Martindale shrugged and replied with a smile, “I’ll ask him. I’m the former president of the United States — I should be able to make some inquiries and get some briefings from his staff. Besides, Thorn believes in open government. He or his staff will tell me everything. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll just send my spies into the White House and find out everything my own way.”
“With all due respect, Rebecca, this is the most harebrained stunt I’ve ever heard of,” Colonel John Long, operations-group commander of the 111th Bombardment Wing, snapped. He was standing out on the underground flight line of Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base with Rebecca Furness, Patrick McLanahan, Dean Grey, and the ground team, getting ready to brief the ground crew prior to their flight mission. Long and Major Samuel “Flamer” Pogue were to fly in the second EB-1C, parked beside Rebecca’s, as the alternate mission aircraft.
“You’ve made your opinion plain to everyone, Long Dong,” Rebecca said quietly. “Keep it to yourself.”
“It’s my job to point out potential policy mistakes by our senior officers,” Long retorted, raising his voice so everyone could hear and plainly refusing to take the hint, “and this is one perfect example. Completely untested, unverified, a disaster waiting to happen.”
“We copy all, Colonel,” Patrick McLanahan interjected. He wanted to chew the guy out for voicing his opinion like that in front of the entire ground crew, but he didn’t want to quash debate, no matter how unprofessionally it was initiated. Instead he only glanced at Long, nodded, and said, “John, we’ve discussed this decision for two days now. We’ve staffed it up and down as best we could.”
“General, we had no choice but to meet your arbitrary deadline,” Long insisted. “I’m concerned that you’re more concerned with dazzling your friends in the Pentagon and meeting a deadline than with crew safety, and I’m afraid this will end in a real disaster.”
“You’ve made your view very clear,” Patrick said. “I’m taking full responsibility for this test. Your career won’t suffer if it fails.”
“I’m concerned about this wing, not about my career.”
“Then that will be a first,” Patrick said acidly. “Now, I strongly encourage you to keep your opinions to yourself unless asked directly for them. Is that understood, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir,” Long shot back. “Loud and clear, sir.”
Rebecca and Patrick finished their Form 781 logbook review and crew briefing, then began a walk-around inspection of the aircraft. The forward bomb bay held a rotary launcher carrying four AIM-150 Anaconda long-range, radar-guided, air-to-air missiles and four AIM-120 medium-range, radar-guided missiles. The aft bomb bay held a rotary launcher with eight AGM-165 Longhorn TV- and imaging-infrared-guided attack missiles. The center bomb bay held two AGM-177 Wolverine attack missiles loaded into air-retrieval baskets. Patrick knew that the Wolverines’ bomb bays each held four AGM-211 mini-Maverick guided missiles.
“I hate to say it, General, but Long is right — this is crazy,” Rebecca said to Patrick once they were out of earshot of the ground crew.
“It’ll work fine,” Patrick said.
“There is an army of engineers and test pilots at Edwards whose job it is to test stuff like this, Patrick,” she said. “Why don’t we let them do their damned jobs?”
“Rebecca, if you feel so strongly about this, why are you going along?”
“The same reason you’re going — because it’s our plan and our program, and we don’t put others in harm’s way unless we’re willing to take the lead and do it ourselves,” Rebecca replied. “Besides, they’re my planes, and if you crash one, it’s my ass. We have some skilled fliers in our unit, but they’re newborns compared to us. They’ve never been in a B-1 bomber that’s trying to kill them. But there are a dozen crewdogs at Edwards or Dreamland who would give a month’s pay to fly some test missions for us. Why don’t we just take the bird down there and let them do it?”
“You know why — because no one at Edwards or anywhere else will waste one gallon of jet fuel or spare one man-hour to work this project without a fully authorized budget.”
“Except me. Me and my budget are the expendable ones, right?”
“I’ve given you lots of opportunities to back out of this project, Rebecca,” Patrick said. He stopped and looked at her seriously. “You and John Long seem to delight in busting my ass and branding me as the bad guy, the one that breaks the rules but gets away with it every time. Fair enough — I’ll accept that criticism. But both of you can put the brakes on this at any time with one phone call to General Magness at Eighth Air Force or General Craig at Air Reserve Forces Command. You haven’t done it. You’ve chewed me out in front of every officer on this base. Long steps right up to the brink of insubordination without even blinking. He’s done everything but put an ad in the Reno Gazette-Journal.
“But you never made the call, and I think I know the reason: You’re hoping this works. Every new wing commander wants two things: for no one to screw up too badly, and to make a name for him- or herself in order to stand out above all the other commanders. In relative peacetime it’s even more important to shine. Long wants his first star so badly it hurts, and you can trade on your reputation as the first female combat pilot only so long.”
“That’s not true, General,” Rebecca said — but her voice had no force, no authority behind it. She knew he was right.
“We can debate this all day, but it won’t make any difference,” Patrick went on. “We have the skill and knowledge to make this work. But you’re the aircraft commander, the final authority. If you disagree, call a stop to it.” He waited, hands on hips. When she turned her flashlight up at the emergency landing gear blowdown bottle gauges, continuing the preflight, he nodded and said, “All right then, let’s do it.”
They finished their walk-around inspection, then climbed the steep entry ladder behind the tall nose-gear strut and made their way to the cockpit. After preflighting his ejection seat and strapping himself in, Patrick quickly “built his nest,” then waited for the action to start.
Rebecca joined him a few moments later. After strapping herself in, she pulled out her checklist, strapped it onto her right leg, flipped to the before apu start page, and began — then stopped herself. She ignored the checklist and sat back, crossing her arms on her chest in exasperation — and maybe a little bit of fear.
“Pretty bizarre way to go to war,” she muttered.
“Pretty bizarre way to go to war,” Dean “Zane” Grey muttered. He was seated at a metal desk inside the VC — virtual-cockpit — trailer, staring at two blank flat-panel LCD computer monitors. It was a tight squeeze inside the trailer. In the center of the interior were two seats in front of the metal desk; flanking them were two more seats with full computer keyboards, a trackball, and large flat-panel LCD monitors. On Daren Mace’s side, he had a “supercockpit” display — a twelve-by-twenty-four-inch full-color plasma screen on which he could call up thousands of pieces of data — everything from engine readouts to laser-radar images to satellite images — and display them on Windows- or Macintosh-like panes on the display. All other room inside the trailer was taken up by electronics racks, air-conditioning units, power supplies, and wiring. It was stuffy and confining, far worse than the real airplane ever was. It made Grey a little anxious — no, a lot anxious.