plunged into his personal office. He held the door open as Stockard wheeled through, the closed it quickly.
“Colonel –”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” said Bastian quickly.
“I’m not worried about Bree, Colonel,” said Jeff. “I know she’s fine. I want to get the Flighthawks on Raven.”
“What?”
“The Flighthawks. If you’re sending a second Megafortress to Africa, you should send the Flighthawks along too. They can act as escorts and scouts,” he added. “We’ll have real-time surveillance and CAP.”
“I don’t know, Jeff.” Dog pulled out his desk chair and sat down. “For one thing, I don’t have approval to send the first Megafortress, let alone the second. I’m only authorizing it on the grounds that the first one doesn’t have a full crew aboard. In theory, two planes are supposed to come back.”
“Come on, Dog. You’re stuffing the Raven with air-to-ground weapons. I agree with you. We should be in this.”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself. The weapons are for defensive purposes only.
“JSOWs?”
“If there are ground installations targeting them,” said Bastian. It was, at best, a thin veneer – but that was all he needed.
“So they’ll need up-to-date intelligence. I’ve flown the Flighthawks off Raven before. I know it will work.”
The phone his desk buzzed. Bastian looked at it angrily.
“You know I’m right about this, Colonel,” said Zen. “If you’re sending another Megafortress, the Flighthawks should go too. They’re proven. “They’re expendable escorts.”
“You haven’t proven anything yet,” Bastian told him. He snapped up the phone. “Bastian.”
“Couple a dozen people waiting to talk to you, Colonel,” said Ax. “And Washington –”
“Start a list. Tell Washington I’ll get back to them,” he snapped, hanging up the phone. He turned back to Stockard. “You think aircraft that cost a half billion dollars to build are expendable?”
“That’s the whole program cost,” said Jeff. “But even if it were the cost of one plane, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than someone’s life.”
As mad as he was, Bastian couldn’t quite disagree with that.
Especially since one of the lives they were talking about was Rap’s.
“Have you used the Megafortress as a mother ship?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” said Jeff. “Once they’re off the wings, flying them from the Megafortress is like flying them from anywhere. Come on. Dog. You know it makes sense. Send them.”
“You’re asking me to send an untested flight system into a war zone.”
“You already did that. Shit.” Zen nudged his wheelchair forward. “You want to prove Dreamland will work, don’t you? I know the whole concept – cutting-edge technology in the hands of an elite force. I have a copy of your paper. You’re right. That’s why this makes so much goddamn sense.”
“Where did you get a copy of that?”
“My cousin works for the NSC,” said Zen, realizing he’d gone too far.”
“Which cousin is that?”
“Off record?”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t want to get my cousin fired,” Jeff pushed on, obviously hoping to skirt the question. “The bottom line here is, I want to put into practice what you’ve been preaching. Cutting-edge weapons on the firing line, where they belong.”
He was right – or at least he was making a damn strong argument. How could he not? It was exactly what Bastian himself believed.
But was Bastian right? He’d written that paper in an air-conditioned Washington, D.C., office over a few quiet afternoons. It was summer, and his evenings had been spent on a golf course, learning to play.
The report, and the man who wrote it, had been far removed from the realities of command, let alone combat. He hadn’t had to worry about consequences of failure.
“Zen, I’m going to forget about that claim to have seen an eyes-only code-word report that I doubt you’re cleared to read,” he told him. “What do we do if one of the Flighthawks crashes?”
“I hit self-destruct.” Jeff shrugged. “God, Colonel, they’re killing us anyway, right? What do we have to lose? I’m not asking you to send the JSF. You know this will work.”
Ax’s short double rap on the door interrupted them. the sergeant appeared with two cups of coffee and a stack of folders beneath his arm.
“Intel report you want to look at, Colonel,” said the sergeant, setting the folders down. “Courtesy of Centcom Planning.”
“Centcom?” Dog took the folder in his hand. It contained a short, undated memo accessing antiair defenses possessed by Iran. The emphasis was on mobile systems purchased form the former Soviet Union. According to the report, the Iranians were suspected of possessing a ‘sizable’ number – ‘more than twenty’ – of SA-3’s, SA-6’s, and
