Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (33 page)

 
          
“Two."

 
          
Sivarek
immediately got a radar lock on the second aircraft. It was in a steep descent
at about eight hundred knots, just over the speed of sound. The radar
immediately broke lock, jammed with much heavier jamming signals than before.
“Badger, I've got heavy music .. ." Just then, the F-16 radar indicated a
sweep processor lock fault—the jamming was so intensive and the anti-jamming
frequency hopping so rapid and intense that the radar finally gave up. “Gadget
bent I’ve got a visual on bandit two at my
twelve o'clock
, five miles. He’s started a rapid descent,
heading your way. I’m engaged. 1 think this is another bomber. Reverse course
and cover me. Acknowledge!"

 
          
“I
copy, 101."

 
          
The
Turkish F-16's Sidewinder missile was fully capable of a nose-to-nose missile
kill, especially with a target glowing nice and hot from a supersonic descent.
Their closure rate put him in firing position in seconds. He double-checked
that the
master arm
switch was off, selected AIM-9 on the weapons panel,
got a flashing
shoot
indication in his heads-up display, then called out
on interplane, “Badger, target in range, I am—"

 
          
Suddenly
his threat-warning receiver blared to life—an enemy fighter had him locked on
radar, well within lethal range! He had gone right to missile guidance without
using search radars.

 
          
“One-oh-one,
Control, pop-up target at your
three o'clock
, ten miles, low,” the ground radar
controller reported. “Range telemetry flash records a missile kill. You have
him in sight?”

 
          
At
first he was going to say that it was unlikely he'd see any fighter ten miles
away, but sure enough he saw him—it looked like anotherTupolev-22M, only
smaller. A B-l bomber? “I see another sweep-wing bomber, Control,” Sivarek
said, “but no fighter.”

 
          
“That's
who recorded the kill, 101,” the ground radar controller said. “He has just now
recorded a kill on your wingman.”

 
          
“Kill?
Kill with
what?
Sticks and stones?”

 
          
“Range
control referee confirms that aircraft has air-to-air capability,” the
controller replied. “Report ready for counterair engagement.”

 
          
Sivarek
whipped off his oxygen mask in exasperation, but he choked back his anger with
a loud laugh. “You bet we are ready for counterair engagement. Control!”
Sivarek shouted. “Let that pig just try to come at us again.”

 
          
“Roger,
101,” the controller said. “Proceed to waypoint Tango at patrol altitude and
hold for range clearance. Advise when established in patrol orbit.”

 
          
“Acknowledged,”
Sivarek responded. “Badger, join on me.”

 
          
“What
happened, Caveboy?”

 
          
“We
got shot down.”

 
          
“By
who? I didn’t see anyone! I got one squeak on my warning receiver!”

 
          
“They
claim we got shot down by a B-l bomber,” Sivarek said. “Don’t worry, it’s our
turn now. Join on me.”

           
“Hey, Mack, the Turks say they’re
pissed and they want a shot at you,” David Luger radioed, the humor obvious in
his voice. “Let’s racetrack the Backfires back to destination D-3 and fly the
ingress route again with two-minute spacing. Report reaching.”

 
          
Like
knights on their chargers galloping back to the start of the lists for another
pass at their opponents, the two Tupolev- 22M bombers and the single EB-1C
Vampire escort traveled back to the northeast comer of the range. McLanahan
reported their position just before reaching the point, and moments later they
were cleared inbound.

 
          
“Looks
like the Turks aren’t going to mess with the Backfires this time,” Patrick
reported, as he studied the first laser radar image. The Turkish F-l6s were
both staying high, practically ignoring the two Backfire bombers trying to fly
in low under them. He touched the super-cockpit display on the righi side of
the Vampire’s big instrument panel, then said to the attack computer, “Weapons
safe, simulated, attack targets.”

 
          
"Warning,
weapons safe, attack command simulated re- ceived, stop attack, " the
computer responded, “Scorpion missiles ready, launch two simulated."

           
“Simulated launch two against each
target at maximum range,” Patrick said. “Got you now, boys .,.”

 
          
“Warning,
launch command received. . .”

           
“Patrick, this is Control,
emergency!
Knock it off, knock it off, knock it off!"
Luger suddenly radioed with
the emergency “stop attack” call “Abort the run. Abort the run. Return to base
ASAP.”

 
          
“
Knock
it off, knock it off knock it off!
” Rebecca called out on the exercise
channel. “Stop launch!” The warning was echoed by the range controllers to the
Turkish Air Force and their air combat controllers, and the computer canceled
the launch command just as the forward bomb bay doors were opening. “What the
hell is going on, Luger?”

 
          
“We’re
going operational—right now,” David said breathlessly. “Get on the ground ASAP”

           
“Seats,” Lieutenant-General Terrill
Samson said in a booming voice as he trotted into the
High-Technology
Aerospace
Weapons
Center
’s battle staff room, ordering everyone back
into their seats from attention. McLanahan and Hal Briggs were already there,
along with Colonel Furness and other members of the One-Eleventh Bomb Squadron
and a few senior staff officers from HAWC. “All right, all right, someone tell
me what in hell’s going on.”

 
          
“We
just received a warning order ten minutes ago, sir,” Patrick responded.
“There’s an incident occurring in
Russia
, and we’ve been asked to get ready to
provide support.”

 
          
“That’s
not
entirely
true, sir,” Rebecca interjected.
“We
don’t have a
warning order. We haven’t been authorized to do anything yet.”

 
          
“There
exists an opportunity for the One-Eleventh to provide air support,” Patrick
said. “I think we should get moving on this immediately. The warning order will
be coming through at any moment.”

 
          
Terrill
Samson hadn't felt this kind of excitement since accepting this position at
HAWC two years earlier. Although working at HAWC was certainly challenging and
exciting, it never had the immediacy and vitality of a combat unit. They tested
the world’s most advanced weapon systems, true, but in the end mostly what
Samson did was write a report, submit engineering data, and give the hardware
back to whoever had built it.

 
          
Samson
glanced at the raw eagerness on the face of Patrick McLanahan, HAWC’s deputy
commander. He was a natural- bom leader, certainly deserving of his own
command. But he had been with HAWC too long, seen too much, and did so much
weird—and probably illegal—stuff with the high-tech gadgets that filled this
place that there was no place for him in the real-world Air Force, How could he
be asked to command a wing of B-2A Spirit stealth bombers, the most advanced
warplanes known, when he
knew
that there existed in Dreamland planes and
weapons that were a hundred times more advanced, a thousand times deadlier?

 
          
Samson
was concerned. Patrick McLanahan’s career had developed under the tutelage—most
would use the term “curse”—of Lieutenant-General Brad Elliott, Samson’s
predecessor and the man for whom their base had been named. To put it as
politely as possible, Elliott had been a rogue officer, a completely loose
cannon. He’d been killed on one of his infamous “operational test flights,”
where he had flown an experimental B-52 bomber—stolen right out from under
federal agents—over China during the recent China-Taiwan conflict. Although his
efforts had helped avert a global thermonuclear exchange, perhaps for the sixth
or seventh time in his career at HAWC, one couldn’t help but notice that most
officials in the White House and the Pentagon had breathed a sigh of relief
after hearing that Elliott was dead. The only thing that still kept them up at
night was the fact that Elliott’s body had never been recovered, so there was
still a possibility that the bastard was still alive.

 
          
Patrick
McLanahan had learned from Brad Elliott that, when the shooting starts and it
seems like the world is on the brink of destruction, sometimes in order to get
results it was necessary to color outside the lines. Patrick was much more of a
“team player” than Brad Elliott ever was—but he was no longer young, he had
rank and certainly much higher status, and he was entering his second decade at
the isolated supersecret desert research base. Like McLanahan, Terrill Samson
was a prot£g£ of Brad Elliott—he knew him, knew what a little power and a “damn
the torpedoes, full speed ahead” attitude could do to a man. Samson had chosen
to follow his own path, and he’d earned his stars by playing by the rules. He
was certainly worried that Patrick Mclanahan was following the ghost of Brad
Elliott down the wrong path.

 
          
“Time
out, children, time out,” Samson said pointedly. “I got a call saying that we
received a warning order. Whatever we received, who’s got it?”

 
          
“Actually,
sir, I do,” Lieutenant Colonel Hal Briggs said.

 
          
“You
do?” Samson knew that Hal Briggs was a highly trained and experienced commando
and infantryman—serving as HAWC’s chief of security was only one of his areas
of expertise. He also knew that Briggs had been an operative in some highly
classified intelligence operations unit that he had not been privileged enough
to have a need to know. Briggs handed him a telefax from the command post, sent
from the Director of Central Intelligence, authorizing Hal Briggs as the point
of contact for this operation. “Okay, I’m impressed,” Samson said truthfully.
“Well, Colonel, we’re waiting. If you’re permitted to tell us, let’s hear it.”

           
“Yes, sir,” Briggs said. The tall,
thin, black officer, who had been assigned to Dreamland longer than anyone else
in the room, looked as excited as a kid who’d just been told he’d be going to
Disneyland
for his birthday. “Since Patrick has been
involved in operations of this sort before. I briefed him on the warning order.
He gave me some suggestions, and then recommended I call you and the
One-Eleventh in on it. Since I’m the man in charge of the team, 1 authorized
it.”

 
          
“Proceed,
then.”

 
          
Briggs
motioned to Patrick, who punched instructions into his computer terminal, and a
map of western
Russia
appeared on the large electronic computer monitor at the foot of the
conference table. “My team has been tasked to support a hostile rescue mission
inside
Russia
. Apparently the CIA has a deep cover agent on the run outside Zhukovsky
Air Base east of
Moscow
. The normal procedure was to activate an underground railroad-type
network inside
Russia
to get her out, but the network was shut down.”

 
          
“Obviously,
CIA neglected to tell the agent about this tiny detail,” Terrill Samson
surmised.

 
          
“You
got it, sir,” Briggs said.

 
          
“What
team are you talking about. Colonel?” Furness asked, glancing warily at both
McLanahan and Briggs. She was a full member of HAWC as well as the One-Eleventh
Bomb Squadron and had complete access to the facility, but she also reminded
herself that what she knew was probably only the tip of the iceberg—this place
was so compartmentalized and so deep undercover that she’d probably be
stupefied by everything that went on here.