After her plane disappeared around the corner to takeoff on Runway 27, Jug returned to the makeshift paraloft and suited up for his flight. He had verified with the Mobile Bay that the airspace was still clear and that conditions remained ideal to execute the test. Despite Colt’s best efforts at convincing him to postpone it, he felt a stir of excitement as he walked back through the empty hangar and onto the dark flight line to man up.
Walking up to his jet, Jug took a moment to appreciate the beautiful lines of the plane. Some considered the F-35C ugly in comparison to fighters of the previous generation, but he didn’t agree. The composite skin had RAM, or Radar Absorbent Material, baked into the body panels, giving it a darker gray look compared to non-stealth carrier aircraft. But its sharp, crisp lines looked elegant from any angle. His jet’s canopy was tilted forward in the open position, and a boarding ladder dropped down from an oddly shaped panel on the left side of the jet below the ejection seat.
Spotlights shone down on the aircraft, casting shadows across the ground as he walked closer and greeted his plane captain. Then, as he had done on every flight before, he completed an exterior preflight inspection, spending a few extra minutes inside the weapon bays with the ordies, inspecting his weapons for the mission. Underneath the nose and hidden behind a durable sapphire window was the EOTS, that combined Forward-Looking Infrared and Infrared Search and Track functionality. It was used for both air-to-surface and air-to-air targeting and would see action in both arenas during the test.
Following his walk-around, Jug climbed the ladder and stepped down into the Martin-Baker Mk16 ejection seat, spending a few minutes calming his nerves by methodically strapping himself into the seat and connecting his life-support systems to the jet. With each buckle that snapped together, he felt his stomach settle just a little bit more as everything going on around him faded away until he was left with total focus on the upcoming mission. It was the final step in combining man and machine and making them one.
Nothing would get in the way of that.
As Punky climbed away from Runway 27, she reacquainted herself with the Carbon Cub’s controls. The tower controller cleared her to depart to the west, and she turned left slightly and went feet wet just south of Port Hueneme.
Unlike the two naval aviators, Punky had never flown over the ocean at night. Her eyes strained to see anything that even remotely resembled a horizon, but she finally gave up and focused on the synthetic horizon displayed on the Garmin glass panel Colt had installed in the plane. Every private pilot had at least three hours of night time and ten takeoffs and landings in the dark, but even her own experience of double that was woefully inadequate to prepare her for the flight to Santa Cruz Island.
The calm voice of the air traffic controller broke through her growing fear. “Experimental Carbon Cub Four Four Three November Alpha, radar services terminated, change to advisory frequencies approved.”
“Three November Alpha,” she replied, then changed the radio’s frequency to Guard.
The VHF Guard frequency, 121.5 MHz, was an international distress and emergency aviation frequency all civilian aircraft were expected to monitor. Though military aircraft monitored a like frequency in the UHF band, Jug understood that the Carbon Cub wasn’t equipped to transmit or receive in UHF. Monitoring Guard was a smart call, as long as he could reach Raptor Two Four and have them contact her there.
“Raptor Two Four, this is Three November Alpha on Guard,” she said.
Silence.
She tried reining in the growing dread that she had made a mistake by flying west into the night. After double-checking that she was pointed at Santa Cruz Island, she reached behind her for the night vision goggles bracket Jug had made for her, then slipped it on over her head. She cinched down the straps, then affixed the AN/AVS-9 night vision goggles to the bracket and powered them on.
After flipping the goggles down in front of her eyes, she made some last-minute adjustments to the fit and focus, then stared at the ominous dark green landmass rising out of the ocean in front of her.
“Three November Alpha, this is Raptor Two Four on Guard,” a voice said.
She breathed a sigh of relief. “This is Three November Alpha, go ahead.”
“I understand you are offering to assist with the search effort?”
“Negative,” Punky replied. “I am with NCIS on a special mission and request your assistance.”
The pause at the other end was long enough to let her know her pronouncement was news to them. If her suspicion proved accurate, their search and rescue mission should really be a search and recovery mission. But she wasn’t about to tell them that.
After several minutes of Punky droning west toward the island in silence, the voice returned. “Go ahead with your request.”
As much as she appreciated Colt letting her borrow his plane, it wasn’t ideal for the interdiction mission she had in mind. She needed to put the Carbon Cub down someplace on the island and then convince the MH-60R crew to pick her up and help her search for a needle in the haystack.
Only this needle shot back.
“Request you meet me at airstrip located at…” She consulted the notes she had taken during her rudimentary target area study, then read back the coordinates for a grass strip located eight miles west of Smuggler’s Cove. “Thirty-three decimal nine eight north, one nineteen decimal six eight west.”
“Stand by, Three November Alpha.”
As Punky neared the east coastline of Santa Cruz Island, she descended to three thousand feet and bisected the island at Scorpion Ranch. She glanced down and saw what looked like a sailboat anchored off the coast, but quickly looked back at the rising terrain, knowing that finding the grass strip at night would be a challenge. Fortunately, the night vision goggles made it easy for her to spot the orbiting MH-60R.
If only it were that easy to find TANDY.
The moon’s dim glow illuminated the sharp ridges and valleys defining the island’s terrain and cast long shadows across the ground. Punky steered the Carbon Cub north of the shoreline where the Seahawk orbited and looked down at the island through the forward windscreen and each side window.
“Three November Alpha, we are supporting an active search and rescue mission and are unable to grant your request,” the helicopter pilot said, in what sounded like a rehearsed response.
She bit her tongue to keep from replying with a string of four-letter curse words, then casually keyed the microphone switch atop the stick. “Raptor Two Four, my mission takes precedence over your search and rescue.”
A different voice answered her. “How do you figure?”
“Meet me at that location and I’ll tell you,” she said, breathing through her nose to control her temper.
“Tell me now, or you’re on your own.”
Punky eased back on the stick as she neared a ridge to the west of Smuggler’s Cove. A blinking red light sat at the top, indicating an antenna or other man-made structure that posed a hazard to aviation. She was already above the height of the ridge, but she believed in the old aviation axiom: Speed is life, altitude is life insurance.
“It’s classified…”
From the corner of her eye, Punky caught an irregular flash that seemed out of place lower on the ridge. She whipped her head to the left and focused through the goggles at the flashing light, just as it stopped.
“Say again,” the helicopter pilot said.
But Punky didn’t get the chance. Before she could respond, she heard the whip-snapping of bullets streaking through the air next to her airplane. She jerked the stick to the right, banking away from what she now recognized as muzzle flashes coming from the side of the ridge.