C
aptain Bob Rodwell initiated a gentle climbing turn to the left, which would take them out of the pattern, while at the same time he reduced power because of noise-abatement regulations. There wasn't an ATR pilot who didn't grumble about the inherently unsafe procedure.
The signal from the Dulles repeater reached the InterTech heat monitor/alarm subassembly as Delta 756 passed through 2,500 feet twelve degrees nose high. There were no indications on any of the cockpit instruments, nor did the jetliner's sophisticated computer that monitored the performance levels of every system notice anything was wrong. But within the first ten milliseconds the fate of the airplane and her crew and passengers was irrevocably sealed.
First to occur was the blockage of heat information from the port engine's thermocouples, which caused internal temperatures to soar several times beyond design limits almost immediately. The Mintori Assurance engineers who had designed the method of sabotage correctly reasoned that in order to mask evidence of an explosion when the sensor frame ignited, there would have to be massive and legitimate heat damage to the engine. Three times out of ten the blocked thermocouples would have created sufficient overheating to cause
the engine to disintegrate on its own. But thirty percent was not good enough odds.
The internal structure of the Rolls-Royce turbine blades began to change. In this instance several of them would have disintegrated on their own within four minutes. As it was the engine would be destroyed much sooner than that.
The overheat also began to affect the fuel nozzles that metered heated kerojet into the combustion chamber. Much of the plumbing was already beginning to deteriorate. Soon the metal walls would be breached and a catastrophic amount of fuel would be dumped into the chamber, causing a massive explosion that in itself would seven times out of ten take not only the engine but the entire wing.
Still there were no indications on any of the cockpit instruments. Nor were the designers satisfied with seventy-percent odds.
Next out of the InterTech CPU was a modulated pulse that delayed GO-One by less than a quarter wave shift. At the end of the wiring harness the complicated signal spread resonantly across the engine-mounted harness frame, which erupted in a fireball as if an uncontrolled fuel flow had suddenly occurred, which it did a few hundredths of a second later.
Now the cockpit crew knew that something very bad had happened. Alarms flashed and buzzed all over the panel as the Guerin 522 began its fatal roll to port.
Captain Rodwell was the first to understand that what was happening was the same as the accident at Dulles. When the flight recorders, including the cockpit voice recorder, were recovered, the investigators' first indication that something had gone wrong, was the single expletive from the captain: “Fuck!”
Rodwell immediately powered back on the starboard engine in what he knew was a futile effort to bring the jetliner back to level flight.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday,” his first officer, Carol Gerrard, radioed, her voice in reasonable control. “This
is Delta seven-five-six, out of Dulles, calling mayday. We have lost our port engine and most of the wing. We are going down approximately four miles southwest of the airport.”
They could hear the passengers screaming in abject terror as the airplane plunged toward a wooded knoll.
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Air Force Two accelerated down the runway past one hundred knots to VI, the point of no return at which the aircraft was committed to taking off. Everything in the cockpit showed normal. Lieutenant Colonel Bob Wheeler anticipated V Rotate and a smooth liftoff. He figured they would be on top of the overcast in just a few minutes, when they would turn northwest on the great circle route to their refueling rendezvous out in the Aleutians. Delta's mayday call came over 121.5 and 243 MHz simultaneously. An instant later a huge fireball engulfed Air Force Two aft on the left. For just a moment Wheeler thought that the Delta flight had somehow collided with them, but that was impossible. Air Force Two lurched sharply to port and began to slide, helped in part because the starboard engine was still developing full thrust. Wheeler started to pull all power when he correctly guessed that they had completely lost their port engine. Instead he hit the starboard engine's thrust reversal immediately slowing their rate of skid to the left, and averting a cartwheel, which would have been a much greater disaster. The airplane began to shudder, and the rate of slide again increased. Wheeler realized that his co-pilot, Major Larry Marthaller, was applying brakes, or they had locked. In either case it was exactly the wrong thing to do to avoid rolling. Their center of gravity needed to be reduced now. Barely thinking, most of his actions reflexive, Wheeler yanked the landing-gear retract control, and the jetliner sank onto its belly, its rate of slide still impressive, but definitely slowing. He cut all power, and then braced himself. There was nothing left for him to do except listen to his co-pilot's mayday call override Delta's.
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Viktor Yemlin had spent the morning packing the remaining books from his apartment. He was finally leaving for Moscow at eight this evening, and he'd already made the last of his courtesy calls on his American friends. He'd been in the U.S. for four years under the cover of cultural attaché, and he was going to miss a lot about the country. Not the high prices and the incredibly high murder rate, but he would never forget the quality of things.
Through the morning he'd thought about what Kirk McGarvey was suggesting, and what
Abunai
seemed to confirm. It was insane. If it had been anyone other than McGarvey he would not have given the notion a second thought. As it was he drifted from his apartment down to the communications center in the embassy on 16th Street around 3:00. It was Sunday and eleven in the evening in Moscow. Except for emergencies most of the offices in the Lubyanka and the Kremlin were closed, so there were only three clerks on duty. But the new SUR
rezident
was probably still in the embassy.
In addition to maintaining a communications link with Moscow, the center was a sensitive listening post. Its efforts were concentrated on intercepting transmissions from the White House, the State Department, and the FBI, in addition to police, fire, ambulance, and airport traffic. Pentagon communications were handled by military intelligence from a different location, although all information came back to the embassy for collation and analysis before being sent on to Moscow.
One of the scanners stopped on the aircraft emergency frequency.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Delta seven-five-six, out of Dulles, calling mayday.”
“What the hell ⦔ Yemlin said half to himself. He went across the room to the bank of radio receivers.
“We have lost our port engine and most of the wing. We are going down approximately four miles southwest of the airportâ”
“Get this on a recorder,” Yemlin ordered one of the clerks.
“It's being done, sir.”
The Delta transmission was overridden by another aircraft calling mayday, and for a second Yemlin did not want to believe what he was hearing. It was more than impossible, it was unthinkable.
“ ⦠Air Force Two, on the ground at Andrews. We have lost our port engine and wing, and are on fire. Eagle Two is on board. Repeat, Eagle Two is on board.”
Yemlin grabbed a phone and called the SUR
rezident
's emergency number. Whatever the man's current location was he would be found.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is U.S. Air twelve-eleven. We're going down, we're going down!”
Yemlin stared at the scanner radio. What the fuck was happening?
The scanner erupted in a babble of voices that lasted for several seconds, until the Delta transmission ceased. A moment later the Air Force Two transmission also stopped.
Yemlin held the phone tightly against his ear, waiting for the
rezident
to come on the line.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is U.S. Air twelve-eleven! We've lost our port engine and wing! We're going down ⦠! Twenty-one miles ah ⦠southwest of Dulles! Haymarket intersection!”
“U.S. Air twelve-eleven, say again nature of your problem?”
“We've lost our port engine ⦔ The transmission abruptly ended.
The
rezident
came on the line. “This is Soroshkin.”
“Stanislas Ivanovich, this is Viktor Yemlin, this is an emergency.”
“What is the nature of this emergency?”
“Air Force Two has apparently crashed on takeoff with the Vice President aboard. You should come down to Communications.”
“Is this the McGarvey operation?”
“Yes, Mr.
Rezident
. Two other airplanes have also crashed. There may be others.”
“I'm on my way.”
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Amanda Lindsay poured her husband a glass of iced tea and passed it across the small table to him. They were having late lunch in the family dining room. It was a Sunday ritual that Mrs. Lindsay insisted on whenever matters of state did not interfere. It was the only time they had alone together. Whenever possible they dismissed their personal staff so that she could serve and sometimes cook for her husband. It was a homey tradition that suited everybody, and one which was never interrupted except for the most extreme emergencies. After lunch he would go to his office to catch up on his reading until five, when he would prepare for his “Sundays at Six” half-hour radio broadcast over the NPR network. It was something FDR had started, and Reagan and Clinton had picked up. Since he had been scheduled to be enroute to Tokyo this evening, he'd taped his talk three days ago. But before it aired he wanted to review it again. There were a number of new points he wanted to bring up, among them the increasing civil unrest in Japan and what effects that would have on his upcoming talks in Tokyo. There was a commotion out in the corridor, and Lindsay turned as Justin Owen, chief of the Secret Service weekend detail, came in, a look of troubled concern on his face.
“Mr. President, Air Force Two has crashed on takeoff, and there's no word on survivors yet.”
“My God,” Lindsay said, his hand shaking as he put his tea down.
“Apparently one of the engines exploded during their takeoff roll. The rescue crews are on site now.”
“Is there fire?”
“Yes, sir, but there's more. At least two other airliners both out of Dulles have crashed. Right now it looks like they had the same problem. Could be sabotage.”
The color drained from Amanda Lindsay's face. “You were supposed to be on that flight today,” she said.
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Operations for Air Force One and Two and other governmental VIP flights were conducted out of Andrews Air Force Base by the 89th Military Airlift Wing. Emergencies were handled by the Air Wing's Search and Rescue squadron. Even before Air Force Two broadcast its mayday, the tower had notified SAR that the airplane was in serious trouble, and the crash teams were scrambled. Each GO truck was manned by seven SARTECH personnel in hot suits.
In the first seconds of the crises, Captain Thomas Moore, 89th SAR commander, thought the U.S. was under attack. Moments before the Vice President went down, they'd monitored Delta 756's mayday. Then came U.S. Air's 1211. Airplanes all over the place were falling out of the sky.
Air Force Two lay tilted to port off the end of the runway. Flames and greasy black smoke rose from where the engine and wing had been torn off. Debris from the wreckage was spread for five thousand feet along the runway. Moore watched the television monitors as the first crash team neared the site. It didn't look good.
“Any comms from the aircraft?” he asked one of his Mission Communications System specialists.
“Negative. They're off the air on all bands, except for their EPIRB.”
“Cockpit's intact.” Moore picked up the red phone direct to the Air Wing Commander's locator. It only took a few seconds. “Sir, this is SAR. We have Air Force Two down at the end of the runway with Eagle Two aboard. Our units are rolling.”
“I just heard,” Lieutenant Colonel Brian Skeggs replied. “How does it look, Tom?”
“Not good.”
“What about backup?”
“The Secret Service is scrambling a VH-3 chopper, and a second is coming down from Bethesda Medical with the ER team. ETA about seven minutes.”
“Fire?”
“Some, but if we can get to it before it spreads we'll have a chance.” Moore watched the television monitors. The first crash team had arrived on site and was spraying fire retardant foam from its main nozzles. “But Colonel, something else is going on. Air Force Two lost a port engine. It exploded. In the last ninety seconds two other aircraft have gone down out of Dulles with exactly the same problem. Delta seven-five-six, and U.S. Air twelve-eleven.”
“Have you talked to intelligence?”