by Dale Brown
office to the Battle staff briefing area. But as they were leaving, with
Teguina well out of earshot, Yin grabbed Captain Sun and hissed, "Get
headquarters' political section on the line immediately. I want to find
out about the ASEAN vote and the status of Nansha Dao. Do it
immediately." THE WHITE HOUSE OVAL OFFICE SATURDAY, 8 OCTOBER 1994, 0627
HOURS LOCAL The President of the United States had extended his hand to
greet United Nations ambassador Deborah O'Day as she walked into the
Oval Office, but by some sort of sudden urge he found himself giving her
a cordial hug. "Welcome back home, Deborah, " the President said,
guiding her to a chair. Secretary of State Danahall, Secretary of
Defense Preston, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Curtis, and several
members of the House and Senate armed services committees stayed on
their feet until O'Day was seated, then took their place around her.
"You've had a hell of an ordeal, haven't you?" "Dealing with the ASEAN
representatives and the Chinese delegation has been tougher than getting
kidnapped by Samar's rebels, " O'Day admitted. She extended a hand, and
her aide placed a leather-jacketed folder into it. "Mr. President,
I've been given a communique by the Chinese government, a reply to your
last message requesting withdrawal from the Philippines. "I take it by
your tone that it's not good news."
"I haven't read the letter itself, sir, but the Chinese ambassador was
not cordial. I think it's bad news." The President took the folder,
broke the seal, initialed the original Chinese-language version of the
letter and placed it aside, then read the United Nations and State
Department translations. "Just as we thought, " Taylor said wearily.
"China rejects our demands for an immediate withdrawal. They say they
are in the Philippines with the permission and full sanction of the
Philippine government, and the American involvement there is illegal
meddling in the internal affairs of another government. They say they
do not know the whereabouts of Arturo Mikaso and said we should make
inquiries with the Filipino government as to his status, but as far as
they are concerned Daniel Teguina is in charge and Jose Trujillo Samar
has no authority in the government. "They regret the attacks on our
aircraft and warships, but in the current unstable world climate such
interference should have been anticipated and therefore we should carry
as much of the blame for the loss as they . "Bullshit, " Curtis
murmured. "They further regard the deployment of heavy bombers and
carrier battle groups around the Philippines as an extremely hostile act
and they will use any and all means at their disposal to protect their
citizens and property." The President tossed the communique aside and
regarded the advisers around him. "Well? Thoughts?"
"Samar's rebels come under attack in less than five hours, sir, " O'Day
said. She glanced at Wilbur Curtis. "Is that right, General?"
"Yes, it is, " Curtis said. He referred to the pile of mounted
satellite photos on the coffee table before him-the photos taken from
the B-2 and U-2 reconnaissance flights. "It may have begun already.
Chinese warships were in position to bombard Davao by sundown. When
their landing craft get into position, they'll start the invasion."
"Five hours? So you're saying it's too late ~"
"No, sir, I'm not, " Curtis said. "As we discussed in the tactics
briefing, the Chinese troops are most vulnerable while they're still in
their troop transports. They've already begun unloading troops along
the Buoyan peninsula east of Mount Apo to secure the coastal towns, but
the main force still hasn't landed in Davao yet-Samar's rebels are
mining the straits and inlets, trying to slow the convoys up. We still
have time to stop them." The President nodded to Curtis. "Thank you,
General." To Secretary of Defense Preston, he asked, "Thomas? What do
you have for me?"
"Only my wish that we wait and bring the Lincoln and Nimitz carrier
battle groups, and the Wisconsin surface action group, forward into
position first, " Preston replied. "But I know if we still desire to
support Samar and his Islamic rebels that we must act quickly." The
President seemed to consider his words for a moment. "Thank you." He
continued around the room, getting last thoughts from Danahall and the
congressional leadership. A few voiced hesitation, but all seemed to
want to act. From the front of his desk, the President withdrew a
redcovered folder and opened it. Below large dark letters that read Top
Secret were the words Executive Order 94-21, Air Operations, Strike,
Island of Mindanao, Republic of the Philippines. Without any further
hesitation, the President signed the order and several copies, then
replaced it in the folder and resealed it. Wilbur Curtis was on the
phone thirty seconds later to the National Military Command Center.
ANDERSEN AFB, GUAM SUNDAY, 9 OCTOBER 1994, 1915 HOURS LOCAL (SATURDAY, 8
OCTOBER, 0815 WASHINGTON TIME) Patrick McLanahan awoke thirty minutes
before his alarm rang. Two hours before the first daily standby
situation briefing-he needed rest, but he knew his mind was not going to
let him have any more. His bedroom was a maintenance office on the top
floor of hangar building number 509, on Andersen's expansive north
parking ramp, which he shared with his aircraft commander, Major Henry
Cobb. Down below them in the huge hangar were two very unusual
machines-Patrick's B-2A Black Knight stealth bomber and an EB-52C
Megafortress strategic escort aircraft-the same Megafortress that had
"saved" their tails from the F-23 Wildcat fighters during General
Jarrel's training sorties three weeks ago in Powder River Run. The
hangar also housed all the other flight, maintenance, and support crews
for the HAWC aircraft, as well as a full squadron of heavily armed
security police. Careful not to disturb his aircraft commander, Patrick
pulled on his flight suit, picked up his socks and boots from their
place under his canvas folding cot, and tried to tiptoe out. "Up
already, Colonel?" Cobb said from his cot. "Yep. Sorry to wake you."
"You didn't. I never went to sleep." Cobb threw off the sheet covering
him and swung his feet onto the floor. "Never slept in a hangar before.
Don't think I want to again after this."
"Amen, " Patrick said. "The smell really gets you after a while. I
started to have... bad dreams." He wasn't going to say what those
dreams were like or what mission he was flying in his dreams. He got
the same dreams every time he was exposed to kerosene-like fumes-a
morning long ago and far away... a tiny snow-covered fighter base at
Anadyr, Siberia, in the Soviet Union, when he pumped thousands of
gallons of kerosene into a B-52 by hand in subzero weather so they could
take off again before the Soviet Army found them. David Luger had
sacrificed himself to make sure they could escape, driving a fuel truck
into a machine gun emplacement-and Patrick relived that horrible moment
every night after smelling jet-fuel fumes. He would probably
do so for
the rest of his life. Henry Cobb hadn't heard all the stories about the
Old Dog mission-he had of course met all the survivors of that mission,
most of whom worked-some called it "exiled"-at the HAWC, and he had seen
the first Megafortress itself after Ormack and McLanahan flew it from
Alaska back to Dreamland-but he could guess that it was some event in
that mission that starred in McLanahan's bad dreams. Both men quickly
washed up in the lavatory down the hall, then returned to their rooms to
dress. Despite the warm, muggy afternoon, they donned thin,
fire-resistant long underwear and thick padded socks under their flight
suits. Under the long underwear were regular cotton briefs and
T-shirts. They wore metal military dog tags next to their skin so they
wouldn't rattle or fly loose during ejection. Many crew members laced
dog tags into their boots as well, because many times lower body parts
survived aerial combat better than upper body parts. They both carried
survival knives in ankle sheaths, lightweight composite-bladed knives
with both straight and serrated edges, a built-in magnetic compass in
the butt cap, and a watertight compartment in the handle that carried
waterproof matches, fishing line, sunscreen, a small signal mirror, and
a tiny first-aid and survival booklet. In thigh pockets they carried
another knife, this one attached to their flight suits by a
six-foot-long cord-this knife was a legal switchblade knife with a hook
blade for cutting parachute risers. The thigh pocket also contained a
vial with earplugs, which were often mistaken by curious nonflyers for
suicide pills. They carried no wallets, at least not the same ones they
carried normally. Into a specially prepared nylon "sortie" wal- let
they placed their military identification cards, some cash, credit
cards, and traveler's checks-these were many times more valuable than
the "blood chits" used to buy assistance during earlier wars. During
the intelligence briefing before a mission, they would receive
"pointee-talkee" native language cards and small escape.and-evasion maps
of the area, which both went into the sortie wallet. Just about every
pocket in a flight suit contained something, usually personal survival
items devised after years of experience. In his ankle pockets, Patrick
carried fireproof Nomex flying gloves, extra pencils, and a large
plastic Ziplok bag containing a hip flask filled with water and a small
vial with water purification tablets. Cobb took a small Bible, a flask
of some unidentifiable liquid, and included an unusual multipurpose tool
that fit neatly inside his sortie wallet. They packed up their charts,
flight manuals, and other documents in a Nomex flying bag, picked up a
lightweight nylon flying jacket-which had its own assortment of survival
articles in its pocketsand departed. While they were up on the
upper-floor "catwalk" in the hangar, they had a good opportunity to look
at the EB-52C escort bomber that was in the hangar with their B-2.
Unlike the B-2, where there was little activity, the technicians and
munitions maintenance crews were swarming around the Megafortress like
worker bees in a hive. It had to be the weirdest plane-and the most
deadly looking plane-either of them had ever seen. The long, sleek,
pointed nose was canted down in taxi position, with the aerodynamically
raked windscreens looking Oriental and menacing. The dorsal SAR
synthetic aperture radar radome, which ran from just aft of the crew
compartment and ended in a neat fairing that blended back into the
fuselage and the diagonal stabilators near the aft end, made the
Megafortress seem broad-shouldered and evil, like some warlock's
hunchbacked assistant. The pointed aerodynamic tip tanks, two on each
wingtip, looked like twin stilettos challenging all corners, like
lowered lances held by charging knights on horseback. Short low-drag
pylons mounted between the inboard engine nacelles and the ebony
fuselage on each side held six AIM-I 20 Scorpion air-to-air missiles,
their red ground-safety streamers still visible. Faired under the wings
were sensor pods that contained laser target designators, infrared
scanners, telescopic cameras for long-range air-target identification,
and millimeter-wave radars to scan for large metallic objects hidden by
trees or fog that normally could not be picked up by other sensors, such
as tanks and armored vehicles. This was one of the older Megafortress
escort bombers-it still had the older, conventional metal wings that
drooped so far down that the wingtips were only a few feet above the
ground and had to be supported by pogo wheels. The new Megafortress
wings were made of composite materials and wouldn't sag one inch, even
fully loaded with fuel and weapons. Other weapons were just being
uploaded, and Henry Cobb, who had had little experience with the
Megafortress project, could only shake his head in amazement. The
forward section of the bomb bay contained two four-round clip-in racks
that held AGM-136 TACIT RAINBOW antiradar cruise missiles. The aft bomb
bay contained a Common Strategy Rotary Launcher filled with smooth,
oblong-bodied missiles-eight TV-guided AGM-84E SLAMs, or Standoff Land
Attack Missiles. "Looks like the Megafortresses are getting loaded for
bear, " Cobb remarked. They could also see the loading procedures for
the Stinger airmine rockets in the tail launcher. Watching this
Megafortress getting ready for combat made McLanahan feel strange-a
crashing wave of deja vu was descending on him. The hangar in a remote
location, the weapons loaded and ready, the plane fueled and ready to
go-it was horribly like the last time he had taken a B-52 into combat
all those years ago. But that wasn't his bird now. He had a new one, a
bigger, darker, more lethal one-the B-2 Black Knight, modified like the
EB-52 to be a strategic escort bomber. All of the B-2's weapons were
internal, and the sophisticated sensors were buried within the wing
leading edges or in the sensor bay in the nose under the crew
compartment. The reconnaissance pods were gone, to be replaced by
rotary launchers that would carry much more lethal warloads than cameras
and radars. The B-2's ground crew had just arrived for the pre-takeoff
inspection, and since the two crewmen were awake at least an hour before
they intended, they had time to look over their Black Knight before
reporting to the briefing room. They found little changed. The
maintenance crews were going through a normal pre-flight as if the plane
were going on another training sortie-they were less than four hours
from takeoff and no weapons had been uploaded yet. "Where are the
missiles?" Cobb asked McLanahan. "I thought we were loading up on
Harpoons or SLAMs for this run. "Won't know what we'll be doing for at
least another two hours yet, " Patrick replied. "We don't know yet if
we're going after ships, or radars, or ground targets-it could be
anything. Once the Joint Battle Staff decides, it'll take them just a
few minutes to snap those launchers and bomb racks in and do a gro
und
check. They can probably do it while other planes are launching." They
completed a casual walkaround inspection, chatting with the maintenance
crews along the way. It was apparent that each and every one of them
was just as apprehensive, just as nervous, just as concerned for what
was happening on Andersen Air Force Base and in the rest of the Pacific
as Cobb and McLanahan. One of the munitions maintenance men stopped
inspecting a SLAM missile seeker head when McLanahan greeted him. "Think
we'll be flying tonight, sir?" the man asked. The "we" was not just a
demonstrative-ground crews were just as emotionally and professionally
tied to their aircraft as the flight crews. When McLanahan's B-2 rolled
down the runway, a hundred other minds and hearts were right in there
with him. "Wish I could tell you, Paul, " Patrick said. "They tell us
to be ready, that's all." The man stepped closer to McLanahan, as if
afraid to ask the question that had obviously been nagging at his
consciousness: "Are you scared, sir?" he asked in a low voice. Patrick
looked back at the man with a touch of astonishment at the question.
Before he could reply, however, some other technician had pulled the man
away. "That's McLanahan, you butthead. He's the best there is, "
Patrick heard the second tech tell him. "He's too good to get scared."
None of the other crew chiefs dared to speak with the two aviators. Cobb
and McLanahan finished their inspection, checked in with the security
guard, who inspected their bags before allowing them to leave, and then
the two B-2 crew members stepped out of the hangar into the twilight.
Unlike the controlled, calm tension inside hangar 509, outside it was
sheer bedlam. The ramp space in front of the hangars was the only clear
space as far as either man could see-the rest of the base was filled
with aircraft of every possible description, and the access roads and
taxiways were clogged with maintenance and support vehicles. The north
ramp to their far right was choked full of cargo aircraft-C-141
Starlifters, C-5 Galaxys, and C-130 Hercules planes, all surrounded by
cargo-handling equipment offloading their precious pallets of spare
parts, personnel, weapons, and other supplies. Like a line of ants
