Eielson.
'After landing, they'll refuel and return to Ellsworth…
undoubtedly they will be regenerated and put on hard Slop strategic nuclear alert.'
'If the base still exists,' someone n#ittered.
The President stared at the sortie chartz' 'It seems too…
easy,' the President muttered.
'I beg your pardon, Mr. President?'
'It seems too simple,' the President said, not much louder.
Curtis strained to hear. 'Where are the defenses) You've told me for years about stiff Russian air defenses. Here…
there's no threat?'
'The target area is still heavily defended, the defenses include-' 'The Excaliburs can make it, General?' the President interrupted. 'They can get in?'
Curtis turned to Lieutenant-General Bradley James Elliott, who stood and faced the President.
'Gener al Elliott,' the President asked. 'Good to see you again. Well, what's your opinion, Brad?Can they make it?'
'I think so, sir. With the new equipment we've tested at Dreamland and built into these B-1s, they should stand a hell of a lot even see the chance. At low altitude, the Russians won't launch Excaliburs until forty, fifty, maybe sixty nautical miles from the target- At nine miles a minute, the Excaliburs will be on top of them before fighters could ever launch-and at two hundred feet in the mountains it'll be impossible to find them.
If they are attacked the Excaliburs have the fuel reserves for a supersonic sprint across the target, and they have specialized jammers, antiradar missiles, and even flying decoys to handle surface-to-air missiles. But the Strikers will be launched fifteen miles from the laser facility, so the B-1s can stay in the mountains all the way.'
The President looked away and stared at the enlarged photograph of Kavaznya, then turned back to his advi sets.
'I know what you're thinking. This attack, the last thing any of us have wanted even to consider, now looks as if it will happen… our repeated attempts in the past few days to Move the Soviets from their inflexible position have failed.
Diplomatic channels remain open and it's still my hope that Secretary Brent will somehow get a commitment from the Soviets that will let me order these B-1s to scrub their mission.
But if he doesn't and I am forced to give the strike order, I want it very clear to everyone that what we will be conducting is, in a real sense, a police action. Every effort has been made to control and contain the scope of this mission. We do not want war with the Soviets. We do not want a nuclear exchange. But we must face the fact that the existence of the laser facility and the Soviet Union's Policy of a peacetime quarantine of Asia will (ventually cripple our ability to defend ourselves against attack or to mount a second strike in reprisal. We must, it seems, take this action now, with its inherent risks, to avoid the certainty of far greater risks later… General Curtis, go over the fail-safe procedures again.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs stood. 'Sir, we need a direct order from you to launch the two bombers, a second one to allow them to proceed past the established SNOWTIME arctic exercise orbit area they usually operate in, and we need a third, separate order to allow the bombers to cross the fail-safe point and prearm their missiles. The third message is their authorization to strike.
'Bombers will continuously monitor SATCOM and HF radios for coded recall or termination instructions, and they can be recalled at any time. They cannot proceed on their missions unless they have two one-hundred-percent operable missiles and an aircraft that meets their tactical doctrine specifications.
Our communications satellites will be programmed to automatically transmit a recall message every half hour unless we instruct them not to. So if communications are disrupted the mission will automatically terminate.'
The President nodded, looked around the room. No one else offered any comment or suggestion. After an unendurably long moment, the President reached down and opened the redcovered folder prepared for him the day before. He broke the sea] and reviewed the document inside authorizing the first step of Curtis' plan.
DREAMLAND
Patrick McLanahan was sitting alone in the semidarkness of his cramped, rickety wooden barracks room when he heard a faint knock on the door.
He smiled and opened it.
Standing in the doorway, wearing a dark gray flight jacket, fliehtsuit and insulated winter flying boots just like his own, was his partner, Dave Luger. Luger had his hands thrust in his pockets and was scuffling the sand around with his toes.
'Ready to go, Muck?' he said, still poking around in the dirt.
McLanahan glanced at his watch and looked at the sky. 'Oh seven-hundred hours,' he asked. 'You're a bit late, aren't you?' Luger checked his watch and shrugged.
'What difference does it make?Last two days, there hasn't been any reason to be on time. All we've been doing is sitting on our behinds.
McLanahan had turned to pick up his jacket, which was slung over the bedpost behind him. 'Wait a minute,' he said, glancing over his shoulder. 'What am I hearing?Is this the same guy who has been bitching for the past two months about the hours we've been putting in?
The same guy who every night for three weeks threatened to strangle me for arranging it so he'd be brought here to Dreamland?'
Luger fell into his ever-familiar gunfighter's slouch. 'Yeah, well, I still don't have fond memories of Lieutenant Briggs barging in on me while I was with Sharon to say that I was going to be taking a little trip. And having that prima donna Anderson on my ass fourteen hours a day hasn't been any picnic either. But ever since those B-1s lit out for Ellsworth two days ago, it's been boring as hell. I mean, what the hell is there to do if you're not in the simulator or out on a training jaunt?'
'Not a damn thing,' McLanahan said as he closed the door to his room and locked it. Actually, that wasn't true, he thought. He had been able to spend more time with Wendy these past couple days, and was thankful for that. It was the first real chance he'd had since she came back with the other civilians working on the project to get past that stony facade she put up and find out what she was about. Before these past two days, even in their late- night study sessions together, she had stayed detached. Now, after spending some relaxed hours with her, he understood better the reason for her detachment.
She wanted first and foremost to be accepted as a professional, as someone who could step into any man's role and perform with maximum efficiency. He guessed she'd had a tough time in this male-dominated Air Force world, and that concealing a part of herself-the part that was soft and feminine-had after a while become an automatic defense.
He couldn't help comparing her to Catherine, whose privileged upbringing had made her much more self- assured and outgoing and yet well, less interesting…
'Hey, Pat,' Luger said as they walked to the briefing shack, why do you suppose Elliott called a meeting this morning?
Think he's going to give us our walking papers?'
'Maybe it's more than that.'
'What do you mean?'
McLanahan continued walking. They were nearing the women's barracks.
'Well, it seems to me that we wouldn't have spent all that time testing out that equipment on the Old Dog, and then installing equivalent systems in those B-1s, if the B-1s weren't being used for something.
Maybe something big. Take that terrain cartridge we were testing before the B-1s left. Well, Bill Dalton, the nav for Zero-Six-Four, said something about it corresponding to an area over the Sarir Calanscio Desert in Libya. That's complete bull. Those planes will be flying through the mountains,' Both men were silent for a moment, lost in their own thoughts. 'Hey, there's Wendy and Angelina,' Luger said, spotting the two coming out of the women's barracks. He waved to them and the four joined up a few yards short of the briefing shack.
'See we're not the only ones who're late,' Angelina Pereira said with a smile. She was the only one of them not wearing a flightsuit. Nice lady, McLanahan thought to him self. Nice and tough.
