by Dale Brown
Houser quickly walked through the outer office, without bothering to order those in the room as they were, and stepped through another set of double doors into his aide’s office. “Coffee, Major,” he said to the officer at the desk.
“On the way, sir,” the aide responded immediately.
Inside his office Houser jabbed a finger at the sofa, and he took the large leather wing chair at the head of the coffee table. He withdrew a cigar from a humidor on the table. “You don’t smoke, as I recall,” he said by way of explaining why he wasn’t going to offer one to Patrick. Patrick didn’t bother to correct him. “So how the hell have you been, Pat?” he asked as he stoked the cigar to life.
“Not bad, sir.”
“Can the ‘sir’ shit, okay, nav?”
“Okay…Gary,” Patrick said. Houser took a deep pull on the cigar, and the silent message conveyed by his rattlesnake-like warning gaze through the cloud of smoke, despite the amused smile, was unmistakable: It’s “General” to you, mister, now and forever.
After the aide brought coffee in for both general officers, Houser sat back in his big chair, took a sip, and puffed away on his cigar. “So, nav, you’ve had one train wreck of a career since you left Ford Air Force Base—when you got shanghaied by Brad Elliott,” Houser began. “Man, you had it made in the shade before you took up with that nut-case. Despite your less-than-firewalled effectiveness reports, me and the wing king had been discussing when to send you to Air Command and Staff College in residence and what your next assignment was going to be—the Pentagon or SAC Headquarters. You were on the fast track to a senior staff job or even a command of your own.
“But then you got recruited by Brad Elliott to join him at Dreamland,” Houser went on. “You bombed the hell out of the Kavaznya laser site in eastern Siberia, taking out a half-dozen Soviet fighters and a dozen SAM sites plus their big-ass antisatellite laser. Then you—”
“That’s classified, General,” Patrick said sternly, “and I know you aren’t cleared for that information.”
“Shit, Patrick, I and ten other guys here at AIA know everything you’ve done over the past fifteen years—I found out about it a month after I first arrived here,” Houser said. “That mission was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union—and the beginning of this agency. Intelligence became the name of the game starting the day after you dropped that bomb on that laser. Everyone was shocked that we underestimated the laser’s capability, and everyone wanted to be the one to discover the next Kavaznya site.”
“With all due respect, General, I advise you to drop that topic,” Patrick said seriously. “You may think you know everything and that you have the right clearances, but you don’t.”
“Come off it, Pat,” Houser said with a chuckle. “You Dreamland guys—rather, you ex–Dreamland guys—think you’re so special. Remember who I work for: Terrill Samson used to run Dreamland. The place was blown wide open after the Kenneth Francis James spy incident. ‘Dog’ Bastian barely had it under control: General Samson had to clean house to make the place right.” Patrick laughed inwardly: He knew that Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian had been firmly in control of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center—in fact, he created the kind of unit that the Air Battle Force had been patterned upon.
It was Terrill Samson, the black man who rose through the ranks after enlisting in the Air Force to avoid being drafted into the infantry during the Vietnam War and who made it all the way to three-star general, who’d never had control. Samson wanted nothing more than to get promoted, to be the newest and greatest black man to be reach the highest echelons of power and leadership in the American military.
But in his quest to become a symbol, he found that the harder he tried to control the men and women at Dreamland, the more he lost control. Samson got his wish: He got himself promoted to lieutenant general and commander of Eighth Air Force, in line to become commander of Air Combat Command, maybe even chief of staff of the Air Force. He left Dreamland without giving it any purpose or direction. The world’s most high-tech laboratory-turned-combat-unit had become little more than a high-tech aircraft boneyard during his leadership, but it had served its purpose—it was the footstool Terrill Samson needed to step up to the next level.
“I’m just giving you my recommendation here, Gary,” Patrick said. “Don’t talk about Dreamland. Let’s change the subject.”
That was three times in a row McLanahan tried to tell a superior officer what to do, Houser steamed, and that was three times too many. “Pat, I know all about the activities there, why you got canned, why you were called back, what you did,” Houser said. “I know Dreamland’s budgets, its projects, personnel, and progress. Same with Battle Mountain, the Air Battle Force, and the One-eleventh Wing—”
“Those units are different, General,” Patrick said. “They’re part of the Air Reserve Forces Command, and their budgets and missions are mostly classified ‘confidential.’ HAWC is still classified ‘Top Secret—ESI’ Level Three, which means nothing gets discussed outside the facility, not even in passing. Let’s drop it before I’m forced to make a report.” He had already decided to make a report—he was just trying to limit the length and detail at this point.
“Nav, don’t lecture me about security procedures, all right?” Houser retorted. “I’m commander of AIA. I live and breathe secrecy and security. You’re the one that needs to be reminded of his duties and responsibilities here, I think.”
Patrick’s mouth literally dropped open from astonishment. “Sir?”
“The way I see it, McLanahan, you’ve been marching roughshod through the Air Force, pulling shit that should have landed you in prison for a hundred years, and somehow you’ve not only gotten away with it but you’ve been rewarded and promoted for it. Only one man, Terrill Samson, had the guts to say, ‘Enough is enough,’ and he pulled the plug on you and your wild-ass excursions into personal aggrandizement. Your buddy President Martindale overruled him and gave you your stars back. I can’t figure out why. But what I do know is this: You screwed up again, your buddy Martindale couldn’t save you, Thorn and Goff wouldn’t help you, and so you got dumped on my doorstep.”
Houser took another deep drag on his cigar. “Maybe the Chief wanted to stick you with me to keep you out of sight, or force you to resign. I don’t know, and I don’t give a shit. But you’re here, and now you’re my problem.
“So here are the rules, and they’re simple: You do as you’re told, you keep your nose to the grindstone, and I’ll help you dig your way out of this shithole mess you’ve gotten yourself into,” Houser said. “You can finish out your twenty right here in San Antonio, maybe get your second star back—maybe—and when you retire, the private consulting firms and security agencies will be throwing plenty of six-and seven-figure offers your way. If the rumors of you going to Washington are true, you can do that, too. You probably won’t be national security adviser, but you can snag some high-ranking post in the White House National Security Council staff—”
“I’m not looking for a government or a private consulting job.”
“I don’t care what you are or are not looking for, General,” Houser said. “I’m just telling you that I don’t like my agency being used as a detention facility for out-of-control disciplinary hard-cases. You were a loner with a give-a-shit attitude when I first pulled a crew with you back at Ford, and you’re the exact same guy now. You may have been able to get away with being like that because of a combination of luck and skill as a bombardier, but that won’t cut it here.
“If you try to pull just one-tenth of the shit you pulled on General Samson, my friend, I guarantee I’ll make your life a living hell,” Houser went on, jabbing his cigar at Patrick. “You’re with the Nine-sixty-sixth now, which doesn’t deploy and gets pretty good face time with the brass and politicos in Washington, Offutt, and Barksdale. That’s a plum job for you. Keep your nose clean, and you can stay there, studying satellite photos and HUMINT contact narratives, then
briefing the four-stars on enemy activity, and you might just improve your reputation after a couple years.
“Here it is in black and white, Pat: You were sent here to cool your heels, and I don’t like it,” Houser went on bitterly. “I don’t like you being dumped in my lap, and I don’t like golden boys who think they know it all and can tell their superior officers off. I want you out of my face and out of the limelight. I want you as quiet as I can make you without cutting out your fucking tongue myself with a pair of rusty scissors. Maybe we’ll both get lucky and Thorn will give you a job in his new administration, and then you’ll be out of here soonest. Otherwise you have two years and nine months before you can retire: I would advise you to keep your yap shut and put in your time in the Nine-sixty-sixth, and then you can go out on the lecture circuit at ten thousand a pop or be a talking head on Fox News Channel at five hundred dollars a day.
“The Nine-sixty-sixth commander is a two-star billet, so maybe you’ll get your second star back and regain a little bit of the decorum and pride you’ve squandered over the past few years,” Houser said. “If you play ball, I’ll help you ease on out of here so you can take care of your son, get your cushy government position, or maybe go back to Sky Masters Inc. and rip off the government with those hyperinflated defense contracts your friend Jon Masters is so fond of negotiating. I don’t give a shit what you do after you get out. But while you’re in my unit, under my command, you will shut your mouth and do what you’re told. Am I making myself perfectly clear, Pat?”
Patrick looked at Houser for a long moment, never breaking eye contact, long enough for Houser to feel the anger start to rise in his temples. But finally Patrick responded. “Yes, sir. Perfectly clear.”
Houser couldn’t find any hint of rebellion or defiance in that simple answer, which made him all the more angry. “Good to see you again, Pat,” he snapped. He jabbed the cigar toward his office door. “Now get the hell out.”
Over Central Uzbekistan, Central Asia
Days later
Thirty minutes to go, sir,” Hal Briggs said gently. “Time to get moving.”
Trevor Griffin was instantly awake and alert, but he didn’t know where he was. The place was dark, smelled like old oil and even older body odor, and was as noisy as hell—he felt as if he were trapped in a garbage truck roaring down a freeway at ninety miles an hour. Then he remembered where he was, and what he was about to do.
And he thought that this wasn’t a bad place after all, compared to what he was about to step into. Not bad at all. Pretty darn nice, in fact.
Griffin unfastened his safety harness and swung out of the bunk he’d been napping in for the past few hours. He was on the upper deck of a QB-52 Megafortress bomber, a highly modified B-52H Stratofortress bomber. The QB-52 Megafortress was a “flying battleship,” capable of delivering up to sixty thousand pounds of the world’s most advanced weapons, from ultraprecise cruise missiles to antisatellite weapons. Except for a pod on each wing that carried radar-and heat-seeking air-to-air defensive missiles, however, the QB-52 carried no ordnance on this mission.
In fact, as Griffin looked forward toward the cockpit, he reminded himself that this B-52 didn’t carry something else either that he used to think was important: a crew. This B-52 bomber was unmanned—it had flown halfway around the world without anyone’s even setting foot in the cockpit. They received constant messages and updates from the folks back at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base in northern Nevada, but the plane flew and even aerial-refueled all by itself.
The other unusual thing about this flight was that this B-52 carried something it rarely ever took along on its missions: passengers. Trevor Griffin was one of them.
But not for long.
Hal Briggs, who occupied the bolt-in bunk on the left side of the aircraft, was already climbing down the ladder to the lower deck. Griffin followed, moving carefully, still getting accustomed to the strange suit he was wearing. The Air Battle Force guys unflatteringly called it BERP—Ballistic Electro-Reactive Process—but Trevor called it simply “un-fucking-believable.” It was a full-body coverall design, made of material that felt like stiff fabric, such as the kind that knife-proof bank deposit bags were made of. But once connected to a power unit worn like a thin backpack, the material electronically, instantly became as hard as an inch of titanium when struck. Griffin had watched a demonstration during his daylong training course and couldn’t believe what he saw: The wearer was protected from thirty-millimeter Gatling-gun fire, explosions, fire, and even a fall from a twenty-five-story parachute-training drop tower.
That wasn’t all. The boots had a jet-propulsion system built into them that compressed and stored a large air charge that allowed wearers to jump several dozen meters in height and distance—they no longer had to run or even drive into combat. The battle armor had two electrodes on the shoulders that could send a lightning bolt of electricity in any direction out to a range of about thirty feet, powerful enough to render a man unconscious. In addition, Briggs wore an exotic-looking exoskeleton device that enhanced their bodies’ strength by automatically stiffening sections of the BERP electronic body armor, then using microhydraulic actuators to amplify muscular strength. Griffin saw BERP-outfitted commandos tossing engine blocks around the training course like pebbles, hefting and firing thirty-millimeter cannons as if they were handguns, and demolishing small buildings like bulldozers.
His new helmet was something out of a science-fiction movie, too: It had sensors that gave him “eyes” in the back of his head, superhearing, night vision, and allowed him to talk to practically anyone on planet Earth with a radio. Even the color of the gear was high-tech: It was some sort of computerized multicolored pixelated design that allowed the wearer to blend into any background, from broad daylight in the desert to night against snow.
Trevor climbed down the ladder and met up with Briggs. On a signal from Hal, Griffin donned helmet and gloves and powered on his battle armor, as he was taught to do back at Battle Mountain days ago. Hal glanced at his old commanding officer with a hint of humor in his eyes occasionally as he checked Griffin’s battle-armor systems. “How do you feel, sir?” he asked.
“Like I gotta pee,” Griffin responded. “I’m finding it hard to consciously pee in this thing.” Like some sort of Frank Herbert sci-fi invention, the BERP gear collected urine and sweat from its wearer and circulated it through small tubules in the suit, which provided incredibly effective temperature control. The suit also had small filters built into the fluid-circulation system that removed bacteria and other contaminants from the collected fluid and allowed the wearer to drink the fluid from a tube—it tasted terrible, but it would save you in an emergency.
“That’s standard for everyone wearing battle armor for the first time,” Hal said. “But the more you pee in it, the better you’ll feel—and I guarantee if you’re thirsty enough, you’ll want it. Any questions for me, sir?”
“How many times have you used this aircraft before?”
“On an actual mission?” Briggs asked. Griffin nodded. “Never.”
“Never?” Trevor remarked. “How about test flights?”
“This particular aircraft? Never. How many total test flights…?”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess: never, right?”
“We have very good computers that model and simulate the flights for every possible loading and flight condition,” Hal said. “It’s been tested a hundred times—just not with any live human beings on board. I think we made one test flight with instrumented dummies a while back.”
“And?”
Hal smiled, shrugged, and said, “You know, sir, instrumented test dummies make terrible pilots.”
“Great.”
“And the best part, sir—you volunteered for this,” Hal said. “We’re happy to have you along.” He turned away and spoke, “Bobcat Control, Tin Man One. How do you copy?”
“One, this is Control, we read you five-by,” Brigadier General David Luger respo
nded from his Battle Management Center, or BATMAN, at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base. With him was Colonel Daren Mace, the operations officer for the 111th Wing; Colonel Nancy Cheshire, commander of the Fifty-second Bomb Squadron, the unit in charge of all the Megafortresses, who was “piloting” this unmanned Megafortress; Marine Corps Sergeant Major Chris Wohl, noncommissioned officer in charge of the Air Battle Force’s ground forces; and Colonel Kelvin Carter, the Fifty-second Bomb Squadron’s operations officer and the man in charge of the special mission that was about to begin in a few minutes. They were supported by intelligence, weapons, surveillance, and maintenance technicians seated with them in the Aircraft Control Group of the BATMAN.
“We’re ready to board Condor.”
“We’re ready here.”
“Let’s mount up.” Hal hit a switch and watched a cabin-pressurization gauge, which showed the cabin altitude slowly increase until it equaled thirty-two thousand feet, the same as the aircraft altitude. Their oxygen system was already built into their BERP suits, so they didn’t need oxygen masks. Griffin tried and failed to control his belches and other bodily outgassing as the lower outside pressure allowed trapped gases in his body to escape. When the pressure was equalized, Briggs undogged the aft bulkhead door and stepped aft. Griffin followed. A short walk later, they were in the QB-52’s bomb bay. Briggs flipped on the lights—and there it was.
They called it the MQ-35 “Condor,” but it had no official designation because it was as experimental as anything ever before fielded by any Air Force unit. The Condor was designed as a stealthy long-range special-operations forces insertion transport aircraft, using a long-range bomber to get it close to its target, then using its onboard propulsion system to fly the team out at the end of the mission. It resembled a giant stealthy air-launched cruise missile, with a smoothly blended triangular lifting-body fuselage, a long flat nose, and a gently sloping aft section culminating in a small-diameter engine-exhaust nozzle. Thirty-six feet long, nine feet high and wide, it took up almost the entire bomb bay, leaving a very narrow catwalk around it. Briggs opened the entry door on the side of the craft, and Griffin clambered inside and began strapping in. Hal performed a brief walk-around inspection using a flashlight, climbed into the front seat, closed and latched the entry door, and strapped himself in.
