Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (23 page)

 
          
“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?

ARKANSAS
INTERNATIONAL
AIRPORT
,
BLYTHEVILLE
,
ARKANSAS
LATER THAT EVENING

 
          
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.”

 
          
“Good,”
Masters said excitedly. “Great. Now, I need to see—”

 
          
She
slapped five more binders in his hands—and she had a dozen more binders ready.
“Airframe reports for your review. Better take a look at -030 and -040—I don’t
think they’re going to make it, but you might be able to work your magic on
them. Everyone else is ready to fly.” She piled the rest of the binders into
his arms. “Revised flight plans, engineering requests, prelaunch reports,
invoices you need to initial, and things I think you need to think about before
we get the flying circus in the air. Look ’em over.”

 
          
“But
I need—”

 
          
“Jon,
you got what you need—here’s what
I
need,” Wendy said, as her husband stepped off the plane. She gave him a long,
deep kiss as Patrick pulled his wife into his arms. Jon was going to ask her
for something else, but the kiss lasted longer than his level of patience, so
he ran off yelling for someone to get him a phone.

 
          
Masters
did not see Patrick pat his wife’s tummy after their kiss parted. “How’s our
new crewdog?” he asked in a low voice.

 
          
“Fine,
Daddy, just fine,” Wendy replied, punctuated with another kiss. “A little
stretch now and then—”

 
          
“Stretch?
You mean cramps? Are you in pain?”

 
          
“No,
worrywart,” she said with a reassuring smile. “Just enough to let me know that
things are happening down there.”

 
          
“You
feeling all right?”

 
          
“A
little indigestion in the evening, and a sudden rush of sleepiness about every
other hour,” Wendy replied. “I close the office door and take a nap.”

           
“I think about you all the time,
sweetie,” Patrick said. “Working around jet fuel and rocket chemicals and
transmitters, pulling long hours, on your feet all day. ”

 
          
“I
stay away from manufacturing and the labs, I take lots of naps, and I find
working on the couch with my feet up just as effective as working at my desk,”
Wendy said. “Don’t worry, lover. I’ll take good care of your child.”

 
          
“Our
child.”

 
          
“Our
what?” Brad Elliott said, as he met up with the couple.

 
          
“Old
married couple talk, Brad,” Wendy said, giving her ex-boss a peck on the cheek.
With Wendy between both men, they walked arm in arm into the admin building.
“How was the meeting at the White House? ”

           
“Good,” Patrick said.

           
“Shit, Muck, it went
great
—we’re a go! ” Elliott said
excitedly. “The President approved our plan. They want us to get ready to fly
out in the next couple days—and they want us armed. Fully operational,
offensive and defensive. We watered their eyes but
goodl
The only lousy part is we gotta play nice-nice with the
squids.”

 
          
“Oh,
God, no! ” Wendy said with mock horror and plenty of sarcasm. “Now, that’s just
totally
unacceptable.
Why would we
ever want to be backed up by five thousand highly trained sailors and seventy
aircraft? Nothing bad ever happens in our missions.”

 
          
“
‘Old married couple’ is right—you’re sounding more like your old man every
day,” Elliott said. “We don’t need the Navy, and we sure as hell don’t need ’em
telling us what to do.”

 
          
“Well,
that’s the way it’s going to be,” Patrick said, rubbing his eyes wearily.
“We’ve got to rechannelize the planes to new Navy fleet frequencies—Admiral
William Allen, commander in chief of U.S. Pacific Command, is taking charge of
the mission, with Terrill Samson as his number two.”

 
          
“That’s
good news, isn’t it, Brad?” Wendy asked. “General Samson is one of us.”

 
          
“Hey,
the Earthmover might speak bombers, but he’s just feathering his nest and
looking for a soft place to land—he’s got his eyes on a fourth star and a cushy
job at the Pentagon,” Elliott said with a sneer. “He’s afraid to go toe-to-toe
with the suits. Because of him, we won’t be able to clear off for relief
without calling CINCPAC first.”

 
          
“Brad,
you’ve been bitching ever since we left the Oval Office,” Patrick said wearily.
The exhaustion in his voice was obvious. “The only thing the Navy’s asked us to
do is rechannelize our radios.”

 
          
“And
they want to have a remote ‘check fire’ datalink to our attack computers, don’t
forget
that,
” Elliott interjected.
“They not only want to tell us when, where, and how to fly our missions, but
they want to be able to electronically inhibit any weapon releases, even for
defensive weapons.”

 
          
“Can
we do that
—should
we do that?” Wendy
asked.

 
          
“We
already told them we can’t tie into the computers, and wouldn’t even if we
could,” Patrick said. “We’re going to put the datalink in, but it’s simply a
communications link, not a remote control. That was the end of the discussion.
Brad wants us to tell the Chief of Naval Operations where to stick his
datalink.”

 
          
“I
just wish we had someone a little stronger than Samson out there sitting with
Allen in that command post, someone not interested in playing politics,”
Elliott scoffed.

 
          
“Terrill
Samson is
precisely
the guy we should
have in the command center,” Patrick said. “Now, can we please terminate this
discussion? The Navy’s on board and running the show, period. You’re going to
get the avionics shop going on the rechannelization and the datalink, right,
Brad?”

 
          
“Yeah,
yeah,” Elliott said resignedly. “But I tell ya, Muck, you’ve gotta get tougher
with those Navy bastards. They’re not interested in seeing us succeed. They’re
only—”

 
          
“Okay,
Brad, okay, I hear you loud and clear, so just drop it. Enough.”

 
          
Wendy
grasped both men’s arms and steered them toward the stairs leading up to the
second-floor executive offices. “Both you guys are suffering from hypoglycemia—I’ll
bet you haven’t had anything except coffee since this morning. I’ve got hot
soup and sandwiches set up in the little conference room. Let’s go.”

 
          
Both
men let Wendy lead them upstairs, but outside the conference room, Elliott
said, “I think I’ll pass on the
midnight
snack, Wendy. Wrap up a couple sandwiches
for me and leave ’em in the fridge, and I’ll have them in the morning. I want
to brief the day shift on the prelaunch checklist.”

 
          
“Okay,
Brad,” Wendy said. “I figured you were going to be up early, so I made up the
sleeper sofa in your office. Flight suit’s cleaned and pressed, too.”

           
Elliott gave Wendy a kiss on the
forehead and gave Patrick a friendly punch in the shoulder. “You are one lucky
son of a bitch, Muck. Thanks, lady. See you in the morning. You going to go
running with me at
five
A.M.
,
Colonel, or do I go by myself again?”
Elliott laughed—he already knew the answer to
that
one.

 
          
“Good
night, General,” Patrick said with mock irritation. He found a seat in the
conference room, while Wendy poured him a cup of chicken noodle soup and fixed
a turkey and tomato sandwich. Patrick remained stiff and uneasy until he heard
the door to Elliott’s office close down the quiet hallway. “Christ, its like
trying to handle a hyperactive three year- old sometimes.”

 
          
“Don’t
tell me—Brad Elliott on the warpath in the halls of the White House.”

 
          
Patrick
downed the soup in hungry bites and began to attack the sandwich. “I think he’s
out to prove that the government made a huge mistake by forcing him to retire
and closing his research facility,” he said. “Everybody is a target—Samson, the
Navy, the President, even me. He’s got a chip the size of the
Spruce Goose
on his shoulder. The more
people resent his arrogant attitude, the more it delights him, because it
proves how right he is. And you know what the biggest problem is?”

 
          
“Sure,”
Wendy Tork McLanahan replied, sitting beside her man and giving him a kiss.
“He’s your friend, your mentor—and you need him.”

 
          
Brad
Elliott simply left his suit, shirt, shoes, and underwear on a chair in the
outer office—here in the corporate world, someone took care of cleaning and
pressing and stuff like that. He usually took the time to hang up his suit
neatly, bag his underwear, and spit-shine his shoes before hitting the rack,
but why waste the time?—someone would do all that for him in the morning no
matter how neatly it was all put away. He said “someone.” He assumed it would
be his “assistant”—they didn’t use the term “secretary” anymore, and the more
military titles “clerk” and “aide” were usually met with round eyes full of
shock. It didn’t matter anyway, because he spent little time in the office,
preferring to be in the labs or on the flightline, and he didn’t even know his
“assistant’s” name. He didn’t even know that the sofa in his office was a
sleeper, because he never sat in the damn thing.