“Don’t give me that, General. Don’t tell me you don’t understand what I’m trying to do.”
“DreamStar is long gone, Patrick,” Elliott said. “It’s up to Air Defense to force it down or shoot it down. There’s nothing we can do—”
“Like hell, Brad. We’re gonna bring down that sonofabitch.”
The change that came over McLanahan was startling but somehow familiar. This was the McLanahan, “Mac” not Patrick, that he remembered from Bomb Comp and from the Old Dog mission eight years earlier — cocky, headstrong, defiant. All part of what had attracted him to the young navigator from the very beginning. The guy was also a pro. He knew it and everyone else knew it — he didn’t sugarcoat with politics or bravado or fake expertise. Some of that in his role as a project commander had been kept under wraps, but the crash of the Old Dog and seeing Wendy Tork — or rather as Hal had told him just moments ago, Wendy Tork McLanahan — lying half-dead in the ruins of the Megafortress, had transformed him back to what he’d always been …
“At max endurance the whole way he only had enough fuel on board to go as far as Mexico City,” McLanahan was saying. “With that max alpha takeoff he made, plus all that combat maneuvering, his range has to be much less. I say he’s gotta be on the ground somewhere …”
“So what can you do about it?” Elliott asked. “If he’s on the ground—”
“Why steal DreamStar, knowing that he can fly for only a few hundred miles before he has to abandon it? Unless he’s getting help, unless he planned to fly DreamStar somewhere where it can be refueled. And the nearest place obviously is Mexico, where he was chased.”
“You don’t know that. What if he’s just flipped out? What if he just wanted to steal DreamStar for a damned joy ride? He’s gotten to be so close to that plane, he thinks he owns it.”
“He shoots down the Megafortress for a joy ride?”
“ANTARES could have attacked the B-52,” Powell broke in. “It’s possible for ANTARES to press an attack right after an evasive maneuver — as part of an evasive maneuver. It could have happened without James ever knowing about it—”
“Look, all this argument isn’t getting us any closer to DreamStar,” McLanahan snapped. “Old Dog got shot down — it happened. James has got DreamStar, that’s a fact. And Cheetah is the jet that has any chance of bringing him down. We’ve seen what’s happened to the others. The instruments on Cheetah can locate DreamStar, on the ground or in the air. If he’s on the ground, I can direct our forces in on him. The Mexicans can yell, but I don’t think they’d really try to stop us. If he’s airborne we can engage him. Either way we need to get our asses in the air. Right now.”
Elliott hesitated. McLanahan might be upset but he was also thinking pretty damn clearly. The question was: what would the Joint Chiefs believe? Would they agree to let Cheetah, with McLanahan on board, try to chase down DreamStar? Obviously they had several squadrons of fighters out after him already, and Cheetah was almost as unique and as classified as DreamStar — too valuable to risk in a major fur-ball dogfight. Would they decide that everyone at Dreamland was nuts and close down the place?
“I need authorization first,” Elliott said. “I have to call Washington—”
“There isn’t time for that. Every minute we delay DreamStar slips further away from us.”
“You can authorize Cheetah to launch at any time, sir,” Powell suggested. “Let us get airborne and headed south. When you get authorization we’ll continue the pursuit. If we stay on the ground until you get the word we’ll never catch him.”
“This is an unauthorized mission. I don’t own these airframes — the Joint Chiefs and the Pentagon own them. They’re experimental aircraft, not operational interceptors. It’s illegal as hell for me to authorize you to take off and hunt down DreamStar or any other aircraft. Can’t you understand that?”
“Sure, and now let me try to make you understand, General. I’m just not going to let any of that stop me from bringing down DreamStar. James is a thief, a killer and either a spy or a traitor. I have the plane to bring him down. As far as I’m concerned all the rest is bureaucratic horseshit that can wait until after DreamStar has been destroyed or recaptured. Now, you can give me authorization to launch, and you can get permission for us to pursue DreamStar after we take off. You can play political games if you want. But we’re leaving, sir, with or without your blessing.”
Which brought matters to Hal Briggs. Would he support his commanding officer or his best friend?
“Don’t even think about it, Patrick,” he said. “I can’t let you go against the general’s orders. Not now …” But then he turned to Elliott: “Sir, I’m a member of this organization, and I agree with Colonel McLanahan. Let him take off and chase down that sonofabitch. It’s the best plan we have.”
“If I get authorization …”
Briggs took a deep breath. “Sir, you’ve never requested authorization for half the plans you cook up. Building that Old Dog ten years ago was unauthorized — you took a B-52 air-frame, ripped off the parts and put the thing together in secret. That whole B-1 bomber mission to Kavaznya was unauthorized. Launching the Old Dog was unauthorized. Continuing the mission was technically unauthorized, and so was penetrating Soviet airspace and attacking that laser installation. You did it, sir, because it had to be done and you had the people and the equipment to do it.”
“This is different—”
“Why? Because it’s the colonel doin’ the rule-breaking and not you? Let me make a wild guess here, sir — Colonel McLanahan here is sort of a carbon copy of Bradley J. Elliott about twenty years ago. He’s ready to go out there and kick some butt, just like you did more than once in your career. I read your bio, General …” He rushed on, afraid if he stopped he’d lose his nerve. “They stick a hot-shot ex-test squadron commander out in some abandoned Air Force test base in Nowheresville, Nevada. They tossed you out, right? You pissed someone off and they stuck you in a hole in the wall in Nevada to get you d t of the way—”
“Hal, I’m trying to be patient, but this isn’t getting us anywhere—”
“But you wouldn’t roll over and play dead, would you? You turned Nowheresville into Dreamland. The Pentagon started tossing iffy projects your way. What the hell, sir, if the projects failed you’d get the blame. You proved them wrong. You made the projects work — and not always by following the book and getting authorization — and you got the credit. Pretty soon every new piece of military hardware went through Dreamland … Okay, now you’re the man, General, and you’re lookin’ at the new Bradley James Elliott — Patrick S. McLanahan. He’s pullin’ the same shit you did twenty years ago.”
Elliott knew that was right. He had been drawn to Mac McLanahan from the start, not just because the guy was the best navigator in the Air Force, but because they seemed so much alike. He also knew he got a kick out of watching the transformation of Mac McLanahan — it was almost as if he was watching a videotape of what had happened with him. It had taken a disaster for Patrick to come alive, to rise above the bureaucratic morass. Now the real McLanahan had resurfaced, the one that once treated a bomb run in Russia like nothing much more than a late-night training flight in Idaho.
Elliott turned to McLanahan. “Mac, smoke that bastard. Whatever it takes, do it.”
Elliott barely had time to lower himself off the crew ladder before Cheetah’s left engine began to spin up to idle power. When Briggs reached up to pull the ladder off, McLanahan grabbed it.