by T. E. Cruise
“You’re implying that your wealth puts you above the law,” Layten said slowly.
“I know it does. Turner. I ain’t exactly been a choirboy my whole life.”
Layten didn’t say anything, but his thoughts reached back to Jack Horton. his old boss at the CIA. Horton had thought he was above the law. but thanks to Steven Gold, and a congressional investigation. Jack had found out otherwise. Trouble was, when Jack Horton fell, he took Turner Layten with him.
“Mr. Campbell!” eagerly shouted one of the men out beating the brush. “I got two of ’cm, here, Mr. Campbell!”
Campbell chuckled to Layten. “I pay these boys fifty bucks a pop for every rattler worth shooting they find me.” He shouted: “Throw ’em out!”
Layten watched as the pair of rattlers hit the dirt fifteen feet away. They were smaller than the first, but quicker. They began crazily slithering, tracing S patterns in the dust as they headed for the side of the trail and the sanctuary of the brush.
“Here, try your luck, son.” Campbell handed Layten one of the six-shooters.
Layten gripped the Peacemaker with both hands, sighting down the barrel toward the nearer snake. He thumbed back the hammer and was about to squeeze off a round when Campbell, shooting from the hip, fanned off a flurry of shots from his remaining Peacemaker. The gun volley plowed up dirt without hitting either of the snakes. Then Layten fired, scoring a lucky shot that blew off a snake’s rattle.
“Beautiful, Turner!” Campbell laughed as the snake disappeared into the scrub, trailing blood. “You just cut that fucker a new asshole!”
“Yes, Tim.” Layten forgot his misgivings about the industrial-espionage laws that he was breaking on his superior’s behalf in his own pleasure at having amused Campbell. “Let’s hope I can perform the same service for Donald Harrison and Steven Gold.”
CHAPTER 14
(One)
Axel Lyegate Memorial Auditorium
Tactical Air Combat Center
Ryder AFB, Nevada
29 May, 1978
Major Robert Blaize Greene peeked out through the curtains at the auditorium full of “visiting players,” the Air Force personnel here at Ryder for the upcoming Red Sky air war exercise. Greene then looked back over his shoulder at the stage, which was dominated by a dramatic forty-foot-tall rendition of the shoulder patch of his squadron. The patch was round, and showed a winged Russian bear attacking head-on from out of a sky-blue background. The Russian bear had fiery red eyes, and golden lightning bolts clenched in its massive jaws. Around the top of the patch in blue against gold curved the letters ATTACKERS. Around the bottom of the patch, the same-colored lettering read: 37th ATTACKER SQUADRON
Greene watched as the pilots in his squadron filed on the stage to take their seats in front of the huge patch. His pilots were all dressed as Greene was: olive-drab flight suits emblazoned with their rank insignia, their “Attackers” patches on chest and right shoulder, black boots, and blood-red ascots.
“They all here. Buck?” Greene asked his administrative assistant. Captain Billy Buckmeyer.
“Yep, everyone’s present and accounted for on both sides of the curtain,” Buck said from offstage. “You ready to start hamming it up, Robbie?”
Greene started out shooting Buck a dirty look, but was unable to stifle his grin. “Well, maybe I do ham it up a little,” he admitted. “On the other hand, it never hurts to instill a bit of awe and mystery about the Attackers into our guests.”
“You just like to strut and bluster,” Buck playfully admonished. wagging his finger like the schoolmaster he so resembled. Billy Buckmeyer was in his thirties, a balding, dark-haired, bookish man with black horn-rimmed glasses who favored wearing his full service uniform—tie, jacket, black-visored officer’s cap—no matter how hot the weather. Buck wasn’t a pilot, but he could handle paperwork the way Greene’s hottest jet jockies could handle their airplanes. Greene respected and desperately needed Buck for his abilities, but in addition to Buck being the chief cook and bottle washer around “Red Square,” the Attackers’ operations building. Buck was also Greene’s best friend.
“You know, you missed your true calling,” Buck was telling Greene. “You should have been a movie star.”
“I am a movie star.” Greene laughed. “I star in the action epic Red Sky, and my role is that of chief villain. That’s what the Attackers are all about, right?”
Greene took one final look around the stage to make sure that all of his people had taken their seats, and one final peek through the curtain, to make sure the auditorium was settled. Then he nodded to Buck, who relayed the signal to start the proceedings.
This auditorium also served as the players’ main briefing hall. (The Attackers had their own briefing hall back at Red Square.) The auditorium had plush Air Force-blue seats and carpeting, and sophisticated AV equipment. It was located in the below ground level of the Tactical Air Combat Command Center, a sprawling complex with a flat roof that was festooned with a nightmare forest of radio, microwave and radar transmitting gear. In addition to the auditorium, TACCC housed the Range Control Center, the Red Sky Operations and Intelligence offices, a series of smaller briefing rooms, and the visiting players’ Personal Equipment Room. Across the street from the TACCC was the ramp where the visiting players’ aircraft were parked and serviced.
“It’s showtime,” Buck called softly.
Greene, nodding, waited as the large silver screen was lowered. Visual aids would be projected on the screen during Green’s presentation, and the screen would also serve to temporarily block the giant insignia patch and the seated Attackers squadron from the audience’s view until the dramatically right moment.
The house lights dimmed slowly and then winked out, plunging the audience into movie-theater darkness. The curtains parted. Greene, guided by the glimmering stage footlights, took his place at the podium located stage right. He took several deep breaths to calm himself—he always suffered a twinge of stage fright at the start of these presentations—and then switched on the podium microphone.
“You don’t know him,” Greene began. Like always, the amplified sound of his own voice booming from the auditorium speakers took him by surprise.
“You call him bogie, bandit, gomer, Ivan, and countless other disparaging names, but all of your mockery does nothing to dispel your fear, because you don’t know him.”
Greene glanced at the screen, where slides of Soviet and Warsaw Pact MiG-21s and -23s—NATO code-named Fish-back and Flogger—were being flashed.
“You don’t know how the enemy pilot thinks. How he fights…”
Now the screen alternated between showing slides, newsreel, and gun-camera footage of USAF Sabres and Broad-Sword fighters mixing it up with MiG-15s, followed by Vietnam-era footage of Phantoms and Thuds dueling with MiG-17s and -21s. The light reflecting off the screen allowed Greene to study his audience. As tradition warranted, the first few rows were taken up with air-to-air fighter jocks. The rest of the seats were occupied with personnel belonging to Airborne Warning and REC, Defensive Suppression, Offensive Counter Air, Close Air Support, and transport/refueling sectors. Airborne Warning and REC included the reconnaissance people who crewed the unarmed F-4s, the AWAC aircraft crews, and the RESCAP specialists who flew spotter slow-movers and choppers; DeSup belonged to the Wild Weasle F-4 crews who ferreted out SAM and his AAA brethern; OCA were the close-air support fliers who piloted A-7 Corsair Mud Movers, while CAS was the province of the A-10 Thunderbolt Warthogs who killed tanks; and then there were the crews who drove the gargantuan C-130 Hercules transports and the crucial KC-10 aerial refueling tankers. Everybody who was anybody came to play war at Red Sky, because in the event of a real war, everybody here would be playing for keeps.
“In Korea we controlled the sky almost from the beginning,” Greene now said as up on the screen the footage and photos unspooled, detailing the history to date of the United States’ experience with jet-age air combat.
“Yeah, we ha
d it our way in Korea, because we relied on seasoned World War Two fighter jocks to do the job. In Vietnam, it was a different story. Most of our pilots were not combat tested. What they knew about ACM they learned from books, and because of that, despite our superior warbirds, we got our ears pinned back by hard-as-nails Commie pilots, many of them flying MiGs that were not much more sophisticated than the ones that our fighter-pilot forefathers had so efficiently sent plunging into the Yalu.”
Greene let the doleful freeze-frame image of a broken-winged F-4 Phantom plummeting to the ground trailing smoke and flames burn itself into his audience.
“In Vietnam, the Air Force and Navy Aviation played a game of catch-up ball, and we came out of it by the skin of our teeth, but we didn’t win.” Greene shook his head. “ I was there. Take it from me. We didn’t win. But as the war wound down, we were getting better. Or at least the Navy was, thanks to an ACM training program called Top Gun.”
Greene paused to let the hostile murmurings rippling through the audience run their course at his mention of Top Gun. The people in this auditorium were among the best frontline personnel the Air Force had; otherwise, they wouldn’t have made the cut to be here in the first place. They were all proud blue suiters who didn’t much cotton to being reminded that these days the Air Force had to share ownership of the sky with the United States Navy.
“Top Gun works so well for the Navy in part because it gives the squid fighter jocks a real-time taste of ACM flying against some of the best instructors the Navy has to offer. The Fighter Weapons School here at Ryder is a close equivalent to Top Gun. For three weeks the fighter jocks among you will be receiving a graduate course in advanced fighter tactics by FWS instructors, while the rest of you will receive similar advanced combat training in your particular specializations.”
The screen, which had been showing candid photos of visiting players receiving their advanced instruction, now went to silver and began to rise. At the same time, the stage lights came on, revealing the the Attacker squadron seated in front of the huge rendition of their emblem.
“After three weeks, school will be over,” Greene said. “And war will begin. You will belong to us. The Attackers…”
Narrow focus spotlights now illuminated the photographic murals lining the auditorium’s walls. Greene watched as the audience swiveled to study the photos of the Attacker squadron’s F-5E II jet fighters wearing Warsaw Pact paint locked onto the tails of various visiting-player aircraft.
“Three weeks from today. Red Sky will begin. You will be subjected to five days of air war conducted according to a specific scenario written by Red Sky intelligence people. The scenario will detail the outbreak of hostilities between a Communist nation on the western side of the Ryder combat ranges, and the United States, who will invade from the east.”
Greene’s outstretched arm encompassed the audience. “As the Blue, United States team, your surveillance operations will attempt to send back intelligence about the Red team, your enemy. Your AWACS will attempt to locate his Combat Air Patrols and guide you to them. Your Wild Weasels will attempt to pinpoint and neutralize his AAA and SAM sites. Your Mud Movers and Warthogs will attempt to disrupt his front line and suppress his ground defenses and mechanized artillery. Your bombers will attempt to decimate his military-industrial complexes. Your transports and refueling tankers will attempt to run his gauntlet to resupply and refuel your air-strike forces.”
Greene offered his audience an exaggerated, wolfish smile. “And your fighters will attempt to wrest control of Redland’s sky away from us, the Attackers, who have been trained and equipped to fly and fight like Russians. Five times a year, we declare war on those who would fly against us in Red Sky, the world’s most realistic and complex aerial-combat exercise. We fly F-5E Tiger IIs equipped and painted to mimic Fishbeds and Floggers. You may think our little F-5 Scooters are inferior airplanes to your own, but we Attackers love them. We call our planes F-5 ‘MiGs.’ We call them F-5 ‘Humiliators,’ because we and our planes are honed razor sharp, and we enjoy making fools out of you green young men who think you’re something special when you’re strapped into your state-of-the-art hardware. Don’t think of the Attackers as instructors, because we don’t fly to teach you anything.” Greene paused, staring down at the auditorium full of uplifted faces.
“We fly to kill you.”
The audience was crypt silent. Greene could feel hundreds of pairs of angry eyes upon him. He could sense the players’ massed outrage at his taunts. They had become a lynch mob, out for his blood.
Good. Greene thought. He wanted to shake his audience’s composure. To get them riled up and get their juices flowing; to get them to begin to approach a state of fevered mental pitch approximating what they might emotionally experience in the tense weeks, days, and hours leading up to a real war.
A lot of these pilots arrived at Ryder thinking that Red Sky was going to be just another cut-and-dried, fly-aroundthe-flagpole war game of the sort they might have experienced while training at their own bases, but nothing could be further from the truth. For one thing, Red Sky was big. The scenario took place over millions of acres of desert, with the various Ryder ranges tricked up to resemble different aspects of Red-land, so that just knowing where the hell you were and how far it was to a place of safety was a challenge.
For another, thing, Red Sky was edge of the envelope when it came to EBS. Sure, the Exterior Battlefield Simulations included the run-of-the-mill plywood and plastic tanks, and scrap-wood buildings for the players to bomb and shoot up, but Red Sky went far beyond the usual “Hogan’s Alley” type knock-’em-down cardboard target setups in terms of combat realism, and in terms of keeping score. Thanks to a network of grid sensors spread around the desert ranges, transmitters placed on the airplanes, microwave relay stations, and powerful computers, every Red Sky mix-up could be displayed in real time to spectators back at Nellis, who viewed the computer-generated action as it occurred on the auditorium’s multiscreens. Each evening, highlights of the day’s battles were shown for the players in the auditorium, and then replayed, for the benefit of the specific players involved, in the smaller briefing rooms.
Most important for the players, Red Sky was complex. It might seem obvious to say that, but Red Sky’s capacity to submerge participants in the sort of confusing electronic and sensory overload that had been experienced by combat fliers in Vietnam was in many ways the exercise’s outstanding value. Once a pilot got a taste of his electronic gear and his radio screaming at him, mixed with the sensation of having a real, live bogie on his six o’clock, and maybe a simulated smoky SAM twisting up at him from the ground, that young man would begin to have an idea of what modern air war was like inside a cockpit, and how his own confusion might destroy him quicker than any MiG.
Best of all, Greene thought, in this war, despite all the simulated realism and electronic enhancements, the only wounds the visiting players might suffer would be to their pride. Sure, there was always the potential for tragic accidents when lots of overeager fighter jocks went streaking around a few hundred feet above the desert at six hundred plus miles an hour; being a fighter jock was not a low-risk occupation. By and large, however, these young men would live to learn from their mistakes, and, it was hoped, never make them again should they be confronted with a real war.
Greene moved to the conclusion of his presentation: “This upcoming Red Flag exercise will be conducted during a tense international climate in the world. In Africa, there’s warraging in Zaire between that ruling government and Cuban-backed rebels. In the Mideast. Iran endures bloody rioting between the Shah’s backers and Moslem fundamentalists. In Central America, Nicaragua suffers as the Samoza government is rocked by Communist rebels. The Red Sky scenario being scripted for you might well have been torn from today’s headlines.
“On behalf of the Attackers squadron, I urge you to study hard these next three weeks.” Greene’s eyes swept the auditorium. “Learn all you can, because when you confron
t us you’re going to need it.”
“Nice performance, Robbie,” Buck said, falling into step with Greene backstage. “Reckon there’ll be a few extra pair of undies going to the laundry this evening.”
“Like I said, scaring the shit out of’em is my job,” Greene said. He squinted as they left the cool darkness of the auditorium through the stage door, stepping out into the bright, hot, Nevada day.
“If that’s your job, then you’re overachieving,” Buck chided good-naturedly.
“No way,” Greene protested as he dug his gold-rimmed Ray-Bans out of his breast pocket. “It’s the Attackers’ role to play the villain, and we’re method actors.”
They cut across the sweltering parking lot toward Greene’s car. It was a fire-engine-red (naturally) Porsche 911 Targa he’d bought with some of the money that Grandpa Herman had left him.
“You know, the bigger they come the harder they fall,” Buck murmured under his breath.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you came on a lot stronger than usual back there with all that ‘we fly to kill you’ crap.”
“Well, maybe I’m feeling extra frisky,” Greene replied evasively. “Maybe I’m intending to run my squadron extra hard on this particular exercise. Make life extra miserable for this bunch of players.”
“Why?” Buck eyed him speculatively. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk that way before.…”
“What’s with these questions?” Greene countered. “Why shouldn’t I put one hundred and one percent into my job?”
They’d reached the Porsche. Buck settled into the passenger’s bucket seat as Greene swung himself behind the wheel, started her up, put her in gear, and began driving down the base’s main drag, Thunder Alley. It was a half-mile to Red Square, the Attacker squadron’s operations building.
