Read Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 for Free Online

no pain. He
had to raise his dark visor to be able to see the instrument panels.
                Cobb raised his own visor as well.
“Yeah, Patrick, I’m fine.” After returning his left hand to his throttle
quadrant, he made one quick scan of his controls and instruments, then resumed
his usual position—eyes continually scanning, head . caged straight ahead,
hands on stick and throttles.
                “CROWBAR, this is Vapor Two-One,
condition green,” McLanahan reported to the ground controllers. “Request
clearance for a flyby of ground zero.”
                “Stand by, Vapor.” The wait was not
as long this time. “Vapor Two-One, request approved, remain at six thousand MSL
over the target.”
                Cobb executed another hard 90-degree
left bank-turn and moved the FB-11 IB’s wings forward to the 54-degree setting
to help slow the bomber down from supersonic speed. They could see the results
as soon as they completed their turn back to the target. There was a ragged
splotch of black around what was left of the concrete target tower, resembling
a smoldering campfire thousands of feet in diameter. The tanks and armored
personnel carriers had been blackened and tossed several hundred feet away from
ground zero, and the regular trucks were burned and melted down to
unrecognizable hunks. Wooden blast targets up to two miles away had been singed
or knocked down, and of course all the mannequins, regardless of what they had
been outfitted with, were gone.
                “My God ...” McLanahan muttered. He
had never seen an atomic ground zero before except in old photos of Hiroshima or Nagasaki , but guessed he was looking at a tiny bit
of what such devastation would be like.
                “Cool,” was all Cobb said—and for
him, that was akin to a long string of epithets and exclamations.
                McLanahan turned his attention away
from the ugly bum mark and the holocaust below: “CROWBAR, this is Two- One,
flyover complete, request approach clearance.”
                “Vapor, this is CROWBAR, climb and
maintain eight thousand, turn left heading three-zero-zero, clear to exit
R-4806W and re-enter R-4808N to PALACE intersection for approach and landing.
Thanks for your help.”
                “Eight thousand, three-zero-zero,
PALACE intersection, Vapor copies all. Good day. Out.”
                McLanahan set up the navigation
radios to help Cobb find the initial approach fix, but couldn’t shake the
powerful impression HADES had left on him. It was a devastating weapon and
would represent a serious threat and escalation to any conflict. No, it wasn’t
a nuclear device, but the fact that one aircraft could drop one bomb and kill
all forms of life within a one-to-two-mile radius was pretty sobering. Just one
B-52 bomber loaded with thirty to forty such weapons could destroy a small
city.
                Thankfully, though, there wasn’t a
threat on the horizon that could possibly justify using HADES. Things were
pretty quiet in the world. A lot of the countries that had regularly resorted
to aggression before were now opting for peaceful, negotiated settlements.
Flare-ups and regional disputes were still present, but no nation wanted war
with another, because the possibility for massive destruction with fewer
military forces was a demonstrated reality.
                And for McLanahan that was just as
well. Better to put weapons like HADES hack in storage or destroy them than to
use them.
                What Patrick McLanahan did not know,
however, was that half a world away, a conflict was brewing that could once
again force him and his fellow flyers to use such awesome weapons.
                 

          1
     
     
                Near the Spratly Islands, South
China Sea Wednesday, 8 June 1994, 2247 hours local