Battle Born (43 page)

“Once we break out of this anchor, I want everyone three miles in trail and stacked up five hundred feet,
and nowhere else
, unless I give other instructions. It’s VMC today, clear and a million, so we shouldn’t have any formation problems. But if you lose contact with the aircraft in front of you once we enter the area, you must stay on the assigned heading and altitude—don’t make any turns unless directed by the security controller, and don’t do the normal lost-wingman procedures.”

“What area is he talking about, Rodeo?” Rebecca asked.

“I’m talking about the area we’re about to fly into,” Patrick replied. “You’ll find out soon enough. Remember what I said—you follow the controller’s instructions exactly, or they’ll blow you out of the sky. These guys are ultraserious.

“Once we’re lined up and on the approach, you’ll set one hundred ten point eight in the ILS and set an inbound course that I’ll give to you later,” Patrick went on. “That’ll be your approach for landing. It’ll be a four-degree glideslope.
Four degrees.
That’s way steeper than normal, so watch your power and sink rate—we’ll start up high and go down fast. Once you’re established on the localizer and glideslope, you have to stay on it. If you need to go around or deviate for any reason, or if your ILS goes tits-up, you have to announce what you will do and get approval. If you say something and then do something else, or if you don’t announce it first, you’ll get shot down.

“Important: do not raise your landing gear if you need to miss the approach. Flying anywhere near this base in a configuration that looks like you may be able to drop a bomb will be considered a hostile act. If you lose more than two engines and you can’t do a go-around with your gear down, crash-land on the dry lake bed. Bottom line: don’t make any sudden moves.
The troops defending our destination have real itchy trigger fingers.

“Couple more important things: Os,
do not activate the attack radar
once you’re inside the area. In fact, everyone, shut ’em down right now and leave them off—not in ‘standby,’ in ‘off.’ If you radiate, they’ll think you’re on a bomb run and blow your shit away. We maintain distance on the approach by air-to-air DME,
not radar.
DSOs, same with the ECM gear. If you turn on anything, accidentally jam a radio or radar, drop a flare or chaff bundle, or do anything to make it look like you’re hostile, they’ll shoot with everything they got, immediately and with no warning. Shut ’em down now. All the way off. Questions or comments.” This time there were none. “Report to me when you’ve shut down the ORS and ECM gear.”

“Two.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

“Good. Make sure your weapons are safe and locked, but if you can’t get a good safe and lock, don’t worry about it.

“Now, when we arrive at the base, you’ll be directed where to taxi. They will leave no doubt where you should go. It’s hard to see the taxiways, so follow the leader carefully. Stay as close to the plane in front of you as you safely can. Do your before-engine shutdown checklists while taxiing—you’ll have lots of time to do it. I’ll guide you through the things I want you to do. Don’t acknowledge any transmissions unless it’s an emergency or unless you really get confused, and I’ll warn you now, try not to get confused while you’re down there.”

“Too late, General,” said one crew member Patrick couldn’t identify. “I’m confused already.”

“We’ll be directed straight into hangars,” Patrick
said, ignoring the flippancy. “Taxi directly inside. Maintain taxi speed—don’t creep into the hangar. The door in front of you will be partially closed. Shut down the engines as soon as you stop. The hangar doors will be closing behind you, so don’t run engines up or scavenge oil or anything like that. Don’t worry about the weapons, the bomb doors, INS alignments, preserving the maintenance data or the bomb-nav computer data, or anything else but shutting your gear off. Open the entry hatch as soon as the plane stops. Security guards will be up to escort you out. Step on out, follow the guards, and do what they tell you. Any questions?”

“Sounds like you’ve been watching a lot of
X-Files
lately,” someone quipped.

The formation spent nearly another hour in the anchor while Patrick got on the secure voice SATCOM and coordinated their arrival. Now they had barely enough fuel to make it to Nellis Air Force Base with legal fuel reserves, and that base was only sixty miles away. They couldn’t legally land back at Reno even if they wanted to without an emergency air refueling. They were indeed committed to their decision.

If any air traffic control agencies were surprised about their flying into the world’s most restricted airspace, they kept their comments to themselves. But they heard the same warnings from all the civil controllers several times; one controller violated Furness and ordered her to contact Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center upon landing, even giving her the telephone number. Furness replied with a curt “We don’t need no stinkin’ vectors, Center,” and ignored all other directives.

The approach was completely routine, if flying into a hornet’s nest could be considered routine. If they still had their electronic countermeasures gear on, their threat-warning receivers would be alive with surface-to-air
missile tracking radars and height finders, including Hawk and Patriot antiaircraft systems. As they got closer, Furness and Seaver could see several missile emplacements. The Patriot launchers weren’t pointed directly at them—they didn’t need to be—but the I-Hawk and British-built Rapier missile batteries tracked them all the way. It was like looking right down the barrels of a triple-barreled shotgun. They were aimed at an immense dry lake bed, with hard-baked sand stretching as far as they could see. Majestic multicolored mountains ringed the valley, some still with snow at the highest peaks.

The scenery was magnificent—and they would have enjoyed it more if they weren’t so afraid of messing up and getting shot down by their fellow Americans.

As they followed the glideslope down and got closer to touchdown, more and more details became obvious. The runway emerged from the dry lake like a mirage. Several vehicles were parked on the dry lake—a disconcerting mixture of fire trucks and Avenger mobile antiaircraft weapon systems, as if their soon-to-be hosts were eager to both hurt them and help them.

At one point in the approach, Patrick said, “We’ve got traffic at our three o’clock, boys.” Rinc leaned forward in his seat and saw an F-22 Raptor fighter just off the right wingtip. He knew that the F-22 with its thrust-vectoring nozzles could turn and shoot its 20-millimeter cannon right from where it was, without having to maneuver or line up behind the Bone. He saw no missiles, but he remembered that the F-22 carried its missiles internally. He strained a look in his rearview mirror and saw another F-22 fighter sitting off the third Bone’s wingtip. It was very impressive to get such a welcome, but it was even more impressive when you considered that the F-22 was in production only and wasn’t scheduled to become operational for almost five years. This
place had
four
of them, manned, fueled, and presumably armed, available for a simple escort mission.

The runway felt concrete-hard but sandy as Rinc touched down. He stayed off the brakes completely until he saw several armored vehicles arrayed before him nine thousand feet down the runway, blocking it and showing him where to turn off. Patrick had the after-landing and before-shutdown checklists ready to go. Security vehicles, all with roof-mounted machine guns—some with grenade launchers or antiarmor missile launchers at the ready—lined the taxiways. Yep, there was no doubt where they were supposed to go—just taxi in between all the security vehicles with the guns pointed at them.

They were taxiing right at the Bone’s twenty-knot taxi speed limit, but it seemed much faster because of the lack of any outside references—it was as if they were in a dune buggy speeding across the desert. “Bitchin’ place you got here, General,” Rinc said. “Lots of room to stretch out. Good hunting and fishing?”

“You may find out, Major,” Patrick said.

“So this is Groom Lake, right?” Rinc asked. “The supersecret military base. Looks pretty ordinary to me. I’ve seen the four-meter Spot recon photos in the mission planning software too—it looks like Plant 42 at Palmdale. How many folks do you think are taking our pictures from those hills right now?”

“None,” Patrick said. “Our security guys rounded up all the trespassers before we came in. The closest UFO watcher was eight miles away, and we got him. We let them come close to the base once in a while so we can learn their ingress routes, which makes it easier to find them and shut them down when we need to. There were a few satellite overflights we had to avoid too—one Russian, one Chinese.”

“Somebody had to have seen us, General,” Rinc
said. “How can you hide four Bones making a straight-in approach to nowhere?”

“If we were worried about just being seen, Colonel, we would’ve had a tanker come up and refuel us, then land at night,” Patrick replied. “We fly all sorts of airplanes in and out of here every day. The spies and looky-loos aren’t interested in the old Bones—they’re interested in what new planes we got here. But the real research these days isn’t on new platforms—it’s on new expendables, like missiles and bombs.”

“I thought Eglin tests that stuff.” Eglin Air Force Base, near Fort Walton Beach, Florida, was the home of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Munitions Directorate, the headquarters of most weapons development in the Air Force.

“We get everything here, from airframes to avionics to software to bullets,” Patrick said. “We test it all before it goes to places like Eglin or Edwards or Langley, before they write the tech orders or train the instructors or technicians. We test it—and then, after it’s fielded, we try to make it better. That’s what we’re going to do with you.” Patrick pointed out ahead. “There’s your parking spots. You’re on the far left. Keep your speed up and zip right in.” On interphone, Patrick said, “Hold on, crew. We’re going to make a hard stop.”

In the distance they saw a row of ten large sand-colored hangars, all by themselves seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The security vehicles positioned themselves to herd the Bones into individual hangars. They kept up a fast pace, so when Rinc did taxi inside his hangar, the stop was dramatic. Most of the switches were already positioned, and they didn’t need the auxiliary power unit, so it was quick and simple to shut down the engines.

Moments after shutdown, after the entry hatch was motored open, Patrick called out, “Just shut off the battery
and leave everything. Step on out.” Seaver, Warren, and Long did as he said. They were surprised to see a young black officer in desert camouflage with a flashlight, a submachine gun attached to a harness on his chest, and a big .45-caliber automatic pistol holster on his hip, standing at the bottom of the boarding ladder waiting for them to come down. “Afternoon, sir,” he said, flashing them a smile. “Welcome to Elliott.”

The high-powered air-conditioning system inside the hangar was already working to pull the last bit of exhaust and heat from the structure. Security guards were searching McLanahan, and they quickly set to work searching Furness, Seaver, and the others. The guards then asked them to take an arm out of their flight suit sleeves and uncover a shoulder. Using a pneumatic hypodermic, the black security officer shot something into their shoulders, then clipped vinyl-covered bracelets onto their wrists. “What the hell are you doing?” Furness asked. “Is that an anthrax vaccine or something?”

“Wiring you folks for sound,” said the officer cheerfully. “Welcome to the club.”

“This is Lieutenant Colonel Hal Briggs, my security chief,” Patrick said. “Hal, meet . . .”

“Lieutenant Colonel Rebecca Furness, Nevada Air National Guard. Nice to meet you.” Briggs shook hands with Furness, then introduced himself to Dewey and Seaver. Furness studied the gun he wore on his chest harness. It was an MP5K, or “Kurz” (short) model, a very small, close-range submachine gun, so small that it was originally intended to replace an aviator’s personal survival weapon. The submachine gun, with one 15-round magazine already locked in place, was attached to the harness with a quick-release strap, which kept it ready for action while keeping the hands free. Parachute cord connected the folding stock with the harness, so as soon as Briggs drew and elevated the
gun to firing position, the stock would unfold and he’d be ready to fire. “I know all of you—probably in disgusting detail.”

“Hal was in charge of the security evaluation at the 111th,” Patrick explained. “He likes doing his homework. Explain what the microtransceivers do, Hal.”

“You’ve just been injected with a subcutaneous microtransceiver, and those wristbands are the power source and antenna,” Briggs explained. “The devices do a number of things. Basically, they’re like a dog’s electronic ID tag. The microchip has coded information on you. The bracelet is the power source and transceiver—the microchip is inert without it. We can monitor your location, track you, talk with you, give you directions, monitor body functions, and a number of other things.”

“Who the hell said I wanted you to shoot a microchip into my arm?” Furness asked.

“You did—‘Commander,’” Patrick said. “I told you the level of intrusion into your life here is intense, and you didn’t believe me. Well, now your body and your men’s bodies are wired for sound, and someone will be listening and monitoring you—for the rest of your lives.” He glanced at Rinc Seaver and added, “Think about that the next time you’re alone with someone special. Big Brother is not just watching—he’s listening and tracking you too.”

Seaver smiled. “Cool,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. He couldn’t see or feel the microchip.

Furness looked ready to explode. “You’re shitting me!”

“Attention in the area!” someone called out. The guards remained at port arms, but everyone else snapped to attention.

“As you were,” another voice boomed. Furness turned and saw an immense black three-star general in
a flight suit, garrison cap, and spit-shined flying boots stride over to the group. McLanahan and Briggs saluted as he walked over to them. “Nice to have you back, General,” he said to McLanahan. “It should make it a little easier to keep you under some kind of restraint, I hope.”