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THE TEAM LANDED AT Edwards Air Force Base in California under the cover of darkness. There was no welcoming party when Jenny taxied the Gulfstream to the remote Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) hangar and shut down both engines. It was after midnight and everyone had gone home for the day, except for the armed security detail watching over the classified facility.
The large hangar doors opened as Spectre exited the aircraft followed by Sparky, Woody, and Cowboy. Kruger and Ringo walked out to meet them as ground personnel went to work hooking up tugs to the recently reassembled SU-30 fighter jets.
Kruger walked right to Sparky and shook his hand. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Sparky said. “Just a little bump on the noggin. I’m good to go.”
“Hey, I’m fine too,” Woody said as he leaned in between them to shake Kruger’s hand. “In case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t,” Kruger responded gruffly. “But I’m glad you boys are doing okay. You’ve got a lot of training to do in a short period of time. The mission timeline has been advanced.”
“Advanced?” Spectre asked.
“I’ll brief you in the vault back home,” Kruger said, frowning.
“Bad news?”
“Very.”
“Awesome,” Spectre said.
“Maybe now we’ll finally get to find out what’s going on,” Woody said. “That’d be nice.”
Spectre nodded toward the two fighters that were being positioned by the ground crews on the ramp. “Might want to go get your preflight done. We’re not hanging around here.”
“Sure thing, brah,” Woody said, rolling his eyes. “Far be it for me to know what’s going on.”
“C’mon, let’s go,” Sparky said.
“I’ll meet you at the jet, Sparky,” Spectre said. “Thanks.”
“No worries.”
“I guess I’d better get to it too, then,” Cowboy said. They had decided to let him ride in the backseat of Woody’s aircraft to give him more seat time since he had been thrown in at the last minute. With the recent events and apparent timeline shift, it was even more important that he get all the seat time he could just in case.
When the three were gone, Spectre turned to Ringo and Kruger. “You don’t have to tell me the details, but tell me this – how fucked are we?”
“Rightly fucked,” Ringo answered, shaking his head. “It’s a bloody disaster.”
“How soon are we talking?” Spectre asked.
“A week,” Kruger said grimly.
“A week? As in a week earlier?” Spectre asked.
“A week as in a week. From now,” Kruger said.
“Jesus!” Spectre said. “No fucking way. We need to pull the plug on this now.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen, bub,” Kruger said.
“Well then, you just signed your own,” Spectre said before turning and pointing at the men preflighting the two jets, “and their death certificates. There is no way they can be trained to the level of proficiency required for this mission in a fucking week!”
“Lower your voice,” Kruger warned. “We’re not talking about this out in the open, got it?”
Spectre threw up his hands. “Alright, dude, whatever. I’m going to get these jets to the oasis and then we can chat. But I’ll tell you right now, it ain’t happening.”
The Oasis was the code name they had given to their isolated base of operations in the Nevada desert. Spectre knew that once there he could hash it out with Kruger, but as far as he was concerned the mission was a scrub. They’d need to go to plan B, or C, or whatever else they had in store. The crews were barely proficient enough to fly the jets back to base after two days of training, much less to employ the aircraft after a week. A fucking week!
Spectre stormed toward the aircraft. The ground crew had hung his G-suit, helmet, bag, and harness on one of the pylons. He put on his gear as Sparky and company gathered by the nose of the aircraft and watched him.
“Everything alright, brah?” Woody asked. “You look super pissed.”
“It’s fine,” Spectre lied. “Are the jets okay?”
“I didn’t find any missing rivets or important bolts,” Sparky said. “But that’s not to say there weren’t any before they disassembled the jets. The Russians build in a safety factor anyway, don’t they?”
“Good,” Spectre said. “Still feeling okay?”
“Feeling great!”
“Alright boys, let’s get out of here,” Spectre said as he zipped the last zipper on his G-suit.
The two crews saddled up and went through their checklists. The DARPA ground crews assisted them through their startup procedures and then each crew chief rendered a crisp salute as they taxied out.
At the late time they had chosen to depart, the tower was unmanned. There was no one to call for taxi or takeoff clearance. Their plan was to fly low, getting safely away from Edwards Air Force Base to the south before turning east and contacting Los Angeles Center for an instrument flight rules clearance pickup. It was the aerial equivalent of a surveillance detection route to make sure no one was tracking them.
Sparky and Spectre took the lead as Woody and Cowboy followed in the second SU-30. They held short of the runway. Woody flashed his position lights to indicate that he was ready. Sparky took the runway and lit the SU-30’s afterburner, gently pinning them both back in the seat. Fifteen seconds later, Woody and Cowboy took the runway and followed.
“Heathen One-Two tied,” Woody called as they were airborne, indicating that they were locked on to Spectre’s aircraft with their radar.
With Woody and Cowboy two miles in trail, the two-ship flew south for two minutes at a thousand feet over the terrain. When they were outside of the Edwards operating areas, they turned east and climbed to eleven thousand five hundred feet.
“Heathen One-Two, goggled, visual,” Woody called over their interflight frequency, indicating he was wearing his night vision goggles and had the lead aircraft in sight.
“Cleared in,” Spectre said. Since it was a short flight, they opted to fly in close formation to only give one radar return as a single aircraft.
“Good evening Los Angeles Center, Learjet November Six-Niner-Eight-Delta-Charlie,” Spectre called.
“November Six-Niner-Eight-Delta-Charlie, go ahead,” the female controller responded.
“Six-Niner-Eight-Delta-Charlie is a Lear 60 at eleven thousand, five hundred, twenty miles southeast of the Hector VOR looking for an IFR pickup to McCarren International,” Spectre said. As part of their deception, they were using the real registration of a Lear 60 that Coolio had confirmed was undergoing repairs and not operating that night. They had chosen the Learjet because it was closest in performance to the cruise speeds they planned to use.
“November Six-Niner-Eight-Delta-Charlie, squawk One-Four-Zero-Two and ident,” the controller said.
“One-Four-Zero-Two with the flash, Eight-Delta-Charlie,” Spectre replied.
“You sure they’re gonna buy that, dude?” Sparky asked over the intercom.
Before Spectre could answer, the controller replied, “Eight-Delta-Charlie, you’re radar contact one-five miles southwest of the Hector VOR. You’re cleared to the McCarren International Airport via direct Hector and the CRESO FOUR arrival. Climb and maintain Flight Level Two-Four-Zero.”
“Direct Hector for the CRESO FOUR. Climb and maintain Two-Four-Zero,” Spectre replied.
“There ya go,” Spectre said over the intercom. “So far so good.”
“I stand corrected,” Sparky replied as he started to climb.
They leveled off at twenty-four thousand feet and were given a descent down to twelve thousand less than five minutes later for the arrival. The SU-30’s avionics were in English, but it wasn’t equipped to fly any of the Standard Terminal Arrivals (STAR) as a real Learjet would be. Spectre used his iPad to read the STAR plate and he manually entered the coordinates of each fix into the navigation system.
As they continued toward Las Vegas, Spectre heard Jenny check in behind them. Their plan was to fly to Nellis for a quick approach and then continue to The Oasis a few minutes behind Spectre’s flight.
As Spectre checked in with approach, he cancelled their clearance to McCarren International. “Approach, November Six-Niner-Eight-Delta-Charlie would like to cancel IFR.”
“IFR cancellation received, say intentions,” the male controller replied.
“We’re going to head southeast to Kingman. Boss’s orders,” Spectre said, doing his best imitation of a corporate pilot.
“And you want to proceed VFR?” the controller asked with a hint of confusion in his voice.
“It’s a nice night,” Spectre replied. “Affirm.”
“Do you want flight following?”
“Negative, sir, that won’t be necessary. Thanks for all your help.”
“Okay...November-Six-Niner-Eight-Delta-Charlie, squawk One-Two-Zero-Zero and remain clear of the Class Bravo airspace. Good night.”
“Squawking VFR and we’ll stay clear, Eight-Delta-Charlie, goodnight.”
Sparky started a shallow bank and descended. They headed toward the uncontrolled Kingman airport eighty-miles to the south, gradually descending into the dark abyss below them. Spectre donned his Night Vision Goggles to assist in terrain clearance, but was using the SU-30s radar to paint the terrain as well.
When they reached five hundred feet a few miles from the airport, Sparky cleared Woody to take spacing and then entered a hard turn. Woody fell back to a mile in trail and Sparky dropped down to one-hundred feet.
They doubled back and flew into the Nellis Airspace at a hundred feet off the desert floor, squawking the appropriate code as they entered the military airspace so the controllers would know it was them. The military controllers had been briefed on their expected arrival and were used to classified missions operating in the area.
Sparky led the formation to their secret base on the western half of the area and the two fighters landed uneventfully on the unlit runway.
“Well, that’s a first for me,” Woody said as the planes were towed into the hangar and they took off their gear.
“What’s that?” Spectre asked.
“I’ve landed on pitching aircraft carriers at night and in bad weather, but I’ve never come into the overhead at a hundred feet and landed on an unlit runway with night vision goggles and no moon. That was pretty sporty.”
Spectre smiled. “Welcome to Project Archangel, my friend.”