Chains of Command

by Dale Brown

  Furness stepped up to Hembree just before he left the briefing room. “Hey, Dick, what about—”

  “About you and Fogelman flying the photo bird? General’s orders.”

  “He give any reason?”

  “Nope,” Hembree replied. “I issued a report to him on the squadron inspection this morning before lunch, including Mark’s apparent disregard for 35-10 and for preparing for deployment—but I don’t think that had anything to do with the decision. He wants you to fly the photo bird, period. He also specified Ogden on the TV bomber and Little on one of the laser birds. If he has a reason for specifying the lineup like this, he didn’t tell me.”

  “But Lynn just qualified on the GBU-15,” Furness said, shaking her head. Every crewmember entered the 715th Tactical Squadron from F-111G fighter lead-in qualified to do level radar, level visual, dive, and computer-toss bomb deliveries only—the unit then qualified them to fly visual toss, photo reconnaissance, PAVE TACK laser-guided bomb deliveries, then finally GBU-15 TV-guided bomb runs. The GBU-15 was by far the most difficult weapon to use because it required a great deal of crew coordination and it was very labor-intensive—the weapon system officer had to use the TV camera in the bomb to guide the plane to the target, then guide the weapon to the target after release, while the pilot initiated evasive maneuvers. Because of the skills involved and because the weapons were so expensive to use just for training, it sometimes took years for a crew to qualify. “She needed five bombs to qualify, almost twice the normal number. Larry Tobias needed only two to qualify, and he hasn’t had any since then.”

  “Rebecca, I hear you,” Hembree said, “but the General laid down the law—he didn’t make ‘suggestions,’ he didn’t leave it up to me, and he didn’t staff it. Ogden gets the Dash-Fifteen, Little on a laser bird. And he wants to see Ogden and Vest do toss releases, and he wants to see a buddy lase.” A toss release was a bomb-release procedure in which the bomb is released “whip-crack” style while in a steep climbing turn to avoid overflying a target. A buddy lase was an attack in which another aircraft in an attack formation laser-designated a target for another aircraft carrying the weapons, which allowed more precision-guided bombs to be used with fewer PAVE TACK laser designators.

  Both these techniques required an extraordinary degree of crew coordination and planning to accomplish properly. Rebecca didn’t doubt that her crews could do these procedures, but it was a lot of work for the first flight of a Hell Week.

  As if to emphasize this point, Hembree continued, “It sounds to me like he wants to challenge this unit, to see what the newbies can do.”

  “I’m just saying that maybe we should be easing into this a bit slower, Dick.”

  “Becky, give me a break,” Hembree said. “The Wing King’s also trying to determine the proficiency and combat readiness of our outfit. Look at all the shit going on in Europe, in Korea, in Asia—we could find ourselves up to our asses in alligators in any one of these places at any time. A crew proficient with Dash-15s is an asset; a crew that’s not is a liability. We need to change them into assets as fast as possible. I don’t want this squadron broken up into crews that can do TV bombs and those who can’t—everyone will be proficient in all of our assigned weapons and tactics. I want our crews to be happy, and I want to reward the top performers, but I want combat-ready crews more than anything. Ogden and Vest do the toss Dash-Fifteen, and I expect to see a shack—you, me, the crew, and the General will watch the videotape together. Anything else?”

  “You wanna talk about the inspection this morning?” Furness asked. “I’m prepared to give you an Air Force Regulation 35-10 briefing.”

  “No. Just make sure Fogman has his shit in the bag and Paula does her hair.”

  “She says she pushed her boobs out for you so you’d be too nervous to stare at her, but it didn’t faze you.”

  Hembree chuckled, and for the first time that day Furness watched some of the tension melt out of his face. “I was distracted, but not that distracted. I noticed her damn hair and her uniform. Tell her to stop playing games and get her shit together.”

  “I did. Fogman too.”

  “Good,” Hembree said. “When the exercise is over, I’ll have you give a standup during Commander’s Call about 35-10. But General Cole has to hear it through the grapevine that I cracked the whip during morning inspection or I’ll be back pushing a crew. ’Nuff said?” Furness nodded, happy that Hembree was at least a little bit back to his old self. “Let’s brief here at sixteen hundred with your strike package, and tomorrow morning at oh-five-hundred for the mass briefing. I gotta go check on Ben and Alpha Flight. See ya later.” Furness headed back to the mission planning room where the rest of her flight was waiting.

  “Well, I guess age doesn’t have its privileges anymore,” she said as she distributed the takeoff and target times and other information from the ATO. “Lynn and Clark, you guys got a GBU-15 toss tomorrow morning out on the Fort Drum range. Don’t screw it up.”

  “You’re kidding!” Clark Vest exclaimed happily. “Man, that’s great!”

  “Such unexpected largesse for a regular Hell Week,” Tobias observed, obviously disappointed that he didn’t get the TV-guided mission. “Something’s heating up. I know it.”

  “I think you’re right,” Furness said, “but I don’t know what—Hawkeye’s not talking. Anyway, we got some live stuff, so let’s make the most of it. Paula, Ted, you got a live one too, a PAVE TACK shape; Bob and Bruce, you guys got the other one, and the Wing King wants a toss. Make sure you got your PAVE TACK preflight procedures down cold—you’ll be launching early in the morning with a cold pod. Ted, I expect to see some mind-blowing videotape of an in-your-face shack.”

  “You got it, Becky,” Ted Little replied.

  “The flight order is going to get shaken up a bit,” Furness continued. “I’ll lead cell number one, with Johnson and Norton on my wing. Johnson and Rota will be going in first, dropping ‘beer cans,’ and then will be buddy-lasing for Norton and Little. Frank, Larry, you will lead cell number two. You’ll be a radar bomber with BDUs, and you’ll drop beer cans third and buddy-lase for Bob and Bruce.” Beer can bombs, or BDU (Bomb, Dummy Unit)-48, were small ten-pound cylindrical smoke bombs that resembled large juice or beer cans with fins—although they were small and did not resemble a bomb at all, their ballistics closely resembled those of a B61 or B83 parachute-equipped nuclear bomb. An F-111 normally carried two SUU-20 racks, one on each wing, with two BDU-48 bombs in each rack. “Paula and Ted, you’ll be fifth with the TV bomb. Everyone else, don’t feel bad, because it looks like everyone’s getting at least one live round this week.”

  “Buddy-lase, toss bombs, TV bombs, all on the first flying day of Hell Week?” Tobias muttered, just loud enough for everyone to hear. “Man, have the Iraqis invaded again?”

  “We’ve got wall-to-wall brass watching us today, so everyone needs to be sharp,” Furness reminded them. “Me and Fogman will be at the top of the block when Johnson goes in, we’ll stay at the top of the block while everyone else enters the route, and we’ll be tail-end charlie and photograph the entire thing.”

  “What?” Fogelman retorted, as if the realization of what was going on finally sank in. “How come we’re in the recon bird? I got more time on PAVE TACK than Ogden.”

  “But you don’t have as much time on the recon pod,” Furness replied. She didn’t know that for sure, but there was no doubt that Fogelman’s expertise with the reconnaissance suite on the RF-111G was poor. “We also quick-turn and shoot pictures for Alpha Flight, too, so you’ll get lots of practice. I said everyone should get a live round this week, so don’t sweat it.” Fogelman scowled his displeasure. “Okay, let’s get to work.”

  But while they were assembling the paperwork, they also used the time to catch up on each other’s civilian activities. Most of the men in the flight were airline captains with liberal schedules that allowed them to take extended days off for Reserve duties—exactly the same kind of
job Furness had been searching for years.

  The technician from Major Pierce’s intelligence office came by to hand out the latest “intelligence” of the target area, so each crewmember had photos and computer-generated radar and visual predictions of the targets. Their usual live bomb targets were mock airfields, small buildings made of stacked 55-gallon steel drums, and plywood vehicle-shaped targets. The most important part of the briefing was the position of Multiple Threat Emitter System, or MUTES, transmitters on the range: “They appear to be out gunning for you on this pass,” the technician said. He passed out coordinates of four MUTES trailers that would be on the range. The MUTES devices were truck-towed, self-powered radio transmitters that simulated enemy surface-to-air missile and antiaircraft-artillery tracking radars; Air Force technicians would accompany the MUTES trailers on the range and evaluate each crew’s evasion techniques as the MUTES sites “attacked” the strike aircraft during their runs. “Latest info says they’re on the move as well.”

  The R-5201 bombing range in northern New York State was only three hundred square miles—four MUTES sites in that small area would place the strikers under almost constant “attack.”

  “What are we looking at?” asked Furness.

  “Brigade or battalion stuff, but they’ve got the biggest and best waiting for you,” the technician said. “Mostly you’ll be looking at SA-8 B-model, max range nine miles; the SA-11, max range seventeen miles; and the SA-15, with a max slant range of eight miles. But you can also expect a surprise in the possible presence of an SA-12 that could ‘attack’ the RF-111 bombers well before they enter the target area.

  “The greatest threat you’ll face, however, is from fighters,” the intelligence technician continued. “If they can spare any—they’re busy shadowing those Backfire bombers flying out of Cuba, but we might get a few to play with. Players will have Russian radar emitters installed, so your detection gear will respond just like real.” That was a bit unusual. The emitters were simply tiny radio transmitters that mimicked enemy fire-control radars. That wasn’t routine for Hell Week.

  Mission planning was mostly done by computer after that. In sixty minutes, the planning was done for the entire six-aircraft strike package.

  No sooner had the charts and flight plans been spit out of the printer and the mission been briefed than Furness saw Fogelman slipping his flight jacket on. “Going someplace?” she asked.

  “I’m going to get my gear and a haircut, like you said,” Fogelman grumbled. “Supply was closed during lunch.”

  “We have to proof these charts and flight plans,” she said. “I’ve got a briefing for the battle staff in one hour.”

  Fogelman looked at his watch, groaned, and said, “Supply closes at three—I’ve got ten minutes to get over there. I’ve got to leave now. Have Tobias proof the stuff for you. Better yet, just take it as is. The computer stuff is always perfect anyway.”

  Furness was about to rag on him some more, but there wasn’t time. Besides, she preferred Larry Tobias’ company anyway—in fact, she preferred anyone’s company over Fogelman’s. “All right, all right. But the show time is five-thirty, and you better have a haircut and a complete mobility bag.”

  “Haircut and three bags full. You got it.” He hurried away, leaving Furness to check all the charts and flight plans on her own.

  With Tobias’ and some of the other crew’s help, chart and flight plan validations were over in just a few minutes. Hembree came into the mission planning room a few minutes after they finished, and they briefed him on the morning’s sorties. He accepted the briefing without comment, but seemed preoccupied. It wasn’t unlike him to say nothing during a mission briefing, especially just before going into the General’s office at headquarters to give the same briefing. But Furness didn’t knock it.

  Like most of the Reservists reporting in for Hell Week, Furness stayed on base in the old alert shelter near the flight line. The dark, windowless alert shelter was a throwback to Plattsburgh’s days as a B-47, B-52, KC-135, and FB-111 bomber base, when as many as half the bombers, tankers, and aircrews on base were assigned strategic nuclear alert duties. Rebecca had done that very same thing as a young KC-135 Stratotanker copilot nearly ten years ago, and she remembered it well. A crewdog could expect at least one alert exercise during a seven-day alert tour, and they alternated day or night exercises to keep all the crews proficient in both.

  When Furness cross-trained from the KC-135 to the KC-10 tanker in 1988, she no longer pulled alert. Thank God, she thought as she unpacked her bags, changed into jogging shorts and a sweat shirt, and put in a two-mile run on a treadmill in the Pad gymnasium. After a shower, she changed into jeans, a heavy wool sweater, a down jacket, and hiking boots, and checked out with the Charge of Quarters.

  Until the Bravo exercise was in full swing, the alert facility dining hall was open only for breakfast. So the flyers and their crew chiefs’ new social club was Afterburners, a small tavern and restaurant on the lower floor of a hundred-year-old hotel in the center of old downtown Plattsburgh, and that’s where Furness met up with most of the members of her squadron.

  The flyers and crew chiefs were in the TV lounge portion of the bar, watching the big-screen TV for the latest news about the skirmishing between Russia and the Ukraine over the Russian minorities in Moldova and the sovereignty of the former Soviet republics versus the unity of the Commonwealth of Independent States. “See that?” Captain Frank Kelly, her wingman, said to Rebecca, pointing at the TV screen. A group of protesters were throwing Molotov cocktails at a tank. “Another riot in that Moldavan city. The media are pointing to the Moldovan soldiers and saying they’re inciting the riots, but no one seems to be blaming the Russians.”

  “That’s because the Moldavian Army is kicking the hell out of the Russians,” someone else said. “If they’d just leave the Russians alone, there wouldn’t be any fighting.”

  “That’s ‘Moldovan’ Army, not ‘Moldavian’ Army,” Larry Tobias interjected. “Get it straight, son.”

  “Gee, Dad,” the other crewmember quipped. “I didn’t know class was in session.”

  “Hey, Larry, my WSO has forgotten more than you’ll ever know,” Kelly said in defense of his weapon system officer. “But as long as you’re the expert here, Larry, tell us: What is all this shit about? The rumor is NATO might get involved, which means us. Is that right?”

  “Because it is the beginning of the Russians’ land grab,” Larry Tobias replied. “There are less than one hundred thousand Russians in Moldova, but ten Russians or a million—Russia would still be involved. Russia wants Moldova back. They care about only one thing—secure borders, a secure homeland,” Tobias said. “You people may not remember this, but over the past forty years, all of the Russian leaders have fought for the same thing. It is not enough to have massive standing armed forces—they want to put a buffer zone between Mother Russia and all foreign territory, especially those countries with foreign troops stationed on them. A lot of Russian leaders fought in World War Two, and every family in Russia lost relatives in the war. The Russians discovered in World War Two that alliances don’t always mean security—occupying and holding land is the key to security for them.”

  “But why do we give a damn if Russia invades the Ukraine or Moldova?” one of the crew chiefs asked. “Who cares? Hell, most people don’t know where Moldova, or Romania, or the Ukraine are on the map. I remember the press had to tell thirty percent of all Americans where Kuwait was before we went to war there.”

  “We care because Russia is involved,” Tobias replied, taking a deep swig of his beer. “Ever since the first Slavic Neanderthal ventured out of his cave, he not only cared about what his neighbor was doing—he wanted to control what he was doing. Russia doesn’t want the Ukraine to go Ukrainian, or Moldova to go Romanian, or Georgia to go Turkish. They sure don’t want any of them to go Islamic, and they sure as hell don’t want any of them to go democratic. That’s probably the worst. Russia will fight to m
ake sure the peripheral republics go nowhere. It’s as simple as that.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It makes perfect sense—just not to you and me.” Tobias burped happily, glancing at a large wall clock on one wall. A sign on the clock had a 715th Tactical Squadron patch, the words Drop Dead, and an arrow pointing at the 7 on the clock, indicating the twelve-hour alcohol limit for those flying the next morning. “We still got fifteen minutes,” Tobias said. He turned to Furness. “Buy you a beer, boss? No, wait, you’re into red wine, right?”

  “Sure, Larry,” Furness replied. “Barkeep, last round for the Black Knights over here.” They searched for a waitress, but none were in sight. “Yo, anybody awake over there?” She spotted a blond guy, good-looking, carrying two large soda and carbonated gas tanks from behind the bar to the back room. “Hey, guy, how about taking our order?”

  “I’m not a waiter.”

  “You can remember a few drinks, can’t you? C’mon, take a chance.” The man put the tanks down next to the bar, wiped his hands on his apron, then hesitantly walked over. He was tall and a little weathered, but in good shape, with piercing green eyes. Furness noticed his GI haircut right away—obviously military, a Reservist most likely, a crew chief or clerk, having to pull down a night job to help make ends meet. She knew the tune to that song, all right. “Thatta boy, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “I’ll get your waitress,” he said.

  “Forget the waitress, guy, you got the job,” Furness said. “Got a pencil?”

  The man rolled his eyes, losing patience, but he shrugged his shoulders, sighed, and replied, “I can remember.”

  “You can, huh? Very impressive.” Furness gave a sly smile to the rest of the crewdogs seated at the table—they had a little game they liked to play on the new waitpersons at Afterburners. After a little nod to make sure everyone was ready, she said, “Okayyy … make mine a 1989 Eagle Falls cabby estate.”