Air Battle Force

Four

BATTLE MOUNTAIN AIR RESERVE BASE

Several days later

The massive shape of Air Force One appeared through the snowstorm like a giant fantasy bird and touched down on Battle Mountain’s long runway in a puff of snow. One-eleventh Bomb Wing Security Forces units, including armored personnel carriers, were stationed along the infields and taxiways to escort the plane to its parking spot. The winds were right down the runway but gusting well over twenty knots, blowing snow nearly horizontally and creating large drifts on the runway and taxiway edges. Despite the poor visibility, Air Force One taxied quickly over to a designated spot several hundred meters in front of the base-operations building and shut down engines.

A set of covered airstairs was wheeled over to the entry door, and a few moments later President of the United States Thomas Thorn, Secretary of Defense Robert Goff, and Deputy Secretary of State Maureen Hershel emerged. Patrick met them at the bottom of the stairs, saluted, then shook hands with each of them. “Welcome to Battle Mountain, Mr. President, Mr. Secretary, Miss Deputy Secretary,” he said.

“Lovely weather you’re having here, General,” Robert Goff groused.

“We don’t build military bases on the waterfront in San Francisco anymore, sir,” Patrick said. “This weather suits us just fine.”

Goff looked unimpressed as he turned up the collar of his overcoat and motioned toward a nearby armored Suburban belonging to the Secret Service. “Thanks for parking us so far away from your base-ops building, General,” he complained. “Is that our vehicle? Let’s get the hell out of this snowstorm.”

“Not necessary, sir,” Patrick said. He raised his head slightly, as if making a request of God, and said, “Ready on elevator three, surface to main ramp level.”

“What did you say, Gen—” Goff stopped in midsentence — because he felt the earth move beneath his feet. “What in hell was that? An earthquake…?” And then he noticed that the entire parking spot, VC-25 and all, started to descend into the earth.

The Secret Service agents seemed right on the brink of panic, but the president held up his hands as he saw the look on McLanahan’s face. “Very interesting, General,” he said.

“This is why working here in the middle of the high deserts of northern Nevada in a snowstorm is no big deal for us, sir,” Patrick said. Goff and Hershel gasped in astonishment as a six-inch slab of steel and concrete slid over the opening overhead, blocking out the wind and snow.

“I’ll bet you had one hell of a time convincing Congress to fund this,” Hershel said.

“Thankfully, it was funded back in the Eisenhower administration. I don’t think I would’ve stood a chance.”

“No shit,” Goff muttered.

Thorn, Goff, Hershel, and their entourage were taken aboard electric cars and shown around the vast underground aircraft-parking ramp. They received tours of all the aircraft. They were especially impressed with the two AL-52 Dragon airborne-laser aircraft. “Unbelievable,” Thorn said. “There they are — laser weapons aboard combat aircraft. Star Wars for real.”

“They’re not officially operational,” Patrick explained, “but the first one was used successfully over Libya. It and the second one are being modified with the plasma-pumped solid-state lasers. They have fifty percent more power than the original chemical-oxygen-iodine laser design, nearly two megawatts of power — enough to destroy airborne or space targets as small as a Sidewinder missile three hundred miles away or ground targets up to one hundred miles away.”

“What do they cost, General?” Maureen Hershel asked.

“Almost a billion dollars, ma’am,” Patrick replied, “plus ten thousand dollars per flight hour to fly them and about fifty thousand dollars to fire the laser each time.”

“So on a typical patrol mission…”

“Twelve-hour patrol sortie, two hundred engagements… over ten million dollars per sortie, not including the air-refueling tanker support.”

“Ouch.”

“It’s cheap compared to what it would cost to field enough aircraft to do all those attack jobs at once,” Patrick said.

He turned and got the opportunity to study the young woman for the first time. He’d seen her often on TV, of course, and was intrigued from the first moment he heard of her and her background. Shoulder-length brown hair, blue eyes behind rimless reading glasses, mid- to late forties, a bit above average height, trim and shapely, wearing good-looking but casual slacks, jacket, and all-terrain boots — unlike the president and secretary of defense, she looked like she’d come to take a tour of a military base.

“For maximum coverage in a hot combat zone,” Patrick said to her, “we would field three to four aircraft: two in an orbit about a hundred miles from the forward edge of the battle area and one or two aircraft that cycle with the others — one in transit, one on the ground undergoing maintenance and crew rest.”

“You need to think of a way to do it with less,” Thorn said. “Those two birds may be all you ever get. Maybe not even that.”

“We could do it with two aircraft, sir, but we wouldn’t have total coverage,” Patrick said. “An interim solution is to place a few EB-1C Vampire airborne battleships up, armed with Lancelot anti-ballistic-missile weapons and Anaconda long-range air-to-air missiles.”

“So now we’re talking about maybe two squadrons of planes just for the anti-ballistic-missile job,” Goff summarized.

“The EB-52 Megafortresses will be capable of doing the long-range precision standoff bombing missions, and the EB-1C Vampires can also serve as long-range bombers. We can launch fast with a lot of firepower and swing easily from mission to mission.”

“It just doesn’t seem likely we’d ever be able to justify that kind of expense, Patrick.”

“Here’s how, sir: One engagement could destroy a single multiple-warhead ballistic missile, saving as many as twelve cities or military bases from annihilation,” Patrick explained. “A single laser shot could destroy a fifty- million-dollar bomber or a hundred-million-dollar spy satellite. I don’t like focusing on the numbers, sir, because they usually tell only part of the story, but in this case, the numbers show that the Dragon is a superb force-multiplying combat system.”

“Most of Congress can’t get past the purchase price, let alone the cost per sortie,” Secretary of Defense Goff said. “And when they realize they’re paying a billion dollars for a plane that was probably built before most of them were born — let me just say it’s a very tough sell.”

“I’d be happy to help try to make the sale, sir,” Patrick said. “We can dazzle them.”

“Well, dazzle us first before you go volunteering to take on Congress,” Goff said.

“Yes, sir,” Patrick said enthusiastically.

There was an odd assortment of other aircraft in the underground parking ramp: C-130 Hercules transports with weird, winglike spy antennae attached to various parts of the fuselage, wings, and stabilizers; huge helicopters with an assortment of radomes and sensor turrets on the nose; and two transport planes that had engines attached to their short, stubby wingtips. “Okay, stop,” Robert Goff said. “I recognize the Commando Solo C-130 psyops plane and the MH-53 Pave Low special-ops helicopter, but what in the heck are those?”

“We call it the MV-32 Pave Dasher — our modification of the CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft,” Patrick explained. “The standard V-22 has turboprops. This one uses fanjet engines that swivel on the wingtips to provide vertical flight as well as high-speed forward flight. The fanjets give it much more lifting power as well as twice the forward speed of the Osprey. The MV-32 Pave Dasher can insert six Battle Force teams — twenty-four heavily armed combat troops — about two thousand miles, or farther with aerial refueling.”

“I don’t recall those planes being authorized or funded,” Goff pointed out. He noticed Patrick’s expression. “I see — another of your freelance, no-cost acquisitions. From Sky Masters Inc., I suppose?”