I’m not sure what he wants, but whatever it is, give it to him.”
“His written orders don’t say anything about what he’s doing here.”
“He doesn’t need any other written orders. He’ll brief you on what you need to do. Give it to him. Anything.”
“Say again, sir?”
“I said, give the general anything he wants,” Bretoff repeated. “Treat him like the inspector general.”
“What’s his clearance?”
“Colonel Furness,” the adjutant general said with exasperation in his voice, “am I not making myself clear? Whatever the man wants, he gets. Full access. Full authority. Whatever he says, goes. He’s got a clearance you or I have never heard of. Two hours ago I had the governor in my office and the secretary of the Air Force on a conference call.
“Sir, I understand what you’re saying,” Furness said, “but it’s damned irregular. I’d like written confirmation of my orders.”
“Written orders have been red-jacketed and placed in your personnel file, Colonel — and in mine,” Bretoff went on. “If you want, you can come down here to the vault and look at them. In the meantime, do whatever the man says. Understand?”
“Loud and clear, sir.”
“Good. And, Colonel?”
“Sir?”
“Don’t let anyone in the squadron go anywhere near the back room of that bar, the Quarry or whatever it’s called, the one you guys hang out at near the airport, until this guy departs,” Bretoff said. “The last goddamn thing we need is for a high-powered scalp hunter like McLanahan to see how depraved you characters are. In fact, I don’t want any of you near that entire establishment until he leaves. Try showing your faces in the SANGA club for a change. We don’t have all-night poker or play dollar-a-ball eight ball, but you might actually enjoy yourselves there anyway. Got it?”
Furness grimaced, and McLanahan smiled, as if he could hear everything. “Yes, sir.” The line went dead after another chatter of digital descrambling beeps. Furness carefully closed up the phone and handed it back to McLanahan.
“You don’t want to try any of the other numbers?” McLanahan asked. “It’s not too late to call Washington.”
“Boss? What’s the story?” Long asked, dumbfounded by the expression on Furness’s face.
“This is Brigadier General McLanahan, boys,” Furness said. She made introductions to all of the squadron officers in the room. “He’s going to be with us for a while. You are to extend him every courtesy and comply with each and every request as if it was an order from the adjutant general himself.”
“We should show him a
“Knock that shit off, gentlemen,” Furness said, her amused eyes studying McLanahan. “Please excuse that remark, sir. Some of my crew have been on edge. We’ve had a lot of investigators and other unwanted attention lately…”
“Yes indeed — a dead crew and a smoking hole in the desert,” Patrick said. The smiles and whispered comments vanished, replaced by angry glares. He looked around and added, “Good to see you’re taking the accident and the corrective action seriously.”
“Of course we are. But you can’t just order men to forget about the deaths of their friends and fellow crew members, General,” Rebecca answered. “It takes time. Please understand — this unit has been through a lot lately. We all deal with grief differently.”
“I see. Well, I can help you through some of your turmoil a little, Colonel. I came here to administer a requalification check.”
Furness frowned in confusion. “Yes, sir,” she said formally, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “We can set up an orientation flight for you. Major Seaver isn’t currently qualified to fly the B-1, but…”
“I know that. I will administer his requalification checkout. Emergency procedures check in the sim tomorrow, then a flight ASAP.”
“I see,” Furness said, again noncommittally. “I would prefer that his requal ride be done by someone in the Nevada Guard. I would also like to know your qualifications, sir. Are you qualified to fly the Bone?”
“Doesn’t matter now, does it, Colonel?” Patrick replied.
Furness looked furious but held her anger in check. “Very good, sir. Well, this ought to be fun.” She slapped her hands together in mock excitement. “Well then, we’ve got a lot of work to do. Why don’t we get you set up in a hotel, schedule a meeting to review Seaver’s paperwork and fitness reports, and—”
“You don’t seem to understand, Colonel,” Patrick interjected. “I’m not here just to give Seaver his flight check, and I think we’ll all be too busy to worry about hotel rooms.”
“Then what the hell
Patrick reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew an envelope. Furness saw the code “A-72” on it. Her eyes bugged out and her breath caught in her throat. He handed her the envelope. “You’ve just been notified, Colonel, that your squadron has seventy-two hours to put bombs on target and then deploy to a remote operations base to begin simulated long-range bombardment operations. Your unit’s predeployment evaluation has just begun. The clock is ticking, and as of right now,
At that moment, John Long’s cell phone beeped. He answered it immediately, listened, then closed it up. “Boss, the airfield operations manager just got a fax from Bretoff’s office, notifying them that intensive Air Guard operations will commence this afternoon.”
“That message was supposed to be secret,” McLanahan said. He shrugged. “You’ve got a good intelligence operation here, Colonel, I’ll give you that.” It was common courtesy for evaluators to give a “heads-up” to certain folks, such as local air traffic control facilities, before an exercise kicked off. It was also common for air traffic control facility managers to slip a heads-up call to the military guys when an exercise was about to commence, even though the information was supposed to be kept under wraps to enhance the shock and surprise element of the exercise.
“Also, Reno Approach Control reports a KC-135 twenty miles out, call sign ‘Blitz Nine-Nine,’” Long went on. The “99” suffix was a common one used by evaluation teams. “RAPCON says he’s parking at Mercury Air for two weeks and is requesting COMSEC procedures in effect for the Air Guard.” That, too, was typical of the kickoff of an exercise. From now on, under COMSEC, or communications security procedures, all movements of Air National Guard aircraft except for safety-of-flight concerns were not to be reported on open radio or phone lines.
Furness looked at McLanahan with a combination of irritation and surprise, then eased up. The predeployment exercise was usually conducted at another B-1B bomber base, usually with the unit flying out and beginning there — but nothing in the regs said it couldn’t start right at home base with a no-notice deployment generation exercise and Furness, like most good fliers, hated surprises.
But she also loved challenges, loved excitement, loved action. Exercises involving recalls, generations, en route bombing, and deployments were right there beside actual combat on the list of things that made Rebecca Furness’s blood race. McLanahan saw the fire ignite in her eyes. He was pleased.
“Long Dong, initiate a squadron recall,” Furness ordered. “Get Dutch and Clock’s sorties back on the ground on the double. The battle staff meets in fifteen minutes with their checklists open and ready to go, and I will personally kick the ass of the man or woman who is not in their seat ready to go by the time I get there. Notify Creashawn on the secure line, have them start a recall, and get ready to move live weapons for the entire fleet on my orders.” Creashawn Arsenal was the large weapons storage facility near Naval Air Station Fallon where live weapons for the B-1s were stored. “Then call Bretoff secure and inform him I’m generating my fleet for combat
