Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (71 page)

 
          
“Dave,
it’s you and me in the back,” Patrick said. “We’ll do a little on-the-job
training on the equipment.” The eagerness and excitement in Luger’s eyes
immediately took Patrick back to their heyday, winning trophies and building an
unmatched reputation for themselves. Plus, they had a lot of damn fun—and,
despite the danger they faced, it felt like it was going to be fun again. “Everyone
else evacuates with Jon’s DC-10.”

 
          
“You
still haven’t told us where we’re evacuating
to
, Patrick,” Jon Masters pointed out.

 
          
Patrick
McLanahan smiled a mischievous grin that could have been directly cloned from
Brad Elliott himself. “I’ll brief you just before we shoot the approach, Jon,”
he said. “You’d probably want to stay right here and take your chances with
Commander Willis and the federal marshals if you knew where we were going or
how we were going to get there.”

OVER THE
PACIFIC
OCEAN
,
TWENTY MILES SOUTHWEST OF HUALIEN, REPUBLIC OF
CHINA
(
TAIWAN
)
JUST BEFORE DAYBREAK

           
“Hualien approach, Military Flight
One-One,” Nancy Cheshire radioed. “Requesting GPS approach runway zero-three
right.”

 
          
“Military
One-One, Hualien approach, do not fly in the vicinity of the Republic of Taiwan
or you may be fired on without further warning,” the precise but heavily
Chinese-accented English-speaking voice responded. “All airspace in and around
the Republic of China is restricted due to the air defense emergency. Say your
PPR number.”

 
          
“Stand
by.”
Cheshire
referred to a Post-it note stuck on the
center multifunction display on the forward instrument console. “One-One has
victor-alpha-one-seven-alpha-two-lima.” A PPR, or Prior Permission Required,
number was standard operating procedure for most military installations, even
halfway around the world on the
island
of
Formosa
, just ninety miles east of the Asian
mainland. Any aircraft attempting to land at a base without a PPR would
certainly be detained and its crew arrested—or worse.

 
          
“Hualien
Approach understands,” the Taiwanese approach controller replied after a long
pause, repeating the code warily, as if there was something very wrong. Hualien
Air Base in east-central Taiwan was the largest Taiwanese military base on the
east side of the island, the home of several Taiwanese Navy air and surface
units as well as two Taiwan Air Force fighter-interceptor and fighter-bomber
squadrons—at least it had been, until a nuclear-tipped Communist Chinese M-9
ballistic missile destroyed most of the base. Now it was a flattened collection
of burned- out foundations and scorched aircraft revetments, with large
blackened piles of metal here and there the only evidence that several dozen
aircraft once were based there. Just three miles to the west, the Chung Yang
Shang mountain range rose precipitously right up to 10,000 feet above sea level
in just a few miles.

 
          
“Military
Flight One-One, cancel GPS approach clearance,” the approach controller said.

 
          
Nancy
Cheshire and Brad Elliott looked at one another in astonishment. “Say again,
control?”
Cheshire
radioed. “Have we been cleared to land? Is
there a problem?”

 
          
“Cancel
approach clearance,” the controller repeated angrily. “Contact the controller
on security frequency channel one-one immediately or you will be considered a
hostile intruder. Comply immediately!”

 
          
Cheshire
acknowledged the transmission and switched
channels, but she was totally confused. The weather was pretty good right
now—scattered clouds, good visibility, some swirling winds because of the
mountains but not too bad. The runway was in sight in the growing dawn. In the
military world, the GPS, or Global Positioning System satellite navigation
system, was far more accurate than any other kind of instrument approach. GPS
signals in the civilian world were downgraded by the U.S. Department of Defense
to prevent
America
’s enemies from using the system against
America
—not so on the EB-52 Megafortress. The
EB-52’s Global Positioning System was accurate to within
six inches
in both position and altitude, which made it hundreds of
times more accurate than any other navigation instrument in existence.

 
          
Cheshire
quickly set up the primary radio for the
next controller, who was on a special military frequency accessible only by
planes using the HAVE QUICK secure radio system, which shifted frequencies for
both air and ground units simultaneously based on a computerized timing
sequence. “Button one-one on radio one,” the copilot announced. “Hualien
approach on backup, Hualien ground on radio two with their command post on
backup. I’ve got the GPS approach dialed in as a backup.”

 
          
“Thanks,”
Brad Elliott responded. “I got the radios.” He keyed the mike: “Hualien radar,
Military Flight One-One with you, level five thousand, thirteen out for runway
zero-three right.”

           
“Military Flight One-One, this is
Hualien final controller,” a voice responded sternly, “execute
all
of my instructions
immediately
.” The Megafortress pilots
noted the extreme emphasis on the words “all” and “immediately” ”In case of
loss of communications, immediately execute missed approach procedures. You
must not delay any missed approach procedures. Do you copy?”

 
          
“One-One
copies.”

 
          
“Roger.
Do not acknowledge further transmissions. Descend to two thousand, turn left
heading zero-eight-one. This will be a PAR approach to runway zero three
right.” Elliott and
Cheshire
dialed in the new heading and altitude, and the autopilot complied.
“Five miles to final approach fix.” The controller made the same reports—altitude,
heading, and position—every five seconds. For the EB-52 s pilots, it was a
complete no- brainer—simply dial in the numbers in the autopilot and watch as
they got closer to the runway. The approach looked like a mirror image approach
to what the GPS was showing them, so the backup was working, too.

 
          
“Maybe
it’s a local procedure—PAR approaches only, as a security measure,”
Cheshire
offered. The PAR, or Precision Approach
Radar, was a controller-operated instrument landing procedure where a radar
controller guided the plane down to the runway by the use of two high-speed,
high-resolution radars—very accurate, but not as accurate as GPS and not
necessary because they could see the runway. Elliott shrugged—it didn’t matter
now, because they were lined up for landing and they hadn’t been shot down yet.
They could see the runway, the GPS was giving them good info along with the PAR
controller—everything was humming along OK.

 
          
At
the final approach fix, the beginning of the final segment to landing, Elliott
called for the “Before Landing” checklist and lowered the landing gear. “Three
green, no red,”
Cheshire
announced, checking the gear-down lights. Elliott checked them as well.
Everything going smoothly—PARs were so simple, a monkey could do it, given
enough bananas.

 
          
“Passing
final approach fix,” the controller reported. “Check gear down, heading
zero-four-two, altitude one thousand two hundred, slow to final approach
speed.”

 
          
“Military
Flight One-One gear down,” Elliott radioed—that was the only allowable radio
call, done as a safety measure. Cheshire began reading the portions of the
“Before Landing” checklist not already accomplished—flaps, lights, starters,
weapons stowed, radar standby, seat belts, shoulder harnesses, crew notified .
. .

 
          
“Heading
zero-three-one, five-hundred-feet-per-minute rate of descent, altitude seven
hundred feet, three miles from touchdown,” the controller intoned. “Heading
zero-three-one, six hundred feet altitude, two miles from touchdown. Report
runway in sight.”"

 
          
“Runway
in sight,” the pilot responded—he had had it in sight for the past five
minutes. He expected instructions to take over visually about half a mile from
touchdown, when the PAR radar could not update fast enough to provide accurate
course and glideslope data. One last check around the cockpit, check the gear,
check . . .

 
          
“One-One,
lights off,” they heard the controller say. “Two miles to touchdown, heading
zero-three-zero, altitude four hundred.”

 
          
“What
did he say?” Elliott asked aloud.

 
          
“He
said turn the lights off,”
Cheshire
replied. She reached up to the overhead switch panel. “Want ’em off?”

 
          
Well,
this was stupid, Elliott thought. But he had the runway made and most of the
rest of the airfield in sight. “Okay, lights off, but I don’t know why the
hell—”

 
          
Just
as
Cheshire
flicked the breaker switches, they heard,
“Military One-One, turn left
immediately
,
heading three-zero-zero, descend to three hundred feet, maintain final approach
speed!”

 
          
“What!”
Elliott exclaimed. That was a
ninety-degree turn to the west
—directly
toward the mountains'.
He crushed the mike switch: “Hualien, repeat that
last!”

 
          
“Military
One-One, turn immediately!” the controller shouted. “Turn now or execute missed
approach instructions! ”

 
          
Elliott
grabbed the control stick and power controller, paddled off the autopilot, and
swung the EB-52 Megafortress hard onto the new heading. “Where the hell is the
terrain? Lower the radome.”
Cheshire
hit a switch on the overhead panel, and the long, pointed SST-style
nose of the Megafortress lowered several degrees to improve forward visibility.

 
          
“Heading
two-niner-eight, altitude two hundred feet, three miles to touchdown,” the
controller intoned. The vectors were coming in faster: “Heading
three-zero-niner, altitude one-fifty, two point five miles to touchdown . . .
now
heading three-four-nine, altitude
two-twenty, two point two miles to touchdown ...”

 
          
“The
son of a bitch! ” Elliott shouted, making the sudden right turn with fifty
degrees of bank, “He’s vectored us right into the side of a mountain! What in
hell is going on?”

 
          
“Brad,
stay on the vectors,” Patrick McLanahan shouted on interphone. “Kuo told us it
was going to be a hairy approach.”

 
          
“
‘Hairy?’ We’re headed right into the side of a fucking mountain! ” “One-One, I
show you well above glide path, fly heading three-five- zero, altitude two
hundred feet...”

           
“General, this is nuts!”
Cheshire
shouted. “I see mountains all around us! ”

 
          
“Shut
up, everyone,
shut up
!” Elliott
shouted. “This doesn’t look good. I’m going missed. Radome in flight position.”
He keyed the mike trigger as he pushed the throttles forward: “Hualien, I’m
executing missed . . . wait, stand by! Wait on the radome!”

 
          
Just
before Elliott began pushing in power to execute a go-around, he saw what
looked like a long, tall cleft in the mountainside. It looked like a depression
at first, but as they got closer, it was obvious that it was far deeper than a
depression, more like a hollow, or even a huge cave ...