Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 Page 2

  It took an entire hour for the votes to be cast, but the results were finally tallied and the announcement was made, soon for all the world to hear: independence.

  SOUTHBEACH, OREGON SATURDAY,

  17 MAY 1997, 0415 HOURS PT (0715 HOURS ET)

  As he had done for the past thirty-two years of his life, the retired U.S. Air Force general was up at four A.M., without the assistance of an aide, an operator, or even an alarm clock. He was a man who had always set the agenda, not followed those of others. He was accustomed to having everyone else get moving on his timetable.

  But now no one in a base command center was waiting for him, there were no “dawn patrol” missions to fly, no world crisis that had to be analyzed so a response could be planned. His uniform now was not a green Nomex flight suit or freshly pressed blue wool class As, but a flannel shirt, thermal underwear—one of innumerable pairs he had used in his flying days, in aircraft where keeping the electronics warm was more important than keeping the humans warm—hunting socks, hip waders, an old olive- drab nylon flying jacket, and an old Vietnam-era camouflage floppy “boonie hat” with spinners and lures stuck in it. He didn’t know that all those things in his hat had nothing to do with open-sea fishing, but it didn’t matter—it was part of the “uniform.”

  By force of habit, he put the hardened polycarbonate Timex aviator’s watch on his left wrist, although his own internal body clock was all he needed now; and he plucked the cellular phone from its recharging cradle, turned it on, and stuck it in his fanny pack, although no one ever called him and he had no one to call. For a long, long time, since assuming his first command more than twenty years before, leaving his quarters without a portable radio or a cell phone and pager had been unthinkable, and such habits die hard. The cell phone was something of a link to his old life, his old base of power. The old life had been stripped away from him, but he would not let it go completely.

  The weather in Oregon’s central coast matched the man’s mood— gray, cloudy, and a little depressing. The man had spent many years in the Southwest, especially southern Nevada, where they had more than three hundred clear, sunny days a year. Many times he cursed the sun and the oppressive heat it brought—one-hundred-degree days in April, lots of ninety-degree midnights, terrible jet performance especially in the high deserts—but right now a little sun and warmth would be very welcome. It was not looking good—typical low overcast, drizzle with occasional light rain, winds out of the southwest fairly light at ten knots but threatening to increase, as they usually did, to thirty to forty knots by afternoon.

  Not ideal fishing weather, but what the hell—nothing else to do except sit around and look at the mountain of unpacked boxes still cluttering his little mobile home in Southbeach, an isolated vacation and retirement village on Oregon’s central coast, about eighty miles southwest of Portland. The Air Force-contracted movers had delivered his household goods seven months before, but there they sat, virtually untouched. He saw a small hole the size of a pencil in the corner of one box marked “Memorabilia” and wondered if the mice were enjoying nibbling on the plaques, awards, photos, and mementos he had stuffed in there. At least someone was enjoying them.

  The man decided just to get the hell out and do what he had planned to do, and to hell with the bad memories and bitterness. Concentrating on his boat, the sea, and staying alive on the cold waters of coastal Oregon in freshening breezes would take his mind off the neglected remnants of the life that had been taken away from him. The prospect of catching a glimpse of a migrating pod of whales filled him with a sense of excitement, and soon he was speeding down the long gravel driveway, eagerly looking forward to getting on the water.

  It was a short drive north on Highway 101 to the marina, just south of the Yaquina Bay bridge. The marina’s general store had just opened, so he had his thermos filled with coffee, his cooler packed full of orange juice, fresh and dried fruit, and some live sardines for bait—he didn’t have the money to buy live mackerel or squid, which would really improve his chances. What he knew about fishing would embarrass himself if he tried to talk about it, but it didn’t matter—if he caught anything, which was unlikely these days in the fished-out waters of central Oregon, he would probably let it go. He filled out a slip of paper that explained where he was headed and how long he was going to be out—somewhat akin to filing a flight plan before a sortie—stuck the paper in the “Gone Fishin’ ” box near the door on his way out, and headed for the piers.

  His boat was a thirty-year-old thirty-two-foot Grand Banks Sedan, bought with most of his savings and the sixty days’ worth of unused accumulated leave time he had sold back to the United States Air Force. Made of Philippine mahogany instead of fiberglass, the heavy little trawler was easy enough to handle solo, and stable in seas up to about five feet. It had a single Lehman diesel engine, covered flybridge, a good-size fishing cockpit aft, a large salon with lower helm station, settee, and galley, and a forward cabin with a head/shower and a V-berth with decent but fish-smelling foam cushions. He turned on the marine band radio and got the weather and sea states from WX1, the Newport Coast Guard weather band, while he pulled off the canvas covers, checked his equipment and made ready to get under way—he still called it “preflighting” his ship, although the fastest he’d fly would be ten knots—then motored over to the pumps, filled the fuel and water tanks, and headed out of the marina into Yaquina Bay and then to the open ocean.

  There was a very light drizzle and a fresh breeze blowing, but the man did make his way up to the flybridge to get a better feel for the sea. Visibility was about three to five miles offshore, but the Otter Rock light was visible nine miles north. The waves were maybe a foot, short and choppy, with the first hint of whitecaps, and it was cool and damp—again, typical weather in Oregon for early summer. He headed northwest, using an eyeball bearing off the lighthouse to sail into the fishing area. When he’d first started sailing, he’d brought an entire bag full of electronic satellite navigation gear, backup radios, and charts for almost the entire West Coast with him, because that’s how he had prepared for a flying mission. After ten trips, he’d learned to navigate by compass and speedometer and left the GPS satellite navigation gear at home; after fifteen trips, by compass and tachometer and currents; after twenty trips, by compass alone; after twenty-five, by bearings off landmarks; just off feel and birds and whale sightings thereafter. Now, he could sail just about anywhere with confidence and skill.

  The man thought that perhaps flying could also be just as uncomplicated and carefree as this, the way pilot-authors Richard Bach and Stephen Coonts wrote about it, but in his ten thousand-plus hours of flying he had never done it that way. Every sortie needed a flight plan, a precise schedule of each and every event and a precise route to follow. Every sortie needed a weather briefing, target study, and a crew briefing, even if the crew had flown that sortie a hundred times before. Hop in and go? Navigate by watching birds and listening for horns? That was for kids, for irresponsible captains. Plan the flight, then fly the plan—that had been the man’s motto for decades. Now he followed birds and looked for whales. -

  Almost an hour later, just as the eastern sky began to show signs of sunrise, the man shut down his engine, threw a sea anchor out by the bow to keep pointed into the wind, poured a cup of coffee, stuck a granola bar in his shirt pocket, and got his gear ready for fishing. Halibut and salmon were running now, and he might get lucky with live sardines on a big hook with one-hundred-pound test and a little weight. He cast out about a hundred feet, couched the pole, set the reel clutch, sat out on deck surveying the horizon . . .

  . . . and said aloud, “What in hell am I doing out here? I don’t belong here. I hate fishing, I’ve never caught a damned thing, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I like boats, but I’ve been out here an hour and I’m bored. I’m wet, I’m cold, I’m miserable, and I feel like tying the fucking anchor around my neck and seeing exactly how long I can hold my breath underwater. I feel like sh
it. I feel like—”

  And then the cell phone rang.

  At first he was surprised at the sudden, unexpected noise. Then he was angry at the intrusion. Then he was curious—who knew his number? He’d left his home number on the little slip of paper at the general store, not the cell phone number. He was even outside max range of the Newport cell site—he didn’t think he could get calls way out here. Puzzled and still a bit peeved, he retrieved the phone from his fanny pack, flipped it open, and growled, “Who the hell is this?”

  “Good morning, General. How are you, sir?”

  He recognized the voice immediately, of course, and it was as if the sun had just popped out and the skies had turned clear and blue, even though it was still gray and cold and wet out here. The man opened his mouth to ask a question, answered it himself—dumb question; he knew they could find his number easily enough if they wanted—so remained silent.

  “How are you doing, sir?” the voice repeated.

  Always friendly, always disarming, always at ease, the man thought.

  This was obviously some kind of business call, but with this guy there was always time for business later. Always so damned polite, too. You work with a guy for, what, almost ten years, and even though there’s an age and rank difference you expect to be on a first-name basis and can the “sir” stuff. Not this guy, at least most of the time. “Fine . . . good,” Brad replied. “I’m doing . . . okay.”

  “Any luck out there?”

  He knew I was out fishing? That was odd. It was no state secret or anything, but he hadn’t told anybody he was fishing, or given out his phone numbers, or even told anyone he was living in a little trailer in Nowhere, Oregon. “No,” Brad replied.

  “Too bad,” the voice on the phone said, “but I got an idea. Want to do some flying?”

  The sun that had come out in his heart a few moments before was now setting his soul on fire, and Brad fairly leapt to his feet. The waders suddenly felt as if they weighed a thousand pounds. “What’s going on?” Brad asked excitedly. “What are you up to now?”

  “Look to the south and find out.”

  Brad did—and saw nothing. He had a brief, sinking feeling that this was all a hoax, some complicated and brutal joke . . .

  ... but then he felt it, that sound, that feeling. It was a change in the atmosphere, an electricity flowing through the air stirring and ionizing the moist sea breeze. It felt like an electric current flowing through nearby high-tension power lines, a snap of unseen force that made little hairs stand up on your skin. Then you feel the air pressure rising, of a thin column of air being pushed ahead like air streaming out of a giant hypodermic needle aimed right at you, the plunger being pushed by what could very well be God’s thumb, but was, Brad knew, a very human construct . . .

  . . . and then the overcast parted and the clouds disgorged a huge black aircraft. It was low, pointed, and very deadly-looking. Brad expected it to roar past him, but instead it hissed by like a giant ebony viper on the move across a jungle floor. Only when the monstrous vehicle had zoomed past him, barely a hundred feet above the Pacific and almost directly overhead, could he hear the thunder of its eight turbofan engines ... no, Brad realized with faint shock, not eight, only four engines, but four huge engines. The aircraft banked hard to the left, showing its long, thin fuselage, its long, low, swept-back V-tail ruddervators, its wide wings tipped with pointed tip tanks—and yes, it carried weapon fairings on its wings, stealthy pods that enclosed externally-carried weapons. It was not only flying, but the damned beautiful creature was armed.

  “What do you think, Brad?” retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Patrick McLanahan asked on the cell phone. “You like it?”

  “Like it?” retired Air Force Lieutenant General Bradley James Elliott gasped. “Like it? Its the ...” He had to be careful—last he knew, the EB-52 Megafortress defense-suppression and attack bomber was still highly classified. “. . . its flying again!”

  “It may be the only model flying in a few months, Brad,” McLanahan said. “The Air Force let us play with a couple. We need crews to fly them and commanders to organize a new unit. If you’re interested, climb aboard the Gulfstream that’ll be waiting for you at Newport Municipal in two hours.”

  “I’ll be there!” Elliott shouted as the Megafortress climbed back into the overcast and disappeared from view. “I’ll be there! Don’t you dare leave without me!” Bradley James Elliott dropped the phone onto the deck, quickly stepped forward to the bow, began reeling in the sea anchor, swore because it wasn’t coming in fast enough, then simply detached it from the bow cleat and dropped it overboard. He did the same with the fishing rod. The cold diesel engine was cranky and wouldn’t start on the third try, but thankfully it started on the fourth, because Elliott was ready to jump out and run all the way back to Newport. After seeing the Megafortress again, a new Megafortress, he felt light and happy enough to give walking on water a try.

  It was back. It was really back . . . and so, with the grace of God, was he.

  OVER THE SOUTH CHINA SEA, TWO HUNDRED MILES

  SOUTHWEST OF PRATAS ISLAND

  SUNDAY, 18 MAY 1997, 2200 HOURS LOCAL (17 MAY, 1300 HOURS ET)

  “Doors coming open! Stand by! All hands, secure loose items and prepare for exposure!”

  The rear cargo doors of the Yunshuji-8C cargo plane motored open at one hundred and twenty seconds time-to-go in the countdown. Admiral Sun Ji Guoming, deputy chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army of the Peoples Republic of China, was standing in the forward section of the cargo plane as the temperature of the cargo hold, already below freezing, suddenly dropped nearly fifty degrees almost in the blink of an eye. The ice-cold wind swirled around the huge cargo hold, tugging at legs and arms as if trying to pull the humans out into the frigid sky. Yes, it was mid-May over the generally warm, relaxing South China Sea, but at 30,000 feet just before midnight, the air, rushing into the plane at over a hundred miles an hour, was still bone-snapping cold. The roar of the Y-8C’s four Wojiang-6 turboprops, at 4,250 horsepower per engine, was deafening even in the thin air.

  The senior naval officer, like the other engineers and technicians in the cargo bay, was dressed in a sub-Arctic snowsuit, layered over an oceangoing exposure suit that was required to be worn anytime they were flying outside safe gliding range of land. Sun also wore a fur-lined aviation helmet with an oxygen mask and cold-weather anti-fog goggles. Sun marveled at some of the soldiers working on the cargo inside the plane— they wore parkas and boots but no gloves, and they took only occasional gulps of 100-percent oxygen from the masks dangling down on the sides of their faces as they worked. These men, obviously born in the punishing cold and high altitudes of Xizang and Xinjiang Provinces of western China, were very accustomed to working in cold, thin air.

  Sun Ji Guoming was one of a rare breed in the Peoples Liberation Army—a young, intelligent officer with vision. At the age of only fifty- three, Admiral Sun, known as the “Black Tiger” because of his noticeably darker, almost Indian-like complexion, was by far the youngest full flag officer in the history of the People’s Republic of China. He was at least fifteen years younger than any other member of the Central Military Commission and thirty years younger than his superior officer, General Chin Po Zihong, the chief of staff. Suns family were high Party officials—his father, Sun Jian, was minister of the State Science and Technology Commission, in charge of restructuring and modernizing China’s vastly outdated telecommunications infrastructure.

  But Sun had not earned his post merely by his family’s powerful Party connections, but by his utter devotion to the Party and to its leadership, first as commander of the South China Sea Fleet, then as former hardline premier Li Peng’s military advisor, then as chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), and now as first deputy chief of the general staff and certainly its next chief, possibly even the next minister of defense. The Black Tiger was truly one of the fiercest officers in the huge Chinese military.


  As deputy’ chief of staff. Suns main goal was to modernize the huge People s Liberation Army, to drive it into the twenty-first century. He had been executive officer several years earlier aboard China's most ambitious blue-water naval project, code-named EF5, the destroyer Hong Lung, or Red Dragon. The Hong Lung was an amazing warship, equal to any other warship owned by any nation on earth. The ship had been the spearhead of an ambitious plan by the chief of staff. High General Chin Po Zihong, to occupy several of the Philippine islands, and had been destroyed in fierce attacks by the United States Air Force and Navy, including bombardment from outer space. But until the final crushing blow, the Hong Lung had controlled the sea and airspace in the southern Philippines for hundreds of miles.

  That was the kind of military power China needed to succeed in the twenty-first century—and Admiral Sun Ti Guoming was going to make it his career to see to it that China developed the technology to meet the challenges of the future.

  “Sixty seconds to release! Navigation data transfer in progress. Pilots. maintain constant heading and airspeed and conform to prelaunch axis limits."

  The soldiers backed away from the cargo as the countdown neared an end. Sun did a count of the men in the cargo bay—six had gone in, and he counted six. plus himself. Accidents were easy and common in this kind of work, but it wnuld not look good for an accident to occur with the deputy’ chief of staff aboard.