Entertaining War: Let the Games Begin

By Lynn Carroll

Lieutenant Colonel Laura Fox Den is the first woman to command an F-22 Raptor squadron. Widowed five years before in a terrorist attack, she is left with two kids and a heavy psychological burden. That burden explodes when an American hacker, an avid video gamer, targets her childrens video games, and causes a Raptor in her squadron to crash. This action precipitates a surprise war on the Korean Peninsula. Kim Jong-il, the Dear Leader of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, tries to use the outbreak of war for his latest perverted agenda.
Den is about to lead her Raptor squadron to war in the Pacific Rim when another cyber attack comes from a totally unexpected source that changes her orders and her life. Faced with entertaining war, Lieutenant Colonel Den has to prioritize her responses as a mother, a woman, a war-fighter and a commander. Assisted by her mentor and close friend, Colonel John Wart Hogge, she becomes immersed with other secretive players trying to stop the conflict before it destroys the peace in Asia, revives what has been called The Forgotten War, and kills millions of refugees caught between two armies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 22, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450219969

Lynn Carroll

Lynn Carroll is a retired colonel and fighter pilot. A twenty-nine-year veteran, he served in all organizational levels of the Air Force. He continues to consult on future military concepts and technologies. Carroll was stationed in Korea for a year and lives in Arizona with his wife, Barbara.

Book preview

Contents

CHAPTER 1

Mishap Mayday!

CHAPTER 2

Let the Games Begin!

CHAPTER 3

Throw a Nickel on the Grass!

CHAPTER 4

Shit Happens

CHAPTER 5

Breaking News

CHAPTER 6

Orient the Revolution

CHAPTER 7

Dear Leader in the Headlights

CHAPTER 8

Mission Impossible

CHAPTER 9

That’s Entertainment!

CHAPTER 10

When Pigs Fly

CHAPTER 11

That’s All, Folks!

CHAPTER 12

Dream Along with Me

CHAPTER 13

Farmer in the DELL

CHAPTER 14

Wakeup Call

CHAPTER 15

Surprise Attack!!!

CHAPTER 16

WTFO?

CHAPTER 17

Code Talkers

CHAPTER 18

Repeating History

CHAPTER 19

Black Unicorns

CHAPTER 20

War Plan

CHAPTER 21

Fuzzy Logic

CHAPTER 22

Game Time!

CHAPTER 23

Fraternization

CHAPTER 24

Cry Havoc!

CHAPTER 25

Swine Flu

CHAPTER 26

Roof Stomp

CHAPTER 27

Flight to Destiny

CHAPTER 28

Be the Bomb!

CHAPTER 29

Trigger Man

CHAPTER 30

Minutes of Terror

CHAPTER 31

Ready! Fire! Aim!

CHAPTER 32

William Tell

CHAPTER 33

Hostile Act

CHAPTER 34

Reverse Angle Replay

CHAPTER 35

The Box Score

CHAPTER 36

In a Corner

CHAPTER 37

Junior Birdmen

CHAPTER 38

War! What Is It Good For?

CHAPTER 39

A Mission to Die for!

CHAPTER 40

In Your Dreams

CHAPTER 41

Gaming the System

CHAPTER 42

Child’s Play

CHAPTER 43

Change of Orders

CHAPTER 44

Playing Ostrich

CHAPTER 45

So Far, So Good

CHAPTER 46

Child Abuse

CHAPTER 47

Déjà vu All Over Again

CHAPTER 48

Gamestas Gone Wild

CHAPTER 49

A Family Affair

CHAPTER 50

Cyber Sleuthing

CHAPTER 51

Hide and Seek

CHAPTER 52

The Usual Suspects

CHAPTER 53

Out of the Loop

CHAPTER 54

Graveyard Shift

CHAPTER 55

Winning the Lottery

CHAPTER 56

Damn the Torpedoes!

CHAPTER 57

When Animals Attack

CHAPTER 58

Counter Punch

CHAPTER 59

Smoke and Mirrors

CHAPTER 60

Runnin’ with the Big Dogs

CHAPTER 61

Duck and Cover

CHAPTER 62

Afraid of the Dark

CHAPTER 63

Kimchi Hits the Fan

CHAPTER 64

Making Faces

CHAPTER 65

Put Me In, Coach!

CHAPTER 66

Target Rich Environment!

CHAPTER 67

Desperation Shot

CHAPTER 68

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!

CHAPTER 69

Halt! Who Goes There?

CHAPTER 70

Mano a Mano

CHAPTER 71

Great White Hope

CHAPTER 72

Dispatches from the Front

CHAPTER 73

Ground Zero

CHAPTER 74

Palace Coup De Grace

CHAPTER 75

Throwing in the Towel

CHAPTER 76

POP! Goes the Weasel

CHAPTER 77

Disappearing Act

CHAPTER 78

Who Won?

CHAPTER 79

Miller Time

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER 1

Mishap Mayday!

Over the Atlantic

Langley AFB, VA

1640L, Friday

Raptor 81, fight’s on! barked Brigadier General Chuck Wentworth, commander of the 1st Fighter Effects Wing at Langley AFB, Virginia. He jammed the F-22’s throttles into afterburner and pushed the side-stick controller forward to dump the nose. The Raptor jumped at the chance to go fast.

Raptor 82, fight’s on! Captain Larry Lane responded over the radio. He had his Raptor already in full afterburner to counter the general’s expected move. Lane was a wing standardization/evaluation check pilot giving the general his required tactical check ride. They were finishing up the mission with a basic fighter maneuver engagement, a dogfight.

Harvey 83, fight’s on! Captain Charlie Parker responded from the microsimulator in the Mission Operations Center back at Langley. He was supporting the mission as a surrogate shooter as well as for safety, security, and reachback support.

The flight was operating over the Atlantic in the military operating area, W-386, just off the east coast of Virginia. The hot airborne sortie was a two-ship of Raptors with live munitions protecting the Hampton Roads Security Protection Zone. The F-22s were flying a combat air patrol, or CAP, mission supporting ongoing Noble Eagle operations started after the 911 attacks. They were part of America’s diminishing air defense.

General Wentworth yanked the throttles out of AB and pulled hard left and up into the attacking jet. The general started to gray out with the too rapid onset of the g-load. He released some backpressure on the side stick to regain his vision.

The combination of his recent weight-loss diet, long stressful days without enough flying, and some over-the-counter allergy medication affected him more than he anticipated. At nearly two hundred pounds and pulling over seven gs, Wentworth weighed almost fourteen-hundred pounds. His blood started to pool in his lower extremities and abdomen starving his brain of oxygen. The rapid computer-controlled onset of over seven gs could have rendered Wentworth incapacitated in a classic g-induced loss of consciousness. However, being a veteran fighter pilot, he eased up.

Then, something caught his attention. His helmet’s faceplate flickered signifying something had changed. The general almost missed the fact his jet’s weapons system had been taken over by an off-platform wizard using the Surrogate Shooter protocol. S2 allowed individual operators to take over other designated weapons systems and use them remotely in addition to their own.

This confusion added to the prior g-induced fog. The general went head down and became preoccupied with the glass cockpit displays. He was trying to clear his head and interpret the anomaly instead of flying the jet. His crosscheck and air discipline started to break down. Instead of calling a knock it off to terminate the engagement as he should have, he fixated on the problem. He violated the tried and true primary edict that every student learns in pilot training…maintain aircraft control.

His aircraft continued the aggressive left climbing turn until passing ninety degrees of bank. Then, it proceeded to a nose-low inverted attitude screaming toward the ocean. The general continued to be distracted by the avionics glitch…or was it?

The jet was twenty seconds from slamming into the ocean when Bitchin’ Betty, the computer-generated female voice, insisted that the pilot, Pull up! Pull up!" The general was rudely refocused and responded by applying so much force on the stick that he reintroduced the over-g condition. This time he did pass out from a classic case of g-induced loss of consciousness.

Bitchin’ Betty stopped complaining as the jet arced nose-high as Wentworth’s weapons system locked up Captain Lane in Raptor 82. Someone other than Wentworth was controlling the jet’s weapons delivery system but was not flying the jet. The jet rolled and dove until it was again nose-low and inverted with its unconscious passenger and the renewed complaining from Bitchin’ Betty.

This ain’t right! Switch to Raptor 81’s interface! Parker yelled to the simulator console operator who was assisting the mission.

Roger, I’m on it! the operator replied as he selected observer mode. That brought up Raptor 81’s cockpit displays and the out-the-window view on the console’s picture-in-a-picture.

Raptor 81’s got a hard lock on 82! Go to the internal camera mode! Parker instructed. The cockpit camera clearly showed the general slumped against his harness in the PIP visual.

Aw fuck, he’s passed out! Parker shouted as the console’s out-the-window visual provided a clear picture of nothing but ocean and the beginning of the Raptor’s death spiral.

Knock it off! Knock it off! Raptor 81, wake up! Parker yelled as if he could propel his voice out over the ocean without the radio.

Raptor 82, knock it off! Lane shouted and waited for Raptor 81 to respond. Silence greeted him as he watched his leader plummet toward the ocean.

General Wentworth! Sir! Wake up! Parker continued to scream as he watched vicariously via his own display. Several technicians who had gathered around the sim console collectively flinched when the visual display virtually hurled them into the ocean with Wentworth.

The general didn’t have to die, and a perfectly good jet didn’t have to become flotsam and jetsam. The F-22 had an auto-recovery system, but it was turned off because of some recent malfunctions. The Raptor also had an auto-ejection system, but the general opted to fly in the manual mode. A perfect storm of technical glitches and bad decisions resulted in another accident and a fatality.

MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY! Raptor 81 down at my position, mark! Captain Lane yelled as he registered the position of the crash on his jet’s system.

Confusion was slowly overcome by professionalism even as the totally chaotic turn of events enveloped the mission crew. The team members reoriented to the crash by safing the systems, clearing the airspace, and time stamping the archived data. It would be critical to discovering what had just occurred. Rescuing the downed pilot was now the top priority.

Was there a chute? Parker queried. Have you got the gadget?

I don’t know about the chute, but the ejection seat emergency beeper is active so he must have gotten out! Lane confirmed hearing it in his helmet.

The gadget referred to the Force Protection Matrix implant under Wentworth’s rib cage. It provided location, status and duress of Wentworth to the Coast Guard Station at Elizabeth City, the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center at Langley, and to anyone in the Global Command and Control system, or GCCS, who was authorized to monitor the emergency signals.

Warriors could be tracked in real time just like FedEx packages anywhere in the world when selected or when duress thresholds were tripped, like now. Wentworth apparently had not survived the crash indicated by the flat-line vitals relayed by the gadget. Parker hoped it had just malfunctioned. Stressed for nearly sixty gs and cushioned by the rib cage, that was not likely.

The slow-motion review of the internal cockpit video showed Wentworth woke up just in time to initiate the ejection sequence. His body was hurled free of the cockpit at five hundred knots, but there was not enough time and distance for a successful ejection. He smashed into the Atlantic just as the parachute deployed. His water-activated survival vest inflated, and he floated amidst the tangle of his unused parachute. A fireball and a belch of black smoke marked the black hole that swallowed the $200 million aircraft.

The search and rescue turned into a recovery effort as the HV-22 located and hovered over Wentworth. Called the Double Whopper by its crews, the Osprey made quick work of the recovery and headed back to Langley with the package.

Parker went numb. What the fuck just happened? A Raptor is down. The wing king’s jet was just sucked into the Atlantic. That’s what happened! Damn it, damn it all to hell! Parker silently screamed as he beat on the microsim cabinet in an emotional outburst of frustration, denial, and pain.

Parker quickly reoriented from winding down on a Friday afternoon to being fully engaged in a crash scenario. He notified the Langley Wing Mission Operations Center warlord supervisor who called for the Mishap Checklist. The warlord made the announcement to the MOC personnel concerning the accident and made sure everyone stayed focused on their particular job at hand. The second-guessing would start shortly. By Monday, the armchair quarterbacks and critics would be in full voice.

The Mishap Checklist didn’t nearly come close to describing what had just happened. Damn, this is really gonna screw up everybody’s weekend, Parker silently lamented.

CHAPTER 2

Let the Games Begin!

94th FES

Langley AFB, VA

1645L, Friday

Hey, Colonel Den, is it the weekend, yet? Master Sergeant Bill Hotseat Boyle shouted down the hallway. The guys in the lounge are gettin’ restless! Boyle was the noncommissioned officer in charge, the NCOIC operations chief of the squadron internal combat support.

The lounge was a transparent cover for a bar. Almost a joke to be politically correct, it was officially called the unit’s Heritage Room. Every fighter unit had one. Some were Spartan. However, most were ornate in their décor. Polished wood, leather, chrome, and flying paraphernalia created the ambiance of an aviation version of a sports bar. All were decorated with the exploits of individual aviators steeped in the global adventures of the unit. Each had a bar, keg coolers, and sundry ways to dispatch vending-style food and drinks. Most accommodated a big screen HDTV, Foosball, a pool table used more for Crud than billiards, and the ubiquitous bell to announce violations of the rules of engagement in the bar. The Heritage Rooms were for lunching, lounging, and taking a break during the week, but they became party central when the mood struck.

Okay, okay. Let the games begin! Den relented and declared the bar open.

Lieutenant Colonel Laura Fox Den was the commander of the 94th Fighter Effects Squadron at Langley AFB, located in the Tidewater area of Virginia. That would be the best F-22 Raptor squadron in the world, thank you! The 94th Hat in the Ring Squadron was part of the 1st Fighter Effects Wing, America’s First Team for air effects dominance. The F-22 provided an expanding suite of kinetic and non-kinetic options to establish and maintain air superiority around the world from home or away.

Den had the squadron gearing up for its next 1st Air Effects Expeditionary Force, or AEEF, deployment to Southwest Asia. The 94th FES was on alert to go expeditionary to the sand container...again. She was also pulling double-duty leadership since her operations officer was in Doha, Qatar, leading the advance team for the squadron’s approaching deployment.

The squadron was appropriately called the Fox’s Den. Fox was Laura’s tactical callsign. She had not only made her mark as a fighter pilot, but she also had the support of the wing leadership as having the right stuff for command. As the commander, she ran one of the most modern fighter squadrons in the world. Being a six-foot, blonde hard-body didn’t hurt either.

It was no small accomplishment for a single mom with two kids at home. They grounded her in conventional living unlike the few bachelors and bachelorettes in the wing. Her kids forced her to schedule everything and then, embrace total flexibility when the schedule turned to shit. Like most airmen, she eventually succumbed to the old military paradigm of indecision being the key to flexibility. No sense in planning anything but the mission. She knew it made her a more flexible person and officer. However, it routinely meant sleep deprivation and stress levels that even an A-type personality found overwhelming.

Her sleep debt was only exceeded by her emotional debt left by her late husband’s murder at the hands of local terrorists five years before. Widowed at thirty-six with two kids and a heavy psychological burden, Den wasn’t exactly the poster child the newly transformed Air Force wanted. But, she was really good at what she did. Laura probably had no more stress than some married jocks with spouses at home that weren’t exactly supportive of their mates’ military careers. Fighting the Global War on Terrorism had taken its toll, particularly on families.

Den had grown of age seeing opportunities for women unfold from the friendly fields of strife in sports all the way to the battlefields in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and America. She surmised combat was not really the equality the sisterhood initially sought. However, it was certainly a validation of what they had wrought. Equality in the boardroom and the bedroom carried a price men had long endured as they forfeited life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness when ideals and ideas clashed in deadly combat. The question of whether American women should, could, or would individually and collectively fight for the same had been put to the test and had been put to rest.

After paying her dues and playing the game, Den was now Queen for a Day as the first woman commander of a Raptor squadron. The men seemed to accommodate to the new coed locker room culture mostly because they had no choice other than to quit doing what they loved most in life…to fly. Unacknowledged was the fact they were just little boys, and mother was now in their sand container. Saying box or head were adolescent violations of the fighter pilots’ inane rules of engagement. You had to say container and cranium. It about summed it up for the manly men of modern aviation according to the women. Den secretly thought guys are all pussy-whipped, first at home and now in the squadron.

But, most of the men weren’t against her in particular or even women in general. They were just basically against someone else’s success at their expense. Professional respect and professional jealousy seemed to be opposite sides of the same unit coin. Many were just against change of any kind. The bottom line was she was occupying their territory and marking it with a different scent. However, the thing that counted the most was her perennial position atop the leader board in gunnery competitions. That always chafed and gave the red ass to some hard-core Luddites in the wing.

Hey, Colonel, get your butt in the lounge, ma’am! We need some adult supervision! one of her iron majors yelled on his way to the lounge. Den could hear the yelling from the Crud game and the shouting that passed for singing. The fighter pilot choir was warming up with a rousing rendition of I Want to Play Piano in a Whorehouse. With an ear cocked to the lounge, her paperwork was getting about as much attention as she thought it deserved. She easily overcame her reluctance to leave the unfinished admin crap and decided to party.

As Den swaggered down the heritage-rich hall to the lounge, she couldn’t help but to check out her picture below the Overall Top Gun display for the quarter. There was a copy of the same picture on an even bigger board in the wing headquarters’ building. She was the top dog in the wing for last quarter. There were some that agreed she was, indeed, the top bitch. Professional jealousy, she thought.

In public view, fighter pilot behavior was regarded as childish, boorish, and highly unprofessional. The Navy’s Tail Hook incident in the 1990s was still the measuring stick of what was unacceptable and over the top. Now, every misstep was judged to be nearly as egregious as the Navy’s millstone that was hewn by a female helo driver that should have known better than to trust naval aviators who should have known better than to harass a double-breasted, split-tailed aviator with a built-in foxhole. Finally, in 2008, the fighter mafia era succumbed to the unmanned vehicle fever and the level playing field movement in the new, non-tribal Air Force. It was premature and delusional, but the Pentagon bureaucrats and other lesser players reveled in it. The fighter pilots’ era was over, at least until America entertained the next real war that would catch the country with its pants down…again.

As Den listened to the choir, she couldn’t help but rue the change. While the current behavior was normally shielded from public view, most of the dirty songs and skits had been preserved by connoisseurs of the underground culture of warriors. They were available on dozens of web sites. Military veterans had tapes, videos, and CDs of the best of the worst. They were trotted out for special occasions or were simply enjoyed during the lonely melancholy of remembering good times past. They were best served with fine sipping whiskey as maudlin survivors of the last excellent combat adventures, aided by selective memory, mournfully celebrated them, their lost comrades, and the end of an era.

Den was thinking about how all of this was somehow doomed…again. The warrior spirit would prevail, but the trappings of the warfighters’ esprit de corps would be forced to morph into some perverted professional veneer more acceptable to the public and the sensitivity-strapped leadership. She remained a little longer to feel closer to what might be a fleeting moment. There was never any warning or ceremony that heralded the passing of an era. You just woke up one day, and it was gone. It would become somebody’s good old days, and the lamentations would begin again from those who unwittingly aided in its passing.

CHAPTER 3

Throw a Nickel on the Grass!

94th FES

Langley AFB, VA

1650L, Friday

Master Sergeant Boyle handed Den an ops group intranet email. It read:

Raptor 81 reported down at 1647L in W-386, twenty-five miles northeast of Langley. No survivor reported. CV-22 Osprey, Shogun 06, on scene for recovery. Mishap pilot General Charles Wentworth. Cause unknown. Not releasable pending notification of next of kin.

Den wobbled as her knees turned to water. Damn! she muttered as Boyle added, I know.

Activate the Mishap Checklist! We’re gonna be the center of a shit storm! Den instructed. That meant an accident board would put her and the squadron under a microscope since Wentworth was attached to the 94th for regular flying. He had been one of Den’s mentors since her F-16 days. He was her flight commander at Luke AFB, Arizona, when she went through B-Course conversion training in the Viper. She could feel the tears coming but fought them back. The initial gush of emotions always went right to her tear ducts. Just a typical female response, she always chided herself. Control restored, the emotional heart shot was re-routed to a less emotional part of her psyche so she could deal with it later at her own choosing.

Do they know what happened? Den asked.

No, ma’am. It just came off the system. The command post sent it down.

Friday night was in full swing as the warriors were about to be slammed back to the reality of aviation with the bad news. The squadron choristers were still in full voice, and the Crud game had reached the din level as personal cell phones and PDAs started to go off throughout the crowd.

Boyle went to the lounge, closed the doors behind him, and switched to CNN on the big screen TV. The lounge went dead silent when Breaking News interrupted some boring talking heads with the initial report of the crash.

Colonel Henderson, this is Lieutenant Colonel Den. Have you received the accident alert? she asked the ops group commander. She used her WILSON PDA on the mobile secure ops intranet to ensure he had the bad news. WILSON was the Worldwide Information Link to Secure Operational Networks.

Affirmative! We’re coming in now, he reported from his golf cart. He was already heading in from the North Course’s fifteenth tee on the immaculately maintained Raptorwood Golf Course at Langley. The vice-commander is in his office.

Thank you, sir! Den replied as she disconnected and then, referred to the Mishap Checklist to initiate the squadron emergency notification and accident decision tree.

Others were doing the same at the wing MOC, the Global Air Effects Operations Center at Langley AFB, the 9th Air Force Combined Effects Operations Center at Shaw AFB, the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center at Langley, the Global Military Effects Integration Center in Cheyenne Mountain, and in the Pentagon’s National Military Effects Command Center. You couldn’t have too much supervision after a mishap. The term mishap always seemed like too polite of a word for an accident where people died and millions of dollars of combat capability were traded in for a black hole in the Earth and in the hearts of family and friends.

Attention in the squadron! This is an all-call in the lounge, Den announced over the intercom. The Happy Hour crowd was engrossed in the repetitious news coverage. CNN had preempted most of Den’s intended announcement.

As most of you just saw, we’ve lost a Raptor. General Wentworth was killed. Please, keep the lid on this until we know more. I know most of you need to make a phone call to your families. Just be discreet. We have no details. Nothing goes out to the public. Public Affairs will take care of that. No emails to your friends. Let the system do its job. Above all, no supposition as to the cause! We just don’t know, yet, Den advised while silently hoping the Wentworth family wasn’t watching, or some well-meaning friend had seen it and called them.

The lounge crowd was mumbling numbly after receiving the sketchy but official word that corroborated CNN. The initial shock produced clenched fists and drained faces that mirrored Den’s feelings. The party was over.

Depending on the ensuing mood, the wake would start shortly. Some of the best parties in the military were those ignited by some personal tragedy. The terrorist war had revived the practice.

Den went to her office and punched the vice-commander’s hot line.

Colonel Wyatt, he responded after a single ring.

Colonel Wyatt, has someone been dispatched to General Wentworth’s home to notify the family?

I sent the base commander to the house with the chaplain. The girls were home from school so we got the neighbors to get over there to stand by.

Thank you, sir. I just wanted to be sure we did all we could to avoid a bad situation.

Thanks, Laura. I think we’re on top of it, the colonel unintentionally rebuffed her help and disconnected.

Den finally noticed a dull murmur had replaced the boisterous outbursts from the lounge from just a few minutes ago. She peeked in as she headed back to her office. She heard Major Skunk Strunk, the squadron’s partymeister, call for everyone’s attention using an unusually soft ding of the squadron bell. Den stopped to listen. Strunk was holding up a glass of beer as he began one of the many litanies he dredged up from his prodigious memory banks of the banal, the inane, and the insane meanderings of a fighter pilot’s dirty mind. It was an ode to Wentworth as only a fellow fighter pilot could deliver. After several seemingly demeaning eulogies, he reverently recited High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. It was a lyrical ode to those who fly.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence

Hovering there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along,

And flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew.

And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Den had no idea how Skunk managed to get through it without a quavering voice or even a quivering chin. She welled up again just listening. At the end, Strunk assumed the hammer from the deceased Wentworth and called a final Dead Bug in his honor. It was a juvenile drinking game where the last player to hit the floor wriggling like a deceased insect bought the next round and inherited the hammer. Strunk remained standing to ensure he would be buying the next round of drinks in honor of a fallen comrade and leader because Wentworth was one of the good guys. A subdued human wad of flight suits hit the floor but not squirming as usual. They were playing the game in memory of Wentworth, for their own sense of loss, and probably dealing with a little more personal vulnerability than was befitting these indestructible terrorist killers.

The fighter pilots raised themselves, their glasses, and their voices in a final salute to Wentworth and to the deluded belief that he died happy because he was doing what he loved. Who would tell that one to his distraught family? Den turned to avoid confronting the tears she saw were coming to Strunk’s eyes as the chorus drew more voices in an uncharacteristically respectful rendition of the old WWII song, Throw a Nickel on the Grass.

Hallelujah, hallelujah,

Throw a nickel on the grass

Save a fighter pilot’s ass

Hallelujah, hallelujah,

Throw a nickel on the grass

And you’ll be saved.

The well-practiced hangover cure the next morning would be a solemn reminder that nothing worked to reduce the pain except going right back out and doing the job everybody loved. Sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you. Sometimes you’re the bug, and sometimes you’re the windshield. Everyone hoped if they had to die, it would be just like Wentworth. Fuck the family! It was just more false bravado from the living. But, who else would speak for the dead?

CHAPTER 4

Shit Happens

Office of Special Aviation Investigations

Harbor Center Building, Hampton, VA

1700L, Friday

I hope you’re cleaning out your email, Boss! The stern admonition came from Colonel John Hogge’s secretary. She was not to be trifled with so Hogge was obediently deleting things based on the three-month, the three-week, and finally, the three-day rule. Hogge hated email, but it was a great lazy man’s filing system. If no one pinged him back, it was probably no big deal. Hogge was sitting in his office on the twelfth floor of the Harbor Center Building across from the marina in downtown Hampton. There wasn’t any room on Langley AFB even for the small aviation safety group. So, he had a panoramic view of Hampton Roads leading out into Chesapeake Bay and across to NAS Norfolk. The view competed with email for his attention.

The unique ring of the secure hotline caused him to jump and interrupt his rhythm on the mouse. He answered it with the usual spike in blood pressure and the tightening in his gut. It was from General William Buck Rogers in the Global Air Effects Operations Center at Langley AFB just up the road. Rogers was the permanent standing Global Air Effects Component commander. He was also the commander of the Air Effects Command, the new and improved Air Combat Command.

Wart, we just lost a Langley Raptor. It went down in the Atlantic. No survivor, but they’ve recovered the body. You need to get on this one ASAP. It was a Noble Eagle mission. We need your team to jump on it. Worse yet, it was the wing commander, Chuck Wentworth. The message traffic is on the safety SIPRNet. Keep me informed!

Click! The phone went dead. The Secure Internet Protocol Router Network was just one of the many secure networks the military used for running the daily classified business of the Department of Military Effects. DoME was the new, more mission descriptive name for the old Department of Defense.

As usual, the Bat Phone caught Hogge totally by surprise. It was always bad news because Hogge ran the Office of Special Aviation Investigations for the Air Force. It meant another accident had occurred somewhere in the world for less than obvious reasons. His team batted cleanup after formal investigations turned to crap. Shit Happens! was not an acceptable finding as the cause of an accident.

Hogge sat slightly stunned looking at the bat phone trying to add more to the cryptic call. Holy shit, the wing commander no less! That would really up the ante! He knew Wentworth from the old days, but they weren’t close.

Hogge had a flash of concern about another person but quickly realized Laura Den was getting ready for an AEEF deployment. She probably wouldn’t be involved in the flight. Laura Den was the bright spot in his mundane existence even though he seldom saw her. She had been his special concern ever since he was her commander in an operational F-16 squadron in Europe. They had become especially close as he helped her through the loss of her husband five years earlier at the hands of a local terrorist cell. He was also the godfather to her kids even though they called him Uncle Wart after his old A-10 tactical callsign.

Hogge was pronounced with a long o and a silent e. He’d flown the A-10 Warthog and drove a 1946 Harley Davidson Knucklehead with a foot clutch and a hand shift. He was tagged with Wart, Boss, or Hog depending on who knew him where or when. Despite the names, he was a fighter pilot’s fighter pilot with passable looks framed by graying hair. Hogge claimed it was ash-colored from setting his hair on fire once too often as a lieutenant. He managed to keep trim with a bachelor’s regimen and only a passing familiarization with sit-down meals. He was divorced and lived in a self-imposed social exile.

Hogge’s world had again been jolted as he hit the all-call intercom button announcing an emergency staff meeting. With the latest in connectivity, the emergency activation automatically sought out and confirmed each member had been alerted regardless of where they were or what they were doing. It also provided their exact location on the Force Protection Matrix screen on Hogge’s computer.

What’s up, Boss? Silas Burnett asked as he wandered in from his cubicle after getting the all-call.

There’s a Raptor down in the Atlantic. It was a Noble Eagle mission.

Si Burnett was a contract computer whiz and network specialist with a built-in nickname. If it was out there, he could find it. If it was protected, he could hack it. If it didn’t exist, he could create it. He never met a virus he didn’t like and respect. He had more contacts throughout the computer world than Hogge thought possible until he’d found out Si had grown up with the whole computer industry starting at age three with his dad in Steve Jobs’ garage. He was fluent in nearly every computer language ever used and in multiple spoken dialects picked up while he globe trotted as a troubleshooter for Microsoft and as Mr. Fixit for the computer industry. He thought in bits and bytes, and like every hacker, he used more keystrokes than necessary to make computing look hard to the layman unless he was writing code. In that case, brevity was next to godliness. He referred to himself as the geekiest geek in