp side of the hangars. The blue-and-white patrol car skidded to a stop, and the security police officer saw the smoking and burning box and shined a car-mounted floodlight in between the hangars, immediately impaling the two men hiding on the other side in the powerful beam.

“You two between the hangars!” the SP shouted on the car’s loudspeaker. “Security police! Kneel down with your hands on your head, now! ” The two men ran off, together at first and then in diverging directions.

As they bolted from their hiding spot, another security police cruiser passing by saw them running and heard the other officer’s alert on the radio, hit his brakes, and stepped out of the car. He shouted a perfunctory “Halt! Security police canine unit! Stop!” but he was already opening up the right rear passenger door of his cruiser. He shouted a few instructions to his German shepherd partner, pointing out one of the fleeing suspects until the dog barked that he had the suspect in sight, and then commanded the dog to pursue.

Spurred on by the wail of sirens all around him, the first terrorist ran north on Arnold Avenue as fast as he ever recalled running in his life. The fire trucks from the base fire station at Arnold Avenue and D Street were rolling, heading for the flight line, and for a moment the terrorist thought he could lose himself in the confusion of vehicles if he could just make it to D Street. Beyond the fire station was the base exchange, commissary, and theater, with plenty of places to hide, cars to steal, hostages to capture.

But the chase did not last long. Trained to be perfectly silent throughout the chase, the terrorist didn’t hear the animal, not even a growl, until he felt the dog’s teeth sink into his upper-left calf muscle. The terrorist screamed and went down, rolling across the ground with the dog’s incisors still buried in his leg. As he tried to rise, the dog released the man’s leg and went for the right wrist, the main appendage a K-9 patrol dog is trained to clamp down on, and began pulling in any direction possible, trying to keep the suspect off-balance until his human partner arrived. Teeth struck bone several times, and dog and man went down together. The dog was a dynamo, never staying still, but twisting in several directions, shaking his head as if trying to rip the- suspect’s arm free from his torso.

But the terrorist was left-handed. He drew a 9-millimeter Browning automatic, and, before the dog spotted the gun and went for the other wrist, put it up to the big furry body and pulled the trigger. The one-hundred-pound bundle of teeth and muscle blew apart in a cloud of blood and hair, still trying to keep hold of his suspect until life drained out of his body — even so, the terrorist had to use the muzzle of his Browning to pry the animal’s teeth out of his mangled right arm so he could…

Headlights, squealing tires, a furious, high-pitched voice shouting, “Freeze! Don’t move or you’re dead!” It was too late. He was already dizzy from the exertion and the loss of blood — there was no resistance possible. Capture was not an option. If the cops didn’t kill him, Cazaux would. Failure was inexcusable; capture automatically meant betrayal, punishable by death. He would rather have the cops do it quick than watch Henri Cazaux rip his beating heart out from his chest.

The terrorist sat up so as to present as large a target as possible, aimed his Browning at the headlights, and fired. The security police returned fire with an M-16 assault rifle.

He was not disappointed.

Army Colonel Wes Slotter, commander of 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, Fort Polk, Louisiana, was the overall commander of ground air defense forces for the nation’s capital. From the Patriot Integrated Command Center van at Andrews Air Force Base, he was in constant contact with all of the Patriot, Hawk, Avenger, and Stinger units in the Washington area, as well as the E-3C AW ACS radar plane and the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, where the Joint Air Defense Commander was headquartered. Although his headquarters was at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, like his mentor, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, he hated being stuck in his office with his units deployed in the field — even if “in the field” only meant The Mall or a golf course on East Potomac Island Park — so he was on his way to the integrated central command for all of the ground air defense units when the air defense alert came down.

And as he trotted over to the control van, he also had a perfect view of the crash of the two F-16 fighter jets, less than a mile from where he was standing.

Slotter ran back to the control center van, wedging his six-foot-two frame past the maintenance technicians and over to the Patriot battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Buckwall, who was seated at the communications officer’s station behind the battalion fire control officer and battalion radar technician. “Jesus, we just had two fighters crash on the runway,” Slotter said. “What do we got, Jim?”

“AWACS radioed an air defense emergency about two minutes ago, sir,” Buckwall reported. “We’re tracking a single heavy airliner inbound toward D.C. from the north. Apparently it made its way from New Hampshire calling itself Executive-One-Foxtrot.”

“A VIP flight? No shit,” Slotter exclaimed. How that bastard made it all the way like that was almost unbelievable. “First that, then they crash a couple F-16s — the Air Force is dicking up by the numbers.” He wasn’t one to dig on another branch of the service, especially during an emergency when anything could happen to anyone at any time, but the prima donnas in the Air Force really deserved it sometimes. “Let’s try not to make any mistakes ourselves. Everybody reporting in okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Buckwall said. “All Avenger ground units deploying as per the ops order. This ICC is in contact with all the Hawk batteries except for Baltimore, but the AW ACS had full connectivity with them. We’re checking our comm relays to find out what the problem is.”

“That AWACS has full control of all ground units, eh?” “Yes, sir,” Buckwall said. “We launch our missiles, but Leather-90 tells us who and when and how we attack. If we lose connectivity with them we have full authority to launch, but as long as the hookup is solid, Leather-90 has the red button.” Slotter didn’t like that idea, either. An Air Force guy with authority over a dozen Hawk missile batteries and two dozen Avenger units, and with full launch control over the Patriots if they were still on-line — well, the idea was unnatural.

Slotter could tell that the maintenance techs wanted to get inside to start checking over the systems to regain contact with the Hawk units at Baltimore-Washington International. There was no room in the control van for an extra person, especially a high-ranking extra person. “I’ll be en route to the NMCC at the Pentagon, Colonel,” he said. “Notify me as soon as possible on the secure line on the engagement status.”

“Yes, sir,” Buckwall responded.

Slotter squeezed past the maintenance techs and exited the hatch, nearly colliding with a soldier coming up the steps toward the ICC. The soldier, wearing an ALICE harness and web belt, had his Kevlar helmet strapped down tight and pulled over his eyes, so Slotter couldn’t recognize him. It was unusual to see a soldier in full combat gear up in the ICC — the security guys usually stayed on the perimeter. “Excuse me, sir,” the soldier said. “I’ve got a message for the commander.”

“Battalion CO’s tied up right now,” Slotter said. “I’m Colonel Slotter, the brigade CO. Let’s have it.”

“Yes, sir,” the soldier said. His right hand came up — but I there was no message, only a small submachine gun with a long silencer on it. Before Slotter could cry out a warning, he felt the sharp, sledgehammer-like blows on his chest, then nothing.

Tomas Ysidro shoved the body off the rear deck of the Patriot ICC, pushed open the entry hatch, threw a tear gas grenade and two hand grenades into the ICC, slammed the door tight, and jumped off the truck. Seconds later, the hatch opened and the tear gas grenade sailed out, but it was too late. The other two high-explosive grenades were never picked up, and the explosions inside the steel box of the Patriot ICC destroyed everything inside instantly.

“Move it, move it!” Ysidro shouted to his partners. He should have set the explosives on the antenna array, but the array was still deployed and the electrical power plant was still operational. He unbuckled the last two grenades he carried, pulled the safety pins, and ran toward the antenna array truck when he heard, “Halt! Drop your weapon!” _u Always playing cowboy, Ysidro thought. You're in combat, you idiot Americans — why do you insist on trying to order the enemy to halt? Ysidro threw the first grenade at the antenna array, then wheeled around and rolled the second grenade under the electrical power plant truck — just as three Army security guards opened fire, catching him in a murderous crossfire from their M-16s. His shattered body hit the ground just a few feet from where his partner lay, shot by another security guard as he tried to plant the remote-detonated mines around the antenna array and electrical power plant.

But the first grenade did the trick. Ysidro’s toss was perfect, bouncing off the back of the “drive-in theater” array and landing right on the waveguide horn on top of the unit. The explosion ripped the entire array and waveguide assembly off the top of the van. The second grenade rolled all the way under the EPP, but the force of the explosion toppled the vehicle on its left side, spilling diesel fuel and starting a fire.

Along The Mall That Same Moment

When the alert went out from Major Milford aboard the E- 3C AWACS radar plane that Washington was under attack, the air defense ground units that had so very carefully been under wraps for the past several days immediately deployed to their fire positions.

From First Street, east of the Capitol, to the Lincoln Memorial, Avenger units rolled out of their parking garages and took up positions on The Mall, with one Avenger stationed every six thousand feet; at the same time, Avenger units deployed to positions around the approach ends of main runways at Dulles, National, Andrews, and Baltimore airports. Avenger was an HMMWV (High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, the Army’s new “Jeep”) truck with a rotating turret installed on it that contained two four- round Stinger missile launchers, a .50-caliber heavy machine gun, a laser rangefinder, and a telescopic infrared sensor. The gunner sat in a cab between the two Stinger launchers and electronically spotted and attacked airborne targets as far as three miles away. A driver/loader and two security troops completed the Avenger crew.

“All Leather units, Bandit-1 bearing zero-one-eight degrees magnetic, range thirty miles and closing. All units stand by for status poll.”

Sergeant First Class Paul Lathrop pushed open the bulletproof Lexan canopy of his Avenger FAAD (Forward Area Air Defense) unit to get a little fresh air into the cockpit, and stretched to try to smooth out the kinks in his muscles. He was the unit gunner, sitting in a tiny, narrow cockpit between two four-round Stinger missile pods. The cab was not made for anyone over six feet tall, nor anyone with any hint of fat — the turret steering column was right up against his chest, and his knees were bent all the way up practically to the dashboard. But even worse than sitting in the hot, confined cab was sitting in the cab when the vehicle was moving. He was wearing no tanker’s pads to protect himself, so every bone in his body ached from being thrown around in the bucking-bronco HMMWV.

Lathrop’s Avenger unit was stationed on the west side of the Washington Monument, with an almost unobstructed view of the sky in all directions — except, of course, for the sky blocked out by the monument. He could clearly see the front of the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and of course the Capitol itself. There was another Avenger unit east of the Washington Monument, near the Capitol, with a clear shot of most of the sky that Lathrop couldn’t see to the east; there were other units over at West Potomac Park guarding south D.C., Ft. McNair, Arlington National Cemetery, and the Pentagon, and east of the Capitol as well.

You don’t deploy units like Avenger in the middle of The Mall in Washington, D.C., and expect not to get noticed, and almost as soon as they rolled out of their hiding places near Union Station, West Potomac Park, the Navy Bureau of Medicine, and George Washington University, a crowd had gathered to watch. D.C. Police and Army security troops were trying to close off The Mall and chase all the bystanders away, but on a warm summer evening in D.C., with the lights of the monuments on for the first time in days, there were a lot of folks out wandering around. The lights had not yet been turned off, and Lathrop idly wondered who would have the switch to the lights of Washington, D.C. Certainly not the President — or the Steel Magnolia.

It was then he noticed that the poll of the air defense units had stopped. On interphone, he said, “Mike, how do you hear?”

“Loud and clear,” Specialist Mike Reston replied.

“What happened to the poll?”

“Dunno,” Reston replied. Lathrop heard a squeal in the radio as Reston deactivated the squelch control. “Radio still works. Hang on.” On the radio, Lathrop heard, “Control, Leather-713, radio check… Control, — 713, radio check.”

“-713, this is Leather-601, stand by.” That was from the lieutenant in charge of the four Hawk missile sites stationed around D.C., based out at East Potomac Island Park, south of the Capitol, along the Potomac.

“Control must’ve gone off the air,” Reston said.

That got Lathrop worried. With a bandit only a few minutes away, he needed radio contact with someone with a long-range radar to spot targets for him until the bandit got close enough. The passive infrared sensor on the Avenger was good out to a range of about five to eight miles, $o long-range spotting was crucial. The Patriot ICC (Integrated Command Center) stationed out at Andrews provided radar coverage for the Hawk and Avenger units — what a shitty time to have radio problems.

“All Leather-600 and -700 units, this is Leather-601,” the commander of the Hawk battalion said on the command net. “ICC is down, repeat, ICC is down, — 601 is taking operational control. Bandit-1 bearing zero-one-zero magnetic, twenty-eight miles, status is batteries released tight, repeat, status is batteries released tight, all units—”

And then that transmission stopped.

“What the fuck…?”

“Hey, guys… er, Leather-700 units, this is -711,1 see a fire over on East Potomac Island Park,” one of the crew members on the Avenger at West Potomac Park radioed. “I see… holy shit, man, I see big explosions south across the Inlet, over on East Potomac Island. I think the Hawk site just got wiped.”

“Say again, Winfield?” Lathrop radioed. “You say you saw explosions?”

When Lathrop released the mike button, the gunner on Leather-711 named Winfield was already reporting: “… and I see several guys headin’ this way… shit, man, * shit, they’re firing at me, all units… you motherfucker!”

“Win, what the hell’s going on?” But then Lathrop looked to his left and saw two men dressed in jogging shorts but carrying rather big knapsacks or duffel bags running down the long walkway to the west of the Washington Monument. He rose out of his seat and shouted to his security guard, “Hey, Kelly, watch those two guys to the west. Don’t let anyone near the unit! Some shit’s going down out there! We lost contact with Winfield in -711.”

The Army guard named Kelly moved over to the left rear comer of the Avenger unit and spotted the two guys trying to casually jog over toward them. Kelly shouted, “Hold it! Stop where you are!” The joggers didn’t stop. A D.C. Police cruiser on Seventeenth Street spotted the joggers and turned on its lights, trying to get them to stop. The first one hesitated, jogging in place a bit until the second guy caught up with him, then they continued. The Police cruiser jumped the curb and started down the walkway, issuing a warning to stop on their PA system. The joggers kept on coming. Kelly leveled his M-16 and shouted, “I said, halt! Last warning! Stop! ”

The joggers angled over away from the Washington Monument, about fifty yards or so away from the Avenger, near a small information kiosk… then suddenly stopped, both of them, and put their duffel bags down.

“What’s the problem, man?” one of the joggers shouted. “What’s going on?”

Kelly shouted, “Leave those bags on the ground and raise your—” But he was interrupted by a terrific explosion that rolled across The Mall. A bright yellow fire was burning, somewhere near the Capitol.

“—712, you read me?” Lathrop radioed. “Wood, man, answer up… — 712, you read me? What’s that fire…?” But Lathrop knew what it was — it was the burning hulk of the Avenger stationed west of the Capitol. Someone was picking off all the air defense units around the Capital, one by one…

… and now they were attacking here. The two joggers had leaped behind the information kiosk, out of sight of the Avenger crew — and suddenly a burst of automatic gunfire erupted, sweeping across Lathrop’s Avenger. The D.C. Police car that was speeding toward them slammed on its brakes, and another burst of automatic gunfire sprayed it with bullets. Kelly ran behind the Avenger and returned fire with his M-16, chopping holes in the fiberglass kiosk. The D.C. Police cruiser was getting chopped up badly — they had some heavy firepower…

Lathrop closed his canopy and swung his turret westward toward the kiosk. Machine-gun fire peppered the polycarbonate canopy, and 9-millimeter bullet holes dented it, but thankfully did not penetrate. One of the joggers bolted toward the police cruiser, firing on the run. Lathrop tracked him with ease in his infrared scanner window, flicked his arm switch to GUNS, hit the ENABLE button on the left turret control, and squeezed the trigger on the right turret grip. From only about two hundred feet away, the Avenger’s .50-caliber heavy machine gun — designed to blow fifty- thousand-pound aircraft out of the sky a mile away — chopped the first jogger up into several large chunks in less than a second. Lathrop immediately swung the turret back around and reacquired the kiosk, ready to blow the shit out of it as well…

… but the second jogger had pulled out a LAWS (Lightweight Antitank Weapon System) rocket from his duffel bag, aimed and fired, and from less than two hundred feet away he could not miss. It seemed as if the rocket was headed straight for the space between Lathrop’s eyes. He felt an incredible blast rock his eight-thousand-pound vehicle and saw a bright flash of light, and then he saw and felt nothing…

Hoover FBI Building That Same Time

It was the closest thing to an interrogation any of them had ever been subjected to. Deborah Harley, Ian Hardcastle, and the Deputy U.S. Marshal of the United States, William Landers, along with several Marshals Service agents and U.S. Navy pilots had been questioned in the Director’s conference room for the past nine hours on the CV-22 raid at Cazaux’s estate in Bedminster, and the attempted intercept of Harold Lake and Ted Fell in Newburgh. They had been subjected to “tag-team” questioning by a small army of investigators — asked to draw detailed maps of their route of flight and movements in the mansion once the attack was under way, describe all of their communications routines, and provide exhaustive records of everything concerning the mission, from where they bought fuel for the PAVE HAMMER tilt-rotor aircraft to a full list of all the weapons used.

Finally, Judge Lani Wilkes, the Director of the FBI, came to visit the group. While staffers and other witnesses had been shuffling in and out all day retrieving records that the FBI requested, Harley and Hardcastle had been there the entire time, and they were stiff and tired as they got to their feet when Wilkes entered the conference room. “Good evening, Agent Harley, Admiral Hardcastle,” she greeted them. “I appreciate your assisting the Bureau in preparing our report to the Justice Department and the White House. I’m told you’ve been here since early this afternoon.”

. “You know damn well we’ve been here all day,” Hardcastle snapped angrily. He had ditched his coat and tie long ago and had changed into a short-sleeve shirt and comfortable loafers* Harley was in a business suit but had removed her jacket — she still looked as calm and fresh as she did when she began the marathon “debriefing” session.

“Something wrong, Admiral?” Wilkes asked sweetly.

“We should have been allowed to submit our reports on the incident first before all this began,” Hardcastle said. “I think it would’ve been more efficient to take our report and then fill in the details later. We’re essentially duplicating our reports and being kept here like prisoners. We should—”

“Admiral, I’ve been FBI Director for three years, and I’ve been involved in thousands of criminal and interagency investigations in my thirty years of law enforcement,” Wilkes interrupted crisply, “so I think I know a thing or two about how to conduct an investigation and how to take a report. Frankly, judging by your actions in the raid on the Bedminster estate, I question whether you have any idea on proper or legal law-enforcement actions. Do us both a favor, Admiral, and let the Bureau do its job — for a change.” She surveyed the room, noticing empty drink cups and sandwich boxes in the trash cans. “I see you’re being taken care of here. This shouldn’t take too much longer. I’m sure you agree that it’s better if we just get this whole thing over with.”

“Judge Wilkes, do you still think the body recovered at the mansion was Henri Cazaux?” Harley asked, a hint of annoyance in her voice.

Wilkes narrowed her eyes in irritation at the question. “I’m sorry,” Wilkes replied icily, “but I can’t talk about an ongoing investigation with you, Agent Harley.”

“She’s as much a part of the investigation as you are, Judge Wilkes,” Hardcastle announced. “Perhaps much more so.”

“Just because you flagrantly disregarded Justice Department policy and procedures and shot up a nest of terrorists doesn’t give you a need-to-know,” Wilkes hissed. “If we weren’t talking about Henri Cazaux, I’d see to it that you had your stars yanked, you and Deputy U.S. Marshal Landers. You don’t seem to care or realize that you interfered with the biggest Bureau investigation since the World Trade Center bombing. However, I will say that the cannon you used to kill him and the eleven other persons inside the place really did a good job in obscuring their features and making identification more difficult—”

“So this whole interrogation is your way of getting back at us, right, Judge Wilkes?” Landers asked, refusing to be cowed by the Director of the FBI or anyone else. “You don’t have to lock us up — just ‘debrief us for the next six weeks until the press is done raking us over the coals for the ‘brutal’ attack on the estate and the ‘incompetent’ way we handled Harold Lake’s capture.”

“Deputy Landers, all these little problems you’ve encountered have nothing to do with me — you caused them all, you and Admiral Hardcastle’s damn-the-torpedoes, full- speed-ahead and attack-dog solutions to every problem that crops up,” Wilkes said. “You interfered with an FBI investigation, and I’ve got to clean up your mess. Congress is going to question us next week on what happened, and I’m going to be ready, and frankly, if you’re inconvenienced by this, I don’t really care. Now, I’ve asked for your cooperation. If you refuse to give it, I’ll have no choice but to schedule a deposition and compel you to attend.”

“And make sure that such a summons is made quite public,” Hardcastle interjected.

“All such summonses are a matter of public record, Admiral,” Wilkes said, not bothering to hide her contempt. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…” Just then her pager went off, and she went over to a nearby office phone on the conference room table. “Director Wilkes… a what? When…? I’ll be right down… no, I don’t want to deploy BLACK TI… I said, I’ll be right down.” She slammed the phone down and hurried to the door.

Both Hardcastle and Harley were on their feet — by the look on Wilkes’ face, they both knew something terrible was wrong. “What is it, Judge?” Hardcastle asked.

. “Nothing… I’ll brief you later.”

“Receiving a recommendation from your command center to deploy BLACK TIGER is not exactly ‘nothing,’ Judge,” Deputy Chief U.S. Marshal Landers pointed out. “What’s BLACK TIGER?” Hardcastle asked.

“That’s none of your concern” Wilkes warned.

“BLACK TIGER is the classified code name for the joint federal and military team designed to protect the capital,” Harley said to Hardcastle. “In peacetime, it’s mostly to protect against rioters and civil unrest. The Attorney General is the commander; senior representatives are from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service — Bill here is the Marshals’ rep — the Secret Service, and the two-star commanding general of the Military District of Washington, plus other military reps. There was an attack somewhere in the capital — wasn’t there, Judge Wilkes?”

“Deputy Landers, you’re with me. You two, I’ll talk to later,” she said, and hurried off. Landers gave Harley a friendly squeeze on the arm and followed Wilkes to the underground FBI Emergency Operations Command Center.

Suddenly, outside the open conference room windows, they saw a flash of light, like a huge flashbulb going off, followed seconds later by a loud rumble that was like a short, sharp crash of thunder. They all went to the window. The flash had come from the south, in the direction of The Mall, but they could see nothing.

Hardcastle was reaching for the phone to call his assistant Marc Sheehan: “That wasn’t thunder — it reminded me of a bomb attack in San Salvador I witnessed once,” he told Harley. “Something’s going on out there near The Mall.”

“Forget the phone call — let’s get out of here,” Harley said. “Talk on the way. We’ll take my car.”

Aboard the E-3C AWACS Radar Plane Leather-90

“MC, Comm, we just lost contact with the Hawk unit at East Potomac Park.”

Milford was dumbfounded. The fake Executive-One- Foxtrot was less than thirty miles away from the Capitol, and at the exact point where the medium-range air defense units would have engaged, they went off the air. First the fighters launching from Andrews were destroyed, then the Integrated Command Center at Andrews that had overall control of the Hawk and Avenger units around the city, now the close-in Hawk radar system.

The Avenger units — if there were still any Avenger units down there — were virtually blind. The gunners on the Avengers had IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) interrogators, so they could pick out any aircraft that was not squawking air traffic control codes, but the tracking sensors on the Avengers had limited range. Even if they spotted the fake Executive-One at the absolute maximum range, they would have only a few seconds to attack before the plane got within range. The Stinger missile was designed to attack targets flying less than two hundred knots airspeed— the fake Executive-One was flying almost twice that speed.

“Status of the runway at Andrews?”

“Closed, sir,” Tate reported. “There are only two other fighters assigned there; neither are ready to fly.”

“Status of the Patriot batteries? Any of them operational?”

‘The Patriot site at Dulles was destroyed by commandos,” the Senior Director responded. “The site at Fort Belvoir is not damaged, but it was decommissioned this morning and was ready to road-march in the morning. It won’t be able to respond.”

Milford checked the radar display with an almost feverish feeling of helplessness and dread. He had nothing to respond with, nothing. A single F-15C fighter carrying one Sparrow radar-guided missile had launched only moments ago from Langley Air Force Base, near Hampton, Virginia, but even at fuel-sucking afterburner power it would take about ten minutes to fly within missile range of the fake Executive-One. Two fighters had launched from Atlantic City, but they would not be in range for almost fifteen minutes.

Not only that, but now they had a new concern. That VFR slow-moving plane from Maryland was right on the outskirts of Andrews Air Force Base’s Class B airspace, about sixteen miles southeast of the capital. It had not announced itself on any emergency frequency, was not squawking any transponder codes, and it had not deviated from course one bit to try to avoid any restricted airspace. It was dead on course — for the capital. It had been marked now as “Bandit-2,” but like the fake Executive-One, they had no way of stopping it.

“Comm, MC, get me the White House, Capitol, and Pentagon communications centers, Flash priority alert,” Milford said. “If you need to get their damned attention, tell them the capital is under attack.”

“MC, Comm, National Command Authority Joint Emergency Communications Network, call sign ‘Palisade,’ button four,” the communications officer said just seconds later. “No problem at all convincing them something’s going on.”

“Go ahead, Leather-90, this is Palisade.”

“Palisade, this is Milford, Mission Force Commander Leather northeast sector, we have an unidentified aircraft inbound, about four minutes north… make that three minutes north of the capital.” Milford found himself hyperventilating, and he consciously slowed his breathing and got his voice back under control. “I have declared an air defense emergency for the Washington and Baltimore Class B airspace. Be advised, all of my air defense systems have come under simultaneous terrorist attack in the past few, minutes, and I have no aircraft or ground-based systems left-. | to respond. I recommend the Leadership be notified and I they evacuate to underground shelters. I am also tracking a j slow-moving target sixteen miles southeast of the capital at li fifteen hundred feet, groundspeed one hundred knots, ETA to the capital about twelve minutes. We have not been able to contact either aircraft; they are hostile, repeat, hostile aircraft. How copy?”

“Leather, I copy all, stand by.”

The response was almost instantaneous: “MC, SD, Marine Two and two other helicopters airborne from Anacostia,” Tate reported. “Three aircraft launching from Quantico.” The Anacostia Naval Station, just a few miles south of the capital, is a satellite base for HMX-1, the Marine Corps unit that flies VIP-configured helicopters from Quantico Marine Corps Air Facility, including Marine One and Marine Two, which carry the President and Vice President, to reduce their response time to the capital. Obviously, the senior director at the National Command Authority Joint Emergency Network command post was trained not to take any warning or threat lightly. The helicopters would touch down on the south lawn of the White House to take the President or Vice President; other helicopters would land on the east side of the Capitol to take any members of Congress or any justices of the Supreme Court to safety, if it was necessary. Others would land near the FBI Building, Justice Department, State Department, and the Pentagon, all to ensure that the most senior members of government, if they were still in the capital, would be safe.

“Give those choppers full priority, SD,” Milford said as he studied the sudden flurry of aircraft over the capital and the surrounding area. “Get their tactical frequency from ‘Palisade,’ or use GUARD to vector them around Bandit-1 when they’re ready to—”

Then he stopped, and his jaw dropped open in surprise. Washington Approach and National Tower was clearing out the airspace around the city — inbound air traffic was stacking up as high as forty thousand feet in orbit areas all i around the Class B airspace — and Milford was mentally I dismissing the outbound flights… all but one… “My I God… Jesus, Maureen — Devil-03. He’s an F-16, isn’t ¹ lie?”

“Devil…” The senior director had completely dis- U missed the flight from her mental catalog of aircraft around D.C. after the mission commander kicked him out of the airspace, but now it was coming back… She punched up his call sign and expanded her scope until she saw the blinking datablock: “God… Weapons One, you still got Devil-03? He’s three miles west of Nottingham.”

“I got him,” the weapons controller said.

“Take Devil-03 on — no, disregard, take him on GUARD channel, don’t bother with a discrete channel. Maybe whoever is flying Bandit-1 will hear what’s going on and get the hint.”

“I got him, I got him,” First Lieutenant Ed Flynn, flying the Weapons One control station, repeated excitedly. He switched his radio to 121.5, the GUARD international emergency channel, and radioed, “Devil-03, this is Leather Control on GUARD, how do you read?” To himself, Flynn and everyone else on that AW ACS radar plane were praying that the pilot of Devil-03 would respond…

… and Vincenti was praying that someone would call, him, because air traffic control or anyone at Andrews Air Force Base command post was not taking his radio calls. He had been trying frantically to contact someone, anyone, and offer his assistance ever since he heard the air defense emergency declared. “Leather Control, this is Devil-03 on GUARD, I read you loud and clear, how me?”

“Devil, I need you to turn left to a heading of two-niner- five and descend and maintain three thousand feet, right now, acknowledge.”

Vincenti had racked his F-16 ADF into a tight, seven-G turn and was on the new heading in three seconds. H$ began feeding in throttle until he was at full military power. “I’m on your heading, Leather,” Vincenti reported. “Is this a vector to the bandit?”

“That’s affirmative,” the controller replied, trying to keep his breathing and voice as normal as he possibly could. “Your bandit is one o’clock, forty miles low. I need your best speed to the intercept, Devil, what can you give me?”

Checking his fuel gauge, Vincenti made a quick mental calculation, then turned the throttle past the detent and clicked in zone 3 afterburner. The airspeed gauge slowly eased upward, the Mach meter hovering very close to 1.0, the speed of sound. “That’s it, Leather,” Vincenti said. “Are we going over to tactical frequency?”

“Negative, Devil,” another, slightly older voice cut in. “No time for that now — besides, I want our bandit to hear all this. Devil, we believe your target is a Boeing 747. It may be painted to resemble a VC-25 or some other VIP aircraft, but it is not, I repeat, it is not a VC-25. This has been verified by numerous independent sources. It is not carrying any VIPs or any government officials — it is believed to be carrying hostiles. We are tracking a second aircraft south of the capital, slow-moving, tracking toward the capital. Whoever they are, they have not responded to our radio calls to turn away from Class B airspace. Both aircraft are definitely hostile. I want you to keep both aircraft away from the entire area, but especially Prohibited Areas P-56, Washington-National and Dulles airports. Your priority is Bandit-1 west to the north; we have other interceptors inbound that might be able to catch the guy to the south. Take Bandit-1 west or north if you can do a visual intercept on them; take Bandit-2 south. Are you familiar with the prohibited areas, Devil?”

“Affirmative,” Vincenti responded. P-56A and — B was prohibited airspace over The Mall and the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Vincenti checked his weapons status, which was a joke. He carried no weapons or ammunition, just videotape for the gun camera. At least I’ll get some great pictures of the chase, Vincenti thought wryly. Of course, maybe the bandit is really radio-out, or maybe a passenger is flying the thing and can't answer, or maybe he'll turn away when he sees me or he 'll give it all up and follow me out of the area.

Just then, a large yellow MASTER CAUTION light illuminated on Vincenti’s eyebrow panel, and he heard a female voice on interphone saying, “BINGO… BINGO… BINGO.” It was a reminder that he had enough fuel to get back to Atlantic City. Plenty of airfields out here, he thought. No way Pm turning back. But it was a bad sign. At afterburner power, he was burning fuel at fifty thousand pounds per hour — he was going to be running on fumes very soon.

“Devil, your bandit is one o’clock, thirty miles low.”

There were lots of radar targets out there — dozens of planes were stacked up over Washington-National and Dulles — but only one at that azimuth and range. Vincenti locked the radar blip up, using the F-16 ADF’s IFF interrogator to see if the target was transmitting any air traffic control codes or signals — nothing. This had better not be. another fucking hot dog TV show crew, Vincenti said to himself. “Devil-03, judy,” he reported to the AW ACS controller.

The fire control computer put the bandit at two thousand feet, just a few hundred feet above ground. His ground- speed was 360 knots and his closure speed was 250 knots. He was going to intercept the bandit only about ten miles north of the capital, so he nudged the throttle to zone 5 afterburner. The airspeed indicator went over 1.0. There was no sddden sound as he broke the speed of sound, no jolt, no vibration, nothing except the ground was going by real damned fast. “One o’clock, twenty-eight miles.”

‘That’s your bandit, Devil,” the controller said.

“Control, Devil, say my engagement instructions again for this target,” Vincenti radioed. He thought he’d try a little gamesmanship here — hopefully the crew of that plane would get spooked and turn around. “Your last instructions to me were to keep this bandit clear of P-56 and Washington-National Airport. No matter what I hear on the radio, even if they claim to be an authorized TV crew on assignment, am I clear to engage at will? Over.”

“That voice sounds familiar,” another voice came on the frequency. “Do we know each other, Devil? Have we met?”

The voice sent chills down Vincenti’s spine. It's him, he thought. Shit — it’s Cazaiuc. It was the same voice he heard over Sacramento before Linda was killed. It’s Cazaiuc. He's on board that fake Executive-One-Foxtrot. Vincenti keyed the mike button: “Cazaux, this is Lieutenant Colonel — this is A1 Vincenti, the partner of the pilot you killed over Sacramento. Remember me?”

“Who can ever doubt the existence of the Fates now, I ask you?” Cazaux asked with laughter in his voice. “There are indeed mysterious forces at work, Colonel Vincenti, that have put us back together once again. But aren’t you the one that is supposed to be keeping the skies safe from men like myself, dear Colonel?”

Vincenti was going to reply, but the MASTER CAUTION light snapped on again, and he saw a FUEL indication in his heads-up display. This time the caution light said AFT FUEL LOW, meaning that the fuel quantity in the aft reservoir tank had dropped below four hundred pounds. It would run dry in just a few moments if he stayed in afterburner power. When the FWD FUEL LOW light came on, he had about two minutes of fuel remaining before they flamed out — perhaps only about twenty or thirty seconds in afterburner power. A normal landing would be impossible if he stayed in afterburner power. He ignored it and keyed the mike: “I’m not going to warn you again, Cazaux. You will turn westbound, lower your landing gear, and head west or north, right now, or I’ll blow you out of the fucking sky. This time I won’t hesitate. I’ve got plenty of reasons to flame your ass, Cazaux. Do it, or you die. That’s my final warning.”

The answer was immediate: “Very well,” Cazaux said simply, and, to Vincenti’s surprise, the 747 banked right and turned toward the west. “Now you have promised you won’t fire on me.” Cazaux snickered. “I have your word, don’t I, Colonel? We are on an open frequency — there are probably thousands of people listening to us. You promised not to harm me if I turned away.”

“I promised,” Vincenti said. He immediately chopped the throttle back to 90-percent power to try to conserve every pound of fuel possible. “But if you try to evade me or don’t follow my instructions, I won’t hesitate to open fire.”

“I assume your Leather Control has heard our conversation as well?” Cazaux asked.

“We’re listening, Cazaux,” the controller replied. “You’re within range of a Hawk missile site right now. I suggest you keep going westbound.”

“Very well,” Cazaux radioed back, chuckling. “I will take my chances with your federal court system. I understand your federal courts have no death penalty, correct? Life in one of your fine American prisons will suit me just fine.”

A few moments later, as Cazaux’s plane was about to fly over the Potomac just south of Rockville, Maryland, Vincenti banked left and joined on the tail of the massive 747. Sure enough, the plane had been painted to look like Air Force One, except the paint was peeling off in several locations and the lettering was not perfect, although very believable. From a distance, it definitely looked like Air Force One.

“Devil, Control, I show the bandit headed westbound, targets have merged. Do you have him in sight?”

Before Vincenti realized he was talking on an open frequency, he replied, “Affirmative, Control, I’m joined on the bandit. His landing gear is down. The aircraft is a 747, resembling a VC-25. It—” Just then the 747 started a steep left turn, the landing gear retracted, and the airliner began, to accelerate rapidly. “Cazaux, stop your turn. Head westbound now. ”

“Too bad, Colonel Vincenti,” Cazaux said firmly. “Too bad you were given a plane with no weapons. You could have been a hero today.”

“I’m warning you, Cazaux, turn back or I’ll fire.”

“You have not been truthful with me, Colonel.” Cazaux snickered again. “I am the man who killed your Linda McKenzie, the man who terrorized the world’s supposedly greatest nation, the one who destroyed your fighters and rendered your entire air defense system useless and inadequate. I am your nemesis, Colonel Vincenti. If you had weapons, Colonel, you would have not hesitated to attack. You have obviously closed inside both missile and gun range, and we are over open territory, with little danger to innocents on the ground — you would have fired on me if you had the ability. You do not. Nor do I expect any of the Hawk missiles sites you lied about to engage. My men have taken care of all of them very effectively.”

The 747 rolled out, now heading eastbound, and Cazaux added, “And look, Colonel — with typical government efficiency, your National Park Service still has not turned out i the lights in your capital. We are perhaps twelve miles away, and I can see your Capitol Building very clearly. It is so simple — line up on the Iwo Jima Memorial and the Washington Monument. How convenient of you to provide me with such beautiful landmarks. I was hoping to hit the White House, but I’m afraid I won’t see it in time. But I can see the Capitol Building very clearly, up on that hill by itself lit up so brightly, so that shall be my target. Good night, Colonel. You did everything you could. Your government certainly cannot fault you.”

Vincenti swore loudly in his oxygen mask and pushed the throttle back up to military power, banking hard to cut off the turn and stay close on the 747. But as soon as he moved the throttles to the mil power detent, the MASTER CAUTION light came on for the third time, this time with the FWD FUEL LOW caution light on. At military power, burning ten thousand pounds of fuel per hour, Vincenti had less; than sixty seconds of fuel left…

He knew what had to be done — it was the only option i left to him now.

Near The Mall That Same Time

The radio in Harley’s car was already a jumble of confusion. She had automatically pulled out of the FBI parking garage onto E Street, heading west toward the Treasury Department, but after pulling onto Pennsylvania Avenue, passing the Hotel Washington, she heard another radio report of terrorists sighted near the Washington Monument, and she turned south onto Fifteenth Street and roared off in that direction, her little emergency light flashing away atop the dashboard.

“Why wouldn’t they let us get our sidearms back?’¹. Hardcastle asked in between radio reports.

“Because the FBI is filled with paranoids,” Harley said, “or else they were told not to release them — that might be Judge Wilkes’s idea of throwing her authority around. Doesn’t matter — we don’t need the popguns anyway. There’s a reason I wanted to take my car.” Hardcastle had never considered his trusty Colt .45 automatic a “popgun,” and he hoped Deborah had something better in mind.

They raced down Fifteenth Street, across Constitution Avenue, and found a plain sedan stopped on the east walkway, about two hundred yards from the Washington Monument. A chunky, gray-haired black plainclothes or off-duty D.C. Police officer with an “ass-duty spread” was standing behind his sedan, pointing a .38 revolver toward the monument and trying to raise someone on his hopelessly jammed police radio. Harley skidded to a stop, popped open her trunk, and jumped out of the car, holding her gold Secret Service badge up for him to see. “Secret Service. What do you got, officer?”

“Automatic gunfire from two perps near the monument, hit a D.C. cruiser over there,” he said, pointing to a stopped D.C. Police cruiser just barely visible on the other side of the Washington Monument. He was a good three hundred yards away — obviously the cop had no intention of getting any closer with just a .38. Smart thinking. “Just blew up an Army missile jeep with a damned bazooka.”

Harley met Hardcastle at the trunk of the car — he was wisely reaching for the heavy, dark-blue bulletproof vests he found. “You always carry two vests in your trunk?” Hardcastle asked.

“Sometimes I wear two vests, Ian,” Harley said. “I’m not proud, believe me.” She flipped down a flap on the front and back of the vests, revealing the words TREASURY AGENT. She then lifted the floor carpeting, unlocked a padlock, lifted a large metal door covering her spare tire well, and lifted out two short, futuristic-looking bullpup rifles with green plastic stocks that seemed to comprise the entire body of the gun itself. “Steyr AUGs. Familiar with them?”

“Used them all the time in the Coast Guard and the Hammerheads,” Hardcastle said. He shoved two 30-round magazines into his pants pockets, slammed one magazine home, charged the weapon, and set it on SAFE. They hopped back into the car and drove off toward the Washington Monument.

Over Arlington, Virginia That Same Time

The 747 was over Arlington now, skimming over the trees and buildings. It looked as if it were going to hit the apartment buildings north of the Iwo Jima Memorial, but Vincenti knew they were not Cazaux’s target. The 747 now filled the windscreen. They were almost at the memorial, yet he couldn’t see anything but the reflection of the lights of Arlington and Washington off the mottled white paint of the 747.

“What are you doing, Colonel?” Cazaux radioed. “Are you enjoying the view? I am.”

“The view I’m enjoying is the one with you crashing into the ground and dying once and for all.”.

“I don’t think so, Colonel,” Cazaux radioed back. “Unfortunately for you, I am not on board the 747. But thank you for thinking of me.”

Vincenti’s color drained. Cazaux isn’t on the 747? He hissed, “Cazaux, you’re a dead man, you don’t know it yet, but you’re dead. ”

“While you waste your breath on threats, flyboy, I shall. stroll down The Mall, watch my 747 crash into the Capitol Building, and then see what other havoc I can raise in the ensuing panic,” Cazaux said. “Perhaps I’ll take my remaining soldiers and visit the White House. Ciao, Colonel.” -

“Fuck you, Cazaux!” Vincenti raged on the radio. He shoved his throttle to full afterburner power to try to catch up with the 747—but as he did, the WARN symbol appeared in the heads-up display almost immediately afterward, and a large red ENGINE warning light illuminated on the eyebrow panel. He was out of fuel and the F-16’s engine had flamed out.

Near the Washington Monument That Same Time

Just then, a man appeared from behind the Washington Monument, about a hundred yards away — they could see his outline against the floodlight surrounding the monument. Harley immediately slid her car right, with the left side of the car facing the man, when suddenly a burst of machine-gun fire sent a swarm of bullets in their direction.

Hardcastle had swung open his door as soon as he saw the mem, and he threw himself out of the car even before Harley completely stopped it. He felt a hand on his leg as he was leaping out, and he thought Deborah was right behind him. Hardcastle took cover behind the right front wheel, leveled the Steyr, flicked the safety to the upper five-dot full-auto position, and fired a full one-second burst in the terrorist’s general direction. “Deborah!” he yelled behind him. He could no longer see the terrorist — either he was on the run or was on the ground. “Deborah, you all right?”

“Shit, no!” Harley yelled. Hardcastle leaned his Steyr against the car beside him where he could get to it easily and crawled around to the passenger-side door. Deborah Harley was lying on the car seat, the left side of her face and left arm bloody. Her left arm looked like it was hit just below the bulletproof vest, but it appeared to be only flying glass that caused the facial injuries. “When you’re getting out, Admiral,” Harley said in a remarkably clear voice, still with a trace of humor despite her injuries, “don’t waste time. I’ll have to crawl over you next time.”

“You do that,” Hardcastle said. “You got a first aid kit anywhere in—”

“Forget about me. I’m all right,” Harley said. “Where’s that gunman who fired?”

Hardcastle heard sounds of running. He reached for his rifle — only to face a tall, fearsome-looking warrior dressed in black, wearing a balaclava facemask, a web harness filled with grenades and weapons, standing less than fifteen feet away. The man was carrying a small submachine gun with a long suppressor. The warrior raised his SMG, aimed…

… then stopped, lowered it, and said in a definite French accent, “Admiral Hardcastle, I presume?” Hardcastle made a move for his rifle, but the gunman fired a short burst into the ground beside him. Hardcastle heard only faint cracks when the gun fired, but he could feel the impact of the bul- * lets along the ground. The gunman then ran over, grabbed the Steyr, tossed it aside, then stood over Hardcastle, just a few feet away. He was tall and powerful-looking, with an athletic body that could not be hidden even by all the combat hardware on his combat harness.

“This officer is hurt,” Hardcastle tried. “Who the hell are you?”

The gunman pulled off his balaclava hood, revealing a narrow face and close-cropped hair. “I am your old friend Henri, Admiral… Henri Cazaux.”

Hardcastle’s face registered shock, then pure white-hot anger. He tried to jump to his feet and tackle Cazaux. The- terrorist merely kicked Hardcastle aside with a sharp snapping kick to the head, accomplishing the move quite easily.

“This is perfect, Admiral, just perfect,” Cazaux said. He' peered into the car door, checking Harley and taking away her rifle. He quickly checked the glove compartment, removing a .380 automatic backup pistol. “She looks beautir ful even with her wounds,” Cazaux said. He turned back to Hardcastle and said, “First I encounter my old friend and your colleague Colonel Vincenti, and now you.”

“Vincenti?”

“He is out there,” Cazaux said, waving toward the Lin- coin Memorial and the Iwo Jima Memorial to the west, “trying to stop my 747 from crashing into the Capitol. He—”

“What?”

“Oh, yes, Admiral,” Cazaux crooned. “You and the young lady have wonderful seats for my final spectacle. You will witness the destruction of the Capitol as my 747 crashes into it, and then witness the destruction of the White House when my fuel-air explosives destroy it. Of course, I think we might be a bit too close to the explosion at the White House — they assure me everything within a half-mile will be damaged or destroyed by the explosion. If the Fates let you live, then you probably deserve it. Unfortunately, I won’t have the opportunity to see any of this — it is a poor soldier who stops to admire the destruction he causes. Au revoir, Admiral. I hope to—”

“Freeze! FBI!” a voice behind them shouted. “Drop your weapon!” Cazaux let the submachine gun clatter to the ground. “Now raise your—”

Cazaux didn’t hesitate — he ducked down behind the car, drew a sidearm, and dragged Hardcastle to his feet, holding the pistol to his head. It was Judge Lani Wilkes, drawing down on Cazaux from about twenty yards away. “Drop the gun, now! ” she shouted.

“My luck is running true to form tonight,” Cazaux cackled. “It is none other than the beautiful FBI Director, Lani Wilkes! I think you should drop your gun, Madame Director, or I’ll blow the Admiral’s brains out right now. Don’t you move in that car either, Treasury agent!” he shouted as he noticed movement inside the car.

“Bad move, Henri,” Hardcastle said, his voice weakened by the steel-like arm across his throat. “The lady would probably give you a citation if you pulled the trigger. Judge, meet Henri Cazaux. Henri, FBI Director Wilkes.” He could see Wilkes’ stunned expression even in the semidarkness of the lights surrounding the Washington Monument.

“My extreme pleasure, madame,” Cazaux said gallantly. “Admiral, it was convenient of you to wear a bulletproof vest tonight. Madame Director, I’ll make you a sporting proposition. If you don’t lower your weapon, I’ll kill the Admiral and I’ll still escape. Toss your weapons away, give me a head start, and the chase starts anew, on equal terms. Agreed?”

“It’s not going to happen, Cazaux,” Wilkes said, her voice faltering from the strain, confusion, and outright surprise. “No one is going to give up their weapons.”

“Ah, your voice says otherwise, Madame Director,” Cazaux said. “You have faith in your agents, I assume. Surely they can capture me in the nation’s capital? Now drop your gun. This is my final warning.”

To Hardcastle’s surprise, Wilkes let her service revolver roll on her trigger finger, barrel pointing upward. “Wilkes, don’t do it.” Hardcastle groaned. “He’ll kill me anyway.”

“Freeze! D.C. Police!” they heard.

The plainclothes D.C. Police officer had chugged his way over to the monument, drawing down on Cazaux. Cazaux instinctively raised his pistol toward him… and Hardcastle reached up and grabbed his right wrist, shoving it upward. The officer fired, but he was too far away and missed. Cazaux shrugged out of Hardcastle’s grasp with ease and fired three shots at the officer, two rounds hitting him in the chest. Wilkes dropped to one knee, swinging her service revolver back up.

Cazaux aimed…

… and they fired simultaneously.

Three .45 caliber rounds hit Wilkes, one in the shoulder and two in the chest; two .38 caliber rounds hit Cazaux in the stomach and left shoulder. Wilkes collapsed onto'her back and was still. Cazaux stood there, a hand over the stomach wound, but he was still standing. He swung his pistol down at Hardcastle, but suddenly his knees gave way and he went down on one knee. Realizing he was really hurt, Cazaux stood up shakily, ignoring Hardcastle, and started running south toward the Sylvan Theater and the Tidal Basin. He started to pick up amazing speed. Before Hardcastle could react and reach for one of the Steyr rifles, Cazaux had almost reached Independence Avenue and was lost in the darkness.

Hardcastle’s first thought was to go after Cazaux, but not with three wounded officers around him. The D.C. Police officer was dead. Lani Wilkes was alive but hurt very badly. “I was on the way to the White House… heard the radio call… where… where’s Cazaux?” she gasped.

“He got away,” Hardcastle said. He tried to stuff a handkerchief into one of the wounds and tried to compress the other with his bare hand — the bleeding was serious.

“Don’t… don’t let him get away, Hardcastle, damn you…”

“Lie still, Judge. Help is on the way,” Hardcastle lied.

“Violence… this violence is sickening,” Wilkes gasped. “When will it end? When will it… ever… end…?” And her voice trailed off into a whisper, then nothing.

“Shit!” Hardcastle swore aloud. “You bastard!” He turned to retrieve his Steyr bullpup rifle, and found Harley on her feet, headed toward him. “Deborah, stay down.”

“Is she dead?”

“She’s hurt badly. The cop is dead,” Hardcastle said. “I’m going after Cazaux. Stay here and see if you can help Wilkes.”

“No way. Where did he go? I’ll call it in.”

“Call it in, but you’re—” He turned and looked toward the Lincoln Memorial as the loud scream of an airliner got closer and closer. “Oh, my God, there it is!” Hardcastle Shouted, pointing toward the Iwo Jima Memorial. “It’s headed this… Jesus, Deborah, get down, get down!” Harley ran over, grabbed Wilkes by the arms, and dragged her behind the Washington Monument to safety…

… just as all hell broke loose.

Near the Iwo Jima Memorial That Same Moment

Just as the 747 was north of the Iwo Jima Memorial and over the interstate, Vincenti closed his eyes and flew his F- 16 Fighting Falcon into the right rear portion of the fuselage, between the wing trailing edge and the forward edge of the horizontal stabilizer.

The impact sliced off most of the 747’s rear empennage, and it nosed over, then tumbled, the crushed F-16 adding its own remaining jet fuel vapors to the tremendous explosion over the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. The airliner impacted just east of the Rock Creek Parkway, on the interchange west of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery complex, tumbling end-over-end in a tremendous flaming fireball two hundred feet high. The bulk of the burning wreckage missed the Lincoln Memorial by less than four hundred yards, spraying burning metal, fire, and destruction across the Reflecting Pool, across the Kutz Bridge, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing Building on the east side of the Tidal Basin, destroying everything in its path.

With a terrific mushroom-shaped cloud of fire, the Francis Case Bridge exploded when it was hit by the wreckage, but it stopped the careening hulk from tumbling any farther. Flying debris and burning fuel spread out in a half-milewide, two-mile-long fan, spraying buildings from the Smithsonian Institution and the Energy Department all the way to South Capitol Street with an incredible firestorm. In less than two seconds, almost two square miles of the District of Columbia was on fire.

Near the Washington Monument That Same Moment

Hiding behind the square stone face of the Washington Monument, their breathing rapid and shallow, hands and legs shaking, eyes staring in tenor, Hardcastle and Harley tried to close their eyes, then found they couldn’t bear to not watch, and they waited for the fires to engulf them.

The crash was utterly devastating.

Hardcastle caught a glimpse of the huge white 747 just to the right of the Iwo Jima Memorial. It appeared to be landing except that it was moving at an incredible speed, the engines shrieking louder than at takeoff, the landing gear up. And, of course, there was no runway in front of it, only the three-mile-long Constitution Gardens and The Mall.

But then Hardcastle saw a blur, a streak of light to the 747’s left, then a brief puff of fire, and suddenly the huge airliner simply dropped out of the sky right before him, like a huge pelican diving for a fish in the Potomac. The cloud of fire and debris obscured all view in that direction, and that’s when Hardcastle dove for cover, holding Harley close to him as if to shield her from the awful concussion that he knew he had no power to stop. The terrible sound of wrenching steel and Capitol-sized flames hissing in the humid night air moved across and seemingly over them at tremendous speed. Hardcastle always remembered the slow-motion TV shots of plane crashes, but of course they. always slowed the images down so you could somehow savor or try to analyze the crash, and the airliner had to be moving well over three or four hundred miles an hour when it hitthe ground. The earth rumbled with the force of a hundred earthquakes; the lights around the Washington Monument exploded as if being shot out by machine-gun fire. The air felt hot and electrified, as if they were standing in front of a steel smelter, and a sudden windstorm sucked the air out of their lungs as a huge mushroom-shaped blob of air was consumed in the fire.

But they didn’t die.

Hardcastle stayed put for what seemed like a long time, and finally looked up when he heard a large piece of debris fall close by. His and Harley’s bodies were, surprisingly, still whole. He crawled around the north side of the monument and peeked westward.

It was raining burning debris and slippery moisture that Hardcastle knew was jet fuel, not rain. The stricken 747 had somehow careened around to the south, between the Lincoln and Washington monuments, across the middle of the Reflecting Pool, coming to rest in a massive flaming pile beyond the Tidal Basin. The sky was glowing far to the southeast with several fires, but Hardcastle did not see the massive Dresden-like firestorm he was expecting. By just a few hundred feet, the 747 had miraculously missed most of the important government buildings and monuments.

“It’s over,” Hardcastle said to Harley, who had gotten to her feet and followed him around the Washington Monument to inspect the destruction. “I think Vincenti rammed jt. I thought I saw either a missile or an F-16 itself hit the. 747 just before it cleared the Potomac.”

“My head is still ringing,” Harley said. “I’ve never heard or felt anything like that before in my life.” She walked around the monument, her eyes tracing the destructive path of the stricken 747. “Didn’t I see Cazaux running in that direction?”

“Yep,” Hardcastle said proudly. “He was all the way down to Independence Avenue. He ran right into the path of that 747. Man, I hope he got fried. What a great way for him to go — cooked by his own weapon.”

“That would be the perfect definition of justice,” Harley said. She trotted over to her car, retrieved a first-aid kit from her well-equipped trunk, and began dressing Wilkes’ wounds. The FBI Director was not conscious, but most of the bleeding had slowed to a manageable level. “I just wish he had gotten it sooner.” She looked back to the west and spotted the Avenger air defense vehicle, sitting on what looked like the scorched edge of the fireball across the Constitutional Gardens. “What’s that? Is that one of the Army air defense things?”

“It’s an Avenger Forward Area Air Defense System,” Hardcastle said. “Must’ve been one of Cazaux’s targets. He — had to take out the ground air defense units to make his air attacks work.”

“We better go see if anyone’s in there.”

“I’ll go — the fire might have destabilized the missiles on board,” Hardcastle said. “They might have a radio on board.”

“You better call the Bureau and tell them Wilkes is hurt badly.”

“She got a piece of Cazaux before she got it,” Hardcastle said. “She was going to play by the rules, even with the Devil himself standing right in front of her.” He shook his head as he trotted toward the Avenger. “Lani Wilkes saved my life. How am I ever going to live that down?”

Aboard the E-3C AWACS Radar Plane Leather-90

Milford saw the fast-moving low-flying radar targets, the F-16 and the fake Executive-One-Foxtrot, get closer and closer, saw the targets merge… and then both disappeared, right over the Potomac, just west of the capital. “Oh, Jesus…

“Lost contact with Bandit-1 and Devil-03,” the Senior Director, Maureen Tate, reported. The entire AW ACS crew was silent, everyone realizing what had just happened — a terrorist 747 had just hit Washington, D.C.

“Bandit… Bandit-2 now twelve miles southeast of the capital,” Maureen Tate stammered, trying to force her brain back to the task at hand. “Groundspeed ninety-three knots, in a slow descent. ETA to the capital area, nine minutes.”,

“SD, Weapons-3, I need to bingo Lima-Golf-31,” the weapons controller reported. Lima-Golf-31 was the F-15 out of Langley that had tried to chase down the 747. “He has less gas than he thought. He won’t make it to the capital.” The F-15 had been in full afterburner power ever since takeoff, and he probably didn’t start with a full load of fuel anyway. “Andrews is closed, and National is a zoo right now, with planes stacked up all over the place — I recommend Navy-Patuxent River.” Tate turned to Milford, who nodded his agreement. That was their last chance of stopping the new bandit. All they could do right now was wait for it to hit…

… no, no, there had to be something still out there. He once had several dozen air defense units operational in the ^s D.C. area — it was inconceivable that Cazaux or any army of terrorists could have gotten them all in just a matter of minutes.

Just one shot was all they needed to stop this last threat…

“Comm, MC, sweep all the tactical channels and try to raise any of the Leather air defense units,” Milford ordered. “Someone out there must still be operational. If possible, try to get some of the Avenger units from the Pentagon, Dulles, or National over to the capital area to try to stop Bandit-2.”

“Any Leather unit, any Leather unit, this is Leather-90 Control,” the communications technician radioed. “If you hear me, come up on any tactical frequency or on VHF 105.0. Repeat, if you hear me, come up on any tactical frequency. Over.”

Near the Washington Monument That Same Time

The entire front of the top turret of the Avenger was crushed inwards and blackened, obviously by a hit from' a small but powerful antitank weapon. The front of the HMMWV itself was still smoking from the fire in the engine compartment, and the turret looked cockeyed, as if shoved off its moorings. Hardcastle used a fire extinguisher he found on the rear deck of the Avenger to put out the last bit of fire in the front so he could reach the driver and gunner. Both were dead. He found the third man in the Avenger crew nearby, shot to death by machine-gun fire. Cazaux was nothing if not a very efficient killer, Hardcastle thought. “Dear God,” Hardcastle said half-aloud, “you may not want it, but I’d give all of my remaining years for an assurance from you that Cazaux is really—”

Hardcastle started on the grisly task of removing the bodies from the Avenger. As he removed the driver’s hel-. met, he heard through the headphones, “Any Leather unit; any Leather unit, this is Leather-90 Control. If you hear me, come up on any tactical frequency or on VHF 105.0. Repeat, if you hear me, come up on any tactical frequency. Over.” Somebody was still calling, trying to see if anyone was still alive. Hardcastle tried to remember who “Leather” was, but it really didn’t matter. This Avenger unit was definitely dead. It wasn’t going anywhere, and the turret and sensors were cooked.

“Unknown rider, unknown rider,” another radio in the Avenger blurted, “unidentified aircraft on the Washington National one-two-five degree radial, two miles, this is Leather Control on GUARD, turn south immediately or you may be fired upon without warning. You are in Washington National Class B airspace and are approaching prohibited airspace. Turn south immediately and squawk 7700. Attention all aircraft, stay outside Andrews or Washington National ten DME, air defense emergency in progress. I say again, unknown rider…”

Holy shit! Hardcastle gasped.

Cazaux’s second terrorist aircraft!

He had almost forgotten — Cazaux said he had a second aircraft inbound to bomb the White House with a fuel-air explosive.

That “unknown rider” was it — and it was only a few miles away.

He donned the Avenger driver’s thick bulletproof Kevlar helmet, moved the microphone toward his lips, and keyed the transmit button: “Leather Control, this is… ah, this is Admiral Ian Hardcastle, on board an Avenger unit on the Mall. How do you read this transmitter?”

“Calling Leather Control, say again.”

“Leather Control, this is Admiral Hardcastle on board one of the Army Avenger units on The Mall. Can you read me?”

“Person calling Leather Control, this is an aviation emergency channel only, if you require medical or police response, change to VHF 121.5 or UHF 243.0, over.”

“Listen to me. Henri Cazaux is flying some kind of aircraft toward Washington, D.C., and it’s loaded with explosives. I’m on the ground near one of your Avengers. Your crew here is dead. I need to know how much time I have and if there’s anything I can do to help avert disaster. Over.”

“Listen, sir, if you are at The Mall, stay away from any military units you might encounter. The authorities will be arresting or shooting any looters. I advise you to get away from the area as quickly as possible. If you are injured or your home has been damaged, you should contact the proper authorities imme—”

The controller’s voice suddenly cut off, then another voice came on the channel: “Is this Admiral Hardcastle, the White House air defense adviser?”

“Affirmative. I’m—” Suddenly Hardcastle remembered back from his unit and situation briefings who “Leather” was: “Is this the senior director of the AWACS orbiting over eastern Pennsylvania?”

“This is Major Milford, the force mission commander,” Milford replied from Leather-90. “Admiral, we’re tracking an unidentified aircraft about nine miles south of you, about three hundred feet aboveground, groundspeed about eighty- seven knots, heading right toward the capital. What’s your situation there? Over.”

“A 747 crashed just west of the Constitution Gardens section of the capital, and it destroyed or damaged everything from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capital Yacht Club,” Hardcastle said. “We found an Avenger unit that was hit by an antitank weapon just west of the Washington — Monument. The crew is dead, and the front of the vehicle and the turret and gunner’s cockpit are badly damaged. That plane you’re tracking belongs to Henri Cazaux. He says he’s got a fuel-air explosive weapon on it and that he’s going to bomb the White House. Is there any way to reactivate this unit, maybe by remote control? Over.”

“Affirmative,” Milford said, stunned by what he had just heard. “There should be a remote-control computer unit up with the driver. You should find a spool of fiber-optic cable about fifty yards long. You should be able to operate the unit with that.”

The computer was in a strong plastic case on the right side of the HMMWV, plugged into a mounting unit under the dashboard, with a round reel beside it. The case unclipped easily from its mounting; the fiber-optic cable was thin but strong. “I found it,” Hardcastle said. “Stand by.”

The remote control unit was a laptop computer with a flip-up two-color LCD screen, a sealed plastic-covered keyboard, and a finger-sized joystick built into the base.below the keyboard. To Hardcastle’s surprise, it was working. A simple menu selection displayed on the screen, and by touching a few buttons he got a radar depiction of the skies around the city. After a few moments, Hardcastle could understand the symbols on the scope — the unknown aircraft, labeled “^A” on the screen, was only ten miles to the south. “The remote control is working, and I’ve got a depiction of the area here.”

“Good,” Milford said. “That means the telemetry between the AWACS and the unit there is functioning. Do you see the up-caret symbol at the bottom of the screen? Zoom the picture in or out to see it.”

“I see it.”

“Just move the cursor with the joystick onto the caret symbol at the bottom of the screen and press the button below the trackball.” Hardcastle did, and a diamond symbol surrounded the symbol. “What happened?”

“I got a diamond around the caret.”

“Good. You should see a menu on the bottom of the screen, with a button or function key that says something like ENGAGE or ATTACK. Do you see it?”

“Yes. It’s a covered switch that says ENGAGE.”

“Good. Get out of the unit, clear yourself and everyone else away by at least fifty feet, and press the button. The turret should turn and the missile launchers should start tracking the target. You can plug your headset into the side of the remote-control device. The missiles will launch when it gets within range. Go ahead.”

Hardcastle plugged the driver’s Kevlar helmet communications cord into the computer, got out of the vehicle, unreeled the fiber-optic data cable at least fifty feet, and knelt. Harley was well behind him, tending to Wilkes. He made sure the diamond designate symbol was still on the hostile “^A” symbol, then hit the ENGAGE button. It turned yellow, then began to blink. The turret, which was pointed west, did not move. “The turret didn’t move, and the ENGAGE button is blinking yellow,” Hardcastle radioed back.

“I’m not sure what that means,” Milford said. “Deselect the ENGAGE button, then go to the unit and see if the turret is jammed and that it can turn freely.” Hardcastle did it, then ran to the Avenger unit. Sure enough, the entire circular track that the turret rode on was twisted and almost completely sheared off the base. There was no way it was going to move.

“I don’t think it’s going to move,” Hardcastle radioed. “The antitank missile twisted the turret track all to hell. There’s hydraulic fluid all over the place.”

“Can it slew in the other direction?”

“Negative. The whole turret is off the track. It would take a crane to lift it back on.” -

“Then you better get out of the area as fast as you can', Admiral,” Milford responded. “You’ve done all you can. The plane will be overhead in about five to six minutes.” Hardcastle wasn’t ready to give up, but he didn’t want anyone else nearby. Their car didn’t look like it was going anywhere, either. “Deborah, start heading toward the Capitol Building — we’ve got about five minutes to make it.” “What about the Director?”

“Just get going — I’ll bring Wilkes. Cazaux’s going to bomb the White House, and the explosive he’s using could fry us all. The Capitol will be the safest place for us. Can you drag Wilkes over there?”

“I don’t think so,” Harley said. “I’m staying here with you, Ian. There’s no other choice.”

“I’ll take Wilkes in a minute. You head for the Capitol. Get going.” Harley reluctantly got to her feet and began trotting east toward the Capitol Building. Hardcastle found a four-cell flashlight and examined the interior of the Avenger — and immediately struck paydirt. He dragged two green steel-and-plastic cases out from storage racks behind the passenger seat and opened them to find a large shoul- der/pistol grip assembly and two cylindrical cans.

“What are they?” Harley asked behind him.

“I said get moving toward the Capitol.”

“I can’t make it — I can hardly see where I’m going,” Harley said. “I’ll help you. Do you know what they are?” Hardcastle cursed and pulled a yellow-and-black tab on one side of the pistol grip. A metal grilled device resembling an open animal cage popped out of the right side of the unit. “It’s a Stinger missile shoulder grip assembly,” Hardcastle said. “I think we can fire the missiles from this unit from the shoulder. All we have to do is figure out how to get the missiles out of the launchers.”

“Looks like the Army already thought of that,” Harley said. She shined the flashlight into the lid of the carrying case, where they saw color-cartoon-like pictures detailing how to do it. Two latches on the bottom side of the right Stinger launcher opened an access panel, where they could see inside the launcher itself; two more latches on the side of one of the green aluminum tubes allowed it to slide free out the rear end of the launcher. She helped slide the aluminum tube onto the pistol grip assembly and lock it into place. Hardcastle took one of the cylindrical cans, inserted it into a hole just forward of the trigger, and twisted it to lock it in place. A green light on the side of the grip told him the unit was on.

“Get that computer over there,” Hardcastle said. “It has a map telling where Cazaux’s plane is.” Harley retrieved the computer, opened it, and studied the screen. Meanwhile, Hardcastle keyed the mike switch on his helmet headset: “Leather, this is Hardcastle. I’ve found the Stinger shoulder launchers. I’m going to try to shoot it with a Stinger.”

“You ever shoot a Stinger before, Admiral?”

“How hard can it be?” Hardcastle asked. “The instructions are printed in cartoons.”

“Three miles,” Harley said, “heading right for us.”

“Can you describe those instructions to me?” Hardcastle asked.

Harley studied the drawings for a moment. “Looks like a button on the left side of the grip is for the… the IFF?”

“ ‘Identification Friend or Foe,’ ” Hardcastle said. “It’ll tell us if the plane is transmitting proper codes. Doesn’t matter — if it flies near here, I’m shooting it. Next.”

“Large lever behind the grip. Pull down with your thumb when the target is within range. Powers the missile gyro, cools the seeker head, and charges the eject gas cylinder.” “What’s the range?”

Harley checked the computer screen: “Two miles.”

The time seemed to drag on forever. Hardcastle couldn’t see a thing in the sky — the few lights and the remains of the fires to the south were destroying his night vision, and now the sirens wailing around the city prevented him from hearing anything. “Range!” he shouted.

“One-point-five miles…”

“I see it… Jesus, it’s low!” Hardcastle shouted. It was a small single-engine Cessna with a fixed landing gear, and it looked like it was less than a hundred feet in the air. It was just south of the Tidal Basin, skimming the treetops. An occasional gust of wind or thermal current from the fires pushed the plane sideways or caused it to lose altitude, but it always regained its heading — it was homing directly for the White House. Hardcastle moved the large lever behind the pistol grip down until it snapped to the stop, and he heard a sudden shot of high-compression air and a loud whirring sound. “I think it’s on. What next?”

“Large button on the very front of the grip — squeeze it with your thumb and hold to open the seeker-head shutter. Look through the sight and center the target in the sight.” Hardcastle looked over the sight, first to line up the Cessna, then looked through the sight. There was a sawtooth frame under a tiny round circle in the center of the sight. When Hardcastle placed the Cessna inside the center of the circle, he heard a loud beep beep beep beep beep… “It’s beeping. What next?”

“Pull the trigger and kill that motherfucker,” Harley said.

Hardcastle squeezed the trigger.

There was a very loud fwoosh! with very little kickback. The missile popped out of the aluminum tube and sailed skyward… and immediately fell to earth about fifty yards ahead of them. A second later the missile’s motor fired, and it skittered across the ground for hundreds of yards until it was lost from sight. “Shit! It didn’t track! It didn’t go!” Hardcastle shouted.

“It should’ve gone, ” Harley shouted. “We did everything right.” But Hardcastle was already scrambling to remove another missile from the Avenger launcher. He removed the launch tube from the shoulder grip, twisted off the hot battery cylinder, loaded another missile on the shoulder grip, and twisted on another battery unit.

By the time Hardcastle hefted the Stinger onto his right shoulder again, the Cessna was over the Jefferson Memorial, swooping lower and lower. Its wings swung wildly as it caught in the hot lower air currents as it passed over the flaming ground path of the terrorist 747. Hardcastle lined up on the Cessna once again, flipped the BCU activation lever down, and…

… as soon as he did so, white acidic gas began streaming out both ends of the missile. Hardcastle threw the missile and launcher on the ground. The gas was coming out at high pressure now, and the battery unit underneath the grip was smoking. ‘The missile must’ve been bad,” Hardcastle said. Harley was already moving toward the Avenger launcher to pull off another missile, so Hardcastle opened the second case to get another launcher — and he had a chance to study the instructions himself…

That's it! he exclaimed to himself.

The missile was pushed out of the launch tube by compressed nitrogen gas, and there was a 1.5-second delay before the rocket motor fired. The launch tube needed to be “super-elevated,” or raised high enough so the missile would not hit the ground before the rocket motor would fire. The last drawing before squeezing the trigger described the final lineup of the target in the sight and how to superelevate: after the target was acquired and locked on with the beeping tone, the Stinger had to be raised until the target nestled into one of the sawtooth notches on the bottom of the sight, depending on the direction the target was flying, to lead the target. The missile’s seeker head would still be tracking the target all the way, and when the rocket motor fired it would home in and kill.

By the time they loaded the third missile and screwed in a new battery unit, the Cessna was almost directly overhead, flying less than the length of a football field west of the Washington Monument. Hardcastle could clearly see two objects under the wings of the Cessna — those had to be the fuel-air explosives. He let the Cessna fly north of his position, then, as it flew over Constitution Avenue, activated the battery unit, squeezed the seeker head uncage switch, heard the beeping sound, lined up on the Cessna for the last…

“Freeze!” someone shouted behind him. “FBI! Drop that missile launcher now! ”

“No!” Harley shouted. “I’m Harley, Secret Service!” She held up her U.S. Treasury Department ID wallet, hoping that the FBI agent would notice the standard federal agent “safe signal”—looping one finger over on the badge side and two fingers on the ID card side. “We’re trying to stop that plane!”

“I said drop it!" Obviously he was too keyed-up to notice Harley’s safe signal. To the FBI agent who had driven up to the group at the Washington Monument, it looked as if Hardcastle were trying to launch a bazooka round at the White House or the Commerce Department Building.

“No!” Harley shouted. “I’m Secret Service! He’s authorized! Don’t!”

Hardcastle felt the bullets crash into the middle of his back like two sharp rapid punches — but the bulletproof vest saved his life. He superelevated the Stinger launcher, placing the target in the middle notch on the bottom of the sight so the muzzle of the launcher was raised well over the Cessna, and squeezed the trigger… just as two bullets hit the back of his Kevlar helmet. The FBI agent couldn’t get the shooter in the back, so he tried for a head shot, and this time he got him.

The missile popped out of the launch tube and sailed high overhead, nearly out of sight — but nowhere near the Cessna. Hardcastle thought it was flying out of control again. It was our last chance, damn it, he thought as he fell forward on his face, dazed and immobilized by the shock.

Our last chance… God, no…

He looked up toward the White House when someone shouted, “Look!” Two quick puffs of fire could be seen on the wings of the Cessna as the fuel-air explosives canisters released, just as the Cessna passed over the Zero Milestone — at the north end of the Ellipse and continued on toward the White House.

“Everyone get down! Get down!” Hardcastle murmured. “The bombs… the bombs are going… going off…” But he couldn’t seem to make his mouth move anymore.

Just as the Stinger missile started to nose over and head back to earth, the rocket motor ignited with a bright orange tongue of fire, and a split second later the missile arched gracefully and smoothly right into the front left side of the Cessna’s engine compartment, near an exhaust stack. The one-and-a-half-pound warhead exploded on contact, and the Cessna nosed over, spiraled down, and crashed on the south lawn of the White House.

But as the canisters began to disperse the deadly high-explosive mixture, the Stinger missile exploded. The cloud of explosive vapors had no chance to properly disperse and mix with the air that would have given it its tremendous explosive power. The fireball that erupted just over the south lawn was still a thousand feet in diameter, large enough to blacken the entire south lawn and blow out windows at the Old Executive Office Building and the Treasury Department. The polycarbonate antisniper windows of the White House rippled and shook from the explosion, but remained intact. Harley could feel the intense heat of the fireball a half-mile away. There were several loud explosions as the bomblets from the fuel-air explosives harmlessly hit the ground, tossed several hundred feet away by the force of the blast.

Harley and the FBI agent ran over to Hardcastle together. The agent had his gun out and aimed at Hardcastle’s head, but Harley shoved her badge and ID in the guy’s face. “Call an ambulance, you idiot,” she ordered. “He just saved the White House. The Director is hurt too — she’s over there.” “The Director… of the FBI?”

“No, the damned director of ‘I Love Lucy.’ ”

“Well, Jesus, Agent, how the hell am I supposed to—” “Just get an ambulance, damn it!” Harley yelled. She carefully unbuckled the helmet — it fell apart in piecesrin her hands. “Ian! Are you all right? Can you hear me?” There was no response. The back of his head was covered with blood, the glistening red blood contrasting well with his thin gray hair. “Ian? Stay with me, stay with me!”

“All right, all right, Deborah,” a subdued, strained voice murmured into the ground. “Just answer the damned phone, will you please? The ringing is driving me crazy.”