been selected for 0-6, and you pin on next week?" No reac-
tion from Willis. "That's great. I wish the Air Force had that
frocking policy, pinning on your new rank as soon as you're
selected for promotion. You Navy guys get the best of every-
thing."
"Mr. McLanahan.. - Colonel McLanahan," Willis re-
lented, "I cannot allow these planes to be towed out onto the
apron without prior approval."
354 DALE BROWN
"It's very important that we tow them out, Commander,"
Nancy Cheshire said. Willis turned to look at the Air Force
pilot. Willis had seen Cheshire out around the planes several
times before, and although she was pretty enough, he had al-
ways thought of her as a tomboy, probably a lesbian, and dis-
missed her.
Not this time. Her flight suit had been altered to accentuate
her figure, and her flight suit's top zipper had been unzipped
to mid-chest, revealing a more than ample bosom, firm and
round. Her hair had been pinned up, revealing a long, slender
neck. Her eyes were shining green, round and inviting, and he
saw those eyes dip down to check him out, her lips opening
up slightly as if she was impressed and perhaps a little excited
about the dashing figure he thought he cut in his tropical
whites.
"Can't you give us clearance, just this once?" Cheshire
implored him. "We'll be done in less than two hours, and
-
we'll have them back in the hangars by midnight." She hes
itated, then added, "I'll notify you in person when we're fin-
ished."
Willis puffed up his chest, excited at that prospect but not
ready to concede one bit. But that thought was quickly can-
celed by a slight girlish grin on Cheshire's lips that spoke huge
volumes to the Navy officer. Willis said, "I'm sorry, but I
cannot allow the planes to leave the hangar without prior clear-
ance." But he paused, then added, "But you may open both
sides of the hangars and run engines inside."
"We really need to do this outside."
"Denied," Willis said. "Run engines inside the hangar, or
not at all. "
McLanahan shook his head, muttered something to himself,
lowered his head in defeat, then nodded. "Very well, Com-
mander. Inside the hangars only. It'll have to do. Thank you."
"Notify me in my office when you are complete and closed
up," Willis added, glancing again at Nancy Cheshire. She
arched her eyebrows, silently asking the question, and he an-
swered with an almost imperceptible nod.. lie stepped away,
issued instructions to the federal marshal and his NCO in
charge of the security detail, gave one last glance at Cheshire,
who still had her eyes locked on him--on his butt, he
guessed-and stepped away to his waiting Humvee.
"Thank you, Commander," Patrick shouted after him-his
FATAL T ER RAI N 355
thanks were not acknowledged. He turned to the others with
him: "Okay, gang, we can't do this outside, so the noise levels
are going to be bad, but we'll have to make do. Let's run the
'Before Starting Engines' checklist for ground engine-running
maintenance first, then climb on board. We're all going to have
to help out. Let's go."
It took just a few minutes for the flight and maintenance
crews to clear out the hangars and open up the double-ended
hangar doors, and within half an hour the deafening sound of
the Megafortress's huge jet engines could be heard. The Navy
security guards put on noise protectors, but were still forced
to retreat to their Humvees to escape the noise.
Fortunately, shift change was coming up soon, so the guards
wouldn't have to contend with the noise for too long. Sure
enough, a radio report announced that relief crews were on the
way, and the security guards packed up their equipment and
got ready to depart when the oncoming crews reported in. At
the same time, a long convoy of canvas-covered trailers moved
from one of the hangars on the other side of the twin runways
to the west, accompanied by the standard four annored vehi-
cles, moving toward them. The guards were curious, but the
relief crews were arriving, so it was their problem now.
The relief-crew Humvee for the front of Hangar No. I
stopped directly in front of the offgoing crew's Humvee, shin-
ing their headlights directly into the offgoing crew's eyes. Six
men stepped out, all wearing Navy-style integrated helmet-
noise protectors; the oncoming detail chief carried the detail
duty log and the weapon inventory sheets, as required. The
Marine detail chief was going to get out and start the weapon
inventory, but the oncoming detail chief was already at the
door, holding the logs and inventory sheets out. His crew
opened the doors in back and began to step out ...
... and then all hell seemed to break loose.
Doors flew open. Guys were yelling something. Confusion.
'Gas began to fill the interior of the Humvee. Doors were
closed, then wedged shut. The headlights on the other Humvee
snapped off. The sweet odor of the gas, a slight choking sen-
sation ... then nothing.
The doors were opened to ventilate the gas, and a guard
wearing a gas mask pushed the unconscious offgoing detail
crew chief over against the huge engine hump in the middle
of the Humvee, jumped in behind the wheel, and drove off.
T
356 DALE BROWN
Outside, Marine Gunnery Sergeant Chris Wohl raised a wal-
kie-talkie to his lips. "Bravo check."
"Bravo secure."
"Copy. Break. Charlie check." One by one, Chris Wohl i
checked in all the members of his fifty-man commando team.
In less than a minute, Chris Wohl and the members of his
Intelligence Support Agency special operations commando
team, nicknamed Madcap Magician, had completely subdued
the four entire Marine Corps security rifle platoons that had
been guarding the five Megafortress hangars.
"Break. Leopard. All secure." i
"Copy," Air Force Major Harold Briggs, the commander
of Madcap Magician, responded. Briggs, an ex-Air Force se-
curity police commander at the HAWC, was in the lead Hum-
vee escorting the convoy of trailers from the secure hangar
that held the Megafortress's weapons-his team had subdued
the Marines guarding the weapons while Wohl's team had
taken down the guards surrounding the planes. The convoy
was ushered into the hangars, while another long convoy
emerged from the weapons hangar on its way to the planes.
Several Humvees converged on Hangar No. I as its engines
were shut down. As each crew member climbed out of the
planes, they did a very unmilitary-like thing-they gave each
Madcap Magician commando a hug. "Damn it all, it's good
to see you, Hal," Elliott said. Neither had seen the other since
the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center had been
closed.
"Same here, General," Briggs said. "You look like a mil-
lion
freakin' bucks, sir."
"Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Hal," Elliott said. "I feel like
shit. But I'm sure glad you're here."
"We weren't going to miss this party for all the nukes in
China, boss," Briggs said. He motioned to Chris Wohl.
"Chris, you remember General Elliott, right?"
"Of course. How are you, sir?" Wohl said, shaking hands
with the retired three-star general. Wohl and Elliott first met
while preparing for a secret rescue mission to Lithuania, when
Wohl had been asked to train McLanahan, Briggs, and another
HAWC commander, now dead, in enough commando-style
tactics so they could safely accompany a Marine Force Recon
team. Wohl had been against the entire plan, but had been
convinced to carry on by Brad Elliott himself.
AL@
FATA L T E R RA I N 357
"Peachy, Gunny, peachy," Elliott responded. "Glad to
have you along. Thanks for the help."
"Nothing to it," Wohl said matter-offactly. "This entire
detachment needed a good ass-kicking. They were way too
complacent. I was happy to give it to them."
"I brought along a guy who said he knew a little about B-
52s," Briggs said. Out of the Humvee came a gentleman a
little younger than Elliott. "You remember Paul White, don't
you, sir?"
"Damn right I do," Elliott said happily, and they exchanged
handshakes, then embraces.
"Good to see you again, General," White said. Paul White
was a retired Air Force colonel, an electronics engineering
expert who'd been assigned to Patrick McLanahan's bomber
base years earlier. Upon retirement from active military duty,
White had become the original commander of the Central In-
telligence Agency-sponsored unit called Madcap Magician.
White's unit had been involved in the Iranian conflict earlier
that year; White himself had been captured by the Iranians.
Although he had been rescued unharmed by Briggs, Wohl, and
the other surviving members of Madcap Magician, White had
been decertified from intelligence work and forced to retire.
"I bear we're going to kick some Chinese butt. Can't wait to
fire up those turbofans."
The real reunion came when Patrick and Wendy McLanahan
emerged and greeted Hal Briggs. These three had first been
together years earlier in the original Megafortress project
started by Brad Elliott, when Patrick and Wendy had been
selected by Elliott to help design and test-fly the first Mega-
fortress, a modified B-52 nicknamed "Old Dog." That test
program started ten years earlier had suddenly become an op-
erational mission when Elliott and his crew of engineers and
flyers had flown the Old Dog over the Soviet Union to destroy
a ground-based laser site that had been shooting down Amer-
ican satellites, and threatening an intercontinental nuclear war
between the superpowers. The bastardized mission had been a
success, and the ragtag test crew had become the centerpiece
of the Air Force's most highly classified installation, the High
Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, nicknamed Dream-
land.
"I never thanked you for helping my ass over Iran, Pat-
rick," Hal Briggs said. "I knew you were up there doing shit,
358 DALE BROWN
1 knew it! I heard the Iranians launching every SAM and triple-
A projectile they had, and I knew it was either a raid by every
bomber in the fleet, or a couple Screamers launched by Patrick
McLanahan. Thank you for saving my narrow ass, brother."
"My distinct pleasure," Patrick said. He shook hands with
Wohl. "Good to see you, Gunny. Great work taking over this
airfield. I don't think the Marines will ever know what hit
them."
"It was no problem, sir," Wohl responded. He motioned to
his Humvee, and two of Wohl's commandos brought out Corn-
mander Willis. "I thought you should explain -things to the
commander." Wohl ripped the piece of duct tape off the Navy
commander's face, leaving a cherry-red mark on either side of
the angry officer's face.
"I will see you thrown in prison for the rest of your life,
McLanahan!" Willis shouted. "This is a complete outrage!
You are nothing but a criminal and a traitor!"
"I'm taking what belongs to me, Eldon," Patrick said.
"We're going to keep you and your men nice and safe and
out of the way. I'm sure you'll be found shortly after we've
departed."
"Where the, hell do you think you're going to go, Mc-
Lanahan?" Willis spat angrily. "Where do you think you're
going to hide five fucking B-52 bombers? You might as well
give yourselves up now. Or maybe you can just defect to Rus-
sia or China or wherever the hell you're headed, you lousy
stinking traitors! "
"I'm not going to defect, Eldon-we're going to fight,"
Patrick said. He nodded to Wohl, who nodded to his men, who
wrapped another long piece of duct tape over Willis's mouth.
"Get him out of here, Gunny," McLanahan said.
"With pleasure, sir," Wohl said hurnorlessly.
Patrick turned to Hal Briggs. "The rest of the flight crews t
said, "so we've only got enough flight crews for one plane.
We're going to load all the weapons we can on Jon Masters's
DC-10 launch plane, and upload all the defensive weaponry
we can on the bombers themselves. We're short on mainte-
nance crews too, so we've got to do a lot of the loading and
preflight stuff ourselves, so we can use all the help your guys
can give us. After the Redtail Hawk mission, I figured your
FATAL TER RAI N 359
troops are somewhat familiar with loading air-to-mud stuff on
bombers."
"You got it, Patrick," Briggs said, rubbing his hands to-
gether with sheer excitement. "Man, this is great! Do I get to
go flying this time?"
" We're way short on crew members, so we can use all the
help we can get."
"In that case, I brought along someone who might help,"
Briggs said. He motioned to his 14umvee, and a single man
stepped out. It was hard to see his face in the glare of the
headlights ...
... but Patrick McLanahan knew who it was the minute he
stepped out of the vehicle, even without seeing his face, and
the brotherly embrace they shared in the glare of the Humvee's
headlights was genuine and tearful. "My God, Dave, it's really
you, it's really fucking you," Patrick breathed, his voice
choked with emotion. Wendy, Briggs, and Brad Elliott joined
the two, and they all clustered around one another like a close-
knit family reunited after many painful years.
David Luger and Patrick McLanahan had once formed the
Air Force's most effective bombing team ever. Because of
their skill, knowledge, expertise, and seamless teamwork, they
had both been selected by Brad Elliott for the secret "Old
Dog" project. When the test project had suddenly turned into
an operational mission, together Patrick, Luger, Wendy,
Brad
Elliott, and two more crew members, now dead, had success-
fully attacked and destroyed the Soviet anti-satellite laser site.
But the crew had been forced to land their battle-damaged
plane on an abandoned Soviet airfield in eastern Siberia. The
crew had managed to steal enough fuel to depart the base, but
in the battle that ensued after they refueled the EB-52, Dave
Luger had left the bomber to draw fire from the Red Army
soldiers that had arrived. His heroic actions had allowed the
Megafortress and the rest of the crew to escape, but he had
been severely wounded and left behind in the frozen wastes.
Luger had been feared dead and was nearly forgotten until
Paul White and members of Madcap Magician, performing a
daring rescue inside a secret Soviet research facility in the
Baltic republic of Lithuania, had discovered Luger inside the
same facility-White had been a simulator instructor and de-
signer with David and Patrick McLanahan at Ford Air Force
Base in California, and he'd recognized Luger instantly. White
360 DALE BROWN
had contacted Brad Elliott, who'd combined forces with Mad-
cap Magician and Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Chris Wohl
and mounted a covert rescue mission. David Luger had been
returned safely to the United States, but had had to be placed
in security isolation because he had been declared dead, and
his sudden reappearance would have caused questions about
the then-classified "Old Dog" project.
Patrick McLanahan's longtime partner David Luger re-
turned the embrace, crying like a child and pounding Patrick's
back with joy. "Hal told me you were going flying, and that
it might be illegal, so we decided to go all the way and spring
me out of security isolation," Luger said in his familiar Texas
drawl. "He filled me in on the way. I guess we're not so
classified after all, are we?"
Patrick was still not believing his partner and best friend
was standing in front of him. "God, Dave, I still can't believe
this," Patrick gasped. "Man, a whole lot of shit has happened
since I saw you last. I never thought either one of us would