Power Curve (9 page)

“Tell you what,” Bender said. “I’ll bring in an old F-16 Dash One, that’s the basic flight manual for an airplane. It will give you an idea of what you’ve got to study.”

“Yeah,” Brian said, “I’d like that.”

“Mom doesn’t like stuff like that,” Sarah said.

Brian stood up. “Ah, she knows I read stuff like that all the time.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Thanks. I gotta go—homework. Grams won’t let me do anything until I get it done.”

The two kids left his office. “See,” Sarah said, her voice echoing down the hall, “I told you he’d talk to you.”

Sanford stood in his doorway, speaking into the whisper mike under his sleeve. “Merlin and Magic Two are on their way upstairs.”

“The names fit,” Bender said.

Sanford nodded. “Do they come down here often?”

“It’s the first time I’ve met Brian. Sarah is down here about every other day. We talk a lot.” A rueful look crossed his face as he remembered how he and Laurie used to talk.

“General, we heard how you went to the mat with Shaw. You saved our butts. Thanks.”

“I was the one who caused the problem,” Bender said. “The Secret Service is not a praetorian guard isolating a Roman emperor from his subjects.”

“It’s too bad Shaw doesn’t know that. Watch your backside, General. Thanks again.” He disappeared down the hall.

Turner was in the small study off her bedroom nestled down for the evening and surrounded by work. Maura entered quietly and sat down in the comfortable overstuffed chair near the fire. “I love it when the fire’s going,” Maura said.

“Humm,” Turner replied. “How are the kids?”

“Sarah’s in bed. Brian’s reading some Air Force manual on airplanes.”

“Where did he get that?”

“General Bender gave it to him.”

Turner slowly removed her reading glasses and looked into the fire. “I’m not sure if I like that. How did he meet Robert?”

“Sarah introduced them. She talks to him quite a bit.”

“She shouldn’t be bothering the poor man,” Turner said. “He’s got enough to do without being bothered by children.”

“He doesn’t mind,” Maura replied. Silence. “Why don’t you let him go?” There was no reply. “He’s the only person on your staff who doesn’t want to be here, and he is a very unhappy man.”

Turner picked up her glasses and resumed reading. “I need him in the White House.”

“Maddy,”—a long pause—“he’s very attractive. Please don’t do anything foolish.”

“Mother,” Turner snapped, “I’m not a schoolgirl with a stupid crush on an older man.”

“You’re going to be forty-six next month,” Maura reminded her. “And he’s not that much older. How old is he?”

“I’m not sure.” That was a lie, she knew exactly how old he was. “Fifty,” she confessed. “Besides, he’s married.” She paused and thought. She did owe her mother an explanation. “The White House isolates a president. It also intimidates the people around me. But at the same time, they are infected by the power that is here and they become arrogant and demanding. They will do anything to stay here and crawl up the power curve. But they are afraid to tell me bad news in case I’ll get angry and fire them. There are only four people who tell me the unvarnished truth and give me a window to the outside: you, William, Bender, and Patrick.”

“Shaw!” Maura exclaimed. “I don’t trust that man.”

“Well, you do have to ask him a straight question,” Turner replied. “Let me ask you a straight question. Who should I choose as my vice president?”

Maura didn’t hesitate. “Sam Kennett. He saved Philadelphia when he was mayor and look what he’s done as governor.”

“Pennsylvania is an anchor state,” Turner added. “But he’s not on Patrick’s short list.”

“Tell Shaw to add his name,” Maura said.

The butler poured a cup of coffee as Turner started her early morning routine. “William, what do you think of Governor Kennett?”

“They say he’s a good man and turned Philadelphia around.”

“I asked for
your
opinion, William.”

“I know, ma’am. But he was awfully hard on people of color and sent a lot of them to jail.”

“That was when he was mayor and cleaning up the streets and the city government. He also sent quite a few whites to jail. He’s brought jobs by the thousands into the state since he’s been governor.”

“He has been a good governor,” William said. “I’ll
give him that, and he is popular. Will there be anything else?” Turner shook her head, and he withdrew. Outside, William hurried down the corridor with as much dignity as he could muster. This was not the morning he wanted to run into Shaw.

Shaw and Jackie entered the study at exactly eight o’clock. Everything went smoothly until he handed her the day’s action list. “I’ve selected who I want for vice president,” she told him. “Sam Kennett.” Jackie smiled and made a note.

Shaw dropped his chin on his chest and scratched his head. Kennett was young, incredibly honest by Shaw’s standards, energetic, and an accomplished politician with national ambitions. He knew how to play the game and had a political base he would bring with him to the White House. In short, he was the last man Shaw wanted as vice president. “I hadn’t considered him.” It was a true statement.

“I want to reach out to him,” Turner said. “Invite him to the White House.”

“We need to check him out first. You don’t need any mistresses hiding in the woodwork.”

“He came through a brutal election,” Turner said. “They picked him apart and couldn’t find a thing.”

“We’ll check him out, Mizz President, and set up a meeting.” He rose to leave.

“And, Patrick, they won’t find any lithium this time.”

“I don’t expect they will.” That also was a true statement. But he would run a full court press on Kennett.

The East China Sea

The two dark gray Strike Eagles punched through the overcast, scudding across the East China Sea, and climbed into the clear, dazzling sky. “Take the lead,” the instructor pilot in the right F-15E radioed when they leveled off at 24,000 feet.

In the backseat of the left F-15E, Laurie glanced at the four video displays in front of her. Her fingers automatically danced around the edge of the third scope, pushing
at the menu buttons, and called up the HUD, the pilot’s head-up display. The multipurpose color display blinked, and she was seeing exactly what her pilot, Chris Leland, saw as he looked through his HUD. He was in the air-to-air mode with the gun selected. Now it was time to quit playing with the giant video game that made up her world in the backseat and return to the basics of air combat.

She twisted in her seat to keep the IP’s aircraft in sight as Chris Leland shoved the throttles up and surged into the lead. “Padlocked,” she told him. For the next few minutes, she would not take her eyes off the other aircraft. “Relax,” she told Chris. “Jink-outs are a piece of cake.” She watched as the IP’s aircraft maneuvered to their six o’clock position and decreased the range to a guns-firing solution.

“Laurie,” the IP called over the radio, “you call it.”

She clicked the radio transmit button twice in acknowledgment. Because the intercom was always hot, she and Chris could talk normally. “Do a 2
g
break to the left when I make the bandit call, then come back hard to the right with about 4
g’
s. Just keep it up, short, hard, heading and altitude changes to break the bandit’s tracking solution and stagnate him back there.” It was all basic fighter maneuvers. In combat, any bandit who hung around too long trying to get off a gun shot behind a hard jinking F-15 was in for a nasty surprise when the F-15 either reversed into him or he got jumped by the F-15’s wingman. But for now, there was no wingman to help them out, and it was a chance to sharpen Chris Leland’s skills and build his confidence in his new weapon system officer.

“The poor son of a bitch won’t know what happened to him,” Chris told her.

She didn’t like the tone of his voice. After two flights, she was having serious doubts about the pilot’s overconfidence. “OK, he’s almost in position,” Laurie said. Then, over the radio as if she were talking to a wingman, “Chris! Break left! Bandit, six o’clock, half a mile, closing.” Laurie was twisted around to her left and braced for a sharp turn in the same direction. Instead, Chris jinked hard to the right, loading the Strike Eagle with over 6
g’s
. Her head banged into the canopy, momentarily stunning her.

She fought the
gs
, trying to twist back to the right and regain a visual on the bandit. At the same time, she felt the afterburners kick in and the nose come down as they entered a split-S, a nose-low vertical turn.
What the hell?
she thought. A split-S was a good maneuver for defeating a rear-quarter threat when the bandit’s range was beyond a mile. But they didn’t have a mile.

Her head was up, and all she saw was gray as they blasted through the clouds going straight down. Her altimeter was a blur as it unwound, and she glanced at the altitude box in the HUD. They were through 16,000 feet and passing Mach 1.2. “Pull!” Laurie shouted as she reached for the stick. But they were still in afterburners and generating a horrendous
g
load as the pilot tried to bring the nose up. The dive shallowed out and the
g
readout in the lower lefthand corner of the HUD increased to nine. Bitchin’ Betty, the computer-activated woman’s voice in the Overload Warning System, bitched at them. “Warning! Over
g!
Warning! Over
g!
”

“The throttles,” Chris yelled. “They’re stuck! Help me!” They had to get it out of afterburner or they would rip the wings off pulling out—if they didn’t black out first. Laurie’s vision started to pull in at the edges, grayout, as the
g’s
increased. Now she was looking down a tunnel. She reached for the throttles, fighting the
gs
and the encroaching blackness. Sweat poured down her face, stinging her eyes. Automatically, she tensed her abdomen muscles, harder than she had ever done before, helping her
g
suit keep her blood from pooling in the lower part of her body.

The IP’s voice came over the radio, loud and urgent. “Pull out! Pull out!”

They were through the overcast, and all she could see was blue-gray ocean. Her fingers were on the throttles, but she couldn’t get her hand over them. She was on the edge of unconsciousness when she felt the
g
relax. Chris had blacked out and released the pressure on the stick. Now they were going straight down again.

She grabbed a fist full of throttles and pulled. They were frozen. At the same time, she pulled hard on the stick and the
g’s
were back, pushing her to the edge of darkness, as the Strike Eagle shallowed its dive. For a
split second, she considered ejecting. But at their speed, they were out of the ejection envelope, and the air blast would crush their chests. They were dead.

Her body got the message, and adrenaline coursed through her. She jerked at the throttles and felt something give. The throttles snapped out of afterburner. The F-15’s nose came up and pointed at the sky. But their sink rate was still over 4,000 feet a minute, and the ocean was rushing at them. Laurie shoved the throttles full forward into afterburner, never releasing the pressure on the stick. She was aware of being surrounded in gray when she heard a loud “Oh, shit!” over the radio. It was the IP.

Then they were flying again, and she felt Chris’s hand on the stick. He was conscious. “I got it,” he said.

“Shit-oh-dear,” the IP said over the radio. “I thought you’d bought it. I lost you in your rooster tail.” The gray Laurie had experienced a few moments before had been ocean spray kicked up when she had jammed the throttles into afterburner to blast them into an upward vector. It had been a close thing, and they had almost died in the fifteen seconds following her bandit call.

She was agonizingly aware that she had wet her pants.
When did I do that?
she wondered.

“Fire light on number 1,” Chris radioed as he shut down the left engine. “We’re losing hydraulic pressure: PC-1 and utility A are gone.”

Laurie called up the Overload Warning System display on her lefthand display screen to see how many
g’
s they had pulled. Her heart raced when she saw the 13.2 appear under the ACC column. She was surprised they had only damaged one engine and two hydraulic systems. She grabbed the checklist she sat on so it wouldn’t fly around the cockpit when they maneuvered but was still handy when she needed it. It was damp from her urine. She flipped to the emergency section to reconfirm what she already knew: no brakes nor nose gear steering and they would have to blow the gear down.

“You ever taken the barrier before?” the IP asked. The barrier was a cable stretched across the approach end of the runway that the F-15 could catch with its tailhook, much like a carrier landing.

“Negative,” Chris answered.

“Hey, guys,” Laurie said, “this is not fun.”

Okinawa, Japan

Martini was in his car, stopped on the taxiway, waiting for them. His critical eye missed nothing as the F-15 landed 400 feet short of the cable and then jerked to a stop when its hook snagged the wire. He grunted in satisfaction. It had been a good single-engine approach and landing with a barrier arrestment. The F-15’s one good engine spun down as crew chiefs hurried to disengage the cable from the tailhook and tow the F-15 clear of the runway. He watched Laurie follow Leland down the crew ladder and snorted when he saw the dark stains on her backside. He knew what had happened.

“Get changed and meet us in debrief,” he muttered. He motioned for Chris to get into the pickup truck he was driving.

Laurie walked into one of the squadron’s small debriefing rooms twenty minutes later. She was wearing a fresh flight suit and had taken a quick shower. Martini was sitting at the table with her squadron commander, the IP from the flight, and Chris Leland. The videotape from the mission was on the VCR, and the IP was explaining what had happened.

“After Captain Bender called bandit, Captain Leland rolled to the right and buried the nose, starting a split-S maneuver to reverse back into me. At the same time, he stoked his afterburners. Why, I don’t know.”