your case, Doctor. But if you’d open your eyes, you might learn a thing or two about what’s going on here.” Masters cleared his throat and tried to look away from McLanahan, but couldn’t. “Hey, ” he said calmly, “I know what’s going on. I know the weapons you’re going to use, the routes you’ll fly. I wrote the friggin’ scenarios, for Godssake.”
“You may have, ” McLanahan said, moving back a bit from Masters, “but you don’t know anything about combat. About what it’s like to be in a war machine facing your own mortality. Have General Elliott or Ormack or Cobb tell you sometime about combat, about life in the cockpit. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before-your secret society, your brotherhood of aviators. Brad-General Elliott-and his B-52s during Vietnam, out at that Arc Light Memorial, he tried to get into it, but he couldn’t explain it. He says, ‘You gotta be there.” Stone, Jarrel, and all the others, even you-you’ve all been in combat before. But you treat it like a game, so why shouldn’t I?” McLanahan bristled. He pulled out his dog tags from under his flight suit. “A game? What are these, Doctor? Tell me.” Masters rolled his eyes. This was boring. “Dog tags. Next.”
“You’re partially right. Out here, Doctor, we have them for more than ornaments on a key ring. See how one is on the neck chain and one’s a small chain all by itself? There’s a reason for that. One they bring back to headquarters to prove you were killed in action-f they find your body, that is. The other they keep on the body, usually clamped shut in your mouth.” He pulled out his water bottle from his left leg pocket. “You see this? Emergency water supply in case I lose my survival kit after ejection-this could be the only fresh water for a thousand miles if I have to punch out over the Philippine Sea.” He ripped off his unit patches and name tag from their Velcro strips on his flight suit. “Patches Velcroed on and removed before we take off in case we get shot down and captured-so the enemy won’t know what unit we’re from. Some chaplain will come around and collect them before we go out to our planes. They’ll check if we made out a will, check to see if they know who our next of kin are. “Take a look at that data you’re generating sometime, Masters. Those ships your satellites are locating represent hundreds of sailors whose job it is to find and destroy me. There are thousands of sailors out there waiting for us-“
“But we know where they are . . . we know who they are. . “We know where they are because men risked their lives to get that data, ” McLanahan said. “A man died getting us those pictures… “Well, once the NIRTSat comes back on-line, that won’t happen again “It doesn’t matter, my friend. Combat isn’t a series of preprogrammed parameters on a computer monitor-it’s men and women who are scared, and brave, and angry, and who feel hopeless. It’s not a clear-cut engagement. Anything can happen. You gotta realize that the people around you don’t think in absolutes, because they know that anything can happen… “Maybe in wars past that was true, ” Masters offered. “When the enemy was a mystery, when you couldn’t see over the horizon or through the fog or under the ocean, maybe it wasn’t so clear-cut. But things are different now. Hell, you know more than anyone else how different it is-you fly the most advanced warplane in the friggin’ universe! We know exactly where the bad guys are. Once the NIRTSats are working again, I can steer your weapons, I can warn you of danger, I can tell you exactly how many weapons you need to win, and I can tell you how long it will take you to achieve any objective. “Then tell me this, Doctor Masters, ” McLanahan said, affixing his steel-blue eyes on the scientist and letting his glare bore into him: “Tell me who’s going to die out there.” Masters opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it suddenly, thought a moment, then replied, “I estimate your losses at less than five percent for the duration of this conflict . “No, I didn’t ask you how many. I asked who.”
“Well, how the fuck am I supposed to know who? If you follow the plan and put your weapons on target, no one should die. “You said should die, Doctor. That means that even if everything turns out perfectly, someone may still die. Right?” Masters shrugged. “Well, it’s very unlikely, but-anything can happen.”
“You’re damned right it can. Now tell me how to deal with that. Tell me how a highly trained professional pilot or navigator can climb into a bomber or fighter and fly into the teeth of the enemy and know that even if everything goes perfectly, he may still end up at the bottom of the sea, and I’ll let you act like a cocky little punk peacock all you want in my command post. Until then you will give this campaign and the people who fight it-all the people who fight it, the combatants on both sides-the proper respect.” Masters was finally silent. McLanahan backed away from Masters, allowing him to get up, but Masters stayed where he was. “So what you’re saying is- you’re scared, ” Masters said after a few long moments. He looked at McLanahan, and when the officer didn’t reply for several seconds, Masters’ eyes opened wide in surprise. “You’re scared? You? But you’re the-“
“Yeah, yeah, I know, ” Patrick said. “I’m supposed to be the best. But it’s bullshit. I know my shit, and I’m lucky. That doesn’t make me invincible, and it doesn’t give you or anyone the right to think this is going to be easy- for any of us. Nothing is cut and dried. Nothing is certain. We know our equipment, know our procedures, but when you go into combat we learn not to trust it. We trust ourselves. We look to ourselves to find the strength to get through the mission.” Masters rose and stood before McLanahan, afraid to look into the Air Force officer’s face but respectful enough to want to be able to do it. “I never realized that, Patrick. Really. I always thought, ‘Well, the gear’s in place, everything’s running, so everything’s going to be okay.” I guess… well, I don’t work with people that much. I’m really so used to dealing with computers and machines. McLanahan shrugged. “Hell, listen to me. A few years ago I never gave a shit much about people either. I wasn’t exactly what you’d call a team player. I did my job and went home. I hate to say it, but we were a lot alike back then.” Masters smiled at that. “Oh yeah? Dirty Harry was laid-back and mellow? You drank beer and chased girls and got stupid?” It was McLanahan’s turn to smile this time. He remembered the B-52 crew parties back in California, the weekends rafting down the American River-one big twelve-person raft for crew dogs, wives, and girlfriends; another slightly smaller raft for the numerous ice chests full of six-packs-the bar-hopping in Old Sacramento till two in the morning, the ski trips to Lake Tahoe when they’d get back to base just minutes before show time for a training mission. “All the damned time, Jon.”
“What happened to you?” McLanahan’s smile vanished, and all his fond recollections of life back home exploded in a bright yellow fireball called reality. He put his dog tags back under his shirt and put his water flask back in its pocket. The pungent odor of jet exhaust and the roar of a plane on its takeoff run invaded the office, and the horrors of another impossible mission thousands of miles away flooded back into his consciousness once again. “Combat, ” was all he said, and he turned and walked away. CHINESE DESTROYER HAIFRNG TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES SOUTHEAST OF THE CITY OF DAVAO MINDANAO, THE PHILIPPINES MONDAY, 10 OCTOBER 1994, 2351 HOURS LOCAL had been hanging around for so long now, big, slow, and I gt~~~~p~~~g, that they had humorously dubbed it Syensheng Tz, Old Gas. They could see the thing easily, almost a hundred miles away and at high altitude-a single, unescorted, vulnerable B-52 bomber. It was cruising westward at a leisurely four hundred and twenty nautical miles per hour. Although it was definitely getting closer, on its present course it would pass well out of HQ-9 1 missile range of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy missile destroyer Kaifeng. It was obviously giving the Chinese ships a wide berth. Even so, if the aircraft carried antiship missiles, it was still a substantial threat: it was within Harpoon missile range of the destroyer, yet outside the range of the destroyer’s missiles, and there were no fighters nearby that could reach it. The commander of the destroyer Kazfeng, a Luda-class destroyer with over three hundred men on board, wanted very close tabs kept on this intruder. “CIC, bridge, status of that B- 52, ” the commander of the Kazjeng requested. “Bridge, CIC, air target one still at seventy-eight-nauticalmiles range, altitude ten thousand meters, speed four-twozero knots, offset range six-zero nautical miles. No detectable radar transmissions from aircraft. It is within Harpoon missile range at this time.”
“Copy.” The commander was carefully trying not to let his frustration and impatience show. American B-52s had been flying these “ferret” missions for many days now, passing just inside missile range of the destroyer’s missiles, then hightailing it out when missile-guidance signals were aimed at it. It was always one bomber, always at thirty thousand feet, always challenging in this same location. It stayed high and relatively slow-very nonthreatening despite being within extreme range of Harpoon antiship missiles it might be carrying. It was obviously collecting intelligence information-it was probably crammed with sensors and recorders, hoping to intercept radio messages or analyze missile fire control radar signals… … or it was crammed with antiship missiles, ready to strike. “Comm, bridge, any response from that plane about our airdefense warnings?”
“None, sir, ” the communications officer replied. Kafeng, as well as other ships in the South Philippines Task Force commanded by Admiral Yin Po L’un, had been warning all aircraft to stay away from this area for days now. The area over the Celebes Sea had been a very well used airway for travelers heading to Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore through Samar International Airport, but the People’s Liberation Army Air Force had refused all access to the region, and air traffic to and from Manila was tightly controlled. All air traffic was forced to fly farther south through the sparsely populated islands of northern Indonesia. Philippines supply routes in the South China Sea were virtually isolated. But with the nuclear explosion near Palawan and the extreme danger of radiation poisoning and contamination, these areas were being studiously avoided anyhow. The American Air Battle Force, however, was obviously ignoring all warnings. “CIC, bridge, position of our fighter coverage. “Sir, Liang-Two flight of
