Heading down the Grant Staircase next to the Vice President’s office to the visitors’ entrance to the West Wing, McLanahan said in a low voice, “You really irritated Admiral Balboa back there, Brad.”
“Irritated him? You gave him a verbal wedgie back there,” Masters remarked with a laugh.
“Don’t worry about Balboa, Patrick,” Elliott said. “He’s worried that we’ll steal his thunder, just like we did when he was CINCPAC and we brought the Air Battle Force in to nail the Chinese invasion fleet near the Philippines.”
“I just think it’s not a good idea to twist his tail, Brad,” McLanahan urged. “Back then, we had General Curtis as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he ran a lot of interference for us in the White House and Pentagon so we could employ the bomber fleet. We don’t have Wilbur or the bombers anymore. If we want to get a chance to show what our upgraded Megafortresses can do, we’ve got to work with Balboa and Allen, not fight them.”
“They should be happy for our assistance, Patrick,” Elliott said. “They’re the ones out of position. We're the ones who can bail them out until they get back in the game. You don’t want to make us look like a naval air support unit or something.”
“I’d be more than satisfied to be flying in support of the Navy, Brad,” McLanahan said. Elliott looked at him in surprise, but McLanahan continued. “Sir, I know that the bombers are a powerful frontline weapon system, and the Megafortress is the best all-around attack aircraft ever flown. We can deliver more firepower than any one of those frigates the Navy has in the Formosa Strait. But we’re not the frontline force anymore. Let the Navy take care of the Strait — let’s prove to the brass and the White House that we can hold the line.”
Elliott stopped in the staircase, looked at his young protege, sniffed, and worriedly shook his head. “C’mon, Muck, don’t tell me you’ve bought this ‘jointness’ crap, all this bullshit about how the U.S. military can’t do anything unless every branch of the service does it together?” he asked derisively. “The service chiefs, especially the Navy, whine about the lack of ‘jointness’ whenever any of the other services, especially the Air Force, shows ’em up. The Navy was aced out in Desert Storm and they whined because we weren’t sharing the target load. The Navy was embarrassed in the Celebes Sea against China, and Balboa whined because we supposedly weren’t cooperating. Now Balboa almost loses the Lincoln in the Arabian Sea to an Iranian cruise missile, and he whines because a stealth bomber takes out the Iranian bomber base. Balboa doesn’t want us to support the naval forces, Patrick. He wants us to step aside and let him and Allen and the Navy take on China single-handedly. He doesn’t want ‘joint’ anything.”
“Brad, you may be right, but I’m not in it, so I can thumb my nose at the Navy or wave the Air Force banner over the burning hulks of Red Chinese warships,” McLanahan said. “I want to prove how good the Sky Masters’s Megafortress conversion is to the Air Force.”
“Good answer, Patrick,” Jon Masters interjected. “I knew you had the proper point of view.”
“And I’m interested in showing what the heavy bomber can do, no matter who’s in charge,” McLanahan went on. “If we get into the game as support forces, good — at least we’re still in the game. But your goal seems to be to rub Balboa’s nose in our bomber’s jet exhaust. We don’t need to do that.”
“Hey, Colonel, I’m trying to do the same as you — get our bombers into the fight where we can do the most good,” Elliott retorted testily. “But you’re not paying attention to the politics. Balboa and Allen and all the brass squids at the five-sided puzzle palace don’t care about jointness and cooperation — they care about funding.
“Look. We’re trying to get a six-hundred-million-dollar contract from Congress and the Pentagon to convert thirty B-52s to EB-52 Megafortresses. That’s one-third the cost of a new Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. Destroyers are good on the open seas, frigates are good in the littoral regions — shallower water, within a nation’s territorial waters — but we know in today’s tactical environment that a long-range stealth bomber with precision-guided standoff weapons is the most effective weapon in the arsenal, in any combat area, with lower costs and much greater mobility. Balboa knows all that, but he doesn’t care — he just wants that new destroyer, so maybe they’ll stick his name on it someday. Is that ‘joint’ thinking? Hell no. He doesn’t care about joint anything. Neither should we. Maybe if we started naming bombers after Joint Chiefs of Staff chairmen, he’d want more of them.”
“I disagree,” McLanahan insisted. “I think we should—”
“Patrick, I’ve got a lot more experience dealing with the Gold Chamber and White House types than you, so how.about letting me handle Balboa and Pacific Command, and you handle the hardware and the crews?” Elliott said in a light but definitive voice. “We’ll show the brass who can do the job. Trust me.”
It was good to see the old fire and fighting spirit in his old boss, McLanahan thought, as they made their way to the waiting limo that would take them to Andrews Air Force Base to catch the flight back to Sky Masters, Inc.’s, headquarters in Blytheville, Arkansas. But the old fighting spirit also meant the old antagonisms, the old competitiveness, the old victory-at-any-cost attitude.
They were back in the fight — but could they prove to the brass that they deserved to stay?
The Sky Masters, Inc., team was whisked by limousine from the White House to the Washington Navy Yard, helicoptered to Andrews Air Force Base, then flown by military jet transport directly to its headquarters in northeastern Arkansas. Arkansas International Airport was the civilian- ized Eaker Air Force Base, where B-52 Stratofortress bombers and KC- 135 Stratotankers of the old Strategic Air Command had once pulled round-the-clock strategic nuclear alert for many years. Despite its grandiose name, Arkansas International Airport had had no aviation facilities on the field after the Air Force had departed until Jon Masters built his new high-tech aerospace development center here shortly after the base closed. Now it was a thriving regional airport, which acted as a reliever facility for passenger flights and overnight shipping companies from nearby Memphis. The civilian and commercial operations were on the east side of the field; Sky Masters, Inc., occupied brand-new buildings and hangars on the west side of the 11,600-foot-long concrete runway.
While everyone else slept on the flight back from Washington, Jon Masters was on the phone; and, still bouncing with boyish energy, he was the first one off the plane after it taxied to a stop in front of the corporate headquarters. Patrick McLanahan’s wife, Wendy, was just pulling off her ear protectors as Masters lowered the C-21’s airstair door. “Wendy! Nice to see you!” Masters shouted over the gradually diminishing turbine noise. “I need you to get me the latest—”
Wendy McLanahan held up a hand, then slapped a blue-covered binder into her boss’s hands. “Latest faxes from Guam — both our DC- 10 tanker and DC-10 booster aircraft arrived code one. One NIRTSat booster had an overtemp warning when they did a test. They need a call from you ASAP. Munitions are being off-loaded.”