Battle Born pm-8

by Dale Brown

  That’s why Sunan had to be neutralized.

  At the prearranged time, the minisubs lifted from the thick silt bottom and began cruising at minimum steerageway speed toward shore. At periscope depth, about six feet below the surface in the tiny vessels, a hatch popped open on each sub and eight commandos rose to the surface, gave each other an “okay” sign, then swam for their infiltration point. One sub’s hatch could not be reseated, and it had to be scuttled. Its crew had no choice but to swim for shore and either hide or try their best to make it back to friendly territory on their own. There was no emergency rescue plan for this one-way covert operation.

  The leader swam slowly, using a minimum-effort stroke that placed him under the surface during all but a few seconds out of every minute. He stopped frequently to check his bearings, listen for danger, and check his troops. Every time he came up, the first thing to break the surface was the muzzle of his Heckler & Koch MP5K submachine gun.

  It took twenty minutes for the team of forty-eight commandos to swim to shore and reach the wharf that was their landfall. They secured their swimming gear to the bottom in black nylon bags, climbed up a dockside ladder until they could get up inside the framework of the wharf, then made their way ashore. They found a dark, secluded area between two noisy ventilator units and stopped to dole out equipment and to rest. While the leader checked in via satellite to his headquarters, his men began to unpack their equipment.

  Twelve commandos carried the waterproof weapons bags for all of them. Each man was armed with a submachine gun, with a shoulder harness and five-cell pouch system that strapped onto his calf, plus a 9-millimeter SIG Sauer P226 autopistol carried on the shoulder harness. The leg pouch contained three thirty-round magazines of subsonic ammunition plus the sound suppressor for the submachine gun.

  Twelve other commandos, two per squad, carried the electronics, including target markers, radios, remote-control detonators, and night-vision equipment. Two commandos carried radios; two others carried medical gear. Six commandos were the “mules,” carrying the explosives — an assortment of plastic explosives, shaped cutting charges, antipersonnel mines, incendiary explosives, and Primacord, plus detonators and timers. When they were all loaded up, checked, their timing established, and their objective identified on the map and compared to their surroundings, they set off.

  Sunan was actually a conglomeration of several bases, spread out over most of western Pyongan Namdo province. In peacetime, all the facilities were independent, run by several different branches of the military. Two South Korean commando squads were detached from the group and dispatched to set charges and electronic target markers on several other key targets on base, including the early-warning and fire control radars, surface-to-air missile sites, and the Scud-B and Scud-C missile sites. Another squad was dispatched to set explosives that would act as diversions and create panic and confusion in other areas of the base.

  The CCF was the commandos’ main target. The remaining three squads, twenty-four highly trained commandos, moved toward this important objective.

  The CCF compound was a sprawling one-hundred-acre site with a drab gray bunkerlike building in the center. Sneaking onto the compound itself was simple. The outer-perimeter security was in poor repair and had already been broken down by bands of roving citizens looking for food or trying to sell food to starving soldiers, or by soldiers on base sneaking supplies off base to sell to local black marketers. Ironically, the best place to penetrate the outer security zone was right in front. Since heavy road traffic from the main base often set off the motion and trembler alarms, they were usually deactivated during base-wide alerts when there was a lot of vehicle traffic. A few silenced gunshots took care of the lights they could not avoid. They saw signs indicating canine patrols inside the outer security ring, but they knew there were no dogs on duty — the soldiers on base had long ago sold or butchered the guard dogs for food.

  The Command and Coordination Facility itself was a squat steel and concrete building, two stories above-ground but four belowground. A long concrete tunnel controlled access to the entrances, so a frontal assault was next to impossible. The guard tower on the roof and the two guard towers around the building were dark, but the commandos could not assume they were unmanned — in fact, they had to assume that a response team was already on the way, so speed was imperative. A short chain-link dog fence protected a twelve-foot-high electrified fence. There was no doubt that the fence was on — the deadly current flowing through it could be heard and felt from ten feet away, like waves of heat from a nearby furnace.

  They were hamstrung — they could not go forward unless they blew the electric fence apart, nor could they retreat. The leader hunched down with his second-in-command, set to discuss their dilemma…

  … when suddenly they heard a noise ahead of them. In a matter of moments, several dozen heavily armed soldiers rushed out of an access tunnel on the north side of the squat concrete structure before them, headed right for the South Korean commandos.

  And the mission had barely begun…

  RENO-TAHOE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT,

  RENO, NEVADA

  THAT SAME TIME

  Even in his earliest days as a B-52 navigator and bombardier, Patrick McLanahan never remembered moving this fast. Was it because these young guys just liked to hustle, or because the schedule was that compressed? It couldn’t be a function of age — or could it?

  Precisely at the prebriefed time, the crews loaded up the old bumpy two-gear blue school bus (at least that hadn’t changed — it seemed like the same old noisy school bus he had ridden in on the way to the B-52 flight line almost twenty years ago) and headed off. First stop was the life support shop, where they grabbed their flight and survival gear and checked oxygen masks and night-vision goggles. Rinc Seaver helped Patrick find his stuff and showed him how to operate the NVG tester, but they couldn’t dawdle because Rebecca Furness, her copilot, Heels Dewey, and the other crew were out the door and loading up. The next stop was base operations, where the crews received a weather briefing, filed their flight plans, checked Notices to Airmen, verified the maintenance status of the planes, got their box lunches from the in-flight kitchen, and took one last nervous pee.

  This was the first opportunity Patrick had to take a breather and check out the other crewdogs as they made last-minute preparations before heading out to the flight line. The differences in the modern-day military kept surprising him. They made him feel a little — check that, a lot—out of place and, well, pretty goddamn old.

  Because the first thing he noticed was how young these guys were. Even though the Air National Guard usually employed veteran aviators, and this unit was definitely top-heavy with field-grade officers, these guys still looked damned young. Their slang and references — mimicking characters like Bart Simpson, Austin Powers, and Beavis and Butt-head seemed to be the big thing — made them seem younger still. They all had very short haircuts, wore perfectly clean flight suits and spit-shined boots, none of them smoked cigarettes (cigars, yes — even the women), and none of them used vulgarity routinely in conversation. They ate like ravenous wolves — all but Heels ordered two box lunches, one to eat in base ops and the other to take along on the flight — but they all seemed trim and fit, so lean, most of them, that they bordered on the anorexic.

  Rinc Seaver was not typical of the new breed. While the others were chatty, chummy, and casual, Seaver was quiet, businesslike, and not very sociable. While the others had Playboy pictures downloaded off the Internet stuck under plastic page protectors in their checklists, Seaver did not.

  What was it with this guy? Patrick wondered. He didn’t need to give Seaver a full-blown check ride to know he was more than competent — he was an expert in every aspect of the Bone. The other crew members in the squadron certainly didn’t resent him or resent his expertise, and it was plain that despite the crash, the feeling of detachment, of ostracism, even outright anger toward Seaver was pretty much in Seaver’s own min
d. The other crewdogs didn’t resent anyone as long as he pulled his weight and supported the unit.

  Furness motioned to Patrick, and they walked out into the hallway to talk without being overheard. “With all due respect, sir — this really sucks,” Furness said. Her voice was low but angry. Well, at least the crews didn’t use vulgarity as a part of normal conversation; the commanders were different. “My guys worked damn hard to gin their birds up on time without a glitch, and then you reward them by forcing everybody to replan. It’s unfair to my troops.”

  “Relax, Colonel,” Patrick said. “We take all this into account when we tally the score. But you know as well as I do that flexibility and replanning are standard operating procedure. ‘Flexibility is the key to air power.’”

  Furness nodded, though her face was still rigid. “My boys will do fine, General, no matter what you toss at us.”

  “That’s what I want to hear, Colonel…”

  “But if I or any of my troops feel that any of this violates crew safety, I’m calling it off, and then I’ll gladly go nose-to-nose with you on who’s right,” Furness said. “Rank or no rank, no one endangers my crews.”

  “My first concern is always crew safety, Colonel — but I’m also authorized to run this exercise any way I choose in order to fully evaluate your unit’s performance. That means I set the limits here, not you. I’m risking my own career by doing what I’m doing. If you squawk, you’d better be prepared to risk your career over it too. Clear?”

  “No, sir, it’s not clear. Not one bit.”

  “Things will become clearer to you as we go on, Colonel,” Patrick said.

  Rebecca Furness squinted at the one-star general, trying to piece together what she had just heard. “General, what in hell is going on here? This isn’t about a pre-D or a check ride for Seaver, is it?”

  “Don’t try to second-guess me, Colonel,” Patrick snapped. “This is my exercise. You do it my way, or you prepare to give up your command over your protest. Do you understand?” Furness had no choice but to agree. “Good. I suggest you let the game proceed, even though it might weird you out. Don’t turn your back on anything until you’re sure you have nothing to learn from it.” Furness did not argue, did not agree — she only looked more confused, although a tiny hint of intrigue and curiosity began to creep over her face. “Carry on.”

  “Yes, sir,” Furness said. “We penetrate, decimate, and dominate. We never give up.”

  “Ho-rah,” Patrick said, not smiling. They went back into the room, and he said, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “The unit is looking real good so far, Colonel. I’m looking forward to shacking some targets today. Anything else for me?”

  “No, sir,” Furness said, spitting out the “sir” from deep in her belly. Patrick noticed a lot of straight backs and serious expressions when she started the formation briefing. “Okay, hogs, listen up.” She opened up her checklist and said, “Someone get a time hack. Formation brief…”

  The excitement level began to build as they headed out to the flight line several minutes later. Security was tight, but once the security guards checked line badges and inspected the crew bus with dogs and mirrors, they seemed just as keyed up about the upcoming mission and deployment as the aircrew members. Even the young airman-first-class bus driver gave them a “Go kick some ass, sir,” as they stepped off the bus at their aircraft parking spot. In the “old days,” when Patrick pulled a crew, the “sky cops,” the maintainers, the support specialties, and crewdogs all lived in separate worlds. Even though everyone respected one another’s work and knew that they all played for the same team, they knew little about what anyone else on base really did. There was always a certain degree of ambivalence and even resentment.

  Not here. It felt to Patrick like a pro football team, where offense, defense, special teams, coaches, trainers, and fans all cheered equally loudly before, during, and after every play.

  Furness, Dewey, and Seaver stepped off the bus and quickly carried their gear to their plane. But Patrick couldn’t help but stop and admire the plane itself. He had a couple of hundred hours’ flying time in the Bone, including second-in-command time, plus another few hundred hours in various simulators and procedures trainers, but he looked at this one as if it were the first time he’d ever seen a B-1B Lancer.

  The best phrase to describe it was “deadly-looking.” He had always used that term to describe his EB-52 Megafortress bomber, the experimental high-tech B-52 Stratofortress bomber that he had worked on and flown into combat for many years. With the Bone, however, that phrase really stuck. The EB-52 was a souped-up B-52 with a pointed nose and other aerodynamic enhancements, but it still had the bulk, the huge thick wings, and the presence of a big, lumbering bomber — the various enhancements worked very well, but they definitely looked “tacked on,” retrofitted.

  The B-1 looked sleek and deadly because it had been designed that way from the beginning. Unlike the B-52s, nothing was hanging off the wings or the fuselage. All weapons were carried internally, and the wings were thin, supercritical airfoils that swept back for high-speed flight. From its long, pointed nose to its gracefully swept “lifting body” fuselage, to its thin wings, to its swept and pointed tail, it looked fast even sitting on the ground. But it was every bit as large as the EB-52, and it could do far more things.

  The rising sun spilled over the Sierra Nevada and began to shine on the flight line, surrounding Patrick’s Bone with golden light. It was then that he knew his future was going to be with this war machine. He had worked on many different high-tech planes and weapons at Dreamland, but none of them had the potential that the B-1 had right now. He realized that he was looking at the new Megafortress.

  Brad Elliott had created the EB-52 Megafortress. That was his legacy. This plane was going to be Patrick McLanahan’s legacy.

  He quickly rejoined his crew at the base of the one-story-tall nose landing gear, and Rinc Seaver began reviewing and briefing the Form 781 aircraft logbooks, going over any recent problems and making sure all the required sign-offs were there. Patrick met the crew chief and two assistant crew chiefs, remarking again to himself how young they were as well. The crew chief, Master Sergeant Chris Bowler, was a fifteen-year veteran, but his assistants, one buck sergeant and one staff sergeant, looked fresh out of tech school. In reality, they had twenty-five years of B-1B experience between them.

  The first order of business after reviewing the 781 and briefing the crew chiefs was a “FOD walk,” where the flight and ground crews walked out from the wheels along the Bone’s taxi path to check for anything on the ground that might get sucked up into the engines when they taxied. Every bit of the aircraft parking ramp was meticulously swept and checked for FOD twenty-four hours a day, and the chance that the flight crew, who were busy mentally preparing for their upcoming mission, would actually find anything on the concrete was fairly remote.

  But this was a “crew” thing, something the crews did together for their bird. The aircraft “belonged” to the crew chiefs until the aircraft commander signed the 781, at which point the aircraft “belonged” to the flight crew until the crew chief signed the 781 after the maintenance debrief and took control of it again. The FOD walk was a kind of symbolic act, something they did together for the mutual benefit of “their” war machine. For a brief period of time, they were not officers or enlisted personnel, not fliers or ground-pounders — they were Aces High.

  Once they parted after the FOD walk, shaking hands, giving high fives, flashing their squadron “gang sign” at each other — three fingers jammed downward in a dunking motion, signifying the 111th — and shouting their squadron motto, “Aces High: Penetrate, Decimate, and Dominate,” they became “flight” crew members and “ground” crew members again. But the bond between them would never be broken.

  Patrick followed the crew offensive systems officer, or “O,” John Long, as he did a preflight of the Bone’s three weapon bays. As briefed, the bomber was fully loaded. It was as
exciting for Patrick to be out here now, preflighting a bomb bay filled with live weapons, as it was years ago when he was the bombardier in charge of all the explosive power in the B-52 Stratofortress and later in the EB-52 Megafortress.

  Long counted the bombs in the forward bomb bay. “Twenty-eight Mark 82 AIRs, ready to go,” he said. The bottom of the bomb bay was ten feet overhead, so there was nothing for him to do but count the weapons and check for any obvious malfunctions or damage.

  The five-hundred-pound Mk82 was the second smallest high-explosive bomb carried by the Air Force and the smallest weapon carried by the B-1. Its basic design hadn’t changed since the 1950s; in fact, many of the more than one million Mk80-class weapons still in the inventory were leftovers from the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. The Bone’s Mk82 AIRs (air-inflatable retarded) were modified for low-altitude delivery with the BSU-49/B Ballute tail unit, which was an air-inflatable mushroom-looking canvas parachute that would slow the bomb down enough to allow the bomber to escape the detonation and blast effects without damaging itself.

  The weapons were loaded onto slanting racks in a confused-looking array, with bombs tightly stacked atop one another. It seemed impossible that those racks could fold and flip out of the way before the bombs above them released, Patrick thought. Twenty-eight five-hundred-pound bombs safely leaving the bomb bay, separated by only one-fifth of a second. Amazing. He knew precisely how they worked, of course — but studying the engineering on paper was much different from actually seeing the bomb bay jammed with more than five tons of explosive power.

  “These are my babies here,” John Long said proudly as they reached the center, or intermediate, bomb bay. This bay held a rotary launcher loaded with eight inert two-thousand-pound GBU-32 JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) guided gravity bombs, the deadliest nonnuclear weapon in the Bone’s arsenal.