“Maybe,” Cassin replied, his voice neutral. “Range traffic control. Warn the bogie he’s intruding into military airspace.”
“Aye, sir.” Two workstations down, a young female Marine adjusted her headset and spoke
into her lip mike. “Civil aircraft Echo George Tango, this is Twentynine Palms Air Traffic Control.
You are about to enter closed airspace. Alter your course. I say again, alter
your course. Over.”
Static whispered on an overhead speaker, then a fragmented voice sputtered. “Marine … Echo … Ge … Palm … Las Vegas … break up … say again …”
The aircraft hack held to its flight path, creeping across the southern boundary of the Combat Center.
The Air Traffic Controller keyed her mike again, her voice more determined. “Echo George Tango, this is Twentynine Palms Air Traffic Control. You are
intruding into military airspace. Execute an immediate turn to the south. I
repeat, execute an immediate turn to the south.”
The target hack on the big screen turned away to the south – but, after only thirty seconds, it conducted a second right-angled turn to the west, drawing a misshapen triangle in the sky.
“Mar … Air … copy … heading … Cannot … Nav … Do you cop …”
The bogie began to repeat its triangular flight pattern over the southeastern corner of the exercise range, the airborne distress signal of an aircraft suffering a communications and navigation failure.
The air traffic controller looked up from her screen. “Sir, I think this guy is in trouble.”
“Maybe,” Cassin repeated. But civil pilots did blunder into reserved military airspace
with frustrating regularity, and anyone could suffer an in-flight systems
failure. “Signal Intelligence, assess the target.”
“Signal patterns are compatible with a civil air radar transponder and a standard
civil air radio transceiver with a signal strength variance compatible with a
malfunction, sir.”
Cassin considered for a long second and then asked his senior NCO’s opinion, always a wise move.
“Gunny, what do you think?”
“He’s not a fast mover,” the Gunnery Sergeant replied, “and I’m getting a hint of a prop flicker. The flight profile matches with a small
turboprop of some kind. He could be as advertised, sir.”
“Any chance he could be a helicopter?”
“Unlikely at that altitude and impossible with that airspeed, sir.”
Cassin still felt a sense of unease. “Get the CAP in there and get a visual ID of the target. If he’s a civilian, escort him out of the range and back to the Springs. If he isn’t … Ladies and Gentlemen, ride those screens. Somebody could be getting sneaky on
us.”
Cassin didn’t notice that the silent observer at the rear of the control center was no longer idly fingering his sportswatch, but was cradling it carefully, his thumb resting on the start button.
Likewise, no one noticed one particular display tucked off in an odd corner of the room.
It was a test circuit, an old fashioned circular PPI scope displaying the raw imaging feed from the air search radar. Had a very good operator been watching that screen very closely, he might have detected three extremely faint intermittent returns creeping northward into the exercise range.
The command center’s battle management system had been detecting those returns for some time as they had traveled eastward along Highway 62 at seventy odd miles per hour and had categorized and filtered them as routine ground vehicle clutter.
The system continued to do so now, even as the “ground vehicles” veered off the highway to transit terrain unbroken by any road.
*
“Civil Aircraft Echo George Tango, this is California Air National Guard
Butterball Two Five, do you copy? Over. Civil Aircraft Echo George Tango, this
is California Air National Guard Butterball Two Five, do you copy? Over.”
Captain Brenda Zabreski, tonight known as Butterball Two Five, pulled her throttle back and flared her speed brakes, bleeding off the excess velocity built up by her descent. As the airspeed sank below three hundred knots, she dirtied up the airframe, dialing in fifteen degrees of flap and popping the speed brakes, her elderly F-16 shuddering in protest.
Over her left shoulder, the aircraft of Lieutenant Dennis Ramirez, Butterball Two Six, held station on her as the two fighters dropped from thirty-five thousand feet in a lazy pursuit curve, lining up on the blip in their cockpit intercept displays.
“Ah … lease repeat … can’t … system … position … Over.”
Zabreski sighed and toggled up to the command channel, “Two Five to Two Six. Did you get anything out of that, Denny? Over.”
“Negatory on that, Captain, just grass and garbage.”
“Roger, Denny, let’s come up on his port side, nice and easy at about a hundred-yard separation.”
“Acknowledged, ma’am. Wish we could rattle this dork’s doors with an afterburner run. We got better things to do out here tonight,
Captain.”
“Stand easy, Denny. This guy could really be in trouble. Beyond that, the State
of California doesn’t need a lawsuit from some civil aviation puke claiming we scared him into a
permanent sexual dysfunction.”
Another voice intruded into Zabreski’s helmet phones. “Butterball Two Five, this is Twentynine Palms Traffic Control. We have the bogie
at your one o’clock at five miles. Do you have a visual? Over.”
Zabreski thumbed the transmit button on the top of her side-stick controller. “We have strobes at our one o’clock. They appear to be the running lights of a civil aircraft. Do you wish us
to continue the intercept? Over. ”
The pulsing strobe flares crept into the cartwheel sight of the F-16’s heads up display as the interceptors aligned with it.
“Affirmative, Butterball Two Five,” Twenty-nine Palms replied. “Close the range and make skin identification of the target.”
“Roger. Will comply.” Muttering to herself about pernickety jarheads, Zabreski juggled her flaps, throttle and flight angle. The F-16 was sluggish and sullen as it crept closer to its target, unhappy at this airspeed.
As their range closed, Zabreski reached up with her left hand and flipped down her low light vision visor, trying to see the aircraft behind the lights. The target’s strobes were set to bright rapid flash and it wasn’t easy.
The bogie wasn’t very big, whatever it was. Maybe a Turbo Mooney. But was that a tail boom? Could it be an old Cessna Skymaster flying flat out and balls to the wall?
Abruptly the strobe lights snapped off and Captain Zabreski got a single instant’s good look at the target.
