Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (17 page)

 
          
“So
what's the story with you two?”

 
          
“What’s
to tell?” she replied. “I fell for him, I thought he fell for me. But he’s got
his work, and that’s pretty much his whole life right now.”

 
          
“You
said ‘right now’ like you don’t really believe it.” She looked at Dev, angry
that he’d said it—and angry that he was right. “Listen, Annie, if you say women
talk about men like I know men talk about women, then men and women are more
alike than they are different, right?” Annie said nothing. “So the only thing
you can be certain about is that you can’t change a guy. Dave Luger will be the
same as long as he wants to be, as long as whatever he gets out of work is more
important or more pleasurable than what he gets from other people. It sucks,
but that’s the way it is.”

 
          
“So
what do I do about it?”

           
“Annie, everybody does the same thing,”
Deverill said earnestly. “You’re here in this hot tub for the same reason that
Colonel Luger is there in the lab—because whatever you’re looking for here,
whatever you hoped to find here, is better than waiting alone in your apartment
for a man who will probably never come.”

 
          
“If
I want to be here, then why do 1 feel so bad about it?”

 
          
“Because
you have feelings,” he replied. “You care about him. You care about what he
might think. But you have to trust yourself. Trust your feelings.” He paused, regarding
her thoughtfully, then asked softly, “You love him, don’t you?”

 
          
“Yes.”
^-

 
          
“You
probably haven’t slept with him, but you love him anyway.” She was going to say
something angry at him, but she couldn’t—because, dammit, he was right. “Maybe
it’s the real thing, then,” he went on. “Maybe you feel guilty because you
don’t
really
want to be here.”

 
          
“I
should follow my feelings, then.”

 
          
“Absolutely.”
She rubbed her eyes, then hid them. It seemed as if she was embarrassed to be
sitting there with him, afraid she was showing how stupid and naive she was. He
drained his wine, then reached for his bathrobe, preparing to leave. “Shall
we?”

 
          
“Yes.”
But instead of leaving, Annie put her hand on his arm, firmly, forbidding him
to move. She moved close to him, her face a little fearful but excited at the
same time, and she reached under the surface of the bubbling water and found
him. Despite their very serious, very nonsexual discussion, it sprang instantly
back to life like the trouper it was.

 
          
“Annie?”

 
          
“You
said follow my instincts,” she said. She crouched above him, still holding him,
then kissed him warmly, deeply, as she maneuvered herself onto him. “I’m
following my instincts. This ... is ... where I want to be, right... now.”

Nellis Air Force Base, north of Las Vegas,
Nevada

Several days later

 
          
“Jee-sus,
look at those suckers
haul ass!”

           
It seemed as if the entire crowd of
about two thousand onlookers said the very same thing as two sleek aircraft
came into view on final approach to Nellis Air Force Base’s main runway. Even
from ten miles out, they were clearly visible. Yet unlike most large aircraft,
such as airliners or military jet transports, this aircraft didn’t seem to be
flying slower than normal—in fact, like the fighter jets that escorted it, it
seemed to be going very fast indeed.

 
          
It
used the NATO nickname “Backfire.” But in the
Republic
of
Ukraine
it was known as “Speka,” meaning “heat,”
and that described the Tupolev-22M perfectly. It looked like a very large jet
fighter or a small, compact bomber, with a long pointed nose, sleek lines,
variable-geometry “swing” wings, and two very big, very noisy afterburning
engines. It carried a wide range of weapons, including all of the Commonwealth
of Independent States’ air-launched weapons. It had half the pay- Idad of the
B-l bomber, but much greater speed and range; and it was air-refuelable, which
meant it could attack targets anywhere on the planet on short notice with
minimal support. It was sleek, fast, powerful, and even sexy-looking. All of
these factors made the Backfire bomber arguably one of the world’s most
devastating attack planes.

 
          
There
were many reasons for
Ukraine
not to have anything to do with the
Backfires, or any expensive offensive weapon system, for that matter.
Ukraine
, the largest and most populous ex-Soviet
republic besides
Russia
, had one of the smallest gross national products in industrialized
Europe
—every bit of its industrial output was
needed to maintain its fragile existing infrastructure and maintain a modicum
of a decent life for its citizens, with hardly anything left over for exports,
long-term capital improvement, or warfighting. Despite its geographical and
strategic importance,
Ukraine
spent a fraction of what other countries
its size spent on defense, and it would be difficult to maintain the fleet of
relatively high-tech planes.

 
          
Upon
splitting off from the Commonwealth.
Ukraine
’s entire strategic attitude had changed as
well.
Ukraine
declared itself a “nuclear-free” country, isolated itself from the
ethnic and economic turmoil engulfing most of eastern Europe and the Russian
enclaves, and resisted joining any outside military alliance.
Ukraine
had few outside enemies except for its
tenuous relationship with its former parent,
Russia
, so the long- range supersonic Backfires
had been considered nothing more than a useless, dangerous money pit. In fact,
plenty of countries, including several
Middle East
countries, had offered as much as one
billion dollars each in hard currency for the planes. So they had been too
expensive to fly, not apparently vital to the security of
Ukraine
, and worth billions in badly needed cash.

 
          
But
times quickly changed, and
Ukraine
had found it could no longer afford to live
in splendid isolation.
Russia
became more and more reactionary and more
aggressive against its former Soviet republics, increasing the pressure on its
neighbors to join the new Commonwealth—what many saw as the rebirth of the
Soviet empire—or suffer its wrath. When
Ukraine
had refused to renew its membership in the
Commonwealth and at the same time applied for membership in the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization,
Russia
had exploded.

 
          
In
1995,
Russia
had staged a series of deadly attacks against military bases in several
of its former republics, including
Moldova
,
Lithuania
, and
Ukraine
.
Russia
had called these bases “suspected terrorist
training facilities” and threats against
Russia
and the Commonwealth of Independent States,
and had accused their former republics of persecuting ethnic Russians.

           
The Russian attacks had been swift
and devastating. Only when
Russia
had attacked NATO warships on the
Black Sea
had anyone tried to oppose the Russian war
machine. Rebecca Furness, at the time the first female combat pilot in the
United States Air Force, and her tiny Air Force Reserve unit from Plattsburgh,
New York, had flown a series of precision strike raids deep into Russia that
had helped stop the conflict before it flared into a general east European
thermonuclear war. Patrick McLanahan, flying the original EB-52 Megafortress,
had done the same in defending
Lithuania
against attacks by neighboring
Belarus
and
Russia
.

 
          
Already
devastated by a slow economy, no foreign investment, and a general lack of
confidence in its reformist government,
Russia
had finally refrained from any more
military forays for several years. It was completely unable to influence events
concerning former close friends
Iraq
,
Serbia
, and
North Korea
. Russia, whose landmass spanned almost half
the globe’s time zones and whose natural resources were unmatched by any
country in the world, was quickly becoming a third-rate power.

 
          
The
rise of nationalist, neo-Communist leaders like Valentin Sen’kov had changed
all that.
Russia
had reasserted its influence in deciding the fate of
Bosnia
,
Serbia
, and Kosovo, and it had used considerable
military force to subdue the breakaway
republic
of
Chechnya
. Ukraine, because of its domineering
location on the Black Sea, its large Russian population, and because it hadn’t
been properly brought into line during the 1995 conflict, clearly saw itself as
next in line if it refused to toe the Russian line.

 
          
Ukraine
’s answer: stop acting like a target, and
start being a true European power and member of the world community. It started
a conscription program—every high school student received ten weeks of military
basic training as a condition of graduation, and every able-bodied person had
to belong to a reserve unit until age forty—and increased defense spending
tenfold.
Ukraine
had beefed up its
Black Sea
fleet, started training its ground forces using German, Turkish, and American
doctrine instead of Russian, and rebuilt its air forces—including reactivating
the Tupolev-22M fleet. Since the 1995 conflict with
Russia
, twelve of the surviving twenty-one
Backfire bombers had been returned to service.

           
The most important change: increased
integration with NATO military command structure and doctrine. Full integration
would take many years, but the beginning of this important step in NATO’s push
toward
Asia
was taking place now. Two of the supersonic
swing-wing bombers were at Nellis Air Force Base in southern
Nevada
, participating in U.S. Air Force-sponsored
joint NATO air combat exercises. They were the most powerful, most anticipated,
ex-Soviet warplanes ever to come to
America
.

 
          
“How
about we have a little fun, guys?” Captain Annie Dewey asked. The
thirty-five-year-old brunette B-1B aircraft commander from the One-Eleventh
Bomb Squadron, Nevada Air National Guard, was sitting in the right seat of the
Tupolev- 22M supersonic bomber. Per
United States
regulations, a
U.S.
military pilot had to be on board every
multi-crew-member combat aircraft landing on an active military airbase. The
nonstop flight from
Ukraine
to
Las Vegas
had taken only nine hours, including two
aerial refuelings,

 
          
“What
do you have in mind?” Colonel-General Roman Smoliy, the crew commander, asked.
With his square jaw, gray flattop, piercing blue eyes, square nose, and broad
shoulders tapering to thin ankles. Roman Smoliy looked like he had been cast
for a
Hollywood
movie. Smoliy was the chief of staff of the
Ukrainian Air Force. Before the conflict with
Russia
,
Ukraine
had had a force of two hundred
intercontinental bombers, equal to that of the
United States
, a mix of Tu-95 Bear turboprop bombers,
Tu-22 Blinders, and Tu-160 Blackjack supersonic bombers, along with the Tu-22M
Backfires. After the war, only fifty had remained. It was General Smoliy’s job
to decide if
Ukraine
should have any long-range bombers at all, and that meant learning how
to employ them in battle. “Nothing boring, I take it?”

 
          
“How
well you know me already. General,” Annie said. She spoke briefly on the radio,
got the clearance she was looking for, then said, “Escorts, you’re clear to
depart. See ya on the ground.” The two F-16C Falcon air defense fighters, who
had been escorting the big Russian bombers on their flight across the
United States
, wagged their wings and split off. “Okay,
General, one-time good deal—all the airspace within thirty miles of Nellis,
including over
Las Vegas
, is yours. Show us what these babies can do.”

 
          
General
Smoliy broke into a wide grin, then reached across the center console, took
Annie’s hand, and kissed it. “Thank you, Captain.” He secured his oxygen mask
with an excited
SNAP!
and took a firm grip on the control stick.
“Doozhe
priyemno
,
Las Vegas
,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.” He then jammed the throttles all the
way to full military power and swept the wings back as far as they could go. He
started a tight left turn back toward
Las Vegas
, his wingman in tight fingertip formation.
It did not take long for the formation to overfly the Strip. They had descended
to just a thousand feet above ground level. They did two three-sixties over the
downtown, using the Stratosphere tower as their orbit point.

 
          
After
the second orbit, just to make sure as many folks as possible were watching,
Smoliy called out,
“Dvee, drova
,
tup!"
and he plugged in
full afterburners. The two Tu-22Ms easily slid through the sound barrier,
booming all of downtown
Las Vegas
. He then aimed directly for Nellis Air Force Base. Still traveling well
past the speed of sound, both heavy bombers flew down the runway only two
hundred feet above ground, creating a double rooster-tail from the supersonic
shock wave that could be seen twenty miles away.