Patrick McLanahan Collection #1 (195 page)

“They retire them,” Patrick echoed, “and then they're cared for by the Veterans Administration or private doctors paid for in part by the government. Summers is doing what he always does: discharging sick guys and pushing them off to the VA. Most of his patients are so thankful to be alive that they never give retirement a second thought.”

“Aren't you glad to still be alive, Muck?”

“Of course I am, Dave,” Patrick said, giving his longtime friend a scowl, “but if I'm going to punch out, I'm doing it on
my
terms, not Summers'. In the meantime, maybe I'll learn something more about the condition and possible treatments that these docs don't know, something that will let me keep my flying status. Maybe I'll—”

“Patrick, I understand flying is important to you,” Luger said sincerely, “but it's not worth risking your life to—”

“Dave, I risk my life just about every time I go up in a warplane,” Patrick interrupted. “I'm not afraid of losing my life to—”

“The enemy…the
outside
enemy,” Dave said. “Hey, Patrick, I'm just playing devil's advocate here—I'm not arguing with you. You do what you want. And I agree: it's worth risking your life using your skills, training, and instincts to battle an adversary who's out to destroy the United States of America. But the enemy we're talking about here is
you
. You can't outfly, outguess, or outsmart
yourself
. You're not equipped or trained to handle your own body trying to kill you. You should approach this battle like any battle you've ever prepared for…”

“That's exactly what I intend to do, Dave,” Patrick said flatly. “I'm going to study it, analyze it, consult with experts, gather information, and devise a strategy.”

“Fine. But take yourself off flight status and check into the hospital for round-the-clock monitoring while you do it. Don't be stupid.”

That last comment took Patrick aback, and he blinked in surprise. “You think I'm being stupid?”

“I don't know what you're thinking, man,” Luger said. He knew Patrick wasn't stupid, and he was sorry he said it, but the one thing that his longtime friend had taught him was to speak his mind. Patrick was scared, and this was his response to fear, just as it had been in the cockpit of a strategic bomber all these many years: Fight the fear, focus on the objective, and never stop fighting no matter how awful the situation appears.

“Look at it from the doc's point of view, Muck,” Luger went on. “I heard the doctors tell you that this thing is like a ticking time bomb with a hair trigger. It might not go off at all, but the odds are it could go off in the next ten seconds as we're standing here arguing. Hell, I'm afraid you could vapor-lock on me as I'm arguing with you
right now,
and there's not a damned thing I could do from down here but watch you die.”

“My chances of dying up here in Earth orbit are just a little bit greater than average with this heart thing—we can be blasted wide open and sucked out into space by a hypersonic piece of debris the size of a pea at any friggin' time, and we'd never know it,” Patrick said.

“If you're not sure about an ICD, then go ahead and research it; talk to Jon Masters or the dozen or so brainiacs on our list, and think it over,” Dave said. “But do it from the safety of a private hospital room where the docs can keep an eye on you.” Patrick's eyes and features remained determined, stoic, impassive. “C'mon, Muck. Think about Bradley. If you continue to fly without the ICD, you might die. If you don't stress yourself out, you'll probably live on. What's the question?”

“I'm not going to give in, Dave, and that's
it
. I'm up here to do an important job, and I'm—”

“A
job
? Muck, do you want to risk hurting yourself over a
job
? It's important, sure, but dozens of younger, stronger guys can do it. Give the job to Boomer, or Raydon, or even Lukas—anyone else. You haven't figured it out yet, Patrick?”

“Figure what out?”

“We're
expendable,
General McLanahan. We're all disposable.
We're nothing but ‘politics by other means.' When it comes right down to it, we're just hard-core hard-assed type-A gung-ho military prima donnas in ill-fitting monkey suits, and nobody in Washington cares if we live or die. If you blow a gasket tomorrow there'll be twenty other hard-asses waiting to take your place—or, more likely, Gardner could just as easily order us shut down the day after you croaked and spend the money on more aircraft carriers. But there are those of us who
do
care, your son being at the top of the list, but you're not paying attention to us because you're focusing on the
job
—the job that doesn't care one
whit
about
you
.”

Luger took a deep breath. “I know you, man. You always say that you do it because you don't want to order another flyer to do something you haven't done yourself, even if the flyers are trained test crewmembers, the best of the best. I've always known that's bullshit. You do it because you love it, because you want to be the one to pull the trigger to take down the bad guys. I understand that. But I don't think you should be doing it anymore, Muck. You're unnecessarily risking your life—not by flying a mostly untested machine, but by exposing yourself to stresses that can kill you long before you reach the target area.”

Patrick was silent for a long time; then he looked at his old friend. “I guess you do know what it's like to face your own mortality, don't you, Dave?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Luger said. As a young navigator-bombardier flying a secret mission to destroy the old Soviet Union's Kavaznya ground-based laser site, Dave Luger had been captured by the Russians, interrogated, tortured, and imprisoned for several years, then brainwashed into believing he was a Russian aerospace engineer. The effects of that treatment affected him emotionally and psychologically—stress would cause him to unexpectedly enter a detached fugue state that left him nearly incapacitated with fear for minutes, sometimes hours—and he voluntarily took himself off active flight status years ago. “It was a hell of a ride…but there are
other
rides out there.”

“Don't you miss flying?” Patrick asked.

“Hell no,” Dave said. “When I want to fly, I pilot one of the unmanned combat air vehicles or my radio-controlled model planes. But I have enough things going on where I don't have the desire anymore.”

“I'm just not sure how it would affect me,” Patrick said honestly. “I think I'd be okay—no, I'm sure I would—but would I always be demanding one more flight, one more mission?”

“Muck, you and me both know that manned aircraft are going the way of the dinosaur,” Dave said. “Are you all of a sudden getting some kind of romantic notion about aviation, some kind of weird ‘slip the surly bonds' idea that somehow makes you forget everything else? Since when did flying ever become anything more than ‘plan the flight, then fly the plan' for you? Man, if I didn't know you, I'd swear you cared more about flying than you did about Bradley. That's not the Patrick Shane McLanahan I know.”

“Let's drop it, okay?” Patrick asked irritably. He hated it when Luger (or his former girlfriend, Vice President Maureen Hershel) brought up his twelve-year-old son Bradley, believing it was a too-oft-used argument to try to get Patrick to change his mind about something. “Everyone's all worried about my heart, but no one stops arguing with me.” He made sure to give Luger a smile when he added, “Maybe you're all trying to make me crash. Change the damned subject, Texas. What's going on at the Lake?”

“The rumor mill is churning, Muck,” Dave said. “Guess who might be back at HAWC?”

“Martin Tehama,” Patrick responded. Dave blinked in surprise—this was a guy who was rarely surprised. “I saw a strange e-mail address on a CC from SECDEF and checked to see who was in that office. I think he's going to be reinstated as HAWC commander.”

“With his buddy in the White House? No doubt.” Air Force Colonel Martin Tehama was designated the commander of the High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center after Major General Terrill “Earthmover” Samson's departure, bypassing Patrick
McLanahan. A well-respected test pilot and engineer, Tehama wanted to rein in the “extracurricular” activities HAWC often got involved with—such as using experimental aircraft and weapons in “operational test flights” around the world—and get back to the serious business of flight test. When Patrick left his White House adviser position he was awarded command of HAWC, bumping Tehama out. He retaliated by delivering reams of information on HAWC's classified missions to members of Congress. “After Summers files a full report on your condition, he'll reappear and take charge as soon as you announce your retirement—or the President announces that you're being medically retired.”

“The President and Senator Barbeau will use my heart thing to cancel the Black Stallion program, citing health concerns, and their errand boy Tehama will promptly shut it down within months.”

“Not even that long, Muck,” David said. “The word from the Senate is that they're going to push the White House to move quicker to shut us down.”

“Barbeau wants her bombers, that's for sure.”

“It's not just her, but she's the loudest voice,” Dave said. “There are lobbyists for every weapon system imaginable—carriers, ballistic missile subs, special ops, you name it. President Gardner wants another four aircraft carrier battle groups at least, maybe six, and he's likely to get them if the space program is canceled. Everyone's got their own agenda. The spaceplane lobby is practically nonexistent, and your injury just casts a shadow on the program, which delights the other lobbyists no end.”

“I hate this political shit.”

“Me too. I'm surprised you lasted as long as you did working in the White House. You definitely weren't made for wearing a suit, listening to meaningless speeches while wasting weeks testifying before another congressional committee, and being jerked around by lobbyists and so-called experts.”

“Copy that,” Patrick said. “Anyway, the heat's been turned up, and Tehama will turn it up even more—right in our faces. All the
more reason to accomplish this Soltanabad mission, bring the crew back safely, and get some good intel all before tomorrow morning. The Russians are up to something in Iran—they can't be content to just sit in Moscow or Turkmenistan and watch Iran become democratic, or disintegrate.”

“I'm on it,” Dave said. “The air tasking order will be ready by the time you get the green light. I'll send you the orbital game plan and the complete force timing schedule right away. Genesis out.”

H
IGH
-T
ECHNOLOGY
A
EROSPACE
W
EAPONS
C
ENTER
, E
LLIOTT
A
IR
F
ORCE
B
ASE
, N
EVADA

A
SHORT TIME LATER

“It's ten times more boring than playing video games,” Wayne Macomber complained, “because I can't even
play
the thing.”

“Pretty deep wash ahead, Whack,” U.S. Army National Guard Captain Charlie Turlock said. “It angles away from the objective, so we'll eventually have to get out. We should—”

“I see it, I see it,” Macomber grumbled. “Wohl, clear those railroad tracks again.”

“Roger,” Marine Corps Sergeant Major Chris Wohl responded in his usual gravelly whisper. A moment later: “Rails are clear, Major. Satellite reports the next train is twenty-seven miles to the east, heading in our direction at twenty-five miles an hour.”

“Copy,” Macomber responded, “but I keep on seein' a return at my three o'clock, five miles, right in front of you somewhere. It's there for a second and then it disappears. What the hell is it?”

“Negative contact, sir,” Wohl radioed.

“This is nuts,” Macomber muttered, knowing that both Turlock and Wohl could still hear him but not caring one bit. This was not how he envisioned doing mission planning…although he had to admit it was pretty darned cool.

As incredible as the spaceplane was, even the passenger module was a pretty nifty device. It served to not only carry passengers and cargo inside the Black Stallion but also as a docking adapter between the spaceplane and a space station. In an emergency the module could even be used as a spacecraft crew lifeboat: it had maneuvering thrusters to facilitate retrieval by repair spacecraft while in orbit and to keep it upright during re-entry; little winglets for stability in case it was jettisoned in the atmosphere; enough oxygen to allow six passengers to survive for as long as a week; enough shielding to survive re-entry if the module was jettisoned during re-entry; and parachutes and flotation/impact attenuation bags that would cushion the module and its passengers upon land or water impact. Unfortunately all this protection was only available to the passengers—there was no way for the Black Stallion's flight crew to get inside the module after takeoff except by spacewalking while in orbit and using the transfer tunnel.

Macomber and Wohl were wearing a full Tin Man armor system, a lightweight suit made of BERP, or ballistic electronically reactive process material which was totally flexible like cloth but protected the wearer by instantly hardening to a strength a hundred times greater than steel when struck. The suit was completely sealed, affording excellent protection even in harsh or dangerous environments, and was supplemented with an extensive electronic sensor and communications suite that fed data to the wearer through helmet visor displays. The Tin Man system was further enhanced by a micro-hydraulic exoskeleton that gave the wearer superhuman strength, agility, and speed by amplifying his muscular movements.

Charlie Turlock—“Charlie” was her real name, not a call-sign, a young woman given a boy's name by her father—was not wearing a Tin Man suit, just a flight suit over a thin layer of thermal underwear; her ride was in the cargo compartment behind their seats. She
wore a standard HAWC flight helmet, which displayed sensor and computer data on an electronic visor similar to the sophisticated Tin Man displays. Trim, athletic, and of just slightly more than average height, Turlock seemed out of place with a unit full of big, muscular, commandos—but she brought something along from her years at the Army Research Laboratory's Infantry Transformational Battle-lab that more than made up for her smaller physical size.

All three were watching a computer animation of their planned infiltration of the Soltanabad highway airfield in Persia. The animation used real-time satellite sensor images to paint an ultra-realistic view of the terrain and cultural features in the target area, complete with projections of such things as personnel and vehicle movement based on past information, lighting levels, weather predictions, and even soil conditions. The three Battle Force commandos were spread out approximately fifty yards apart, close enough to support one another quickly if necessary but far enough apart to not give one another away if detected or engaged by a single enemy patrol.

“I can see the fence now, range one point six miles,” Charlie reported. “Moving over the wash now. The ‘Goose' reports thirty minutes of flight time left.” The “Goose” was the GUOS, or Grenade-launched Unmanned Observation System, a small powered flying drone about the size of a bowling pin, launched from a backpack launcher, that sent back visual and infrared images to the commandos by a secure datalink.

“That means we're behind,” Macomber groused. “Let's pick it up a little.”

“We're right on schedule, sir,” Wohl whispered.

“I said we're behind, Sergeant Major,” Macomber hissed. “The drone will be running out of fuel and we'll still be inside the damned compound.”

“I've got another Goose ready,” Charlie said. “I can launch it—”

“When? When we get close enough for the Iranians to hear it?” Macomber growled. “How noisy are those things anyway?”

“If you'd show up for my demos, Major, you'd know,” Charlie said.

“Don't give me any lip, Captain,” Macomber spat. “When I ask you a question, give me an answer.”

“Outside a couple hundred yards of engine ignition, they won't hear a thing,” Charlie said, not disguising her exasperation at all, “unless they have audio sensors.”

“If we had proper intel before starting this mission, we'd
know
if the Iranians had audio sensors,” Macomber groused some more. “We need to plan delaying the drone launch until we're within two miles of the base, not three. You got that, Turlock?”

“Roger,” Charlie acknowledged.

“Next I need—” Macomber stopped when he noticed a flicker of a target indicator appearing again in the very periphery of his electronic visor's field of view. “Dammit, there it is again. Wohl, did you see it?”

“I saw it that time, but it's gone,” Wohl responded. “I'm scanning that area…negative contact. Probably just a momentary sensor sparkle.”

“Wohl, in my book, there's no such thing as ‘sensor sparkle,'” Macomber said. “There's something out ahead of you causing that return. Get on it.”

“Roger,” Wohl responded. “Moving off-track.” He used a small thumbwheel mouse to change direction in the animation, waiting every few meters until the computer added available detail and plotted more warnings or cautions regarding whatever lay ahead. The process was slow because of all the wireless computer activity, but it was the only available means they had of rehearsing their operation and getting ready to fly it at the same time.

“We're supposed to be commandos—there's no such thing as a ‘track' for us,” Macomber said. “We have an objective and a million different ways of getting there. It should be a damned piece of cake with all these pretty pictures floating in front of us—why is this making my head hurt?” Neither Turlock nor Wohl replied—they had grown quite accustomed to Macomber's complaining. “Anything yet, Wohl?”

“Stand by.”

“Looks like tire tracks just past the wash,” Charlie reported. “Not very deep—Humvee-sized vehicle.”

“That's new,” Macomber said. He checked the source data tags. “Fresh intel—downloaded in just the past fifteen minutes by a low-altitude SAR. A perimeter patrol, I'd guess.”

“No sign of vehicles.”

“That's the reason we're doing this, isn't it, kids? Maybe the general was right after all.” It sounded to both Wohl and Turlock as if Macomber hated to admit that the general could be right. “Let's proceed and see what—”

“Crew, this is the MC,” the mission commander, Marine Corps Major Jim Terranova, cut in over the intercom, “we've commenced our countdown to takeoff, T-minus fifty-six minutes and counting. Run your pre-takeoff checklists and prepare to report in.”

“Roger, S-One copies,” Macomber responded…except, as he noted himself with not a small bit of shock, that his words came out through an instantly dry, raspy throat and vocal cords, with barely enough breath for the words to escape his lips.

If there was one thing these guys at the High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center and the Air Battle Force were
really
good at, Macomber had learned early on, it would definitely be computer simulations. These guys ran simulations on everything—for every hour of real flight time, these guys probably did twenty hours on a computer simulator beforehand. The machines ranged from simple desktop computers with photo-realistic displays to full-scale aircraft mockups that did everything from drip hydraulic fluid to smoke and catch on fire if you did something wrong. Everyone did them: air crews, maintenance, security, battle staff, command post, even administration and support staffs conducted drills and simulations regularly.

A good percentage of all the personnel at both Elliott and Battle Mountain Air Bases, probably one-tenth of the five thousand or so at both locations, were involved solely in computer programming, with other private and military computer centers tied in all around
the world contributing the latest codes, routines, subroutines, and devices; and at least a third of all the code these top secret super-geeks wrote 24/7 had to be involved solely with simulations. This was his first
real
trip into space, but the simulations were so realistic and so numerous that he truly felt as if he had done this dozens of times before…

…until
just now,
when the mission commander announced they were less than an hour from takeoff. He had been so busy preparing for the approach and infiltration into Soltanabad—just three hours to get ready, when he demanded no less than three
days
to prepare in the Combat Weather Squadron!—that he had completely forgotten that they were going to be
blasted into space
to get there!

But now that frightening reality hit home with full force. He was not going to just pile his gear into a C-17 Globemaster II or C-130 Hercules for a multiday trip to some isolated airstrip in the middle of nowhere—he was going to be shot almost a hundred miles into space, then flutter down through the atmosphere through hostile airspace to a landing in a desert in northeastern Iran, where quite possibly an entire brigade of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps fighters, the elite of the former theocratic regime's terror army, could be waiting for them.

In the time it would normally take for him to just
arrive
at his first transition base en route to his destination, this mission would be
completed
! That simple fact was absolutely astounding, almost unbelievable. The time compression was almost too much to comprehend. And yet, here he was, sitting in the actual spacecraft—not a simulator—and the clock was ticking. By the time the sun rose again, this mission would be over, and he'd be debriefing it. He would have entered low-Earth orbit, traveled halfway across the globe, landed in Iran, scoped it out, blasted off again, re-entered low-Earth orbit, and hopefully landed at a friendly base…

…or he'd be dead. There were a million unforeseen and un-simulatable things that could kill them, along with the hundred or
so simulatable things they practiced dealing with day after day, and even when they
knew
something bad was going to happen, sometimes they couldn't deal with it. It would either work out okay, or they'd be dead…or a hundred other things could happen. Whatever would happen, it was all going to happen
now
.

Macomber certainly felt the danger and the uncertainty…but as it so often did, the frenetic pace of every activity dealing with McLanahan and everyone at the High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center and the Air Battle Force quickly pushed every other feeling of dread out of his conscious mind. It seemed a dozen voices—some human, but most computerized—were speaking to him at the same time, and all needed acknowledgment or an action, or the speaking quickly changed to “demanding.” If he didn't respond quickly enough, the computer usually ratted on him, and a rather irate human voice—usually the mission commander but sometimes Brigadier General David Luger, the deputy commander himself, if it was critical enough—repeated the demand.

He was accustomed to performing and succeeding under intense pressure—that was the common denominator for any Special Operations commando—but this was something entirely different: because at the end of all the sometimes chaotic preparation,
they were going to shoot his ass into space
! It seemed Terranova made the announcement just moments earlier when Macomber felt the Black Stallion move as four Laser Pulse Detonation Rocket System engines, or “leopards,” in full turbofan propulsion mode, easily propelled the aircraft to Dreamland's four-mile-long dry lake bed runway.

Whack was not afraid of flying, but takeoffs were definitely his most fearsome phase of flight—all that power behind them, the engines running up to full power sucking up tons of fuel per minute, the noise deafening, the vibration its most intense, but the aircraft still moving relatively slowly. He had done many Black Stallion takeoffs in the simulator, and he knew that the performance numbers even with
the spacecraft still in the atmosphere were impressive, but for this part he was definitely on pins and needles.

The initial takeoff from the dry lake bed runway at Elliott Air Force Base was indeed spectacular—a massive shove as the LPDRS engines in turbofan mode moved into full military thrust, then a rapid, high-angle climb-out at well over ten thousand feet per minute after a short takeoff roll. The first few seconds of the run-up and takeoff roll seemed normal…but that was it. At full military power in turbofan mode, the four LPDRS engines developed one hundred thousand pounds of thrust
each,
optimized by solid-state laser igniters that superheated the jet fuel before ignition.