of them.'
'Well, make damn sure that plane is disarmed as soon as it lands, ' the President said.
'We don't need another screw-up. 'The President didn't wait for Curtis' muted 'Yes, sir,' but stormed past the Marine guards and headed for the elevator.
Curtis waited until the others had left, then headed for the Situation Room communications center, where communications experts were working out a transmission routine for the Satellite Communications code, SATCOM.Once Elliott had the code and had set it into his SATCOM receiver aboard the Old Dog, Curtis could talk to the crew. But first he had to figure out how to give the code to the crew without compromising the code itself.
He walked into the communications center. 'Well?'
'Transmitting now, General,' the chief of the center, reported. 'It'll be picked up by the SAC Emergency action Network in a few minutes, and it'll continue until ordered to stop.'
'Good. You know that the crew has no decoding documents, no secrets.'
'Yes, sir. They shouldn't need any. We have direct voice backup routines being put together if necessary.'
Curtis nodded. 'Word from the Excaliburs?'
'Ops normal message three minutes ago from both birds, Chr(34)+ the chief said.
'Still hadn't finished refueling.'
Curtis accepted the full printout of the Excalibur crews messages and put it in his briefcase. He sighed, louder than he intended.
'Keep me informed. 'And wondered what next could go wrong.
'Genesis, this is Los Angeles Center.'
General Elliott put down the can of water Dave Luger had found in a rations container downstairs and readjusted his microphone. 'Go ahead, Los Angeles.
'Your emergency flight plan has been received,' the controller said.
'Your call sign is now Dog Zero-One Fox. Yo are cleared to orbit as required. Acknowledge.
Elliott looked quizzically at Ormack. 'Strange call sign, Chr(34)+ Elliott said.
'Dog Zero-One Fox acknowledges, center,' Elliott replied over the radio.
'Any other messages, Los Angeles?'
'Negative, Zero-One,' the controller replied. 'Radar sen ice terminated, cleared to contact oceanic flight following.'
'Zero-One Fox, thank you. 'Elliott picked up the olive drab can of water from the crew survival kit and took a sip he stared out of the cockpit windows.
'Well,' Elliott said, 'we're cleared-but to where?How For how long?'
'They'll try to contact us-somehow,' Ormack asked. 'We're monitoring all the SAC Command Post frequencies SATCOM, all the emergency frequencies, and the S.A Emergency Action Alpha monitor periods on high- frequency radio. Maybe they haven't decided what to do yet.
'Well, I've decided,' Elliott said, rubbing at the pain spreading in his right calf. 'We've got to land this beast tonight. If they don't tell us where, we'll pick the place.
Tonopah, Indian Springs-wherever we need to go. 'Over the ship's interphone, he said, 'Crew, we've received notification from Center that our call sign is now Dog Zero-One Fox.'do McLanahan said: 'Any word on what we're supposed to 'Not Elliott asked. 'Just keep monitoring your yet, assigned frequencies. We should hear something soon.
, Can someone take HF for a while?' Luger asked. 'The static is driving me nuts.'
'I'll take it,' McLanahan said, reached across and took the 0 high-altitude general aviation chart that Luger was using to copy the high-frequency radio messages on. He glanced at his watch. 'Three more minutes until Alpha monitor. 'He switched his interphone panel waver switch to the HF setting and winced as he turned the switch on.
He fumbled for the S volume knob. 'Sorry I volunteered. You got three-eleven, I remember.
Here's the log I made up.
Luger looked over the mountain of radio messages on the 9 U.H.F alternate SAC command post frequency 'Just routine messages,' he asked. 'What are we looking for?'
'Anything,' McLanahan asked. 'A clue. Something unusual.
'Can't they just say, 'Hey you guys, set A-B-C in SATCOM 'Then everyone who hears the message sets it in their printers. It's not secure anymore.'
'Or, 'Hey, Dog, land at Tonopah'?Oh, never mind. Same reason.' 'Real smart boy,' McLanahan asked. 'Alpha monitor i period — ' He shut off all the radio switches except HF and pressed the headset pads closer to his head to hear better the Strategic Air Command emergency action message broadcasts.
Alpha monitor was the primary time period for worldwide Strategic Air Command messages over the high- frequency radio spectrum.
'How's the fuel look, John?' Elliott asked Ormack.
'Still about seven hours at this throttle setting,' Ormack said, checking his homemade flight plan filled out on the back of a piece of cardboard- 'We can still fly across the country twice if we need to, 'My butt won't hang in there that long, Elliott said.
'How about your leg?'
'Still smarts,' Elliott said, gently touching his calf.
ight publications holder behind his Ormack reached into a fl seat and pulled out the North America IFR supplement. 'I've got the frequency for McClellan Global Command Control,' he told Elliott. 'I'll give them a call, tell them we're exiting the ADIZ.- Over the interphone he asked, 'Anyone using the HF?'
'The Muck's copying a message,' Luger replied. He glanced over at McLanahan, who was intently listening to the static-charged radio message, occasionally tapping a pencil on the characters he was transcribing.
'Let me know when he's finished,' Ormack asked. 'Any problem with keeping up with our position?'
'No, sir.'
'I'll need some more endurance figures in a minute. I'l probably need an ETA to a fix somewhere when I call McClellan.
Ask and ye shall receive,' Luger said, and looked over again a It McLanahan, who had just switched his interphone knobs to their normal positions.
'HF is yours, Colonel,' Luger asked. 'Nav clearing off to the sextant.
Hey, Muck, I gotta take a sun shot. You wanna do the honors or count me down?'
'I've done the last three shots on the sextant,' he said.
'Gimme the watch. 'As Luger got up to head to the upper deck to take the sextant positions, McLanahan grabbed his arm. 'Anything unusual about any of these HF messages you copied, Dave?' He tapped his pencil on the long lines of numbers and letters, together with the time of transmission ant the call sign of the command post that made the transmission 'No, the usual number of characters, no special order o anything. Of course, we can't decode the messages.'
'Something in the messages… Dave, did the message say 'fox' or 'foxtrot'?'
'What?Oh, the phonetic spelling for the 'Fs, Chr(34)+ you mean? He thought for a moment. 'Yeah, you're right. 'Fox'!No 'foxtrot'!But it's the same thing, right?'
'Maybe, maybe not. 'McLanahan pulled the mike closer 'Angelina? Any luck?'
Angelina made an obscene gesture at the row of buttons on the SATCOM printer, which were used to set the address enable codes into the printer-receiver. 'My finger's getting numb setting codes.'
'I think I might have something,' McLanahan asked. 'We just got HF traffic. They're using 'fox' in their messages instead of 'foxtrot.'
It's the same as that strange suffix on our call sign.
Fox'?Sure, why not?I've tried dozens of other codes.'
In the gunner's compartment, Angelina set the address enable switch on the SATCOM printer to DISENABLE.She then set the address code windows to 'F-O-X' and changed the address switch to ENABLE.'Nothing,' she said.
'Try those characters backwards,' McLanahan told her.
'That has to be the key.'
