Nerve Center (11 page)

But something about the Megafortress kept him at bay. He could fly it, but he wanted to
fly
it—to master it, twist it over and around and in and out of knots. He wanted to get out on the edge of the envelope with it. The flying battleship was the future of the Air Force.

He wanted to prove he was a great pilot. He wanted to prove…

That he was better than his daughter?

The idea shot into his head like the snap vector from an AWACS controller. Dog pushed up out of his seat, squeezing out of the Megafortress’s cockpit. He didn’t have to prove anything to anyone, especially himself, and definitely not Breanna. He had other things to do than fiddle around in the sky.

Cheshire met him on the ladder down to the lower deck. “Colonel,” she said. “You’re leaving?”

“Sergeant Gibbs will be waiting. What did you want to say?”

Cheshire leaned against the bulkhead and began talking about the Megafortress project, saying that the engine tests were taking much longer than anticipated. The mechanical delays were only part of the problem. She needed more engineers—a common and justified complaint. The decision to develop the Megafortress as a mother ship for the Flighthawks was also stretching her people and the planes to the max.

“We only have the three planes,” said Cheshire. “Raven, Bear Two, and Mo. Galatica, the AWACS tester, won’t be on board until at least next week.”

Bastian nodded.

“We need at least two planes to complete the engine tests. Bear Two is needed for static tests, and Galatica still has to go through the usual flight trials. We won’t have the others for at least three weeks. The tanker program is already on hold, and the backlog on the avionics tests is thicker than a phone book.”

“The Flighthawks remain a priority,” Dog told her, guessing what she was going to suggest. “Raven has to stay with them.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest we stop using the EB-52 as the Flighthawks’ mother ship,” she said. “Though I’ve heard the control gear won’t fit in the Megafortress weapons bay once you reach eight U/MFs.”

Obviously she’d been talking to Rubeo.

“That may be a problem,” said Bastian. “That’s why we’re in business—to solve those sorts of things.”

Damn Rubeo. He was throwing every possible objection in the way of ANTARES.

“We can’t solve it if we don’t have the resources,” said Cheshire.

“Pete Rensling suggested using the 777 airframe as the ANTARES mother ship,” said Dog. “It has a huge bay, and the fuel tanks that would be needed for refueling were already part of the tanker testing.”

“That’s not a bad idea, if the wings could take it.”

“Being studied right now. If it works, that will lessen some of the burden on you. In the meantime, I’ll expedite more conversions as part of ANTARES.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” said Cheshire. She was smiling broadly. “Now how about more pilots?”

“I’m still working on that,” said Bastian. There were presently only six qualified B-52 pilots on the base; since even with the new flight computers it typically took two to fly a Megafortress, there was only one crew per plane. Two of the pilots were due to be transferred next week.

“You better be careful, Colonel. If you get any good, we may slide you into the rotation.”

“I’ll help out anyway I can,” said Bastian, smarting a bit from her tone.

“You sure you don’t want to take this run? I still need another pilot.”

“Maybe I will,” he said. “As a matter of fact, let’s go for it.”

Dreamland Handheld Weapons Lab
23 January, 0807

“LATE, AS USUAL.”

Danny grinned at the gray-haired woman in the white lab coat. Her frown turned into a smile, even as she shook her head and wagged her finger.

“Captain, you need a secretary to look after you,” Annie Klondike told him. She turned and began walking briskly toward the back rooms of the handheld weapons lab.

“You want the job?” asked Freah, falling in alongside. “You wouldn’t last twenty-four hours.”

Klondike shuffled toward the large room where the firing ranges were located.

“Annie, those new slippers?”

“Don’t get fresh.”

Klondike walked to a large gray box that sat in front of a series of drawer-shaped lockers. About eight feet wide and another six feet deep, the box came up to the diminutive weapons scientist’s chest. It seemed to be made of a very hard plastic material. Klondike put her palms on the top and the box began to move. Fascinated, Danny watched as the box pulled itself apart, a shallow section remaining behind the top.

“Opens only with my palm print and could withstand a one-megaton explosion,” said Klondike.

“This thing?” asked Danny. The shell material was no more than three inches thick.

“As long as it’s not a direct hit. Of course, if it was one of
my
bombs—”

“You do nukes too, Annie?”

“In my youth, Captain. I’m retired from that.”

“You shittin’ me?”

Klondike lowered her face, but kept her eyes fixed on him, as if she were a Sunday school teacher peering over her glasses. She sighed, then again shook her head, shuffling over to the table.

“At the moment, the Combat Information Visor must be attached to the Smart Helmets,” she said, turning her attention to the device Danny had come to inspect. “I have some hopes of miniaturizing it further, so that it can be used as goggles. I find the visor cumbersome, and I’m told some troops do not like the helmet.”

“It’s heavy,” said Danny. The so-called Smart Helmet included a secure com link and a GPS system. It could withstand a direct hit by a fifty-caliber machine-gun bullet from fifty yards—though that produced a hell of a headache. Klondike’s prototype visor added two additional functions: a long-range multi-made viewer, and an aiming screen for a specially adapted M-16.

The visor looked like a welder’s shield. It shifted the helmet’s center of gravity far forward when it was snapped on, promising severe neck strain.

“There are four native modes to the viewer,” said Klondike, reaching to cinch the chin strap. “They select on the right, zoom and back out on the left. They toggle through in sequence. One is unenhanced. Two allows—wait, let’s kill the lights.”

Mode Two was infrared. Three was starlight-enhanced. Four actually did not work yet; they were perfecting a graphics Geiger counter, which would allow the unit to detect radioactive materials from twice the distance as the “sniffers” or portable Geiger counters Whiplash now packed on NBC missions. But the gear wasn’t quite ready.

“I’d trade it for making it lighter,” Danny said, fiddling with the helmet.

“Well, it won’t make it heavier, because we hope to press the functions into a pair of chips. I’m sorry, Captain. The weight comes from the LED panes and the carbon-boron sliver-plates at the side,” she added. “We’ve actually lightened it about a pound and a half since we began. Notice how the slide here is almost round?”

“Oh, yeah, first thing I noticed.”

Klondike turned the lights on. “The helmet can accept inputs from external sensor systems, assuming they meet MAT/ 7 standards. You’ll need an RCA plug, but once you plug in you’re slaved to a Pave Low’s infrared, assuming the helicopter’s gear has been modified for an additional output. The host thinks it’s the original screen. Adjustment’s easy; we’ll have it put on your C-17 the next time Quick-mover goes in for a lube.”

While she was talking, Klondike had approached the gun drawers. These were locked with an old-fashioned key, which she kept on a string around her neck. She bent to one and opened it, then removed an M-16.

“I prefer my MP-5,” Danny told her.

“Captain, please,” said Klondike. “With all due respect to my friends at Heckler-Koch, submachine guns are meant to be sprayed, even theirs. A fine weapon under certain circumstances, but hardly a one-bullet, one-kill solution. Now come on or I’m going to miss my soap opera—or worse,
Jeopardy.”

The M-16A3’s laser sight had been replaced with a small, stubby bar that had only a small pinhole at the barrel end. Nudging a slider on the top of the gun activated a VSRT or Very-Short-Range FM Transmitter, which allowed the gun to communicate with the targeting screen. A pair of cursors appeared on the view screen; as the gun was aimed horizontally, the cursors merged. A tear-shaped ring appeared around the cursor, showing the probable trajectory if the shot deteriorated because of the wind or distance.

“The cursor is absolutely right on to two hundred yards in all conditions,” Annie told him after he’d put five bullets into the center of a target at three hundred feet. “But we haven’t been able to reliably compensate for weather conditions beyond that. Additionally, you can’t aim through water or glass as you can with the sniper rifle. But it’s an improvement over the laser dot, both in distance and detectability. And it has the added bonus of persuading men to keep their helmets on,” added Klondike, “no matter how heavy they may be.”

“Ready for field testing?” asked Danny.

“Didn’t you notice the helmet was formed for your head?” said Klondike.

“If I weren’t married already, Annie …” said Danny.

Klondike’s response was drowned out by the report of the rifle as he squeezed off the rest of the clip.

Dreamland, Aggressor Hangar
23 January, 0182

WHEN YOU WERE A GENERAL, YOU NEVER HAD A BAD day. Generals had drivers. Generals had staffs. Generals had people who made sure their stinking alarm clocks didn’t malfunction so they didn’t oversleep.

More importantly, when you were a general it didn’t matter if you overslept.

Mack Smith wanted more than anything to be a general. He’d had a master plan from the day he entered the recruiting office, and until getting shot down over Somalia three months ago, he’d followed it perfectly: combat experience, an air kill (two), serious seat time in the country’s most advanced planes. He had numerous connections inside and outside Washington, dozens of military godfathers—all of whom knew he had the right stuff and were willing to pull strings to make sure he got ahead.

His next step, command of a top-tier squadron, had seemed assured. For the last three months, though, everything seemed to be going wrong. The President—bit of a windbag, but still the commander in chief, don’t forget that—had shaken his hand and thanked him—thanked him!—for doing such a “good job over there.” Then he’d gone and lost the election. With him went the Defense Secretary, who had smiled and murmured something about a promotion to colonel.

Worse, Knife hadn’t been able to snag an important assignment. The gig testing Sharkishki was the best he could manage, a bit of an end run that had brought him back to Dreamland against his wishes. He’d taken it in hopes that it would lead to an assignment at Nellis heading the Aggressor squadron, which was where the MiG and its brethren were headed next. Recently, though, there were rumors that the Aggressor squadron, which trained top-rung fighter pilots for combat, was overstaffed. It was possible he’d get there only on temporary duty, assigned to show the boys how to work the stick and rudder—a cushy job certainly, but not one calculated to take him to any great heights. It would also put him back where he had started, in search of a command billet.

Was he in the midst of a bad streak? Or were others out to sabotage him? Everywhere there were minor annoyances trying to trip him up. Like his alarm clock. And this morning’s Dolphin, whose pilot insisted on waiting at Nellis for nearly a half hour because he was the only passenger.

As if anyone else important might show up.

By the time Knife reached the hangar where he and the engineers were due to review the upgrades to the MiG’s passive avionics, he was nearly forty-five minutes late.

Which didn’t explain why his team wasn’t here.

One look at the man who was, Major Franklin Thomas. and Mack knew his luck was going from bad to absolutely terrible. Thomas was a bean-counter who always came up three beans short. He also never delivered good news.

“You missed the meeting,” said Thomas.

“What meeting?”

“0730. There was an e-mail on it last night.”

“To me? Musta missed it.”

“Major, I won’t sugarcoat this,” said Thomas. “The Advanced Aggressor program has been canceled.”

“What?”

“Completely. The MiGs are going to be mothballed.”

“You
have
to be shitting me.” He gestured toward the three fuselages to the right, in various stages of renovation. “There’s got to be ten million dollars of work tied up in those planes, and never mind what the airframes cost.”

“The Aggressor program isn’t going to make the cut,” said Thomas. “The new Administration believes it’s better to cut bait right now, rather than dragging it on. I can run through some of the numbers if you want.”

“Oh, fuck that.”

Thomas’s lower lip quivered and his cheek jerked up nervously. “The Russians have canceled most of their developmental programs, so our efforts to anticipate them no longer make sense. We would be training against a nonexistent threat.”

“Bullshit.”

“E-ev-everyone’s going to be reassigned to other Dreamland projects. Of course, we’ll be securing the airframes that we have. Now you’re not technically Dreamland personnel, so the colonel mentioned that he’d help find something for you if you need help.”

“I don’t need God’s help,” said Mack, practically spitting Dog’s very unofficial and not exactly flattering nickname.

“Major, this isn’t going to affect you adversely. It’s just a little bump.”

“Screw yourself, Thomas, okay? Just fucking screw yourself.”

Aboard Mo
23 January, 0915

EVEN THE PEOPLE WHO FLEW B-52’s CALLED THEM BUFFs—Big Ugly Fat Fellas, or Fuckers, depending on whether there was a reverend around. The venerable Cold War bombers looked clean on the first sketch pads, but even by the late sixties wore a variety of blisters and stretch marks across their approximately 160-foot bodies. Each modification made the bomber a more potent weapon, but most also took a slight nick out of its aerodynamic qualities. Never fast to begin with, latter-day Stratofortresses positively labored in certain flight regimes, including low-level maneuvers.