Tom Clancy's HAWX

Chapter 33

Troy was shown into Raymond Harris's large top-floor office, the office that didn't remind you that he was a retired general so much as it hit you over the head with that fact. Harris was behind his big desk, next to his flagpole.

He was on the phone but waved for Troy to take a seat. As Harris finished his call, Troy's eyes roamed the room, looking at the framed photos of Harris with famous people and his collection of 1/22-scale mahogany aircraft models. As his eyes came to rest on an F-16, he thought about Hal and the cruelties of war.

When the call was finished, the two men exchanged pleasantries and Harris got down to business.

"I wanted you to be among the first to know that I'm stepping aside as Director of Air Ops here at Firehawk." Harris smiled.

"That's sort of a bombshell," Troy said. He was bowled over. Harris was synonymous with air operations at Firehawk. He had run the Air Ops Division since its inception and had watched it grow into one of the top ten air forces in the world. "This is really astounding…. what next for you?"

"That's the good part." Harris grinned. "I'm staying with Firehawk. I'm just moving to a new division." "Which division?"

"One you've never heard of, and one I can't tell you about… unless of course you accept my invitation to come over and work with me there."

"Sounds like a desk job," Troy said. "I don't think that's right for me. I like what I'm doing and I'm real anxious to get back overseas and start doing it some more," Troy said

"Well, I will tell you that this job does involve flying," Harris said.

"How much flying?"

"There'll be an opportunity for you to get into the cockpits of some pretty extreme stuff."

"Hmmm," Troy said thoughtfully. "What does it pay?"

"As you recall the last time I offered you a job, we sat in this room and I asked you what you were making, and I doubled it. This time, I know what you're making, and I'm offering to double it."

"Well, then I guess you have your guy," Troy said. A change of pace was always good, especially after all the anguish he'd been wrestling with since Hal died.

A doubled salary didn't hurt, either.

Troy was a little startled that Harris had already prepared the papers and nondisclosure agreements for him to sign, but only just a little. As soon as these details were attended to, he began his explanation.

"Back at the end of World War Two, when the Germans were way ahead of us on certain kinds of technology, the Army and the Army Air Forces went in to scoop up the German scientists and the stuff they were working on. You've heard of Operation Paperclip, right?"

"Of course," Troy said. "That was when the Americans got hold of Wernher von Braun, who invented the V2 ballistic missile… and brought him to the United States to build a whole succession of bigger and bigger rockets that led to ICBMs and to the Saturn V that took astronauts to the moon."

"Right." Harris nodded. "But Paperclip was only one of several programs of that sort. Another one run by the U. S. Air Force was called Project FALCO, for Foreign Aircraft and Logistics Capture Operations. Paperclip's bailiwick was big rockets, while FALCO's was veryhigh-altitude fighters. You've heard of the YF-12 and the SR-71, which came along in the sixties and flew at altitudes up to a hundred thousand feet… well, there were others you never heard of."

"Why not? That was a half century ago."

"Certain things just stay secret. In this case, HAW, the High Altitude Warfare program, was parallel to other things like the SR-71 that were merely top secret. HAW remained classified beyond all access partly because it was classified beyond all access. They had done such a good job of keeping it a secret that the biggest secret was simply that they had kept it that way."

"How does this affect Firehawk?" Troy asked. The history lesson was nice, but he was anxious for Harris to cut to the chase.

"Because the program still exists," Harris said, lowering his voice almost to a whisper, as though to underscore the secrecy. "For several decades after its heyday in the sixties, the program was underfunded and didn't really do very much, but in the last couple of years, they've really cranked it up again. It's now called HAWX for High Altitude Warfare, Experimental, because of the emphasis on really advanced systems."

"That doesn't explain how this affects us."

"It affects us because the U. S. Air Force has decided to privatize it and hand it off to a PMC," Harris said excitedly. "They're so pleased with the efficiencies of working with PMCs that they decided to let us run with it. On top of that, it's growing so big so fast that they want to keep it another step away from congressional oversight. They're afraid this increases the chance of information getting leaked."

"Where is the program located?" Troy asked.

"It's been all over. It was at Wright-Pat, then Langley, and now it's out on the Nellis Air Force Base range about a hundred miles north of Las Vegas, out by Groom Lake. Officially, it's known as the 24th Test and Evaluation Squadron."

"Mmmm," Troy purred conspiratorially. "Out by Area 51?"

"About fifty miles to the northeast," Harris replied straight-faced.

"What would I be doing exactly?"

"There are three primary missions of the 24th TES. First, just like the squadron designation says, there's testing and evaluation of experimental and secret aircraft and hardware, with an emphasis on high-altitude systems. Second, the 24th has been called on to fly live high-altitude combat or recon missions. All of these will be strictly on the 'black ops' side. You'll get to continue doing what you're doing now, it's just that nothing that you do will officially have happened."

"I understand." Troy nodded. "What about the third mission category?"

"As needs dictate, the 24th is involved in training of United States and Allied pilots, new people who come into the HAWX Program. Y'know, we might even get involved in capturing enemy technology to evaluate."

"It sounds interesting," Troy said. "I'm ready for this kind of thing. When do I start?"

"That's the spirit," Harris said, giving Troy a fatherly glance. "Since we're all wrapped up in Malaysia, thanks in no small part to your own celebrated efforts, I'd say that you can start as soon as possible. Shall we say in ten days? That'll give you a week and two weekends to recharge your batteries. See you in the desert, Loensch."