Fatal Terrain Read online

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  bomber forces commander-this was an ominous warning

  message. Samson paused to get his emotions under control;

  then he took a deep breath and continued: "I want to thank

  the men and women of Second Bomb Wing for your service,

  and also add a personal thank-you to the men and women of

  Eighth Air Force for your hard work and dedication to duty

  to the command, to our nation, and to me.

  " And I know it seems silly to do so, but indulge me: I want

  to thank the B-52 bomber, and all the men and women who

  have taken them into battle and who have sat with them on

  nuclear alert, defending our homes, our freedom, our way of

  life, and protecting our allies. You're only a big hunk of metal,

  ten thousand random parts flying in formation, but God bless

  you anyway." The applause was unexpectedly loud and long,

  which greatly pleased General Samson, who took a long look

  at the B-52H behind him and gave it a thumbs-up. He then

  turned back to the audience, snapped to attention, and said in

  a loud voice, "Attention to orders from the I commander in

  chief"

  "Wing, ten-hut!" General Vidriano shouted. The uniformed

  men and women came to attention, and the audience respect-

  fully stood.

  Samson was passed a blue binder, and he opened it and read,

  "By order of the commander in chief of the armed forces of

  the United States of America, the Second Bombardment Wing,

  Heavy, and its component squadrons, Barksdale Air Force

  Base, Louisiana, are hereby relieved of all combat and support

  duties and ordered to stand down this date." The tears flowed

  again, from the big man at the podium to the combat veterans

  to the tough young security policemen guarding the line.

  "Your success in long-range bombardment missions, as well

  as in maintaining a strategic combat-ready posture over the

  years, has ensured the peace and security of the United States

  and of the free world, and reflects great credit upon yourselves

  and the United States Air Force. I am pleased to express the

  heartfelt thanks of a grateful nation. Mission accomplished.

  Job well done. Signed, The Honorable Arthur S. Chastain, Sec-

  retary of Defense; The Honorable Sheila F. Hewlett, Secretary

  of the Air Force; General Victor A. Hayes, Chief of Staff,

  United States Air Force. General Vidriano, carry out the or-

  ders.

  Vidriano saluted, then said in a loud voice, "Wing, present

  FATAL TER RAI N 69

  your colors!" Samson closed the binder, then left the podium

  and walked in front of the group of officers and their guidon-

  bearers. One by one, the individual squadrons were called out.

  As the squadron commander's and senior NCOIC's names,

  along with a little of each squadron's history and major ac-

  complishments, were read aloud to the audience, the officers

  and guidon-bearers stepped forward, and the guidon was rolled

  up on its staff, covered, and presented to the Second Bomb

  Wing commander, who gave it to his wing NCOIC.

  After all of the squadron guidons were furled and covered,

  General Vidriano then took the wing flag, the tip of its flag's

  staff festooned with dozens of campaign ribbons won from

  more than fifty years of combat service, from his wing's senior

  noncommissioned officer and, holding it in two hands, held it

  out stiffly with both arms fully extended and presented it to

  General Samson. "Sir, I present to you the Second Bomb

  Wing, Heavy, the best heavy bombardment wing in the world.

  The wing has stood down, as ordered."

  Samson saluted. "Thank you, General. Please personally

  thank your men and women for their outstanding service to

  the nation. "

  At precisely the moment that General Samson took the wing

  flag in his hands, a loud rumbling was heard in the distance.

  The audience members looked up and saw an incredible sight:

  flanked by three T-38 Talon jet trainers that looked insectlike

  in comparison, a massive formation of twenty B-52 bombers

  passed slowly only 5,000 feet overhead, forming a gigantic

  number 2 in the sky. The sound of those huge planes passing

  overhead sounded as if a magnitude ten earthquake were in

  progress-metal folding chairs rattled, bits of dirt on the

  ground jumped like giant fleas, a thin cloud of dust began to

  rise over the ground stirred up by the vibration, car alarms in

  the nearby parking lot went off, and somewhere behind the

  audience a window shattered in the Base Operations building.

  o ers ye e an screame in (e ight, civilians put their

  hands to their ears and made comments to people beside them

  that couldn't be heard, and children clutched their parents' legs

  and cried in abject fear-and combat veteran and (at least until

  October 1) Eighth Air Force commander Lieutenant General

  Terrill Samson felt a lump of awe lodge in his throat, dredged

  up by a wellspring of pride from his heart. The sounds of

  cracking glass in the Base Ops building finally caused his emo-

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  FATAL T ER RAI N 71

  tions to bubble forth, and the big three-star general laughed

  until he cried, clapping as hard as a young kid at a circus. The

  audience happily joined in.

  Even without dropping any iron, Samson thought gleefully,

  the damn BUFFs-the Big Ugly Fat Fuckers-could still do

  what they had done best for the past thirty-five years: they

  could still break things on the ground with power and ease.

  As General Samson's C-21A Leaijet transport plane pulled up

  to the VIP parking area in front of Base Ops a few hours after

  the stand-down ceremony ended, General Samson shook hands

  with Barksdale's senior officers and enlisted men and women,

  returned their salutes, picked up his briefcase, and headed to

  the jet's airstair. Normally Samson would insist on taking the

  pilot's seat, but this time he had business to attend to, so he

  headed back to the cabin and strapped in at the commander s

  seat at the small desk. The copilot ensured that the general was

  comfortable, gave a short safety briefing to the general and the

  other three passengers already aboard, and hurried back to the

  cockpit. The plane taxied back to the runway and was airborne

  again within minutes.

  "Forgot how emotional these damn stand-down ceremonies

  can be," Samson said to his three fellow passengers. "I've

  been presiding over too damn many of them."

  "Some pretty cool flying, though," said Dr. Jon Masters,

  as he sipped from a can of Pepsi. Jon Masters, barely thirty

  years old, drank several such cans of sugar-laden beverages

  every day, but somehow was still as skinny as a pole, still had

  all his teeth, and still had no detectable chemical imbalances

  or vitamin deficiencies. "They must've been practicing that

  formation for days."

  "Weeks, Dr. Masters," Samson said. "That's all the flying

  they've been doing lately." He looked over at passenger num-

  ber two
, paused as if considering whether or not he should do

  it, then stuck out a hand. "How the hell are you, Brad?"

  Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Bradley James Elliott

  smiled, noticing Samson's discomfort at his presence with un-

  disguised amusement. "Peachy, Earthinover, just peachy," he

  replied, and took Samson's hand in his.

  There it was again, Samson thought grimly-that irritating

  cocksure attitude. Samson was not sure exactly how old Elliott

  was, probably in his early sixties, but he had the demeanor

  and attitude of a young, spoiled brat, of a guy who just knew

  he was going to get his way. Medium height, medium build,

  still as healthy-looking in a business suit as ever-even with

  the leg. Samson's eyes wandered down to Elliott's right leg,

  barely visible behind the desk. It looked normal under the

  nicely tailored suit, but Samson knew it was not normal-it

  was artificial. Very high-tech, fully articulating, it had been

  good enough to get Elliott re-cleared for flying duties back

  when he was in the Air Force-but it was still very artificial.

  Elliott saw Samson checking out his leg. He smiled that

  irritatingly smug grin and said, "Yep, still have the appliance

  onboard, Earthmover." He flexed his foot around in a circle,

  an incredible feat for a prosthetic device-it truly did look

  real. "It only hurts when I think about what's happening to

  my Air Force." Samson chuckled, but the joke was DOA-

  no one, not even Elliott, was smiling.

  Elliott had always been this way, Samson remembered-

  grim, demanding, headstrong to the point of being reactionary.

  A former Strategic Air Command bomb wing commander,

  Penta on staffer, and expert in strategic bombing and weap-

  ons, Brad Elliott had been living the dream that Terrill Samson

  had harbored for many years-to be universally acknowledged

  as the expert, the one that everyone, from the line crewdogs

  to the President of the United States, called on for answers to

  difficult questions and problems. Elliott was a prot6g6 of stra-

  tegic nuclear aerial warfare visionaries such as Curtis E.

  LeMay and Russell Dougherty, and a contemporary of modem

  conventional strategic airpower leaders such as Mike Loh and

  Don Aldridge, the true proponents of long-range airpower. It

  was Elliott who had engineered the hasty but ultimately suc-

  cessful rebirth of the B-1 bomber, developed new cruise mis-

  sile technology for the B-52, and kept the B-2 stealth bomber

  on track through its long and expensive trek through the halls

  of Congress when it had been a deep "black" program that

  could be canceled in the blink of an eye.

  Rising quickly through the ranks, Brad Elliott had become

  director of Air Force plans and programs at the Pentagon, then

  deputy commander of the Strategic Air Command. He had

  been well on his way to a fourth star and command of SAC,

  and possibly back to the Pentagon as Air Force chief of staff,

  when. . . he'd suddenly dropped almost completely out of

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  sight. He'd surfaced only once, as a military advisor to the

  abortive U. Border Security Force, but he'd been suddenly

  so far under cover, wrapped in an airtight cocoon of secrecy

  of which Samson had never seen the like, then, now, or ever

  since.

  Elliott's name was linked to dozens of dramatic, highly clas-

  sified military operations and programs supposedly originating

  from the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, or

  HAWC, the top-secret research and testing facility in the de-

  serts of south-central Nevada known as "Drearriland.- Many

  risky, bold military operations all over the world had Brad

  Elliott's signature style on them: small, powerful, high-tech air

  attacks aimed directly into the heart of the enemy, usually

  involving heavily modified bombers. Although he didn't know

  for certain, Samson was sure that Brad Elliott and the crew-

  dogs at HAWC had been behind unbelievable military suc-

  cesses from central America to Lithuania to the Philippines.

  Well, here he was again. Brad Elliott was now a civilian,

  working on classified Air Force programs as a senior vice pres-

  ident of Sky Masters, Inc. Elliott had been shit-canned, forced

  to retire, after a major spy scandal had shut down HAWC and

  shoved military research programs back at least a decade. But,

  as always, Brad Elliott had landed on his feet, cocky as ever.

  No one in Washington liked him, not even his advocates-

  like the President of the United States, for example. But he

  had this mystique, this air of complete command, of presci-

  ence. He was known as the man to turn to, plain and simple.

  You didn't have to like him, but you had better get him work-

  ing on your problem.

  Samson decided to ignore him for the moment, and he

  turned and shook hands warmly with the third passenger.

  "Patrick, good to see you again," he said to retired Air Force

  Colonel Patrick McLanahan.

  "Same here, sir," McLanahan said in return. Now, here was

  a kid he could get to like, Samson thought. McLanahan was,

  pure and simple, the best pilot-trained navigator-bombardier in

  the United States, probably the best in the world. He had been

  an engineer, designer, and team chief at HAWC, working as

  one of Brad Elliott's supersecret whiz kids, designing aircraft

  and weapons that would someday be used in wars. Like Elliott,

  McLanahan had been forced to accept an early retirement in

  1996 in the wake of the Kenneth Francis James spy scandal

  FATAL T E R RAI N 73

  and the HAWC closing. Even though McLanahan had risked

  his life to bring the Soviet deep-cover agent Maraklov back

  from Central America before he had a chance to escape to

  Russia with a stolen secret Air Force experimental aircraft,

  he'd been sacrificed for the good of the service. McLanahan

  and Elliott had been close friends for many years.

  But unlike Brad Elliott, Patrick McLanahan got the job done

  without pissing the leadership off, without copping an attitude.

  When the President had wanted someone to head up a secret

  aerial strike unit under the Intelligence Support Agency to

  counter Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, he hadn't

  turned to Brad Elliott, the acknowledged expert in long-range

  bomber tactics-he specifically had not wanted Elliott in-

  volved in the secret project, although Elliott had planned and

  executed many such operations. The President's staff instead

  had turned to Elliott's prot6gd, McLanahan. And the young

  Californian, who looked more like a young college professor

  or corporate lawyer than an aerial assassin, had come through

  brilliantly, taking a modified B-2 Spirit stealth bomber halfway

  around the world to nearly single-handedly shut down the

  newly rebuilt Iranian war machine. Now McLanahan was get-

  ting a reputation as the "go-to" guy when the shooting started,

  even over well-qualified active-duty crewdogs.

  "So, what do you have for us, Earthmover
?" Brad Elliott

  asked, rubbing his hands in exaggerated anticipation. "Are we

  going after the North Korean chemical weapons plants? We

  going to polish up in Iran? Someone tried to whack the Iranian

  military chief of staff Buzhazi and missed-let us take a shot

  at him. And that ex-Russian carrier is in the South China Sea,

  on its way to Hong Kong-we should sink that thing before

  it gets within striking range of Taiwan. Rumor has it that it's

  fully operational and carrying."

  Samson ignored Elliott for the moment-hard to do, since

  they were sitting right across from each other-and turned to

  Jon Masters instead. "I take it that Brad here is part of your

  team, Dr. Masters? I wasn't made aware of that."

  "We've got five of the eight Megafortresses flying now,

  General," Masters said. "We need experienced crews."

  "The Air Combat Command guys you sent need at least six

  months of training time," McLanahan interjected. "They're

  good sticks, and they can certainly handle the beast, but the

  systems are unlike anything they've experienced before. And

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  we're changing the systems, too, so we put them to work as

  engineers and test pilots while they're getting checked out on

  the plane." He paused, searching Terrill Samson's face for any

  signs of difficulty. "Brad Elliott is the Megafortress. He's the

  creator, the progenitor." Samson was silent, his mouth a hard

  line on his face. "Problem, Terrill?"

  "Terrill thinks the President's going to have a cow when

  he sees me," Elliott answered for the big three-star general.

  He turned to McLanahan. "We're going to meet the Presi-

  dent--didn't you know that? I called the White House corn-

  munications office and confirmed the meeting. That cute V.

  Whiting, Chastain, Freeman, Hartman, Collier from NSA I

  think, and George Balboa, that old Navy squid sack of--

  "Brad. .

  "We go way back, me and Martindale, so don't worry about

  it, big guy," Elliott interrupted, watching Samson's face turn

  puffy with anger. "We'll have a good meeting, and we'll have

  all the right answers."