Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (42 page)

           
“Then do it,” Balboa said. “But you
are not authorized to speak with anyone else, especially foreign nationals, at
any time. The only persons you are authorized to communicate with are units or
command posts briefed to you prior to takeoff. Failure to comply with this
order will subject you and your co-workers to the most severe penalties
allowable. Is that clear?”

 
          
“Yes,
sir,” McLanahan said. Elliott shook his head and rolled his eyes at his partner
acceding to Balboa’s lame threat so passively, but McLanahan ignored him. “Sir,
I need permission to contact Lieutenant Vikram’s family. ”

 
          
“Denied,”
Balboa said. “My staff will decide how to handle notification. You worry about
your patrol missions and keeping out of trouble. Dismissed.” The
videoconference link was abruptly terminated.

 
          
“What
a butthead,” Elliott fumed. He got up and found himself a cup of coffee. “I’ll
bet he wanted so badly to shit-can us that he probably considered ignoring the
President’s orders. That asshole, blaming
you
for all those deaths. Ignore all that, Muck. The PLAN’s at fault for
attacking the ROC and for killing Emitter, not you.”

 
          
McLanahan
got up. His muscles were aching, a by-product of long hours in the
Megafortress’s cockpit, nearly an hour of sheer terror while under attack by
the People’s Republic of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy, a dead crew
member, two hours of nursing a crippled bomber back home to an emergency
landing in marginal weather—and then, after all that, a tongue-lashing by the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs. All in all, a pretty shitty twelve hours. He
wasn’t ready to hear Round Two from Brad Elliott. “Let’s give it a rest now,
Brad, all right?” McLanahan asked. “We’ve got a lot to do—get repairs going on
our damaged bird, get the patrols back in the air.” He wanted to call Emil’s
family, whom he had met several times, but decided against it.

 
          
“The
first thing I’m going to do is make a few phone calls back to Washington,”
Elliott said resolutely. “I’ve got plenty of markers to call in. Balboa doesn’t
have the authority to cancel our contract. If we put a little pressure on him,
he’ll be forced to back off. We should—”

 
          
“Do
nothing,” McLanahan said angrily. “Nothing. No phone calls, no markers. Just
back off, okay?”

 
          
“What
in hell’s the matter with you?” Elliott asked. “You can’t let jerks like Balboa
run our lives. He’s the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, not commander in chief or
the damned emperor. ”

           
“Brad, he’s running this operation.”

 
          
“Balboa
and Allen are pissed because we launched a couple Rainbows and Wolverines and
protected that frigate,” Elliott went on. “They would’ve done the same if they
were flying that mission, but because
we
did
it, they’re mad. I’ll tell you the truth, son—if it was
their
plane, or if they had a ship of their own in position,
theyd’ve blasted that carrier and destroyer and as many of the other ships back
there to hell in the blink of an eye! You know it, and I know it.”

 
          
“I
hear you, Brad, and I agree one hundred percent,” McLanahan said. “But
they
are calling the shots, not
us.
That’s the difference. We weren’t
given the go-ahead to make our own attack decisions. It may be hurt pride, or
embarrassment, or professional jealously, whatever—it doesn’t matter. They say
‘jump,’ we ask ‘how high?’ ”

 
          
“What
about Sung? What about those Taiwanese sailors? They died right before our
eyes, waiting for our help.”

 
          
“Brad,
if that had been an American ship down there, I’d have stayed until all our
weapons were exhausted, and then I would’ve helped the other Megafortresses
roll in on target, and then I’d go back and reload and come back out again,”
McLanahan said. “But it wasn’t one of ours.”

           
“So you
don't care
what happens to them?” Elliott asked incredulously.
“Man, this doesn’t sound like you at all.”

           
“What I care about is how this
weapon system integrates with our other military forces,” McLanahan said, “not
how we can kick ass and sink ships all over the Pacific. We’re not mercenaries,
and we’re not avenging angels.”

 
          
“What
is this? I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” Elliott shouted, shaking his head.
“Did you think you had a chance of ‘integrating’ the Megafortresses with any
project coming out of the Pentagon? Did you really think Balboa was going to
embrace you and the Megafortresses, whether or not you did as you were ordered
to do?”

 
          
McLanahan
was silent—he knew Brad Elliott was right. The Megafortresses got to fly over
the Formosa Strait only because he and Terrill Samson had earned the Presdent’s
attention and respect as a result of the secret Iran bombing missions. Patrick
had deluded himself into believing that he could reintegrate the modified B-52s
into the American aerial strike force—but that was not going to happen. The
current Pentagon brain trust did not care for large land-based bombers. They
weren’t going to pay any money to keep any around, no matter how high-tech they
were. The Quemoy mission was dead right from the start. Emil Vikram may indeed
have died for nothing.

           
“Screw it, Brad, just screw it,”
McLanahan said irritably. “I’m tired of your military services bigotry, I’m
tired of the political games, and I’m tired of risking my neck for nothing.
Just shut up and—”

 
          
“Whoa,
whoa, listen to yourself, Muck,” Elliott said. “You sound like a quitter, like
a spoiled brat who just wants to take back his bat and ball and go home. What
is with you? This doesn’t have anything to do with Wendy being pregnant, does
it? You’re not trying to keep us out of harm’s way because you got one in the
oven, are you?”

 
          
“Wendy’s
pregnant?”
Cheshire exclaimed. “Is it
true? You didn’t tell us this, Muck!”

 
          
“Tell
’em, Muck,” Elliott said, that cocksure grin on his face again. He guessed,
McLanahan knew, and he was smug and happy that he guessed right.

 
          
“Yes,
it’s true,” McLanahan said. “We didn’t say anything because we’re only going on
our third month.” McLanahan jammed a finger in Elliott’s face. “General, it has
nothing to do with Wendy—it has to do with
you,
”
he shot back angrily.

 
          
“What
about me? I’m doing my job, the job I was hired to do!”

           
“Hired by whom? Jon Masters, the
U.S. government—or the Taiwanese government?” McLanahan asked.

           
“What in hell are you talking
about?” Elliott retorted, perhaps a little too vehemently.

 
          
“I’m
wondering how that Captain Sung synchronized onto our comm channel during our
surveillance,” McLanahan said hotly. “The chances of him finding our initial
frequency, channel-hopping along with us, then calling in the blind and
reaching us at the exact moment we were in the area—I’d say that was a
thousand-to-one shot.”

 
          
“A
kid with a Radio Shack scanner and some brains can do it,” Elliott said. “You
know that.”

 
          
“So
how did he know we were flying a bomber?”

 
          
“He
must’ve guessed,” Elliott said. “That Taiwanese ambassador saw us in the White
House; he knows we’re bomber guys, and he passed the info along to his navy.
Hell, stealth bombers have been in the news for months now.”

 
          
“So
I suppose you guessed the captain’s name, then?”

 
          
“What?”

           
“You mentioned the captain’s name,
Sung, even before he called us on the secure channel,” McLanahan said. “You
also admonished Sung for launching the attack when he did. You didn’t bother
getting an authentication—even though you got one from Samson, talking to him
over an even more secure satellite freq—because you knew Sung
couldn't
authenticate. And you were
quick to blame the Navy for lousy communications security, when it was
you
all along.”

 
          
“You’re
nuts, Mack.”

 
          
“Nuts,
huh? Why don’t I call back to Blytheville and get Wendy to pull the phone
records from the day before our launch?” McLanahan asked angrily. “We can get
the caller’s name and number for any call in or out of headquarters, and
Security might even be able to get a transcript. You must’ve been in contact
with someone right before launch—we can find out who it was.”

 
          
Elliott
was about to protest again, but he looked at McLanahan’s stone-angry face and
cracked a smile. “Jesus, I can’t believe I guessed right: you
are
going to have a baby,” the old
ex-three-star general said. “I think of you as a son, Patrick. I feel like I’m
going to be a granddad.”

 
          
“Stick
to the point here, ‘grandpa.’ ”

 
          
“All
right, all right—yes, I was in contact with the Taiwanese—with Kuo, the new
ambassador to the U.S. that we ran into in the West Wing,” Elliott said
resignedly.
“He
called
me,
and that’s the goddamn truth. He
knew, or guessed, everything we were about to do. He told me about Taiwan’s
plans to block the Chinese fleet. He told me about the intelligence they
received about China putting nuclear warheads on its land attack and anti-ship
missiles. And then he asked for my help. What in hell was I supposed to do?”

 
          
“You
were supposed to hang up and report the foreign contact to the security
department at Sky Masters, Inc.,” McLanahan said, “and sure as hell, you
weren’t supposed to confirm any information or reveal any information to him,
like the synchronizer codes! Jesus, Brad, if Balboa ever finds out—no, I should
say,
when
Balboa finds out!—he’s
going to throw all of us in prison for twenty years! It’s a clear violation.”

 
          
“Balboa’s
too stupid to find out, and besides, I think the ROCs will cover their trail
and explain away the rest,” Elliott said confidently. “Don’t worry about it.”

 
          
It
was no use arguing with Elliott over this, McLanahan decided—as usual, he felt
he was invincible, not just above the law but somehow blessed by God and given
full authority to stretch the law and the truth with impunity. He continued to
study his friend and mentor, watching him sip coffee; then: “You okay, Brad?”

 
          
Elliott
seemed startled, then annoyed, that anyone was watching him. He scowled over
the rim of his coffee mug. “I’m fine, Mack. Why?”

           
“How’s the chest pains?”

           
“Chest pains? What chest pains?”

           
“You complained of chest pains on
the plane.”

           
“I just got blasted half out of my
seat by an imploding one-hundred-pound sheet of Lexan,” Elliott responded.
“You’d be in pain too.”

           
“Nothing else? Shortness of breath,
numbness in the arms, blurred vision, feelings like indigestion, headaches?”

           
“Hey, Dr. Pat, I did not, nor am I
now, having a heart attack or stroke,” Elliott retorted. “Sure, I got rattled
when that windscreen blew out in my face. Yeah, I could use about twenty-four
hours of sleep—in fact, that’s where I’m headed right now. You want to waste
time hooking me up to monitors and making me walk a treadmill, go ahead—I
challenge
you
to keep up with me! In
the meantime, Balboa will be chopping up your planes right there in the hangar
and trying like hell to toss
our
company
into the crapper. You make the decision, mission commander. I’m going to hit
the rack. ”

 
          
On
his way out, Elliott bumped into none other than Wendy McLanahan. Without one
bit of surprise at her being on Guam, he gave her a kiss on the forehead.
“Congratulations, gorgeous,” he said simply, then walked away toward the exit.

 
          
“Brad?
Hey, General, how about . . . ?” But he was off, leaving Wendy confused.