Each of the boys came from homes where select apples lay disregarded in decorative baskets. Candy was by far the preferred sustenance of the tribe. But the apple in the orchard was a jewel, not least because Charlie claimed it to be such. The chief had spoken, and the wild fruit took on something of the mystery of lost worlds, dangling in the wild grove where there was just enough sense of danger to thrill a boy's heart.
Charlie had devised a plan. At his command, they would all throw rocks at once, knocking the apple off the branch. It was a good combat plan, brutal and direct, save for a single hitch: one boy would need to position himself immediately beneath the branch, in order to catch the fruit and make off with it before the surprised wasps could strike.
The leader looked around for volunteers.
Not one of the bold band stepped forward.
"Come on," Charlie said. "It'll be easy. We can do it."
All eyes rose to the high branch and its treasure. The wasps' nest swelled with a terrible splendor, and the lazy local activity of its guardians began to seem far more menacing than any of the boys had previously realized.
"Georgie," Charlie said. "You're the smallest. The wasps'll have more trouble spotting you. And you can run fast."
The last claim was a lie. He always came in last in the sudden races with the older, longer-legged boys.
Taylor did not answer. He simply looked up at the hideous sack of the wasps' nest. Afraid.
"Ain't afraid, are you?" Charlie demanded.
"No," Taylor replied. He wanted to run away. To go home and immerse himself in some other game. But he feared being called a baby. Or a puss.
"Well, prove it. I think you're chicken."
"Yeah," a third voice joined in, "Georgie Taylor's a chicken." The attack came from a gray, indefinite boy whose name Taylor would forget over the years.
"I'm not chicken," Taylor said. "You're more chicken than I am." And he forged his way down through the briars and thirsty brush.
He positioned himself as directly below the apple as he could, staring up to keep his bearings. It was very hard. The sun dazzled down through the leaves, blackening the boughs and making him faintly dizzy.
"You ready?" Charlie called.
"I guess so," Taylor said. But he was not ready. He would never be ready. He was indescribably afraid.
"Get ready," Charlie commanded. "Everybody, on three."
The boys clutched their rocks. Taylor shifted nervously, trying to see the apple clearly up in the tangle of brilliance and blackness.
"One… two… three."
Everything happened with unmanageable speed. Shouts, and the whistle of projectiles. A blurred disturbance in the world above his head. Cries of alarm as far too much came falling: a spent stone clipped his shoulder and the apple fell just beyond his grasp. Beside it, the cardboard waste of the wasps' nest landed with a thud.
He reached for the apple. But it was no good. The wasps were already at him. He ran. The world exploded with disorder. He swung his arms, howling at the living fires on his skin. A wasp flew at his mouth.
Everyone else was gone. He ran through the wilderness alone, scrambling through a world of relentless terror that would not stop hurting him. He raced through thorns and sumac, batting his paws at the wasps, at the air. Crying, screaming, he clawed his way up the dirt bank of the ravine and burst from the poisonous gloom, imagining that the wasps would have to quit now that he had escaped their domain and regained the freedom of the clear blue day.
But the remarkable pains would not stop. The creatures droned, plunged, pelted him. Far ahead, nearly back to the world of paved streets and perfect houses, he saw his comrades in full retreat.
Charlie slowed briefly to yell, "Come on, Georgie."
The older boy was laughing.
Seated in the cockpit of his war machine, leading his grown-up warriors into battle, Taylor found himself wondering to what extent he was still the boy standing under a wasps' nest, while other, distant figures threw the stones.
Things had already begun to go wrong. The United States Air Force had been scheduled to fly a strategic jamming mission along the old prerebellion Soviet-Iranian border, wiping out enemy communications over tens of thousands of square kilometers. But the ultrasophisticated, savagely expensive WHITE LIGHT aircraft remained hangar-bound, grounded by severe weather at their home base in Montana. Taylor's regiment and the electronic warfare support elements from the Tenth Cavalry would be able to isolate the operational battlefield with the jamming gear available in-theater, but the enemy would retain his strategic and high-end operational communications capability. An important, if not absolutely vital, part of the surprise blow would not be delivered.
Locally, a lieutenant in the Third Squadron had disobeyed the order to lift off with his automatic systems in control. Hotdogging for his crew, he had attempted a manual lift-off in the darkness and had flown his M-100 into mercifully inert power lines. Thanks to the safety features built into the M-100, the lieutenant and his entire crew had survived the crash with only some heavy bruising, some missing teeth, and one broken arm. But the regiment had been robbed of another precious system before the battle had even begun. Controlling his temper over the incident, unwilling to exchange the image of control for the brief pleasure of public anger, Taylor nonetheless promised himself that the lieutenant would soon have the opportunity to seek a new line of work, if he and his regimental commander both survived the war.
Things had already begun to go wrong. But they were not yet sufficiently fouled-up to rattle Taylor. One of the very few truths that his long years of service had taught him was that military operations were simply fucked-up by their very nature. The selective maps and decisive arrows that made everything appear so obvious and easy in the history books and manuals were invariably instances of radical cosmetic surgery on the truth. Behind those implacable graphics lay scenes of indescribable confusion, misunderstanding, accidents (both terrible and felicitous), and the jumbled capabilities, failures, fears, and valor of countless individuals. Warfare was chaos, and the primary mission of the commander was to impose at least marginally more order on that chaos than did his opponent. The reason that military discipline would always be necessary was not simply to ensure that the majority of men in uniform would fight when ordered — that was only a small part of it. Discipline was necessary because every military establishment existed constantly on the edge of disaster, from the humbler inevitabilities of crushed fingers in the peacetime motor pool to the grand disasters of war.
Taylor would not receive the promised support of his nation's air force, and he had lost one of his war machines to the antics of a uniformed child. But his regiment was largely in the air — forty-six M-l00s had lifted off, thanks to the last-minute achievements of Manny Martinez and the regimental and squadron motor officers. The electronic warfare birds from the Tenth Cav were on station. And there was still no sign that the enemy had discovered the American presence. In less than ten minutes, the First Squadron would cross its line of departure, followed quickly by the Second Squadron, then by the Third. So far, the untried war machines seemed to be working just fine, and their electronic suites enriched and thickened the darkness through which they would pass to strike their enemies. No recall order had arrived from the nervous men in Washington, and soon the Seventh United States