Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 05 (22 page)

 
          
Jamieson
muttered a curse under his breath and fell silent, seething underneath. Tony
“Tiger” Jamieson, a twenty-five-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force with over
four thousand hours’ flying time and experience in several major conflicts from
Vietnam to Libya to the Persian Gulf, had been tasked to give a
“dog-and-pony-show” ride for a visiting VIP. The former fighter-bomber ace, now
the operations group commander of the 509th Bomb Wing, the home of the B-2A
Spirit stealth bomber, was not accustomed to being ordered to do these “public
affairs things,” as he liked to call them, and he would have preferred to turn
the whole thing over to the bomb squadron commander or one of his senior
instructor pilots, the tall, studly-looking Steve Canyon types with the square
jaws and blue eyes that look so good on TV and in the newspapers. But the
brass— namely, the wing commander and his boss, the commander of all Air Force
bomber forces—wanted Jamieson, so his job was to salute smartly, say “Yes,
sir,” and perform as expected.

 
          
The
C-20H military special air mission jet landed precisely at its scheduled time,
and taxied quickly to the base operations building; even before the engines had
spooled down on the military version of the Gulfstream IV, the air-stair door
popped open and soldiers and technicians in fatigues hurried out. The VIPs, led
by a three-star general accompanied by a two-star general, a colonel, and two
civilians, were quickly whisked right from the plane to the waiting cars
without stopping for any pleasantries, as if the early-morning sunlight would shrivel
them up like vampires if they stayed in the open too long. Two Humvee security
vehicles filled with uniformed and plain-clothes security officers flanked the
staff cars; Jamieson was displaced to a second staff car because a plainclothes
security officer, armed with a submachine gun partially hidden under his
safari-style jacket, took the front seat. He also noted many other persons in
utility uniforms disembarking from the C-20 Gulfstream jet, all heading for the
maintenance group hangar complex in a real hurry, some carrying catalog cases
full of tech orders, some carrying toolboxes and test-gear equipment—and some,
judging by the length of their hair and the width of their midsections,
obviously not military. They all looked as if they were already late for a big
meeting.

 
          
Security
police units closed all the intersections as the litde motorcade made its way
to the B-2A Weapon Systems Trainer building. All this excitement only served to
make Jamieson even grumpier. Doing these “dog-and-pony shows” was bad enough,
but a motorcade and extra security for a lousy civilian? A lot of it had to be
for show, Jamieson decided. The visitor was probably some congressional budget
weenie investigating security procedures for the B-2A stealth bomber fleet, and
the brass had beefed up security to make it look good. Their security was
already very tight here at Whiteman, but a good show of force never hurt.

 
          
After
they were seated in a briefing room in the simulator building, with the doors
closed and locked and guards stationed inside and out, Jamieson got his first
opportunity to check out the VIP. Too bad it was a guy—the female congressional
staffers that frequently visited Whiteman were all knockouts, and Jamieson, now
single after two divorces (“if the Air Force wanted you to have a wife, they’d
have issued you one”), had gotten to know many of them. The guy was about ten
years younger, four inches shorter, and forty pounds heavier than Jamieson,
with broad, knobby shoulders, thick arms, and weight lifter-like thighs and
calves—a former college power lifter turned desk jockey who liked to hang out
at the weight machines on occasion, Jamieson decided—with thin blond hair and a
fairly new mustache, both a bit longer than the regs allowed and definitely a
lot longer than the current crew-cut style common in the late-nineties
military. His handshake was firm, his eyes were blue and sparkling with energy,
and he looked as if he might have wanted to smile when the introductions were
made, but something dark and painful inside him vetoed the idea of showing any
emotion at all, let alone a happy one. Bags under his eyes and lines in his
face showed signs of tension, of aging beyond his years.

 
          
Jamieson
was also reintroduced to another VIP who was going to monitor the simulator
ride: the commander of Eighth Air Force himself, Lieutenant General Terrill
“Earthmover” Samson, the man responsible for manning, training, equipping, and
deploying all U.S. Air Force heavy bomber units. Samson was
America
’s “bomber guru,” the man who was
single-handedly responsible for the continued presence of the B-2A stealth
bomber and the other heavy bombers still in the Air Force inventory. When
everyone else had been telling Congress to get rid of the “heavies,” Samson had
been trying to convince Congress that America still needed the speed,
flexibility, and sheer power of the intercontinental-range combat aircraft.
Jamieson had met him once, a few years earlier, when Jamieson had been
installed as Operations Group commander of the 509th.

 
          
Samson
often brought influential congressmen and Defense Department bureaucrats in to
see the B-2A stealth bomber in order to drive his arguments home. Because
civilians were not permitted to fly in the plane (the third seat in a B-2A,
located at the flight engineer’s station behind the right seat, was no longer
fitted with an ejection seat), a few special VIPs sat in on B-2A simulator
sessions flown by other crew members. Jamieson assumed that this guy was going
to get a real special treat and sit in the right seat while he flew the
simulator. No problem: Jamieson could fly the beast without help just fine,
from the left seat.

 
          
“Good
morning, gentlemen, welcome to Whiteman Air Force Base,” General Wright began.
“I’m Brigadier General Tom Wright, commander of the 509th Bomb Wing, the home
of four thousand dedicated men and women who take care of the world’s most
sophisticated warplane, the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber. As you may know, the
509th has the distinction of being the only American military unit to employ
nuclear weapons in anger—as the 509th Bomb Group, we dropped the first two
nuclear bombs on
Hiroshima
and
Nagasaki
in World War Two. Our unit crest is the
only military crest authorized to depict a mushroom cloud on it. We take great
pride in our past as well as responsibility and leadership in our future.

 
          
“Today,
we employ a weapon system that is far more sophisticated and far more important
to our national defense than the thermonuclear device—the B-2A Spirit stealth
bomber. We will be introducing you to the world’s deadliest war machine by
giving you a short unclassified background briefing on the aircraft, a thirty-
minute classified familiarization ride in the B-2A Weapon Systems Trainer, a
tour of our facilities, a meeting with some of the outstanding officers and
airmen of our major units, and of course a look at the aircraft itself. Without
further ado, I’d like to introduce you to the 509th Operations Group commander
and our most experienced B-2A aircraft commander and instructor, Colonel Tony ‘Tiger’
Jamieson, who will conduct today’s simulator familiarization session. Colonel
Jamieson? ”

 
          
Jamieson
had already set up all the standard briefing stuff, and he flipped on the
digital slide projector and got to his feet: “Thank you, sir. I’m Tony Jamieson,
Operations Group commander here at Whiteman. I’m responsible for overall
operational and administrative charge of five squadrons in the wing, about two
thousand men and women, dealing directly with combat flying activities,
training, and deployment: the 393rd Bomb Squadron ‘Tigers,’ the first
operational B-2A squadron; the 715th Bomb Squadron ‘Eagles,’ which is due to
receive its first B-2A aircraft later this year; the 509th Air Re. fueling
Squadron ‘Griffiths,’ which fly the KC-135R Stratotanker aerial refueling
tankers; and the 4007th Combat Crew Training Squadron ‘Senseis,’ which fly the
T-1A Jayhawk and T-38 Talon jet trainers and operate the B-2A part- and
full-task weapons-system simulators. The Senseis conduct all B-2A initial,
recurrent, and instructor ground and flight training. Also under my chain of
command is the 509th Operational Support Squadron, which include the life
support, weapons loaders, flight line security, weather, intelligence, and
mission-planning officers.

 
          
“My
job is simple: provide General Wright with the maximum number of mission-ready
tactical aircrews ready to go to war at a moment’s notice,” Jamieson went on.
“We do this by maintaining a rigorous training schedule to keep all crews fully
proficient, including using the simulators and Jayhawk jet trainers for normal
proficiency training, thereby maximizing the number of bombers and tankers
available to go to war. We feel the combination of the part-task and
full-motion simulators and the specially configured Jayhawks can keep our crews
proficient without too much training time in the bomber itself, which allows us
to deploy the B-2A as much as possible without sacrificing capability or
training—in fact, we can deploy all of our B-2A bombers overseas and still
train aircrews to full mission capable status here at home.

 
          
“The
name of the game here at Whiteman is ‘quick strike’—the ability to successfully
strike any assigned target anywhere in the world with any weapon in our arsenal
within twenty-four hours of a warning order,” Jamieson continued. “In simple
terms, in case of war or if ordered to deploy to an overseas base, my group and
I move as a team as quickly as possible, brief and launch the combat-ready
bombers and tankers, load our prepositioned mobility packages into the first
available transport planes, and begin attack operations and/or deploy to our
forward operating location, depending on our orders.”

 
          
“I
hate to burst Colonel Jamieson’s obvious pride bubble,” General Samson
interjected with a smile, turning toward the stranger, “but I must add that the
509th is not yet fully mission ready. We’re at least a year ahead of our
planned initial operational capability schedule of January one in the year
2000, and we could fly combat missions with the ten planes we have here right
now, but the 509th won’t be officially combat capable for another year or two.”

 
          
Jamieson
took a deep breath as he clicked the button and brought up the next slide. Man,
this was a total waste of his time, he thought. The VIP looked disinterested
and distracted, as if thinking about a hundred things happening thousands of
miles away. Probably already has his report written, Jamieson concluded. “This
morning, after showing you around the base a bit,” he went on, “we will present
an overview of the 509th Bomb Wing organization, a briefing on current and
near-future technology, then present standard flight mission planning profile
in the—”

 
          
“Colonel,
we can stop this right here,” General Samson said, holding up a hand. “Tony, I
apologize. I’ve had to lead you on a bit. My orders were to conceal the real
purpose of this visit as much as possible using my own discretion, so I made
this visit look like a VIP tour. It isn’t.” He motioned to the civilian seated
beside him and said to Jamieson, “Tony, I want you to give this gentleman a
full B-2A emergency procedures simulator check ride.”

 
          
Jamieson
nearly dropped his jaw in surprise. Was this some kind of
joke?
“Of
course,
sir,”
Jamieson responded sarcastically. “Give a check ride in the B-2A stealth bomber
to a civilian. Not an orientation ride, but a check ride. Yes,
sir.
” He turned to the stranger with an
amused grin and asked, “So. How did you do on your open-book and closed-book
exams, sir?”

 
          
“I
think I did pretty good, Colonel,” the VIP replied, in a deep, monotone voice,
opening his briefcase.

 
          
Jamieson
scowled at the guy’s smart-ass comeback, then laughed as if dismissing the
thought of this guy passing a B-2A bomber crewmember exam. But all traces of
humor disappeared when the VIP picked out a folder with a red TOP SECRET cover
sheet on it, and extracted a single sheet of paper—a 509BMW Form 88, “B-2A
Record of Aircrew Training and Performance.” Jamieson examined the form with a
dumbfounded expression, then muttered, “What is this shit?”

 
          
“It’s
all genuine, Colonel,” the VIP said, as if reading Jamieson’s mind. He had
indeed finished his open-book and closed-book exams, with near-perfect marks,
along with a 100 on a “bold print” emergency procedures test, a complete
publications inspection— this guy apparendy had a complete and up-to-date set
of B-2A tech orders, including the classified 1TO-B2A-25-1 weapons-delivery
manual—an oral exam, and a complete Class I flight physical and psychological
stress exam. He was even certified under the Personnel Reliability Program, the
program used to certify any person who had responsibility for nuclear weapons
or components. A few of the sign-off blocks had been blacked out so he couldn’t
read who the evaluator was, but all of the other blocks were signed off by
Eighth Air Force Standardization/Evaluation instructors, with General Steve
Shaw himself, the four-star commander of Air Combat Command, in charge of all
Air Force combat air forces, as the final approving authority.