Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (32 page)

 
          
“Sure,”
Gayze said. Every aircraft on an IFR flight plan has a “strip,” or a piece of
paper used by air traffic controllers to monitor and log a plane’s progress.
All Universal Express flights flew on IFR flight plans—company policy—and they
were carefully tracked from start to finish by both the company and the FA A. A
tracking strip was generated by a Flight Service Station or an
Air
Route
Traffic
Control
Center
and electronically passed from sector to
sector as the plane progressed. Although it was not unheard of for a plane to
lose its “strip,” it was pretty unusual these days.

 
          
A
plane without a strip was not officially “in the system” and was handled on a
workload-permitting basis. This guy was lucky—it wasn’t too busy at the moment.
Right now there were almost one hundred and fifty planes of all sizes scattered
around Universal Express’s “super hub,” loading up and preparing for
departure—it was busy, but not too bad to handle this one straggler.

 
          
“Tell
him he can have runway two-seven if he wants it,” Gayze said.

 
          
Runway
two-seven lay across the northern part of the airport, right beside Universal
Express’s freight and package delivery complex. Normally it was a mad race for
Universal’s pilots to get to their cargo gates ahead of the others—this guy
seemed to be taking it easy.

 
          
“Stand
by,” Latimer said. Gayze could hear the controller’s conversation with the
pilot over the phone line, then: “Okay, Bill, he’s taking vectors to two-seven
at six thousand feet, two thousand inside ten, D.L.”

 
          
“Approved,
B.G.,” Gayze responded, passing the information to the tower controllers
handling arrivals to runway two-seven. “How’s it looking out there tonight,
Doug? Busy?”

 
          
“I
think every plane in
Texas
is heading your way tonight, Bill,” Latimer said.

 
          
“Great,”
Gayze said wearily. “Ask your boys to vector the southwest arrivals south of
Tunica, we’re starting to bunch up.” The string of lights aiming at runway
three-six was starting to get longer and more tightly packed, and the flights
were coming in faster. Each airplane under instrument flight rules in the
airspace around Memphis International had a protective “cylinder” at least six
miles in diameter and two thousand feet thick, with the plane in the center,
which could not be violated under any circumstance. If the pilots could see the
runway or a preceding aircraft and advised the controller of that, Gayze could
tighten the spacing up to about two miles and five hundred feet, but most pilots
flying at night were too busy scanning their instruments and running checklists
to accept responsibility for separation. Things were going smoothly now, but
one plane going too fast or too slow could create a whipsaw effect that could
cause problems very quickly. Better to start extending the traffic now, rather
than wait.

           
“You got it, Bill, vector southwest
arrivals south of Tunica, D.L.,” Latimer replied. “Talk at you later. ’Bye.”

 
          
“D.G.,
’bye.” Gayze took a sip of coffee, laced with a little fat-free chocolate milk
this time to boost the caffeine level. Things didn’t calm down in the tower
until after
one
a.m.
,
nearly four hours away, and it was looking
like a busy night. He needed to stay sharp.

 
          
“He
wants to take me over to runway two-seven,” the young pilot in the right seat
of the Shorts 330-200 cargo plane said. “I said okay. He sounded like he was
trying to help me out.”

 
          
Henri
Cazaux was in the back of the Shorts, inspecting his deadly cargo, when he
heard the call over his wireless intercom. He raised his microphone to his
lips: “Follow his vectors, but do not accelerate,” Cazaux said. “I’ll be up
there in a minute.” He then continued his inspection.

 
          
Although
boxy and rather odd-looking, the Northern Ireland-built Shorts 330-200 was a
popular short-range turboprop commuter/cargo plane—it had even been purchased
by the U.S. Air Force, Army, and National Guard as a short-range utility
aircraft. Over two hundred had been built for small airlines or major airline
partners, carrying up to thirty passengers or 7,500 pounds of cargo. The
twenty- year-old plane no longer flew for the
U.S.
military, and was now flown only by a
handful of commuter and cargo services around the world. The used-airplane
market was full of them, and it was easy and relatively inexpensive to build a
small fleet of them and to train pilots to fly the small “trash-hauler.”
Cazaux’s bird was a freighter version of the Model 300-200, called a C-23B
“Sherpa” in the U.S. Air Force, modified with a rear cargo ramp and integral load
rollers in the floor.

 
          
Tonight,
the Shorts was a bomber.

 
          
Cazaux
was inspecting three LD3 cargo containers, standard airline-use baggage, cargo,
or mail containers, each filled with two thousand pounds of a mixture of waste
ammonium nitrate rocket propellant, stolen from an industrial- waste storage
facility in western Massachusetts, and TNT. The three containers were chained
together, and the forward container was chained to a quick-release lever
attached to the forward cargo-bay deck. A fourth pallet in the rear of the
plane carried a six-foot-diameter pilot parachute and a forty-foot-diameter
main cargo parachute, cabled to the LD3 containers.

 
          
This
setup comprised a functional and tested parachute- extraction system, similar
to the kind used by many tactical transport planes, including the Shorts 300.
At the appropriate time, the pilot parachute would be released and inflated in
the aircraft’s slipstream, applying tension to the three LD3 containers. Once
over the target, the pilot parachute would be allowed to release the main
parachute, and as soon as the main ’chute fully opened, it would drag the
containers out of the Shorts’ cargo bay. Deceleration or G- sensors were
installed in each container to set off the explosives one second after hitting
the target, which would allow the containers to break through the roof of the
target before detonating.

 
          
Satisfied
that all was ready, Cazaux made his way back up to the cockpit and put on a
headset. “Say again your last, Roberts?”

 
          
“I’m
using the Universal call sign you gave me, Captain,” the young pilot responded,
“and I asked for vectors to runway three-six right, as ordered. Approach
Control asked me if I wanted the Universal runway instead, two- seven ...”

 
          
“You
should have replied no,” Cazaux said. “I ordered you to approach on three-six.”

 
          
“Sir,
in my judgment it would have appeared very suspicious to not accept vectors to
two-seven,” the pilot said. “Approach Control said I would be number two for
landing on two-seven, but number eight on three-six right. The winds are calm,
so all runways are in use tonight. I felt I had no choice.”

           
“Get a clearance back to three-six
right immediately, Roberts,” Cazaux hissed. “You are not paid to exercise
your
judgment, you are paid to fly as
you are
directed.
Now get a clearance
back on course.”

 
          
As
Roberts got back on the radio, Cazaux checked the portable GPS satellite
navigation receiver’s moving-map display. They were many miles off course now,
almost beyond the extended centerline of three-six right. It might be too late
to get two-seven now, and their mission timing was way off. “You had better
check your timing, and do whatever it takes to get back on course and back on
time,” Cazaux warned his young pilot. “I want no more errors in judgment or you’ll
be a dead man.”

 
          
A
few moments later, the interfacility interphone came alive again: “Bill, Doug,
Sierra-12. Universal-107 changed his mind again and now wants three-six right.”

 
          
“Bless
him,” Gayze said impatiently, being careful (after listening to his controller
tapes many times with a supervisor present) not to swear. This was not the time
for new pilots to be messing around with multiple requests and weird
clearances. “Send him over to me. I’ll give him three-six left and try to fit
him in on the right. At least I’ll get him out of your hair, B.G.”

 
          
“Thanks,
Bill, I owe you. Here he comes. D.L. ’Bye.”

 
          
A
few moments later, the pilot of the Universal Express Shorts 300 checked in: “
Memphis
Tower
, Universal Express-107, with you descending
to two thousand, crossing Arkabutla, requesting vectors ILS three-six right.”

 
          
“Express-107,
radar contact,” Bill Gayze responded, double-checking the radarscope. “Turn
left heading zero- four-zero, descend and maintain two thousand, slow to one-
six-zero, vectors for the GPS three-six left approach course, repeat, left.
I’ll work on a sidestep to the ILS three-six right.”

 
          
“Express-107,
roger, zero-four-zero on the heading, leaving six for two.”

           
The pilot sounded dejected, maybe
even pissed off, but he brought it upon himself. Gayze didn’t recognize the
voice, but the pilot must be a new guy and the old head flying with him must
not be paying attention. Most Universal Express flights didn’t jam themselves
into the normal inbound traffic flow, but overflew or circumnavigated the
Memphis Class B airspace direct to Holly Springs VOR or the Loosahatchie NDB,
then got their radar vectors to runway two-seven. Even with a stiff crosswind,
most Universal pilots took runway two-seven because it cut down on taxi time,
and those guys at Universal had to account for every gallon of jet fuel.

 
          
Things
were going along smoothly for the next few minutes, but a bottleneck was
beginning to develop—no surprise who was causing it. The pilot of Universal 107
was still flying over two hundred nautical miles per hour groundspeed and was
starting to overtake the slower traffic in front of him. “Express-107, I need
you at your final approach speed,” Gayze radioed. Airspeed glitches like that
would create a ripple effect for the next three hours, Gayze thought sourly.
Express-107 would slow to one-twenty, which meant that planes behind him would
be overtaking him, so Gayze would have to slow everybody down to avoid a
“deal,” or a busted separation. This kid had probably just ruined what could
have been a pretty good night, and Gayze punctuated his instructions with a
curt
“Acknowledge”
to accent his
displeasure.

 
          
“107
correcting, slowing to one-two-zero knots,” the pilot replied.

 
          
This
guy sure sounded overly green, Gayze thought, and he wasn’t getting too much
help from his captain. Maybe he better put a bug in Universal’s ear about him.
Gayze hit a telephone button marked
univ
disp
on his communications console, and a moment later he heard: “Universal
Express, dispatcher, Kline.”

 
          
“Hey,
Rudy—Bill Gayze up in
Memphis
Tower
.”

           
“Hey, Bill how’s it goin’ tonight?
What’s up? Not with any of our birds, I hope.”

 
          
“Minor
problem, thought you might want to mention it to Mike.” Mike Chaswick was the
chief pilot at Universal Express. He and Gayze were friends and had visited
each other’s places of business many times on orientation tours. “One of your
birds coming up on final approach now. No violations, but he’s skating on thin
ice.”

 
          
“Sure,
Bill... ah, which flight are we talking about?” “One-oh-seven.”

 
          
There
was a very long pause, then: “107, you said?” “Yeah,” Gayze replied. “A Shorts
330, landing in about two minutes.”

 
          
“Our
flight 107 landed four hours ago,” Kline said. “107 is a daily from
Shreveport
to
Memphis
, but it usually arrives at
eleven
p.m.
,
not
two
a.m.
Our last inbound is usually down around
one-thirty—we start launching outbounds at three. What kind of plane you say it
was? A Shorts?” “Yep. Tail number November-564W.”