Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (10 page)

 
          
“
Sandusky
, this is Saber flight,” the pilot of the
lead F-22 radioed. “No fair. We can’t chase you guys down that low without
busting the ROE. How about one pass at Phase Three?” Phase Three was the most
realistic, most dangerous level of combat exercise: 1,000 feet between
aircraft, no lower than 200 feet above the ground, max closure rate of 1,000
knots, unlimited bank angles. Samson said nothing; Carter considered that
silence as permission and agreement from the aircraft commander.

 
          
McLanahan
didn’t ask if Samson wanted to play, didn’t wait for any comments from anyone
else. “Saber flight, this is
Sandusky
, acknowledged, Phase Three, we’re in.”

 
          
“Saber
flight’s in, Phase Three, fight’s on.”

 
          
“They’re
coming around again,” McLanahan said. “I’ve got a sliver valley off to the
left. Take it right in between those ridges. I’ll dial it down to
COLA
—they’ll lose us for sure.”
cola
stood for Computer-generated
Lowest Altitude, where the terrain-avoidance computer would sacrifice safety to
choose the lowest possible altitude—it could be as low as just a few dozen feet
above ground, even in this rocky, hilly terrain. “We’ll pop up through that
saddle to the south before the valley ends and swing all the way around behind
them. They won’t know what the hell happened.” But instead of turning right,
McLanahan felt the EB-52 start a climb. “Hey, get the nose down, sir, and give
me a right turn, there’s your track.”

 
          
“I
said enough, Patrick,” Samson said. He punched off the attack computer from the
autopilot and started a slow climb, straight ahead down the wide valley. It did
not take long for the kill—the F-22 fighters roared on them at supersonic
speed, radars locked on, and passed less than 600 feet overhead. The sonic boom
sent a dull shudder and a loud thunderclap through the bomber. Samson switched
his number one radio to the range safety frequency and keyed the mike: “All
players, knock it off, knock it off, knock it off.
Sandusky
is RTB.” The F-22s could be seen rocking
their wings in acknowledgment as they climbed out of sight.

 
          
Patrick
McLanahan punched in commands to give Samson steering cues to the range exit
point, then stripped off his oxygen mask in exasperation. “What in hell was
that, General?” he asked. “You don’t give up during a chase like that! ”

 
          
“Hey,
McLanahan, you may be a civilian, but you watch your mouth and your attitude,”
Samson said angrily, his head jerking to the right. “It wasn’t a chase,
McLanahan, it was showboating. We weren’t scheduled to go low, and we sure as
hell weren’t fragged to do terrain avoidance or do lazy eights around mountains
like that!”

 
          
“I
know we weren’t,” McLanahan said, “but we got the gas, the TA system was up, we
got the fighters, and they wanted to play.”

 
          
“We
didn’t brief it, we didn’t plan it, and I’ve got two civilians on board,”
Samson interjected angrily. “Yes, you’re a civilian, McLanahan. I know you can
do the job, I know you’re every bit as capable as an active- duty crew member,
but you’re still just a civilian observer. Hell, McLanahan, I’m
not
qualified in this contraption, and I
haven’t flown terrain-avoidance missions in ten years, let alone been chased by
Lightnings at five hundred AGL! It was dangerous.”

 
          
“It’s
nothing you haven’t done before, General,” McLanahan said. “I know you’ve gone
over the Mach at one hundred AGL in the B-1B, and you’ve shook off fighters in
a
B-52
down low before, too.”

 
          
“That’s
enough, McLanahan,” Samson said. “The test is over. Sit back and enjoy the ride
back to Edwards.” He turned to look over his right shoulder at Masters. “You
okay, Dr. Masters?”

 
          
“Sure
. . . fine.” He looked right at the edge of losing control of his stomach’s
contents, but he wore a concerned expression. “I hope you didn’t stop all that
yanking and banking pilot stuff because of me. Actually, I was starting to get
into it.”

 
          
“Why
did
you stop, Terrill?” McLanahan
asked. “Why did you let those guys get us?”

 
          
“What’s
the point, Patrick?” Samson asked in an angry tone. “Like you said, it was
daylight, they had us visually. They got us. We didn’t have a chance. We were
just rolling around down close to the ground, waiting for them to kill us. We
couldn’t escape. It was inevitable.”

 
          
“Nothing
is inevitable, sir,” McLanahan
said. “We can beat even the F-22 Lightning down low. I’ve seen the best
fighters in the world lose a
B-52
when it’s down in the rocks—the more high-tech a fighter gets, the less capable
it’ll be in a visual chase down low.”

 
          
“I
know that, Patrick. I’ve done it myself.”

 
          
“But
we can’t show the powers that be how good we are if we keep on calling ‘knock
it off’ the minute we’re bombs-away, sir. We’ve got to prove that we can
survive in this day and age of superfighters and high- tech air defense
systems.”

           
“You’re preaching to the choir,
Patrick,” Samson said, “but unfortunately I think the heavy bomber is going to
become a thing of the past with or without the Wolverine missile. The Pentagon
understands the concept of employing squadrons of fighters and fighter-bombers
overseas or aboard carriers—they don’t understand, or refuse to accept, the
idea that we might not be able to send a carrier into a certain part of the
world, or we might not be able to establish a forward operating base close
enough to the enemy to use a fighter-bomber.”

 
          
“So
. . . what are you saying, sir?”

 
          
“I’m
saying, as of October first, Eighth Air Force goes away—and with it, most of
the heavies.”

 
          
“What?”
McLanahan interjected. “The Air
Force is doing away with the long-range bombers?”

 
          
“Not
entirely,” Samson replied. “Twelfth Air Force gets one B-2 wing, twenty planes
by the year 2000—hopefully with ten or twenty more, if Congress gets their act
together, by 2010—and three B-1B wings, two Reserve wings, and one Air National
Guard group.”

 
          
“No
B-lBs in the active duty force—and
all
the BUFFs and Aardvarks go to the boneyard?” McLanahan exclaimed, referring to
the B- 52s and F-llls by their crewdog-given nicknames. “Unbelievable. It
doesn’t seem
real.
”

 
          
“Fiscal
realities,” Samson said. “You can fill the sky with F-15E fighter-bombers for
the same price as a single B-2 squadron. The President looks at Mountain Home
with a huge ramp full of a hundred F-15s, F-16s, and tankers, and he knows he
can precision-bomb the shit out of North Korea with just that one wing for
three hundred million per year; or he looks at Barksdale or Ellsworth with just
twenty heavies and virtually no precision-guided stuff for the same money.
Which one does he pick? Which one looks worse to the bad guys?”

 
          
“But
the heavies drop more ordnance, cause more damage, inflict more psychological
confusion—”

 
          
“That’s
arguable, and besides, it doesn’t matter,” Samson interjected. “I can tell you
that European or Central Command planners much prefer to hear that a hundred
Eagles or Falcons are on their way rather than twenty B-52s or even thirty
B-ls, even though a B-l can beat an F-16 any day in conventional radar bombing.
Pacific Command—well, forget it. They won’t even ask for an Air Force bomber
wing unless every carrier is on the bottom of the ocean—for them, almost
nothing except tankers and an occasional AWACS radar plane exist outside Navy
or Marine Corps fighter.”

 
          
“I
just hope, sir,” McLanahan said, “that you don’t let the Pentagon kill off the
heavy bombers as easily as you just let those fighters kill
us.
”

          
 
“Hey, McLanahan, that’s out of line,” Samson
said bitterly. “You listen to me—I believe in the heavy bombers just as much as
you, probably more. I fight to keep the heavies in the arsenal every fucking
day.
”

           
“I didn’t mean to accuse or insult
you, sir,” McLanahan said, iron still in his voice, “but I’m not ready to give
up on the heavy-bomber program. We’d be committing national defense suicide.”

 
          
“You
might want to loosen up a bit, Patrick,” Samson interjected, with a wry smile.
“Those decisions are made far, far above our pay grade. Besides, it was the
success
of the heavy bomber that helped
kill it off more than anything else.”

 
          
“What
do you mean?”

           
“After your overflying of
China
with a B-2 everyone thought had been
destroyed, the world is scared shitless,” Samson explained. “Any talk of using
strategic bombers in a conflict, especially with
China
, looks like a return to the Cold War days,
and it has lawmakers on both sides nervous. The President has ordered all the
Beaks back to Whiteman, and he’s lying low, waiting for the ‘lynch mobs’ to
quiet down.”

 
          
“Lynch
mobs? Someone’s upset that we struck back at the Iranians?” “Don’t you read the
papers, Patrick?” Samson asked with surprise. “Half of Congress, mostly the
left side of the aisle, is howling mad at the President for authorizing those
bombing missions against
Iran
. There’s talk of an investigation, an
independent counsel, even impeachment. Nothing will come of it, of course—it’s
all political mudslinging, and few outside the Pentagon or the closed-door
congressional military committees know what we did over Iran—but the
President’s neck is stretched way out there.”

 
          
“We
proved today that the B-52 is still a first-class weapon system,” McLanahan
said resolutely. “We’ve got five more EB-52s sitting in storage right now, and
Sky Masters can arm them all with Wolverine attack missiles and Tacit Rainbow
anti-radar missiles. The mission has changed, General, but we still need the
B-52s.”

 
          
“The
B-52s have already been fragged for the boneyard, Patrick, including the
Megafortresses,” Samson said. “The moneys already been spent to get rid of
them. Minot and Barksdale go civilian by the end of next year—-hell, my desk
will be auctioned off by Christmas. Give it up, Patrick. I’ll recommend that
Air Force buy Wolverines, but not to equip B-52s—that’s a losing proposition.
Mate Wolverines with Beaks and Bones”—Samson used the crewdog nicknames for the
B-2 A and B-1B bombers—“and I think we’ll have a deal.”

 
          
But
McLanahan wasn’t listening—he was lost in thought, his eyes locked in the
“thousand-yard stare” that he seemed to lapse into from time to time. Even
though he ran checklists and did his duties as a B-2 bomber mission commander,
he seemed to think about a hundred different things all at once. Just like Brad
Elliott, Samson thought. Thinking about how he was going to twist the game to
his advantage, turning over each and every possibility, no matter how weird or
outlandish, until the solution presented itself. Elliott was famous . . . no,
infamous
... for that.

 
          
“Twenty
B-2s and sixty B-ls to cover all of the long-range strike contingencies around
the world?” McLanahan muttered. “You can’t do it, sir. Deploy the force to
Diego Garcia for a
Middle
East
conflict,
then swing them to
Guam
for an
Asia
conflict? Maybe for a few days, but not for
more than that. Who leads the way for the little guys?”

 
          
“That’s
why we got the Navy and the F-117,” Samson said. “Bombers aren’t the only
answer, MC, you know that. You’re forgetting the other twenty-five Air Force,
Reserve, and Guard combat strike wings, the thirteen Navy air wings, the four
Marine air wings ...”

 
          
“Tactical
bombers need forward airstrips, lots of tankers, and lots of ground support,”
McLanahan reminded the general, “and naval bombers need carriers that can sail
safely within range of the target. A conflict in
Asia
, for example, could do away with all of
these.”