by Dale Brown
. . , and the Megafortress flew directly through the fireball.
"Shit! We've been hit!" Rinc shouted. The cockpit seemed bathed in fire, and it quickly started filling with smoke.
"Rinc! Can you hear me?" It was Patrick McLanahan. "If you can hear me, break left now! Another Hawk missile launched! I'm activating your countermeasures! Turn left now"
Rinc started his turn-but then he noticed the supercockpit display. The Korean Patriot missile systems had successfully attacked and destroyed every other Lancelot missile launched against the Osan command center. Rinc had the last one.
Fire lights started illuminating on the instrument panel one by one. "Two . . , no, three fire lights!" John Long shouted.
"Eject, Long Dong," Rinc ordered. "Get the hell off my ship."
Long looked at Seaver through the thickening smoke. His eyes widened, as if to apologize-then he straightened in his seat and pulled his ejection handles.
Rinc twisted the knob on his ejection mode switch from AUTO to MANUAL just before Long ejected. He wasn't going anywhere until the last Lancelot missile was gone.
At that same moment, the I-Hawk's tactical control officer saw the target still flying after missile detonation and immediately commanded a second launch.
Rinc watched as the attack computers commanded the bomb doors to open partially-since the Lancelot missiles launched one by one from the rotary launcher, the doors did not need to open fully-and the last Lancelot missile was ejected into the slipstream. It dropped away from the bomber, its fins unlocked and stabilized the missile in the slipstream, the first-stage motor ignited, and the missile shot past the bomber and flew off into space on a ballistic trajectory.
"Rinc!" he heard a voice call out. It was Rebecca. "Get out! Eject!"
"I still show you in there, Rinc!" Patrick radioed. "Get the hell out, now! Eject! Eject!"
The smoke in the cockpit had cleared as soon as Long's ejection hatch blew off, so now he could see everything clearly. He saw the second I-Hawk lift off, and this one began tracking the last Lancelot missile too.
Nuts to that, Rinc thought. He started a rapid climb, swept the Megafortress's wings full forward, dropped the gear, and lowered full flaps and slats, instantly destroying all the bomber's stealthy characteristics and increasing his radar cross section about 10,000 percent.
He couldn't see the I-Hawk missile anymore, but it didn't matter-he had done all he could.
"Rinc, what are you doing?" Rebecca called out. "Eject! What are you waiting for?"
The mission was over. Time to get the hell out. "I'm with you, sweetheart," he radioed back. "Pop open a cold one for me." He reached down to his ejection handles . . .
The I-Hawk missile hit the Megafortress's vertical stabilizer, blowing it and most of the tail section off. The bomber nosed over into a gentle descent, then started a slow roll.
Rinc was halfway through his second roll when he saw a shining silvery globe erupt just a few miles in front of the Megafortress. The inside of the silver orb looked like swirls and billows of liquid fire, but the surface of the globe was perfectly smooth, flawless. He pulled the ejection handles and shot out of the stricken bomber, out into the artificial marble-like sun growing before his eyes.
He expected to feel a volcanic heat and hear thunder, something to demonstrate the horrible violence he was witnessing. Instead, it felt more like falling onto an infinitely soft pillow. He felt the silver orb surround him, caress him, welcoming him into the alternate dimension within . . .
EPILOGUE
MOUNTAIN, NEVADA
SEVERAL WEEKS LATER
Rebecca Furness's Cessna P210 squeaked to a halt onto the cracked concrete runway. As usual, she landed right on the faded white runway numbers, but there was hardly any reason to do that-she still had over eleven thousand feet of concrete ahead of her. She turned off at the first intersection and taxied toward the weather-beaten old hangars and base operations building across the huge expanse of tarmac ahead of her.
"I didn't think this place was still open," John Long remarked. He still wore a neck brace and bandages over one elbow as a result of his ejection, and it would be several more weeks until he was back on flying status. He had a copy of the Airport/Facility Directory open in his lap. "Says here there's a Department of Forestry squadron here, and one card-lock fuel pump." He looked over at Rebecca when she didn't answer. She was handling the little single-engine Cessna okay, but her mind was a million miles away . . .
.., or, more precisely, eleven thousand miles away, in Korea. •*
Rebecca taxied over to the unattended credit-card-operated fuel pump, shut down, and they stepped out into the brilliant sunshine and cool, fresh air. The airport was in a valley between two mountain ranges, with the biggest peak rising over five thousand feet above the airport only ten miles to the southeast. There were a few private planes parked here and there, a few cars parked beside the old base operations building. But the place looked deserted. A sign on the base operations building read, "Welcome to Tuscarora Army Air Corps Base, Battle Mountain, Nevada, elevation 4532 ft." "I guess this used to be an old World War Two bomber training base," John said. He looked around. "Must've been hairy flying around all these mountains, but it sure as hell is pretty secluded."
Rebecca still wasn't saying much-in fact, she had hardly talked at all since picking up John at Reno-Tahoe International Airport and flying him in the rented Cessna to Battle Mountain. She was going to head into the base operations building, but she looked around and noticed that the old wooden hangar on the northeast side of the airfield had its doors open, and wordlessly she started walking in that direction. Long followed.
It was soon obvious that the doors were open because there was an aircraft inside-the same Gulfstream jet that had picked her and her squadronmates up in Reno and taken them back to Dreamland. Inside, she found General Terrill Samson, Patrick McLanahan, Dave Luger, Nancy Cheshire, Hal Briggs, and, to her surprise, Annie Dewey. "Nice P210," Patrick said as she and Long entered the hangar. "I was thinking about getting one myself. Do you like them?"
Rebecca shrugged. "They're okay," she said as she shook Patrick's hand.
"Nothing like a Bone, huh?" Patrick said with a smile. Rebecca didn't return the smile. "Is it yours?" he asked.
"It was Rinc's," she said woodenly. "I'm . . , borrowing it."
Annie walked over to Rebecca and gave her a warm hug. "Are you doing okay, boss?" she asked.
"Not really," she replied. She looked over at Dave Luger, then back at Annie and gave her a shy grin. "You and Colonel Luger?"
"Hey, love strikes at the weirdest times and in the weirdest places," Annie said. "Looks like we were meant to be 'crewed-up' after all." Rebecca gave her a congratulatory squeeze of the hand.
"Welcome, Colonel," General Samson said. "Glad -you could make it." She shook hands with him and the others. "How are you doing, Colonel Long?"
"Much better, thank you, sir."
"Good," he said. "Well, I'm sure you heard the good news by now: China and United Korea finally began formal diplomatic relations and exchanged ambassadors. What you may not have heard is that China has decided to pull all of its troops away from the border. No troops on either side. Same with the Russia-Korea border area." No reaction from Rebecca.
"More good news: they held peninsula-wide elections, and the prime minister, Lee Kyong-sik, was elected president. They elected an ex-North Korean as vice president. That country might actually make it, even after everything it's been through."
"Any noise about the . . , er, aftermath at Osan?" John Long asked.
"Lots," Patrick said. "But, as always, the answer was 'no comment,' except to the President, of course. But he's all worried about reelection and politics so he didn't ask too many questions."
"What happened to Osan?"
Terrill Samson shrugged. "The Korean Master Control and Reporting Center was destroyed. The initial reports said that part of Osan Air Base just . . , disappeared.
Of course, that's impossible." He gave a smile that made him look like a big black crocodile about to have dinner. "Later on, they found nuclear material in the area and evacuated the base. The word now is that it was a subatomic blast. It's under investigation by a joint American-Chinese research team. One of the guys on the team is a friend of ours. There's no telling how long it will be before any concrete information is available . . ."
"Your 'friend' will see to that."
"Good to see you're starting to understand how our little world works, Colonel," Samson said. "It so happens that the Chinese did end up destroying most of United Korea's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons labs in Chagang Do province on their way out of the country, so Korea's special weapons capability has been all but eliminated. The new president has vowed to destroy the rest of the weapons. We'll see.
"Well, let's do some business here. I heard you turned down that assignment offer from the Air Guard at March Air Reserve Base, Rebecca. Mind telling me why?"
She shook her head, then lowered her eyes. "Didn't feel like going for it, that's all, sir."
"You done with flying, then?" he asked. "Done with the military?"
"I think so."
Samson shrugged his shoulders, then looked around. "Too bad," he said. "It's a shame to lose good, tough, aggressive commanders."
"Being tough and aggressive didn't get us much, did it, sir?"
"It brought victory, and it brought peace," Samson said. "You taught it well to your troops, and you did the job and conquered. For a warrior, that's the best reward there is. You should be proud." No reply. "The
163rd Air Refueling Wing is still looking for a new commander, Rebecca. I'd be happy to put in a good word for you."
"No thank you, sir."
"Plenty of other good units out there need commanders," Patrick McLanahan said. "In fact, I've heard of a Nevada Air National Guard unit that needs a commander."
Rebecca looked up at him-she knew there was only one Nevada Air Guard unit, her old one in Reno, and it had been disbanded. "What did you say, sir?"
"I heard of a plan to put twenty Block G B-1B bombers at a new base to be built in northern Nevada," Patrick said. "Specifically, right here at Battle Mountain Airport. I heard this new B-1B unit, the 111th bombardment Wing, Missile, will be training down in Tonopah Air Force Base until the new base is built and the planes are modified. They wouldn't be Megafortress aircraft, but they'd be primarily deployed for suppression of enemy air defenses, antiballistic missile defense, and standoff attack."
"What do you think about that, Rebecca?" Samson asked. "It would mean lots of headaches: lots of deployments, training new instructors, setting up a new base, setting up a new wing, congressional wrestling matches ..."
"I ... I think it's great, sir," Rebecca said, her eyes lighting up. "Where might an interested party sign up for this assignment?"
"Why, I think the general is taking applications right now," Hal Briggs said with his famous smile. "And I do believe you're first in line."
