“Sir, Puppeteer is declaring an emergency,” Patrick announced. “We have fifteen minutes of fuel and two souls on board. Our intentions are to attempt a full-stop landing on the downwind runway. Please have men and equipment standing by.”
Charlie was already talking — no, shouting—on the frequency when Patrick let go of the mike button: “… repeat, you will not attempt a landing on Diego Garcia, Puppeteer, do you understand me? Your aircraft represents an extreme hazard to this base. Accept vectors to the ditching zone. Acknowledge!”
“I copy, Rainbow,” Patrick said. He knew that the ops officer at Diego Garcia knew that Patrick was going to go over all their heads. He didn’t care. The Vampire was in trouble, big trouble, and they weren’t going to make it unless they got permission to land at Diego Garcia.
But a few minutes later Patrick got his answer from the secretary of defense himself — permission to land at Diego Garcia denied. It was too risky closing down that important Indian Ocean runway.
“What do we do now, General?” Rebecca said, remarkably calm for an aircraft commander who was going to lose her plane in just a few minutes. “We brief these contingencies for days before these missions. I can’t believe we actually have to do it.”
A pair of U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bombers rendezvoused with the Vampire bomber to look it over and take pictures. Patrick thought the fighter pilots would try to crowd the bomber off its final approach path — they were tucked in tight, but they weren’t going to try to bully the bigger jet away. “Puppeteer, don’t do it,” one of the Navy pilots radioed. “If you shut down that runway, I might have to punch out. I won’t take kindly to that — neither will my wife and kids.” Patrick did not reply.
“General, think of your family,” someone else said. “Don’t risk your life with this. It’s just a machine. It’s not worth it.”
Patrick still did not reply. In fact, for most of the five-hour-plus flight out of Central Asia, that’s all Patrick had thought about — his son, Bradley, waiting for him back in Nevada. Bradley’s mother, Wendy, had been brutally murdered during a mission in Libya, along with Patrick’s younger brother, Paul. Patrick came home to see his son and bury his brother and then left again to try to rescue his wife when the exiled Libyan king located her in a Libyan prison.
The rescue mission was a failure: Wendy was killed, and Patrick barely made it out alive. He was finally able to bring her body home after the Libyan king set up a new constitutional government in Libya, and they cremated her remains and scattered her ashes in the Pacific Ocean. After that, Patrick vowed he would never leave Bradley’s side….
But he broke that promise shortly afterward, when President Thomas Thorn gave him Air Force major general’s stars and command of the Air Battle Force wing at Battle Mountain. At first it was short trips away from home only, to the Tonopah Test Range or Dreamland, maybe to Washington. Bradley was being watched by Patrick’s sisters either at his home in Battle Mountain or at their home in Sacramento; many times Patrick took his son with him. Bradley was making friends, playing T-ball, and he seemed happy to see his father when he finally came home, not traumatized or clingy. Bradley was a tough kid, Patrick thought. He had gone through a lot during his short life.
But now Patrick was on a weeklong mission, flying out of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. He rationalized it by saying it was only a UCAV control-and-monitor mission — there were no plans whatsoever to fly over hostile territory, so he would be as safe as he could be in a 470,000-pound combat aircraft. Now even that flimsy rationalization was exploded. At the very worst there was an extremely good chance that he would leave his son an orphan — at best he was probably going to lose his commission. Again.
Finally the Hornets went away, glad to be out of midair-collision range with the bomber, and the Vampire was all by itself.
The bomber was several miles north of the island of Diego Garcia when the first engine flamed out from fuel starvation. “Shut down the opposite engine before you get two flaming out on the same side,” Rebecca told him, but Patrick was already ensuring that the computers were doing just that. Rebecca stared hard out her windscreen, but all she could see were blurs. “How are we doing?” No reply. “Patrick? You okay?”
“I… I was thinking about my son,” Patrick said. “I barely made it home after the Libyan ordeal and his mother’s death, and now I might just orphan him with this stunt.”
“It’s not too late to get out. I’m ready to go. All you have to do is say the word.”
Patrick paused — but only for a few moments. “No. We’ll make it.”
“Puppeteer, you are too low,” the tower controller called. “Start a slow turn now, away from the final approach path, or you won’t make it.”
“It’s now or never, Patrick,” Rebecca said, firmly but evenly. “If you wait and try to turn too tight later, you’ll stall and crash. If we lose another engine, we won’t make it. And if we lose an engine while in the turn, we’ll spin in so fast they’ll need a dredger to dig us out of the ocean bottom. Turn now.”
“No. We can make it.”
“General, don’t be stupid—”
“If we ditch, Rebecca, we’ll lose a three-hundred-million-dollar plane,” Patrick said. “If we land and we end up crashing it on the runway, maybe even shutting the place down, so what? I doubt if we’d do more than three hundred million worth of damage.”
“You’re nuts,” Furness said. “You have much more than just a problem with authority — you have some sort of sick death wish. Need I remind you, sir, what happened to you the last time you violated a direct order from the National Command Authority?”
“I was forced to retire from the Air Force within forty-eight hours.”
“That’s right, sir,” Rebecca said. “And you nearly took me down with you.”
“We’ll make it,” Patrick said. He keyed the microphone. “Diego Tower, Vampire Three-one on final for full-stop landing runway one-four.” He used his unclassified call sign on the open channel.
“Vampire Three-one, this is Diego Tower,” the voice of the British tower controller replied. “You do not have proper authority to land.”
“Diego Tower, Vampire Three-one is declaring an emergency for a flight-control malfunction, five minutes of fuel on board, requesting fire equipment standing by.”
“Vampire Three-one, you do not have permission to land!” the controller shouted, his British accent getting thicker as he grew more and more agitated. “Discontinue approach, depart the pattern to the east, and remain clear of this airspace.”
“Puppeteer, this is Rainbow,” the American naval air operations officer cut in on the secure channel. “I order you to break off your approach and leave this airspace, or I will bust you so hard that you’ll be lucky to get an assignment changing tires at the motor pool back at your home base rather than commanding it.”
Patrick ignored him. Yes, he was taking an awful risk, not just to his career — which was probably over at this point — but to everyone on the ground. This was loco. Why risk it? Why…?
“Puppeteer, I order you to break off this approach, now!”
At that moment the computer said, “Configuration warning.”
“Override,” Patrick ordered. “I’m leaving the gear up.”
“General…?”
“I’m committed,” Patrick said to Rebecca’s unasked question. They weren’t going to make it. They were so low that Patrick couldn’t see the runway anymore.