Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (67 page)

           
“So what do we do, then?” McLanahan
asked. “This is what might be called a target-rich environment. What’s first?”

           
“General Stone and the Joint Task
Force still haven’t decided,” Elliott replied. “They have a general outline to
work with, but they’ll wait for the latest satellite data from
Washington
before going ahead with a frag order. If
Jon

           
Masters* setup was working, we’d be
done by now—it only takes a few minutes to build a frag order from PACER SKY
data. We get flight plans, data cartridges, computer tapes, charts, briefing
boards, even slides from his system here. Now we have to program all this stuff
by hand.” McLanahan saw Masters on the master console. “Masters, how are you
doing?”

           
“Cool, Mac, my man, real cool,”
Masters said. Masters was dressed in white shorts, a flowered Hawaiian shirt,
and sneakers with no socks—it looked as if he had just returned from
Tarague
Beach
, Andersen Air Force Base’s recreation area.
“Brad, we got ten more minutes until the data comes in . . .”

           
“Is it back on-line, Doctor
Masters?”

           
“Not quite,” Masters admitted. “But,
hey, you gotta think positive. Everything looks good so far. Say, Mac, you
ready to kick some Chinese butt out there tonight?” Patrick stared, not believing
what he had just heard.

      
     
“Excuse me, Doctor?”

           
“Yeah, man, you’re gonna clean up,”
Masters enthused. “We got spectacular photos and data, and we’ve got ingress
and egress routes scoped out so well that the Chinks won’t even know you’ve
just kicked their sloped asses . . .”

           
“I don’t think we better—”

           
“Hey, loosen up,” Masters said,
taking a big swallow from his ever-present squeeze bottle of Pepsi. “Just sit
back in that big B-2 cockpit of yours, put on some tunes, turn on the BNS, and
send Uncle Cheung’s squids to the bottom of the
Celebes Sea
. You can come back and we’ll check out the
Japanese babes out on
Turnon
Beach
. .

           
Patrick noticed General Elliott take
a step toward Masters, but Patrick was already moving by then. Without another
word, Patrick had taken Masters’ skinny left arm in his big left hand and had
pulled the young scientist up out of his chair and out of the battle staff
area.

           
“Hey, Mac, I can’t leave the board
quite yet. . .”

           
The adjacent office near the Command
Post was unoccupied and unlocked, so McLanahan took Masters right inside,
closed the door behind him, and deposited him unceremoniously onto the worn
Naugahyde sofa. “Let’s get something straight, Doctor. First, the name is
Lieutenant Colonel Patrick
McLanahan.
Second, you’ve got a big mouth.”

           
Masters stared at the looming,
six-foot blond pilot. He looked a lot bigger standing over him than he had a
moment ago. “Look, Colonel, I know you’re a little nervous about—”

           
“You don’t know jack-shit, including
when to keep your mouth shut about classified material and when to conduct
yourself in an appropriate manner—”

           
Masters smiled weakly. “Hey, who are
you, Dirty Harry?” He tried to rise, but McLanahan pushed him back down.

           
“Get this straight, Doctor. While
you’re in this command post, you’ll not wear shorts or sneakers, you’ll address
the senior officer in the room as ‘sir’ or by their rank, not their first name,
and you’ll keep your bigoted comments to yourself. You’re supposed to be a
professional, so start acting like one.” McLanahan looked at his watch. “You’ve
got about ten minutes before your satellite data comes in—that’s plenty of time
for you to go back to your barracks and change.”

           
“Hey, man, you’re not my father,”
Masters complained. “Get off your Clint Eastwood act and off my case . . .”

           
McLanahan leaned over the couch,
putting his face within an inch of Masters’ own. They were but eight years
apart in age, but worlds apart in experience. McLanahan looked directly into
Masters’ eyes. “I shouldn’t have to be on your case, Doctor. But if you’d open
your eyes, you might learn a thing or two about what’s going on here.”

           
Masters cleared his throat and tried
to look away from McLanahan, but couldn’t. “Hey,” he said calmly, “I
know
what’s going on. I know the weapons
you’re going to use, the routes you’ll fly. I wrote the friggin’ scenarios, for
Gods- sake.”

           
“You may have,” McLanahan said,
moving back a bit from Masters, “but you don’t know anything about combat.
About what it’s like to be in a war machine facing your own mortality. Have
General Elliott or Ormack or Cobb tell you sometime about combat, about life in
the cockpit ...”

           
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that
before—your secret society, your brotherhood of aviators. Brad—General
Elliott—and his B-52s during
Vietnam
, out at that Arc Light Memorial, he tried
to get into it, but he couldn’t explain it. He says, ‘You gotta be there.’
Stone, Jarrel, and all the others, even
you
—you’ve
all
been in combat before. But you
treat it like a game, so why shouldn’t I?”

           
McLanahan bristled. He pulled out
his dog tags from under his flight suit. “A game? What are these, Doctor? Tell
me.”

           
Masters rolled his eyes. This was
boring. “Dog tags. Next.”

           
“You’re partially right. Out here,
Doctor, we have them for more than ornaments on a key ring. See how one is on
the neck chain and one’s a small chain all by itself? There’s a reason for
that. One they bring back to headquarters to prove you were killed in action
—if
they find your body, that is. The
other they keep on the body, usually clamped shut in your mouth.”

           
He pulled out his water bottle from
his left leg pocket. “You see this? Emergency water supply in case I lose my
survival kit after ejection—this could be the only fresh water for a thousand
miles if I have to punch out over the
Philippine Sea
.” He ripped off* his unit patches and name tag from their Velcro strips
on his flight suit. “Patches Velcroed on and removed before we take off in case
we get shot down and captured—so the enemy won’t know what unit we’re from.
Some chaplain will come around and collect them before we go out to our planes.
They’ll check if we made out a will, check to see if they know who our next of
kin are.

           
“Take a look at that data you’re
generating sometime, Masters. Those ships your satellites are locating
represent hundreds of sailors whose job it is to find and destroy me. There are
thousands of sailors out there waiting for us—”

           
“But we know where they are . . . we
know
who
they are . . .”

           
“We know where they are because men
risked their lives to get that data,” McLanahan said. “A man
died
getting us those pictures ...”

           
“Well, once the NIRTSat comes back
on-line, that won’t happen again ...”

           
“It doesn’t matter, my friend.
Combat isn’t a series of pre-programmed parameters on a computer monitor—it’s
men and women who are scared, and brave, and angry, and who feel hopeless. It’s
not a clear-cut engagement.
Anything
can
happen. You gotta realize that the people around you don’t think in absolutes,
because they Icnow that anything can happen . .

           
“Maybe in wars past that was true,” Masters
offered. “When the enemy was a mystery, when you couldn’t see over the horizon
or through the fog or under the ocean, maybe it wasn’t so clear-cut. But things
are different now. Hell, you know more than anyone else how different it is—you
fly the most advanced warplane in the friggin’ universe! We know
exactly
where the bad guys are. Once the
NIRTSats are working again, I can steer your weapons, I can warn you of danger,
I can tell you exactly how many weapons you need to win, and I can tell you how
long it will take you to achieve any objective ...”

           
“Then tell me this, Doctor Masters,”
McLanahan said, affixing his steel-blue eyes on the scientist and letting his
glare bore into him: “Tell me who’s going to die out there.”

           
Masters opened his mouth as if to
speak, then closed it suddenly, thought a moment, then replied, “I estimate
your losses at less than five percent for the duration of this conflict . . .”

           
“No, I didn’t ask you how many. I
asked
who. ”

           
“Well, how the fuck am I supposed to
know
who?
If you follow the plan and
put your weapons on target, no one should die . . .”

           
“You said
should
die, Doctor. That means that even if everything turns out
perfectly, someone may still die. Right?”

           
Masters shrugged. “Well, it’s very
unlikely, but—anything can happen.”

           
“You’re damned right it can. Now
tell me how to deal with that. Tell me how a highly trained professional pilot
or navigator can climb into a bomber or fighter and fly into the teeth of the
enemy and know that even if everything goes
perfectly,
he may still end up at the bottom of the sea, and I’ll let you act like a cocky
little punk peacock all you want in my command post. Until then you will give
this campaign and the people who fight it
—all
the people who fight it, the combatants on
both
sides—the proper respect.”

           
Masters was finally silent.
McLanahan backed away from Masters, allowing him to get up, but Masters stayed
where he was.

           
“So what you’re saying is—you’re
scared,” Masters said after a few long moments. He looked at McLanahan, and
when the officer didn’t reply for several seconds, Masters’ eyes opened wide in
surprise. “You’re
scared? You?
But
you’re the—”

           
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Patrick said.
“I’m supposed to be the best. But it’s bullshit. I know my shit, and I’m lucky.
That doesn’t make me invincible, and it doesn’t give you or anyone the right to
think this is going to be easy—for any of us. Nothing is cut and dried. Nothing
is certain. We know our equipment, know our procedures, but when you go into
combat we learn not to trust it. We trust
ourselves.
We look to ourselves to find the strength to get through the mission.” Masters
rose and stood before McLanahan, afraid to look into the Air Force officer’s
face but respectful enough to want to be able to do it. “I never realized that,
Patrick. Really. I always thought, ‘Well, the gear’s in place, everything’s
running, so everything’s going to be okay.’ I guess . . . well, I don’t work
with people that much. I’m really so used to dealing with computers and
machines ...” McLanahan shrugged. “Hell, listen to me. A few years ago I never
gave a shit much about people either. I wasn’t exactly what you’d call a team
player. I did my job and went home. I hate to say it, but we were a lot alike
back then.” Masters smiled at that. “Oh yeah? Dirty Harry was laid-back and
mellow? You drank beer and chased girls and got stupid?”

           
It was McLanahan’s turn to smile
this time. He remembered the B-52 crew parties back in California, the weekends
rafting down the American River—one big twelve-person raft for crew dogs,
wives, and girlfriends; another slightly smaller raft for the numerous ice
chests full of six-packs— the bar-hopping in Old Sacramento till two in the
morning, the ski trips to Lake Tahoe when they’d get back to base just minutes
before show time for a training mission. “All the damned time, Jon.”

           
“What happened to you?”

           
McLanahan’s smile vanished, and all
his fond recollections of life back home exploded in a bright yellow fireball
called reality. He put his dog tags back under his shirt and put his water
flask back in its pocket. The pungent odor of jet exhaust and the roar of a
plane on its takeoff run invaded the office, and the horrors of another
impossible mission thousands of miles away flooded back into his consciousness
once again.

           
“Combat,” was all he said, and he
turned and walked away.