Patrick paused for a moment, and now even Wendy was looking at him with a thoughtful glance. But still he said, “No. I... I’m sorry about Paul and his crew... but I can’t. Sorry.”
“Then we’ll be off,” General Freeman said, rising to his feet. “Thank you for your time, both of you. I don’t need to remind you, I’m sure, that this entire conversation, this entire interaction, is of the highest secrecy...”
“General, tell him the rest,” Preston said.
“I think not.”
“What is this, some kind of game? A ‘good-cop-bad-cop’ routine?” Patrick said, rising to his feet as well. “I said I’m not interested. That’s final.”
“Tell him, General.”
“No.”
“It’s about Madcap Magician,” Preston said quickly. Freeman whirled at the Marine, but she finished her sentence: “One of the ISA agents attached to Madcap Magician—”
“Colonel, that’s enough!”
“He wasn’t killed, but he’s going back in to look for Colonel White and anyone else who might have been captured.”
“Preston, what in hell is it?”
“Colonel Preston, no!”
“One of the Madcap Magician agents is Major Hal Briggs,” Preston said.
“Hal Briggs is with ISA? With Madcap Magician?” Patrick exclaimed.
“At the risk of breaking a major rule of survival with ISA—yes,” Philip Freeman replied, after giving Marcia Preston one last warning glare. “Individual technical units aren’t supposed to know any members of other units—one captured agent can put hundreds of others at risk. But.. . yes, Hal Briggs was recruited for service by my predecessor shortly after the James spy incident. In fact, he’s going to be named its operations commander, if the unit survives and is reconstituted.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s ... in-country,” Freeman admitted. “Major Briggs ... er, has a valuable contact, an intelligence officer from the United Arab Emirates who assisted him in the raid on Abu Musa Island. Major Briggs is awaiting clearance to go back in to make contact.”
“That agent’s gotta be a woman,” Wendy said with a smile.
“I must warn you again, Colonel and Dr. McLanahan,” Freeman said, pointing a finger at both of them, “that all this information is highly classified—I don’t need to tell you what would happen to the persons involved if word as to their identities or position was released.” Freeman nodded at the Secret Service agents in the room, and they headed for the door. He extended a big, rough hand. “It was a pleasure and an honor to meet you, Patrick McLanahan,” he said. “The country—maybe the entire world—already owes you a tremendous debt of gratitude. I’m sorry we couldn’t put your talents to work again. Dr. McLanahan, it was an honor to meet you as well. Good day to you both.”
But Patrick was looking into Wendy’s eyes—and she saw it, the sudden hot spark of energy, the old cocksure hellfire-and- damnation blaze in his eyes that had attracted her to him ten years earlier, back at that bar in Bossier City, Louisiana. Briggs had tipped the scale, she knew—Briggs and White and the memories of their old friends and comrades-in-arms. His gaze was also a question— he knew there was no time to converse, no time to talk it over as they always had before, but he was asking her opinion, asking her permission. ...
She knew—and she responded: Do it, Patrick, her eyes told him. You want it, I want it for you, and men out there need you. Do it, but don’t do it their way—do it your way!
And Patrick understood, because when Freeman tried to release the handshake, Patrick held firm.
Freeman looked at McLanahan with a puzzled expression. “Colonel McLanahan, does this mean .. . ?” Freeman started—but McLanahan’s grip suddenly tightened. Freeman couldn’t let go. “Yes, very well, Patr—”
“We use Disruptors,” McLanahan interrupted, still clutching Freeman’s hand tightly. “Non-lethal weapons only, unless there’s a declaration of war—then we go in with everything we’ve got, and I mean everything. ”
“Ah...” McLanahan’s grip tightened suddenly; it surprised Freeman. “Agreed,” Freeman replied. “That was the plan all along, of course.”
“We operate overseas only, not over U.S. or allied territory unless there’s a declaration of war or an invasion.”
“Agreed,” Freeman said again, hiding the pain. “Now if we could, I’d like to have Colonel Preston give you—”
“We support ISA operations only—no CIA, no other agencies or operations. No DEA, no ATF, no FBI,” McLanahan continued. “Full disclosure, full verification, open access.”
“Colonel, there’s time to run down all the options ...”
The grip suddenly doubled in strength—Freeman didn’t think it was possible. He was starting to sweat. “Agree to it, General!” McLanahan said loudly. The Secret Service agents warily took a step toward McLanahan. McLanahan’s grip was crushing, making Freeman see stars. “Swear it! Or is all of this some kind of bullshit agency snow job right from the top?”
“What in hell do you think you’re doing, dammit?”
The Secret Service agents started to rush over to Freeman’s side. “If those sons of bitches touch me or Wendy, the whole deal’s off!” McLanahan shouted. Freeman held up his left hand, halting the agents. “Tell me the truth, Freeman, damn you, if you have the balls!” Something was going to break—his hand, or the Secret Service agents’ patience. . ..
“All right!” Freeman cried out through gritted teeth, “I agree!”
“Agree to what?”
“No other agencies ... ISA only ... full disclosure, full access,” Freeman said. McLanahan released his grip, and Freeman jerked away, as if he had just been electrocuted. He gingerly rubbed the circulation back into his hand. McLanahan hadn’t even broken a sweat. “That was a childish and immature thing to do, McLanahan,” Freeman said. “What were you trying to prove—how tough you think you are?”
“I wanted to give you a little reminder, in case you’ve been in the Pentagon or the White House too long,” McLanahan said, “that good men, my friends and I, are going to be counting on you keeping your promises. If you don’t, the pain you just felt will be nothing compared to theirs. ”
Freeman knew he should be furious, but somehow he couldn’t fault McLanahan, not after all the man had seen and been through. He let the anger drain away with the pain in his right hand, then nodded. “I’ll keep my part of the bargain,” Freeman said, “not because of your little macho stunt, but because I goddamn do care about the men and women under my command. I don’t play games, Colonel McLanahan.”
McLanahan snatched up the wig and shook it in front of Freeman. “You all play games, General,” he said angrily. “We all play games—but not with the lives of fellow crewdogs. I learned a lot from Brad Elliott in almost ten years, sir, and I’ve got lots of ideas of my own. You play straight with me, and we’ll kick some ass and come home alive. If you don’t, I’ll make you wish you hired Brad Elliott and had never even heard of me.”
Freeman did not like being spoken to in this way, but he knew McLanahan was a truly dedicated man. Everything he had heard and read about this guy was true. “If you’re finished breaking my fingers and my ass, you’re on the government clock now, McLanahan. Your plane leaves Travis Air Force Base in seven hours. Good luck.” By impulse, he held out a hand to him, then quickly retracted it. He smiled, nodded, and said, “Kiss your lovely wife good-bye, McLanahan. You’re in the ISA now.”
Whiteman AFB, Missouri 17 APRIL 1997, 0649 CT
“Who the hell is it, Tom?” Colonel Anthony Jamieson irritably asked the one-star general standing beside him. The two officers were standing in the cool, damp morning air outside the base operations building at Whiteman Air Force Base, Knob Noster, Missouri, waiting as ordered for the jet carrying the VIPs to arrive. “A Congressman? A Senator’s aide?”
“The boss says you don’t need to know the answer to that, Tony—yet.” Brigadier General Thomas Wright, the commander of
the 509th Bomb Wing, Whiteman Air Force Base, and Jamieson’s boss, obviously disliked giving that kind of response to a senior officer, fellow pilot, and friend—but it was the only one allowable.
Jamieson could see his boss’s indecision and decided to keep on pressing: “Do you know who he is?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” Wright admitted, “and apparently I don’t need to know, either. Listen, Tiger, stop asking all these damned questions. You just have to fly him in the simulator. This is just one of Samson’s gee-whiz dog-and-pony-show tours. Have fun, water his eyes—you know the drill. I’ll wax your ass in golf afterward.”
Jamieson muttered a curse under his breath and fell silent, seething underneath. Tony “Tiger” Jamieson, a twenty-five-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force with over four thousand hours’ flying time and experience in several major conflicts from Vietnam to Libya to the Persian Gulf, had been tasked to give a “dog-and-pony-show” ride for a visiting VIP. The former fighter-bomber ace, now the operations group commander of the 509th Bomb Wing, the home of the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber, was not accustomed to being ordered to do these “public affairs things,” as he liked to call them, and he would have preferred to turn the whole thing over to the bomb squadron commander or one of his senior instructor pilots, the tall, studly-looking Steve Canyon types with the square jaws and blue eyes that look so good on TV and in the newspapers. But the brass— namely, the wing commander and his boss, the commander of all Air Force bomber forces—wanted Jamieson, so his job was to salute smartly, say “Yes, sir,” and perform as expected.
The C-20H military special air mission jet landed precisely at its scheduled time, and taxied quickly to the base operations building; even before the engines had spooled down on the military version of the Gulfstream IV, the air-stair door popped open and soldiers and technicians in fatigues hurried out. The VIPs, led by a three-star general accompanied by a two-star general, a colonel, and two civilians, were quickly whisked right from the plane to the waiting cars without stopping for any pleasantries, as if the early-morning sunlight would shrivel them up like vampires if they stayed in the open too long. Two Humvee security vehicles filled with uniformed and plain-clothes security officers flanked the staff cars; Jamieson was displaced to a second staff car because a plainclothes security officer, armed with a submachine gun partially hidden under his safari-style jacket, took the front seat. He also noted many other persons in utility uniforms disembarking from the C-20 Gulfstream jet, all heading for the maintenance group hangar complex in a real hurry, some carrying catalog cases full of tech orders, some carrying toolboxes and test-gear equipment—and some, judging by the length of their hair and the width of their midsections, obviously not military. They all looked as if they were already late for a big meeting.
Security police units closed all the intersections as the litde motorcade made its way to the B-2A Weapon Systems Trainer building. All this excitement only served to make Jamieson even grumpier. Doing these “dog-and-pony shows” was bad enough, but a motorcade and extra security for a lousy civilian? A lot of it had to be for show, Jamieson decided. The visitor was probably some congressional budget weenie investigating security procedures for the B-2A stealth bomber fleet, and the brass had beefed up security to make it look good. Their security was already very tight here at Whiteman, but a good show of force never hurt.
After they were seated in a briefing room in the simulator building, with the doors closed and locked and guards stationed inside and out, Jamieson got his first opportunity to check out the VIP. Too bad it was a guy—the female congressional staffers that frequently visited Whiteman were all knockouts, and Jamieson, now single after two divorces (“if the Air Force wanted you to have a wife, they’d have issued you one”), had gotten to know many of them. The guy was about ten years younger, four inches shorter, and forty pounds heavier than Jamieson, with broad, knobby shoulders, thick arms, and weight lifter-like thighs and calves—a former college power lifter turned desk jockey who liked to hang out at the weight machines on occasion, Jamieson decided—with thin blond hair and a fairly new mustache, both a bit longer than the regs allowed and definitely a lot longer than the current crew-cut style common in the late-nineties military. His handshake was firm, his eyes were blue and sparkling with energy, and he looked as if he might have wanted to smile when the introductions were made, but something dark and painful inside him vetoed the idea of showing any emotion at all, let alone a happy one. Bags under his eyes and lines in his face showed signs of tension, of aging beyond his years.
Jamieson was also reintroduced to another VIP who was going to monitor the simulator ride: the commander of Eighth Air Force himself, Lieutenant General Terrill “Earthmover” Samson, the man responsible for manning, training, equipping, and deploying all U.S. Air Force heavy bomber units. Samson was America’s “bomber guru,” the man who was single-handedly responsible for the continued presence of the B-2A stealth bomber and the other heavy bombers still in the Air Force inventory. When everyone else had been telling Congress to get rid of the “heavies,” Samson had been trying to convince Congress that America still needed the speed, flexibility, and sheer power of the intercontinental-range combat aircraft. Jamieson had met him once, a few years earlier, when Jamieson had been installed as Operations Group commander of the 509th.
Samson often brought influential congressmen and Defense Department bureaucrats in to see the B-2A stealth bomber in order to drive his arguments home. Because civilians were not permitted to fly in the plane (the third seat in a B-2A, located at the flight engineer’s station behind the right seat, was no longer fitted with an ejection seat), a few special VIPs sat in on B-2A simulator sessions flown by other crew members. Jamieson assumed that this guy was going to get a real special treat and sit in the right seat while he flew the simulator. No problem: Jamieson could fly the beast without help just fine, from the left seat.
“Good morning, gentlemen, welcome to Whiteman Air Force Base,” General Wright began. “I’m Brigadier General Tom Wright, commander of the 509th Bomb Wing, the home of four thousand dedicated men and women who take care of the world’s most sophisticated warplane, the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber. As you may know, the 509th has the distinction of being the only American military unit to employ nuclear weapons in anger—as the 509th Bomb Group, we dropped the first two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War Two. Our unit crest is the only military crest authorized to depict a mushroom cloud on it. We take great pride in our past as well as responsibility and leadership in our future.
“Today, we employ a weapon system that is far more sophisticated and far more important to our national defense than the thermonuclear device—the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber. We will be introducing you to the world’s deadliest war machine by giving you a short unclassified background briefing on the aircraft, a thirty- minute classified familiarization ride in the B-2A Weapon Systems Trainer, a tour of our facilities, a meeting with some of the outstanding officers and airmen of our major units, and of course a look at the aircraft itself. Without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to the 509th Operations Group commander and our most experienced B-2A aircraft commander and instructor, Colonel Tony ‘Tiger’ Jamieson, who will conduct today’s simulator familiarization session. Colonel Jamieson? ”
Jamieson had already set up all the standard briefing stuff, and he flipped on the digital slide projector and got to his feet: “Thank you, sir. I’m Tony Jamieson, Operations Group commander here at Whiteman. I’m responsible for overall operational and administrative charge of five squadrons in the wing, about two thousand men and women, dealing directly with combat flying activities, training, and deployment: the 393rd Bomb Squadron ‘Tigers,’ the first operational B-2A squadron; the 715th Bomb Squadron ‘Eagles,’ which is due to receive its first B-2A aircraft later this year; the 509th Air Re. fueling Squadron ‘Griffiths,’ which fly the KC-135R Stratotanker aerial refueling tankers; and the 4007th Combat Crew Training Squadro
n ‘Senseis,’ which fly the T-1A Jayhawk and T-38 Talon jet trainers and operate the B-2A part- and full-task weapons-system simulators. The Senseis conduct all B-2A initial, recurrent, and instructor ground and flight training. Also under my chain of command is the 509th Operational Support Squadron, which include the life support, weapons loaders, flight line security, weather, intelligence, and mission-planning officers.
“My job is simple: provide General Wright with the maximum number of mission-ready tactical aircrews ready to go to war at a moment’s notice,” Jamieson went on. “We do this by maintaining a rigorous training schedule to keep all crews fully proficient, including using the simulators and Jayhawk jet trainers for normal proficiency training, thereby maximizing the number of bombers and tankers available to go to war. We feel the combination of the part-task and full-motion simulators and the specially configured Jayhawks can keep our crews proficient without too much training time in the bomber itself, which allows us to deploy the B-2A as much as possible without sacrificing capability or training—in fact, we can deploy all of our B-2A bombers overseas and still train aircrews to full mission capable status here at home.
“The name of the game here at Whiteman is ‘quick strike’—the ability to successfully strike any assigned target anywhere in the world with any weapon in our arsenal within twenty-four hours of a warning order,” Jamieson continued. “In simple terms, in case of war or if ordered to deploy to an overseas base, my group and I move as a team as quickly as possible, brief and launch the combat-ready bombers and tankers, load our prepositioned mobility packages into the first available transport planes, and begin attack operations and/or deploy to our forward operating location, depending on our orders.”
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