Chapter 64
Cruising at thirty-five thousand feet, the crew of Condor One Five could just make out the first sliver of dawn on the horizon. The sky was a periwinkle blue up above the earth, melding with a streak of misty orange to the east.
As the pilot banked the plane into the first turn of the eight-mile loop, the sun poked up above the horizon, its yellow rays finding the exterior of the tanker and bathing it in a warm glow. The surface of the sea down below remained pitch-dark.
The captain pulled his glasses on. “Sunrise comes early at flight level three-five-oh.”
As the plane turned away from the rising sun, the copilot received a coded message on the priority satellite channel. It came directly from the aircraft’s squadron commander back in Japan.
“Condor One Five,” the commander said, “we have strong reason to believe your aircraft will fall under imminent and lethal attack. This is a direct order to egress the plane immediately. I repeat, entire crew to bail out immediately. You may have only minutes.”
The captain froze for a split second. Bailing out of a tanker at thirty-five thousand feet was not the same thing as ejecting from a fighter.
The plane had to be depressurized. The crew had to pull on parachutes and squirm through a small hatch in the floor behind the cockpit—an act none of them had really trained for, since parachutes had only recently been put back on board after being removed from most of the Air Force’s heavy aircraft for decades.
The copilot looked at a loss for words. The captain responded. “With all due respect, sir, is this some kind of joke?”
“No joke,” the squadron commander said. “This order comes directly from the Pentagon. Set that plane on autopilot and get your crew out. Now.”
Shaking himself out of shock, the captain gave the order. “Okay, let’s move,” he snapped. “Dump the pressure. Grab your…”
As the captain spoke, a blinding flash outside the window caught his eye. As if the sun were coming up again. But they were heading west now, into darkness. “What the…”
The first shot missed the cockpit by a matter of feet, close enough that it dazzled the captain the way a laser pointer did when reflected into the eyes.
The second pulse did not miss. It punched through the fuselage and out the other side, vaporizing the aluminum in its path and causing an instant and catastrophic decompression.
The fuselage buckled outward and broke at the bend.
It was in the process of coming apart when another pulse sliced through the upraised wing, rupturing a fuel tank and igniting thousands of gallons of kerosene all at once.
Seen from the outside, the tanker appeared in a haze of orange fire.
Driven by the heat and pressure, the sphere of burning fuel expanded like the sun and then darkened into a smoke cloud broken by arcs of curling flame.
Parts of the aircraft and unrecognizable chunks of metal fell through this cloud, trailing smoke and fire.
The plane raced toward the sea like a shower of meteors, destined for a final impact on the surface of the water.
At the military air traffic control center in Japan, the squadron commander who’d given the bailout order stood over the shoulder of a radar specialist monitoring the flight. They watched the aircraft vanish from the screen.
For a brief moment, a larger, more diffuse radar return appeared in its place. It was caused by the radar waves reflecting off the rapidly expanding cloud of fuel and debris. The ghostly return faded quickly, leaving nothing but darkness.
The enlisted air traffic controller knew the plane was gone. He asked the obvious question. “Did they get out?”
The squadron commander shook his head. There was no quick way to get out of a tanker filled with fuel. “No,” he grunted. “Not enough time.”
The news hit the Situation Room like a tornado. The chief of staff allowed his fury to show. Now, in direct contact with the theater commander, the President demanded action. “Where is the impostor aircraft now?”
“It’s over the Strait,” he was told. A brief delay followed. “Mr. President, it appears to be heading for China.”
The President shook his head in dismay. He looked up at the chief of staff, then over at the director of the CIA, and then at the three-star general representing the Air Force.
They were right back where they’d begun, with the stolen laser system heading toward enemy territory.
But this time they had it on radar and they had significant forces in the air already.
“I want that plane destroyed,” he ordered. “Send everything you have after it.”
“It will be in Chinese airspace in less than five minutes,” he was warned.
“I don’t give a damn about airspace,” the President snapped. “I don’t want it making landfall. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” the commander said. “We should alert the Chinese to the rogue aircraft condition.”
The chief of staff leaned in. “If you do that, you’ll be telling them that the weapon is there for the taking.”
“We’ll inform them after the fact,” the President insisted. “Just knock that plane out of the sky.”