by Dale Brown
“Oh, and one last piece of advice, for whoever the next unlucky sonofabitch is you happen to work for: impress the new boss, even if you think he’s a dickhead or you think you should have gotten his job. Shovel his staff car out of the snow, drive him to his headquarters, shovel the sidewalks leading to his headquarters, spiff the place up, and make him coffee when he arrives in his office for the first time. You can’t even suck up properly. You’re out. That is all.”
Razzano was so embarrassed, so deflated, that he stormed out of the office too shocked to say another word.
“Lieutenant, you’re a captain, effective today,” Mace said. “Field promotions are authorized in case of unusual staff requirements, are they not?”
“Yes, sir,” she replied sheepishly, “with command approval within.…”
“I’ll either get the approval immediately or get myself shit-canned. In any case, you’re authorized to wear the new rank until the orders come down. I suggest you have the clerk send your utility uniforms out to the parachute shop to get the rank changed right away—don’t ask me why. The ACC action message came down two hours ago. When can you have the report ready for me?”
“Preliminary report immediately, sir,” Porter said. “The divisions update the group status daily on the computer. Full report in about two hours.”
“Good answer, Lieutenant,” Mace said with a hint of a smile—this one knew what she was doing! “Call me on the phone as soon as the full report is ready. You’re in charge of the office and the staff, and your signature is as good as mine as of right now.”
He headed for the outer office and started putting on his jacket and gloves. “I’m heading out to the flight line,” he told Porter, “but I don’t want to see that station wagon ever again after today. Tell Transportation I want the largest vehicle they have with four-wheel drive, preferably a step-up maxi-van. I want all the FM and UHF radios and telephones on board, I want exterior floodlights front and rear, a crew bench in back with heaters, and I want it equipped just like the maintenance supervisor’s truck. No use in anyone driving out on the flight line unless they’re carrying spare parts and tools. I want to pick the truck up before lunch. Anything for me, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir,” Porter said. “I’ll need you to block out some time for inprocessing, and I’ll need your home address and phone.”
“My home address and phone are—” Mace looked at the phone number on his staff officer’s cellular phone and gave it to her. “That is where you can reach me, now and forever. Mail my paychecks right here to the office. I’ll do all the other inprocessing when the ‘war’ is over. Have a nice day, Lieutenant.” He grabbed his coat, hat, and gloves, and hurried out the door.
Alena Porter returned to her desk in a total state of shock. She picked up the phone to call Transportation—the thought of the MG driving a big, lumbering Step Van supply truck, known as a “bread truck,” around the base was a funny thought, but that’s what the man wanted—but instead went out to the hallway, put a quarter in the pay phone, and took a few moments to call her mother at home.
“Mom? It’s me. The new boss arrived today … what’s he like? He made me a captain … yes, just like that, a captain. He’s a wild man, Mom. A wild man.”
FOURTEEN
The ferry Rebecca Furness was on unceremoniously bumped and slid into the docking slip at Cumberland Head. Furness started the truck’s engine and waited her turn to pull out. The roads were much better on the New York side, so she made good time driving into Plattsburgh, arriving at the base a little before seven A.M.
The base was divided into the “old” and “new” sections, with the flight line, flying squadrons, and newer family housing areas in the “new” section (built in the 1930s) to the west, and the command, administrative, and senior housing areas in the “old” section (the original base, established in 1814 and still in use ever since) to the east, bordering Lake Champlain. Instead of heading for the base gym on the east side of the base, Furness took a right turn at the small air museum at the entrance to the “new” base, checked in with the security guard, and headed for the flight line. She had a little time to kill, and Plattsburgh’s almost round-the-clock flight line operations were exciting to watch.
The KC-135 Stratotanker aerial-refueling tankers, the largest and loneliest planes on the parking ramp right now, sat silent vigil in the cold morning air. They were going on forty years old, but they would still be in service well after the year 2000, Furness knew. A few of the planes out here, known as R-model tankers, had been re-engined with more modern turbofan airliner engines, which significantly improved their range and load-carrying capability, and a few had been equipped with integral cranes and load-handling devices to give the KC-135 some true bare-base cargo capability. But most of the tankers here at Plattsburgh were A- or E-models, old and slow and underpowered. They were nothing like the new KC-10 tankers, though, Furness thought. The KC-10 could run rings around these beasts. She sometimes missed the old days in the KC-10 Extender, the Air Force’s “supertanker”—no alert, few dispersals, comfortable seats, few cold-weather assignments, no cold-weather bases.
But she certainly wasn’t complaining.
Rebecca wanted to drive down the flight line road far enough to see “her” plane, number 70-2390, nicknamed “Miss Liberty,” but she had run out of time and she had to report in for duty. She made her way to the old side of the base, through another guard gate, drove a few blocks to the base gymnasium, parked in the closest space, grabbed her deployment bag, and headed for the entrance. She saw she was the last to sign in, even though they had fifteen minutes to their scheduled seven A.M. muster time. Anyone reporting in after the scheduled muster time would be given an “incomplete” for the day, and with greater competition for ERP slots, all performance standards, even for Reservists, were stricter than ever before. Being five seconds late for Hell Week could quite possibly get one kicked out of the program for good. The squadron was beginning to line up for inspection, so Furness went over to her place on the gym floor without stopping to exchange pleasantries with anyone.
Plattsburgh had twenty-two RF-111G bombers, matched up with twenty ready crews (eighteen in the squadron plus the squadron and wing commander’s planes, leaving one spare plane and one “hangar queen” used for spare parts or ground training). Each plane was assigned a flight crew and a ground crew, both of whom stayed with that plane as long as possible. The Reservists, even in the new ERP that received many former active-duty members, tended to be older, smarter, and, because it was “their” plane and “their” base in “their” hometown, they took a lot of pride in their Reserve duties.
As commander of Bravo Flight, Furness was first in line in the second row. She set her bag down at her feet and lined up directly behind the flight commander of Alpha Flight, Major Ben Jamieson, allowing enough room between her bag and Jamieson’s row for the inspector to walk. The rest of her flight lined up on her, and Charlie Flight lined up behind her. After allowing a few moments for everyone to get situated, she stepped out of place and walked down her row to count noses and take a look at her flight before the inspection.
Even though it was considered a “super Reserve” duty, the Enhanced Reserve Program attracted a great variety of characters, and they were all represented right here in Bravo Flight. It was impossible to pinpoint exactly what each crewmember had in common—they all came from diverse backgrounds and had widely varying skill and experience levels:
First Lieutenant Mark “Fogman” Fogelman was Rebecca Furness’ weapon system officer, or “wizzo.” He graduated with a commission from Air Force ROTC and a degree in business from Cornell University, and was one of the lucky few to draw the new RF-111 fresh out of undergraduate navigator training. The rumor had it that Fogelman’s parents, who owned a ski resort and lots of property near Lake Placid, used considerable political pull to get their son a choice assignment, but Furness was not going to bad-mouth that plan of action because she had relie
d on personal influence as well.
The 715th Tactical Squadron and its sleek, deadly Vampire bomber had attracted a lot of “political” appointees, persons with important families with powerful political ties. Promotion and more desirable positions were almost guaranteed if one was lucky enough to score an RF-111G assignment. It was considered a “front-line” combat assignment—everyone had to be nuclear certified under the Personnel Reliability Program and given a top secret security clearance—but because the unit’s primary mission was tactical reconnaissance, it was considered a relatively benign assignment.
Just out of Fighter Lead-in Training at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico, “Fogman,” only twenty-five years old, was the youngest crewmember in the unit. Because she was so “by the book” and demanding, Rebecca Furness often drew the squadron’s new weapon systems officers—it was found that Furness would either straighten the new guys out or drive them so completely nuts that they would quit. She had no doubt that a lot of veteran weapons systems officers preferred not to have a woman aircraft commander, so Rebecca ended up with the new guys who had little say in who they were teamed up with.
The kid never had his uniform completely up to standards, but Rebecca hated helping Fogelman fix his uniform because she always felt like a fussy mother doting over her child. But she had no choice. She ripped the squadron patch off his right sleeve, the F-111 “Go-Fast” patch off his left arm, and swapped the two. “Jesus, Fogman, aren’t you ever going to get these straight?”
“I was in a hurry this morning, Becky,” he replied, not offering any apologies. He gave her flight suit a quick appraisal, found something amiss, and gave her a smug grin. She remembered that she had been rushed, too, and the reason why, and wished she had checked herself in a mirror before reporting in. Oh well, too late now. Besides, she looked ten times better than Fogelman on her worst day. When Fogelman noticed Furness looking at his deployment bag, which looked significantly more empty than everyone else’s, he said quickly, “It’s all there, Major. I checked.”
“I hope so.”
“You can check mine if I can check yours,” he said smugly.
Furness stepped right up close to Fogman, sticking her face right into his. He did not retreat and had no room to get out of her way—he was trapped. “Was that a joke, Fogelman? Were you trying to make a funny? Or was that a sexual innuendo, like perhaps you were offering to show me your wee-wee? If so, get me a magnifying glass.”
Fogelman could feel several pairs of eyes on him now. “Yes … I mean, no, I wasn’t …”
“Or do you want to sniff my underwear? You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Fogman? Does women’s underwear turn you on? Maybe I’ll find some women’s underwear in your bag if I looked.” She backed off right away, giving him a chance to retaliate, but everyone was looking now so he didn’t try it. Furness gave him a half-amused, half-exasperated glare and continued on.
She did not presume to try to criticize most of the other members of her flight—they were all fairly experienced flyers. Her wingmen in her flight were Captain Frank Kelly and Lieutenant Colonel Larry Tobias. Kelly was a five-year veteran of F-111s, and Tobias, the oldest flying crewmember in the unit at age forty-eight, was his weapon system officer. Tobias had seniority over everyone in the squadron except for the squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hembree, but Tobias, a twenty-one-year Air Force veteran, had no command experience, nor had he attended Air Command and Staff College, and so was not eligible for command. He was a flyer, and preferred to stay that way. Furness simply greeted the two crewmembers, asked if they needed anything, and moved on.
Three of her other six crewmembers were new and relatively inexperienced. First Lieutenant Lynn Ogden, married with one child, was a WSO who spent three years as an RC-135 navigator before cross-training to the RF-111. It turned out that Ogden had volunteered for several dangerous reconnaissance missions during Desert Storm, and her reward was a coveted RF-111 assignment. First Lieutenant Paula Norton, unmarried, a former T-38 instructor pilot and C-21 military jetliner pilot, had been a mission specialist candidate for NASA’s space shuttle program, and had been given the RF-111 as a sort of consolation prize; she had made it known to everyone, not in words but in her attitude, that being in the 715th Tactical Squadron was a brief “pit stop” on her way to a high-visibility job flying generals and Cabinet officials around in VIP special transport duties like Air Force One. Major Ted Little, married with three children, another WSO and an ex-B-1B bomber navigator, had been out of active duty for nearly two years before joining the Reserves and landing an RF-111. In those two years, he had starred in several major motion pictures, three of which had become major box-office smashes, and had amassed a small fortune. The reasons why he moved from Hollywood to upstate New York, joined the Reserves, and flew the RF-111 were unclear, but he did qualify. Everyone joked he was simply doing research work for another movie. The other five crewmembers—Majors Clark Vest and Harold Rota, and Captains Bruce Fay, Joseph Johnson, and Robert Dutton—were veteran F-111 flyers who had been suddenly and unceremoniously dumped from active duty but had immediately found Reserve billets.
Everyone looked pretty good. Fogelman’s hair length was pushing the edge of the envelope, as usual, but that was the worst offense she could see in Bravo Flight. Only Lieutenant Colonel Hembree had access to military personnel and civil records, so there could still be some surprises—having unit members getting busted for DUIs, traffic violations, child support arrears, that sort of thing, was fortunately getting less common, but it still happened once in a while. Furness took her place at the left side of the row and stood at ease until the squadron was called to attention by First Lieutenant Cristina Arenas, the squadron executive officer; then squadron commander Lieutenant Colonel Hembree, operations officer Lieutenant Colonel Alan Katz, and squadron NCOIC Master Sergeant William Tate walked out onto the gym floor precisely at seven-fifteen A.M.
The squadron was ordered to parade rest, and the inspection began.
Rebecca could see this was going to be a tough morning. Colonel Hembree was not picking bags and people at random—he was inspecting everyone. The Alpha Flight commander, Major Ben Jamieson, and his WSO passed, but the first pilot in the flight was pulled out of the ranks and his bag tossed aside by Hembree himself. “Captain, maybe you better just go home and start all over again,” Hembree shouted, loud enough for everyone on the floor and almost everyone else in the gym to hear. “Your uniform looks like shit, you got a mustache and sideburns that look like something out of the damned sixties, and it looks like you’re ready to deploy to some beach in Florida instead of to a cold-weather base. You just lost one day’s training. If you’re not back here in one hour with a clean uniform, proper gear and proper grooming, you’ll lose the entire week. Get out of my sight.”
Hembree broke off his inspection and began circling the squadron like a shark closing in on a wounded whale. Hembree was a big, square-jawed, powerful black man in his late forties, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and dark, electric eyes. His voice all but rattled windows, especially when he was angry—which was right now: “I will not have any of you slacking off here. You will report to training week ready to deploy, ready to fly, and ready to fight, or I don’t want you here at all. We are not Reservists, dammit—we are the United States Air Force. Got that? We are the main combat force. Because we train only two weeks per month, we have to do it better than the active duty units. We have to look sharper, fly better, and move faster. I will not tolerate anyone in this unit who thinks he or she can get away with something here. I am going to pound this fact into you people and make you believe it.”
He completed his circle, letting everyone get a taste of the medicine, before resuming his inspection. Fortunately for Ben Jamieson, everyone else in A Flight passed inspection. Hembree assigned Jamieson two nights’ worth of duty officer shifts for allowing one of his pilots to report in without his required gear, then moved on to Furness’ flight.
She called the flight to attention, saluted, and said, “Bravo Flight, ready for inspection, sir.”
Hembree returned Furness’ salute, looked up and down the row, then said, “You think you’re ready, huh? Well, we’ll have to do some pictures first. Perhaps you can tell me about tech order warnings and cautions for the UPD-8 recon pod, Major Furness?”
“Yes, sir,” Furness replied immediately. Questions and answers during inspection was something new for Hembree, and this was no idle exercise. Hembree had something on his mind … but she had no more time to think about it. She knew the capabilities and functions of all of the eleven different reconnaissance pods that could be fitted to the RF-111 aircraft, and she could recite warnings and cautions in her sleep:
“There are two warnings, two cautions, and seven notes in the tech order about the UPD-8 radar reconnaissance pod,” she began. “The most important are: stay clear of the sensor domes until aircraft power and battery power is removed; and ensure all ground crewmen are clear of the aircraft for a distance of at least one hundred feet while running the ground BIT test because of stray emissions—”
Hembree suddenly stepped closer to Furness and interrupted her with, “Did you sleep in that flight suit, Major? It looks like hell.” Hembree had caught its postsex rumpled look. Furness fumed inside—not at Hembree, but at Ed Caldwell. Christ, how did she let that happen?
“I know these are only utility uniforms, Major,” Hembree snapped, “but if you don’t take care of them in peacetime, what assurances do we have that you’ll take care of them if we go to war? You have duty officer for two nights after Major Jamieson. Reach into your deployment bag and show me six pairs of wool socks.” She quickly did as she was told, then put them back, but Hembree was already moving down the line, so she had to hurry to catch up.