Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (22 page)

 
          
Admiral
Balboa ignored everyone in the office that he outranked, which meant he planted
himself right in front of Freeman’s desk. “Things are getting a little out of
control here, Philip,” he said in a low voice. “The President looks like he’s
under considerable pressure these days. How’s he doing? How’s he holding up?”

 
          
“The
President is doing just fine, George,” Freeman said. “Let me give you a piece
of friendly advice, my friend: stop leading with your mouth. You could find
yourself out on the street if you keep on equating the President’s decisions
with acts of terrorism. I think you had a chance to dissuade him from approving
the bomber operation, but you blew it by copping this
do-what-I-want-or-kiss-my-ass attitude. And I also suggest you don’t get on the
bad side of Jerrod Hale. You talk with the President maybe an hour a day—but
Jerrod Hale talks to him
sixteen
hours
a day, maybe more. And as you know, no one is closer to the boss than Hale, not
even his actress
-du-jour
Monica
Scheherazade. So back off.”

 
          
Balboa
waved that suggestion away like an irritating fly. “If the President wanted a
yes-man as his Joint Chiefs chairman, he should’ve hired someone else.”

 
          
“You
called the President a terrorist, George?” Brad Elliott remarked. “Shit,
someone better check your medication.”

 
          
“Button
it, Elliott,” Balboa retorted, turning and pointing a warning finger at the
retired Air Force three-star general. He studied Elliott for a moment, his eyes
turning from white-hot angry to disapproving and pitying. “You’re looking kinda
thin, Brad. Maybe we need to schedule you for another flight physical, maybe
check that fancy peg-leg of yours. I frankly don’t think you’d pass. Wonder
what would happen to your project if you were grounded?”

 
          
“I’ll
compare my blood pressure and prostate size with yours any day, you old fart. ”

 
          
“That
will be
the last of that shit I will
ever hear from either one of you in my presence, or else the next sound you
will hear is the door to your cell in
Leavenworth
slamming behind you,” Freeman angrily
interjected. “No judge, no jury, no court-martial. Is that clear? If you don’t
think I have the juice to do it, try me.” Balboa and Elliott simply glared at
each other—Balboa with a dark scowl, Elliott with his sly, maddening grin. “Our
mission is to keep an eye on the Chinese navy and back each other up if a
shooting war starts. Anything that interferes with that mission is nothing but
background noise, and I will squelch background noise immediately and
permanently.

 
          
“George,
you’re responsible for notifying Admiral Allen that the Megafortresses are en
route and will be in his theater. He will have full operational command of the
bombers...” Admiral Balboa smiled at that, until: “. . . through General
Samson.”

 
          
“What?”
Balboa asked. “What does Samson have to do with this mission? This is Pacific
Command’s theater. COMNAVAIRPAC has the staff and experience to—”

 
          
“The
boss wants Samson in the loop,” Freeman said. “No one knows bombers better than
he does. General Samson is hereby temporarily assigned the billet as CINCPAC’s
deputy, effective today. Make it happen, George.”

 
          
“And
what about Elliott?” Balboa asked. “What are you going to make him—chief of
naval operations?”

 
          
“Elliott
is an employee of Sky Masters, Inc., a military retiree and a private citizen,”
Philip Freeman said, ignoring Balboa’s sarcasm. “He has no rights or
responsibilities except those given to him by Dr. Jon Masters and his company
as defense contractors.”

 
          
“But
if I know Elliott, he’ll be piloting one of these Megafortresses you’re sending
to Pacific Command,” Balboa said. “He’ll have his finger on the trigger. Who
gives him the order to cease fire? I ask that because Mr. Elliott here usually
decides for
himself
when to
open
fire—it doesn’t matter to him what
his superior officers or his commander in chief thinks.”

 
          
“Admiral,
fair warning—button it,” Freeman said. “You get Admiral Allen up to speed on
the mission, and let me worry about the civilians. Anything else for me?”

 
          
“I’d
like to make an appointment with the President to talk about this so-called
plan,” Balboa said sternly. “The sooner the better. There might still be time
to convince him of what a stupid idea this is.”

 
          
“Of
course, Admiral,” Freeman replied. “Just go over to Jerrod Hale’s office. I’m
sure he’ll be glad to help you any way he can. Out the door, turn right, end of
the hall, straight ahead.” He picked up his desk phone and added, “Shall I
phone the chief of staff’s office and tell him to expect you?” Balboa scowled
again, spun on a heel, and left the National Security Advisor’s office without
another word, slamming the door behind him with just enough force to rattle a
few pictures but not enough to inflame Freeman’s anger any more.

 
          
“Well,
Brad, I expected the President to hit the roof when he heard you were involved
in this project—it wasn’t so bad coming from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,”
Freeman said wryly. “We might still get an earful from the boss.” Despite all
this, however, Freeman had to smile at seeing Brad Elliott again, looking
pretty damned good regardless of his recent travails. He was a big pain in the
butt, but, Katy bar the doors, he made things
happenl
To Patrick McLanahan, he asked, “So when can you get your
flying circus in-theater, Patrick?”

 
          
“We
can be on-station in twenty-four hours,” McLanahan replied. “Give us your
choice of weapon load, and we’ll have it uploaded by the time we arrive back at
Blytheville
. Crew rest, briefing, preflight, and
fourteen hours’ flight time.”

 
          
“Good,”
Freeman said. “We won’t need you to go right on-station, so you’ll recover at
Andersen. You can change your weapon load at Andersen if necessary?”

 
          
“We
can refuel and rearm hot if you need it,” Jon Masters said. “Hot” reloading
meant reloading weapons and fuel with engines running, trying to get the plane
in the air and into the fight as quickly as possible. “We’ve got enough weapons
available for two weeks of combat operations. First-line stuff.”

 
          
“Shouldn’t
be necessary—but we’ll keep that capability in mind,” Freeman said. He nodded
and smiled at McLanahan. “A whole wing of Megafortresses, huh? Pretty good
idea. There’s no money in the budget for another wing of paper airplanes, let
alone high-tech B-52s, but it’s a cute idea. Any idea who we might pick as
commander of the first wing of EB-52 Megafortresses,
Colonel
McLanahan?” The young navigator- bombardier had no reply,
just a smile. Freeman stood and shook hands with each of them. “Yeah, right.
Get out of here, flyboys. Good luck and good hunting.”

 
          
Heading
down the Grant Staircase next to the Vice President’s office to the visitors’
entrance to the West Wing, McLanahan said in a low voice, “You really irritated
Admiral Balboa back there, Brad.”

 
          
“Irritated
him? You gave him a verbal wedgie back there,” Masters remarked with a laugh.

 
          
“Don’t
worry about Balboa, Patrick,” Elliott said. “He’s worried that we’ll steal his
thunder, just like we did when he was CINCPAC and we brought the Air Battle
Force in to nail the Chinese invasion fleet near the
Philippines
.”

 
          
“I
just think it’s not a good idea to twist his tail, Brad,” McLanahan urged.
“Back then, we had General Curtis as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he ran a
lot of interference for us in the White House and Pentagon so we could employ
the bomber fleet. We don’t have Wilbur or the bombers anymore. If we want to
get a chance to show what our upgraded Megafortresses can do, we’ve got to work
with Balboa and Allen, not fight them.”

 
          
“They
should be happy for
our
assistance,
Patrick,” Elliott said. “They’re the ones out of position.
We're
the ones who can bail them out until they get back in the
game. You don’t want to make us look like a naval air support unit or
something.”

 
          
“I’d
be more than satisfied to be flying in support of the Navy, Brad,” McLanahan
said. Elliott looked at him in surprise, but McLanahan continued. “Sir, I know
that the bombers are a powerful frontline weapon system, and the Megafortress
is the best all-around attack aircraft ever flown. We can deliver more
firepower than any one of those frigates the Navy has in the
Formosa Strait
. But we’re not the frontline force anymore.
Let the Navy take care of the Strait—let’s prove to the brass and the White
House that we can hold the line.”

 
          
Elliott
stopped in the staircase, looked at his young protege, sniffed, and worriedly
shook his head. “C’mon, Muck, don’t tell me you’ve bought this ‘jointness’
crap, all this bullshit about how the
U.S.
military can’t do anything unless every
branch of the service does it together?” he asked derisively. “The service
chiefs, especially the Navy, whine about the lack of ‘jointness’ whenever any
of the other services, especially the Air Force, shows ’em up. The Navy was
aced out in Desert Storm and they whined because we weren’t sharing the target
load. The Navy was embarrassed in the
Celebes Sea
against
China
, and Balboa whined because we supposedly weren’t cooperating. Now
Balboa almost loses the
Lincoln
in the
Arabian Sea
to an Iranian cruise missile, and he whines
because a stealth bomber takes out the Iranian bomber base. Balboa doesn’t want
us to support the naval forces, Patrick. He wants us to step aside and let him
and Allen and the Navy take on
China
single-handedly. He doesn’t want ‘joint’
anything.”

 
          
“Brad,
you may be right, but I’m not in it, so I can thumb my nose at the Navy or wave
the Air Force banner over the burning hulks of Red Chinese warships,” McLanahan
said. “I want to prove how good the Sky Masters’s Megafortress conversion is to
the Air Force.”

 
          
“Good
answer, Patrick,” Jon Masters interjected. “I knew you had the proper point of
view.”

 
          
“And
I’m interested in showing what the heavy bomber can do, no matter who’s in
charge,” McLanahan went on. “If we get into the game as support forces, good—at
least we’re still in the game. But your goal seems to be to rub Balboa’s nose
in our bomber’s jet exhaust. We don’t need to do that.”

 
          
“Hey,
Colonel, I’m trying to do the same as you—get our bombers into the fight where
we can do the most good,” Elliott retorted testily. “But you’re not paying
attention to the politics. Balboa and Allen and all the brass squids at the
five-sided puzzle palace don’t care about jointness and cooperation—they care
about
funding.

 
          
“Look.
We’re trying to get a six-hundred-million-dollar contract from Congress and the
Pentagon to convert thirty B-52s to EB-52 Megafortresses. That’s one-third the
cost of a new Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. Destroyers are good on the open
seas, frigates are good in the littoral regions—shallower water, within a
nation’s territorial waters—but we know in today’s tactical environment that a long-range
stealth bomber with precision-guided standoff weapons is
the
most effective weapon in the arsenal, in any combat area, with
lower costs and much greater mobility. Balboa knows all that, but he doesn’t
care—he just wants that new destroyer, so maybe they’ll stick his name on it
someday. Is that ‘joint’ thinking? Hell no. He doesn’t care about joint
anything. Neither should we. Maybe if we started naming bombers after Joint
Chiefs of Staff chairmen, he’d want more of them.”

 
          
“I
disagree,” McLanahan insisted. “I think we should—”