Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (54 page)

 
          
“Then
why take it apart at all?” William Stuart, the Secretary of Defense asked. “Why
not just fly it to
Managua
and load it onto a large freighter?”

 
          
“That
can be done, sir,” Elliott replied. “But they know that it would be easy to
spot once it arrived in
Managua
, and very difficult to conceal. We could detect which ship it was
loaded onto and intercept or destroy—”

 
          
“Destroy a Russian freighter?”
from
Attorney General Richard Benson. “In peacetime? That’s crazy!”

 
          
“Mr.
Benson,” Elliott said, “that is one thing we should
never
reveal.”

 
          
“I
don’t understand.”

 
          
“Sir,
many other military powers in the world would kill to keep an aircraft like
DreamStar from falling into enemy hands. To the Russians, the Chinese, the
French, the Israelis, the British, destroying a freighter with a torpedo from
several miles away to keep that freighter from escaping with their country’s
most valuable military aircraft would be no big deal. They wouldn’t hesitate—”

 
          
“That’s
them,
not us.”

 
          
“Mr.
Benson, if we really want our fighter back we must at least
appear
ready at any time to commit such
an act. We must convince the Russians that we are ready to do anything
necessary to get our aircraft back. If we announce we will never shoot at a
Russian freighter in peacetime, we invite them to load DreamStar on that
freighter and sail it right under our noses back to
Russia
. If we tell them we’ll blow your ass out of
the water if we find out our plane is on board, and we convince them and the
world that we
mean
it, well, they may
just look for a different way to get it out of
Nicaragua
.” He was also thinking about the Cuban
missile crisis but didn’t bring it up.

 
          
Heads
nodded around the conference table; Elliott had apparently gotten through to
most of them, at least enough to see the logic of what he was saying. And the
President was at least attentive if perhaps not convinced.

 
          
“If
they don’t want to risk discovery by loading the entire aircraft onto a ship,”
Elliott pressed on, “and they don’t just quickly chop it up into pieces, they
have two other options: they can take their time dismantling it, making careful
records and notations about how to put it back together, or they can fly it out
of
Nicaragua
. It wouldn’t take long to dismantle
DreamStar—a day or two, pull the engine and the black boxes, dissect and
discard the rest. If they choose to fly it out, it may take them a few days,
three at the most, to configure it for overwater flight with extra fuel tanks.”

 
          
“What’s
keeping them from just flying the thing onto one of their new aircraft
carriers?” Deborah O’Day asked. “From what I understand DreamStar can land on a
carrier without an arresting hook and take off again without a catapult.”

 
          
“All
true,” Elliott said, surprised that she knew so much, careful to use the same
tone of voice with her as with the President and Stuart and the other members
of the staff. He had to fight himself to keep from smiling at her. He was all
but convinced that she was the one who had leaked information about DreamStar
to the press to force the President’s hand. He knew her feelings and those of
the NSC. It was a risky maneuver but it could pay off—and it could also result
in both of them being sent to
Leavenworth
or Eglin for ten years for conspiracy . . .
“Again, they’d be exposing themselves to a great degree of danger if they tried
to fly DreamStar onto a carrier. It’s a tricky operation under the best
conditions; for James in DreamStar it would be that much more difficult, even
with his advanced flight-control system. And the Soviets know they would risk
attack if it was discovered that they had DreamStar on board. They would not, I
feel, risk one of only six
Moscow-
class aircraft carriers for one fighter
plane, even this one.”

 
          
“These
are all conjectures on your part, Elliott,” the President said. “Sheer
speculation not surprisingly biased in favor of a military response.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir, I agree. I am speculating on all of this, and I am leaning in favor of a
swift, decisive, direct response—but only for the sake of time. If we could
count on the Russians taking weeks to carefully dismantle DreamStar I would not
even consider a direct military response. Certainly not at this point. If you
recall back in 1976, when Viktor Belyenko flew his then- top-secret MiG-25 to
Japan, one of the first reactions by the Ford administration was to guarantee
that we would turn the MiG over to the Russians intact immediately after our
investigation of the matter was completed—which, of course, gave us time to
study the thing. We made that guarantee, sir, because the Russians had
one-fifth of their navy within five hours’ sailing time of the MiG’s landing
spot and the administration was convinced that the Russians would militarily
intervene in
Japan
to get their MiG-25 back. I’m saying, sir, that is the
threat
we need to project to the Soviets
in
Nicaragua
. It comes down to how badly we want
DreamStar back.”

 
          
The
President was silent, staring at Elliott. “Did we give the MiG-25 back?”

 
          
“Yes,
after we determined that the MiG-25 wasn’t all our intelligence and their
propaganda said it was. The MiG-25 was simply two huge jet engines with wings,
built for speed at any cost. Our F-15 was operational by then, and the F-16 was
in production. Both those aircraft could fly rings around the MiG- 25. But
DreamStar is different, sir. DreamStar is our only flying model of that concept
of aircraft. It would be a huge loss for us and a quantum leap in technology
for the Soviets. It would take two years to build another XF-34, and we’d be
right back where we are now. Meanwhile, the Soviets would take several giant
steps forward in their technology, and with their advantage in military budget
and production could field a squadron of XF-34 aircraft before we could—”

 
          
“Excuse
me, Mr. President,” William Stuart broke in. “General Elliott has made several
broad statements that Defense doesn’t find supportable. He’s making DreamStar
seem like the ultimate weapon, when in fact it’s nothing more than an advanced
technology demonstration aircraft. Congress hasn’t voted to deploy the XF-34,
nor will DreamStar even be ready for deployment for another five years. Agreed,
it’s an extraordinary machine, but it is not our
next
fighter aircraft. Far away from it.”

 
          
“So
you’re saying that it’s not worth going after?”

 
          
“My
point is simply that DreamStar in the hands of the Russians is not the terrible
threat that General Elliott is making it out to be. It is a setback, true, but
no more of a setback than if DreamStar had crashed on a test flight or if the
program had run out of funds and was canceled.”

 
          
“General
Elliott?”

 
          
“I
disagree with Secretary Stuart, sir. Seriously disagree. The technology transfer
alone in the DreamStar theft is enormous. It’s certainly of such great military
importance to us that its return, or if it comes to it, destruction, is of the
highest priority—”

 
          
“Not
my
highest priority,” Stuart
interrupted.

 
          
"It
may be true that
we
were several
years from deploying DreamStar, Mr. President,” Elliott said, “but the Soviets
could follow an entirely different timetable. We have the F-32 fighter in
preproduction that will be our front-line fighter for the next five to ten
years. The Soviets have their MiG-33
^an
d Sukhoi-35 fighters
operational or in production that will serve them for the next decade. Neither
of those fighters can match our F-32—and
that
is a DOD assessment, not mine. With the XF-34 fighter in production in the
Soviet Union, they will easily have the capability to counter our front-line
fighters for the next ten years until we redevelop our own XF-34—and then we
will only be
matching
the Soviets’
capability. We will instantly be five years behind the Soviets if we don’t
react.”

 
          
“General,
you’re blowing this whole thing out of proportion—"

 
          
“All
right, enough,” the President said. “We don’t need to get into arguments about
the future. The fact is, they got the damn plane. What do we do about it
now?”

 
          
“I
think we need to examine this problem from another perspective, Lloyd,”
Attorney General Benson said, “the political side. This thing’s about to be
splashed all over TV, newspapers and videotext terminals around the world. We
can avoid feeding fuel to the fire by not providing any details, and it
may
indeed fizzle out over time, but the
opposition is going to use this against us when their convention opens in
Seattle
next month. We need a strong, positive step
to show the voters that were in charge—”

 
          
“So
you favor a military response?”

 
          
“Not
necessarily, Lloyd,” Benson said, leaning sideways toward the President and
scarcely making himself heard in the conference room. As the President’s
brother-in-law (he’d taken plenty of heat for that), he was one of the few Cabinet
members who called the President by his first name; when he did it usually
meant he was separating himself from the Cabinet to make an especially strong
point. “But we’re playing catch-up ball here—the press has the advantage and we
can’t let that situation continue. You’ve got to make a move that shows that
you’re ready to handle the situation. We don’t have to decide on an offensive
against
Nicaragua
right now—I think it would be a bad move
anyway. But you
do
have to make a
move, and something stronger than a diplomatic protest. Five months from now
when the voters ask what you did about this, you want to be able to point to
something substantial, positive.”

 
          
Benson
decided after the meeting he would tell the President that the first step would
be to get rid of Elliott. After all, he was the one who lost the damn plane . .
.

 
          
The
President held up his hand, indicating that he was going to reserve judgment,
and turned to William Stuart. “Outline our responses, Bill.”

 
          
“I
think it’s a problem for State or CIA, Mr. President,” Stuart said. “We can’t
attack
Nicaragua
. It’s just not an option for us. CIA might
be able to suggest something, a covert operation maybe, but in my opinion it’s
out of DOD’s hands. We can’t put out a candle with a fire hose.”

 
          
“That’s
it, Bill?”

 
          
Defense
Secretary Stuart looked at Elliott. “If I may say so, the problem should have
been handled long ago by General Elliott and his unit, and the aircraft should
have been properly secured. We lost the aircraft. Now General Elliott wants to
go in, as usual, with six-guns blazing. But if we confront the Soviets, they
will probably agree to turn the aircraft over to us. It may take a few weeks,
or months, but we will get the aircraft back from them. And if we do, well,
that’s the bottom line.”

 
          
“So
you’d just let them
have
it? They
kill four of my flyers, two security guards and two interceptor pilots, and
you’re saying that we should let them alone until they’ve done what they want
with it?”

 
          
“Don’t
put words in my mouth, General Elliott.” Stuart’s voice had risen. “What I’m
saying is that we can’t go off and start a war over
our
screwups or—rather,
your
screwups. I agree with the President. The X-34 is great but it isn’t worth—”