The President paused and turned toward Freeman and Balboa. “Make no mistake, gents, I am getting a lot of heat for flying that B-2 over Asia, so the press has parked themselves at the front gate of every bomber base in the country counting to make sure they’re all there. I’ve been presented with a new option, a plane that’s not on the books and can’t be counted, so I’m taking it. I expect full support from all of the service chiefs.
“If it fails, I take full responsibility, and then I expect advice and assistance in formulating a new plan, with no lip and no attitude from anyone. Interservice rivalry is a reality, and I know I’ve got to deal with it, but I don’t want it to interfere with my wishes, is that clear?” Those last two sentences were aimed squarely at Balboa, who nodded slightly. “The Taiwan support operation will be executed as planned; the Navy will assume operational command. Anything else for me?”
But Jerrod Hale didn’t give anyone the opportunity to respond. He gave Freeman a silent urging not to ask anything else, then blasted Admiral Balboa with a warning glare that threatened to cause a sunburn. He hustled the President expertly out of reach and covered all sides from anyone else trying to get his attention as they made their way toward the stairs to the President’s private quarters.
National Security Advisor Philip Freeman led Balboa, Samson, Masters, and McLanahan down the hall past the Roosevelt Room, past the Vice President’s office, and into his office in the northwest corner of the West Wing; Brad Elliott was waiting for them inside, chatting with a Secret Service agent assigned to accompany him.
Admiral Balboa ignored everyone in the office that he outranked, which meant he planted himself right in front of Freeman’s desk. “Things are getting a little out of control here, Philip,” he said in a low voice. “The President looks like he’s under considerable pressure these days. How’s he doing? How’s he holding up?”
“The President is doing just fine, George,” Freeman said. “Let me give you a piece of friendly advice, my friend: stop leading with your mouth. You could find yourself out on the street if you keep on equating the President’s decisions with acts of terrorism. I think you had a chance to dissuade him from approving the bomber operation, but you blew it by copping this do-what-I-want-or-kiss-my-ass attitude. And I also suggest you don’t get on the bad side of Jerrod Hale. You talk with the President maybe an hour a day—but Jerrod Hale talks to him sixteen hours a day, maybe more. And as you know, no one is closer to the boss than Hale, not even his actress-du-jour Monica Scheherazade. So back off.”
Balboa waved that suggestion away like an irritating fly. “If the President wanted a yes-man as his Joint Chiefs chairman, he should’ve hired someone else.”
“You called the President a terrorist, George?” Brad Elliott remarked. “Shit, someone better check your medication.”
“Button it, Elliott,” Balboa retorted, turning and pointing a warning finger at the retired Air Force three-star general. He studied Elliott for a moment, his eyes turning from white-hot angry to disapproving and pitying. “You’re looking kinda thin, Brad. Maybe we need to schedule you for another flight physical, maybe check that fancy peg-leg of yours. I frankly don’t think you’d pass. Wonder what would happen to your project if you were grounded?”
“I’ll compare my blood pressure and prostate size with yours any day, you old fart. ”
“That will be the last of that shit I will ever hear from either one of you in my presence, or else the next sound you will hear is the door to your cell in Leavenworth slamming behind you,” Freeman angrily interjected. “No judge, no jury, no court-martial. Is that clear? If you don’t think I have the juice to do it, try me.” Balboa and Elliott simply glared at each other—Balboa with a dark scowl, Elliott with his sly, maddening grin. “Our mission is to keep an eye on the Chinese navy and back each other up if a shooting war starts. Anything that interferes with that mission is nothing but background noise, and I will squelch background noise immediately and permanently.
“George, you’re responsible for notifying Admiral Allen that the Megafortresses are en route and will be in his theater. He will have full operational command of the bombers...” Admiral Balboa smiled at that, until: “. . . through General Samson.”
“What?” Balboa asked. “What does Samson have to do with this mission? This is Pacific Command’s theater. COMNAVAIRPAC has the staff and experience to—”
“The boss wants Samson in the loop,” Freeman said. “No one knows bombers better than he does. General Samson is hereby temporarily assigned the billet as CINCPAC’s deputy, effective today. Make it happen, George.”
“And what about Elliott?” Balboa asked. “What are you going to make him—chief of naval operations?”
“Elliott is an employee of Sky Masters, Inc., a military retiree and a private citizen,” Philip Freeman said, ignoring Balboa’s sarcasm. “He has no rights or responsibilities except those given to him by Dr. Jon Masters and his company as defense contractors.”
“But if I know Elliott, he’ll be piloting one of these Megafortresses you’re sending to Pacific Command,” Balboa said. “He’ll have his finger on the trigger. Who gives him the order to cease fire? I ask that because Mr. Elliott here usually decides for himself when to open fire—it doesn’t matter to him what his superior officers or his commander in chief thinks.”
“Admiral, fair warning—button it,” Freeman said. “You get Admiral Allen up to speed on the mission, and let me worry about the civilians. Anything else for me?”
“I’d like to make an appointment with the President to talk about this so-called plan,” Balboa said sternly. “The sooner the better. There might still be time to convince him of what a stupid idea this is.”
“Of course, Admiral,” Freeman replied. “Just go over to Jerrod Hale’s office. I’m sure he’ll be glad to help you any way he can. Out the door, turn right, end of the hall, straight ahead.” He picked up his desk phone and added, “Shall I phone the chief of staff’s office and tell him to expect you?” Balboa scowled again, spun on a heel, and left the National Security Advisor’s office without another word, slamming the door behind him with just enough force to rattle a few pictures but not enough to inflame Freeman’s anger any more.
“Well, Brad, I expected the President to hit the roof when he heard you were involved in this project—it wasn’t so bad coming from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Freeman said wryly. “We might still get an earful from the boss.” Despite all this, however, Freeman had to smile at seeing Brad Elliott again, looking pretty damned good regardless of his recent travails. He was a big pain in the butt, but, Katy bar the doors, he made things happenl To Patrick McLanahan, he asked, “So when can you get your flying circus in-theater, Patrick?”
“We can be on-station in twenty-four hours,” McLanahan replied. “Give us your choice of weapon load, and we’ll have it uploaded by the time we arrive back at Blytheville. Crew rest, briefing, preflight, and fourteen hours’ flight time.”
“Good,” Freeman said. “We won’t need you to go right on-station, so you’ll recover at Andersen. You can change your weapon load at Andersen if necessary?”
“We can refuel and rearm hot if you need it,” Jon Masters said. “Hot” reloading meant reloading weapons and fuel with engines running, trying to get the plane in the air and into the fight as quickly as possible. “We’ve got enough weapons available for two weeks of combat operations. First-line stuff.”
“Shouldn’t be necessary—but we’ll keep that capability in mind,” Freeman said. He nodded and smiled at McLanahan. “A whole wing of Megafortresses, huh? Pretty good idea. There’s no money in the budget for another wing of paper airplanes, let alone high-tech B-52s, but it’s a cute idea. Any idea who we might pick as commander of the first wing of EB-52 Megafortresses, Colonel McLanahan?” The young navigator- bombardier had no reply, just a smile. Freeman stood and shook hands with each of them. “Yeah, right. Get out of here, flyboys. Good luck and good hunting.”
Heading down the Grant Staircase next to the Vice President’s office to the visitors’ entrance to the West Wing, McLanahan said in a low voice, “You really irritated Admiral Balboa back there, Brad.”
“Irritated him? You gave him a verbal wedgie back there,” Masters remarked with a laugh.
“Don’t worry about Balboa, Patrick,” Elliott said. “He’s worried that we’ll steal his thunder, just like we did when he was CINCPAC and we brought the Air Battle Force in to nail the Chinese invasion fleet near the Philippines.”
“I just think it’s not a good idea to twist his tail, Brad,” McLanahan urged. “Back then, we had General Curtis as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he ran a lot of interference for us in the White House and Pentagon so we could employ the bomber fleet. We don’t have Wilbur or the bombers anymore. If we want to get a chance to show what our upgraded Megafortresses can do, we’ve got to work with Balboa and Allen, not fight them.”
“They should be happy for our assistance, Patrick,” Elliott said. “They’re the ones out of position. We're the ones who can bail them out until they get back in the game. You don’t want to make us look like a naval air support unit or something.”
“I’d be more than satisfied to be flying in support of the Navy, Brad,” McLanahan said. Elliott looked at him in surprise, but McLanahan continued. “Sir, I know that the bombers are a powerful frontline weapon system, and the Megafortress is the best all-around attack aircraft ever flown. We can deliver more firepower than any one of those frigates the Navy has in the Formosa Strait. But we’re not the frontline force anymore. Let the Navy take care of the Strait—let’s prove to the brass and the White House that we can hold the line.”
Elliott stopped in the staircase, looked at his young protege, sniffed, and worriedly shook his head. “C’mon, Muck, don’t tell me you’ve bought this ‘jointness’ crap, all this bullshit about how the U.S. military can’t do anything unless every branch of the service does it together?” he asked derisively. “The service chiefs, especially the Navy, whine about the lack of ‘jointness’ whenever any of the other services, especially the Air Force, shows ’em up. The Navy was aced out in Desert Storm and they whined because we weren’t sharing the target load. The Navy was embarrassed in the Celebes Sea against China, and Balboa whined because we supposedly weren’t cooperating. Now Balboa almost loses the Lincoln in the Arabian Sea to an Iranian cruise missile, and he whines because a stealth bomber takes out the Iranian bomber base. Balboa doesn’t want us to support the naval forces, Patrick. He wants us to step aside and let him and Allen and the Navy take on China single-handedly. He doesn’t want ‘joint’ anything.”
“Brad, you may be right, but I’m not in it, so I can thumb my nose at the Navy or wave the Air Force banner over the burning hulks of Red Chinese warships,” McLanahan said. “I want to prove how good the Sky Masters’s Megafortress conversion is to the Air Force.”
“Good answer, Patrick,” Jon Masters interjected. “I knew you had the proper point of view.”
“And I’m interested in showing what the heavy bomber can do, no matter who’s in charge,” McLanahan went on. “If we get into the game as support forces, good—at least we’re still in the game. But your goal seems to be to rub Balboa’s nose in our bomber’s jet exhaust. We don’t need to do that.”
“Hey, Colonel, I’m trying to do the same as you—get our bombers into the fight where we can do the most good,” Elliott retorted testily. “But you’re not paying attention to the politics. Balboa and Allen and all the brass squids at the five-sided puzzle palace don’t care about jointness and cooperation—they care about funding.
“Look. We’re trying to get a six-hundred-million-dollar contract from Congress and the Pentagon to convert thirty B-52s to EB-52 Megafortresses. That’s one-third the cost of a new Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. Destroyers are good on the open seas, frigates are good in the littoral regions—shallower water, within a nation’s territorial waters—but we know in today’s tactical environment that a long-range stealth bomber with precision-guided standoff weapons is the most effective weapon in the arsenal, in any combat area, with lower costs and much greater mobility. Balboa knows all that, but he doesn’t care—he just wants that new destroyer, so maybe they’ll stick his name on it someday. Is that ‘joint’ thinking? Hell no. He doesn’t care about joint anything. Neither should we. Maybe if we started naming bombers after Joint Chiefs of Staff chairmen, he’d want more of them.”
“I disagree,” McLanahan insisted. “I think we should—”
“Patrick, I’ve got a lot more experience dealing with the Gold Chamber and White House types than you, so how.about letting me handle Balboa and Pacific Command, and you handle the hardware and the crews?” Elliott said in a light but definitive voice. “We’ll show the brass who can do the job. Trust me.”
It was good to see the old fire and fighting spirit in his old boss, McLanahan thought, as they made their way to the waiting limo that would take them to Andrews Air Force Base to catch the flight back to Sky Masters, Inc.’s, headquarters in Blytheville, Arkansas. But the old fighting spirit also meant the old antagonisms, the old competitiveness, the old victory-at-any-cost attitude.
They were back in the fight—but could they prove to the brass that they deserved to stay?
ARKANSAS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, BLYTHEVILLE, ARKANSAS LATER THAT EVENING
The Sky Masters, Inc., team was whisked by limousine from the White House to the Washington Navy Yard, helicoptered to Andrews Air Force Base, then flown by military jet transport directly to its headquarters in northeastern Arkansas. Arkansas International Airport was the civilian- ized Eaker Air Force Base, where B-52 Stratofortress bombers and KC- 135 Stratotankers of the old Strategic Air Command had once pulled round-the-clock strategic nuclear alert for many years. Despite its grandiose name, Arkansas International Airport had had no aviation facilities on the field after the Air Force had departed until Jon Masters built his new high-tech aerospace development center here shortly after the base closed. Now it was a thriving regional airport, which acted as a reliever facility for passenger flights and overnight shipping companies from nearby Memphis. The civilian and commercial operations were on the east side of the field; Sky Masters, Inc., occupied brand-new buildings and hangars on the west side of the 11,600-foot-long concrete runway.
While everyone else slept on the flight back from Washington, Jon Masters was on the phone; and, still bouncing with boyish energy, he was the first one off the plane after it taxied to a stop in front of the corporate headquarters. Patrick McLanahan’s wife, Wendy, was just pulling off her ear protectors as Masters lowered the C-21’s airstair door. “Wendy! Nice to see you!” Masters shouted over the gradually diminishing turbine noise. “I need you to get me the latest—”
Wendy McLanahan held up a hand, then slapped a blue-covered binder into her boss’s hands. “Latest faxes from Guam—both our DC- 10 tanker and DC-10 booster aircraft arrived code one. One NIRTSat booster had an overtemp warning when they did a test. They need a call from you ASAP. Munitions are being off-loaded.”
“Good,” Masters said excitedly. “Great. Now, I need to see—”
She slapped five more binders in his hands—and she had a dozen more binders ready. “Airframe reports for your review. Better take a look at -030 and -040—I don’t think they’re going to make it, but you might be able to work your magic on them. Everyone else is ready to fly.” She piled the rest of the binders into his arms. “Revised flight plans, engineering requests, prelaunch reports, invoices you need to initial, and things I think you need to think about before we get the flying circus in the air. Look ’em over.”
“But I need—”
“Jon, you got what you need—here’s what I need,” Wendy said, as her husband stepped off the plane. She gave him a long, deep kiss as Patrick pulled his wife into his arms. Jon was going to ask her for something else, but the kiss lasted longer than his level of patience, so he
ran off yelling for someone to get him a phone.
Masters did not see Patrick pat his wife’s tummy after their kiss parted. “How’s our new crewdog?” he asked in a low voice.
“Fine, Daddy, just fine,” Wendy replied, punctuated with another kiss. “A little stretch now and then—”
“Stretch? You mean cramps? Are you in pain?”
“No, worrywart,” she said with a reassuring smile. “Just enough to let me know that things are happening down there.”
“You feeling all right?”
“A little indigestion in the evening, and a sudden rush of sleepiness about every other hour,” Wendy replied. “I close the office door and take a nap.”
“I think about you all the time, sweetie,” Patrick said. “Working around jet fuel and rocket chemicals and transmitters, pulling long hours, on your feet all day. ”
“I stay away from manufacturing and the labs, I take lots of naps, and I find working on the couch with my feet up just as effective as working at my desk,” Wendy said. “Don’t worry, lover. I’ll take good care of your child.”
“Our child.”
“Our what?” Brad Elliott said, as he met up with the couple.
“Old married couple talk, Brad,” Wendy said, giving her ex-boss a peck on the cheek. With Wendy between both men, they walked arm in arm into the admin building. “How was the meeting at the White House? ”
“Good,” Patrick said.
“Shit, Muck, it went great—we’re a go! ” Elliott said excitedly. “The President approved our plan. They want us to get ready to fly out in the next couple days—and they want us armed. Fully operational, offensive and defensive. We watered their eyes but goodl The only lousy part is we gotta play nice-nice with the squids.”
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