Battle Born pm-8

by Dale Brown

  “We have, as you say, placed all our cards on the table, sir,” Minister Kang said. “I understand your concerns and your desire to study and discuss this information. We do not wish to inconvenience you any longer with our presence. I thank you for your time and attention. I would be happy to convey your concern and thoughts to my government.”

  “We would like to hear what General Kim has to say, Minister,” Martindale said stonily.

  Kim shook his head sharply. Kang seemed relieved. “The general seems to have nothing more to add, Mr. President. Therefore, I thank you again for—”

  “Hold on a minute, Mr. Minister,” the President said. Addressing Kim directly, he said, “If you have something on your mind, General, now’s the time to say it.”

  Kang got up. “Thank you for your hospitality, sir.”

  Suddenly, Kim exploded. He shot to his feet, firing words at Martindale, at Chastain, at Kang. Kang shouted something in return, but Kim would not be stopped.

  “What did they say? Translate!” the President ordered.

  “General Kim says that you have become too timid in the face of the Chinese,” the interpreter said. “He says that you are too concerned with your image and your reelection to risk it all by defending democratic Korea’s peace and freedom. He says you,” turning his head to Chastain, “counsel caution and ‘wait and see’ in safety while free Koreans worry about a nuclear holocaust. And he says that Minister Kang has not the courage to tell the Americans that if they will not help us, we will do what we must to protect our homeland. Minister Kang ordered the general to be silent or he will see to it that he is relieved of duty. The general says he will lead his forces to victory over the Communists whether or not he gets any help from the weakling Americans.”

  The angry voices had penetrated outside the Oval Office, and at that moment Secret Service guards burst inside, automatic pistols leveled. Two plainclothes officers reached for the President, ready to shield him with their bodies. “No!” he shouted. “Wait!”

  Kang shouted something at Kim, but Kim was already headed for the open door. More plainclothes and uniformed guards were ready to tackle him. “Let him go,” the President ordered. He turned to Kang. “Minister Kang, I want to talk with President Kwon immediately. If you’re considering war with North Korea, you must wait until I have had a chance to talk with him.”

  “I assure you, Mr. President, we are not contemplating war with the North,” Kang said. “Many in my government are gravely concerned, but we agree that the best hope we have is calling the world community’s attention to the North’s aggression, backed up with the power and influence of the United States of America. But we must have assurances that America will support my country in our efforts.”

  “I’ll tell President Kwon that he will always have the full protection and support of the United States,” Martindale said. “But listen carefully: we must not be blind-sided or railroaded into war because some hotheads in your government like General Kim think they can ignore the Chinese and can whip the North Koreans into submission overnight. We’ll fight by your side, but we want this to be a partnership. I can’t sell it to the American people any other way.”

  Kang looked deeply hurt at that, hurt that the President had to “sell” the idea of protecting South Korea to the American people. His face was grim as he said, “I see, Mr. President.” He bowed deeply. “I am very sorry to have disturbed you and disrupted the peace of this eminent place. I personally apologize and take full responsibility for General Kim’s behavior. If you will excuse me.” And with that he left, neither looking up nor shaking hands.

  Martindale, Whiting, Chastain, and Hale looked at one another as if in a daze. “What the hell was that?” Chastain asked incredulously.

  “Let me hear it, folks — are the South Koreans planning anything?” the President asked. “Will they actually attack these targets?”

  “I’d want to get some briefings from Central Intelligence,” Chastain offered, “but offhand, I’d say the Korean government is certainly leaning toward taking some kind of action. Kim seemed ready to charge across the DMZ by himself right this minute.”

  “There is no way on God’s green earth that President Kwon can actually believe he could successfully stage an attack against North Korea unless we were totally behind him and ready to step in,” Vice President Whiting said. “He knows he wouldn’t stand a chance. North Korea’s military outnumbers his forces three to one. And China must have more cooks than Kwon has troops in his entire military. I think this incident with the nukes just spooked them. Kim’s was the voice of the hotheads wanting revenge — Kang’s was the voice of moderation. I don’t see a war happening.”

  “Don’t guess, Mr. President,” Jerrod Hale said. “Call President Kwon. Ask him point-blank. Tell him how you feel. If you find he wants war, tell him to wait and suggest a peaceful alternative. If he still cares about one.”

  At that moment, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral George Balboa and Director of Central Intelligence Robert Plank entered the Oval Office. “That looked like South Korea’s foreign minister leaving the White House,” Plank said. “Was he here?”

  “He was here — and he dropped a bombshell on us,” the President said, returning to his desk. “I want a full rundown of the military situation on the Korean peninsula, including a complete accounting of all of South Korea’s forces, and I needed it an hour ago.” Then he picked up the phone, called the White House Communications Center, and ordered a call placed to President Kwon Ki-chae of South Korea.

  CHAPTER THREE

  111TH BOMB SQUADRON RAMP,

  RENO-TAHOE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT,

  RENO, NEVADA

  TWO DAYS LATER

  Impressive as hell, Muck,” said Dave Luger. “That’s it in a nutshell. Very damned impressive.”

  Patrick McLanahan took a sip of coffee and raised an eyebrow in surprise as he sat in the back of a large blue StepVan, used by his evaluation team as their mobile headquarters. It was a couple of hours before dawn, right at the twelve-hour safety-of-flight crew rest time limit prescribed by regulation for all fliers. It was damned early, much too early, but Patrick was determined not to let his team leaders — who certainly had had much longer days than he — see how tired he was.

  With him inside the van were Patrick’s old friend and partner Lieutenant Colonel David Luger, acting as chief of the maintenance and weapons inspection team; Lieutenant Colonel Hal Briggs, chief of the security and administrative inspection team; and Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Cheshire, chief of the command and control and services inspection team. They were parked on the Air National Guard ramp, just outside the entry control point of the long aircraft parking ramp. The line of sleek, deadly B-1B bombers, illuminated in the harsh yellow glow of overhead “ball park” lights, filled the place with excitement. Maintenance vehicles and crews moved around purposefully. To this unit, this was no exercise — it was the real thing. Aces High was going to war, and every man and woman in the small unit, from the airman basic cook in the in-flight kitchen to the commander, knew it.

  “All of the planes came up with only minor squawks,” Luger went on. Dave Luger was a tall, lanky Texan, a former B-52 navigator who now worked as chief project engineer under Patrick McLanahan at the supersecret Dreamland research facility. “Seven bombers fully configured and ready to fly. The biggest hitch was getting weapons from the Navy depot at Creashawn, but once they showed up, they uploaded them without any deficiencies.”

  “None?” Patrick asked incredulously.

  “None,” Dave assured him. “Seven B-1s with mixed payloads — twenty-eight Mark 82 AIRs in the forward bay, a rotary launcher with eight GBU-32 JDAMs in the mid bay, and ten CBU-87s in the aft bay — all went up on time without a major glitch. I’m going to have to nitpick to find something to ding ’em on.

  “The place is amazing, Muck. You know how you can tell how a unit is going to function as soon as you walk in just by looking at the floors? I
knew these guys had their shit together the minute I walked in there. The floors are so clean you can eat off them. They look like they polish their weapon-jammers and tow bars, not just clean them.”

  “Every unit spit shines their gear when an inspection team’s on base,” Patrick pointed out.

  “But you can usually tell if the spit shine is cosmetic, done once a year, or if it’s done regularly — and around here, it’s obviously done a lot,” Dave said. “Besides, this was a no-notice inspection — there was no time to spit shine every tool, every shop, every workbench, every rack. It was already done. And remember, this unit thought they were on their way to Ellsworth or Dyess for their pre-D. Why clean every piece of equipment before dragging it all off station?

  “A big help around here is the crewdogs,” Luger went on. “The flight crews are right there with the maintainers, assisting and checking. Their attention to foreign-object damage control is the best I’ve ever seen — we can take some lessons from them. They aren’t afraid to go up to an inspector and get on his case for dropping a pencil or not checking vehicle tires for FOD.”

  “Good.” Patrick knew that was true. A buck sergeant had admonished him — politely but firmly — for placing a checklist clipboard down on the ramp. The nearest running engine was at the adjacent parking spot almost three hundred feet away, but the danger of having a gust of wind or a vehicle push the checklist close enough to get sucked into a seven-million-dollar jet engine was too great to take a chance. “So we’ve got seven birds uploaded and ready to fly?”

  “Seven in the green, fueled, armed, and ready,” Luger replied. “These guys pull together well. They’d be hard to distinguish from an active-duty unit. I have no doubt they can surge their birds for as long as we want.”

  “Overall rating?”

  “Excellent,” David replied. “In critical mission-essential areas, I rate them an ‘outstanding.’”

  “Very good.” Patrick turned to Hal Briggs. “What have you seen, Hal?”

  “Ditto,” Briggs replied. He was a wiry black man who always seemed in perpetual motion, always animated and excited, with dark dancing eyes and a quick smile. But Patrick had also seen him kill with equal joy. Until the death of his mentor, Brad Elliott, Hal’s favorite sidearm had been a rare.45-caliber Uzi submachine gun — now it was Elliott’s ivory-handled.45-caliber Colt M1911A1 Government autopistol.

  “As you know, me and a couple of my white boys and girls arrived a couple of days ago to poke around and do some security probes,” Briggs said. “We tried everything — the janitor routine, the telephone man routine, the sneak-and-peek routine, everything but a full commando assault. For a unit located on a commercial civilian airfield, their security is pretty damned good. They practice good COMSEC procedures all the time. Airport security is typical — lousy — but security tightens quickly as you get closer to the Guard ramp. Good K-9 unit, good use of manpower, good rotation procedures, good challenge and response and use of authenticators.

  “I found a few unlocked doors and open gates and was able to get close enough to hand-toss some fake grenades at a plane in a fuel dock. We found one bag of shredded classified material in a Dumpster, but it was confetti-shredded and unreadable — still a violation, but not a serious one. Never got access to a plane, never got near their command post or their classified documents vault. Couldn’t hack into their classified computer server. Bought lots of drinks, but we couldn’t get one single Guard guy in a bar to talk about anything even remotely approaching classified topics — even had one guy report his contact to Furness, who filed the report with the adjutant general, state police, and Air Force Office of Special Investigations at Beale Air Force Base. Rating: ‘above average’ overall, ‘excellent’ in critical areas.”

  “Good,” Patrick said. “What do you have, Nance?”

  “I sound like a broken record, Patrick, but I give them an overall ‘above average’ and an ‘excellent’ in mission-essential areas,” Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Cheshire replied. Cheshire, a petite dark-haired woman in her late thirties with large doe eyes and a little button nose, was one of the Air Force’s toughest and most talented test pilots. She was the first female pilot to fly the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber, but her real accomplishments had come as Dreamland’s first and greatest female test and combat pilot, flying three secret missions in experimental B-52 bombers over the past several years. Now she was the chief test pilot of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center.

  “It was a pleasure to watch these Guard guys go to work,” she continued. “The battle staff, operational support squadron, and command post performed flawlessly in all the scenarios. Good security procedures, good time control, good use of checklists and command doctrine. One overdue situation report and one brain-fart with a radio frequency that broadcast a coded message on an open frequency prevented them from getting an overall ‘outstanding.’

  “I was primarily concerned about the mobility line, but that’s where this unit really earns an ‘outstanding’ score. It must be the unit’s recent history with C-130 transports, but these guys run a mobility line more efficiently than anyone I’ve ever seen. Excellent use of computers, with most programs custom-written for this unit. Almost no wasted time. But the key is the folks going through the line, and I’ve got to say that this unit has got the procedures down cold. Everyone had updated records, everyone had current vaccinations, everyone had their required gear. This unit was waiting for their transportation to arrive. It’s a small, close-knit unit, true, but these folks are revved up and ready to fight.”

  “They can generate, they can pull alert, and they can mobilize,” Dave Luger summarized. “The big questions now are…”

  “Can they fight, and can they deploy and then fight?” Patrick finished for him. “Maybe it’s time to load ’em up a bit and see how much mayhem they can take.”

  Nancy Cheshire gave an evil grin. “You gonna make it hurt, Muck?”

  “This is not a training situation here,” Patrick replied. “I want to see what they got. It might hurt a little.” He nodded to all of his staff officers around him. “Thanks for all your hard work, guys. Unclassified summary reports in my e-mail box by sixteen hundred hours today; classified summaries by tomorrow morning. I’ll see you at Tonopah.”

  Suppressing yawns, they all left the StepVan except for Dave Luger. “How are preparations for Lancelot progressing back at the home drome?” Patrick asked.

  “General Samson has got the Lancelot modification kits ready to go for the first two planes — we just need the planes and we’re ready to go,” Luger replied. “He received authorization for two more kits. By the time we’re ready to fly one and two, we should be starting work on three and four. Leaving one for a ground training article, that should leave us with three operational birds in two to three months.” He paused for a moment, then added, “From what I’ve seen so far, we might be looking at our best candidates right here. The birds are in excellent shape; the maintenance guys are top-notch; they have good facilities and good support. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know, Dave,” Patrick replied uneasily. “I agree, the machines are in good shape — it’s the aircrews I have a problem with. These guys have a real cocky attitude. Furness delights in telling everyone to go to hell, and it’s rubbed off on her troops. They were mouthing off at the adjutant general right to my face, all of them. Rinc Seaver is the worst of the bunch — the best, but the worst.” Patrick got up, stretched, then told their driver to head over to the squadron building.

  “The force is different from when we were pulling a crew, Muck,” Dave said. “Since the Strategic Air Command’s bombers were absorbed by the Tactical Air Command, all the crewdogs are like fighter jocks — they’re cocky, tougher, more aggressive, more competitive, and lots smarter. The force is smaller and leaner, which means that only the best of the best get to fly. And the Air National Guard is all that and more. They’re like a pack of wild starving wolves fighting over who’s goin
g to kill the caribou. I don’t think we need to straighten them out — I think it’s us that needs to realize what the modern-day force is like.”

  “Maybe so,” Patrick said grumpily, suddenly feeling very old. “But some of them can still use a good dose of whup-ass.”

  Luger watched his longtime friend stifle a jaw-breaking yawn. “You ready to fly, partner?” he asked with a smile. “It’s been — what, five years, six? — a long time since you’ve been in a B-1.”

  “I’ll be fine, Dave,” Patrick said. “I know the Bone like the back of my hand—”

  “I’m talking about you, partner,” Dave interrupted. “It’s been about a year since you ejected out of the Megafortress. Are you ready to start flying again?”

  “I have been flying for the past year or so, Dave…”

  “I don’t mean flying prototypes, simulators, test beds with a bunch of engineers, or the BERP suit — I mean flying a real sortie with a real crew, as part of the crew,” Luger interrupted again. “You don’t have to do this, you know. Nancy can give Seaver an evaluation, and I can certainly let you know if these guys are the real deal or just hot dogs. Besides,” he added with a serious expression, “you old guys need more sleep.”

  Patrick scratched his nose with an uplifted middle finger, making sure Luger got the message, then clasped him on the shoulder. “I’ll be fine, partner,” he said. “This will give me an opportunity to get back into the real world. I’m looking forward to this.”