Patrick McLanahan Collection #1

by Dale Brown

  “The B-1 bombers launched,” the National Security Adviser said. The President’s jaw dropped in surprise. “The tower controller at the air base told the crew to hold their position, but there is no crew on those planes—they’re remotely controlled from Elliott Air Force Base in Nevada—”

  “McLanahan.”

  “McLanahan is still aboard the space station, so it’s his deputy, Brigadier General Luger, in charge of the bombers out of Elliott,” Carlyle said. “I’ve got a call in to Secretary of Defense Turner to order Luger to get those bombers back on the ground. Je-sus…!”

  “He is out of control!” the President snapped. “I want him off that space station and in custody immediately! Send a damned U.S. Marshal up there if you have to!”

  “Send a U.S. Marshal—into space?” Kordus asked. “I wonder if that’s ever been done before…or if we could get a marshal to volunteer to do that?”

  “I’m not kidding around, Walter. McLanahan has to be slapped down before he starts another damned war between us and Russia. Find out what in hell is going on, and do it fast. Zevitin will be on the phone before we know it, again, and I want to assure him everything is under control.”

  BATTLE MANAGEMENT AREA, BATTLE MOUNTAIN AIR RESERVE BASE, NEVADA

  THAT SAME TIME

  “Headbanger Two-One flight of two is level at flight level three-one-oh, due regard, Mach point nine-one, thirty minutes to launch point,” the mission commander reported. “Due regard” meant that they had terminated all normal air traffic control procedures and were flying without official flight-following or civil aviation monitoring…because they were going to war.

  Two officers sat side by side in a separate section of the BATMAN, or battle management area, at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base in northern Nevada, seated at what appeared to be a normal computer workstation that might be used by a security guard or securities day trader…except for the jet-fighter-style joysticks. On each side of the officers were two enlisted technicians with their own bank of computer monitors. The men and women in the room talked into their microphones in muted voices, bodies barely moving, eyes scanning from monitor to monitor. Only an occasional flick of a finger on a keyboard or hand rolling a cursor with a trackball led anyone to believe anything was really happening.

  The two officers were piloting two unmanned EB-1C Vampire supersonic “flying battleships” which had launched from their forward operating base in eastern Turkey across northern Iran. Three high-resolution monitors showed the view in front and to the sides of the lead bomber, while other monitors showed performance, systems, and weapons readouts from both planes. Although the two bombers were fully flyable, they were usually flown completely on computer control, reacting autonomously to mission commands entered before the flight and deciding for themselves what to do to accomplish the mission. The ground crew monitored the flight’s progress, made changes to the flight plan if necessary, and could take over at any time, but the computers made all the decisions. The technicians watched over the aircraft’s systems, monitored the electromagnetic spectrum for threats, and looked over incoming intelligence and reconnaissance data along the route of flight that might affect the mission.

  “Genesis copies,” David Luger responded. He was back at the battle staff area at Elliott Air Force Base in south-central Nevada, watching the mission unfold on the wall-sized electronic “big boards” before him. Other displays showed enemy threats detected by all High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center aircraft and satellites and other allied sensors operating in the region. But Luger’s attention was drawn to two other displays: the first was the latest satellite imagery of the target area in eastern Iran…

  …and the second was of the satellite space tracking data, which at the moment was blank.

  “They’re taking down the laser stuff in a pretty big damned hurry,” Dave commented. “They must have guessed we’d send bombers to blast the hell out of that base. I’m not sure if we’ll get there in time, Muck.”

  “Push ’em up, Dave,” Patrick McLanahan said. He was monitoring the mission as well from the command module on Armstrong Space Station. “Get a tanker airborne to meet the bombers on the way back, but I want those missiles on the way before the Russian cockroaches scatter.”

  “Roger, Muck. Stand by. Headbanger, this is Genesis. Odin wants the bombers to attack before the target scatters. Push up the bombers and say status of the support tankers.”

  “Already got the alert tankers taxiing out, Dave,” the commander of the Air Battle Force’s air forces from Battle Mountain, Major General Rebecca Furness, responded. “He’ll be airborne in five minutes.”

  “Roger that. Odin wants the Vampires pushed up as much as you can.”

  “As soon as the tanker’s within max safe range, we’ll push the Vampires up to Mach one point two—that’s the max launch speed for the SkySTREAKs. Best we can do with the current mission parameters.”

  “Suggest you erase the one-hour fuel reserve for the tanker and push up the Vampires now,” Luger said.

  “Negative—I’m not going to do that, Dave,” Rebecca said. Rebecca Furness was the U.S. Air Force’s first female combat pilot and first female commander of a tactical combat air unit. When Rebecca’s Air Force Reserve B-1B Lancer unit at Reno, Nevada, was closed and the bombers transferred to the High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center for conversion into manned and unmanned “flying battleships,” Furness went along. Now she commanded the five tactical squadrons at the new Reserve base at Battle Mountain, Nevada, composed of converted manned and unmanned B-52 and B-1 bombers, unmanned QA-45C stealth attack aircraft, and KC-76 aerial refueling tankers. “We’ll get them, don’t worry.”

  Luger glanced again at the latest satellite image of the highway air base at Soltanabad, Iran. It was only five minutes old, but it already showed a few of the larger trucks gone and what appeared like an entire battalion of workers taking down the rest. “We’re running out of time, ma’am. The cockaroaches are scattering quick.”

  “I know, Dave—I see the pictures too,” Rebecca said, “but I’m not risking losing my bombers.”

  “Like we lost the Stud?”

  “Don’t give me that crap, Dave—I know what’s going on here, and I’m just as mad about it as you are,” Rebecca snapped. “But may I remind you that our bombers are the only long-range strike aircraft we have now, and I’m not going to risk them on…an unauthorized mission.” It was no exaggeration, and Dave Luger knew it: since the American Holocaust, the Russian cruise missile attack on American bomber and intercontinental missile bases four years earlier, the only surviving long-range bombers had been the handful of bombers deployed overseas and the converted B-52 and B-1 bombers based at Battle Mountain.

  Furness’s bombers soon racked up casualties of their own. All of Battle Mountain’s bombers had been sent to a Russian aerial refueling tanker base in Yakutsk, Siberia, from where Patrick McLanahan led attack missions against nuclear ballistic missile bases throughout Russia. When the American bombers were discovered, then–Russian president General Anatoliy Gryzlov attacked the base with more nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Half the force had been lost in the devastating attack. The remaining bombers successfully attacked dozens of Russian missile bases, destroying the bulk of their strategic nuclear force; McLanahan himself, aboard one of the last EB-52 Megafortress battleships, attacked and killed Gryzlov in his underground bunker southeast of Moscow in a grueling twenty-hour-long mission that took him across the entire breadth of the Russian Federation.

  After the conflict, Rebecca Furness had been given command of the Air Force’s few remaining bombers; consequently, no one knew better than she the incredible responsibility placed upon her. The surviving planes, and the few unmanned stealth bombers built since the American Holocaust, were the only air-breathing long-range strike aircraft left in the American arsenal—if any bombers were going to be built ever again, it might take decades to build the force back up to credible levels.

&nb
sp; “Ma’am, I’m sure the strike mission will be approved once the national command authority gets our report on what happened to our spaceplane,” Dave said. “That mobile Kavaznya laser is the biggest threat facing our country right now—not just to our spacecraft, but possibly to anything that flies.” He paused, then added, “And the Russians just killed five of our best, ma’am. It’s time for some payback.”

  Rebecca was silent for a long moment; then, shaking her head, she said wryly, “Three ‘ma’ams’ out of you in one conversation, General Luger—I believe that’s a first for you.” She punched some instructions into her computer. “I’ll authorize a change to thirty minutes’ bingo fuel.”

  “Odin to Headbanger, I said, push them up, General Furness,” Patrick interjected from Armstrong Space Station. “Take them up to Vmax, then slow them down to one point two for weapon release.”

  “What if they don’t make it to the air refueling anchor on the way back, General?” she asked. “What if there’s a navigation error? What if they can’t hook up on the first go? Let’s not lose sight of—”

  “Push ’em up, General. That’s an order.”

  Rebecca sighed. She could legally ignore his order and be sure her bombers were safe—that was her job—but she certainly understood how badly he wanted retribution. She turned to her Vampire flight crew and said, “Push them up to one point five, recompute bingo fuel at the air refueling control point, and advise.”

  The crew complied, and a moment later reported: “Headbanger flight of two now at flight level three-one-oh, on course, speed Mach one point five, due regard, in the green, twenty minutes to launch point. Bingo fuel at the ARCP is gone; we’re down to ten minutes’ emergency fuel. We should make up a few more minutes after we get the tanker’s updated ETE.”

  “That’s ten minutes after the second bomber cycles on the boom, right?” Rebecca asked. The grim, ashen expression and silent no on the face of the tech told her that they were in really deep shit.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.

  —JOSE NAROSKY

  ABOARD ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

  MINUTES LATER

  “McLanahan here, secure.”

  “McLanahan, this is the President of the United States,” Joseph Gardner thundered. “What in hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Sir, I—”

  “This is a direct order, McLanahan: Turn those bombers around right now.”

  “Sir, I’d like to give you my report before—”

  “You’re not going to do a damned thing except what I order you to do!” the President snapped. “You’ve violated a direct order from the commander-in-chief. If you want to avoid life in prison, you’d better do what I tell you. And that spaceplane had better still be in orbit, or by God I’ll—”

  “The Russians shot down the Black Stallion spaceplane,” Patrick quickly interjected. “The spaceplane is missing and presumed lost with all souls.”

  The President was silent for a long moment; then: “How?”

  “A mobile laser, the same one that we think shot down our spaceplane last year over Iran,” Patrick replied. “That was what the Russians were hiding at Soltanabad: their mobile anti-spacecraft laser. They brought it into Iran and set it up at an abandoned Revolutionary Guards Corps base, one we thought had been destroyed—they even placed fake bomb craters on it to fool us. The Russians set up the laser in a perfect spot to attack our spacecraft overflying Iran. They got the second-biggest prize of them all: another Black Stallion spaceplane. The positioning suggests their real target was Armstrong Space Station.”

  Again, silence on the other end of the line…but not for long: “McLanahan, I’m very sorry about your men…”

  “There were two women on board too, sir.”

  “…and we’re going to get to the bottom of this,” the President went on, “but you violated my orders and launched those bombers without permission. Turn them around immediately.”

  Patrick glanced up at the time remaining: seven-plus minutes. Could he stall the President that long…? “Sir, I had permission to launch the spaceplane into standard orbit from STRATCOM,” he said. “We suspected what the Russians were up to, but we were awaiting permission to go in. Our worst fears were confirmed…”

  “I gave you an order, McLanahan.”

  “Sir, the Russians are packing up and moving the laser and their radar out of Soltanabad as we speak,” he said. “If they are allowed to slip away, that laser will be an immense threat to every spacecraft, satellite, and aircraft in our inventory. We’re just a few minutes away from launch, and it’ll be over in less than a minute. Just four precision-guided missiles with kinetic-kill warheads—no collateral damage. It’ll take out the components that haven’t been moved yet. The Russians can’t complain about the attack because then they’d be admitting moving attack troops into Iran to kill Americans, so there won’t be any international backlash. If we can get Buzhazi’s troops in there to start a forensic search as soon as possible after the attack, we might uncover evidence that—”

  “I said, turn those bombers around, McLanahan,” the President said. “That’s an order. I’m not going to repeat myself. This conversation is being recorded and witnessed and if you don’t comply it’ll be used against you in your court-martial.”

  “Sir, I understand, but I ask you to reconsider,” Patrick pleaded. “Five astronauts aboard the spaceplane were killed. They’re dead, blasted apart by that laser. It was an act of war. If we don’t get direct evidence that Russia has commenced direct offensive military action against the United States of America, they’ll get away with murder and we’ll never be able to avenge their deaths. And if we don’t destroy, damage, or disable that laser, it’ll pop up somewhere else and kill again. Sir, we must—”

  “You are in violation of a direct order from the commander-in-chief, General McLanahan,” the President interrupted. “I’ll give you one last chance to comply. Do it, and I’ll let you retire quickly and quietly without a public trial. Refuse, and I’ll strip you of your rank and throw you in prison at hard labor for life. Do you understand me, General? One last chance…which is it going to—?”

  Six minutes left. Could he get away with the “scratchy radio” routine? He decided he was far, far beyond that point now: he had no choice. Patrick cut off the transmission. Ignoring the stunned expressions of the technicians around him, he spoke: “McLanahan to Luger.”

  “Just got off the phone with the SECDEF, Muck,” Dave said from Elliott Air Force Base via their subcutaneous global transceiver system. “He ordered the Vampires recalled immediately.”

  “My phone call trumps yours, buddy: I just heard from the President,” Patrick said. “He ordered the same thing. He offered me a nice quiet retirement or a lifetime breaking big rocks into little ones at Leavenworth.”

  “I’ll get them turned—”

  “Negative…they continue,” Patrick said. “Bomb the crap out of that base.”

  “Muck, I know what you’re thinking,” Dave Luger said, “but it might already be too late. The latest satellite image shows at least a fourth of the vehicles already gone, and that was over ten minutes ago. Plus we’re already past bingo fuel on the Vampires and well into an emergency fuel situation—they might not reach the tanker before they flame out. It’s a no-win scenario, Muck. It’s not worth risking your career and your freedom. We lost this one. Let’s pull back and get ready to fight the next one.”

  “The ‘next one’ could be an attack against another spaceplane, a satellite, a reconnaissance aircraft over Iran, or Armstrong Space Station itself,” Patrick said. “We’ve got to stop it, now.”

  “It’s too late,” Luger insisted. “I think we’ve missed it.”

  “Then we’ll leave ’em with a little calling card in their rearview mirrors, if that’s the best we can do,” Patrick said. “Nail it.”

  “He’s going to what?”

  “You heard me, Leonid,�
�� the President of the United States said on the “hot line” from Air Force One, just minutes after the connection was broken to the space station—he had to let loose a string of epithets for a full sixty seconds after the line went dead before he could speak with anyone else. “I think McLanahan is going to launch an air strike on a place called Soltanabad in northeastern Iran. He insists you have set up a mobile anti-spacecraft laser there and you used it to shoot down his Black Stallion spaceplane just a few moments ago.”

  Russian president Leonid Zevitin furiously typed instructions on a computer keyboard to Russian air forces chief of staff Darzov while he spoke, warning him of the impending attack and ordering him to get fighters airborne to try to stop the American bombers. “This is unbelievable, Joe, simply unbelievable,” he said in his most convincing, sincere, outraged tone of voice. “Soltanabad? In Iran? I’ve never heard of the place! We don’t have any troops anywhere in Iran except the ones guarding our temporary embassy in Mashhad, and it’s there because our embassy in Tehran has been blasted to hell and Mashhad is the only secure place in the entire country right now, thanks to Buzhazi.”

  “I’m just as flabbergasted as you are, Leonid,” Gardner said. “McLanahan must have flipped. He must’ve suffered some kind of brain injury when he had that heart flutter episode. He’s unstable!”

  “But why does an unstable officer have control of supersonic bombers and hypersonic missiles, Joe? Maybe you can’t get your hands on McLanahan, but you can shut down his operation, can’t you?”

  “Of course I can, Leonid. It’s being done as we speak. But those bombers may get off a few missiles. If you have any forces on the ground out there, I suggest you get them out pronto.”

  “I thank you for the call, Joe, but we don’t have forces in Iran, period.” Still no reply from Darzov, he noticed—damn, he’d better get that laser out of there, or else their game was going to be over. “And we certainly don’t have some kind of magic super-laser that can shoot down a spacecraft orbiting Earth at seventeen thousand miles per hour and can then disappear like smoke. The United Nations investigated those reports last year and came up with nothing, remember?”