Patrick McLanahan looked at his assembled circle of friends and comrades-in-arms, and felt the pride and happiness well up in his heart. They were all together once again: the crew of the original EB-52 Megafortress, the “Old Dog,” minus its copilot John Ormack and its gunner Angelina Pereira; Hal Briggs, his friend and fellow warrior; Paul White, his former instructor turned high-tech rescue expert; Jon Masters, the boy genius whom Patrick had dragged out of the laboratories and corporate boardrooms to show him what defending your country and risking your life in combat was really about; Nancy Cheshire, the smart- mouth hard-as-nails test pilot who had been in combat in the Megafortress even more times than Patrick McLanahan himself; and newcomer Chris Wohl, the brooding, powerful Marine who suffered himself to be around all these Air Force techno-soldiers and who had shown them all what it was like to kill while looking directly into the eyes of the enemy instead of from the sky.
And, last but not least, they were all together with the beast that had started the whole thing ten years earlier — the modified B-52 strategic escort “battleship” they called the Old Dog. Over the past ten-plus years, they had done some incredible, mystifying, unheard-of things in the strange pointed-nose, V-tailed, fibersteel-skinned demon.
Now they were faced with their greatest challenge — to leave the protection and support of the United States military, fly to a strange new land, and attempt to turn the tables on a giant military superpower that was willing to risk a global thermonuclear holocaust to assert its domination. The odds seemed enormous.
“Guys, listen up for a minute, all of you,” Patrick McLanahan said. “I don’t mean to insult any of you, but I’m going to remind you that what we have done and what we are about to do are probably among the most dangerous things you will ever do or ever contemplate doing. If we succeed, you will not be rewarded for a job well done — in fact, you might find yourself in federal prison for a long, long time. My child…”
“Your… what, Mack?” David Luger asked incredulously. “Your child? ”
“Yes, my child—our child,” Patrick said, reaching over to take Wendy’s hand. “My child could grow up fatherless, or he could be born with his father in prison — in fact, he or she could be born in prison. And of course, we could all die successfully defending our country, and no one will thank us, or we could die in total obscurity, and it will be as if we never existed at all. I know we’re not in this business to get thanks from anyone, but I do know that we fly for our country and to preserve our freedom. Well, our country’s leaders don’t want us to do what we’re about to do.
“On the other hand, if we don’t do this mission and if we turn ourselves in to Sky Masters, Inc.’s, lawyers in Washington, we could have a pretty good chance of surviving lawsuits and court-martials and returning to our former lives with our fortunes and careers intact,” Patrick went on. “I think Jon Masters and I have enough friends in high places, including the White House, to go to bat for us. Between our political pals and our lawyers, I feel pretty confident that if we stop now, our careers and our company can survive all that we’ve done up until now, even including taking this airfield. So you see, you’ve got nothing to gain and everything to lose if we go on.”
“So what else is new, Patrick?” Hal Briggs deadpanned.
“If you’re done talking, Colonel,” Nancy Cheshire said, “I think we better get off this airpatch before someone happens by. Let’s go.”
Patrick McLanahan searched the faces of all those surrounding him — there was not one downturned eye, not one uncertain fidget, not one shred of doubt evident in any nuance or expression. They were all ready to fight. “Very well, folks,” Patrick said. He turned to Brad Elliott and asked, “You feel up to doing some flying again, sir?”
“You try to stop me, Muck,” Elliott responded. The retired three- star looked at his young colleague and protege with great admiration, but said nothing else as he headed back to the hangar to get ready to load and launch his bomber.
“Good speech, boss,” Nancy Cheshire said as she followed. “Corny as hell, but very inspirational. Made me weepy all over the damn place.”
“Thanks, Nancy. High praise coming from you,” he deadpanned. “And I’m not your boss.”
“Maybe you will be,” Cheshire said. “You sure sound like a commander giving a pep talk to the troops before stepping.”
“It’ll be all I can do to keep us out of prison, Nance,” Patrick said. “Try to keep the general straight.”
“No problem, Colonel,” Nancy Cheshire said eagerly. “See you on the other side.” She trotted off after Elliott.
“Dave, it’s you and me in the back,” Patrick said. “We’ll do a little on-the-job training on the equipment.” The eagerness and excitement in Luger’s eyes immediately took Patrick back to their heyday, winning trophies and building an unmatched reputation for themselves. Plus, they had a lot of damn fun — and, despite the danger they faced, it felt like it was going to be fun again. “Everyone else evacuates with Jon’s DC-10.”
“You still haven’t told us where we’re evacuating to, Patrick,” Jon Masters pointed out.
Patrick McLanahan smiled a mischievous grin that could have been directly cloned from Brad Elliott himself. “I’ll brief you just before we shoot the approach, Jon,” he said. “You’d probably want to stay right here and take your chances with Commander Willis and the federal marshals if you knew where we were going or how we were going to get there.”
“Hualien approach, Military Flight One-One,” Nancy Cheshire radioed. “Requesting GPS approach runway zero-three right.”
“Military One-One, Hualien approach, do not fly in the vicinity of the Republic of Taiwan or you may be fired on without further warning,” the precise but heavily Chinese-accented English-speaking voice responded. “All airspace in and around the Republic of China is restricted due to the air defense emergency. Say your PPR number.”
“Stand by.” Cheshire referred to a Post-it note stuck on the center multifunction display on the forward instrument console. “One-One has victor-alpha-one-seven-alpha-two-lima.” A PPR, or Prior Permission Required, number was standard operating procedure for most military installations, even halfway around the world on the island of Formosa, just ninety miles east of the Asian mainland. Any aircraft attempting to land at a base without a PPR would certainly be detained and its crew arrested — or worse.
“Hualien Approach understands,” the Taiwanese approach controller replied after a long pause, repeating the code warily, as if there was something very wrong. Hualien Air Base in east-central Taiwan was the largest Taiwanese military base on the east side of the island, the home of several Taiwanese Navy air and surface units as well as two Taiwan Air Force fighter-interceptor and fighter-bomber squadrons — at least it had been, until a nuclear-tipped Communist Chinese M-9 ballistic missile destroyed most of the base. Now it was a flattened collection of burned- out foundations and scorched aircraft revetments, with large blackened piles of metal here and there the only evidence that several dozen aircraft once were based there. Just three miles to the west, the Chung Yang Shang mountain range rose precipitously right up to 10,000 feet above sea level in just a few miles.