by Dale Brown
There was a general nod of agreement around the table at that remark. The President, a young southern Democrat, had to be the most blatantly antimilitary president to come along since Rutherford B. Hayes. In the President’s eyes—and, it was noted, in the eyes of his powerful wife, a former attorney who was known around Washington as the Steel Magnolia—the military was nothing but an overblown, unnecessary cash drain that needed to be plugged.
“Russia has publicly threatened Moldova for shooting down the transport,” Freeman went on, “and accused Romania of supplying the weapons, and even accused the Ukraine and Turkey of assisting in the downing by broadcasting and highlighting the transport’s position with the fighters. They think Turkey is assisting the Ukraine, like Romania is assisting Moldova, in driving out all ethnic Russians from their lands and their high positions in these former republics’ governments.”
“You think Russia has named all of its potential targets for retaliation in that statement, Philip?” Marine Corps commandant Roger Picco asked.
“I’m sure of it, Roger,” Freeman grumbled. “The border incursions, the sniper attacks, the firefights, the angry words have all been intensifying over the years. Now, ever since Turkey has come out in favor of Ukraine’s admittance into NATO, not to mention its condemnation of Russia for its aggressiveness in the Black Sea region, Russia has been rattling the saber even harder. They say they’re being backed into a corner: I say they see their buffer states and regional influence disappearing, and they want to stop the hemorrhaging. The hard-liners have taken charge, gentlemen. We can’t afford to just sit back and wait for this thing to blow up in our face.”
“But selling any sort of military action to the President will be nearly impossible.” Admiral Marise sighed in exasperation, as if his earlier remark hadn’t been understood. “He doesn’t want to know about the chances of success or failure—he assumes we’ll come out of it unscathed—but he’ll want to know how much it will cost.”
“And then, when Congress comes up with a number,” added Army general Patrick Goff, chief of staff of the Army, “the President believes them instead of our figures.”
“I didn’t ask for a commentary, gentlemen,” Freeman interrupted. “And we should know better than to air our dirty laundry in front of someone who’s not wearing a primary-colored suit.” He looked right at the CIA representative.
Sparlin of the CIA laughed along with the Joint Chiefs, then added, “Hey, I’m with you guys—when the President’s not hammering away at the Pentagon budget, he’s taking a flamethrower to our intelligence budget. But I see big problems in Eastern Europe if we don’t do something. Russia lost its access to the Black Sea and the Baltic when the Soviet Union broke up. They got it back when they formed the Commonwealth of Independent States, but now that the CIS has broken up, they’ve lost it again. Russia’s not going to stand for that, especially not that wild-card Velichko. This Moldova thing might be their best opportunity to take action.”
“Then we have to convince the President to act—diplomatically as well as militarily,” General Blaylock of the Air Force decided. “We lost a lot of face when Germany led NATO in the Yugoslavia crisis. We tossed in a few planeloads of MREs and managed to get a few C-130s shot down over Bosnia—then Germany leads NATO into the region, and everyone comes to the bargaining table. We still got egg on our face from that one. Now do we want Turkey to take the lead in doing something about the Russian crisis or just play with ourselves?”
Freeman shrugged. “I don’t want a plan of action just for the hell of it—I need a plan that’s doable, that’ll position our forces in the best possible manner if Russia decides to bust loose. My idea is to support Turkey, to unify and strengthen the NATO allies. If we tighten up NATO and show the Russians we still got a strong, unified military alliance opposing them, the Russians might think twice before starting any large-scale operation.”
“So you’re going to tell the President—and our demure First Lady—to stop making speeches condemning the joint military operations between the Ukraine and Turkey?” Admiral Marise asked skeptically. When dealing with the chief executive of the United States, everyone knew it was always two-on-one—the President and his wife versus everyone else. But in their few confrontations, General Philip Freeman actually seemed to have a handle on the opinionated, sometimes volatile First Lady—if not cordial or friendly, at least their meetings had been mutually respectful. He just didn’t care for women who kept their maiden name and their husband’s all in one.
“Hey, I don’t like the Turks flying F-16s close to the Russian borders,” Freeman replied, “or having the Turks doing practice bomb runs in a new bombing range that ‘just happened’ to have been constructed close to a Russian cabinet member’s dacha near the Black Sea, or having the Turks reportedly accepting surplus weapons and equipment from the Ukraine for safekeeping.”
“It’s not a rumor,” Sparlin interjected. “It’s the truth. They averaged ten cargo ships per day until the Washington Post broke the story last month.”
“Turkey says it’s not true, so we believe our ally.” Freeman sighed. “The point is, I wish Turkey would play straight with us a little more. But yes, I’m going to recommend we support Turkey—all of NATO, but especially the Turks. Turkey has asked for more Patriot missile batteries and defensive aircraft, and they want to buy our surplus F-111 aircraft. I’ll recommend we go ahead with the deal.”
“Good luck,” someone chuckled.
“Thanks a heap. Okay, what else do we need to think about?” Freeman asked. “Let’s say the President does nothing about the Russians until well after the shooting starts, but then the country and the allies go into a panic when the Red Army starts rolling across the Ukraine, and the President finally decides he better do something. What are we going to want or need? What can we do to get it into better position once the shit hits the fan?”
There were several ideas tossed around the table, but one comment from Air Force general Martin Blaylock got everyone’s attention like nothing else: “Maybe we should consider the absolute worst-case scenario, Philip. What if the Russians try to invade the Ukraine, they drag Turkey into it, Russia nails Turkey, NATO gets dragged into it, and the Cold War heats up overnight? Let’s think about putting our Reservists on nuclear alert—putting the B-1s, B-52s, maybe the F-111s and B-2 bombers on alert, with Reservists, and the boomers back on patrol. What then?”
It was the question to end all questions. As a major cost-cutting measure, the President had slashed the size of the active-duty military forces by nearly half. But to appease those worried about readiness, he increased the size of the Reserves and Guard to their highest levels yet—there was almost parity between active and Reserve force levels. The cost savings were enormous. But many front-line units were now manned by Reservists, especially in Blaylock’s Air Force. If ninety B-1 bombers went on nuclear alert, as many as twenty of them would be manned by Reservists. If the B-52s went on alert, over half of them would have Reservists on board …
… and in all Air Force flying units, as many as one-fourth of the aircrews would be women as well.
“Good point, Marty,” Freeman said. “I think we can see that scenario happening here. I know you’re pushing for chairman of this gaggle, Marty, so I’ll bet you have a rundown on what we’d have to do and what we’d have if we went ahead and did it, am I right?”
“You’ve got that right, sir,” Blaylock said. “I got together with CINC-Strategic Command, Chris Laird, and put together a dog-and-pony show for you. I’d like to bring him in and lay it on you.”
“No,” Freeman replied. His response stunned the Joint Chiefs—but he raised a hand to settle them all down, and added, “I want that briefing, but I want the whole National Security Council, including the President and Veep, to hear it. Let’s get General Laird in here ASAP and set up a meeting.”
“Yes, sir,” Blaylock said, then, with an evil smile, added: “But remember to double-check to make sure the
First Lady’s calendar is clear.”
No one laughed.
Over Eastern Turkey, December 1994
“No, no, no,” U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel Daren J. Mace shouted over interphone. “If you go in hot, Lieutenant, you can’t dick around—and don’t you dare touch those throttles. IP inbound to the target, you’re at military power, and you stay there unless you need to plug in the afterburners. Understand?”
“I think I overshoot,” Lieutenant Ivan Kondrat’evich of the Ukrainian Air Force replied. He and Mace were flying in a tandem two-seat Ukrainian Sukhoi-17 “Fitter-G” attack plane, over a bombing range in eastern Turkey. They were practicing bombing and aerial gunnery with Turkish F-16 fighters and other NATO aircraft. “I too high, I go around.”
“No way, Ivan,” Mace said. “You go in hot, you burn your target. Show me your moves, Ivan.”
“I not understand, Colonel Daren.”
“Like this. I got the aircraft.” Mace grabbed the control stick in the backseat of the Su-17, made sure the throttles were up into military power, and rolled the Su-17 inverted. As expected, the big, heavy fighter-bomber sank like a stone. “Wings to forty-five,” Mace ordered. Kondrat’evich moved the Sukhoi-17’s wing-sweep handle to the intermediate setting—the backseaters did not have wing-sweep control, a serious design flaw—which gave them a much rougher ride at this high airspeed but gave them much more precise control. The big fighter was now aimed at an impossibly steep angle, and the altimeter was unwinding as if it had an electric motor driving it down. Since he had very little forward visibility, the only way Mace could see the target visually was to look out the top of the canopy while they were inverted and try to line up as best he could.
At two thousand feet above the ground, Mace rolled upright. “You got the aircraft,” he shouted to Kondrat’evich in the front seat. “Now kill that bad boy.” Instead of firing the guns, however, Mace felt the young Ukrainian pilot pop the Su-17’s four big speedbrakes. “Don’t do that! Retract your speedbrakes, Ivan.” He did so. “Now kill the target, Ivan, now!”
With Mace’s hand on the control stick helping him line up, Kondrat’evich pressed the gun trigger on his control stick. The two 30-millimeter Nudelmann-Richter NR-30 cannons, one in each wingroot, erupted with a tremendous shudder, and a visible tongue of fire at least thirty feet long seared the sides of the Su-17. “Richter” was a good name for that cannon: they had fired only about eighty rounds at the target, an old Soviet tank, but the huge 30-millimeter “soda bottle” shells completely ripped the tank apart and probably slowed the Su-17 down a good fifty knots, even though they were in a screaming descent. “Good shooting, good kill,” Mace said. “Recover.”
There was no reaction, and Mace was ready for it. Many young attack pilots, especially if they transition from air-to-air fighters, get a bad case of “target fixation,” or keeping their noses pointed at the target after completing the attack. Perhaps it was a holdover from firing radar-guided missiles, which usually required the pilot to keep his nose aimed at the enemy to radar-illuminate the target so the missile could home in; or maybe it was just a fascination with seeing a hapless ground target die. In any case, a lot of ground attack crews kill themselves by forgetting to pull up after firing their weapons.
“I got the aircraft!” Mace shouted, hauling back on the stick with both hands. At first he was actually fighting Kondrat’evich, who wanted to push the nose down so he could keep the target in sight, until the young pilot realized how low they were. “Wings to thirty!” he shouted, and Kondrat’evich swept the wings full forward to 30 degrees so they could get every ounce of lift and control possible. They finally got their nose up and began a safe climb at only sixty feet above the ground.
“Good dust, Kiev Three, good dust,” the range controller called out.
“What does that mean?” Kondrat’evich asked.
“That means they’re congratulating us for flying so low but not hitting the ground and killing ourselves, Ivan,” Mace replied. “Ivan, you’re doing ground attack now, not fighter tactics. There are no ground attack weapons in the inventory that require you to keep your nose pointed at the ground after pulling the trigger.” Actually, the Ukrainians had one, the AS-7 “Kerry,” but it was an obsolete weapon and they were training for gunnery and Maverick-style TV, imaging infrared, or laser-guided weapons, not old-style radio-controlled missiles. “Shoot, then scoot—don’t hang around to admire your handiwork. You understand?”
“ ‘Shoot, then scoot,’ “ Kondrat’evich mimicked. “Climb or die, eh?”
“You got it,” Mace agreed. “Climb or die. Now get on your egress heading and get up to your assigned altitude before your wingmen think you’re a bad guy.”
“I understand,” Kondrat’evich said, making the turn and climbing to five thousand feet to join up on his formation leader. “But it is a very good day to die today. You think so?”
Mace dropped his oxygen mask, looked at the bright sun and clear blue cloudless sky around him, and clicked his mike twice in reply. Yes, he agreed, it was a pretty good day to die.
Back on the ground a few minutes later, Ivan Kondrat’evich was so happy with his performance that he was out of the cockpit and running to join up with his fellow Ukrainian pilots almost before the engines were shut down. Mace had to smile as he watched the exuberant young pilot darting about the tarmac, slapping his buddies on the shoulder, cajoling them for some screw-up they did. When their operations officer came by a few minutes later to tell them their gunnery scores, Ivan practically did cartwheels on the frosty ramp. Mace could tell their scores were good. Despite a few lapses in concentration, Kondrat’evich was a good stick. A few more years and a couple weeks at RED FLAG, the U.S. Air Force air combat exercise in Nevada, and he might just live to see age thirty.
It was a long time since Mace had been that happy after coming back from a mission, and even longer since he’d seen age thirty. Mace was a tall, rugged-looking man, with close-cropped blond hair and dark green eyes. Six foot, 180 pounds of naturally well-defined muscle, Mace would have been Central Casting’s dream for a war movie. A younger, less-weathered Robert Redford, they would have said. He was a former enlisted man in the Marine Corps for two years, with an assignment as a weapon systems specialist at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, California, first in the A-4 Skyhawk and then in the F-4 Phantom. It was the big, powerful Phantom that ignited his desire to fly military jets—in two years on the flight line, he had never flown in the planes he fixed—so he applied for officer candidate school. But the Marine Corps was looking for more infantry soldiers, not more officers, and the only place he could get accepted for officer training was Air Force ROTC at Eastern New Mexico State University.
He graduated in 1974 with a degree and a commission in the United States Air Force. He entered navigator training virtually on the very day the U.S. embassy in Saigon was being overrun by the Viet Cong. His years as a prior enlisted man helped him past the “new guy” syndrome common to second lieutenants, and studying hard in military classes was something the Marine Corps hammered home. Mace graduated top of his nav class in 1975, and got an assignment in the F-4E Phantom II at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia.
But it was during a Tactical Air Command bombing exercise in Nevada that Mace was introduced to the F-111 “Aardvark,” and he was hooked forever. He cross-trained to the sleek, sexy-looking FB-111A in the Strategic Air Command in 1980, shortly after pinning on captain’s bars, and was assigned to Pease Air Force Base, New Hampshire, in 1982, pulling strategic alert duties with nuclear-loaded Aardvark bombers. He and the FB-111A became one. He became an instructor, simulator panel operator, senior navigator, and wing weapons officer, shuttling between Pease and Plattsburgh Air Force Base in New York, the only two FB-111 bases in the country.
Daren Mace wanted to be involved in every aspect of the F-111 mission. He became instrumental in ushering in the new digital avionics modernization program for the Aardvark’s weapon and navigation
systems, won Strategic Air Command’s Bombing and Navigation Competition once as S-01 senior instructor navigator, and participated in tests of several new weapons for the FB-111, including the AGM-131 SRAM II attack missile, the AGM-84E SLAM (Standoff Land Attack Missile), and the AIM-9 Sidewinder self-defense missile. As the nuclear deterrent role of the FB-111 diminished, Mace saw to it that SAC crews adopted skills in non-nuclear bombing tactics, and he helped design and test new weapons and new missions for the F-111, including “Wild Weasel” enemy air defense suppression and tactical reconnaissance. He was an expert in high-threat bomb delivery tactics, precision-guided munitions employment, and defensive tactics.
He was at Pease as the DONB (Deputy Commander for Operations, Navigation, Bombing) in 1989 when the decision was finalized to transfer the FB-111 to Tactical Air Command and close Pease Air Force Base. Mace began shuttling FB-111s to McClellan Air Force Base in California to begin their conversion to the F-111G, giving them full integration with Tactical Air Command units. While at McClellan, a major aircraft maintenance and repair facility, he learned more about the inner workings of the Aardvark than ever before—his training as a former Marine aircraft mechanic helped him. In just a few months, Daren Mace was recognized as one of the country’s leading experts on the F-111 weapon system.
Then, in 1990, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. America at war. A secret assignment, no questions asked. In one fateful night, Daren Mace’s life was turned upside down. Nothing was the same ever again.
After Desert Storm, Mace wanted to get as far away from the United States, as close to virtual exile, as one could get. He still had his wings, but he rarely flew—completely by choice. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel without fanfare in 1992, was allowed to attend Air War College, and was then sent to Turkey in 1993 for his third overseas assignment.
The Islamic Wars of 1993 and 1994, in which a strengthened Iraq, allied with Syria, Jordan, and other radical Muslim nations, tried to throw the entire Persian Gulf region into chaos once again, signaled the rebirth of Daren Mace. As weapons officer for the 7440th Provisional Wing at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, Mace supervised the weapons requirements for a hastily formed NATO coalition, successfully arming every strike aircraft that was sent to him in the first few critical weeks of the outbreak of war. He helped keep two hundred Turkish, U.S. Air Force, Saudi Arabian, and a few Israeli aircraft in fighting shape until help could arrive in force. Daren Mace did everything—refuel planes, upload bombs and missiles, change engines, and even flew as a weapons officer in F-15E, F-111F, and F-4E and -G fighter-bombers.
