“At this time the flood surge has reached the western edge of the city of Folsom and is now approaching the Gold River and eastern portions of Rancho Cordova. It is spilling over Nimbus Dam and the fish hatchery. The Rainbow Bridge in Folsom has collapsed, and the Negro Bar and Hazel Avenue bridges are threatening to weaken or even collapse. In Folsom, all areas north of the river appear safe so far, but south of the river in low-lying areas the destruction is extensive. Old Folsom and indeed all areas south of the river and north of Blue Ravine Road are under at least four feet of water. We do not have any estimates of loss of life at this time, but the explosions came with no warning. The Aerojet-General rocket plant is underwater, and the safety and environmental hazards are very great. There are reports that tanks of rocket fuel and propane gas are adrift in the floodwaters and could present a highly dangerous explosion hazard.
“The flood surge is moving at a rate of approximately five miles an hour, and is expected to reach the city less than three hours from now. Evacuation orders are mandatory and will be enforced by California National Guard troops. Highway 50 and Folsom Boulevard have been closed east of Watt Avenue, so everyone should travel either north or south on major surface streets away from the American River and stay off Highway 50 and Folsom Boulevard. California National Guard units will be blocking off the freeway to aid in evacuations, so please do not use these thoroughfares. We repeat, all residents of flood-prone low-lying areas within two miles of the American River are ordered to evacuate immediately, and residents within five miles of the river are urged to evacuate as a precaution.”
The passenger in the front seat of the California National Guard Humvee turned off the radio as the vehicle approached the Elkhorn Boulevard gate of McClellan Air Force Base in the north part of the city of Sacramento. Three more Humvees followed. The gate was a madhouse as security guards scrambled to keep track of the vehicles streaming in and out. The four Humvees took their place in a long line of military and civilian trucks trying to enter the base. Under the press of traffic, the security guards began waving all military vehicles through with cursory checks of ID cards, and the Humvees entered without difficulty.
One of them split off and headed east on the base, stopping at the security headquarters and the central communications facility, then going around the west side of the base to the power transformer farm near Roseville Road. The others headed north around the runways toward the hangars on the northwest side. Again, one split off, dropping off four soldiers in full-camouflage battle-dress uniforms and combat gear at strategic locations on the access roads leading to the hangars. There was virtually no security anywhere on the base except for the southeast side, where air rescue and relief activities were beginning to gear up in response to the rupture of the dam and the anticipated flooding of the city of Sacramento.
Gregory Townsend and eighteen of his soldiers dismounted from the remaining vehicles and ran to the edge of the security fence around the four target hangars. When all his units were in position, Townsend issued the order to go. Explosions destroyed the base’s central communications facility, and more explosions at the power transformer farm on Roseville Road cut off power to most of the base. This did not affect power inside the target hangars, but it deactivated the security systems surrounding them, slowing down any response from elsewhere on the base. Then he blew open the security gates and headed for the hangars.
There were eight of them, but Townsend had targeted only the four on the west side and assigned four soldiers to each hangar. On his signal, they entered the hangars simultaneously by blowing open the outer doors, then rushing inside, neutralizing the Air Force guards, and mopping up the remaining armed resistance.
The guards in the hangars had managed to sound the alarm, but the base’s central communications system and security-police headquarters never received it. Still, Townsend knew that before long someone would realize they were missing a scheduled security report or check-in, and there’d be some form of response. But with the frantic preparations for coping with the flood rapidly approaching Sacramento, he calculated he had at least an hour’s leeway. His men could easily deal with any roving or curious security-police unit that happened by in the meantime, and an hour was all he needed. His men set to work on their final objective.
The complex on the northwest side of McClellan Air Force Base had changed hands many times over the years. Back in the 1950’s and 60’s, the area had been used to decontaminate spy planes that were flown over American, French, Russian, and Chinese aboveground nuclear-weapons explosions. In more recent years, flight-test squadrons built and tested new air weapon systems there, such as the 4,700-pound GBU-28 “bunker-buster” bomb used to try to kill Saddam Hussein as he hid in his deep underground shelters in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
In addition to the classified weapon and flight-test work done there, the complex had another secret activity: It contained a small but full-scale nuclear reactor, which produced gamma rays used for NDI, or nondestructive inspection, of military aircraft. Although magnetic eddy current fields, X rays, lasers, radar, and plain old eyeballs were still useful in detecting cracks and fatigue in aircraft structures, they weren’t reliable or adequate for the new crop of composite “stealth” aircraft, so gamma-ray inspections were developed to check these planes without having to disassemble them first. Fifteen years ago, McClellan Air Force Base had been the first aircraft-maintenance depot in the world to use gamma rays for aircraft NDI, and it was still the main nuclear NDI facility in the free world.
And the latest clients ready for their annual nuclear NDI inspection were sitting right there before Gregory Townsend and his soldiers: four F-117A Night Hawk stealth fighter-bombers. All four of these odd-looking planes, with their multifaceted, pyramid-shaped fuselages, short pointed wings, and thin, highly swept tails, were Gulf War veterans, each having performed more than thirty missions in the heart of stiff Iraqi air defenses without a single casualty. Although they could carry only five thousand pounds of ordnance-usually two two-thousand-pound laser-guided bombs-and were more than fifteen years old, they were still in good condition. And because they were virtually invisible on radar and invulnerable to most modern air defense systems, they were four of the deadliest warplanes on earth…
… and they now belonged to Gregory Townsend.
While several of his soldiers began to refuel the planes and brought over ground power “start carts,” Townsend and three of his other men, all trained combat pilots, stepped up the special access ladders designed for the F-117 stealth fighters, opened up the cockpit canopies, and got to work preflighting their aircraft. The preflight checks went quickly. Because the Night Hawks’ cockpits were so cramped and uncomfortable, they were designed from the outset to be highly automated, relegating the human on board to being a system monitor rather than a pilot.
Besides, these pilots were not concerned about getting the planes ready to go to war. They simply had to make sure they had enough gas to fly a few hundred miles to an isolated airstrip in southwestern Nevada, where more fuel was waiting. A thousand miles at a time, and the aircraft would eventually end up in South America, where eager international arms merchants and foreign countries were waiting to start the bidding on the auction of the century.
On a signal from Townsend, all four F-117 engines were started inside the hangars themselves, in preparation for taxiing. There was no concern about the exhaust damage-it didn’t matter what the hangars looked like after they left-and none of them bothered with flight-control or engine checks. The F-117 Night Hawk stealth fighter was inherently unstable in all flight axes-there was no such thing as “dead-sticking” an F-117 to an emergency landing. The aircraft needed at least one flight-control computer and one engine to fly. If it lost more than that, the pilot had a single option: eject. But a foreign government such as Libya, Iran, Iraq, or China would still pay hundreds of millions of dollars for an F-117 stealth fighter even with only one engine or one flight-control computer.