Fortunes of War (15 page)

“Russia has done nothing to deserve the vicious wounds being inflicted upon her by evil, greedy men, men intent on robbing future Russian generations of their birthright….

“Your leaders have today come to me, asking me to wield the power of the presidency
and the Congress
to save holy Mother Russia.”

His voice seemed to grow louder, deeper, to fill the hall, like the thunder of a summer storm on the steppe.

“In the name of the Russian people, I, Aleksandr Ivanovich Kalugin, take up the sword against our enemies.”

 

When Bob Cassidy walked into the lobby of the McGuire Air Force Base Visiting Officers Quarters to register, the first person he saw was Clay Lacy, sitting in the corner looking forlorn.

“Colonel Cassidy, Colonel Cassidy.” Lacy rushed over. “I've been waiting for you. I called Washington and they said to come to McGuire, but these people don't have me on their list.”

“Uh-huh.” Cassidy signed his name on a check-in card as the civilian behind the desk watched.

“I need to see your ID card,” the desk clerk said to Cassidy.

“Wearing a colonel's uniform, I look like an illegal immigrant?”

“I just do what I'm told, Colonel.”

Cassidy dug out his wallet, extracted the card, and passed it over.

“Didn't get to talk to you after our interview,” Lacy was saying, “but I want to go with you. Over there.” He nodded his head to the east. Maybe south. He didn't seem to want to say the word
Russia
. “I called Washington and they said to come here, to McGuire, so I did. At my own expense. But when I got here, this man said I wasn't on the list, so he couldn't give me a room.”

“Do you really want to go?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Lacy said, glancing at the clerk behind the desk.

“I'll be frank with you, Lacy. You look like a flake to me.”

Lacy was offended. “Have you seen my service record?”

“Yeah. You still look like a flake. Think you got the balls for this?”

“Yes, sir.” Lacy set his jaw. He looked as if he might cry.

Well, the folks in Air Force Officer Personnel said this guy was one hell of a pilot. Maybe there was some mix-up on the name.

The colonel shrugged. If Lacy couldn't cut the mustard in the air, he would put him in maintenance, or give him a rifle, make a perimeter guard out of him. Surely there was something useful an overgrown teenager like Lacy could do.

Cassidy turned to the clerk. “Where's your list for JCS Special Ops?”

The civilian produced a clipboard from beneath the counter. Cassidy looked over the printed list, then added Lacy's name in ink at the bottom. He handed the clipboard back to the clerk.

“Okay, Lacy. You're on the list.”

“Wait a minute, Colonel,” the clerk protested. “Base Housing sent this list over—”

“Give Lacy a room, mister. Right now, no arguments or I'll have your job.” He said it softly, barely glancing at the desk clerk as he picked up his bags.

The clerk swallowed once, took a deep breath, and watched Cassidy's back as he headed for the elevator. When the elevator door had closed on the colonel, the clerk turned to Lacy. “ID card, driver's license, or something.”

They gathered that evening in the second-floor television room of the VOQ. Two Air Force policemen sealed the hall.

“For those of you who haven't met me, I'm Colonel Bob Cassidy. My friends call me Hoppy or Butch; you can call me Colonel.”

No one smiled. Cassidy sighed, looked at the list.

“Answer up if you're here. Allen, Cassini…”

They answered after each name. He knew about half of them, the ones he had recruited and several he had known from years ago.

He put the list down, looked around to see if he had everyone's attention, then began. “Thanks for volunteering. You'll probably regret it before long; that's to be expected. About all I can promise you is an adventure. We are going to Germany in the morning on a C-141. There we'll check out the newest version of the F-22. After a week, two at the most, we'll go to Russia. You pilots will be civilians hired by the Russian government. They may even swear us into the Russian army—we'll see how it goes. The aircraft will be loaned to the Russians by the U.S. Air Force. Although the U.S. markings will be removed, the planes will still be U.S. property, so they will be maintained by active-duty Air Force personnel, who will join us in Germany. Any questions?”

There were none.

“Besides me, I think there is only one other pilot in this room who has ever flown in combat. All of you will be veterans very soon. You undoubtedly have some preconceived notions of what combat will be like. What you cannot know now is how it will feel to have another human being trying his absolute damnedest to kill you. Nor can you know what it feels like to kill another person. All that is ahead.”

He looked at their faces, so innocent. Some of them would soon be dead; that was inevitable.

“We all won't be coming back,” he said slowly. “If anyone wants out, now is the time to say so. You get a handshake and a free ride home from here, no questions asked.”

Nobody said a word. They didn't look at one another, just seemed to focus on places that weren't in the room.

“Okay,” said Bob Cassidy. “We are all in this together. From now on, you are under my rules. Not Air Force regulations:
my
rules. Disobey my rules here or in Germany, I'll send you home. Disobey in Russia…” He left it hanging.

“No telephone calls, no letters, no E-mail, and no one leaves the building. Those of you I haven't met, I will talk to as soon as possible. I want each of you to know what you are in for. That's all.”

Cassidy walked out of the room as someone called the crowd to attention. The people in the room were struggling to snap out of the low lounge chairs as he went through the door. Over his shoulder, he said, “Preacher, come with me.”

Preacher was Paul Fain, a tallish man with a square face and a ruddy complexion. When he entered the colonel's room, he closed the door behind him and grinned, displaying perfect white teeth. “Good to see you, Bob.”

Cassidy reached for Fain's outstretched hand. “What in the dickens are you doing here, Preach? Of all people, I never expected to see your name on that list.”

“Life's an adventure. This sounded like a good one, and when I heard you were in charge, well…Here I am!”

“What about Isabelle? What did she say when you broke it to her?”

“She wasn't happy, but she knows me, inside and out. We're stuck with each other.”

Fain was the only uniformed ordained minister not in the Chaplain Corps that Cassidy had ever met. He was serving as assistant pastor in his first church when he chucked it all years ago and joined the Air Force. When Cassidy had last seen him, Fain was flying F-22s at Nellis. Isabelle was his long-suffering wife, a woman who thought she married a minister but wound up with a fighter pilot instead.

They chatted for several minutes about old times, and Cassidy made Fain bring him up-to-date on Isabelle and the two children.

Finally, Cassidy said, “Preacher, I want you to think this Russia thing through. The rest of them”—Cassidy nodded toward the television lounge—“are adventurers, rolling dice with their lives. Live or die, they don't really care. They want excitement, to try something new, to bet their lives on their skill and courage. A few of them just want to kill somebody. You aren't like them.”

“And you are?”

“Listen to me, Preach. I'm trying to level with you. My wife and kid died years ago. I'm single. I've got nothing in this world. If I get zapped over Russia, no one is going to miss me. No one. The same with that crowd down there. I can order them into combat. When they die I won't lose any sleep over them…and no one else will either.”

“What makes you think I am different from them?”

Cassidy was embarrassed. “You're different because I know you. And someone
will
miss you—Isabelle, the kids.”

Fain didn't reply.

Cassidy growled, “I'll miss you, for Christ's sake. I don't want to take that chance. Go home to Isabelle.”

“No. I volunteered for this fight. Somebody has to be willing to lay his precious neck on the line or the ruthless bastards are always going to keep coming out on top. When God wants me, he can take me. That's always been the case, Bob, and Isabelle can live with it. She has faith in me, and faith in God.”

Cassidy went over to the window and looked out at the summer evening. Clouds were rolling in. Soon the rain should come.

“I guess I don't have faith,” he mused. “Not that kind, anyway. The ruthless, implacable bastards always seem to come out winners.” He found this whole discussion irritating. Preacher Fain should have stayed at home. “People live, and then they die. That's the way of the world. I don't want to lose any more friends. I've lost too many people I care about already.”

“I have enough faith for both of us, Colonel.”

Cassidy didn't know what to say. Fain was cool as ice, as usual. “Okay, Preach. I give up. You want in, you're in. Don't say I didn't warn you. How about sending in Dick Guelich?”

“Thanks, Bob.”

“You're my admin officer. We've got a long night of paperwork ahead of us, so get some pencils and paper and a beer from the fridge, then come on back here.”

“Okay.”

 

Lee Foy found Aaron Hudek in the entertainment room playing a holographic video game. “Hey, Fur Ball.”

Hudek didn't look around. He kept squirting energy balls at alien space fighters, who were addicted to head-on attacks. “Foy Sauce. What are you doing here?”

“Same as you.”

Hudek eventually ran out of energy balls. As he fed more coins into the machine, he said, “Couldn't resist a chance at those Jap fighter jocks, eh? Gonna pop a few. If they don't get you first.”

“Mr. Personality. Gonna be great having you on this expedition.”

“Suck it, Sauce.”

“The road might be rocky, but fortunately we have a world-class diplomat along to impress the locals.”

Hudek was using both hands on the video game's controls, tapping
them, massaging them, caressing them while he moaned with pleasure. The suicidal aliens kept ripping in to get fried, almost too fast for the eye to follow.

Foy giggled. “Still the magic touch with machinery, huh, Fur Ball?”

“Wanta make a bet? A grand to the guy who gets the first kill?” Hudek kept his eyes glued on those incoming alien idiots.

Foy took his time answering. “The difficulty is collecting from a dead man. When I win, you'll probably be long gone to a better, cleaner world.”

“God, the camaraderie! The male bonding rituals!” Hudek exclaimed ecstatically. “What a fool I was to think I could live without it.”

Hudek shot down several hundred more aliens; then the game ended abruptly, a few points shy of a free game. He studied the score, then muttered, “Damn.” He glanced around as he dug in his pocket for more quarters. “You still here? Stay out of my space, Sauce. I don't have time to wet-nurse you.”

 

“You're my executive officer,” Bob Cassidy told Dick Guelich. “You got operations,” he said to Joe Malan. “We'll land in Germany at the Rhein-Main Air Base. A squadron of F-22s there will transfer all their planes to us and we'll ask for volunteers from the maintenance troops. We should get enough mechanics and specialists to keep the planes flying, at least for a while.

“Our problem is training. I demanded at least a week before we go to Russia. We may get more time, but don't count on it.

“One week. It's nowhere near enough. We don't have time to train them; they are going into combat knowing just what they know now. What we can do is make them think about combat, shake off the peacetime complacency, key them up, get them sharp.”

“A week isn't enough time,” Guelich said. “Two months, maybe, but a week?”

“We got seven days.”

“That'll be enough,” Joe Malan said. “I think everybody has trained to combat ready at one time or another. If we put them in the simulator, concentrate on the systems, refresh on tactics, and talk about what they can expect in the air over Siberia, they'll be at seventy-five or eighty percent. The first Zero they see, they'll get pumped the rest of the way.”

“That's your job, Joe.”

“I have to get transitioned to this plane,” Malan objected. “I never flew an F-22.”

“Piece of cake,” Guelich told him. “We'll put you in the magic box first. It's easier than an F-16 or F-18. Very straightforward airframe. You'll pick up the system quickly.”

“What I want to know,” Joe Malan said, “is how we are going to do all the paperwork. Air Force squadrons have staffs of clerks and ground-pounders doing this stuff, and we don't.”