— President Thorn’s first national security adviser.”
“I doubt that,” Patrick said tonelessly. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too, sir,” Mace said. They shook hands. “You were involved in that Korean conflict a couple years ago — you developed a squadron of B-1 bombers that launched ballistic-missile-interceptor missiles.”
“That’s right.” What was left unsaid was the rest of the story: that McLanahan got himself kicked out of the Air Force as a result of the recent conflict with Russia over activities in the Balkans and the much-publicized crash of a B-1B Lancer bomber in Russia. Before that, his name had come up a few times: his experience with the now- defunct (but soon to be resurrected) Border Security Force and his work in defending Korea right after unification made him the front-runner in both the Martindale and now the Thorn administrations for national security adviser.
McLanahan’s was a strange career, Daren thought, most of it shrouded in secrecy, rumor, and legend. Whenever there was some explosive, fast-moving international crisis that threatened to expand into a nuclear conflict, his name started popping up. “I would guess you were involved in that recent incident in Central Asia. Iran is claiming that one of our bombers illegally attacked Muslim forces inside Turkmenistan — then, the same day, that B-1 crashes in Diego Garcia. Iran claims it was the one that violated their airspace.”
McLanahan shrugged. “I don’t care much what Iran claims,” he said dryly, taking a seat and busying himself on the laptop. Mace noticed it was not a denial, but he knew better than to quiz the guy who was probably his new boss, or at least a very high muck-a-muck. “What makes you think I had anything to do with something in Turkmenistan, Colonel?”
“Your reputation definitely precedes you, sir,” Mace said. McLanahan glanced up; Daren couldn’t tell if it was an irritated glare or an amused look. “If it makes any difference to you, sir, I think it’s the kind of reputation
“If you care about working here and about your career in the military, Colonel, I wouldn’t recommend it,” McLanahan said. There was an uncomfortable pause. Then he went on, “I was impressed with your work with the Global Hawk wing at Beale Air Force Base. Those unmanned aerial vehicles had been in use for many years, but they still had some problems. You were able to overcome them and stood up the wing in very short time — the very first unmanned air wing. I thought you should have been given command of the wing — but their loss is my gain.”
“Thank you, sir. I had a lot of good folks working for me. Actually, I ripped off a lot of the technology I used to bring the Hawks online from Zen Stockard and you guys at HAWC — specifically, your ‘virtual cockpit’ technology.”
“Glad to be of help. We’ve done great improvements with the VC, and we’re building a state-of-the-art facility to exploit it. What we needed was someone with both operational and engineering experience. We’re going to ask you to do the same for us that you did with Beale’s Global Hawks — get our aircraft and organization up to speed as quickly as possible. Your job will be to work with the wing commander and the engineering staff from the Tonopah Test Range.”
Daren shook his head. “I’m confused, sir,” he said. “I thought this was a tanker unit.”
“We’ve got tankers here, yes.”
“What other aircraft do you have here?”
“You haven’t spoken with anyone from wing headquarters yet?”
“Well… I did run into General Furness in town a little while ago, but we didn’t really talk.”
Patrick’s eyebrows raised in question at that. “I thought you two knew each other.”
“It wasn’t a good time to chat,” Daren said, stumbling. He was thankful to see McLanahan nod, apparently willing to let it drop. “I just arrived tonight. My report date isn’t until next week, but I decided to show early. I didn’t imagine in-processing would only take ten minutes.”
“Now I see why you’re in the dark,” McLanahan said with a slight smile. “You haven’t had the nickel tour yet. I think I’ll leave that up to General Furness or Colonel Long.”
“What are you doing out here tonight, General?”
“Trying to nail down all the interface parameters between my virtual cockpit and my plane,” he replied, “but we’re missing something. We can’t find it in the VC, I can’t find it out here. It must be in the plane, but we still can’t isolate it.”
“What plane are you talking about, General?” Daren asked. “I haven’t seen any planes here yet. And why in hell are you—”
“Shh. Not so loud — and watch your French.” Patrick motioned with his head to his right, and Daren saw a small boy in a sleeping bag, lying on an inflatable mattress.
“Is… is that your
Patrick nodded. “Bradley James. I’ve been so busy the last several days, I haven’t been with him very much. I couldn’t stand being away from him any longer, so I told him we were going on a camping trip. I know it’s forecast to go below freezing tonight, and he’s got school, but I did it anyway. We cooked hot dogs and macaroni and cheese — his favorite comfort foods — we looked at the stars through a telescope, and he conked out.”
“You took your son out to the desert while you’re working on a project?”
“Couldn’t think of anything else to do,” Patrick said. He looked at his son and sighed. “I always wanted to take him out camping, but his mother didn’t relish the idea. He has a rough night if we do something that we used to do together, so camping seemed to kill two birds”—he swallowed a bit, then corrected himself—“I mean, it seemed to fit the bill nicely.”
Daren had heard something about some great tragedy in McLanahan’s life, but no one had laid it out for him, out of respect for the man. It obviously had something to do with his wife, Bradley’s mother. This was a very surreal scene: a young commanding general, personally monitoring a major project being conducted in his high-tech unit, but concerned — disturbed? — enough to bring his son out to the site in a sleeping bag. How weird was this?
“Anything I can help you with, sir?”
“I hope so. That’s why I got you assigned here from the Pentagon,” Patrick said. He ran his hands wearily over his face and his short-cropped hair. “This is not an official wing project, Daren. I’ve got no budget — not one dime. I’m stealing fuel and flight hours from the wing already as it is. But I promised the chief that I’d have something to show him.”
“I don’t get it, sir,” Daren commented. “Aren’t you the commanding officer here?”
“Officially, Daren, I don’t exist here,” McLanahan admitted. “The First Air Battle Force was stood up here, but we don’t have a mission. It’s my job to build one. The One-eleventh Wing is the only official unit here. My funding runs out September thirtieth of this year. I talked the chief and SECDEF into bringing them here to see if we can integrate them into a deployable force, but I don’t have a staff or a budget. When the money runs out, it closes down.”
“Excuse me, sir, but what exactly are you working on?” Daren asked.
McLanahan finished typing notes, got up, checked on Bradley to make sure he was warm enough, then motioned to Daren. “Come with me, Colonel.”
Daren followed McLanahan out of the tent. He immediately saw the tall, android-looking figure standing nearby, now carrying a huge futuristic-looking weapon. “Excuse me, sir, but what in hell is that?”
“You mean ‘who,’ “ Patrick corrected him. “Gunnery Sergeant Matthew Wilde, Air Battle Force ground operations,” Patrick replied.
“Ground operations? You mean,
“That’s the idea.”
“What’s he wearing? What’s he carrying?”
“He’s wearing electronic battle armor; he’s carrying an electromagnetic rail gun.”
“A
“I’ll explain later.” They stepped quickly over to the steel trailer. McLanahan unlocked the door by pressing his thumb on a pad; the door opened with a hiss of pressurized air. Inside the tightly packed trailer were two seats facing simple consoles with two hand controllers; on either side of the seats were computer terminals; on the leftmost side, facing the front of the trailer, was a fifth console with three computer monitors, manned by a technician furiously entering commands into a computer keyboard. The inside of the trailer was so loud from the sound of the air-conditioning that the tech had to wear hearing protectors. But all this occupied only about a third of the trailer. The rest was jam-packed with electronics, circuit-board racks, power supplies, communications
