Battle Born

Questions?” There were a few; after they were answered and discussed, Furness took the podium again.

Before she began, she wrote the acronym “BOTOTCHA” as item number one on the list of objectives of the mission. “Our overall objective on this mission is, as always, ‘Bombs on target, on time, come home alive,’” she said. “Our primary objective is to stop or blunt the North Kimchee invasion by destroying as many high-value strategic targets such as artillery sites, rocket sites, air defense sites, armor and vehicle concentrations, and vehicle marshaling areas as possible. Our secondary objective will be to destroy targets of opportunity transmitted to us by reconnaissance and intelligence sources. Our subobjectives, as always, are: no withholds due to crew or switch position errors; no unreacted-to threats; and clear communications and transmission of threat and intelligence information.

“Each sortie has two assigned targets, which will be attacked using Mark 82 AIRs from the forward bomb bay and CBU-89 cluster bomb dispensers from the aft bay. The Mark 82 attacks will generally be against armored- vehicle marshaling areas, vehicle and troop concentrations, and enemy weapons and supply depots inside South Kimchee. The CBU operations will generally be against air defense sites, artillery emplacements, and vehicle and troop concentrations inside North Kimchee, since we don’t want to hamper friendly vehicle movement with our mines.

“We will then withdraw to a refueling anchor area and await any follow-on targets transmitted via SATCOM. Follow-on targets will be attacked using JDAMs from mid-or high altitude. These can be any type of target, deep inside North Kimchee or over South Kimchee. You hit as many as you can, then withdraw to the forward operating location.

“The forward operating location for us will be Tonopah Air Force Base, Nevada,” Rebecca went on. “The Operational Support Squadron, Civil Engineers, and the Air Base Group have already deployed. After you arrive, you’ll reload with Mark 82s and CBU-89s, go on crew rest, and get ready to accept new strike packages.”

“What!” John Long exclaimed. A loud, surprised murmur of voices in the room echoed him. “We’re going to fly strike missions from a bare-base location?”

“Shut up, all of you,” Furness broke in hotly. “I know this isn’t standard. Our usual scenario is to turn our birds over to a forward-deployed active-duty unit that has already been set up in the forward location. Well, we’re not doing it that way. The bare-base operation at Tonopah will be ours — our gear, our spares, our planes, our staff, our plans. We can expect to do this for as long as ten days, so I hope you brought your toothbrushes and gave your honeys the full monty, because it’s going to be us in the sand with the bugs for a long time.”

Rebecca pointed to the list of tasks on the whiteboard. “Here’s your jobs, here’s the schedule. We’ll have a ‘how d’ya do?’ in thirty minutes.” She paused, then glanced at Patrick. “I suppose you all know that we’ll be having an evaluator aboard Rodeo’s flight. General McLanahan will be in the copilot’s seat, so I guess that makes him invulnerable to SAMs, right, sir?” No response from Patrick. “Remember, we follow peacetime safety-of-flight rules,” Furness concluded. “We play it by the book. Any questions?” No reply. “Rise.”

As Rinc Seaver headed for the door, he placed several piles of papers on the table in front of Furness, then began checking off items on the whiteboard. “What’s this, Rodeo?” Furness asked.

“Got all these things done already,” Seaver replied.

“What? How? I just got the info myself an hour ago.”

“I got it an hour ago too,” Rinc said, “and I finished the planning. Computer target predictions, fly-through simulation, threat assessment, sun position, terrain analysis — it’s all there. I’ll get the latest intel briefing materials and plug ’em into the flight plans.”

Furness looked very irritated. She glanced up at McLanahan, who instantly got the message and stepped out of the briefing room. When he was out of earshot, Furness said angrily, “You better not have busted crew rest, Rinc.”

“Not that you know about,” Rinc shot back. Furness looked as if she was going to explode. “Lighten up, Beck. The general was already out on the ramp. I saw Heels coming out of the in-flight kitchen when I was going to the command post, so she was obviously on base before five.” Captain Annie “Heels” Dewey, one of the 111th’s three other female Bone crew members, was Furness’s copilot for this mission. “I showed up at the command post at five after five to get a copy of the frag order. They said you already picked a copy up—twenty minutes before me. Let me know when you’re ready to bust your own ass — I’d like to see it for myself.”

Rinc stepped closer to Furness, looked her right in the eye, and said in a low voice, “This is my requal check ride, Beck, my first evaluation after losing my crew and my friends. Let me sink or swim on my own. You do your job and let me do mine, and we’ll see if I got what it takes to keep my wings. If I don’t, I’m outta here.”

“No one wants to see you flunk, Rinc.” She lowered her voice a bit, then added, “Especially me. But we’re all under the gun here. We’ve got to do it like we always do it, by the book and together.” But Furness could see that Rinc wasn’t about to believe anything she said right now. “Rodeo, get together with the other crews and see if they need some help.”

“I’ve got a better idea, Colonel,” Patrick said from just outside the door. He reached into a flight suit pocket and pulled out a small stack of envelopes. Fanning them out like a deck of cards, he held them up to Furness. “Pick a card. Any card.” Furness looked puzzled, then selected an envelope. Patrick opened it, read it quickly, then nodded. “Good one. Very good.” He left the room with a smile on his face.

“What was that about?” she wondered.

“Change in scenario,” Rinc said. “He must’ve seen us arguing and decided to shake things up a bit.”

Sure enough, a few moments later the intercom buzzed, summoning Furness to the senior controller’s desk in the ready room. The ready room was filled with crew members scurrying around, collecting information and getting ready for the mass prestrike briefing in a couple of hours. “What is it, Scarecrow?” Furness asked the senior controller, Major Sean “Scarecrow” Asterman.

“Just got a note from the exercise referee,” Asterman said. “ACC wants to send three bombers straight to the forward operating location ASAP, without doing bomb runs. Battle staff will be meeting in five minutes.”

“Shit, shit, shit!” Furness exclaimed. That meant that the four remaining bombers would have to take up the target list of the three scratched bombers. And that meant a complete replanning — new weapons loads, which would take time, all new frags, all new target times, all new intelligence briefings, all new mission tapes. And they had less than six hours in which to do an entire day’s worth of planning.

Furness’s eyes scanned the room and found Brigadier General McLanahan talking on his secure cellular phone. Patrick looked up, saw her glaring at him, then smiled and waved the envelope — the one Furness had picked! It was the change of scenario! McLanahan must’ve noticed that the mission planning was going so well that he decided to throw a major monkey wrench into the works.

“I’m on my way,” Furness told Asterman. “Notify the crews and tell them to stand by to start replanning.” When Patrick walked up to her, she said in a low voice, “This isn’t realistic, General. We’re less than six hours from launching. Air Combat Command would assign the new sortie to another unit that hadn’t finished generating its sorties. We have to replan, download weapons, deconflict all our tracks…”

“Then I suggest we get on over to the battle staff meeting and find out what we need to do,” McLanahan said. “But the change stays. Or do you want to throw in the towel now? You have that authority.”

Furness gritted her teeth and mumbled a low, growling “No way, sir,” then spun on her heel and headed for the door. Patrick had to trot to keep up with her.

NEAR SUKCHON, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S

REPUBLIC OF KOREA

SEVERAL HOURS LATER

The tactic was simple: Do what the North Koreans had been doing for years — only deadlier.

One hundred and sixteen feet long and displacing only 275 tons submerged, the Yugo-class midget submarine looked like a sophisticated but comical toy. Its top speed was twelve knots, but it was usually restricted to three or four knots because its temperamental diesel engines couldn’t stand the strain — some ocean currents around the Korean peninsula could easily outrun it. It was one of approximately forty-five midget submarines used by the North Korean Spetznaz special operations forces to infiltrate South Korea and land commandos and spies near its most important military bases.

But several Yugos had been captured intact over the years, and now they were the property of the Republic of Korea Marines.