Combat

by Stephen Coonts

  “Well, what the hell do you suggest, nav?” Brad asked acidly.

  Patrick hesitated, then leaned over to Wendy, and said, “Cut jamming on UHF GUARD.”

  Wendy looked at him with concern. “Are you sure, Patrick?”

  “Yes. Do it.” Wendy reluctantly entered instructions into her ECM computer, stopping the jamming signals from interfering with the 243.0 megahertz frequency, the universal UHF emergency channel. Patrick flipped his intercom panel wafer switch to COM 2, which he knew was set to the universal UHF emergency channel. “Attention, Iranian aircraft at our six o’clock position, one hundred and seventy-six kilometers southeast of Bandar Abbas. This is the American aircraft you are pursuing. Can you hear me?”

  “Patrick, what in hell are you doing?” Elliott shouted on interphone. “Defense, did you stop jamming UHF? What in hell’s going on back there?”

  “That’s not a good idea, Patrick,” John offered, sternly but not as forcefully as Elliott. “You just told him we’re Americans. He’s going to want to take a look now.”

  “He’d be crazy to answer,” Brad said. “Now stay off the radio and …”

  But just then, they heard on the radio, “Shto etah? Nemalvali pazhaloosta.”

  “What the hell was that?” Wendy asked.

  “Sounded like Russian to me,” Patrick said.

  Just then, in broken English, they heard, “American aircraft at my twelve of the clock position from my nose, this is Khaneh One-Four-One of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force. I read you. You are in violation of Iranian sovereign airspace. I command you now to climb to three thousand meters of altitude and prepare for intercept. Reduce speed now and lower your landing-gear wheels. Do you understand?”

  “One-Four-One, this is the American aircraft. We have locked defensive weapons on to your aircraft. Do not fly closer than twelve kilometers from us or you will be attacked. Do you understand?”

  “Range ten miles.”

  “You are at sixteen kilometers,” Patrick radioed. “Do not come any closer.”

  “Patrick, this is nuts,” Brad said. “You’re going to try to convince him to turn around? He’ll never go for it.”

  “Nine miles. Closure speed five hundred knots.”

  “One-Four-One, you are at fourteen-point-five kilometers, closing at thirteen kilometers per minute. Do not, I repeat, do not fly closer than twelve kilometers to us, or you will be attacked. We are not in Iranian airspace, and we are withdrawing from the area. This is my final warning. Do you understand?”

  “Eight miles …”

  “One-Four-One, we have you at twelve kilometers! Break off now!”

  “Stand by to shoot, Wendy! Damn you, McLanahan … !”

  “Here he comes!” Wendy shouted. “Closure rate … wait, his closure rate dropped,” Wendy announced. “He’s holding at eight miles … no, he’s slowing. He’s climbing. He’s up to five thousand feet, range ten miles, decelerating.”

  “Cease jamming, Wendy,” Patrick said.

  “What?”

  “Stop jamming them,” Patrick said. “They broke off their attack. Now we need to do the same.”

  “Brad?”

  “You’re taking a big damned chance, Muck,” Brad Elliott said. He paused, but only for a moment; then: “Cease jamming. Fire ’em up again if they come within eight miles.”

  “Trackbreakers and comm jammers to standby,” Wendy said, punching instructions into the computer. “Range nine miles. He’s climbing faster, passing ten thousand feet.”

  “You Americans, do not try to approach our Iran, or we will show you our anger,” the Iranian MiG pilot said in halting English. “Your threats mean nothing to us. Stay away or be damned.”

  “He’s turning north,” Wendy said. “He’s … oh no! He’s diving on us! Range ten miles, closure rate seven hundred knots!”

  “Jammers!” Brad shouted. “Lock on and shoot!”

  “No! Withhold!” Patrick shouted. He keyed the UHF radio mike button again: “One-Four-One, don’t come any closer!”

  “I said shoot … !”

  “Wait! He’s turning and climbing!” Wendy reported with relief.

  “He’s climbing and turning, heading northeast.”

  “Prick,” John Ormack said with a loud sigh of relief. “Just a macho stunt.”

  “Scope’s clear,” Wendy said. “Bandit at twenty miles and extending. No other signals.”

  “Pilot’s clearing off,” Brad said. He didn’t wait for John’s acknowledgment, but safetied his ejection seat, whipped off his straps, and stormed out of his seat and back to the systems officer’s compartment.

  “He doesn’t look happy, guys,” John warned Patrick and Wendy on interphone.

  The instrument console was right behind the hatch leading to the lower deck, so Brad couldn’t go all the way back. He plugged into a free interphone cord, so everyone on board could hear his tirade, stood over the console with eyes blazing, pointed a gloved finger at Patrick, and thundered, “Don’t you ever countermand my orders again, Major! He could’ve blown us away—twice! You’re not the aircraft commander, I am!” He turned to Wendy Tork and shouted, “If I say ‘shoot,’ Tork, you obey my orders instantly or I will kick your ass, then kick your ass into prison for twenty years! And don’t you dare cease jamming an enemy aircraft unless I give the order to stop! You copy me?”

  “I hear you, General,” Wendy shot back, “but you can go straight to hell.” Elliott’s eyes bulged in rage. Wendy hurried on: “Who gave us the order to shoot? Who even gave us permission to jam a foreign power’s radar and radios?” Elliott remained silent.

  “Brad?” John Ormack asked. “This mission is supposed to be a contingency mission, in case Iran opens a second front against the Coalition. We’re not supposed to be flying so close to disputed territory—I don’t think we were supposed to engage anyone.”

  “In fact, I don’t ever recall being given an order to fly at all, sir,” Patrick said. “I read the warning order, and it says we were supposed to stand by for possible action against Iran or any other nation that declares neutrality that might be a threat to the U.S. I never saw the execution order or the rules of engagement. We never received any satellite photos or tactical printouts. Nothing to help us in mission planning.”

  “What about that, General?” Wendy asked. “I never saw the execution order for our mission either. I never got the order of battle or any intelligence reports. Is this an authorized mission or not?”

  “Of course it is,” Brad said indignantly. His angry grimace was melting away fast, and Patrick knew that Wendy had guessed right. “We were ordered to stand by for action. We’re … standing by. This is tactically the best place to be standing by anyway.”

  “So if we fired on an Iranian fighter, it would be unauthorized.”

  “We’re authorized to defend ourselves …”

  “If we were on an authorized mission, we’d be authorized to defend ourselves—but this isn’t authorized, is it?” Patrick asked. When Brad did not answer right away, Patrick added, “You mean, none of the Megafortresses we have in-theater is specifically authorized to be up here? We’ve got three experimental stealth warplanes loaded with weapons flying ten thousand miles from home and just a few miles from a war zone, and no one knows we’re up here? Jesus, General …”

  “That will be all, Major,” Elliott interjected. “The sorties were authorized—by me. Our orders were to stand by and prepare for combat operations in support of Desert Storm. That is what we’re doing.”

  Patrick unstrapped, unplugged his interphone cord, got to his feet, leaned close to Brad Elliott, and said cross-cockpit, so no one else could hear, “Sir, we can’t be doing this. You’re risking our lives … for what? If we got intercepted by Iranians or Iraqis or whoever, we’d have to fight our way out—but we’d be doing it without sanction, without orders. If we got shot down, no one would even know we were missing. Why? What the hell is all this for?”

  Brad and Patr
ick looked into each other’s eyes for a very long moment. Brad’s eyes were still blazing with indignation and anger, but now they were shadowed by a touch of … what? Patrick hoped it would be understanding or maybe contrition, but that’s not what he saw. Instead, he saw disappointment. Patrick had called his mentor and commanding officer on a glaring moral and leadership error, and all he could communicate in return was that he was disappointed that his protégé didn’t back him up.

  “Is it because you didn’t participate in Desert Storm?” Patrick asked. The Persian Gulf War—some called it “World War III”—had just ended, and the majority of troops had already gone home. They were enjoying celebrations and congratulations from a proud and appreciative nation, something unseen in the United States since World War II. “Is it because you know you had something that could help the war effort, but you weren’t allowed to use it?”

  “Go to hell, McLanahan,” Elliott said bitterly. “Don’t try any of that amateur psychoanalyst crap with me. I’m given discretion on how to employ my forces, and I’m doing it as I see fit.”

  Patrick looked at his commanding officer, the man he thought of as a friend and even as a surrogate father. His father had died before Patrick went off to college, and he and his younger brother had been raised in a household with a strong-willed, domineering mother and two older sisters. Brad was the first real father figure in Patrick’s life in many years, and he did all he could to be a strong, supportive friend to Elliott, who was without a doubt a lone-wolf character, both in his personal and professional life.

  Although Bradley James Elliott was a three-star general and was once the number four man in charge of Strategic Air Command, the major command in charge of America’s long-range bombers and land-based ballistic nuclear missiles, he was far too outspoken and too “gung ho” for politically sensitive headquarters duty. To Brad, bombers were the key to American military power projection, and he felt it was his job, his duty, to push for increased funding, research, and development of new long-range attack technologies. That didn’t sit well with the Pentagon. The services had been howling mad for years about the apparent favoritism toward the Air Force. The Pentagon was pushing “joint operations,” but Brad Elliott wasn’t buying it. When he continued to squawk about reduced funding and priority for new Air Force bomber programs, Brad lost his fourth star. When he still wouldn’t shut up, he was banished to the high Nevada desert either to retire or simply disappear into obscurity.

  Brad did neither. Even though he was an aging three-star general occupying a billet designated for a colonel or one-star general, he used his remaining stars and HAWC’s shroud of ultrasecrecy and security to develop an experimental twenty-first-century long-range attack force, comprised of highly modified B-52 and B-1 bombers, “superbrilliant” stealth cruise missiles, unmanned attack vehicles, and precision-guided weapons. He procured funding that most commanders could only wish for, money borrowed—many said “stolen”—from other weapons programs or buried under multiple layers of security classification.

  While the rest of the Air Force thought Brad Elliott was merely sitting around waiting to retire, he was building a secret attack force—and he was using it. He had launched his first mission in a modified B-52 bomber three years earlier, dodging almost the entire Soviet Far East Air Army and attacking a Soviet ground-based laser installation that was being used to blind American reconnaissance satellites. That mission had cost the lives of three men, and had cost Brad his right leg. But it proved that the “flying battleship” concept worked and that a properly modified B-52 bomber could be used against highly defended targets in a nonnuclear attack mission. Brad Elliott and his team of scientists, engineers, test pilots, and technogeeks became America’s newest secret strike force.

  “It’s not your job or place to second-guess or criticize me,” Elliott went on, “and it sure as hell isn’t your place to countermand my orders or give orders contrary to mine. You do it again, and I’ll see to it that you’re military career is terminated. Understand?”

  Patrick thought he had noted just a touch of sadness in Brad’s eyes, but that was long gone now. He straightened his back and caged his eyes, not daring to look his friend in the eye. “Yes, sir,” he replied tonelessly.

  “General?” John Ormack radioed back on interphone. “Patrick? What’s going on?”

  Brad scowled one last time at Patrick. Patrick just sat down without meeting Brad’s eyes and strapped into his ejection seat again. Elliott said, “Patrick’s going to contact Diego Garcia and get our bombers some secure hangar space. We’re going to put down until we get clarification on our mission. Plot a course back to the refueling track, get in contact with our tankers and our wingmen, and let’s head back to the barn.”

  When Brad turned and headed back to the cockpit, Wendy reached across the cabin and touched Patrick’s arm in a quiet show of gratitude. But Patrick didn’t feel much like accepting any congratulations.

  “I want to go over the highlights of the Secretary’s MOI with you before we get started,” Major General Larry Ingemanson, the president of the promotion board, said. He was addressing the entire group of board members just before they started their first day of deliberations. “The MOI defines the quotas set for each promotion category, but you as voting members aren’t required to meet those quotas. We’re looking for quality, not quantity. Keep that in mind. The only quotas we must fill for this board are for joint-service assignments, which are set by law, and the Secretariat will take care of that. The law also states that extra consideration be given to women and minorities. Bear in mind that your scores are not adjusted by the Secretariat if the candidate happens to be female or a member of a minority—no one can adjust your score but you. You are simply asked to be aware that these two groups have been unfairly treated in the past.

  “You are also asked to keep in mind that since the start of hostilities in the southwest Asian theater, some candidates may not have had the opportunity to complete advanced degrees or professional military education courses. Eventually I believe this will become more and more of a concern as deployment tempos pick up, but so far the law has not been changed. You’re just asked to keep this fact in mind: If a candidate hasn’t completed PME or advanced degrees, check to see if he or she is serving in some specialty that requires frequent or short-notice deployments, and take that into consideration.”

  General Ingemanson paused for a moment, closed his notes, and went on: “Now, this isn’t in the MOI—it’s from your nonvoting board president. This is my first time presiding over a board but my fourth time here in the box, and I have some thoughts about what you are about to undertake:

  “As you slug through all the three thousand-plus files over the next several days, you may get a little cross-eyed and slack-jawed. I will endeavor to remind you of this as the days go on, but I’ll remind you now, of the extreme importance of what you’re doing here: If you have ever thought about what it would be like to shape the future, this, my friends, is it.

  “We find ourselves in a very special and unique position of responsibility,” Ingemanson went on solemnly. “We are serving on the Air Force’s first field grade officers’ promotion board just days after the end of Operation Desert Storm, which many are calling the reawakening of America and the reunification of American society with its armed forces. We are seeing the beginning of a new era for the American military, especially for the U.S. Air Force. We are tasked with the awesome responsibility of choosing the men and women who will lead that new military into the future.”

  Norman Weir rolled his eyes and snorted to himself. What drivel. It was a promotion board, for Christ’s sake. Why did he have to try to attach some special, almost mystical significance to it? Maybe it was just the standard “pep talk,” but it was proceeding beyond the sublime toward the ridiculous.

  “I’m sure we’ve all heard the jokes about lieutenant colonels—the ‘throwaway’ officer, the ultimate wanna-bes,” Ingemanson went on. “The ones t
hat stand on the cusp of greatness or on the verge of obscurity. Well, let me tell you from the bottom of my soul: I believe they are the bedrock of the Air Force officer corps.

  “I’ve commanded four squadrons, two wings, and one air division, and the O-5s were always the heart and soul of all of my units. They did the grunt work of a line crewdog but had as much responsibility as a wing commander. They pulled lines of alert, led missions and deployments, and then had to push paper to make the bosses happy. They had the most practical hands-on experience in the unit—they usually were the evaluators, chief instructors, and most certainly the mentors. They had to be the best of the best. Us headquarters weenies could get away with letting the staff handle details—the 0-5s pushing squadrons never got that break. They had to study and train just as hard as the newest nugget, but then they had to dress nice and look sharp and do the political face time. The ones that do all that are worth their weight in gold.”

  Norman didn’t understand everything Ingemanson was talking about, and so he assumed he was talking flyer-speak. Naturally, Ingemanson himself was a command pilot and also wore paratrooper’s wings, meaning he probably graduated from the Air Force Academy. It was going to be a challenge, Norman thought, to break the aviator’s stranglehold on this promotion board.

  “But most importantly, the men and women you’ll choose in the next two weeks will be the future leaders of our Air Force, our armed forces, and perhaps our country,” Ingemanson went on. “Most of the candidates have completed one or more command and staff education programs; they might have a master’s degree, and many even work on doctorates. They’ve maxed out on flying time, traveled to perhaps five or six different PCS assignments plus a few specialty and service schools. They’re probably serving in the Sandbox now, and perhaps even served in other conflicts or actions. They are beginning the transition from senior line troop, instructor, or shop chief to fledgling unit commander. Find the best ones, and let’s set them on track to their destinies.