They drove back out to Foxtrot row, where the Nevada Air National Guard B-1 bombers were stored. General Terrill Samson and Lieutenant Colonel David Luger, along with the adjutant general of the state of Nevada, Adam Bretoff, and the governor of Nevada, Kenneth Gunnison, were waiting for them. They had just come down from the first modified EB-1C Megafortress bomber, and Bretoff’s stunned expression was still fresh on his face.
“General Bretoff, Governor Gunnison, may I present General McLanahan, my deputy and chief of operations,” Samson said. “He’s in charge of the Coronet Tiger program.”
“I feel like we’ve already met, General,” Bretoff said as he shook hands. He was a short, rather round man, but the devices on his uniform, both Regular Army and Nevada National Guard, attested to a long and distinguished military career. Gunnison was tall and silver-haired. He looked like a rancher or an old-time oil wildcatter; his steel- blue eyes promised no nonsense and warned that he would take no bull from anyone.
“Nice to finally meet you in person, sir,” Patrick said. “Sir, I realize you may think this is dirty pool, but it was the best way I could think of to convince you to agree to our plan.”
“I don’t understand half of what I’ve just seen,” Governor Gunnison admitted, “but I’ve never seen old Adam here so bug-eyed before, so it’s gotta be good stuff.”
“It’s the only one like it in the world, sir,” Patrick said. “We want to build an entire squadron of them, and we want to base them in Nevada. We need your support to do it.”
Gunnison looked the Megafortress over again, then rubbed his chin. “You know, son, I’m all for supporting our military and all that shit,” he said. “But we need to talk about the bottom line. Nevada doesn’t have a lot of money to invest in military planes, especially planes that the state can’t use for disaster relief or quick logistics, like we did the C-130s we had in Reno. This is all Cold War stuff to me.”
“We’re talking about basing at least eight and as many as twenty B-1 bombers in your state,” Patrick said. “Making improvements, hiring workers. The infrastructure construction and improvements would all be at federal expense. We give you the tools, pay to fix up your installations and surrounding infrastructure to our standards, and pay for training and upkeep. The state pays a small salary to keep highly trained guardsmen and their families in the state; but when they are federalized, which we think with our mission will be quite often, they’re on our dime, not yours.”
“I’ve seen the budget figures and mission projections, sir,” Bretoff said. “Quite impressive. A one-of-a-kind mission, high-profile and very exclusive.”
“Where are you thinking of basing this unit?” Gunnison asked.
“They would be here until the unit stands up,” Terrill Samson said. “But we were thinking northern Nevada again, though perhaps not Reno. The old training base near Battle Mountain is a good possibility. Plenty of land, good neighbors, the old runway in pretty good shape for our planes. We know you want to send a little more industry and opportunity into the northern part of your state. We can help.”
That sold it for the governor. Any talk of bringing growth to sparsely settled north-central and northeastern Nevada was music to his ears. “I think we might be able to talk business, General,” Gunnison said. “What do you need from me?”
“We need you to assert your rights to these planes, that’s all,” Patrick said. “Your flight crews were involved in some… well, some aggressive flying tactics yesterday. The Pentagon wants to slap the crews down and confiscate these planes. You can’t let them do it, sir.”
“I’ve slammed my door in Washington’s face before, gents. We Nevadans enjoy doing that sort of thing.”
“They’ll threaten you with everything in the book,” Samson warned the governor. “Lawsuits, obstruction of justice, investigations, bad press, political pressure, threats to cut off federal funding…”
Gunnison took this in stride too.
“We’re not too concerned about that either,” Patrick said. “Frankly, sir, we’re worried about when the Pentagon gets to the money phase.”
“Oh?”
“Your planes here are worth a lot,” Patrick admitted. “The Pentagon will start with small numbers — fifty million. But they’re worth two, maybe three hundred million in spare parts.”
“Holy shit,” the governor exclaimed. “All that for these four little ol’ planes?”
“I’m talking three hundred million
“Who knows?” Samson added with a mischievous smile. “Maybe someday they’ll rename the base after the governor who took a chance and started it all.”
Gunnison hesitated — but only for a split second. He held out a hand, and Samson shook it warmly. “You got yourself an air force,” he told them. “Any chance I get to thumb my nose and bare my hairy cheeks at Washington I’ll take — they fuck with Nevada too much as it is already. You can do whatever fancy shit you want to ’em — the more the merrier. Battle Mountain is a pretty good name for the base — maybe name one of these monsters after the wife, paint one of those sexy nose art portraits on there.” He paused, then asked, “You’re going to fly these things over there in Korea, aren’t you? Protect Korea from being fucked by the Chinese again?”
“I’m afraid we can’t talk about any possible missions we might be involved in, sir,” Patrick said.
“Good answer, son,” Gunnison said, smiling. “I was in the first Korean War, and when I left I felt we still had a job to do. ‘Battle Born’ is our state motto, you know. Maybe now, with a few of these Battle Born beasts over there, you can finish the job me and my buddies set out to do back in ’52. Get to work, and give me a ride in her when you get done kicking some ass over there in Korea.”
CHAPTER SIX
It was the most astounding sight imaginable: long lines of Chinese troops and vehicles marching to the Nampo docks, and hundreds of Korean citizens — residents of both the old North and South Korea — jeering and shouting at them. There were occasional former North Korean soldiers, mostly officers, in the march, and they had to dodge an occasional piece of fruit aimed in their direction. United Republic of Korea soldiers — again, from both North and South, genuinely united — stationed themselves between the demonstrators and the departing troops, keeping the citizens out of the road itself, but the crowds were orderly and the soldiers made no effort to stop their shouts and jeers.
And yes, there was even fruit to throw. When the former North Korean warehouses were opened up, citizens found tens of thousands of tons of food, fuel, clothing, and other supplies cached away all over the country, kept for party members, bureaucrats, and Chinese troops, or rifled by smugglers and black marketers. The black marketing was under control now — UROK troops dealt severely with the crooks — and for the first time in ages, fresh produce was reaching ordinary citizens.
The naval base at Nampo was one of the largest ports on Korea’s east coast, and North Korea’s largest naval facility. It was also the home of the People’s Republic of China’s Korean flotilla, a small fleet of surface and subsurface vessels based in North Korea to help train their client state’s large-and medium-ship fleet. China had had over twenty thousand personnel and forty ships permanently based at Nampo, plus several dozen other vessels that visited the port monthly while on maneuvers in the Bo Hai and Yellow Seas.
Today, however, the base represented the beginning of the end of Chinese occupation of the Korean peninsula. The last of the Chinese troops and their heavy equipment, that which could not be sent by rail or along the highways north to China, were preparing to leave the country. Twenty heavy roll-on, roll-off container ships were waiting at the docks to take the last of China’s war machine out of Nampo.
Korean troops lined the way, watching the procession. The departure was going smoothly until two American-made Humvees veered into the street and set up a blockade in front of a large green tractor-trailer rig.
