Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (31 page)

 
          
The
President looked away and stared at the enlarged photograph of Kavaznya, then
turned back to his advisers.

 
          
“I
know what you’re thinking. This attack, the last thing any of us have wanted
even to consider, now looks as if it will happen . . . our repeated attempts in
the past few days to move the Soviets from their inflexible position have
failed. Diplomatic channels remain open and it’s still my hope that Secretary
Brent will somehow get a commitment from the Soviets that will let me order
these B-ls to scrub their mission. But if he doesn’t and I am forced to give
the strike order, I want it very clear to everyone that what we will be
conducting is, in a real sense, a police action. Every effort has been made to
control and contain the scope of this mission. We do
not
want war with the Soviets. We do
not
want a nuclear exchange. But we must face the fact that the
existence of the laser facility and the
Soviet Union
’s policy of a peacetime quarantine of
Asia
will eventually cripple our ability to
defend ourselves against attack or to mount a second strike in reprisal. We
must, it seems, take this action now, with its inherent risks, to avoid the
certainty of far greater risks later . . . General Curtis, go over the
fail-safe procedures again.”

           
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
stood. “Sir, we need a direct order from you to launch the two bombers, a
second one to allow them to proceed past the established SNOWTIME arctic
exercise orbit area they usually operate in, and we need a third, separate
order to allow the bombers to cross the fail-safe point and prearm their
missiles. The third message is their authorization to strike.

 
          
“Bombers
will continuously monitor SATCOM and HF radios for coded recall or termination
instructions, and they can be recalled at any time. They cannot proceed on
their missions unless they have two one- hundred-percent operable missiles and
an aircraft that meets their tactical doctrine specifications. Our
communications satellites will be programmed to automatically transmit a recall
message every half hour
unless
we
instruct them
not
to. So if
communications are disrupted the mission will automatically terminate.”

 
          
The
President nodded, looked around the room. No one else offered any comment or
suggestion. After an unendurably long moment, the President reached down and
opened the red-covered folder prepared for him the day before. He broke the
seal and reviewed the document inside authorizing the first step of Curtis’
plan.

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
P
atrick McLanahan was sitting alone in
the semidarkness of his cramped, rickety wooden barracks room when he heard a
faint knock on the door. He smiled and opened it.

 
          
Standing
in the doorway, wearing a dark gray flight jacket, flight suit, and insulated
winter flying boots just like his own, was his partner, Dave Luger. Luger had
his hands thrust in his pockets and was scuffling the sand around with his
toes.

 
          
“Ready
to go, Muck?” he said, still poking around in the dirt.

 
          
McLanahan
glanced at his watch and looked at the sky. “Oh-seven- hundred hours,” he said.
“You’re a bit late, aren’t you?” Luger checked his watch and shrugged.

 
          
“What
difference does it make?” Last two days, there hasn’t been any reason to be on
time. All we’ve been doing is sitting on our behinds.”

 
          
McLanahan
had turned to pick up his jacket, which was slung over the bedpost behind him.
“Wait a minute,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “What am I hearing? Is
this the same guy who has been bitching for the past two months about the hours
we’ve been putting in? The same guy who every night for three weeks threatened
to strangle me for arranging it so he’d be brought here to Dreamland?”

 
          
Luger
fell into his ever-familiar gunfighter’s slouch. “Yeah, well, I still don’t
have fond memories of Lieutenant Briggs barging in on me while I was with
Sharon
to say that I was going to be taking a
little trip. And having that prima donna Anderson on my ass fourteen hours a
day hasn’t been any picnic either. But ever since those B-ls lit out for
Ellsworth two days ago, it’s been boring as hell. I mean, what the hell is
there to do if you’re not in the simulator or out on a training jaunt?”

 
          
“Not
a damn thing,” McLanahan said as he closed the door to his room and locked it.
Actually, that wasn’t true, he thought. He
had
been able to spend more time with Wendy these past couple days, and was
thankful for that. It was the first real chance he’d had since she came back
with the other civilians working on the project to get past that stony facade
she put up and find out what she was about. Before these past two days, even in
their late-night study sessions together, she had stayed detached. Now, after
spending some relaxed hours with her, he understood better the reason for her
detachment. She wanted first and foremost to be accepted as a professional, as
someone who could step into
any
man’s
role and perform with maximum efficiency. He guessed she’d had a tough time in
this male-dominated Air Force world, and that concealing a part of herself—the
part that was soft and feminine—had after a while become an automatic defense.
He couldn’t help comparing her to Catherine, whose privileged upbringing had
made her much more self-assured and outgoing and yet . . . well, less
interesting . . .

 
          
“Hey,
Pat,” Luger said as they walked to the briefing shack, “why do you suppose
Elliott called a meeting this morning? Think he’s going to give us our walking
papers?”

 
          
“Maybe
it’s more than that.”

 
          
“What
do you mean?”

 
          
McLanahan
continued walking. They were nearing the women’s barracks. “Well, it seems to
me that we wouldn’t have spent all that time testing out that equipment on the
Old Dog, and then installing equivalent systems in those B-ls, if the B-ls
weren’t being used for
something.
Maybe something big. Take that terrain cartridge we were testing before the
B-ls left. Well, Bill Dalton, the nav for Zero-Six-Four, said something about
it corresponding to an area over the
Sarir
Calanscio
Desert
in
Libya
. That’s complete bull. Those planes will be
flying through the mountains.” Both men were silent for a moment, lost in their
own thoughts. “Hey, there’s Wendy and Angelina,” Luger said, spotting the two
coming out of the women’s barracks. He waved to them and the four joined up a
few yards short of the briefing shack.

 
          
“I
see we’re not the only ones who’re late,” Angelina Pereira said with a smile.
She was the only one of them not wearing a flight suit.

 
          
Nice
lady, McLanahan thought to himself. Nice
and
tough. She reminded him a little bit of his mother. He nodded toward Luger.
“Dave here had to get his beauty sleep. Good buddy that I am, I decided to wait
for him.”

 
          
Wendy
looked worried. “Pat,” she said, “do you have any idea why General Elliott
called us together?”

 
          
McLanahan
shrugged. “I expect we’ll find out soon enough,” he said as he opened the door
to the shack.

 
 
          
***

 
          
General
Bradley Elliott removed a pair of sunglasses and looked out over his captive
audience. He wore a thick green nylon winter-weight flight jacket over a set of
standard starched Air Force fatigues with subdued green and black name tags, a
subdued Strategic Air Command patch, and subdued black stars on his collar. He
propped himself on a desk at the front of the room and twirled his sunglasses
absently.

 
          
“Well,
I’m glad that all of you have seen fit to put in an appearance,” Elliott said.
“Even if a bit late.” He looked at the four stragglers who had just entered the
room.

 
          
“I’ve
called all of you here,” he said, “to provide some explanation for the events
of the past two days, and of the past few months. As most of you have surmised,
the improvements and modifications we made in those two
Excaliburs
were not implemented on the off chance that they might
prove of use at some future date. They were carried out with a definite purpose
in mind.”

 
          
Elliott
paused to stare at the faces around the room. Directly in front of him, Colonel
James Anderson sat straight in his chair. To his immediate left was Lewis
Campos, his forehead shiny with sweat. At the back of the room, Patrick
McLanahan sat staring at the floor, his legs straight out.

 
          
“Ladies
and gentlemen,” Elliott said, “approximately twenty-five minutes ago two
B-ls—the B-ls you’ve worked on these past few months— took off from Ellsworth
Air Force Base. They are launching as part of a possible strike force on an
area in the
Soviet
Union
.”

 
          
There
was a collective gasp from those in the room. McLanahan felt suddenly sick to
his stomach. He looked over at Luger and shook his head.

 
          
“I
said
possible.
They’ll orbit in
narrowing circles near
Russia
while the politicians still work for a
negotiated solution. If there isn’t one, the B-ls go in . .

 
          
“A
negotiated solution to
what?”
Lewis
Campos asked, his voice rising above other whispered comments.

 
          
“Quiet
down, people,” Elliott said, opened his locked briefcase, extracted a series of
photographs and handed them to Colonel John Ormack, who passed each to his
left.

 
          
“The
photographs that are being circulated,” Elliott went on, “show a facility that
has been built in the
Soviet
Union
in a small
fishing village called Kavaznya. The Soviets have built an actual
anti-satellite and antiballistic missile laser there. In the past few months
they’ve been
using
it.”

 
          
“On
what?” Dave Luger asked as McLanahan studied the satellite reconnaissance
photographs. “There hasn’t been anything in the news—”

 
          
“And
there won’t be,” General Elliott interrupted. “Injecting public sentiment into
the situation could make it more volatile than it already is. The fact of the matter
is that the Kavaznya laser has proved very effective. Although the Russians
haven’t even admitted the presence of the weapon, it has destroyed over five
billion dollars worth of American equipment and has taken thirteen lives.”

 
          
“My
God,” Luger said, reflecting the collective sentiment.

 
          
“Our
job is nearly finished here,” Elliott continued. “I’ll want all of you to stand
by for the next few hours in the unlikely event SAC command needs your input on
some aspect of the B-ls’ gear that may not be functioning correctly, but after
that you’ll be free to go. I’ve already had the Transportation office arrange
your flights back. You also are ordered not to reveal a word of what I have
just told you. You all have top-security clearance, and I felt you were entitled
to know what you’ve been a part of. Knowing should also make you acutely aware
of the necessity of not revealing to anyone ever what you have been doing
here.”

 
          
Suddenly
the door to the briefing shack was thrown open and Lieutenant Harold Briggs hurried
into the room. He halted two steps away from Elliott. “General,” Briggs said,
“we’ve got a problem.”

 
          
Elliott’s
face turned pale. He noticed that Briggs was wearing his short- barreled Uzi
submachine pistol mounted on a shoulder harness, and that the harness had three
hand grenades clipped into it. “Hal?”