Chains of Command

by Dale Brown

  “You took on fifteen thousand pounds of fuel,” Furness reported, “and I see no leaks up here. We’ll follow you all the way to landing.”

  “This should do me for at least three to four hours,” Mace said. “I think I’m done for now. Thanks again, BC.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Furness said as she saw him wave at her. “See you when I see you.” Furness removed the headset, slumped in the seat, took a deep breath, and let it out in one expansive sigh.

  “Good job, Captain,” Clintock said, then added with a mischievous smile, “For a lady, you got a lot of balls.”

  “I just hope the brass sees it that way,” the chief master sergeant said as he took his seat beside Clintock again after Furness got out, “when they review those radio transmissions. And thank God we had a fighter out there with missiles on board, or else we’d be a flaming hole right now.”

  “We got the -111 and the Tornado its gas,” Furness said. “That’s what we were ordered to do. Any other problems they have with my procedures are moot if the Aardvark makes it back in one piece.”

  The chief shook his head but said nothing else.

  Furness made her way back up to the forward passenger cabin to get back to her newspaper when she met up with the flight engineer and the pilot Marlowe again coming out of the cockpit. The engineer looked as white as a sheet, and specks of white and a large stain spread over the front of his flight suit. “Hey, Pete, what’s the matter?” The engineer made no reply, but avoided Furness’ eyes and hurried over to the lavatory. “What’s with him, Sam?”

  Marlowe made sure the engineer made it, then turned angrily toward Furness. “He’s sick, that’s what, Furness,” Marlowe snapped. “He can barely stand up.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “You’re what happened,” Marlowe said. “That attack by the fighter … it really rattled him. He’s scared shitless, all because of you. I was coming back here to advise you that I’m making a full report of this incident to the wing,” he said.

  Furness’ smile disappeared in a fraction of a second. “You’re … what … ?”

  “You think you’re some kind of hero for refueling that bomber with enemy fighters in the area? Bullshit. I say you’re an egotistical prima donna that gets her kicks from breaking the rules when it suits her.”

  “Well, you go right ahead and make your report, Marlowe,” Furness seethed. “I was ordered to refuel that bomber, and that’s what I did.”

  “And you broke technical, procedural, and tactical rules to do it—not to mention putting this entire crew and this aircraft in jeopardy.”

  “I didn’t put anyone in jeopardy,” Furness said. “In emergency situations we can continue the rendezvous.”

  “We saw the damned fighter, Furness,” Marlowe said grimly.

  Furness’ jaw dropped open in surprise. “You what … ? How far? When … ?”

  “He was right there, less than three, maybe four miles away,” Marlowe said. “He was rolling in on us … Jesus, he fired on us, Furness, we saw him launch a missile at us! We couldn’t do anything.”

  “You didn’t try to evade? You didn’t say anything?”

  “It was too late to do anything,” Marlowe said. “By the time we saw him, he was coming at us and the missile was in the air. God, I don’t know how it missed us. The Tornado dropped a flare, and I think it went after the flare.”

  “So the bandit was firing on the Tornado.”

  “It was firing at us, Furness!” Marlowe shouted. “It shot at us! You set us up like a sitting duck for that bandit to shoot us down!”

  Furness was completely speechless—she had no idea the fighter was so close: “Greg, the bomber reported the bandit outside lethal range.”

  “That doesn’t mean shit, Furness. We don’t know from lethal or nonlethal range—we know ‘attack.’ We were under attack, and you ordered us not to evade.”

  “You were on the flight deck, Marlowe,” Furness said. “You saw the bandit. You should have called a breakaway and begun evasive maneuvers.”

  “Hey, that’s good, lady, that’s real good,” the stunned pilot retorted. “Blame it on me now. Just what I expected. You are the senior officer and the mission commander, you were talking on the radios over enemy territory when we were told to maintain radio silence, you ordered me not to evade, you told the receivers to stay in contact position—but now you’re blaming me for not doing something.”

  Marlowe turned away, a look of resigned defeat on his face, and said, “Well, I was the pilot-in-command at the time, and I know I’m in charge when I’m in the left seat, so they’ll take me down too …” But then he snapped a look of pure anger at her and added, “But I’m going to make sure you go down with me, you bitch. And if they don’t bust you, I’ll make sure no one in the Command ever flies with you again.”

  EIGHT

  “Emergency-gear extension handle—pull,” Mace said half-aloud. He unwrapped the stainless steel safety wire from the yellow handle on the center forward instrument panel and pulled. Immediately the main gear-down lights came on steady green, but the nose-gear light was still out. Mace didn’t panic—yet. The emergency gear extension system used very high-pressure air to shove the gear out into the slipstream and throw the downlocks into place, but the book said that it might take much slower airspeeds, higher angles of attack, or as long as five minutes for the nose gear to come down because its shocks were so big.

  “Your nose gear looks like it’s halfway down, my friend,” the British pilot aboard the Tornado chasing Mace radioed. They were just a few miles inside Saudi Arabian airspace, but no Iraqi fighters had dared to fly this far south yet so they were given permission to use the radios. The Tornado crew had configured their fighter-bomber to look exactly like Mace’s plane—clean wings (they had used their last two remaining Sidewinder missiles to kill the Iraqi fighter, which turned out to be a MiG-29—a very impressive kill considering that the MiG-29 was a front-line Soviet-made fighter, similar to the American F-15 Eagle, and the Tornado was a “mud-pounder” that happened to carry air-to-air missiles), gear down, and wings swept back to about 30 to 35 degrees. The Tornado was about thirty feet from Mace’s right wingtip, accomplishing some of the steadiest “welded-wing” formation flying Mace had ever seen.

  “Yeah, I know,” Mace radioed back. “Fuckin’ thing is falling apart around my ears. I’ll give it a few more minutes.”

  “Right,” the Tornado pilot replied skeptically. Judging by the tone of his voice, he strongly believed in Murphy’s Law—”if it can go wrong, it will go wrong”—and Mace’s Corollary to Murphy’s Law: “Emergency-Gear Extension Handles won’t.”

  “Breakdance, this is Ramrod,” a new voice on the radio announced a few minutes later. “How do you hear?”

  “Loud and clear,” Mace replied. Ramrod was a standard call sign for a maintenance officer at most Air Force bases, a sort of on-site foreman who coordinated all repair, supply, and emergency activities at a base during aircraft launch and recovery.

  “Roger. We have an emergency recovery team in place to assist you. The landing zone will be marked by vehicles, and we have a mobile BAK-6 arresting cable set up with a line of trucks marking its location. Land well short of the cable. Check hook extended now.”

  Mace reached across Parsons and pulled a yellow hook-shaped handle. With all the other warning and caution lights illuminated on the front panel, Mace almost missed the new one: HOOK EXTEND. “Hook is down,” he radioed.

  “Confirmed,” the Tornado crew added.

  “Say gross weight, Breakdance.”

  “Estimating five-five thousand.”

  “Status of weapon bay stores.”

  “Unknown,” Mace replied. “One store may be hot.”

  “We copy,” Ramrod replied. There was a long, strained pause; then: “Breakdance, do you require assistance to complete your checklists?”

  “What I need is to get this beast on the ground,” Mace replied. He took a few
deep breaths, trying to flush the nervousness out of his eyes and hands, then said, “No, I think I got everything I can. I’m flying upright, the gear is down, and I’m cool for now. Over.”

  “We’re about thirty miles out,” the pilot aboard the RAF Tornado radioed. “Let’s try a controllability check, shall we? Slow to your computed approach speed and let’s have a go.”

  “Let’s,” Mace replied curtly.

  His computed approach speed of 195 knots—about 60 nautical miles per hour faster than normal—wasn’t that much slower than the airspeed he was flying right now, but the effect on his control just by pulling off a little power was dramatic. Immediately the nose came up, the stall-warning buzzer sounded, and the F-111G sank like the anchor on an aircraft carrier. He had to shove in military power to get his airspeed back up above 185. Through it all, the Tornado stayed on his wing, matching his airspeed swings and threatening to send himself crashing in the desert. “Sorry about that,” Mace offered as he climbed back up to two thousand feet and accelerated back to a comfortable, stable 220 knots.

  “Pulled off a bit too much too fast, I think,” the Tornado pilot said. “Not recommended for a normal approach, but keep it in mind if you have a short-field approach. Any serious vibrations or directional control problems?”

  “No.” Mace replied. “Let’s give it another shot—can’t do much worse. Ready?” No reply. “Elvis, you ready?” Still no reply. Then he saw the Tornado pilot point to the side of his helmet, tapping his earpieces, and Mace knew what had happened even before he looked back into the cockpit. He punched the MASTER CAUTION light out and found the RGEN and UTIL HOT caution lights illuminated. With one engine running, the primary hydraulic system from the one good engine had to supply power to the entire aircraft. Because of this, it was easy to overload it, as Mace had obviously done with his recovery efforts.

  Now the system was in “isolate,” which meant that the backup hydraulic system had activated and only a few vital systems were getting hydraulic power—namely, the stabilators, which controlled pitch and roll. Since the electrical generators ran on hydraulic power as well, all electrical systems were out now. Mace tried switching to battery power only, which powered radio one, but when he keyed the mike, nothing happened. The game was just about over. It was all up to the Tornado crew now to get him to the recovery base.

  A few minutes later they did reach the recovery base—except it wasn’t a base. They had descended to one thousand feet and had first aimed right at a group of trucks parked alongside a highway. But when the Tornado began a right turn and started to parallel the highway, Mace knew what was happening—the highway was his recovery base. He was going to land on the highway!

  The Tornado pulled ahead of Mace’s F-111G for the last two left-hand turns, keeping his airspeed up to two hundred knots for maximum controllability in the turns and making sure the maneuvers were gentle and easy. They lined up perfectly on the highway after the last turn on final. Three trucks on either side of the highway marked the BAK-6 arresting cable location, and off in the distance a few more trucks blocked the highway just before a curve—a little less than two miles available.

  Once they turned onto final, all Mace had to do was keep up with the Tornado. The backseater was watching him intently for any other signs of danger.

  Mace couldn’t keep the damn throttle steady. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t find a power setting that maintained the proper glide angle. Every tiny pitch change required a power adjustment, which changed his altitude, which required another pitch and power change to compensate. Several times he found himself well above the Tornado, and once he was so high that he lost sight of it. While the Tornado’s approach was a straight line, Mace’s approach was a series of roller-coaster hills that—

  Suddenly the pilot pointed forward. Mace looked up. He was still twenty, maybe thirty feet above the highway—well above the touchdown point. Mace tried a last-ditch dive for the cable, yanking the nose up just before the nose gear hit, but the hook bounced off the pavement and missed the arresting cable.

  “Breakdance, negative cable! Negative cable!” Ramrod shouted on the radio. “Go around! Go around!”

  Mace didn’t hear the warning, but he knew his landing attempt had gone horribly wrong. He shoved the power back in on the good engine and tried to raise the nose, but the control stick felt as heavy as an iron girder and the nose wasn’t moving up. He had no choice—he was going to land.

  The line of trucks blocking the highway at the curve seemed to be right in front of him. Although they were still at least a mile and a half away, at his speed he would close that distance in a hurry. Mace tried to ease the big bomber down with small power changes, but thermals coming off the highway were buoying him up, refusing to let him settle gently to earth. He was high and fast, with no highway left. When he reached the trucks ahead, both he and Parsons would die in a spectacular ball of fire. He had only one chance left to save himself… Please, God, he prayed silently, don’t let the nukes blow.…

  Mace chopped the throttle to idle and pulled the wing-sweep handle back to the 54-degree lockout. That dumped every last erg of lift remaining in the F-111G, and it sank tailfirst almost straight down. The sudden power loss shut down the backup hydraulic system, and Mace suddenly had no directional control at all—he was at the hands of the gods, the same ones that Daren Mace had been pissing off almost all his life.

  The tail feathers surrounding the engine exhaust nozzles hit first, crunching the metal against the destroyed engine and instantly igniting some fuel or hydraulic fluid and starting a black, smoky fire in the aft engine section. The main trucks hit hard, blowing the right tire and starting a small fire in the aft wheel well. The nose hit third, the partially extended nose gear collapsed instantly, and Mace was thrown so hard against his shoulder straps that he lost his breath. The fiberglass radome snapped, broke free, and crashed into the windscreen, destroying what was left of it before flying off.

  Still traveling well over 150 miles an hour, the F-111G left the highway and careened out into the desert, threatening to tumble like a mobile home caught in a tornado. The bomber began to spin on its blown right wheel, then on its nose digging into the sand, and finally came to rest nearly a mile past its touchdown spot, buried up to the cockpit in sand.

  It took several long moments for Mace to get his wind back—the sudden smell of burning fuel and rubber immediately invaded his half-conscious senses and quickened his recovery. The bomber, with two AGM-131X nuclear-tipped missiles and about fifteen hundred gallons of jet fuel on board, was on fire.

  Mace’s first impulse was to run, to get away from the burning plane before something blew—but his pilot, Robert Parsons, was also on that plane. He might be dead, especially after the crash, but he couldn’t just leave him in the plane to fry. Instead, he hobbled around the decimated nose to Robert Parsons. His restraints had failed on impact and he was slumped over his lap, blood covering his legs and chest, but with the bomber tipped over onto its left side it was easy to pull him free of the plane. With strength he didn’t know he possessed, Mace dragged the pilot out across the desert nearly a hundred yards before his strength drained away and he collapsed on the sand.

  Laying Parsons down, he carefully removed his battered helmet. Parsons’ face was deeply scarred and covered with blood, and all of Mace’s bandages had torn off in the windblast. His left shoulder appeared dislocated and shattered. The bandages on his chest were intact but soaked through with blood. The wound across the left side of his chest looked the worst, and Mace had nothing to cover the gaping, bloody wound with except his hands. He applied pressure on the exposed tissue—and to his surprise a low moan escaped from Parsons’ lips. Was it just air from his dead lungs being expelled through his—No! Parsons was still alive! “Oh, Jesus,” Mace murmured as he saw Parsons move his head and lips. “Bob, can you hear me? We’re okay. We made it. Help will be here in a minute.” Parsons’ lips moved, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he stru
ggled to speak.

  “Don’t try to talk, man. You’re okay. Don’t try.”

  But Parsons gasped again, leaning forward to get closer to Mace. Over the sounds of the approaching rescue crews and the fire extinguishers being activated against the fires creeping toward the bomb bay, Mace leaned closer to Parsons. “What is it, Bob?” he asked his pilot.

  “Nuke … you didn’t … launch … nuke.”

  Then he heard one word from his pilot, but it was a word that was going to change his life:

  “Traitor,” Parsons coughed. “You’re … a fucking traitor.”

  PART TWO

  There’s nothing I’m afraid of

  like scared people.

  —Robert Frost

  NINE

  The White House Oval Office, January 1995

  It was very much like a state visit—the honor guard at the airport, the greeting by Secretary of State Harlan Grimm, the motorcade through the streets of Washington, and the greeting at the White House by the President, the First Lady, and members of the Cabinet and Congressional leadership. The greeting for Valentin Ivanovich Sen’kov, former prime minister of Russia, senior member of the Congress of People’s Deputies, and the moderate opposition leader to hard-line Russian president Vitaly Velichko, was almost as grandiose as those accorded a popular state leader.

  Sen’kov was in his late forties to early fifties, tall, slender, handsome, and unmarried. He was a former colonel in the SPETSNAZ, the Red Army’s Special Forces, a veteran of Afghanistan. Sen’kov was a strong ally of Boris Yeltsin, the now deposed and exiled former Russian President. When Yeltsin was still in office, Sen’kov was named Deputy Chairman of the Congress of People’s Deputies, the third-highest position in the new Russian Federation. But with the ascension of Vitaly Velichko, Sen’kov was removed from that post and stripped of most of his official powers. Ideologically, the young Sen’kov was a reformer who wanted closer ties to the West, and he went out of his way to show the world how exciting it could be for a Russian to embrace the West—he had established very close ties to many Western governments and was a star of his own TV talk show in Russia and in an English-language version of the show shown overseas. Politically, however, Sen’kov swung with the winds. He was careful to make powerful friends both in Russia (including the military) and overseas, especially to show his Russian colleagues what real Western wealth was about. Although not tremendously popular with the bureaucrats or the military, his popularity with the Russian people and people from all over the world could not be ignored. He was certainly a very atypical Russian politician.