May 1
LaGuardia International Airport
Federal Customs & Enforcement Heliport
New York City
3:20 P.M. EDT
Pilots live by checklists, often literally. In the United States Marine Corps, the axiomatic boast is that Marine pilots thrive on them.
The axiom is particularly true when the Marine pilot in question is assigned to Marine Helicopter Squadron One, known in military acronym-speak as HMX-1. Moreover, the axiom was specifically true when the Marine pilot in question was Major Pamela Stack, now doing her pre-flight walkaround of her HV-3D helicopter—an elegant, if aging, airborne Cleopatra’s barge.
The helo and the major were both part of the specialized “WHITESIDE” USMC helicopter squadron, tasked to transport a very select group of VIPs—first and foremost, of course, the Commander-in-Chief. When he steps aboard as passenger in any of the unit’s nineteen so-called “White Top” helicopters, that helicraft is automatically designated “MARINE ONE.”
Stack carefully checklist-inspected “her” helicopter. While the HV-3D may have been at the beck of the President and paid for by the taxpayers, those were mere technicalities in her mind.
She confirmed every list-item by sight and feel: carefully eying the five main rotors, each thirty feet long; tugging at control rods and fuel lines; double-checking Teletemp warning strips and sight-glass lube-fluid levels; draining, inspecting, and sniffing a shot-glass-sized sample of kerosene fuel from the water-separator bulb; and much, much more.
Finally, she traced her fingers lightly along the dark green metal-flake fuselage, noting with satisfaction that its mirrorlike finish was indeed spotlessly clean.
The latter fact was no accident; Presidential helicopters piloted by Marines were always scrupulously immaculate.
But a full radiation decontamination—scrubbing, pressure-washing, jet-blasting, vacuuming and then repeating the process several times hence—
—well, that hadn’t hurt either, she told herself.
And chuckled, somewhat ruefully.
For the helo, at least. Can’t say the same for me, though…
Stack blinked back a yawn; it had been a long night. It looked to be a longer day.
She had been duty pilot, the evening before scrambled from Naval Support Facility Anacostia/D.C. to the South Lawn shortly after 9 p.m. Her urgent orders: to fly the President and his family from a suddenly besieged White House to an anxiously waiting Air Force One at Andrews AFB.
Under normal procedures, several of the unit’s helicopters and crews would have been simultaneously loaded onto cargo planes and rushed to destination—to land in advance of Air Force One, to be on immediate stand-by as the Commander-in-Chief descended from his own jet, to greet him with a Marine honor guard and await his orders.
Not so last night, the night of The Attack.
Even as the Presidential 747 jet had clawed into the Maryland night, HMX-1’s own nocturnal labors had just begun. The President was not alone in an emergency need to flee the capital; now, the scramble to lift out high-priority officials under the CONTINUITY OF GOVERNMENT EVACUATION PLAN superseded standing protocols, as well as everything else.
Immediately, HMX-1 had been commandeered, along with helicopters from every available aviation asset, to become part of the massive helicopter evacuation effort.
It was an unprecedented race against time.
Time won.
A sudden, brilliant light had mushroomed into the skies west of D.C. shortly after midnight. Stack and her fellow pilots kept up the desperate daisy-chain—landing, loading, racing to off-load outside the reach of the plume, repeating the process—even as the lethal cloud of radioactive dust rolled toward, then into, the nation’s capital.
The hopeless shuttle had ended, if only partially completed, when the rad-meter needles were already deep inside their red zones.
HMX-1, abruptly homeless, dispersed to various interim bases outside the D.C. hot zone. Stack’s own VH-3D had been routed in-flight to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, landing there in tandem with an identical Sea King from the VIP fleet, and much of the ensuing hours had been spent decontaminating aircrafts and crews alike.
An experience I’d damn sure like to forget, Stack now told herself.
She could not: standing in what could have been a small child’s wading pool, surrounded by waiting scrubbers, eying with dread the cold water hose held by what looked alarmingly like an olive-drab martian.
Nonetheless, Stack had stripped off her admittedly gamey Dress Blues. They were sweat-drenched after hours inside the bulky radioactive-protective overalls she had wormed into when the orders came, and worn throughout the night.
She had handed the wrinkled Blues to one of the spaceman-attired attending her, who placed it with care in a red plastic sack marked “RADIOACTIVE WASTE.”
“Everything, Major. Sorry,” another of the eerie, white-clad figures had said. His voice was distorted through the sub-micron filters of the full-face mask.
Modesty shelved for the sake of efficiency, Stack had shrugged, pulled off the USMC-stenciled T-shirt, reached for the clasp of her bra…
From no direction in particular—though she was certain not from her crew, as they were ankle-deep in decon-pools and in various stages of undress—came a long, muffled wolf whistle.
A secret revealed: a stickler for USMC uniform regulations in every other area, Pamela Stack had an addict’s affinity for the Victoria’s Secret catalogue.
That’s one I’ll never live down at the Officers’ Club, Stack told herself, and sighed.
She had watched with regret as the remaining, definitely non-GI-issued garb was added to the red sack, and braced for the frigid stream of the decontaminating waters.
Stack was wearing regulation underwear now—Victoria’s Secret has yet to open a shop at LaGuardia—but the loss of her uniform was doubly complicated when she discovered that the spare Dress Blues she normally stowed in her flight bag had also been claimed by the decontamination crew.
Still, Marines are also renowned for yet another axiom: “Innovate. Adapt. Overcome.”
Challenge: When flying the Commander-in-Chief, instead of the usual flight suit Marine pilots proudly don the hallowed, precisely tailored Dress Blue Uniform—in either long-sleeved CHARLIE or short-sleeved DELTA configuration, the latter preferred for a mild day in May.
Solution: A new set—hastily located by a senior Marine officer who had both an overwhelming concern for the traditions of HMX-1 and a phone line to a highly competent, exceptionally innovative Gunnery Sergeant—had arrived by dawn. No questions had been asked, nor certainly would they have been answered.
The uniform almost fit Stack. But during a national emergency, “close enough” would have to do, even for a Marine.
Pre-flight inspection complete, she now made one final survey—this one of the figure reflected in the polished fuselage.
What Stack saw was a Marine—squared away and ready for duty.
• • •
Major Pamela Stack and her four-Marine crew lifted off from LaGuardia minutes later, holding the helicopter in a hover until its twin rose into formation alongside. Then, in a two-handed synchrony of expert movement, she pushed forward the collective joystick, twisted the throttle, and eased higher the cyclic lever.
The aircraft nosed down slightly, accelerated, and swept over the city on a rising westbound heading toward Newark.