Free Brown, Dale - Independent 04 by Storming Heaven (v1.1) Page A

sector and the chief of the Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center . Oakland ARTCC, or Oakland Center , was one of the busiest and most diverse
air traffic regions in the world, covering northern and central California and Nevada . “Southwest Air Defense Sector, Senior
Director, Lieutenant Colonel Berrell.”
                 “John,
this is Mike Leahy,” the deputy director of Oakland Center replied. “I just got a call from a Special
Agent Fortuna of ATF. They have a fugitive smuggling suspect that just launched
out of Chico Airport , and they’re asking for assistance. He’s
south westbound, not squawking. His ID code is seven-delta-four-zero-four.”
                 “Sure,
Mike,” Berrell replied. “Stand by one.” Berrell put Leahy on hold and turned to
his SD tech, Master Sergeant Thomas Bidwell. It was not unusual at all to get
calls like that from the FA A—that’s what the hot line was for—but to get it
directly from the deputy director of the Center was a bit unusual. ‘Tom, Oakland Center has a recent fugitive departure from Chico airport, ID number
seven-delta-four-zero-four. Zero in on him for us. Don’t make him a pending
yet, just an item of interest. Request for support from ATF.”
                 “Yes,
sir,” Bidwell replied. He opened his checklist to the proper page, logged the
time of the request in the correct block, and passed the information to the
Surveillance and Identification sections—since this was a target already over
land, and the Sector Operations Command Center usually only tracked targets
penetrating the air defense identification zones, Bidwell had to get his
technicians to break out the new target from the hundreds of others on the
scope and display it to each section. On the phone, Berrell said, “Mike, I got
your slimeball on radar. Do you want to make him a pending or just monitor him
for you?”
                 “Monitor
him for now,” Leahy said. “I don’t know what Treasury wants to do. You might
want to get your flyboys up out of bed and thinking about heading toward their
jets, though.”
                 “Is
this an exercise, Mike?”
                 “
’Fraid not, Colonel,” Leahy said. “The pilot of this one is apparently some
hotshot gun smuggler. The suspect killed some ATF agents at Chico a few minutes ago. He’s got several tons of
explosives on board his plane.”
                 Berrell
rose out of his seat, pointed to an extra phone for Tellman to listen in on the
call, and rang a small desk-clerk bell on top of his console with a slap of his
left hand. Serious shit was going down. Technicians who were chatting and
taking a breather hurried to their stations and began scanning their
instruments. “What kind of plane is it, Mike?” Berrell asked.
                 “A
Czechoslovakian LET L-600,” Leahy replied after retrieving some notes.
“Twin-turboprop medium transport. Gross weight about thirty thousand pounds,
payload with full fuel about six thousand.”
                 “What
kind of explosives is he carrying?”
                 “You
name it,” Leahy replied. “Ammunition, demolition stuff, pyrotechnics. Suspect
might be connected with a National Guard armory heist a few years ago. You
heard of the name Henri Cazaux before?”
                 “Oh,
shit,” Berrell said, cursing under his breath. Had the world heard about Carlos
the Jackal? The IRA? Abu Nidal? “I understand,” Berrell said. “Stand by one.” Fuck, he thought, this one’s going to happen. A night intercept, over a heavily
populated area, with dangerous fugitives and someone like Cazaux on board.
Berrell never wanted to see his sector’s pilots or anyone on the ground put in
harm’s way, but if there was a way to gun down Henri Cazaux, Berrell wanted to
do it.
                 Berrell
turned to his SD technician, but Bidwell had been listening