Tempest Down - Softcover

PART I

TEMPEST

ONE

BRACKETTVILLE, TEXAS

 

In 1938, when Maj. Tom Bryan was minus thirty-one years old--including womb time--his fate was determined by some farsighted member of the 75th Congress. This gentleman, whose name Major Bryan did not know, but who was probably from Texas, put together a committee that put together a report that decided the United States did not have sufficient pilot-training facilities to meet a military crisis should a crisis occur. The gentleman further recommended that such a facility be constructed in Texas, in Corpus Christi, a swath of bay-front where it was sunny an average of 255 days a year and not so hot that your ears hurt just from moving when you breathed.

The rest of Congress took a look at the U.S. military, took a look at the world situation with Germany and Japan acting more and more like pit bulls at a rib roast, and said okay. In March 1941, the new naval air station opened for business. Nine months later the Axis gave birth to World War II.

By war's end, thirty-five thousand aviators had learned their skills at NAS Corpus Christi. It was on its way to becoming the world's largest pilot-training facility. Today, Training Air Wing Four lets loose an average of four hundred highly qualified fliers every year. Of course, most of them did not fly the way Major Bryan did. They usually landed back at Corpus Christi and not on a plain some six hundred miles away. Also, their airplanes had engines.

The short, muscular Bryan was alone in the twenty-two-meter-long sailplane, a pearl-white, straight-winged, high-performance glider with a nearly clear, slightly bulbous cockpit. The aircraft looked like a banana on a stick with a high T-tail and long, skinny wings droppedbehind the pilot. The beauty of the plane was that if it showed up on radar at all, it looked like a big bird. With oxygen and a pressure suit the pilot could come in from fifteen to twenty thousand feet. He could launch from Florida and land in Cuba, from Saudi Arabia and land deep in Iraq, or from Pennsylvania and land in Virginia if the states ever went to war and he was called to fight for the home turf. Depending on the thermal currents, he could ride for just about as many hours as he could stand to soar, loop, dive, and rise again.

After being towed aloft by a Cessna, two miles out into the Gulf of Mexico, Bryan swung the gleaming bird around and pushed her toward the northwest. His destination was Brackettville, twenty miles southeast of Laughlin Air Force Base. His mission was twofold. First, he had to try to get into Laughlin's airspace without being asked to ID himself. Second, he had to land in a field and find a parcel that had been left there by a fellow member of his L.A.S.E.R. unit, Capt. Paul Gabriel. Of course, there was a time limit. If he did not find the package by 6:00 P.M., the results--he had been told--would not be pleasant. His commanding officer, Gen. Benjamin Scott, was inclined toward understatement.

The setup was fine with the major. He enjoyed high-risk scenarios. Otherwise, there would be no reason to hold the position of field commander for the U.S. military's new Land Air Sea Emergency Rescue unit. Since L.A.S.E.R.'s formation nine months before, the goal of the multiservice team had been to be able to get anywhere, at any time, to rescue trapped or stranded military personnel. That included extracting undercover intelligence operatives and rearming or retrieving troops under fire, cut off by an act of God, lost in bad weather, or simply broken down where traditional search-and-rescue operations could not reach them. It was not a job for underachievers.

This run, for example.

Bryan was not a pilot. L.A.S.E.R. was stationed at the Corpus Christi NAS for logistical reasons. It was a good staging area for air activity. He left the flying to others who had spent years in a cockpit. But sailplanes were different. There were a stick, two pedal controls for the rudder, and elevator controls. That much he could handle. It was similar to being in a rowboat. The pilot could feel the currents; the air was damn near solid. The one difference--and it was a big one--was that without a rowboat a man could still tread water. But Bryan didn't let that bother him either. Keeping the plane aloft, and intact, was part of the challenge. He had done test runs in two-seaters with an experienced pilot in the backseat. Except for the hard, ass-bonenumbing landings, he had done all right. And even the best pilots had those, Bryan was told.

"The lift at ten feet vertical is not very significant," his instructor--also a man of understatement--had told him. "Setting down at all is pretty impressive."

Bryan figured gravity would take care of that. All he had to do was make sure he was upright.

The major was running silent. If this were a real mission, there would be no communication between himself and his point of origin. The only concession to safety was a transponder that sent a high signal once every twenty minutes. The beep lasted less than a half second. Someone had to be listening for the sound to hear it. Bryan once had to parachute into a Tarlac jungle to evacuate a rescuer. The newbie, a Delta Force lieutenant, John Johns, had broken his leg on a jump to rescue a spy, a Philippine army scout ranger, who had been captured by the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group. Those things happened from time to time, but it was one of the most embarrassing turns extraction personnel could endure. It was far worse than the humid, hundred-plus heat and mouse-sized mosquitoes that called Tarlac's tropical jungle home. Bryan had been to some lousy places--Iraq in the summer, the north pole in the winter--but the four days sloshing through rivers that were hotter than coffee were his least favorite. He managed to save the ranger, then went back for the Delta Force lieutenant, who had found a grove of mahogany trees and stayed buried under a pile of leaves for three days. He'd stayed hydrated and fed by sucking roots and worms. He was proud to have fought and defeated a kingfisher for the rights to the territory.

The trip to Brackettville wasn't fast, but Major Bryan had enjoyed a mostly smooth ride since the towplane had cut him loose just over six hours before. He was following landmarks on a mini-laptop strapped to his right thigh. Linked to a military global positioning satellite, the image scrolled in all directions as the glider moved in those directions. Bryan also had a dome compass on his left wrist, just in case the laptop died or the sun was so bright it killed the display with glare.

For the past half hour the major had been at six thousand feet and holding. When a red star indicating Brackettville scrolled onto the four-by-six-inch LED monitor, Bryan used a combination of pedals and stick to begin his slow descent. The thermal currents were not as active at this hour as they were in the morning. There was relatively little lift though the air was busy. It bumped and rolled under the wings, tilting him several degrees with each knock. He compensated with the pedals and stick as he continued to drop. The digital altimeter clicked past three thousand feet. Clouds were spotty and he avoided them as he watched the ground. Once he dropped below one thousand feet, the heated air would not be ascending with sufficient force tokeep him airborne. There would be nothing for him to rise on. He would have to set down. When he did, he needed to be in the target area.

Holding the stick in his left hand, the thirty-four-year-old officer touched a button on the computer with his right. His blue eyes squinted. His leg had to stay where it was to keep his foot on the pedal, but the sunlight coming through the window threw a glare on...