Primary Target (1999) (38 page)

"Pete," Oliver said as evenly as he could, "try our previous frequency. Get someone on the horn."

"Okay."

Recently promoted to copilot, First Officer Pete Taylor frantically switched the radios and made three calls to the air traffic controller who had been working them. The only thing he heard was a high-pitched screeching sound. He turned to meet Oliver's questioning eyes.

"There's something weird going on," Taylor declared in a hollow voice, "and we're right in the middle of it."

They exchanged anxious looks.

"Try twenty-one-five," Oliver said firmly.

"Okay."

Taylor switched to 121.5 and tried the emergency frequency. Finding it blocked, he gave Oliver a blank look.

"Nothing, boss. We better get the hell out of here while we have a chance."

"Yeah," Second Officer Zeke Ingraham added, "before we end up scratching some sheet metal."

Fred Oliver, a former Navy F-4 Phantom pilot and distinguished military test pilot, nodded his agreement with his crew. "I don't know what to tell you, except we've got big problems."

"No shit!" Ingraham grumbled.

"Pete," Oliver began in as calm a voice as he could muster. "Keep transmitting on guard, and squawk emergency, then lost comm."

"I'll try Flight Service, too," Taylor responded while he set the transponder to squawk 7700.

"Good idea," Oliver said briskly.

The special 7700 transponder code would notify the air traffic controllers that United 1147 had an emergency situation in progress. Taylor then tried the nearest Flight Service Station. The FSS frequency was clobbered with frantic requests for information and directions. Everyone was attempting to talk at the same time, which was completely obstructing the frequency. The frightened flight crew of United 1147 weren't the only people in trouble.

"No luck," Taylor reported.

Oliver glanced at him. "Great--just what we need." Zeke Ingraham groaned and absently studied his flight engineer panel. Along with his fellow pilots, Ingraham knew that for every second they remained in this predicament, the chances of having a midair collision went up exponentially.

We've got to do something, skipper! Ingraham's mind was screaming. We can't screw around out here.

Without waiting a full minute, Pete Taylor switched the transponder to squawk 7600--the code for lost radio communications--and gave Oliver a pained look. "We better get outta the area, or we're gonna get our asses smashed."

"Yeah," the shaken captain answered. "You're right." Ingraham leaned forward. "You got my vote!"

Fred Oliver hesitated a moment to analyze the situation. He knew his radios were working because they could hear the frantic calls to the Flight Service Station. However, he didn't have any idea what was going on with the approach
,
departure, and tower frequencies. If there was a massive blockage of communications and everyone attempted to follow the FAA regulations pertaining to radio failures while operating in instrument flight conditions, Captain Oliver knew there was going to be a lot of aluminum fluttering to the ground.

Unable to see beyond the nose of the airplane, Oliver decided to do something unorthodox. He turned north-northwest toward Dobbins Air Reserve Base and descended to 4,500 feet--a Visual Flight Rules cardinal altitude that was 500 feet below and 500 feet above standard Instrument Flight Rules altitudes of 5,000 feet and 4,000 feet. He could only pray that no one else was trying the same evasive tactic--and that no one was climbing or descending through their altitude. He silently cursed both his bad luck and the miserable weather. This isn't really happening, is it? "Pete, try Dobbins Approach while we test the 'big sky theory.' "

"You got it."

Zeke Ingraham looked ill. "We're in the goddamn Twilight Zone."

"Traffic! Traffic!" warned the computer-generated voice of TCAS, the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System. "Traffic! Traffic!"

An airborne-collision-avoidance system, TCAS is based on radar beacon signals which are beamed outward from the host aircraft. The collision warning system operates independent of ground-based equipment and provides conflict resolutions to pilots.

In a frenzy, Pete Taylor searched his charts for the proper approach frequency for the military base. What a cluster-fuc
k
"Traffic! Traffic!" TCAS blared.

Ingraham momentarily closed his eyes and prayed that he'd be able to see his son's softball game the following day. A few moments later he opened his eyes and stared at his wedding band. If I survive this, I'm going to find a ground-based job and stick to it.

"Uh-oh," Kirk Upshaw said nervously. "Someone is deliberately interfering with our communications."

"Sabotage," Curt Bolton declared.

"What?"

Bolton spoke slowly. "We're being sabotaged."

Upshaw's eyes reflected his fear. "Should we declare an emergency and climb to VFR on top, then sort this mess out?"

"Let's hold on declaring an emergency. Get out the Dobbins charts and get ahold of a controller--try UHF and VHF."

"Okay." Upshaw reached for his approach plates and paused. "Do you want to contact Washington?"

"Absolutely. Fire off a message."

"Yessir."

Upshaw quickly thumbed through his flight information publications. "You wanna squawk lost comm?"

"Yeah--go ahead."

Upshaw punched in 7600 on the transponder.

"I want to get the president on the ground," Bolton loudly declared. "Then we'll find out what the hell is going on." A moment later the senior Secret Service agent onboard rushed into the cockpit. "Colonel, we've just received a warning from Washington that we may be flying into a terrorist trap."

With a small turn of his head, Bolton cast a lazy glance in his direction. "You're a little bit late, Sam."

"Oh, shit," the agent said with an anguished look. "What's going on?"

Bolton concentrated on his flight instruments. "Someone is giving bogus instructions over the radio, then jamming the frequency."

Gripped with acute fear, both the feeder and final air traffic controllers sat helplessly and watched scores of moving radar blips beginning to merge while they frantically tried to establish radio contact on different VHF and UHF frequencies. Warning devices for the special transponder codes and the airborne conflict alert systems were sounding their alarms, adding more distractions to the utter confusion in the control room.

Through trial and error, the frustrated controllers found unblocked local frequencies, but the desperate flight crew
s
had no way of knowing what radio frequency they should be monitoring.

In the enormous Atlanta Air Route Traffic Control Center, frenetic en route radar controllers were quickly attempting to stem the flow of air traffic descending into the Atlanta area. Some flights in the high-altitude structure were being placed in holding patterns, while other flights were being diverted to other major airports or held on the ground.

The sudden breakdown in communications near Hartsfield/ Atlanta International had reverberated all the way to the Air Traffic Control System Command Center located at Herndon, Virginia, near Dulles International Airport. Approximately 130 ATC personnel at the 29,000-square-foot building monitor and manage more than 150,000 flight operations daily in the contiguous United States. With a click of a computer key, FAA specialists can scrutinize eight large screens with pictorial displays of air traffic and weather conditions nationwide.

If a major midwestern airport was expecting a blizzard, ATC Command Center would be able to regulate the time flights could depart for the area. The idea is not to allow more aircraft in the air than can be safely controlled without having to resort to "stacking" the airplanes in holding patterns. The system was designed to hold planes on the ground until the FAA feels it is reasonable to expect that the flight can proceed directly to the destination airport and land. Holding flights near an airport is an added complication for controllers and pilots and consumes a tremendous amount of fuel.

At the moment the planners and controllers at Command Center were scrambling to slow the arrival sequence of 287 aircraft headed for the Atlanta area. Safety was the paramount consideration on their minds. Restoring order was the only way to achieve that goal. Everyone was cooperative, but no one had anticipated this type of communications breakdown and the system couldn't cope with the blocked frequencies. Simply stated, there wasn't a contingency plan to deal with this magnitude of sabotage.

Louis Traweek sat in stunned silence and stared at a rada
r
symbol that represented American Airlines Flight 864--
a
Boeing 727 carrying 124 people that was passing over the airport and flying almost straight at the corridor for traffic inbound from the northwest. A reformed chain-smoker, Traweek reflexively reached for his empty breast pocket as he visualized the midair collisions he believed were imminent.

While chaos was spreading through the darkened control room, Traweek snapped out of his daze and repeatedly tried to call Delta Flight 176--the MD-88 that had been given a counterfeit order to go around as the captain was preparing to flare for a landing. With the hapless crew unable to see out of the airliner, or communicate with an air traffic controller, the airplane was now flying straight north toward the combined inbound traffic congestion from the northeast and northwest.

What concerned the shaken controller most was United Flight 1147. For whatever reason, the crew had changed course and, according to their current altitude readout, had descended to 4,500 feet without receiving an ATC clearance to deviate from their assigned heading or altitude. Under the circumstances, the captain had elected to play a deadly game of airborne Russian roulette.

The cluttered radarscope indicated another frightening catastrophe in the making. After losing communications when they were told to turn to a heading of 280 degrees, the pilot of Air Force One had obviously decided to use his command prerogative to declare a lost communications situation and proceed toward Dobbins Air Reserve Base. They were squawking 7600 on their transponder while the Boeing 747 was rapidly merging with United Flight 1147.

With his insides twisted from stress and sheer frustration, Traweek helplessly watched the United flight and Air Force One close on each other. lie knew the only salvation would be if each maintained their current altitude. More midair conflict alerts went off as nine airplanes converged near the airport and occupied a one-square-mile section of airspace. Louis Traweek and his fellow controllers wanted to close their eyes and block out any thoughts of the high probability that they were about to witness multiple collisions in the skies over Atlanta.

For most air traffic controllers, their worst recurring nightmares were about personal miscalculations that resulted in two jumbo jets colliding over a highly populated area. The present situation was even worse than their most frightening dreams. They were actually living the nightmare, and Air Force One was in the center of the flail.

Involuntarily, Traweek flinched when two blips indicating the same altitude merged for a long moment before separating on the scope. They couldn't have missed each other by more than 100 to 200 feet vertically or horizontally.

Chapter
37

Air Force One
.

'Traffic! Traffic!" TCAS warned as Bolton and Upshaw
and
I stared at the screen, then made a minor correction in both course and altitude. Eleven seconds later Bolton cringed when his airplane was buffeted by American 864 as it passed overhead in the dark clouds. Flying in these conditions was like being in a submarine and unexpectedly having another sub scrape across the top of the hull of your boat. For Bolton and Upshaw, the near midair experience was too frightening even to contemplate.

Bolton was a cool customer by nature, but his present predicament was unnerving and unprecedented in his accident-free aviation career. Even the most shocking emergencies he'd faced weren't as stressful as flying blind in a dark sky full of metal objects traveling hundreds of miles per hour in many different directions. With no positive control, Bolton and his crew and passengers were in the hands of fate. Bolton glanced at Upshaw. "This could only happen when the president is onboard."

"No shit," Upshaw said while he yanked open his approach plates and selected the military ATIS frequency for Dobbins. "We're all passengers for the time being."

The cockpit became eerily quiet while they listened to th
e
Dobbins information. The weather wasn't any better than what had been reported at Hartsfield/Atlanta.

"Traffic! Traffic!" TCAS warned.

"Curt." Upshaw hesitated while he tuned in the busy approach-control frequency at Dobbins, then carefully framed his question. "Do you think we ought to step down a couple of hundred feet, get below our cardinal altitude?" "Maybe miss a fender bender?" Bolton calmly asked. "It might give us a better-than-even chance."

Bolton stared at the altimeter for a few seconds and initiated a slight descent from their assigned altitude of 5,000 feet. "What the hell--it's a roll of the dice any way you look at it."