Then there would be pain again, and the dragons on the loose to spread terror and destruction across the countryside. As the dragons cleared a path for her, she would at last make her way to the river to wait for her rescuers.
She hoped she would not have to wait long. She had done well for the Red Flames. So she felt she deserved all the rewards they'd promised her. She wouldn't say that out loud, of course. General Golovin had a reputation for dealing harshly with those he thought were getting greedy. But General Golovin was not the only man with power in Russland. If necessary, she could earn the gratitude and support of some of the others.
After a while she had to leave the path and cut across country. The long grass was already wet with the night's dew and quickly dampened her slacks up to the knee, while brambles jabbed their thorns into her.
The mile of cross-country walking slowed her, but she still had plenty of time when she reached the field. It stretched before her, dark and empty and agreeably silent. On the far side the trees rose in a forbidding wall. She lay down, watching for any sign of ambush.
The darkness and the silence remained unbroken. Crouching low, she made her way across the field. With a sigh of relief she grasped the handles of the transmitter and dragged it out of its hiding place. It weighed less than thirty pounds, so it had been easy for her to carry it to the woods. Now it was easy for her to carry it back out again.
On top of the transmitter was a small balloon. Elva pulled the cord to inflate it, and watched while it swelled into a six-foot sphere of dark plastic. Then she carried it out into the open and released it. It rose into the night, the antenna wire trailing behind it. She waited until the antenna was fully unreeled, activated the transmitter, and set the frequency selector to one of the pleasure wavelengths.
Then she leaned back against the moss-grown trunk of an elm. Her work was done for the moment. She looked at her watch. The signals pouring out into the night should be reaching the dragons now. The leading wave of tonight's attack should be no more than twenty miles offshore.
Richard Blade stood on the bridge of the motor torpedo boat, staring up into the sky and listening to the reports as they came in over the radio. He knew there was no good reason for staring at the sky yet. The nearest dragons would still be well out of sight. Watching the sky merely eased the strain of waiting.
With every minute, a new report of dragons came in from the radar stations along the coast or from the patrol planes offshore. The young lieutenant in command of the torpedo boat was beginning to fidget.
«Damn it,» he finally muttered. «Why can't the planes hit the dragons before they land? It makes more sense to get them in the air.»
Blade hesitated, not wanting to reveal information that was not yet in general circulation. But he happened to know that the lieutenant came from an East Coast town. His wife and baby daughter were there now, where the dragons might land tonight. The man had a right to know at least some of the truth.
«They aren't a good target for missiles,» said Blade. «If a plane slows down enough to hit them with its guns, it's likely to stall out and crash. Antiaircraft guns can pick them off while they're in the air, but there aren't enough antiaircraft guns.» The lieutenant nodded, obviously wishing that things were otherwise, but was silent.
Blade's eyes swept forward and aft along the boat's deck. The sailors were at the bow and stern cannon, in their helmets and flak vests. His own men sat on the torpedo tubes or leaned against the superstructure. Each man carried an Uzi and a light antitank rocket launcher. The decks were piled with extra rocket rounds and ammunition cans. Blade hoped no dragon would get a good breath of flame onto that deck. The fireworks would be spectacular and deadly.
He checked his own weapons. Blade carried his Enfield 7 rifle, now fitted with infrared telescopic sights, a heavy revolver, hand grenades, and a flare pistol.
More minutes, more reports. Then suddenly the lieutenant pointed a shaking hand upward into the darkness. Blade raised his eyes from the man's pale face and also stared upward.
Dim but unmistakable in the night, three dragons were gliding in across the river. They came and went so fast that they might have seemed ghosts if the radar operator hadn't called in.
«Sir, it looks like they're heading upriver. Estimate landing point about ten miles west.»
«Very good. Keep tracking them until they go off the screen.»
Before the first three dragons went off the screen more swept in from the sea, three, six, ten at a time. All were following nearly the same path as the first three.
The lieutenant smiled shakily. «The buggers are going to be landing right on top of each other if they aren't careful.» It was a weak joke delivered in a weak voice. Blade said nothing.
Still more minutes, more reports, and more dragons. Blade found himself coming alert at the slightest noise. His reason told him that the dragons could not attack the boat from a thousand feet up. His instincts told him that it would be death to attract the notice of a single one of those monsters gliding eerily overhead.
Blade stopped thinking of minutes. Time became something long and formless, without beginning or end.
Then the speaker crackled. «Radio message, sir. Dagger to Buckle Teams. Hollyhock.»
Blade grinned. «Dagger» was R, and the «Buckle Teams» were his own striking force in their helicopters and boats. «Hollyhock» was the order to move in. R had reached his decision about where the dragons were landing. Now the trap was going to close.
Blade slapped the lieutenant on the shoulder. «Let's get underway. Up the river, standard cruising speed.»
«Aye, aye, colonel.»
The engines rumbled into life and the deck began to vibrate, then tilted gently aft as the boat got underway. Blade clung to the bridge railing and the grin on his face grew broader.
It felt good to be springing the trap, instead of having one sprung on him.
Elva Thompson straddled the branch, counting dragons. She stopped when she'd counted a hundred, landing in the field or passing so low overhead that they were certainly about to land. Then she scrambled down the tree, so fast that she tore her slacks all along the inside of one thigh.
She ran quickly to the transmitter. The dials showed that everything was still working, and the batteries had a good hour's life still in them. That would be more than enough time to finish her work.
She lifted the transmitter and hooked the carrying straps over her shoulders and around her waist. Her hand reached for the main knob that would turn the broadcast wavelength from pleasure to pain, turn the dragons from docile to furious. The hand wavered for a moment, then twisted the knob.
Pain roared and thundered in the brains and along the nerves of all the dragons. They roared and thundered in turn. Elva clapped her hands over her ears as the sound filled the darkness all around her. It seemed that the ground itself was shaking so that the trees might fall down on top of her and crush her into the earth.
Then the roaring and thundering of the dragons started finding echoes. Elva listened, in surprise and confusion and mounting fear. There shouldn't be any such thing as the sounds swelling in the air high above.
Then fear swamped her as she recognized the sounds. Rockets were coming down out of the sky at the dragons-at her. They might have been launched from the air, from the ground, even from the sea that was so close and had promised a road to safety. She didn't know or care. She only knew that the rockets had been launched, and now they were about to land.