Chains of Command

SEVENTEEN

As usual when Furness woke up after her first night in the alert facility, she didn’t know where she was. The windowless rooms were completely dark, illuminated only by the red 3:45 AM LED numerals on the alarm clock — again, she had awakened several minutes before the alarm. The feeling of vertigo was so bad that she had to feel for the edge of the bed and the cold whitewashed concrete wall before attempting to move out of bed. It reminded her of the reason why she had no curtains over the triple-paned windows on her Vermont farmhouse, and she suddenly longed for its quiet privacy, its isolation, its serene beauty.

Showering in the open-stalled bathroom in the alert facility brought her back to reality very quickly, and Rebecca got out of there as fast as possible. In twenty minutes she was dressed. She was ready to head upstairs to get breakfast when the phone startled her.

“Becky? Ben here.” It was Ben Jamieson, the Alpha Flight commander, who was acting as duty officer in the facility for the evening. “You better get up here. Fogelman just made an ass out of himself — and you.”

In the CQ office, her heart sank — Colonel Hembree was waiting for her along with … Mark Fogelman. At least it looked like Fogelman, except this character had a shaved head! “Fogman?” she gasped, forgetting for a moment that Hembree was standing there. “Is that you …?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Fogelman replied matter-of-factly, his voice uncharacteristically official and disciplined. Not one hint of his usual smug grin.

“Major Furness,” Hembree began irritably, “maybe you can explain what’s going on here. Lieutenant Fogelman claims that you ordered him to cut his hair like this. Is this true?”

“Wha— No, it’s not true!”

“With all due respect, ma’am, you’re not telling the truth,” Fogelman said. The word “ma’am” coming from Fogelman’s lips sent a chill down her spine, like fingernails down a chalkboard. “I distinctly remember you giving me an order to cut my hair, and then you ordered me to cut it all off.”

“I did no such thing!”

“I will be happy to get witnesses for you, sir,” Fogelman told Hembree. “It was right after the open-ranks inspection. She was upset at me after the inspection, and she warned me that I had better not show up today without a haircut, and then she ordered me to cut it all off, to make sure I passed inspection, I suppose. Why would I do this unless she gave me a direct order?”

“Because you’re a little prick, that’s why, Fogelman.”

“That’s enough, Major,” Hembree said. “Addressing a fellow officer like that is out of line, and I won’t stand for it, hear me? As far as your haircut, Lieutenant — well, it’s within the regs, and you did it to yourself, so you have to deal with it. You are dismissed.” Fogelman snapped to attention, turned, gave Furness a satisfied grin, then departed. “Major, I want a word with you.” Hembree walked into the adjacent facility manager’s office and closed the door after Furness followed him inside.

“Rebecca, what the hell is going on here?” Hembree asked angrily. “I’ve got the wing commander and the commander of Fifth Air Battle Force coming out here in twenty minutes to view this exercise, and what’s he going to see? Two of my crewmembers arguing and sniping at each other like children. What is with you two?”

“I told him to get a haircut and to get his mobility gear together, that’s all,” she replied. “He made a joke about cutting off all his hair — hell, I didn’t think he’d really do it. I’m not trying to bust his nuts, Dick, but he shows up for work clearly out of uniform and without his required equipment, and he fights me at every turn—”

“Becky, I could see you two weren’t getting along, but I was hoping that would change,” Hembree said wearily. “I thought he’d get over this attitude problem he has, especially toward you, and I was hoping you’d straighten him out. I was wrong on both counts, but I’m especially disappointed in you. Fogelman has a suck attitude — I think bringing him out of C Flight so early was a mistake — but you have got a chip on your shoulder the size of a concrete block. Bravo Flight doesn’t need someone to constantly challenge them like you do.

“As soon as this exercise is over, I’m splitting you two up and putting you in C Flight,” the Colonel said. “Martin Gruber will take B Flight, and you’ll take C Flight. I’ll put Fogelman with Gruber or Alomar.”

“Dick, I don’t deserve this,” Furness said. “I spent almost twelve months in C Flight, longer than any other instructor. When Fogelman came out of C Flight four months early and before qualifying on PAVE TACK, I recommended against it. Give me Gaston from C Flight and—”

“It’s already been decided, Rebecca,” Hembree said. “Listen, your experience and knowledge will be good for C Flight, your effectiveness reports will still go to the one-star for his signature, and you and Fogelman won’t be in each other’s hair.”

“If you send me down to C Flight you’ll be giving Fogelman what he wants — the satisfaction of busting me.”

“This is not a demotion, Rebecca, it’s a change that reflects your management style, your expertise in the weapon system, and the need for your knowledge with the newcomers,” Hembree said. “The newcomers in Charlie Flight need a strong hand, and your style would fit in better there. Maybe next time you’ll think more carefully about what you tell your troops. You like playing games with people’s heads, and this time it cost you. And lay off the name-calling in front of the staff — if this shit gets outside the squadron, you may both find yourselves out on the street. Now let’s go to work. Your flight will be the first ones through the range today, and half the Air Combat Command will be watching. I want your people firing on all cylinders this morning. Anything else?”

Furness didn’t want to argue the haircut incident anymore — it made her look bad. “Are you going to fly with us?”

“General Cole and Vice Commander Lachemann of Fifth Air Battle Force want to observe our deployment procedures, so I’ll be on the ground with them while your flight does their bomb runs,” Hembree replied. “Alpha Flight has landed from its ‘deployment’ but hasn’t configured for strike yet, so I’m sure the brass will want to watch that, and C Flight is getting ready to ‘deploy.’ I’ll probably fly in C Flight’s first strike mission after the brass leaves.”

“One more thing, Dick — nothing to do with Fogelman. I’ve noticed that things seem really … well, tense around here. Is anything imminent? Are we going to be mobilized?”

“Who the hell knows, Rebecca?” Hembree replied irritably. “Nothing specific has come down. Everyone’s looking for another Desert Storm, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. No, no one’s going anywhere. You just worry about your flight for now. Both Cole and Lachemann want to see the bomb-run video when your planes land, and they want to see shacks. Let’s make sure it happens.” Hembree stormed out of the office.

Well, that was a great way to start the morning. Chewed out by the squadron commander. And now she had to go fly with Fogelman, the little sonofabitch.

About an hour later, after a quiet breakfast during which Furness and Fogelman silently glared at one another and other crewdogs avoided the lightning bolts shooting between them, the flight held a mass briefing at the squadron. As promised, Brigadier General Cole and Major General Lachemann, a tall, hefty man with dark hair, dark complexion, and an even darker mood, sat in on the briefing. It was times like this, Rebecca thought as she stood to begin the briefing, that she wished she wasn’t a flight commander.

After a few minutes, Furness was about to run through the sortie when a beeper on the two-star general’s belt went off, and he and Cole quietly excused themselves, ordered that the briefing continue without calling the room to attention, and trotted out. For the first time that morning, Furness felt able to relax and continued her briefing. She spoke about the mission objectives, training rules, the tactical situation, current intelligence, the overall route, formation procedures, force timing, and join-up and recovery procedures.

When she was finished, Larry Tobias then briefed the low-level flying route. Furness asked for questions, then concluded the briefing and turned it over to Colonel Hembree.

“As you can see,” Hembree began, “we’ve got some high-powered visibility today. Everyone wants to know how the Reserve fast-burners will perform. What the generals want is shack scores. What I want is safe, heads-up flying. I want it done right. I want a successful completion of our training objectives, but if the shit starts piling up and you are getting overloaded, fly your airplane right-side up and away from the ground, stop whatever you’re doing, and think. Fly aggressively, but fly safe and fly smart. Now get out there and let’s show these off-base generals what the Eagles can do.”

The crews headed out to collect their gear, and loaded up into crew buses and headed to the flight line. One by one, the bus driver deposited the crews in front of their planes. The crew chiefs for each plane, who had already been out on the flight line for the past five hours, thankfully jumped on board the crew bus to get warm as it stopped, and the crews went over the maintenance logs and preflight inspection checklists in the warmth of the bus before venturing out into the cold. After reviewing the maintenance log, they collected their gear and headed toward the plane.

Working the RF-111G Vampire bomber could best be described as a series of checklists — virtually nothing was done in or around the plane, on the ground or in the air, without referring to a checklist. Before even setting a bag inside the cockpit, the first few items of the Before Preflight Inspection checklist were run right from the ladder, looking into the cockpit with a flashlight without touching anything: external power disconnected, ejection handles and capsule life support systems levers pinned, and battery and external power switches off. It was dangerous just getting near the sleek, deadly aircraft without double-checking to make sure it was safe to start working around it.

After stowing all the personal gear in the plane, the Power-Off Exterior Inspection, or “walkaround,” was next. Usually this inspection was accomplished by both crewmembers, especially with weapons aboard, but Furness and Fogelman only had the reconnaissance pods uploaded, so Fogelman went right to work preflighting the camera pods.

The RF-111G reconnaissance plane carried two electronic reconnaissance pods, mounted like external fuel tanks on the number three and six wing weapon pylons. The UPD-8 pod, mounted on the right-wing pylon, was a synthetic aperture radar that took high-resolution radar images of terrain or seas around the plane for a range of up to fifty miles. The radar images could pick out small vehicles hidden under foliage or in bad weather, and had enough resolution to pick out tank tracks in sand or dirt. The AN/ATR-18 Tactical Air Reconnaissance System pod on the left wing was similar to standard optical camera pods, with telescopic, wide field-of-view, panoramic, and infrared cameras for use at night, but the photographs were digitized, stored on computer chips, and data-linked to ground stations up to two hundred miles away. In this way, the results of their photo runs could be transmitted and distributed to friendly forces hours before the plane landed and hours before standard film images were available.

Fogelman simply assumed everything was okay, swept his flashlight around the pods, then scrambled back up into the cockpit to get out of the cold. He stowed his flying jacket behind his seat, closed both canopies, and slapped his left fist against his open right hand, a signal to the crew chief to get warm air flowing inside the cockpit.

The crew chief, Staff Sergeant Ken Brodie, trotted around to Rebecca Furness. He knew that the reconnaissance pods needed power soon to keep from “cold-soaking” the electronics, and he knew that it was damn cold in the cockpit — but he also knew that the external power cart would create a lot of noise, especially for someone up inside the wheel-well areas as Furness was, so he thought it would be better to ask first: “The wizzo wants power,” he hollered in her ear over the sound of power carts starting up nearby.

That was the first time Rebecca noticed that Fogelman wasn’t going to do the walkaround with her, and it made her angry. “Wait until I’m clear of the main wheel well,” Furness told Brodie. “Let him cold-soak for a while.”

A few minutes after that, Rebecca finished her exterior inspection, climbed into the cockpit, and began her interior power-off, before engine-start, and engine-start checklists. At the briefed time, Furness called for the crew chief to get into position and began the engine-start procedures. Two minutes later, the engines were started and the power-on preflights were begun.

Most of the upgrades on the RF-111G Vampire bomber had been done on the weapon systems officer’s side. The navigation, bombing, and reconnaissance avionics were all high-speed digital systems, so getting the ship ready to navigate was virtually automatic and very easy: turn ten switches from OFF to ON or STBY.

All that was left was to preflight the rest of the avionics, check the mission computer for the proper preset data points, and check the reconnaissance pods. All the checks were automatic and mostly done by computer. Preflighting the reconnaissance pods was simply a matter of making sure they had power, checking the data-link system was active, and making sure the radar could transmit — Fogelman did all his checks without referring to his checklist. In less than fifteen minutes, he was ready to go.

Rebecca’s checks took substantially longer. After twenty-five minutes, her checks were complete. At the preplanned check-in time, she switched to the squadron common frequency. “Thunder Flight, Thunder One, check in and advise ready to taxi.”

“Two.”

“Three. Getting a new videotape. Ready in two.”

“Four.”

“Five.”

“Six. I need a few more minutes.” Everyone was on frequency. As usual, Paula Norton needed more time to complete the exhaustive after engine-start and before-taxi checklists.

Four minutes later, Norton called in ready. Furness took the flight to ground control to copy their route clearance and get permission to taxi. Furness swept the wings of her RF-111C to 54 degrees, clicked on nose-wheel steering, and turned on the taxi light. “Ready to taxi?” she asked Fogelman.

“Ready. Clear right.” Fogelman had properly set the taxi lights and had the NAV mode primary pages up on the two Multi-Function Displays on the forward instrument panel — NAV DATA page on the left and NAV PRESENT POSITION page on the right. He was looking out the right cockpit canopy as if he were scanning for wingtip clearance, but he was pretty quiet and unanimated — he seemed a bit lethargic, as if he had got up too early. Hopefully he’d snap out of this soon.

“Here we go.” Furness released the brakes and pushed the throttles up, then pulled them back and tapped the brakes when they started moving. The ramp seemed slightly slippery, but not dangerous. Ken Brodie guided her out of the parking area and watched carefully as she made the right turn toward the parallel taxiway. In order, the rest of the flight followed along, keeping a 150-foot spacing and staggered slightly on the taxiway to keep away from the preceding jet’s exhaust. She noticed a blue station wagon following the aircraft, and tried to ignore it — undoubtedly the generals and the squadron commander were watching from there.

There was a short taxi checklist to run, which consisted mainly of checking switches and indicators while turning to make sure everything was tracking. When Rebecca checked the left MFD, however, she noticed that the TIME TO DEST, GND SPEED, GND TRK, and FIXMAG readouts were blank. She checked the right MFD, and the PRESENT POSITION readout was blank. “Something’s wrong with your INS,” she told Fogelman.

“No, it’s—” Fogelman stopped his protest, then issued an exasperated “Shit,” loud enough for Furness to hear without the interphone. He hit a switch on his right instrument panel. The readouts on both Multi-Function Displays came back, but they were reading gross values — the GND SPEED readout, the inertial navigation system’s computed speed over the ground, was reading 87, about seventy miles an hour faster than their actual speed. “Dammit,” Fogelman said, “I forgot to go to NAV.” Fogelman had neglected to command the Inertial Navigational System (INS) to stop ground alignment and begin navigating before moving the aircraft. The INS would factor in all aircraft movement less than twenty-five nautical miles per hour and net zero earth-rate movement, and all the velocities in the system would be in error. Fixes, even superaccurate satellite fixes, probably wouldn’t torque the errors out — he would have to start over.

Forgetting to go to NAV on the INS before taxiing was a common new-guy error, but Fogelman had nearly six months in the RF-111G — he should have known better. He was behind the aircraft already, and they hadn’t even left the ground yet. “Realign in the hammerhead,” Furness suggested. “You should have time for a partial alignment at least.” Fogelman swore again in reply. This flight, she thought wryly, is kicking off to a great start.

The quick-check area was three aircraft-parking areas surrounded by thick steel walls where aircraft were inspected, de-iced, and, if they were carrying weapons, the armorers pulled the safety wires — in case of an inadvertent bomb release or fire, the revetment walls would protect the other aircraft being armed up. Rebecca pulled into the first parking slot in the quick-check area, set the parking brake, checked that the attack radar and terrain-following radars were off, shut off the taxi light, then called on the radio, “Quick, Thunder Zero-One, radar’s down, brakes set, cleared in.”

Two maintenance technicians stepped out of a large blue truck. One plugged his interphone cord into the bomber’s ground-crew jack, while the other stood by and waited. “Good morning, Zero-One. Quick’s going in … when you’re ready.”

Furness placed her hands on the canopy bow. “Feet and hands clear,” Furness replied.

“When you’re ready, ma’am.”

Furness looked over at Fogelman, who was working on restarting the INS. “Fogman, let ’em see your hands.” The quick-check crews would not approach the aircraft unless they were sure that a crewmember in the cockpit wasn’t going to move a flight control.

“One second.”

“Don’t bother restarting your alignment, Mark,” Rebecca said. “They’re going to move us in thirty seconds.” But he did not acknowledge her, just continued working for a few seconds, then placed his hands on his side of the canopy bow. “Okay, feet and hands clear.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” the crew chief acknowledged. His assistant rushed in to check for loose access panels, leaks, Remove Before Flight streamers that might have been missed, and tire cuts. The assistant reappeared a minute later, and the crew chief began to motion for Furness to roll forward. She released brakes and applied power …

“Hey!” Fogelman shouted. Furness slammed on the brakes. “Dammit, you just spoiled the new alignment. I’ll have to restart it.”

“I tried to tell you that, Fogman,” Furness snapped. “Let’s finish the quick check, then start the alignment at the hammerhead.” She taxied forward and reset the brakes.

The crew chiefs finished their tire inspection, then had Rebecca run the right engine up to 85-percent power and got into the main gear wheel well area to check for bleed air leaks. When that was done, the crew chiefs unchocked the plane, moved away from the bomber, and waved at the cockpit. “Have a nice flight, Zero-One.”

“Thanks, Quick.” The crew chiefs unplugged and trotted over to the next bomber waiting in the adjacent revetment. Rebecca taxied forward out of the quick-check area and over to the aircraft hammerhead, the parking area at the very end of the runway. Again, she set the brakes, then called for the Before Takeoff checklist. The wings were swept forward to takeoff position, the flaps and slats were set, and Rebecca checked the flight controls for full and complete movement. “Now you can start your alignment,” she told Fogelman. He said nothing.

Another blue sedan, this one bristling with radio antennas on its roof, approached the parked bomber. “Foxtrot moving in,” they heard on the radio.

“Foxtrot’s cleared in to Zero-One, radar down, brakes set,” Furness replied. As the bombers lined up in the hammerhead waiting for takeoff, the blue sedan carrying the Supervisor of Flying, an experienced flyer trained to be the commander’s eyes and ears on the flight line during flight operations, began circling them, conducting one last visual inspection.

“No leaks, no streamers, and you appear to be in takeoff configuration,” the SOF reported. “Have a good flight, Zero-One.”

“Zero-One, thanks.”

It was obvious Fogelman was still having problems — the PRI ATT and PRI HDG caution lights were still lighted on Furness’ caution panel, indicating that the inertial navigation system was still not ready to go, and it was only a few more minutes to takeoff time. Fogelman was frantically searching through one of the supplemental squadron booklets for something. “How’s it going, Mark?” she asked.

“The GPS didn’t feed present position for coarse alignment,” he replied. “I gotta set in the parking spot coordinates by hand.” The INS needed an accurate latitude, longitude, and elevation to start an alignment. The squadron booklet, or “plastic brains,” had coordinates for almost every possible parking spot on base, so getting the INS running without GPS shouldn’t be a problem, but if you weren’t expecting trouble, you usually weren’t prepared for it — and that described Fogelman pretty well.

Meanwhile, the last bomber was coming out of the quick-check area.

“Thunder Zero-Six, no pins, no leaks, and you appear to be in takeoff configuration,” the Supervisor of Flying radioed. “Have a good flight.”

“Zero-Six, thanks,” Paula Norton replied. “Lead, six is ready.”

“Zero-One copies. Thunder Flight, push button four.” The other five bombers acknowledged. Furness was going to tell Fogelman to change frequencies for her. Normally, the weapon systems officer changed radio frequencies via the Computer Display Unit on the right-side instrument panel, but he looked pretty busy, so she decided to do it herself. On the left Multi-Function Display, Rebecca punched the NAV option-select switch in the upper-left corner, which switched the MFD to the master menu page, then pushed the switch marked IFF/COMM, punched the switch marked CHAN, entered 04, then ENT, then RTN to get back to the radio page.

“Thunder Flight, check in button four.” All five other planes acknowledged with short “Two … Three … Four … Five … Six.”

Rebecca noticed that the PRI ATT and PRI HDG caution lights were out on her instrument panel, meaning that the inertial navigation system had finished coarse alignment and was somewhere in fine alignment. That was good enough for now — they had only two minutes to get the flight off the ground. “Plattsburgh Tower, Thunder Zero-One flight of six, ready for takeoff.”

“Thunder Zero-One flight, winds two-eight-zero at eight gusting to fifteen, RCR 12, patchy ice, braking action fair, runway three-zero, switch to departure control, cleared for takeoff.” The RCR, or Runway Condition Reading, was a measure of the slipperiness of the runway — a low number was good, a high number was bad. Twelve was borderline. The sweepers, with their big revolving bristle drums, had been out here a few minutes earlier, but sometimes the brushes merely polished the stubborn ice, making it even slicker. But Rebecca could see a lot of clear patches in the grooved runway, and the hammerhead and runup areas were clear.

“Zero-One, cleared for takeoff. Thunder Flight, push button five.” All five planes acknowledged. On interphone, Furness said, “Stick it in nav and let’s go, Mark.”

“It’s not done yet,” he protested, but he punched the NAV line select key next to the steady NAV READY indication on his control and display unit — the INS was now navigating on its own, although with only a partial fine alignment its accuracy was in doubt. He then switched to the UHF RADIO page, tuned the primary radio to Burlington Departure air traffic control, set the backup radio to Plattsburgh Tower, then switched the identification beacon transmitters to ON. “Radios are set.”

Furness released brakes and taxied out of the hammerhead. She made one last cockpit check, then “stirred the pot”—moved the control stick in all directions to check for free movement — then, as she turned and lined up with the runway centerline, began pushing in the power. Both throttles went to the first detent, and she scanned the RPM, turbine inlet temperature, exhaust pressure ratio, and nozzle position gauges. When the needles were stable, she started a stopwatch, then moved the throttles one at a time into afterburner zone one and watched the RPMs peg at 110 percent and the nozzle gauge read full open. She then quickly clicked the throttles all the way to afterburner zone five, letting the gradual but powerful kick of the engines shove her back into her seat.

The Vampire bomber sped through sixty nautical miles per hour in a few seconds. No call from Fogelman — the sixty-knot call was mandatory. “Sixty knots, nose wheel steering off.”

“Hundred-knot check, instruments good,” Fogelman said a few seconds later. At least he made the call, Furness thought, although she doubted he really checked the gauges or even really knew what to check for. Her engine instruments were good, the afterburners were still lit, and no warning lights on. He missed the fifteen-second acceleration call as well, but by that time they were almost at rotate speed. Furness applied back pressure, drawing the control stick to her belly, then waited a few more seconds. At the takeoff speed, the Vampire’s nose wheel lifted off, followed by the main gear. Because the wheels were so big and the suspension system so rugged, takeoffs in the RF-111G were very smooth and it was hard to tell exactly when they lifted off. She simply waited until the vertical-speed indicator and altimeter were both moving upward a substantial amount, then raised the gear handle and retracted the flaps.

Ten seconds later, Johnson’s Vampire crossed the runway hold line and leaped into the sky, Norton followed ten seconds later, and Kelly, leading the second three-ship cell, followed. But Clark Vest in the number-five bomber was a few seconds late getting his plane across the hold line, and tried to compensate by shoving the throttles too quickly into afterburner. The left-engine afterburners lit, but it blew out seconds after the right afterburner was cut in. Vest cycled both throttles into military power, let them stabilize, then tried to relight the ‘burners, but the left afterburner blew out again.

“Thunder Five, fifty knots abort, fifty knots abort, fifty knots abort,” he called on the Departure Control radio frequency. “Switching to tower.” He turned his radio wafer switch to the backup radio. Meanwhile, Bruce Fay in Thunder Zero-Six had started his takeoff roll, but had aborted as soon as they saw Vest’s left afterburner wink out. “Plattsburgh Tower, Thunder Zero-Five, aborting takeoff at fifty knots, turning off at midfield. No relight on number one. TITs are steady.” Abnormally high TIT, or Turbine Inlet Temperature, would mean that a fire was building within an engine, which was common during afterburner blowouts or power drops. Fay switched to the Tower frequency as well — he wasn’t going anywhere now.

“Thunder Flight, Plattsburgh Tower on GUARD, cancel takeoff clearance,” the tower controller said. Zero-Five and Zero-Six held their position and acknowledged the order.

Furness and her wingmen heard the abort call on the departure control frequency as they continued their takeoff climbout. “Dammit, what a way to start the week,” she muttered. “Now we’ll have a royal clusterfuck to get this flight back together.”

The big bomber climbed rapidly in the cold, dense air. A few seconds after takeoff, Furness had the gear, flaps, and slats fully retracted and the wings swept back to 26 degrees. At 350 knots indicated she pulled the engines out of afterburner and continued her climb to cruise altitude. “Mark, get on button one and find out about the other three planes.”

Fogelman was looking at something in the radar — not a good idea when they were less than ten thousand feet altitude, in scattered clouds, with two wingmen trying to rejoin. With an exasperated shake of his head, he clicked his microphone. “Thunder Flight, go to button one on backup, now.”

“Two.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

“Mark, what do you have in the system?” Furness asked on interphone. She was following the standard instrument departure from Plattsburgh and was ready to transition to the mission flight plan, but the autopilot steering bug, or “captain’s bars,” were pointing behind the plane.

“I’m busy, pilot,” Fogelman said. “I don’t know where they’re at. Switch it yourself.” He then checked in the other two planes on the backup radio. Again, Furness couldn’t argue, so she swapped nav pages with the right Multi-Function Display, checked her flight plan copy on her kneeboard for the correct computer sequence number, and entered it in the MFD. The captain’s bars swung around to the proper heading, and she engaged the autopilot and turned to the first waypoint. Again, Fogelman was either being a jerk or was already too task-saturated to do more than one thing at a time — like set up the mission computers properly.

“Vest aborted because of an AB blowout,” Fogelman told Furness. “Fay is going to hold with him.”

“Terrific,” Furness said. Their morning spectacular was busted almost before it began. Frank Kelly and Larry Tobias in Thunder Zero-Four were dropping “beer cans” and buddy-lasing for Bruce Fay in Zero-Six — he should launch single-ship and let Vest in Zero-Five, who was dropping a TV-guided bomb solo, go when he was ready. “Tell Command Post that Zero-Six needs to launch ASAP. Zero-Five can delay, but we need Zero-Six up here.”

“I’m trying to recover my system and get an eyeball on our wingmen,” Fogelman snapped. “How about calling them yourself?”

“Fine. Sing out when you see Johnson.” Furness switched over to the backup radio: “Control, Zero-One, can you get Zero-Six airborne? We’ve got their bombing buddy airborne with us. Over.”

In the background, Furness could hear Burlington Departure Control calling her. Fogelman was checking something in his radar and alternatively searching out the cockpit for the other three planes. Johnson was about two miles behind them, while Norton and Kelly were completely out of sight. Furness wafered over to Burlington Departure. “Departure, Thunder Zero-One, did you call?”

“Affirmative, Zero-One. Have your wingmen squawk standby when they approach within two miles. Say intentions of Thunder Zero-Four.”

“Departure, Zero-Four will be joining on Zero-One to make a flight of four,” Furness replied. “We’re trying to get the status of the other two planes now.”

“Roger, copy, Thunder Zero-One. Have them squawk standby when they are joined up with you.”

“Zero-One, roger. Thunder Flight, you copy?”

“Two.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

Furness switched over to the backup radio again. The channel was silent — they had been talking, but she couldn’t pay attention. “Control, Zero-One, you were cut out, say again.”

“I said, Zero-One,” the command post controller said irritably, “that Alpha has directed Zero-Five and Zero-Six go as a flight of two. We’re trying to get new target times on the range for Zero-Four, Zero-Five, Zero-Six, and you.”

“Control, just launch Zero-Six—he and Zero-Four can still meet their time over target,” Furness radioed back. Each bomber entered the route exactly four minutes apart, and while they were in the low-level route the airspace and the range had to be reserved for them — that meant coordinating new target times through Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center, the Air Force, and the Army. If a plane was going to be late, even by just a few seconds, new reservation times had to be obtained or the flight couldn’t go. “You just need a new time for Zero-Five and a new time for me if you want me to go in after Zero-Five. Over.”

“Zero-One, Alpha wants a two-ship launch,” the command post controller replied. Obviously he was in no mood to argue — undoubtedly the command post folks were feeling a little heat from the brass, too. It was not a regulation, but aircraft with weapons aboard rarely were allowed to fly by themselves unless the weather was crystal clear — if there was an emergency, it was important to have a wingman to help lead the emergency aircraft back to base safely. The fact that they were Reservists and not full-time crews obviously had a lot to do with that unwritten rule — the thought of weekend warriors flying around by themselves with bombs on board unsettled a lot of people. “Request you contact us after your refueling so we can pass new times to you.”

“Zero-One, roger,” Furness replied. Well, so much for their plan. This was going to be a long fucking day. She had heard no reports on where her wingmen were — it was time to catch up on the joinup. She asked, “Okay, Mark, where’s—”

Suddenly she heard Joe Johnson over the primary radio say, “Lead, Zero-Two, I’m overshooting, move out a little bit,” in a rather urgent tone of voice. Furness looked out the right cockpit canopy and gasped in panic. Joe Johnson in Thunder Zero-Two was not just overshooting a bit — he was ready to collide. His overtake had been much too fast; his power was high during the climb, and the level-off surprised him.

“Jesus … dammit, what in hell are you doing!” She was about to yank the control stick over to bank away, but her right wingtip would collide with Zero-Two if she did that. Instead, she eased the stick down to lose some altitude. Slowly, the two planes slid away. “Shit, Mark, you’re supposed to be watching the rejoin!”

“I was watching it,” Fogelman seethed.

“You watch the rejoin until they’re stabilized in fingertip, and you do nothing else,” she fired back. “When you got aircraft closing into fingertip, forget the radar, forget the INS, and concentrate on the rejoin. Christ, that was close!”

Johnson knew he had come close too: he said on the backup radio, “Sorry about that, lead. Just wanted you to get a good look at our underside.”

“Thunder Flight, this is not a damned race,” Furness shouted on the backup radio. She didn’t care if the command post or the generals at Plattsburgh could still hear her — the near-collision was way, way too close for comfort: “Smooth and gentle on the rejoins. Zero-Three, say range.”

“Two miles from Zero-Two,” Paula Norton replied. Her voice sounded a little shaky — she had undoubtedly seen that near-collision as well. “We’ve got you both in sight. I’ve got Zero-Four on my wing already. He’s checked me out already, too.” Frank Kelly, an experienced F-111 pilot, had “cut off the corner,” joined on Paula Norton’s right wing, and had even accomplished a visual inspection. He would simply follow Norton in as she rejoined with Furness and Johnson.

“I want nice smooth turns and no abrupt power changes,” Furness said. “Weather looks good in the orbit area. Lead’s at 82 percent.”

One by one, as they headed southwest toward the first checkpoint, the four bombers joined together. The first sequence of events was an aerial refueling over northern New Hampshire. The rendezvous with the New Hampshire Air National Guard KC-135E tanker from Portsmouth Air Force Base was uneventful and smooth.

One by one, the formation split up while in the refueling anchor. Two minutes before Zero-Two’s end air refueling time, Johnson accomplished a rendezvous to precontact position and then performed a practice emergency “breakaway”—the receiver would chop power and descend rapidly, the tanker would shove the power in and climb, and the other planes would stay on the tanker’s wing. Rebecca remembered lots of practice breakaway maneuvers, both in the KC-135 and KC-10 tankers … and she was glad to be on the receiver side. She remembered back to those long hours flying over the desert during Desert Shield and Desert Storm as a KC-10 tanker pilot, refueling just about every kind of aircraft in the world — and she remembered how vulnerable the tanker was to any nearby danger. Especially the time during the emergency refueling with the stricken F-111G in the opening day of the war.

God, that seems like ages ago. She tossed it out of her mind and focused completely on getting into that comfortable state of mind where you feel that you’re ahead of the aircraft, anticipating the sequence of events — finally in control of the situation. It was a little rocky starting out, she thought, but it was all coming back to them now.…

Miracles never ceased.

EIGHTEEN

Mikola Korneichuk pushed her way through a rather large crowd of hospital workers, patients, and bystanders on her way to the hospital front desk. The well-wishers shouted congratulations to the dark-haired, dark-skinned beauty, but she hardly heard one word — her eyes, her heart, her soul were focused only on one extraordinary man.

“Pavlo!” she shouted as the last few onlookers stepped aside to let her pass. The tall flying officer at the outprocessing desk finished the paperwork he had been working on, signing his name with a flourish on the last release form.

Aviation Captain First Class Pavlo Grigor’evich Tychina smiled from behind an antiseptic cotton mask covering part of his face, at hearing his girlfriend’s voice. The mask was trimmed at the top, which allowed his curly brown hair to show and partially conceal the mask. Bandages and pads covered his nose and ears, but it was obvious that they were damaged — his left ear and his nose looked as if they were missing completely. Although Tychina wore a flight suit and heavyweight flying jacket — a new one, not the one in which he had bailed out — it could be seen that the upper part of his torso was covered with bandages, and his neck was thickly wrapped. “Mikki!” he shouted in return. He turned to greet her, but held back.

She paused, taking his hands warmly, her eyes narrowing with concern as she sensed something in his mannerisms. “Pavlo? What is it?”

“I … I’m happy to see you, Mikki …” But he was pushing her away. Fearing that she might be repulsed by the sight of him, he was trying to keep his distance, not forcing her to get too close because of the onlookers surrounding them.

“Pavlo … Pavlo, damn you …” Mikola rushed into his arms and kissed him. The hospital staff surrounding them gave them an appreciative “Ahhh …” But as the kiss became more prolonged, they broke out into enthusiastic cheers and whistles. She finally released him, hugged him, then took his hand and led him to the hospital doors amidst wild cheering.

The sunshine was dazzling outside the hospital. Pavlo breathed in the crisp, cold air, thanking God and the stars above for letting him live. “All I want to do,” Pavlo said, letting great gusts of steamy breath escape from the cotton mask’s mouth slit, “is to stand out here and drink it in.”

“We’ll freeze to death, Pavlo,” Mikola said, shivering. “So. Your place or mine?”

“Headquarters first,” Tychina said. “I’m going to report back to duty right away.”

“Report back to— Pavlo, you shouldn’t even be out of the hospital yet!” Korneichuk protested. “You should be in bed and off that left leg! You just survived a high-speed, high-altitude ejection. What on earth makes you think you can go back on duty?”

“Because my injuries aren’t serious, and we’re at war,” Tychina replied as if she should even have to ask. “I didn’t say I’d be flying, although I think I’m well enough to fly. They’re going to need every soul available to mobilize the armed forces if Russia wants to fight.”

“If Russia wants to fight, the best the Ukraine can do is negotiate and beg for help from the West,” Korneichuk said grimly. “They can slaughter us like sheep if they decide to invade.”

“They can try to slaughter us,” Tychina said, shaking his head as they walked away from the hospital. “And there may be little hope for us. The Ukrainian armed forces were designed to resist an outside invader until help arrived from Russia — not fight against Russia. But it’s important to fight, Mikki. Whoever the invader is, it is important to fight.”

A convoy of trucks carrying base security soldiers rolled by just then, and the truck’s driver started to beep his horn when he recognized the young fighter pilot who, almost single-handedly, fought off the Russian air invasion. Soon every soldier in the back of the truck was cheering, and then the entire convoy of ten trucks joined in. Like the scene at the hospital, it was a stirring moment for the young pilot — and for her. Mikola Koneichuk began to realize what her lover was saying: one man’s actions could make a difference. Seeing the enthusiastic faces of the men driving by in the trucks, in the faces of those she saw at the hospital, she could no longer say with certainty if her country would be defeated so easily by any foe — even Russia.

It was less than a kilometer to air army headquarters, but it took the couple over an hour to make the short walk because of the numbers of well-wishers who stopped to congratulate Pavlo on the way. Many of them offered the couple a ride, but Pavlo would simply put his arms around Mikola and say, “Would I deprive you unfortunate cretins a chance to glimpse this beautiful woman as you drive by?”

Korneichuk felt enormous pride and love for this man. His life, in many ways, had been so typical of young men in the then-USSR. Born in 1967 in Brovary, near Kiev, Pavlo was the son of Russian parents who made them very proud when he became a member of the Komsomol (Young Communists) and graduated with honors from the Gritevets Higher Military Aviation Academy in Char’kov, Ukraine SSR in 1987. After that, Pavlo was assigned to the Twenty-fourth Air Army in Tallinn, Estonia SSR, flying combat, strike, and maritime patrols in the Black Sea region in MiG-23s and MiG-27s. When the Ukraine declared independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991, Pavlo gave up all privileges in the Russian/Soviet Air Force and accepted a commission in the fledgling Ukrainian Air Force. He did the same duties he’d always done for the Russians, except now it was for his true homeland. As his career moved quickly forward in the new Air Force, he became a flight instructor and flight commander just a year ago. Neither one of them could have guessed what had just happened, barely one year later.

She knew that he had almost been cut out of her life once, and that she should not allow it to happen again. She had always had doubts about being the wife of a military officer, especially a military pilot’s wife, and she was never sure if that was the kind of life she wanted. But she now realized that, as difficult as life was in the Ukrainian Air Force, a life without Pavlo Tychina would be even worse. “Pavlo?”

“Yes?”

“I … I want to ask you something.” She stopped, and Tychina turned to face her. “I’ve thought a lot about us, and … and …”

He reached up with leather-gloved hands and encircled her face. “I know what you’re going to say, my love,” Tychina said. “Believe me, I love you with all my heart and soul, and I want nothing more than to be with you forever. But I … I’m not … I just think you should wait. I don’t want to pressure you into something you might regret.”

“Regret? What could I possibly regret?”

Sadly, slowly, Tychina removed his fur hat, then pulled off the cotton antiseptic face mask. Pavlo’s face was a maze of scars and lacerations, some requiring extensive stitches to close; others were so deep that they had to be kept open to allow pus to properly drain. His nose was heavily taped, but it was obvious, too obvious, that he no longer had a nose. A deep scar missed his left eye by millimeters, making his left eyelid look as if it were twice as large as normal, and it slanted upward, giving him a sinister Oriental appearance. His eyebrows and eyelashes were burned or shaved off. The scars continued down his throat — Mikola saw where a trachea tube had been inserted in his throat sometime during his surgery — and Pavlo revealed enough of his chest for her to see that the injuries continued far down his torso. It was a wonder to her that he could stand the pain without screaming.

“Do you understand now, Mikki?” Tychina asked quietly. “I look at myself in the mirror, and I am sickened! I begged my best friend to bring a gun and kill me, but it would be a waste of a bullet that could be used to kill invading Russians. The only thing that keeps me from ending my pain is my desire to keep the Russians off my homeland. I will not compel you to be with a man like me.”

“With a man like—” Mikola stepped closer to him, reaching up to his face. He recoiled from her, but she took his horribly disfigured face in her hands and held it. “You are the bravest, kindest, most loving man I have ever known, Pavlo Grigor’evich,” she said. She kissed his scarred lips, holding the embrace until he finally relaxed and returned her kiss. She released him, then, still holding his face in her hands, said, “And if you don’t marry me right away, Pavlo, you and I will both regret it.”

“Are you sure, Mikki?” Another kiss gave him her answer. “Then yes, I would regret it for the rest of my life if I lost you. If you’ll have me, Mikola, will you be my wife?”

Her tears of joy and her kiss was all the answer he required.

As they got closer to headquarters, which was only a few blocks from the flight line, they could hear the roar of dozens of jet engines. Pavlo could see more planes than normal parked on the ramp. Instead of just MiG-23 fighters and older Sukhoi-17 attack aircraft parked out there, there were a lot of Mikoyan-Gurevich-27 and Sukhoi-24 bombers. Although the MiG-23 had a integral bombing capability and the Su-17 was a capable, proven bomber, the MiG-27 and Su-24 were true high-tech supersonic bombers. The Su-24 was newer, faster, and deadlier than the Su-17 or MiG-27, and could carry up to eight thousand kilograms of ordnance, far more than any aircraft in the Ukrainian inventory, and it was also capable for use as a tanker to aerial-refuel other Sukhoi-24s for long-range bombing missions. Most Su-24s in the Ukraine were based in Odessa and Vinnica, so obviously substantial strike forces were being moved farther north to counter an expected Russian ground advance into the Ukraine. The smell of war was as powerful as the smell of burning jet fuel — and, truthfully, it both sickened and electrified Pavlo Tychina.

The entrance to the air army headquarters building was heavily guarded now. The guards allowed both Tychina and his new fiancée to enter the foyer, but because the base was on a war footing they could not allow Mikola to proceed past the security desk. Before proceeding, Pavlo made a few phone calls from the security desk, then turned to Mikola: “I’ve made an appointment with the wing chaplain,” he said. “He has agreed to marry us later this evening.”

She threw her arms around him, ignoring the guards and staff officers filing around them. “When, Pavlo? When can we go?”

“I’ve got to check in with the command center and speak with the commanding general,” Tychina said. “He’s old-fashioned, and he’d probably expect me to ask permission to marry. The chaplain will marry us in the base chapel in three hours, so you have that long to call your friends and ask them to meet us. I’ll see you at the chapel then.” She kissed him once again and, with her eyes glistening from tears, hurried off to make the wedding arrangements. Tychina checked in with the security guards, then proceeded toward the underground command center — undoubtedly, the air army commander would be down in the deep underground war room rather than up in his fourth-floor office.

A stairway took Tychina three floors down, where his identification was checked once again. Security was extensive, but Tychina was greeted warmly by security and wing staff members alike as he made his way to the command center. A curved, truck-sized ramp led one more floor down, past intelligence, combat planning, and meteorological offices, through another set of steel blast doors, and then into the command center itself. A few of the guards in the security cubicles let themselves out to shake Tychina’s hand, and a few curious ex-flyers wanted him to lift his antiseptic mask up so they could see his scars and lacerations. Tychina was happy to see that no one that he could detect was repulsed by his appearance, and he knew he was fortunate. The Ukrainian Air Force was small, very close-knit, and supportive-unfortunately, he thought as he entered the main command center, it usually took a great disaster such as this to remind himself of how lucky he was to serve with such fine soldiers.

After checking in with the final security unit, Tychina met up with Colonel of Aviation Petr Iosifovich Panchenko, the deputy commander of operations of L’vov Air Base. Panchenko, nearly fifty years old, with a bald head and stone-gray eyes, was one of the few senior officers on base that Tychina really enjoyed working with — probably because Panchenko had risen through the ranks in his thirty years of service from a pneumatics technician, to weapons officer on attack helicopters, to rotary and then fixed-wing pilot, to the third-highest-ranking officer on base. He was a former Communist and very influential in the old Soviet Air Force, and could have been Chief of Staff of the Ukrainian Air Force or even Marshal of Military Forces, the highest-ranking military man in the Ukraine, or even Minister of Defense, had it not been for his past Communist Party affiliation and his formerly close ties to Moscow. Best of all was Panchenko’s pro-flyers attitude — he still wore a flight suit as his standard utility uniform, even in headquarters.

“Captain Tychina?” Panchenko asked with surprise. “Dobri dyen, man, you’re out of the damned hospital? How do you feel? Jesus, come on in here.” Panchenko led Tychina through the communications center, past the battle staff conference room, and into a suite of concrete-walled offices reserved for the wing staff when they were in combat conditions. “I was going to visit you tomorrow, and I expected to see you either in traction or surrounded by beautiful nurses.” He examined the sterile mask, then silently motioned for Pavlo to remove it. Penchenko’s eyes narrowed slightly when he saw the horrible lacerations, but soon he stepped over to Tychina, put his hands on his shoulders, and said in a low, sincere voice, “You look like hell, Pavlo. You really do. But I’m damned glad to see you up and around.”

“I’m reporting for duty, sir.”

“You’re … what? You want to start flying again?” he asked incredulously.

“I’m ready, sir.”

“Did you get your medical degree on your last leave, Pavlo? Are you an expert now? Why don’t you just take it easy for a few days and—”

“The Russians cut me up, sir,” Tychina said in a low voice, “but they didn’t hurt me. I can see, I can walk, I can fly, I can fight. I counted at least thirty new airframes on the ramp — do you have enough pilots to go with them? I should remind you that I’m checked out in every swing-wing fighter in the inventory.”

“I know you are, Pavlo, and yes, for now, I have enough pilots,” Panchenko replied rather uneasily. Obviously unspoken was the fact that if they had to begin a major deployment or, God forbid, an offensive against the Russians, he would run out of fresh pilots in less than twenty-four hours. “Look, Captain, I admire your dedication. I’ll tell the General you were by — oh, hell, he’ll probably be over at the hospital visiting you tonight.”

“I’ll wait here for him,” Tychina said. “I’d like to ask his permission to get married.”

“Married …? Jesus, Pavlo, you’re the most active war casualty I’ve ever seen,” Panchenko said. He smiled, then took Tychina’s hand and shook it. “Congratulations, son. Miss Korneichuk … Mikola, if I’m not mistaken?” Tychina nodded. “Good man. You were wise to seek the old man’s permission, too. He’s from the old school, when officers couldn’t get a hard-on without the commanding general’s permission. But if I know you fast-burning MiG-23 pilots, you already got the chaplain lined up, am I right?”

“He’ll do the ceremony in about two and a half hours, sir.”

“Ha, I knew it,” Panchenko said with a broad smile. “After what you’ve been through, I wouldn’t blame you for not waiting.” He picked up the outer office telephone and told Tychina, “I’ll get the old man to come back to the command center to tell him you’re here. You can ask him for his blessing, then I’ll have a car take you to the chapel. You’ll make it, don’t worry.” He made the phone call to his clerk, then added, “As far as permission to go back on duty, it’s denied — until after the honeymoon. Four days … no, make it a week. May I suggest you spend your honeymoon abroad, as far as your savings can take you — Greece, Italy, even Turkey.”

“You’re suggesting I leave the country, sir?” Tychina asked with total amazement. “I couldn’t do that!”

“Son, I’ll give you permission to cross the border,” Panchenko said, his face suddenly hard and serious, “and I strongly suggest you do it. First of all, you’re a damned hero, a true hero. You put your life on the line to defend your country against astounding odds, and you were victorious. The whole world knows about you, and they would think poorly of the Ukrainian Air Force if we put you back on duty so fast. You should be going to the United Nations or to NATO, testifying on the Russian aggression — in fact, I will request that the commanding general send you to Kiev to debrief the general staff, then send you to Geneva to argue our case.

“Second, you’re injured. You may think you’re ready to fly, but you’re not.” He held up a hand to silence Tychina’s protest, then added, “Third, you should take your bride out of the country, spend a few days making a future Ukrainian pilot, then leave her out of the country where it’s safe.”

“Sir, what in hell are you saying?”

“I’m saying that there’s going to be a war, son, and Ukrayina is going to be the battleground,” Panchenko said, using the less formal and more popular name, “Ukrayina,” for their country. “New Russia wants to lead an empire again — Moldova, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, maybe the Baltic states: the sons of bitches will try to take them all back. We’re going to stop them from taking Ukrayina, with God’s help and maybe some help from the West. But in the meantime, this will be no place for young Ukrainian wives and mothers.”

“Do you really expect a war with Russia, sir?” Tychina asked gravely.

“Unfortunately, I do,” Panchenko admitted. “So does the general staff. Ever wonder why you led a major patrol formation the other night with only a partial warload?”

Tychina’s eyes lit up from behind his mask: “Yes, dammit, I only had half the close-range missiles I needed.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Panchenko said, “and it’s not because of some black market thefts, as the rumor mill is saying these days. You should—”

A klaxon alert suddenly blared just outside the office. Tychina jumped at the sound, but to his surprise, Panchenko did not — in fact, he appeared to have expected it. The door to his office burst open, but Panchenko did not look at the communications officer who had entered — he looked directly at Tychina’s masked face with a sad, exasperated expression. “Sir!” the communications officer shouted. “ ‘Majestic’ fighter patrol reports large formations of bombers inbound. Supersonic bombers, Tupolev-160 and Tupolev-22M bombers, coming in at very low altitude. They got past the patrols.”

“Cruise missile attack … and this time it won’t be a straight-and-level attack,” Panchenko said slowly, as if a great weariness had just come over him. “Lieutenant, launch Crown patrol and any other ready air patrols and aircraft. Sound the air raid sirens. Where’s the General and the Vice Commander?”

“The General is in quarters, sir. The Vice is at a city council meeting downtown.”

Panchenko knew it would take the commanding general at least ten to fifteen minutes to get back to headquarters, even if he raced back at high speed. He shook his head — he knew he had no choice. “Very well,” he said. “Under my authority, seal up the command center and disengage external antennas. Switch to the ground-wave communications network and report to me when full ground-wave connectivity is established.”

Pavlo Tychina’s masked head quickly went from the excited communications officer back to Panchenko. “What’s going on, sir? You’re sealing up the command center?”

“We were lucky the other night, thanks to you,” Panchenko said wearily. “You turned back what would have been the Russian’s warning shot at Ukrayina. If they meant peace, we would have been safe. If they meant war, I knew they would return, only this time with weapons of mass destruction. That attack has begun.”

“What? The attack? What are you … Mikki! God, no …!” Tychina’s masked eyes finally realized what the senior officer was saying. He shot to his feet, pushed the communications officer out of his way, and raced for the door. He managed to make it out of the battle staff area and main communications center, but by the time he reached the large blast door outside the command center, he found it closed and bolted. He went back and confronted the security guards outside the communications center, but all he found were men with tight lips and eyes filled with terror who would not comply with his order to open the blast door.

“Even the commanding general must stay out until the all-clear is sounded, Pavlo,” Colonel Panchenko said behind Tychina. “He knows that. Our ability to survive and fight would be destroyed if we opened that door. Even love must take a backseat when a nation and the lives of millions are at stake.”

The lights suddenly went out, and after several long moments of darkness the emergency lights went on. “We’re on generator power,” he said matter-of-factly. “We operate on hydroelectric generators that run on an underground river, did you know that? Unlimited water and power. We can even produce oxygen. We have diesel generators and batteries as a backup — we have enough batteries to cover a soccer field down here. I estimate there are a hundred people in the command center, and the supplies were stocked for twice that number. We can survive down here for three months, if need be.”

“What’s the point?” Tychina asked angrily. His sterile mask produced a hideous effect, ghostly and evil-looking, like some medieval executioner on a rampage. “Is there going to be anything up there to protect?”

“Cicero said, ‘While there is life there is hope,’ “ Panchenko said.

He turned, sniffed at the air. “The ventilators have kicked on. We draw fresh air from miles away from the base until radiation levels exceed a certain point, then shut down and go on carbon dioxide scrubbers and electrochemical air-restoration systems, like a big submarine. Come on, Pavlo, let’s get back and find out what’s going on outside.”

Tychina touched the big steel door. He thought he could hear voices and maybe fists pounding on the door from the other side, but the door was sixty centimeters thick, so that was unlikely. “She’s gone, isn’t she, sir?” he said from behind his mask.

“Pavlo, we don’t know,” Panchenko said over the loud hum of the ventilators. “All we know is, we’ve got a job to do. Our country needs us. You may have become the senior pilot of this wing, Pavlo, maybe even of the entire Ukrayina Air Force. I need you to help organize whatever forces we have. Now you can destroy yourself with pity, and I’ll understand, because you’ve been through hell already. Or you can come with me and help me organize the battle against the Russians. Which is it going to be?”

Tychina nodded, took a deep breath, and followed Panchenko back to the battle staff briefing room. Perhaps he was being overly dramatic, he thought. Maybe it wasn’t a full-scale attack, or maybe the air patrols would turn the Russian bombers back — the patrols had been strengthened since his incident the other night. He could hear the usual cacophony of chatter coming from the communications room, the clatter of teletypes and fax machines, the hum of computers. Nothing was going to happen, he thought. Dammit, he had let Petr Panchenko, a man he truly admired and wanted to emulate, see his scared, apprehensive side. He had to really take charge now, Tychina thought. He had to—

— suddenly all the lights went dead, a sound louder than thirty years’ worth of thunderstorms rolled through the underground structure, and everything in Pavlo Tychina’s consciousness went black.

NINETEEN

They had left Lossiemouth Royal Air Force Base in Scotland, heading southeast, under the cover of a drenching rain and low overcast skies. The first sonic boom was sixty seconds after takeoff, where only a few fishermen and whales in the North Sea heard it. They stayed at high altitude and at Mach-two, flying in the same jet airways as the Concorde and other military flights, until over the Atlantic far off the coast of Spain, where the flight rendezvoused with a special U.S. Air Force KC-10 Extender aerial tanker. After fifteen minutes, fully fueled, the aircraft turned eastbound again, and let the throttles loose. Passing Mach-two, the normal turboramjet engines were shut down, and the ramjet engines were engaged. Now, twenty minutes and fifteen hundred miles later, they were screaming over the Adriatic at an altitude of one hundred thousand feet.

Every mission in the United States Air Force’s newest reconnaissance aircraft, the SR-91A Aurora, was not only an aviation record-setter — it was a totally new experience for mankind. The Aurora was a large, triangular-shaped aircraft made entirely of heat-resistant composite materials — the fuselage was both a lifting body, like a giant one-piece wing, and was also a critical component of the aircraft’s combined-cycle ramjet engines. Most of the 135-foot-long, 75-foot wide, three-hundred-thousand-pound gross weight aircraft was fuel — but not JP-4 jet fuel or even JP-7 high-flashpoint fuel as used in the Aurora’s predecessor, the SR-71 Blackbird, but supercooled liquid methane. It was the fastest air-breathing machine ever built.

For takeoff from Lossiemouth, the SR-91A burned gaseous methane mixed with liquid oxygen through the four large engine ducts on the bottom of the aircraft, much like the liquid-fueled engines on the Space Shuttle. At Mach-2.5, or two and a half times the speed of sound, the liquid oxygen would gradually be shut off, the rocket nozzles retracted, and the engines would switch to pure ramjet operation. A ramjet was a virtual hollow tube with a bulged interior that would compress incoming air like a giant jet turbine compressor; then methane fuel would be added and the mixture burned. The resulting thrust was four times more powerful than any other existing aircraft — Aurora was more like a spacecraft at that point. One more refueling over the Arabian Sea, and on to the destination in Okinawa, Japan. Upon approach to landing, the ramjet engines would be shut down, the turboramjet engines restarted, and a “normal” approach and landing — if a five-hundred-mile-long, two-hundred-mile-per-hour straight-in approach to landing could be considered normal — and the mission would be over.

In that mission, the three-person crew would have encircled one-third of the Earth in about three hours, and photographed over seven million square miles of the Earth’s surface, transmitting the imagery via satellite to the Defense Intelligence Agency in Virginia. The pictures — synthetic aperture radar, long-range oblique optical, digital charged-coupled device optical, and infrared linescan — along with data from dozens of electronic sensors, would be developed and analyzed long before the Aurora was parked in a special hangar at Okinawa, allowed to cool off — its skin temperature would easily exceed a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, and it would take about twenty minutes before anyone could even approach the plane — and the space-suited crew finally taken off the plane. The next day, another series of recon missions, more records set, and a final landing at their home base at Beale AFB, California.

It was often said by proponents of the SR-91A Aurora that crewmen were an unnecessary redundancy — everything done on Aurora, from takeoff to landing to all reconnaissance and navigation work, was fully computerized. So when the electromagnetic and particle sensors aboard Aurora went crazy as it passed over the Adriatic Sea, the reconnaissance computer merely recorded the data, reset itself, did a complete self-test of its millions of computer chips and circuits, and began recording more information, automatically repeating the process six times a second. There was no report to the human occupants, no warning, no flight plan alterations.

It was as if it were perfectly normal, an everyday routine occurrence, for a half-dozen solar flares to erupt simultaneously — on the surface of the Earth, over Eastern Europe.

“Whoa, baby!” Air Force Major Marty Pugh, the engineer and RSO (Reconnaissance Systems Operator), called out over interphone. Although the plane’s cockpit was fully pressurized, all of Aurora’s crewmembers wore pressure suits, like the astronauts they were, and they were strapped so securely in place that movement was all but impossible. Very little talking was ever done during the high-altitude, high-speed portion of the flight, so when something happened, an excited voice got instant attention from everyone. “Hey, I got some particle energy readings that just jumped off the scale.”

“Copy,” Colonel Randall Shaw, the mission commander, replied. “I’m running a flight control check, Snap. Stand by.” He got two clicks on the microphone from the aircraft commander, Graham “Snap” Mondy, who merely positioned his hands a bit closer to the side-mounted control stick and throttles. In a conventional aircraft, a flight control check would entail moving the stick, jockeying the throttles, perhaps turning off the autopilot and making a few gentle turns. Not in Aurora — a gentle turn might take them off course by two hundred miles, and flying without an autopilot at Mach-six could turn them into a blazing meteor in seconds. The flight control check was a simple voice command and a two-second self-check in which the flight control computer checked all of its circuits. “Check complete,” Shaw reported. “In the green.” Two more clicks meant that Mondy confirmed the report.

“Some shit is really going down there off to the north,” Pugh said. In the fifteen seconds between his first and second sentence, Aurora had traveled twenty miles, and the sensors had turned their attention to Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, and was getting ready to take pictures of Greece, Turkey, and the eastern Mediterranean. “You guys see anything out there at your ten o’clock?”

Looking out the window in Aurora was usually an exercise in frustration. The hull glowed so brightly from the heat that it washed out much of the view, and ground features zipped by so fast that even prominent landmarks like a city at night or the Himalayas went by before you had a chance to say, “Look at the Himalayas.” But Colonel Mondy swiveled his head around in the Teflon helmet bearings and looked to his left …

… just in time to see a tremendously bright burst of light, like a laser beam had just flashed directly in his eyes. He blinked his eyes and turned away, but the spot was still there, etched right into the center of his field of view. “Dammit,” Mondy said, “I just got flashed by something — an explosion, or a laser beam, something. Damn, I got a spot in my eyes.”

“Massive electrical discharge,” Pugh reported, “like a … a nuclear explosion or something … no thermal energy, but particle energy discharges nearly off the scale. Portside CCD optical cameras are out — whatever hit you, Colonel, got our digital cameras too. I’ve picked up five or six of them.”

“Not now, Marty,” Mondy interrupted irritably. He lifted his visor and tried to rub his eyes with his right index finger, but the bulky inflated gloves of the pressure suit didn’t do much good. “Dammit, Randy, I really got hurt here.”

“What is it, Colonel?”

“That flash … I got a dark brown spot in front of my eyes, and it’s not going away,” Mondy said. “I think I got a retinal burn or something. You have the aircraft.”

“I have the aircraft,” Shaw acknowledged. “You need help? Want to come out of hypersonic range so we can radio headquarters?”

“No … dammit, maybe. Let me think,” Mondy said. Because Aurora developed a very powerful thermal and static electric field around it during its hypersonic flight, it was usually necessary to slow down to Mach-three, the lowest speed possible with the ramjet, to talk to anyone on the radios. Standard procedure was to remain radio-silent during all ramjet operations. In an emergency you stayed hypersonic until you computed an alternate landing site at least five hundred miles away, because it would take that long to slow down, restart the turboramjet engines, and make an approach — and there were only ten approved landing sites in the entire civilized world for Aurora.

“No, stay with the flight plan — but you’ll have to take the plane for the landing, Randy,” Mondy said. “Man, I’m really hurt. That dark spot is getting bigger and darker, and I’m getting a really bad headache. Check all systems again, crew — I’m concerned about that blast affecting our systems.”

“Hell, we’re sixteen miles above and at least six hundred miles away from the location of that disturbance,” Pugh said. “Imagine what it was like for someone on the ground.”

They did not even want to think about that.

TWENTY

Five minutes after the tiny button in the office of the chief of the Presidential Protection Detail, U.S. Secret Service, was pressed, a large green and white helicopter was dropping out of the gray, ice-filled clouds over Washington, D.C., and lowering onto the front lawn of the White House. The helicopter was of course Marine One, a VH-3D Sea King helicopter flown by HMX-1, the Marines Corps Executive Flight Detachment from Quantico, Virginia. The engines were never brought to idle upon landing — the Marine Corps pilots held the helicopter on the ground by brute strength with the throttles just below takeoff power until their very special passengers and their Secret Service escorts were on board. Then the pilots shoved the power back in and lifted off, swooping low over the Ellipse before rapidly climbing. Seconds after clearing the area, it was joined by two other identical VH-3D VIP helicopters, and the three craft shuffled inflight position in a prebriefed sequence until it could no longer be apparent to anyone on the ground which helicopter was really carrying the President of the United States, his wife, and members of his Cabinet and staff.

It was a short helicopter ride to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, and a high-speed tactical landing just a few feet from the left wingtip of a Boeing E-4B NEACAP, or National Emergency Airborne Command Post aircraft. The huge modified Boeing 747B, white with a dark blue stripe across the sides with the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in bold letters across the upper half, also had a distinctive bulge on the top of the plane that distinguished this plane from the standard VC-25A Air Force One; the bulge contained a satellite and SHF (Super High Frequency) communications antenna that, along with a two-thousand-foot trailing wire antenna and forty-six other antennas arrayed around the plane, allowed the plane’s occupants to literally talk to anyone in the known world with a radio receiver — even if that radio receiver was aboard a nuclear-powered submarine sitting two hundred feet below the surface of the ocean or in orbit two hundred miles above the Earth. Exactly ninety seconds after Marine One touched down, RAFT-104 (as the NEACAP aircraft was known on an open radio channel) was leaving the ground.

The President, his wife, and their daughter had been securely strapped into plush, high-backed seats in the forward flight crew section of the 4,600-square-foot main deck of the aircraft. The President was a big, handsome young man from what many derisively called a “Deliverance” state — lots of farmers and country folk with the joke being that, as in the movie, the men found the pigs more attractive than the women. He had been one of that state’s youngest and most popular politicians and one of the youngest chief executives of the United States. Despite his frequent campaign and news shots of him jogging around the running track on the South Lawn, he was plainly out of breath after running up the thirty-four steps of the airstair to enter NEACAP. But if it was from physical exertion or from fear of being roused out of the White House by the Secret Service, it was hard to tell. His wife, in stark contrast, was not out of breath one bit. Much shorter than her husband, slim and trim, with professionally lightened, shoulder-length hair and blue eyes, the First Lady was highly intelligent and very much like her husband. It was often said that the combination of this almost inseparable pair was far greater than the sum of their parts. Many couples in the White House had been described as running a copresidency for a variety of reasons, but although she held no official posts or headed any commissions other than ceremonial ones, in this White House there was no doubt that the President and his wife made a very powerful force to reckon with.

Just a few moments after takeoff, the First Lady turned to their lone colleague, Michael J. Lifter, the President’s National Security Advisor, and asked, “What was this about an attack in Europe, Michael? Something happen with Russia and Moldova?” The President’s eyes briefly registered his wife’s question, and there might have been a hint of irritation at her speaking out before he, but he turned toward Lifter and silently awaited his response.

Lifter, just a bit taller than the First Lady, dark and angular, glanced at the communications panel on the table in front of them. “As soon as the air-to-ground channels are open, I’ll get us an update,” he replied, addressing them both. “The word I got was that the Ukraine came under attack by Russian cruise missiles, and that nuclear weapons might be involved.”

“My God,” the First Lady replied. “That’s horrible … it should be confirmed at once. I hope Velichko hasn’t finally gone over the edge.”

“It’ll take a few minutes for the communications group to get connected into the system and a situation report prepared,” Lifter said. He was a former naval officer and a long-time military attaché to the White House, and was very familiar with the interface between the military and civilian halves of the chain of command. Information flowed relatively freely and quickly between military users, especially intraservice, but it flowed less effectively interservice and, in most cases, very poorly between the military and civilian sectors. The First Couple, for example, would never request or accept a standard NMCC SITREP, or National Military Command Center Situation Report — it was so full of abbreviations and acronyms that it would throw both of these Ivy League grads into a royal tizzy. It had to be condensed into a readable, reportable format, and that took time. “Once we’re above ten thousand feet,” Lifter said, adding a definite number that he knew the couple could comprehend, “the crew can unstrap and all stations can hook in. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

While they waited, a crew physician came forward to check the President and the First Lady — he had a history of occasional airsickness — and another crewmember distributed a card with a list of crewmembers on board and facilities ready at the President’s disposal. There was a flight crew of eight — four pilots, two navigators, and two flight engineers in two shifts — a cabin crew of ten, a security crew of ten — all Secret Service, no Marines — a military crew of forty, a secretarial staff of six, a White House advisory staff of eight, a computer operations crew of two, and a medical staff of four. Only the President, the First Lady, and the National Security Advisor had made it to NEACAP when the alarm had sounded. “Aren’t there supposed to be more Cabinet officers on board? What about the Secretary of Defense? Where’s Don Scheer?”

“Sir, during a full-alert scramble, it’s always unlikely that anyone but those in immediate arm’s-length availability with the President will ever make the run,” Michael Lifter explained. “The crew of the airborne command post is chosen carefully for its ability to command the military in time of emergency. It is not really intended to be a flying White House.”

“It’s like a flying Hitler’s bunker,” the First Lady said half-aloud, almost in disgust. She moved closer to her husband and whispered, “We need to get in touch with Don Scheer and Harlan Grimm right away. We can’t be holed up too long with the damned military.” Grimm was the Secretary of State and a close friend to the First Couple.

“I know, honey, I know,” the President said. “Let’s let the boys do their job, though.” The First Lady sat back in her seat and affixed Lifter with an impatient glare.

Of course the officers and technicians in the C-³-I (Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence) area of NEACAP didn’t need a “few minutes” or to unstrap to do their jobs — information could flow from all points of the globe no matter how high or low NEACAP was flying — and in far less time than Lifter predicted, a report was delivered to him by an Air Force brigadier general, the chief of NEACAP’s communications section, and he reported that the battle staff was ready to speak with the President in the battle staff conference area. The President and Lifter rose and headed back to the conference room; the First Lady deftly moved herself in back of her husband and in front of Lifter as they were led by a steward to the meeting.

The senior military officer on board NEACAP was Air Force Lieutenant General Alfred Tarentum, the fifty-seven-year-old commander of Eighth Air Force, the major command division of the U.S. Air Combat Command, from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. The chief of the NEACAP battle staff was chosen by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense based on the nature of the current world emergency, as well as by a rotation list of senior military officers; Tarentum, as commander of the Air Force’s numbered air force in charge of all bombers and attack aircraft, was the highest-ranking air power expert available for detached duty.

Because NEACAP aircraft had not been deployed on alert duty to Washington for several years (NEACAP followed the President while traveling overseas, but otherwise was rarely used since the end of the Cold War), and because Tarentum was based in Louisiana and not in Washington, the President and very few others in the White House actually knew him — this didn’t help to put anybody at ease as he began his briefing: “Mr. President, ma’am, Admiral Lifter, I’m Lieutenant General Al Tarentum, battle staff senior officer, and I have your situation report.” He did not wait or expect any other comments, but went right into his briefing:

“About twelve minutes ago, at approximately five o’clock in the afternoon Moscow time, approximately one hundred Russian bombers launched long- and short-range cruise missile and gravity bomb attacks against targets in the Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania. Some of these attacks included cruise missiles armed with low-yield nuclear warheads, what are commonly known as enhanced radiation devices or neutron bombs—”

“Excuse me, General,” the First Lady interjected, “but why did we have to evacuate Washington? Was the United States under attack as well?”

“No, ma’am,” Tarentum replied. “However, we detected and have been monitoring the deployment of Russian bombers back to bases in Cuba. These bombers are similar to the ones that attacked in Europe. Since we can’t be sure of the precise location and number of bombers along the eastern seaboard at any time, when we received notification of the nuclear release in Europe we had no choice but to evacuate the NCA.”

“The NCA,” Lifter said, “is the National Command Authority, generally meaning the President and the Secretary of Defense or their designees.”

“I know who the NCA is,” the President said, finding a glass of ice water and taking a sip. He didn’t sound nearly as irritated as his wife did — undoubtedly his stomach was causing him more consternation than events were right now. The windows on board NEACAP had been sealed shut with silver-coated shutters to block out any possible nuclear flashes.

“Then how come Mr. Grimm isn’t on board, General?” the First Lady asked pointedly.

“Ma’am, our first priority is the safety of the President,” Tarentum replied. “The chains of command are intact as long as the President is safe. If any other Cabinet members were present, they would of course be taken along.”

“We were fifteen minutes from a morning staff meeting,” she said, challenging him. “Surely the others were present or very close by.”

“Honey, let’s postpone this discussion for some other time,” the President said. “Go on, General. What else?”

“We have a call into President Velichko of Russia and President Khotin of the Ukraine,” Tarentum said. “However, both men issued statements soon after the attack.” A folder was placed before the President with a full text of the two government heads’ addresses. “President Velichko said that the attack was a response to the aggression by the Ukraine two nights ago when their fighters attacked several reconnaissance planes legally overflying the Ukraine.”

“That’s bullshit,” the President said, shaking his head. “Everyone knows those planes were Bear bombers.” He turned to Lifter, his eyes searching for confirmation.

“Absolutely, Mr. President,” Lifter acknowledged. “Armed with cruise missiles. Sources confirmed it.”

“President Khotin of the Ukraine in response declared war on Russia,” Tarentum went on, “and said he and the Ukrainian people will fight to the last man, woman, and child to keep their country free from Russian domination. There has been no further official communication from Kiev. Sources say that the central government may be evacuating the capital.”

“Where could they go?”

“The Pentagon believes they could very well go to Turkey, sir,” Tarentum replied. “As we’ve seen for several years now, relations between Turkey and the Ukraine have grown very close, possibly to the point of mutual cooperation and defense. The Pentagon has speculated that Turkey may have been accepting large quantities of Ukrainian weapons over the past several weeks to be stockpiled there in case of an invasion.”

“Excuse me, but I want to know what all this has to do with us,” the First Lady interjected. “You spirit us away in this thing like it’s the end of the world, and now we’re talking about Turkey and the Ukraine — two countries on the other side of the world, for God’s sake.” She turned to her husband and said, “I think we should put this thing on the ground at Andrews and get back to the White House immediately. We look like a bunch of chickens running around with our heads cut off.”

“As soon as we determine exactly the status of the Russian bombers in Cuba and other Russian and CIS forces in Europe and the Atlantic,” Tarentum said, not believing the balls of the Steel Magnolia. “We’ll make a determination—”

“General, my husband will make a determination, not you or anybody else,” the First Lady said.

That silenced everyone in the conference cabin. The President put a hand on his wife’s without looking at her, a silent order to calm down and take it easy, then said to Tarentum, “General, you go ahead and do your evaluation. However, I am concerned about getting back to Washington as soon as possible. Frankly, I’m concerned, like my wife is, about what it looks like if the President abandons the capital like this. The American people will start to think I’m scared, and I don’t want that. I may be able to direct military forces from up here, but I can’t be a leader flying safe and sound thirty thousand feet over everyone’s head.”

“We need to issue a press release calling this a false jump by the military,” his wife said. “Off the record, I’ll say we were nearly shanghaied into getting on board this thing — we can authorize that to get leaked to the press.”

“Let’s get the military business over with, shall we?” the President asked. “What do we need to do, General?”

“Your first decision is how to respond to the attack,” Tarentum replied, “specifically to the use of nuclear weapons by Russia. From a military standpoint we have no strategic nuclear forces available right now except for a few submarines, which I very much doubt if the Russians think we would consider using in a European conflict. This means we hold no Russian targets at risk whatsoever. If Russia decided to commence a nuclear attack in Europe or North America, our only response right now would be with six Ohio-class submarines, each carrying sixteen or twenty-four missiles, each with one warhead — a maximum of 144 warheads.”

“That’s a pretty sizable force, I’d say.”

“Yes, sir, but the question would be, does Russia think we’d employ those missiles, and would the damage they’d inflict be greater than what the Russians could do on their first attack?”

“What do the Russians have deployed right now that could reach the United States?” the President asked.

“We don’t know precisely, sir,” Tarentum replied, “but our latest estimates are based on credible forces the Russians had deployed at the time they voluntarily stood down a large percentage of their nuclear forces.” He placed another folder before the President; no one touched it. “The primary threat is from approximately two hundred road-mobile SS-25 missiles and about ninety rail-mobile SS-24 missiles. That’s almost three hundred missiles, assuming the Russians haven’t put multiple warheads on the SS-24—it can take as many as ten warheads each.

“We estimate at least 25 percent of their sea-launched ballistic missile force has been mobilized since recent hostilities started — that’s another 250 missiles, not including the additional deployment of sub-launched SS-N-21 Sampson cruise missiles. We’ve seen as many as one hundred bombers launched in support of the attacks against targets in the Ukraine, and they’ve been carrying cruise missiles and short-range attack missiles — the Blackjack bomber can carry twelve cruise missiles each—”

“Okay, okay, I get the picture,” the President said. “Jesus, I thought the Russians were doing away with all these heavy nuclear forces. Why in the hell are we giving them billions of dollars to dismantle their nuclear forces when they still have all these forces operational?”

“Sir, as you know, final ratification of the START treaty was held up primarily because of the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine,” National Security Advisor Lifter said. “The Ukraine refused to eliminate its nuclear weapons until a defense agreement was signed with NATO — that wasn’t done until late last year.”

“I know, but we’ve been telling the American people that we’ve been doing away with Russian weapons of mass destruction, that we’ve got nothing to worry about from Russia as far as long-range nuclear weapons are concerned,” the President said. “Next thing you know, we’re up in the Doomsday Plane. How are we going to explain this?”

“Sir, let me get back to the situation at hand,” General Tarentum interjected. “I have a specific suggestion to make: implement the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s alert plan right away.” The First Lady was no longer paying attention; the President motioned for him to continue: “We can have our land-based bombers placed back on alert within twenty-four hours.” He set another folder before the President. “That comprises a force of fifty B-52G and — H bombers, approximately eighty B-1B bombers, and twenty B-2A stealth bombers. We can augment this force with F-111 or F-15E bombers if necessary. The Pentagon suggests that we not mobilize any more sea-launched or land-based missiles at this time. The bombers would represent a low-scale response to a very grave threat.”

“I’ll have to take this up with the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” the President said. “When can I talk to them?”

“We should be connected any minute now, sir,” Lifter replied.

The President was silent for a moment; then: “What about mobilizing the Reserve forces? What kind of force mix do we get from that?”

Tarentum had anticipated such a question, and flipped a page in the previously ignored folder to show the President. It was a well-known fact that the Commander in Chief was a firm believer in the cost-cutting advantages of the Reserves, and a primary focus of his administration had been to enhance the viability of the Reserve forces. “There is one B-1B squadron in South Dakota, four B-52 squadrons in New York and Washington state, one F-15E squadron in North Carolina, and four F-111 squadrons in New Mexico and New York, all in the Enhanced Reverse Program,” Tarentum replied. “These units are primarily conventional squadrons — the one RF-111 unit up in upstate New York is a reconnaissance and Wild Weasel-type unit — but they are all fully certified for nuclear duties.” He paused, watching the First Lady out of the corner of an eye, and added, “They also have the largest percentages of women serving in the tactical air squadrons—thirty percent of the crewmembers in these combat units are women.”

That got the Steel Magnolia’s attention like nothing else. As outspoken as the President was on the value of the Reserves and National Guard, she was equally vocal about putting women in combat. Her reaction was understated, but Tarentum could see her eyes flicker in sheer delight. This was precisely what she wanted, and she made her wishes known by simply placing her hand atop her husband’s, a secret, quiet sign — known to everyone in the White House — that she wanted the order given.

“I think this would be a good opportunity to see our women combat soldiers in action,” the President declared. “Besides, I don’t want to stir things up too much — it’s possible that the Russian attack was all a big mistake, and I don’t want anyone to get the impression that I think the Cold War is heating up all over again. Ten bomber squadrons is plenty — no subs or MX missiles for now. Get General Freeman on the phone and let’s get to it. And I want a report on when we can set this thing down — the sooner the better.” He had lapsed into calling NEACAP, the most sophisticated aircraft on earth, “this thing,” just like his wife referred to it and all the apparatus of the office of the President of the United States with which she was decidedly uncomfortable.

“Maybe we should go somewhere as if this was a scheduled visit,” the First Lady suggested. “Perhaps down to talk to President Carter in Georgia, or Walter Mondale in Minnesota? Perhaps we can pick up Air Force One in Georgia and fly back to Washington in it, so the press and the public will see us flying in it rather than the … the Doomsday Plane.”

“Good idea, honey,” the President said. “Can you see if we can arrange that, General? Let’s go see Jimmy. Mike, how about getting the office on the phone and twisting some arms here? And some coffee and juice would be nice. What’s the kitchen like on this thing, anyway?”

The meeting over, stewards and secretaries swarming into the conference room, General Tarentum carefully collected up all the classified briefing folders on the conference table and dismissed his staff. Just as he feared, the threat wasn’t being taken seriously. What could possibly become World War III was happening right now in Europe, and the President of the United States’ response was to mobilize only one-fifth of America’s strategic fighting forces, then he was off to see Jimmy Carter, of all people, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Times had certainly changed, all right.

TWENTY-ONE

“Very impressive,” General Cole said half-aloud as Colonel Lafferty, the wing vice commander, entered the office. Cole ran one hand across his black-haired flattop and handed the report he was reading over to Lafferty with the other. “It’s the preliminary Air Combat Command readiness report from Maintenance Group.”

“What? So soon?” But Lafferty’s skeptical expression turned into one of surprise, then grudging admiration as he scanned the report. Lafferty was not the easiest man in the world to impress. A Naval Academy graduate who transferred to the Air Force after Navy flight assignment drawdowns went into effect following Vietnam, Lafferty looked like a typical fighter jock, with a large expensive Rolex, rolled-up sleeves on his flight suit, visible dog tags, and non-military-issue aviator sunglasses on top of his head. He loved fighters and flyers, but wasn’t overwhelmed by either until both proved themselves to him. “Well, all right—the new guy aces out the other groups his first day on the job. Mace must’ve really lit a fire under Razzano’s behind.”

“He fired Razzano,” Cole said. “Sent him to me for reassignment. Made Lieutenant Porter his exec instead — even promoted her to captain.”

“Shaking things up in the old office? Housecleaning?” Lafferty shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, it’s his prerogative. Razzano was on autopilot anyway, waiting for a reassignment, and Mace is a crewdog — he’ll cut the ground-pounders out and put in junior officers or other crewdogs every time. But I was afraid he’d do his ex-Marine head-busting routine.” He scanned the report, then: “Boy doesn’t pull any punches, either — he’s saying we’re only slightly better than minimally mission-capable. You going to upchannel this?”

“With the boss coming, I have no choice.” Cole sighed. “If my MG says it may take over seventy-two hours to generate the force for SIOP or for a max-rate deployment, I have to go along with it. But he’s got a plan to compensate. He’s moving eight Vampires into the shelters — says he’s going to put them into preload status right away.”

“We’re going to preload eight bombers?” Lafferty asked, astonished. “Jesus, spare us from the old retread SAC guys. That means we’re going to start flying with external tanks again?”

“Afraid so. With eight planes in preload status, that means he’ll need to keep at least ten, maybe twelve planes with tanks on the line.”

“God — wintertime with external tanks.” Lafferty moaned. “Remember all the problems we had? Frozen feed lines, crew chiefs pounding on tank pylons with wheel chocks to unstick frozen valves, incompatible mountings, upload tractor breakdowns …”

“Yeah, and remember the last Bravo exercise we had, where we had to cut the deployment exercise short by two days because three of our tankers went off-station and we couldn’t get enough external tanks on our planes?” Cole asked. “We’ve been kidding ourselves, Jim — we call ourselves mission-capable a lot of times when in reality we couldn’t get half this wing overseas in the required amount of time. If Colonel Mace wants to take on the challenge of maintaining one-third to one-half of our bomber fleet in preload status, let him. We’ll give him until the end of the second quarter to see if he can do it without breaking the bank or causing his entire Group to resign.”

“Well, I’m going to miss flying with slick wings,” Lafferty said. “Flying with externals is a real disappointment. What do you want to do with Razzano?”

“I have no earthly idea,” Cole said. “I’ve got a call in to check on his assignment to Seymour-Johnson, but no word yet. You got any special projects you need handled?”

“Right off, he can collect and process all these readiness reports,” Lafferty said. “We should—”

There was a knock on Cole’s door, and before Cole could respond, Major Thomas Pierce burst into the office. “Excuse me, sir …”

“Something wrong, Tom?”

“Something’s happening in the Ukraine again, sir,” Pierce said, going over to Cole’s television and turning the channel to CNN. “About five minutes ago, all the network stations just interrupted their normal broadcasts. About thirty seconds ago, we got an all-stations standby poll from NEACAP. STRATCOM is advising—”

“What? NEACAP? The President is airborne …?”

Pierce nodded, his face taut and grim. NEACAP, or National Emergency Airborne Command Post, was the high-tech Boeing 747 reserved for the President and others in the military chain of command in case of war. Except for annual exercises, it had not been used in many years. Normally all four of the nation’s E-4B NEACAP planes were stationed at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, but one had been moved to Andrews Air Force Base and placed on alert weeks ago when the conflict in Europe started to heat up. “Jesus … this is some serious shit.”

Just then, Cole’s executive officer stuck his head in the door as well; after checking that no uncleared persons were in the office, he said, “Sir, Command Post called. An A-Hour has just been declared.”

“A what?” Cole demanded, shooting to his feet. “What in the hell is going on? You two, follow me.” He rushed out the door, shouting to his executive officer, “Captain, call in the entire staff to the battle staff conference room on the double,” as he headed out of the office and downstairs to the underground command post. What the fuck had happened over there? Had Velichko finally gone off the deep end? The declaration of an A-Hour, or Alert Hour, confirmed their worst fears after learning that the President had abandoned the capital: the A-Hour was an order relayed from the President of the United States through his specified commanders to prepare for a nuclear war.

The command post at Plattsburgh had remained virtually the same as it was when it was all but abandoned in 1990, after the FB-111A bombers were removed from the base; except in recent weeks when events had started really heating up, it was used only occasionally for alert exercises. The wing commander and his staff members used a CypherLock keypad to gain entry through the outer door, which was locked behind them. They were now inside a small enclosed hallway, called an entrapment area, where the officer in charge of the command post could see them as their identification was checked one by one by an armed security guard. Inside, they went through a small office area and then into the communications center, where two command post technicians and one officer manned a complex of several radios, covering many bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, allowing them to communicate by voice or data to anywhere in the world. One wall was covered with an aircraft-status board, showing the location, crew complement, and status of every wing aircraft, both at Plattsburgh and at Burlington International Airport.

Cole was about to hurry into the battle staff area, from where he could receive reports and watch the news on banks of television monitors, but at that moment a warbling deedledeedledeedle alerting sound came over the loudspeaker, and a shadowy voice, probably a controller from the Pentagon speaking on the microwave link judging by the clarity of the voice, announced, “I say again, I say again, SKYBIRD, SKYBIRD, message follows: two, Bravo, Tango, India, seven, one, seven, Lima …” The cryptic message, read out as numbers or as phonetic characters, continued on for a total of exactly thirty-seven alphanumerics, then repeated once again. On one of the readbacks, the controller’s nervous voice cracked with the tension, and he had to issue a “Correction, character twenty, Whiskey, reading on beginning with character twenty-one, Uniform, five, five …” until the message was reread successfully.

“What have you got, Harlan?” Cole asked Major Harlan Laughlin, the command post senior controller.

“Message from the Pentagon, National Military Command Center,” Laughlin replied. “We’re officially in DEFCON Four. Strategic Command is generating the bombers for SIOP operations.”

Cole sucked in his breath as the tension crept across his neck and forehead like hot air from a bonfire. Defense Configuration Four officially placed selected portions of the Air Force’s B-52 Stratofortress, B-1B Lancer, B-2 Black Knight stealth bombers, and other tactical aircraft, including the RF-111G Vampire, into Strategic Command — they were back into the strategic nuclear warfighting business, known as the SIOP, or the Single Integrated Operations Plan, the computerized “playbook” for World War III.

As an experienced Air Force commander and former Pentagon officer, Cole was very familiar with DEFCON Four — that was a low-threat war footing, the readiness level at which they had operated from the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the end of 1991. During the Cold War, DEFCON Four was considered “normal,” with hundreds of bombers and thousands of nuclear-armed missiles poised to strike at the first sign of a large-scale attack. Now, after years at DEFCON Five, which was total peacetime readiness, DEFCON Four suddenly felt like the beginning of the end of the world.

“STRATCOM and Air Combat Command issued verified repeat messages,” Laughlin continued. “STRATCOM issued a Posture Two message just now. LOOKING GLASS is airborne.” To further define the actions each unit was to take, STRATCOM messages would direct various “postures,” or levels of readiness. Postures were numbered opposite of DEFCONs — while DEFCON One was all-out war, Posture One was the lowest readiness level; and since Strategic Command, with its huge and powerful deterrent arsenal of long-range nuclear weapons, wanted its forces ready for anything, they usually set a posture level one step higher than the military as a whole.

“Have we established connectivity with LOOKING GLASS?” Cole asked. Strategic Command had its own airborne command post, an EC-135 communications aircraft known as LOOKING GLASS because its sophisticated communications abilities allowed it to “mirror” the actions of the STRATCOM underground command center in Omaha and control all of its nuclear forces — it could even launch land-based nuclear missiles by remote control, once given the proper coded orders from the President of the United States. LOOKING GLASS, which carried a general officer, a battle staff of eight, and a very sophisticated communications suite, would take command of the strategic forces as soon as it entered its orbit area over the central United States, within secure radio range of the ICBM missile silos in Montana, Wyoming, Missouri, and North and South Dakota.

“Not yet, sir. May not be up for another thirty minutes. We still have full connectivity with all headquarters, and LOOKING GLASS is not expected to take command of the force.” This did not make Cole any happier about these circumstances. The commander of Strategic Command could take control of all of America’s nuclear forces at any time from LOOKING GLASS, but the communications networks were not as secure or as reliable. STRATCOM Headquarters in Omaha would retain control until an attack was actually underway.

“Let’s get moving with the checklists,” Cole said grimly as he headed for the battle staff conference room. Major Harlan Laughlin opened up a thick three-ring binder, then followed General Cole into the battle staff conference room. Cole waited until Laughlin had filled out the blank spaces on a series of overhead projection slides and put them up on a screen in the center of the main wall.

“The Posture Two message,” Laughlin began, “establishes an A-Hour, or alert reference hour, and sets the timeline for all other actions. According to the operations plan, the message directs the wing to generate the Alpha-alert combat-capable aircraft for nuclear strike missions.”

“My God,” Cole muttered. He knew, with all the conflicts and turmoil in Europe, that something like this was possible with Velichko in power, but he never truly believed it would really happen.

The alert was even more surprising because everyone, including Cole, assumed that the nation’s fleet of F-111G bombers had been out of the nuclear warfighting business — in fact, he had assumed that the world was out of the nuclear warfighting business. Although most F-111s are capable of delivering nuclear gravity bombs (only the EF-111A “Raven” electronic warfare aircraft is unarmed), and the F-111G could launch long-range air-to-ground nuclear missiles such as the AGM-131 Short Range Attack Missile and the AGM-86 and AGM-129 long-range cruise missiles, the Air Force Reserves’ RF-111G Vampire had been thought to have only a non-nuclear combat role — the B-1, B-2, and B-52 bombers were thought to have taken over the long-range nuclear bombing mission. Now, with this fresh crisis, one of the first planes to be called upon to prepare for nuclear war was none other than a Reserve RF-111G!

General Cole was fully prepared to generate his machines for nuclear warfighting, but the prospect made him uneasy. The prospect of handling nuclear weapons, the required top secret documents and devices, and responding to nuclear strike orders issued from Strategic Command and the Pentagon instead of a theater commander, was not considered a Reservists duty — and yet they had been ordered to do it.

“Preplanned bomber sorties one through six and tanker sorties one-oh-one through one-oh-four will be gained immediately by STRATCOM upon generation,” Laughlin continued, “and will respond to Joint Chiefs of Staff or STRATCOM emergency action messages. The ops plan directs all other bomber and tanker sorties configured in preload status and available for accelerated generation. These follow-on sorties will not respond to STRATCOM or JCS emergency action messages, but unit commanders may be required to ensure the survival of nongenerated aircraft. This would be done by positioning these aircraft in OCCULT EAGLE or FIERY WILDERNESS airborne alert orbits. These will be accomplished by clear-text messages or by hand-delivered messages authenticated by date-time group.”

Laughlin put up slides depicting several large rectangular boxes off the east coast of the United States. OCCULT EAGLE and FIERY WILDERNESS were preplanned airborne alert missions in which nuclear-loaded aircraft were sent to safe orbit areas, far from potential targets, until sent on their grim missions or recalled after the emergency was over.

“Christ almighty,” Cole muttered, scratching his flattop. “This is turning out to be one really lousy day.” On a small bookstand on his desk in the battle staff room, Cole picked a binder labeled “Defcon” and opened it to “Defcon Four.” The binder had checklists that directed all of the battle staff’s initial actions to take when notified of a serious emergency — no major actions, especially something as serious as this, was ever left to memory. Cole turned to Lafferty and said, “Jim, start an Alpha recall immediately. Start running your checklists.” The recall would direct all available wing personnel to report to their duty stations, ready for deployment or for combat — as Reservists, the Alpha recall meant that they were all federalized as soon as they entered the base. “Thank God we got all of the bomber crews and most of the tanker crews on base already.” Cole continued to read and initiate items in his checklist as his staff filed in; then, one by one, he assigned tasks to his staff officers according to the checklists. Soon every telephone in the room was in use by the General’s staff.

One by one the group commanders and key members of the Wing staff hurried into the battle staff room. When Daren Mace entered the room, his first look was at the main projection screen, which had the words DEFCON FOUR TIMELINES at the top and a series of times penciled in. “DEFCON schedules? We changing the Bravo exercise?”

“No exercise, Daren,” Cole said to his new MG. “This is the real thing. A shooting war has broken out in Europe, and LOOKING GLASS and the NEACAP are airborne.”

“They’re— Ho-ly shit. “ He hurried into his seat at the conference table and opened up his own binder of checklists. The first thing he did was call Alena Porter. “Captain, I need you over here in the command post on the double. The exercise is over, and we have an A-Hour.” Mace heard a slight intake of breath on the other end. Porter was sharp: she would know what an A-Hour was and she would hustle. “Make sure the sergeant stays put and near the phone — we’re starting a recall. Hurry.” It took about ten minutes for Porter to dash over to the command post with a briefcase full of slides and transparencies, fill in the spaces from the main DEFCON time schedule slide, and get an update on the status of the Wing aircraft from Maintenance Control to complete the slides.

“Okay, Daren, you’re in the hot seat now,” General Cole said. “We need to put the brakes on the Bravo exercise, generate six bomber airframes and four tankers for SIOP missions, and begin predeployment ops.” SIOP, or Single Integrated Operations Plan, was the nuclear warfighting “master plan” that would be executed by the White House and Pentagon in case of war, coordinating attacks against thousands of targets by hundreds of weapon systems — bombers, land-based missiles, and sea-launched missiles — over several weeks. “What have we got?”

Mace stood up, took the slides prepared for him by Captain Porter, and put them on the overhead projector. “I feel pretty certain we can meet the twelve-hour time limit for sorties one through four,” Mace said confidently. “Alpha Flight’s planes, which were in tactical deployment configuration, can be reconfigured for SIOP rather quickly — they have fuel, tanks, racks, expendables, all that stuff ready to go. Fortunately, Charlie Flight’s bombers were not uploaded with training ordnance when the message came down, so those bombers should take less time to generate.”

“We’ll need to get Bravo Flight back on the ground as fast as we can,” Cole said. “Will it be a problem downloading their training stores while you’re uploading the … special weapons on Alpha Flight?” Another euphemism — the military, even the men and women trained to handle nuclear weapons, hardly ever called them “nuclear weapons”—they were usually called “special” or “unconventional” weapons.

“If the weather holds up, it shouldn’t be a problem,” Mace said. “If we get that snowstorm later today or tonight, our weapons handlers will be under the gun. We may have to do all loading and preflight actions in hangars and then tow them to their parking spots.”

Major Laughlin stepped right in front of General Cole: “Sir, message from NEACAP — we’re going to DEFCON Three.”

“Jesus,” Cole exclaimed as Laughlin put up the DEFCON Three slides and updated all of the Wing’s schedule times — the group commanders could see Laughlin’s fingers trembling as he put the slides on the projector. DEFCON Three was a medium-threat war-readiness level, not far from all-out nuclear war. “What the hell is going on?”

“Sir, Russia is bombing the Ukraine and Romania,” Laughlin said. “I heard it on the news. Massive waves of bombers are attacking several military bases in the Ukraine, Romania, and Moldova. Initial reports suggest that the Russians used low-yield nuclear devices against some Ukrainian air bases.” Voices fell silent, and every head turned toward Laughlin and Cole. “Sir, STRATCOM is directing all units near the coastline to disperse their fleets as much as possible, to protect them in case of a preemptive attack.”

“I know, I know,” Cole said, flipping his binder to the DEFCON Three checklists. DEFCON Three was usually issued when a major conflict began overseas in which the United States or its allies could possibly be affected or involved — or in case nuclear weapons were employed against any nation. The speed at which the U.S. military had moved from total peacetime to DEFCON Three indicated the seriousness of the emergency — it was not unreasonable to assume the worst, that all of Eastern Europe could be at war in the next few hours. Whereas DEFCON Four directed only the Alpha-alert bombers — the first six planes — to be loaded and placed on round-the-clock alert, the DEFCON Three message would direct Cole’s entire fleet of Vampire bombers and Stratotanker tankers be made ready for war. Security, crew integrity, safety, nuclear surety, federalization of the Reserve force — it was going to be a nightmare.

Martin Cole had something else to worry about. As commander of the 134th Fighter Squadron at Burlington International Airport, Cole’s F-16 fighters were already shadowing Russian Tupolev-22M Backfire bombers out of Cuba that were flying up and down the Atlantic coast. He hadn’t thought too much about those sleek, deadly behemoths — until now. Although Plattsburgh was about two hundred miles from the coast and almost three hundred miles from where those Backfire bombers were traveling, it was possible for those surveillance planes to pinpoint each and every one of Cole’s planes — and if they were carrying nuclear cruise missiles, they could destroy all of Plattsburgh’s planes in one shot.

“All right.” Cole sighed. “This may screw up your day, Daren, but those Bravo Flight planes won’t be coming back for a while. Jim,” he said, turning to Operations Group commander McGuire, “those crews don’t have the OCCULT EAGLE orbit-area charts with them, but I want the Bravo Flight crews that are airborne into those orbit areas, at the right altitudes.”

“Excuse me, sir, but I need those bombers on the ground,” Mace said. He pointed to the updated slide put up on the screen. Instead of only 4 planes in twelve hours and 6 planes within twenty-four hours, now the first 6 bombers had to be ready within eighteen hours, the first 12 bombers ready within thirty-six hours, and the entire fleet at Plattsburgh ready to go to war within three days. Everything was speeded up by 50 percent, and they hadn’t even started to move one weapon yet. “Look at those timelines for DEFCON Three. I needed those planes on the ground three hours ago.”

“Daren, it can’t happen,” Cole insisted irritably.

“Dammit, General, this DEFCON Three status won’t last long,” Mace said. “It’s a political thing — they’re trying to scare Russia into stopping the fighting. We should at least stay with the DEFCON Four timelines and—”

“Colonel, listen to me, we are at war!” Cole snapped angrily, pounding the table with his fist. The battle staff, the entire command center, fell silent. Cole’s angry gaze bored into every man’s face in the room before affixing on Mace. “The Russians actually nuked the fucking Ukraine, dammit — they dropped a goddamned nuclear bomb. We could be next, Colonel Mace. This is not some Tom Clancy fantasy. We can’t second-guess them.”

“Then you have no choice but to inform Fifth Air Battle Force that we can’t make the timelines,” Mace interjected.

Cole’s face reddened and his mouth dropped open in surprise. “What did you say …?”

“Sir, we’d have a tough time generating all our aircraft to full SIOP readiness in three days in peacetime, with all our planes on the ground ready to go,” Mace explained. “We cannot do it in time with planes and weapons scattered all over the ramp.”

“Colonel, I am the one who will determine whether we can or cannot make our deadlines, not you,” Cole retorted. “I’ll inform General Layton of any delays. But DEFCON Three says preserve any combat-ready assets to the maximum extent possible, and I’m thinking of those damned Backfire bombers out there — if they’re carrying cruise missiles, bringing those bombers back to Plattsburgh would be a tactical mistake. I’ve got to think about the survival of my forces. Request to land the four Thunder bombers denied. Every two aircraft generated under DEFCON Three will be launched under positive control into the airborne alert orbit areas as soon as possible.”

“We can’t call Boston Center to change their flight plans,” Lafferty said, “unless they declare an air defense emergency. We’ll have to send them VFR, without a flight plan.”

“Then do it,” Cole said. “Give them the computer sequence point, and have them keep in touch by HF radio or SATCOM. We’re going to need a weather briefing for the OCCULT EAGLE orbit area. If the weather goes to shit, we’ll have to lie to the FAA that World War Three has just started. Until then, get those four Thunder planes into the orbit area any way you can.”

TWENTY-TWO

Soon it was just Furness and Kelly in the air refueling track. Zero-Five and Zero-Six were going to be delayed several more minutes, so Furness and Kelly hit the tanker one more time before the tanker had to depart, and they exited the air refueling track and headed over to the Montpelier radio navigation station, requested and received a safe altitude block, and set up an orbit pattern to wait.

Furness checked to see what Fogelman was up to, now that things had calmed down enough for them to take a breather and get caught up. He had the nav data page on the left MFD and the nav present position page on the right MFD. He stayed in the radarscope a long time, nudging the radar tracking handle onto a radar return and softly muttering to himself. When she checked the FIXMAG readout on the left Multi-Function Display, it read 12600 FT — over a two-nautical-mile difference between where the system thought it was and where Fogelman was trying to tell it where it was. “How’s your system looking, Mark?” Rebecca asked.

“Shitty,” he replied.

“You got a big buffer load in there,” she offered, referring to the large FIXMAG reading. “What are you trying a fix on — the Brookfield overpass?” The radar fixpoints near the Montpelier radio navigation station were well known to all Plattsburgh crewmembers, and the overpass was a good one to use — very easy to identify and aim on. But there were two overpasses that crossed the highway twenty miles south of the capital city of Vermont — and they were exactly two miles apart. If he was on the wrong one, and the system was good, that would be a reason why FIXMAG read twelve thousand feet. If he was on the right one, that meant that the inertial navigation system was off by two miles — bad enough so that it might be better to just start over and reinitialize. “Make sure you got the right overpass.”

“I got the right one, pilot,” Fogelman snapped. “Stop harping on me.” He moved the PRES POS CORR switch to IN, jiggled the tracking handle a few more times to refine his crosshair placement — Rebecca noted that he didn’t try to select another offset aimpoint to check his crosshair placement, which would have told him if he was on the right aimpoint or not — then hit the ENT FIX option-select switch on the left MFD.

On Rebecca’s right MFD, a message flashed on the screen about twenty seconds later that read PP REAS FAIL. The INS had rejected the fix because of the disparity between where it thought it was and where Fogelman decided it was. The INS itself thought it was navigating accurately. In three years of flying the RF-111G with its two INS systems, and especially after the GPS satellite navigation system was installed, Furness had never seen a fix rejected by the system that wasn’t due to operator error. “I think you picked the wrong—”

“The thing has gone to shit,” Fogelman complained. “I’ll jam this fix in, and if it spits it out I’ll reinitialize.”

“But don’t you think—”

But Fogelman wasn’t going to wait. He selected RDR PP on his right MFD to change the fix method, then entered OVR WHL — he was going to “jam” the fix, or tell the INS to accept his crosshair placement as perfect no matter what. He refined his crosshairs once again and took the fix.

Kiss that INS good-bye, Furness thought. An OVR WHL fix, or Override Wholevalue, updated the system present position but did not update the system velocities. Now the INS present position was off by at least two miles, and the INS velocities, which were obviously bad before the fix, were just as bad now and probably getting worse. She had never seen anyone take an override fix except in the simulator, mainly because the INS was always very good. Expect that puppy to roll over any minute now, she thought grimly. On the left Multi-Function Display, she saw that Fogelman had just about every possible sensor selected — both INS units, Doppler, TAS (True Air Speed computer), and GPS satellite navigation. The velocities from these sensors would all feed into INS number one through the computers, and eventually INS one would discover that it was out to lunch — then it would “kill” itself, or take itself off-line. That would happen in about …

“Thunder Zero-One, this is control, how do you hear?”

Furness keyed her mike. “Loud and clear. Go ahead.”

“Thunder Zero-One …” There were a few seconds of hesitation; then: “Thunder Zero-One and Zero-Four, we need you to fly to and hold at destination number two-eight-nine, repeat, two-eight-nine. You will cancel IFR, squawk standby, and proceed to that destination. You will be given additional instructions later via AFSATCOM. Attempt to contact Thunder Zero-Two and Zero-Three on the command post or RBS frequencies and direct them to join you at destination two-eight-nine.” AFSATCOM, or Air Force Satellite Communications System, was a secure global communications network that transmitted coded messages via satellite from the Pentagon, Air Combat Command headquarters in Virginia, Strategic Command Headquarters in Nebraska, or any combat-unit command post, directly to tactical aircraft. In the 1980s when the FB-111A was pulling nuclear alert, AFSATCOM was the primary method that aircrews received their dreaded “go-to-war” messages. When the Strategic Air Command was stood down and the FB-111 became the F-111G in the new Air Combat Command, AFSATCOM was no longer used. The system still worked and crews still trained with it, but lately it was used to pass routine bombing-range scores and maintenance messages from the planes to the local command posts.

Without waiting on Fogelman, Furness called up the destination number on the left Multi-Function Display and checked its coordinates on her chart. The RF-111G Digital Computer Complex held 350 sets of coordinates, called data points or destinations, which could be a turnpoint, target, or radar offset aimpoint. Most local training missions used only the first two hundred data points; the other data points were never used except for unusual training missions, such as long cross-country flights, RED FLAG exercises in Nevada, or special test flights.

To her surprise, the coordinates weren’t on her map, and she had to pull out a standard civil aeronautical chart to find the spot — it was several hundred miles east, about a hundred miles out over the Atlantic Ocean, at an ADIZ entry point called FREEZ. Many times the RF-111G aircraft ran maritime strike and reconnaissance missions out over the ocean or Lake Ontario to practice overwater photo procedures or AGM-84 Harpoon antiship-missile strike procedures. The checkpoint they mentioned was in the middle of a large overwater warning area between Kennebunkport and Brunswick, Maine. When reentering U.S. airspace, aircraft had to enter at a specific spot at the proper time for positive identification purposes or else fighter-interceptors could be scrambled to visually identify the “intruder.”

This had to be part of the exercise — they flew many air defense exercises through the years, going supersonic down over the ocean and letting F-16 fighters from Burlington or Massachusetts try to find them. But why were they supposed to go out there, especially with live (albeit only ten-pound BDU-48 “beer can”) weapons aboard Zero-Four? Were they supposed to dump the weapons into the sea? If so, why didn’t they just tell them to do so?

“Control, Zero-One, stand by for authentication.” To Fogelman, Furness said, “Mark, get out the decoding documents and check this message.”

“What?” he asked, perplexed.

“The command post wants us to fly out over ocean,” she told him, explaining it all to him as if he hadn’t heard any of it. “I want to authenticate their instructions.”

“Jesus Christ…” Fogelman muttered as he removed his lap and shoulder belt so he could twist all the way around in his seat. The classified decoding documents were in a small canvas carrying bag that he had stuffed in the retractable lunch-box bucket behind the seat. You had to be a contortionist to reach it. The bag had enough decoding documents to last them for the rest of the month, including unlocking documents for nuclear weapons.

When he had finally retrieved the bag, he tossed it onto Furness’ lap while he strapped back in. She opened the encode/decode book to the proper day’s page, selected two characters, and found the proper response character. “Control, Thunder Zero-One, authenticate bravo-juliett.”

“Thunder control authenticates yankee.” It was the proper response.

“Holy shit,” Furness muttered on the interphone. “If this is some kind of a test, I don’t get it. They just ordered us to go VFR to an orbit point out over the Atlantic Ocean. We’re supposed to try to raise Zero-Two and Zero-Three while they’re in the low-level route and have them join on us.”

“I guess our low-level has been canceled,” Fogelman said. “Maybe they’re going to pass us some recon information for a maritime target. That’ll be cool — get target information from headquarters via AFSATCOM while the ‘war’ is going on. Near real-time stuff.”

That explanation was as good as any, and Rebecca accepted it. “Boston Center, Thunder Zero-One flight of two would like to cancel IFR at this time.”

The controller’s mike opened, there was a short hesitant silence; then: “Ah, roger, Zero-One flight. Can you accept MARSA at this time?” MARSA stood for Military Accepts Responsibility for Separation of Aircraft, and it legally allowed military flights to fly in close proximity to one another.

“Thunder Zero-One accepts MARSA with Zero-Two.”

“Roger,” the controller said, a puzzled tone still in his voice. “I don’t know what it is, but you military types are dropping off the screens all over the place. Squawk 1200, maintain VFR hemispheric altitudes, monitor GUARD, frequency changed approved, good day.”

“Zero-One copies all, good day.” Fogelman set 1200 in the IFF Mode 3 window, which allowed the air traffic controllers to track the bombers and to maintain separation from other planes, but they were not under radar control. It was “see and avoid” for the rest of the day. Rebecca descended to 17,500 feet, the proper altitude for visual-flight-rules aircraft going eastbound. “Okay, they want us to use SATCOM for any more messages,” she told Fogelman, “so you can set the backup radio to SATCOM’ and I’ll keep the primary radio in the command post freq. I’ll—” Just then she noticed that the present-position readouts and all flight-data readouts had zeroed again. “Looks like your INS just rolled over.”

“Fuck,” Fogelman muttered. “Just my luck. I draw a piece-of-shit INS my first day of Hell Week.” Furness didn’t have the heart to tell him it was probably his system management that screwed the INS up. Both INS units seemed to have taken themselves off-line, so he shut down both of them, selected the satellite navigation system for the autopilot and system position and velocity reference, switched INS2 to ATTITUDE mode, then turned INS1 on and began an inflight alignment. The INS would use global positioning system present position, speed, and altitude to begin coarse alignment. It would take twice the effort to maintain the navigation system, and it might never tighten down completely. Fogelman still had a lot to learn about the navigation system — it worked better if just a few quality radar fixes and GPS comparisons were put in, rather than a lot of poor or mediocre radar fixes.

The common post frequency was buzzing a few minutes later as the two bombers overflew the base — Rebecca tried to check in with them, but received only a hurried “Thunder control, unable at this time, out,” when she requested an update on their landing time or to check if they had contacted Zero-Two and Zero-Three in the low-level route. “That’s weird … I guess the exercise must be heating up,” she said on interphone. “Some sort of big-time readiness test or something, I bet. Getting a late takeoff and two aborts to start the ball rolling didn’t help.”

“These exercises are a waste anyway.” Fogelman sighed. He had been working hard on the navigation system, punching fixes in every ten minutes or so — far too many, in her opinion. “We practice too much and don’t spend as much time flying and dropping real bombs. If they had only two mobilization exercises a year and spent the money they’d save on live bombs and flying time, we’d get more out of these reserve weeks. At least that’s how it seems to me.”

“You’re probably right,” Furness agreed, “but mobility is what we do. That’s our mission.”

“Come on, Furness,” Fogelman said. “Everyone talks mobility, but do you think they’d ever deploy RF-111s? They’d need half the airlift in the inventory to take our support gear — and that’s not including the photointel trailers. Sure, we might deploy to England, to the old F-111 bases in Lakenheath or Upper Heyford, or deploy to Guam, but nowhere else. We’re playing the numbers game, that’s all. We’re keeping F-111s in the inventory just to show that we’re not getting complacent about national or global defense. The F-15Es, the B-1s, the B-2 bombers, the B-52 or ship-launched cruise missiles — those guys get all the glory. We just get to play mobility.”

“Well, well, Fogman really does have an opinion about national defense issues,” Furness chided him, “even if it is motivated by laziness and a total give-a-shit attitude. You really have given this some thought, haven’t you?”

“All I care about,” Fogelman said, unaffected by either Furness’ compliment or her backhanded barb, “is doing my job and getting my ass on the ground. You know what your problem is?”

“I can’t wait to hear.”

“You got this romantic notion about flying and this job,” Fogelman said. “You’d sacrifice your business, your personal life, all the real stuff in your life, for the Reserves. Do you think they care about your sacrifice? The Reserves will keep on taking until you got nothing left — no career, no job, no future. Then, just when you’ve hit bottom, they’ll RIF you, just like they did back in ’92. You think they’re going to let any female Reserve flyer under the rank of colonel make it to retirement? They’ll kick your butt out or make life so miserable for you that you’ll quit before you collect all your retirement points. Meanwhile you’ve lost your charter business and your commercial license, you’re older, and you’re out of work. Thank you very much, Air Force Reserves. I’m not being cynical, just realistic.”

Furness admitted he had a point — the tough-ass dude in the bar the other night, obviously in the military and working nights as a maintenance man to make ends meet, came to mind — but she didn’t tell Fogelman that. “The solution to that, Mark,” she decided, “is to work harder at both jobs. I can make Liberty Air work, and I can make it to 0–6 in the Reserves.”

“If you say so.” Fogelman clucked. “Just remember who told you first. You got maybe five more years in the flying game before they put you out to pasture — and that’s if they will still allow women in combat past the five-year evaluation period that ends in ’98. You might make it to light colonel and might even make ops officer, but get in your Air War College and squadron commander in five years? I don’t think so. All the good slots go to active-duty ass-kissers. And you need to get a command position in a tactical unit before they’ll make you a full bird. I hate to say it, but you got screwed when you accepted a Reserve commission. You’d be better off if you just concentrated on getting Liberty Air to go regional, rather than blowing half your time flying these fucking planes. Doesn’t that make sense?”

Before she could answer, activity on the primary radio halted their conversation, and he had his head back in the radarscope again. But she had to give Fogelman a bit of credit — he was smarter than he ever let on. If she was given the choice of building her military career or building Liberty Air into a regional carrier, which should she choose?

Liberty Air, of course. There was no other choice, really. She was already stretching herself to the limit by pulling fourteen days of Reserve duty a month — what would she do when it was time to make the big push for squadron commander? Spend an extra week, without pay, working on base? Go full-time to Air War College in residence — for six months? That would kill Liberty Air Service for sure. Even Ed Caldwell, who was the closest thing to a steady guy she’d had in years, wanted her to make a choice and settle down with him.

Sure, there was something to be said for being one of the few top women combat soldiers in the country, even a dash of celebrity. And nothing beat flying the RF-111G Vampire bomber. It was an aviator’s wet-dream. But as irritating and aggravating as Fogelman could be, his points were ones she had tried to push out of her mind in the past. But she knew he was calling a spade a spade. She had put in time with the military, a lot of time, and Liberty Air offered her the chance to finally build a life for herself. Some security. Some recognition and respect outside of the military. But it couldn’t be done if she was going to try and climb the military Reserves ladder as well. She tried to toss the thought out of her head … for now. But soon, very soon, Rebecca knew she was going to have to seriously weigh the direction she wanted her life to take … and her commitment to the Reserves.

It took about an hour to reach the specified coordinates, and another hour to reach Johnson and Norton and have them join up on them in the overwater restricted area. On the way to the destination, they got the latest weather advisories from Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center. Their nearest alternate airfield, Brunswick Naval Air Station in Maine, was getting light snow showers, and Plattsburgh itself might be snowed in too in about four hours. Their last suitable alternate base, Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire, would probably go down in about six hours.

By the time they reached point FREEZ, they were out of radio range of both military and civilian stations. Just to make matters worse, everyone’s AFSATCOM satellite communications units in the four-ship cell did not seem to be working — the units were functioning and messages seemed to be going out to the satellite, but no messages were coming in. That meant no coordination for a landing site and aerial refueling. When they tried the high-frequency (HF) radio, they heard absolutely nothing but static. “Anything in the weather briefings about sunspot activity?” Furness asked Fogelman.

“Huh?”

“Sunspots,” Rebecca said. “They wipe out HF messages by electrifying the ionosphere so radio waves can’t bounce off.”

“I didn’t hear anything briefed to us about sunspots,” Fogelman said. She wondered if he ever listened to weather briefings. Furness sent the rest of the flight out to loose-route formation, set best-endurance airspeed to conserve fuel, and set up a monitoring system on the UHF, AFSATCOM, and HF radios for any instructions from anybody.

Right away, she was feeling more and more uncomfortable with this setup. Problem number one was the weather. After just a few minutes, Furness found she had to bring the other flight members closer and closer in, nearly right back into fingertip formation, so they could stay in visual contact with one another. This immediately began taxing Paula Norton’s flying skills — she was a pretty good stick, but long minutes in fingertip formation tended to make her a bit erratic. Rebecca had kept her in her original position in the number-three position, but as the wingmen drew in closer and the weather got worse, the planes at the farther ends tended to shift more, amplifying the other planes’ movements, so she put Norton in the number-two position, right on Furness’ wing. If they had to go “lost wingman” in the clouds, Rebecca wanted Paula to stay with her as long as possible.

Rebecca made the decision to start heading back toward Plattsburgh after nearly an hour orbiting in the warning area. Johnson and Norton had already been down on the low-level navigation route — Johnson had dropped his “beer can” bombs, while Norton still had her GBU-24 laser-guided bomb — and they were getting close to their fuel reserves. It would take nearly thirty minutes for a tanker from Pease or Plattsburgh to get out to them in the warning area for a refueling, and that was too close a call — if a plane couldn’t take on gas, they’d have an immediate fuel emergency. She was going to get an IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) clearance from Boston Center and head back to Plattsburgh before the weather totally crumpled. Exercise or not, things were getting a little too disorganized and dangerous, and it was time to get on the ground and regroup.

Just as they headed inbound from point FREEZ and were about to contact Boston Center for their clearance, they heard: “Unknown rider, unknown rider, off the Kennebunk VOR zero-five-zero-degree radial, niner-five nautical miles, this is WINDJAMMER on GUARD, authenticate kilo-bravo and stand by.” The message was repeated several times. They knew exactly who WINDJAMMER was: that was the collective call-sign for the northeast sector of the Air Force Air Defense Zone. The radar controllers that continually scanned the skies for intruding aircraft had locked on to them.

Furness quickly used her left MFD and set the backup radio to GUARD, the international emergency frequency, and said, “Mark, look up that authentication.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Fogelman said, quickly flipping back to the proper date-time-group page. Air Defense required unknown aircraft to respond immediately or they would scramble fighters — some of those fighters coming from their own sister squadron, the 134th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Burlington. Once they discovered you were a friendly, the shit would hit the fan from headquarters on down. No one wanted to be caught busting the Air Defense Identification Zone. “Reply Zulu,” Fogelman finally said.

“WINDJAMMER, this is Thunder Zero-One flight of four, authenticates Zulu,” Furness radioed on the backup radio. On the primary radio, she said, “Thunder Flight, fingertip formation, monitor GUARD on backup. Zero-Two, try to contact Boston Center on the primary radio and get us a clearance back to Plattsburgh.”

“Two, wilco.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

“Thunder Zero-One, this is WINDJAMMER,” the air defense controller came back. “Check your IFF for all proper codes, recycle your beacons, and stand by for authentication. Acknowledge.”

Furness and Fogelman looked at each other, puzzled. Fogelman hit the CFI, or Channel Frequency Indicator, button on his control and display unit, which gave him a readout of all the beacons and transceivers on the plane. “I got mode one on and set, although I don’t know what for,” he said, reading off the currently activated radios and their frequencies. “Mode three is squawking 1200, and altitude readout Mode C is on. Mode two and four are standby.” Mode two and mode four were special identification codes required for tactical aircraft in a battlefield situation. They were never used in peacetime and could be set only on the ground, usually by the crew chiefs before every flight if required. Mode one was a military-unit-identification beacon interrogated only by allied nations and naval vessels; modes three and C were standard civil-air-traffic-control beacons used to transmit flight data and altitude.

“Better turn mode four on,” Furness said, “and hope Sergeant Brodie set it right.” Fogelman used the CDU and made sure the correct codes were on. It was unlikely that mode two was set properly, but if WINDJAMMER wanted it on, they would turn it on.

But it didn’t seem to work. “Thunder Zero-One, this is WINDJAMMER on GUARD, codes not received, turn right heading zero-four-zero, clear of United States warning and prohibited airspace. Acknowledge.”

“WINDJAMMER, Zero-One, we cannot turn,” Furness replied. “Altering course may cause a fuel emergency. We are talking with Boston Center at this time, requesting an IFR clearance, type aircraft Romeo-Foxtrot-One-Eleven-Golf, slant-Romeo, flight of four, direct Plattsburgh at sixteen thousand feet, cargo code yellow-four. We are VFR at this time. How copy?” Usually flight plans were filed only with an air-traffic-control facility, not with a military surveillance site, but this guy didn’t seem to realize who they were, so it would be best to let him copy their information down and get it into the system however possible. The “yellow-four” code, indicating they were carrying explosive ordnance on board, usually got a lot of attention from anyone who recognized the nomenclature, so a flight plan should be ready ver—

“Thunder Flight, this is WINDJAMMER on GUARD, your request cannot be accepted at this time,” the air defense controller said. Furness’ mouth dropped open. Was this guy serious …? “You must alter course and turn away from the coastline until proper identification procedures and clearances are obtained. Turn right immediately to heading zero-four-zero, maintain VFR at seventeen thousand five hundred feet or above, with all lights on and landing gear extended. Acknowledge.”

What kind of idiot was in the control tower? she wondered. Rebecca mashed the mike button on the throttle quadrant in total anger: “WINDJAMMER, I am not going to lower my landing gear. We were sent to warning area W-102 VFR as part of a Bravo exercise conducted by Thunder control. We were told to expect refueling support and further instructions at a later time, but some aircraft formations are low on fuel and we need to proceed back to base. If this is part of the exercise, then terminate immediately or we’ll declare an inflight emergency and file a written report with the FAA. Over.”

The “unknown rider” warning was then repeated several times, with hardly an opportunity in the broadcasts to interject a response. “Christ,” Furness mused on interphone, “it’s like they don’t know who the hell we are. I hate to risk busting the air-defense identification zone, but I think we’re lost in the system, and with the HF and AFSATCOM out, we’ve got no way to communicate with the command post as long as we’re out over water.” On interplane frequency, she radioed to Johnson: “Two, any luck with Boston Center?”

“Negative,” Johnson replied. “They can hear us, I think, and I can hear them talking, but it sounds weird, like there’s been an accident and they’re clearing out the airspace or something. It’s pretty confused, but I don’t think they want to talk to us. What are we going to do, Lead?”

“What’s your fuel look like?”

“About an hour left, with minimum reserves,” Johnson replied. “We’ll have about five thousand over the fix, probably less.” Five thousand pounds of fuel “over the fix,” or at the initial approach fix for an instrument approach and landing, was the absolute minimum for any chosen destination — that would allow enough fuel for perhaps two or three bad-weather landing attempts. “Maybe we should think about Pease instead, or go to Navy Brunswick.” Even though they had the National Guard tankers there, Pease, a former Strategic Air Command bomber base and home for the FB-111, was now a civilian airport, and they might not take kindly to RF-111 bombers with bombs and lasers aboard landing beside the tourists and vacationers.

“Brunswick it is,” Furness said. On interphone, she told Fogelman, “Mark, call up Navy Brunswick on the computer and give me a heading, then squawk ‘Emergency’ and keep trying to raise someone on GUARD frequency on the backup radio. This bullshit’s gone on long—”

Just then, on the radar threat-warning receiver, a bat-wing symbol appeared at the top of the scope, with a fast, insistent deedledeedledeedle audio warning over the interphone. Fogelman was working on calling up Navy Brunswick’s destination number and didn’t call it out — the warning receiver gave spurious signals occasionally, and this one certainly seemed like a phantom signal. A bat-wing symbol was an enemy-airborne-radar warning, showing the presence of a radar that matched the pulse-repetition frequency and wavelength of a Russianor Chinese-made fighter. The symbol drifted around at the top of the scope for a few seconds, moving slowly eastbound — the AN/APS-109B Radar Homing and Warning System could not determine the range to the threat, only approximate “lethal range”—then disappeared. “That’s weird,” Furness said. “Friendly radars don’t make that warning.”

“Probably a glitch,” Fogelman said dismissively. “ ‘Captain’s bars’ are on Brunswick.” Rebecca gently steered the bomber until the nav computer director’s bars were centered, then reengaged the autopilot to head for Navy Brunswick. Meanwhile, Fogelman began rooting through the charts and approach plates in the rack beside Furness’ headrest, searching for the approach plates and airport diagrams for the base. He set in the VOR radio navigation aid frequency in the primary nav radio as a backup to his admittedly poor INS system. The VOR needle on Furness’ Horizontal Situation Indicator continued to rotate aimlessly, and a red OFF flag in the HSI case told them no nav signal was being received. “Brunswick VOR must be off the air,” he said. He set in the UHF frequencies for Brunswick ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information Service) to hear a recording of the Brunswick weather and field conditions — no response. Fogelman set in the approach, tower, and ground control frequency into presets. “I’ll wait till we get a bit closer to the base, then—”

“Hey,” Rebecca interrupted, motioning out the right windscreen with her head into the darkening gray clouds, “there’s traffic at—holy shit, look out!”

Fogelman looked up just in time to see two F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter-jets in steep 90-degree-plus bank turns, not more than a few yards away from Thunder Zero-Four — and the first fighter appeared to be firing its 20-millimeter cannon at them.

Rebecca could actually see several winks of light and a stream of gas from the cannon muzzle of the lead F-16. The second F-16 fighter appeared to be flying in close trail, directly behind and slightly above his leader, and so he passed right over Rebecca’s head, so close that she could see the second pilot’s checklist strapped to his right thigh through his large clear bubble canopy. There was no time to react, speak, not even scream — Furness couldn’t do anything but let the thunderous roar and the shock wave of the two jets pass over her and pray that death would come swiftly or not at all.

The cannon shells hit with the force of Thor’s hammer along the bottom of the fuselage and left wing of Furness’ bomber, shaking the plane so badly that Furness thought she’d go into a stall or spin. The MASTER CAUTION light snapped on, several yellow caution lights illuminated on the forward instrument panel, and the navigation computers and most other control and display screens and systems went dark.

The F-16 passed less than half a wingspan away — no more than thirty or forty feet. Their supersonic shock wave smashed into the formation of Vampire bombers, threatening to twist them inside out and upside down. Rebecca saw Paula Norton’s plane cartwheel over into a complete roll, caught in the hurricane-like twisting forces of the F-16’s vortices — and it was plummeting right into Furness’ plane. Furness grabbed her control stick with both hands and pulled sharply to the left to get away from the second RF-111. The cockpit filled with debris from the negative G-forces as the bomber sliced over and down. There wasn’t any way Rebecca could control the roll — her controls froze. The roll continued, one after another, and Rebecca couldn’t stop it.

Fogelman kept screaming, “You have it? Shit, lady, do you have it?” He was frantically looking four directions at once — at the engine instruments, which were probably close to Greek to him; out the window; at his radarscope for some inexplicable reason; and at the ejection handles on the center console next to his left knee.

“I got it, Fogelman, I got it!” she shouted back, first on interphone and then cross-cockpit. He was so excited, with his oxygen mask, arms, and head flailing around so much, that Rebecca found herself watching the ejection handles, ready to block any attempt Fogelman might make to pull one and punch them out.

“I feel a vibration,” Fogelman shouted. “Right under my feet. Did Norton hit us? Jesus, we almost got plastered by those F-16s! All my stuff is out …”

“Fuck that!” Furness shouted. “I got the airplane — I got it …” But maybe I don’t, she thought in horror. The nose stayed high and wouldn’t come down, the aft end stayed low, and the left roll continued despite her efforts. She mashed the autopilot disconnect lever and brought the throttles to IDLE. No change.

“Eject! Eject!” Fogelman suddenly screamed. Furness saw him make a grab for the right ejection lever and she pushed his hand away.

“No!” Furness shouted. “What the fuck are you doing? We’ve still got ten thousand feet to work this.” She stomped on the left rudder petal with all her might. Suddenly the roll stopped — or did it? The turn-coordinator ball was still hard left and the turn needle was oscillating, although it appeared that the horizon had stopped rolling. She kept the left rudder pushed in, despite her desire to straighten out. Sure enough, the turn needle straightened and the rolling stopped, although the nose was still high over the horizon and the ball was still hard left. The altimeter was still unwinding — they were passing through ten thousand feet above sea level, the recommended safe ejection altitude. Furness pushed the control stick full forward.

“What are you doing?” Fogelman demanded. He tried to haul back on the control stick, but Furness managed to overpower him, and he eventually gave up. “Don’t dive! We’re already past ten thousand!”

“We’re in a flat spin,” Furness said calmly as she shoved the wing-sweep handle full forward. The airspeed-indicator tape was reading zero, a strange sensation since they were still thousands of feet in the air. “We’ve got no airspeed. Hold on — and keep your hands away from the fucking controls!” She shoved the nose seemingly straight down at the ocean. They plunged through a cloud deck, and Rebecca had to fight off a tremendous wave of nausea and vertigo. Her head was spinning wildly, to the right this time, and only by gluing her eyes to the instruments was she able to hang on. A few seconds later they popped through the cloud deck, and all they could see was blue ocean and wind-tossed whitecaps below. Slowly the airspeed began to rise, and when it climbed over one-fifty, she pulled back on the control stick slowly, not letting the airspeed bleed below one-fifty, and fed in power — thankfully, both engines had not stalled and responded immediately. The nose finally rested above the horizon, and she leveled off at about six thousand feet — they had lost over eleven thousand feet of altitude in about thirty seconds.

Carefully Rebecca tried some gentle pitch movements — no problem. But when she tried a gentle left turn, she noticed that the left spoiler, a fence-like drag device atop each wing used to help make crisper turns, would not deploy. “Looks like we got a damaged spoiler actuator on the left wing,” she said. “We’ll have to lock out the spoilers for the rest of the flight. I think the recon pod got creamed by that bomb, but it’s not serious.” On the primary radio tuned to the GUARD emergency frequency, she called, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Thunder Zero-One on GUARD, midair collision with two Foxtrot-One-Six fighter planes, approximate position seven-zero-miles east-north-east of Brunswick, Maine, altitude zero-six thousand feet.” She wasn’t about to say that a friendly F-16 fighter had nearly succeeded in shooting her out of the sky. “My flight is split up and I am in marginal VMC. Thunder Flight, check in on GUARD frequency with status and altitude, over.”

“Thunder Zero-Two on GUARD, loud and clear, code one, one-seven-thousand feet, holding hands with Zero-Four,” Joe Johnson replied, signifying that they were undamaged and that Kelly in Thunder Zero-Four was with him.

“Thunder Zero-Four on GUARD,” Frank Kelly replied shakily, “loud and clear, scared shitless but code one.” No reply from Thunder Zero-Three.

“Thunder Zero-Three, this is Thunder Zero-One on GUARD,” Furness radioed, “report up on GUARD frequency. Over.” No response. “Zero-Three, come up on GUARD frequency immediately, over.” Still no response. “Paula, Ted, dammit, come up on any radio if you can! Key your mike three times if you can hear me. Zero-Three, come in!” Rebecca couldn’t believe it — they had lost Paula Norton and Ted Little. She obviously couldn’t recover from the—

“Becky!” Norton shouted over the GUARD frequency. “Thunder Zero-Three’s up on GUARD. Anybody hear me?”

“Paula, this is Rebecca. Are you all right? Where are you? What’s your altitude?”

“We’re okay,” Norton replied, her voice shaking with excitement, fear, and exhilaration all at once. “Ted hit his head — he’s a little loopy but he’s okay. I’m at one-two thousand feet. I stalled my left engine and it took a few tries to get it restarted, but I’m in the green. I have no damned idea where I am — Brunswick VOR’s not on the air, and the nav stuff is out.”

“Are you VFR, Zero-Three?”

“Negative. Visibility is poor with snow. Not picking up any ice yet, though.”

“All right, Zero-Three, you can start a climb to one-six thousand,” Furness said. “We’ll try to get a contact to you.”

“Roger,” Norton replied. “Leaving twelve for sixteen — thank God.”

“Zero-Three, Zero-Two’s got a lock on you,” Johnson radioed, indicating that his attack radar was locked on to Norton’s plane. “We’re at your four o’clock position high at five miles. You’re clear to climb to sixteen thousand five hundred.”

“Roger. Zero-Three’s leaving fourteen for sixteen-five,” Norton announced.

“Zero-One copies, I’m leaving eight for fifteen-five.” Rebecca had to give Norton a lot of credit for bringing it back under control.

By the time Rebecca climbed up to altitude, Thunder Zero-Two and Zero-Four, now with Zero-Three within visual range of them, had moved to within a mile. Because Fogelman’s nav gear wasn’t running, Rebecca put Johnson in the lead and got on his right wing, with Kelly flying beside Furness so he could look her plane over carefully. After coordinating what they would do, Furness moved to twice route-formation distance, about a half-mile from Johnson, and Kelly crossed under and to her left wing, looking at the damage:

“Well, you can kiss that recon pod good-bye,” Kelly radioed. “It’s departed the aircraft completely. Both bomb bay doors caved in, your nose gear door looks damaged, looks like a few actuators hanging in the breeze. Looks like hydraulic fluid or coolant streaks underneath— better double-check that the pod is powered down and isolated.”

“Checked, power off, bomb door switch off, circuit breakers pulled,” Fogelman told Furness.

“We got it, Zero-Four,” Furness radioed Kelly.

“It looks like the nose gear door might have gotten hit,” Kelly continued, “so we’ll have to keep an eye on it when you bring the gear down. Moving to the left wing.” Kelly eased his bomber over the left wing: “Looks like a possible rupture or break in the skin, Zero-One — I suggest you start transferring fuel out of the right wing, if you got any left, or you’ll end up with a heavy wing.”

“We’re burning off body fuel only.”

“Copy. Your left weapon pylon is gone, and you’ve got a lot of damage on the pylon root. About four feet of the trailing edge of the center flap assembly is ripped off. Some pieces are landing in the slipstream, but not much. Anything else you want us to check?” “Couldn’t stand any more happy news, Zero-Four.”

“Roger that. Moving back to fingertip.”

Just as Rebecca watched Kelly slide under and out of sight, she looked up and saw four F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters, behind and to Johnson’s left about a quarter of a mile. “Company, eight o’clock, Thunder Flight,” she called on interplane. “Green Mountain boys returning to the scene of the crime.”

“The four buttheads who buzzed us, no doubt,” Ted Little chimed in. “You guys are from Burlington? Why the hell did you make a pass at us like that?”

“Hey, Thunder, we didn’t know it was you,” one of the 134th Fighter Interceptor Squadron Patriot’s F-16 pilots radioed back. “We were scrambled against a Backfire bomber from Cuba that NORAD had been tracking all morning.” NORAD, or North American Air Defense Command, call-in sign WINDJAMMER, was the joint U.S. and Canadian military agency responsible for the air defense of the entire North American continent, from the North Pole to Panama. “WINDJAMMER must’ve thought you guys were the bogey and vectored us right on top of you.”

No wonder Boston Center and the military command posts were so weird on the radios, Furness thought — they had Russian bombers off the coast to deal with! Well, this wasn’t a topic for discussion on an open radio. “Patriots, how about leading us back to Plattsburgh? We’ve got two birds close to emergency fuel, and now we’ve got structural damage. Tell Boston Center we’ll need weapons-on-board clearance and that we’ll be declaring an emergency. Or are you still out chasing Bears?”

“We’re heading back to the barn too,” the lead F-16 pilot replied. “We’ve been rotating these intercepts for days now. And after our little close encounter back there, I’m going to need a fresh flight suit — right before I go downtown and get plastered.”

TWENTY-THREE

“Two green — correction, nose gear green light out, red light in the gear handle still on,” Fogelman called out. Normally he read the checklists very mundanely, with little interest, and recited the usual “two green no red” verbatim without hardly looking — but not this morning. He paid attention to every checklist step and double-checked each light and indicator as if his life depended on it — which, of course, it did.

Rebecca’s damaged RF-111G Vampire bomber was handling pretty well as they descended through the clouds and prepared for landing at Plattsburgh, and up until now things had been fairly routine. There were a few snow showers in the Plattsburgh area, and it was overcast and cold, but the runway was open and the ice and snow had been scraped off. The Air Battle Wing had a strip alert tanker ready to launch and refuel the incoming bombers, but the other three bombers had enough fuel to land without an emergency aerial refueling, so the tanker stayed on the ground. Thunder Zero-Two and Zero-Four landed first and Zero-Three last, with Paula Norton taking the approach end arresting cable just in case her aircraft had experienced any serious structural or landing gear problems.

Because Rebecca would be landing without flaps, slats, or spoilers, she needed to burn down fuel before landing in order to get the lowest aircraft gross weight and the shortest landing roll possible. Her plan, as long as the weather cooperated, was to enter the visual pattern into Plattsburgh, being careful to keep the base and the runway in sight at all times, and do a series of low approaches until they were down to five thousand pounds of fuel remaining. Meanwhile, the approach and departure end arresting cables were being reconfigured for her.

Again, it was wall-to-wall checklists — no flap — no slat landing checklist, asymmetrical spoiler checklist, brake energy limit check, approach or departure-end-cable arrestment checklist in case the runway was too icy to stop, plus the normal approach and landing checklists. Now they had an unsafe-gear indication — either the speed brake (the forward main gear door) was not in its proper in-trail position or the nose gear was not fully down and locked. With the damage to the nose-gear-door area, Furness had to assume the worst — the nose gear was not fully locked.

“Delta, this is Zero-One, nose gear indicating unsafe condition, and I’m picking up increased vibration in the nose,” Furness radioed on the command post frequency. Delta was the call sign for the Maintenance Group commander, who would coordinate all the recovery efforts for the damaged bomber.

“Copy that, Zero-One,” the group commander responded. Furness didn’t know the new maintenance group commander — he had just recently arrived — and she was a little skittish about turning over this recovery to a new guy, but the operations group commander, Colonel Greg McGwire, call sign Charlie, and the wing commander had both deferred to the new guy’s experience and had turned this recovery over to him. “What are your light indications?”

“Delta, the nose gear light is out, repeat out, the main-gear green light is on, and the red light in the gear handle is on, repeat, on, Thunder Zero-One.”

“Okay, Zero-One, leave the gear handle where it is, check your circuit breakers, clean up your checklists … and clear me in to your left wing.”

“Zero-One cop— Say again, Delta? Clear you in …?” Furness searched out her left side and to her amazement saw an F-16B Fighting Falcon fighter, the two-seat trainer version of the supersonic interceptor from the 134th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in Burlington, climbing and turning to join on them. “Delta, are you in the F-16 closing on me?”

“Affirmative, Zero-One,” Lieutenant Colonel Daren Mace said. While the other three RF-111Gs were landing, Mace had requested a two-seat F-16 from Burlington to take him up to inspect the damage personally. “Give us a right turn toward the base. We’ll be underneath you looking at your damage.”

“Copy, Delta,” Furness replied. Somewhere in the back of her mind she thought that voice sounded familiar.

The F-16 reappeared on her left wing a few minutes after she rolled out of her turn. “Okay, Zero-One, your nose gear is not down and locked, and it looks like the wheels are castering in the slipstream. Looks like you’re going to take an approach-end cable. Hang in there about fifteen more minutes to get down and get ready. See you on the ground.”

It took more like thirty minutes before Delta called up and cleared her for the cable pass. Furness had only fifteen minutes of fuel remaining — she had this try and one more, and then they’d have to take it out over the Atlantic and eject. She was determined not to miss.

“Okay, Mark,” she said to Fogelman, “all the checklists are done, right?”

Fogelman had been very quiet for the past thirty minutes. She could see his fists clenching and unclenching on his lap, his nervous, staring eyes, how he jumped at every new shudder and creak the bomber made. He was double- and triple-checking his landing data numbers, reading the checklists over after running them to make sure he had done all the items, and glancing around the cockpit, repeatedly securing loose items, checking switches and circuit breakers. Nothing like a good old-fashioned inflight emergency, she thought, to bring out the best in a crewdog. “Yes,” Fogelman muttered, “checklists are complete.”

“Go ahead and lock yourself in,” she said, “then pull those straps tight.”

“You don’t need anything else?” he asked nervously.

“I’m all set. Lock your harness.”

Fogelman tightened his straps one more time, lowered both helmet visors, tightened his oxygen mask connectors, then flipped a lever that would lock the inertial crash reel in place. He would not be able to reach any switches or move his body after that reel was locked. He pulled on the straps so hard that his thighs looked as if they’d been severed. “Locked,” he said. Then: “You ever take a cable before, Rebecca?”

Hearing her first name spoken by Mark Fogelman was a surprise — this was the first time he had ever said it. She replied, “No. I took a departure end cable once, but it was just a safety precaution. We took the cable going about forty knots — we hardly felt it. I guarantee we’ll feel this one. One-sixty to zero like that. “ She couldn’t see his face, but saw him hesitate for a long moment; then, as she turned final and began to line up on the runway, he began straightening his neck, pressing the back of his head securely against the contoured headrest.

The snow had started to fall harder now, and the visibility was down to perhaps three to five miles. There was only going to be one shot at this. “Thunder Zero-One turning final.”

“Got you in sight, Zero-One,” Delta replied. “Bring her on in. Equipment’s ready.” No one liked to say “fire trucks” or “crash trucks” on the radio — everyone used the euphemism “equipment” instead.

The touchdown zone had been heavily worked while Furness was in the pattern to make this landing as soft and smooth as possible. Airports did not foam runways anymore — foam was expensive, dangerous to work with, and not always effective — so Mace had used the next-best thing. The runway was scraped clean of ice and snow from its approach end to the arresting cable, but on the other side of the cable Mace had used snowplows, dump trucks, and huge snowblowers, and piled tons of snow on the runway to a depth of several feet. Then he had arranged the dump trucks and snowplows on either side of the runway to act as a barrier in case Furness missed or broke the cable and slid off the runway. Finally, the last half of the runway was again cleared and scraped so she could try for the departure-end arresting cable as a last resort. If she missed that, only the outer fence and some trees would stop her.

Rebecca pulled the yellow, hook-shaped handle, and the HOOK DOWN warning light illuminated. “I see your hook, Zero-One,” Delta reported. “Lock your harness and get ready.” Furness didn’t reply, but lowered both visors, locked her inertial reel, and prepared to land.

Furness’ no-flap, no-slat, no-spoiler approach was fast and low. The cold air buoyed her wings, threatening to sail her over the cable, but she was determined not to let that happen. Her wheels touched down just a few yards from the overrun. She held the nose off, using her flight controls to steer the bomber, not trusting the broken nose gear to steer straight on the runway.

As soon as the arresting cable disappeared under the nose, Furness began to lower the nose back onto the runway …

Then the hook caught the cable, and the huge arresting-gear brakes kicked in. Rebecca heard a doglike woof from Fogelman, and she heard herself cry out as Fogelman’s head and torso snapped forward and his head hit the thin metal glareshield — he had either failed to lock his harness or the reel itself had failed. The bomber’s nose came down as if the nose-gear strut were compressing as usual, but there was no typical oleo shock absorber bounce — the nose just kept right on coming down until the fuselage hit the snow. Furness held it off as long as she could, pulling the control stick back to her belly, but eventually the cable brakes held and the nose crashed to the ground. The cable continued to reel out for another two hundred feet, sending waves of snow over the canopy.

Rebecca’s body strained against the shoulder straps as the bomber began to slow, digging the thick web straps into her shoulders and thighs. The nose was pitched over so far that it appeared that they were rocketing into the ground, and the sound of the fuselage scraping against the porous-friction runway surface was what a building being dynamited must sound like. But Furness somehow had the presence of mind to act. When the bomber settled to a stop, she unlocked her shoulder-harness inertial reel to free her seat straps, yanked the throttles to idle, then to CUTOFF, pushed both fire pushbuttons to isolate fuel from the engines, and lifted the silver agent-discharge switch to activate the engine-compartment fire extinguishers.

Furness ripped her oxygen mask off and raised her visors, then reached over to Fogelman. He was slumped forward in his seat, the top part of his helmet was cracked, and there was no movement. “Mark, you all right?” she shouted. “Mark, answer me …”

The bomber was being pulled back slightly by the stretching action of the arresting cable, but Furness could hear voices and footsteps outside. At least a foot of snow was brushed off the cockpit canopies, and a silver-hooded fireman appeared over Furness’ head. “Other side!” she screamed through the canopy. “The wizzo’s hurt!”

The fireman motioned to someone on the other side of the cockpit, and was then pushed aside by a man in a winter-weight flying jacket and watch cap. “Check your throttles and fire buttons!” he shouted.

“Cutoff and depressed!” Furness shouted back. The fuel valves should have closed and the fire extinguishers should have activated by now, she thought, so she shut off the battery switch as well. “Battery switch off!”

“Good,” the man said. Rebecca thought the man looked remarkably calm despite the fact that he was standing atop the broken hulk of a fifty-million-dollar aircraft. “Guard the ejection levers.” He motioned someone else clear, then depressed the canopy-release button and swung the left-side canopy open. The first thing he did was put a spare set of safety pins in the two ejection levers and the capsule-recovery handles on the center cockpit beam. That done, he could relax a bit. “Capsule’s pinned,” he said to the firemen surrounding the bomber. “Clear to go in. Wizzo looks like he might be hurt. Be careful.” Puffing from the running and climbing he did, he turned to Furness, smiled, and said, “Nice to have you back in one piece, Major Furness.”

Despite the forced landing, despite the damage, despite her hurt crewmember and her own pain, Rebecca could think of only one thing — the man’s voice: “You’re … you’re Delta? The new MG?” The man nodded. And then she recognized that incredible face. “You’re also the guy from the bar last night!”

“Naw, that was my evil twin brother,” Daren Mace said with a smile. When her shocked expression remained, he nodded and said, “Yeah, yeah, it’s me. Are you hurt, Rebecca? Can you move?”

Furness found that she was staring open-mouthed at the MG. He looked — well, like a movie star. He had a ruddy, energetic glow in his face, great blond hair peeking out from under his hat, and those green eyes looked so vital, confident, even happy.

“Rebecca?” His face searched hers, looking anxious and concerned but, after realizing she wasn’t hurt, he relaxed. He held her left shoulder with his right hand, reached down, and turned the four-point harness connector, releasing all her harness straps at once. “Move slowly, and let me know if there’s any pain.”

She leaned forward, and he put his left hand on her right shoulder to help ease her away from the seat. “No … no, I feel okay. Everything’s okay.” A fireman was sitting atop the capsule, and with his help Mace eased Furness out of the cockpit. She steadied herself on the canopy sill after her legs were swung out.

Her feet were resting on a mound of snow that had piled itself up all around the Vampire bomber. The nose was almost completely buried in snow, and the wall of snow also nearly covered the wings’ leading edges and engine intakes. If she hadn’t shut down the engines first, they would have flamed out from having the intakes clogged with snow like that. Overall, the plane looked in pretty good shape considering the nose section was lying on the ground.

Mace covered her shoulders with a rough wool blanket as he helped her off with her flight helmet. “You certainly know how to make an entrance, Major,” Mace said. “Let’s get you down from there.” A fireman put a cervical collar around her neck, and several firemen and medics helped her down off the bomber and into a waiting ambulance. With Fogelman on a gurney with her, Furness was laid on another gurney in the ambulance, covered with blankets, and strapped in securely. The MG rode with her the entire way in the back of the ambulance.

“How bad does my plane look, sir?” Furness asked him.

“Don’t worry about that,” Mace replied.

“Okay.” She sighed. He seemed completely nonplussed about the disaster on his runway, which was pretty amazing for an MG. “How’s Mark?” she asked with worry.

He checked on Fogelman, who was being cared for by two medics and a flight surgeon. “Mark cracked his head pretty good. He’s unconscious.” He saw Furness turn away from him and tears start to flow down her cheeks. Her lower lip trembled, as if from the cold. “Hey, everything’s going to be fine. Mark’s going to be okay.”

“It’s not that … I just never crashed a plane before,” she muttered through cold, chattering teeth. “I never even came close …”

“You didn’t crash, Rebecca, you brought yourself and your crew back safely and saved the plane from extensive damage or even total loss,” the MG said. “You should be proud of yourself. Take a deep breath and try to relax.”

“I tried to get away from Paula’s plane … I pulled as hard as I could …” she insisted.

“I said, try to relax, Major,” the MG said — she had forgotten his name already, and was already thinking of him as just the MG. “You did good. You were in a no-win situation. I used to be an Aardvark crewdog, too, and I know about crash landings, believe me.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, unfortunately.” He nodded. “Both me and the pilot got out okay, but I got the grilling of a lifetime — everything but the bamboo shoots up the fingernails and the rubber hoses — and it was all for nothing. That won’t happen this time. I’m in charge of the accident investigation board, and I’ve got procedures to follow, but I will tell you that as long as I’m in charge of the investigation, we’ll dispense with the shit they put me through. I promise you.”

“What is going to happen, sir?” she asked, biting a nail nervously.

“Can the ‘sir’ stuff unless it’s around the brass,” Mace said. “The name is Daren. Daren Mace.”

Rebecca’s lip stopped chattering when she heard that name … and the voice. She had a weird sense of déjà vu, but didn’t know why … somewhere she’d heard that name before.

“You gotta realize that under the regs we gotta do certain things right away,” Mace was explaining. “An aircraft investigation board’s been convened. They’re going to take blood, and they’re going to give you EEGs and X rays and all that shit, and they’ll test your urine once you have to use the bathroom. You realize they’re looking for … foreign substances. They have to do all this right away. A flight surgeon will be with you the whole time, and you can have someone else stay with you if you want — your husband, your parents, anybody. Want me to call someone?”

The ambulance hit a slight bump, which jolted them a bit. She thought about calling her uncle, but he would already be in Washington for the new Congressional session. Ed Caldwell? He’d be useless. Her parents were in Florida, and the nearest sibling was in Dallas, Texas. She had friends at Liberty Air, but no one she wanted to drag out here and stay with her. “There’s … no one,” Furness replied. “Dollie Jacobs will be all right.” She had known Dr. Jacobs, the squadron flight surgeon, ever since she arrived at Plattsburgh.

“Fine,” Mace said. “She’ll meet us at the hospital — she’s checking out the others right now. You realize that the accident investigation board’s already been sworn in, and we’re interviewing the others in your flight, as well as the F-16 crews. We’re also retrieving the Boston Center and Air Defense Command recordings.” He told her who else was on the accident investigation board — they were all Wing officers, all people she knew and trusted — except the new MG, of course. “The most important thing to remember is that nothing you say to me or the board can be used against you, ever, so I encourage you to talk to me and the other board members, and don’t talk to anyone else. The Chief Circuit Defense Counsel has been called in from Langley, so if you feel you want to talk with counsel, we’ll do that right away.” The Area Defense Council was a team of military lawyers who were used as military defense attorneys — they reported only to the Air Force Judge Advocate General and the Secretary of the Air Force in Washington, not to any local commander, and so could not be swayed or influenced by rank or position.

“I’ll cooperate in any way I can. I … I feel just fine talking with you,” Rebecca heard herself say. She hadn’t intended on that sounding so personal, but … it just came out that way.…

“Hey,” Mace said, smiling, as the ambulance slowed to a stop at the emergency entrance to the base hospital. “Better stop that — you’re starting to turn me on, BC.”

Furness’ eyes widened and her mouth went dry. She had heard those very same words before … but where? “Daren. I know that name. I remember … you … you were in Saudi … I mean, Iraq____”

Mace smiled at her, showing her those pearly whites. He squeezed her hand reassuringly. “We’ll talk later … Shamu,” he said. As soon as the ambulance doors opened, he stepped out, and Dr. Dollie Jacobs took his place and began to examine her.

Jacobs had Rebecca transferred to an examining room, where she and two nurses gave her a thorough examination. The entire medical staff was wearing fatigues instead of hospital whites — that was a very unusual uniform-of-the-day combination for the hospital. “We getting an IG inspection or something, Dollie?” Furness asked.

Jacobs was examining Rebecca’s ear canals for any signs of bleeding or eardrum rupture: “There’s … uh … you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“We got a message about two hours ago,” Jacobs explained. “We’re doing a full aircraft-generation — and it’s not an exercise, it’s the real thing.”

“A generation?” Furness asked, thinking she hadn’t heard right. “Are you sure? Not a deployment?” The 394th Air Battle Wing’s primary mission was “deployment,” or preparing to move to another location and begin offensive bombing missions. The wing rarely practiced or performed a “generation”—that was when all of the bombers on base were loaded with thermonuclear weapons, and the tankers configured for long-range refueling missions, and both were placed on round-the-clock strategic alert, ready to go to war.

“I’m afraid not,” Jacobs said. “Russia has attacked the Ukraine with at least one nuke. The shit, as they say, is really hitting the fan.”

TWENTY-FOUR

“Where the hell have you been, Colonel?” Colonel Lafferty, the wing vice commander, asked a few minutes later as Daren Mace entered the battle staff conference room. “The battle staff meeting ended ten minutes ago.”

“At the bomber recovery,” Mace replied. His fatigues were soaking wet from crawling on the snow-covered plane, and his hair was tousled and sweaty. “I accompanied Furness and Fogelman to the hospital.”

“Daren, I need your ass right here at headquarters,” General Cole interjected. “I understand that it’s important to talk with the crews and see the damage yourself, but we’ve got a generation to run here.”

“Sir, did you receive a report on Furness and Fogelman yet?” Mace interjected. He turned to Greg McGwire, the Operations Group commander, and asked, “Do you know what the status of your crewmembers is, Colonel McGwire?”

“No, but what does that have to do with—”

“Well, I know, because I bothered to goddamn ask,” Mace said, obviously angry at being rebuffed simply because he was more concerned about the crews than the machines. “If we’re generating SIOP sorties, I think it’s important to know the condition of those you’re handing the codes to, don’t you think, sir?

“Major Furness appears unhurt. Mark Fogelman is still unconscious with head injuries. Our movie star, Ted Little, is being examined for a mild concussion. The flight surgeon says that all of them might need a staff PRP evaluation before being allowed back on flying status. That means two crews and two planes down for now.” He paused for a moment, then averted his eyes, just enough to show Cole or McGwire that he wasn’t trying to challenge anyone, then added, “With all due respect, sir, you can’t always run a generation from the command post.”

General Cole appeared angry and ready to blast back at Mace, but instead he took a deep breath, simmering, then said, “Thank you for the report, Colonel. Just answer the phone when I call, Daren, is that clear?” Mace nodded, then accepted a cup of coffee and a computer printout on the progress of the aircraft generation from Captain Porter. To the Operations Group commander, Cole asked, “John, let’s plan on decertifying Norton and Furness for at least one day, pending a staff review. What will this do to our alert lines?”

“Shouldn’t affect the generation at all, General,” McGwire replied. “All the alert lines are manned. We can put Furness and Norton together on the Charlie alert lines — as an instructor, Furness is fully qualified as a weapons system officer — which won’t come up for at least twenty-four to forty-eight hours. That means we’ll be only one crew down.”

“That means,” Colonel Lafferty interjected, “that we’re only one crew or two planes short of going combat-ineffective — and that’s if Fifth Air Battle Force doesn’t take us all down under PRP anyway.”

Mace shook his head at that acronym — he thought he had heard the last of PRP. The Personnel Reliability Program was established in the early years of the Strategic Air Command to certify crewmembers who handled nuclear weapons in any manner. Each person cleared for nuclear duties had to pass a stringent set of physical and psychological standards in order to be cleared for “special”—i.e., nuclear weapon — duties. Certain serious personal occurrences — illness, taking medication, hospitalization, accidents, a personal or family crisis, anything that might cause a person to “not be himself” in any way — would prompt a commander to “decertify” a crewmember, or remove him or her from nuclear duties. Fogelman was definitely off PRP. Under normal circumstances, Colonel Hembree, the bomber squadron commander, would have certainly taken Paula Norton, Ted Little, Rebecca Furness, and maybe even the other two crews in Furness’ formation immediately off PRP as well, even though none was injured; a close call like theirs might make them a bit reluctant to fly or might distract them from the dangerous job of handling a nuclear-loaded bomber.

There was seldom any hesitation in temporarily pulling a crewmember’s PRP certification — temporary decertification did not affect a crewmember’s career or official records. The safe play was to yank PRP — except when it appeared that the whole world was getting ready to go to war. Unless the crewmember showed clear signs of stress, injury, or emotional trauma, they would be kept on the line getting their bombers ready to fight.

“Okay,” Cole said, “let’s go over the generation so far. I’d like to start with an intelligence briefing. Major Pierce?”

“Yes, sir.” Pierce got to his feet and walked over to a map of Eastern Europe, showing western Russia and the Black Sea region. “As you all know by now, the Russians launched a large-scale air attack against the Ukraine, using low-yield tactical nuclear devices, and they used non-nuclear bombs and cruise missiles against military targets in Romania and Moldova. The goal of the attack was obviously to destroy the Ukraine’s main offensive and defensive air bases, and to cripple Romania’s and Moldova’s military units and stop them from mounting any sort of offensive against the Russians living in the Dniester region of eastern Moldova.

“The reports call it a Desert Storm-type air assault, with AS-4 cruise missiles launched from Backfire bombers and AS-15 cruise missiles carried by Blackjack supersonic bombers, followed up by gravity bomb and short-range missile attacks by Bear and Badger long- and medium-range jet bombers,” Pierce added, putting up a slide of the suspected Russian staging bases, the types and numbers of bombers, and their suspected routes of flight. “Ukrainian air defense stations reportedly engaged the heavy bombers, but they had no chance to stop them. Reportedly a few of the AS-4 and -15 nuclear cruise missiles were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, but a total of four nuclear detonations were recorded.

“If there’s a bright spot to this horrible attack,” Pierce continued, “it’s the fact that the Russians didn’t use the normal 350- or 200-kiloton nuclear warheads in the AS-4 and AS-15 missiles. They apparently used those rinky-dink RKY-2 devices, which are very small enhanced radiation devices normally used on battlefield nuclear artillery shells. The difference with these devices is that they have no outer shell of uranium to collect and capture neutrons — the neutrons from the first fission explosion are released. Therefore, there are no typical nuclear bomb effects: no gigantic shock wave, no thermal blast effects, no craters, no fallout, no lingering radiation. Their yield is equivalent to about a two-kiloton nuclear device—”

“Neutron bombs,” General Cole muttered. “People-killers.”

“Exactly, sir,” Pierce said. “The neutron stream from the explosion can penetrate unshielded structures with ease. Personnel in shielded vehicles, properly constructed underground shelters, or wearing nuclear-chemical-biological exposure suits are safe, and protected individuals can enter the attack area almost immediately after the detonation.”

“And anyone not in shelters or wearing suits?” Colonel McGwire asked.

Major Pierce shuffled uneasily, checked his notes, cleared his throat, then said, “Within a half-mile from ground zero, death from radiation poisoning will occur within twelve hours. Inside two miles from ground zero, death will occur within three to five days, even with medical treatment, depending on distance and level of exposure. Injuries from burns, shock, overpressure, and flashblindness are common within two miles as well.” The battle staff was too stunned to react. Of all the ways to die, death from massive radiation poisoning had to be the worst conceivable way — slow, painful, and horrible.

“What Ukrainian bases were hit by these … things?” Colonel Lafferty asked.

“Three isolated bases in western and central Ukraine were hit by neutron bombs,” Pierce said, putting up a slide of the Black Sea region and the Ukraine. “L’vov in western Ukraine was hit by a neutron missile. Fortunately the base is several miles outside the city of L’vov, which has a population of almost a million. However, L’vov Air Base is … rather, was … the largest Ukrainian air base except for Kiev, and it had been recently reinforced with more aircraft from Odessa. There could have been five squadrons destroyed in the attack.” Unsaid was the fact that Pierce was talking about five squadrons’ worth of people, about five to six thousand military personnel, since the neutron bomb would have left most of the aircraft intact except those closest to the explosion.

“The central Ukrainian base of Vinnica was hit by one missile, and since the base is very close to the city, here is where we can expect the largest death tolls — possibly close to seven thousand dead or injured, military and civilian,” Pierce continued. “Two, perhaps three fighter and bomber squadrons may have been destroyed.

“Krivoj Rog in east-central Ukraine was hit with one missile as well,” Pierce continued. “KR was a transport base, with two squadrons destroyed and minimal civilian casualties. Also heavily attacked, but not with nuclear devices, was the port town of Belgorod-Dnestrovski, which is the headquarters of the Ukrainian Coast Guard river patrols. The Russians were obviously going after the Ukrainian river patrols that have been intercepting Russian barges and vessels trying to resupply the Russian rebels in Moldova.” Pierce didn’t know if anyone was really listening to him anymore, but he decided to press on and get through this godawful briefing as fast as he could.

“In Moldova, the air attacks were centered on the town of Bel’cy, in northwestern Moldova, which had one Moldovan Army division and was a marshaling area for perhaps four or five Romanian army divisions. Kishinev, the capital, was untouched except for antiradar-missile attacks against Romanian long-range radar systems installed during the buildup.

“Three cities in eastern Romania were hit. Iasi, headquarters of the eastern military district and the headquarters for Romanian military operations in Moldova, was hit very heavily with non-nuclear weapons,” Pierce went on. “Galati, the main air base in eastern Romania, with six fighter and bomber squadrons based there, was the only base outside the Ukraine hit by neutron bombs — the estimated loss of life is near four thousand. Braila, just a few miles south of Galati, had one army division and was a major Romania Coast Guard base patrolling the Danube; it was hit with non-nuclear weapons.”

The immensity of that number simply could not be digested, and nearly everyone at the battle staff conference table shook their heads. Some eighteen thousand people dead, and even more injured — in one attack? How could any nation hope to care for that many injured or bury that many dead? It was too enormous to even think about. And what if it happened in the United States? Against Burlington or Plattsburgh, or New York City or Boston? How could anyone deal with it?

“What is equally interesting about these attacks is what was not attacked,” Pierce concluded. “Kiev, with five fighter and bomber squadrons and four army divisions, was overflown but not attacked, although it fired a great many air defense missiles and shot down several Russian aircraft and cruise missiles. Odessa, with two fighter squadrons, two army divisions, and the thirty-ship Ukrainian Navy; and Doneck, in the eastern coal mining and heavy manufacturing region known as the Don, with six army divisions, were both untouched. In Romania, the large Black Sea military complex at Constanta, with four fighter squadrons, two bomber squadrons, four army divisions, and Romania’s only blue-water naval base, was untouched.

“All in all, it appears that the Russians went after air forces and specifically stayed away from attacking large troop concentrations and population centers. They obviously understand that air power is very important, that control of the skies is their first priority, and limiting casualties is important for public relations—”

“Public relations?” Cole asked in amazement. “My God, they nuked the Ukraine! I’d say their public relations efforts have gone down the toilet.”

“The best explanation for the use of neutron warheads is that the Ukraine is a powerful opponent and the Russians needed the biggest bang possible out of their big, long-range bombers,” Pierce said. “Put a small-yield nuke warhead on some of the missiles, and your mission effectiveness jumps tremendously. It’s pretty cold-blooded, but it’s an effective way of prosecuting a war. The death toll is going to be very large, but it could have been much worse.”

“Jesus. It’ll be a pretty sad day when nations determine that they can use nuclear weapons to fight a war. Soon every nation on earth will be using them. This was all supposed to have ended with the Cold War. What a joke.”

Daren Mace hoped that no one saw him squirm uncomfortably. Believe me, General, Mace remarked to himself, the Russians definitely weren’t the only ones to think of that idea. What would the U.S. reaction be? If the U.S. government considered the use of low-yield nuclear weapons against a relatively weak foe like Iraq, as they had that opening day of Desert Storm, would the U.S. resort to nuclear weapons if drawn into a battle against a formidable foe like Russia?

“Conclusions, then, Major,” Cole asked. “How much of the Ukraine’s military was destroyed, and what is their current military status?”

“About half of their military force was decimated,” Pierce replied, “mostly their air assets. Although Ukrainian ground forces are fairly intact, with their Air Force so heavily destroyed, I’d say the Ukraine is vulnerable to attack and will not be able to put up much resistance throughout most of the country, with the exception of Kiev, the south, and the Don region — western Ukraine is wide open. Same goes for Romania, although they suffered heavier land forces losses. Conclusion: Moldova can belong to Russia again as soon as Russia is ready to reclaim it, without any interference from the Ukraine or Romania.”

“How about closer to home?” Cole asked. “What have the Russians been doing in North America?”

“Their entire force of Backfire bombers based in Cuba was airborne throughout the attack period,” Pierce replied. “They were not seen with any weapons when they were intercepted over international waters. However, it is now estimated that the Backfires are each armed with six AS-16 ‘Kickback’ short-range attack missiles in an internal rotary launcher. It is now believed that the Backfires were poised for a strike against the United States if one was deemed necessary. The AS-16 missile is an equivalent to our AGM-69 Short-Range Attack Missile, with inertial guidance, a range of about a hundred miles, a top speed of Mach-three, and a circular error probability of about a hundred feet; it probably would’ve been delivered during a supersonic low-level dash inland, with a pretty good chance of success. I think we can assume that the Russians have put RKY-2 warheads on the AS-16 missiles as well. It hasn’t been officially announced yet, but I think we can expect a directive to come down to shoot down any Backfires encountered from now on.”

“I think we’d all agree with that,” Cole said grimly. Now at least they had something to focus their anger on, something to take their minds away from dying men, women, and children in Europe, and back to the task of defending their nation. The Backfires were too close to home, and that fact helped them to concentrate. “Okay, gentlemen, let’s get down to our job. We’ve got a helluva lot of work to do. God help us.”