The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [22]
"Tower, this is Spade requesting permission to take off." It just sort of came out on its own.
A laughing reply: "This ain't the Enterprise, Air Force Two, and we don't have cat shots here, but you are cleared to depart, sir."
You could hear the grin in the reply: "Roger, Tower, AF-Two is rolling."
"Your call sign was really 'Spade'?" the assigned command pilot asked as the VC-20B started rolling.
"Got hung on by my first CO, back when I was a new nugget. And it kinda stuck." The Vice President shook his head. "Jesus, that seems like a long time ago."
"V-One, sir," the Air Force officer said next, followed by "V-R."
At velocity-rotation, Jackson eased back on the yoke, bringing the aircraft off the ground and into the air. The colonel retracted the landing gear on command, while Jackson flipped the wheel half an inch left and right, rocking the wings a little as he always did to make sure the aircraft was willing to do what he told it. It was, and inside of three minutes, the G was on autopilot, programmed to turn, climb, and level out at thirty-nine thousand feet.
"Boring, isn't it?"
"Just another word for safe, sir," the USAF officer replied.
Fucking trash-hauler, Jackson thought. No fighter pilot would say something like that out loud. Since when was flying supposed to be … well, Robby had to admit to himself, he always buckled his seat belt before starting his car, and never did anything reckless, even with a fighter plane. But it offended him that this aircraft, like almost all of the new ones, did so much of the work that he'd been trained to do himself. It would even land itself … well, the Navy had such systems aboard its carrier aircraft, but no proper naval aviator ever used it unless ordered to, something Robert Jefferson Jackson had always managed to avoid. This trip would go into his logbook as time in command, but it really wasn't. Instead it was a microchip in command, and his real function was to be there to take proper action in case something broke. But nothing ever did. Even the damned engines. Once turbojets had lasted a mere nine or ten hours before having to be replaced. Now there were Spey engines on the G fleet that had twelve thousand hours. There was one out there with over thirty thousand that Rolls-Royce wanted back, offering a free brand-new replacement because its engineers wanted to tear that one apart to learn what they'd done so right, but the owner, perversely and predictably, refused to part with it. The rest of the Gulfstream airframe was about that reliable, and the electronics were utterly state-of-the-art, Jackson knew, looking down at the color display from the weather-radar. It was a clear and friendly black at the moment, showing what was probably smooth air all the way to Andrews. There was as yet no instrument that detected turbulence, but up here at flight level three-niner-zero, that was a pretty rare occurrence, and Jackson wasn't often susceptible to airsickness, and his hand was inches from the yoke in case something unexpected happened. Jackson occasionally hoped that something would happen, since it would allow him to show just how good an aviator he was … but it never did. Flying had become too routine since his childhood in the F-4N Phantom and his emerging manhood in the F-14A TOMCAT. And maybe it was better that way. Yeah, he thought, sure.
"Mr. Vice President?" It was the voice of the USAF communications sergeant aboard the VC-20. Robby turned to see her with a sheaf of papers.
"Yeah, Sarge?"
"Flash traffic just came in on the printer." She extended her hand, and Robby took the paper.
"Colonel, your airplane for a while," the VP told the lieutenant colonel in the left seat.
"Pilot's airplane," the colonel agreed, while Robby started reading.
It was always the same, even though it was also always different. The