Battle Born

CHAPTER FIVE

Bullrider, this is Avalanche, outlaw at zero-three-zero bull’s-eye, one hundred and twenty miles slowly descending from angels two-three-zero, speed three hundred and seventy knots, repeat, three-seven-zero. Right turn to zero-one-zero, take angels two-three to intercept.”

The pilot of the lead U.S. Air Force F-15C Eagle air superiority fighter, from the 366th Wing at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, started a turn to the northeast and keyed his throttle-mounted mike button: “Roger, Avalanche. Bullrider’s in the turn.” He took a quick look out the right side of his canopy to be sure his wingman in another F-15 fighter was starting his rejoin.

Pretty damned strange, the lead F-15 pilot thought. The B-1B bomber crews must be playing it safe, or else they were getting soft. The Nellis range complex was open, and they were within the time allotted for the fighter intercept exercise, so this must be their target. But what was he doing just starting his descent to low altitude? Most bomber guys were already low, or at least screaming hell-bent for the ground whenever fighters were nearby. He was going slow too — way too slow.

These Guard guys from Reno were supposed to be the most successful, most outrageous bomber unit in the business. Their recent accident, the pilot surmised, must’ve softened them up a little. The 366th Wing was an Air Expeditionary Wing, with a mix of several different aircraft — F-16s, F-15s, F-15E bombers, KC-135R tankers, and B-1B bombers — all located at one base, ready to deploy and fight as a team. The fighter guys from Idaho knew bomber tactics, knew what a Bone could do. So far, these Guard guys from Nevada weren’t showing them much.

“Hey, lead, what do you think?” the F-15 pilot’s wingman radioed.

“I think we got a faker,” the lead pilot responded immediately. They were thinking alike, the way a good hunter-killer team should. He had heard of Air National Guard guys decoying themselves by bringing their KC-135 aerial refueling tankers all the way to the range complex and having them fly the inbound strike routing, buying precious time for the bombers to sneak in low at very high speed to try to make it to their targets. “Avalanche, Bullrider. You got any low targets entering the range complex? We think we got a faker up high.”

“Stand by, Bullrider,” Avalanche, the controller aboard the E-3C AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) radar plane, replied. There was a long pause; then: “Bullrider, this is Avalanche, we’re clean. Negative contact on any other bogeys at this time.”

That wasn’t definitive. A B-1 was hard to see when it was flying really low; visual contour at two hundred feet above the ground or lower would make it tough to detect at long range even for a skilled crew in an AWACS radar plane. This guy up high couldn’t be a bomber, flying this high and this slow, so the real targets still had to be out there. But killing a tanker was worth a lot of points too, and a tanker in the hand was almost as good as two bombers in the bush. “Copy, Avalanche. We’ll continue with this intercept.”

He didn’t need his radar to make the intercept, and the longer he kept his radar off, the closer he could get to his target without being detected. He knew the B-1B had a tail-warning radar system, called TWS, that would warn of any aircraft or missiles behind them, so as long as he stayed in front of the B-1 with his radar off, he could approach without being detected.

“Roger, Bullrider. Bogey’s at your one o’clock, eighty miles low.”

The lead F-15 pilot interrogated the unidentified aircraft, checking for any friendly IFF — identification friend or foe — signals, and found none. The rules of engagement, or ROE, for this mission profiled an area defense scenario, which meant that any aircraft not electronically identified using IFF or radio was to be considered hostile, even if many miles away from the defended area. Inside sixty miles — the approximate maximum range of a standoff weapon dropped from high altitude — he was authorized to “attack” any unidentified aircraft.

“Bullrider, lead, take the high CAP,” the F-15 pilot said, directing his wingman to climb up to the “perch” so he could watch the entire area for more attackers. He knew that B-1 bombers always attack in packs, usually two or three bombers in trail offset a few miles or a few seconds so they cross the target area with at least ten seconds’ spacing. “I’ll make the first pass, climb up to the perch, and then you can take a shot. Keep an eye out for trailers.”

“Two,” the wingman acknowledged, starting a fast climb.

The bogey was increasing its rate of descent, but still not traveling anything near the speed of a B-1 bomber. It had to be a decoy. “Avalanche, bogeydope,” the lead F-15 pilot called.

“‘Clean,’ Bullrider. Only bogey is at your one o’clock, sixty miles.”

It didn’t seem likely, but it could be that the Air National Guard B-1 guys were just taking it nice and easy. This was only the first day of their annual evaluation — they had another two weeks of this coming up. Maybe it was better to get the feel for live air-to-air combat the first day before…

“Bullrider, Bullrider, Avalanche has a new bogey, three-three-five degrees bull’s-eye, range seven-zero miles, low, airspeed three hundred!”

There it was! the F-15 pilot said to himself. No wonder the AWACS guys couldn’t find it — it was flying only three hundred knots, about half its normal speed. To reduce clutter on their radarscopes, some AWACS radar technicians “squelched” out targets flying below a certain speed. “I’ll take that bogey, Avalanche!” the F-15 lead pilot radioed.

“Roger, Bullrider, left turn heading three-five-zero, bogey will be at your two o’clock, fifty miles.” That was a close one — the B-1 almost got by him as they chased down the decoy up high. “Descend to angels ten, advise when you can maintain visual terrain clearance.”

“I’m VMC, Avalanche.” “VMC” meant that the F-15s were in “visual meteorological conditions”—they could visually see the ground. The AWACS controller could concentrate on setting up the intercept instead of keeping his fighters from hitting the ground. “Bullrider flight, rejoin on me.”

“You want me to check out the high bogey, lead?” the second F-15 pilot asked.

“Negative. I need you to look for trailers.” Because B-1s always fought in groups, the second and third aircraft awere usually within ten miles of the leader. Killing a KC-135 tanker was too easy. Although they certainly got points for shooting down a valuable force multiplier like a tanker, they’d lose many more points if they allowed a bomber to sneak by and bomb a defended target.

“Roger.”

“Twelve o’clock, forty miles,” the AWACS controller reported. “Be advised, bogey is faded. Losing him in ground clutter. Come left twenty degrees to stay out of his TWS.” But only a few vectors later, the AWACS plane was having trouble staying locked on. “Bullrider, bogey faded. Last solid contact twelve o’clock, twenty miles.”

“Roger, Avalanche.” He interrogated the target for an IFF signal — nothing. It was a bad guy, all right. High-speed bombers like the B-1 could elude even an AWACS radar plane the farther they got, so the lead pilot activated his APG-70 look-down, shoot-down radar and immediately locked it onto the newcomer. Got him! “I’m tied on radar, in high trail. Let’s hook this sucker.”

“Two!” the wingman crowed. Killing a B-1 bomber, especially with a short-range heat-seeking missile or with guns, was second only in excitement to killing a B-2 stealth bomber. B-52H Stratopig bombers, the few that were left, were such easy targets that they were left for the newbies, the new guys in the squadron, or killed with a BVR (beyond visual range) missile shot. Even chasing down and killing a cruise missile was considered poor sport these days.

Sure enough, the minute he locked in the low-flying plane with his radar, it sped up. Too late, chumps, the lead F-15 pilot thought.

Procedure for max kill points: maintain radar contact through at least two defensive maneuvers, close within twenty miles, shoot a radar-guided missile, maintain radar lock through one more defensive maneuver, close to within eight miles, shoot a heat-seeking missile, close to within two miles, make a cannon shot, then make and announce a visual ID within one mile. Piece of cake. Easy…

… Yeah, too easy! He was within twenty miles and had this guy locked up for almost thirty seconds, and he hadn’t made one maneuver yet. His threat-warning receiver must’ve been screeching in his ears loud enough to deafen him! The lead F-15 pilot noticed the target had accelerated, but only to about four hundred knots — at least two to three hundred knots slower than he expected! What in hell was going on?

“Bullrider, this is Avalanche,” the AWACS radar controller announced, “bogey number one has started a very rapid descent, heading down at thirty thousand feet per minute and accelerating to five hundred knots… he’s descending below angels ten, now at six hundred knots. He’s crossing over to your seven o’clock, forty miles. Suggest you break off your attack on bogey two and take vectors to bogey one.”

Son of a bitch! the lead F-15 pilot swore into his oxygen mask. They did a double switch — they put the faker down low, and they put the real bomber up high. He had to go get the bomber before it got to terrain-following altitudes — the B-1 was difficult to chase and almost impossible to get a radar lock on once it tucked itself deep into the valleys at treetop level. But the tanker was less than fifteen miles away — an easy target and a lot of points. Losing a tanker in a two-week-long battle meant the B-1 squadron couldn’t do a lot of their normal-length patrols.

“Billy, this is lead, you got me in sight?” the F-15 lead pilot asked.

“Rog.”

“You get the guy down low. I’ll clear off to the left and go get the bomber.”

It would’ve made more sense for the guy on the perch to go after the bomber, but bagging a B-1 was a better prize, and he was the leader. “Roger, lead. I’ve got a visual on you. You’re clear to the south.”

“Lead’s breaking left. Avalanche, this is Bullrider One, I’ll take a vector to bogey one. Bullrider Two is going to nab bogey two.”

“Roger, Bullrider.” There was a touch of irritation in the AWACS controller’s voice. It was a hazardous maneuver. His job was to bring aircraft together — preferably in a position where the good guy can kill the bad guy. It was not typically his job to separate aircraft. But he monitored the formation split, made sure the two F-15s were far enough away from each other as they maneuvered around to get pointed at their respective targets. At their combined speed, even twice the normal separation distance — ten miles each — gave them only six seconds to react to a collision situation.

The second F-15 pilot was a little miffed that he was given the “easy” kill, the tanker, but a kill was a kill. He’d get max points if he moved right in for a gun kill and didn’t waste any missiles — he didn’t even have to use his radar. As he pointed his fighter’s nose down, he picked up speed and closed the distance quickly. Man, that tanker was low! Those crews must be sweating bullets, flying below ridgeline level like that!

Finally, at four miles’ distance, he could see his quarry. Actually, he saw the tanker’s shadow first — big, slow, and highlighted against the dry brown rocky hills occasionally broken up by dirty white snow, it was easy. “Avalanche, Bullrider Two tally-ho.” The AIM-9M Sidewinder heat-seeking missile simulator he carried growled its lock-on warning. “Bullrider Two tracking heat.”

“Copy, Bullrider Two, good heater.”

“Rog. Withholding. Closing in for guns…”

“They took the bait,” Patrick said. He was watching the profile of the attack on his threat profile display, which showed all of the “players” in the range. “They broke off from Two-Zero and they’re going after the tanker.”

“Both of them?” Rinc Seaver asked.

“Yep… stand by. No, one’s going after Two-Zero, the other’s going after the tanker.”

“Aces, this is lead, looks like one’s after you,” Seaver radioed to Rebecca Furness on the interplane frequency.

“Roger. We’re heading for mother earth. Looks like our tanker’s had it, though,” Rebecca responded.

“We can’t let the tanker get nailed,” Rinc Seaver said on interphone. “We won’t lose Damage Expectancy points if he gets shot down, but…”

“But we lose a tanker,” Patrick said. “They might not want to play with us anymore if we keep on sending them out to get shot down.”

“Lock up that fighter air-to-air, Long Dong,” Rinc said. “Put him in rendezvous mode.” Patrick looked over at Rinc in surprise. Long reconfigured his attack radar to rendezvous mode, which was exactly like an F-16 fighter’s radar’s air intercept mode, and in a few seconds he had the F-15 Eagle locked up. The pilot’s Horizontal Situation Display now showed a set of cross hairs — keep the cross hairs centered, and eventually they’d smack into the fighter.

“Steering is good, Rodeo. He’s low and slow, closing in on our tanker.”

“Not for long,” Rinc said. He turned the bomber westward and cobbed the throttles to max afterburner.

“What’s the plan, Seaver?” Patrick asked.

“No one chases one of our tankers, sir,” Rinc Seaver said. He turned toward him, and Patrick could see his eyes dancing with excitement and evil. “No one messes with Aces High…”

It took only a few more moments. The tanker — a KC-135R Stratotanker, leaving a trail of black smoke several miles long as it struggled around the craggy hills — couldn’t maneuver very well way down here. It was almost like closing in for an aerial refueling rendezvous — the pilot felt like calling “Stabilized precontact and ready,” as if he was ready to move in and plug in for gas. Instead, he called, “Avalanche, Bullrider Two, visual contact on bogey two, a KC-135 Stratobladder, looks like California Air Reserves. Closing in for guns.”

“Roger, Bullrider,” the AWACS controller responded, “we copy your—” He broke off and shouted frantically, “Bullrider Two, Bullrider Two, pop-up bogey at your three o’clock low, low, low, range nine miles, airspeed eight-zero-zero, collision alert, collision alert!”

In a panic the pilot searched out the right side of his cockpit canopy. But before he could spot it, it was right in front of him—a B-1B Lancer bomber, wings swept all the way back, in what looked like a tight ninety-degree left bank. The F-15 pilot thought he could see the bomber pilots through their windshield, it was that close! For goddamn sure they were going to collide!

He thought about a quick snap-shot — just squeeze the trigger and hope to hit it — but survival came first. He hauled back on his control stick as hard as he could, then shoved in full afterburners. All he saw for a few seconds was the side of a mountain — and then his nearly blacked-out vision filled with blue sky. He kept the stick pulled back and his fighter’s nose aimed for blue sky for several seconds, not wanting to release the back pressure until he was positive he was away from the ground and the mountains and all low-flying mother-fucking planes. “Fighters were not meant for flying so damned close to the ground, not so close to the ground, not so close to the ground,” he kept on muttering, like a mantra.

It was an illegal maneuver. It had to be. His range to the tanker was less than three miles, seconds before claiming a gun kill. Because this was the first day of the exercise, the ROE stated all opposing aircraft could close to no less than two miles, and closure rates were restricted to less than one thousand knots — no going nose-to-nose over the sound barrier. The F-15 pilot knew the rules, knew the bomber pukes busted the rules, knew he could get the AWACS radar controller to document the entire violation…

… but he didn’t call “knock it off” and report the violation. Once he leveled off — at eighteen thousand feet, high enough that he knew he wouldn’t hit any mountains — he had to laugh and, yes, tip his hat to the fucking bomber pukes. They saved their tanker and chased the United States’ most advanced air superiority fighter right out of the damned playground. By the time he got himself turned around, reoriented, and pointed back toward the players, the KC-135 tanker decoy had exited the range complex and was on his way home.

He was never, never going to live this one down.

“Hey, lead, we got you drifting out to eleven miles,” Rebecca Furness radioed to her wingman on the inter-plane frequency. “You defensive?”

“That’s a big negative, Go-Fast,” Rinc responded. “Just had to chase some fighter pukes out of our range. Break. Pioneer One-Seven, this is Aces Two-One, tail’s clear, you are clear to exit the range direct Hokum intersection. Squawk normal and contact Joshua Approach. See you in the patrol anchor. Thanks for your help. We owe you a night on the town.”

“Pioneer Seventeen, roger,” the pilot of the KC-135R tanker replied happily. “Thanks for the pick. We liked flying in the dirt with you guys. Go kick some butt. We’re outta here.”

“Thanks, Pioneer,” Rinc radioed. “Break. Aces lead, you’re clear down the chute. We’ll keep your tail clear. You better drop some shacks, or don’t bother comin’ home. We’re right behind you.” On interphone, he said, “Okay, hogs: we keep our wingman’s tail clear, we drop all zero-zeros, and we don’t screw up. Keep it tight and lean forward. No mistakes.”

Patrick had seen it all happen right before him — he thought he was going to die. He didn’t know — didn’t want to know — how close they came to that F-15 Eagle fighter. It was close enough to see the pilot’s unit patches on his sleeve, see the collar of his flight suit turned up, see the kink in his oxygen hose as he looked out his big canopy and saw the big B-1 barreling down on him. Hell, it had to be close enough to hear that F-15 driver’s asshole slam shut as he saw his windscreen fill up with 400,000 pounds of Bone cracking the speed of heat. Patrick knew it, because he thought he’d heard his own asshole do the same thing!

He would find out exactly how close later from the AWACS guys and the Nellis range controllers, since they had all the planes and the entire fifty thousand square miles of bombing ranges fully instrumented and could re-create every moment of a battle in exquisite computerized detail. When someone is that close to death or disaster, you can feel it coming at you — you don’t need windows or radar or anything. In his eighteen-year career, Patrick had felt that feeling many, many, many times. They certainly busted the ROE big-time, and they probably came within seconds of creating one of the most spectacular midair collisions in the history of aviation. The tiniest of deviations — just a few seconds off, a few miles off, one extra turn, crossing east around a peak instead of west, a half-degree steeper dive or 1 percent more airspeed — could have had disastrous results.

“Center up, steering is good,” John Long announced. His voice boomed over the quiet interphone channel like a gunshot in a tunnel. “Forty seconds to ACAL, sixty seconds to my fix.”

“You see any brown streaks coming out that fighter’s cockpit, sir?” Rinc asked Patrick, his voice light.

“SA-3 at two o’clock,” the crew’s defensive systems officer, Captain Oliver “Ollie” Warren, announced, checking his electronic warfare threat profile display. “Coming from the target area. I’m picking up high PRF and intermittent uplink signals, but not aimed at us — he must be trying to lock onto our wingman.”

“Give ’em a shout, Ollie,” Rinc said. “See if we can’t divert their attention away from our wingman.” Patrick shrugged — pretty good idea, although it would be giving away their position. Warren manually activated the L-band uplink jammer. At this range, the jammer would be only marginally effective, and it would immediately tell the enemy the range and bearing to the new threat. He shut it down after only a few seconds.

It worked. The “enemy” switched from the missile-guidance uplink to a wide-area search, trying to find the newcomer. It didn’t last very long, ten seconds at the most, but that ten seconds could mean the difference between successfully dropping bombs and destroying the enemy, and getting shot down.

Seconds later Rinc and Patrick saw a brilliant sparkle of white-yellow lights in the desert ahead on the horizon, spreading out in a long, wide oval pattern — the unmistakable look of a stick of detonating cluster bombs. At the same moment, the SA-3 search radar disappeared completely. “SA-3 down,” Warren announced.

“Good shooting, guys!” Rinc crowed. Colonel Fur-ness’s crew obviously dropped its bombs close enough to the SA-3 site to score it as a “kill.”

The crew heard deedle deedle deedle in their headphones, and Warren announced, “Fighter at twelve o’clock, fifteen miles, looks like he’s heading down the chute after our wingman.”

“Go-Fast, this is Rodeo, bandit on your tail!” Rinc radioed to their leader.

“We’re on the rail, Rodeo,” Rebecca in Aces Two-Zero responded. “We’re lining up for the second release. Can’t maneuver too much.”

“You son of a bitch,” Rinc swore. “We’re going to fry his butt. Long Dong, we’re going to racetrack around back and you can get your ACAL and a patch on the second pass. We’re ten seconds ahead right now. If we do this right, we’ll lose about thirty seconds time-over-target. We’ll lose points, but not as many as we’d lose if our leader gets shot down.”

“Go for it, pilot,” Long said, but it was obvious he didn’t think much of the plan.

Seaver didn’t hesitate. He punched the throttles into max afterburner and turned sharply right to line up behind the lead F-15 fighter. “Lead, we’re coming up behind you,” he radioed to Furness. “Give me some S-turns so we can catch up. We’ll get those Eagle pukes off your butt.”

Meanwhile, Long switched radar modes on his APG-66 attack radar back to rendezvous mode and locked onto both the F-15 and their wingman in the other Bone. “Got them,” he said. “Twelve-thirty, eight miles, fighter’s at about a thousand feet AGL… range seven miles… six miles… five…”

“Tally-ho,” Patrick shouted, pointing out the windscreen. Rinc followed his gloved hand and saw the fighter, highlighted against the blue sky.

“Gotcha!” Rinc said. They slid through the sound barrier and rapidly closed the distance. “Knock knock, motherfucker…”

“Bullrider flight, you’re cleared to the perch,” the lead F-15 pilot said on his interplane frequency.

“Roger, lead. I’m at your six, moving up. Got you in sight.”

“What the hell happened, Billy? I didn’t hear you call out a ‘guns’ on the tanker.”

“I was three seconds from hosing the tanker and then the second B-1 popped out of nowhere and flew between me and the tanker,” the wingman explained. “I lost sight of both of them and had to bug out before I hit a goddamn mountain.”

Shit! Shit! Shit! the leader swore to himself. This morning was not going well at all. He was angry not only because his wingman failed to kill the tanker but because he couldn’t catch up with the first B-1 before it bombed its first target. He couldn’t see the B-1 down low, but he knew he’d been there — the sight of a bunch of cluster bombs detonating across the desert floor just a few miles in front of him was hard to miss. “Well, why didn’t you call KIO or record a violation?”

“Because… oh, fuck it, just because,” the wingman said. “I recorded a possible heater kill anyway. It was a gutsy move. They deserve the save.”

“Like hell they do,” the lead F-15 pilot shot back. “They deserve to get busted for doing a stunt like that.” But if the pilot on the scene didn’t register a violation, there was no violation — even if the AWACS airborne radar controllers or range controllers saw it. No doubt the bomber crew would get a stern lecture on range safety from the commander, but if no one called a foul, there was no foul.

A bat-wing symbol appeared on the lead F-15’s threat scope, but the pilot got no warning tone, indicating that he was being painted with friendly radar. He immediately dismissed the indication, thinking it was his wingman taking up his position on the perch again, covering his leader. “Avalanche, Bullrider One, moving into position on bandit one, record a heater track, now.”

“Copy, Bullrider… Bullrider One, bandit at your six o’clock low, five miles, closing rapidly. Bullrider, can you delouse?” That was a request for the wingman to try to identify the newcomer.

Low? His wingman was low? That meant the target on his threat scope wasn’t his wingman! Oh, shit! “Bullrider flight, you got that bogey? You see him?”

“Negative, lead!”

“Bogey one six o’clock, three miles… two miles, closing fast!”

“I got him, lead, I got him!” the wingman cried out. “He’s right under you!”

Not for long. Just as the lead F-15 pilot rolled right a bit to get a better look underneath him, the B-1 bomber, in full afterburner, zoomed up directly in front of him. The pilot instinctively rolled hard left and pulled until he heard his stall warning horn, then rolled out. “Billy, you got him in sight? You got him?”

“Screw that, lead! I lost sight of you! I’m lost wingman! I’m blind! I’m level ten thousand!”

“Bullrider Two, collision alert, snap right forty degrees now!” the AWACS radar controller shouted. The lead F-15 pilot had rolled up and right into the path of his wingman on the high perch. The second F-15 took immediate evasive action. It was just in time — the two planes missed each other by less than two hundred feet, without either pilot seeing the other’s plane.

The lead F-15 pilot mashed his mike button as he jerked his control stick over hard, waiting for the crunch of metal and the explosion he knew was going to happen. “Knock it off, knock it off, knock it off!” he shouted on his command channel. That was the signal to all aircraft to stop maneuvering, roll wings level, and assess the situation. He had lost complete situational awareness, and any maneuver he might make could cause an accident or death.

“I got you in sight, lead!” the second F-15 called, after he rolled out of his snap-turn. “I’m at your five o’clock, one mile. I’m climbing to eleven thousand.”

The near-miss rattled the lead F-15 pilot so much he had to drop his oxygen mask to keep from hyperventilating. Damn, what in hell was wrong with those bomber pukes? They used their aircraft like missiles, not giving a damn about peacetime safety-of-flight. Two near-misses within just a few seconds of each other — that was too much!

“I’m going to nail those sons of bitches if it’s the last thing I do!” the lead pilot shouted to himself as he snapped his oxygen mask back in place. No hot dog Guard bomber pukes are going to make any Eagle driver look like a putz!

At two hundred feet above the ground, Patrick felt safer now than he had for most of the flight in the Nellis range — he wasn’t accustomed to flying so close to other aircraft while on a mission, let alone “enemy” aircraft. He noticed he had pulled his shoulder and lap belts so tight that they hurt, but he didn’t even consider loosening them. Again, for the umpteenth time, he checked his ejection levers and ejection mode switches, mentally targeting the levers in case he had to go for them while they were upside down or pulling lots of Gs. This crew seemed hell-bent on making the worst happen.

Were they reckless? Maybe. Were they dangerous? Some might think so. But the question was — were they effective? Did they get the job done? So far, protecting their tanker and their wingman, the answer had to be yes. But at what price? When were these stunts going to finally catch up with them?

Rinc Seaver steered the bomber back around in a bootleg racetrack pattern, rolled back in over their lead-in point. Long got his altitude calibration, then took his initial fix and high-resolution patch of the target area. The bomb release — another Combined Effects Munitions cluster bomb attack, a few hundred meters beside where the other B-1 had dropped — was almost an anticlimax.

Were they effective at hitting their assigned targets? Definitely — but, again, at what price?

“I heard a ‘knock it off’ call, crew,” Patrick announced on interphone. “Stand by. I’ll be on the voice SATCOM. Everyone else toggle off.” Patrick got an acknowledgment from the rest of the crew, then dialed up the secure voice satellite channel. “Firebird, this is Aces Two-One secure.”

“This is Firebird,” Dave Luger responded. They authenticated themselves once again; then: “Hey, Muck, we just got a call from Avalanche, the AWACS controlling your Red force in the range. They relayed a safety-of-flight violation regarding your crew. Claim you busted the ROE by flying too close to the fighters?”

“They call a KIO?”

“Affirmative.”

“You get any radar data?”

“It’s coming in now… Yep, it looks like your guys flew within a half mile of one of the F-15s. ROE says two miles on day one. Avalanche passed along more radar data that says you did it earlier too, but the Red force recorded no violation.”

That was it, Patrick thought. A range safety violation was an instant bust on a predeployment exercise. If it was toward the end of a successful exercise, or if it was once at the beginning of an exercise, it might be forgiven — but not twice in one sortie. “Copy,” he said. “Ask if Bullrider still wants to play.”

“Stand by,” Dave Luger responded. A moment later: “Message from Bullrider flight reads as follows: shit yes we’ll play. Any ROE the Bones will comply with, they’ll accept.”

“Relay to Bullrider that the fight’s on, level three ROE,” Patrick said. “Anything else?”

“Yes, we’re monitoring something on Air Combat Command’s tactical comm network, an ‘all stations’ alert broadcast,” Luger replied. “We’re polling all our sources, but everyone seems to be shutting up and not answering the phones, just listening. We might hear it on CNN before we hear it from the DoD.”

“Okay,” Patrick said distractedly. They were fast approaching the second target complex. “I’ll call you back after we leave the range.”

“Copy. Sorry about the bust. Have fun. Firebird out.”

No, wait… sir, it’s not an invasion,” Secretary of Defense Chastain said in shock at the Pentagon reports he was hearing. “It isn’t troops crossing the DMZ—civilians are. North Korean civilians. By the thousands. And there’s no resistance from the South. All South Korean border posts are deserted. No response at all from North Korean border troops either. The DMZ is wide open and completely unmanned on either side. Hundreds of artillery emplacements, rocket launchers, tank traps, response routes, minefields — all deserted. On both sides.”

“What?” Martindale exclaimed. “It must be some kind of mistake.”

“I’ll get confirmation, sir.” But he stopped short. “Sir, I’m getting another report. This one’s from the Korean Central News Agency — that’s the official North Korean government bureau of propaganda. They’re broadcasting that riots have broken out all over Pyongyang and that Government House and the presidential palace are under siege. They are calling for support from the Army to help put down the riots. And wait, more reports… They say that the central radio and TV broadcasting center is also under siege. They’re broadcasting mobilization orders to dozens of active, reserve, and paramilitary units, including the two corps units set up to protect the capital.”

“That’s odd,” said the President. “Why would the civil broadcasting system be used to issue response and assistance orders? Why not use the military networks?”

“And why haven’t those units already responded to the South Korean attacks?” asked Philip Freeman, the national security adviser. “They must have seen those South Korean jets coming almost as soon as they left their bases, and certainly long before they even crossed the DMZ. That was almost twenty minutes ago. What the hell’s going on over there?”

Chastain put his hand up, listening intently; then he lowered the headset and stared at it blankly. “Arthur?” Freeman asked. “What’s happened?”

“KCNA just went off the air,” Chastain replied. “It reported that the government information bureau said the headquarters was being overrun by rioters and agitators, supported by deserting Regular Army soldiers. Then someone else came on a few minutes later and identified himself as a supporter of the new United Republic of Korea.”

“The what?” Martindale asked. “Is that a nationalist faction? An opposition group?”

“I don’t know,” Chastain said. “Never heard of it before. But they claim to be the representatives of the new United Korea. They claim that President Kim Jong-il has evacuated the capital along with several members of the Korean Politburo and his cabinet. They say he’s on his way to China to seek asylum.”

“This… this is extraordinary,” Martindale exclaimed. “I can’t believe this is happening. North Korea is simply… capitulating? The borders and checkpoints just disappeared?”

“It’s Germany all over again, sir,” announced Director of Central Intelligence Robert Plank as he strode quickly into the Situation Room, carrying a stack of reports and photographs. “Sorry I’m late, sir, but I had to wait for all the latest downloads and field reports. It’s true. Entire Regular Army, Reserves, and paramilitary units are deserting their commands and either marching on Pyongyang to join the rioters or moving south with their families and a few belongings. When they reach the Military Demarcation Line, they just keep right on going, because all of the South Korean checkpoints are wide open. Panmunjom, Kangseri, Kumhwa, Sehyonni, Sohwari — every one of the border towns has opened the barricades. All of the tank traps and artillery emplacements are still manned, but they’re simply standing by in place — there’s no attempt to stop, detain, search, or identify anyone. An entire army of spies could be crossing into the South, and nobody would know it. The minefields are being blown up in place—by South Korean soldiers. They’re clearing a safe path for anyone from the North to cross over.”

“What’s the status of our bases?” the President asked.

“All secure and closed up tight,” said Arthur Chastain. “However, the Korean-owned bases are wide open. They’re being used as relocation and refugee centers. It’s absolutely incredible. The South has simply opened its doors.”

“That’s right,” said Plank. “Route 1, Route 3, Route 43, Route 5—all roads and highways that cross the MDL are open. No border inspections, no searches, no identity papers required. The South Korean government’s already begun opening up relocation offices along the DMZ to assist North Koreans in finding relatives — it’s clear they had it all planned. They’re providing transportation away from the no-man’s-lands around the border areas and are even changing North Korean won to South Korean currency! It’s the most incredible thing I’ve seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

“I’ve got to talk to China,” the President said. “It’s urgent that I speak with President Jiang directly, right away.”

“State is working on it,” Chief of Staff Jerrod Hale called out in response.

The President shook his head in frustration. Jiang Zemin rarely spoke to world leaders on the phone and never initiated calls. Martindale, too, preferred face-to-face talks, but this was a crisis, and this cultural stigma against using the telephone was maddening. “Bob, what are the Chinese doing?”

“Sir, I know it seems extraordinary — but I don’t think they’re doing anything,” Plank replied. “All I have are the daily force status reports, but they all reported normal deployments and no unannounced troop or aircraft movements.”

“But what can they hit us with? What kind of retaliation can we expect?”

“Sir, there’s about a quarter of a million Chinese troops within one day’s march of the North Korean border, and those troops can easily cross into South Korea and overrun the capital within days — we couldn’t stop them if we wanted to without using nukes,” Plank said. “We’re trying to get a more precise status report now, but that could take a few hours. There are about a dozen rocket and artillery units that can launch an attack within moments, and another dozen with weapons that can easily reach into South Korea. The truth is, they can retaliate at any moment.”

“If we launch our planes or mobilize any troops, we’ll look like we’re participating in what’s happening,” said Freeman. “And if we don’t, they’ll get slaughtered if China or North Korea attacks.”

The President nodded. “We’re sunk no matter what we do — unless everyone holds fast and stays away from the red button,” he said. “I hope our words get to Jiang.” He thought for a moment, then said, “Transmit an order to all our forces: everybody stand by. We watch and wait. No aircraft lift off — not reconnaissance, not intelligence, not support, and especially not attack planes.”

“Mr. President,” Freeman said earnestly, “I strongly advise you take your command center airborne. That’s the safest place for you, and you can still keep in close contact with all your forces globally.”

“Will the Russians or the Chinese know if I depart Washington?”

“Yes… probably, after a time,” Freeman said, after glancing at Plank and getting a nod. “But that doesn’t matter. You should—”

“Then I’m staying,” the President said resolutely. “Unless we actually see ICBMs appearing over the horizon, I’m staying. That goes for the senior leadership as well.”

“Sir, you know that if the Russians launch an attack, all of our political and bureaucratic institutions will suffer greatly, even be wiped out,” Jerrod Hale said. “Congress is still in session; the entire leadership is still in town…”

“I don’t think the people will give a rat’s ass if the political and bureaucratic institutions get wiped out, Jerrod,” the President said wryly. “In fact, I think they’ll see it as a sad but welcome relief.” Then his tone grew serious. “But since you mention it, you’d better send a military aide over to the congressional leadership and let them know what’s happening. I’ll leave it up to them if they want to adjourn. But make sure they know I’m staying.”

“But, sir,” Hale protested, trying once more to convince his boss that it was not a safe move to stay, “the National Airborne Operations Center aircraft were designed and tasked to provide global communications in fluid emergency situations such as this. It is not a symbol of panic, desperation, aggression, or cowardice to use them.”

“It is to me, Jerrod,” the President answered. “Besides, I’m not going to run to the safety of the skies while the Vice President is in the middle of a nuclear fire storm. Now, since State hasn’t been able to get through, you see if you can get President Jiang on the phone for me — and see to it that the congressional leadership is up to speed about what’s going on.”

As his chief of staff got on the telephone, President Martindale’s eyes were on the banks of computer and TV monitors but not really watching them. CNN was showing a live broadcast from Seoul, which was little more than a cloud of black smoke on the horizon toward the site of a high-explosive rocket barrage and a chemical weapons attack. He had seen much worse. Then the focus shifted to the streets. They were filled with cars and people, but there was no sign of panic. In fact, it looked like the reverse. Surreal, that’s what it was. There was a military attack under way, but it was as if the crowds realized something else was happening — something long awaited.

Just then Jerrod Hale, phone in hand, shouted, “Mr. President! It’s the Vice President, calling from Osan!”

“Thank God,” Martindale said. He snatched the telephone out of Hale’s hand. “Ellen! Are you all right?”

“Yes, Mr. President, we’re all right,” Whiting replied. “We had a close call, but everyone inside the facility here survived. The fallout levels were low enough, so they decided to evacuate us.”

“Good,” he said. “We thought you didn’t make it. Information is coming out very slowly, in bits. Where are you? We’ll send someone to fly you out.”

“I’ve got at least a couple of hundred marines within a stone’s throw of me right now,” Whiting said, her voice cheerful. “I feel very safe. They can evacuate me out in one of those tilt-rotor planes any minute, but I’m not ready to go back just yet.”

“What? Why?”

“Mr. President, President Kwon is going to Pyongyang,” Whiting said. “He’s meeting with First Vice President Pak Chung-chu of North Korea, who apparently has been helping Kwon orchestrate this revolution for many months. Mr. President, the Communist government in Pyongyang, the entire Politburo, has fled the country, and the North Korean People’s Army has disbanded. Kwon and Pak are going to announce the formation of a new democratic government, headquartered in Pyongyang. The peninsula has been reunited, Mr. President. Korea is one. And I would like to be there when they make the announcement.”

Martindale sank into his chair. The reports Chastain had relayed were real. This was truly unbelievable. “Ellen… Ellen, how can you be sure it’s safe for you?”

“I guess I can’t, Kevin,” Whiting replied. “But I feel I have to go. I’m going to take all the marines I can in the tilt-rotor, probably twenty or thirty. Kwon and Pak are taking an enormous risk, far greater than me.” She paused. “Mr. President, this is an extraordinary opportunity for peace in Asia. It’s up to us to seize it. The two leaders plan on meeting in three hours in Pyongyang. I want to be there. I want representatives from China, Russia, and Japan to be there too. If we do this, if all six of the participants in the Korean split appear at once when the peninsula wants to reunify, no one can argue that this is illegitimate. What do you say?”

“I’m worried about your safety, Ellen,” Martindale answered. “But… of course. I’ll call Beijing, Moscow, and Tokyo and try to arrange for some representatives, the highest-ranking ones I can find willing to go to Pyongyang so soon after the nuclear attacks. But make sure you listen to the marines. If they think it’s unsafe, if they can’t guarantee your safety, I want you out of there.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. This is going to be wonderful. I can feel it.”

“Maybe. But things are still explosive over there, Ellen. Remember, this revolution is still only hours old. Don’t take any more chances. There’s plenty of time for announcements and proclamations and photo ops when things are calmer.”

He heard the line go dead abruptly. Another thrill of panic shot down Martindale’s spine, and he held the phone to his ear for several long moments, hoping she would come back on the line.

Then he hung up. “She’s going to Pyongyang,” he said.

“What? Pyongyang?” Plank exclaimed. “The capital of North Korea? Why? Has she been captured? Is she all right?”

“She sounds all right,” the President responded. “In fact, very much so. And apparently there is no North Korea anymore. The Politburo has fled the country, and the army has disbanded.”

“There is no way we can verify that, sir!” Plank insisted. “Just because South Korean planes are freely flying over the North and they’ve opened the borders doesn’t mean the North is safe for foreigners to travel, let alone the Vice President. It’s too hazardous!”

“Sir, we wouldn’t let the Vice President go to Disneyland without adequate preparation by an advance team,” the chief of staff reminded the President. “We should at least try to postpone this. One day. Twelve hours. It’ll give military intelligence a chance to look the place over first.”

“I hear you,” the President said, “and I agree one hundred percent. But events are moving too fast. President Kwon is on his way to Pyongyang right now, and he’s going to stand right beside the vice president of North Korea and make the proclamation that will stun the world. We need to be part of it. Ellen accepts the risk, and I”—he swallowed hard—”and I accept the responsibility.”

To Secretary of State Jeffrey Hartman, he said, “Jeff, Ellen says Kwon and Pak are requesting representatives of Russia, China, and Japan at the announcement. Make some calls and find out if they’re interested.”

The United Republic of Korea. United Korea. Despite a few apparently knee-jerk rocket launches, it really was virtually a bloodless birth: the people throwing off the shackles of communism that had left them ostracized by the rest of their country — and by the rest of the world. First independent Taiwan, now United Korea. What a way to start the new millennium!

But the wild card was still China. Would they stand aside and watch their Communist brothers vanish before their eyes? Would they launch the massive attack everyone had long feared they would?

“Jerrod.”

“Sir?”

“Alert the media. Address to the nation in thirty minutes, from the Oval Office.” He took a deep breath and said, “I’m going to announce my support of the United Republic of Korea.”

Aces, Two-Zero is defensive, triple-A at T3,” Rebecca Furness, who was now dropping on their second target, said on the interplane frequency just as Patrick switched back to normal radio.

“What d’ya got, Go-Fast?” Rinc radioed.

“Big-time concentrations of triple-A north of T3,” Rebecca said. “We had to scram west.”

“Time for an airshow, boss,” Rinc said on inter-plane. “Aces Two-Zero, how about airshow north plus three minutes, repeat, airshow north plus three.”

“No way,” Furness responded. “Just do the run and do the best you can with the threats. We’ll be behind you to try again.”

“Beck, they’ll be expecting attacks from the same axis as before — we can’t give it to them,” Rinc said. “Airshow north plus three. That’s plenty of room, and the range is ours.”

There was a slight pause; then: “All right, Rinc. If you don’t have a visual on us by three, scram east, I’ll go west. Don’t screw this up, Seaver!”

“Penetrate, decimate, dominate,” Seaver said. “Kick ass, Beck!”

“Steering’s good, Rodeo,” Long said, after quickly entering several commands into his nav computer.

“What’s the plan, guys?” Patrick asked. “What’s an airshow?”

“You’ll see, General,” Rinc replied. “Just keep the bad guys off our butts, Ollie. Here we go.” Seaver pushed the throttles into full military power, moved the wing sweep handle forward to thirty-six degrees, then started a steep climb and a fast turn toward the new destination coordinates.

Patrick had had the Nellis range crews set up a difficult nest of several antiaircraft artillery emplacements near the last planned gravity bomb target. He put so many ZSU-23s and dual 57-millimeter radar-guided guns near the target that even a B-1 going supersonic couldn’t survive overflying the target. That was the purpose: to see if the crew would alter their tactics, and if so, what they would do next. Patrick could see that Rinc had offset them far to the east of their planned track, well away from the last target. They were passing twenty thousand feet and going higher.

“We’re getting kinda high for some of the big threats out here, aren’t we?” Patrick asked. If they stayed up this high for much longer, some of the long-range strategic surface-to-air missiles could “kill” them with ease, and at this speed and angle-of-attack, they couldn’t maneuver very well. They were flying up high, obviously, to stay away from the triple-A threats that could kill them if they stayed low — but this was getting ridiculous. They were off course, off time, off altitude…

“SA-3 in search, twelve o’clock, forty-five miles,” Ollie reported. “SA-10, three o’clock, fifty miles.”

“We need to get the nose down, pilot,” Patrick warned him. “We’re naked up here. Airspeed’s dropped below four hundred, AOA is eight. What’s the plan?”

“Bandits twelve o’clock, forty miles and closing…”

“You got it, General,” Rinc said happily — and then he pulled the wing sweep handle back to sixty-seven point five degrees, rolled the Bone inverted, and started a steep left diving turn, screaming for the ground.

“Mother of God!” Patrick shouted.

“Passing thirty for six,” Long said calmly. Checklist pages and tiny bits of dirt and dust were floating around them. As they accelerated earthward, Patrick started to feel the pressure squeeze him into his seat as the G-forces built up. They had reversed their direction of flight and had rolled back upright, speeding toward the second target complex in the opposite direction they had planned — exactly opposite of the second B-1 on this bomb run!

“Hey, our track will put us nose-to-nose with our wingman,” Patrick pointed out.

“We know that,” Rinc answered. “He should be off our nose at sixteen DME, low.” The crew kept the air-to-air TACAN system dialed in so they could tell exactly how far they were from each other. “Where are those threats, D?” he asked.

“SA-3 down, SA-10 four o’clock, search only… triple-A at twelve o’clock, fast-scan search. He’s getting ready to range on us. We’ve got bandits now at six o’clock, thirty miles and closing fast, coming down the ramp at us.”

“Wingman at fifteen… fourteen…” Patrick couldn’t believe how fast the air-to-air DME was winding down.

“A little hot, Rodeo,” Long said. “Give me a few seconds. Two should do it.” Seaver responded by honking the Bone into two very steep, tight turns, one to the left and another to the right, to lose a little time without pulling off any power, still with the nose aimed earthward. “That should do it. Ten DME… passing ten for six… looking good… pop when ready, Rodeo!”

“Boards!” Rinc shouted. Patrick hit the OVERRIDE switch and deployed all four spoilers up into full speed-brake position. They all slammed forward against their shoulder straps as they quickly decelerated. As the speed decreased, Rinc swept the wings forward to fifty-four degrees to slow down even more.

“Triple-A locked on!” Warren shouted.

“Five DME!” Rinc announced over interphone. “Got them yet, General?”

“Raise the nose a little,” Patrick replied, his head spinning. “A little more… contact, contact! Eleven-thirty, low!”

“Got ’em,” Rinc said calmly. They were head-to-head with their wingman, the other B-1 bomber! Aces Two-One was screaming earthward from above while Rebecca Furness in the lead Bone was racing supersonic across the high desert. Their flight paths intersected directly over the second target complex.

“Bandit six o’clock, twenty miles!” Warren shouted. “Triple-A lock, chaff, chaff!” Then, just as suddenly: “Triple-A down! It’s the fighter on our tail! They don’t want to shoot at their own guy.”

“Get your nose up a little, pilot,” Long said. “Twenty TG to bomb release. We level at one thousand!”

But the call was too late. Out the cockpit window, they could see Aces Two-Zero laying down a string of five-hundred-pound bombs. Bright flashes of yellow light quickly made way for an immense cloud of smoke and exploding metal. The desert erupted and boiled as if it had suddenly turned to sand-colored lava.

The second B-1 passed within one mile of Furness’s bomber, just three hundred feet underneath. Rinc was watching the first B-1 and was not paying attention to his altitude until the RADAR ALT LOW warning light and buzzer came on at eight hundred feet.

“Pull up!” Patrick shouted. Seaver pulled back on the control stick to level off, but not before the bomber careened through five hundred feet above ground — aimed right at the center of the detonation pattern. The crew felt a sharp jolt and a bouncing, pinging pebbly sound underneath the plane, like a car driving across a rough gravel road.

“Ten TG!” Patrick shouted. “We’re too low! Withhold!”

Long ignored him. At that same moment, the bomb doors swung open, and Aces Two-One released their own Mk82 bomb load on their own target two complex. Again, the desert rippled and undulated as the bombs ripped apart the enemy vehicles set up below.

The B-1 was in a steep climb and escaped most of the effects of the Ballute-retarded bomb attack. The F-15 pilot chasing Aces Two-One was not quite as lucky. He stopped his descent and turned away as he saw the second B-1 bomber heading right for him, but he turned directly into the path of the first Bone’s bomb fragmentation pattern.

“Avalanche, this is Bullrider One on GUARD,” they heard on the GUARD emergency channel. “Bullrider One is declaring an emergency for a right engine fire and right wing structural damage.”

“Roger, Bullrider One,” the AWACS controller responded on GUARD. “All Bullrider and Aces playmates, knock it off, knock it off, knock it off. Bullrider One, you’re radar contact, climb and maintain one six thousand, turn right heading one-five-three, vectors for the visual approach at Nellis, squawk normal. Bullrider Two, you are radar contact, squawk normal, say intentions.”

“Bullrider Two will rejoin on Bullrider One for a formation visual approach to Nellis.”

“Roger, Bullrider Two. Climb and maintain one five thousand, fly heading one-seven-zero, vectors for a rejoin, advise when holding hands with Bullrider One. Bullrider flight, push Red Five.”

“Bullrider flight, Red Five, go.”

“Two.”

That was not the last word: the bomber crews heard a curt “Aces, Falcon five-oh-one,” then the frequency was clear. No one in either bomber had to look up that “Falcon” code in their unofficial checklist pages — it was well known to most fliers. It decodes as “Kiss my ass.”

“You can kiss my ass — at least we’re not going home with a bent bird,” Rinc retorted.

Patrick wasn’t so sure — they were a couple of hundred feet low on their bomb release and could easily have fragged themselves with their own bombs.

“You’ve got steering to the anchor,” Long said.

Rinc rejoined with Furness a few minutes later, and they made their way to the refueling area, where Pioneer Seventeen, the tanker that had participated in their low-level penetration charade, was waiting for them. They topped off their tanks, the tanker departed safely, and the two bombers settled into their orbits to wait for targets of opportunity.

“So what do you think, General?” Rinc Seaver asked.

“I think I’d hate to see the underside of this plane after we land,” Patrick replied.

There was a long, uncomfortable pause on interphone. Finally, Rinc said, “I think we were okay.”

The first target-of-opportunity message, from the SATCOM text terminal, came in a few moments later, and Rebecca’s crew broke off and took it, leaving Rinc’s sortie in the holding pattern. Patrick got a call on the SATCOM secure voice channel several minutes later: “Go ahead, Amarillo. How did Aces do?”

“Shack — no problem,” David Luger responded. “We heard about the F-15 getting fragged too. The commander of the 366th at Mountain Home wants some butts.”

“He might get some.”

“Roger that. Listen up, Muck. We got some shit happening in Korea.”

“Korea? Did the North invade? I don’t believe it! During Team Spirit?”

“No, it wasn’t the North — it was the South,” Luger responded. “Do you believe it? South Korea invaded North Korea. Happened a little while ago. And get this: no massive invasion force. Apparently, the South has been spreading propaganda and stirring up shit in the North for months, maybe years. When the South started in, most of the North’s defense network was already shut down. The civilians that aren’t hotfooting it for the South are marching on the capital, getting ready to tear the place down. Looks like it’s a South-assisted nonmilitary revolution in North Korea.”

“Hol-ee shit,” Patrick exclaimed. “I never would’ve expected that. I always thought of the North as this big monolithic Big Brother ultra-Marxist dictatorship. Who would have thought the South could ever pull off something like that.”

“I don’t have all the details, but from what I’ve read, the North was going to implode under the weight of two million starving citizens anyway,” Luger said. “But here’s the real news, Muck: the North launched Nodongs and Scuds on the South. About a dozen ballistic missile attacks.”

“Any special weapons?”

“I’m talking only about special weapons, Muck,” Dave said somberly. “The Patriots got most of them, but a few fifty-KT nukes and a bunch of bio-chem warheads made it through. The South didn’t get hit as hard as everyone thought they might, but they got hit pretty good.”

“Oh God,” Patrick mumbled. He thought about the horrible loss of life, and he thought about the three rather small but dangerously significant nuclear conflicts in the past five years, and what this world was transforming itself into as his young son was growing up…

… but what he really thought about was Lancelot, his B-1-based antiballistic missile weapon system. If Asia was teetering on the brink of a major conflict, possibly a thermonuclear war, his air-launched antiballistic missile missiles might be the secret to defending American interests in that region.

Was he thinking more and more like Brad Elliott these days? Was that how Brad corrupted his career and ultimately destroyed himself, consumed with developing a response to a world crisis no matter what the cost? Patrick shook off those thoughts. Those were questions for another time, another place, perhaps with a therapist, with his wife, Wendy, and a glass of Banff-shire Balvenie in the hot tub. Right now, he had to put his plan into motion.

“Dave, I’ve got the first two Lancelot units lined up here,” Patrick said. “I would like to talk with Earthmover ASAP.” “Earthmover” was HAWC commander General Terrill Samson’s call sign.

“You got it,” Luger responded. “You going to terminate the pre-D now?”

Patrick thought for a moment, then replied, “Call out to Tonopah and tell the squadron to get ready to copy new deployment orders. In six hours, have them land at Groom Lake.”

“What!” Luger exclaimed. “You want the squadron at Dreamland?”

“Amarillo, I know in my gut that Lancelot is going to get a green light,” Patrick said. “From what the general told us, the 111th is going to get decertified and lose their bombers once word of this bust goes up the chain of command. Well, possession is four-fifths of ownership. I’ve got first dibs on the B-1Bs, and I’m taking them to Dreamland. You say we’ve got two kits ready to install and two more kits on the way — I’m going to install them, starting tonight. Clear out Foxtrot row for seven Bones, have the Support Squadron get some TLQs ready, and have Engineering stand by to start installing Lancelot.”

“You got it, Muck,” Dave Luger said happily. “Messages going out as we speak. I should get security clearance to recover planes within the hour. Hot damn! We’re either going to get kicked in the ass or get us a bomb squadron tonight. Firebird out.”

Patrick switched back to normal interphone and keyed his mike button: “D is back up, crew. SATCOM voice available again. Listen up, crew. We’re going to divert to a different anchor. Colonel Long, I’ll give you some coordinates to plug in.”

“Is the pre-D over?” Rinc asked.

“For now,” Patrick said. “I’ve got a reason for doing all this. If you show me something, I’ll let you all in on it.”

“I knew there was something else going down!” Rinc exclaimed. “I knew this was no ordinary pre-D. What are you planning, General?”

“Stand by,” Patrick said. He recited a series of new navigation coordinates for Long, verified them carefully, then said, “Okay, crew, listen up. Pilot, first, notify Two-Zero that you want them to stay at this orbit point after they get done until we come back and get them. Call Los Angeles Center and get them their own Mode Three code.”

“We going somewhere without our wingman, General?”

“Just tell them,” Patrick ordered. Rinc did as he was told.

“Okay, General, the steering is good to a new orbit point.”

“Roger.” Patrick had Seaver engage the autopilot. Then he set special codes in the Mode One portion of the IFF and activated Mode Two and Mode Four beacon codes. “Pilot, once you reach the reference point, give me a racetrack pattern on a southerly heading at best endurance speed, two minute legs, left turns at half standard rate. If L.A. Center or Joshua Approach gives you a warning message telling you you’re heading for a hot restricted area, I’ll give you a PPR number, but my crew should’ve already coordinated our entry. They may assign you a new Mode Three code, probably with a ‘zero-one’ prefix; go ahead and set whatever they tell you.”

“Entry? Entry into what?”

“We’re entering R-4808 North.”

“That’s not approved, General,” Long said. “That’s off limits. Way off limits. We can lose our wings and go to jail for busting that airspace.”

“Not today you won’t,” Patrick said. “Just do as I said, and hope that your ground crews set your Mode Two and Mode Four codes correctly or we’ll all be in big trouble.” The bomber immediately rolled into a turn — Patrick could feel the tension building.

“While we’re navigating to the new orbit anchor, I’ll explain what’s going to happen,” Patrick went on. “Here’s the situation: the Bones are going to act like tactical attack aircraft. No more straight and level bombing. Every target is a target of opportunity. Got it?”

“Cool!” Rinc Seaver exclaimed.

“I’m willing to give it a try,” Oliver Warren said. “It’ll be like the old F-4 Wild Weasel days — cruise around until a threat pops up, then go in after it.”

“Exactly,” Patrick said.

“We don’t have the equipment or the training for something like that, General,” Long remarked.

“We’re going to have to simulate it for now,” Patrick said. “I want to go through the motions and see what potential problems we might have. Okay: This morning we’re looking for ballistic missile launches. We can receive intelligence or reconnaissance data on the presence of mobile launchers in our area using radar planes like Joint STARS, and spot a missile launch using… other sensors, but today we have to spot the launches ourselves. Once you spot a launch, you need to cob the power and lead the missile’s flight path.”

“This sounds like total nonsense, General sir,” John Long protested. “It’s unrealistic…”

“It’s totally unrealistic, Colonel,” Patrick admitted, “but it’s the best we can do with a stock B-1B.”

“Does that mean there’re Bones out there that aren’t ‘stock’?” Rinc asked. “We got Bones that are set up for this kind of thing?”

“You don’t need to know that right now,” Patrick said. “Just play along, and we’ll see how you do. We’ll be in the anchor in five minutes.”

“What kind of threats are there in the area?” Oliver Warren asked.

“Good question — glad someone thought to ask,” Patrick said. “Most mobile ballistic missile launchers are protected by short-range mobile antiaircraft systems. You’ll get anything from triple-A to SA-4s to Rapiers to Hawks to Patriots — anything the bad guys might possibly have. Do whatever you think you need to do to get away from the threats. Any more questions?” There were none. The action started just a few moments later.

They received several warnings about entering restricted area R-4808, including one on the emergency GUARD frequency from Los Angeles Center and one from Avalanche, the Air Force AWACS radar plane that was helping the fighters hunt down the B-1s. After all the urgent warnings, Seaver and his crew — except for Patrick McLanahan — couldn’t help but hold their breath as the miles-to-go indicator clicked down to zero. The radios got very quiet as Rinc started his holding pattern — it was as if no one at Los Angeles Center or any other civilian air traffic control agency wanted to talk to them anymore. The interphone got extremely quiet too. They, like the air traffic controllers, knew they were doing something profoundly special.

Patrick had been listening on the secure SATCOM channel. He clicked the interphone mike button: “Missile launch. Behind us, fifteen miles.”

“I didn’t see anything on the screen!” Ollie protested.

“You may see something, you may not,” Patrick repeated. “Sometimes if there are bombers in the area close by, launch crews won’t use the radar and just launch using forecasts or old data. It makes for a less accurate missile, but if you’re launching nukes or bio-chem weapons, you don’t have to be that accurate.”

“Well, hell,” Long protested. “What good is this goatfuck if it’s that easy to pop one off? You put a Bone and a tanker crew in harm’s way, and the bad guys can still launch? Why not just lay waste to the whole battle area and be done with it?”

“You flew in Desert Storm, Colonel,” Patrick said. “The coalition forces were laying waste to Iraq — two thousand sorties a day — and the Iraqis were still launching Scuds. The answer is, it’s not so easy to find these mobile launchers. Joint STARS can track every vehicle from a hundred miles away, unless it’s hidden under an overpass or in someone’s barn or in an underground bunker. But we still have to try to stop the missile launches.”

“I guess you may need to have two planes in the orbit,” Rinc offered. “That way, you got the whole horizon covered.”

“I don’t get it, General,” Long pressed. “What good is it to wait for a missile launch? Sure, you take out the launcher, but the missile’s still on its way. I don’t—”

“I got one!” Warren suddenly called out. “No, it’s gone…”

“Where, Ollie? Where did you see it?”

“Four o’clock, thirty miles.”

Rinc immediately slammed the Bone into a tight right turn and rolled out after approximately 120 degrees. “You see anything on radar, Long Dong?”

“Stand by,” Long responded. After a moment of tuning and searching: “I’ve got several hard targets between thirty and forty-five miles, between eleven and one o’clock.”

“Try a patch on the largest ones first,” Rinc suggested. “You might be able to patch on all of them — wait! I see smoke! Eleven-thirty position, range… shit, range… hell, use thirty miles! I could use a laser range finder here — it’s tough estimating distance.”

“Got it,” Long said. “Three targets right around in that same area, within a few miles of each other.”

“Target all of them!” Rinc said. “Load all the targets. We make one pass with JDAM.”

“Sure would be a waste of a lot of bombs,” Patrick interjected, trying to make them think like a Lancelot attack crew.

“Then we try to see a launch from one of them and target that one,” Rinc said. “If we can’t get a bead on the right one, we’ll take ’em all out.”

“Sound good to you, Colonel?” Patrick asked.

“Affirmative,” Long said. “It’s the best we got until someone gives us a sensor made for this kind of mission.” Long quickly had the Offensive Radar System compute the GPS satellite-derived coordinates of the three objects on his radar screen, then fed the data into the Joint Direct Attack Munitions navigation computers. The bombing computers calculated the release zone for each target, computed a release track based on the time the internal bomb bay rotary launcher moved a new weapon into drop position, then fed the navigation information to the Bone’s autopilot.

“Steering is good to the release track,” he said a few moments later. “Stand by for weapon release in ninety seconds. Give me point nine Mach, pilot.”

Just as Rinc began pushing the throttles forward, Warren shouted, “Hey, I’ve got a search radar up… and it’s staying up too. Ten degrees right, twenty-five miles.”

“Drop on all three targets,” Rinc said. “We have no way of knowing which…” Suddenly, he pointed out the window and shouted, “Look! There’s a rocket lifting off, right in front of us! I can see it! Holy shit, I’ve never seen a rocket launch before.”

“Pilot, I want max afterburners now!” Patrick shouted. “I want you to aim the nose right at that missile until you can’t hold it any longer!”

“What? You want what?”

“I said, max AB now, and keep us pointed right at that rocket for as long as you can! Go!”

Rinc shoved the throttles all the way to the stops and swept the wings back to full. The Bone leaped forward like a meteor. The rapid acceleration and gradual but unrelenting pressure of increasing G-forces pressing Patrick into his seat felt great, like the power and exhilaration of a race car or speedboat. Rinc kept on raising the nose, and the G-forces kept right on coming. It was easy to think he was an astronaut, riding a column of fire into space.

But unlike a spaceship, the Bone couldn’t keep on raising its nose and accelerating at the same time. Patrick had started a timer when Rinc began the maneuver, and after only twenty seconds and twenty degrees above the horizon, the speed was already dropping off. In full blower, they might have to hit a tanker if they kept this up much longer. But about then, Rinc said, “Hey! The rocket is nosing over — it’s starting to descend.”

“That was just a test rocket — it burned out just to make sure it didn’t fly outside the range,” Patrick said. “Good job, Major.”

“What do you mean, good job?” Seaver asked as he leveled off and pulled the throttles to normal power settings. “What did I do?”

“Later,” Patrick said. “Okay, crew, let’s go back and get those launchers back there.”

“What? Now you want us to bomb those targets? Why didn’t we do that be—” But Rinc stopped his protests as the lightbulb finally popped on in his brain, and he turned back to the first target. At 32,000 feet, the altitude he had climbed to when he stopped the chase on the test rocket, the JDAM satellite-guided bombs could glide over fifteen miles. As fast as the rotary launcher could spit them out, the JDAMs dropped into space.

A few minutes later, after clearing off to the voice SATCOM channel, Patrick reported, “Good work, everyone. Three good hits, all within thirty feet, which is pretty good for JDAM. One bomb hit within ten feet — a shack. Only one was the launcher, but the other three were simulated maintenance and crew vehicles — legitimate targets in anybody’s book. Let’s head back to the orbit area.”

“Okay, General, what was that climb for?” Rinc asked as he started a turn back for the patrol anchor. “We gonna chase rockets now?”

“Just wanted to distract you a little.”

“If I can speak freely, General sir — bullshit,” he said. “You don’t just want to go after launchers — you want to go after missiles too! Tell us, General — do we have a weapon that can take down a ballistic missile? You got a weapon you can put on a Bone that’ll take down a ballistic missile?”

“No comment.”

“So you don’t work for the Air Force chief of staff, do you, sir?” Long asked. “You work for some R and D unit — maybe even for the supersecret squirrels down there at Dreamland, huh?”

“Time out, all of you. That’s the last we talk about any of this,” Patrick warned. “You say a word about this to anyone outside this airframe, and your life will turn into an endless maze of courtrooms, lawyers, investigators, and maximum security cells. Do you all understand?”

“Fine, fine, General,” Rinc said. “Now tell us: What do you have in mind? What’s the mod? Is this what Block G is going to do? You gotta tell—”

“Hey!” Ollie shouted as the crew heard a slow-paced deedle deedle deedle tone on interphone. He had to remember to key the mike switch in his excitement: “SA-4 up.” The SA-4 “Ganef” is a mobile high-altitude SAM, an older system, but still deadly to any aircraft flying higher than five or six hundred feet. “Better get our asses down, boys!”

“Not quite yet,” Patrick said. “Max range of an SA-4 is fifty miles, but lethal range is about twenty miles, so we should be safe — they’ll wait until we get well within lethal range. They can see us up here, but they won’t attack yet. Let’s make the SA-4 our next target. Ollie, keep on feeding us position data.”

“Okay,” Warren said. “Rodeo, right ninety degrees, target at thirty miles.” Rinc made a tight turn and rolled out precisely on heading.

“Right five degrees, twenty-nine miles… okay, dead ahead, twenty-eight miles.”

“Stand by.” Long moved his cursor control out the proper amount, then adjusted the gain and brightness controls to tune out the terrain features on the radar-scope. He then moved his cross hairs onto the largest radar return still on the radar image. “I’m going to take a patch. Left fifty, pilot,” he ordered. Rinc made the turn. With the target offset the proper amount, Long was able to take a high-resolution “patch” of it, then examine the magnified image. “There it is. Pretty good look at an SA-4 Ganef SAM.”

“Cool!” Warren exclaimed, straining over to look. It didn’t actually look like much — just a group of boxes — but on one box, the upraised missiles could clearly be seen. “Hey, that’s pretty neat.”

“I’ve got the coordinates loaded… bombing computers are programming JDAM… programming complete,” Long announced. “Okay, pilot, steering is good to the release point. Give me Mach point nine, right turn to the release point, stand by for countermeasures and evasive action.”

No sooner had Rinc shoved in the throttles to full military power and finished the turn than the threat-warning receiver issued another alert tone, this one a faster-paced deedledeedledeedle. “Missile warning,” Warren called out. “Pilot, stand by for maneuvers…” Then they heard another warning tone, and Warren watched as the left chaff dispenser counter clicked. “Missile launch! Break right!”

Seaver reacted instantly, yanking the control stick hard right and pulling, waiting until their speed had slowed to cornering velocity, then rolling out and shoving in full afterburner again to regain their speed.

“Should we go low?” Rinc shouted on interphone.

“Uplink down… height finder down… SA-4 back in search,” Warren said.

“If we descend, we’ll have to fly closer to the target,” Long said. “Stay up here. Center up, steering is good. Twenty seconds to release. If we get another launch, pilot, we have to stay wings-level until bomb’s away. Don’t turn until I tell you. Fifteen sec—”

Another warning tone. “Missile alert! Height finder up!” Warren shouted.

“Hold heading! Ten… doors coming open.” The rumble of the doors was not as loud as before, since with a JDAM bomb release from the rotary launcher, the bomb doors needed to open only halfway.

Another warning tone. “Missile launch!” Warren shouted, reading the blinking alert message on his multifunction display. “Chaff! Chaff!”

“Hold heading!” Long shouted. Ollie swore and hit the CHAFF EJECT button as fast as he could. Chaff bundles shot out of the ejectors atop the forward part of the fuselage, creating a larger cloud of radar-decoying metal slivers that ballooned the radar cross section of the B-1 several hundred times. “Bomb away! Doors closed! Pilot, scram left! Clear to descend!”

Rinc immediately started a hard turn and hit the TERFLW button on his autopilot control — but he didn’t wait for the computer to point the nose earthward, he rolled the B-1 nearly inverted. The terrain-following fail-safe fly-up system immediately pulled the B-1’s nose downward, and the Bone plummeted to earth.

Seaver jammed the throttles to idle and popped the spoilers to try to slow down while descending at the same time. He kept the bomber nearly inverted until the nose was over forty degrees below the horizon, then pulled the pitch interrupt trigger to temporarily disconnect the autopilot. But when he tried to roll upright, nothing happened. He shook the stick, pulled it in every direction — the nose stayed down, airspeed kept on decreasing, and the earth was rushing up to meet them in a hurry.

“Five thousand to level, pilot,” Patrick warned. “Check your attitude.”

Rinc pulled the pitch interrupt trigger all the way to disconnect the autopilot, then tried the controls again. Nothing. He shoved in full military power and tried to roll wings-level — nothing. He swept the wings forward right to the airspeed limit “barber pole”—still nothing. No stick control at all.

#x201C;Four thousand!” Patrick shouted. “Pilot, roll out!”

“Can’t!” Rinc said. “I got no roll response!”

“Three thousand!”

Patrick tried his own control stick — still no response. “We’re mushing… no response… we’re in a full stall, dammit… we got the nose down and mil power and we’re in a full damned stall… What in hell’s happened?”

“Two thousand!” Long shouted. “Seaver, you motherfucker, you got it? You got it?”

Rinc reached over with his left hand and hit the PREPARE TO EJECT switch. A yellow warning light illuminated over every crew station.

“Hey, what the hell?” Ollie asked. “Rodeo?”

“One thousand feet!”

Patrick frantically scanned the instrument panel, then reached down, not to his ejection handles, but to the center console, and flipped the four SPOILER OVERRIDE switches back to NORMAL. The airspeed immediately began to build. Seaver shoved the stick to the right, and the bomber responded. Barely five hundred feet above the ground, the B-1 bomber rolled upright, easily nosed skyward, and started a rapid climb. The abrupt pull-up from the steep dive squished them all into their seats, but the Bone settled into a fast two-thousand-foot-per-minute climb.

“Hol-ee shit!” Warren exclaimed. “What happened? Did we stall? Did we lose an engine?”

Rinc looked at Patrick. In order to start a rapid descent with the wings swept back, he had had to raise the spoilers — and to do that with the wings swept back, he had to override the flight control computers. But when he raised all four spoilers after rolling nearly inverted, he didn’t have the flight control authority or the airspeed to roll upright again.

“My fault,” Rinc said. Patrick shut off the PREPARE TO EJECT light. “I had switches out of position for TERFLW. I fucked up. The general found my spoiler switches out of position. He saved our asses.”

“Good going, sir,” Ollie said.

“Everybody relax,” Patrick said. “Climb back to the new patrol anchor. I’m clearing off to SATCOM. Everyone else toggle off.” He switched his interphone panel, then keyed the mike: “Firebird, this is Two-One, requesting scores.” No conversation this time: Patrick copied down a string of numbers and letters, cleared off SATCOM, then used a decoder document to decode the message.

“TOSS bomb score on the SA-4 site, guys: two-nine-five degrees, sixty-seven feet. Not too shabby. With a two-thousand-pound bomb, I’d call that a kill.” No one celebrated this time — they were still too stunned by the near-crash. “Now for the bad news: first SA-4 missed by three hundred eighty feet. We might have survived that one. Second SA-4…”

“Second?”

“SA-4s always fire in salvos of two, like a Patriot system,” Patrick said, “and each SA-4 battery has three launchers. Second SA-4 estimated miss distance was only one hundred twenty feet. With a two-to-three-hundred-pound warhead, I think we would’ve taken a major hit.”

“Well, it’s bullshit going after something like an SA-4 with a JDAM,” Ollie said. “We still gotta fly within its lethal range, even if we drop from high altitude — which exposes us even more.”

“Damn right,” Rinc said. “Give us a HARM or a Maverick or SLAM, and we can take it out without getting shot down.”

“Let’s wrap this up, folks — I think we’ve had enough for the day,” Patrick said. “Let’s head back to the first patrol anchor and pick up our wingman. Then I’ll give you vectors for our new destination.”

“New destination?”

“We’re not going to Tonopah.”

“We’re not? You get something on the SATCOM? Are we going back to Reno?”

“I did get some news on SATCOM, and I decided to change our itinerary,” Patrick said. “Get Two-Zero tied on radar.”

“What’s the story, General? Where are we going?”

“Somewhere over the rainbow, boys and girls,” Patrick said. “Somewhere over the rainbow. I just hope we don’t run into a wicked witch after we get there.”

The rejoin with Aces Two-Zero went off without a hitch, and soon both bombers were in close fingertip formation, visually inspecting each other for any signs of damage or hanging ordnance after their live releases. Each plane did a turn over and around the other, checking all possible sides. “You look clean, lead,” reported the copilot aboard Two-Zero, Annie “Heels” Dewey, on the secure HAVE QUICK interplane frequency. “Hey, where were you guys?”

“We can tell you — but then we’d have to kill you,” Rinc said, but there was no humor in his voice.

“Put a cork in it, Rodeo,” Furness said.

“Crew, I’m clearing off to SATCOM voice,” Patrick said. “Make sure you’re toggled off.” Patrick switched over to the secure satellite communications channel and reauthenticated with Dave Luger. “How are we coming, partner?”

“We’re ready and waiting, boss,” Dave replied. “Foxtrot row is ready. We’ve diverted Aces Three-Zero and Aces Three-One, and they’ll be arriving in your patrol anchor shortly. You can come in as a four-ship. We might have problems with the three planes that were supposed to deploy to Tonopah, however.”

“Problems?”

“Muck, half the world is hopping mad at you right now,” Luger said. “Air Combat Command has been screaming at the Nevada Air Guard and at us for the last hour, asking if your guys and you have gone off your collective rockers. They’re pissed about the ROE violations, and they’re ready and anxious to prosecute all of you for dropping live ordnance over R-4808 without prior coordination. They’ve issued orders to the three planes still in Reno to cease all operations. The Nevada adjutant general isn’t arguing with ACC.

“I tried to explain that Genesis was driving this exercise,” Dave said, using HAWC’s unclassified call sign, “but I don’t have nearly enough juice to put out this fire. General Samson wants to meet with the chief of staff and/or the CJSC, but with this Korea thing exploding, no one’s available to take a meeting.”

“Has General Samson talked with General Bretoff?”

“Affirmative,” Dave said. “Bretoff’s a nice guy, but this squabble is way over his head, and he’s swinging whichever way the wind’s blowing. I think if General Samson will run interference, Bretoff will run with the ball and let us play. I think this was just plain bad timing, Muck — everyone would be a lot less tweaked if the Korea thing hadn’t erupted.”

“Gotcha,” Patrick said. “I’m not really concerned about ACC right now — what I want is those planes.”

“Bottom line: I think all you’ll get are the planes that are airborne right now, my friend,” Dave said. “Might be better to leave it at that. We only have kits and weapons for two birds anyway, and funds for only two more. Get the four on the ground at Dreamland, and only the SECAF or higher can dislodge them. CSAF is already onboard, if your boys haven’t pissed him off too much.”

“We’ll see,” Patrick said. “Thanks, Dave. See you on the ground shortly.” He switched back to interphone. “Co’s back up, crew. I’m going to interplane freq.” He switched to the air-to-air frequency: “Aces Two-Zero, check.”

“We’re up,” replied Rebecca Furness in the other B-1 in the patrol orbit.

“Aces Three-Zero flight, check.”

The transmission was a little scratchy, but they heard, “Aces Three-Zero flight of two is up. Hiya, hogs.”

“Three-Zero?” Furness remarked. “What’s going on, sir?”

“You’ll see.” On the interplane frequency, he said, “Three-Zero flight, Two-Zero flight is in fingertip in the anchor at one seven thousand block one eight thousand. I want you in the block one-niner to two-zero.” Both flights verified their positions on air-to-air TACAN and radar, then coordinated the rejoin with Los Angeles Center. Once both formations were within three miles of each other, McLanahan had Furness declare MARSA—”military assumes responsibility for separation of aircraft”—with the other formation. The civilian controllers seemed very relieved to relinquish responsibility for this strange and unusual gaggle of military aircraft.

“Hey, you guys hear what’s happened?” the pilot in Aces Three-Zero said on the secure interplane frequency after they were safely in the patrol orbit. “War has started in Korea. They expect the balloon to go up any second.”

“I think the balloon has already gone up — right on top of us,” the pilot of Aces Three-One chimed in. “We’ve been getting messages from the command post and SATCOM messages telling us to put down back in Reno. They say our whole unit’s been violated. What’s the story, boss?”

“I’m going to let the general explain,” Furness said, “because I don’t fucking understand it one bit.”

“Okay, listen up, all of you,” Patrick said on inter-plane. “This is Major Seaver’s copilot. A situation has developed related to the Korea crisis, and using my own discretion under the authority of the chief of staff of the Air Force, I have ordered all of the 111th’s aircraft and deployable aircrews to another location. We’re on our way there right now. It’s imperative that you follow my directions exactly, or you’ll be shot down. Do you understand?”

“What’s going down, Go-Fast?” asked Pogo Lassky in Aces Three-One. “Is this for real? What does he mean, shot down?”

“Shut up and listen, all of you,” Furness said. “I don’t know what’s happening, but the general is in charge. Be quiet, pay attention, and do like the man says.”

“How’s your fuel level, number one?” Lassky asked.

“I’m not under duress, Pogo,” Furness answered immediately. Lassky’s question was a code phrase, asking in as natural a manner as possible if there was a hijacker or any trouble onboard. “This is for real. We’ll be on the ground shortly, and then he’ll explain everything. Now listen good.”

“Hey, are you a terrorist or something?” John Long asked. “Is this some twisted plot to steal our planes and bomb Canada or something?”

“It’s a twisted plot, all right,” Patrick said with a smile in his voice. “And yes, I am stealing the planes — sort of.”

“Is this part of the pre-D?” someone else asked. “Is this part of the exercise? Some kind of loyalty or anti-terrorist test?”

“No, this is not part of the pre-D, and no, it’s not a test of your loyalty,” Patrick replied. “You can refuse to participate in what I’m planning on doing. I will not order anyone to follow my directions. You can fly back to Reno. I’ll even invalidate the flying portion of the pre-D.”

“Say what?” Furness asked incredulously. “You’ll what?”

“The squadron did almost perfectly in the generation and predeployment,” Patrick said. “You didn’t do so well in the flying part. I’ve already received hate mail from Air Combat Command, the Guard Bureau, and several wing commanders, and I’m sure there are more waiting to chew some butt. But I’m willing to tell ACC, the National Guard Bureau, and the chief of staff of the Air Force that I unfairly influenced the flying portion to make it more difficult than the regs allowed. You keep all your Probability to Launch and Survive points, and you do the flying part some other time with some other evaluator.”

“Why invalidate the flying portion of the pre-D?” the pilot aboard Aces Three-One asked. “What happened? How did we do?”

“I don’t know,” Patrick said. “I haven’t tallied the reports yet. I’ll debrief you all later.”

“If we were doing okay, I think you’d tell us, sir,” another crew member said. “Why don’t you tell us the truth? We’re big boys.”

“Any objections, Colonel Furness?” Patrick asked on interplane. There was no response — Patrick decided Furness knew exactly what was coming and was afraid to countermand a full report in front of the troops. “Very well. All in all, the squadron did very well — I’d rate you an ‘excellent’ overall, in fact. Almost perfect in Probability to Launch and Survive points. Almost perfect… right up until Major Seaver taxied out of the parking area. After that, it all went downhill.”

“What…?”

“One documented ROE violation, three observed range safety violations, one observed weapons safety violation, one possible safety-of-flight violation,” Patrick said. “That gives Two-One’s sortie a zero Damage Expectancy score, which takes you down to eighty-six percent even if everyone else was absolutely perfect. You need an eighty percent to pass. If Two-Zero gets charged with a range safety violation for participating in that ‘airshow’ stunt with Seaver, they’ll get a zero DE score too. Two noneffective sorties out of seven is an automatic fail.”

“Stand by!” Rinc Seaver thundered. “What the hell do you mean, we failed? What right do you have to tell my fliers something like that? Who the hell do you think you are, McLanahan?”

“That’s ‘General’ or ‘sir’ to you, Colonel!” Patrick snapped. “And don’t give me this innocence routine. You all knew what the ROEs are for this ride, and you deliberately broke them — not once, but three times: twice with the fighters and once with your own wing-man! And you know damn well that you were two hundred and twenty feet low on that last bomb release — you could’ve killed us all. I’ve got verified radar data from the AWACS plane. We haven’t even landed yet, and I’ve already received safety-of-flight complaints! You just don’t push the envelope or bend the rules, Seaver — you disregard them. You’re unsafe.”

“So if I’m such a hazard and a risk, why did you have us do all that other crazy shit over R-4808?” Rinc asked. “You want us for something, don’t you?”

“Right now I want your planes,” McLanahan said. “I’ll decide if and which crews I want for them later.”

“And what if we decide not to go along with this cockamamy scheme of yours?” Rebecca Furness interjected. “Why in hell should we do all this and risk getting busted and maybe even handing our planes over to a terrorist or some wacko? We don’t know jack shit about you or what’s going on. Why should we trust you?”

“The answer is, you shouldn’t if you don’t want to,” Patrick replied. “Anyone who wants to can depart the anchor, get a clearance and a squawk from L.A. Center, and take your plane back to Reno. I’ll invalidate the flying phase of the pre-D exercise, and I’ll make sure you get full recognition for your outstanding job during the generation and deployment.

“I don’t know what will happen if you return to Reno, guys,” Patrick went on. “If you’re lucky, Major Seaver and maybe Colonel Furness will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll get to do your pre-D all over again after a six-month probationary period. But odds are, you’ll get decertified. The Nevada Air National Guard will lose its Bones, and it’ll take every ounce of juice from your congressional delegations and state lobbyists to get a military flying unit back into the state of Nevada, let alone to Reno.”

“So what happens if we go with you, General?” Furness asked.

“Maybe the same thing,” Patrick admitted. “The Air Force and the Pentagon can nix my entire plan. Then I get canned along with you and Seaver.

“But if the Pentagon signs off on my plan, by wintertime we’ll be flying the most high-tech warplanes on the face of the earth,” Patrick continued. “You’ll be placed on extended active duty for training in a new class of warplane. You’ll train a new generation of bomber crews with a mission unlike anything the world has ever seen before.”

“Well, shit, General,” Seaver said sarcastically. “When you put it that way, what’s the big deal?”

“This is the big deal,” Patrick said. “My program is ‘black’ right now. That means it’s so classified that everything and anything that comes near it is sucked into a bottomless, agonizing pit of security rules that at best will drive you nuts.

“If you all agree to this, your lives will change forever. Your personal and professional lives, and the lives of your family, friends, and acquaintances, will be under intense scrutiny for decades. You will be giving up most of your personal freedoms and liberties by agreeing to do this. I know many of you joined the Air Guard to escape the life of an active-duty career military officer — well, if you agree to do this, life in the active-duty force will seem like a vacation in Hawaii compared to what you’ll be subjected to. You’ll be jerked around as soon as you get on final approach to our destination — I shit you not.”

Patrick waited for several moments; then: “According to my watch, we’ve got twenty minutes of fuel left before we need to head back to Reno. That’s how long you’ve got to think about my offer. Ask any questions, talk it over with your crews or with the colonel. Then give me an answer. Once we get back to Reno, the decision will be made for you.”

“We don’t need to talk about it,” Furness radioed. “I’m still the commander of Aces High, and I make the decisions.”

“Not this time, Colonel,” Patrick said. “This decision affects each aviator personally. It’s not a squadron decision.”

“They’re in my planes — it’s my decision, General.”

“I said, no it’s not, Colonel,” Patrick snapped. “Each man and woman makes this decision on their own.”

“You don’t know shit about command, do you, General?” Furness said. “Listen up, hogs. The general’s right on one count: we blew it today. We all know the rules of engagement exist so the fighter pukes can have a chance of bagging us. We all know they’re bullshit. But we get paid to follow the rules, and we broke them because protecting our guys and doing the job means more than following some desk jockey’s safety rules. The pud-pounders have been looking for an excuse to shut down Aces High, and it looks like we gave them an excuse this morning. Fuck it. Our mission was BOTOTCHA, not playing by some stinking nice-nice rules. We put bombs on target and came out alive. We did our job.”

“I don’t know what game the general’s playing,” Rinc Seaver broke in, “but I got a peek at his super-secret project. It looks pretty cosmic, and it looks like it’s exactly up our alley. If we go back to Reno, we’ll probably be sucking wind. If we stay together and keep pushing forward, we might get a chance to do some pretty cool shit. We’re going for it. Everyone copy?”

“Two.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

“Colonel Furness is not being entirely straight with you guys,” Patrick said. “I don’t know what will happen to your unit if you return. Like I said, my guess is that the two pilots involved in the ‘airshow’ incident will be forced to retire or reassigned. Your unit will probably continue on…”

“And I don’t think the general’s been entirely straight with us either,” said Seaver. “The general has a hidden agenda: he wants our planes more than he wants us. We’ve been ordered back to Reno. If we land someplace else, we’ve violated a direct lawful order. We could all get shit-canned on the spot. But the general will end up with our planes, which is probably all he’s wanted ever since he showed up in town. Tell me I’m wrong, General McLanahan.”

“You’re wrong,” Patrick said. “My underlying agenda involves finding the best crews and the best planes for a new attack mission. I think you’re it. But my primary reason for coming to Reno was to conduct your predeployment inspection. Your showboating and the conflict in Korea has just sped up my timetable. It’s your hotdogging that’s put this unit in jeopardy, Major, not my agenda.”

“Thanks for the clarification, General — I think it agrees with what I just said,” Furness said. “We’ll leave it up to the crewdogs. Okay, hogs. Talk among yourselves, then report back and tell me if you’re in with me or out. If you want out, fine. No hard feelings.”

“Two’s in,” Rinc said immediately.

“Three’s in.”

“Four’s in.”

“That good enough for you, General?” Furness asked, a sharp edge to her voice.

“I guess it’ll have to be,” Patrick said. “Welcome aboard, guys and gals. Welcome to hell. Listen up carefully:

“We’re going to break out of this anchor and shoot an ILS approach at an undisclosed and uncharted military airfield. I have no doubt you’ll figure out which one I’m talking about shortly. As you might guess, security there is extraordinarily tight. Overflying the base is not allowed at any time no matter what the circumstances. We need to do this precisely so the security forces on the ground don’t encounter any surprises, because they have only one response to surprise aircraft overflying their location — they’ll destroy it. Plain and simple. They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again. Any aircraft, any person aboard — dead, if they don’t follow procedures. We are expected, so we’re not a total surprise for them, but this hasn’t been coordinated in advance, so all the security forces will be high-strung.

“Once we break out of this anchor, I want everyone three miles in trail and stacked up five hundred feet, and nowhere else, unless I give other instructions. It’s VMC today, clear and a million, so we shouldn’t have any formation problems. But if you lose contact with the aircraft in front of you once we enter the area, you must stay on the assigned heading and altitude — don’t make any turns unless directed by the security controller, and don’t do the normal lost-wingman procedures.”

“What area is he talking about, Rodeo?” Rebecca asked.

“I’m talking about the area we’re about to fly into,” Patrick replied. “You’ll find out soon enough. Remember what I said — you follow the controller’s instructions exactly, or they’ll blow you out of the sky. These guys are ultraserious.

“Once we’re lined up and on the approach, you’ll set one hundred ten point eight in the ILS and set an inbound course that I’ll give to you later,” Patrick went on. “That’ll be your approach for landing. It’ll be a four-degree glideslope. Four degrees. That’s way steeper than normal, so watch your power and sink rate — we’ll start up high and go down fast. Once you’re established on the localizer and glideslope, you have to stay on it. If you need to go around or deviate for any reason, or if your ILS goes tits-up, you have to announce what you will do and get approval. If you say something and then do something else, or if you don’t announce it first, you’ll get shot down.

“Important: do not raise your landing gear if you need to miss the approach. Flying anywhere near this base in a configuration that looks like you may be able to drop a bomb will be considered a hostile act. If you lose more than two engines and you can’t do a go-around with your gear down, crash-land on the dry lake bed. Bottom line: don’t make any sudden moves. The troops defending our destination have real itchy trigger fingers.

“Couple more important things: Os, do not activate the attack radar once you’re inside the area. In fact, everyone, shut ’em down right now and leave them off — not in ‘standby,’ in ‘off.’ If you radiate, they’ll think you’re on a bomb run and blow your shit away. We maintain distance on the approach by air-to-air DME, not radar. DSOs, same with the ECM gear. If you turn on anything, accidentally jam a radio or radar, drop a flare or chaff bundle, or do anything to make it look like you’re hostile, they’ll shoot with everything they got, immediately and with no warning. Shut ’em down now. All the way off. Questions or comments.” This time there were none. “Report to me when you’ve shut down the ORS and ECM gear.”

“Two.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

“Good. Make sure your weapons are safe and locked, but if you can’t get a good safe and lock, don’t worry about it.

“Now, when we arrive at the base, you’ll be directed where to taxi. They will leave no doubt where you should go. It’s hard to see the taxiways, so follow the leader carefully. Stay as close to the plane in front of you as you safely can. Do your before-engine shutdown checklists while taxiing — you’ll have lots of time to do it. I’ll guide you through the things I want you to do. Don’t acknowledge any transmissions unless it’s an emergency or unless you really get confused, and I’ll warn you now, try not to get confused while you’re down there.”

“Too late, General,” said one crew member Patrick couldn’t identify. “I’m confused already.”

“We’ll be directed straight into hangars,” Patrick said, ignoring the flippancy. “Taxi directly inside. Maintain taxi speed — don’t creep into the hangar. The door in front of you will be partially closed. Shut down the engines as soon as you stop. The hangar doors will be closing behind you, so don’t run engines up or scavenge oil or anything like that. Don’t worry about the weapons, the bomb doors, INS alignments, preserving the maintenance data or the bomb-nav computer data, or anything else but shutting your gear off. Open the entry hatch as soon as the plane stops. Security guards will be up to escort you out. Step on out, follow the guards, and do what they tell you. Any questions?”

“Sounds like you’ve been watching a lot of X-Files lately,” someone quipped.

The formation spent nearly another hour in the anchor while Patrick got on the secure voice SATCOM and coordinated their arrival. Now they had barely enough fuel to make it to Nellis Air Force Base with legal fuel reserves, and that base was only sixty miles away. They couldn’t legally land back at Reno even if they wanted to without an emergency air refueling. They were indeed committed to their decision.

If any air traffic control agencies were surprised about their flying into the world’s most restricted airspace, they kept their comments to themselves. But they heard the same warnings from all the civil controllers several times; one controller violated Furness and ordered her to contact Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center upon landing, even giving her the telephone number. Furness replied with a curt “We don’t need no stinkin’ vectors, Center,” and ignored all other directives.

The approach was completely routine, if flying into a hornet’s nest could be considered routine. If they still had their electronic countermeasures gear on, their threat-warning receivers would be alive with surface-to-air missile tracking radars and height finders, including Hawk and Patriot antiaircraft systems. As they got closer, Furness and Seaver could see several missile emplacements. The Patriot launchers weren’t pointed directly at them — they didn’t need to be — but the I-Hawk and British-built Rapier missile batteries tracked them all the way. It was like looking right down the barrels of a triple-barreled shotgun. They were aimed at an immense dry lake bed, with hard-baked sand stretching as far as they could see. Majestic multicolored mountains ringed the valley, some still with snow at the highest peaks.

The scenery was magnificent — and they would have enjoyed it more if they weren’t so afraid of messing up and getting shot down by their fellow Americans.

As they followed the glideslope down and got closer to touchdown, more and more details became obvious. The runway emerged from the dry lake like a mirage. Several vehicles were parked on the dry lake — a disconcerting mixture of fire trucks and Avenger mobile antiaircraft weapon systems, as if their soon-to-be hosts were eager to both hurt them and help them.

At one point in the approach, Patrick said, “We’ve got traffic at our three o’clock, boys.” Rinc leaned forward in his seat and saw an F-22 Raptor fighter just off the right wingtip. He knew that the F-22 with its thrust-vectoring nozzles could turn and shoot its 20-millimeter cannon right from where it was, without having to maneuver or line up behind the Bone. He saw no missiles, but he remembered that the F-22 carried its missiles internally. He strained a look in his rearview mirror and saw another F-22 fighter sitting off the third Bone’s wingtip. It was very impressive to get such a welcome, but it was even more impressive when you considered that the F-22 was in production only and wasn’t scheduled to become operational for almost five years. This place had four of them, manned, fueled, and presumably armed, available for a simple escort mission.

The runway felt concrete-hard but sandy as Rinc touched down. He stayed off the brakes completely until he saw several armored vehicles arrayed before him nine thousand feet down the runway, blocking it and showing him where to turn off. Patrick had the after-landing and before-shutdown checklists ready to go. Security vehicles, all with roof-mounted machine guns — some with grenade launchers or antiarmor missile launchers at the ready — lined the taxiways. Yep, there was no doubt where they were supposed to go — just taxi in between all the security vehicles with the guns pointed at them.

They were taxiing right at the Bone’s twenty-knot taxi speed limit, but it seemed much faster because of the lack of any outside references — it was as if they were in a dune buggy speeding across the desert. “Bitchin’ place you got here, General,” Rinc said. “Lots of room to stretch out. Good hunting and fishing?”

“You may find out, Major,” Patrick said.

“So this is Groom Lake, right?” Rinc asked. “The supersecret military base. Looks pretty ordinary to me. I’ve seen the four-meter Spot recon photos in the mission planning software too — it looks like Plant 42 at Palmdale. How many folks do you think are taking our pictures from those hills right now?”

“None,” Patrick said. “Our security guys rounded up all the trespassers before we came in. The closest UFO watcher was eight miles away, and we got him. We let them come close to the base once in a while so we can learn their ingress routes, which makes it easier to find them and shut them down when we need to. There were a few satellite overflights we had to avoid too — one Russian, one Chinese.”

“Somebody had to have seen us, General,” Rinc said. “How can you hide four Bones making a straight-in approach to nowhere?”

“If we were worried about just being seen, Colonel, we would’ve had a tanker come up and refuel us, then land at night,” Patrick replied. “We fly all sorts of airplanes in and out of here every day. The spies and looky-loos aren’t interested in the old Bones — they’re interested in what new planes we got here. But the real research these days isn’t on new platforms — it’s on new expendables, like missiles and bombs.”

“I thought Eglin tests that stuff.” Eglin Air Force Base, near Fort Walton Beach, Florida, was the home of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Munitions Directorate, the headquarters of most weapons development in the Air Force.

“We get everything here, from airframes to avionics to software to bullets,” Patrick said. “We test it all before it goes to places like Eglin or Edwards or Langley, before they write the tech orders or train the instructors or technicians. We test it — and then, after it’s fielded, we try to make it better. That’s what we’re going to do with you.” Patrick pointed out ahead. “There’s your parking spots. You’re on the far left. Keep your speed up and zip right in.” On interphone, Patrick said, “Hold on, crew. We’re going to make a hard stop.”

In the distance they saw a row of ten large sand-colored hangars, all by themselves seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The security vehicles positioned themselves to herd the Bones into individual hangars. They kept up a fast pace, so when Rinc did taxi inside his hangar, the stop was dramatic. Most of the switches were already positioned, and they didn’t need the auxiliary power unit, so it was quick and simple to shut down the engines.

Moments after shutdown, after the entry hatch was motored open, Patrick called out, “Just shut off the battery and leave everything. Step on out.” Seaver, Warren, and Long did as he said. They were surprised to see a young black officer in desert camouflage with a flashlight, a submachine gun attached to a harness on his chest, and a big.45-caliber automatic pistol holster on his hip, standing at the bottom of the boarding ladder waiting for them to come down. “Afternoon, sir,” he said, flashing them a smile. “Welcome to Elliott.”

The high-powered air-conditioning system inside the hangar was already working to pull the last bit of exhaust and heat from the structure. Security guards were searching McLanahan, and they quickly set to work searching Furness, Seaver, and the others. The guards then asked them to take an arm out of their flight suit sleeves and uncover a shoulder. Using a pneumatic hypodermic, the black security officer shot something into their shoulders, then clipped vinyl-covered bracelets onto their wrists. “What the hell are you doing?” Furness asked. “Is that an anthrax vaccine or something?”

“Wiring you folks for sound,” said the officer cheerfully. “Welcome to the club.”

“This is Lieutenant Colonel Hal Briggs, my security chief,” Patrick said. “Hal, meet…”

“Lieutenant Colonel Rebecca Furness, Nevada Air National Guard. Nice to meet you.” Briggs shook hands with Furness, then introduced himself to Dewey and Seaver. Furness studied the gun he wore on his chest harness. It was an MP5K, or “Kurz” (short) model, a very small, close-range submachine gun, so small that it was originally intended to replace an aviator’s personal survival weapon. The submachine gun, with one 15-round magazine already locked in place, was attached to the harness with a quick-release strap, which kept it ready for action while keeping the hands free. Parachute cord connected the folding stock with the harness, so as soon as Briggs drew and elevated the gun to firing position, the stock would unfold and he’d be ready to fire. “I know all of you — probably in disgusting detail.”

“Hal was in charge of the security evaluation at the 111th,” Patrick explained. “He likes doing his homework. Explain what the microtransceivers do, Hal.”

“You’ve just been injected with a subcutaneous microtransceiver, and those wristbands are the power source and antenna,” Briggs explained. “The devices do a number of things. Basically, they’re like a dog’s electronic ID tag. The microchip has coded information on you. The bracelet is the power source and transceiver — the microchip is inert without it. We can monitor your location, track you, talk with you, give you directions, monitor body functions, and a number of other things.”

“Who the hell said I wanted you to shoot a microchip into my arm?” Furness asked.

“You did—‘Commander,’” Patrick said. “I told you the level of intrusion into your life here is intense, and you didn’t believe me. Well, now your body and your men’s bodies are wired for sound, and someone will be listening and monitoring you — for the rest of your lives.” He glanced at Rinc Seaver and added, “Think about that the next time you’re alone with someone special. Big Brother is not just watching — he’s listening and tracking you too.”

Seaver smiled. “Cool,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. He couldn’t see or feel the microchip.

Furness looked ready to explode. “You’re shitting me!”

“Attention in the area!” someone called out. The guards remained at port arms, but everyone else snapped to attention.

“As you were,” another voice boomed. Furness turned and saw an immense black three-star general in a flight suit, garrison cap, and spit-shined flying boots stride over to the group. McLanahan and Briggs saluted as he walked over to them. “Nice to have you back, General,” he said to McLanahan. “It should make it a little easier to keep you under some kind of restraint, I hope.”

“Nice to be home, sir,” Patrick said with a sly smile. “Sir, may I present Lieutenant Colonel Rebecca Fur-ness, commander of the 111th Bomb Squadron, Nevada Air National Guard. Colonel Furness, this is Lieutenant General Terrill Samson, commander of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, Elliott Air Force Base, Groom Lake.”

Samson returned Furness’s salute, then they shook hands. “I hear good things about you, Colonel,” Samson said cheerfully. “I look forward to seeing some good stuff from you. Welcome.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Samson was introduced to Rinc Seaver. “Major,” Samson said coolly. Seaver tried to match him stare for stare, but quickly wilted under the sheer physical presence of the big man.

Samson turned his attention back to McLanahan, for which Seaver was grateful. “Patrick, I know I signed off on the concept, but I didn’t expect you to hijack four Nevada Air National Guard B-1 bombers and their crews,” Samson said. “We’ve got some phone calls to make. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to leave you all in the hands of Colonel Briggs, who will escort you to your quarters. But I have a few things to say first:

“I know General McLanahan has probably told you this already, but I’m going to reiterate it for you: you are now part of our nation’s most top-secret weapons research facility. What you do here will decide the shape of the United States Air Force and the American military for the next twenty to fifty years. Our team members here understand and respect the awesome responsibility we place upon them, and they protect the technology and information here as closely as their own lives.

“Nonetheless, we don’t rely on that — if we want to keep an eye on you, we do it, however and whenever we want. That’s the price you pay for agreeing to be part of what goes on in this place. You will find your work here enjoyable and stimulating — many say eye-popping.

“However,” and he paused and looked them all in the eye before continuing, “you will find your life here sucks. If you thought the worst assignment in the Air Force was in the Aleutians or Greenland, think again. And if you thought you’ve already encountered the worst, most hard-assed commander to work for, think again. I am that man.”

Samson walked up to Rinc Seaver and looked him straight in the eye as he addressed them all. “I’ve received reports about this unit, about your activities in and out of the cockpit, about your performance — and about your attitude,” he said in a cavern-deep voice. “You’re supposed to be the best of the best. But that doesn’t matter anymore. Your past successes don’t matter anymore. This base is filled with the best of the best, the top one-half of one percent of this nation’s engineers, scientists, technicians, and aviators. We fly jets and operate weapon systems that will make history in future conflicts. You’ll have a chance to prove yourselves, I guarantee that. But I don’t let anyone come near my new weapon systems unless they prove to me that they can work as a team. Your trial starts now. Questions?”

“I have one request, General,” Rinc Seaver said.

“Major?”

“We’re going to need a hand receipt for those planes, sir,” Rinc said.

Samson’s eyes flashed in anger — but then he smiled, an evil crocodile smile. “Sure, Major,” he said. “Got a pencil?” Before Furness could react, Samson grabbed Seaver by the left shoulder of his flight suit, grasped the left sleeve near the pencil pocket, and ripped the sleeve clean off in one quick, fluid motion, making it look as effortless as tearing a sheet of paper. Rinc did not react; it was as if he had expected the big man to do it.

Samson reached down to the shards of Nomex and retrieved a black grease pencil. “I guess this will have to do,” he said. “Now I need something to write on.” He grabbed the top of Seaver’s flight suit and ripped it open with a quick snap. Pieces of zipper and fire-retardant fabric went flying in all directions. On Seaver’s white T-shirt, he wrote, “Four (4) each B-1B Lancer bombers,” then signed his name and dated it. Rinc stood at attention, eyes caged, fixed straight ahead the entire time.

“There’s your hand receipt, smart-ass,” Terrill Samson said, sliding the grease pencil behind Seaver’s right ear. “Anything else I’ve overlooked, Major?”

“No, sir,” Rinc replied.

“Good. Thank you for the reminder. I hate to leave the paperwork until the last minute. Colonel Briggs.”

“Sir!”

“Get this paper-pushing clown and these other crewdogs out of my sight. And get Major Seaver a new flight suit — he’s out of uniform.”

“Yes, sir,” Briggs said, not trying to hide his smile. “If you’ll follow me, folks.” Furness saluted Samson, received a salute in return, and walked away with Briggs. Seaver did not even attempt to pick up the tattered pieces of his flight suit.

Patrick watched his boss’s face as the guardsmen were escorted to a waiting van to take them to their quarters. Samson was scowling, but there was a hint of a smile on his lips. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you, sir?”

“What I would’ve enjoyed more is kicking him in his fucking ass,” Samson said. The thought of doing that made him grin. “But unfortunately, he’s on the right track. Those planes aren’t ours yet — they belong to the state of Nevada. We can’t touch them without their permission.”

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem, sir,” Patrick said. “But if Air Combat Command wants those planes for spare parts, or if Nevada wanted to sell them to another Guard unit, I may have set you up for a food fight with them.”

“If you get me written authorization to modify those planes, Patrick, I’ll deal with ACC,” Samson said. “Even if the Air Force decertifies the unit, the planes still technically belong to Nevada, and they’re free to loan them out to anyone with Class One resource facilities — including us.” He turned to Patrick and said warmly, “But you knew all this, didn’t you? That’s why you brought them here. You knew that once they were in our hot little hands, it would take a papal edict to dislodge them from here. And if Nevada gives us the go-ahead — sweetened with some money for upkeep and personnel, no doubt — there’s not a thing anyone can do about it.”

“Even though we may have possession now, sir,” Patrick said, “we can’t hold on to them forever. We need to water some eyes. As soon as I get permission from the governor to play with his planes, I’d like permission to start installing the Lancelot kits in two planes.”

“Approved,” Samson said. “You have permission to get the other two ready for modification as well. How long before we can test-fly the first two birds?”

“Two months — three at the outside.”

“Make it no more than two, and you might have a chance,” Samson said. “Even better, if we can deploy two bombers as part of an air task force participating in this Korea conflict or revolution or whatever is happening, we might get approval to convert the entire unit — maybe even get funding for an entire wing. But you gotta dazzle them, Patrick. Hit ’em between the eyes with all the magic you can.”

“I’ll get on it right now, sir,” Patrick said. “Sorry you have to go nose-to-nose with Air Combat Command. I suppose we could’ve done this another way — requested use of the planes through official channels. The Pentagon is going to think we’ve all flipped our lids.”

“It’s the spirit of Brad Elliott, Patrick,” Terrill Samson said. “It’s funny — a lot of the brass, in and out of uniform, understand that already. I don’t have to tell them. Carry on.”

The American E-3C Airborne Warning and Control System radar plane, call sign “Guardian,” had been on patrol now for six hours. It had topped off tanks just a few minutes earlier. Since no more tankers were available, this was going to be its last patrol — four more hours on station, then a couple of hours’ flying time to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, with enough fuel for two hours’ reserves over the high fix. Normally, it would be on station for eight hours, refuel at Kunsan Air Base in South Korea, then go on another eight-hour patrol until relieved. But needless to say, no one was landing in South Korea for a while.

Unfortunately, because of the start of hostilities and orders from Washington, no one would be launching from any bases in South Korea or Japan. That meant no fighter protection. There was no sign of North Korean air activity at all, but the big modified Boeing 707 with the thirty-foot rotodome mounted on tall legs near the tail was a sitting duck, especially in daytime.

But there was another reason for the E-3C to be on station: this was a unique opportunity to see what it was like to operate AWACS in a nuclear environment. This was the first time an E-3 was airborne while a thermonuclear attack was under way, and engineers and crews wanted to see what it was like to use the powerful APY-1C radar in the vicinity of nuclear detonations. Of course, all this had been simulated by computers and in electromagnetic research laboratories at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, but now it could be done for real.

The experiment was working very well — so well, in fact, that the radar operators aboard Guardian spotted the flight of aircraft lifting off from Sohung Air Base in North Korea, about thirty miles southeast of Pyongyang, from well over 150 miles away.

The radar operator detected the airborne targets and assigned a “U” with a diamond symbol to the contact, meaning “unidentified, considered hostile.” “Radar has bandits in sector three, heading one-niner-zero, climbing through angels eleven, speed four-twenty,” he announced on ship-wide interphone.

“Sector three roger,” the sector intercept officer responded. “I’ve got negative modes and codes. ESM, stand by for identification. Attention crew, sector three has three, repeat three, bandits on an intercept course. Stand by for tactical action. Charlie?”

“Charlie’s up and I’ve got the contacts,” responded the senior controller, call sign “Charlie.” “We don’t need ESM — let’s classify as hostile fighters. Crew, stand by for evasive maneuvers. Radar, engineering, shut the rotor down. Crew, we’re going dark. Pilot, Charlie, right turn heading one-two-zero, let’s head for the deck.” The radar crew and the engineering technicians shut down the powerful APY-1 radar and all other electrical emissions while the pilots started a steep turn and a rapid descent to try to get away from the inbound fighters.

“Crew, this is Echo, I’ve got contact on our bandits,” the electronic support measures officer, or ESM, call sign “Echo,” reported. ESM was a passive backup and augmentation system that allowed AWACS not only to detect aircraft and ships but to identify them by their electronic emissions. In addition, when the active radar was shut down as it was right now, ESM allowed the crew to continue tracking targets by their electronic signatures. It wasn’t a perfect system — if the enemy fighter wasn’t transmitting any signals, AWACS would be completely blind. “I’ve got a Slot Back One radar. Looks like North Korean MiG-29s, range eighty miles and closing fast.” North Korea operated only two squadrons, fewer than thirty, of MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters, made in the Soviet Union, but they were some of the world’s most capable and deadly fighters. Typical air defense load was two R-27 radar-guided missiles, four R-60 heat-seeking missiles, and 150 rounds in its big 30-millimeter cannon.

The senior controller got on the emergency GUARD channel: “Mayday mayday mayday, this is Guardian three-oh-one, sixty-five miles southwest of Seoul VOR, we are under attack by North Korean hostile aircraft. Requesting any assistance. Please respond.”

But he knew it was no use using the radios. The nuclear blast that destroyed Suwon sent a wave of highly charged energy, called the electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, many miles in all directions, turning the atmosphere into a mass of random electrical sparks. Even if anyone was listening, all they would hear was static. The EMP at the time of the blast itself was powerful enough to fry electronic devices many miles away. The effects of an EMP on the atmosphere could last for many hours, even days.

“Six o’clock, sixty miles,” the ESM officer reported. “He’ll come within max Alamo range in less than two minutes.” The Russian-made R-27, code-named “Alamo,” had a maximum range of about forty miles. The senior controller knew that was probably their countdown to die — because there were no friendly aircraft up in the vicinity right now. In an effort not to appear too hostile or offensive, all American aircraft that survived North Korea’s initial ballistic missile attack were grounded. The South Korean Air Force was being used to attack a few targets inside North Korea, relying on ground-based air defense to protect the cities from air attack.

So there was no one up protecting Guardian from air attack.

But they still had a chance. They were less than one hundred miles from the coastline, heading toward Kun-san Air Base. That base was fully operational, and it was armed with Patriot surface-to-air missiles, with a maximum range of sixty miles. It was a footrace now to see if they could get inside the Patriot’s protective umbrella before the North Korean MiGs caught up to them.

“Crew, this is Echo, I’ve got hostile ESM contact at eleven o’clock, fifty miles. Another Slot Back radar — looks like more MiG-29s over South Korea.” Their worst fear had come true: the North Koreans had begun their counterattack and had already penetrated deep inside South Korea, all the way to the southern part of the peninsula. The North Korean MiG-29s would clear the skies of enemy fighters well enough to allow the North’s large but older and less capable fleet of fighter-bombers to sweep across the South and finish off what their ballistic missile barrage failed to do.

“Let’s get this beast down on the deck now, pilot!” the senior controller shouted on interphone. The E-3C AWACS radar plane had a suite of electronic jammers and decoys, but in daytime in good weather, enemy fighters didn’t need electronic sensors to kill a big E-3. Even North Korea’s lowest-tech fighter in the hands of young, inexperienced pilots could do it with ease. A MiG-29, with its outstanding maneuverability and close-range kill capability, could move in and kill an AWACS without even altering its flight path.

“Bandit at eleven o’clock, forty miles… bandits at six o’clock, forty-five miles… eleven o’clock, thirty miles… six o’clock, thirty miles… stand by for evasive maneuvers, crew… eleven o’clock, twenty miles… six o’clock, twenty miles… bandit at twelve o’clock, missile launch, missile launch, pilot break left!” As the pilot started a steep, swift turn, the ESM officer pressed a button, ejecting clouds of radar-decoying chaff into the sky.

It was a desperation move, nothing more. A big E-3C AWACS plane couldn’t do a break or any other maneuver fast enough to defeat an air-to-air missile. But it might be enough to break a radar lock long enough for the enemy missiles to lose track, long enough for someone from Kunsan or Taegu to help. It was their only hope…

“Bandit six o’clock, fifteen miles, locked on, missile launch, missile launch!” the ESM officer shouted. Both MiG-29s were firing… both were locked on…

Then, suddenly, the North Korean MiG-29 behind them disappeared, followed seconds later by the MiG ahead of them. “Pilot, roll out!” the ESM officer said. He punched out more chaff as the pilot started to level off. “Crew, Echo, I have negative contact on both bandits. Stand by for evasive maneuvers.” The only possible explanation: both North Korean fighters had moved within IRSTS, or infrared search and track system, heat-seeking sensor range. With IRSTS, a MiG-29 didn’t need radar to find and track a target. Now their only indication of an attack would be the AWACS’ tail-warning system, which used heat-seeking sensors to detect fighters and the flare of a missile’s motor to detect a missile launch.

“Contact!” the pilot called. “I’ve got bandits at twelve o’clock high!”

“Go nose-to-nose, pilot!” the ESM officer shouted. “Stand by for defensive maneuvers!”

“It’s moving in on us!” the pilot yelled. “It’s closing in… Shit, it’s got us, it’s got us dead in its sights, twelve o’clock, three miles…” Then the pilot stopped. Nothing.

“Pilot, where is he?” the ESM officer asked. “Where did he go? Can you see him?”

“He’s… he’s off our left side, range… range about one mile,” the pilot said. “Holy shit, it’s a Japanese fighter! I see a red rising sun on its tail! It’s a Japanese MiG-29 fighter! Damn, they must’ve killed those North Korean MiGs chasing us!”

It was an unbelievable and very welcome sight. Two Japanese Self-Defense Force fighters, on patrol over the Sea of Japan, had raced across the Korean peninsula, risking attack by South Korean air defenses, to rescue the AWACS plane. The Japanese government, in retaliation for increased American presence and influence in Asia over the past few years, had spurned American military hardware and purchased large numbers of Russian weapons, including the modern and powerful MiG-29SMT, the Western-modernized version of Russia’s most advanced fighter-bomber. The Japanese could buy three times as many MiG-29s as American F-15s, F-16s, or F/A-18s, and get a plane that was every bit as capable as its Western competitors.

“I’ll be damned,” the pilot murmured on interphone. He waved at the Japanese fighters and watched as they wagged their wings in response and peeled off. “They saved our asses big-time. I’ll never bad-mouth the little buggers again.”

The anthem of the Republic of Korea played in the background as the lights came up. The first thing seen was a strange new banner — one that combined the flags of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea.

There were two dark blue bars, at the top and bottom of the banner, representing the sky and the strength of the earth. The white middle section symbolized the united land. The circle in the center, the t’aeguk, represented yin-yang, the power of opposites. Its red “yang” upper half, or positive side, represented life, goodness, and fire; the lower “yin” blue half, or negative side, represented evil, death, darkness, and cold. The two segments were entwined, meaning that they could never be separated. Surrounding the center circle were the four broken-bar trigrams, taken from ancient Taoist and Confucian thought, representing virtuous ideals important to a long and happy life.

On either side of the new banner were four other flags: those of the United States, the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, and the Republic of Japan.

As the anthem played, two men walked to lecterns set up before the flag, bowed deeply to each other, and shook hands warmly. At that moment, three men and one woman walked out and took their places in front of their respective flags: Vice President Ellen Christine Whiting from the United States; Deputy Foreign Minister for Far East Affairs Dmitriy Antonovich Aksenenko of the Russian Federation; Minister of Foreign Affairs Ota Amari of Japan; and the assistant deputy secretary for cultural affairs of the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang, Xu Zhengsheng. All stood at attention behind the lecterns until the anthem finished.

On a signal from a stage director, Kwon Ki-chae, president of South Korea, bowed to the others, then bowed to the camera, and said: “My fellow Koreans, it is with great sorrow and also great happiness that I address you today. I am pleased to speak to you from the Hall of the People at the Korean Workers’ Party headquarters in Pyongyang, the capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“This morning, in a show of solidarity, unity, trust, and hope, the people of North Korea marched on the capital here in Pyongyang, demanding an end to the repressive dictatorship of Kim Jong-il. Members of the First Army of the Korean People’s Army supported the North Korean patriots and either laid down their arms or joined in this historic, peaceful display of the voice and will of the community. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers from all over the North joined the patriots and left their barracks to support this action. As a result, the dictator Kim, all of the members of the Communist Party Politburo, and most of his cabinet members fled the wrath of the citizens.

“In the spirit of cooperation, peace, and divine reunification, the government of the Republic of Korea assisted this people’s revolution by sending in fighter-bombers to attack the Korean People’s Army internal ‘black operations’ units, the Spetznaz, who are responsible for crushing free speech and human rights in the North. They also attacked and destroyed many of the North’s weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately, we could not stop all of them in time. Several missile volleys were launched into the South, killing thousands and injuring several hundred thousand. We pray for the souls of the dead and offer our condolences and our hands to the survivors.

“But at the same moment as Communist rockets were hitting the South, we were opening up our arms of friendship and reunification to our family in the North. I am pleased to announce that the Military Demarcation Line, the unholy gash that has torn our people apart for over half a century, is no more. The checkpoints, minefields, border crossings, observation towers, and no-man’s-land separating our two countries no longer exist. Thousands of citizens of the North have crossed the frontier to reunite with long-lost family members. Korea is no longer divided. Korea is one. Mr. Vice President?”

Pak Chung-chu bowed to President Kwon, bowed to the other guests, then bowed to the camera. “Thank you, Mr. President. My fellow Koreans, I am Pak Chung-chu, first vice president of the former government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. It is my great honor to announce to the Korean people and to the world the formation of the United Republic of Korea. My first official act will be this.” He withdrew a red Korean Workers’ Party identification booklet from his jacket pocket and ripped it into pieces. “Before the gods, before my ancestors, and before you, my fellow Koreans, I am completely and absolutely rejecting and condemning the Korean Workers’ Party and the Communist Party of Korea for the Reunification of the Fatherland. The party was unfaithful and betrayed its people. I hope all true and loyal Koreans will join me in doing the same.”

Head held high, Pak went on: “The capital of our new constitutional, democratic republic will be Seoul, which is and always has been the spiritual and historic center of our nation and our people. Pyongyang will be rebuilt and modernized, and will soon become the model for a new and revitalized Korea, a shining example of the spirit and dedication of the Korean race. The people of Korea are hereby free to travel about our great land as they choose. I know the rest of your brothers and sisters welcome you.

“Together, Comrade Kwon Ki-chae and I will oversee the technical details of reunifying our country. Our primary concern is for the well-being of millions of our citizens of the North, who under the repressive Communist regime have been suffering from malnutrition, poor health care, homelessness, and poverty. We are here to assure all our people that help is on the way. We urge you to place your trust in your brothers and sisters of the South. This is the day we have long prayed for, and we must learn that our enemies were our warring governments, not the people. The help that may arrive at your village may be soldiers from the South. They are coming to help you in any way necessary, not to hurt you.”

Pak Chung-chu bowed to Kwon once again. Kwon bowed in return, then spoke: “Thank you, Comrade Pak. I echo those words most sincerely to our fellow Koreans in the South. The peninsula is whole and one again; travel is free and open to all Koreans without restriction or identity papers. Please welcome all who come to you for help, employment, or assistance, regardless of the regime under which they lived before this date. True peaceful unification is possible only if it exists in your heart. Do not allow mistrust and fear to ruin this long-awaited, blessed moment in history.

“Comrade Pak and I will share in presiding over this transition period of our new government until such time as new elections can be called. Voting rights will be extended to all Koreans over the age of seventeen — one man, one vote. Other details of the peaceful transition to one national system of government, finance, and law will be announced as soon as possible. Our task is to make this transition as smoothly, as equitably, and as peacefully as possible. Our land is rich, strong, and generous, and it is our task to see that all our people share in its blessing together. It will be a difficult task, but one which must take place. The world is watching. For the sake of our heritage and our children’s future, we must not fail.”

Kwon motioned to the world leaders beside him and went on: “As our country undertakes this day to reunify and rebuild, we look upon the governments around the world, and especially those who are represented by our distinguished guests beside me here today, to bless, support, protect, and defend the Korean people as they come together in the spirit of peace and harmony. Comrade Pak and I pledge to help forge a good, strong, law-abiding neighbor for you all. We desire only peace and prosperity for everyone. Thank you for being with us to share this blessed event.

“I would like to invite all of you to say a few words to the people of Korea and to the rest of the world. Madam Ellen Whiting, Vice President of the United States of America, if you please.” Kwon motioned to Vice President Whiting and bowed. She bowed in return and stepped forward to the microphone.

But before she could speak, Kwon returned to the microphone and said, “A thousand apologies, Madam Vice President. There is one more important announcement I wish to make before Vice President Whiting speaks:

“In the interest of peace and universal trust, Comrade Pak and I wish to declare that all foreign military forces will be asked to leave the Korean peninsula as soon as possible. This includes the Chinese Twentieth and Forty-second Group Forces, all Russian advisers and training posts, and the joint Korean and American Combined Forces Command.”

Vice President Whiting could feel the sting in her ears and fought to maintain her composure as Kwon went on: “We welcome the presence and assistance of the United Nations Commission on Reunification and Disarmament of Korea, and we look to them for support and guidance. But we respectfully request the dismantling and removal of the United Nations Military Command and the United Nations Demilitarized Zone Monitoring Agency. For the first time in almost a century, Korea now belongs to the Korean people. We hope the world as well as the parties involved support and respect this decision and help us to take our rightful place in the world community by diminishing the risk of our land becoming again a bloody battleground.”

Vice President Whiting kept her face impassive as Kwon Ki-chae said with a broad smile, “And now, may I present Madam Ellen Whiting, Vice President of the United States.” But she was in shock. Neither Kwon nor Pak had said anything about removing the United States military forces from Korea! Yet it was urgent that she pull herself together and say something coherent.

The presence of the foreign leaders there at the televised announcement ceremony was a setup, and they all knew it now. By standing there in front of the new United Republic of Korea flag, the foreign leaders were tacitly agreeing to all that was being said — including the removal of their military forces. The Chinese representative, Xu, was a minor functionary from the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang — he didn’t grasp what had been said. He was there simply because he was the nearest and least influential Chinese government official who would dare enter Korea.

But the other representatives knew what was happening. In the spirit of peace and in the hope of a cessation of further nuclear exchange, they had been cleverly duped into coming here and giving their blessing to the biggest coup of the young millennium. Vice President Whiting would never have entertained the idea of American peacekeeping forces leaving the Korean peninsula until the United States was sure the new Korean government was established, secure, and safe from internal or external intrigue or attack. Now, by her very presence, she was agreeing to precisely that. So were the Chinese, Japanese, and Russian governments.

In the blink of an eye, the American presence in Korea was over.

There is your proof,” Captain Kong Hwan-li said bitterly as he shut off the short-wave radio. “A propaganda ploy, combined with an aerial attack. Every uneducated pig in the army fell for it. It disgusts me.”

Kong was pacing in front of a small campfire, surrounded by several other Korean People’s Army officers. He had kept his voice low and the group remained silent, fearing that their voices might carry in the stillness of the countryside; the fire was small to avoid attracting attention.

A few moments later a guard escorted another soldier to the campfire. He stepped before Captain Kong and saluted. “Sir, my name is Master Sergeant Kim Yong-ku, noncommissioned officer in charge, Unit Six, Forty-fifth Regiment, Sixth Battalion. I am reporting to you as ordered by my commanding officer, Lieutenant Choi Yeon-sam.”

“Where is the lieutenant?” Kong asked.

“Sir, he was captured, tortured, and left to die by a roving band of deserters on his way to this meeting,” Kim replied. “He was attacked about a kilometer from where our unit is in hiding. Security forces from Unit Six responded to his cries for help, but we were not in time. But before he died, the lieutenant told me about this meeting and how important it was for someone from our unit to attend. He said it was the only way our country had to reconstitute our strategic forces in order to drive the invaders out.”

Captain Kong drew his sidearm and aimed it at the sergeant. “How do we know you are not one of the deserters?” he asked. “How do we know you didn’t torture the information out of Choi and come here to us, hoping to lead the capitalists or their American overlords to us?”

Kim bristled angrily, then stiffened his back almost to attention. “I may not be an officer, sir, but I am a loyal and faithful soldier and servant of the fatherland and of our Beloved Leader,” he said. “I did not flee to China when the deserters and traitors left my unit — I stood at my post and did my solemn duty. When marauders and thieves attacked our unit, I fought them off. When my commander was killed, I avenged his death. If you still believe I am a traitor to the fatherland, I give you permission to end my life. I do not deserve to live if I cannot serve the fatherland or the People’s Army.”

Kong lowered his sidearm. He had noticed that the sergeant still wore his People’s Army uniform. That said a lot, especially now. Anyone in an Army uniform was being shot at on sight. Most important was the news that word of the meeting had managed to reach the commanding officer of Unit Six. The unit’s expertise was vital to Kong’s plans. He holstered his weapon. “We welcome you,” he said. “We will ask you to prove your worth, and if you are really a traitor to the fatherland, may your ancestors curse your name forever. You are now Lieutenant Kim Yong-ku, commanding officer of Unit Six. How many men in your unit?”

“Five, sir,” Kim responded. “Three launch technicians, my maintenance supervisor, and one locomotive engineer.”

“Barely enough to do the job,” Kong said. “But we will do it, no matter how many traitors there are around us.” To the assembled group, he said, “Loyal soldiers of the fatherland, I will not try to minimize our situation — it is very grim. Unit Six represents the last and possibly the only ballistic missile assets still operational in the People’s Army — two Nodong-1 units, two Scud-B units, and one Scud-C unit. I have tried to contact the rest of the command, and you are the only ones who have responded.

“But there is good news, comrades: I have been in contact with our government-in-exile in Beijing,” Captain Kong went on. “Efforts are under way to reconstitute the government as we speak. We have been instructed to use every means at our disposal to transport our weapons as far north as possible, to Chagang Do province. If we are successful, we can expect support from the People’s Liberation Army.” That bit of news led to a round of muted cheers. “We shall be the trailblazers, the first to establish a home for loyal Communist supporters in the fertile Tongno River plains. Our comrades in the People’s Republic of China will help us recapture and hold Chagang Do province. We will make it an autonomous entity within the new Korea. It will be a haven for all those who seek to restore the world socialist dream illegally taken from us.

“As you all know, Chagang Do province was the heart of our nation’s modern weapons development program, including the weapons that are now in our charge,” Kong went on. “It was doubtless a major target for attack or occupation by capitalist forces. Traveling to Chagang Do will not be easy. We cannot rely on the People’s Liberation Army to protect us until we are close to our objective. We must therefore do everything in our power to get as close to Kanggye as possible and hope that our friends the Chinese will intervene if we are intercepted.

“To accomplish this goal, I have received authorization to create a diversion by staging our own attack on designated targets within South Korea. Our presence will certainly become known, so we shall attack the military targets most likely to participate in a search for us. The best way to assure that our attacks will have the greatest chance of success is to coordinate our launches. I have devised a plan, approved by the Ministry of Defense and the Politburo-in-exile, to disperse our forces and proceed to presurveyed launch points. Based on distance to target, we shall compute a launch time and date and proceed with a simultaneous launch. Five missiles reentering from different directions will have a better chance of penetrating any capitalist defenses than one. I have set up the first coordinated launch in three days. The units with reloads will then relocate to a new launch point and launch again.”

Kong handed out sheets with a list of geographic coordinates, elevations, nearby landmarks, surveyor’s distance and bearing coordinates, and celestial data needed to help align the missiles’ gyros. “Here are the planned and alternate launch points I’ve selected for your units,” he explained. “Some may be unfamiliar to you. I have rejected several of our normal launch points because I suspect some are known to the capitalists or have been compromised by deserters. It will be up to you to locate the new launch points. Use your GPS receivers to work yourself down as close as you can to the presurveyed point, locate the landmarks, then crosscheck with the surveyor’s coordinates.

“It will be up to each unit to find a hiding place,” Kong went on. “Do your best to find and secure a good location. On the date listed on your handouts, move to the launch point, do a coarse celestial heading alignment, store it, then stand by. At the time listed, power up, elevate your weapon, do a fine alignment, then launch. Remember to retreat back to your hiding place immediately after launch — do not wait to reload. Even better, try to retreat several miles to the north. Then proceed with reload procedures.

“Each of us has at least one reload. Unit Twelve has two Scud-B reloads; my Unit Fourteen, which is a Nodong-1 unit, has two reloads as well. After you secure your units, we will try to meet at this location three days after the first launch, or at one of the other rendezvous locations listed on your sheet in four days; we will contact you with instructions. We will then proceed to secondary launch points inside Kangyang Do province. Depending on the success of our first launch, we may decide to try to split up the reloads, or we might try to get more reloads from one of our bases.

“Most important, comrades, is this: survival,” Kong said. “We represent the last and only hope for the restoration of our nation. We are possibly the only weapon left that can stop the capitalists from destroying us. Guard your weapons with care. Do whatever is necessary to preserve your forces and carry out your assigned mission. If one of you is down, destroy or cache any remaining weapons, destroy all classified documents, then rendezvous with another unit to assist them. Remember: your mission is not complete until you receive verified, competent orders from myself or from headquarters telling you otherwise.”

Kong looked at the men assembled around the camp-fire. He saw that his message had stirred them, but he also saw the fear in their eyes. Their nation was imploding, coming apart at the seams. They had all heard the muted whine of enemy planes overhead, wondered when the cluster bombs or nuclear detonation would hit, whether the end had come. They had a long march ahead of them, at least five hundred kilometers. Under normal conditions, such a march would take less than a week. Under current conditions, it could take months.

It was not just the South Korean warplanes, or the threat of an American nuclear-loaded cruise missile that posed the greatest risk — it was the threat from one of their own, their comrades-in-arms. They were more likely to be killed by a bullet from a North Korean rifle than an American bomb. The man they shared a meal or a laugh with yesterday, someone they had known or trained with for years, might be the man who would put a bullet through their head tonight.

“This is the time to be strong, all of you,” Kong Hwan-li said as forcefully as he could. “We have trained for this our entire lives. The skills and knowledge given to us by the party and the fatherland are not just a means of livelihood — they are a solemn duty, a terrible and important responsibility.

“We have always said in our command that we are the point of the spear. It has never been more true than now. We may be the last hope of the fatherland. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea lives, but it needs our spirit to nourish it if there is any hope for survival against the imperialists. You are not alone out here. Your lives and your actions will set the course of history. Your ancestors will be the witnesses, your descendants the judge. Do not disappoint them.”

General Samson here and secure.”

“Earthmover, Jester here,” Air Force Chief of Staff General Victor Hayes responded.

“Thank you for returning my call, sir,” said Terrill Samson, commander of Dreamland. “I know it’s late. Did you get my proposal outline, timetables, and budget proposals, sir?”

“I’m not returning your call, Earthmover,” Hayes said somberly. “I need to find out what in the hell you’re up to out there.”

“Please be a little more specific, sir.”

“McLanahan. The Nevada Air National Guard B-1s. Dreamland. Balboa is getting it in Surround Sound from the Navy, from the Air Force, and from the National Guard Bureau about General McLanahan’s project, and now he’s pissing on my desk,” Hayes said. “First, you guys set off that plasma-yield thing without telling the Navy. Bad. That went straight to Balboa. We cooled things down with him and the Navy, but he’s got a burr under his saddle. He hears about B-1s and Dreamland and McLanahan and Samson and immediately gets a bad butt-rash.

“Next, a wing commander in Idaho claims a couple B-1 bombers almost rammed his jets deliberately. That was a Class One incident, Earthmover, a near-miss observed by both military and civilian radar facilities on the ground and in the sky. They had no choice. The reports went straight to Balboa’s desk and got cc’ed to the SECDEF. More bad press.

“But that’s not the best part, Earthmover,” Hayes went on, his anger growing in intensity. “As part of the Class One incident investigation begun by the secretary of the Air Force’s safety office, we start looking for the planes. We can’t find them. Someone pushes the panic button and the word goes out right up to the Pentagon and on to 1600 Pennsylvania that four B-1 bombers with weapons aboard are missing. Shades of the A-10 suicide. Shades of the F-117 hijacks in California. National Guard, FBI, CIA, DIA, FAA, every alphabet noodle in the damned soup can is mobilized.

“So where do we find them? Where are they? In your sandbox, Earthmover! You got ’em! And no one can touch them! Now everyone is howling at me, at Balboa, at the SECDEF. Everyone wants some butts, Terrill! And I look like the biggest dipshit in the universe because I authorized all this and I didn’t know what the hell was going on! Hell, everyone was saying those B-1s were hijacked by North Korean terrorists in retaliation for the South taking over their country, and that seemed like the best possible scenario! Now, what in the hell is going on out there?”

“Sir, we’re moving ahead with Coronet Tiger and deployment of Lancelot,” Samson said. “General McLanahan has been working closely with the Air National Guard unit from Reno, and he’s determined that they’re best suited for Coronet Tiger. When the Korea incident occurred, and since we had operational control of the Nevada B-1s, I decided we should implement the plan ahead of schedule. Since General McLanahan already had the bombers near our base, I authorized him to bring them on in to begin the conversion process, as previously planned.”

“The ‘best suited’? Are you crazy, Terrill? They almost rammed two F-15 fighters — not once, but twice. Then they almost rammed each other! They’re nuts! They’re crazy! And so are you and McLanahan if you think you’re going to use them!” He paused, and Samson could hear swearing on the other end of the phone. “Terrill, you can’t tell me that you knew and approved of all this. I know you too well. You’re not like Brad Elliott. You would have come to me first. McLanahan did all this, didn’t he?”

“I tried to contact you earlier, sir, but with the Korea thing erupting, the networks were a jumble,” Samson lied. “And General McLanahan has a lot of initiative, and I give him a lot of authority and responsibility around here, but he doesn’t do anything unless I give him approval. The B-1s’ arrival was coordinated well in advance…”

“Don’t bullshit me, Earthmover,” Hayes interjected. He paused again, then went on: “Don’t touch those bombers until I tell you to, Terrill. Don’t even gas them up. Discontinue all test flights and weapons trials. You, McLanahan, and the Nevada Air Guard crews will probably face disciplinary action for what you’ve done today. I can’t help that. Coronet Tiger and the Lancelot project might be all that keeps you two off the unemployment lines — or out of Leavenworth.”

“Sir, with all that’s going on in Korea right now, General McLanahan and I feel our program might be the best option if China starts—”

“You obviously didn’t hear what I said, General Samson,” Hayes cut in angrily. “Cut the Air National Guard guys back to their unit and stand down, now, or drop your stars in the mailbox on your way out of town.”

As before, the only item on the news when the members of the 111th Bomb Squadron woke up the next morning was events in Korea. They hardly noticed what they had for breakfast or how long the coffee had been standing — every one of them was glued to the TV sets, which as in their own unit were tuned to CNN.

The news of the creation of the independent United Republic of Korea rippled around the world faster than a meteor, and as the sun rose on various parts of the globe, world leaders one by one endorsed and welcomed it. Even close North Korean allies, such as Russia, Iraq, Iran, and Libya, seemed to at least accede that the people might be better off. Revolutionary ideas, they said, might be better spread throughout a united, independent Korea rather than a divided peninsula with lots of foreign troops stationed on either side.

The People’s Republic of China was the one glaring holdout. The president of the former Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kim Jong-il, had set up a government-in-exile in Beijing, and Chinese President Jiang Zemin had warmly welcomed him. China had not committed any troops when South Korean planes started flying over North Korea — in fact, China had not even mobilized troops. But despite the televised appearance of a Chinese government functionary at the announcement, no one believed China would support a united, independent Korea that was not Communist, and they did not.

The world was holding its breath, afraid to move too fast or even blink for fear of touching off a global thermonuclear exchange. But it really did appear as if this was going to work: a Korea that was one nation again for the first time in nearly fifty years, and free from foreign troops on its soil for the first time in almost one hundred years.

Breakfast was served in the bottom-floor dayroom of the dormitory in which the 111th Aces High men and women were billeted. It resembled a standard Air Force base’s transient lodging facility — except for the security. Like every building they could see, it was surrounded by tall barbed-wire fences and ringed by security cameras. They decided it was very much like being in prison.

Breakfast was “continental”—rolls, toast, cold cereal, juices, and coffee, wheeled in a tall stainless-steel warming cart, along with the Las Vegas newspaper and USA Today. Like the TV, the papers focused on the Korea situation.

Except for occasional comments about a TV or newspaper item, there was almost no talk. Then John Long and Rinc Seaver reached for the copy of USA Today at the same time. “You’ve got it, Long Dong,” Rinc said.

“No. Go ahead.”

“I can wait.”

“Jesus Christ, Seaver, you irritate the hell out of me every time I talk to you,” Long snapped. “Take the damn paper, I said.”

“Is that an order, sir?”

“Hey, how about I order you to shut your fucking mouth, asshole?”

“What is it with you, Colonel?” Rinc asked angrily. “You can’t give me one goddamn break. I do a good job for you, I bust my nuts to be the best, and all I get is grief.”

“Everyone gets what they deserve, Seaver,” John Long said. “Maybe you get grief because you deserve it. Maybe you just rub most folks the wrong way. That’s why everyone hates your fucking guts.”

“No one asked you, Long.”

“Hey, Major Jerkoff, you watch who you’re talking to!” Long retorted. “Act like an aviator instead of teacher’s ass-kissing pet…”

“I got an ass for you to kiss, Long, right here.”

“Maybe you ought to be kissing a little less butt with your buddy the general and concentrate on doing your job,” Long said. “You almost killed us yesterday on the range. I’m surprised you didn’t punch out again, Seaver.”

The other members of Aces High were startled; this was the first they had heard of the incident. “The general probably had to fight to keep your hands off the handles.”

“You’re the ass-kisser, Long,” Seaver said. “You got your nose so far up Furness’s ass that she needs to fart for you to breathe.”

Long lunged at Seaver in a rage so violent that it stunned. Long got in one good shot at Seaver’s face and drew blood from a cut on the lip before Seaver fought him off.

“Knock it off!” Furness shouted. Someone tried to grab Long’s arms from behind, but he shrugged them off and went at Seaver again. This time it was Furness who got in his way. “I said knock it off, John!” she shouted again.

“I’m gonna kick that asshole’s butt but good!” Long yelled. “He damned near kills his crew again, and he has the nerve to mouth off at you and me?”

“Room, ten-hut!” someone called out. Everyone automatically snapped to attention as Patrick McLanahan and Hal Briggs entered the dayroom.

Patrick looked at Seaver’s cut lip, then at Long, and finally at Furness. “What the hell is going on in here, Colonel?” he asked.

“Hangar flying, sir,” Furness replied.

“Don’t shit around with me, Colonel!” Patrick snapped. “I’m asking you again, what the hell is going on in here?”

“We are having a critique of our first day on the ranges, sir,” Furness replied. “Our discussions sometimes get a little heated.”

“How did the major’s lip get cut?”

“I cut myself shaving, sir,” Rinc replied.

“Is that right?” Patrick walked over to Seaver and looked him in the face. Seaver kept his eyes straight ahead. “It looks to me like you got hit, Major Seaver. Colonel Briggs?”

Hal Briggs grabbed John Long’s right hand and lifted it up so everyone could see. Long tried to snatch it away but found Briggs’s grip as strong as steel. There was a gash on his right middle knuckle. “Looks to me like Colonel Long hit him with his right fist, sir,” said Briggs.

“Did he hit you, Major?” Patrick asked.

“No, sir.”

“Don’t lie to me, Major!” Patrick shouted. “There are reasons for every argument, and even reasons for someone to take a swing at another officer. I can understand such actions. I can even excuse them if they’re provoked, or if there’s good cause and the man is genuinely sorry and willing to repent. But I will not tolerate lying for any reason. A liar is someone of imperfect and questionable character. A liar is not fit to fly in my planes. A liar is not fit to wear a uniform or command a fighting unit. A liar is not fit to walk upon the same ground that true American heroes have walked on. I will turn in my stars and wings before I allow a liar to remain one second longer on this base and tarnish the honor and memory of the great men and women who have stood here and given their lives for this country.”

Patrick stood face-to-face with Rinc Seaver. “Now, which are you, Major? Are you going to lie to my face? Are you going to show me you have no character? Or are you going to tell me the truth and let us deal with this incident like officers?”

“I will tell you the truth, sir,” Seaver responded.

“That’s all I ask, Major,” Patrick said, much more gently. “After all, it does look like you were the wronged one. The truth never hurts the innocent. Now, what happened? Is my chief of security’s observation wrong? Did Colonel Long strike you?”

“I cut myself shaving, sir,” Seaver said.

“What are you, Major, some kind of idiot?” Patrick asked angrily. “Where do you think you are, back in your high school gym locker room in Galena having an argument with your school pals about who’s going to ask Polly Sue to the prom? Remind him, Colonel Briggs.”

“This is Dreamland, Major,” Hal Briggs snapped. “Everything and everyone within one hundred miles of where you’re standing is wired for sound and video and recorded twenty-four hours a day every day of the year. You are wired for sound. These walls are wired for sound and video. You can’t jerk off under the covers of your rack without us knowing about it, Major!”

“All we have to do is pull the tapes of your little ‘hangar flying session’ and we’ll know the truth,” Patrick went on. “Now, I’m going to ask you once more, and you better tell the truth or I will destroy what’s left of your military and civilian aviation career: did Colonel Long strike you?”

“Sir…,” Rinc said. He swallowed hard. “I cut myself shaving, sir.”

Patrick McLanahan glared at Seaver, clenched his jaw as if he was going to continue the tirade — then nodded. “Very well, Major,” he said. “If that’s what you say, then you live with it.” He turned away to wipe off the smile that had started in spite of himself, then addressed Furness. “Anything to say, Colonel?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“Good.” He straightened up and faced the squadron members, still standing at attention. “Get your gear packed,” Patrick said. “You’re leaving.”

“Leaving?” Furness said in astonishment. “Why? What’s going on?”

“There’s no mission, no program,” Patrick told them. He forced himself to look the squadron members in the eye and found it very difficult. “Seems ACC disapproved of my methods to recruit fliers and airframes for my project. We’re shut down. Get your gear together and stand by to depart.”

There was a long, stunned silence. Patrick turned for the door, but Furness’s words stopped him. “What about… us, sir?”

He faced the members of Aces High and said, “You’ve been decertified by Air Combat Command as not mission-effective, based on the results of yesterday’s range activity. You are therefore unqualified to be federalized and ineligible to be tasked for any missions in support of the active-duty force. The state of Nevada is thereby ineligible to receive any federal funds to support further flying activity. Therefore, the squadron has been stood down as of today by order of the Nevada adjutant general and the governor.

“Since you were Nevada’s only Air National Guard organization, and the state has not been offered any other flying missions by the Air Force, there is no reason to keep you on the state payroll any longer. You have all therefore been placed in inactive mobilization augmentee status until you can be reassigned, transferred, or dismissed from state service. That is all.”

“That’s horseshit, sir!” Seaver cried. “They can’t do that to us! You can’t do this to us!”

“I’m not doing a thing, Major,” Patrick said, trying to keep his voice under control. “Air Combat Command looked at the radar data from your mission and busted you for range safety. It’s simple. You knew the ROE, and you broke them. Everything that happened afterward is a result of what you did on the range. You’re decertified. Pack your bags and prepare to depart the fix.”

“What happens to our planes, General?” Rebecca asked. “Or is that classified super-top-secret too? You always wanted our planes — now you’ve got them.”

“The planes don’t belong to me — they belong to the state of Nevada,” Patrick said. “As soon as they decide what to do with them, we’ll ferry them out. But I can almost guarantee they won’t be going back to Reno, and I can definitely guarantee that they won’t be flown by the 111th Bomb Squadron.”

“General McLanahan, we’re asking you to reconsider,” Rinc Seaver interjected.

“Not possible. Not being considered.”

“You know as well as I do that no one else in the world can fly the Bone like we can,” Rinc said. “Yes, we got busted for range safety violations, but we beat two F-15 Eagles and every SAM and triple-A site you threw at us and we hit every assigned target. The only way we could do that was to bust ACC’s ROE. Tell me, sir: Does Dreamland even have a ROE for their ranges? Is there any such thing as Level One, Level Two, or even a Level Three ROE? Or are you allowed to fly however possible in order to get the mission accomplished?”

Patrick said tersely, “All good points, Major. Except for one problem: no one gave you permission to invent your own ROE in Air Combat Command’s ranges during their evaluation. You knew the rules of engagement, and you broke them. If you showed me your skills and accuracy while following the ROE, we could’ve taken it one step further — we could’ve taken it into my ranges, where you could’ve rocked and rolled your asses off. But you didn’t do that. You busted. You’re out.”

“But, sir…”

“End of discussion!” Patrick snapped. “Be ready to depart in twenty minutes. That is all.” Patrick stormed out of the building, followed closely by Hal Briggs. The security guard outside the gate barely got it open in time to avert the general’s wrath.

“I’ll drive,” Patrick said to Hal as they reached his staff Humvee.

“Oh shit, you must be really pissed,” Briggs said. He got his seat belt on just as Patrick roared off. He pulled out his secure cell phone. “Those Guard guys, they got some nerve talkin’ to you that way,” he said.

“They can talk all they goddamned want,” Patrick snapped. “They’re out of here. They learned the hard way that there’s a time for the crazy shit and a time to follow the proper procedure. They’ve flaunted the rules for years. It cost them a bomber and three crew members, and they still fly like they’re insane. They deserve to get shit-canned.”

“Absolutely, sir,” Hal said. He started speed-dialing a number. “They sure are nutzo. Totally unpredictable. They fly like they’ve got nothing to lose. They’re not afraid to do whatever is necessary to get away from the bad guys and kill the target.” He stopped, listened, then said into the phone, “Yes, sir. General McLanahan calling secure from Elliott Air Force Base… Yes, sir, please stand by.” And he handed the phone to Patrick.

“Secretary Chastain?” Patrick asked him.

“No.”

“C’mon, Hal. You’re getting slow. I thought you could anticipate my every—”

“It’s the White House,” Hal interjected. “General Freeman, national security adviser. He wants to meet with you. In Washington. Right away.”

Patrick looked at Briggs’s broad, shit-eating grin. “That’ll do, Hal. That’ll do,” he said, and took the call.

They drove back out to Foxtrot row, where the Nevada Air National Guard B-1 bombers were stored. General Terrill Samson and Lieutenant Colonel David Luger, along with the adjutant general of the state of Nevada, Adam Bretoff, and the governor of Nevada, Kenneth Gunnison, were waiting for them. They had just come down from the first modified EB-1C Megafortress bomber, and Bretoff’s stunned expression was still fresh on his face.

“General Bretoff, Governor Gunnison, may I present General McLanahan, my deputy and chief of operations,” Samson said. “He’s in charge of the Coronet Tiger program.”

“I feel like we’ve already met, General,” Bretoff said as he shook hands. He was a short, rather round man, but the devices on his uniform, both Regular Army and Nevada National Guard, attested to a long and distinguished military career. Gunnison was tall and silver-haired. He looked like a rancher or an old-time oil wildcatter; his steel-blue eyes promised no nonsense and warned that he would take no bull from anyone.

“Nice to finally meet you in person, sir,” Patrick said. “Sir, I realize you may think this is dirty pool, but it was the best way I could think of to convince you to agree to our plan.”

“I don’t understand half of what I’ve just seen,” Governor Gunnison admitted, “but I’ve never seen old Adam here so bug-eyed before, so it’s gotta be good stuff.”

“It’s the only one like it in the world, sir,” Patrick said. “We want to build an entire squadron of them, and we want to base them in Nevada. We need your support to do it.”

Gunnison looked the Megafortress over again, then rubbed his chin. “You know, son, I’m all for supporting our military and all that shit,” he said. “But we need to talk about the bottom line. Nevada doesn’t have a lot of money to invest in military planes, especially planes that the state can’t use for disaster relief or quick logistics, like we did the C-130s we had in Reno. This is all Cold War stuff to me.”

“We’re talking about basing at least eight and as many as twenty B-1 bombers in your state,” Patrick said. “Making improvements, hiring workers. The infrastructure construction and improvements would all be at federal expense. We give you the tools, pay to fix up your installations and surrounding infrastructure to our standards, and pay for training and upkeep. The state pays a small salary to keep highly trained guardsmen and their families in the state; but when they are federalized, which we think with our mission will be quite often, they’re on our dime, not yours.”

“I’ve seen the budget figures and mission projections, sir,” Bretoff said. “Quite impressive. A one-of-a-kind mission, high-profile and very exclusive.”

“Where are you thinking of basing this unit?” Gunnison asked.

“They would be here until the unit stands up,” Terrill Samson said. “But we were thinking northern Nevada again, though perhaps not Reno. The old training base near Battle Mountain is a good possibility. Plenty of land, good neighbors, the old runway in pretty good shape for our planes. We know you want to send a little more industry and opportunity into the northern part of your state. We can help.”

That sold it for the governor. Any talk of bringing growth to sparsely settled north-central and northeastern Nevada was music to his ears. “I think we might be able to talk business, General,” Gunnison said. “What do you need from me?”

“We need you to assert your rights to these planes, that’s all,” Patrick said. “Your flight crews were involved in some… well, some aggressive flying tactics yesterday. The Pentagon wants to slap the crews down and confiscate these planes. You can’t let them do it, sir.”

“I’ve slammed my door in Washington’s face before, gents. We Nevadans enjoy doing that sort of thing.”

“They’ll threaten you with everything in the book,” Samson warned the governor. “Lawsuits, obstruction of justice, investigations, bad press, political pressure, threats to cut off federal funding…”

Gunnison took this in stride too.

“We’re not too concerned about that either,” Patrick said. “Frankly, sir, we’re worried about when the Pentagon gets to the money phase.”

“Oh?”

“Your planes here are worth a lot,” Patrick admitted. “The Pentagon will start with small numbers — fifty million. But they’re worth two, maybe three hundred million in spare parts.”

“Holy shit,” the governor exclaimed. “All that for these four little ol’ planes?”

“I’m talking three hundred million each, sir.” They saw him gulp in surprise. “I know, it’s a lot of money. But we’re asking you to say no. We don’t have a billion-dollar budget, but we’re offering to set up a flying unit like no other in the world. Only Nevada will have it. In fact, it may be worth more than a billion dollars to Nevada, but only in ways that can’t be shown on a balance sheet.”

“Who knows?” Samson added with a mischievous smile. “Maybe someday they’ll rename the base after the governor who took a chance and started it all.”

Gunnison hesitated — but only for a split second. He held out a hand, and Samson shook it warmly. “You got yourself an air force,” he told them. “Any chance I get to thumb my nose and bare my hairy cheeks at Washington I’ll take — they fuck with Nevada too much as it is already. You can do whatever fancy shit you want to ’em — the more the merrier. Battle Mountain is a pretty good name for the base — maybe name one of these monsters after the wife, paint one of those sexy nose art portraits on there.” He paused, then asked, “You’re going to fly these things over there in Korea, aren’t you? Protect Korea from being fucked by the Chinese again?”

“I’m afraid we can’t talk about any possible missions we might be involved in, sir,” Patrick said.

“Good answer, son,” Gunnison said, smiling. “I was in the first Korean War, and when I left I felt we still had a job to do. ‘Battle Born’ is our state motto, you know. Maybe now, with a few of these Battle Born beasts over there, you can finish the job me and my buddies set out to do back in ’52. Get to work, and give me a ride in her when you get done kicking some ass over there in Korea.”