Patrick McLanahan Collection #1

by Dale Brown

  Martindale motioned toward the cemetery before him. The rains had stopped, and, as he concluded his remarks, the sun actually appeared through breaks in the clouds. His handlers could not have hoped for a better outcome to this press conference. “The shades of the heroes who lie in Arlington expect nothing less than strength, leadership, courage, and honor from the commander in chief,” he said. “I ask for your help to begin the campaign to bring leadership and honor back to the White House. Thank you, and God bless America.”

  Unbidden and completely out of character, the reporters started to applaud. Martindale’s silver locks were back—the former president was on the warpath once again.

  THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  That same time

  “I seriously think you need to have your head examined, General,” Secretary of Defense Robert Goff said. He was busy packing a briefcase, stuffing it with papers with short, angry stabs. Short, white-haired, what some might call puckish, Robert Goff was one of the United States’ leading military and international-affairs experts. If he had not already been a close friend, campaign manager, and adviser to President Thomas Thorn, his name would still have been at the top of Thorn’s or any president’s short list of candidates for secretary of defense. “Just a few months on the job, and now I’ve got to go to the White House and explain what in hell you were doing over Turkmenistan and why you found it necessary to crash a B-1 bomber on Diego Garcia after you were specifically ordered to ditch it.”

  Standing at attention in the middle of Goff’s office were Major General Patrick McLanahan and Brigadier General Rebecca Furness. Both were still in sweat-stained flight suits. There had not even been time to get fresh uniforms. They’d been on the ground less than thirty minutes in Diego Garcia before being whisked out of there on a military jet transport, and in less than eighteen hours they were back in Washington. Standing at parade rest off to Goff’s right was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard Venti, with a passive and completely unreadable expression on his young fighter-pilot face.

  “I went to bat for you over this, Patrick,” Goff continued disgustedly. “The president gives you the newest combat wing in the U.S. military, weeks after you almost start a nuclear war in Libya. . . .” He didn’t press the events during that period of time—because Patrick had lost both his brother and his wife during those battles in North Africa. “With no forward bases in Central Asia, we trusted you to take your unmanned aircraft over Afghanistan—avoiding overflying any populated areas or doing anything that could draw attention—and hunt down the Taliban raiders that have been stirring up trouble. You assured me that none of your manned combat aircraft would violate sovereign airspace.

  “Instead, not only do you violate Pakistani airspace, but you throw in Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan as well for good measure! Then, to make matters worse, you ignore a direct order from superior officers and me and crash-land your plane on an important active runway instead of ditching it. So tell me, McLanahan—what in hell do I say to the president?”

  “Sir, tell him that our mission was accomplished, we brought all of our aircraft home or had them destroyed beyond traceability, and all crew members returned home with only minor damage and injuries,” McLanahan replied.

  “Are you trying to be funny?” Goff retorted. “Are you trying to make me look like a fool? You really expect me to go in front of the National Security Council and tell that to the president of the United States? Do you think he’ll find the humor in my statement after he reads the entire report that the director of Central Intelligence will undoubtedly give him and finds out what really happened?” Goff stared at McLanahan, who had his eyes caged straight ahead. “Well? I’ve got two minutes before I go. You’d better start talking—and fast.”

  “Sir, the mission was a success,” McLanahan said. “Our mission was to locate, identify, track, and if necessary interdict that group of Taliban raiders that has been killing United Nations aid workers and Afghan government security forces. We were successful, and the systems we employed worked perfectly, until we were hit by ground fire, went out of control, and were in danger of crash-landing almost intact in Turkmenistan. The only way to retrieve the aircraft was to switch to line-of-sight radio control.” He didn’t need to explain what that was—Robert Goff was an industrialist and engineer and knew almost as much as any aerospace scientist.

  “It was supposed to recall itself if there was a problem,” Goff said. “It was supposed to come back if it sustained any damage or lost contact with you.”

  “I have no excuse for that, sir—I haven’t had time to analyze the data we were able to retrieve from the UCAV’s flight-control computers,” Patrick responded. “We couldn’t recall it or self-destruct it, and I knew we couldn’t just let it crash-land in Turkmenistan—our most sophisticated unmanned combat aircraft would be in the hands of the Russians or sold on the black market. No special-ops forces were available to retrieve it. The only choice I had was to dash across Pakistan and Afghanistan, reach it before it ran out of fuel, and hope it responded to direct line-of-sight commands instead of satellite-relay commands. Flying over Iran was unavoidable as well. We were able to reach it and get it turned around, but at the same time we were attacked by Turkmen air defenses. The drone was shot down, and we sustained damage to our aerial-refueling system. I thought we had enough gas to safely reach the runway.” He paused, then added, “I was right.”

  “Don’t smart-mouth me, mister,” Goff said. “You were ordered by me to ditch that plane. Why did you ignore that order?”

  “Sir, I felt an ejection and ditching under those circumstances would be hazardous to my crew, pose a danger to vessels and aircraft in the area, subject the United States to unnecessary security and negative publicity exposure, and result in unnecessary loss of a valuable military asset,” Patrick McLanahan replied. “I made a decision as senior officer on board the aircraft to attempt a landing. I felt the risk was minimal compared to an uncontrolled crash-landing at sea.”

  “I don’t care what you felt or what you decided—you violated a direct order from several superior officers,” Goff said. “You could have caused unmentionable damage to that airfield and the aircraft parked there. Both of you could have been killed.” Goff looked at Venti, who had remained silent during this entire meeting. “Well, General Venti? What do you think we ought to do to these two?”

  “Sir, I recommend the Air Medal be awarded to both Generals McLanahan and Furness for successfully completing a dangerous mission over hostile airspace, for bringing their crippled aircraft home, and for preserving and protecting the secrecy of their mission, even at considerable risk to their own lives,” Venti responded, a broad smile spreading across his face.

  “Make it the Airman’s Medal. We can award that in peacetime, can’t we, General?”

  “We can indeed, sir,” Venti replied happily.

  “Good,” Goff said. “I’d make it the Distinguished Flying Cross, but I know that can’t be awarded in peacetime.” He enthusiastically shook hands with McLanahan and Furness. “Stand at ease. Damn fine job, you two. If either that drone or your B-1 went down anywhere in Central Asia, even Afghanistan, the president would’ve been embarrassed enough to make him consider resigning. Not that he ever would, of course, but he’d consider it for the good of the country. That means I’d be the one forced to resign. The situation is so screwed up over there, who knows what would have happened? Good job.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “General Venti says you want to send in a team to look at the wreckage of the drone, recover the critical components, and destroy the rest?”

  “Yes, sir. The team is already in place aboard a salvage vessel in the Arabian Sea—”

  “The ones that went in over Pakistan to divert attention away from you so you could escape?”

  “Yes, sir. We’ve got the location of the wreckage pinpointed fairly accurately by satellite—about fifty-five miles southwest
of Kerki, about twenty miles south of the Kara Kum Canal. It’s uninhabited, but close enough for a patrol to go out searching for the wreckage. We need to get there first.”

  “How soon can you have the team in?”

  “The recovery team is standing by, sir. We’re ready to go in immediately if our satellites spot any activity near the crash site,” Patrick replied. “The rest of the team will be in place within twenty-four hours.”

  “You want to go back there in twenty-four hours? That’s impossible. From what the CIA tells me, the Iranians and Pakistanis are still on full air-defense alert—hell, even CNN still has reporters in the area. It’s too hot to try a recovery effort now. You’ll have to wait until things calm down.”

  “Our plan has taken that into account, sir,” Patrick explained. “Our plan calls for three aircraft plus Air Force tanker support. Two aircraft will be CV-32 Pave Dasher tilt-jets, based off our salvage ship in the Arabian Sea. One of them will be used as an aerial-refueling tanker—it’ll go three hundred miles inland with the leader, refuel him, and return to the ship. The lead aircraft will carry the recovery team—Sergeant Major Chris Wohl and three commandos.”

  “Four commandos? That’s all?”

  “Four Tin Men, sir,” Venti pointed out.

  Goff nodded—he knew what just one of the Tin Men was capable of. “Almost sounds like overkill now,” he quipped. “I’m afraid to ask, but . . . what’s the third aircraft?”

  “An EB-1C Vampire missile-attack aircraft,” Patrick responded.

  “A Vampire bomber? The same one that you almost got shot down in over Turkmenistan?” Goff asked incredulously.

  “The Vampire can attack air, ground, and even surface targets with the right mix of weapons,” Patrick said. “It’ll stay at high altitude and keep watch over the entire recovery team from launch to landing. It’s stealthy enough to stay out of sight by search radars, and it can defend itself if any fighters manage to get a lock-on and approach it.”

  “For Pete’s sake . . . ,” Goff muttered. He looked at Patrick and said, “I suppose you already have this Vampire in the theater?”

  “Not quite, sir,” Patrick replied. “I’ve launched one EB-52 Megafortress attack plane, which will go on alert on Diego Garcia in about twelve hours, ready to respond in case the salvage vessel is threatened. I want to launch the EB-1C Vampire attack aircraft within forty-eight hours to be ready to go into the recovery area in case someone goes looking for the wreckage.”

  Goff looked at General Venti. “Any other assets we can use in the region, General?”

  “The Twenty-sixth Marine Expeditionary Unit can be within range in forty-eight hours,” Venti replied. “But flying nine hundred miles across four hostile countries is a long haul for them, and their support is all nonstealthy fixed-wing planes. They would be able to execute the plan within forty-eight hours, but I wouldn’t give them the same chance for success as General McLanahan’s troops.”

  Goff shook his head—but soon relented. “All right, the mission is authorized. But let me be perfectly clear, General McLanahan: That drone is not worth a scratch on one man or woman’s little finger. If it looks too hot, I want your troops out. No downed aircraft, no captured troops, no screw-ups for the president to admit to on the evening news. It gets done perfectly or you don’t do it. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “General Venti also says you have a project you want me to consider—some new force concept you want to establish out there at Battle Mountain,” Goff said. “Well, first things first. You pull this one off, General, and you’ll have your chance to make your pitch to me and the White House. We’re up against an enormous budget crunch, as you know, but you know what the president and I like: state-of-the-art, cutting-edge stuff. Stretch the limits. Build in lots of redundancy, make it reliable and powerful, make it a definite force multiplier, and—most important—dazzle us. If you can do that, you’ve got a chance.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Goff looked at his watch. “Catch up with me, General. Congratulations for bringing your cripple home, you two.” He headed toward the door, then stopped and turned. “I don’t need to tell you both that you have lots of enemies in the administration and on Capitol Hill,” he said. “Unfortunately, your crash-landing on Diego Garcia will be considered a major screw-up, not a success. Blowing this recovery mission will probably put an end to everything you want to accomplish and everything you’re being considered for. Can you handle that, Patrick?”

  “Yes, sir,” McLanahan replied with a smile.

  The secretary of defense was definitely not smiling. “Try real hard not to screw this up, General,” Goff said seriously, and he hurried off.

  “I’ve got your Air Battle Force proposal,” Richard Venti said, tapping a folder under the crook of an arm. “I want my staff to look it over first—might take a few days. We’ll have to do it by video teleconference when you get back.”

  “I’d like to show you what we’ve done, sir,” Patrick said. “Instead of a videoconference, come on out to Battle Mountain and see for yourself.”

  “How much time do you need?”

  “One month, sir.”

  Venti raised Patrick’s briefing folder. “One month—for all this?”

  “I’ve hit the ground running, sir,” Patrick said. “We’ll put on a show for you that you won’t believe. All I need is a few people, and we’ll dazzle you.”

  “Where’s your money coming from?”

  “Most of it will come from HAWC, sir,” Patrick replied. HAWC was the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, Elliott Air Force Base, Nevada, which tested high-tech weapons prior to their becoming operational. “Most of the aircraft and weapons still belong to HAWC. Once I get a real budget, I’d like to find funding for my own unit.”

  “Where’s the rest of it coming from?”

  “I thought it would come from the One-eleventh Wing,” Patrick said, turning and looking at Rebecca Furness. “Her unit owns the EB-1C Vampires, and their base up in Battle Mountain has the space to accommodate us.”

  “General Furness? Are you in on this plan, too?”

  Rebecca looked at Patrick but managed to reply without too much hesitation, “Absolutely, sir. We’re ready to help any way we can.”

  “O-kay, if you say so,” Venti said, shaking his head. “I’ll brief SECDEF later on in the week—assuming there won’t be a hue and cry for our scalps from the NSC. The vice president has some kind of big trip planned to the West Coast in a few weeks. I’ll see if he wants us to work your demo into his itinerary. I’m sure SECDEF won’t want to miss it. If you can convince the VP, you’re in.” Venti grabbed his briefcase; McLanahan and Furness snapped to attention as he departed the room, hot on the secretary of defense’s heels.

  Rebecca Furness looked completely deflated. “Oh, shit, I thought we were goners—again,” she breathed. “Christ, McLanahan, how in the hell do you get me into shit storms like this? And what in hell is this new Air Battle Force thing all about? I’m the wing commander out there, remember? Those are my planes, my troops, my budget, and my ass on the line, and I don’t even know what this is about!”

  “Do you want me to get you involved in another ‘shit storm,’ Rebecca,” Patrick asked, “or don’t you?”

  “Maybe if you’d let me in on your plans before the shooting starts or before the brass calls us on the carpet, I could help you keep things from degrading into deep, dark shit storms.”

  “Rebecca, if I bring you in on this, my objective will be to upgrade our situation into a major deep, dark shit storm,” Patrick said. “At least it’ll be a major one for the bad guys.”

  “Well, if you put it that way,” Rebecca said, rolling her eyes in disbelief—and maybe a little apprehension, “how can I possibly refuse?”

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  A short time later

  Since its formation in 1947, every U.S. president had treated the National Security Council in
a different way. Some presidents, like Kennedy and Johnson, largely ignored the NSC except in the direst emergencies; others, like Eisenhower, treated it as an extension of the military; other presidents used the NSC as a clearinghouse for data from all the different departments; still others used it as a leash to try to keep the executive departments in line. Many times the NSC ran the foreign-affairs show; other times it was seen as just another bureaucratic hunk of sludge, slowing down the government machinery.

  In 1961 President Kennedy appointed the first national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, and set him up in the Situation Room in the basement of the White House to monitor the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion. Although the National Security Council met only forty-nine times in Kennedy’s administration and was soon obviated by Kennedy’s “whiz kids” and Johnson’s “Kitchen Cabinet,” at that point the position of national security adviser was crafted and remained fairly similar. . . .

  Until the turn of the twenty-first century and President Thomas Nathaniel Thorn. This president never appointed a national security adviser; the National Security Council staff was reduced from over two hundred staffers to just four dozen. The other statutory members of the NSC—the president, vice president, secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the director of Central Intelligence—used their own staffs to collect, distill, and analyze the mountains of information that poured into the White House every hour.

  The national security adviser was not the only cabinet-level position never filled by Thomas Thorn—not by a long shot. The vice president, Lester Busick, acted as the president’s chief of staff and press officer; the secretary of defense, Robert Goff, was director of Homeland Security and was considered the de facto national security adviser and the president’s closest counsel. Several cabinet departments had been combined: the Department of Health and Human Services now included the Departments of Education, Veterans Affairs, Labor, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy; the Treasury Department now included the Commerce Department, the Office of Management and Budget, and the U.S. Trade Representative; the Department of the Interior now included the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, plus the Environmental Protection Agency. Because of this organization and the extreme degree of cabinet-level involvement with day-to-day government operations, the president kept in very close contact with all his cabinet officers each and every day.