Dead on Arrival (3 page)
Authors: Mike Lawson
‘I’m just saying let’s start with the Muslims,’ Broderick said.
Joe DeMarco saw Mahoney sitting on the warped wooden bleachers with five black women and a couple of toddlers. The football players they were watching appeared to be ten or eleven years of age, their helmets too big for their heads. The team in the hand-me-down, wash faded orange jerseys was called the Tigers; the other team, their color blue, their uniforms just as worn, were the Cougars. Just as DeMarco reached the bleachers, the Cougars’ quarterback threw a perfect ten yard spiral to a kid who was about three feet tall and who was imme diately buried under a sea of orange shirts.
‘Good hands, son!’ Mahoney yelled out. ‘Way to stick. Way to hang on to that ball.’
DeMarco had no idea why Mahoney did this – the stress of the job, a need for some time alone – but whatever the reason, every once in a while he’d leave his office and sneak over to southeast D.C. and watch the kids play. He’d sit there on the sidelines with the mothers, completely out of place, a big white-haired white man dressed in a topcoat and a suit in a part of Washington that was predominantly black. The other odd thing was that he wasn’t usually recognized; this was odd because John Fitzpatrick Mahoney was the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. It seemed as if folks who lived in this section of the city had lost their faith in politicians a long time ago and no longer paid all that much attention to the players, including those at the top of the roster.
DeMarco took a seat on the bleachers next to Mahoney. Mahoney glanced over at him – clearly irritated that he was there – and turned his attention back to the game. DeMarco took an envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Mahoney. ‘I ran into Martin Born up in Boston,’ he said. ‘He asked me to pass this on to you.’
Born was a Boston developer, one of Mahoney’s wealthier constitu ents, and he had his small avaricious heart set on a wetland area known to be home to some variety of slow-breeding duck. Mahoney, at least for the moment, was siding with the ducks.
Mahoney started to open the envelope, but the Cougars’ quarter back was sacked just then by a ten-year-old who looked big enough to play for Notre Dame. ‘You gotta double-team that guy, boys. Protect your quarterback!’ he yelled.
One of the mothers, a woman as big as Mahoney, turned to him and said, ‘They gotta
triple
-team that one. That chile, he must weigh a hundred fifty pounds.’
‘Yeah,’ Mahoney said, ‘but that kid playin’ right guard, he’s stoppin’ him by himself about half the time. That kid’s got game.’
‘You got that right,’ the woman said. ‘That’s my sister’s boy, Jamal.’
When the Cougars took a time-out, Mahoney ripped open the envelope and fanned out a number of hundred-dollar bills, maybe ten of them. ‘What the hell’s this?’ he said. ‘A
tip
?’
DeMarco just shook his head. He was a lawyer, although he’d never practiced law, and he occupied an unusual position on Mahoney’s staff. If asked his job, he would have said he was the speaker’s personal troubleshooter, but one of his duties was bringing Mahoney envelopes like the one he’d just delivered. There were times DeMarco didn’t like his job.
‘Mavis sent me over here to get you,’ DeMarco said. Mavis was Mahoney’s secretary. He didn’t bother to add:
Which I wouldn’t have had to do if you’d ever turn on
your goddamn cell phone!
‘You got a roomful of people waiting to talk to you about Broderick’s bill.’
Mahoney shook his head. ‘What a waste of time. That bill’s not goin’ anywhere. Broderick’s a fruitcake.’
DeMarco shrugged. ‘I dunno. People are scared.’
‘So what?’ Mahoney said. ‘Just because – ’ Mahoney leaped to his feet. ‘Offside! Number eight, he was offside!’
‘Yeah, Lionel,’ the big woman said. ‘You shoulda seen that, for cryin’ out loud. Them glasses you got, they thick enough to see stuff on the
moon
.’
Mahoney whooped.
Lionel, a man in his sixties, a good guy who had volunteered his time to ref the game, glared over at the woman – and the speaker.
‘What are you lookin’ over here for?’ the woman yelled. ‘If you wasn’t always lookin’ at the women in the stands, you’da seen that boy was offside too.’
Mahoney sat back down, happy. Nothing he liked better than start ing a ruckus.
‘Mavis said the meeting was supposed to start half an hour ago,’ DeMarco said.
‘Aw, goddammit,’ Mahoney said, but he rose from the bench. He started to walk away, then turned back to the woman. ‘Hey, you got some kind of fund for uniforms and stuff?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, suspicious now, not sure what Mahoney was up to.
‘Well, here,’ Mahoney said, and handed her the envelope that Mr. Born had stuffed with cash. ‘Get those boys some new jerseys – and football shoes too. You know the kind with little rubber cleats on the bottom, so they won’t be slippin’ all the time.’
The two F-16 Falcons screamed down the runway at Andrews Air Force Base.
Pete Dalton – Lieutenant Colonel Dalton –
lived
for this. There was absolutely no other experience on the planet like flying an armed-to-the-teeth air force fighter.
It was the week before Thanksgiving, and when the klaxon went off, Dalton and his wingman had been sitting in the ready trailer at Andrews, bitching that they’d been assigned to work the holiday, although Dalton didn’t really care that much. Then the klaxon blared and they were out of the trailer, into their planes, and tearing down the runway five minutes later.
As they were ascending into the skies over Washington, they were briefed on the situation. Some idiot in a small slow-moving plane had just taken off from an airfield in Stafford, Virginia. The guy was at three thousand feet and doing eighty-six knots, almost a hundred miles an hour. He had flown briefly to the south, then turned northeast and crossed into the outer zone and was not responding to air traffic controllers at Dulles.
There are two air defense zones around the nation’s capital, an inner and an outer zone. The outer zone has a ragged, roughly circular boundary that extends thirty to fifty miles outward from the Washington Monument. This zone is called the ADIZ – the Air Defense Identification Zone. To enter the ADIZ a pilot has to identify himself, must have an operating transponder that broadcasts a signal identifying his aircraft, and must remain in continuous two-way communication with FAA controllers. The second zone, the inner zone, is the no-fly zone. The no-fly zone is a perfect circle extending out sixteen miles from the Washington Monument. The only aircraft allowed to enter this area aside from commercial traffic going in and out of Reagan National Airport have to be specially cleared.
The fool in question hadn’t identified himself, his transponder was either malfunctioning or disabled, and he wasn’t responding to queries from FAA controllers. He was doing
everything
wrong. When the unidentified aircraft was two miles inside the ADIZ, thirty-three miles and approximately twenty minutes from all the government buildings in D.C., a whole bunch of things began to happen.
An air force colonel in Rome, New York – the officer commanding
NORAD’S
Northeast Air Defense Sector – scrambled the F-16s out of Andrews; Blackhawk helicopters under the control of Homeland Security lifted off from Reagan National; the Secret Service and the U.S. Capitol Police were alerted and told to be prepared to evacuate the White House, the Capitol, and the Supreme Court; and men in secret locations throughout Washington who are qualified to fire surface-to-air missiles were notified and told to stand by.
At the same time, four people were paged: the secretary of defense, his deputy, a navy admiral located at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado who had overall command of NORAD, and an air force major general located at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida who was responsible for
NORAD’S
operations in the continental United States. These four people were paged because they had been delegated the authority by the president of the United States to shoot down a plane entering the no-fly zone.
Dalton was fairly certain, however, that it wouldn’t come to that; it never had in the past. He expected that within the next two minutes the dummy from Stafford would be on his radio saying, ‘Oh, shit, sorry,’ about sixteen times and then get headed in the right direction, and Dalton would be ordered back to Andrews before he could have any fun.
But these incidents, pilots breaching the ADIZ, occurred two or three times a week, and once Dalton had been on duty when it happened three times in one day. These muttonheads who couldn’t read a map or a compass, who had their radios turned off or set to the wrong frequency, would blunder into the ADIZ and then have the livin’ shit scared out of ’em when two F-16s went roaring past them at six hundred miles an hour.
‘Huntress. Hawk Flight. Bogey still not responding. Snap vector three-twenty for thirty. Intercept and ID. Noses cold.’
Huntress
was the call sign for the colonel com manding the Northeastern Air Defense Sector. He had tactical command of the F-16s.
Hawk Flight
was the two F-16s: Hawk One was Pete Dalton; Hawk Two was his wingman, Major Jeff Fields.
Snap vector
320 for 30
meant the bogey was on a bearing of 320 degrees and 30 miles from the Hawk Flight’s po sition.
Noses cold
meant they were to approach with their weapons systems unarmed – which was a damn good thing for the bogey.
Dalton responded. ‘Hawk One. Huntress. Copy that. Proceeding to intercept.’
The unidentified aircraft was now twenty-four miles and fourteen minutes from Washington, D.C.
Dalton could see the bogey on his radar, and a minute later he could make out a dot in the sky that had to be it. He and Fields headed directly at the dot, and when they were half a mile away, and the bogey was clearly visible – and they were visible to it – Dalton split to the right and Fields to the left, and they blasted past the plane, coming within a hundred yards of its wingtips. Dalton looked over his shoulder and saw the bogey wobble in the jet wash caused by the F-16s, and he figured that whoever was flying that baby was sitting there right now in a puddle of his own piss.
Dalton and Fields made tight loops in the sky and came in behind the plane, slowing down to match its speed.
The bogey was now twenty miles and twelve minutes from Washington.
‘Hawk One. Huntress. Bogey is a Cessna One-fifty, tail number N3459J. Repeat N3459J.’
‘Huntress. Hawk One. Copy that. Attempt contact.’
‘Hawk One. Huntress. Roger that.’ Dalton switched frequencies on his radio. ‘Cessna 3459, Cessna 3459. This is the Air National Guard. Respond. Respond. You are approaching the no-fly zone. Respond.’
Nothing came back from the Cessna. Shit.
‘Cessna 3459. Cessna 3459. Respond or you will be fired upon. You are
entering
the no-fly zone.’
Nothing. It was possible, of course, that the Cessna’s radio wasn’t working or that the pilot was unconscious and the plane was flying itself. That had happened before, though not this close to the capital.
‘Hawk One. Huntress. Cessna 3459 is not responding. Going alongside for visual.’
‘Huntress. Hawk One. Copy that and proceed.’
While his wingman stayed behind the Cessna, Dalton pulled up next to it, the tip of his starboard wing less than fifty feet from the other plane. He waved his right hand at the pilot, signaling for him to get the hell out of the air and down on the ground, but the Cessna pilot, the damn guy, was staring straight ahead, not even looking over at Dalton’s jet. He looked like he was in a trance.
Jesus
, Dalton thought.
The pilot looks like an Arab
.
The Cessna was seventeen miles and ten minutes from D.C.
‘Hawk One. Huntress. Cessna not responding. Pilot ignoring visual contact.’
‘Huntress. Hawk Flight. Fire flares.’
‘Hawk One. Huntress. Roger that. Firing flares.’
Dalton and his wingman shot ahead of the Cessna and made tight turns in the sky to come back at it. This was the sort of maneuver they practiced a dozen times a month. Each pilot fired two flares. The flares missed the Cessna, but not by much, the closest one coming within thirty feet of the Cessna’s cockpit. There was no way the Cessna pilot didn’t see those flares – or the F-16s coming directly at him once again.
But the guy just kept going, never deviating from his original course.
The Cessna was now ten miles – six minutes – from Washington.
Dalton shot past the Cessna again, turned, and pulled up alongside it a second time. He waggled his wings and waved an arm at the pilot. No response. The bastard just sat there like he was made of stone. Dalton reached out to – aw, shit! The Cessna had assumed a downward angle. It was going to cut right across one of the approaches to Reagan National. Beyond the airport, across the Potomac, Dalton could see the White House.
This son of a bitch was headed directly at the White House – and the Cessna was now less than three minutes away from it.
Dalton wasn’t concerned about his F-16 or the Cessna colliding with commercial airplanes going in and out of Reagan National. He knew that by now every plane within a hundred miles either was on the ground or had been diverted away from D.C. Dalton also knew that at this point the White House was being evacuated: guards screaming, people running and tripping and falling, images of 9/11 burned into their brains. Dalton didn’t know if the president was in town, but if he was, two big Secret Service guys had him by the arms and were running him to the bunker, the president’s feet not even hitting the ground.
The Cessna was now four miles – less than two and a half minutes – from the White House.
Dalton spoke into his radio. ‘Hawk One. Huntress. Cessna not responding. I repeat. Cessna ignoring all attempts at contact.’ Dalton knew that he
sounded
calm – he’d been trained to sound calm – but his heart was hammering in his chest like it was going to blow through his breastbone. He also knew he didn’t have to tell anybody where the guy in the Cessna was headed.
There was no immediate response from Huntress.
Oh, shit!
Dalton thought.
Please, God, don’t let somebody’s
goddamn radio go out now
. Then his radio squawked.
‘Huntress. Hawk One. Bogey declared hostile. Arm hot. You are cleared to fire. Repeat. Arm hot. Cleared to fire.’
Now Dalton understood the pause. The word had gone up and back down the chain of command. One of those four men who had the authority to give that order had just given it.
Dalton knew this was his mission. This was the reason they’d spent all those years and all that money training him. This was the reason he was flying an F-16 Falcon. But he had never
really
expected to have to execute the command he’d just been given.
Dalton hesitated, he hesitated too long – he hesitated long enough to end his career.
‘Huntress. Hawk One. Did you copy that order?’
‘Hawk One. Huntress. Roger that. Arm hot. Cleared to fire.’
And then Lieutenant Colonel Peter Dalton did what he’d been trained to do. He reached down and toggled the master arm switch in the cockpit to ON, slowed down to increase the distance between him and the smaller plane, and just as the Cessna was crossing over the Potomac River – less than two miles from the White House – he fired.
NORAD
and the Air National Guard refused to tell the media what sort of weapon had been used to destroy the Cessna. Ordnance and armament used to protect the capital from aerial assault are classified. But whatever Dalton fired, it struck the Cessna and a ball of flame fifty yards in diameter bloomed in the sky over the Potomac. Pieces seemed to rain down onto the river for a solid minute after the Cessna had been obliterated.
