by Dale Brown
T_
68 DALE IS ROW N
bomber forces commander-this was an ominous warning
message. Samson paused to get his emotions under control;
then he took a deep breath and continued: "I want to thank
the men and women of Second Bomb Wing for your service,
and also add a personal thank-you to the men and women of
Eighth Air Force for your hard work and dedication to duty
to the command, to our nation, and to me.
" And I know it seems silly to do so, but indulge me: I want
to thank the B-52 bomber, and all the men and women who
have taken them into battle and who have sat with them on
nuclear alert, defending our homes, our freedom, our way of
life, and protecting our allies. You're only a big hunk of metal,
ten thousand random parts flying in formation, but God bless
you anyway." The applause was unexpectedly loud and long,
which greatly pleased General Samson, who took a long look
at the B-52H behind him and gave it a thumbs-up. He then
turned back to the audience, snapped to attention, and said in
a loud voice, "Attention to orders from the I commander in
chief"
"Wing, ten-hut!" General Vidriano shouted. The uniformed
men and women came to attention, and the audience respect-
fully stood.
Samson was passed a blue binder, and he opened it and read,
"By order of the commander in chief of the armed forces of
the United States of America, the Second Bombardment Wing,
Heavy, and its component squadrons, Barksdale Air Force
Base, Louisiana, are hereby relieved of all combat and support
duties and ordered to stand down this date." The tears flowed
again, from the big man at the podium to the combat veterans
to the tough young security policemen guarding the line.
"Your success in long-range bombardment missions, as well
as in maintaining a strategic combat-ready posture over the
years, has ensured the peace and security of the United States
and of the free world, and reflects great credit upon yourselves
and the United States Air Force. I am pleased to express the
heartfelt thanks of a grateful nation. Mission accomplished.
Job well done. Signed, The Honorable Arthur S. Chastain, Sec-
retary of Defense; The Honorable Sheila F. Hewlett, Secretary
of the Air Force; General Victor A. Hayes, Chief of Staff,
United States Air Force. General Vidriano, carry out the or-
ders.
Vidriano saluted, then said in a loud voice, "Wing, present
FATAL TER RAI N 69
your colors!" Samson closed the binder, then left the podium
and walked in front of the group of officers and their guidon-
bearers. One by one, the individual squadrons were called out.
As the squadron commander's and senior NCOIC's names,
along with a little of each squadron's history and major ac-
complishments, were read aloud to the audience, the officers
and guidon-bearers stepped forward, and the guidon was rolled
up on its staff, covered, and presented to the Second Bomb
Wing commander, who gave it to his wing NCOIC.
After all of the squadron guidons were furled and covered,
General Vidriano then took the wing flag, the tip of its flag's
staff festooned with dozens of campaign ribbons won from
more than fifty years of combat service, from his wing's senior
noncommissioned officer and, holding it in two hands, held it
out stiffly with both arms fully extended and presented it to
General Samson. "Sir, I present to you the Second Bomb
Wing, Heavy, the best heavy bombardment wing in the world.
The wing has stood down, as ordered."
Samson saluted. "Thank you, General. Please personally
thank your men and women for their outstanding service to
the nation. "
At precisely the moment that General Samson took the wing
flag in his hands, a loud rumbling was heard in the distance.
The audience members looked up and saw an incredible sight:
flanked by three T-38 Talon jet trainers that looked insectlike
in comparison, a massive formation of twenty B-52 bombers
passed slowly only 5,000 feet overhead, forming a gigantic
number 2 in the sky. The sound of those huge planes passing
overhead sounded as if a magnitude ten earthquake were in
progress-metal folding chairs rattled, bits of dirt on the
ground jumped like giant fleas, a thin cloud of dust began to
rise over the ground stirred up by the vibration, car alarms in
the nearby parking lot went off, and somewhere behind the
audience a window shattered in the Base Operations building.
o ers ye e an screame in (e ight, civilians put their
hands to their ears and made comments to people beside them
that couldn't be heard, and children clutched their parents' legs
and cried in abject fear-and combat veteran and (at least until
October 1) Eighth Air Force commander Lieutenant General
Terrill Samson felt a lump of awe lodge in his throat, dredged
up by a wellspring of pride from his heart. The sounds of
cracking glass in the Base Ops building finally caused his emo-
70 DALE BROWN
FATAL T ER RAI N 71
tions to bubble forth, and the big three-star general laughed
until he cried, clapping as hard as a young kid at a circus. The
audience happily joined in.
Even without dropping any iron, Samson thought gleefully,
the damn BUFFs-the Big Ugly Fat Fuckers-could still do
what they had done best for the past thirty-five years: they
could still break things on the ground with power and ease.
As General Samson's C-21A Leaijet transport plane pulled up
to the VIP parking area in front of Base Ops a few hours after
the stand-down ceremony ended, General Samson shook hands
with Barksdale's senior officers and enlisted men and women,
returned their salutes, picked up his briefcase, and headed to
the jet's airstair. Normally Samson would insist on taking the
pilot's seat, but this time he had business to attend to, so he
headed back to the cabin and strapped in at the commander s
seat at the small desk. The copilot ensured that the general was
comfortable, gave a short safety briefing to the general and the
other three passengers already aboard, and hurried back to the
cockpit. The plane taxied back to the runway and was airborne
again within minutes.
"Forgot how emotional these damn stand-down ceremonies
can be," Samson said to his three fellow passengers. "I've
been presiding over too damn many of them."
"Some pretty cool flying, though," said Dr. Jon Masters,
as he sipped from a can of Pepsi. Jon Masters, barely thirty
years old, drank several such cans of sugar-laden beverages
every day, but somehow was still as skinny as a pole, still had
all his teeth, and still had no detectable chemical imbalances
or vitamin deficiencies. "They must've been practicing that
formation for days."
"Weeks, Dr. Masters," Samson said. "That's all the flying
they've been doing lately." He looked over at passenger num-
ber two
, paused as if considering whether or not he should do
it, then stuck out a hand. "How the hell are you, Brad?"
Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Bradley James Elliott
smiled, noticing Samson's discomfort at his presence with un-
disguised amusement. "Peachy, Earthinover, just peachy," he
replied, and took Samson's hand in his.
There it was again, Samson thought grimly-that irritating
cocksure attitude. Samson was not sure exactly how old Elliott
was, probably in his early sixties, but he had the demeanor
and attitude of a young, spoiled brat, of a guy who just knew
he was going to get his way. Medium height, medium build,
still as healthy-looking in a business suit as ever-even with
the leg. Samson's eyes wandered down to Elliott's right leg,
barely visible behind the desk. It looked normal under the
nicely tailored suit, but Samson knew it was not normal-it
was artificial. Very high-tech, fully articulating, it had been
good enough to get Elliott re-cleared for flying duties back
when he was in the Air Force-but it was still very artificial.
Elliott saw Samson checking out his leg. He smiled that
irritatingly smug grin and said, "Yep, still have the appliance
onboard, Earthmover." He flexed his foot around in a circle,
an incredible feat for a prosthetic device-it truly did look
real. "It only hurts when I think about what's happening to
my Air Force." Samson chuckled, but the joke was DOA-
no one, not even Elliott, was smiling.
Elliott had always been this way, Samson remembered-
grim, demanding, headstrong to the point of being reactionary.
A former Strategic Air Command bomb wing commander,
Penta on staffer, and expert in strategic bombing and weap-
ons, Brad Elliott had been living the dream that Terrill Samson
had harbored for many years-to be universally acknowledged
as the expert, the one that everyone, from the line crewdogs
to the President of the United States, called on for answers to
difficult questions and problems. Elliott was a prot6g6 of stra-
tegic nuclear aerial warfare visionaries such as Curtis E.
LeMay and Russell Dougherty, and a contemporary of modem
conventional strategic airpower leaders such as Mike Loh and
Don Aldridge, the true proponents of long-range airpower. It
was Elliott who had engineered the hasty but ultimately suc-
cessful rebirth of the B-1 bomber, developed new cruise mis-
sile technology for the B-52, and kept the B-2 stealth bomber
on track through its long and expensive trek through the halls
of Congress when it had been a deep "black" program that
could be canceled in the blink of an eye.
Rising quickly through the ranks, Brad Elliott had become
director of Air Force plans and programs at the Pentagon, then
deputy commander of the Strategic Air Command. He had
been well on his way to a fourth star and command of SAC,
and possibly back to the Pentagon as Air Force chief of staff,
when. . . he'd suddenly dropped almost completely out of
72 DALE BROWN
sight. He'd surfaced only once, as a military advisor to the
abortive U. Border Security Force, but he'd been suddenly
so far under cover, wrapped in an airtight cocoon of secrecy
of which Samson had never seen the like, then, now, or ever
since.
Elliott's name was linked to dozens of dramatic, highly clas-
sified military operations and programs supposedly originating
from the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, or
HAWC, the top-secret research and testing facility in the de-
serts of south-central Nevada known as "Drearriland.- Many
risky, bold military operations all over the world had Brad
Elliott's signature style on them: small, powerful, high-tech air
attacks aimed directly into the heart of the enemy, usually
involving heavily modified bombers. Although he didn't know
for certain, Samson was sure that Brad Elliott and the crew-
dogs at HAWC had been behind unbelievable military suc-
cesses from central America to Lithuania to the Philippines.
Well, here he was again. Brad Elliott was now a civilian,
working on classified Air Force programs as a senior vice pres-
ident of Sky Masters, Inc. Elliott had been shit-canned, forced
to retire, after a major spy scandal had shut down HAWC and
shoved military research programs back at least a decade. But,
as always, Brad Elliott had landed on his feet, cocky as ever.
No one in Washington liked him, not even his advocates-
like the President of the United States, for example. But he
had this mystique, this air of complete command, of presci-
ence. He was known as the man to turn to, plain and simple.
You didn't have to like him, but you had better get him work-
ing on your problem.
Samson decided to ignore him for the moment, and he
turned and shook hands warmly with the third passenger.
"Patrick, good to see you again," he said to retired Air Force
Colonel Patrick McLanahan.
"Same here, sir," McLanahan said in return. Now, here was
a kid he could get to like, Samson thought. McLanahan was,
pure and simple, the best pilot-trained navigator-bombardier in
the United States, probably the best in the world. He had been
an engineer, designer, and team chief at HAWC, working as
one of Brad Elliott's supersecret whiz kids, designing aircraft
and weapons that would someday be used in wars. Like Elliott,
McLanahan had been forced to accept an early retirement in
1996 in the wake of the Kenneth Francis James spy scandal
FATAL T E R RAI N 73
and the HAWC closing. Even though McLanahan had risked
his life to bring the Soviet deep-cover agent Maraklov back
from Central America before he had a chance to escape to
Russia with a stolen secret Air Force experimental aircraft,
he'd been sacrificed for the good of the service. McLanahan
and Elliott had been close friends for many years.
But unlike Brad Elliott, Patrick McLanahan got the job done
without pissing the leadership off, without copping an attitude.
When the President had wanted someone to head up a secret
aerial strike unit under the Intelligence Support Agency to
counter Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, he hadn't
turned to Brad Elliott, the acknowledged expert in long-range
bomber tactics-he specifically had not wanted Elliott in-
volved in the secret project, although Elliott had planned and
executed many such operations. The President's staff instead
had turned to Elliott's prot6gd, McLanahan. And the young
Californian, who looked more like a young college professor
or corporate lawyer than an aerial assassin, had come through
brilliantly, taking a modified B-2 Spirit stealth bomber halfway
around the world to nearly single-handedly shut down the
newly rebuilt Iranian war machine. Now McLanahan was get-
ting a reputation as the "go-to" guy when the shooting started,
even over well-qualified active-duty crewdogs.
"So, what do you have for us, Earthmover
?" Brad Elliott
asked, rubbing his hands in exaggerated anticipation. "Are we
going after the North Korean chemical weapons plants? We
going to polish up in Iran? Someone tried to whack the Iranian
military chief of staff Buzhazi and missed-let us take a shot
at him. And that ex-Russian carrier is in the South China Sea,
on its way to Hong Kong-we should sink that thing before
it gets within striking range of Taiwan. Rumor has it that it's
fully operational and carrying."
Samson ignored Elliott for the moment-hard to do, since
they were sitting right across from each other-and turned to
Jon Masters instead. "I take it that Brad here is part of your
team, Dr. Masters? I wasn't made aware of that."
"We've got five of the eight Megafortresses flying now,
General," Masters said. "We need experienced crews."
"The Air Combat Command guys you sent need at least six
months of training time," McLanahan interjected. "They're
good sticks, and they can certainly handle the beast, but the
systems are unlike anything they've experienced before. And
74 DALE BROWN
we're changing the systems, too, so we put them to work as
engineers and test pilots while they're getting checked out on
the plane." He paused, searching Terrill Samson's face for any
signs of difficulty. "Brad Elliott is the Megafortress. He's the
creator, the progenitor." Samson was silent, his mouth a hard
line on his face. "Problem, Terrill?"
"Terrill thinks the President's going to have a cow when
he sees me," Elliott answered for the big three-star general.
He turned to McLanahan. "We're going to meet the Presi-
dent--didn't you know that? I called the White House corn-
munications office and confirmed the meeting. That cute V.
Whiting, Chastain, Freeman, Hartman, Collier from NSA I
think, and George Balboa, that old Navy squid sack of--
"Brad. .
"We go way back, me and Martindale, so don't worry about
it, big guy," Elliott interrupted, watching Samson's face turn
puffy with anger. "We'll have a good meeting, and we'll have
all the right answers."