The Warbirds (16 page)

Sara handed a copy of the finished report to Lieutenant Bill Carroll. “I think you’ll like what it says about your translating the Libyan’s communications. I didn’t know the Air Force had officers who spoke Arabic that well.”

“He speaks Farsi like a native Iranian,” Waters put in. “Also some Berber, and who knows what the hell else.”

Sara smiled at Waters. She liked working for him. Be honest, she told herself, you like him. Very much. For one thing, he doesn’t have an ego that always needs massaging. He’s confident about himself and willing to accept me as I am, not on some limited basis that makes him feel safe. He’s a man, a good man…and like they say, a good man is hard to find. She had first seen him at Andrews, walking off the RC-135, tired and in need of sleep. Even then there had been something in him she found appealing. Vulnerability? Come on, Sara, you’re acting like a damn schoolgirl. Well, maybe so, but what she felt was more than girlish. Maybe some of the magic of that evening with the Shaws would come back…if necessary, she’d help it along…maybe if he didn’t ask her out, she’d just have to ask him. Jack was an attractive flyboy. Muddy Waters was a man who stirred deeper emotions…

She forced herself back to the report and the Watch Center. Bill Carroll had arrived two days earlier and had almost wagged his tail at seeing Waters. At first she had chalked up Carroll’s reaction as being that of a young toady, but soon learned that the lieutenant was nobody’s bootlicker. He also had a first-class analytical mind.

Blevins entered the office then. “General Cunningham has reviewed the report and wants to see us immediately.” The colonel seemed pleased to be the bearer of this important message.

Waters pushed away from the table. “The moment of truth.”

Outside Cunningham’s office General Beller and General Sims from Operations were waiting. Beller was not thrilled to see Sara, a junior officer, but gave in when Waters said that Captain Marshall had written part of the report and might be needed to answer Cunningham’s questions about it. Carroll was dismissed.

They found Cunningham reading the report when they were ushered in. He laid it down and motioned them to seats. “Good report, get it distributed to the field.”

Blevins couldn’t contain a wide smile, which Cunningham ignored and got to the point. “The President has been told about the Russian pilot. The CIA has confirmed a much larger Soviet presence in Libya than suspected. The spooks claim the Egyptians know about the Russians and are doing a lot of wheeling and dealing with the Libyans right now. The State Department sees the two of them working out a
quid pro quo.
That’s bullshit for cutting a deal…the Libyans get rid of the Russians, the Egyptians kick us out…Of course the idiots don’t realize the place is about to come apart. The President has already decided that if the Egyptians do shoot our base down we’ll withdraw nice as you please. We’ve got to stay friends while they kick us out of Arabland so we can return to defend them when they get their ass in a crack. Fucking camel jockeys. Anyway, the President has authorized us to start looking for another base for the 45th when and if we are kicked out. He wants to keep the wing in the area. We’ve got a number of emergency wartime bases we’ve been maintaining in NATO for years. Maybe we can use one of them. That’s where you come in, Waters. I’m assigning you to the Operational Plans Division under General Sims to find a base where we can bed down the 45th in a hurry. I’ll open the subject with our NATO allies. You find a base.

“Also, this report tells me the 45th is not ready to play an active combat role in the Middle East should the President decide to use them. But that’s why they’re there. So, what’s wrong with them?”

“Sir”—Blevins fairly leaped at the opportunity to impress Cunningham, and intended to do it at Shaw’s expense—“I believe the problem is lack of leadership in the 45th. You can read it between the lines of the report—”

“I think it’s more complicated than that,” Waters said quickly. “The wing is brand new and has a lot of problems to solve all at once. Right now they’re a hit-and-miss proposition. Their command post and Intelligence sections are very good, but their Maintenance couldn’t get
missiles on the birds. The pilots are good, although they did do some dumb things—”

“For example?”

“They’d never heard of Outpost. They briefed for the engagement enroute, after takeoff, and were switching lead back and forth depending on who had a radar contact. Lieutenant Locke opened up with a head-on cannon attack. That’s gutsy but dangerous. Mostly what he accomplished was to let his wingman be jumped by both Floggers. Then he forgot to monitor his fuel, came close to flaming out.”

“What
did
they do right?” Blevins shot at Waters.

“Locke got a MiG,”
Waters said.
“That
counts. I think the wing’s making progress and should be okay in a couple of months. Maintenance hasn’t gotten enough planes ready to fly to meet the daily training schedule but Shaw has that almost licked. They’ve come a very long way, considering the condition of the base they inherited. Bottom line so far, eighteen months ago the 45th only existed on paper. Now, it is a wing for real.
That’s
an accomplishment.”

Cunningham shrugged. “Okay, okay, let’s go to it. Find a place to put the 45th’s seventy-two F-4s. I’ll try to convince the NATO members that having those F-4s in their countries helps them. After all, any commitment we make to shore up stability in the Middle East, especially the Gulf, helps keep the oil flowing their way. You can never predict the exact time or place for the next explosion in the Middle East, but it’s on our heads to be ready when it comes.”

“General, we’re seeing some indications that things are sort of quieting down in the Eastern Med,” General Beller said carefully. “Our allies are seeing the same thing. They might not buy your argument…”

Sims shook his head. “Doesn’t apply to the Gulf. Too many factions to stay quiet for very long…Iran and Iraq, Sunni and Shiite, it’s a real shatter zone. Like the general says, it may be quiet there today, but next week?”

“General Sims,” Waters said, “I’ve got a Middle East expert who has a worked-out scenario. He’s waiting outside.”

“He’s got five minutes,” Cunningham said.

Waters went to the door and motioned to Carroll to come in, told the lieutenant
sotto voce
that he was to brief Cunningham.

Carroll felt his stomach hit the floor, he’d heard about the way Cunningham devoured briefers…He noticed a bank of maps rolled up on the wall opposite the general, pulled down the one labeled “Mid East” and was relieved to see it was the standard briefing map he had used before. “The scenario, sir, is based on two assumptions. First: the Iranians will not quickly be able to solve the problem of political succession when the Ayatollah dies or falls from power. Second: the Soviet Union will continue to support the Tudeh, the Iranian communist party…”

“We know who the Tudeh are,” Cunningham broke in.

“Yes, sir, sorry…The Tudeh will make a power play for control. They’ll ask their Islamic brothers in communism from the Soviet Union and Afghanistan for help. Well-organized and well-equipped so-called volunteers will stream into Iran in support of the Tudeh. It will be a two-pronged thrust”—Carroll was pointing at the map—“toward the head of the Persian Gulf, right at Kuwait and toward the strait of Hormuz. That will give the communists the strategic locations necessary to control the Gulf.”

“And how do we forestall that, Carroll?”

“I suggest that our best alternative is to give military support to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. They must hold a line roughly along the Shatt-al-Arab at the head of the Gulf where the Iran-Iraq war stalemated. Also, we need a creditable military presence in Muscat and Oman, at the strait. If the communists have the strength, they’ll simultaneously press at both points, exploiting their advantage. There will be fighting. We can’t afford to let them succeed.”

Cunningham squinted at the lieutenant. “What else can we do, Carroll?” Cunningham knew his questions were unfair, demanding too much of the young man.

“There are things we can do, but I doubt we can stop it from happening. We can encourage Saudi Arabia and Iraq to form a stronger alliance. We can encourage some European countries to actively support such an alliance; it’s to their advantage—”

“And which of our dedicated allies would be most likely to do that?” The general was leaning forward over his desk.

“Only Britain, sir. They’ve probably already worked out a scenario like this one.”

“Lieutenant,” Beller said, “your scenario strikes me as simplistic, leaves out too many factors. You overlooked, for example, the Soviet Union’s concern with increasing its ties with the West. If they supported the Tudeh like you said, it would ruin that and close a lot of doors to them for years. It’s called linkage—”

“Not if the Soviets do it right, sir,” Carroll said. “They’ll be the friendliest you’ve ever seen them.
Glasnost
will be alive and well. They’ll take the pressure off everywhere else and might even disown Castro for a while. All the time they’ll maintain that it’s a regional matter and they are not more directly involved than the United States. They will do everything possible to avoid linkage.”

Waters picked pretty damn good subordinates, Cunningham thought, and knew how to use them…“Thank you, Lieutenant Carroll. You’ve made your point. That’s it for now,” he said, dismissing them.

The office started to empty when Cunningham called his aide back. Stevens automatically shut the door and returned to stand in front of the general. “Dick, the situation in Egypt is much more fragile than I let on. It can go either way right now. Too bad, but I’m going to have to use Shaw, even make him into a fall guy. He’s due for reassignment anyway. Have the colonel in charge of assignments find him a better job, one that can help get him promoted, while I make unpleasant noises about him to the Egyptian air attaché.”

After listening to Waters and Blevins argue about the 45th, Cunningham had decided Shaw had done a creditable job as wing commander and certainly did not want to block his path to promotion when he played political games.

“Has Third Air Force come up with names for a new commander?” Stevens nodded. “Who’s at the top of the list?”

“J. Stanley Morris,” Stevens told him.

“What do you know about him?”

“Well, sir, the men don’t much love him, but he did some very good work activating the cruise-missile weapons storage-sites in England and Belgium, dealt with some pretty touchy political and public relations issues.”

“Sounds okay…what does
J
stand for?”

“It’s only the letter, no name. I believe he had it legally changed from Jesus before he entered the Air Force Academy.”

“What some parents do to their kids,” Cunningham muttered.

“Bill, you did a fine job with the general,” Waters said as he retreated down the long halls of the Pentagon with Bill Carroll and Sara. “How would you two like to work for me for a while? Finding a new home for the 45th.”

Both officers quickly accepted, one for professional reasons only, one for personal and professional.

6 August: 0640 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 0840 hours, Alexandria, Egypt

Chief Pullman stood beside his colonel at parade rest, holding the wing’s fanion as the C-141 carrying the new wing commander taxied in. The chief held the staff of the small pendant carrying the wing’s number and logo with pride. His stomach hurt like hell…medicine couldn’t help…but he wouldn’t give in to it as he kept his face as motionless as the fanion. The pain had started as his sources filled in the details on J. Stanley Morris, better known as “Mad Stanley.”

He had passed on his information to every chief master sergeant on base, preparing them for the new commander. Everything he had learned spelled trouble. He watched Colonel Shaw greet the new commander. Morris was rugged, trim and athletic looking. There was no gray in his dark hair but the lines around his eyes and mouth spoke tension, worry and pressure. The colonel’s voice, however, was calm, tightly controlled.

After a few minutes Shaw told Pullman to have a staff car brought around and the chief volunteered to drive them.
Colonel Morris, it seemed, was not much interested in the flight line, maintenance or the general security of the wing. Instead he ordered Pullman to drive around the base while he made comments into a small cassette recorder on cleanup and beautification. Twice he had Pullman stop the car and get the name and the unit of an airman whose appearance he judged below military standards. The last stop was on the ramp in front of base Ops, where the change-of-command ceremony would be held the next morning.

“Chief, this is not acceptable. I want the time changed to fifteen hundred hours and I want a pass-in-review. It will be my first chance to meet the wing.”

“Stanley,” Shaw said, “we planned this for the morning, before the heat of the day. It will be a hundred and twenty degrees on the ramp at three o’clock—”

“I said fifteen hundred hours, and by the way, three
P.M
. is civilian talk, Colonel. That’s what’s wrong with this place…” He returned to the car, cutting off any response.

Jesus, thought Chief Pullman, the man’s a regular Captain Queeg.

The next morning he called the hospital and spoke to Colonel Douglas Goldman, the hospital commander, telling him what Morris had done.

Goldman, a veteran of Alexandria South, knew how dangerous the heat could be. “I’ve already heard,” he said. “We’ll have ambulances and medics out there. We’ll pass out water and salt tablets as they form up. The salt tablets don’t really do much good, but the troops think they do. Have your NCOs watch their people. Carry anyone looking flushed and not sweating to one of the aid stations set up by the ambulances. I’ve got a new doctor who will organize the show on the ramp—Lieutenant Colonel Landis.”

At 2:30 Goldman walked around the ramp with Landis and was impressed with the way Landis had organized the aid stations. He also enjoyed the man’s dry sense of humor. Both men were drenched with sweat by 2:40 when the squadrons formed up.