Samson nodded; it was the correct response. If he had forgotten it, he was grateful to Jamieson for pointing it out—and angry that his superiors had forced him to forget the basics of employing strategic air power. But the wheels were already in motion here; Samson was committed to following his own directives until they could be followed no more. “What if you had only one bomber available?” Samson asked. “What then?”
“Sir, I wouldn’t get forced into that predicament in the first place,” Jamieson said resolutely. “Don’t let the bean counters talk you into limiting your options in order to save money or reduce risk—as if they knew anything about reducing the risk to anyone but themselves. If you aren’t left with any options, recommend scrubbing the mission or find another way.” Just then the civilian came into the simulator control room, carrying his charts and checklists. “You’ll have to wait outside, sir.” But the guy didn’t move—and Jamieson noticed that his entire demeanor, his entire bearing, had changed. He didn’t seem like the quiet, contrite civilian bureaucrat anymore. “General?” the guy asked. “What about it?”
Jamieson felt his face flush with anger. “I said wait outside, mister…”
The stranger was still ignoring the Ops Group commander: “I need to know right now, General.”
“Did you hear what I said, buddy?”
“Tiger …” Samson interjected. Jamieson looked at the three-star general with a shocked expression—the stranger was practically ordering Samson around here! “I … we have something to ask of you.”
“What’s going on, sir?” Jamieson asked. He turned to the civilian. “What’s your story, mister?”
“This gentleman is … joining the 509th for a while, Tiger,” Samson began. “We’re going to take a B-2A bomber, load it with state-of-the-art precision standoff weapons, and fly bombing missions overseas—except they won’t be Air Force operations. We need a B-2A aircraft commander, preferably the best in the business—General Wright says it’s you, and I agree.”
“What the hell is this, General?” Jamieson retorted. “Who in hell does he work for?”
“You’re not authorized to reveal anything,” the stranger said to Samson.
“I told you I wasn’t going to allow any of my people to commit to this project without full disclosure,” Samson said to the stranger. “Jamieson’s been cleared. We tell him, or the deal’s off.”
The civilian looked at Samson, then at Jamieson’s angry, confused features, then nodded to Samson. “All right, sir,” retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Patrick S. McLanahan said resolutely.
“In the vault.”
The 509th Operational Support Squadron building was a huge three-story, 20,000-square-foot electronic vault, guarded night and day by humans and by a dazzling array of electronic eyes and sensors. The reason: the OSS received real-time intelligence information from all over the world and processed it continuously, building and refining a series of preplanned strike packages for the B-2A stealth bomber and other long-range bombers. When the Russians moved an SS-21 missile from one launch site to another, or when Iran deployed a new fighter, or a new terrorist base camp in Sudan opened, or a new surface-to-air missile site in China was activated, the computers in the OSS adjusted mission charts, flight plans, strike routings, target lists, and threat predictions on dozens of computerized mission packages. If the stealth bomber crews were tasked to perform a strike mission, the 509th OSS would simply dump the latest flight plans and intelligence data into two videocassette-sized cartridges and print out the latest sixteen-color charts straight from the computer databases. The crews would load the cartridges into readers in the planes, and the mission would begin. Satellite uplinks to the B-2A bomber would allow crews to receive the latest intelligence data and update their mission computers continuously in-flight, right up to seconds before bomb release.
There were several briefing rooms within the OSS building, where aircrews received pre-mission briefings and received the latest intelligence information. General Wright led Samson, Jamieson, and the stranger to one of the larger briefing rooms and posted a guard inside and out.
His face impassive, his voice even and firm, the stranger got to his feet, faced Jamieson, and began: “What I’m about to tell you is classified top secret, Colonel.”
“I figured that much,” Jamieson interjected, not quite ready to be intimidated by this guy. “Just tell me who you are and what you want.”
“My name is Patrick McLanahan, lieutenant colonel, United States Air Force, retired,” the civilian said. “I …”
“McLanahan! I recognize that name,” Jamieson said. “You were involved in the raid on Chinese forces in the Philippines a few years ago, like I was. The President gave you some award or commendation, but no one knew who the hell you were, where you came from, or what you did.”
McLanahan nodded. “That’s right, Colonel.” Three years earlier, naval forces of the People’s Republic of China had attempted an invasion of the Philippines following the U.S. military withdrawal. Jamieson himself had led a force of three B-2A bombers on secret raids against Chinese air defense positions in what had been the first use of the B-2A bomber in combat …
… at least, the first known combat mission for the B-2A.
Obviously there had been others …
“There was a fourth bomber, Tony,” Samson explained, as if he were reading Jamieson’s mind, “and it didn’t launch from Whiteman. It was in-theater before the Whiteman birds deployed to Guam, doing special reconnaissance and defense-suppression stuff. It-“
“Defense suppression? Reconnaissance? We didn’t have any defense-suppression weapons on …” He finally stopped and made all the connections. “This guy … this guy went in ahead of the Air Battle Force bombers with defense-suppression weapons? I thought we took out the coastal radars and long-range ship-borne radars with cruise missiles.”
“HAWC was tasked to employ several of its test-bed aircraft over the Philippines and to use some of its other development weapons and space technology to support air operations,” McLanahan explained. “The President wasn’t sure if he wanted to commit massive U.S. forces against the Chinese, so he sent HAWC units in secretly to soften up the Chinese air defenses, make them more vulnerable to U.S. air attacks. The idea was if they found themselves more open to attack, it might draw them back to the negotiating table faster.”
“Obviously it worked—the Chinese navy backed off in a matter of days,” Samson said proudly. “It was a great victory for strategic air power.”
“Well, HAWC can’t seem to get out of its own way lately, from what I hear,” Jamieson said with a sneer. “I heard rumors of a plane crash, another stolen plane, right?”
“I’m not going to go into details about what happened at HAWC, Colonel,” McLanahan said, trying not to show the flush of anger and frustration—and the flood of awful memories—that rose up within him. “But HAWC was closed down, right?” Jamieson asked.
“Tiger, drop it,” Samson warned.
“That’s all right, General,” McLanahan interjected. “Yes, Colonel, HAWC was disbanded. Weapon-test operations went to Eglin Air Force Base; flight-test ops went to Edwards. Most of our more exotic airframes and weapons were either destroyed or placed in secure storage. Some were dispersed to active-duty units after cleaning out the classified stuff. In fact, the 509th was slated to get one of our experimental airframes, Air Vehicle 0 1 1. The test crews and technicians were reassigned; the senior staff members were given early retirements, including me.”
“You don’t look too retired to me,” Jamieson said. There was a knock on the door at that moment, and two more Air Force officers were shown inside by uniformed and plain-clothes security officers.
“Colonel Jamieson, I didn’t come here to be evaluated by you: I came here to evaluate you,” McLanahan said. He motioned to the newcomers and said, “Colonel Jamieson, this is Major General Brien Griffith, commander of Air Force Air Intelligence Agency; Colonel George Dominguez, the chief B-2A maintenance officer assigned to this task force; and Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Marcia Preston, my deputy and liaison officer with the office of the White House National Security Advisor. Colonel Dominguez, Colonel Preston, and I are the chief officers of a task force of the Air Intelligence Agency, code-named Future Flight. We’re going to take charge of Air Vehicle 011.” Jamieson’s jaw dropped open in surprise as McLanahan continued, “We are going to use the B-2A to fly covert reconnaissance and defense-suppression missions in support of National Security Agency operations.
“You’re CIA?” Jamieson retorted. “You’re a goddamned CIA agent?”
“I’m a crewdog, not a CIA agent,” McLanahan said.
“You’re a contractor, a former crewdog working for the CIA,” Jamieson corrected him. “You got canned because of some fiasco at HAWC, so now you sell your services to the guys with more money than brains-“
