Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (19 page)

 
          
“Nothing,
Hamiy.”
he replied absently, using his pet name for her, “Beautiful.”
“It is nothing. I thought I saw ... but it is impossible.” He shook off the
image, took Annie’s hand, and kissed it. “He is special to you, no?”

 
          
“He
is special to me, yes.”

 
          
“Good
for you,” Smoliy said. “Very good. Take care of him.” Annie tried but couldn’t
read anything else in the big general’s eyes to give her a clue about what was
going on.

 
          
A
few hours later, after the welcoming celebrations and brief meetings with the
commander of the
Air
Warfare
Center
and the wing commander, the Ukrainian and
Turkish commanders were escorted to their quarters, and General Peterson walked
over to his secure battle staff room inside the base command post. Two officers
were there waiting for them. “Well, well, so they do let you out of the sandbox
once in a while, eh, Earth- mover?” he said to one of the men waiting for him.

 
          
“Only
on special occasions. Laser,” Lieutenant-General Terrill Samson, commander of
the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, responded with a smile. The big
three-star black general extended a huge hand to Peterson. “You remember my
deputy, Patrick McLanahan?”

 
          
“Sure
do,” Peterson said, shaking hands with McLanahan. “That job at the
Fifty-seventh Wing is still yours for the asking, Muck. Even though you’re a
bomber puke, you’re still the best man for the job. Put your name in the
bucket, and you’re in the pipeline. I’ll pick up that phone and set aside an
Air War College slot for you right now. Just say the word.”

 
          
’“Thanks,
General,” Patrick said, “but I’m very good right now.” In his mid-forties,
solidly built and unassuming, his blond hair slowly but surely turning gray,
McLanahan looked more at home as a policeman or a high school wrestling coach,
but in fact he had spent most of his professional life designing and testing
exotic high-tech warplanes for the U.S. Air Force. He had never really aspired
to be a wing commander. What he’d really wanted was what he’d just received—recognition
of his talents from his superiors. More than anything else, that made his
career complete.

           
“I’ll bet you are,” Peterson said,
smiling and giving Samson a wink. He invited the two to sit down, then offered
them cigars. “Heck, we don’t use the battle staff room for anything these days
except when you jokers from Dreamland come wandering back to the real world,”
he said, “so I turned it back into a smoking-okay room. I know it doesn’t jibe
with the smoke- free Air Force, but what the hell.” At that, both Samson and
McLanahan lit up. “So you want to take a look at the Backfire, huh? You guys
going to start flying them up there in Dreamland now?”

 
          
“Maybe,”
Samson replied. 'They might be the only long- range intercontinental bombers in
NATO pretty soon.”

 
          
“What
are you talking about. Earth—?” Peterson stopped, his jaw dropping open and a
curl of smoke escaping. “Holy shit. The rumors are
true?
The
United States
will leave NATO? Leave
Europe
?” Samson nodded. “Do you have details?”

          
 
“Not many I can share with you right now,”
Samson replied “American units will leave European bases by attrition, which
means that units will slowly draw down over time until they become non-mission
effective, at which time they’ll close down. A few units, especially those
involved in treaty obligation duties, will be replaced with Reserve and
National Guard units until the treaties can be renegotiated.”

 
          
“This
is incredible!” General Peterson shouted. “The
United States
will simply
leave
Europe
?
Ignore sixty years of partnership in maintaining the peace and simply
go
home?”

           
“Afraid so,” Samson said. “There are already bills before Congress
authorizing our withdrawal from NATO, but the President has said he will cut
off nonessential funding for overseas units. When they run out of money and
can’t fulfill their missions, they’ll go back to the States. Funding for NATO
itself will draw down over five years.”

 
          
“Wow”
was all Peterson could say. He shook his head. “What about the other rumors?
The Army ... ?”

 
          
“Slash
and burn,” Samson said.

 
          
“No
troops stationed overseas?”

 
          
“How
about no active duty Army combat troops ...
anywhere,"
Samson said.
“None.
The only active duty Army will be administrative, support,
research, training, and special operations. The rest will be Army Reserve and
National Guard only, with no overseas bases on non-U.S.-owned territory. If the
country needs an army, the President will have to go before Congress and ask
for it, and Congress will have to come up with the money. The only
forward-deployed infantry troops will be Marine Corps expeditionary forces
serving afloat, and Guard and Reserve forces on training days.”

 
          
“My
God. What is Thom smoking? Is he crazy? The American people will revolt against
him.
Europe
will be ripe for the picking.”

 
          
“That
remains to be seen,” Samson said. “Anyway, we start gearing up for more
long-range missions. We’re going to start seeing a lot more foreign air forces
here at Nellis training with our guys, because now they have to be responsible
for defending their own territories as not only the frontline force, but the
sustaining force until the U.S. gears up and deploys the Reserves. HAWC is
interested in the tactical and strategic bombers, and right now, that’s the
Backfires and any other forces that can carry standoff weapons. We want to see
how the
Ukraine
stacks up against the Turkish Air Force.”

 
          
“Judging
by Smoliy’s and Sivarek’s personal relationship, I’d say we’re going to have a
wild time in the ranges in the next few weeks,” Peterson said. He studied
Samson for a moment over his cigar, then turned to Patrick and asked, “You
going to be playing along with them? Get some of your supersecret toys up
there? Mix it up a little with them?”

 
          
“What
supersecret toys arc you referring to, sir?” Patrick asked, then masked his
smile with a cloud of aromatic cigar smoke.

 
          
“Ah,
don’t give me that brainwashed bullshit, Muck,” Peterson said, with a laugh.
“All I ask is that if you want to play on my ranges, brief the crews as much as
possible on the performance parameters of whatever you’ll put up against them.
You don’t have to give away any secrets—just a heads-up so no one gets hurt.
This is still a training environment. I don’t want these guys thinking we’re
chasing them across the sky with UFOs or something.”

           
“Deal,” Patrick said.

 
          
Peterson
shook his head again, then took a deep drag from his cigar. “No Army. The
cockroaches are going to be taking over the kitchen now for
sure”

 
          
Later
that evening, several Nellis Security Force officers escorted two U.S. Air
Force officers into the isolated revetment area on the east side of Nellis Air
Force Base, away from the main parking ramp, where the two Ukrainian Tu-22M
Backfire bombers were parked. Already there beside one of the bombers was
General Roman Smoliy. He was puffing away on a cigar impatiently as the two
officers approached.

 
          
“Hey,
Hamiy!
Pretty lady captain!” Smoliy greeted Annie Dewey. “I did not
expect you tonight—I expect you to be dancing all night with my men. I told
them all about you and those gentle, talented hands of yours.”

 
          
Annie
Dewey approached Smoliy, and she and the officer with her saluted. Smoliy
returned the salute with the butt end of his cigar. “It is too late, and I am
too relaxed, for protocols,” he said. He turned his attention to the other
officer and said, “If you don’t mind. Colonel, I want to be with my men
tonight. It has been a long day.”

 
          
Colonel
David Luger said nothing, but stared back at Smoliy, then up at the big
Tupolev-22M Backfire bomber behind him. “This won’t take long. General. I
promise.”

 
          
“Good,
good,” Smoliy said. He studied Luger carefully for a moment, his eyes
narrowing, then looking askance as if trying to dredge up some long-forgotten
images in his mind. He looked again at Luger, opened his mouth, closed it.
Luger looked back at him, then removed his garrison cap. Smoliy gulped, his
mouth and eyes opening wide in surprise, and he gasped,
“Idi k yobanay
matiri
...”

 
          
“Da,
General,” Luger replied in casual, remarkably fluent Russian. “
Dobriy vyechyeer.
On zassal yimu mazg!
”

 
          
Annie
Dewey turned to David in surprise. “I didn’t know you spoke Russian—”

 
          
“Ozerov,”
Smoliy gasped. “Ivan Ozerov. You’re
here?
Here in
America
?
In an American military uniform?”
David Luger swallowed hard. He hadn’t heard that name in years—but it was his,
all right.

 
          
Luger
was a fifteen-year Air Force veteran from
Amarillo
,
Texas
. His aeronautical engineering background and expertise in computers,
systems design, and advanced systems design, along with his years as a B-52
bomber navigator-bombardier, had made him one of the most sought-after aviation
project leaders in the world. If Dave Luger were a ci vilian, he would
certainly be a vice president of Boeing or Raytheon, or an undersecretary of
defense at the Pentagon ... and if it hadn’t been for the Redtail Hawk
incident, he might be head of an Air Force laboratory.

 
          
But
in 1988, following a secret B-52 bombing raid engineered by the High Technology
Aerospace Weapons Center against a ground-based laser site in the Soviet Union,
Luger had been left for dead on a snow-covered runway in Siberia, then captured
and brainwashed while being nursed back to health by the KGB. For five years,
he had been forced to use his engineering brilliance to build the next
generation of Soviet long-range bombers.

 
          
To
the
U.S.
military and intelligence community, David Luger had been a traitor.
The CIA had thought he was nothing more than an AWOL U.S. Air Force B-52
bombardier that had deserted and joined the other side. The security level at
the High Technology Aerospace Center was so high that no one, even the CIA,
knew Luger had been on the EB-52 Old Dog bombing raid against the Kavaznya
laser site or that he had been left behind at the Siberian air base at Anadyr
and presumed dead; the cover story, devised by the previous director of HAWC,
General Brad Elliott, had stated that Luger had died in a crash of a top-secret
experimental aircraft. The CIA knew that Luger was in the
Soviet Union
, and assumed he had defected. All they
really knew was that a highly intelligent
Air
Force
Academy
grad, American citizen, B-52 crew member,
and member of a top-secret weapons research group with an advanced degree and a
top-secret security clearance, had been advancing the state of the art in
Russian long-range bombing technology by an entire generation.

 
          
He
had been discovered and rescued by Patrick McLanahan and a special combined Air
Force-Marine Corps Intelligence Support Agency operations team called Madcap
Magician just before the CIA had been going to carry out plans to terminate
him, at the same time averting a certain all-out war between the newly
independent Baltic states and a resurgent Soviet-style military government in
Russia. It had taken another five years to deprogram, rehabilitate, and return
Luger to his life as an American aviator and expert aerospace engineer.