He took personal control of the aircraft and banked as hard as he could.
"Clean release," he heard in his helmet's tiny speakers. One by one, the other aircraft in his flight reported in. Clean release, clean release.
Noguchi found his course and ordered all of the aircraft under his command to accelerate to the maximum. Behind them, the undersized drones sped quietly toward a place called Silver.
"Roger," Heifetz reported over the command net. "Everybody's tucked in. Assembly Areas Gold and Platinum report fully secure status. We have no systems losses. The Tango element took five KIA and eleven WIA during ground contact with an Iranian headquarters site, but I think you might want to get the details straight from him." Taylor's voice returned. He sounded unusually raspy and stressed to Heifetz. "Everything okay at your site?"
"Basically. There was a small site-management problem. Part of Silver was already occupied by Soviet support troops. There's no coordination. Their system's gone to hell. One unit opened fire on us before we got it all sorted out."
"Casualties?"
"No. We were lucky. Now we have what they used to call 'peaceful coexistence.' "
"Christ," Taylor said. "That's all we need. Gunfights with the Russians."
"It's all right now. Tercus is putting his boys into good hide positions. He's very impressive."
"All right. We should be at your location in approximately forty minutes," Taylor said. "I've got a probable heavy concussion casualty on board and another soldier in ambulatory shock. We'll need medical support when we come in."
"Roger. We'll be waiting. Over."
"Five-five out."
Heifetz laid down the hand mike. Such a good day, he thought. It was bewildering how such a good day could be formed of so much death. A Jericho of steel, he said to himself, thinking of the Japanese-built war machine that had tumbled into ruin across the morning.
It was enough for him. He had already made up his mind. He simply did not know how he was going to break the news to Taylor.
He would finish the campaign. Then he would resign. He had squandered so much of his life in confusion, in self-deception, in the deep dishonor of the honorable man of mistaken purpose. He had been a good soldier, of course. In all of the outward respects. Now it was time to stop before he became a bad one.
He was going to go home. To the new home his fellow refugees were building in the Israeli settlements in the American West. Turning yet another desert into a garden. He did not know exactly what he would do, or for what he might be qualified after so many years in arms. But he knew with iron certainty that he would manage. He was not afraid of a little dirt under his fingernails, if it came to that. And he did not need much.
For an instant he regretted the years of salaries he had donated to the American-Israeli relief fund. Then he dismissed the consideration, ashamed of himself. It was better this way. To start clean. Without the false security that too much money insinuated into a man's soul.
Perhaps there would even be a woman. He recognized now that Mira had never asked for his celibacy. No, he had wronged her that way too. She had been so much better than that. She would have wanted him to love again, to the meager extent of his abilities.
All of his adult life had been spent doing the wrong thing, for the wrong reasons. He only hoped there was still time to put it right. He was going to allow himself to live again. And, this time, it truly would be for Mira. He would turn his face back toward the light.
Heifetz picked up the helmet that he always wore in the field to set the right example for his subordinates.
"I'm going outside to take a piss," he told his ops crew.
The cold was beautifully clean, and he thought of Taylor. It would be good to see him at the end of such a day. Taylor was his closest semblance of a friend. He did not yet have the words to explain to Taylor about resigning, but that could wait. Taylor had to concentrate on other things now, and Heifetz was determined to help him as best he could. There were plenty of problems waiting to be resolved, especially with the loss of the last functioning weapons calibrator back at Omsk. But, somehow, he and Taylor would find solutions. Heifetz pictured himself beside Taylor, leaning over a map, shaping destiny with a marker pen. The two men did not even need words to understand each other.
Heifetz tramped through the snow toward an undernourished-looking stand of trees. The white trunks and branches looked feminine and tubercular. It struck him that this country was poor in so many ways.
His musings were interrupted by the sight of a startled young captain who had been squatting in a little snow-smoothed hollow. The captain had twisted over to clean himself above a display of steaming shit.
The younger man straightened at the sight of Heifetz, discarding the smudged paper from his hand and grabbing for his distended coveralls.
Heifetz could not help smiling. Life went on, after all.
"At ease," Heifetz commanded. "Continue with your mission, captain."
The young officer stammered something unintelligible, and Heifetz turned to urinate against the slender tilt of a tree trunk.
A more distant voice called Heifetz by his rank and last name. There was no escape, not even for a moment. Heifetz glanced back toward his M-100 and saw one of the staff NCOs trotting bareheaded toward the little grove. Have to tell them to keep their damned helmets on when they come outside, Heifetz thought. Like children. After combat, the natural tendency was to over-relax. To drop your guard and decline into slovenliness.
Heifetz shook himself vigorously, then tucked the cold-tightened bit of flesh back into his uniform. Too long unused for its higher purpose, he teased himself.
The NCO hurried toward him, hopping through the snow.
"Lieutenant Colonel Heifetz, sir. Lieutenant Colonel Reno's on the net. He says he's got to talk to you personally."
Heifetz nodded in weary acquiescence. Then he turned to the ambushed captain, who was hurriedly doing up his uniform.
"You know what the biggest problem is with the U.S. Army?" Heifetz asked. The captain had the sort of wholesome, handsome features Heifetz had come to associate with a peculiarly American invulnerability to intellect. After a moment's rumination, the captain resettled the web belt around his athlete's waist and said nervously, "No, sir."
"We talk too much," Heifetz said. But he could see from the captain's features that the triteness of the observation had disappointed the younger man, who apparently had expected a revelation of far deeper profundity.
"We talk too much," Heifetz repeated. He smiled gently and turned back toward his place of duty.
Captain Jack Sturgis couldn't believe it. He had actually seen Lucky Dave Heifetz smile. He wondered if he would ever be able to convince his friends of what he had seen.
He began to reconstruct the tale in his head. He immediately discarded the bit about his physical situation during the incident. Then he reconsidered, and modified his role into the more manly one of fellow-pisser-on-nearby-tree. How exactly had Heifetz put it? About the Army's biggest problem? Pretty dumb, really. Nothing much to it. Sturgis poked at Heifetz's words for some hidden meaning: "We talk too much." Did he mean, like, too much talk and not enough action? Or just too much talk, period?
Goddamn, though. There he was, with Lucky Dave Heifetz. The man who had never been known to crack a smile, the cradle-to-grave soldier. And the old bugger comes through with this big toothy grin.
He wished he had a witness. Then he recalled the more personal details of the encounter and decided that he was glad there had been no witness, after all.
Maybe Heifetz had just been laughing at him?
Naw. Old Lucky Dave had seen plenty of guys taking a dump before. No, it probably meant that things had gone really well. That they had really torn the enemy a new asshole.