Strike Force Alpha (36 page)

All 10 of the hijacked airliners had been accounted for.

But where were the other two planes?

Marty Noonan and his KC-10 Extender refueling craft had spent the last 30 minutes circling high above the strait. He and his crew had watched the astonishing battle from six miles up.

What had happened below still didn’t seem real. The chaos of metal and men was frightening and not something for which Noonan was prepared. His tanker’s UHF radio had become so cluttered with anxious and excited voices, Noonan had turned it off and had simply watched in silence as the fantastic events unfolded.

Aloft again on yet another double-up training mission, he and another tanker from Bahrain had been rushed to the scene as soon as the first reports of the hijackings had come in. Luckily, they were very familiar with the airspace due to all the flying they’d done above the Gulf recently. In those countless training missions with their Bahrani copilots, the American tankers had flown down to Hormuz, to go around in circles, sometimes for hours, before flying back to Bahrain again. Now they were actually down here for a reason, or so they thought. In all this time, not one of the U.S. warplanes below needed to come up for a refueling. Everything had happened that fast.

But that was OK, too. The two KC-10s just continued doing what they did best.

Circling and waiting….

Once it appeared that everything was calming down below them, Noonan turned his UHF radio back on. There was still a storm of excited voices and static, but now he thought he was able to decipher what was going on. Ten airliners had been hijacked; 10 had either been shot down or landed somehow. But now other people were coming on the airwaves and saying that there were
still
two more planes out there. But where?

Noonan almost laughed. He put this comment down to the excitement of battle and how easily things could get confused. If there were two more planes, why weren’t they showing up on the Navy’s hot-shit radar? Besides, he was flying the highest of any plane connected with the battle. He searched the skies now and found they were clear to both horizons.

“Two more planes?” he was saying. “There ain’t two more planes left up here.”

That’s when he saw a glint of metal off to his right. He turned just in time to see his Bahrani copilot coming at him, not with a pot of coffee but with a box cutter, its blade extended to its fullest length….

Ryder had finally got through to a couple Navy pilots on his radio. He’d explained to them who he was and why he thought two more planes might be out there. They’d agreed to pass his information on to the carrier’s CIC.

The moment he broke off with them, he saw the huge KC-10 tanker suddenly appear above him.

Ryder recognized the aircraft right away. It was Noonan’s Extender. He could tell by the image of the red Pegasus—the Mobil Oil flying horse—emblazoned on its tail.

But what was it doing? Active refuelers rarely came down below 20,000 feet; at least that’s how Ryder was familiar with them. This one, though, was falling like a stone.

And right behind it was another.

Ryder switched channels for his chin mike. For one foolish moment he thought he’d be able to radio the two tankers directly and tell them they had to clear the area immediately, that this was still a combat zone and nowhere for two planes full of gas to be….

But that’s when it hit him.
Could these be the last two airplanes?

“Phelan!” Ryder roared into his cell phone. But the young pilot was already on the case.

“Those coffee-making bastards,” he was cursing wildly. Then he added: “I’m climbing….”

This was not good. The tankers were still about seven miles away from the carrier, but there was no doubt now that they were intent on crashing into it. But Ryder had lost contact with the Navy pilots and couldn’t raise them again. Both UHF and VHF channels were still overloading, and any other U.S. aircraft not damaged in the great battle were at least two minutes away.

Bottom line: he and Phelan were the closest to the two refuelers. It would be up to them to stop them.

Ryder looked at his ammo counter. He still had exactly 24 cannon shells left. He was sure Phelan had less. In fact, the way the young pilot had been thoughtlessly blazing away earlier, there was a good chance his gun was completely dry.

“Ammo check!” Ryder called up to his wingman. Phelan was now about five hundred feet above and ahead of him.

There was no reply.

“Lieutenant Phelan…give me your ammo count!” Ryder said again.

Again Phelan did not acknowledge his request. Instead, he just said: “I’ll take Noonan’s plane….”

Ryder had no time to argue with him. They were now about a half-mile behind the tankers, even as the tankers closed to within five miles of the carrier. Ryder went left and began lining up on the second refueler.

He thought he’d already spent his time in hell, but at least in this instance things were more clear-cut. These weren’t airliners filled with innocent people. They were guided missiles filled with thousands of gallons of gas. The tankers
had
to be shot down, simple as that. As for the American personnel onboard the planes, Noonan included—well, Ryder had to assume just like the Delta guys on the airliners the Navy had shot down, they’d fought the hijackers but lost. The chances were great that they were already dead.

But Ryder knew he had to use his head. With only two dozen shells left, he had to shoot this thing down well before it reached the
Lincoln
. Even a near miss on the carrier could prove catastrophic.

He booted full throttle and suddenly was going faster than he thought possible in the jump jet. He came right up on the tanker’s tail and immediately fired off six cannon shells. Only three hit, and they caused no discernible damage. He fired off three more, but again to no avail. He smacked himself upside the head. What was he doing? He wasn’t going to take down this monster by firing on its rear end.

He pulled back on the throttle, then dived below the huge aircraft. The tanker was full of JP-8 aviation fuel, highly volatile.
Fuel,
the lifeblood of this crazy adventure, first not ever enough of it and now too much. There was only one place to hit this plane.

Ryder pushed 45-degree deflection nozzle and raised the Harrier’s nose 10 degrees, all in three seconds. It was a maneuver only a jump jet could do. His cannon was now pointing at the bottom of the descending aircraft, right where the wings met the fuselage. He let off three more cannon shots. Incredibly, they seemed to bounce right off. What were they? Duds? He didn’t know. He tried again, three more, practically single-fired. Everything seemed to go in slow motion even as the distance between him and his target was shrinking. He could see these shells going right through the center of the big plane—but so far to no effect.

He was running out of time. He kept the trigger depressed and watched his ammo count dwindle. Just nine shells left. Now six. Now just four….

He let the last three go at once—and that’s when the sky suddenly turned pearl white. Just for a second. Then it turned to yellow, and yellow to orange, then to nothing but red. Ryder had finally hit something on the big plane and it had caused a violent explosion. Again instinct took over. One of his hands yanked his plane up and over; the other went full positive deflection. In other words he went flat out, straight ahead.

He would retain a memory that he actually flew through all those flames, and maybe he did. But he also found himself going sideways over the top of the tanker’s fuselage as the bottom half of the plane was falling away. He was moving at an incredible rate of speed, pushed along by the force of the huge explosion, but it was just too much for the Harrier to take. It flipped over and began spinning out of control. His panel lights were blinking like crazy. His engine was coughing and about to stall. For one brief moment he thought if he just let it go and plowed in, maybe he’d see Maureen again soon. But in the same instant he knew she would have disapproved. So he was able to dredge up an old test pilot’s trick. He applied heavy right rudder and used just about the last of his gas to go full throttle. The Harrier began bucking as if it was being pulled in two directions at once. But that was the whole idea. The engine spazzed once, twice…but then came back on at full power.

He recovered flight, went wings level, and tried to get his bearings. He felt like he’d been hit on the head with a hammer. His stomach was turned inside out, too. But when his vision cleared he could see the tanker going down in four large pieces right below him. It hit the water with a mighty crash, causing yet another huge explosion, this one birthing a mushroom cloud of white smoke and water vapor. And then, just as quickly, it was gone.

Ryder took in a deep breath of oxygen and felt it run through his body. Then came a startling question:
Where the hell was Phelan?

No sooner did the thought arrive than the other tanker went right over Ryder’s head. It was bearing down on the carrier—and Phelan was riding right beside it. A bizarre moment ensued. It almost looked like Phelan was flying in formation with the big fuel plane, following it down. He had no ammo left; that much was clear now. And neither did Ryder. But for some reason the young pilot had pulled up almost level to the tanker’s cockpit. He seemed to be looking inside. The two planes were now less than two miles from the carrier.

What was he doing?

Suddenly Ryder’s phone rang. It was Phelan.

All he said was: “Go see my mom. Tell her what happened out here today.”

“We’ll both tell her when it’s over,” Ryder replied, not really getting what Phelan was saying.

That’s when he saw Phelan bank his Harrier as sharp and clean as if he were coming in for another perfect landing. This time, though, he just kept on going—and slammed into the nose of the KC-10.

There was one long weird moment when the two planes flew along, almost cojoined. But then Phelan’s Harrier blew up—and a moment later, the second refueler blew up, too.

Now just a mass of burning metal and igniting jet fuel, the wreckage went straight down and crashed into the sea about a mile north of the carrier.

The Persian Gulf was in chaos.

The massive terrorist attack had been thwarted and the USS
Abraham Lincoln
had survived intact. Praise for the U.S. military was flooding in, but the world markets immediately began roller-coastering, even more so than before. Oil prices especially were all over the map, spiking both historic highs and lows within 20 minutes of the news coming out of Hormuz. Was the U.S. victory a good thing or not? No one could really tell. Al Qaeda had been dealt a serious blow, maybe its last. But hundreds were dead. Most of them passengers on the hijacked airliners, most of them Arabs. Cries of revenge were already coming from nearly every radical Muslim nation. But just who would pay the price was uncertain.

Suddenly the Middle East seemed more unstable than ever.

All this was certainly
not
good news for the six men who were at that moment leaving Prince Ali’s palace outside Riyadh in a caravan of limousines.

The Next Big Thing had been a bust and their fingerprints were all over it, especially Ali himself. That’s why he and the others had their trunks packed and were leaving the Saudi Kingdom as quickly as they could.

Their destination would be Switzerland, as they had many friends there. The question of transportation had been a slight problem, though. Once word of the foiled attack reached them, they knew there was no way they could all fly off in their private jets, making their way to Zurich individually. That would have been way too suspicious. Plus the U.S. Air Force and Navy were throwing every airplane they had into the skies above the Gulf, acting as if they were expecting another attack. Furthermore, American troops were being rushed to just about every civilian airport in the region in order to scrutinize every passenger jet thoroughly and prevent any further hijackings. Even the Saudi national police were supposedly looking for the instigators of the plot, which meant the government needed some warm bodies to arrest. No, flying six Gulfstreams out of Riyadh anytime soon was out of the question. There would be no better way to attract attention to themselves.

Luckily, the half-dozen men had an alternate plan. Ali’s friend Farouk had many connections at the nearby Khalid International Airport. Six months before, he had made arrangements to have a charter airplane on call, 24 hours a day, just in the event of something like this. A lifeboat of sorts. As soon as things started going badly around Hormuz, Farouk called the airport and let it be known he would be needing this plane immediately.

But how would it be able to fly when their Gulfstreams could not? Because Farouk had arranged to lease the aircraft under the guise of a UN agricultural team, one whose main office was just an address, located in a very small town somewhere in New Jersey. This gave the plane a sort of aerial diplomatic immunity. It would be able to leave despite the immediate U.S. tightening on private and commercial flights. Or the worst that could happen was that it would be forced to turn around after taking off.

In any case, they knew the United States would never shoot it down.

So now the six men were on their way to the airport. They were escorted by a squad of Saudi National Guardsmen, soldiers in their employ. Upon reaching Khalid, they were met at a private entrance by Farouk’s personal bodyguards and taken directly to the airplane. It was a refurbished DC-9, owned by the Gulf Air Corporation; it was all white, almost like a real UN plane, except for the distinctive red flaring design of GAC on its tail. The big plane was already warmed up and waiting out on the runway.

The six men climbed aboard and took their seats in the deserted first-class section. They all said a quick prayer and laughed when the airliner took off. The ascent was a bit shaky, but as soon as the airplane reached 10,000 feet it leveled off and the seat belt sign went out. The six men sat back and relaxed for the first time in days.

The plane was luxurious. Farouk had done his job well. There were couches and reclining chairs and a buffet and of course a bar. The six men began to eat and drink and talk about what awaited them in Zurich.

That’s when Prince Ali noticed the airplane appeared to be flying east, almost as if it was heading back to Riyadh, instead of north. He waved his hand at Farouk. His old friend got up and knocked on the flight cabin door. There was no reply. He tried again. Still nothing.

He opened the door and peered in. The first thing he saw was a man slumped over in the copilot’s seat. He was an Arab. He’d been shot twice in the head.

Then at his feet was another man in a Gulf Air uniform. He, too, was dead.

Farouk was so horrified, he couldn’t even cry out. There were two dead men on the floor of the flight compartment. Who the hell was flying the plane? He stepped into the cockpit to see a man behind the controls. Farouk screamed in his ear:
“What has happened here? Who are you?”

Finally the man turned around. He seemed to have dark skin, not naturally but heavily tanned. His hair appeared dyed, as did his mustache. On a busy night or in the early-morning darkness he would have easily passed for an Arab. But he was not Arabic. He was an American.

It was Tom Santos.

And he was holding a gun.

“Please return to your seat, sir,” Santos calmly told Farouk. “And enjoy the rest of your flight….”

About 2,000 people worked in the Pan Arabic Oil Exchange building. All of them were men.

The retro-futuristic structure, whitewashed marble, 22 stories, with a postmodern bubble top and faux prayer tower, was among the most prominent in downtown Riyadh.

By myth, its location was a very holy place. Supposedly Muhammad himself had slept near here, when this area was still a desert, and predicted that someday great wealth would come from beneath the sands. It was a charming piece of bullshit and quite untrue. Yet many people in Saudi Arabia believed it as if it came directly from the Koran itself. And that’s why the building was here, in all its gold and splendid glory.

Legitimate people with legitimate jobs worked at Pan Arabic. Its accounting department housed a small army of moneymen, many with MBAs from colleges in America. The company made millions and was worth billions. These accountants were the ones who kept it so.

There were also legitimate oilmen employed here. The trek sweet crude made from ground to gas tank was a long one, and money could be lost or made at every turn. The art of moving vast quantities of oil was practiced at Pan Arabic, day after day, month after month. Geologists, piping experts, supertanker captains, and Ph.D.’s in refining all worked here.

Of the two thousand employees, roughly half handled the actual product itself; the others counted the money. Of that thousand who worked on the money end, more than two-thirds had been involved in some way with helping fund Al Qaeda.

As word spread about the events in Hormuz, it seemed a very dark day for the state of Islam was at hand. Many people in the Pan Arabic Oil Exchange building were not at their desks or planning tables. They were in colleagues’ offices or gathered in one of the building’s six lavish lobbies, watching TV. Al Jazzier News was broadcasting the events in the lower Gulf practically as they were happening. Somehow the Arab TV network had received a piece of video tape, shot from very far away but still showing the height of the attack on the
Lincoln
.

The footage and the breaking news had just about everyone in the building glued to the TV sets.

That’s why very few people ever saw the airliner coming.

The plane had been spotted by air traffic controllers at Khalid Airport shortly after 10:30
A.M.

It had arrived from the west and began circling the city at an altitude of just 2,000 feet, very low for such a large plane. There were two attempts to contact it from Khalid, but the plane never responded and Khalid never tried contacting it again. The ATC men would later claim that the events unfolding near Hormuz, just a few hundred miles way, combined with the Americans’ sudden imposition of restricted airspace over the entire Gulf, had distracted them. Six of these air traffic controllers would later be arrested and executed by the Saudi government.

For the people inside the Pan Arabic Oil building, it was the noise that arrived first.

Jet engines, roaring from somewhere in the distance, coming from an airliner flying on a morning when there wasn’t supposed to be anything other than the American military in the air.

It circled the building once, a huge white aircraft with a bright red tail and the letters
GAC
emblazoned on it. Then the plane began a long, slow, deliberate dive, its engines screaming and smoking, not unlike a B-52. The plane hit the building going 540 knots, nearly supersonic, and impacted about two-thirds of the way up the ornate prayer tower. It passed through the main structure, its fully loaded gas tanks exploding somewhere around the thirteenth floor. A massive fireball rained debris and burning fuel onto those unlucky to be caught below. Half the fuselage tore off within the building itself. The other half continued through to a courtyard and into the street beyond.

Everyone on the plane, and everyone in the building, was killed.

Near the Strait of Hormuz

Gallant and Bingo had been out on the fantail of
Ocean Voyager
for the past 30 minutes, scanning the skies above them while at the same time watching the rush of U.S. Navy warships flooding into the Gulf.

They were anchored off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, trying their best to maintain the cover of a simple cargo ship just staying out of the way. They’d watched the airliners’ foiled attack from about twenty miles off. Even now, they couldn’t believe it had been real.

But that’s not why they were out here. They’d crept as close to the scene of the battle as they could and now they were looking for something. Something, up there, in the smoke and clouds.

Suddenly Bingo cried out: “Damn, here comes one of them!”

A Harrier had appeared almost directly above them, no more than 2,500 feet up. But it was coming down very quickly and making very little noise while doing so. It became obvious the Harrier wasn’t so much trying to land on the ship as it was falling out of the sky. And it was not trying to set down on one of the ship’s two exposed pancakes; they were actually too far away. Rather, it was heading for the ship’s little-used helicopter pad.

“He’s out of gas!” Gallant yelled. The two men immediately dived into a nearby hatch to avoid getting clipped by the falling aircraft.

The Harrier slammed onto the copter pad just a few seconds later. It bounced once, twice, and then almost fell off the platform completely. It came to rest only because its front nose and port outrigger wheel became entangled in the safety netting surrounding the pad. If this hadn’t happened, it would have gone right over the side.

The two men scrambled out of the hatch and raced up to the stricken plane. Its canopy had blown off; its engine was not turning. Gallant had been right; the plane had run out of gas and crashed. Or, in jump jet parlance, it had performed a dead-stick, vertical insertion.

They climbed up onto the wing and found it was Ryder in the cockpit. He was conscious, but just barely. He was drenched in sweat and shaking. His hands were particularly white to the bone. So was his face. He looked terrible.

He somehow managed to take off his helmet and look up at his colleagues. His eyes were red.

“Did Phelan land yet?” was all he could say.

Ten hours later

The sun finally began to sink on this bloody, historic day.

The Harrier, near totaled in its controlled crash, was covered with pieces of canvas now, to keep it better hidden from prying eyes.

Ryder had been patched up by the Navy guys and injected with a large dose of morphine. It was the only way they could get him to sleep. He lay, not moving, on a cot in the sick bay for hours. Maureen did not appear in his dreams this time. In fact, he didn’t dream at all. When he finally woke up, he felt worse than when he landed.

He was in a semi–state of shock. Whether it was exhaustion or the events he’d just lived through or the double whammy of morphine, he felt like he was sleepwalking. Some things made sense to him; other things didn’t. Yet he insisted on being allowed to climb up to the fantail, where he hoped the others would still be.

Here he found Gallant and Bingo, leaning against the greasy rail, continuing their lonely vigil. Martinez was still nowhere to be seen. Ryder would later learn the Delta officer was locked in his cabin, refusing food, refusing to even talk. What would have happened if he had allowed his Delta guys to blast the hijackers while they were still on the ground at el-Salaam Airport? It was a question destined to haunt him for a long time to come.

Gallant and Bingo had the last six-pack of Budweiser on the ship with them, but neither felt like drinking. Ryder joined them at the rail. He was able to give them some scattered details on what had happened over Hormuz, but his mind was elsewhere. As he spoke, he was continuously searching the skies overhead, half-expecting Phelan to appear at any moment, circling the ship for a landing.

Bingo told him two of his guys had gone through Phelan’s cabin, once it appeared certain that the young pilot was not coming back. They’d intended to gather his personal effects but had found his billet practically empty. All his CDs, his music player, his books, clothes, everything was gone, thrown overboard, they supposed. Did this mean Phelan had intended to commit his final act all along? Had he snapped? Or was he just a brave kid who had seen too much? No one knew.

All that remained was his mother’s picture, found hanging on the cabin wall. Bingo now handed the photo to Ryder, who barely looked at it before putting it in his pocket.

Then the ship became ethereally quiet.

“God, was all this worth it?” Gallant asked softly. “Phelan, the Delta guys. Probably Curry, too. All gone….”

“But look what they did,” Bingo replied. “They helped stop the mooks from hitting us big-time.
They helped save America
—at least for one more day. This thing would have played out a whole lot different if we hadn’t been on the case. Not that it will settle everything. There are still plenty of mooks left out there. Not just in this neighborhood either. I’m talking about Southeast Asia. The Philippines. Indonesia. There’ll be more blood in the water before this thing is finished. But today,
this
day, we knocked them on their ass. And that’s what we were supposed to do all along.”