“Presley, move Big Sky now.”
“What?” Presley Friedman asked. “He’s wheels-up in another two hours.”
“Move him now!” ordered the director of the National Intelligence Agency.
“Is this…?” The Secret Service chief didn’t get to finish his question.
“Code: Rising Thunder.”
“Copy that. Rising Thunder.” The cryptogram was the president’s own choice for a fast moving emergency.
“Yes,” Evans barked.
“We’ll get Big Sky on his way,” Friedman responded. He was already typing the order into his computer.
The fact that President Lamden was staying in a specially outfitted suite in a Los Angeles hotel was exactly why he had to move. There was an evacuation at another hotel, with a similar suite, also dubbed Rip Van Winkle. That hotel was on the itinerary for President Lamden’s visit in August, set by the Office for Strategic Initiatives.
“He’ll be out in three minutes,” the Secret Service director acknowledged.
“I’ll alert the vice president and the speaker. Call me when he’s cleared the building. Again, when he’s on the road. At the airport and in the air.”
Now Presley Friedman wondered about the exact nature of the emergency. He’d find out soon enough.
Eric Ross had very few of the worries of the average American. His meals were covered. The same for his laundry bills. His clothes were provided. He had a per diem wherever he traveled, and he traveled all over the world without paying a dime to the airlines. It was a perfect deal for a private man with no family and few friends.
But Ross did have responsibility.
Eric Ross was a career U.S. Air Force officer. He served with the Air Mobility Command’s 89th Airlift Wing, stationed at Andrews AFB, Suitland, Maryland. He had high security clearance and access throughout the base. He grunted more than talked, worked more than socialized. Cohorts who’d served with him could hardly say they actually knew Rossy, even after 12 years. But he wasn’t there for his personality. It was for what he could do. Eric Ross supervised the maintenance of the two most important airplanes in the United States: a pair of specially configured Boeing 747-200Bs built at Boeing’s Everett, Washington, plant.
The planes flew with the designation VC-25A and tail numbers SAM 28000 and 29000. In military parlance, SAM referred to Special Air Mission. These were definitely special jets.
When Ross’s boss was onboard either craft, the radio call sign became Air Force One.
This afternoon, the planes were serviced and waiting at a satellite terminal on the ocean side of LAX. The president was in Los Angeles for two days of meetings with Western governors. Ross had to make sure they were ready to fly at a moment’s notice.
Blindfolded, Lt. Eric Ross could successfully inspect the most hidden quarters of his SAMs. Performing specific diagnostic tests in the dark was part of his education. However, Rossy exceeded the minimum standards. He’d been trained behind closed doors by Boeing’s top engineers. He had the reputation for being able to smell virtually any trouble. What he couldn’t personally figure out, he could get help for, day or night, from anywhere on the planet. Ross had direct access to unlisted numbers of people with very special knowledge. Most importantly, he had the guarantee that there would always be an answer.
For years, the 44-year-old, five-foot-ten career officer passed on putting in for a transfer to far easier duty. He said Air Force One was his life. It called out to him. The last three presidents always felt better when they saw his name on the roster, better yet when he accompanied them in the air. And when the current commander in chief, still getting used to the trappings of his flying Oval Office, asked, “Is everything looking okay, Rossy?” the thumbs-up put him at ease.
The confidence came from the sense that these were Rossy’s planes, and his hands-on approach to their care made the whole experience of flying on Air Force One more secure.
If Ross hadn’t put in the 238 miles of wire in each plane himself, more than twice what is found in a typical civilian 747, he certainly acted like he had. They weren’t just wires. They were his wires. And not just ordinary wire at that. These were lifesaving strands, with a shielding over the core to protect the planes’ systems from any electromagnetic pulse — the kind generated by a thermonuclear blast.
Unless he was sicker than a dog, Ross traveled everywhere with the Airlift Wing. The planes couldn’t be serviced by commercial aviation ground crews or even regular Air Force. Security reasons alone made that impossible. That’s why Ross and members of the 89th were so vital.
According to the orders that had come down, the VC-25As were scheduled to depart for Andrews at 2215 hrs. Both planes. These days they always had to be flight worthy, 24/7. One ferried the president; the other was support. Ross couldn’t pilot either 28000 or 29000, but he could ground them with a check mark in the wrong box.
In addition to their actual operation, Rossy had extensive knowledge of the history of Air Force One — actually a misnomer, because the call sign doesn’t belong to any one plane. Air Force One is actually any airplane the president is aboard, whether it’s a 747, an F/A-18 Super Hornet, a S-3B Viking, or even a Cessna. And once a president ceases being a president, through death or resignation, the designation of the aircraft immediately changes.
Such was the case on August 9, 1974, after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger read President Nixon’s formal resignation letter, and Gerald Ford was sworn in as the thirty-eighth president. Air traffic control in Kansas received the radio message from the plane carrying Nixon: “Kansas City, this is former Air Force One, please change our call sign to SAM 27000.”
The lieutenant was not permitted to discuss classified information about the twin jets, or reveal details on anything already on the record. Occasionally, freshmen members of the White House press corps would try. “Come on, Rossy. Where’s the escape pod?” There was none, but he would only smile and shrug his shoulders.
“How many parachutes does this thing carry?” Again, no comment, even though they were not equipped with parachutes. The dangerous slipstream created by the 747 in flight prevented their use.
“What about the range of this thing?”
“I dunno, pretty far,” he offered, even though the reporters could find out on the Internet that the planes were capable of flying halfway around the world without refueling, and with midair fill-ups, they could probably fly indefinitely.
Ross was not known for volunteering much. But he did like telling reporters, “When you really come down to it, my job’s pretty simple. I just have to think about the unthinkable and make sure it doesn’t happen.” For that reason and a hundred others on the official checklists, Air Force One was gassed up and ready to go.
They were happy he was working for the good guys.
“Mr. President, we have to go,” said the lead agent, a 6-foot-tall bulldog of a man. The Secret Service agent closest to the president had gotten the message before Friedman was off the phone with Jack Evans. Word also had been radioed to the Air Force, which urgently launched a pair of F-15s out of Nellis AFB in Nevada. Already aloft were two Navy Super Hornets from San Diego, an E-3 Sentry AWACS Boeing 707/320, and a KC-10 tanker, all flying sweeping figure-eight patterns off the coast. Since 9/11, their contrails created a haunting white web above many of America’s cities; a visible reminder of how the world had changed.
“What the…?” Lamden managed.