10:15 (Washington Time)
Tuesday, September 14, 1993 ‘C’
Main tarmac, Langley Air Force Base
Langley, Virginia, U.S.A.
‘’Here is your mount for this morning’s flight, General: one of our most recently delivered North American F-93A MUSTANG II fighter-bomber. It was delivered to this base a mere two weeks ago and is only the 23rd series production aircraft of this type to enter service in the whole country.’’
‘’It is a true beauty!’’ said Ingrid while admiring the supersonic jet aircraft parked on the tarmac along a line of other military aircraft.
‘’It certainly is, General.’’ Replied Brigadier General Mack Hollingsworth, the commander of the First Fighter Wing based in Langley. ‘’Our pilots positively love it: it is very fast, extremely agile and is also well-armed, with three 30mm cannons, internal bays for four air-to-air missiles, retractable rocket launchers for a total of 64 76mm rockets and a total of nine external weapons pylons. It has shown no vices or bad surprises in terms of in-flight handling and accelerates like a rocket. It may not be as fast as our old F83, which you helped develop some forty years ago, I believe, but it is still capable of attaining Mach 2.5 at altitude.’’
‘’Well, I did direct the development of our F-83 EAGLE in the early fifties, but it is still an excellent aircraft, even after 41 years in service. However, I will be happy to see the new Lockheed F-95 EAGLE II enter service in one or two years. I see that you reserved a single-seat version for my flight, instead of a twin-seat trainer variant.’’
Hollingworth nodded his head soberly at that.
‘’I decided so after seeing how easily you aced your two simulator sessions, General. I didn’t want to insult such a superb and highly experienced combat pilot as you by sticking you with an instructor pilot, so I ordered this plane to be reserved for your flight.’’
Ingrid, wearing a supersonic pilot’s helmet, grinned on hearing that.
‘’Flattery will get you nowhere, General Hollingsworth, but thank you for your consideration. Well, time to see what this baby got!’’
Approaching the small ladder positioned against the left side of the plane’s cockpit, Ingrid quickly climbed it and stepped into the cockpit, sitting on its ejection seat and then letting an aircraft mechanic help her attach her safety harness, plug her radio and oxygen connection and finally remove the safety pins of her ejection seat. Once the ladder was removed and the personnel around the F-93 stood at a safe distance, Ingrid switched on her aircraft systems and lit up the single turbofan engine with afterburner, then did a quick instrument check before giving a thumbs up signal to Brigadier General Hollingsworth, who replied with a similar sign at once. Pushing slightly forward her engine throttle, Ingrid then made her aircraft roll out of the lineup and turned it towards the nearest taxiway leading to the main runway of the base. At the same time, she contacted the control tower by radio.
‘’Langley Control, this is Foxtrot Charlie 24! I am now rolling towards Runway 08, over.’’
‘’Langley Control acknowledged!’’
Ingrid did not speak further until she positioned her aircraft at one end of the 3,048-meter-long runway.
‘’Langley Control, from Foxtrot Charlie 24: I am in position on Runway 08 and ready to take off, over.’’
‘’Foxtrot Charlie 24, you have permission to take off. Have a good flight!’’
‘’Thank you, Langley Control! Taking off now!’’
Pushing forward gradually her engine throttle while stepping hard on her brakes, Ingrid then released her brakes once she was at full power, with the afterburner on. Her F-93 fighter-bomber then jumped ahead and accelerated down the runway at a tremendous rate, pushing her back into her seat. Ingrid then felt again the excitement that she still got during every flight in a military jet: she had truly been born to be a pilot. Attaining her takeoff speed, she then pulled gently on her control stick, making her aircraft rotate its nose up and lifting it from the concrete runway surface. She retracted her landing gear nearly as soon as she was airborne and continued her climb, enjoying every second of it. Langley then contacted her as she was passing the altitude of 2,000 meters.
‘’Langley Control to Foxtrot Charlie 24, turn to heading 095 and continue climbing up to 30,000 feet to get to the free practice airspace zone.’’
‘’Turning to heading 095 and climbing to 30,000 feet. Foxtrot Charlie 24 understood!’’
Less than two minutes later, she entered the free practice zone used by the Langley pilots to practice their air maneuvering and started making a succession of air maneuvers, cautiously at first, to get the feel of her new aircraft. The F-93 then proved to be as agile as Hollingsworth had claimed it to be, with a very low wing loading and high thrust-to-weight ratio close to unity, even when fully loaded. In the interceptor configuration she was in for this flight, that ratio was actually just above unity, allowing her to do a spectacular zoom climb to the altitude of 15,000 meters. Once up, she admired for a moment the surface of the sea below her before doing more maneuvers. She was in the middle of a ‘S’-turn when an alarm klaxon sounded out in her cockpit. Looking down at her instruments, she swore when she saw that the pressure in her hydraulic fluid lines was dropping, and fast!
‘’Damn it! A nearly brand-new aircraft.’’
Turning back at once towards Langley, Ingrid then spoke in her radio microphone.
‘’Langley Control, this is Foxtrot Charlie 24! My hydraulic fluid pressure is going down fast. I am returning to base while I still have some fluid pressure left, over.’’
‘’From Langley Control: acknowledged! We will free the air traffic close to the base and reserve Runway 08 for you. The base emergency services will stand by, over.’’
‘’Thanks, Langley Control! Know that my hydraulic pressure is still going down fast and is now only at one third nominal pressure.’’
In the control tower of Langley, the air controllers on duty exchanged worried glances: without hydraulic pressure, her flight controls would become extremely hard to move, making the F-93 nearly impossible to control. A new radio message from Ingrid then added to their worries.
‘’Langley Control, from Foxtrot Charlie 24: my primary hydraulic circuit is now empty. The secondary hydraulic circuit is also emptying fast now, over.’’
‘’How could both hydraulic fluid circuits on a brand-new aircraft fail like this?’’ asked a junior air controller to his supervisor, who shook his head.
‘’It shouldn’t happen but it apparently is happening right now. Get our fire trucks and our ambulance ready next to the one-third point of Runway 08 and tell them to be ready for a probable belly landing. Without hydraulic fluid pressure, General Dows won’t be able to lower her landing gear.’’
‘’Right away, sir!’’
The supervisor then went to a telephone and called General Hollingsworth’s office, getting his military secretary to answer his call.
‘’Sergeant, this is Warrant Banks, in the control tower. I need to speak urgently to General Hollingsworth.’’
‘’I am sorry, Warrant, but the general is still somewhere around the flight line. Can I pass a message to him?’’
The supervisor swore quietly to himself, then answered the secretary.
‘’If he comes back to his office in the few coming minutes, then tell him that General Dows’ plane has called an in-flight emergency and is on its way back to the base. I will now make an announcement on the tarmac area P.A. system to alert him.’’
Putting down the telephone receiver, the supervisor then grabbed a microphone and switched it to the loudspeakers posted outside around the tarmac area.
‘’Brigadier General Hollingsworth, please call the control tower at once. This is an emergency!’’
He repeated his message twice, then went back to the air controller who was in liaison by radio with Ingrid Dows.
‘’How is General Dows doing now, Scarletti?’’
He didn’t like the face the corporal did then.
‘’She just said that she now has zero hydraulic fluid pressure left in her aircraft, sir. She however is still approaching the base and is now 26 nautical miles away and at an altitude of 16,000 feet.’’
In the cockpit of her F-93, Ingrid needed nearly all of her supernatural strength to be able to move her flight control stick, which felt as if it had been sunk into concrete. Still, she was able to keep control of her aircraft…barely, and kept her maneuvers very progressive. She toyed with the idea of trying to lower her landing gear but, with no hydraulic pressure left, it would probably only come down partially by gravity and would not lock. That would in turn make any attempt at landing very risky, with her partially deployed landing gear possibly sending her aircraft into a deadly cartwheel. Also not available were her flaps, which meant that she would have to land at a much faster speed than usual. There was always the option of ejecting, but she rejected that nearly at once: that would leave her uncontrolled aircraft to crash about anywhere, putting at risk the civilians living and working around Langley. She thus decided to try her luck at a hard landing in Langley. Looking down briefly at her navigation display, she then started a very gradual and large ‘S’-turn in order to approach Langley and line up on Runway 08. Again, she needed most of her unnatural strength to make her stick move. If she would have been a normal pilot, then that pilot would have lost control of the plane many minutes ago. She wondered for a second about how she could have suffered such a catastrophic hydraulic pressure failure but quickly concentrated back on her flying: now was not the time to speculate about this. If she managed to land in one piece, then the base technicians will have something to work on to find what happened.
On the grass surface next to the east side of the main runway, Captain George Brown, the head of the firefighting department of Langley AFB, nervously scanned the skies with a pair of binoculars while standing next to one of his firefighting trucks. He finally spotted a small dot in the sky which was heading towards the airfield. Brown then ran back into his firefighting truck while giving orders on his hand-held radio.
‘’To all vehicles: be ready to roll! Man the foam cannons!’’
In the control tower, where Brigadier General Hollingsworth had just arrived, short of breath after running up the stairs of the tower, the air controllers also spotted Ingrid’s incoming aircraft and pointed it to the wing commander. Hollingsworth had one look at the incoming F-93 before going to the radio microphone of the tower.
‘’Foxtrot Charlie 24, this is Langley Control Six: your plane is not worth risking your life by attempting a belly landing. Your aircraft is still full of fuel and you will probably catch fire on landing. Turn towards the sea and eject once over the water, over.’’
‘’Langley Control Six, from Foxtrot Charlie 24, if my plane crashes at sea, then we may never know why my hydraulic systems failed.’’
‘’I realize that, Foxtrot Charlie 24, but we can deal with that later. Now, turn around and eject over the sea, that’s an order! Our coastal patrol craft will be waiting to retrieve you.’’
The air controllers didn’t miss the irony of a one-star general giving an order to a five-star general but, as the base commander, Hollingsworth was in his right to order Ingrid Dows around when it came to air traffic control. There was a short delay before Ingrid’s voice came on the radio.
‘’Understood, Langley Control! Am now turning towards the sea to eject, out!’’
In her cockpit, Ingrid swore to herself about her bad luck on a flight that should have been pure fun but nonetheless started a wide 160 degree turn to the left to point her aircraft towards the sea. With Langley being on the coast of Virginia, she needed only a few seconds before she started overflying the ocean. Sighing in resignation, she pulled back her feet next to her ejection seat, then grabbed the ejection handle situated between her legs and pulled hard on it. To her surprise and shock, nothing happened! Pulling again for a second time and still getting nothing, she swore out loud.
‘’For fuck’s sake! How can I have two separate major systems failures at the same time in a brand-new aircraft? Ejection seat failures are nearly unheard of! And the canopy should have flown off, independent of the seat.’’
The truth then hit her like a hammer: this was no simple aircraft systems failures, it had to be sabotage! Starting another wide turn to head back to the base, she keyed her oxygen mask’s radio microphone.
‘’Langley Control, this is Foxtrot Charlie 24. I was unable to eject due to the failure of both my ejection seat and of my canopy. I now suspect that my plane was sabotaged. I have no choice left now but to return to the base for a belly landing. I intend to land on the grass surface on the west side of the main runway, in order to soften a bit the impact with the ground, over.’’
In the control tower, Brigadier General Hollingsworth looked with disbelief at his microphone for a moment, then exploded in rage.
‘’SHIT! That’s the only plausible explanation for this cascade of failures in a new plane. Warrant, you are now in charge of guiding General Dows to a landing next to the main runway. I have calls to place to the base security office.’’
‘’yes sir!’’
As the senior air controller spoke on the radio with Ingrid Dows, Hollingsworth jumped on a nearby telephone and called the duty desk of the base security section.
‘’Hello, Base Security? This is General Hollingsworth speaking! Go to Red Alert at once and have all the access points of the base closed immediately. Nobody is to either exit or enter, no matter what the person or the excuse. We have a possible saboteur on the base. Have our personnel at the gates break out their rifles as well. I also want an armed squad ready to secure an aircraft that is about to crash-land besides the main runway. Get to it!’’
Hollingsworth was still fuming as he was putting down his telephone receiver. A thought then came to him and he did a second call, this time to the aircraft maintenance section, where he got hold of Major Tina Golding, the Base Aircraft Maintenance Officer.
‘’Major Golding, this is General Hollingsworth speaking. The F-93 that had been prepared for General Dows flight has suffered both a complete loss of hydraulic fluid and failures of both its canopy and its ejection seat. I can only see sabotage as an explanation for what just happened to a brand-new aircraft. Find out the names of all the maintenance personnel who worked on that F-93 during the last 36 hours, then make sure that they don’t leave the base. Call a squad of Air Force policemen as a backup and get a pistol for yourself… Yes, you heard me! Get those names quickly, Major!’’
With that call done, Hollingsworth walked to the side of the senior air controller.
‘’Where is General Dows now, Warrant?’’
‘’Over there, on approach to Runway 08, sir.’’
In her F-93, Ingrid now had the main runway of the base in sight, but lined up her aircraft with the grassy surface to the left of it instead of with the concrete runway. With all the fuel she still had aboard her aircraft, a belly landing on a concrete surface was going to cause lots of sparks, sparks that would most certainly light up any fuel leaking from the F-93’s reservoirs and turn it into a bouncing torch, with her still stuck inside. The sight of the waiting fire trucks and ambulance near the runway reassured her a bit but the toughest part was still to come. Her first move was to unlock and manually slide back her canopy, leaving it wide open and making fierce winds rush into her cockpit. Whatever happened, she had no wish to be trapped inside a burning aircraft. Next, she slowed down her aircraft to just above stalling speed and flew down in a gentle slope until she was a mere ten meters above the ground, so that she could touch the ground as soon as she was over the runway area. In this she was helped by the very small wing loading of her F-93, which was only half that of most other fighter jets. That low wing loading allowed for slower stalling speeds, something that she desperately needed right now. Her aircraft then overflew the perimeter security fence of the base and she started to see the main runway’s surface go by her right side.
‘’Time to show that you are a real pilot, girl!’’ she said to herself as she lowered her aircraft to a mere two meters above the grass, then cut power to her engine.
On the other side of the main runway, Captain Brown saw her fly to just above the grass surface, then slow down while raising a bit the nose of her aircraft. The tail of the fighter-bomber made contact first with the grass, digging a long furrow in it and creating a trail of projected dirt and grass behind the plane. Ingrid Dows was able to keep the nose of her F-93 up for a couple of crucial seconds as her tail dragged on the ground and slowed it down. Then, its aerodynamic lift spent, the nose of the F-93 slammed down on the ground, creating an even bigger geyser of grass and dirt as the plane slid on the ground at more than 180 kilometers per hour. Brown then patted hard the shoulder of his truck driver.
‘’ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF THE RUNWAY AND GO TO TOP SPEED, PARALLEL TO THE PLANE.’’
Brown then spoke on his radio.
‘’TO ALL EMERGENCY VEHICLES: ROLL ON THE RUNWAY AND FOLLOW THAT PLANE. START SPRAYING FOAM ON IT THE MOMENT THAT IT WILL STOP.’’
As his big fire truck accelerated down the runway, Brown anxiously watched as the F-93 kept sliding on the grass, creating a big furrow on the ground. Thankfully, the friction with the ground gradually slowed down the crashed aircraft and it finally came to a stop halfway down the long surface, still on its belly. Brown let out a sigh of relief on seeing no flames burst out of the wrecked F-93. Still, he could not become complacent now.
‘’STEVE, START HOSING DOWN THE PLANE WITH FOAM AS SOON AS WE ARE CLOSE ENOUGH TO IT.’’
‘’GOT IT!’’
The fire truck finally stopped once some twenty meters from the F-93, with one fireman already spraying fire-retardant foam on the plane as Brown stepped out in a hurry, an axe in one hand. Sprinting towards the cockpit of the crashed fighter-bomber, he saw the pilot in the process of jumping out on the ground after undoing her seat harness. He met her halfway, then directed her retreat towards the approaching ambulance. Once they got to it, Brown anxiously looked at the young female pilot.
‘’Are you okay, ma’am?’’
‘’I believe so, Captain. I feel no pain anywhere and, as you could see, I was able to run away from my plane. By the way, tell your people to disturb or damage that wrecked aircraft as little as possible: I suspect that an act of sabotage caused it to fail in flight and crash.’’
‘’Sabotage, ma’am?’’
‘’Yes! I suffered multiple failures in flight in a nearly new aircraft, including a complete loss of hydraulic pressure and a failure of both my ejection seat and of my canopy ejection system.’’
‘’Damn! That does sound suspicious.’’
‘’Indeed! Ah, here is General Hollingsworth.’’
Ingrid then walked towards Hollingsworth, who was stepping out of a jeep, worry on his face.
‘’Are you alright, General Dows?’’
‘’I am a bit shaken but, apart from that, I am okay.’’
‘’Still, you should be examined by a doctor soon, General: that was quite a rough landing. By the way, my congratulations for the fantastic piloting job you just pulled.’’
‘’Thank you! However, I am afraid that your new F-93 is now good for the scrap heap.’’
‘’It can be replaced, General, but you can’t.’’ replied Hollingsworth. ‘’By the way, I have put the base on alert and had all access points closed until further notice. I also called the AFOSI{2} headquarters in Quantico and asked them to send me an investigative team ASAP{3}. Right now, I can see no explanation other than sabotage for this incident. The base security force will also cordon and guard this crash site and preserve it as a crime scene.’’
‘’Good! We really need to find the rats who did this.’’
Hollingsworth was silent for a second before asking Ingrid a question in a low voice.
‘’General, who could want you dead to the point of causing this?’’
Ingrid nearly broke out in laughter at that question.
‘’Who could want me dead? Well, White supremacists and racists around the United States, including the KKK and more than a few members of Congress, all hate my guts with a passion and call me a ‘nigger lover’. Then, you have all the defense firms and lobbyists whom my new defense procurement policies caused them to lose juicy contracts with the Pentagon. Then, you have the Chinese Triads and some sectors of the Mafia who consider me a major shit disturber. Believe me, General Hollingsworth: when you cause someone to lose a multi-billion-dollar contract, the grudge that follows is quite sizeable and intense. Your AFOSI field agents won’t be lacking in suspects in this affair.’’
‘’My God! You do live an interesting life, as the Chinese would say.’’
‘’A very interesting life, General Hollingsworth.’’ corrected Ingrid with a slight smile on her lips.
11:03 (Washington Time)
Personnel locker room, Aircraft maintenance section
Langley Air Force Base
‘’How could this nigger-loving bitch have survived this? She should be dead now, stuck inside her aircraft lying at the bottom of the sea.’’ muttered to himself Technical Sergeant Zacharia Bedford as he frantically unlocked his individual effects locker in the changing room of the base’s aircraft maintenance section. Once his combination lock was off the door of his locker, he opened it and quickly grabbed a canvas tool bag lying at the bottom of it and took it out, then put back in place his lock. His tool bag in hand, Bedford turned around to leave but had to freeze at once: facing him and blocking the exit door of the room were Major Tina Golding, the base aircraft maintenance officer, and two Air Force policemen. The policemen had handguns pointed at him as Golding spoke to the technician, her voice cold.
‘’Sergeant Bedford, what do you have in this bag and where were you going?’’
‘’Uh, just tools, Major. I was going to double-check something on our F-83C EAGLE presently in refit in our hangar.’’
Golding obviously didn’t believe him, as she then gave a curt order to one of the Air Force policemen.
‘’Go get that bag and bring it to me, Airman.’’
‘’Yes ma’am!’’
With the policeman being a big, powerful man weighing nearly fifty kilos more than him, Zacharia Bedford didn’t dare resist him and let him take his tool bag from him. The policeman then returned to Golding and gave her the tool bag, which she opened at once to inspect its content. Bedford felt cold sweat run down his forehead when the maintenance officer took out a two-liter bottle made of ceramic and stainless steel. Golding read quickly the sticker on the bottle, then threw a murderous look at her mechanic.
‘’Nitric acid?’’
Not waiting for him to reply, she opened the bottle and cautiously sniffed its content, keeping her nose well away from the opened cap.
‘’It is indeed nitric acid and this bottle is nearly empty. Men, arrest this mechanic for suspected sabotage and attempted murder and put him in a cell. He is not to speak with anyone until AFOSI agents will have arrived to interrogate him.’’
As the two Air Force policemen went forward to arrest and handcuff Bedford, Tina Golding looked again with disgust at the bottle of nitric acid. Bedford’s plan, which was becoming too apparent to her now, had apparently been to mix a quantity of nitric acid into the hydraulic fluid circuits, and this during last night, after a particular F-93 had been pulled aside for use by General Dows. The strong acid would then have started damaging the fluid pipes, but slowly at first, until the hydraulic circuits would have been put under pressure at engine startup. Then, it would have been a question of mere minutes before some joint or seal would fail, eaten up by the nitric acid, causing a catastrophic leak. As for the failure of the ejection seat and of the canopy jettisoning mechanism, she already had a couple ideas about how that could have happened. She threw a last dark look at Bedford as he was being escorted out, then hurried out of the locker room with the incriminating bottle and tool bag: Brigadier General Hollingsworth had to know about this right away.
13:47 (Washington Time)
Detention and interrogation section, base security building
Langley AFB, Virginia
AFOSI senior special agent Dan Karpinski went directly to Ingrid and to General Hollingsworth after leaving the small interrogation room where Zacharia Bedford was being kept under guard. Karpinski’s face was somber as he spoke to Ingrid.
‘’The good news is that Bedford cracked and gave up names and details after being threatened with a possible death sentence for sabotage and attempted murder. The bad news concerns the names he gave us: there is one congressman in the lot, plus a lobbyist for the Chesapeake Naval Yards and a KKK Grand Wizard.’’
While Ingrid stayed quite composed on hearing that, Hollingsworth’s eyes popped wide open.
‘’Holy shit! I can understand the part about the congressman and the KKK Grand Wizard but why a lobbyist for the Chesapeake Naval Yards?’’
‘’Easy!’’ replied Ingrid. ‘’I cost that shipyard a three-billion-dollar contract when I had a project for the building of a new aircraft carrier at their shipyard cancelled some two weeks ago and gave a new contract to another, more dependable shipyard better suited for the production of our new class of aircraft carrier.’’
Karpinski made a face at the figure quoted by Ingrid.
‘’Three billion dollars? That’s a lot of reasons to have someone killed.’’
‘’Effectively, Special Agent Karpinski. Well, I will now return to the Pentagon and leave you free to continue your investigation in this affair. Please keep me informed if you find anything else worthy of mention.’’
‘’I will, General.’’ promised the AFOSI field agent. Ingrid then turned to face Hollingsworth and shook his hand.
‘’Well, I must say that your F-93 was a dream to fly…until it ran out of hydraulic fluid. We now have a truly great fighter-bomber to replace our tired F-10s. On the other hand, I can’t wait for the first F-95 to come out of production, so that I can test fly it.’’
‘’Just check the hydraulic fluid before you fly off in it, General.’’ replied Hollingsworth, a smirk on his face.
14:31 (Washington Time)
Monday, October 04, 1993 ‘C’
General Ingrid Dows’ office, The Pentagon
Arlington, Virginia
Advised by her secretary of the arrival of a trio of visitors, Ingrid walked around her work desk to greet the three men, two of them in Air Force uniforms and the third one wearing a civilian suit, as they entered her office. She returned the salutes from the two uniformed men before starting to shake hands with the trio.
‘’Welcome, gentlemen. I suppose that I owe your visit to the investigation on my crash in a sabotaged F-93?’’
‘’You supposed right, General.’’ replied AFOSI Special Agent Daniel Karpinski while shaking Ingrid’s hand. ‘’I brought with me Commander James Turner, of the Air Force JAG Office, and FBI Special Agent Charles Hurst. Commander Turner will be prosecuting those military members named as involved in this affair, while Special Agent Hurst is conducting a parallel investigation about the civilians involved. Our investigation is still ongoing but we already unearthed quite a lot of dirt, some of it quite shocking.’’
‘’Then let’s discuss this while sitting in the sofas of my coffee corner. Would you like some coffee, tea or other refreshment? I can even offer some strong espresso coffee.’’
Karpinski’s eyes popped open at the mention of ‘espresso coffee’.
‘’I will certainly accept a cup of espresso, General.’’
‘’I will also take one, General.’’ said Turner, with Hurst also asking for a cup of espresso. Ingrid took a few seconds to pass the word to her secretary to have a pot of espresso prepared and delivered to her office, then led her visitors to a low coffee table sitting in one corner of her office and surrounded by three well-pa