Nick of Time, Smooth Criminal [read aloud .TXT] 📗

Force Material Command, AFMC, which controlled the base. General Cunningham had arrived at Edwards Air Force Base this morning from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where the headquarters of AFMC is situated. She held a hour-long meeting with Matthews immediately after a breakfast she relished and he skipped. She explained him, all too courteously, about how things had been arranged in his favor with meticulous deliberation by many unnamed specialists across many of their sister agencies and United States Armed Forces. Her lecture had the sound of being informative, but Matthews could read between the lines. She did not say anything he had not known, but her earnest tone made him uneasy. It was only after that meeting his anxiety for success sidestepped to portray him a grisly image of failure. If he succeeded, the day would be nothing more than addition to his numerous achievements. If he failed, however, everyone would be at his throat.

 

He pushed the thought away and let his eyes wander to the only other prominent person in the room. She was talking animatedly on phone, probably with one of the technicians in the ramp regarding the after-checks he had to do once her handiwork had been fixed to its place. She was Chitra Venkatesh, the director of DARPA. Standing next to her was a guy named Noah Barocas. Venkatesh was gesturing at him to verify if her instructions on phone were correct, and he was nodding energetically at her. Barocas and his team had designed the deadly weapon that must have been affixed by now into the belly of the most advanced air craft in USAF’s history. He was the creator of the technology that had elicited all this fuss.

 

“Gentlemen, we have our pilots on board now.” Edward Harris, the chief of Air Traffic control team for tonight’s mission, announced in the mike by his monitor. People hurried to their places. Air Traffic controllers to the consoles overlooking the radar transmissions and monitors showing the overviews of the base, Communication squad to its final check of the communication equipment, and the rest to their respective stations, each of which would start sending its report to ATC in a moment’s time. Matthews went over and stood behind Harris. Cunningham joined him. He glanced at her side and she gave him a tense smile. Venkatesh and Barocas now stood behind another controller, pointing at and commenting on something showing up on his monitor. From the corner of his eye, Matthews saw General Wright still standing beside the curve of the glass wall, his arms folded now, his face still turned away.

 

“Control, this is Escort One, filling in for the Trident.” A voice came floating from Harris’s console.

 

“Hello, Escort One, this is Control. Other arms of the Trident, please copy and respond,” said Harris into his mouthpiece.

 

“Copy Control. This is Escort Two.”

 

“Hello Control,” Matthews winced a little as the voice came over. “This is Pegasus. How ya doin’??”

 

Harris looked uncertain for a moment. Matthews took a cursory glance at Cunningham and she raised an eyebrow at him. None of them expected a pilot with his ass perched on a 900-million-dollar worth of bomber craft, with the deadliest weapon imaginable buried in its entrails, to be in high spirits like this. Matthews was sure the other guy in the craft, the co-pilot of this fool, would be strung out so hard right now with the weight of this huge responsibility that he might be pissing in his pants. Nothing wrong with  him; so was everyone, except this lad here. Matthews had not heard of him until two weeks ago. His jaw fell when Cunningham told him, with a barely restrained urge to roll her eyes, that the fate of the mission would depend on the prowess of a Captain in his late twenties. He started to complain the role and age were both inappropriate for a mission of such a magnitude. Cunningham held up her hand at him. “It is the Big Guy’s decision,” she said, referring to General Wright. Big Guy was how they called him; it was not entirely a figurative name per se. “He says this guy might be young but he got the thing in him. We might as well go along with his instincts,” she said. The fact Ralph Caldwell, the Captain in question, had a dossier that screamed of numerous cases of insubordination and unconventional flight plans helped only to worsen Matthews’s fears.

 

Harris recovered immediately. “Doing good, Pegasus.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Good flight to you.”

 

“Thanks, boyo,” chimed Caldwell.

 

Harris cleared his throat, and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Trident, Escort One will stay with tower, filling in for all the three of you. The three of you are to copy and acknowledge the instructions from the tower. Escort One will respond in behalf of you all. Is that clear?”

 

“Roger that,” Responses came one after the other from the three aircrafts.

 

The computer monitors of all the controllers were bathed in streaks of green, celluloid outlines of the base’s overview. Harris was organizing the inputs from other operators and managing them with a dexterity Matthews envied. He was also barking instructions to the pilots concurrently as if the action was executed by a separate department of his brain.

 

“Control, Escort One ready to copy IFR to Andrews AFB,” said the pilot of Escort One. His name was Julian Reed.

 

“Escort One, cleared to Andrews AFB via radar vectors as filed. Fly runaway heading. Climb and maintain eight thousand feet; expect one five thousand ten minutes after departure. Depart on 133.9, squawk 0334.”

 

“Cleared Andrews AFB via radar vectors as filed, fly runaway heading, up to eight thousand feet, departure 133.9, squawk 0334, Escort One.” repeated Major Reed.

 

“Control Tower automated weather information Zulu,” Another controller sitting next to Harris spoke into his mike. “Winds 300 at 6. Visibility at 2. Few clouds at 8000 feet. Temperature 10, dew point 5. Altimeter 29.90.”

 

Matthews looked at the miniature replicas of the aircrafts in the hangar glowing green on the screen. Radar detection had been activated.

 

“Control, Escort One ready to taxi IFR, with Zulu.”

 

“Escort One, steer onto taxiway lima to two two.”

 

“Steer onto taxiway lima to two-two, Escort One.”

 

The radar projection of Escort One, an F-15E Strike Eagle, moved from the domain marked ‘HANGAR’ towards the runway marked ‘22L’ in halting steps. Matthews could visualize in his mind’s eye the sleek figure of the fighter craft trundling along the tarmac, its wings heavy with AIM-9 Sidewinders and AIM-120 AMRAAMs, its progress looked over by a group of airmen with their arms gesticulating to clear up the way or to signal the pilot. It was a perfect replica of Escort Two, which waited in the hangar behind Pegasus. The lineup of two F-15s would provide the air security for the transportation. The pilots, Major Reed in Escort One and Major Zachary Lynch in Escort Two, were personally chosen by Matthews. His recommendation was followed by an assessment session presided over by General Wright. Both the Majors, Reed and Lynch, had been under the covert surveillance of FBI since then.

 

“Control, Escort One ready for takeoff IFR, runway two-two lima,” Reed announced once the green icon of Escort One entered the runway 22L.

 

Harris leaned forward to the microphone, his eyes lingering for a silent moment on his screen. Then he said, “Escort One, winds three zero zero at seven. Cleared for take-off.”

 

“Cleared for takeoff, runway two-two lima, Escort One.”

 

The F-15 drifted along the runway, its progress step by hesitant step. But Matthews knew that down below, far ahead in the lighted confines of hangar, the fighter would be racing down the runway in breakneck speed with a grace that belied the threat it possessed. The altimeter suddenly stirred to life, and he knew Escort One had taken off. The height displayed in the altimeter climbed swiftly as the plane soared high in the air and into the night. The figures continued to rise until the Eagle reached eight thousand feet, now settling into a fluctuation of ten feet on either side.

 

“Escort One, climb and maintain one five thousand now,” said Harris.

 

“Roger. Up to one five thousand, Escort One.” The numbers increased accordingly in the altimeter.

 

Harris patiently repeated the process with the other two arms of the Trident. The Pegasus came in second. The aircraft had been named ‘C-3’ unofficially, since it took after most of the features of B-2 bomber including a semblance of its looks. On the radar display, its electronic representation looked just like a moth. Its radar signature was red against the surrounding green.

 

“That asshole must be thrilled like hell,” Cunningham leaned closer and whispered. She meant Caldwell. She cast a quick, wary look over her shoulder at General Wright. He stood statuesque, still looking away into the night.

 

“Clear to take-off, Pegasus.”

 

“Taking off now, Control. Up we go, Pegasus.”

 

Matthews wished he were standing at the tarmac below right now to witness the grace with which C-3 took off, albeit he had seen it happen a hundred times. The bomber came into his command to be tested in Air Force Test Center three months back. Matthews had been debriefed that the C-3 project was launched a year back in Air Force Plant 42, led by Boeing, and it was a clandestine activity shrouded carefully from the outer world by the command of Joint Chiefs of Staff. This was the deadliest plane ever to take to air. Perhaps by a twist of fate, its first mission involved carrying the most threatening weapon in American arsenal from Edwards Air Force Base to Andrews Air Force Base in Virginia, where it would be presented to the President and the Secretary of Defense. Matthews never imagined he would be weighed with this much responsibility within a month’s time.

 

“Pegasus on air,” proclaimed Captain Darren Mitchell, Caldwell’s co-pilot in the mission.

 

“Pegasus, climb and maintain one five thousand.”

 

Mitchell copied and repeated it. Pegasus’s height rose to 1500 in the altimeter. Matthews turned sideways to look at the towered structure standing four hundred yards away from the control tower, by the old control tower. It was erected in a month’s span. The specialized radar the tower housed, the one named ‘the Beacon’, was giving the feeds that showed Pegasus here in screen. This bomber, C-3, was the apotheosis of stealth technology. B-2 was also a stealth bomber, yet no stealth bomber is completely invisible. You just have to see the pattern of birds flying, or filter out the small anomalies. A seasoned radar operator would find your stealth aircraft given time if he pleased and persevered. C-3, however, was miles past that limitation, and that was what made it very special. No radar would be able to track C-3. Once it rose into air, it would be lost in the air space. Completely invisible. They tested it countless times with many test pilots in the Test Center, but not even the most experienced radar men could triangulate the craft. Pegasus was bound to the control tower only by Beacon. The Beacon was an advanced radar tailor-made to improve the tracking of C-3, or rather, execute it. Beacon could barge in and zero in on the sleek body of C-3 where normal radar waves could not reflect from its smooth edges. They developed the most ambitious plane on the planet, Matthews thought, fixed the weapon of the century into it and put a half-baked fucker on top of them both.

 

Five minutes later, all three planes were airborne. They were flying in tandem, a span of a quarter of a mile separating one from the next. Escort One led the line up, Pegasus followed and Escort Two brought up the rear. The Eagles had turned on their stealth mode, too. They were invisible now, but not quite. Pegasus was stained red by the Beacon. A huge, collective sigh had escaped in the control room as the Trident took off successfully and settled nicely into the preordained flight plan.

 

“Six hours, people.” a controller announced. “Our boys would be aloft for six hours.”

 

Matthews