power supplies, so you can still debrief, but air-conditioning and lights are out. Shouldn’t last long.”
Just a few minutes into the maintenance debriefing the lights and power came back on, but the afternoon deluge had already cut down on the humidity. After the debriefing, Cutlass gave Sondra a set of keys. “Would you show Brad here where his father’s tent is? He’ll bunk in there with him. You can take him by the flight line and show him the other bombers. Don’t forget your flight-line IDs. Be back at the command center in an hour for the mission briefing.”
“Yes, sir,” Sondra said. Brad grabbed his backpack and computer case and followed.
In a few minutes they were slowly driving in a four-door crew pickup truck down the flight line at Andersen Air Force Base, examining the rows of B-52H, B-1B, and XB-1 bombers, KC-135 and KC-10 tankers, and F-22 Raptor and F-15 Eagle fighters in their parking spots. They were stopped frequently for ID checks. Vehicles with carts loaded with munitions of every description, and roving security and munitions maintenance vehicles drove up and down the line as well. “It looks like chaos, but it’s all pretty well orchestrated so no bottlenecks occur that create a safety or security situation,” Sondra said.
They stopped at an XB-1 Excalibur bomber about halfway down the line. A security guard checked their IDs and waved them past a simple yellow nylon rope barrier. “Be sure to only enter and exit here, where the guard is,” Sondra said. “The guards will jack you up if you cross over the rope, and they are authorized to shoot if they think you’re a suicide bomber or something.”
“I remember the security briefing,” Brad said.
They walked underneath and found Ed Gleason preflighting his jet inside the forward bomb bay. “Hello, Sondra,” Gleason greeted them.
“Hello, sir,” Sondra said. “Ed, I don’t think you’ve met General McLanahan’s son. Ed, this is Bradley McLanahan. Brad, meet Lieutenant General Ed Gleason, retired, one of the most experienced B-1 drivers at Sky Masters. He graduated number one in his Air Force Academy class, flew F-15E Strike Eagles as a second lieutenant, flew B-1s as a young captain, and commanded flying wings until finally becoming Twelfth Air Force commander. We’re lucky to have him.” Brad shook his hand.
“Sorry about the Academy, son,” Gleason said.
Brad rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Does everyone on Guam know that I dropped out of the Air Force Academy?”
“
“We’ll get you trained as an aircraft commander before you know it,” Gleason said. “You going to show Brad around the bird, Sondra?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Great. Nice to meet you, Brad.”
“Same here, sir.” They shook hands again, and Gleason departed, leaving Brad and Sondra alone.
“As you know, Brad, we can put three different payloads in each of the three bomb bays, or we can move the bulkhead between the forward and center bays to accommodate larger weapons.
“The primary mission for this bird is suppression of enemy air defenses, both against surface ships and on land,” she went on. “The forward bomb bay has a rotary launcher with four AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles and four AIM-120 AMRAAM radar-guided air-to-air missiles, which I think all the Excaliburs carry now.” They moved to the intermediate bay. “Here we have a rotary launcher carrying six AGM-158 Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missiles. JASSM has a one-thousand-pound warhead, a range of over two hundred miles, and an imaging infrared terminal seeker along with inertial navigation system and GPS. We can retarget it with the AESA or with target information received by satellite. The aft bomb bay has a three-thousand-gallon fuel tank, which all the Excaliburs carry because of the long overwater legs, even though we have our own tanker support.”
They exited the bomb bay, and she motioned to two clusters of missiles mounted externally under the fuselage. “These are my favorites: the AGM-88 HARM, or High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile,” Sondra went on. “We have two clusters of two missiles each on the external hardpoints. HARM can detect, home in on, and destroy enemy radars from as far as thirty miles—it can kill any target within range in less than a minute. They’re programmed to detect every known radar in the Chinese or Russian military.”
“Do they fly the Excaliburs armed with JASSMs?” Brad asked.
“They’ll fly them for proficiency or weapon checkouts, but not on patrols,” Sondra said. “Only the birds with the air-to-air missiles are allowed to fly patrols.”
“The patrols sound a little boring.”
“Most of the time we fly airborne radar overwatch for Navy patrols,” Sondra said. “We can send our radar data directly to the Aegis ships, or we just pass on radar or visual information to ships that can’t collect datalinks or digital imagery. They can get boring, but finding and classifying a ship out ahead of a Navy formation is pretty cool. We air refuel every two hours or so, which gives us plenty of fuel for a divert base, so we stay busy.”
“Wish I could fly those patrols,” Brad said.
“I don’t see why you can’t,” Sondra said. “If you fly with Colonel Hoffman, Ed Gleason, or your father, you’ll be flying with an instructor, so those hours count toward your ATP, and once you get that you can get checked out as an Excalibur aircraft commander. You probably need all the security clearances and background checks we had to get to be part of this task force. Tell them you want some patrols. Colonel Cuthbert can get you all the clearances, and you’re good to go.”
They drove to the housing area, not far from the flight line. Brad saw rows and rows of white tents on a coral and sand lot. “My dad lives in a tent?” Brad exclaimed.
“He insisted on living like the other crews and maintainers live—if he gets uncomfortable, he knows how everyone else feels,” Sondra said. “Besides, these things are pretty nice.” She punched in a code on the door—no tent flaps here—and showed Brad inside. It was surprisingly spacious. There was room for two folding beds, two dressers, and two desks.
“I didn’t see any power lines coming in here,” Brad observed.
“The tents are all solar powered,” Sondra said. “A group of six tents shares a big battery, and there are solar collectors on each tent and on each battery enclosure. The battery can be topped off by base electrical power, but that’s rare—the solar cells do a pretty good job.”
“Not much privacy.”
“The task force patrols and works on the flight line twenty-four-seven,” Sondra said, “so everyone is pretty busy. We work a five-days-on, two-days-off rotation, but to tell the truth, everyone makes themselves available on off days because there’s not much to do out here—the hotels and casinos are all but shut down, and lying around on the beaches gets old fast. Privacy isn’t really an issue—you make your own privacy. The sound of planes taking off is a bother, bunking so close to the flight line, but you get used to tuning it out.” She looked at him carefully, gave him a little smile, then reached out and touched his hand. “Besides, Brad, whatever would you do if you had a little privacy?” she asked.
He stepped over to her and gave her a light kiss on the lips, which she seemed to enjoy. “I’d come up with something,” he said in a soft voice.
“Oh, I’m sure you could, stud,” Sondra said, heading for the door. “I’m sure you could. C’mon, we have the mission briefing.”
“Am I allowed to attend?” Brad asked.
“They’ll tell you if you’re not, but I don’t see why not—we all have the same security clearance,” Sondra said. “It’ll get your mind out of the gutter.”
“It wasn’t there before I met you,” Brad said. She smiled but said nothing.
ELEVEN
OVER THE SOUTH CHINA SEA
SEVERAL DAYS LATER
“Anytime I get to fly is a great joy,” the weapons officer of the carrier-based JH-37 Flying Leopard attack
