Power Curve (30 page)

FAMILIES COME FIRST

Ben panned the crowd, focused on Liz, and cued her to start talking. “The first break in the snowstorms that have battered this city has brought out a new wave of protesters on this bright Wednesday morning. This is the nineteenth day of what is now called the Counterfeit Crisis by Washington insiders, and tensions are subsiding as more and more dependents and U.S. civilians are evacuated from Okinawa. At the same time, a massive airlift, reminiscent of the Berlin airlift and Operation Provide Promise in Bosnia, is bringing much needed relief to Okinawa.

“The peace drummer and demonstrators for women’s rights have been joined by a new group.” Ben zoomed in on O’Malley’s sign without showing her. “The concern for families is in response to the bizarre and grotesque report that a sergeant was forcibly separated from her children during the evacuation of dependents from Okinawa. So far, the White House and the Pentagon have refused to comment on the incident. This is Elizabeth Gordon, CNC-TV News, reporting live from the White House.”

Ben lowered his Betacam. “Fireplug’s comin’ this way. You want to interview her?”

“Not this time,” Liz replied. “Let’s go.” O’Malley glared at them as they hurried away. It was one more personal slight she added to her ever-growing list.

Turner walked out of the Cabinet Room and headed for the Oval Office. The vice president and Jackie Winters matched her pace while Shaw lingered behind. “You’re behind schedule,” Winters said. “You have ten minutes with your security advisors before leaving for the luncheon speech with the American Banker’s Association. You’re talking on tax reform—twenty minutes. The speech is ready and similar to the one you’ll be giving tomorrow in Seattle.”

“I’ll review it on the way over,” Turner said. She turned into the Oval Office. Bender, Secretary of Defense Elkins, and the DCI were waiting for her. Winters peeled off to her desk while Kennett and Shaw followed her in, closing the door. “Well, gentlemen,” she said sitting down in the rocker by the couches, “is there any good news today?”

“No change,” the DCI answered.

“This is the third day of the evacuation,” Elkins said, “and we’re ahead of schedule. Over 15,000 dependents have been flown out, and we should finish it off in another forty-eight hours.”

“And the Coltrain incident?” Turner asked.

“We want to treat it as a routine breech of discipline,” Elkins said. “If Coltrain will return to duty, Martini will drop the court-martial charges and slap her hands with a fine and demotion in rank. Unfortunately, Coltrain is being difficult and refuses to return to duty. She’s going for the court-martial.”

“She also claims she was physically abused by a senior NCO,” Sam Kennett said.

“When is the military going to learn?” Turner demanded.

“According to witnesses,” Bender said, “she boarded a bus for evacuees without permission. An NCO ordered her off, and she kicked him. He responded by poking a finger at her forehead and shouting. She got off.”

“I suppose he outweighed her by 100 pounds,” Turner said.

“She did not belong on the bus,” Bender repeated. “And she was holding up the flight. The officer in charge of the evacuation should have never—”

Turner cut him off. “Why are we even discussing this?”

Sam Kennett answered her. “We’re discussing this because someone is feeding the demonstrators and the press misinformation, and they choose to make a case out of it.”

“This is getting out of hand, Mizz President,” Shaw said. “We need to defuse it—now.”

“Suggestions?” she asked. She listened until Jackie Winters appeared in the doorway holding a heavy top coat and scarf. Turner stood up, her decision made. “Have the Pentagon issue a press release announcing all charges against Sergeant Coltrain have been dropped, and she is being reunited with her children.” The meeting was over, and the men stood while she left.

“Well,” Kennett said, breaking the heavy silence, “that solved the problem.”

“Did it?” Bender asked.

The East China Sea

Ryan leaned back into the red nylon webbing of the parachute jump seat and let the sound of the C-130’s droning turboprop engines wash over him.
Friday morning
, he thought,
and we’re almost home
. He pulled himself up and looked out the small round window above his head. The sun was up, and he could make out the dark mass of Yoron Island, north of Okinawa. He was returning from a medical air evacuation mission to Yakota Air Base in Japan and would be back in time to see the fifth and, hopefully, the last day of NEO. Not that it needed him at this point, because the entire operation was running like a well-oiled machine functioning on autopilot.

Increasingly, he had found himself at loose ends, and when a doctor had been needed to evacuate six litter-bound hospital patients to Yokota, Martini had told him
to go on the mission and evaluate the Yokota end of the operation for an after-action report. “Sir,” the loadmaster said, “please strap in. We’ll be landing in a few minutes.” Ryan straightened up and savored the moment.
One more day
, he thought. And he had made it happen.

Two busloads of dependents and civilians were waiting to board the C-130 when it taxied to a halt. Ryan waited with the nurse and sergeant who had accompanied him on the air evac while children scampered off the buses and ran up the rear ramp of the Hercules. Automatically, Ryan tallied the passenger manifests. Ninety-four more gone.

“Lucky bastards,” the sergeant muttered. Ryan agreed with him, and they climbed on board an empty bus for the ride back. The C-130’s engines were spinning up as they drove away. The bus driver followed Perimeter Road back to the main base and slowed when they reached Habu Hill. “Sir,” the sergeant said, “can we see the C-130 take off?” Ryan nodded, and the bus driver pulled onto the overlook.

The C-130 Hercules taxiing out had been delivered to the Air Force by Lockheed in 1969. It had performed yeoman duty airlifting cargo and troops in Vietnam, the Grenada invasion in 1983, the invasion of Panama in 1989, the Gulf War in 1990, and the Bosnian peacekeeping mission in 1996. Over 40,000 hours of flying time were recorded in its log books, and it had served the Air Force well, far exceeding its designed lifespan.

But Ryan only knew that this particular Hercules had carried him and six patients to Japan, returned him to Okinawa on time, and was now flying ninety-four more people to safety. He climbed off the bus and stood by the guardrail. His eyes followed the C-130 as it rolled down the runway and lifted off on another routine mission into a gorgeous tropical morning. The Hercules climbed straight ahead to 500 feet over the East China Sea and turned out of the pattern.

That was when the C-130’s left main wing spar snapped, the result of age and metal fatigue. It was a clean break between the number one and two engines. The prop on the outboard engine was still turning as the wing twisted away, taking the number one engine with it. Ryan
stood transfixed as if his feet were nailed to the ground. The Hercules was in a flat left spin, and he heard one of the engines surge. The wing was still falling away. One engine sounded louder as the aircraft hit the water in a gigantic belly flop. A wall of water rose above the plane and crashed down, obscuring his view. His first rational thought told him they were OK and it was only a matter of getting everyone out before the Hercules sank. But all he could see was the tall vertical stabilizer riding above the water, like a shark fin framed by the rising sun.

He sank to his knees and tried to breathe. He couldn’t.

Ryan knew the smell: ammonium carbonate and ammonia water—smelling salts. “Are you OK?” the nurse asked. Ryan shook his head, fending off the fog that was still there to claim him. He was lying on the ground next to the guardrail, the nurse and sergeant bent over him. He had passed out.

“The C-130?” he cracked, barely able to talk.

The nurse stared at him, at a loss for words to answer his question. She raised her right hand, still holding the smelling salts, and made a vague gesture at the water. Ryan struggled to his feet and held onto the guardrail. The water was smooth and clear of debris, as if the Hercules had never existed. He could hear sirens in the background and saw a small boat speeding toward the scene of the accident. “Why?” he muttered. Nothing made sense.

Martini was on the main floor of the command post huddled with the disaster response cell. This was their first real emergency, and he listened as they drove the wing’s response to the accident. They were a well-trained team, but no exercise, no amount of training, could guarantee their reaction to the real thing. He could hear strain in their voices, but there was no panic. They were OK. He forced himself to move slowly and ambled over to the airlift coordination desk. It was their aircraft that had just crashed. A sergeant looked up at him, his face drawn and flushed. “Take a couple deep breaths,” Martini said. “It helps.”

The sergeant breathed deeply. “I’ll be OK, sir.”

“I know,” Martini replied. He continued to move
slowly around the big room, taking the strain and leaving a wake of calm resolve behind him. Finally, he was in the Control Cab with the controllers. “Are all the messages sent?” he asked.

The senior controller answered. “Yes, sir.” He hesitated. “Sir, Staff Sergeant Lancey Coltrain was on that C-130.”

“Damn,” Martini muttered. “Get me CINC PAC on the secure phone. I’ll take it in the Battle Cab.” He paused. “I want to speak to her husband’s commander ASAP. And get Major Ryan in here on the double.” The phone call to CINC PAC was a short one. Staff Sergeant Donald Coltrain would be escorting his wife’s remains back to the States at the earliest possible moment.

Ryan walked onto the main floor of the command post a few minutes later. He was still shaking as he made his way to the Battle Cab and knocked on the glass door. Martini motioned him inside and poured a cup of coffee. “I don’t know about you, but I need a cup of coffee.” He pointed to a chair, and Ryan sat down. “Care for a cup?” Ryan gratefully accepted the cup of steaming brew the general handed him.

“I saw it,” Ryan said. Martini gave a little nod and was silent as Ryan relived the crash. Both hands were clasped around his cup as he fought to tame the surging emotions that threatened to engulf him. He told Martini about the engines and the way they sounded.

Martini sketched a top view of a C-130 and drew a jagged line on the wing between the left engines. He circled the inboard engine. “It sounds like the pilot firewalled the throttle on the number two engine and feathered the two engines on the opposite wing. He was trying to use differential power to regain control. That’s what kept them in a flat spin.” There was respect in his voice. “He never gave up. Remember that.”

“NEO was my operation,” Ryan said. “It was my responsibility to get them out of here.” His voice was shaking. “Ninety-four people are dead. Ninety-four.”

Martini lowered his voice, and the hard-driving, caustic general was gone. “Ninety-nine, counting the crew. But don’t lose perspective. Over 20,000 people are safe be
cause of what you did. And what about those six patients you got to Yokota?”

“Any good medical team could have done that,” Ryan said.

“But you did it. You made all that happen.”

The chief of the disaster response cell entered the cab. “General—” He stopped, unable to go on. Like Ryan, he was on the edge, losing control. “Sir—” Martini still waited, not about to push the man. Not now. Finally, he was able to say it. “Sir, there are no survivors. Sharks are in the water.”

Ryan gasped for breath, and he buried his head in his hands. “The tail, I saw the C-130’s tail in the water. It was like a shark’s fin.”

Martini’s voice cut like a knife, hard and sharp. “That’s bullshit. It was the tail of an aircraft. Nothing else.”

Ryan couldn’t look at his commander. “Thirty-eight children were on board. I saw the manifest. I saw them get on.”

Martini picked up his phone and keyed the public address system. “May I have your attention.” His voice resonated through the building, and every head in the command post turned toward him. “I’ve been told there are no survivors from the crash. You are going to hear some pretty ugly rumors, and some of them are going to be true. But don’t give in to them, make yourself look past the rumors and search for the truth. So what is the truth of it? The truth is that we’ve been hit hard and in the one place we didn’t expect. They got to our families, our loved ones. Don’t buy the argument that this accident had nothing to do with those sons of bitches who are blockading us. Our families are in harm’s way because of them. Never forget that. We’ve got a job to do. So let’s do it.” He punched off the loudspeaker and dropped the phone on the console.

The professional in Ryan kicked in, and he knew what Martini was doing. He was taking whatever guilt or exaggerated sense of responsibility his people may have assumed for the accident and placing it directly on the enemy. Martini studied him for a moment. “It was the enemy that killed them, Doctor. Not you, not material
failure, not a senseless accident. And they created the situation, not us. Hopefully, that’ll put some hate in your heart.”

Ryan tried to pull back from the black pit of despair that still yawned in front of him. “Why them?” he moaned. “Why them and not me? I just got off that plane. I had just flown on it.”

Hard experience had taught Martini the answer to Ryan’s question. But could the doctor accept it? “Because you weren’t there.”

Over the Midwest

Bender was stretched out and sleeping near the rear of
Air Force One
. It had been a long day, and they had been traveling since early Thursday morning. Now it was the same evening, and
Air Force One
was taking the president back to Washington, D.C. One of Shaw’s pretty staff members nudged him awake and asked him to please join the chief of staff in the conference room. Bender stood up, adjusted his tie, and put on his coat. He would have preferred wearing a uniform, but as long as he was on a leave of absence and serving as the national security advisor to the president, he would wear a white shirt and tie with a dark suit. “This just came in,” Shaw said, handing him a long message.