Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (11 page)

Clark Air Base, Angeles,
Pampanga Province Republic of the Philippines Philippines Independence Day
Sunday, 12 June 1994, 1147 hours local

           
One of the first major uses of
Masters’ new NIRTSat constellation of real-time position and communications
reporting capability for Air Force aircraft was a few days later—and it was the
most inauspicious. It was the day the last of the United States Air Force’s
aircraft departed the
Philippines
as the Americans turned over their military
bases to full Filipino control. The satellites would control the last of the
American fighters and tankers as they withdrew from the
Philippines
to bases in
Japan
and
Guam
.

           
Headquarters of the U.S. Air Force’s
Thirteenth Air Force at Clark Air Base, sixty-five miles north of
Manila
, was in a magnificent white six-story
stucco building, at the end of a long grassy mall between the NCO and officers’
family-housing areas. Both sides of the mall along the Weston and Wirt Davis
avenues had once been lined with flags of the numerous military units of
several nations that had liberated the
Philippines
from
Japan
during World War II, standing as a monument
to those who had died defending this island nation against the Axis. Now the
sixty poles were vacant except for the three flagpoles at the head of the mall
opposite the headquarters building—the flags of the
Philippines
, the
United States
, and the U.S. Air Force.

           
From his vantage point on the review
stand in front of the headquarters building, Major General Richard Stone
noticed that someone had lowered the American flag down several feet from the
top of its staff—it almost appeared to be at half staff. Perhaps it should be
so.

           
Stone’s aide, Colonel Michael Krieg,
stepped over to his boss and handed him a Teletype report. “Latest on that
skirmish near the Spratlys, sir,” Krieg said. “The Chinese are still claiming
they were attacked by heavy antiship weapons. Twenty-seven Filipinos dead, six
Americans, and five missing.”

           
“Christ,” Stone sighed. He had
watched the repercussions build over the last week since the skirmish. “Do the
Chinese expect anyone to believe that? Why the hell would an oil company have
any antiship missiles on an oil-exploration platform?”

           
“They did have machine guns, sir.
Twenty-millimeter. World War Two vintage American Mk 4. Pretty good operating
condition, too—before the Chinese melted it with a Fei Lung-7.”

           
“Idiots,” Stone muttered. “Opening
up on a warship like that. So what are the Chinese doing now?”

           
“Laying low,” Krieg replied. “Only
occasional incursions in the
Spratly
Island
neutral zone. President Mikaso’s government
is being very understanding about it so far. Vice President Samar issued a
statement calling for reparations from the Chinese.”

           
“Lots of luck.”

           
“Vice President Teguina called for
an investigation—not of the Chinese, but of Mikaso’s government,” Krieg added.

           
“Of
Mikaso’s
government? Not the Chinese? ’Course— that’s typical,”
Stone said. “Whatever it takes to distance himself from Mikaso ... just as he’s
always done. Anything for a headline.”

           
“The little bastard’s got balls,
that’s for sure.”

           
Major General Stone grunted. “You
can say that again— Teguina loves to stir things up. Now, what do we have out
there keeping an eye on things?”

           
Krieg looked at his boss with a look
of pure concern. “In two hours—nothing.”

           
“What?”

           
“Message from CINCPAC.” CINCPAC was
the acronym for Commander in Chief Pacific Command, the
U.S.
military organization responsible for all
military activities from the West Coast of the
United States
to
Africa
. “He wants no combat aircraft or vessels
near the area until they can get a reading from the Chinese. Strictly hands
off.” “Well, what
did
we have out
there?” Stone grumbled, irritated at CINCPAC’s order.

           
“A couple F-l6s from here checking
it out, maybe a P-3 subchaser diverted to Zamboanga Airport or Bangoy Airport
near Davao—er, sorry, they call it Samar International Airport now—to take some
pictures. Apparently the Chinese feel our presence is threatening. CINCPAC
agreed. No more flights within fifty miles.”

           
“A fitting end to a perfectly lousy
day,” Stone said, straightening his uniform and heading toward the reviewing
stand for the ceremony.

           
Major General Richard “Rat” Stone
was the commander of the now disbanded Thirteenth Air Force—the principal
American air defense, air support, and logistics support organization in the
Republic of the
Philippines
. General Stone—whose nickname was short for
“Rat Killer” after a strafing run in his F-4 along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in
Vietnam
had killed dozens of rats with
20-millimeter cannon fire—commanded the twenty different organizations from
five major operating commands at Clark Air Base.

           
Principal of all the organizations
on his base was the Third Tactical Fighter Wing, composed of F-l6
fighter-bombers and F-4G “Advanced Wild Weasel” electronic warfare and defense
suppression fighters; and the 6200th Tactical Fighter Training Group, who
operated the various tactical training ranges and fighter weapons schools in
the Philippines and who ran the seven annual “Cope Thunder” combat exercises to
train American and allied pilots from all over the Pacific. The Third Tactical
Fighter Wing, whose planes had the distinctive “PN” letters on the tail plus
either the black “Peugeots” of the Third Tactical Fighter Squadron or the
“Pair-O-Dice” of the Ninetieth Tactical Fighter Squadron, flew air-to-air and
air-to-ground strike missions in support of American interests from
Australia
to
Japan
and from
India
to
Hawaii
.

           
Clark Air Base had also been home to
a very large Military Airlift Command contingent of C-130 Hercules transports,
C-9 Nightingale flying hospitals, C-12 Huron light transport shuttles, and
HH-53 Super Jolly and HH-3 Jolly Green Giant rescue and special-operations
helicopters. The 374th Tactical Airlift Wing shuttled supplies and personnel
all across the South Pacific and would, in wartime, deliver troops and supplies
behind enemy lines. The Ninth Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, the Twentieth
Aeromedical Airlift Squadron, and the Thirty-first Aerospace Rescue and
Recovery Squadron all provided medical airlift support and would fly rescue
missions over land or water to recover downed aircrews—these were the
organizations that first welcomed the American prisoners of war from
Vietnam
in 1972. Clark also housed the 353rd
Special Operations Wing, whose MC-130E Combat Talon aircrews trained to fly
psychological warfare, covert resupply, and other “black” missions all across
the Pacific.

           
The base also supported the other
American and Filipino military installations, including Subic Bay Naval
Station, Sangley Point Naval Station, Point San Miguel Air Force Station,
Camp
O’Donnell
, Camp John Hay, Wallace Air Station,
Mount
Cabuyo
, Mactan Airfield, and dozens of Philippine
Coast Guard and National Guard bases.

           
In essence, Clark Air Base had been
a vital link to the Pacific and a major forward base for the
United States
and its allies since it opened in 1903. Now
it was all being handed back to the Philippines—handed back to them during some
of the most volatile and dangerous times in the country’s history.

           
Stone’s gaze moved from his
country’s flag to the throngs of noisy protesters outside the perimeter fence
less than a kilometer away. At least ten thousand protesters pressed against
the barbed wire-topped fences, shouting anti-American slogans and tossing
garbage over the brick wall; Stone had arranged armored personnel carriers
every one hundred yards along the wall surrounding the base to counter just such
a demonstration. The Americans inside those carriers were armed only with
sidearms and tear-gas-grenade launchers, and the Filipino troops and riot
police outside the gates had nothing more lethal than fat rubber bullets. They
were being pelted by rocks and bottles so badly that the carrier’s crews dared
not poke their heads out or even open one of the thin eye-portals. The throngs
could easily overrun them all if they were stirred up. Occasionally a shot
could be heard ringing out over the din of the crowd. Stone realized that,
after weeks of these protests, he no longer jumped when he heard the gunfire.

           
The Thirteenth Air Force commander
had aged far beyond his fifty years in just the last few months. Of no more
than medium height, with close-cropped silver hair, piercing blue eyes, broad
shoulders narrowing quickly to a trim waist, and thin racehorse ankles, Stone
was a soft-spoken yet energetic fighter pilot who had risen through the ranks
from a “ninety-day-wonder” Officer Training School pilot candidate during the
Vietnam War to a two-star general and commander of a major military
installation defending a principal democratic ally and guarding America’s western
flank. In the past year, however, he had found himself supervising a degrading,
ignoble withdrawal from the base and the country he had learned to love so
well. It was deeply depressing.

           
From a contingent of nearly eleven
thousand men and women only twelve months earlier, Stone had assembled the last
remaining two hundred American military personnel on the mall in front of the
reviewing stand, to march one last time in parade. Although there were supposed
to be ten persons from each of the twenty resident and tenant organizations on
the base, Stone knew that most of the two hundred men and women who marched
before him were security policemen, who had been hand-picked to ensure the
safety of General Stone and the other Americans from Clark AB as they departed
that day.

           
Part of the reason for the huge
demonstration outside the perimeter fence was the presence of the two Filipino
men on the reviewing stand with Stone: Philippine President Arturo Mikaso, and
First Vice President Daniel Teguina. Teguina had carried the cry for the
Philippines
to cut all ties with the West and to not
renew the leases on American military bases. Unlike the refined and elderly
Mikaso, Daniel Teguina liked to be in the public eye, and he carefully polished
his image to reflect the young radical students and peasants that he believed
he represented. He dressed in more colorful, contemporary clothes, dyed his
hair to hide the gray, and liked to appear in nightclubs and at soccer matches.

           
The National Democratic Front,
despite reputed ties to the New People’s Army, the organization that controlled
the Communist-led Huk insurgents in the outlying provinces, flourished under
the Mikaso-Teguina coalition government. Under Mikaso’s strong popular
leadership, the military threat to the government from the extremist Communist
forces subsided, but the new, more radical voices in the government were harder
to ignore. It didn’t take long for a national referendum to be called after the
1994 elections, which forbade the President to extend the leases for American
bases any further. The referendum passed by a narrow margin, and the United
States was ordered to withdraw all permanent military forces from the
Philippines and turn control of the installations to the Philippine government
within six months.

           
Second Vice President General Jose
Trujillo Samar, who was not present at the ceremonies, shared the majority of
Filipinos’ distaste for American hegemony, and he fought hard for removal of
the bases.