The man thought that perhaps flying could also be just as uncomplicated and carefree as this, the way pilot-authors Richard Bach and Stephen Coonts wrote about it, but in his ten thousand-plus hours of flying he had never done it that way. Every sortie needed a flight plan, a precise schedule of each and every event and a precise route to follow. Every sortie needed a weather briefing, target study, and a crew briefing, even if the crew had flown that sortie a hundred times before. Hop in and go? Navigate by watching birds and listening for horns? That was for kids, for irresponsible captains. Plan the flight, then fly the plan — that had been the man’s motto for decades. Now he followed birds and looked for whales. -
Almost an hour later, just as the eastern sky began to show signs of sunrise, the man shut down his engine, threw a sea anchor out by the bow to keep pointed into the wind, poured a cup of coffee, stuck a granola bar in his shirt pocket, and got his gear ready for fishing. Halibut and salmon were running now, and he might get lucky with live sardines on a big hook with one-hundred-pound test and a little weight. He cast out about a hundred feet, couched the pole, set the reel clutch, sat out on deck surveying the horizon…
… and said aloud, “What in hell am I doing out here? I don’t belong here. I hate fishing, I’ve never caught a damned thing, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I like boats, but I’ve been out here an hour and I’m bored. I’m wet, I’m cold, I’m miserable, and I feel like tying the fucking anchor around my neck and seeing exactly how long I can hold my breath underwater. I feel like shit. I feel like—”
And then the cell phone rang.
At first he was surprised at the sudden, unexpected noise. Then he was angry at the intrusion. Then he was curious — who knew his number? He’d left his home number on the little slip of paper at the general store, not the cell phone number. He was even outside max range of the Newport cell site — he didn’t think he could get calls way out here. Puzzled and still a bit peeved, he retrieved the phone from his fanny pack, flipped it open, and growled, “Who the hell is this?”
“Good morning, General. How are you, sir?”
He recognized the voice immediately, of course, and it was as if the sun had just popped out and the skies had turned clear and blue, even though it was still gray and cold and wet out here. The man opened his mouth to ask a question, answered it himself — dumb question; he knew they could find his number easily enough if they wanted — so remained silent.
“How are you doing, sir?” the voice repeated.
Always friendly, always disarming, always at ease, the man thought.
This was obviously some kind of business call, but with this guy there was always time for business later. Always so damned polite, too. You work with a guy for, what, almost ten years, and even though there’s an age and rank difference you expect to be on a first-name basis and can the “sir” stuff. Not this guy, at least most of the time. “Fine… good,” Brad replied. “I’m doing… okay.”
“Any luck out there?”
He knew I was out fishing? That was odd. It was no state secret or anything, but he hadn’t told anybody he was fishing, or given out his phone numbers, or even told anyone he was living in a little trailer in Nowhere, Oregon. “No,” Brad replied.
“Too bad,” the voice on the phone said, “but I got an idea. Want to do some flying?”
The sun that had come out in his heart a few moments before was now setting his soul on fire, and Brad fairly leapt to his feet. The waders suddenly felt as if they weighed a thousand pounds. “What’s going on?” Brad asked excitedly. “What are you up to now?”
“Look to the south and find out.”
Brad did — and saw nothing. He had a brief, sinking feeling that this was all a hoax, some complicated and brutal joke…
… but then he felt it, that sound, that feeling. It was a change in the atmosphere, an electricity flowing through the air stirring and ionizing the moist sea breeze. It felt like an electric current flowing through nearby high-tension power lines, a snap of unseen force that made little hairs stand up on your skin. Then you feel the air pressure rising, of a thin column of air being pushed ahead like air streaming out of a giant hypodermic needle aimed right at you, the plunger being pushed by what could very well be God’s thumb, but was, Brad knew, a very human construct…
… and then the overcast parted and the clouds disgorged a huge black aircraft. It was low, pointed, and very deadly-looking. Brad expected it to roar past him, but instead it hissed by like a giant ebony viper on the move across a jungle floor. Only when the monstrous vehicle had zoomed past him, barely a hundred feet above the Pacific and almost directly overhead, could he hear the thunder of its eight turbofan engines… no, Brad realized with faint shock, not eight, only four engines, but four huge engines. The aircraft banked hard to the left, showing its long, thin fuselage, its long, low, swept-back V-tail ruddervators, its wide wings tipped with pointed tip tanks — and yes, it carried weapon fairings on its wings, stealthy pods that enclosed externally-carried weapons. It was not only flying, but the damned beautiful creature was armed.
“What do you think, Brad?” retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Patrick McLanahan asked on the cell phone. “You like it?”
“Like it?” retired Air Force Lieutenant General Bradley James Elliott gasped. “Like it? Its the…” He had to be careful — last he knew, the EB-52 Megafortress defense-suppression and attack bomber was still highly classified. “… its flying again!”
“It may be the only model flying in a few months, Brad,” McLanahan said. “The Air Force let us play with a couple. We need crews to fly them and commanders to organize a new unit. If you’re interested, climb aboard the Gulfstream that’ll be waiting for you at Newport Municipal in two hours.”
“I’ll be there!” Elliott shouted as the Megafortress climbed back into the overcast and disappeared from view. “I’ll be there! Don’t you dare leave without me!” Bradley James Elliott dropped the phone onto the deck, quickly stepped forward to the bow, began reeling in the sea anchor, swore because it wasn’t coming in fast enough, then simply detached it from the bow cleat and dropped it overboard. He did the same with the fishing rod. The cold diesel engine was cranky and wouldn’t start on the third try, but thankfully it started on the fourth, because Elliott was ready to jump out and run all the way back to Newport. After seeing the Megafortress again, a new Megafortress, he felt light and happy enough to give walking on water a try.
It was back. It was really back… and so, with the grace of God, was he.
“Doors coming open! Stand by! All hands, secure loose items and prepare for exposure!”
The rear cargo doors of the Yunshuji-8C cargo plane motored open at one hundred and twenty seconds time-to-go in the countdown. Admiral Sun Ji Guoming, deputy chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army of the Peoples Republic of China, was standing in the forward section of the cargo plane as the temperature of the cargo hold, already below freezing, suddenly dropped nearly fifty degrees almost in the blink of an eye. The ice-cold wind swirled around the huge cargo hold, tugging at legs and arms as if trying to pull the humans out into the frigid sky. Yes, it was mid-May over the generally warm, relaxing South China Sea, but at 30,000 feet just before midnight, the air, rushing into the plane at over a hundred miles an hour, was still bone-snapping cold. The roar of the Y-8C’s four Wojiang-6 turboprops, at 4,250 horsepower per engine, was deafening even in the thin air.