Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (31 page)

 
          
To
his aircraft commander sitting beside him in the cockpit of the EB-1C
Megafortress-2 bomber, nicknamed “Vampire,” Patrick said, “Luger’s not going to
let us sneak a peek, so I better get a fix on all our players. LADAR coming
on.”

 
          
“Go
ahead,” the pilot. Colonel Rebecca Furness, responded curtly. “Make it quick.
General.”

 
          
“Rog,”
McLanahan said as he activated the LADAR. or Laser Radar. Using tiny laser
emitters, the LADAR scanned the sky for fifty miles in all directions,
including near-space, and “drew” a three-dimensional image of all terrain,
surface, and airborne objects. In five seconds, LADAR had scanned one hundred
and twenty-five thousand cubic miles of earth and sky around the bomber,
correlated the scan with known terrain features and current intelligence
information, and stored the image in computer memory. Patrick deactivated the
system and reported, “LADAR down, Rebecca.”

 
          
Furness
glanced over at the large multifunction display mounted on the mission
commander’s instrument panel, which showed a “God’s-eye” view of the
battlefield. “What do we got, MC?” Furness asked impatiently. Rebecca Furness
was a twenty-plus year veteran of the Air Force, serving mostly in the Reserves
and Air National Guard. She also had the distinction of being one of the first
female combat pilots in the Air Force and one of the first to command a combat
unit, the 111 th Bomb Squadron of the Nevada Air National Guard—twice. Furness
made it clear to everyone who would listen that Patrick McLanahan had been
mostly responsible for her losing her command—and she grudgingly admitted that
he had been mostly responsible for getting it back for her.

 
          
She
could think of a hundred things she’d rather be doing than playing chauffeur
for the boy general on yet another of his endless test flights. Rebecca had a
squadron to assemble, and she knew that a lot of heavy hitters in the Pentagon,
in
Washington
, and all over the world were watching her.

 
          
“The
Falcons split up,” Patrick replied. “Number two is chasing the leader while
number one is sweeping to his six to check on the number two Sila. Looks like
the number two Falcon’s going to take his turn and get the lead Sila with a
Sidewinder.”

 
          
“Well,
let’s not wait for them to kill both of our attackers,” Furness said. “Let’s
bust a move.”

 
          
“Hold
your horses, pilot,” Patrick said. “We briefed this engagement a half-dozen
times—you know the plan as well as I do. We want to see what they can do on
their own first.”

           
“Why are we doing this support
stuff anyway, sir?” Rebecca asked. “You picked my unit because we’re good at
tactical bombing. The Bone was built to penetrate heavily defended airspace and
attack high-value targets. Your Megafortress contraption can do that job better
than even I ever thought possible . Why not let us do our job?”

 
          
“This
is our job right now, Rebecca,” Patrick said testily. “We are here to deploy a
tactical strike support system. The EB-1C Megafortress aircraft are designed to
be strategic airborne battleships—that means strike support, surveillance, and
reconnaissance as well as attack. Our turn to have fun comes later.”

 
          
Rebecca
Furness fell silent, disappointed but not surprised over the young general’s
lack of corporate knowledge. Her first combat unit, the 394th Air Battle Wing
of the Air Force Reserve, had flown a modified F-l 11G Aardvark supersonic
bomber nicknamed the RF-111G Vampire bomber, which had been primarily designed
for armed reconnaissance. Rebecca herself had dubbed the EB-1C bomber the
Vampire in her old jet's honor. She had enjoyed the armed reconnaissance role
back then. Each mission had been a combination of many different
responsibilities—standoff attack, antiship, antiradar, antiairfield,
minelaying, and antireconnaissance, along with photoreconnaissance and data
relay—and she’d enjoyed the challenge. Rebecca had been positive that, as the
nation’s first woman to fly in a combat unit, she had been assigned to the
394th because the Vampire was supposed to be a safe, standoff weapon system,
not really designed to be a frontline attack unit. The possibility of her being
shot down and captured was supposed to be low. But she’d commanded her flight
and flown her missions with aggressiveness and courage that won her a lot of
attention and praise, and eventually her own command of a combat unit.

 
          
But
truth to tell, the RF-111 was not a huge success. It was fast, stealthy,
capable, and carried a large variety of payloads, like the EB-1, but it was
maintenance-intensive, needed a lot of aerial refueling and ground support, and
was considered old technology and not a good buy for the military—again, like
the B-l. Despite their success in Operation Desert Storm, all of the F-l 11
models were soon retired from service—and the first to go was the RF-111.
Having one aircraft do a variety of missions looked good on paper, but if the
sortie didn’t launch or couldn’t continue the mission, the entire strike
package suffered greatly. In effect, the weapon system was
too
capable—
instead of considering all the incredible things the plane could do, all the
planners could think of was what would happen if the plane broke down and didn’t
make it to the target area. That was enough to kill the program.

 
          
The
B-l fleet came within a few votes of being mothballed as well. Sixty of ninety
planes were placed in “flyable storage,” which meant they could be flown only
after a few months of intensive resuscitation. The rest were transferred to the
Air National Guard and Reserves as a cost-cutting measure. Patrick McLanahan
and his research group at Dreamland had hac! Other ideas for the fleet. He'd
received enough funding to turn eight B-l B Lancers into EB-1C Vampire “flying
battleships,” operated by the Nevada Air National Guard in peacetime and
federalized into the Air Force's Air Combat Command in wartime.

 
          
The
Vampire could drop or launch every weapon in the
U.S.
arsenal, including antisatellite and
anti-ballistic missile weapons and every kind of cruise missile imaginable. Its
three bomb bays could hold over sixty thousand pounds of ordnance, and external
hardpoints on the fuselage gave
it
the
ability
to carry even more
weapons. Rebecca was proud to command the nation's one and only Vampire unit.
But the EB-1 was very much like a very big RF-111. and in this age of budget
cuts and changing priorities, the second coming of the Vampire was very likely
to suffer the same fate as the first.

 
          
Whether
or not the EB-1C actually made it, Rebecca reminded herself that all these
tests were helping to make Patrick McLanahan look pretty good, too. His use of
the “we” word, she thought, was being a little disingenuous. Patrick McLanahan
seemed like a good guy, but all one-star generals were alike—they just wanted
to be two-star generals, and all two- stars wanted was three stars, and so on.
When it came right down to it, Rebecca was sure McLanahan would grab the next
rung of the ladder and use her and everyone else around him as a step to help
himself up.

 
          
He
was certainly, as the old saying went, “making hay while the sun shines.”
Following his successful efforts both in protecting the United Republic of
Korea from attack by
China
and at the same time protecting
China
from rogue retaliatory attacks by a
power-mad Korean general with control of several dozen nuclear weapons. Patrick
McLanahan had become an overnight hero, almost on a par with Norman Schwarzkopf
and Colin Powell. Many comparisons had been instantly made between him and his
mentor, friend, former commander, and perennial thorn in the Pentagon’s ass.
Brad Elliott, the former commander of HAWC, although McLanahan was definitely
perceived as more of a team player than Elliott. Patrick's promotion to
major-general, his second star in three years, and eventual command of the
High-Technology
Aerospace
Weapons
Center
—or possibly an operational command—were
almost assured.

 
          
Now,
Rebecca thought, he was going full speed ahead on every possible weapons
program that popped into his head— or, more likely, every one that popped into
his buddy Dr. Jon Masters’s head—and he was getting lots of funding and high-
powered attention for almost every one of them. Jon Masters was the head of a
small high-tech military contractor. Sky Masters Inc., that designed and built
various pieces of hardware, including satellites, “brilliant” cruise missiles,
and satellite communications and reconnaissance systems. When most of the
officers in charge of HAWC had been dismissed a few years ago because of the
Kenneth Francis James spy scandal, McLanahan and his wife Wendy, an electronics
engineer, had gone to work for Jon Masters—and Dr. Wendy Tork still worked for
him today. There was obviously a financial motive for Patrick to develop Sky
Masters Inc.’s systems. It all looked a bit improper for such a direct pipeline
between the military" and civilian world to exist, but Rebecca w as sure
that relationship had been scrutinized by the Pentagon seven ways to Sunday by
now.

 
          
Even
though Rebecca questioned and maybe even resented McLanahan's business
dealings, to tell the truth, she liked McLanahan s enthusiasm and drive But she
believed sometimes it was all being done at someone else’s expense. Namely;
hers.

 
          
“Vampire,
this is Control,” Luger radioed to Furness and McLanahan on the secure Blue
Force channel. “Muck, the Ukrainians look like they’re asleep or something.
You're going to have to kick the Ukrainians in the butt a little. They seemed
to be taking this exercise a little too lightly.”

 
          
“Roger,”
Patrick responded. He took another laser radar “snapshot” of the area, studied
it for a moment, then radioed on the tactical interplane frequency: “Sila
Zero-One, this is Vampire. You’ve got a bandit on your tail,
seven o’clock
, less than four miles! I have you at two
thousand feet AGL. Recommend you descend, accelerate, begin evasive maneuvers,
begin terrain masking, and prepare to respond to a heat-seeking missile threat”

 
          
“Acknowledged,”
the pilot responded simply.

 
          
Patrick
waited—and nothing happened. “Sila Zero-One, the bandit will be within missile
range in five seconds. Get out of there! Now!”

 
          
“Give
us a heading. Vampire,” the Ukrainian pilot said.

 
          
“A
heading?
Any
heading! You need to get away from him
now.
^r
'

 
          
“Our
Sirena tail-warning system is inoperative,” the pilot reported. “We do not have
contact. We need a heading, please.”

 
          
“Oh,
for Pete’s sake ..Patrick was ready to explode in frustration. He had just
given them all the information they needed. Besides, they were two minutes from
the target—they should be going balls-to-thc-wall anyway! “Sila Zero-One. do a
hard break to the right toward that ridgeline, descend at least fifteen hundred
feet, then reverse about two miles from the ridge and accelerate. Make him start
thinking about hitting the mountains instead of lining up a shot on you!”

 
          
“Acknowledged.”
the Backfire pilot said. He started a relatively slow turn toward the north,
then reversed his turn almost immediately. “Maneuver completed,” he reported.
“Returning to target heading. One hundred seventeen seconds to target.”

 
          
“I
think he's more scared of the mountains than that F-16 pilot will be,” Rebecca
said.

 
          
“Well,
scratch one Backfire,” Patrick said disgustedly. “Might as well let the Turks
get some air-to-air work in and let the Ukrainians practice some bombing.”

           
“He’s not doing anything—just
heading direct to the target,” the second Turkish F-16 pilot reported.
“Apparently his tailwarning system is not functioning,”

 
          
“Your
tail is clear, so he's not playing possum so a fighter can sneak up behind
you,” Sivarek said. “Give him a wake up call with the radar and see what he
does.”