embassies and consulates around the world, letter bombs, and night
ambushes on school buses in isolated areas.
Then the provocations grew bolder, more directly aimed at the heart of
Israel. Border infringements, commando-style raids, violations of air
space, shellings, and a threatening gathering and massing of armed might
along the long vulnerable frontiers of the wedge-shaped territories of
the tiny land.
The Israelis waited, praying for peace, but girl for war.
Day after day, month after month, David and Joe flew to maintain that
degree of expertise, where instinct and instantaneous reaction
superseded conscious thought and reasoned action.
At those searing speeds beyond sound, it was only this training that
swung the advantage from one combat team to another. Even the superior
reaction times of these carefully hand-picked young men were unequal to
the tasks of bringing their mighty machines into effective action, where
latitudes of error were measured in hundredths of a second, until they
had attained this extra-sensory perfection.
To seek out, to recognize, to close, to destroy, and to disengage, it
was a total preoccupation that blessedly left little time for brooding
and sorrow.
Yet the sorrow and anger, that David and Joe shared, seemed doubly to
arm them. Their vengeance was allconsuming.
Soon they joined that select half-dozen strike teams that Desert Flower
called to undertake the most delicate of sorties. Again and again they
were ordered into combat, and each time the confidence that Command had
in them was strengthened.
As David sat in his cockpit, dressed from head to foot in the stiff
constricting embrace of afull-pressure suit, breathing oxygen from his
closed face mask, although the Mirage still crouched upon the ground,
there were four black, red and white miniature rounders painted on the
fuselage below his cockpit. The scalps of the enemy.
It was a mark of Desert Flower's trust that Bright Lance flight had been
selected for high altitude Red standby. With the statter lines plugged
ready to blow compressed air into the compressors and whirl the great
engines into life, and the ground crew lounging beside the motor, the
Mirages were ready to be hurled aloft in a matter of seconds. Both
David and Joe were suited to survive the almost pressureless altitudes
above sixty thousand feet where an unprotected man's blood would fizzle
like champagne.
David had lost count of the weary uncomfortable days and hours he had
sat cramped in his cockpit on Red Standby with only the regular
fifteen-minute checks to break the monotony.
Checking 1115 hours, fifteen minutes to stand down. David said into the
microphone, and heard Joe's breathing in his ears before the reply. Two
standing by. Beseder.
Immediately after stand-down, when another crew would assume the arduous
waiting of standby, David would change into a track suit and run for
five or six miles to get the stiffness out of his body and to have his
sweat wash away the staleness. He was looking forward to that,
afterwards he would There was a sharp crackle in his earphones and a new
voice. Red Standby, Go! Go!
The command was repeated over loudspeakers in the under-ground bunker,
and the ground crew boiled into action. With all his pre-flight checks
and routine long ago completed, David merely pushed his throttle to
starting position, and the whine of the statters showed immediate
results. The engine caught and he ran up his power to one hundred percent.
Ahead of him the blast doors were lifting.
Bright Lance Two, this is leader going to take off power.
Two conforming, said Joe and they went screaming up the ramp and hurled
themselves at the sky.
Hallo, Desert Flower, this is Bright Lance airborne and climbing. Bright
Lance, this is the Brig, David was not surprised to find that he was in
charge of command plot.
Distinctive voices and the use of personal names would prevent any
chance of the enemy confusing the net with false messages. David, we
have an intruder approach at high level that should enter our air space
in four minutes, if it continues on its present course. We are tracking
him at seventy-five thousand feet which means it is either an American
U. 2, which is highly unlikely, or that it is a Russian spy plane
coming over to have a look at our latest dispersals. Beseder, sir,
David acked.
We are going to try for a storm-climb to intercept as soon as the target
becomes hostile in our air space. 'Beseder, sir.
Level at twenty thousand feet, turn to 186 and go to maximum speed for
storm-climb. At twenty thousand, David went to straight and level
flight and glanced into his mirror to see Joe's Mirage hanging out on
his tail.
Bright Lance Two, this is the leader. Commencing run now. 'Two
conforming.
David lit his tail and pushed the throttle open to maximum afterburner
position. The Mirage jumped away, and David let the nose drop slightly
to allow the speed to build up quickly. They went blazing through the
sound barrier without a check, and David retrimmed for supersonic
flight, thumbing the little top-hat on the end of his stick.
Their speed rocketed swiftly through mach 1. 2, mach 1. 5.
The Mirages were stripped of all but their essentials, there were no
missiles dangling beneath them, no auxiliary fuel tanks to create drag,
the only weapons they carried were their two 30 mm. cannons.
Flying lightly, they drove on up the mach scale, streaking from
Beersheba to Eilat in the time it would take a man to walk a city block.
Their speed stabilized at mach 1. 9 just short of the heat barrier.
David, this is the Brig. We are tracking you. You are on correct
course and speed for interception. Prepare to commence dimb in sixteen
seconds. 'Beseder, sir. Counting now.
Eight, seven, six . . . two, one. Go!
Go!
David tensed his body and as he pulled up the nose of the Mirage, he
opened his mouth and screamed to fight off the effects of gravity. But
despite these precautions and the constricting grip of his pressure
suit, the abrupt change of direction crammed him down into his seat and
the blood drained out of his head so that his vision went grey and then
black.
The Mirage was standing on her tail still flying at very nearly twice
the speed of sound and, as his vision returned, David glanced at the
G-meter and saw that he had subjected his body to nearly nine times the
force of gravity to achieve this attitude of climb without loss of
speed.
Now he lay on his back and stared up at the empty sky while the needle
of his altimeter raced upwards, and his speed gradually eroded away.
A quick sweep showed Joe's Mirage rock steady in position below him,
climbing in concert with him, and his voice came through calm and
reassuring.
Leader, this is Two. I have contact with target. Even under the stress
of storm-climb, Joe was busy manipulating his beloved radar, and he had
picked up the spy plane high above them.
In this manoeuvre they were trading speed for height, and as one
increased so the other drained away.
They were like a pair of arrows aimed directly upwards. The bowstring
could throw them just so far and then they would hang there in space for
a few moments, until they were drawn irresistibly back to earth. In