Battle Born Page 9

  "Incredible, Earthmover, just incredible," Hayes exclaimed. "I can't believe we had anything in the budget to make design changes and upgrades like this."

  "It's been tough, sir," Samson said. "We've eliminated the B-52 and grounded one-third of the B-1B fleet to get the money to make any upgrades at all. Give us a budget, and we can field a squadron of B-l rocket killers in less than twelve months."

  "Less than a year?" Hayes echoed. "How in the hell is that possible?"

  "Because HAWC has turned into scrounger's central, sir," Samson explained. "We suck up every gadget we can get our hands on. Everything we have on this beast is off-the-shelf, and in some cases the shelf the stuff came from is mighty dusty. It's what we're forced to do nowadays to build new weapon systems-instead of designing an antiballistic missile killing system from a clean sheet of paper, HAWC looks at what we've got lying around the boneyard and depot warehouses. Be- yond that, it's just the raw talent and imagination of the troops we have around here."

  "So what's your proposal going to look like, Earthmover?" Hayes asked, excited now.

  "I propose the formation of a rapid-response antimissile squadron," Samson responded eagerly. "I'm looking for at least ten B-1B Lancer bombers sent here to Elliott Air Force Base, one per month. We modify the planes and train the crews simultaneously. My suggestion: get the B-ls from the National Guard, and use National Guard crewdogs. We train them, reequip them, then send them back to their home states to stand ready. That way, we have low acquisition costs, low personnel costs, and low upkeep costs.

  "But the trick," Samson went on, "is going to be finding the right combination of crews to man these Megafortress-2s. The bombers'll be operating behind enemy lines all the time, right in the bad guy's face. They have to be hunters. They'll have to hang around the forward edge of the battle area, expose themselves when a ballistic missile lifts off, then drive right down the enemy's crotch to cut off his balls before his erection goes away. We need to pick the most aggressive, most fearless crewdogs in the service. I mean, they have to be real hard-core mud-movers."

  For the first time that day, Hayes seemed concerned. "I don't know if that kind of flier exists nowadays," he said, "especially in the bomber force. Their entire career field has been raped so badly over the past six years that if we've got any heavy-iron aerial assassins anymore, it'll be a miracle."

  "Oh, they're out there, sir," Terrill Samson said confidently. "Let my deputy loose and he'll find exactly who we're looking for. They might seem ugly and unruly and not poster-child material, but they'll happily drive a two-hundred-ton Bone down a bad guy's throat and all the way out his asshole any day of the week. We'll see to that."

  The feelings of strength and urgency that had begun coursing through Victor Hayes when he stepped into the chase plane's cockpit that morning now turned overwhelming. They came from the sense of direction, purpose, and urgency created by Terrill Samson and the men and women in this isolated, secret desert airfield. These people weren't afraid of getting into trouble, rocking the boat, or busting the budget. All they cared about was doing the job. They identified a problem, devised a solution, and built the right weapon for the task. They never gave a thought to how what they did would look on an effectiveness report, evaluation, news article, or budget analysis.

  "Do it, Earthmover," Hayes said excitedly. "Get started ASAP. I don't know how I'll find the money, but I'll find it. Get your guy to find the hardware and the crewdogs, and I'll back your play. I think we're about to set the ballistic missile weenies of the world back on their asses big-time."

  NEVADA AIR NATIONAL GUARD TRAINING

  CENTER, RENO, NEVADA

  LATER THAT DAY

  Tall, athletic, with dark brown eyes and brown hair, Lieutenant Colonel Rebecca "Go-Fast" Furness, commander of the 111th Bomb Squadron, Nevada Air National Guard, had the intelligence of a physician, the spirit and determination of a police officer^ and the looks of a model. But her life had always revolved around flying. Men, career, a decent living, and excitement were all good things to have-but flying was her one and only true love.

  She had graduated from the University of Vermont with an Air Force ROTC commission and attended Air Force flight school at Williams Air Force Base, Arizona, graduating in 1979 at the top of her class. All top pilot graduates, including women, had their pick of assignments-just as long as the women didn't choose any combat flying assignments. As a subtle sign of protest, Furness requested the FB-111A Aardvark supersonic bomber, but accepted the KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling tanker with the Strategic Air Command-she knew the bomber was never an option. She set out to show she was worthy of the best assignment and quickly proved her exceptional flying skills and dedication. She cross-trained to the coveted KC-10A Extender tanker-transport, the military version of the DC-10 airliner, and tore up the program there too, quickly becoming a flight commander and instructor pilot.

  It was Desert Storm that changed her life. Rebecca Catherine Furness was in command of a KG-10 tanker flight over Saudi Arabia when a call came in about an F-111 bomber suffering massive battle damage. The bomber had numerous fuel leaks, and its crew was only minutes away from having to eject over Iraq. Furness took her KC-10 more than a hundred miles inside Iraq, dodging fighters and surface-to-air missile sites to refuel the bomber, and gave its crew the chance it needed to fly into friendly airspace.

  As a reward, Furness achieved her lifelong dream she became the Air Force's first female combat pilot. She accepted a Reserve assignment with the 394th Air Battle Wing, Pittsburgh, New York, flying the RF-111G Vampire reconnaissance/attack fighter-bomber. Her unit was the first to see action in the Russia Ukraine conflict when the Vampires were deployed to

  Turkey to help defend Ukraine from Russian imperialists seeking to reunite the old Soviet Union by force. She earned her nickname, "Go-Fast," as a result of her tenacious, fearless flying over Turkey, the Black Sea, Ukraine, and Russia, including an attack on Moscow itself.

  The Air Force grounded the RF-111 bombers shortly thereafter, but they didn't dare try to ground Rebecca Furness. She sat still long enough to complete Air command and Staff College and the Army War College, then went after her next career dream-a flying command of her own. She commanded a B-1B Lancer flying training squadron in Texas, then was offered command of a T-38Talon flying training wing in Arizona. That didn't suit her one bit. She had had enough of training units and wanted a combat command.

  She found one in the Nevada Air National Guard. When the unit traded in its C-130 Hercules transports and became the third Air National Guard B-l bomber unit in the United States, she applied for a job. She was by far the best-qualified applicant, and the state of Nevada made her ambition reality. In a very short time, her unit had won the Proud Shield Bomb Competition and was recognized as the best bomber unit in the United States military. Until now.

  "Well, well," Lieutenant Colonel John Long exclaimed as he and Furness entered the B-1B Part-Task Training Facility with six crew members-two new ones, one DSO and one OSO, and two simulator operators. "Look who's here, boss. Ejection boy."

  "What?" Furness took a look at the man in the pilot seat of the simulator cab and felt her heart pounding.

  "We should welcome his ass back from the hospital," Long said sarcastically. The air-conditioned room grew frostier still.

  Furness hesitated, happiness, concern, and fear tearing at her all at once. Here she was, her dreams of becoming the Air Force's first female combat pilot and achieving a combat command not only realized but at the very finest level-and it had all begun to crumble. In the weeks since the B-1B bomber crash that took the lives of three good men, the 111th Bomb Squadron of the Nevada Air National Guard was tearing apart-and sitting in the simulator cab before her was the man they blamed for it.

  Major Rinc "Rodeo" Seaver was dressed in full flying gear, flight suit and boots, his short-clipped hair the only visible indication of his four weeks in the hospital after his ejection from the B-1B in April. />
  "Hi, boss," Seaver said. He did not stop what he was doing. "Okay, Neil," he said on the intercom, "reset me back to the third target and get ready to plug in faults G-seventeen and E-twenty again."

  "What the hell are you doing in here, Seaver?" Furness demanded. "You're not due back from sick leave for another two weeks. And what are you doing in the sim? You weren't on the schedule."

  "I feel pretty good, boss," Seaver said. He flexed his right shoulder experimentally, trying hard not to grimace from the pain. His right shoulder had hit the edge of the upper escape hatch during the ejection sequence, causing him to tumble wildly as he left the stricken aircraft. The tumble had made him lose precious altitude during ejection. The rocket motor blasted him down instead of up, and he had hit the B-l's right elevator at the attach point to the vertical stabilizer. Luckily, his steel ejection seat took most of the force of the collision, and his chute still opened properly. He underwent reconstructive surgery, three weeks of rest, and one week of in-hospital physical therapy; he was still undergoing daily physical therapy and doing as much swimming as his body could stand. But he was ready and anxious to get back on flying status.

  "I got tired sitting on my butt," Seaver explained. "I couldn't stand being cooped up in the house one more day. I called Neil and he said the box was free for a couple hours, so I thought I'd play around. We've been experimenting with various malfunctions that I think occurred on my last flight, and I think I got it."

  John "Long Dong" Long, Furness's squadron operations officer and second-in-command, looked daggers at Seaver. Arrogant as always, he thought. It was one way, and not an uncommon one, of seeing Rinc Seaver. He was tall, thin, wiry, with bony features and vivid green eyes, a second-generation American, born in Nevada, whose family had emigrated from Wales during the Depression. Seaver's entire military career was a study in perseverance and raw determination, a series of ups and downs that would have crushed a lesser man. From childhood, his dream had been to fly the hottest military jets in combat, to lead a squadron of attackers to fight in a decisive battle that would decide the fate of nations and defend his homeland. Movies like Midway and TV shows like Baa Baa Black Sheep cemented that idea firmly in his head. He visualized strapping himself into his futuristic jet, lifting off a runway as the sneak attack was under way, then battling through waves of enemy defenders until the enemy command center was in his bombsights. He went to the annual Reno National Championship Air Races, where the dozens of vintage World War II fighters roaring overhead reinforced the thrill of flying, the thrill of the hunt, the thrill of victory.

  Rinc Seaver decided the road to fulfilling that dream was a civilian pilot's license, so when he was fourteen, he began working to raise the money for flying lessons. He received his pilot's license on his sixteenth birthday, and it was the happiest moment of his young life. But no one told him until it was too late that the way to the hot military jets was through good grades and good SAT scores, not hours in a logbook. Ask him any question about aerodynamics or FAA commercial pilot regulations and he could write a book or teach a class on it; ask him about elementary calculus and he was lost. His average grades and average SAT scores-he took the test three times-denied him his hope of admission to the Air Force Academy.

  Now desperate to make up for lost time, Rinc enrolled in the University of Nevada at Reno and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. He turned down dozens of offers from companies all over the world-a young engineer with a commercial pilot's license was rare indeed-and applied for and won a place at the Air Force Officer Training School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. After that came a pilot training slot, one of only a handful awarded to OTS "ninety-day wonder" graduates.

  He graduated with honors and was one of the first Air Force second lieutenants to be selected to fly the coveted FB-111A Aardvark supersonic bomber for the Strategic Air Command. The FB-111 was an elite showpiece assignment-there were fewer than fifty line Aardvark pilots in the entire U.S. Air Force. But the SAC version of the F-111 fighter-bomber never went to fight in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, so Seaver never saw any combat. And his FB-111 assignment ended less than two years later, when the Aardvarks were retired from service, a victim of budget cutbacks.

  There were no other flying slots open during the steep force drawdowns of the early nineties, so Seaver transferred to the Aeronautical Systems Division, Special Projects Office, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, working as a project officer and weapons design engineer for the B-1B Lancer bomber. He helped develop a series of high-tech, almost science-fiction-like weapons for the bomber, earning accolades and high-ranking attention throughout the Air Force as a forward-thinking, innovative designer. But the Lancer was in danger of being unceremoniously retired as well, and funding for advanced weapons and upgrades was slashed. Seaver's job was eliminated virtually overnight. He attended Squadron Officer School and was promoted to captain, but his prospects were looking poor for the career in the military that he longed for.

  Without a regular commission or any recent flying experience, the young captain left the active-duty force, went home to Reno, and transferred to the Nevada Air National Guard. The Guard unit in Reno was one of the last to fly the RF-4 Phantom tactical reconnaissance jet, and Seaver saw his opportunity to fly a fast-mover once again. But he was a victim of the same old pattern that had dogged him before: the aged RF-4 was soon doomed to retire. When the Reno Guard got C-130 Hercules cargo planes, Seaver, disappointed but thankful to be back in the sky once again, accepted a part-time pilot assignment, flying one or two missions a week out of Reno-Tahoe International Airport.

  In between, he worked as a flight instructor and charter pilot in Reno, earning his Airline Transport Pilot rating and quickly accumulating more commercial flight time. He piloted every charter assignment that came his way, got as much sleep as he could, then worked equally hard as a C-130 "trash-hauler." He completed Air Command and Staff College and received his master's degree, both achievements very unusual for National Guard officers. Everyone thought he was crazy for chasing an unattainable dream; to someday be called back to active duty and fight in the mythical air battle he still dreamed about. But Rinc Seaver proved them all wrong. When the Reno Air National Guard transitioned from the C-130 to the B-1B Lancer bomber, he applied and was immediately accepted for pilot transition training and a fulltime Guard assignment. He was back in his element, and his star quickly rose. He was promoted to major three years below the zone and became the squadron's senior standardization/evaluation pilot. To top it all off, he led the fledgling 111th Bomb Squadron in winning the LeMay, Dougherty, Ryan, Crumm, and Fairchild Trophies in Air Combat Command's biennial long-range Bombing and Navigation Competition. "Aces High" became the first Air Force Reserve Component unit in history and only the second B-1B unit to win the coveted Fairchild Trophy.

  But Seaver's promotion and success did not sit well with most of the other Reno Air Guard crewdogs. Although he was clearly the most technically knowledgeable flier in the squadron-his pilot skills rivaled those of some of the veteran aircraft commanders-almost everyone saw him only as a young, cocky, know-it-all junior major with no life other than flying. What made him think he was so great? He had relatively little total military flying time, very little Bone time, and no combat experience. Some of the pilots he gave evaluations and check rides to had thousands of hours and many more years in service, and had flown combat missions in Desert Storm and even earlier conflicts, such as Operation Just Cause over Panama. As far as they were concerned, Rinc Seaver was an outsider and would always be one-forget that he was a native Nevadan and one of the first members of Aces High. Even after winning Bomb Comp, the old heads still considered him a there systems operator, not a real aviator.

  Rinc Seaver's answer to them was simple: go piss up a damned rope. He worked hard to be the best. He did his job with skill and dogged determination, just as he did everything else in his life, and he took no crap from anyone regardless of rank or flying
time. Even in the Nevada Air National Guard, where politics, influence, and family name meant almost as much as skill and dedication, Rinc Seaver-the name meant "determined warrior" in Welsh-took a backseat to no one. He developed a reputation as a brash, determined loner who liked to push the envelope as much as possible at every opportunity.

  Now he sat in the B-1B Part-Task Trainer, a computerized B-l flight simulator, with a pilot and OSO/DSO compartment side by side in nonmoving but otherwise fully realistic cabs, ignoring Long's glare. "Watch this," he said to Furness, about to recap the doomed flight. "Okay, Neil, hit it." Furness suppressed her irritation and nodded to him to continue. The PIT had full visual displays out the cockpit windows and a worldwide radar and threat display database, so the crews could fly anywhere in the world and get realistic terrain and geographic displays and readouts. A control console was manned by two instructors and a computer technician. The instructors could program thousands of different scenarios into each simulator session, re-creating the simplest orientation flights or the most complex wartime emergency procedures scenario imaginable. The simulator operated twenty hours a day, six days a week. Like most military units in this age of steep budget cuts, the simulator had more "flying" time than all of the unit's aircraft combined.

  The computer-generated visual display out the cockpit windows showed a vast expanse of desert, dotted with tall, jagged, rocky peaks. "Here we are at the Scud-ER target at Navy Fallen," said Seaver. "We hit two targets, but the damned squids jerked our chains and kept the emitters on and didn't simulate a kill, so