Shadow Command

the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know yet, sir,” Kordus said. “I told USAFE that no bombers were authorized to launch for any reason, and I ordered them to deny launch clearance. I have a call in to McLanahan and to his deputy Luger out in Nevada, trying to find out what’s going on.”

“Are the bombers armed?”

“We don’t know that yet either, sir. This mission was totally unauthorized.”

“Well, we should assume they are — knowing McLanahan, he would keep weapons on his planes even though they’re all grounded, unless we specifically ordered him not to, and even then he might do it. Just keep them on the ramp until we find out what’s going on. What’s the story with the spaceplane? Is it still in orbit?”

“I’ll check as soon as McLanahan picks up the phone, sir.”

“It’d better be, or I’ll nail his hide to my bathroom door,” the President said, taking another sip of orange juice. “Listen, about the ‘meet-and-greet’ thing in Orlando…” And then he heard Carlyle swear into his phone. “What, Conrad?”

“The B-1 bombers launched,” the National Security Adviser said. The President’s jaw dropped in surprise. “The tower controller at the air base told the crew to hold their position, but there is no crew on those planes — they’re remotely controlled from Elliott Air Force Base in Nevada—”

“McLanahan.”

“McLanahan is still aboard the space station, so it’s his deputy, Brigadier General Luger, in charge of the bombers out of Elliott,” Carlyle said. “I’ve got a call in to Secretary of Defense Turner to order Luger to get those bombers back on the ground. Je-sus…!”

“He is out of control!” the President snapped. “I want him off that space station and in custody immediately! Send a damned U.S. Marshal up there if you have to!”

“Send a U.S. Marshal — into space?” Kordus asked. “I wonder if that’s ever been done before…or if we could get a marshal to volunteer to do that?”

“I’m not kidding around, Walter. McLanahan has to be slapped down before he starts another damned war between us and Russia. Find out what in hell is going on, and do it fast. Zevitin will be on the phone before we know it, again, and I want to assure him everything is under control.”

BATTLE MANAGEMENT AREA, BATTLE MOUNTAIN AIR RESERVE BASE, NEVADA

THAT SAME TIME

“Headbanger Two-One flight of two is level at flight level three-one-oh, due regard, Mach point nine-one, thirty minutes to launch point,” the mission commander reported. “Due regard” meant that they had terminated all normal air traffic control procedures and were flying without official flight-following or civil aviation monitoring… because they were going to war.

Two officers sat side by side in a separate section of the BATMAN, or battle management area, at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base in northern Nevada, seated at what appeared to be a normal computer workstation that might be used by a security guard or securities day trader…except for the jet-fighter-style joysticks. On each side of the officers were two enlisted technicians with their own bank of computer monitors. The men and women in the room talked into their microphones in muted voices, bodies barely moving, eyes scanning from monitor to monitor. Only an occasional flick of a finger on a keyboard or hand rolling a cursor with a trackball led anyone to believe anything was really happening.

The two officers were piloting two unmanned EB-1C Vampire supersonic “flying battleships” which had launched from their forward operating base in eastern Turkey across northern Iran. Three high-resolution monitors showed the view in front and to the sides of the lead bomber, while other monitors showed performance, systems, and weapons readouts from both planes. Although the two bombers were fully flyable, they were usually flown completely on computer control, reacting autonomously to mission commands entered before the flight and deciding for themselves what to do to accomplish the mission. The ground crew monitored the flight’s progress, made changes to the flight plan if necessary, and could take over at any time, but the computers made all the decisions. The technicians watched over the aircraft’s systems, monitored the electromagnetic spectrum for threats, and looked over incoming intelligence and reconnaissance data along the route of flight that might affect the mission.

“Genesis copies,” David Luger responded. He was back at the battle staff area at Elliott Air Force Base in south-central Nevada, watching the mission unfold on the wall-sized electronic “big boards” before him. Other displays showed enemy threats detected by all High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center aircraft and satellites and other allied sensors operating in the region. But Luger’s attention was drawn to two other displays: the first was the latest satellite imagery of the target area in eastern Iran…

…and the second was of the satellite space tracking data, which at the moment was blank.

“They’re taking down the laser stuff in a pretty big damned hurry,” Dave commented. “They must have guessed we’d send bombers to blast the hell out of that base. I’m not sure if we’ll get there in time, Muck.”

“Push ’em up, Dave,” Patrick McLanahan said. He was monitoring the mission as well from the command module on Armstrong Space Station. “Get a tanker airborne to meet the bombers on the way back, but I want those missiles on the way before the Russian cockroaches scatter.”

“Roger, Muck. Stand by. Headbanger, this is Genesis. Odin wants the bombers to attack before the target scatters. Push up the bombers and say status of the support tankers.”

“Already got the alert tankers taxiing out, Dave,” the commander of the Air Battle Force’s air forces from Battle Mountain, Major General Rebecca Furness, responded. “He’ll be airborne in five minutes.”

“Roger that. Odin wants the Vampires pushed up as much as you can.”

“As soon as the tanker’s within max safe range, we’ll push the Vampires up to Mach one point two — that’s the max launch speed for the SkySTREAKs. Best we can do with the current mission parameters.”

“Suggest you erase the one-hour fuel reserve for the tanker and push up the Vampires now,” Luger said.

“Negative — I’m not going to do that, Dave,” Rebecca said. Rebecca Furness was the U.S. Air Force’s first female combat pilot and first female commander of a tactical combat air unit. When Rebecca’s Air Force Reserve B-1B Lancer unit at Reno, Nevada, was closed and the bombers transferred to the High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center for conversion into manned and unmanned “flying battleships,” Furness went along. Now she commanded the five tactical squadrons at the new Reserve base at Battle Mountain, Nevada, composed of converted manned and unmanned B-52 and B-1 bombers, unmanned QA-45C stealth attack aircraft, and KC-76 aerial refueling tankers. “We’ll get them, don’t worry.”

Luger glanced again at the latest satellite image of the highway air base at Soltanabad, Iran. It was only five minutes old, but it already showed a few of the larger trucks gone and what appeared like an entire battalion of workers taking down the rest. “We’re running out of time, ma’am. The cockaroaches are scattering quick.”

“I know, Dave — I see the pictures too,” Rebecca said, “but I’m not risking losing my bombers.”

“Like we lost the Stud?”

“Don’t give me that crap, Dave — I know what’s going on here, and I’m just as mad about it as you are,” Rebecca snapped. “But may I remind you that our bombers are the only long-range strike aircraft we have now, and I’m not going to risk them on…an unauthorized mission.” It was no exaggeration, and Dave Luger knew it: since the American Holocaust, the Russian cruise missile attack on American bomber and intercontinental missile bases four years earlier, the only surviving long-range bombers had been the handful of bombers deployed overseas and the converted B-52 and B-1 bombers based at Battle Mountain.

Furness’s bombers soon racked up casualties of their own. All of Battle Mountain’s bombers had been sent to a Russian aerial refueling tanker base in Yakutsk, Siberia, from where Patrick McLanahan led attack missions against nuclear ballistic missile bases throughout Russia. When the American bombers were discovered, then — Russian president General Anatoliy Gryzlov attacked the base with more nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Half the force had been lost in the devastating attack. The remaining bombers successfully attacked dozens of Russian missile bases, destroying the bulk of their strategic nuclear force; McLanahan himself, aboard one of the last EB-52 Megafortress battleships, attacked and killed Gryzlov in his underground bunker southeast of Moscow in a grueling twenty-hour-long mission that took him across the entire breadth of the Russian Federation.

After the conflict, Rebecca Furness had been given command of the Air Force’s few remaining bombers; consequently, no one knew better than she the incredible responsibility placed upon her. The surviving planes, and