Patrick turned and found Lieutenant Colonel Rebecca Furness standing right behind him. She was every bit as attractive as her official photos, but that took away none of the iron in her voice. Back when she was flying the RF-111G Vampire reconnaissance/attack planes as a flight leader and the Air Force’s first female combat pilot, Furness had earned the appellation “the Iron Maiden.” Patrick could see right away that it was deserved.
“We need to talk, Colonel,” Patrick said, allowing his eyes to survey her body.
Furness didn’t react — but John Long did. “Hey, asshole,” Long said angrily, “the lady said scram. You better leave or we’ll help you out.” A few of the squadron members started to move closer to the stranger.
“Colonel Long, sit down and relax,” Patrick suggested, continuing to stare at Furness. “We’re going to be working together for a long time — if you’re lucky.” He turned, went over to one of the slot machines, put in a quarter, and pulled the handle. A ten-dollar winner dropped a satisfying tinkle of coins into the tray. “Looks like I’m pretty lucky. You guys aren’t. Or maybe that’s all you guys are — just dumb lucky.” He left the money in the tray.
“Who the hell are you?” Furness demanded.
“My name is McLanahan, Colonel. Brigadier General Patrick McLanahan. From Air Force headquarters. General Hayes’s staff.” There was a startled silence in the room at the news that a one-star general had walked into the middle of their “unit training session.”
“I see,” Furness said. “Do you have ID, General? Orders?”
“Yes,” McLanahan replied. He withdrew a set of orders and his green Air Force ID card.
Furness checked the card and scanned the orders, her eyes narrowing in confusion. They were the shortest set of TDY orders she’d ever seen. She handed them to John Long. “These orders don’t say shit,” Long said. “It’s just a bunch of account codes.”
“I’d like something that tells me what you want with my squadron on my base, sir,” Rebecca said.
“Okay.” Patrick reached into his pocket, pulled out a tiny cellular telephone, and tossed it to Furness. She caught it in surprise. “Speed-dial one for General Bretoff in Carson City.” Adam Bretoff was the adjutant general of the state of Nevada, the commander of all Army and Air National Guard forces in the state. “Speed-dial two for General Hayes at the Pentagon. Speed-dial three for the secretary of the Air Force. Speed-dial four for the secretary of defense.”
Furness looked at the phone, then opened it and looked at the keypad. “Who’s speed-dial five?” she asked flippantly.
“Try it and find out, Colonel. But be very polite.”
Furness glanced at McLanahan. “I’ll call your bluff, General,” she said, then hit some buttons. She was surprised to hear the beeps of a digital scrambler. A moment later she heard “Bretoff here and secure. Go ahead.”
Furness swallowed in disbelief, unable to control her surprise. She recognized the adjutant general’s voice immediately — the call went right to the secure phone on his desk, not to the comm center, his aide, or a clerk. This guy was carrying a secure cell phone — she didn’t even know they existed! “Colonel Furness here, sir.”
“Problem, Rebecca?”
No pleasantries, no chitchat. She decided that the other speed-dial buttons on the phone were too hot to even think about right now. “Just verifying the identity of the gentleman who was sent over here this afternoon.”
“Are you secure?”
Furness stepped as far as she could away from the noisy video poker machines. “Yes, sir,” she replied.
“McLanahan, Patrick S., brigadier general, Air Force,” Bretoff said. “Came from the chief of staff’s office. Identity verified. Is he there already?”
“Standing right in front of me now, sir. I’m using his cell phone.”
“You’ll get a classified memo first thing in the morning informing you about his arrival,” Bretoff said. “Frankly, I’m not sure what he wants, but whatever it is, give it to him.”
“His written orders don’t say anything about what he’s doing here.”
“He doesn’t need any other written orders. He’ll brief you on what you need to do. Give it to him. Anything.”
“Say again, sir?”
“I said, give the general anything he wants,” Bretoff repeated. “Treat him like the inspector general.”
“What’s his clearance?”
“Colonel Furness,” the adjutant general said with exasperation in his voice, “am I not making myself clear? Whatever the man wants, he gets. Full access. Full authority. Whatever he says, goes. He’s got a clearance you or I have never heard of. Two hours ago I had the governor in my office and the secretary of the Air Force on a conference call. They don’t even have this guy’s security clearance.”
“Sir, I understand what you’re saying,” Furness said, “but it’s damned irregular. I’d like written confirmation of my orders.”
“Written orders have been red-jacketed and placed in your personnel file, Colonel — and in mine,” Bretoff went on. “If you want, you can come down here to the vault and look at them. In the meantime, do whatever the man says. Understand?”
“Loud and clear, sir.”
“Good. And, Colonel?”
“Sir?”
“Don’t let anyone in the squadron go anywhere near the back room of that bar, the Quarry or whatever it’s called, the one you guys hang out at near the airport, until this guy departs,” Bretoff said. “The last goddamn thing we need is for a high-powered scalp hunter like McLanahan to see how depraved you characters are. In fact, I don’t want any of you near that entire establishment until he leaves. Try showing your faces in the SANGA club for a change. We don’t have all-night poker or play dollar-a-ball eight ball, but you might actually enjoy yourselves there anyway. Got it?”
Furness grimaced, and McLanahan smiled, as if he could hear everything. “Yes, sir.” The line went dead after another chatter of digital descrambling beeps. Furness carefully closed up the phone and handed it back to McLanahan.
“You don’t want to try any of the other numbers?” McLanahan asked. “It’s not too late to call Washington.”
“Boss? What’s the story?” Long asked, dumbfounded by the expression on Furness’s face.
“This is Brigadier General McLanahan, boys,” Furness said. She made introductions to all of the squadron officers in the room. “He’s going to be with us for a while. You are to extend him every courtesy and comply with each and every request as if it was an order from the adjutant general himself.”
“We should show him a little more courtesy than that,” someone said sotto voce.
“Knock that shit off, gentlemen,” Furness said, her amused eyes studying McLanahan. “Please excuse that remark, sir. Some of my crew have been on edge. We’ve had a lot of investigators and other unwanted attention lately…”
“Yes indeed — a dead crew and a smoking hole in the desert,” Patrick said. The smiles and whispered comments vanished, replaced by angry glares. He looked around and added, “Good to see you’re taking the accident and the corrective action seriously.”
“Of course we are. But you can’t just order men to forget about the deaths of their friends and fellow crew members, General,” Rebecca answered. “It takes time. Please understand — this unit has been through a lot lately. We all deal with grief differently.”
“I see. Well, I can help you through some of your turmoil a little, Colonel. I came here to administer a requalification check.”