make a gross alignment change, or just throw out all the old attitude adjustment figures and come up with new ones. Sorry, sir.”
“No problem, Master Sergeant,” Patrick said. “We’ll know to look for things like that more often from now on.” But he continued staring at the images and the computer’s comparison boxes. The boxes disappeared as Lukas erased the old comparison data, leaving very clear images of the bomb craters on the ramps and taxiways. He shook his head. “The space-based radar’s pictures are stunning, Seeker — it’s like I can measure the thickness of those concrete blocks heaved up by the bombs. Amazing. I can even see the colors of the different layers of concrete, and where the steel reinforcing mesh was applied. Cool.”
“The SBR is incredible, sir — it’s hard to believe it’s almost twenty-year-old technology.”
“You can clearly see where the concrete ends and the road base begins. It’s—” Patrick looked closely at the images, then put on a pair of reading glasses and peered closer. “Can you enlarge that image for me, Seeker?” he asked, pointing at a large crater on the south side of the highway.
“Yes, sir. Stand by.”
A moment later the crater filled the monitor. “Fantastic detail, all right.” But now something was niggling at him. “My son loves those ‘I Spy’ and ‘Where’s Waldo?’ books — maybe he’ll be an imagery analyst someday.”
“Or he’ll design the computers that will do it for us.”
Patrick chuckled, but he still felt uneasy. “What is wrong with this picture? Why did the computer ring the bell?”
“I’m still checking, sir.”
“I spent a short but insightful period of time as a detachment commander in the U.S. Air Force’s Air Intelligence Agency,” Patrick said, “and the one thing I learned about interpreting multispectral overhead imagery was not to let the mind fill in too many blanks.”
“Analysis 101, sir: Don’t see what isn’t there,” Seeker said.
“But never ignore what
“That’s not possible for a crater.”
“No…unless they’re
“Decoy
“I’ve heard of every other kind of decoy — planes, armored vehicles, troops, buildings, even runways — so why not?” Patrick remarked. “That might explain why COMPSCAN flags them — if they’re moved and not placed in exactly the same spot, COMPSCAN flags it as a new target.”
“So you think they’ve rebuilt that base and are secretly using it, right under our noses?” Lukas asked, still unconvinced. “If that’s true, sir, then the space-based radar and our other sensors should have picked up other signs of activity — vehicles, tire tracks, storage piles, security personnel patrolling the area…”
“If you know exactly when a satellite is going to pass overhead, it’s relatively easy to fool it — just cover the gear with radar-absorbent camouflage, erase the tracks, or disguise them with other targets,” Patrick said. “All those tents, trucks, and buses out there could be housing an entire battalion and hundreds of tons of supplies. As long as they offload the planes, get the men and vehicles out of the area, and sweep up the area within the two- to-three-hour span between our overflights, they’re safe.”
“So all our gear is practically useless.”
“Against whoever is doing this, yes — and I’ll bet it’s not the Islamist clerics or even the remnants of the Revolutionary Guards Corps,” Patrick said. “There’s only one way to find out: we need eyes on the ground. Let’s get a report ready for STRATCOM and I’ll append my recommendations for action…but first I want to get Rascal working on a plan.” While Lukas began downloading sensor data and adding her observations — and reservations — about the activity at Soltanabad, Patrick selected the command channel on his encrypted satellite communications system. “Odin to Rascal.”
A moment later the image of a large, blond-haired, blue-eyed, powerful-looking man appeared on Patrick’s monitor: “Rascal here, sir,” replied Air Force Major Wayne Macomber rather testily. Macomber was the new commander of the Battle Force ground forces based at Elliott Air Force Base in Nevada, replacing Hal Briggs, who had been killed while hunting down mobile medium-range ballistic missiles in Iran a year earlier. Macomber was only the second person ever to take charge of the Battle Force. He had big shoes to fill, and that, in Patrick’s mind, would never happen.
Macomber was not Patrick’s first choice to lead “Rascal” (which had been Hal’s call-sign and was now the new unclassified call-sign of the Battle Force). To put it mildly, Macomber had serious problems dealing with authority. But he had somehow managed to use that personality glitch to propel himself into more and more challenging situations in which he was ultimately able to adapt, overcome, and succeed.
He was kicked out of public middle school in Spokane, Washington, because of “behavioral incompatibilities” and was sent off to the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell in hopes of having round-the-clock military discipline straighten him out. Sure enough — after a difficult first year — it worked. He graduated near the top of his class both academically and athletically and won a nomination to attend the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Although he was a nationally ranked linebacker for the Falcons football team, where he earned his nickname “Whack,” he was kicked off the squad in his senior year for aggressive play and “personality conflicts” with several coaches and teammates. He used the extra time — and probationary period — to improve his grades and again graduated with honors with a bachelor of science degree in physics and a pilot training slot. Once again he dominated in his undergraduate pilot training class, graduating top of his class, and won one of only six F-15E Strike Eagle pilot slots awarded straight out of flight school — almost unheard of for a first lieutenant at the time.
But again, he couldn’t keep his drive and determination in check. An F-15 Eagle air superiority fighter is a completely different bird with an offensive systems operator, big radar, conformal long-range fuel tanks, and ten thousand pounds of ordnance on board, and for some reason Wayne Macomber couldn’t figure out that airframes bend in unnatural directions when an F-15E Strike Eagle pilot loaded up with bombs tries to dogfight with another fighter. It didn’t matter that he was almost always the winner — he was racking up victories at the expense of bending expensive airframes, and was eventually…ultimately…asked to leave.
But he was not orphaned for long. One organization in the Air Force welcomed and even encouraged aggressive action, out-of-the-box thinking, and virulent leadership: Air Force Special Operations. To his dismay, however, the unit that wanted rude and crude “Whack” the most was the Tenth Combat Weather Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Florida: because of his physics education, the Air Force quickly made him a combat weather parachutist. He got to wear the coveted green beret and parachutist wings of an Air Force commando, but it still grated on him to be known as a “weatherman.”
Although he and his squadron mates always took a lot of ribbing from other commando units for being “combat weather-guessers” or “groundhogs,” Macomber soon learned to like the specialty not only because he happened to like the science of meteorology but also because he got to parachute out of perfectly good planes and helicopters, carry lots of guns and explosives, learn how to set up airfields and observation posts behind enemy lines, and how to kill the enemy at close quarters. Whack performed more than a hundred and twenty combat jumps in the next eight years and rose quickly through the ranks, eventually taking command of the squadron.
When Brigadier General Hal Briggs was planning the assault and occupation of Yakutsk Air Base in Siberia in Patrick McLanahan’s retaliatory operation against Russia following the American Holocaust, he turned to the one nationally recognized expert in the field to assist in mission planning for operations behind enemy lines: Wayne Macomber. At first Whack didn’t like taking orders from a kid eight years younger than he, especially one who outranked him, but he quickly recognized Briggs’ skill, intelligence, and guts, and they made a good team. The operation was a complete success. Macomber won a Silver Star for saving dozens of personnel, Russians as well as Americans, by getting them into fallout shelters before Russian president Gryzlov’s bombers attacked Yakutsk with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.
“I’m sending you the most recent shots of a highway airbase in northeastern Iran, Wayne,” Patrick said. “I think it’s being secretly repaired, and I’m going to ask permission for you to go in, recon it, and render it unusable again — permanently.”
