Combat

by Stephen Coonts

  In reality, the hangar had mostly been used as a temporary overflow barracks during the Persian Gulf War, or used to store VIP aircraft out of the hot sun to keep it cool until just before departure. Since the cease-fire, it had been used to store dozens of pallets of personal gear for returning troops before loading on transport planes. Now, it held two aircraft—two very special aircraft, tightly squeezed in nose to tail.

  The two EB-52 Megafortress bombers had arrived separately—Brad Elliott’s plane was returning from its patrol near Iran, while the second bomber had been en route to replace the first when it had been diverted to Diego Garcia—but they had arrived within minutes of one another. The airfield had been closed down and blacked out, and all transient ships in the harbor had been moved north toward the mouth of the harbor, until both aircraft touched down and were parked inside the Air Force hangar. A third Megafortress bomber involved in the ’round-the-clock aerial patrols near Iran remained back at its home base in Nevada, with crews standing by ready to rotate out to Diego Garcia if a conflict developed. Roving guards were stationed inside and outside the hangar, but the lure of the island’s secluded, serene tropical beauty and every warrior’s desire to escape the stress and strains of warfighting combined to keep all curious onlookers away. No one much cared what was inside that hangar, as long as it didn’t mean they had to go back to twenty-four-hour shifts to surge combat aircraft for bombing raids.

  Patrick McLanahan had spent all night buttoning up the Megafortress, downloading electronic data from the ship’s computers, and preparing a detailed intelligence brief for the Air Force on the strange aircraft they had encountered near the Strait of Hormuz. Now it was time to summarize their findings and prepare a report to send to the Pentagon.

  “We need to come up with a best guess at what we encountered last night,” Brad Elliott said. “Wendy? Start us off.”

  “Weird,” Wendy said. “He had a big, powerful multimode X-band surface-search radar, which meant it was a big plane, maybe bomber-class, like a Bear, Badger, Backfire, Nimrod, or Buccaneer attack plane. But it also had an S-band air-search radar, like a Soviet Peel Cone system or like an AWACS. He was fast, faster than six hundred knots, which definitely eliminates the Bear and AWACS and probably eliminates a Badger, Nimrod, or Buccaneer attack plane. That leaves a Backfire bomber.”

  “Or a Blackjack bomber,” Patrick offered, “or some other class of aircraft we haven’t seen yet.” The Backfire and Blackjack bombers were Russia’s most advanced warplanes. Both were large intercontinental supersonic bombers, still in production. The Backfire bomber, similar to the American B-1 bomber, was known to have been exported to Iran as a naval attack plane, carrying long-range supersonic cruise missiles. Little was known about the Blackjack bomber except it was larger, faster, more high-tech, and carried many more weapons than any other aircraft in the Communist world—and probably in the entire world.

  “But with air-to-air missiles?” John Ormack remarked. “Could we have missed other planes with him, maybe a fighter escort?”

  “Possible,” Wendy said. “But normally we’d spot fighter intercept radars at much longer distances, as far as a hundred miles. We didn’t see him until he was right on top of us—less than forty miles away. In fact, we probably wouldn’t have detected him at all except he turned on his own radar first and we detected it. He was well within our own air-search radar range, but we never saw him.”

  “A stealth bomber?” Patrick surmised. “A stealthy Backfire or Blackjack bomber?”

  “There’s nothing stealthy about a Backfire,” Wendy said, “but a Blackjack bomber—interesting notion. Armed with air-to-air missiles?”

  “It’s the equivalent of a Megafortress flying battleship, except built on a supersonic airframe,” Patrick said. “Three years after we first flew the EB-52 Megafortress, someone—probably the Russians—builds their own copy and sells it to the Iranians. Remember we thought we heard a Russian voice on the radio before we heard the Iranian pilot respond in English? The Russians built a Megafortress flying battleship and sold it to the Iranians.”

  “Hol-ee shit,” Brad Elliott murmured. “It would sure keep the Russians in the Iranians’ good graces to sell them a hot jet like a Megafortress. That would be worth a billion dollars in hard currency, something I’m sure the Russians need badly. It would be the ultimate weapon in the Middle East.”

  “We know how capable our system is—we know we can sneak up on any ship in the U.S. Navy and launch missiles and drop bombs before they know we’re there,” John Ormack said. “If the Iranians have a similar capability …”

  “The entire fleet in the Persian Gulf could be in danger,” Brad Elliott said ominously. “With Iraq all but neutralized and the Coalition forces going home, this could be Iran’s best chance to take over the Persian Gulf. I want an abbreviated afteraction and intelligence summary ready to transmit in thirty minutes, and then I want a detailed report prepared and ready to send out to Washington on the next liaison flight. Let’s get busy.”

  The crew had the report done in twenty minutes, and they were hard at work on the afteraction report when a communications officer brought in a message from the command post. Brad read it, his face darkened, and he crumpled it up into a ball and stormed out of the room, muttering curses.

  John picked up the message form and read it. “We’ve been ordered to stand down,” he said. “Apparently the Iranians filed a protest with the State Department, claiming an American warplane tried to violate Iranian airspace and attack a patrol. Almost every Gulf country is demanding an explanation, and the President doesn’t have one …”

  “Because he didn’t know what we were doing,” Patrick said. “The President must be ready to bust a gut.”

  “We’ve been ordered to bring the Megafortresses back to Groom Lake immediately.” He gulped, then read, “And Brad’s been relieved of duty.” Patrick shook his head and made an exasperated sigh, then closed his classified notebook, collected his papers, and secured them in a catalog case to turn back in to the command post. “Where are you going, Patrick?”

  “Out. Away from here. I’m on a beautiful tropical island—I want to enjoy a little of it before I get tossed into prison.”

  “Brad wanted us to stay in the hangar …”

  “Brad’s no longer in charge,” Patrick said. He looked at John Ormack with a mixture of anger and weariness. “Are you going to order me to stay, John?” Ormack said nothing, so Patrick stormed out of the room without another word.

  After turning in his classified materials, Patrick went to his locker in the hangar, stripped off his smelly survival gear and flying boots, found a beach mat and a bottle of water, took a portable walkie-talkie and his ID card, grabbed a ride from the shuttle bus to one of the beautiful white-sand beaches just a few yards from the Visiting Officers’ Quarters, found an inviting coconut tree, stripped off his flight suit and undergarments to the waist, and stretched out on the sand. He heard the walkie-talkie squawk once—someone asking him to return to answer a few more questions—so Patrick finally turned the radio off. But he immediately felt bad for doing that, so he set his “internal alarm clock” for one hour and closed his eyes.

  He was exhausted, bone-tired, but the weariness would not leave his body—in fact, he was energized, ready to go again. There was so much excitement and potential in their group—and it seemed it was wasted because Brad Elliott couldn’t control himself. He was too eager simply to charge off and do whatever he felt was right or necessary. Patrick didn’t always disagree with him, but he wished he could channel his energy, drive, determination, and patriotism in a more productive direction.

  It seemed as if only a few minutes passed, but when Patrick awoke a quick glance at his watch told him fifty minutes had gone by. The sun was high in the sky, seemingly overhead—they were close enough to the equator for that to happen—but there was enough of a breeze blowing in off the Indian Ocean to keep him cool and comfortable. There were a few sailors or a
irmen on the beach a few dozen yards away to the east, throwing a Frisbee or relaxing under an umbrella.

  “Helluva way to fight a war, isn’t it?”

  Patrick looked behind him and saw Wendy Tork sitting cross-legged beside him. She had a contented, pleased, relaxed look on her face. Patrick felt that same thrill of excitement and anticipation he had felt on the Megafortress. “I’ll say,” Patrick commented. “How long have you been sitting there?”

  “A few minutes.” Wendy was wearing nothing but her athletic bra and a pair of dark blue cotton panties; her flying boots and flight suit were in a pile beside her. Patrick gulped in surprise when he saw her so scantily clad, which made her smile. She motioned toward the Visiting Officers’ Quarters down the beach. “Brad decided to let us get rooms in the Qs rather than sleep in the hangar.”

  Patrick snorted. “How magnanimous of him.”

  “What were you going to do—sleep on the beach?”

  “Damn right I was,” Patrick said. He shook his head disgustedly. “We were cooped up in that plane for over seventeen hours.”

  “And it was all unauthorized,” Wendy said bitterly. “I can’t believe he’d do that—and then have the nerve to chew you out for what you did.”

  “You mean, you can’t believe he’d do that again,” Patrick said. “That’s Brad Elliott’s MO, Wendy—do whatever it takes to get the job done.”

  “Flying the Kavaznya sortie—yes, I agree,” she said. The first flight of the experimental EB-52 Megafortress bomber three years earlier, against a Soviet long-range killer laser system in Siberia, was also unauthorized—but it had probably saved the world from a nuclear exchange. “But with half the planet involved in a shooting war in the Middle East, why he would commit three Megafortresses to the theater without proper authorization and risk getting us all killed like that? Hell, it boggles my mind.”

  “No one said Brad was the clearheaded all-knowing expert in everything military,” Patrick pointed out. “If he was, he’d probably build Megafortresses for just one person. He has a crew behind him.” He turned toward her. “Rank disappears when we step into that bird, Wendy. It’s our job, our responsibility, to point out problems or discrepancies or errors.”

  “Aren’t you obligated to follow his orders?”

  “Yes, unless I feel his orders are illogical or illegal or violate a directive,” Patrick replied. “Brad wanting to engage that unidentified aircraft—that was wrong, even if we were on an authorized mission. We can’t just go around shooting down aircraft over international airspace. We did what we were supposed to do—disengage, identify ourselves, turn, run, and get out. We prevented a dogfight and came home safely.” He paused, then smiled.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “You know, I was a little miffed at Brad ordering us up on this mission at first,” Patrick admitted. “But you know, I probably … no, I definitely wanted to go. I knew we had no tasking or execution order. If I wanted, I could have asked the question, demanded he get authorization, and stopped this sortie from ever leaving the ground. The fact is, I wanted to do it.” His expression grew a bit more somber as he added, “In fact, I probably betrayed you, maybe even betrayed myself for not saying anything. I had a responsibility to speak up, and I didn’t. And if things went completely to shit and some of us were killed or captured or hurt, I know that Brad would be the one responsible. I accused Brad of being irresponsible, of wanting to get into the fighting before it was over—and at the same time, I was thinking and doing the exact same thing. What a hypocrite.”

  “You are not a hypocrite,” Wendy said, putting a hand on his shoulder as his eyes wandered out across the beach toward the open ocean. “Listen, Patrick, there’s a war on. There might be a cease-fire now, but the entire region is still ready to explode. You know this, Brad knows this, I know this—and soon some smart desk jockeys in Washington will know this. They really did want our team warmed up and ready to go in case we were needed. Brad just advanced the timetable a little …”

  “No, a lot,” Patrick said.

  “You played along because you recognized the need and our unit’s capabilities. You did the right thing.” She paused and took a deep breath, letting her fingers slide along his broad, naked shoulders. Patrick suppressed a pleased, satified moan, and Wendy responded by beginning to massage his shoulders. “I just wish Brad was a little more … userfriendly,” she went on absently. “Commanders need to make decisions, but Brad seems a little too eager to pull the trigger and fight his way in or out of a scrape.” She paused for a few long moments, then added, “Why can’t you be our commander?”

  “Me?” He hoped his surprised reaction sounded a lot less phony than it sounded to himself. In fact, ever since joining the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, Patrick thought about being its commander—now, for the first time, someone else had verbalized it. “I don’t think I’m leadership material, Wendy,” Patrick said after a short chuckle.

  His little laugh barely succeeded in hiding the rising volts of pleasure he felt as her fingers aimlessly caressed his shoulder. “Sure you are,” she said. “I think you’d be a great commanding officer.”

  “I don’t think so,” Patrick said. “They made me a major after the Kavaznya mission only because we survived it, not because I’m better than all the other captains in the Air Force …”

  “They made you a major because you deserve to get promoted.”

  Patrick ignored her remark. “I think I might be meeting a lieutenant-colonel promotion board sometime this month—a two-year below-the-primary-zone board—but I have no desire to become a commander,” he went on. “All I want to do is fly and be the best at whatever mission or weapon system they give me. But they don’t promote flyboys to O-5 if they want to just stay flyboys.”

  “They don’t?”

  “Why should they? If a captain or a major can do the job, why do they need a lieutenant colonel doing it? L-Cs are supposed to be leaders, commanding squadrons. I don’t want a squadron.” Wendy looked at the sand for a long moment, then drummed her fingers on his shoulder. He glanced at her and smiled when she looked up at him with a mischievous smile. “What?”

  “I think that’s bull, Major-soon-to-be-Lieutenant-Colonel McLanahan.” Wendy laughed. “I think you’d make an ideal commanding officer. You’re the best at what you do, Patrick—it’s perfectly understandable that you wouldn’t want to spoil things by moving on to something else. But I see the qualities in you that other high-ranking guys lack. John Ormack is a great guy and a fine engineer, but he doesn’t have what it takes to lead. Brad Elliott is a determined, gutsy leader, but he doesn’t have the long-range vision and the interpersonal skills that a good commander needs.

  “So stop selling yourself short. Those of us who know you can see it’s total bull. The Strategic Air Command has got you so brainwashed into believing the mission comes first and the person comes last that you’re starting to believe it yourself.” She lay on the warm sand, facing him. “Let’s talk about something else—like why you were watching me last night.”

  Her frankness and playfulness, combined with the warm sand, idyllic tropical scenery, fresh ocean breezes—not to mention her semiundressed attire—finally combined to make Patrick relax, even smile. He lay down on the sand, facing her, intentionally shifting himself closer to her. “I was fantasizing about you,” he said finally. “I was thinking about the night at the Bomb Comp symposium at Barksdale that we spent together, how you looked, how you felt.”

  “Mmm. Very nice. I knew you were thinking that. I thought it was cute, you trying to stammer your way out of it. I’ve been thinking about you too.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Her eyes grew cloudy, tumultuous. “I had been thinking for the longest time if we’d ever get back together again,” Wendy said. “After the Kavaznya mission, we were so compartmentalized, isolated—I thought I’d never touch you ever again. Then you joined Brad in the Border Security Force assignment, and that went bu
st, and it seemed like they drove you even deeper underground. And then the Philippines conflict … we lost so many planes out there, I was sure you weren’t coming back. I knew you’d be leading the force, and I thought you’d be the first to die, even in the B-2 stealth bomber.”

  Wendy rolled over on her back and stared up into the sky. The clouds were thickening—it looked like a storm coming in, more than just the usual daily late-afternoon five-minute downpour. “But then Brad brought us back to refit the new planes to the Megafortress standard, and you were back at work like nothing ever happened. We started working together, side by side, sometimes on the same workstation or jammed into the same dinky compartment, sometimes so close I could feel the heat from your temples. But it seemed as if we had never been together—it was as if we had always been working together, but that night in Barksdale never happened. You were working away like crazy and I was just another one of your subcontractors.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Wendy …”

  “But it did hurt,” she interjected. “The way you looked at me at Barksdale, the way you treated me at Dreamland, the way you touched me on the Megafortress just before we landed in Anadyr … I felt something between us, much more than just a one-night stand in Shreveport. That felt like an eternity ago. I felt as if I waited for you, and you were never coming back. Then I caught you looking at me, and all I could think of to do was come up with subtle ways to hurt you. Now, I don’t know what I feel. I don’t know whether I should punch your damned lights out or …”