Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (85 page)

 
          
There
was a slight pause on the other end, followed by an exasperated but resigned
sigh; then: “Okay, Terrill, I’ll make the request once more. But it’s not going
to work.”

 
          
“Thank
you, sir,” Samson said. “I can fly out to
Washington
at any time to meet with the Chief or the
NCA.”

 
          
“You
just stay at Barksdale, and I’ll tell you when to show to give your
dog-and-pony show,” Shaw said. “Keep quiet till then, okay?”

 
          
“Yes,
sir,” Samson replied—but Shaw had hung up before Samson gave his response. It
was not a friendly suggestion to keep quiet—it was an order.

 
          
Sometime
during the conversation with Shaw, Samson was handed a note. He asked a question
of the briefer, then half-listened to the reply as he glanced at the
messageform—and then his heart skipped a beat. He threw a “Continue on” order
to his battle staff and dashed out of the battle staff room to the comm center.
“What did you pick up?” he asked the command post senior controller.

 
          
“A
message on that special SATCOM terminal you had installed here, sir,” the
senior controller said. He handed Samson a printout. “Auto decryption on this
end.” The message read: “HEADBANGER SENDS. URGENT REQUEST EMER AR RNDZVZ W/
SINGLE DRAGON 16 25N117E 10K ONLOAD. USE RED7 ARFREQ. ADVISE ASAP. OUT.” A
later message read: “HEADBANGER FINDS FOUR H-7 MANY H-6 AT TDELTA SKIPPING
TFOXTROT AND TGOLF. THX FOR EMERAR WITH DRAGON16. NAV27 ARCP OK. OUT”

 
          
“Wasn’t
Headbanger the call sign of that modified B-52 that broke out of Andersen past
the Navy and
U.S.
marshals and then disappeared, sir?” the senior controller
asked.      .

 
          
“It
sure as hell is,” Samson replied excitedly. “Shit. This means that not only is
Elliott, McLanahan, and the rest of that motley crew alive, but they’re flying
a damned mission—over fucking
China
).
”

 
          
“That
attack on the PRC garrison at
Xiamen
?”

 
          
“A
SEAD Wolverine cruise missile attack,” Samson surmised. “A couple of those
cruise missiles could wipe out dozens of SAM and tripleA sites. Then they get
someone to follow up with cluster-bomb attacks.”

           
“The ‘Dragon-16’? You don’t suppose
they mean Taiwanese F-16s? That EB-52 is flying SEAD missions for Taiwanese
F-16s?”

           
“Yep, and then continuing on deep
inside
China
to do more bombing missions,” Samson said proudly. “I’ll bet the next
intelligence message we get says that
Wuhan
has been attacked by unidentified
bombers—maybe a couple other targets between
Xiamen
and
Wuhan
, or between
Wuhan
and the
East China Sea
.”

 
          
“But
I thought all the Taiwanese F-16s were destroyed, along with their bases.”

 
          
“Obviously
some survived—along with one Megafortress and Jon Masters’s tanker and a few of
his gadgets,” Samson said. He searched a map of
China
: “The Chinese H-6 bomber base is at
Wuhan
, west of
Shanghai
,” he said. “It sounds like McLanahan found
some H-7s—those are Tupolev-26 supersonic bombers—and decided to expend their
remaining weapons there, instead of a couple other preplanned targets. But where
are they flying out of? Who is running that operation?”

 
          
“We
could find out,” the senior controller said. “If I can still receive their
SATCOM transmissions, I suppose we can send
them
a message just as easy. ”

 
          
General
Samson broke out into a broad grin, the first one in many, many hours. “Move
over, son,” he said excitedly. “I’ve got to call me up some renegades so we can
get to work cleaning up this war—before it gets completely out of hand.”

 
          
As
Terrill Samson sat down to start typing out messages, he called for his
executive officer. “Get the C-21 fueled up and ready to depart for Andrews. I
want every preplanned strike package we’ve got to attack the Chinese ICBM
complexes, bomber bases, and radar sites—and I want it all ready to go within
the hour. Then contact Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Roma at Ellsworth and Colonel
Anthony Jamieson at Whiteman, drag them off alert or wherever they are, and
have them standing by with their conventional strike packages. Tell them I’m
taking some of their bombers off nuclear alert—and then we’re going to work the
way we were
meant
to go to work!”

KAI-SHAN MILITARY COMPLEX,
NEAR HUALIEN, REPUBLIC OF
CHINA

WEDNESDAY, 25 JUNE 1997
,
0651 HOURS LOCAL (
TUESDAY,
24 JUNE, 1751
HOURS ET)

           
The roar of jet engines could be
heard far below, creating a constant rumbling and vibration throughout the
medical facility. The Taiwanese staff appeared not to notice. They worked with
silent efficiency, quickly and quietly loading up medical supplies for the
evacuation.

 
          
David
Luger had just been wheeled into an examination room from the X-ray lab. He was
lying on a gurney, a thin sheet concealing all the other bandages on his left
leg and arm. The left side of his body looked as if he had been spray-painted
with a mixture of black, yellow, and brown paint—it looked like one continuous
bruise from his head to ankle, and his left eye was swollen almost completely
shut. “I tell ya, I’m okay,” Luger was protesting to the doctor accompanying
him. Patrick and Wendy McLanahan, Brad Elliott, and Jon Masters were waiting
for him; Patrick’s injuries, not nearly as serious as Luger’s, had already been
treated.

 
          
“What’s
the scoop, Doctor?” McLanahan asked the attending physician, who was carrying
Luger’s X rays.

 
          
“Severe
concussion, as we suspected,” the Taiwanese doctor replied, holding up each
pertinent X ray as he spoke. “Slight cranial fracture. Partial hearing loss in
the left ear, slight fracture in the left orbit. Cuts and bruises all along the
left side of his body where he took the brunt of the explosion. Broken left
knee, swollen left ankle and left foot. If I did not know he was hit by an
exploding missile, I would say he had been hit by a bus.”

 
          
“I’m
okay, I said,” Luger protested. “Damn, we kicked some ass, didn’t we?”

           
“We sure did,” Brad Elliott said, a
broad smile on his face. “It was just like the first Old Dog flight. They threw
everything but another Kavaznva laser at us, and we fought through it all and
bombed the crap out of them! ”

 
          
“So
let’s gas up and get ready to fly another sortie,” Luger said.

           
“Not you, Dave,” Patrick said.
“You’re grounded. We’ll take the next run ourselves. I can handle both the OSO
and DSO’s stuff.”

           
“This damned headache won’t keep me
from at least helping mission- plan for you guys,” Luger said. “We still have
to knock out the air defense sites around
Shanghai
.”

 
          
“What
I’d like to do is bomb the crap out of the Chinese ICBM silos and launch
sites,” Patrick McLanahan said, a definite tone of anger in his voice—very
uncharacteristic for his buddy, Luger thought.

 
          
“We
know where they are—-we just need to get in there and nail ’em,” Ton Masters
said, his voice as bitter as Patrick’s. “Our guys back at
Blytheville
launched two more satellite tracks over
central
China
, and we think we’ve pinpointed all the DF-5 and DF-3 silos and launch
sites. One more NIRTSat launch and I can have each and even
⁷
one
targeted, along with a good number of mobile missile launchers.”

 
          
“But
we’re low on weapons,” Patrick went on. “We’re down to only two Strikers, two
Wolverine missiles, and two Scorpion missiles. The ROC has plenty of fuel,
air-to-air missiles, and cluster munitions left over, but our rotary launchers
can’t earn
⁷
the cluster bombs.”

 
          
“Shit,
maybe we can send Hal, Chris Wohl, and Madcap Magician back to Andersen to
steal us the rest of our Megafortresses,” Luger said with a grin—and then he
noticed that the others did not share in his quip. In fact, everyone looked
real funereal all of a sudden. “But why all the focus on the Chinese ICBM sites
all of a sudden? I thought we were going after air defense sites.”

 
          
“Oh,
that’s right—you were being checked out up here when we heard,” Wendy said.
“Dave . . . the Chinese launched a nuclear ICBM attack against
Guam
.”

 
          
“What?”

           
“Andersen has been destroyed—it was
attacked with a
two-megaton
warhead,”
Wendy went on sadly. “
Agana
and most of the northern half of the island have been severely
damaged.”

 
          
“Oh,
my God,” Luger said in a low, completely horrified tone. “Was it a retaliation
against
our
attack? Did we cause the
Chinese to attack with nuclear missiles?”

           
“The Chinese were committed to using
nuclear weapons to attack their enemies long before you came to our assistance,
Major Luger,” Brigadier-General Hsiao Jason, commander of the Kai-Shan Military
Complex, said as he entered the examination room. He extended a hand to David
Luger. “I wanted to thank you for your sacrifice and good work, Major. I am
very proud of all of you, and very grateful.”

 
          
“We’re
not done yet, General,” Elliott said. “We’re going to load up each and every
weapon we can and shove them right down
China
’s damned
throat\
”

 
          
“We
will—when we get the right opportunity and the right targets, Brad,” McLanahan
said. “Right now, we’ve got to finish repairs, then see if we can mount any of
the ROC’s cluster munitions on our rotary launchers. Wendy, Brad, can you help
General Hsiao’s techs finish the repairs on the DSO’s stuff?” Wendy nodded,
gave Dave Luger a kiss to help speed his recovery, and hurried off back to the
EB-52.

 
          
Patrick
turned back to Luger. “Bedrest for you, chum.” He noticed Dave Luger wearing
the archetypical “shit-eating grin” on his face, which looked even more funny
with half of his face swollen and purple. “What are you grinning at?”

 
          
“You,
Muck,” Luger said. “Look at you—tossing orders around, and everyone’s jumping,
even Brad Elliott. Pretty cool. You’ve taken over this team, whether you know
it or not.”

 
          
“So
I’m like some modern Asian Robin Hood with his merry band of outlaws, huh?”
Patrick remarked. “Sticking it to the Chinese and defending
Taiwan
.”

 
          
“I
don’t mean just the mystical Zen bombardier, Patrick—you’re turning into the
boss man around here,” Luger said seriously. “When we first started flying
together, you didn’t want to have anything to do with commanders, not even
aircraft commanders. You’d been offered dozens of command positions even before
you made the major’s list, and you turned them all down. I don’t know how many
more positions you were offered since the Old Dog mission—probably another
couple dozen. Everybody knew you and respected your talents, but you weren’t a
leader, and you never wanted any leadership positions. Now everybody’s waiting
for you to give the word, even Brad.”