Every member of the battle staff reached for telephones as soon as the minibriefing was over. Lieutenant-General Terrill Samson, commander of Eighth Air Force, was on the phone to his boss, the commander of Air Force Air Combat Command, General Steven Shaw. He was put on hold.
Samson sighed but did not let himself become angry. He knew he was already effectively out of the picture—in more ways than one. Steve Shaw didn’t need to talk to Terrill Samson for any important reason right now.
Barksdale’s sortie board was filled with tail numbers and parking areas, but all the sortie numbers and crew numbers were blank. That’s because they were all for B-52H bombers, and the B-52s had all been retired, deactivated. By October, all of them would be flown to Davis- Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona, there to be cut up and put on display so that Russian, Chinese, and whoever else’s spy satellites could photograph the birds and be sure their wings had been clipped for good. Not that Barksdale’s ramps were vacant. Some of the B-lBs from the Seventh Bomb Wing out of Dyess Air Force Base, Abilene, Texas, who were going to become Air Force Reserve bombers in October, had dispersed to Barksdale—they would probably be assigned here full-time when Dyess turned into a B-1B training base.
But all of the heavy bombers that had once been under Terrill Samson’s command were now in the hands of U.S. Strategic Command and Admiral Henry Danforth—and since Samson had opened his mouth and dared to contradict Danforth’s blind preparation for a nuclear war that was not wanted and probably would never come except by some horrible accident, Samson was not even entrusted with commanding his bombers under CINCSTRATCOM. He was a three-star general without a command, without any responsibilities. He still monitored the status of each and every bomber that was formerly under his supervision, but he was not in the chain of command anymore—he was not even in the advice and consultation loop.
The bomber SIOP generation, the preparation for all the land-based B-1B Lancer and B-2A Spirit bombers for nuclear war, was still not going very well. About three-quarters of the force was on alert now—but under DEFCON Three, 100 percent of the bombers had to be on alert. In addition, 25 percent of the force had to be dispersed to alternate operating locations—Barksdale was one, along with Fairchild AFB in Spokane, Washington, Grand Forks AFB in North Dakota, and Castle AFB near Merced, California—but just a few bombers had arrived, and it would take days for them to get on alert with nuclear weapons aboard. All of the alternate fields were former bomber bases, but it had been months, even years, since any of them had any big bombers land there, let alone any bombers with nuclear weapons aboard.
Terrill Samson could offer words of encouragement, or dispense advice, or rant and rave and threaten to kick ass if they didn’t get moving faster. But it meant nothing. His words did not have any authority behind them anymore. Although his stand-down wasn’t officially set until October, it was as if Terrill Samson had already been relieved of command, and retired.
“Terrill, Steve here,” General Shaw said, as he came on the line a few moments later. “STRATCOM wants to put the B-2s on airborne alert. You got something on the shelf that we can give them in the next couple hours?”
“Yes, sir,” Samson responded woodenly, disguising his shock and disbelief. Airborne alert, nicknamed “Chrome Dome” and immortalized in films like Dr Strangelove, hadn’t been done in more than twenty-five years because it was so dangerous to have nuclear-loaded bombers flying around for hours or even days on end—the old Strategic Air Command had lost two bombers and four nuclear gravity bombs during Chrome Dome missions. Now Danforth and Balboa, two Navy pukes, somehow thought it would be a good idea to do it again.
“I expected a slightly stronger reaction from you, Earthmover,” Shaw remarked.
“Would it do any good, coming from me—or you?”
“Probably not, but I’d like to hear it anyway,” Shaw said. “First answer the question so I can give STRATCOM their answer, then talk to me.”
“We don’t have any Beak-specific airborne alert tracks laid out,” Samson responded, “but we can modify a few old B-52 racetracks and give them out to the B-2 crews. We can mate them to B-1B tracks, but we want to be sure we spread them out in case China decides to use nuclear warheads on air-to-air missiles.” Samson wondered why his deputy, General Michael Collier, who was the bomber chief for Strategic Command after Samson had been relieved, hadn’t called in the request directly from STRATCOM headquarters at Offutt. The only explanation was that Danforth, commander in chief of Strategic Command, was disregarding Collier’s recommendations, as he disregarded Samson’s.
“Sounds good. I knew I could count on you. Pass them along to Offutt soonest,” Shaw ordered. “Now, lay it on me. Give me your thoughts. Quickly, please.”
“Yes, sir,” Samson said. “I want to make another pitch to the Chief and the National Command Authority about the bomber force. We have got to take them off SIOP alert. I’ve got a series of plans we can present to the NCA—”
“I don’t have time to make the same pitch we tried yesterday, Terrill,” Shaw said. “I’m up to my eyeballs. STRATCOM wants to put nukes on the Strike Eagles now. ”
“What?”
“You heard me,” Shaw said. “We’re going to have all four F-15E Strike Eagle wings—the 3rd at Elmendorf, the 4th at Seymour-Johnson, the 366th at Mountain Home, and the 48th at Lakenheath—loaded for the SIOP and deployed to Elmendorf for operations against North Korea or China. CINCSTRATCOM is looking at North Korea starting a nuclear exchange within a few hours.”
“That’s nuts, sir,” Samson said. “That’ll suck a fourth of your tankers away. Losing Guam was bad enough for the tankers—putting nukes on F-15s for possible missions against North Korea, will drain even more tankers away.”
“You’re exactly correct, Earthmover, and that’s the argument I made—but the JCS and STRATCOM are on autopilot for Armaggedon. They think that if we put more nukes on more planes, the Chinese and North Koreans will back off,” Shaw said. “Anyway, I’m still waiting on a cocked-on-alert call from your Bones. Pass along a good word for me to the boys and girls at Whiteman for a good job in getting the B-2s loaded up so fast.”
They were loaded up and put on alert just so Danforth and Balboa could start dinking around with them, such as putting them on airborne alert, Samson thought bitterly. “I will, sir,” he responded; then, quickly, Samson went on: “Sir, I’d like a chance to meet with you and General Hayes on my plan to neutralize the Chinese strategic forces. We have missions on the shelf right now, ready to go, where we can take out every one of the Chinese long-range-missile silos without using nuclear weapons. I’d like to—”
“Sorry, Earthmover, but I can’t,” Shaw interrupted. “I went to STRATCOM with your suggestions without any luck, and I’ve got a second message in with the chief. They want to keep all the bombers on nuclear alert—they think it gives them the most leverage to have the bombers, especially the B-2s, loaded with nukes and threatening to destroy targets in China.”
“It’s obviously not working, sir, because China went ahead and destroyed Andersen and nearly wiped out the capital city of Guam,” Samson interjected, “and we still haven’t retaliated. Someone did, but it wasn’t us.
“Sorry, Earthmover,” Shaw repeated. “To a certain extent, I happen to agree with the JCS. We can’t risk losing the B-2s on a deep strike mission inside China.”
“The B-lBs can soften up China’s air defense well enough for the B-2s to go in.”
“But then they’re up against thousands of fighters and triple-A sites,” Shaw argued. “We can’t destroy all of them. Eventually, the B-2s would be fully exposed. If we lost even ten percent of the B-2 fleet on this attack, it would be a staggeringly demoralizing loss—and it would seem even worse if we didn’t do commensurate damage to the Chinese military. We might then be forced to use ICBMs or nuclear cruise missiles to destroy Chinese targets, and then we’d be on the very slippery slope we want to stay off. We’d be sending nuclear
warheads over the pole, over Russia. That would make the Russkies very nervous, and we don’t want them involved in this fight, on either side.”
“Sir, we’ve got a plan that would practically ensure destruction of the Chinese long- and intermediate-range strategic offensive arsenal, without a devastating loss on our side—and without using nukes,” Samson said. “But I need the B-l and B-2 bombers. All of them. They’re not doing any good loaded with nukes. With you, me, and General Hayes talking to the SECDEF or maybe even the President, we might be able to convince him to let us try my plan before it’s too late.”
There was a slight pause on the other end, followed by an exasperated but resigned sigh; then: “Okay, Terrill, I’ll make the request once more. But it’s not going to work.”
“Thank you, sir,” Samson said. “I can fly out to Washington at any time to meet with the Chief or the NCA.”
“You just stay at Barksdale, and I’ll tell you when to show to give your dog-and-pony show,” Shaw said. “Keep quiet till then, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Samson replied—but Shaw had hung up before Samson gave his response. It was not a friendly suggestion to keep quiet—it was an order.
Sometime during the conversation with Shaw, Samson was handed a note. He asked a question of the briefer, then half-listened to the reply as he glanced at the messageform—and then his heart skipped a beat. He threw a “Continue on” order to his battle staff and dashed out of the battle staff room to the comm center. “What did you pick up?” he asked the command post senior controller.
“A message on that special SATCOM terminal you had installed here, sir,” the senior controller said. He handed Samson a printout. “Auto decryption on this end.” The message read: “HEADBANGER SENDS. URGENT REQUEST EMER AR RNDZVZ W/ SINGLE DRAGON 16 25N117E 10K ONLOAD. USE RED7 ARFREQ. ADVISE ASAP. OUT.” A later message read: “HEADBANGER FINDS FOUR H-7 MANY H-6 AT TDELTA SKIPPING TFOXTROT AND TGOLF. THX FOR EMERAR WITH DRAGON16. NAV27 ARCP OK. OUT”
“Wasn’t Headbanger the call sign of that modified B-52 that broke out of Andersen past the Navy and U.S. marshals and then disappeared, sir?” the senior controller asked. .
“It sure as hell is,” Samson replied excitedly. “Shit. This means that not only is Elliott, McLanahan, and the rest of that motley crew alive, but they’re flying a damned mission—over fucking China). ”
“That attack on the PRC garrison at Xiamen?”
“A SEAD Wolverine cruise missile attack,” Samson surmised. “A couple of those cruise missiles could wipe out dozens of SAM and tripleA sites. Then they get someone to follow up with cluster-bomb attacks.”
“The ‘Dragon-16’? You don’t suppose they mean Taiwanese F-16s? That EB-52 is flying SEAD missions for Taiwanese F-16s?”
“Yep, and then continuing on deep inside China to do more bombing missions,” Samson said proudly. “I’ll bet the next intelligence message we get says that Wuhan has been attacked by unidentified bombers—maybe a couple other targets between Xiamen and Wuhan, or between Wuhan and the East China Sea.”
“But I thought all the Taiwanese F-16s were destroyed, along with their bases.”
“Obviously some survived—along with one Megafortress and Jon Masters’s tanker and a few of his gadgets,” Samson said. He searched a map of China: “The Chinese H-6 bomber base is at Wuhan, west of Shanghai,” he said. “It sounds like McLanahan found some H-7s—those are Tupolev-26 supersonic bombers—and decided to expend their remaining weapons there, instead of a couple other preplanned targets. But where are they flying out of? Who is running that operation?”
“We could find out,” the senior controller said. “If I can still receive their SATCOM transmissions, I suppose we can send them a message just as easy. ”
General Samson broke out into a broad grin, the first one in many, many hours. “Move over, son,” he said excitedly. “I’ve got to call me up some renegades so we can get to work cleaning up this war—before it gets completely out of hand.”
As Terrill Samson sat down to start typing out messages, he called for his executive officer. “Get the C-21 fueled up and ready to depart for Andrews. I want every preplanned strike package we’ve got to attack the Chinese ICBM complexes, bomber bases, and radar sites—and I want it all ready to go within the hour. Then contact Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Roma at Ellsworth and Colonel Anthony Jamieson at Whiteman, drag them off alert or wherever they are, and have them standing by with their conventional strike packages. Tell them I’m taking some of their bombers off nuclear alert—and then we’re going to work the way we were meant to go to work!”
KAI-SHAN MILITARY COMPLEX, NEAR HUALIEN, REPUBLIC OF CHINA
WEDNESDAY, 25 JUNE 1997, 0651 HOURS LOCAL (TUESDAY, 24 JUNE, 1751 HOURS ET)
The roar of jet engines could be heard far below, creating a constant rumbling and vibration throughout the medical facility. The Taiwanese staff appeared not to notice. They worked with silent efficiency, quickly and quietly loading up medical supplies for the evacuation.
David Luger had just been wheeled into an examination room from the X-ray lab. He was lying on a gurney, a thin sheet concealing all the other bandages on his left leg and arm. The left side of his body looked as if he had been spray-painted with a mixture of black, yellow, and brown paint—it looked like one continuous bruise from his head to ankle, and his left eye was swollen almost completely shut. “I tell ya, I’m okay,” Luger was protesting to the doctor accompanying him. Patrick and Wendy McLanahan, Brad Elliott, and Jon Masters were waiting for him; Patrick’s injuries, not nearly as serious as Luger’s, had already been treated.
“What’s the scoop, Doctor?” McLanahan asked the attending physician, who was carrying Luger’s X rays.
“Severe concussion, as we suspected,” the Taiwanese doctor replied, holding up each pertinent X ray as he spoke. “Slight cranial fracture. Partial hearing loss in the left ear, slight fracture in the left orbit. Cuts and bruises all along the left side of his body where he took the brunt of the explosion. Broken left knee, swollen left ankle and left foot. If I did not know he was hit by an exploding missile, I would say he had been hit by a bus.”
“I’m okay, I said,” Luger protested. “Damn, we kicked some ass, didn’t we?”
“We sure did,” Brad Elliott said, a broad smile on his face. “It was just like the first Old Dog flight. They threw everything but another Kavaznva laser at us, and we fought through it all and bombed the crap out of them! ”
“So let’s gas up and get ready to fly another sortie,” Luger said.
“Not you, Dave,” Patrick said. “You’re grounded. We’ll take the next run ourselves. I can handle both the OSO and DSO’s stuff.”
“This damned headache won’t keep me from at least helping mission- plan for you guys,” Luger said. “We still have to knock out the air defense sites around Shanghai.”
“What I’d like to do is bomb the crap out of the Chinese ICBM silos and launch sites,” Patrick McLanahan said, a definite tone of anger in his voice—very uncharacteristic for his buddy, Luger thought.
“We know where they are—-we just need to get in there and nail ’em,” Ton Masters said, his voice as bitter as Patrick’s. “Our guys back at Blytheville launched two more satellite tracks over central China, and we think we’ve pinpointed all the DF-5 and DF-3 silos and launch sites. One more NIRTSat launch and I can have each and even7 one targeted, along with a good number of mobile missile launchers.”
“But we’re low on weapons,” Patrick went on. “We’re down to only two Strikers, two Wolverine missiles, and two Scorpion missiles. The ROC has plenty of fuel, air-to-air missiles, and cluster munitions left over, but our rotary launchers can’t earn7 the cluster bombs.”
“Shit, maybe we can send Hal, Chris Wohl, and Madcap Magician back to Andersen to steal us the rest of our Megafortresses,” Luger said with a grin—and then he noticed that the others did not share in his quip. In fact, everyone looked real funereal all of a sudden. “But
why all the focus on the Chinese ICBM sites all of a sudden? I thought we were going after air defense sites.”
“Oh, that’s right—you were being checked out up here when we heard,” Wendy said. “Dave . . . the Chinese launched a nuclear ICBM attack against Guam.”
“What?”
“Andersen has been destroyed—it was attacked with a two-megaton warhead,” Wendy went on sadly. “Agana and most of the northern half of the island have been severely damaged.”
“Oh, my God,” Luger said in a low, completely horrified tone. “Was it a retaliation against our attack? Did we cause the Chinese to attack with nuclear missiles?”
“The Chinese were committed to using nuclear weapons to attack their enemies long before you came to our assistance, Major Luger,” Brigadier-General Hsiao Jason, commander of the Kai-Shan Military Complex, said as he entered the examination room. He extended a hand to David Luger. “I wanted to thank you for your sacrifice and good work, Major. I am very proud of all of you, and very grateful.”
“We’re not done yet, General,” Elliott said. “We’re going to load up each and every weapon we can and shove them right down China’s damned throat ”
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