Ingrid had left her SKYTRUCK and was walking around the tarmac near her plane as it was about to topped off with fuel prior to its transatlantic crossing when Elizabeth Gardner, who had stayed in the cockpit, shouted to her through her opened cockpit side window.
‘’INGRID, YOU BETTER GET UP HERE! THERE IS A GENERAL CALL FOR
HELP FROM THE COAST GUARD ABOUT A CRUISE LINER IN DISTRESS NEAR
NEW YORK.’
‘’Shit! I’M COMING!’
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Before running inside her aircraft, she gesticulated at the airport employees who were about to fill her fuel tanks.
‘’STOP THE REFUELING OPERATION! WE ARE GOING TO RESPOND TO
AN EMERGENCY REQUEST FOR HELP FROM THE COAST GUARD. WE WILL
RETURN HERE AFTERWARDS TO FUEL UP. FEEL FREE TO CHARGE ME FOR
THE EXTRA COST OF DELAYING OUR REFUELING.’
She then hurriedly climbed the airstairs on the forward starboard side and nearly ran inside the cockpit, where Elizabeth Gardner briefed her at once on what she had heard.
‘’According to the Coast Guard general emergency call, the cruise liner PRINCESS OF THE SEAS was rammed by a tanker ship off the coast of New Jersey and is on fire and in danger of sinking. The Coast Guard is asking all ships and aircraft in the vicinity of that incident to reroute and offer all assistance possible. I have already plotted the position of that cruise liner and the heading and distance to it.’
‘’Good! Are all of our people aboard?’
‘’Yes, but nearly all of them are presently asleep in our relief bunk beds.’
‘’Wake them up, right now! I am going to make sure that this refueling truck rolls away before we start our engines.’
Some four minutes later, with all her team awake and sitting inside the cockpit, Ingrid was able to take off vertically from the main parking apron of the Logan Airport, watched by the incredulous people inside the nearby passenger terminal. She then climbed to an altitude of 2,500 meters while turning on the heading calculated by Elizabeth, pushing her engines to maximum power and accelerating her aircraft to its maximum speed of 750 kilometers per hour. As she overflew the Boston harbor, Ingrid saw below her a Coast Guard helicopter taking off from the Boston Coast Guard Air Station, with a second helicopter still on the ground but with its rotors turning.
‘’If this cruise ship is full or next to it, then the Coast Guard will truly need every help we will be able to give it. We are probably looking at a few thousand people to save.’
‘’But, we can normally accommodate about ninety persons aboard or, at the most, about 160 persons in emergency situations.’ said her copilot from the primary crew, Shirley Slade.
‘’I know! However, the more urgent thing will be to offload these poor people from that burning and sinking ship and to bring them to a safe spot. If there are ships
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close by, then we will fill up as much as we can and will fly them and drop them on those ships before returning for a new batch of survivors.’
‘’Uh, how can I make myself useful, Ingrid?’ asked Elliot Goulding. ‘’I am not trained in rescue operations.’
‘’You can do your best to comfort the people we will pick up and make them as comfortable as possible, Elliot. What you can do right now is to go get from our equipment lockers the wool blankets we have and distribute in advance one blanket per seat. Once that is done, prepare a big pot of coffee in our kitchenette and check how many bottles of water we have.’
‘’On it!’ said the executive, happy to be able to contribute to this rescue mission, as he got up from his seat and went aft inside the rescue mission pod.
It took only minutes before they were able to see a big column of black smoke on the horizon, something that made Ingrid frown.
‘’Damn! To be seen from this far means that there is a lot of oil burning on the ocean. I really hope that at least one ship will be in proximity to this cruise liner, so that we could keep our shuttling time as short as possible. Alright, me and the main crew will stay in the cockpit, while the relief crew will man our rescue stations. Let’s move, people!’
16:50 (Eastern Standard Time)
Bridge of the PRINCESS OF THE SEAS
Captain Roger Knudsen felt nearly powerless as he had to face a truly impossible situation. With all ship power gone, his crew didn’t have any working pressure in the ship’s water mains, so couldn’t fight the internal fires inside the ship.
Neither could he evacuate his passengers by using his lifeboats: those on the starboard side were too close to the burning oil or had their fiberglass melted by the high temperatures of the flames, while the lifeboats on the port side could not be used because of the ship’s listing to starboard. The only hope he could see right now were the two motor launches from the cargo ship that had stopped ahead of his bow some ten minutes ago. The crew of the SOUTHERN STAR had just lauched their two boats, which were now approaching his doomed cruise liner.
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‘’Damn! There will be places for at most a hundred people in those boats. There may well be a mad, panicked rush for places in them if we don’t control this operation.’
Knudsen then moved to the open port bridge wing armed with a loudspeaker and started giving orders to his crewmembers who were trying as best they could to control the packed crowd of panicky passengers filling the small bow deck of the ship.
‘’THROW DOWN ROPE LADDERS OVER THE PORT SIDE AND BE READY
TO
GUIDE
OUR
PASSENGERS
DOWN
TO
THOSE
TWO
LAUNCHES
APPROACHING US. I WANT FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN TO HAVE PRIORITY
FOR THE PLACES IN THOSE TWO BOATS. TO ALL WHO CAN HEAR ME, STAY
CALM AND OBEY THE ORDERS FROM MY CREWMEMBERS. THE WOMEN AND
CHILDREN WILL GET OFF FIRST. IF WE ALL STAY CALM, WE WILL BE ABLE TO
SAVE YOU.’
Lowering his loudspeaker, Knudsen made a prayer to himself.
‘’Lord, please show mercy to all these innocent people.’
Three minutes later, the two launches arrived next to the ship, where the four rope ladders deployed by the crew lay over the inclined left side of the liner’s hull.
Knudsen was pleased to see that his third officer, Cynthia Fromm, had sent dozens of crewmembers down the rope ladders, so that they could post themselves along the ladders and thus assist the passengers who would climb down from the bow deck.
Knudsen felt a bit better when he saw the first women and children start to board the two motor boats from the SOUTHERN STAR. However, that process quickly proved to be agonizingly slow, with the passengers only slowly climbing down the rope ladders and with more than a few being nearly paralized with fear. One bridge officer then shouted to him while pointing at the sky towards the Northwest.
‘’THERE, CAPTAIN: AN AIRCRAFT IS APPROACHING!’
Using his binoculars, Knudsen looked at the incoming aircraft, hoping that it would be an helicopter, thus able to pick up passengers directly from his decks. However, what he saw left him confused.
‘’What the Hell is this thing?’
Returning inside the main bridge, he grabbed a hand-held UHF radio meant to be used to communicate with helicopters and aircraft during emergencies and walked back on the open bridge wing, where he first checked that his radio was tuned to the International Distress Air Frequency before talking in it.
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‘’Approaching aircraft, this is the PRINCESS OF THE SEAS. Can you help us save at least some of my passengers, over?’
The voice of a young woman then answered him.
‘’Affirmative, PRINCESS OF THE SEAS. We are capable of vertical flight and can maneuver like a helicopter. I suggest that you be prepared to have passengers board us under the control of your crew when we will extend our aft access ramp. We have capacity for about 160 persons aboard, so I would ask you to organize your passengers into groups of 160 people and to keep tight control over them. Once full, we will fly to the cargo stopped next to you and drop your passengers on its deck before returning to pick more people. Did you understand all this, over?’
‘’I did! What is your callsign, by the way?’
‘’We are the Hiller X-06, a prototype VTOL transport aircraft. Just call us HX-06
from now on. Now, start organizing those groups of 150 people: if panic overruns them, then it may make it very difficult to sustain this operation, over.’
‘’Understood, HX-06! I’m on it!’
Knudsen then raised again his loudspeaker to his mouth.
‘’LIEUTENANT FROMM, THE APPROACHING AIRCRAFT CAN FLY IN
HELICOPTER MODE AND WILL TAKE UP TO 160 PERSONS ABOARD. IT WILL
OPEN ITS REAR RAMP AND WILL COME FLY NEXT TO OUR PORT FLANK. START
ORGANIZING GROUPS OF 160 PEOPLE AND SEND THEM WITH CREWMEMBERS
TO THE PORT SIDE PROMENADE DECK. MAKE SURE THAT ONLY WOMEN AND
CHILDREN BOARD THAT AIRCRAFT AT FIRST.’
He saw Cynthia Fromm salute him as a way to acknowledge his instructions. Now feeling renewed hope, Knudsen then sent the members of his bridge crew, who basically could do nothing useful on the bridge, down to the port side Promenade Deck, in order to assist Fromm in keeping control of the evacuation operation.
‘’OPEN THE AFT HATCH PANEL!’
On the request from Elizabeth Gardner, who was sitting at the aft rescue control station of the SKYTRUCK’s search and rescue module, Robert Stanwick unlocked the multiple retaining points firmly holding closed the large aft upper hatch, then activated the hydraulic pistons of the hatch, making it open upward and exposing the aft rescue compartment to the outside air. Now able to see where they were in relation to the
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cruise liner, Elizabeth spoke in her headset, switched to the cockpit communications system.
‘’Our aft hatch is now opened up. I am taking over control of the aircraft now.’
‘’Acknowledged!’ replied Ingrid on the set. Turning a large knob on the instrument panel of her rescue control station, Elizabeth then took hold of a control stick and of an engine power control lever, gaining effective flight control of the SKYTRUCK.
With its rear facing the nearby cruise liner and with a clear view of the Promenade Deck filled with fearful passengers, Elizabeth slowly made her aircraft fly backward while adjusting her flight altitude. Once close enough to the ship, she pushed a button and made their telescopic rescue foot bridge, which was wide enough for two persons abreast and had safety guardrails, extend out by a full six meters past the tail of the SKYTRUCK. Using her headset switched to ‘loudspeaker mode’, Elizabeth then spoke to the passengers and crewmembers of the cruise ship waiting on the Promenade Deck.
‘’YOU CAN NOW START BOARDING OUR AIRCRAFT. DON’T RUN AND
FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS OF MY CREW.’
Not believing their luck, the first women and children, some mere toddlers or babies, started climbing over the ship’s railing, helped by crewmembers, and walked over the foot bridge and into the SKYTRUCK, where Elliot Goulding, John Meredith and Robert Stanwick greeted them and led them at once inside the main cabin of the search and rescue pod, where ninety bench seats were available. Once those seats were full, Meredith made other passengers sit down on the floor between the rows of benches.
With many of the rescued passengers being children, they were actually able to pack 184 persons aboard the aircraft before Elizabeth decided to stop the boarding. Using her loudspeaker system, she made an announcement to the frustrated passengers who had been stopped from coming aboard.
‘’WE ARE NOW GOING TO MAKE A SHORT TRIP TO THE CARGO SHIP
STOPPED NEARBY, WHERE WE WILL DROP OFF THE PEOPLE WE NOW HAVE
ABOARD. DON’T PANIC: WE WILL BE BACK IN LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES TO
REPEAT THIS PROCESS.’
Not bothering to retract the rescue foot bridge, Elizabeth then spoke to Ingrid via her headset.
‘’We are now full, Ingrid. I’m giving you back the flight controls now.’
‘’Acknowledged! Flying away now!’
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On the bridge of the PRINCESS OF THE SEAS, Captain Knudsen felt immense relief as he watched the Hiller SKYTRUCK move away with its first load of rescued passengers. At about the same time, the two motor launches from the SOUTHERN
STAR, loaded to the maximum with over a hundred women and children, started their return trip to the cargo ship. While the two small boats took a good three minutes to reach the SOUTHERN STAR and then start transferring their rescued passengers aboard the cargo ship via a lowered access stair, the Hiller SKYTRUCK had time to fly to the cargo ship and drop off its 184 persons to the safety of the cargo ship’s deck. The HX-06 was loading a second batch of passengers when Knudsen saw two small dots appear on the horizon. Those two dots progressively grew into two Coast Guard helicopters painted bright orange and red, making Knudsen grin: things were starting to finally look up. His grin however disappeared when he heard a horrible noise of tortured metal coming from inside his ship. He recognized at once that noise: it was some of the internal watertight partitions of the ship giving up to the relentless push from the sea entering it.
‘’Noo! Noo! Please, God, give us more time!’
In the lead Coast Guard helicopter, First Lieutenant Malcom Sturgis stared for a moment at the strange aircraft holding station next to the port side of the cruise liner.
‘’What the Hell is that thing? Did you ever see this before, Mack?’
‘’No, but it bears a strong family resemblence to our Navy PELICANs VTOL
assault transports. I bet that this baby was built by Hiller. Whatever it is, it is doing a bang up job in helping evacuate those poor people.’
‘’You’re right! Time to do our part here. We will fly a few feet above the bow deck and will lower our rope ladder. It will be a slow process but that’s the most we can do right now. Petty Officer Sorentti, open our starboard side door and be ready to lower our rope ladder.’
‘’On it, sir!... Door now opened and rope ladder ready, sir.’
‘’Good! Let’s start this show!’
They barely had time to deploy their rope ladder and to greet their two first passengers aboard when the cruise liner’s listing to starboard suddenly augmented by a good five degrees, while they heard scary noises coming from inside the ship’s hull.
63
‘’SHIT! THIS SHIP COULD ROLL OVER AND CAPSIZE AT ANY MOMENT
NOW!’
The still over 3,000 passengers waiting on the bow deck to be rescued apparently understood that as well and instantly became a panicked, uncontrolled mob. Five passengers, all men, then tried to grab a hold on the rope ladder of the Coast Guard helicopter, upsetting its balance. Sturgis needed all his expertise as a pilot in order to prevent his helicopter from crashing. However, that also forced him to fly away from the bow of the giant ship, four men still desperately holding on to the rope ladder. The moment he flew sideways to clear the liner, Sturgis and his copilot involuntarily raised one arm in front of them as they started feeling the intense heat from the burning crude oil covering the sea around the PRINCESS OF THE SEAS. Just at that moment, the heat and gas pressure from the pierced forward tanks of the MEDINA ignited the oil in the remaining tanks, creating a titanic ball of fire which then rose high in the sky, while the heat wave from the fireball became painful to Sturgis and his crew. The four passengers still holding to his rope ladder, fully exposed to the searing heat and screaming with pain, soon let go their grip and fell down into the sea of burning oil.
‘’JESUS! THIS IS TRULY HELL!’ Shouted the horrified copilot, Mack Hammersfield.
On the PRINCESS OF THE SEAS, Captain Knudsen had to take hold of an open bridge fitting in order not to slide down towards the starboard side of his ship, which was quickly becoming its bottom side. Using his loudspeaker he shouted a last desperate order to his fourth officer.
‘’LIEUTENANT FROMM, HAVE OUR PASSENGERS STEP OVER THE
RAILINGS AND STEP ON THE PORT FLANK OF OUR HULL! MAKE IT QUICK
BEFORE WE BELLY UP!’
On the Promenade Deck, the young female mariner officer did her best to control her own fear and shouted at the passengers around her while showing them what to do by helping a young mother and her toddler girl over the railing.
‘’QUICK, ALL OF YOU! STEP OVER THE RAILING ANS SIT ON OUR HULL!
WE WILL WAIT THE RETURN OF THE AIRCRAFT THERE.’
Thankfully, most of the passengers kept enough control over themselves to be able to obey her and do as she told them…most but not all. One big, fat man, his face deformed by sheer terror, brutally pulled a preteen girl from the railing, sending her
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slamming against the side wall of the promenade, in order to take her place at the railing. Becoming mad with anger on seeing that, she ran to the big man and pushed him off the railing, then went to assist the little girl, who was now crying with both fear and pain.
‘’Come with me, sweetie: I will help you climb over the railing.’
As she was supporting the girl, the fat man who had tried to take her place came back to try again to go over the railing himself. However, another male passenger stopped him cold with a furious punch to the jaw which dropped him half unconscious to the deck.
‘’STAY BACK, YOU FAT COWARD, OR I WILL KILL YOU!’
That intervention permitted Cynthia Fromm to push the young girl over the railing and to make her sit on the port surface of the hull, which was now inclined at about 45 degrees.
‘’Stay on top of the hull and keep a hold on the railing in order not to slide into the sea. The aircraft will soon return to pick you up. Do you understand me?’
‘’Y…yes, miss!’
Thankfully, the Hiller SKYTRUCK was back next to the ship’s hull after another two minutes, ready to load another batch of survivors. Cynthia felt joy on seeing the little girl being part of those passengers able to board the aircraft. The SKYTRUCK was lifting off for yet another trip to the SOUTHERN STAR when the list of the PRINCESS
OF THE SEAS increased again...dramatically. This time, the cruise liner ended up lying on its starboard side, with its port side now completely out of the water and with its surface nearly at the horizontal. Seeing that, Ingrid decided on a new tactic when she returned from the SOUTHERN STAR and, to the surprise of the crews of the two Coast Guard helicopters, lowered her landing gear and squarely landed on top of the ship’s hull, as if it had become a landing pad. Seeing that passengers were now able to board the SKYTRUCK much faster than during the prior boardings, being able to run directly to the aircraft, Lieutenant Sturgis pumped up his fist in triumph.
‘’THAT’S WHAT WE NEED TO DO OURSELVES! WE’RE GOING TO LAND
ON THE PORT HULL, NEAR THE BOW. BRAVO RED TWO, FOLLOW ME!’
With another cargo ship arriving at full speed, both Ingrid and the Coast Guard pilots were soon able to land passengers on two ships, thus accelerating the evacuation effort.
Unfortunately, their luck didn’t hold for long, as the liner’s rate of sinking increased rapidly some fifteen minutes later. Another five minutes and the PRINCESS
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OF THE SEAS was disappearing under the waves, surrounded by a burning layer of crude oil. The people still aboard the liner were then sucked down with the ship. In her cockpit, Ingrid could only look with immense sadness at the site of the sinking.
‘’So many lives lost. We may have managed to save about one quarter of the people who were on that ship, no more.’
‘’We did our best, Ingrid.’ replied softly Shirley Slade. ‘’Now, let’s think about the ones we were able to save.’
‘’You are right, Shirley. Since we still have our pod full of people, I believe that we should fly those poor souls to Boston, rather than simply dropping them on one of those ships. I’m going to call the Coast Guard about this.’
After a short radio exchange with the Coast Guard center in Boston, Ingrid was told to bring her survivors to the Logan Airport, where help would await them. As she started flying back to Boston, Ingrid thought about this whole tragedy and how it could have happened. The more she thought about it, the more the possibility of this being a simple accident appeared most improbable to her. The weather was fine, with clear visibility for dozens of kilometers, while the two ships involved were true giants of the seas: they had to be plainly visible from afar to everyone but a blind man.
On arrival at the Logan International Airport, she saw that the promised support was indeed waiting for her: over a dozen ambulances, five buses and four police cars were parked on the tarmac, near the domestic terminal. She also saw what appeared to be a dark blue official car waiting with the emergency vehicles. Going in VTOL mode, she landed smoothly less than fifty meters from the waiting vehicles, then switched off her six turboshaft engines and got up from her pilot’s seat.
‘’I’m going out to meet the officials waiting for us, Shirley. They will most probably want to hear my part of the story on this tragedy. I will however go see first our survivors: they deserve first priority here.’
‘’They certainly do, Ingrid.’
On entering the rescue pod of her aircraft, Ingrid found that her passengers had already started to disembark via the aft ramp, to be then escorted by paramedics and police officers to either a bus or, if the survivor was wounded or in a state of shock, to an ambulance. One young woman who was clinging to a toddler boy was still sitting on one
66
of the bench seat and crying nearly hysterically. Ingrid hurried to her and crouched in front of her, speaking in her softest voice to the woman.
‘’You and your child will be okay, miss: you are now safely in Boston.’
The woman’s response was to shake her head vehemently.
‘’I am not okay, miss! I just lost my husband and my oldest child, all that because of that damn tanker ship! It kept veering towards us despite the efforts of our captain to avoid it.’
Ingrid was furiously tempted to ask her about that but decided that the poor woman was already traumatized enough without bombarding her with questions. She thus simply helped the woman to get up, then escorted her to the aft access ramp, where she left her and her child with a paramedic. Seeing a senior officer of the Coast Guard who was standing a bit off her aircraft while watching the survivors disembark from the SKYTRUCK, Ingrid jumped down on the tarmac and walked towards him. That officer obviously recognized her, which was really not surprising to Ingrid, and came to attention while saluting her.
‘’General Dows? You were piloting this aircraft?’
‘’I also designed it, Commander. This is the first prototype of the Hiller SKYTRUCK. We were on our way to the Paris Le Bourget Air Show, where we plan to show our new aircraft to potential customers, when we heard the emergency call for help on the radio. So, can you tell me how two such large ships could collide in good weather and in full daylight?’
‘’It was no accident, General. According to a cargo ship captain who saw the collision happen, the tanker ship deliberately rammed the PRINCESS OF THE SEAS.’
‘’Do you know where that tanker ship came from?’
‘’It came from Saudi Arabia and was called the MEDINA, General.’
On hearing that, Ingrid closed her eyes and tightened her fists into tight balls as anger flashed inside her.
‘’Terrorists! There will be Hell to pay for this, I swear! Do you have a preliminary count of the survivors and of those who are missing and presumed dead, Commander?’
‘’With the survivors I counted coming out of your aircraft, added to the counts aboard the two ships now carrying survivors, we were able to save some 1,098 people, mostly thanks to you, but a total of 3,530 other persons are missing and presumed dead.’
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‘’Over three and a half thousand people dead... Whoever did this, this constitutes an act of war against the United States.’
‘’It certainly does, General. However, my job now is to make sure that those survivors are properly taken care of. Could you stay in Boston overnight, General, so that I could get your deposition as a witness to this tragedy?’
‘’Me and my crew will effectively stay here overnight before resuming our trip to France. We will want anyway to do a thorough inspection of our aircraft before flying out again: we pushed our engines quite hard on this impromptu rescue mission.’
‘’That is quite understandable, General. Uh, if I may ask, what could you tell me about your aircraft?’
‘’I will do better than simply tell you, Commander. Follow me!’
With a curious Keating close behind her, Ingrid walked back inside her aircraft and started describing to him the rescue equipment they passed by.
‘’This SKYTRUCK is presently fitted with a modular pod customized for search and rescue and waterbomber operations. I designed the Hiller SKYTRUCK with maximum user flexibility in mind, by making the whole center and aft sections easily changed as a single block. This search and rescue pod includes a telescopic, retractable rescue foot bridge, meant to save people stuck in high, burning buildings or on a steep mountain cliff, plus has a winch and rescue basket. Here, to your left, is an hyperbar chamber, to be used to treat divers who suffered a deep dive accident. We are now walking through the main cabin, which contains ninety seats, four medical gurneys, reserves of medical equipment, one kitchenette and two toilet stalls. Oh, I nearly forgot!
Under this deck are a centerline belly water scoop, high-power pumps, high-pressure spray heads and four water tanks which can contain up to twenty tons of water, meant to fulfill the role of water bomber.’
Keating looked with incredulity around him before giving a stunned look to Ingrid.
‘’But this is fantastic! It would be the perfect aircraft for us. That you happened to pass by Boston this exact day with such an aircraft must be considered like a miraculous coincidence, General.’
‘’Call it ‘Destiny’ instead, Commander.’’ replied Ingrid, dead serious.
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CHAPTER 8 – SHOCK AND ANGER
09:04 (Eastern Standard Time)
Tuesday, June 12, 2001 ‘C’
The Situation Room, The White House
Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
‘’ROOM!’
The twelve men and two women sitting and waiting inside the Situation Room all got up from their chairs around the long conference table when the Marine guard shouted, announcing the arrival of President George W. Bush. Bush, looking both angry and worried, went to his seat and spoke a few words as he sat down.
‘’Please sit, ladies and gentlemen, and let’s deal with yesterday’s awful incident off New York.’
Bush waited for the others to be all sitting, then directed his first question to Admiral John Leman, the Commandant of the United States Coast Guard.
‘’Do we have a firm number on the number of victims in yesterday’s incident, Admiral Leman?’
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‘’We have, Mister President! Counted either confirmed dead or missing is a total of 3,530 passengers and crewmembers of the PRINCESS OF THE SEAS. A total of 1,098 persons, nearly all female passengers and children, were saved before the liner sank. Luckily, retired General Dows, who now works for the Hiller Aircraft Corporation in Port Angeles, near Seattle, was on her way to the Paris Le Bourget Air Show with the prototype of the Hiller SKYTRUCK, a VTOL-capable transport aircraft, and was refueling her aircraft at the Boston Logan Airport when we made our general emergency request for help. Her SKYTRUCK ended up saving the majority of the people which were rescued that day.’
A bitter smile appeared on Bush’s lips on hearing that.
‘’Good old General Dows: always ready to help and defend the United States.
Do we have details of this collision between the PRINCESS OF THE SEAS and that Saudi tanker ship?’
‘’We are now pretty sure that this was a deliberate ramming by the Saudi tanker ship and thus most probably a major terrorist attack against our country, Mister President.’
Bush next looked at his director of the FBI, Louis Freeh.
‘’Have you launched an investigation into that incident, Louis?’
‘’We did, Mister President! While it has barely started, a number of worrying things have already come out. First off, somebody posted a declaration in Saudi medias late last night, claiming the sinking of the PRINCESS OF THE SEAS as an action by the Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda. As you may remember, we dismantled over four months ago a network of Al-Qaeda operatives present in the United States and who were preparing at the time a major air hijacking operation. Thankfully, the custodian of the old Athena files in the Pentagon drew our attention to a similar hijacking operation which happened in the 2001 of Miss Laplante’s timeline. That allowed us to check for the presence of Islamic suspects taking piloting courses here in the United States.
Unfortunately, it seems that yesterday’s incident had no parallel in Laplante’s timeline, so we got no historical hint about it. The dismantling of their network in the United States probably pushed the leader of Al-Qaida, Osama Bin Laden, in trying something completely new.’
‘’I see! Can we expect more attacks from this Al-Qaeda now?’
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‘’There is presently no way to be sure about it, Mister President, but my guess is that we can expect more terror attacks against our country or against American citizens and interests around the World.’
‘’And where is that damn Osama Bin Laden right now?’
‘’The latest reports we have place him in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Mister President.’
‘’Afghanistan!’ spat Bush with an expression of distaste. ‘’The perfect kind of hole for such a bastard to hide in it. George, what do we know about the operations and organization of this Al-Qaeda, particularly in Afghanistan.’
George Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA in short, looked briefly at a file opened in front of him before answering.
‘’Unfortunately, not much, Mister President. Afghanistan is presently governed by a hardline Islamist group named the Taliban, who are virulently anti-American and anti-Western and who are supporting Al-Qaeda in their country. As for Saudi Arabia, the country of origin of Bin Laden and of the majority of his followers, it proved in the past to be less than helpful when we tried to get information about the various Islamist extremist groups there. Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda organization enjoy in fact the support of many Saudi citizens and officials and my informant network there is very shaky, Mister President. I don’t expect much cooperation from the Saudis for our investigation.’
‘’And the tanker ship which rammed the PRINCESS OF THE SEAS? What do we know about its captain and crew?’
‘’We still havent’t have time to investigate that aspect of the incident, Mister President. The only thing we know is that the captain of the MEDINA was a veteran of the high seas with no known penchant for religious extremism. My bet would be on newer crewmembers or passengers on the MEDINA having been Al-Qaeda operatives.’
Bush repressed his frustration and then looked around at the members of his National Security Council.
‘’So, to resume things: we don’t know much about this terror attack, apart from that this Al-Qaeda claims responsibility for it and that its leader is hiding in Kandahar, Afghanistan. We definitely need more solid information if we want to reply to that attack, which was tantamount to an act of war against the United States. However, I want our forces to prepare in advance for any future actions against this Al-Qaeda. General Sherman, I want you to start organizing and deploying in advance a strong task force of ships, troops and aircraft to the Indian Ocean and Middle East regions, so that we could
71
be ready to hit those Al-Qaeda bastards hard once we will have enough information to act. Prioritize the use of our Navy, Marine Corps and airborne units for that future campaign.’
‘’I will get on it right away, Mister President.’ replied at once General of the Army Harold Sherman, who had replaced Ingrid Dows as the commander of all American combat forces.
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CHAPTER 9 – TO EVERY ACTION, A REACTION
18:33 (Paris Time)
Wednesday, June 13, 2001 ’C’
Room # 4, Hôtel Izmir-Café du Nord, 126 Avenue du 8 Mars Le Blanc-Mesnil, Paris Northeast suburbs, near Le Bourget Airport Paris, France
‘’...As a response to this monstruous act of terrorism which cost the lives of over 3,500 Americans, I, President George W. Bush, am declaring that the United States of America is now at war with the terrorist group Al-Qaeda and with Islamic terrorism.’
Ingrid, who was listening from her hotel room with her crew to the televised broadcast of President’s Bush national address, shook her head in frustration while letting out an expletive.
‘’SHIT! Why did he have to use those exact words?’
‘’Uh, what was wrong with the President’s words, Ingrid?’ asked John Meredith, the second pilot of the Hiller SKYTRUCK. Ingrid answered him while eyeing with a black look President Bush, who was closing his national address prior to taking questions from the reporters assembled in the Oval Office.
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‘’He could have simply said ‘terrorism’ instead of ‘Islamic terrorism’. Now, the Islamic nations who could have helped us against those Al-Qaeda bastards will feel targetted as well and may just withdraw their support from us or, worse, transfer their support to Al-Qaeda. Because of this, we will again pass as the modern version of the Christian Crusaders, bent on destroying Islam. I bet that his more right-wing advisors pushed him into adding those words to his speech.’
‘’Could those Islamic countries really take his words this badly, Ingrid?’ asked Elliot Goulding. This time, it was Elizabeth Gardner who answered him.
‘’You bet they will, Elliot! If my fourteen years in the Philippines thaught me something, it is that muslims can be very touchy about any perceived attack against their religion, and ‘perceived’ is the key word here. This will definitely be felt by many Muslims as an attack against Islam.’
‘’But, over 3,500 Americans just got murdered by Muslim fanatics!’ objected Robert Stanwick, the second engineer of the SKYTRUCK. ‘’Why should we sugar-coat our response to those bastards?’
‘’Because we should have limited our declaration of war to Al-Qaeda, without the need to antagonize all the Muslims around the World, Bob.’ replied Ingrid, somber.
‘’This extra word may just unnecessarily cost us a lot more lives in the future.’
The group of three men and four women then fell silent while listening to President Bush’
answers to the questions thrown at him by the reporters in the Oval Office. When the televised report ended, to be replaced by comments from the panel of French newscasters analyzing the speech, Ingrid switched off her television set, then got up from her bed, on which she had been sitting.
‘’Well, enough with gloomy news! Let’s go have supper at the restaurant downstairs. Then, I counsel you all to go to bed early: we will have plenty of work tomorrow, setting up our aircraft stand display.’
04:15 (Eastern Standard Time)
Thursday, June 14, 2001 ‘C’
Assembly hall of the First Battalion/Sixth Marine Regiment Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, U.S.A.
Greta Visby was standing three paces behind the ranks of her rifle platoon, as parade rules dictated about the usual position of platoon sergeants. As for the
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commander of the Third Rifle Platoon of Bravo Company, First Marine Battalion of the Sixth Marine Regiment, Second Lieutenant Mark Whitfield, he stood at attention some four paces in front of his platoon as the battalion commander, Lieutenant colonel Chris Walters, marched into the large assembly hall. The nearly 1,200 men and women of the First Battalion had been awakened in the middle of the night and told to prepare their combat kit for overseas deployment and then assemble in the unit’s hall for four o’clock in the morning. Nothing had been said about the destination of their deployment but it didn’t take a genius to figure that out, in view of the horrible news about the sinking of the PRINCESS OF THE SEAS. Greta’s bet was on somewhere around the Middle East, in view of who had claimed the attack on the cruise liner. While going to a possible war always should make a sane person consider the possible personal outcomes, Greta felt reassured by the fact that her unit was an experienced, well trained and well equipped one. Furthermore, she knew well most of the members of her platoon and of her company, having fought alongside them in the Caucasus and in Somalia during the five previous years. That unit bond had been further reinforced in the past few years by the new rules concerning postings and unit assignements, rules established by General of the Army Ingrid Dows while she was commander of all American combat forces. Those new rules had basically stopped the senseless and, in Greta’s opinion, stupid process of so-called ‘ticket-punching’, which had forced until then the members of the American military to spend only a couple of years at a specific unit or place before having to move to a new post, dragging their families with them, all supposedly to diversify the experience of the service members. That, in General Dows’ well-expressed opinion, made the service members ‘Jacks of all trades and masters of none’, on top of forcing their dependants to be uprooted continuously every two to three years. That old policy had also cost a fortune in administrative and logistical terms, with tens of millions of dollars spent on moving people and personal belongings around the World every couple of years. Now, the directives were to keep as much as possible military members within their present units when they got promoted. In Greta’s case, she had started her career in the Marine Corps as a simple private in the Second Rifle Squad of the Third Rifle Platoon, then had been promoted in succession to private first class and then corporal within that same squad. When she had been promoted in the field in Somalia to the rank of sergeant, she had then taken command of the First Rifle Squad of the Third Rifle Platoon. On being promoted recently to the rank of staff sergeant, she had become the platoon sergeant in the same platoon she had joined as a fresh private six years ago.
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Another big plus of the new promotions and postings directives had been a very significant boost in personnel morale, with military members now being able to offer some long-term stability for their families in terms of housing, schools and services. In turn, that boost in personnel morale had translated in less departures from service and thus less needs to train replacements, saving hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
With the battalion having been called to attention by Sergeant-major Richard Fielding at the entrance of Lieutenant colonel Walters in the hall, Greta watched discretely her battalion commander as he took place behind a dais supporting a microphone. Walters looked quickly around his troops before starting to speak into the microphone.
‘’BATTALION, STAND AT EASE! STAND EASY! I know that this call to assemble has been rather sudden and most early for all of us, but be assured that it was made for very good reasons. While I myself has been told very little about what is going on, I can tell you this: our regiment was ordered by the Pentagon to prepare and depart as quickly as possible for an overseas combat operational deployment. The area we are going to deploy to and our mission have still not been specified to me or even to our regimental commander. We are going to move in the next hour by bus to the New River Air Station, where we will board aircraft which will then fly us to the ships on which we will travel. The word from the Pentagon is that our mission parameters and the details of our deployment will be refined as we sail away from the United States. Our deployment will also stay confidential for the moment, so no phone calls or emails to your relatives and friends will be allowed until further notice. Operational security is thus the order of the day. Once you will have picked up your weapons and a basic load of ammunition and rations, we will load up in buses which are starting to line up outside this hall, then we will go to the New River Air Station. That is all for the moment. Company commanders will now direct their troops to the weapons vaults of our unit quartermaster.
MAJOR TRUMAN, PROCEED!’
‘’YES SIR!’ shouted back the deputy commander of the battalion before turning towards the assembled marines. ‘’ALPHA COMPANY WILL NOW PROCEED TO THE
ARMORY, FOLLOWED IN ORDER BY BRAVO COMPANY, CHARLIE COMPANY, WEAPONS COMPANY AND FINALLY BY HEADQUARTERS AND SERVICES
COMPANY. LET’S MOVE, PEOPLE!’
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Seeing that Bravo Company’s turn at the armory would be at least ten minutes away, Greta went to her three squad leaders, each standing at the right-side end of their line of soldiers, to speak to them and pass directives of her own.
‘’Alright, guys! Pass the word to your marines that, once they have their weapons and ammunition and are in the buses, they will start right away to load up their rifle magazines. Let’s not waste time by simply staring out of the windows while we roll towards New River.’
‘’Got it, Sarge!’ replied Sergeant Ken Nakamura, the leader of First Rifle Squad.
‘’And remind them that no magazines will be inserted into their weapons during transport. Pilots hate it when they have bullets flying inside their aircraft.’
‘’Gee! I don’t know why, Sarge.’ added Harrison Schmidt, making the others grin. Greta then returned to her previous spot, to wait for their turn to line up at the weapons vault. While she was confident that the marines in her platoon would be up to about anything, she couldn’t say the same about their platoon leader, Second lieutenant Mark Whitfield. Whitfield was a brand new marine officer who had graduated from the Navy Academy in Annapolis a mere two weeks ago and had joined the battalion less than one week ago. He had appeared to Greta to be an intelligent and dedicated young man but his total lack of experience was in sharp contrast to that of his predecessor, First lieutenant Kenneth Gomer, who had been promoted to captain and was now in command of Bravo Company. However, as platoon sergeant, Greta’s job was precisely to help and counsel this young officer with her own experience of combat and by supervising her three squad leaders. Thankfully, Whitfield had proven to be open to her advice and counsel...up to now.
As she had expected, her platoon’s turn at the weapons vault came after another eleven minutes of waiting in the assembly hall for Alpha Company to finish drawing its weapons. Urging on her marines to not waste time and make it quick during the weapons distribution, Greta then watched on as supply technicians waiting in a separate hall distributed to her soldiers various types of ammunition, including hand grenades and rifle grenades, from pallets loaded down with crates. Another team of supply technicians standing next to more pallets loaded with boxes then distributed two days-worth of field rations to each passing marine before the latter left the big battalion building complex and boarded a long line of waiting buses. While Lieutenant Whitfield boarded the first of
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two buses carrying their platoon, Greta boarded the second bus and shouted to her marines as the vehicle started rolling.
‘’ALRIGHT GUYS: START LOADING YOUR MAGAZINES, BUT DON’T SIMPLY
THROW AWAY THE EMPTY BOXES. I WILL PASS AROUND A GARBAGE BAG FOR
THOSE EMPTY BOXES BEFORE WE ARRIVE AT THE NEW RIVER AIR STATION.’
‘’DO YOU KNOW WHERE WE ARE GOING, SERGEANT?’ asked a young private, making Greta shake her head.
‘’NEGATIVE! WE WILL KNOW ABOUT THAT ONCE OUR FEARLESS
BIGWIGS AT THE PENTAGON WILL HAVE FIGURED OUT WHICH WAY IS LEFT.’
A concert of chuckles and laughter greeted her barb at their higher military leadership, something which helped relax some of the tension in the marines.
The drive to the Marine Corps Air Station New River, situated on the opposite side of the New River, took about twenty minutes, with the long convoy of buses and trucks having to cross a bridge over the Northern Creek on their way, then passing by the city of Jacksonville. When they arrived in sight of the large military airfield, which housed the aviation units supporting the Second Marine Division, Greta’s eyes sparkled at the sight of the dozens of rather strange-looking transport aircraft lined up on the main tarmac.
‘’Hiller PELICANs assault transports: now we’re talking!’
‘’Uh, I find those aircraft rather ugly, Sergeant.’ said a young private sitting near her. Greta gave him an understanding look while smiling.
‘’Yes, they are ugly, Private, but they are also very efficient and highly performing machines. You can pack in them a whole rifle platoon, plus a couple of ATVs6, take off at the vertical and travel a few hundred miles at over 400 miles per hour before landing at the vertical directly on the objective. It also is an armed transport aircraft, with 30mm cannons, rocket launchers and machine guns to help keep the enemy’s heads down while we scramble out of our PELICANs. I already was part of six previous air assaults in either the Caucasus or Somalia, riding in a PELICAN. That ugly beast will help keeping you and me alive, Private, and that’s the most important thing to know about it.’
‘’uh, got that, Sergeant.’ replied the young marine in a contrite tone. Returning her attention to the aircraft parked at the air station, Greta then realized that there were a 6 ATV : All-Terrain Vehicle.
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lot more Hiller PELICAN VSTOL transports than she had ever seen in one place. She however quickly understood why that could be.
‘’Damn! We are not the sole battalion to fly out of here today. This is indeed shaping up to be a major operation.’
The next thing she noticed was a long line of small 8X8 ATVs, which were in the process of rolling inside the cargo cabins of the waiting PELICANs.
‘’Argo MUDMASTERs! Yes! I love those little beasts! Have you ever ridden in one of them, Private?’
‘’No, Sergeant, but I did use four-wheeled ATVs at my home farm. These look fun.’
‘’They are, Private. More importantly, they will be able to save us from breaking our backs by helping to carry our extra ammunition and supplies. The Argo MUDMASTER is amphibious, can go over any kind of terrain and can carry up to four equipped marines or over 900 pounds of kit or supplies. You can also fit wide rubber tracks around their wheels, making them able to travel over deep snow. Two of them can fit inside a PELICAN, on top of a full rifle platoon.’
‘’Have you driven one, Sergeant?’
‘’Yes, I did and they are great little vehicles. The Marine Corps was most inspired when it decided a couple of years ago to drastically augment their dotation in our regiments. Before, we had only a grand total of sixteen ATVs for the whole division but, after the Somalia Campaign showed us how useful they were in the air assault role, the Corps shopped around for more and better ATVs. As a result, we now have enough such ATVs to have at least one per squad.’
‘’Argo? I never hear about that company before, Sarge.’ said another young private.
‘’It’s a Canadian company which specializes in light all-terrain vehicles. We use a lot of Argo ATVs in Alaska, where I am from. We also use a lot another Canadian brand, Bombardier, which by the way invented the snowmobile. Used together, the Hiller PELICAN and the Argo MUDMASTER truly make a winning combination for air assault missions.’
‘’So, you think that we will be doing air assaults, Sarge?’
‘’That is the most probable mode of combat I can see for this operation, which is probably aimed at the terrorist group which sank the PRINCESS OF THE SEAS and
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killed over 3,500 Americans. Those bastards are about to learn what the word ‘payback’
means.’
Her last sentence made the marines around her nod their heads in approval.
Another ten minutes and the convoy of buses and trucks stopped behind the line of parked Hiller PELICANs, letting the marines of the First Battalion disembark with their big backpacks and their weapons. Ground personnel waiting by the sides of the transports then guided each arriving platoon to the PELICAN assigned to it. Greta ended up climbing aboard with her platoon in the fourth aircraft, using its rear cargo ramp and ending inside the five-meter-wide cargo compartment of the PELICAN, where two Argo MUDMASTERs were already parked and chained down. She however stopped for a moment then, surprised by a few things which had changed since the last time she had flown in a PELICAN. She thus looked at the loadmaster and asked a question while pointing at the seats lining both sides of the cabin.
‘’Hey, weren’t the seats organized in a different manner before in the PELICAN?’
‘’They certainly were, Sergeant. The seating arrangement was changed to a new standard a couple of months ago, as part of a retrofit. Instead of facing inside on canvas seats, you now will be using standard business class commercial seats arranged in pairs facing forward. That new arrangement is both a lot more comfortable, especially for long flights, and also safer in case of hard landings. I hope that you will enjoy your flight.’
‘’I certainly will, Warrant! Gee! I’m going to travel business-class!’
She was about to take off her backpack when Lieutenant Whitfield signaled her to come forward. Obeying him, Greta was then led by Whitfield into the large cockpit area forward of the cargo cabin, where her officer showed her two padded seats set against the back wall of the compartment.
‘’They have seats reserved for officers and senior NCOs inside the cockpit area.
From those seats, we will be able to look outside through these large front windscreens, thus will have a better picture of where we are going.’
‘’Neat!’ replied Greta before taking off her backpack and placing it in the large overhead bin situated over her seat. She was also able to fit her rifle into the weapon-holding rack next to her seat. She let out a sigh of satisfaction when she sat down in the well-padded seat, which also happened to have a reclinable back rest.
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‘’Aah! This definitely beats the old canvas seats we had during our Caucasus and Somalia operations. So, do you know where we will be going and on what ship, sir?’
‘’Fuck knows, Sargeant!’ was Whitfield’s reply. A bit frustrated by that, Greta suddenly had an idea and asked a question to the pilot of their PELICAN, a Marine Corps aviator.
‘’Excuse me, sir. Do you know to which ship we will be deploying for our move overseas?’
The aviator, a young and handsome captain, smiled to her while answering her.
‘’I sure know about that, Sergeant, as me and my whole transport air group will also be traveling on the same ship as you: we are going to fly to the carrier U.S.S.
NEPTUNE.’
‘’The NEPTUNE? Yes! We are going to travel in first-class!’
‘’In first class, on a Navy warship?’ said Whitfield, not understanding her reaction.
‘’Indeed, sir! The NEPTUNE is fully up to par to the newer crew accommodation facilities, with individual cabins for everyone aboard and with large messing and services spaces. Its whole upper deck was designed to accommodate a full reinforced marine rifle battalion and there are plenty of holds’ space for our combat supplies and vehicles.
It also is one mighty powerful puncher, with an arsenal of missiles and guns to supplement an airwing of nearly a hundred aircraft. You will love it, sir.’
‘’If you say so, Sergeant.’ replied Whitfield, apparently not too convinced.
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CHAPTER 10 – THE DICES ARE ROLLING
