Free Riding the Red Horse by Jerry Pournelle, Christopher Nuttall, Rolf Nelson, Chris Kennedy, Brad Torgersen, Thomas Mays, James F. Dunnigan, William S. Lind Page A

the NSA happen to be correct about the opfor bringing the battle to us.”
    James nodded. It made sense. And he understood the reason for the catch too. A pissant colonel on a National Air Guard base didn't have the juice to be at the center of that sort of informal network. But the commander of the 432nd undoubtedly did. And if he didn't screw up, there was every chance that he'd get his star sooner rather than not at all.
    He took a deep breath. “I'll be glad to do it, Bill. If you think I can do it, then I'm your man.”
    The general extended his hand and smiled. “I don't think you can, Ron. I know you can.”
     
    “How was your meeting, honey?” He didn't know if it was his good mood or not, but Jennifer was looking particularly vivacious in her t-shirt and jeans as she greeted him in the kitchen.
    “It was… interesting. They have unusual opinions on base housing, to say the least. How do you feel about Nevada?”
    “Nevada? I don't know that I've ever thought about it.” She frowned. Then her eyes widened. “You don't mean Creech!”
    He grinned. “That's exactly what I mean.”
    “Oh, honey!” She leaped into his arms. “That's wonderful!”
    He laughed, and carefully disengaged himself from her. “It's not official yet. And it doesn't necessarily mean I'll make flag rank.”
    “But it means you probably will?”
    “If I don't manage to screw up by dropping a Hellfire on Windsor Castle or something, yeah, I probably will.”
    “Ha!” she exclaimed and kissed him enthusiastically. “I told Bonnie you'd get your first star before Robert did.”
    “It's not a competition!”
    “Don't be silly, Ron. Everything is a competition. Especially among military wives. You have no idea how many condescending women were reassuring me after you took this command instead of staying on at Beale. What unit are they giving you?”
    “The 432nd. It has 245 birds, and 488 pilots and operators. Another 350 maintenance personnel, plus the usual catalog of contractors. It's a pretty big step up from here. Bigger than I'd anticipated, to be honest.”
    “Wow,” she marveled.” She pounded his chest with her open palm. “This calls for a celebration, Colonel James! How do you feel about steaks?”
    “I feel very strongly that they should be preceded by a bottle of beer,” he said, opening the refrigerator. “Possibly two. And, by the way, not one word to the kids, not until it's settled. I don't want to upset them in case it turns out to be a false alarm.”
    “Oh, God,” she said, “the kids! Bruce will be all right now that the football season is over, but Michaela will be devastated!”
    “She'll be all right,” James reassured her. “She's a tough kid and this is hardly the first time we've moved.”
     
    It was ten days before his official notification was scheduled to arrive. He and Jennifer had done what they could to prepare the children for the possibility that they would be leaving Willow Grove, but any guilt that he felt over uprooting them again was drowned out by his excitement at the challenge of overseeing up to twenty missions per day. He'd reviewed as much material from Creech as he could quietly obtain from his various connections around the Air Force, and from what he'd gleaned, both on and off the record, was that the former Colonel Cooper's methods left a good bit of room for improvement. The 432nd's kill-to-mission rate wasn't bad for such a large operation, although it was less than half that of the 111th, but it soon became clear that Cooper was a bit of a cowboy who wasn't terribly averse to collateral damage.
    James winced as he read about a school in Kurdistan, a church mistaken for a mosque in Nigeria, and a blue-on-blue incident that took the lives of three Marines in Iraq. Such incidents were tragic, but worse, they were absolutely unnecessary. It was clear that a little patience on the part of the pilot would have sufficed to avoid each of the three incidents. Such failures, he