Everyone in the room was thunderstruck. “What did you say, General?” Lafferty asked.
“You heard me,” Eyers said, the smile disappearing. “We’re going in with the Ukrainians to bomb Novorossiysk, Krasnodar, and Rostov-na-Donu, but after they finish having their little fun pretending that they’re actually contributing something to this war, we’ll take your RF-111s up along the Ukrainian border, up into Russia, launch a SRAM or two on the Russian bastard Velichko’s underground bunker at Domodedovo, and split for Lithuania. The Lithuanians are going to cover your retreat. We take out this base and the underground command center, and the air war is over for the damned Russians. The President wants to teach the fucking Russians a lesson, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
“We’ve been ordered to launch a nuclear strike against Russia?” Furness asked in complete disbelief. “Are you sure? We’ll start World War Three.”
“I see you’ve been spreading your pacifist bullshit along with screwing her, eh, Mace?” Eyers said with a laugh. “Yeah, we’ve known about you two since you arrived at Plattsburgh, Mace, you and your drug-dealing biker buddies. If you survive this mission, Mace, I’ll still see your ass hauled into prison for twenty years for associations with known international drug traffickers. I’m sure we can even trace your smuggling activities to right here in Turkey — I knew there had to be a reason why you had so many consecutive assignments here.…
“The President’s going to push this war to the next logical step, troops, and he wants us to spearhead the attack,” Eyers continued. “He gave the big prize to me.” He turned to Daren Mace, gave him a disgusted chuckle, and said, “Now we’ll see what you’re really made out of, boy. And just for laughs, guess who’s going to be your aircraft commander? How about Major Furness?”
“You can’t do that, General,” Layton insisted in protest.
“Excuse me, General,” Colonel Lafferty interjected, “but I’ll decide who crews these sorties. As senior wing officer, I should be the one who pilots that—”
“It’s already been decided,” Eyers said with a sneer, “and I don’t want to hear shit from any of you. Furness is a flight instructor and training flight commander — hell, Lafferty, she gives you check rides, for Christ’s sake. Furness is the best pilot, Mace is the most senior weapons officer. End of story. Lafferty, you’ll command the backup SRAM shooter, and you’ll pick the best four RF-111s you got to fly with you as SEAD antiradar escorts. The rest of the wing will be participating in the air strikes with the Ukrainians. I’ve got all your charts, your flight plans, your communications documents, and your intelligence material, and the RF-111s with your SRAM-B missiles should be arriving within the hour.”
Eyers turned to Mace, reached into his blouse pocket, extracted a red plastic sheath, and gave it to him. “Just to make sure, Colonel, I got you a copy of the executive order authorizing this mission. You’ll find the precise procedures for terminating your mission — no more second-guessing, no more chickening out because you think somebody screwed up. If you don’t launch the missile, it’ll be because you screwed up, you chickened out, or you were killed. I suggest you do your duty this time—if you have the guts. I’d hate to see the pretty major there splattered across some Russian peat bog because you weren’t man enough to get the job done. Now get out of my sight and get to work. You are dismissed.”
FORTY
Mace and Furness were preflighting their RF-111G Vampire in preparation for launching that evening. They were in a large semiunderground concrete shelter, but the large steel and concrete blast doors covering the hangar were partially open. The aircraft had just come from the United States, and it had been completely inspected and checked in a very short period of time. The internal bomb bay held the two AGM-131 SRAMs (Short-Range Attack Missiles), and the two crewmen were inspecting the weapon right now.
“I’ve seen these things for years now,” Furness commented as they crawled in under the bomb doors with a flashlight and inspection mirror, “but it seems — different this time. It’s like this thing is alive.”
They inspected the general condition of the weapon. The missile was rather small, with a triangular cross section and three stubby moving fins in the rear — the two missiles fit comfortably in the bomb bay with just a few inches on each side and about one inch between them. It had a soft rubbery outer layer that burned off as it flew through the air at over Mach-three to protect it and to absorb radar energy, making it “stealthier” than earlier models. The nosecap of the missile was hard composite material that covered a radar altimeter for arming and detonating the weapon. There was an inspection access door on the bottom of the missile, and they checked the missile settings together.
“Twenty-kiloton yield,” Mace recited. The missile was set for its lowest yield — the highest setting was a full 170 kilotons. “Primary fuzing is an air burst at five thousand feet, with a backup ground burst option. Dual motor burn for a high-altitude climb at Mach-three, then an inertially-guided ballistic flight path to impact.”
“Checks,” Furness said. She stuck the inspection mirror up between the missiles and shined the flashlight up on the right side of the missile. “Warhead safing plug’s been removed.” She checked the second missile, then handed the mirror and flashlight to Mace, who double-checked both weapons. “Man, I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she said; then she turned to Mace, realizing what she just said. “And you almost did it. That’s what you were carrying back over Iraq when you rendezvoused with me — nuclear bombs.”
“I was carrying two of these things,” Mace said uneasily. “They were X-models, modified for only a five-kiloton ground burst, no backup fusing option. But yes, I was going to launch one on a bunker south of Baghdad.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because the order was rescinded. They just didn’t tell us officially, but I knew it had been,” Mace replied. He told her about Operation Desert Fire, how the Scud missile attack on Israel was mistaken for a biological-chemical attack, how his mission was executed. “It was obviously a screw-up — Coalition planes everywhere, hundreds of them right over ground zero. I would’ve fragged all of them. I withheld the launch — kept the doors closed until the missiles timed out. Eyers was in charge. He didn’t plan it properly, and sold the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President a bill of goods. General Layton was the air boss. He knew there was a problem, knew that the execution order had to be terminated. When the coded terminate order didn’t come through, he tried to terminate me by broadcasting in the clear. I listened, and I terminated. I got nailed for it.”
“But you did as you were ordered to do.”
“Not in Eyers’ twisted mind,” Mace said. “I disobeyed a lawful order. Only General Layton kept me out of prison.”
Furness fell silent for a moment, stung by the enormity of what he had experienced — but there was still one last unanswered question. “Would you have done it?” she asked him. “Would you have launched? If there was no terminate call, no friendlies in the area — would you have done it?”
“Rebecca, I think that’s a question every crewdog has to answer for themself.”
“I need to know, Daren,” she said. She reached out to touch the gray missile hanging before her, but pulled her hand away as if she could feel the radioactivity pulsing within its fuselage. “I need to know … because I’ve never had to face it. I wonder if I can.”