Stephen Coonts - Combat

And he didn’t have a runner’s chin. Norman could tell immediately if a guy took care of himself, if he cared about his personal health and appearance, by looking at the chin. Most runners had firm, sleek chins. Nonexercisers, especially nonrunners, had slack chins. Slack chins, slack attitudes, slack officers.

Norman marked Patrick S. McLanahan’s BTZ score sheet with a big fat “No,” and he couldn’t imagine any other panel member, even Harry Ponce, voting to consider this guy for a BTZ promotion. Then, he had a better idea.

For the first time as a promotion board member, Norman withdrew an Air Force Form 772—“Recommendation for Dismissal Based on Substandard OSR,” and he filled it out. A rated officer who didn’t fly, who was obviously contently hiding out at some obscure research position in Las Vegas twiddling his thumbs, was not working in the best interest of the Air Force. This guy had almost nine years in service, but it was obvious that it would take him many, many years to be prepared to compete for promotion to lieutenant colonel. The Air Force had an “up or out” policy, meaning that you could be passed over for promotion to lieutenant colonel twice. After that, you had to be dismissed. The Air Force shouldn’t wait for this guy to shape up. He was a waste of space.

A little dedication to yourself and dedication to the Air Force might help, Norman silently told the guy as he signed the AFF772, recommending that McLanahan be stripped of his regular commission and either sent back to the Reserves or, better, dismissed from service altogether. Try getting off your ass and do some running, for a start. Try to act like you give a damn …

Mother Nature picked that night to decide to dump an entire week’s worth of rain on Diego Garcia — it was one of the worst tropical downpours anyone had seen on the little island in a long time. The British civilian contracted shuttle bus wasn’t authorized to go on the southeast side of the runway, and Patrick wasn’t going to wait for someone to pick him up, so he ran down the service road toward the Air Force hangar. He had already called ahead to the security police and control tower, telling them what he was going to do, but in the torrential storm, it was unlikely anyone in the tower could see him. Patrick made it to the outer perimeter fence to the Air Force hangar just as one of the security units was coming out in a Humvee to pick him up.

Patrick dashed through security in record time, then ran to the hangar to his locker for a dry flight suit. Inside he saw maintenance techs preparing both Megafortress flying battleships for fueling and weapons preloading. Patrick decided to grab his thermal underwear and socks too — it looked as if he might be going flying very soon.

“What happened?” Patrick asked as he trotted into the mission planning room.

“An American guided-missile cruiser, the USS Percheron, was transiting the Strait of Hormuz on its way into the Persian Gulf when it was attacked by several large missiles,” Colonel John Ormack said. “Two of them missed, two were shot down, two were near misses, but two hit. The ship is still under way, but it’s heavily damaged. Over a hundred casualties.”

“Do they know who launched the missiles?”

“No idea,” Ormack replied. “Debris suggests they were Iraqi. The missiles were fired from the south, across the Musandam Peninsula over Oman. The warhead size was huge — well over five hundred pounds each. AS-9 or AS-14 class.”

“The Percheron couldn’t tag the missiles?”

“They didn’t see them until it was too late,” Ormack reported. “They were diving right on top of the cruiser from straight overhead. They were already supersonic when they hit. No time to respond. The Percheron is a California- class cruiser, an older class of guided-missile cruiser — even though it was fitted with some of the latest radars, it wasn’t exactly a spring chicken.”

“I thought every ship going into the Gulf had to be updated with the best self-defense gear?”

“That’s the Navy for you — they thought they had cleaned up the Gulf and could just waltz in with any old piece of shit they chose,” Lieutenant General Brad Elliott interjected as he strode into the room. He glared at Patrick’s wet hair and heavy breathing, and added, “You don’t look very rested to me, Major. Where’s Tork?”

“On her way, sir,” Patrick replied. “I didn’t wait for the SPs to come get me.”

“I guess it’s not a very good night for a romantic stroll on the beach anyway,” Elliott muttered sarcastically. “I could’ve used both of you an hour ago.”

“Sorry, sir.” He wasn’t really that sorry, but he tried to understand what kind of hell Brad had to be going through — stripped of the command that meant so much to him — and he felt sorry for Brad, not sorry that he wasn’t there to help out.

“The Navy’s officially started an investigation and is not speculating on what caused the explosions,” Elliott went on. “Defense has leaked some speculation to the media that some older Standard SM-2 air-to-air missiles might have accidentally exploded in their magazines. Hard to come up with an excuse for an above-deck explosion in two different sections of the ship. No one is yet claiming responsibility for the attack.

“Unofficially, the Navy is befuddled. They had no warning of the attack until seconds before the missiles hit. No missile-launch detection from shore, no unidentified aircraft within a hundred miles of the cruiser, and no evidence of sub activity in the area. They were well outside the range of all known or suspected coast defense sites capable of launching a missile of that size. Guesses, anyone?”

“How about a stealth bomber, like the one we ran into?” Patrick replied.

“My thoughts exactly,” Brad said. “The Defense Intelligence Agency has no information at all about Iran buying Blackjack bombers from Russia, or anything about Russia developing a bomber capable of launching air-to-air missiles. They got our report, but I think they’ll disregard it.”

“I wonder how much DIA knows about us and our capabilities?” Wendy asked.

“I think we’ve got to assume that Iran is flying that thing, and it’s got to be neutralized before it does any more damage,” Patrick said. “One more attack — especially on an aircraft carrier or other major warship — could spark a massive Middle East shooting war, bigger and meaner than the war with Iraq.” He turned to Brad Elliott and said, “You’ve got to get us back in the fight, Brad. We’re the only ones that can secretly take on that Blackjack battleship.”

Elliott looked at Patrick with a mixture of surprise, humor, and anger. “Major, are you suggesting that we — dare I even say it? — launch without proper authorization?” he asked.

“I’m suggesting that perhaps we should follow orders and return the Megafortresses to Dreamland,” Patrick said. “But I don’t recall any specific instructions about a specific route of flight we should take.”

“You think it makes any sense for us to fly from Diego Garcia all the way to the Strait of Hormuz and tell the Pentagon we were on the way back to Nevada?” Brad asked, a twinkle of humor in his eyes.

“We always file a ‘due regard’ point in our flight plans, which means we disappear from official view until we’re ready to reenter American airspace,” Patrick said. Classified military flights, such as spy plane or nuclear-weapon ferry flights, never filed a detailed point-by-point route flight plan — they always had a “due regard” point, a place where the flight plan was suspended, the rest of the flight secret. In effect, the flight “disappears” from official or public purview. The flight simply checks in with authorities at a specific place and time to reactivate the flight plan, with no official query about where it was or what it did. “Even the Pentagon doesn’t know where we go. And our tankers belong to us, so we don’t have to coordinate with any outside agencies for refueling support. If we, for example, fly off to Nevada and, say, develop an in-flight emergency six hours in the mission and decide to head on back to Diego Garcia, I don’t think the Air Force or the Pentagon can blame us for that, can they?”