Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 05 (25 page)

 
          
“On
today’s sim ride, Tiger, what would have been the chance that he would’ve hit
his assigned target?” Samson asked.

 
          
Jamieson
shrugged. “You saw the results, sir: he hit his assigned targets, so I guess
the answer is one hundred percent,” Jamieson admitted. “But I’d give him only a
seventy-five percent chance of reaching his target in the first place, and
that’s bad, because he could have brought his bomber home and gotten it fixed
and taken a one hundred percent plane into combat. What’s his chance of
bringing the plane and his crew home with all the malfunctions he let
accumulate? Maybe twenty percent, tops. He exercised poor judgment.”

 
          
“Wliat
if the mission absolutely had to go off on a certain date and time?”

 
          
“Use
the backup planes,” Jamieson replied. “You need one bomber to take out the
target: launch three. Send one home after the last inbound refueling, then send
another home just before ingress- ing Indian country. Fly the best one to the target
and bomb the crap out of it.”

 
          
Samson
nodded; it was the correct response. If he had forgotten it, he was grateful to
Jamieson for pointing it out—and angry that his superiors had forced him to
forget the basics of employing strategic air power. But the wheels were already
in motion here; Samson was committed to following his own directives until they
could be followed no more. “What if you had only one bomber available?” Samson
asked. “What then?”

 
          
“Sir,
I wouldn’t get forced into that predicament in the first place,” Jamieson said
resolutely. “Don’t let the bean counters talk you into limiting your options in
order to save money or reduce risk—as if they knew anything about reducing the
risk to anyone but themselves. If you aren’t left with any options, recommend
scrubbing the mission or find another way.” Just then the civilian came into
the simulator control room, carrying his charts and checklists. “You’ll have to
wait outside, sir.” But the guy didn’t move—and Jamieson noticed that his
entire demeanor, his entire bearing, had changed. He didn’t seem like the
quiet, contrite civilian bureaucrat anymore.

 
          
“General?”
the guy asked. “What about it?”

 
          
Jamieson
felt his face flush with anger. “I said wait outside, mister...”

 
          
The
stranger was still ignoring the Ops Group commander: “I need to know right now,
General.”

 
          
“Did
you hear what I said, buddy?”

 
          
“Tiger
...” Samson interjected. Jamieson looked at the three- star general with a
shocked expression—the stranger was practically
ordering
Samson around here! “I... we have something to ask of
you.”

 
          
“What’s
going on, sir?” Jamieson asked. He turned to the civilian. “What’s your story,
mister?”

 
          
“This
gentleman is .. . joining the 509th for a while, Tiger,” Samson began. “We’re
going to take a B-2A bomber, load it with state-of-the-art precision standoff
weapons, and fly bombing missions overseas—except they won’t be Air Force
operations. We need a B-2A aircraft commander, preferably the best in the
business— General Wright says it’s you, and I agree.”

 
          
“What
the hell is this, General?” Jamieson retorted. “Who in hell does he work for?”

 
          
“You’re
not authorized to reveal anything,” the stranger said to Samson.

 
          
“I
told you I wasn’t going to allow any of my people to commit to this project
without full disclosure,” Samson said to the stranger. “Jamieson’s been
cleared. We tell him, or the deal’s off.”

 
          
The
civilian looked at Samson, then at Jamieson’s angry, confused features, then
nodded to Samson. “All right, sir,” retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel
Patrick S. McLanahan said resolutely. “In the vault.”

 
          
The
509th Operational Support Squadron building was a huge three-story,
20,000-square-foot electronic vault, guarded night and day by humans and by a
dazzling array of electronic eyes and sensors. The reason: the
OSS
received real-time intelligence information
from all over the world and processed it continuously, building and refining a
series of preplanned strike packages for the B-2A stealth bomber and other
long-range bombers. When the Russians moved an SS-21 missile from one launch
site to another, or when Iran deployed a new fighter, or a new terrorist base
camp in Sudan opened, or a new surface-to-air missile site in China was
activated, the computers in the OSS adjusted mission charts, flight plans,
strike routings, target lists, and threat predictions on dozens of computerized
mission packages. If the stealth bomber crews were tasked to perform a strike
mission, the 509th
OSS
would simply dump the latest flight plans and intelligence data into
two videocassette-sized cartridges and print out the latest sixteen-color
charts straight from the computer databases. The crews would load the
cartridges into readers in the planes, and the mission would begin. Satellite
uplinks to the B-2A bomber would allow crews to receive the latest intelligence
data and update their mission computers continuously in-flight, right up to
seconds before bomb release.

 
          
There
were several briefing rooms within the
OSS
building, where aircrews received
pre-mission briefings and received the latest intelligence information. General
Wright led Samson Jamieson, and the stranger to one of the larger briefing
rooms and posted a guard inside and out.

 
          
His
face impassive, his voice even and firm, the stranger got to his feet, faced
Jamieson, and began: “What I’m about to tell you is classified top secret,
Colonel.”

 
          
“I
figured that much,” Jamieson interjected, not quite ready to be intimidated by
this guy. “Just tell me who you are and what you want.”

 
          
“My
name is Patrick McLanahan, lieutenant colonel, United States Air Force,
retired,” the civilian said. “I... ”

 
          
“McLanahan!
I recognize that name,” Jamieson said. “You were involved in the raid on
Chinese forces in the
Philippines
a few years ago, like I was. The President gave
you some award or commendation, but no one knew who the hell you were, where
you came from, or what you did.”

 
          
McLanahan
nodded. “That’s right, Colonel.” Three years earlier, naval forces of the
People’s Republic of
China
had attempted an invasion of the
Philippines
following the
U.S.
military withdrawal. Jamieson himself had
led a force of three B-2 A bombers on secret raids against Chinese air defense
positions in what had been the first use of the B-2A bomber in combat. . .

 
          
...
at least, the first
known
combat
mission for the B-2A. Obviously there had been others ...

 
          
“There
was a fourth bomber, Tony,” Samson explained, as if he were reading Jamieson’s
mind, “and it didn’t launch from Whiteman. It was in-theater before the
Whiteman birds deployed to
Guam
, doing
special reconnaissance and defense-suppression stuff. It—”

 
          
“Defense
suppression? Reconnaissance? We didn’t have any defense-suppression weapons on
... ” He finally stopped and made all the connections. “This guy ... this guy
went in ahead of the Air Battle Force bombers with defense-suppression weapons?
I thought we took out the coastal radars and long-range shipborne radars with
cruise missiles.”

 
          
“HAWC
was tasked to employ several of its test-bed aircraft over the
Philippines
and to use some of its other development
weapons and space technology to support air operations,” McLanahan explained.
“The President wasn’t sure if he wanted to commit massive
U.S.
forces against the Chinese, so he sent HAWC
units in secretly to soften up the Chinese air defenses, make them more
vulnerable to
U.S.
air attacks. The idea was if they found themselves more open to attack,
it might draw them back to the negotiating table faster.”

 
          
“Obviously
it worked—the Chinese navy backed off in a matter of days,” Samson said
proudly. “It was a great victory for strategic air power.”

 
          
“Well,
HAWC can’t seem to get out of its own way lately, from what I hear,” Jamieson
said with a sneer. “I heard rumors of a plane crash, another stolen plane,
right?”

 
          
“I’m
not going to go into details about what happened at HAWC, Colonel,” McLanahan
said, trying not to show the flush of anger and frustration—and the flood of
awful memories—that rose up within him.

 
          
“But
HAWC was closed down, right?” Jamieson asked.

 
          
“Tiger,
drop it,” Samson warned.

 
          
“That’s
all right, General,” McLanahan interjected. “Yes, Colonel, HAWC was disbanded.
Weapon-test operations went to Eglin Air Force Base; flight-test ops went to
Edwards. Most of our more exotic airframes and weapons were either destroyed or
placed in secure storage. Some were dispersed to active-duty units after
cleaning out the classified stuff. In fact, the 509th was slated to get one of
our experimental airframes, Air Vehicle Oil. The test crews and technicians
were reassigned; the senior staff members were given early retirements,
including me.”

 
          
“You
don’t look too retired to me,” Jamieson said. There was a knock on the door at
that moment, and two more Air Force officers were shown inside by uniformed and
plainclothes security officers.

           
“Colonel Jamieson, I didn’t come
here to be evaluated
by
you: I came
here to evaluate
you,
” McLanahan
said. He motioned to the newcomers and said, “Colonel Jamieson, this is Major
General Brien Griffith, commander of Air Force Air Intelligence Agency; Colonel
George Dominguez, the chief B-2A maintenance officer assigned to this task
force; and Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Marcia Preston, my deputy and
liaison officer with the office of the White House National Security Advisor.
Colonel Dominguez, Colonel Preston, and I are the chief officers of a task
force of the Air Intelligence Agency, code-named Future Flight. We’re going to
take charge of Air Vehicle Oil.” Jamieson’s jaw dropped open in surprise as
McLanahan continued, “We are going to use the B-2 A to fly covert
reconnaissance and defense-suppression missions in support of National Security
Agency operations.”

 
          
“You’re
CIA?” Jamieson retorted. “You’re a goddamned CIA agent?”

 
          
“I’m
a crewdog, not a CIA agent,” McLanahan said.

 
          
“You’re
a contractor, a
former
crewdog
working for the CIA,” Jamieson corrected him. “You got canned because of some
fiasco at HAWC, so now you sell your services to the guys with more money than
brains—”

 
          
“You
don’t know shit about me or my mission, Colonel! ”

 
          
“I
don’t fucking
care
to know!”

 
          
“All
right, both of you, shut up,” General Samson interjected. “Colonel, you listen
to what this man has to say. I’ll give you an opportunity to talk. Now you
listen.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir,” Jamieson relented. “Sorry, but I’m a little confused and a little angry
that I’m being ‘volunteered’ for some illegal ops. So what does this Future
Flight want with me?”

 
          
“General
Griffith is taking command of Air Vehicle Oil and assigning it to Future
Flight,” McLanahan explained. “My job is to assist Colonel Dominguez in
equipping it, then to recruit, train, and fly reconnaissance and
defense-suppression missions in the
Middle East
.
Eve chosen you to be my aircraft commander.”