preflight checks went quickly. Because the Night Hawks’ cockpits were so cramped and uncomfortable, they were designed from the outset to be highly automated, relegating the human on board to being a system monitor rather than a pilot.
Besides, these pilots were not concerned about getting the planes ready to go to war. They simply had to make sure they had enough gas to fly a few hundred miles to an isolated airstrip in southwestern Nevada, where more fuel was waiting. A thousand miles at a time, and the aircraft would eventually end up in South America, where eager international arms merchants and foreign countries were waiting to start the bidding on the auction of the century.
On a signal from Townsend, all four F-117 engines were started inside the hangars themselves, in preparation for taxiing. There was no concern about the exhaust damage-it didn’t matter what the hangars looked like after they left-and none of them bothered with flight-control or engine checks. The F-117 Night Hawk stealth fighter was inherently unstable in all flight axes-there was no such thing as “dead-sticking” an F-117 to an emergency landing. The aircraft needed at least one flight-control computer and one engine to fly. If it lost more than that, the pilot had a single option: eject. But a foreign government such as Libya, Iran, Iraq, or China would still pay hundreds of millions of dollars for an F-117 stealth fighter even with only one engine or one flight-control computer.
“Report ready to taxi,” Townsend ordered. When the other three pilots reported, the four hangar doors were manually opened. Guards stationed themselves in front of the hangars and along the taxi route, prepared to repel any security forces that might come along. Each was armed with an M-16 assault rifle fitted with an M-206 grenade launcher for fighting off heavy response vehicles or trucks. “Release brakes now,” Townsend ordered.
At that moment, the pilot of the number four F-117 moving from the westernmost hangar saw a blur of motion off to his right. A soldier in full combat gear and helmet appeared out of nowhere directly in front of his hangar, carrying what looked like two large duffel bags. He dropped both bags on the tarmac, then reached down with his left hand and threw one of them under the nose gear of the aircraft. “
Then the pilot looked again and realized that these were not duffel bags being thrown under his wheels-they were
“Unit four, go to full power!” ordered Townsend, who could not see what was happening from his cockpit. “Taxi immediately! All other units taxi at maximum speed!”
The number four pilot shoved his throttles up to full military power, trying to taxi over the bodies of his dead comrades. But the intruder had disappeared under the nose of the F-117 and seconds later the pilot felt four hard bangs. The aircraft shuddered and dropped. Before the pilot’s stunned eyes the intruder reappeared, one of the dead soldiers’ sidearms in his hands. He had shot out several of the tires.
The pilot pulled the throttles to idle, opened his canopy, and jumped out of the plane. He watched as the intruder calmly walked over to the number three aircraft. Then he crouched down to get the M-16 assault rifle slung across the body of the soldier under his left main gear, checked it, loaded a fresh magazine, and fired from a range of fifteen meters. There was no way he could miss-yet the man did not go down. He turned around to look at the pilot even as the shots struck him, then continued on his way.
It was him, the pilot realized. The Tin Man. He was alive! He had been killed in the dam explosion but he was
The Tin Man reached the number three F-117 and fired several rounds into the left main landing-gear wheel. The outside tire popped, but the inner tire kept the plane moving. As the plane’s pilot watched in astonishment, he saw the helmeted figure leap fifteen meters across his windshield and land on his left wing.
Atop the engine inlets were blow-in doors, which provided additional inlet air to compensate for the reduced airflow through the large main inlets caused by the radar-absorbing mesh screen covering them. Before the pilot’s eyes, the Tin Man dropped the empty pistol into one of the open blow-in doors on the left engine. Sucked into the engine, it shredded the first-stage compressor blades in a matter of seconds, and the disintegrating remnants shot out in all directions, puncturing fuel and hydraulic lines and blasting apart the entire engine and part of the left fuselage.
The number one and two F-117’s were taxiing away fast. The Tin Man sped down the right wing of the stricken number three, jumped onto the ground, ran toward the taxiing fighters, then leaped as soon as his thrusters were recharged. He landed right on the canopy of number two, but with nothing to grasp and the groundspeed building up rapidly, he beat on the glass canopy panels. His left fist broke through a side panel with ease. The glass of the forward panels was much thicker and stronger, but several crushing blows broke it too. He reached in, shattered the heads-up display atop the instrument panel, then grabbed for the pilot. “He is on my aircraft!” the pilot shrieked into his radio, evading the grasping arm.
Unable to reach the pilot to disable him, the Tin Man grabbed the overhead curtain ejection handle on the ACES II ejection seat, then hit his thrusters to blow himself clear of the plane. The pilot shot up through the broken canopy on a column of fire from the rockets in his ejection seat. He was blasted 150 feet into the night sky. His parachute fully deployed, but there was time only for one swing under it before he hit the taxiway. The plane continued straight ahead. But starting the ejection sequence had automatically cut off fuel and power to the engines, so it rolled forward until it hit a blast fence on the north side of the main runway and came to a stop.
The Tin Man got back to his feet, scanning the area with his infrared visor. It was too late to reach Townsend in the number one F-117. By the time the thrusters were fully charged, Townsend had already lifted off into the night sky. The one he really wanted had escaped.
“Well, General McLanahan,” he heard in his helmet radio, which was set to monitor the emergency UHF channel. “Yours was a valiant effort. But one plane will still make my buyers very happy. Good night, and enjoy what is left of your city.”
But astoundingly there was one last chance. A UH-1 Huey helicopter with CA NATIONAL GUARD markings touched down on the apron directly in front of the security hangars where the F-117’s had been parked. It had arrived as planned to pick up a few chosen members of Townsend’s assault team, and the soldiers ran to board it. The Tin Man shot across the runways, and as the fully loaded helicopter was lifting off, he jumped up and grabbed on to the right skid, then the belly cargo hook, straddled the skids, and held on for the ride. The pilot didn’t even notice the additional weight because the aircraft was already wallowing from its heavy load as it lifted into the sky.
The Huey headed almost directly east, climbing to eleven thousand feet as it cleared the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It took all the Tin Man’s strength and concentration to hold on in the frigid night air whistling around him at 120 miles an hour. Two hours later, the helicopter swooped across steep, rocky crags and flew low through a high-desert valley. An airfield came into view. It was surrounded by what appeared to be abandoned military hangars and industrial structures. As the helicopter moved low over a group of wooden buildings, the Tin Man dropped free, using his thrusters to break his fall.
The place had a weird look to it; it was like stepping into an abandoned city. The hangars were large enough to hold the biggest military or commercial aircraft, but they were empty and falling apart. He saw the twisted, rusted hulks of what might once have been an oil refinery or large factory. The ground was covered with cactus, tumbleweeds, and thick dust. There was a long unlit runway ahead, and a very large aircraft-parking ramp lit by blue taxiway lights. The only other lights were on a lone building on the northern edge of the ramp, which had a rotating airport beacon and several radio antennas on top, a few scraggly trees in front, and a fuel truck parked nearby. The Tin Man headed for it.
A sign indicated that the building was a general-aviation fixed-base operator-an FBO-called Tonopah Flying Service. He knew there was a Tonopah, Nevada, a small desert town in the southwestern part of the state, midway between Reno and Las Vegas. This had to be it, and from the look of it, he guessed the airport must once have been a military base.
Moments later, the UH-1 Huey helicopter touched down on the ramp in front of the FBO building and Townsend’s terrorists dismounted. Within minutes, the Tin Man could hear shouts in German coming from inside- they were taking over the facility. He peered through a side window and was startled to see a terrified woman cowering in front of a man with a gun.
At the sound of a muted whistling out on the runway, the white runway edge lights snapped on. Then an F-
