Except for a sudden brief loss of the nosewheel steering system in Rinc’s plane, which was corrected immediately by recycling the system, the flight taxied out without incident. A large crowd of onlookers was up on the roof of both commercial airline terminal buildings at Reno-Tahoe International, watching the two-ship of B-1B bombers taxiing out for takeoff. All the commercial flights had been cleared onto the parallel runway to make way for the military flights, but several stopped to watch the Bones parade by. Almost everyone based at Reno International knew that the 111th Bomb Squadron was getting some sort of evaluation, and a few knew that these planes carried live weapons, so they recognized that this was something special.
They received a “last chance” inspection at the end of the runway by the supervisor of flying behind the steel revetments in the runway hammerhead. “Looks like you got a nick in the left nosewheel tire, Rodeo,” the SOF radioed via the maintenance officer’s intercom cord. “Must’ve happened when your nosewheel steering cut out.”
“Any cords showing?” Rinc asked.
“I see two cord belts.”
“Shit,” Rinc muttered. That meant an abort to change the tire. A Bone near max gross weight with a bald spot on a nose gear tire was not a good place to be. “Screw it. We’ll take it.”
“You sure about that?” Patrick asked.
“The book says we can take up to three cords—”
“But at gross weight?”
“It doesn’t give a gross weight restriction, sir,” Seaver pressed. “Besides, we’re forty thousand under gross right now. Three cords peacetime, five cords wartime. We can probably get a waiver for five. We should—”
“We’re going off station to a forward-deployment base that probably won’t have the gear we need to change tires,” Patrick said. “Better to get it changed now rather than take a broken bird to a forward bare-base.”
“This is our pre-D launch, General — we’re talking about Probability to Launch and Survive points,” Rinc emphasized. “PLS isn’t a factor once we get to our deployment base. But if we lose PLS points due to a late launch, we get hammered. We’ll be okay with two cords missing. You should know that the tires have twelve cord belts, and even with five gone we’ve got a wide safety margin. We’re still legal. Let’s get the hell outta here and go drop some iron.” Patrick hesitated. Seaver added irritably, “Unless you’re going to order me to get it changed.”
“You’re the boss,” Patrick said.
“SOF, I’m taking the plane,” Rinc said, nodding to his guest copilot. “Finish up and clear the runway for launch.”
“Roger dodger, Rodeo,” the SOF said. He finished his drive-arounds and found nothing else wrong with any of the planes. “Aces Two-Zero flight, pins and streamers pulled, doors closed, and you appear to be in takeoff configuration. Penetrate, decimate, and dominate. SOF is clear. Break. Reno tower, Aces SOF, clear me on three-four left for a last-chance runway inspection.”
“Aces SOF, Reno tower, clear on three-four left, report when off.” The SOF sped down the runway, making a last inspection for anything that might cause damage to the Bones during takeoff. Once the SOF cleared off the runway, it was time for departure.
Patrick had forgotten what a takeoff in the B-1B was like. He had flown lots of different aircraft, including supersonic bombers, but there was something different about the raw power meshed with the physical size of the Bone that made takeoffs even more spectacular in this plane than in any other.
As soon as Rebecca Furness in Aces Two-Zero started rolling, Rinc Seaver lined up on centerline, locked the brakes using his toes on top of the rudder pedals, then started to feed in power. The sound was muted, silky smooth, with no trace of rattle or “burping” as in the G-model B-52s Patrick used to fly. Rinc moved the throttles up to military power, paused to let all four engines stabilize, then cracked the throttles into afterburner range. He watched as the eight afterburner initiator lights illuminated, then released brakes and pushed the throttles to max AB.
Acceleration was rapid but not very dramatic in military power — but when those four huge afterburners lit and power was moved to max AB, the thrust and acceleration snapped Patrick’s eyes open. The ejection seat felt as though it came up and smacked him in the back of the head. He had felt afterburner kicks plenty of times, but usually it was just that — a kick and nothing more. In the Bone, a constant, steady pressure that forced him deep into his seat followed that nice hard kick. It was like flying in a rocket ship headed for earth orbit. Patrick hadn’t felt G-forces like that in a long time. The pressure and acceleration made his head spin — it seemed as if the deck was inclined at least forty-five degrees.
Seaver’s little “departure show” routine didn’t help Patrick’s stomach. Rinc lifted only about one hundred feet off the runway, pushed the nose over to hold that altitude, then raised the gear and flaps and swept the wings back to twenty-four degrees. He accelerated to well over four hundred knots — at max afterburner, it only took a few seconds — then, as he blasted between the twin towers of the Nugget Casino and the Hilton Hotel Casino, he wagged the wings twice before lifting the Bone on its fiery tail. Their 400,000-pound bird suddenly did become a rocket ship, headed skyward at almost ten thousand feet per minute. Rinc didn’t revert to a more conventional climb-out until passing twelve thousand feet, when he pulled back to military power at 350 knots. They leveled off at twenty-one thousand feet in no time.
John Long reported “tied on radar” and fed continuous position information on the flight leader, and the formation quickly joined up. After closing to tight wingtip formation to check one another out, Rinc extended to loose route formation so he could perform their checklists without having to concentrate too much on formation flying.
“How you doing over there, General?” Rinc asked.
“Fine,” Patrick replied.
“Heard some heavy breathing on interphone. Thought you might lose some of your box lunch.”
“Not a chance,” Patrick responded. “I’ll be with you on the TERFLW checklist in a minute. Crew, I’ll be on secure SATCOM. I’d appreciate it if no one monitors that channel until I let you know. Copy?”
“Sure,” Rinc replied. “Monitor GUARD and interphone, report back up. I’m starting the TERFLW checklist.”
“O.”
“D.”
“Thanks,” Patrick said. “Copilot is clearing off to SECURE.”
Patrick set the referee’s SATCOM channel into the satellite communications thumbwheels, clicked his communications wafer switch to SECURE, then keyed the mike button: “Firebird, Firebird, Aces Two-One.”
“Two-One, this is Firebird.” Patrick instantly recognized Luger’s voice on the scrambled satellite communications channel. “Authenticate Foxtrot-Uniform.”
There was a moment’s pause while Patrick looked up the response in his AKAC-1553 code book for the familiar “F-U” challenge: “Two-One has ‘Tango.’ Is this Amarillo?”
“Sure is.” Dave Luger was from Amarillo, Texas, and Patrick, from California, usually never let him live it down. Only months of concentrated Russian brainwashing and years of working as a Soviet bomber design engineer in Lithuania, where he was known to the Central Intelligence Agency as an American defector code-named “Redtail Hawk,” had made Luger lose his thick Texas drawl.