Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06

by Fatal Terrain (v1. 1)

  “You can’t do that, sir,” McLanahan said quickly. “Those planes are out on a long-term lease with Sky Masters, Inc. The money’s been paid.” “Well, that explains a lot, McLanahan—you only care about your contracts, your money, not about obeying orders, or preserving national security, or selling out the commander in chief,” Balboa said. “Forget the money, McLanahan—your company will never see it, and anything already paid will be seized by the government. The lease will be canceled. The money we’ll seize will be used to pay for the federal marshals I’ve assigned to guard the aircraft and to keep you and the folks from Sky Masters, Inc., under surveillance.”

  “But those planes belong to Eighth Air Force and Air Combat Command,” McLanahan said. “I signed for them myself from General Samson and ACC. They’re not fragged for the Boneyard. They still have assigned hangar space and a project office at Edwards.”

  “Not anymore they don’t,” Balboa said. “I recommended they be dismantled and the program canceled, and the Chiefs will agree.

  “If the aircraft are not flyable, the aircraft will be destroyed in place, wherever they are, and the costs of the destruction and cleanup will be charged to Sky Masters, Inc., in the lawsuit that will be filed that same day. Written orders will be transmitted to you shortly. That is all.” The computer announced that it had cut off Guam from the videoconference.

  “Shit, I can’t believe it,” Elliott swore. He got up slowly, massaging his left arm and shoulder. He popped a couple of antacid tablets and washed them down with a cup of coffee. “Balboa’s an asshole. He always was. He’s probably still carrying a grudge from our days at the National War College. He can’t stand to lose face. He’ll blame everybody else for the smallest failure and take away anyone else’s accomplishments.” Patrick McLanahan opened the door to the command post battle staff room, which signaled Jon Masters and Wendy McLanahan that they were permitted to enter. He saw the looks on their faces, and knew that they had been listening in to the entire communication—after all, Jon Masters had designed the satellite-based communications system they were using, so he would know how to bypass the Pentagon security encryption routines. “I can’t believe this—it’s like a nightmare,” Wendy said, as she came over and put her arms around her husband. “They can’t do this! You risked your lives for this project, and now he wants to throw you in jail?”

  “I believe he can do it,” Patrick said. “He’s got my attention. Jon?”

  “Already called home plate, and the legal beagles are on their way— plus they’re filing injunctions in D.C. and in Arkansas federal court, trying to prevent Balboa from canceling the contract Hthout a performance review,” Jon Masters said. “But Balboa moved even quicker—he’s already got Navy SPs from Agana Naval Base guarding the planes. They’ve got the ramp shut down—nothing’s moving.

  “The lawyers say we can probably keep ourselves out of court, maybe even get the contract money, but they think Balboa can throw us in jail just by uttering the magic words ‘national security,’ and they’re positive he can have those planes chopped up into little pieces anytime he wants. He’s got my attention too.”

  “Let me call in my markers, Muck,” Elliott said earnestly. He had found a seat and was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands holding his head. “Balboa’s got plenty of skeletons in his closet, and I know the boys who can take ’em out and put ’em on display. He’ll back off pronto, I guarantee it. If it doesn’t work, we’ll go right to the White House—heck, Muck, you and me, we got dirt on Martindale that I know will make him squirm.”

  “Brad, I told you already, I’m not interested in fighting the Pentagon over this,” McLanahan said. He studied Elliott for a moment, and decided that he felt much worse than Elliott looked right now. “We’ve lost. We’ve invested millions in the project, but it just won’t get on track with brass like Balboa fighting us from the top. We just can’t do it. It’s not fair to ourselves, it’s not fair to our loved ones, and it sure as hell isn’t fair to the shareholders.”

  “Why in hell are you so concerned about shareholders, Patrick?” Elliott said angrily. “Jeez, have you completely lost your entire spine?”

  “My damned priorities are different, Brad,” McLanahan said. “I work for Jon now, not the U.S. government. I’ve sold everything I own to invest in Sky Masters, Inc., and help this company, and I don’t want to see Balboa and the federal courts drain our capital and our life savings fighting lawsuits. If we cooperate and let the government hide us, we can walk away with our company intact, ready to develop more technology and compete for more contracts. But if we fight them, they’ll sic federal marshals and lawyers and judges on us for the next ten years—and we can still lose. I don’t want my child to have a father in a federal penitentiary. ”

  “Listen to yourself!” Elliott shouted, jumping to his feet. “We did good out there, Patrick. You’re letting bozos like Balboa make you think that you screwed up. Nobody screwed up here—not you, not Denton, not me. We did what we knew was right. Balboa is trying to make us believe we did the wrong thing and that we deserve to be punished—next, he’ll be telling us that we’re not going to jail because he interceded on our behalf. It’s bullshit, Patrick! Don’t fall for it! If you give up, if you let assholes like Balboa chop up nearly ten years of hard work, we lose— just as surely as if we lost a one-hundred-million-dollar lawsuit.”

  “Forget it, Brad,” McLanahan insisted. “It’s not worth the fight, not worth the aggravation. We did some good jobs in the Megafortresses, but the Pentagon doesn’t want them. We can’t fight them all.”

  “At least we’ll give it a fighting chance,” Elliott said. McLanahan shook his head and headed for the door to the battle staff room. “Dammit, McLanahan, I already lost one organization because I let the pencil-pushers and brown-nosers tell me that I couldn’t cut it. Now it’s happening again—except you re letting it happen.”

  “Brad, I’m tired. I’ve been shot at and yelled at and kicked around all day,” McLanahan said. “I’m getting out of here.”

  Elliott blocked his path. He was almost a head taller than McLanahan, but in size and physical strength, he was no match for his young protege—but that didn’t stop Elliott from getting into his longtime colleague’s face. “What’s the matter, Muck? You ready to hang up your spurs and turn your back on your friends just because you’re too scared or too tired to stand up to someone? You want to just sit back on your ass at your desk and push papers and collect your salary and pension, while jerkoffs like Balboa screw Jon and everyone else in this project?” “Brad, give it a rest.”

  “I want to know exactly what you plan on doing about this, Mr. Mission Commander, Mr. Corporate Executive,” Elliott shouted, sweat popping out on his forehead in large glistening drops. “Answer me!”

  “Brad, c’mon,” Wendy tried.

  “No, wait just a sec, Doc,” Elliott said. “Let the corporate big shot here tell us what he intends to do. How are you gonna sell us out? You gonna hide behind Masters’s lawyers?”

  McLanahan was glaring at his old mentor and friend, his jaw tight, his blue eyes blazing. Wendy saw the building rage in his eyes and tried to hurry him to the door. “Brad ...”

  “You forgetting about Cheshire, and Atkins, Denton and Bruno, the ones who volunteered for the project?” Elliott said. He was almost nose to nose with McLanahan now, his breath ragged and excited, his eyes blinking from the tension, veins pulsing in his neck from the anger. “Are your lawyers going to help them out? Or are they going to be chewed up and spit out by Balboa and his JAGs?”

  “Brad, let’s table this discussion for later,” Wendy said resolutely, taking Patrick’s hand and leading him to the door.

  “Talk some sense into your old man, Doc—hey, don’t you walk away from me! You show me some respect, mister!” Elliott shouted—and then he made the mistake of trying to pull McLanahan around to face him. Instead, he shoved Wendy in the back, and she lost her balance and crashed facefirst into the doo
r that Patrick had just half opened.

  Patrick McLanahan caught Wendy before she sagged to the floor, stood her back up on her feet, made sure she was going to stand on her own, saw that she wasn’t hurt—and then turned on Elliott. With never- before seen quickness, Patrick had Brad Elliott’s neck in his hands and slammed him back to the wall. “You old son of a bitch!” he snarled in a low, menacing voice. “You ever touch Wendy again, I’ll break your neck!”

  “I’m all right, Patrick!” Wendy said. “Let him go!”

  Patrick felt hands on his arms right away—Cheshire and Atkins, ready to pull him away from Elliott—and the anger dissipated immediately when he heard Wendy’s voice. He loosened his grip on Elliott’s neck—but Brad still seemed to be choking. When he released him, he immediately collapsed. Patrick was able to lower him gently to the floor and noticed his shortness of breath, the panicked look in his eyes, and the contortions and spasms in his left arm.

  “Christ, I think he’s having a heart attack! ” he shouted. “Get an ambulance—now!” Nancy Cheshire was already on the phone, dialing the paramedics at the base hospital. McLanahan unzipped Elliott’s flight suit, exposing his chest, preparing to give CPR if necessary. “Hang in there, Brad, goddamn it,” Patrick McLanahan said. He felt crushed inside, thinking that the last words his best friend might have heard from his lips were words of anger and hate. “C’mon, Brad, you old warhorse, hang in there. ...”

  YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, MIURA PENINSULA, REPUBLIC OF JAPAN

  SATURDAY, 21 JUNE 1997, 0644 HOURS LOCAL (FRIDAY, 20 JUNE, 1644 HOURS ET)

  “Can’t the damned harbor police do anything about this?” U.S. Navy Captain Davis Manaus complained. “Where the hell are they?”

  “They’re out there already, skipper,” U.S. Navy Captain Sam Anse replied, scanning the area with his binoculars. “Every harbor patrol, prefecture police, and Maritime Self-Defense Force unit stationed in the Bay is out there.”

  It was not hard to understand why it was impossible to believe that fact. Admiral Manaus’s ship, the American aircraft carrier USS Independence, was surrounded by what one lookout estimated as two thousand boats of every shape, size, and description, all decked out in white sheets and flying white flags. Most of the people on each ship were dressed in white, with white bandannas with the red “rising sun” of Japan over their foreheads. Interspersed among the white-clad protesters had to be another several dozen boats with camera crews from all over the world. The police and Navy security units had been circulating around the Independence all night and all morning, keeping protesters away from the carrier’s hull; many of the protesters were carrying buckets of red paint, obviously destined to decorate the ship’s hull.

  It took several more hours and much restrained but angry appeals all the way to the office of the prime minister, but eventually the tugs were allowed to be brought into position, and the Independence was moved away from the wharf and into the bay. Protesters on loudspeakers and bullhorns tried to convince the tugboat captains and harbor pilots not to assist the carrier out, and for a brief moment it appeared as if their appeals might take hold, but seemingly by inches the great warship was under way and heading out into the Gulf of Sagami.

  The Independence, now with its escort group assembled and in formation—three anti-submarine warfare frigates, two Aegis guided-missile cruisers, and a replenishment ship—was about twenty miles south of the tip of the Miura Peninsula, roughly in the middle of the Gulf of Sagami, when it was safe for fixed-wing flight operations to get under way again. There were still a few protesters shadowing the carrier group, but they were not allowed closer than three miles from the carrier, well outside the perimeter established by the escort frigates. The battle group had accelerated now to flight ops formation speed of twenty-seven knots, so very few of the smaller protester’s vessels could keep up.

  The first aircraft to launch were the rescue helicopters, two huge Sikorsky SH-3H Sea Kings with two pilots and two rescue swimmers on board. Next were the E-2 Hawkeye radar planes, which could extend the radar “eyes” of the battle group out almost 400 miles. The Hawkeye’s crew would act as the long-range air traffic controllers for the carrier, vectoring incoming aircraft toward the carrier until the final approach controllers on board the carrier itself took over. One KA-6D aerial refueling tanker then launched, followed by four F-14A Tomcat fighters on outer perimeter air defense patrol, with two more Tomcats positioned on the number three and four catapults on alert five status, ready to launch and help defend the carrier group.

  The first aircraft to arrive was the least attractive but most appreciated aircraft of all—the twin turboprop C-2A Greyhound, known as the “COD,” for Carrier Onboard Delivery. The COD ferried crewmembers, passengers, supplies, spare parts—and most importantly, the mail—on and off the ship several times a day. Ungainly and slow when “dirtied up” and ready for the “trap,” or landing on the carrier, the COD was cleared to land, reporting its landing weight as 48,000 pounds, just two thousand shy of max landing weight—it was loaded to the gills with crew members who hadn’t made the departure, extra crew members, a few civilian passengers participating on a “Tiger Cruise” for a few days, and a pallet of mail sacks.

  The approach was a little high, and that spelled trouble right away. Nailing the airspeed, nailing the initial approach and rolling in on final at the right altitude to capture a centered Fresnel glide path landing indicator, called the “ball,” then nailing the desired angle of attack, making very slight corrections to stay on centerline and stay on glide path—that was the key to a successful “trap.” Corrections in a heavyweight COD had to be made very, very carefully—crew members describe it as “thinking” throttle movements rather than actually applying huge inputs and then having to take them back out again. Many pilots liked to carry a little extra airspeed, knowing that a plane configured to land, with gear, flaps, slats, and hook extended, was going to slow down fast with the slightest reduction in airspeed; also, it took several seconds after any throttle advancement for the turbine engines to spool up to desired power, so being on the positive side of the power curve was important. But high and fast was a bad combination.

  Altitude was corrected with power, airspeed corrected with angle of attack—just the opposite of cruise. The pilot pulled off a fraction of an inch of power, and immediately felt the sink rate increase. He had to ignore the sensation of sinking too rapidly and concentrate on his scan— ball, airspeed, ball, AOA, ball, centerline, ball. Enough of a power correction: the LSO, or landing system officer, ordered more power just as the pilot was pushing the throttles forward. The tiny speck of a carrier deck was quickly becoming bigger and bigger. Enough power; recheck and correct pitch angle to get the AOA indexers centered again.

  OK, OK, the pilot told himself, this was not going to be a pretty landing, but it was the first of about three he’d make today. He was now at the reins of a bucking bronco. If everything starts smoothly and inputs are gentle, the ride down the chute is smooth and easy—relatively speaking for carrier landings. But very often, if one parameter is off, then it’ll be hands and feet dancing on the controls, throttles, and pedals all the way—and that’s the way it was on this one. The ball was staying centered, but it was like controlling a marionette dance routine.

  On touchdown, he was still on the backside of the power curve, nose very high, power coming up but way late. All carrier landings were characterized as “controlled crashes,” and landings in a heavyweight COD were even more so. This was going to be a doozy—a two-wire trap, just fifty feet from the edge of the fantail, slow and wobbly. He was not going to earn any Brownie points for that one. The nose was going to come down like a felled tree if he didn’t fly it down carefully before the arresting wires stopped him short. The pilot felt the jerk of the arresting wire, saw the deck director signal a good catch, pushed the throttles to full power in preparation for a bolter in case of a broken wire, saw the edge of the landing deck coming up to meet him but at the sa
me time saw the airspeed rapidly decreasing, felt his body squished harder and harder against the shoulder straps, jammed the throttles to idle . . .

  .. . and then his aircraft, his carrier, his world disappeared in a flash of white light.

  “The most important lesson learned from the Persian Gulf War of 1991 is this: if you are ever to go to war against the United States of America, be sure to bring a nuclear weapon.”

  — Republic of India’s military chief of staff

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ELLSWORTH AIR FORCE BASE, RAPID CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA

  FRIDAY, 20 JUNE 1997, 2232 HOURS LOCAL (SATURDAY, 21 JUNE, 0032 HOURS ET)

  With flashes of lightning from an early-summer thunderstorm illuminating the night sky to the west, the first aircrew bus rolled out onto the aircraft parking ramp. The ramp was brown and dusty with disuse, with tall weeds poking up through the cracks in the reinforced concrete. The bus rolled along in between two long lines of airplanes, finally turning in and parking between two of them. All of the planes were surrounded by maintenance men and vehicles; all except the ones toward the back of the line were encircled with red ropes supported by orange rubber cones, with the cones toward the nose of each aircraft marked “ECP,” or “Entry Control Point.” The aircrew stepped off the bus, unloaded their gear, and shuffled toward the armed security guard at the gap in the rope marked “ECP” as if they were in a dream—or perhaps caught in a nightmare. Although it was much easier and quicker to just step over the red rope surrounding the plane, the crew members knew what dire consequences awaited them if they dared to do so—security police terms like “kiss concrete” and “jacked up” came immediately to mind.