“Are you canceled, sir?” the officer asked.
“Yeah, Casone-my first flight on a B-2, and it’s nixed,” Whack said. “We’ll get to fly in it someday.” He was referring to the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber inside. The bat-winged composite long-range strategic bomber and its five sisters composed virtually all of America’s long-range air-breathing strike forces after the B-2’s lone base, Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, had been destroyed in a Russian nuclear sneak attack eight years earlier-four of the six survivors had been forward-deployed to Diego Garcia as part of an Asian bomber task force, and two had been airborne.
“She’s pretty, that’s for sure,” Charlie said. She touched the almost completely smooth dark gray skin. “Smooth, like a baby’s bottom.”
“Yeah, but flying in the Condor is just plain loco,” Jason said. They walked over to the open bomb bays. The left bomb bay had a rotary launcher with two RAQ-15 StealthHawk reconnaissance and strike cruise missiles, designed to loiter for several hours, transmit images and data back to the Spirit bomber, detect and analyze possible targets, then attack with small guided missiles if directed. The missiles were meant to neutralize any area defenses or patrol ships and make it easier to extract commandos on the ground.
The right bomb bay held something entirely different: an MQ-35 Condor air-launched commando insertion and extraction air vehicle. The Condor could carry up to four commandos and their gear. The commandos entered through the Spirit’s bomb bay, and the Condor was dropped like a bomb. The Condor could glide for up to two hundred miles and had a retractable landing gear for landing on a hard surface. If undamaged, the Condor had a small turbofan engine that allowed it to take off again and fly up to two hundred miles to safety.
“Almost as loco as flying in space stuffed in the back of those little spaceplanes,” Whack said, “but we’ve had the opportunity to do that, too.”
The three waited as a weapon-loading crew arrived and downloaded the Condor from the bomb bay. After it was placed on its storage cradle, Charlie opened a hatch on the left side, and the three dragged a large dark gray rectangular box resembling two refrigerators bolted together-but considerably lighter in weight-out and set it on the glossy polished hangar floor. “Hey, Carlo,” Charlie called out to the security officer. “You haven’t seen this thing in action yet, have you? C’mon over here.”
“I’m on duty, ma’am,” Sergeant Casone said. “I’ll watch from here.”
“Rog.” Charlie turned to the box and spoke, “CID One, deploy.”
At that, the box began to move. Sections of it shifted and popped out, quickly replaced by other moving pieces, until the box became a ten-foot-tall two-legged robot.
“Awesome,” Casone exclaimed.
“This is the best part,” Charlie said. “CID One, pilot up.”
The robot squatted down, its left leg and both arms extended backward, and a hatch popped open on its back. Charlie used the outstretched leg as a ramp and the arms as handrails to climb up and wriggle inside the robot. The interior surface was composed of a soft electroconducting material that completely surrounded her entire body, cushioning her from shock and picking up neural impulses in her body for transmission to the robot’s haptic control computers. Her head fit into a helmetlike device with a breathing mask, communications gear, and an electronic wide-angle multi-function visor.
Moments after the hatch closed, the robot stood up-and it moved as lithely and naturally as a human. “All systems in the green,” Charlie spoke, although her voice was heard as a male electronically synthesized growl. She ran around the B-2 bomber to Casone, curtsied before him, and extended a massive armored hand, its fingers moving as realistically as her own. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Sergeant Casone.”
“All right, Charlie, stop screwing around,” Whack said. “Put the CID away and-”
Jason’s secure cellular phone rang, and he answered it immediately. “Richter here…who?…General McLanahan…you mean, General Patrick McLanahan? Excuse me, sir, but how did you get this number?” The name got everyone’s attention instantly. Jason looked at Whack, then said, “Stand by, sir.” He held out the phone to him. “It’s Patrick McLanahan. He wants to talk with you.”
Whack smiled ruefully and shook his head. “I should have known he’d be involved with this,” he said, reaching for the phone. “If it has to do with the Tin Men, the CIDs, or big bombers, McLanahan’s got to be behind it, civilian or no.” He took the phone. “Hello, General. Fancy talking to you.”
“Hello, Whack,” Patrick said. “Listen up. We lost a B-1 bomber over the Gulf of Aden. Gia’s plane.”
The smile was instantly replaced with a scowl. “Where and when?” he asked.
“About ten minutes ago, approximately four hundred miles southwest of Salalah, Oman. The Reagan carrier group is en route; fixed-wing searchers should be on scene within the hour.”
“Any 406 signals?”
“No.” A 406-megahertz locator beacon with a GPS receiver built into each crewman’s survival harness automatically sent a survivor’s identification code and position digitally via satellite to rescue coordinators. “She missed the first manual-activation window.” To reduce the chance of location signals being picked up by enemy forces, survivors who could manually activate their beacons were instructed to do it for short periods of time at specific times every hour, based on Greenwich Mean Time. “I heard your mission was scrubbed.”
“You heard? How could you hear that? We just found out a couple minutes ago ourselves!”
“I had a little to do with planning your mission onto Socotra Island.”
That explained a lot, Whack thought-and it was probably a lot more than just “a little.” “We’ve got a badass bomber with four cruise missiles, plus a CID and Tin Man, all dressed up with nowhere to go,” he said. “What do you need?”
“I’m trying to get clearance to press forward with your mission,” Patrick said, “but the White House shut down all air intel and surveillance ops in the region. We have a backup plan to get two of you onto Socotra. A plane’s on the way to take you and your gear to Dubai. You’ll meet up with a CIA guy who’ll get you the rest of the info.”
“You know, General, I’m just a shooter here-you’d better speak to the boss,” Whack said. He handed the phone back to Richter. “McLanahan’s got a backup plan.”
Jason took the phone. “Richter again, sir.”
“Backup plan in progress, Colonel,” Patrick said. “A plane will be taking Macomber, Turlock, and the CID unit to Dubai.”
“How did you know who and what we have here, sir?”
“The same way I got your secure cellular number and codes, Colonel,” Patrick said. “That’s not important right now. The plane will be there in about eight hours.”
“I can’t tell Macomber what to do, sir,” Jason said, “but Turlock is an Army officer under my direct supervision, and she’s not going anywhere without proper orders.”
“It’s just a plane ride to Dubai, Colonel,” Patrick said. “Her orders will be waiting for her there.”
“Sorry, sir,” Jason said. “I don’t know how you’re involved with this-and I’m sure I don’t have a need to know-but until I get orders in my hands, Turlock stays put. You can come get Macomber anytime-the sooner the better.”
“And the equipment?”
Jason thought for a moment: “The Tin Man stuff isn’t the Army’s, so Macomber can take it and wear it for Halloween if he wants to,” he said finally. “The CID unit belongs to the U.S. Army, and I need a valid transfer order before it leaves my hands.”
“Understood,” Patrick said. There was a slight pause; then: “I studied your work with Task Force TALON, Colonel-tough, fast, gutsy, a lot like the Air Battle Force ground teams,” he went on. “And of course I’ve had a chance to work with the CID units on a number of occasions. Fantastic technology. Good work.”