A pair of armored personnel carriers came up the road
from the navy base and stopped in front of the gate. A dozen Marines in battle fatigues scrambled out of each and took up defensive positions, their weapons at the ready. It was extraordinary. Nothing like this had ever happened before.
“Disperse at once,” the police lieutenant's amplified voice carried over the crowd.
“Look at what is happening behind you!” Hatoyama pointed to the Marines. “Will you let a foreign military power fire on innocent civilians?”
A few of the policemen glanced nervously over their shoulders.
“My fellow countrymen, listen to me! Japan must be cleansed of all foreign military! How long must we remain an occupied country?”
Shotoro Ashia came up from the mob and pulled Hatoyama back a few feet. He had been talking to someone on a cellular phone. “Something is happening.”
“What is it?” Hatoyama asked. He kept his eyes on the police line and the Marines blocking the gate behind them.
“The American Vice President's airplane crashed on take-off just minutes ago. And there are other crashes. All over America.”
Hatoyama's breath caught in his throat. “Has it started?”
“I don't know. I cannot get through to Kobe. But Takushiro, all American forces have gone to DEFCON THREE. That's why they are guarding this base so well. They will fire on us.”
“Do they want war?” Hatoyama asked, stunned.
“No one knows.”
Hatoyama looked at the police line. “Perhaps it will start here. Perhaps this is our destiny. Our
giri,
for the
Yamato Damashi
of Nippon.”
Â
“At least six airplanes are down, maybe more,” Captain Reiner said excitedly. “I'm turning back.”
“Hold on,” McGarvey shouted. He and Socrates scrambled up from the electronics bay. They would cross the coast in another minute or so, the Pacific Ocean stretched to the horizon ahead of them.
America
was still climbing to a cruise altitude of sixty-six thousand feet, but already the party had started. They could hear music and people talking and laughing. The panel clock showed 12:05:00 PST: Callahan was on the radio with Guerin's operations center at Gales Creek.
“Where'd Air Force Two go down?” McGarvey asked.
“On take-off at Andrews.”
“What about the others? You said Oakland. Where else?”
“Dulles, Minneapolis, New York. All over the fucking country.”
“What kind of equipment?” McGarvey asked, but he already knew. It was starting just as he'd feared it would.
“I don't know,” Reiner admitted.
“All 522s, Mr. McGarvey,” Callahan said. “Ops says the number is up to thirteen.”
“Jesus H. Christ, that's fucking impossible!” Reiner blurted.
“What happened to them?”
Callahan's eyes were round. “Six of them lost port engines. They're not sure about the others. What the hell is going on?”
“It's the heat monitor,” Socrates muttered. “The new CPU. The modification came up from InterTech in '90. Right after the American Airlines crash.”
“The same one you just pulled?” McGarvey asked.
Socrates looked down into the electronics bay where the heat monitor lay on the deck, connected only by its input cable. “Has to be something on the engines themselves. The port engines. Something that has a left and right. Mirror images.”
“The engines aren't interchangeable, port and starboard?”
“Yes, but there are some differences,” Socrates said. Then he had it, and his breath caught in his throat. “The
heat monitor is connected to the thermocouple frame. One's for port, the other's for starboard. My God, it's as simple as that, but we never saw it.”
“Call the FAA and ground the fleet, now,” McGarvey told the engineer. “Wait. How would it work? Would it be on a timer? An outside signal. What?”
“Probably a triggering signal from somewhere. Maybe through the VOR system. Maybe even via satelliteâthe GPS system. Could be anything.”
“Any way of blocking it?”
“Pull the heat monitor, just like we did,” Socrates said.
“Call the FAA and tell them to get that message out to every 522 whose engines are turning. Do it right now.”
Callahan relayed that to Guerin Ops. “Mr. Socrates, the company wants a clarification.”
“No time.” The engineer plugged a spare headset into the phone system.
“Do we turn back or keep going?” Reiner asked. He scanned his instruments almost continuously.
“Get us out of the mainland air traffic control system as quickly as possible,” McGarvey said. “In the meantime try to find out which airports have been affected. Maybe it's not the entire system.”
“Right,” Reiner replied.
McGarvey unlocked the flight-deck door and stepped out into the forward galley. Two flight attendants were opening champagne. They looked up, startled.
“Oh,” one of them cried out. She dropped the open bottle on the deck. It didn't break, but champagne squirted all over the place.
“Is David Kennedy on board?” McGarvey asked. He kept his voice and manner nonthreatening.
“No,” the other stew said.
Several people at the front of the main cabin saw what was going on and sensed that something was wrong. They stopped talking in mid-sentence. Two men rushed up the aisle from the back of the plane, drawing their pistols.
McGarvey stepped back half a pace and spread his hands away from his body. The flight attendants moved out of the way.
“FBI, Mr. McGarvey,” the lead man said. “You're under arrest.” He stepped to the left to give his partner a clear firing path.
“That'll have to wait,” McGarvey said, keeping his voice low. “We've got a problem.”
Â
Mangled bodies and blood were nothing new to Technical Sergeant Halvorson. He'd been on SARTECH teams in the Philippines, Labrador, and Greenland and had personally participated in five accident rescues and cleanups. Some of them had been a lot worse than Air Force Two. But this time the Vice President was involved.
A total of thirty-seven persons were aboard, including Eagle Two and his wife, the flight-deck crew, the communications staff, the stewards, the Secret Service, the Veep's personal staff, and the media. At first glance he estimated more than half of them were dead or critically injured.
At least they didn't have to contend with fire for the moment. But with a heavy aircraft down, that was always a potential problem.
Halvorson could hear screams and cries for help even through his thick helmet. His partner, Staff Sergeant Salo, was right behind him as they carefully climbed through the jumbled wreckage.
“Okay, we've got many survivors in here,” Halvorson radioed. “Let's go, let's go.”
“Over there, Roy.” Salo pointed toward the front of the crumpled main cabin where the VP was wedged beneath a desk and two aircraft seats.
“We see Eagle Two,” Halvorson said.
Cross was struggling, trying to reach his wife, who was several feet away from him. She was obviously dead.
“Able Leader One, say his condition,” the SARTECH coordinator radioed.
“He's alive but badly injured. We need a backboard in here.”
Halvorson and Salo eased the aircraft seats away from the desk and set them aside. They could see that the VP's left side had been badly mangled when the desk had slammed into him in the crash. Another few inches and his head would have been crushed. It was one bit of luck at least.
Two other openings were being cut into the aircraft's hull, and a pair of SARTECH personnel joined Halvorson and Salo with a backboard. The VP would have to be stabilized before they moved him.
Still others were starting to administer first aid to some of the accident victims, but their primary consideration was the Vice President. Until he was clear no one else would be moved.
Between the four of them they managed to lever the heavy desk off the VP. Three of them held it away, so that Halvorson could ease the man out from under. Immediately blood began spurting from two major wounds.
“We've got two bleeders here,” Salo radioed. One of the SARTECHs pulled a big pressure bandage out of his First Response kit and handed it down.
The first was the femoral artery on the VP's left thigh. It took Halvorson several moments to put the pad in place and get enough pressure to slow the blood flow to a trickle. Next, he positioned an inflatable tourniquet bandage on the VP's left leg below the knee, which had been badly crushed, and quickly pumped it up.
The Vice President screamed and his eyes fluttered. His complexion turned pasty white. His breathing became shallow and rapid.
“He's going shocky,” Halvorson said, maintaining his calm. He cut the VP's coat and shirt sleeves away from his right arm, as the SARTECH behind him ripped the seals off a plasma administration kit.
He pulled off his hot-suit gloves. A SARTECH handed him an alcohol pad that he used to swab the VP's arm
above the elbow. Then he found a vein and eased the plasma needle into the skin and through the tough venal wall, taped it into place, and released the clamp to start the flow.
“Sally,” the Vice President called weakly. Halvorson pulled off his helmet. “It's all right, sir. She'll be fine. Do you understand?” He moved forward so that they could get the backboard into place beside the VP. “We're going to move you now onto the stretcher. Just hang in there, sir.”
While Salo held the plasma bag up, Halvorson and the two other SARTECHs eased the Vice President onto the board.
“Easy now, Mr. Vice President, you'll be okay,” Halvorson said.
Padded wedges were placed on either side of the VP's neck before they strapped his head down so that it could not move. They placed a strap across his shoulders, one across his hips, and wedged his legs, strapping his ankles.
“All right, we're coming out with Eagle Two,” Halvorson radioed.
Â
The streets of Tokyo were practically empty at this hour. Prime Minister Ichiro Enchi rode in his limousine to Government House while speaking on the telephone with his Director General of Defense, Shin Hironaka.
“What is the situation with Vice President Cross?”
“Mr. Prime Minister, we have had no further word in the past two or three minutes. But already thirteen airplanes have gone down in the U.S. And there is another situation developing. Have you called your entire cabinet?”
“Yes,” Enchi said, trying to grasp the enormity of what he was being told. “What situation?”
“Admiral Shimakaze called me from Yokosuka. Rising Sun has gathered a mob at Seventh Fleet Headquarters. They are threatening to arrest Admiral Ryland because nuclear weapons have been brought here aboard his ships.”
Enchi closed his eyes. “Have you spoken with Admiral Ryland?”
“No, Mr. Prime Minister,” Hironaka said. “The Seventh Fleet has been raised to a Defense Condition Three. The same order was apparently transmitted to the American Marine and Air Force installations on Okinawa.”
“What are you telling me?”
“The timing makes it seem likely that the Americans believe we are responsible for the attack on their air fleet.”
“Kamiya and Kobayashi are to be arrested.”
“I understand, Mr. Prime Minister. But that may take too much time. Considering the situation in Yokosuka, as well as the continuing threat that the Russians may make a retaliatory strike at any moment, I suggest that we raise our readiness level to Defense Condition Two.”
“That's tantamount to a declaration of war.”
“We may have no other choice.”
“I will call President Lindsay,” Enchi said.
“First let me give the order, Mr. Prime Minister. We must not be caught unprepared. We must be ready.”
“Very well,” Enchi said. “Do they want war?”
Â
CIA Director Murphy got into his limousine and, before it rolled down the driveway, he was speaking to his Deputy Director of Intelligence, Doyle. “What's NSA's best estimate?”
“There's continuing flash traffic from the embassy to Tokyo. I've seen the partial decryptions and translations, General. They're definitely involved.”
“Sonofabitch.” He motioned for his bodyguard to give him a cigarette. “Any word on Cross?”
“He's hurt but alive. The number's at thirteen now. Should have word from the FAA any minute to ground the system.”