Shadow Command

back to the mission status monitors…and immediately saw the new threat: a swarm of missiles barreling down on the Vampire bombers. “We did a post-turn long-range LADAR sweep and spotted them,” she said. The LADAR, or laser radar, was a system of electronically agile laser emitters embedded throughout the fuselage of the Vampire bombers that instantaneously “drew” a high-resolution image of everything around the plane for a hundred miles, then compared the three-dimensional picture to a catalog of images for immediate identification. “Look at the speed of those things — they have to be traveling at greater than Mach seven!”

“Countermeasures!” Dave Luger shouted. “Knock them out of the sky!”

But it was soon clear that it was too late. Traveling at more than fourteen miles per second, the Russian missiles ate up the distance long before the Vampire bombers’ microwave emitters could activate, lock on, and disrupt their guidance systems. Three of the four hypersonic missiles scored direct hits, quickly sending both bombers spiraling into the Caspian Sea.

“Damn it,” Dave swore. “Looks like the Russians have a new toy for their MiGs. Well, I guess we won’t have to worry if the bombers will make their tanker, will we, Rebecca?”

“We just lost one-fourth of our remaining B-1 bomber inventory, Dave,” Rebecca Furness radioed from Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base. “It’s not a laughing matter. We only have two Vampires at Batman now.”

“Get ’em airborne to provide air cover for the CSAR guys out of Herat, Rebecca,” Patrick ordered. “Use active LADAR to scan for intruders. If anyone comes within a hundred miles of your planes, fry ’em.”

“With pleasure, Muck,” Rebecca said. “I’m ready for a little payback. They’ll be ready to taxi in about fifteen.” But just a few minutes later she called back: “Odin, this is Headbanger, we have a problem. Security Forces are parked in front of the hangar and preventing the Vampire from taxiing. They’re ordering us to shut down or they’ll disable the plane.”

Patrick was on the secure videoconference line in a heartbeat, but he was beaten to the punch by an incoming call: “General McLanahan, you are either deranged or suffering from some sort of mental breakdown,” Secretary of Defense Miller Turner said. “This is an order directly from the commander-in-chief: stand down all your forces immediately. You are relieved of command. Do I make myself clear?”

“Sir, one of my Black Stallion spaceplanes has been shot down by a Russian anti-satellite laser based in eastern Iran,” Patrick said. “We have indications that the passengers may have survived. I want air cover…”

“General, I’m sympathetic, but the President is pissed and he’s not listening to any arguments,” Turner said. “You hung up on him, for God’s sake! Do you expect him to listen to you now?”

“Sir, the passenger module is intact, and it’ll be on the ground in less than fifteen minutes,” Patrick said.

“What? You mean, someone ejected from the spaceplane…?”

“The passenger module is jettisonable and is designed to act as a lifeboat for the space station crewmembers,” Patrick explained. “It can withstand re-entry, fly itself to a landing spot, safely glide in for a landing, and save the crew. The module is intact, sir, and we’re hoping the crew is safe. We’re zeroing in on the possible landing zone right now, and as soon as we compute the exact landing spot we can deploy a rescue team there right away — that’s the only advantage we’ll have over the enemy. But it’ll take at least ninety minutes for a rescue team and air cover to arrive in the recovery area. We have to launch right away.”

“General, you have already disobeyed direct orders from the President,” Turner said. “You’re already on your way to prison, do you understand that? Don’t compound it by arguing anymore. For the last time: Stand down. I’m directing General Backman to take command of all of your forces. I’m telling you—”

“And I’m telling you, sir,” Patrick interrupted, “that most of the Middle East and central Asia will have seen the Black Stallion fall to Earth, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the al-Quds forces, all of the terrorists that have flooded into Iran since the military coup, and probably the Russians will be on their way to the crash site to retrieve whatever they can find. We must get every aircraft and combat search and rescue team possible airborne to find the survivors before the enemy does.”

“Central Command will coordinate that, McLanahan, not you. You are ordered to stand down. Take no further actions whatsoever. You will do or say nothing to anyone. You are relieved of your command and will be placed under arrest as soon as you can be brought off that station.”

For the second time that day, Patrick hung up on a civilian military leader. His next call was directly to General Kenneth Lepers, the four-star Army general in charge of U.S. Central Command, the major combat command overseeing all military operations in the Middle East and central Asia, to try to convince him to allow the bombers to take off.

“General McLanahan, your ass is in a really big sling right now,” Lepers’ deputy said. “The general has been directed not to speak with you, and this call will be reported to SECDEF. I advise you to straighten this thing out with SECDEF before the whole world cuts you off.” And he hung up.

Patrick’s next call was back to Rebecca Furness at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base. “I was just going to call you, sir,” Rebecca said. “I’m sorry about the Black Stallion. I wish we could’ve done more.”

“Thanks, Rebecca. I’m sorry about your Vampires.”

“Not your fault, sir.” It was, she reminded herself: if he hadn’t ordered to launch on this unauthorized mission, she’d still have her bombers. But the Vampires were unmanned, and the Black Stallion wasn’t, so she didn’t feel the need to rub salt on a wound. “We should have been scanning for bandits — I made the call to go in completely silent. I don’t know how the Russians knew we were coming or when, but they are going to get it back in spades, I guarantee that.”

“Are you still being stopped by the sky cops?”

“Affirmative. We’ve shut down as ordered and are holding our position inside the hangar.”

Patrick thought for a moment; then: “Rebecca, I tried calling General Lepers at CENTCOM to get his permission to launch the Vampires, and he’s not talking to me. I would guess if I tried to call STRATCOM I’d get the same response.”

“Cannon’s an okay guy,” Rebecca commented. “The others think you’re gunning for their jobs.” Or nuts, she silently added.

“If we don’t launch some air cover, our guys and maybe the CSAR troops will get chewed apart by the Pasdaran,” Patrick said. “I’m going to clear those Security Forces away from the hangar. I want you ready to launch as soon as they’re away.”

“But you said Lepers won’t talk to you, and you haven’t spoken to CENTAF yet, so who’s going to—?” Furness paused for a moment, then said simply, “That’s crazy. Sir.”

“The question is, Rebecca: Will you launch?”

The pause was very, very long; just when Patrick was going to repeat himself, or was wondering if Furness was dialing SECDEF’s number on another line, she said, “Get ’em out of my ships’ way, General, and I’ll launch.”

“Thank you, General.” Patrick hung up the phone, then spoke, “Odin to Genesis.”

“Go ahead, Muck,” Dave Luger responded via their subcutaneous global transceiver.

“Move those security guys away from the bombers.”

“They’re moved, Muck. Out.” Luger turned to his command radio: “Saber, this is Genesis.”

BATMAN AIR BASE, REPUBLIC OF TURKEY

THAT SAME TIME

“Saber copies, go ahead, Genesis,” Air Force First Lieutenant James “JD” Daniels, commander of the Battle Force ground operations team code-named “Saber,” responded. Daniels had been sent to Batman Air Base to provide security for the EB-1C Vampire bombers, but also because the base was an isolated, well-equipped place to train with new CID pilots in real-world scenarios. As a technical sergeant the thirty-year-old tall, brown-eyed, brown-haired rancher’s son from Arkansas was one of the first of the Battle Force commandos to check out as a Cybernetic Infantry Device pilot. After being injured from radiation sickness after fighting in Yakutsk Air Base in Russia following the American Holocaust, Daniels used his recovery time to get a bachelor’s degree, then attended Officer Training School and earned his commission. Now he was the senior training officer and, except for Charlie Turlock herself, the resident expert in the CID weapon system.

“I have a task for you, Saber, but you might not like it,” Dave Luger said. “Odin wants to launch the Vampire bombers.”

“Yes, sir. We were ready to go a moment ago, but the Security Forces guys showed up at the hangar, and the planes shut themselves down. The base commander ordered us to assist and protect the Security Forces from