Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (61 page)

 
          
“The
President wants a gradual
increase
in
the number of flights,” Mersky added. “I’ll concede that giving access to
uncontrolled or VFR air traffic should be phased in over a much longer time
frame, but the President’s top priority is to do everything he can to encourage
the airlines to start flying again.”

 
          
“General
Lowe, Secretary Mersky, if all you propose is allowed to happen, the military
won’t be able to stop a Cazaux type again,” Hardcastle said. “There are just
too many aircraft out there doing suspicious or even downright illegal things.”

 
          
“The
only way to make sure we can pick a terrorist flight out from all the rest of
the inbound flights is to increase the number of interceptors and decrease the
number of flights until the two balance out,” Colonel Vincenti added.

 
          
“And
we’re telling you, Colonel, that’s not what the President wants, and that’s not
what the American people want,” Elizabeth Lowe said finally. “Besides, it’s not
the military’s job to find and stop these terrorists—it’s my job, and the FBI’s
job.

 
          
“I’ll
pass along your reservations, General Skye, Admiral Hardcastle, but I’m
recommending to the President that we immediately ground all fighter patrols
over the
United States
.”

 
          
“Maybe
we should go tell the President our opinions together, General Lowe,” Skye
suggested.

 
          
“General,
the^purpose of having this committee is so a horde of people with a horde of
different opinions aren’t marching in and out of the Oval Office all day,” Lowe
said, refusing to let the four-star Air Force general bully her around. “My job
as chairman of the Executive Committee on Terrorism is not only to coordinate
day-to-day antiterrorist operations, but to analyze the threshold of danger
existing in the country, determine what are the best possible options to deal
with the danger, and present my opinions to the President.  -

 
          
“In
my opinion and in the opinion of the majority of members of this committee, the
danger has subsided to a sufficient level, and the hazards of continued
military interceptor and military air traffic control have increased to such !
a dangerous level, that we feel we can recommend that the military’s
involvement in this emergency can be substan- daily decreased.”

 
          
“General
Lowe, I caution you about using the President’s wishes to form the basis of
this committee’s policy decisions,” Hardcastle interjected. “The President
wants everything back to normal—we all do. But we feel the time’s not right. At
least let’s wait a few more weeks until the FBI analyzes Cazaux’s financial
records from Lake’s computers, sifts through the debris at the mansion in New
Jersey, tracks down whoever killed Lake and Fell in Newburgh, and bags more
members of Cazaux’s organization.”

 
          
“This
committee is not a Presidential rubber stamp, Admiral,” Lowe snapped. “Our
respective staffs have been working overtime on this problem, and we’ve all
come up with the same conclusion: we don’t need the military anymore.”

 
          
“In
my opinion we never did,” FBI Director Wilkes said. “All we needed was a little
more
cooperation,
and this situation
probably could’ve been solved earlier.”

 
          
“We
don’t want to totally dismantle the emergency system or cut out the military,”
Mersky said. He opened his staff’s summary sheet and went on: “I propose the
following: we keep all military surveillance in place except for the fighter
interceptors. We keep the short-range ground-based air defense systems in
place, namely the mobile Avenger Stinger systems, but deactivate all Patriot
and HAWK systems. Airport and aircraft security will stay at maximum levels,
with security situations reevaluated daily on a case- by-case basis. We
deactivate all emergency air cordons in Class B airspace, but we mandate that
all aircraft in Class B airspace must be on a flight plan—no aircraft allowed
in Class B airspace with pop-up clearances.”

 
          
“Any
other discussion?” Lowe asked.

 
          
“Discussion
seems to be pointless,” Skye said.

 
          
“Very
well,” Lowe said. “I move that Secretary Mer- sky’s and the Department of
Transportation’s recommendations be adopted by the committee and presented to
the President immediately.” The motion was seconded and approved. The Secretary
of Defense’s representative voted in the affirmative for General Skye, and,
because he had been suspended from the Executive Committee on Terrorism,
Hardcastle’s negative vote was counted as an abstention. “Thank you all. Our
next meeting will be tomorrow morning, unless the situation changes. General
Skye, I don’t think we’ll require your presence unless a member of the
committee requests it.”

 
          
“Fine
with me,
General
Lowe,” Skye said.
“This little game of power politics is a total waste of my friggin’ time
anyway. But I’ll tell you this, Miss Lowe: I’m sending my strongest
reservations about this committee’s actions up my chain of command. I’m
advising the Chief of Staff of the Air Force that your recommendations do not
reflect my opinion, and I’ll ask that he present my opinions to the Secretary
of the Air Force and on to the White House— frankly, I don’t trust you to give
the President the word for me. It’s nothing personal, General Lowe ...” Skye
paused, looked at Lowe, then shrugged and said, “Okay, it
is
personal. In my humble and insignificant opinion, any person who
lets her people, even guys like Hardcastle, hang out to dry like you did and
ignores all the danger signs around her is an asshole—ma’am. And any committee
who allows all of the above to happen on their watch should be publicly kicked
in the ass.”

 
          
“I
encourage free expression in my meetings, General Skye,” Lowe said tightly,
“but now I’m giving you fair warning—get control of your tongue and your
attitude before they get you into serious trouble.”

 
          
“My
comments are totally on the record, ma’am—I trust they’ll stay there.”

 
          
“Count
on it, General,” Lowe responded bitterly.

 
          
“Then
my apologies if I’ve offended anyone—you know who you are,” Skye said,
collecting his papers and rising to depart. “I hope the President knows what
he’s doing, that’s all.” He got to his feet and dismissed himself from the
meeting; Hardcastle, Vincenti, and Sheehan followed.

 
          
“I
hope you get around to busting Skye’s nuts when you get a chance,” Wilkes said
after the rest of the committee had departed.

 
          
“Skye’s
already dug himself a hole he can’t crawl out of,” Lowe said. “We’ve got a
bigger concern to talk about—namely, the President’s fund-raiser in
California
.”

 
          
“Security
will be airtight,” Lani Wilkes said. “The President will be perfectly safe,
especially once we get those missiles and fighters put away.”

 
          
“I
agree,” Lowe said. “But I need all your best efforts on making sure that the
body you got in the morgue is Cazaux, and that his organization is shut down.
I’m putting the President’s security in your hands because you said you could
handle it.”

 
          
“It’ll
be taken care of, General Lowe,” Wilkes assured her.

 
          
“It’d
better be,” Lowe said. “The President’s advance team deploys in less than two
days from now, and once they’re on the road, every crazy and nut case will be
out there hunting the President down.” She silently looked at the FBI Director
for a moment, then added, “Frankly, Judge, you’ve been one step behind the
Marshals and Hardcastle this entire crisis. In case you’ve forgotten, there’s
an election coming up next year, and how the President reacts to this crisis is
important. He wants to be seen in the sky and on the road again, and he doesn’t
want to be seen hiding behind F-16 fighters or Patriot missiles—or too many
government agents.”

 
          
Pease International
Tradeport
Portsmouth
,
New
Hampshire
Two Nights Later

           
Pease International Tradeport was
once Pease Air Force Base, a small but vital Strategic Air Command bomber base,
closed in 1990 and converted to civilian use. The eight large hangars that once
housed B-52 Stratofortress bombers and KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling
tankers now housed a collection of small fixed-base operators servicing light
civilian planes—one hangar now held two dozen light planes in the same space
that once could house only one B-52. The base operations building had been
converted into a Bar Harbor Airlines commuter terminal, flying passengers
throughout
New
England
.

 
          
The
original company which gave Pease Tradeport its “international” designation was
Lufthansa Airlines, who in 1992 built a modern office complex in nearby
Kittery, Maine, and converted three of the large maintenance hangars at Pease
to a jumbo aircraft refurbishment and inspection facility, one of the most
modern facilities of its kind in the world. The location was perfect—within an
hour’s flying time of six of the top ten busiest airports in North America,
close to many European and Asian transpolar flight routes, good schools,
generous tax incentives, no income tax, a rural atmosphere but close to Boston
and the high-tech Route 128 Corridor of northeastern Massachusetts. Pease
International Tradeport was on the verge of becoming a major American airport,
a vital reliever to already crowded and expensive Boston-Logan International.

 
          
Its
popularity and success soon became its number-one problem. There had been two
major crashes per year since the facility was opened.

 
          
Seacoast-area
residents, backwoods environmentalists, and perturbed rich
Massachusetts
vacationers with beach homes in the
Vineyard and Narragansett kicked the golden goose and told Lufthansa to scale
back; indignant Lufthansa did them one better and left for the open arms, tax
breaks, and relative peace of
Raleigh
,
North Carolina
. Pease International Tradeport became a virtual ghost town practically
overnight.

 
          
But
there were still high-tech heavy jet maintenance facilities at Pease, so
occasionally the three-thousand-pound Cessnas would get a visit from one of
their three-hundred- thousand-pound cousins. The busiest destination was
Portsmouth Air, which leased about a third of Lufthansa’s aircraft
refurbishment facility at Pease but still struggled to stay in business.

 
          
The
Boeing 747-200 jetliner with Nippon Air livery had been flown into Pease the day
after its prepurchase inspection at Mojave, and since then was locked away
inside one of the remodeled hangars, one big enough to house the entire plane
instead of leaving a tail section sticking out through a hole in the hangar
doors. The hangars were designed to allow environmentally safe aircraft
painting, completely sealing toxic fumes in and allowing multiple painting
crews to work at the same time. Tanker trucks filled with paint were brought in
to repaint the airliner, and work continued on for several days.

 
          
Pease’s
air traffic control tower closed at
nine
p.m.
,
and by nightfall the airport was silent, but
it was not unusual to get after-hours traffic. At several minutes past one
a.m.,
a Piper Aerostar twin-engine
plane self-announced on Pease’s tower frequency, entered right traffic for
runway 30, and lined up to land. Since Pease was one of the pilot’s favorite
and frequent destinations, he knew it was best to stay high and delay landing
until after midfield, still with six thousand feet of runway remaining, in
order to shorten the taxi time to the general aviation ramp on the northern
half of the field. No problems with the landing, no problems taxiing clear of
the runway and heading toward the dead-quiet transient parking ramp. The pilot
noticed activity at the Portsmouth Air maintenance facility, but that was
normal—those guys worked day and night on the few jumbo jets that came in these
days.