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  Jamieson did not reply. The guy was better than he had let on, Jamieson had to admit. Yeah, decision making was important, but that’s why God had invented aircraft commanders and crew coordination. Jamieson would prefer to have a knowledgeable systems man in the right seat any day over a second-guesser or a self-anointed tactics expert. Jamieson reluctantly admitted that he regretted the Air Force’s decision to put a second pilot in the right seat of the B-2A stealth bomber rather than a pilot-trained navigator or engineer; or, even better, leaving the third seat in and bringing a navigator-engineer-bombardier along. He had criticized the guy for knowing a little about a lot; in fact, the man knew quite a bit about almost everything, and that made him a valuable asset on a bomber crew, no matter what kind of wings he wore—or even if he wore no wings at all.

  The door to the cockpit came opened, and the crew chief for The Spirit of Hell met up with Jamieson. “We’re done for the day, chief,” Jamieson said, as he stepped from the cab to the steel platform surrounding the full-motion simulator. “You’re cleared to reset the box after the print-out’s ready.”

  “Uh, sir …?”

  “Where’s the printout?” Jamieson asked—then he stopped short when he saw the armed guards in the doorway to the simulator room.

  “What’s going on, chief?” he snapped. “What in hell are those security guys doing in here?”

  “I asked them,” Lieutenant General Terrill Samson said. The big three-star general was in the simulator instructor’s control room, carrying the mission-data printout and a large catalog case with a large combination lock on it. Jesus, Jamieson thought, the guy is huge! How did he ever fit into the cockpit of a military jet trainer? “Thank you, chief. If you’ll excuse us, I need to talk with Colonel Jamieson. Let me know when the maintenance troops arrive, please.” Soon they were alone in the control room.

  Jamieson noticed that everyone in the entire simulator bay had departed, except for the guards, who were armed with Uzi submachine guns.

  Jamieson was tall, but the commander of Eighth Air Force towered over him. It was a little intimidating even for a guy like Jamieson, who was not easily scared by other men. Tony Jamieson had over four thousand hours’ flying time in a dozen different Air Force combat aircraft, including more than sixty combat sorties over Iraq, and anyone who could beat those numbers got Jamieson’s instant respect and attention. Terrill Samson was such a man. “Hello, General,” Jamieson said to Samson. “What’s with the guards?”

  “We’re going to be doing a few modifications to this simulator,” Samson said, “testing out a few new items. It’ll be down for only a day or two; you’ll have to use the second box by itself for the time being. How did it go with our boy?”

  “Fair to poor,” Jamieson replied. “He’s knowledgeable and all-book stuff, numbers, some good systems knowledge, not a bad stick—but he doesn’t know tac doctrine and procedures.”

  “Could he be a B-2A Combat Crew Training Unit student?” Samson asked. CCTU was the 509th Bomb Wing’s B-2A six-month initial training program. “If so, what stage would he be in?”

  “His pilot skills are average, but based on his systems knowledge, I’d say he was a second- or third-stage student, upper level …”

  “So you’re saying he’s as good as an average pilot who’s been through about half the CCTU program, Tiger?”

  “There are lots of candidates out there with better piloting skills,” Jamieson said quickly, still not wanting to admit that the guy was pretty good for fear of appearing to compromise on his deliberately set lofty standards for B-2A crew members. “He seems to have lost a lot of heavy iron piloting skills.”

  “He never was a pilot, Tiger,” Samson said with a smile. “He’s an ex-bomber-navigator, B-52s mostly.”

  Jamieson was surprised—no, shocked was the word. The bomber part didn’t surprise him, but Jamieson would’ve bet that the guy had been flying nothing but a desk for years. “Where’d he learn to fly, then?”

  “HAWC,” Samson replied, “and that’s classified. Highly classified.”

  “HAWC?” Jamieson sputtered. “You’re shitting me … er, sorry, sir, I mean … man, this guy used to fly for HAWC? When? What did he fly?”

  Samson closed his eyes, as if the very mention of the word HAWC caused him great physical or mental stress. “Tony, do me a big damned favor and keep your questions to yourself,” Samson said impatiently.

  Jamieson did exactly as he was told—he knew as well as Samson what the Department of Defense did to those who breathed a word about its most super-secret research facility. Only the best engineers and fliers got to work at HAWC—even hotshot veteran sticks like Tony Jamieson didn’t dare apply to work there for fear they’d be rejected or that working under such a constant level of strict security would destroy their private lives.

  The aircraft and weapons HAWC worked on were classified at the highest levels of national security, and any inquiries or even a casual mention of the place or the organization required a report to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Jamieson knew that Samson had to report him to AFOSI—just for having this conversation—and that such a report would change Jamieson’s life forever, because of the level of official scrutiny he’d be under from now on. With all of the recent security breaches rumored to have occurred at HAWC, everyone even remotely involved in the facility would be closely monitored; their public and private lives would no longer be their own, but would be documented and examined by the Department of Defense until death closed the file.

  “Excuse me, sir, but there’s a whole lot you’re not telling me,” Jamieson probed. “You say this guy is ex-military, a civilian, but he’s got access to B-2A tech orders, weapons manuals, and he’s riding the sim with the radar on? No person without a special-access clearance has ever seen the radar in operation before—he not only watched it work, but knew how to work it in a combat situation!”

  “No more questions, Tiger,” Samson said. “I need to know one thing: would you fly with him, right now, in combat?”

  “Not in a million friggin’ years!” Jamieson retorted. “Why should I, sir? I’ve got thirty of the world’s best pilots in my wing, already fully trained and qualified to fly the Beak.

  Why should I fly with someone who’s not checked out?”

  “I’m not asking you to choose between a mission-ready crew member and him,” Samson urged. “I’m asking you, would you fly with him if-“

  “If he was the last man on earth?” Jamieson interjected. He had no idea where this was leading, but it wasn’t good. “He could back me up on most tasks, but … no, sir, I wouldn’t fly with him. It’d be a waste of a good airframe.”

  “On today’s sim ride, Tiger, what would have been the chance that he would’ve hit his assigned target?” Samson asked.

  Jamieson shrugged. “You saw the results, sir: he hit his assigned targets, so I guess the answer is one hundred percent,” Jamieson admitted. “But I’d give him only a seventy-five percent chance of reaching his target in the first place, and that’s bad, because he could have brought his bomber home and gotten it fixed and taken a one hundred percent plane into combat. What’s his chance of bringing the plane and his crew home with all the malfunctions he let accumulate? Maybe twenty percent, tops. He exercised poor judgment.”

  “What if the mission absolutely had to go off on a certain date and time?”

  “Use the backup planes,” Jamieson replied. “You need one bomber to take out the target: launch three. Send one home after the last inbound refueling, then send another home just before ingressing Indian country. Fly the best one to the target and bomb the crap out of it.”

  Samson nodded; it was the correct response. If he had forgotten it, he was grateful to Jamieson for pointing it out—and angry that his superiors had forced him to forget the basics of employing strategic air power. But the wheels were already in motion here; Samson was committed to following his own directives until they could be followed no more. “What
if you had only one bomber available?” Samson asked. “What then?”

  “Sir, I wouldn’t get forced into that predicament in the first place,” Jamieson said resolutely. “Don’t let the bean counters talk you into limiting your options in order to save money or reduce risk—as if they knew anything about reducing the risk to anyone but themselves. If you aren’t left with any options, recommend scrubbing the mission or find another way.” Just then the civilian came into the simulator control room, carrying his charts and checklists. “You’ll have to wait outside, sir.” But the guy didn’t move—and Jamieson noticed that his entire demeanor, his entire bearing, had changed. He didn’t seem like the quiet, contrite civilian bureaucrat anymore. “General?” the guy asked. “What about it?”

  Jamieson felt his face flush with anger. “I said wait outside, mister…”

  The stranger was still ignoring the Ops Group commander: “I need to know right now, General.”

  “Did you hear what I said, buddy?”

  “Tiger …” Samson interjected. Jamieson looked at the three-star general with a shocked expression—the stranger was practically ordering Samson around here! “I … we have something to ask of you.”

  “What’s going on, sir?” Jamieson asked. He turned to the civilian. “What’s your story, mister?”

  “This gentleman is … joining the 509th for a while, Tiger,” Samson began. “We’re going to take a B-2A bomber, load it with state-of-the-art precision standoff weapons, and fly bombing missions overseas—except they won’t be Air Force operations. We need a B-2A aircraft commander, preferably the best in the business—General Wright says it’s you, and I agree.”

  “What the hell is this, General?” Jamieson retorted. “Who in hell does he work for?”

  “You’re not authorized to reveal anything,” the stranger said to Samson.

  “I told you I wasn’t going to allow any of my people to commit to this project without full disclosure,” Samson said to the stranger. “Jamieson’s been cleared. We tell him, or the deal’s off.”

  The civilian looked at Samson, then at Jamieson’s angry, confused features, then nodded to Samson. “All right, sir,” retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Patrick S. McLanahan said resolutely.

  “In the vault.”

  The 509th Operational Support Squadron building was a huge three-story, 20,000-square-foot electronic vault, guarded night and day by humans and by a dazzling array of electronic eyes and sensors. The reason: the OSS received real-time intelligence information from all over the world and processed it continuously, building and refining a series of preplanned strike packages for the B-2A stealth bomber and other long-range bombers. When the Russians moved an SS-21 missile from one launch site to another, or when Iran deployed a new fighter, or a new terrorist base camp in Sudan opened, or a new surface-to-air missile site in China was activated, the computers in the OSS adjusted mission charts, flight plans, strike routings, target lists, and threat predictions on dozens of computerized mission packages. If the stealth bomber crews were tasked to perform a strike mission, the 509th OSS would simply dump the latest flight plans and intelligence data into two videocassette-sized cartridges and print out the latest sixteen-color charts straight from the computer databases. The crews would load the cartridges into readers in the planes, and the mission would begin. Satellite uplinks to the B-2A bomber would allow crews to receive the latest intelligence data and update their mission computers continuously in-flight, right up to seconds before bomb release.

  There were several briefing rooms within the OSS building, where aircrews received pre-mission briefings and received the latest intelligence information. General Wright led Samson, Jamieson, and the stranger to one of the larger briefing rooms and posted a guard inside and out.

  His face impassive, his voice even and firm, the stranger got to his feet, faced Jamieson, and began: “What I’m about to tell you is classified top secret, Colonel.”

  “I figured that much,” Jamieson interjected, not quite ready to be intimidated by this guy. “Just tell me who you are and what you want.”

  “My name is Patrick McLanahan, lieutenant colonel, United States Air Force, retired,” the civilian said. “I …”

  “McLanahan! I recognize that name,” Jamieson said. “You were involved in the raid on Chinese forces in the Philippines a few years ago, like I was. The President gave you some award or commendation, but no one knew who the hell you were, where you came from, or what you did.”

  McLanahan nodded. “That’s right, Colonel.” Three years earlier, naval forces of the People’s Republic of China had attempted an invasion of the Philippines following the U.S. military withdrawal. Jamieson himself had led a force of three B-2A bombers on secret raids against Chinese air defense positions in what had been the first use of the B-2A bomber in combat …

  … at least, the first known combat mission for the B-2A.

  Obviously there had been others …

  “There was a fourth bomber, Tony,” Samson explained, as if he were reading Jamieson’s mind, “and it didn’t launch from Whiteman. It was in-theater before the Whiteman birds deployed to Guam, doing special reconnaissance and defense-suppression stuff. It-“

  “Defense suppression? Reconnaissance? We didn’t have any defense-suppression weapons on …” He finally stopped and made all the connections. “This guy … this guy went in ahead of the Air Battle Force bombers with defense-suppression weapons? I thought we took out the coastal radars and long-range ship-borne radars with cruise missiles.”

  “HAWC was tasked to employ several of its test-bed aircraft over the Philippines and to use some of its other development weapons and space technology to support air operations,” McLanahan explained. “The President wasn’t sure if he wanted to commit massive U.S. forces against the Chinese, so he sent HAWC units in secretly to soften up the Chinese air defenses, make them more vulnerable to U.S. air attacks. The idea was if they found themselves more open to attack, it might draw them back to the negotiating table faster.”

  “Obviously it worked—the Chinese navy backed off in a matter of days,” Samson said proudly. “It was a great victory for strategic air power.”

  “Well, HAWC can’t seem to get out of its own way lately, from what I hear,” Jamieson said with a sneer. “I heard rumors of a plane crash, another stolen plane, right?”

  “I’m not going to go into details about what happened at HAWC, Colonel,” McLanahan said, trying not to show the flush of anger and frustration—and the flood of awful memories—that rose up within him. “But HAWC was closed down, right?” Jamieson asked.

  “Tiger, drop it,” Samson warned.

  “That’s all right, General,” McLanahan interjected. “Yes, Colonel, HAWC was disbanded. Weapon-test operations went to Eglin Air Force Base; flight-test ops went to Edwards. Most of our more exotic airframes and weapons were either destroyed or placed in secure storage. Some were dispersed to active-duty units after cleaning out the classified stuff. In fact, the 509th was slated to get one of our experimental airframes, Air Vehicle 0 1 1. The test crews and technicians were reassigned; the senior staff members were given early retirements, including me.”

  “You don’t look too retired to me,” Jamieson said. There was a knock on the door at that moment, and two more Air Force officers were shown inside by uniformed and plain-clothes security officers.

  “Colonel Jamieson, I didn’t come here to be evaluated by you: I came here to evaluate you,” McLanahan said. He motioned to the newcomers and said, “Colonel Jamieson, this is Major General Brien Griffith, commander of Air Force Air Intelligence Agency; Colonel George Dominguez, the chief B-2A maintenance officer assigned to this task force; and Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Marcia Preston, my deputy and liaison officer with the office of the White House National Security Advisor. Colonel Dominguez, Colonel Preston, and I are the chief officers of a task force of the Air Intelligence Agency, code-named Future Flight. We’re going to take charge of
Air Vehicle 011.” Jamieson’s jaw dropped open in surprise as McLanahan continued, “We are going to use the B-2A to fly covert reconnaissance and defense-suppression missions in support of National Security Agency operations.

  “You’re CIA?” Jamieson retorted. “You’re a goddamned CIA agent?”

  “I’m a crewdog, not a CIA agent,” McLanahan said.

  “You’re a contractor, a former crewdog working for the CIA,” Jamieson corrected him. “You got canned because of some fiasco at HAWC, so now you sell your services to the guys with more money than brains-“

  “You don’t know shit about me or my mission, Colonel!”

  “I don’t fucking care to know!”

  “All right, both of you, shut up,” General Samson interjected.

  “Colonel, you listen to what this man has to say. I’ll give you an opportunity to talk. Now you listen.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jamieson relented. “Sorry, but I’m a little confused and a little angry that I’m being ‘volunteered’ for some illegal ops. So what does this Future Flight want with me?”

  “General Griffith is taking command of Air Vehicle 01 I and assigning it to Future Hight,” McLanahan explained. “My job is to assist Colonel Dominguez in equipping it, then to recruit, train, and fly reconnaissance and defense-suppression missions in the Middle East. I’ve chosen you to be my aircraft commander.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been tasked with forming a group that can support secret high-risk deep-strike and reconnaissance operations worldwide.

  The B-2A stealth bomber is the best strike platform out there; the President and the National Security Council agree. I’ve been tasked to recruit B-2A flight and support crews from the active-duty ranks, among others, to support group operations.”

  “You mean, you’re forming a secret squadron to fly B-2A bombing missions?” Jamieson asked incredulously.

  “That’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard. Pardon me, General, but I don’t believe what I’m hearing here’ “You go ahead, Tiger,” Samson said, fixing McLanahan with a satisfied smile.