Tiger's Claw

OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN

A FEW DAYS LATER

“Slipway doors are open,” Tom Hoffman said. He was in the pilot’s seat of a newly refurbished XB-1 Excalibur bomber, but he wasn’t flying the plane and had not done much flying at all on this trip, because Brad McLanahan insisted on doing most of it. But this was the first time Brad was going to try aerial refueling for real. He had done it from the right seat plenty of times in the dozen simulator sessions they had accomplished, and he got to watch Hoffman do the first real one just west of Hawaii, but now it was his turn.

They had a third crewmember along on this trip. Sondra Eddington was a few years older than Brad and was one of the first persons to go through Tom Hoffman’s accelerated flight training program at Warbirds Forever, except she had a bit more money saved up than Brad and could afford an apartment, a car, and attend the University of Nevada–Reno for her bachelor’s degree in business and a master’s in business adminstration instead of having to stay in a storeroom and work at the company.

After a corporate stint for a few years flying everything from Piper Cheyenne turboprops to Gulfstream bizjets, the tall, blond, blue-eyed pilot returned to Warbirds Forever by special invitation from Tom Hoffman to be part of the Excalibur project. She had already ferried several Excaliburs to Guam, but on this hop she was the relief pilot, spending most of her time in the bunk reading or napping and fixing the others cups of coffee or Ramen noodles. Now, in preparation for air refueling, she was strapped into the jump seat between the pilot and copilot, wearing her helmet plugged into oxygen and intercom, gloves, and a parachute. In an emergency, after the two pilots safely ejected, her task was to make her way aft to the entry hatch, blow the nose gear down, and jump—not an appealing prospect, especially if the jet was not straight and level, but her only option.

“Okay, remember your sight picture, Brad,” Hoffman said. “You’re on the right side, but it’ll look exactly the same from over there.”

“Yes, sir,” Brad said. He looked eminently confident and relaxed at the controls of the big jet.

“Masters One-Four, Cajun Two-One, how do you read your boom operator, sir?”

“Loud and clear,” Brad responded.

“Loud and clear up here, too. I have you in sight. Cleared to precontact position, Two-One is ready.”

“One-Four is cleared to precontact.” All the director lights on the belly of the KC-10 Extender aerial refueling tanker ahead of them flashed briefly, and then two green lights began flashing, verifying that he was cleared to precontact position. The tanker’s flying boom was already lowered and the nozzle extended slightly.

“Very smooth, gradual control inputs,” Hoffman coached Brad in a quiet voice. “You’ll find it much easier than the simulator. You don’t even have to move the stick. It’s like moving the planchette on an Ouija board—you just barely touch the stick and think about moving it, and it moves. No rush. Nail your airspeed, then make fine corrections. The Excalibur is very slippery, so you won’t need many throttle adjustments once you’re in sync with the tanker.”

The boom started to get larger as Brad crept up and forward. “Don’t focus on the nozzle, Brad,” Hoffman said. “Keep your scan going—director lights, nozzle, window bow, tanker belly. Keep scanning. You’re looking for that precontact picture: aft row of the director lights right at the top of the window bow, nozzle centered, director lights telling you to come on in, checking for closure rate or elevation warnings, then repeat. Nice and easy.”

Now Hoffman was starting to see Brad clenching and unclenching his hands and swallowing hard—the first sign of nervousness he’d seen Brad have past the first few simulator sessions. “Nice easy grip on the stick, Brad—don’t fight her. You got this. The B-1 is the easiest plane to air refuel but the slipway is in front of you, not behind as it is on most planes, and you tend to get the feeling that nozzle is coming right through the windscreen. The boomer won’t let that happen, believe me. Don’t focus on it. Relax. Scan.”

Brad forced himself to relax, and soon his hands were starting to make the tiny adjustments needed to form the sight picture he had practiced so many times in the simulator. Now he was making only quick glances at the approaching nozzle, and even though he knew this was for real and not a simulation, he got into the rhythm of forming the sight picture and using a quick and easy scan to . . .

. . . and before he knew it, there it was, the perfect picture of the landmarks on the tanker and the cockpit windscreen bow, and he heard, “Stabilize precontact, One-Four.”

“Roger, stabilized precontact,” Brad responded, pulling off just a tiny bit of power to stop the forward motion. Before he knew it he saw the boom come down a bit, the nozzle extended, and he heard and felt the satisfying CLUNK! as the nozzle extended and slammed home inside the receptable, without even touching the slipway.

“Contact, Two-One,” the boom operator said.

Hoffman checked his multifunction display. “Contact,” he reported.

“Contact, One-Four,” Brad replied.

“Taking fuel,” Hoffman reported. “We’re not going to take on much fuel, but just be aware that if we were taking on a normal onload you’d have to make very slight power changes as the gross weight increases.”

Now the director lights on the tanker’s belly had changed: Brad’s job was to keep the boom aligned with the yellow centerline and respond to the director lights, which would tell him if was too high or too low or too close or too far away. Brad found that the lighter his touch on the control stick, the easier it was to stay in the center of the refueling envelope.

They took on just a token amount of fuel—Hoffman had already accomplished the first refueling that would be sure to take them all the way to Guam, and Sondra had gotten a few practice contacts from the left seat as well—and then he had Brad do a few practice disconnects and reconnects, including contacts while in a turn, as if they were doing a refueling anchor pattern—a racetrack pattern designed to keep the aircraft in a particular geographic location—instead of a long straight refueling track. Just before Brad made it to precontact position on the fifth practice try, Hoffman keyed the microphone button and said, “Breakaway, breakaway, breakaway!” Brad immediately chopped the throttles to idle and started a brisk but not too rapid descent, while the tanker pilot gunned his throttles and started a fast climb and the boom operator yanked the refueling boom up and back to its maximum retracted position on the tanker’s tail.

“Thanks for the work, Two-One,” Hoffman radioed. “You had a newbie doing those contacts and the breakaway from the right seat.”

“Nice job, copilot,” the boomer radioed. “Catch you on the flip side, guys. Cajun Two-One is clear.”

“Great job on your first contact, Brad,” Hoffman said. “I think you’re going to have the Excalibur nailed.”

“Like you said, sir,” Brad said, “the lighter the touch on the stick and throttles, the easier it is.”

“Kinda seems like I’ve done this a few times before, eh, Brad?” Hoffman deadpanned. He patted the top of the instrument panel. “It may seem like the B-1 is a big muscular roaring monster, Brad, but she’s really more like a sweet intelligent woman: you be respectful and aware and don’t try to muscle her around, and she’ll respond just as sweetly. Try to push her around and she’ll bite back.” He turned over his right shoulder. “Sondra, I’m going to clear off for relief, grab a protein bar, and then I’m going to take a nap for a half hour. Sound good?”

“Yes, sir,” Sondra replied. She took off and stowed her parachute, folded up her jump seat, let Hoffman squeeze past, then pulled herself up into the pilot’s seat and strapped in. “Pilot’s up on intercom,” she reported. She put her hand on the control stick and gave it a quick shake. “I’ve got the aircraft.”

Brad shook his control stick and felt Sondra’s resistance on it, and he knew she had control. “You’ve got the airplane.”

“I’ve got it.” She disconnected the autopilot and made some gentle turns, getting the feel for the aircraft—Brad knew she almost never used the autopilot. “How’s it going, Brad?” she asked.

“Great, Sondra.”

“Sounded like you got a little nervous there during the first hookup, but you worked your way through it. Nice job.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m really impressed by how fast you’ve moved through the colonel’s flight training program,” Sondra said. “I thought I did it quick, but you blew me away.”

“I wasn’t doing a full load of credits at UNR while doing flight training,” Brad said.

“No, but I felt a little sorry for you—having to put up with the boss while you trained full-time,” Sondra said. “But you did good.” She paused for a few moments, then said, “So what’s next, Brad? You’re a multi- and instrument flight instructor and commercial pilot; you’re checked out in a few warbirds; and now you’re getting checked out in an XB-1 bomber. What else?”

He looked over at Sondra and gave her a smile. “To be honest, Sondra: I want to do what you’re doing,” he said. “My dad suggested this way back before I started the program, and now I’ve met someone who’s done it: commercial, CFI, CFI-I, and you have a degree in business and a master’s in aviation maintenance management. He said all that plus maybe an A and P license would make me competitive for working at Sky Masters, plus the fact that I’ve worked there and the bosses know me.”

“Pretty good advice,” Sondra said. “But to tell you the truth, I did all that stuff for one thing: to meet guys.”

“Say what?”

“To meet pilots.” Brad gave her a skeptical expression. “Pilots are hot. You probably don’t think so, but I do. All the pilots I’ve ever met know they have a skill that less than one percent of the people in the country possess. The jerk pilots have this cocky swaggering deal going on that turns me off, but the cool pilots keep the swaggering to a minimum, fly the plane, and complete the mission.” She looked over at him. “I haven’t figured out which you are yet,” she said, a slight smile just visible behind her microphone. “When you first arrived at Warbirds Forever, I thought you were the biggest jerk I’ve ever seen. You’re starting to come around.”

“Thank you . . . I think,” Brad said.

Sondra gave him a big smile. “That was a compliment,” she said. “So, tell me: What’s it like being General Patrick McLanahan’s son?”

Brad shrugged. “A mixed bag, I guess,” he said. “All I really know about my dad are the stories or opinions other people tell. He never talks about what he did in the Air Force. Every now and then I see him get this look, like he’s remembering something bad that happened a long time ago. He’ll hear a heavy jet fly nearby or see a warbird taxi out, and he’ll stop what he’s doing and get that faraway look. It’s not sadness or post-traumatic stress disorder or anything like that—at least I don’t think it is—but it happens, and I ask him later to talk about it, and he won’t.”

“I think your dad is quite hot,” Sondra said.

Brad’s head snapped around in surprise. “What?”

Sondra smiled, looking straight ahead. All the time they were talking, the Excalibur bomber didn’t wander one iota in altitude or heading—it was as if she had engaged the autopilot. “The strong silent type,” she said dreamily. “In a room full of pilots you’d never know he’d be the guy in charge . . . until it was time to get to work or until he spoke, and then you’d get it.”

“But he’s twice your age!” Brad exclaimed, probably too vociferously.

After a few long moments, she shrugged. “Not a complete disqualifier,” she said finally. She looked over and smiled at Brad’s shocked expression. “I see where you get it from.”

“Get what from?”

“You got the skills and the cocky attitude, Brad,” she said, “but you don’t show it—in fact, you work hard to hide it.” She gave him a smile, then added: “Not a complete disqualifier.”

“Disqualifier for what?” But she never answered him, only wore that slight little smile and steered the Excalibur as if it was on rails until Hoffman came up a half hour later and switched with Brad so he could take a break.

A few hours later they were painting the island of Guam on radar. “Guam Center, Masters One-Four,” Brad McLanahan radioed, back in the copilot’s seat but flying the Excalibur, “level at one-four thousand, forty miles east of BAGBE intersection, information Romeo for landing.”

“Masters One-Four, Guam Center, welcome,” the controller responded. “Descend and maintain eight thousand eight hundred, cleared for the GPS Zulu runway two-four left approach. Winds three-zero-zero at ten gusting to seventeen.”

After doing aerial refueling contacts, flying a GPS approach with the Excalibur seemed like child’s play to Brad. He used the same techniques as during air refueling: light touch on the stick and throttles, remain relaxed, and maintain the sight picture while keeping the needles centered and the airspeed under control. Hoffman made sure the checklists were done, and they rode the ILS beam nice and steady. The satisfying SQUEAK! SQUEAK! of the main landing gear touching the pavement was almost a surprise.

“Welcome to Guam, son,” Patrick McLanahan said as Brad, Tom Hoffman, and Sondra Eddington climbed down the Excalibur’s long entry ladder after parking the Excalibur outside of its tent. He gave Brad a big hug. “How was the flight?”

“Great!” Brad exclaimed, “except my butt thinks my legs have been cut off.” He unzipped his flight suit to his waist. “Whew! Is it humid out here!”

“We should be getting our usual three P.M. thunderstorm any time now, so it’ll feel better,” Patrick said. He handed each of them a bottle of water, then asked Hoffman, “How did he do, Tom?”

“Chip off the ol’ block, sir,” Hoffman said. He added with a smile, “But don’t worry: we’ll make him better.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Patrick said. They headed to maintenance debrief, all chugging cold water. By the time they reached the maintenance hangar, the skies had darkened, and moments later the clouds that had appeared as if out of nowhere disgorged sheets of rain. “You can almost set your watch by the afternoon thunderstorm,” he said.

“And the same for the power outage,” Colonel Warner “Cutlass” Cuthbert said, trotting into the maintenance hangar. “Blackout, usually caused by a tripped breaker at the municipal power station or transformer farm from a lightning strike or surge. Our backups should be kicking in any minute. The computers are all on uninterruptable power supplies, so you can still debrief, but air-conditioning and lights are out. Shouldn’t last long.”

Just a few minutes into the maintenance debriefing the lights and power came back on, but the afternoon deluge had already cut down on the humidity. After the debriefing, Cutlass gave Sondra a set of keys. “Would you show Brad here where his father’s tent is? He’ll bunk in there with him. You can take him by the flight line and show him the other bombers. Don’t forget your flight-line IDs. Be back at the command center in an hour for the mission briefing.”

“Yes, sir,” Sondra said. Brad grabbed his backpack and computer case and followed.

In a few minutes they were slowly driving in a four-door crew pickup truck down the flight line at Andersen Air Force Base, examining the rows of B-52H, B-1B, and XB-1 bombers, KC-135 and KC-10 tankers, and F-22 Raptor and F-15 Eagle fighters in their parking spots. They were stopped frequently for ID checks. Vehicles with carts loaded with munitions of every description, and roving security and munitions maintenance vehicles drove up and down the line as well. “It looks like chaos, but it’s all pretty well orchestrated so no bottlenecks occur that create a safety or security situation,” Sondra said.

They stopped at an XB-1 Excalibur bomber about halfway down the line. A security guard checked their IDs and waved them past a simple yellow nylon rope barrier. “Be sure to only enter and exit here, where the guard is,” Sondra said. “The guards will jack you up if you cross over the rope, and they are authorized to shoot if they think you’re a suicide bomber or something.”

“I remember the security briefing,” Brad said.

They walked underneath and found Ed Gleason preflighting his jet inside the forward bomb bay. “Hello, Sondra,” Gleason greeted them.

“Hello, sir,” Sondra said. “Ed, I don’t think you’ve met General McLanahan’s son. Ed, this is Bradley McLanahan. Brad, meet Lieutenant General Ed Gleason, retired, one of the most experienced B-1 drivers at Sky Masters. He graduated number one in his Air Force Academy class, flew F-15E Strike Eagles as a second lieutenant, flew B-1s as a young captain, and commanded flying wings until finally becoming Twelfth Air Force commander. We’re lucky to have him.” Brad shook his hand.

“Sorry about the Academy, son,” Gleason said.

Brad rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Does everyone on Guam know that I dropped out of the Air Force Academy?”

“I know now,” Sondra said. That really turned Brad’s face sour, but she gave him a smile that perked him right back up. “Brad is a flight instructor at Warbirds Forever, and he just completed his first Excalibur ferry flight as second in command. I think he did pretty well. Colonel Hoffman even got him some air refueling stick time from the right seat. No dings on the Bone.”

“We’ll get you trained as an aircraft commander before you know it,” Gleason said. “You going to show Brad around the bird, Sondra?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Great. Nice to meet you, Brad.”

“Same here, sir.” They shook hands again, and Gleason departed, leaving Brad and Sondra alone.

“As you know, Brad, we can put three different payloads in each of the three bomb bays, or we can move the bulkhead between the forward and center bays to accommodate larger weapons.

“The primary mission for this bird is suppression of enemy air defenses, both against surface ships and on land,” she went on. “The forward bomb bay has a rotary launcher with four AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles and four AIM-120 AMRAAM radar-guided air-to-air missiles, which I think all the Excaliburs carry now.” They moved to the intermediate bay. “Here we have a rotary launcher carrying six AGM-158 Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missiles. JASSM has a one-thousand-pound warhead, a range of over two hundred miles, and an imaging infrared terminal seeker along with inertial navigation system and GPS. We can retarget it with the AESA or with target information received by satellite. The aft bomb bay has a three-thousand-gallon fuel tank, which all the Excaliburs carry because of the long overwater legs, even though we have our own tanker support.”

They exited the bomb bay, and she motioned to two clusters of missiles mounted externally under the fuselage. “These are my favorites: the AGM-88 HARM, or High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile,” Sondra went on. “We have two clusters of two missiles each on the external hardpoints. HARM can detect, home in on, and destroy enemy radars from as far as thirty miles—it can kill any target within range in less than a minute. They’re programmed to detect every known radar in the Chinese or Russian military.”

“Do they fly the Excaliburs armed with JASSMs?” Brad asked.

“They’ll fly them for proficiency or weapon checkouts, but not on patrols,” Sondra said. “Only the birds with the air-to-air missiles are allowed to fly patrols.”

“The patrols sound a little boring.”

“Most of the time we fly airborne radar overwatch for Navy patrols,” Sondra said. “We can send our radar data directly to the Aegis ships, or we just pass on radar or visual information to ships that can’t collect datalinks or digital imagery. They can get boring, but finding and classifying a ship out ahead of a Navy formation is pretty cool. We air refuel every two hours or so, which gives us plenty of fuel for a divert base, so we stay busy.”

“Wish I could fly those patrols,” Brad said.

“I don’t see why you can’t,” Sondra said. “If you fly with Colonel Hoffman, Ed Gleason, or your father, you’ll be flying with an instructor, so those hours count toward your ATP, and once you get that you can get checked out as an Excalibur aircraft commander. You probably need all the security clearances and background checks we had to get to be part of this task force. Tell them you want some patrols. Colonel Cuthbert can get you all the clearances, and you’re good to go.”

They drove to the housing area, not far from the flight line. Brad saw rows and rows of white tents on a coral and sand lot. “My dad lives in a tent?” Brad exclaimed.

“He insisted on living like the other crews and maintainers live—if he gets uncomfortable, he knows how everyone else feels,” Sondra said. “Besides, these things are pretty nice.” She punched in a code on the door—no tent flaps here—and showed Brad inside. It was surprisingly spacious. There was room for two folding beds, two dressers, and two desks.

“I didn’t see any power lines coming in here,” Brad observed.

“The tents are all solar powered,” Sondra said. “A group of six tents shares a big battery, and there are solar collectors on each tent and on each battery enclosure. The battery can be topped off by base electrical power, but that’s rare—the solar cells do a pretty good job.”

“Not much privacy.”

“The task force patrols and works on the flight line twenty-four-seven,” Sondra said, “so everyone is pretty busy. We work a five-days-on, two-days-off rotation, but to tell the truth, everyone makes themselves available on off days because there’s not much to do out here—the hotels and casinos are all but shut down, and lying around on the beaches gets old fast. Privacy isn’t really an issue—you make your own privacy. The sound of planes taking off is a bother, bunking so close to the flight line, but you get used to tuning it out.” She looked at him carefully, gave him a little smile, then reached out and touched his hand. “Besides, Brad, whatever would you do if you had a little privacy?” she asked.

He stepped over to her and gave her a light kiss on the lips, which she seemed to enjoy. “I’d come up with something,” he said in a soft voice.

“Oh, I’m sure you could, stud,” Sondra said, heading for the door. “I’m sure you could. C’mon, we have the mission briefing.”

“Am I allowed to attend?” Brad asked.

“They’ll tell you if you’re not, but I don’t see why not—we all have the same security clearance,” Sondra said. “It’ll get your mind out of the gutter.”

“It wasn’t there before I met you,” Brad said. She smiled but said nothing.