The WHITE LIGHT aircraft had the capabilities of flying at speeds above Mach 3 or of slowing to a near hover. In either case, they were invisible to any of the air defense systems known to be deployed in-theater. A long association with the WHITE LIGHT program gave Tooth the sort of warm, safe feeling a man had when he held good investments while the economy was going to shit for everyone else. Personally, Tooth had put his money into select real estate during the plague years, and he had no retirement worries.
"Don't you think we should try to contact the Army guys?" his copilot asked over the intercom.
Tooth could hardly believe his ears. "You nuts, Chubbs?"
"Well," Chubbs said more carefully, "I just thought we ought to let them know we're onstation. You know?"
Tooth sighed. So few people understood the interrelationships. "Maybe on the way out," he said, always ready to compromise. "But first we're going to run a complete mission. Nobody's going to be able to say the U.S. Air Force didn't do its part." Tooth shuddered inwardly, picturing some rough-handed, semiliterate Army officer testifying before a congressional subcommittee, claiming that the weight of military operations had been borne by the Army alone. The Air Force didn't need that kind of heartache, with budgets as tight as they were. Tooth understood clearly that the primary mission of the U.S. Army was to siphon off funding from vital Air Force programs.
The Air Force had gone through a run of bad luck. It began in Zaire, where the South Africans had cheated and attacked the B-2 fleet on the ground — now that had been a royal mess, and a man could only be thankful that nobody in the press had ever been able to sort out the real unit cost of the stealth bomber. Then the Army had started grabbing all the glory, whether from their dirty little police duties during the plague or from their primitive rough-necking down in the Latin American mud. Why, you could have hired off-duty policemen to do the Army's job and you would have saved the country billions. And, all the while, it had been embarrassingly difficult to find appropriate missions for the state-of-the-art manned bombers, which Congress had finally come around to funding in the nineteen nineties — thanks to contractor programs that spread the wealth across congressional districts in practically every state in the Union. The minor action the Air Force had seen had shown, to widespread horror, that the oldest, slowest planes in the inventory were the best-suited to joint requirements. The underdeveloped countries simply refused to buy first-class air defense systems for stealth bombers to evade. Worse, they refused to provide clear-cut high-payoff targets. Then there was the humiliation with the Military Airlift Command's transport fleet. Naturally, lift capability had been put on the back burner in the quest to acquire sufficient numbers of high-tech combat aircraft to keep fighter jocks and bomber crews in uniform.
And the transport fleet had bluntly failed in its initial attempts to ferry the Army in and out of Africa and Latin America. The government had been reduced to requisitioning heavy transports and passenger aircraft from the private sector.
So the opportunity to show what the WHITE LIGHT aircraft could do was a welcome one. The birds had come in just at nine billion dollars a copy in 2015, and the program had required fall-on-your-sword efforts by congressmen whose districts included major defense contractors in order to force it through Appropriations. It would have been nice, of course, if everything could have been synchronized with the Army operation, in accordance with the original plan. But, ultimately, the thing was just to get the birds into action. His superiors had made the decision to launch the mission twenty-four hours late without consulting the other services. There was always the chance that the Army would try to block the Air Force activities with some whining to the effect that there was no further need for the jamming support, or that it would interfere with ground ops. You could never trust a grunt. They never understood the big picture, and they thought at the speed of the human foot. Absolutely no grasp of strategic imperatives. And they died broke.
"How's everything going back there, Pete?" Tooth called to his weapons officer, who was currently sending streaks of man-made lightning through the heavens, destroying billions of dollars worth of enemy electronics.
"Just fine, sir. We're putting out so much juice we'll fry pretty near every transmitter between here and the Indian Ocean. They'll be talking with tin cans and pieces of string when the sun comes up. Tokyo's going to shit."
"Well, you just keep up the good work," Tooth said. Then he called the navigator. "Jimmy-boy, you put us back in friendly airspace by dawn, understand?"
"Got it, sir."
Colonel Johnny Tooth was fully aware that stealth technology and fifth-generation electronic defenses had rendered his aircraft as invisible in the daylight hours as at night. But Tooth nonetheless preferred flying in the darkness. It might be unreasonable, but the ability to wrap himself in the ancient cloak of night just made him feel that much more secure. Besides, he wanted to be back on the ground by lunch, since he had to place a very important phone call. Supporting the Army was one thing, but a real estate transaction was serious.
23
They crucified the men during the night and left the crosses standing just outside the gate. Akiro, who had found it difficult enough to follow Noburu across the sea of bodies, began to gag. The wind flapped the blood-soaked uniforms of the Japanese officers like wet canvas.
The Azeris had not gotten it exactly right, Noburu noted. Here a spike had been driven through the hand instead of a wrist, while on another cross a leg dangled free. Noburu recognized two of the three men as officers from the airfield. Perhaps the third man was a recent arrival he did not know. Noburu looked up at the lolling faces with their expressions of torment and wonder. Behind him, Akiro finished his dry retching.
"At least they killed them," Noburu said, lowering his eyes to look down between the ranks of burned buildings, across the human flotsam the mob had left in its wake. "Why?" Akiro begged. "Why did they do this?" Noburu smiled. "They think we're Christians. All foreigners are Christians, you see. I'm afraid our allies are not as enlightened as Tokyo might wish."
Back inside the gates, the bulldozer resumed its grunting. Moving the bodies, clearing an entryway for the relief column that must eventually come. Otherwise, the city was very quiet. The morning light seemed crippled, misshapen by twisting columns of smoke and the smell of death. The bulldozer added to the stink, disturbing the settling filth that had been a man, its blade wrenching open another corpse's bowels. Underneath the reek of mortality the familiar smell of the oil works came sharply up from the coast. A thousand years after they shut down the derricks and refineries, Baku would still stink of oil. And death.
They were waiting, Noburu realized. Down in the labyrinth of the old city. On the waterfront. Or, farther out, in the apartment blocks built to give the workers a foretaste of paradise, and in the disease-culled slums, where families lived under worse conditions than had their most distant ancestors. The streets were empty now. The population had been driven indoors by the light of day, by defeat, plague, and exhaustion. But they were still there. Waiting.
Until the darkness returned. They would come again in the night. Noburu could feel it.