Brown, Dale - Leadership Material by Brown Dale

Author:Brown, Dale [Brown, Dale]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2001-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Mother Nature picked that night to decide to dump an entire week's worth of rain on Diego Garcia-it was one of the worst tropical downpours anyone had seen on the little island in a long time. The British civilian contracted shuttle bus wasn't authorized to go on the southeast side of the runway, and Patrick wasn't going to wait for someone to pick him up, so he ran down the service road toward the Air Force hangar. He had already called ahead to the security police and control tower, telling them what he was going to do, but in the torrential storm, it was unlikely anyone in the tower could see him. Patrick made it to the outer perimeter fence to the Air Force hangar just as one of the security units was coming out in a Humvee to pick him up.

Patrick dashed through security in record time, then ran to the hangar to his locker for a dry flight suit. Inside he saw maintenance techs preparing both Megafortress flying battleships for fueling and weapons preloading. Patrick decided to grab his thermal underwear and socks too-it looked as if he might be going flying very soon.

"What happened?" Patrick asked as he trotted into the mission planning room.

"An American guided-missile cruiser, the USS Percheron, was transiting the Strait of Hormuz on its way into the Persian Gulf when it was attacked by several large missiles," Colonel John Ormack said. "Two of them missed, two were shot down, two were near misses, but two hit. The ship is still under way, but it's heavily damaged. Over a hundred casualties."

"Do they know who launched the missiles?"

"No idea," Ormack replied. "Debris suggests they were Iraqi. The missiles were fired from the south, across the Musandam Peninsula over Oman. The warhead size was huge-well over five hundred pounds each. AS-9 or AS-14 class."

"The Percheron couldn't tag the missiles?"

"They didn't see them until it was too late," Ormack reported. "They were diving right on top of the cruiser from straight overhead. They were already supersonic when they hit. No time to respond. The Percheron is a California-class cruiser, an older class of guided-missile cruiser-even though it was fitted with some of the latest radars, it wasn't exactly a spring chicken."

"I thought every ship going into the Gulf had to be updated with the best self-defense gear?"

"That's the Navy for you-they thought they had cleaned up the Gulf and could just waltz in with any old piece of shit they chose," Lieutenant General Brad Elliott interjected as he strode into the room. He glared at Patrick's wet hair and heavy breathing, and added, "You don't look very rested to me, Major. Where's Tork?"

"On her way, sir," Patrick replied. "I didn't wait for the SPs to come get me."

"I guess it's not a very good night for a romantic stroll on the beach anyway," Elliott muttered sarcastically. "I could've used both of you an hour ago."

"Sorry, sir." He wasn't really that sorry, but he tried to understand what

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