Skyhook (29 page)

Mac MacAdams had remained silent through the entire sequence

of events, but with the onboard controller’s words in his ears, he turned, spotting Sergeant Jacobs at a console two rows back, motioning him to come quickly to his console.

Mac nodded and moved back, taking the offered headset as Jacobs filled him in.

“The intruder is just outside the MOA, sir.” He punched his microphone button again.

“Sage Ten, Crown, I say again, traffic twelve o’clock, fifteen miles, southwest-bound, reported at two thousand level. Can you change course left or right?”

“Negative, Crown! No control…”

Jacobs turned back to Mac. “Range is thirteen miles.”

“Where are the eagles?” Mac asked, referring to a flight of four F-15s doing the shadow duties for the test flight.

“Flying high combat patrol.”

“Open the channel,” Mac directed, and Jacob’s hands deftly clicked the appropriate switch and held down the push-to-talk as Mac immediately ordered two of the F-15s to intercept the low flying civilian aircraft.

“You’re going to shoot him, sir?” Jacobs asked.

“Of course not!”

“They can’t reach him in time,” Jacobs said. “They’re closing too fast.”

The lead eagle driver asked for more instructions and Mac issued them quickly. “Force him to land at Elmendorf. If compliance is refused, destruction unauthorized.”

Mac looked at Jacobs and pointed to the radar display. “What’s the range?”

“Five miles left. It’s gonna be close, sir.”

HBOHRD UIIDGEON N8771B

“More traffic at almost twelve o’clock,” April said.

“Didn’t see him.”

“Much lower I’d say, by the angle.” April strained to see the speck again through the slightly scarred Plexiglas of the Widgeon’s windscreen. There was a faint hint of a light, different this time, more white and self-generated, and she relayed what she’d seen.

“If he’s got landing lights on, it’s someone under ten thou . .

.”

Scott’s eyes had been searching the same spot of sky. He stopped speaking, leaned forward, focusing on … something … getting larger ahead of them.

“Oh SHIT!” he yelped as he jammed the control column forward, lifting April out of the seat with negative G forces.

The onrushing dot had been growing at an alarming rate and not moving in the windscreen when Scott latched onto it visually, realizing almost too late that it was an aircraft closing on them at jet speeds. The calculation of relative flight paths led to the emergency dive, but as soon as he had the Widgeon standing on her nose, it was sickeningly obvious he’d gone the wrong way! The oncoming jet was diving too fast for Scott to get under him. He yanked back on the Widgeon’s yoke and firewalled the throttles.

Gravity jammed both of them into their seats. A large metallic T-tail loomed at them from the twilight sky just ahead as time dilated, inducing a feeling of slow motion, the huge structure passing almost laconically beneath them with a horrendous “whoosh” and a mighty roar. The Widgeon’s stall warning horn sounded at the same moment, and Scott fought to roll off to the right and let the nose drop, regaining speed and finally righting the aircraft.

He glanced at April, who was drained of color.

“What the hell was that?” she stammered.

“A near-midair!” he said. “Some sort of bizjet… I couldn’t tell.”

Scott could feel his heart racing and his breathing trying to catch up, but his voice sounded funny. “You all right?” She nodded, unable to speak.

“Below two thousand now, and thirty-fifty is set!”

The Gulfstream pilot’s words were clipped and urgent. The descent was continuing with only seconds left until they hit the water, when once again Ben felt the nose starting to come up as the descent rate slowed. He could see enough through the windows to know they were very low, but the horizon line—or what there was of it in the gathering darkness—was now nearly horizontal.

“Jeez, Ben! What was that?” the pilot demanded.

“Are we level?”

“Yes … at sixty feet this time. What on earth … ?”

“Do you have control back?”

“No. It’s still locked, but we’re level and the power’s coming up.”

“Try to disconnect the autothrotdes.”

More silence, then a yelp of triumph. ” THAT worked! What’s it doing, Ben?”

“I still don’t know why, but it has to do with the altimeter setting. You reset them all?”

“Yes! Hell, you didn’t give us a choice, thank God. But what’s still holding on to this bird, if it’s not the computer?”

It was Ben’s turn to hesitate. His finger moved to the interphone button, but the pilot beat him to it.

“Wait! It’s the damned autopilot, isn’t it?”

An autopilot disconnect warning horn sounded through the interphone as the Gulfstream jumped and both pilots let out a war whoop.

“Got it!” the captain whooped. “By damn, that did it!”

“How?” Ben asked.

“The autopilot disconnect! Somehow the autopilot had seized control, and with all the modifications we’ve made, it couldn’t be overridden.”

“We’re back under control?”

“Yes! And climbing. Crown, you copy?”

There was a sigh from the test director aboard the AWACS.

“Yes. Stand by while we finish performing CPR on each other.”

rlie had noticed the dark blue Chevy van earlier in the afternoon, a utility version with no windows motoring down the road leading past his property. The van stopped for several minutes before moving on. Addresses were hard to find among the widely spaced properties in the area, but it was the third appearance of the same van within three hours that snagged his attention as unusual. When it showed up several cars back in traffic as he drove into nearby Port Angeles, Arlie realized he was being followed. He turned suddenly near the center of the downtown area and turned again into a Jiotel parking lot, racing past the separate lobby structure and around the back, where his car would be hidden. He sat, waiting for several minutes, before deciding to investigate on foot.

He reached the main street and walked several blocks in each direction, but the blue van was nowhere to be seen, and he retraced his steps to the hotel parking lot feeling slightly foolish.

I must be getting paranoid, he thought, as he rounded the corner of the building and looked up to see the dark blue van parked right next to his car.

*Ť*Ť*

“Captain Rosen?” A male voice startled him from directly behind, and he turned abruptly to find himself facing a broad shouldered man with a weathered face.

“Yes? Who are you?”

The man smiled and looked around before meeting his gaze. His hands were stuck in the pockets of a long black leather coat, and he held himself with easy confidence. Arlie glanced at the broad pockets of the coat and wondered if either contained a gun.

“Consider me a friend, Captain.”

“Okay, but do you have a name?”

The man ignored the question and fixed Arlie with a cold stare.

“I have a vital warning for you, and I did you the favor of coming a long distance to deliver it in person.”

“What, you couldn’t ring my doorbell?”

“I doubt you would want your wife to be as frightened as you’re about to be.”

“Excuse me?”

“Captain, you’ve blundered into something way over your head, and your daughter and her pretty friend, Gracie, are making some very powerful people very upset with their questions and lawsuits.”

“What the hell are you—”

A large right hand came out of the jacket, motioning for silence, and the accompanying look on his face stopped Arlie cold. “I’m not here to answer questions. I’m here to warn you to call your girls off, withdraw your lawsuits, fire your lawyers, and just hunker down. You will withdraw those legal actions on Monday and bring your daughter back now. If you do, your license will be reinstated in a few weeks. If you don’t, you’ll never fly again, and someone’s very likely to get hurt.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Rosen, the people you’re challenging will stop at nothing to protect their interests. Do you understand what that means?”

“Yeah. You, or they, are threatening my family. If you’re a government agent, I’ll have your badge for this!”

Once more the man smiled and studied his feet before replying.

“Who I am is not important. What’s involved is. Stop your little war and you’ll get back in the cockpit. Keep it up, and lives will be changed drastically, jobs extinguished, and careers ruined. Especially your daughter and her friend. Do not tell them, or anyone else, about this conversation, or I’ll be back to deal with you.”

Arlie’s jaw was set and his fists clenched as he stepped forward, but he was unprepared to see the man’s left hand pull a silenced Clock 9mm from his coat in one unbroken motion. He raised the gun to Arlie’s chest, and just as quickly jerked it to the right and pulled the trigger. A surprisingly loud, muffled noise caused Arlie to jump and whirl to his left in time to see shattered glass falling from his side mounted rearview mirror, which now featured a bullet hole in the very center.

“What the hell…” he yelped.

The man shoved the gun back in his pocket. “Don’t delude yourself into thinking this isn’t just as serious as I said.”

“Jesus Christ, man!” Arlie was backing up, his eyes wide with alarm as the man turned and walked past him to the blue van, turning at the rear bumper.

“We’re not kidding, Rosen. Don’t risk it.”

RBOHRD WIDGEON N8771B ODER THE GU

RSKfl, SOUTHEHST OF

The voice in their headsets came from nowhere.

“Unidentified aircraft flying at two thousand feet five-zero miles east of Seward, come up on guard frequency, one-twenty-onepoint-five, immediately.”

“Who’s that?” April demanded.

Scott looked to the left, then back to the panel, confirming that one of the radios was, indeed, tuned to the emergency “guard”

frequency. He flipped a switch and pressed his microphone button.

“Who’s this?”

“This is a U.S. Air Force fighter, Husky Eighteen. You have violated restricted military airspace and we are intercepting you. You are directed to comply with our orders and follow us back to Elmendorf Air Force Base to land.”

“I haven’t violated any airspace, Husky Eighteen. I’ve got two GPSs and they both confirm I’ve never been over the line.”

“State your call sign.”

“That’s a negative. You don’t need to know my call sign, and I will not follow you.”

“State your call sign, unidentified aircraft. We are proceeding with the approved rules of interception. If you do not comply, you will be shot down.”

“Scott? What does he mean?” April asked in alarm. The shock she’d seen on his face moments before was turning to anger, and she could see his jaw set.

“Hang on, April.”

Scott reduced power and kicked the Widgeon into a sudden, tight right, descending turn, as he spotted the lights of the two fighters coming in from behind with a closing speed of several hundred knots.

“Scott! I do not want to get blown out of the sky.”

“Those clowns are not going to get a firing solution on me …

not to mention the fact that they don’t have authorization to fire. It’s a standard bluff.”

The nose of the Widgeon was pointed down at a twenty-degree angle and April felt herself grasping the edges of her seat. Scott pulled the throttles all the way back to idle and extended the flaps as he continued the spiral to the right. The water was coming up, the land mass in partial shadow on her right, then her left, as she began calling out the altitude.

“Six hundred … five hundred … four hundred.”

“I’m leveling. We’re going up one of those fjords.”

“Scott… two hundred … one-fifty … one hundred.”

He worked the controls to level the wings and bring the nose up, flattening their trajectory just above wave height. There were more strident calls from Husky Eighteen.

“Unidentified amphibian, this is Husky Eighteen. We say again, you must obey the rules of interception and follow us, or you will be shot down.”

“Sure I will,” Scott snorted to April. “He’s getting frustrated.”

“Unidentified amphibian, be advised you can’t get away from us even down in the weeds!”

Scott brought the Widgeon toward the northern bank of a fjord leading inward and began hugging the cliff, less than a hundred yards from the passing trees.

“Scott? Couldn’t they get your license for evading them?”

“Prove I’m out here. They don’t have my registration number and they’re not going to get it.”

“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” April said, trying to catch his eye, but worried about distracting him with the cliff mere yards away to the right. The daylight was fading fast as the jagged coastline they were shadowing wound its way toward a glacier she could see looming a mile or so ahead.

Scott craned his neck above the dash panel to spot the fighters.

“There! Hah!”

“Define hah’ please.”

“They had to go halfway to Anchorage to turn around, and now they’re trying to get in behind and lock us with their tactical radar down here in the so-called weeds. They’ve got look-down, shoot down’ capability, April, but they’ve got to have a stable target, and we’re going to deny them the pleasure. I know a place to hide.”

“You mean, they could shoot us with guns?”

“Missiles. Technically yeah. It’s really hard to do … but not impossible.”

“Oh, that’s a comfort!”

There was a gentle upslope over the top of the cliff leading to a clearing on the right and they saw it simultaneously. Scott banked

right and brought the Widgeon less than thirty feet over the top of the ridgeline, flying between the trees as he flew up the meadow and turned with the meandering terrain. He added power to climb with the slope as he extended the flaps to the fully deployed position.

“This’ll keep us as slow as possible. The air farce up there can’t get much below two hundred and we can fly at seventy.”

“Scott?”