Air Battle Force (11 page)

“You want to go back there in twenty-four hours? That's impossible. From what the CIA tells me, the Iranians and Pakistanis are still on full air-defense alert—hell, even CNN still has reporters in the area. It's too hot to try a recovery effort now. You'll have to wait until things calm down.”

“Our plan has taken that into account, sir,” Patrick explained. “Our plan calls for three aircraft plus Air Force tanker support. Two aircraft will be CV-32 Pave Dasher tilt-jets, based off our salvage ship in the Arabian Sea. One of them will be used as an aerial-refueling tanker—it'll go three hundred miles inland with the leader, refuel him, and return to the ship. The lead aircraft will carry the recovery team—Sergeant Major Chris Wohl and three commandos.”

“
Four
commandos? That's
all?
”

“Four Tin Men, sir,” Venti pointed out.

Goff nodded—he knew what just
one
of the Tin Men was capable of. “Almost sounds like overkill now,” he quipped. “I'm afraid to ask, but . . . what's the third aircraft?”

“An EB-1C Vampire missile-attack aircraft,” Patrick responded.

“A Vampire bomber? The same one that you almost got shot down in over Turkmenistan?” Goff asked incredulously.

“The Vampire can attack air, ground, and even surface targets with the right mix of weapons,” Patrick said. “It'll stay at high altitude and keep watch over the entire recovery team from launch to landing. It's stealthy enough to stay out of sight by search radars, and it can defend itself if any fighters manage to get a lock-on and approach it.”

“For Pete's sake . . . ,” Goff muttered. He looked at Patrick and said, “I suppose you already have this Vampire in the theater?”

“Not quite, sir,” Patrick replied. “I've launched one EB-52 Megafortress attack plane, which will go on alert on Diego Garcia in about twelve hours, ready to respond in case the salvage vessel is threatened. I want to launch the EB-1C Vampire attack aircraft within forty-eight hours to be ready to go into the recovery area in case someone goes looking for the wreckage.”

Goff looked at General Venti. “Any other assets we can use in the region, General?”

“The Twenty-sixth Marine Expeditionary Unit can be within range in forty-eight hours,” Venti replied. “But flying nine hundred miles across four hostile countries is a long haul for them, and their support is all nonstealthy fixed-wing planes. They would be able to execute the plan within forty-eight hours, but I wouldn't give them the same chance for success as General McLanahan's troops.”

Goff shook his head—but soon relented. “All right, the mission is authorized. But let me be perfectly clear, General McLanahan: That drone is not worth a scratch on one man or woman's little finger. If it looks too hot, I want your troops out. No downed aircraft, no captured troops, no screw-ups for the president to admit to on the evening news. It gets done perfectly or you don't do it. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“General Venti also says you have a project you want me to consider—some new force concept you want to establish out there at Battle Mountain,” Goff said. “Well, first things first. You pull this one off, General, and you'll have your chance to make your pitch to me and the White House. We're up against an enormous budget crunch, as you know, but you know what the president and I like: state-of-the-art, cutting-edge stuff. Stretch the limits. Build in lots of redundancy, make it reliable and powerful, make it a definite force multiplier, and—most important—dazzle us. If you can do that, you've got a chance.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Goff looked at his watch. “Catch up with me, General. Congratulations for bringing your cripple home, you two.” He headed toward the door, then stopped and turned. “I don't need to tell you both that you have lots of enemies in the administration and on Capitol Hill,” he said. “Unfortunately, your crash-landing on Diego Garcia will be considered a major screw-up, not a success. Blowing this recovery mission will probably put an end to everything you want to accomplish and everything you're being considered for. Can you handle that, Patrick?”

“Yes, sir,” McLanahan replied with a smile.

The secretary of defense was definitely
not
smiling. “Try
real
hard not to screw this up, General,” Goff said seriously, and he hurried off.

“I've got your Air Battle Force proposal,” Richard Venti said, tapping a folder under the crook of an arm. “I want my staff to look it over first—might take a few days. We'll have to do it by video teleconference when you get back.”

“I'd like to show you what we've done, sir,” Patrick said. “Instead of a videoconference, come on out to Battle Mountain and see for yourself.”

“How much time do you need?”

“One month, sir.”

Venti raised Patrick's briefing folder. “One month—for all
this?
”

“I've hit the ground running, sir,” Patrick said. “We'll put on a show for you that you won't believe. All I need is a few people, and we'll dazzle you.”

“Where's your money coming from?”

“Most of it will come from HAWC, sir,” Patrick replied. HAWC was the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, Elliott Air Force Base, Nevada, which tested high-tech weapons prior to their becoming operational. “Most of the aircraft and weapons still belong to HAWC. Once I get a real budget, I'd like to find funding for my own unit.”

“Where's the rest of it coming from?”

“I thought it would come from the One-eleventh Wing,” Patrick said, turning and looking at Rebecca Furness. “Her unit owns the EB-1C Vampires, and their base up in Battle Mountain has the space to accommodate us.”

“General Furness? Are you in on this plan, too?”

Rebecca looked at Patrick but managed to reply without too much hesitation, “Absolutely, sir. We're ready to help any way we can.”

“O-kay, if you say so,” Venti said, shaking his head. “I'll brief SECDEF later on in the week—assuming there won't be a hue and cry for our scalps from the NSC. The vice president has some kind of big trip planned to the West Coast in a few weeks. I'll see if he wants us to work your demo into his itinerary. I'm sure SECDEF won't want to miss it. If you can convince the VP, you're in.” Venti grabbed his briefcase; McLanahan and Furness snapped to attention as he departed the room, hot on the secretary of defense's heels.

Rebecca Furness looked completely deflated. “Oh, shit, I thought we were goners—again,” she breathed. “Christ, McLanahan, how in the hell do you get me into shit storms like this? And what in hell is this new Air Battle Force thing all about? I'm the wing commander out there, remember? Those are my planes, my troops, my budget, and my ass on the line, and I don't even know what this is about!”

“Do you want me to get you involved in another ‘shit storm,' Rebecca,” Patrick asked, “or don't you?”

“Maybe if you'd let me in on your plans
before
the shooting starts or before the brass calls us on the carpet, I could help you keep things from degrading into deep, dark shit storms.”

“Rebecca, if I bring you in on this, my objective will be to
upgrade
our situation into a major deep, dark shit storm,” Patrick said. “At least it'll be a major one for the bad guys.”

“Well, if you put it that way,” Rebecca said, rolling her eyes in disbelief—and maybe a little apprehension, “how can I possibly refuse?”

A short time later

Since its formation in 1947, every U.S. president had treated the National Security Council in a different way. Some presidents, like Kennedy and Johnson, largely ignored the NSC except in the direst emergencies; others, like Eisenhower, treated it as an extension of the military; other presidents used the NSC as a clearinghouse for data from all the different departments; still others used it as a leash to try to keep the executive departments in line. Many times the NSC ran the foreign-affairs show; other times it was seen as just another bureaucratic hunk of sludge, slowing down the government machinery.

In 1961 President Kennedy appointed the first national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, and set him up in the Situation Room in the basement of the White House to monitor the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion. Although the National Security Council met only forty-nine times in Kennedy's administration and was soon obviated by Kennedy's “whiz kids” and Johnson's “Kitchen Cabinet,” at that point the position of national security adviser was crafted and remained fairly similar. . . .

Until the turn of the twenty-first century and President Thomas Nathaniel Thorn. This president never appointed a national security adviser; the National Security Council staff was reduced from over two hundred staffers to just four dozen. The other statutory members of the NSC—the president, vice president, secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the director of Central Intelligence—used their own staffs to collect, distill, and analyze the mountains of information that poured into the White House every hour.

The national security adviser was not the only cabinet-level position never filled by Thomas Thorn—not by a long shot. The vice president, Lester Busick, acted as the president's chief of staff and press officer; the secretary of defense, Robert Goff, was director of Homeland Security and was considered the de facto national security adviser and the president's closest counsel. Several cabinet departments had been combined: the Department of Health and Human Services now included the Departments of Education, Veterans Affairs, Labor, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy; the Treasury Department now included the Commerce Department, the Office of Management and Budget, and the U.S. Trade Representative; the Department of the Interior now included the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, plus the Environmental Protection Agency. Because of this organization and the extreme degree of cabinet-level involvement with day-to-day government operations,
the president kept in very close contact with all his cabinet officers each and every day.

President Thomas Thorn was a young man, in his late forties, quiet and unassuming. Married, with five children, Thorn was a former governor of Vermont and, before that, an ex–U.S. Army Green Beret who had served during Desert Storm, leading platoons of troops deep into Iraq to laser-mark targets for the F-117 stealth bombers that struck the first blows against Baghdad. Thorn was the founder and leader of the Jeffersonian Party and the first third-party candidate to be elected to the White House since Abraham Lincoln—and that was only the beginning of what had to be the most unusual administration anyone could remember.

Thomas Thorn was a true “techie” who made great use of computers, e-mail, and wireless devices to gather, analyze, and disseminate information. His usual style was to gather daily briefs from the cabinet secretaries and the military via secure e-mail, fire back questions and requests, and then get follow-ups. The cabinet officials had access to the president at any time, but the administration was now greatly decentralized—the secretaries were expected to handle situations and make decisions on their own, with only general thematic guidance from the president himself. The president's chief of staff was not nearly as powerful as past holders of that office—he was little more than an assistant, trying to manage the president's busy schedule and his voracious appetite for information.

Thomas Thorn treated the office of president of the United States as a sacred trust, putting his duties only a millimeter under his devotion to his family. He never took vacations, played no sports, had no hobbies, and only rarely used the Camp David retreat. Since the Jeffersonian Party was little more than a philosophy, a way of thinking devised, managed, and practiced only by Thomas Thorn himself, he had virtually no political apparatus behind him, so he rarely made campaign speeches and never went on fund-raising trips.

The National Security Council members met every Thursday morning at 7:00 a.m., usually in the Oval Office for routine matters, in the Cabinet Room for larger briefings, or in the Situation Room for crisis-management meetings; today the meeting was in the Oval Office. The outer-office secretary admitted the cabinet members all at once, and Thorn greeted them with a smile as he made final notes on his wireless PDA. “Seats, everyone, please,” he said. “Welcome.” The NSC members took their usual places at the chairs and sofas in front of the president's desk, and a butler brought in each person's preferred beverage. Thorn usually paced the office while the meeting was under way—although he virtually carried his life in the personal digital assistant, he rarely referred to it during meetings.

“You see Martindale's press conference today?” Secretary of State Edward Kercheval asked no one in particular. “They did a ‘breaking news' thing—I thought we'd dropped a nuke on China or something.”

“Brutal,” Vice President Lester Busick said. “The guy's a nut. He'll be the laughingstock of Washington in no time.”

“I didn't think you were allowed to use Arlington National Cemetery for political events,” Darrow Horton, the attorney general, said. “Maybe I should check into that.”

Robert Goff, the secretary of defense and the president's de facto chief political adviser, nodded in agreement. “Good idea,” he said. “But I wouldn't be too concerned about Martindale. When word about some of the things he's been doing over the past couple years starts leaking, he'll have no choice but to pull out. The American people won't stand for an ex-president who uses his office to carry out secret mercenary missions.”

“Let's get started, shall we?” the president began as he put away his PDA. “I saw the item in this morning's news on the fighting in Chechnya. What's the latest?”