Zeederberg felt unaccustomed streaks of sweat trailing down his back, chilling the inside of his flight suit. It was nerve-racking flying. This is what it must have been like in the old days, he thought. Before the computers took over.
"Sky watch report?" Zeederberg begged through the intercom. He half expected the intercom to go out too.
"All clear," a tiny voice responded. "Plenty of interference. But the sky looks as clean as can be."
It was like a visit to the dentist, Zeederberg told himself.
You just had to remember that it was all going to be over before you knew it.
He promised himself that as soon as he got home to South Africa he was going to pack up Marieke and the kids, go off to the beach for a holiday, lie in the sun, and laugh about all this.
"Forty miles and closing," Meredith's voice rang through the headphones.
"Roger."
"They're coming too fast," Krebs said. "We're going to have to engage at max range and take our chances."
"All right," Taylor said. "Weapons systems to full automatic."
"Thirty-five miles."
"Bad angle," the assistant S-3 cried.
"Fuck it" Krebs said. "You pays your money and you takes your chance."
Taylor's eyes were fixed to the monitor.
"Here they come," he said.
"Hold on," Krebs shouted.
The M-100 jerked its snout up into the air like a crazy carnival ride designed to sicken even the heartiest child. The main gun began to pulse.
"Jesus Christ."
The M-100 seemed to slam against one wall of sky, then another, twisting to bring its gun to bear on the racing targets. Taylor had never experienced anything like it.
"Hold on."
Taylor tried to watch the monitor, but the M-100 was pulling too hard. The machine's crazy acrobatics tossed him about in his safety harness as though he were a weightless doll. He did not think the machine would hold together. The system had not been designed for the bizarre and sudden angles of aerial combat with fixed-wing aircraft.
Going to crash, he thought. We're going to break up. He strained to reach the emergency panel. But the rearing craft threw him back hard against his seat.
The main gun continued to pulse throughout the mechanical storm.
Taylor tried again to reach the emergency toggles.
"Flapper," he shouted. "Help me."
There was no answer. Taylor could not even twist his head around to see if his copilot was all right.
The M-100 went into a hard turn, slamming Taylor's head back.
The main gun blasted the empty sky.
Suddenly, the M-100 leveled out and began to fly as smoothly as if nothing had occurred.
Taylor's neck hurt, and he felt dizzy to the point of nausea. But beside him the old chief warrant officer was already on the radio, checking in with the two escort ships. Krebs's voice was as calm as could be. It took a damned old warrant, Taylor decided, to fake that kind of coolness.
The entire action had taken only seconds. One bad curve on the roller coaster.
Taylor looked at the target monitor. The screen was empty.
"Merry," he called angrily. "Merry, goddamnit, we lost them. The sonsofbitches got away."
"Calm down there, Colonel," Krebs told him. "Ain't nobody got away. Look at your kill counters."
"Chief's right," Merry said through the intercom. "We got them. Every last one. Look."
Meredith relayed a series of ground images to the monitors in the forward cabin. Taylor insisted on going through the images twice. Counting.
Yes. They had gotten them all. Or, rather, the M-l00s had. Nine unmistakable wrecks lay strewn across the wasteland, with components burning here and there.
The staffers back in the ops cell were hooting with glee. Taylor could hear them through the intercom, and he imagined them all doing a little war dance in the cramped cubicle. But his own feelings had not settled yet. It had all been over so quickly. It made him feel old, a little lost. For all his education and experience, this was not war as he imagined he knew it. It was all so quick, so utterly impersonal. Taylor felt as though he were being left behind.
The battle staff continued their noisy celebration. Captain Parker, the assistant S-3, even overcame his fear of the old, severe veteran.
"Colonel Taylor, sir," the captain called forward, his voice full of childlike exuberance, "you think the Air Force will give us combat wings for that one?"
"Fat fucking chance," Krebs interrupted. His voice had the delectably exaggerated sourness that seemed to come naturally to warrant officers when they were very proud of something they and their comrades had done. "Those goddamned Air Force weenies are going to be in Congress tomorrow, lobbying to take these babies away from us." The M-100 program had taken the best years of Krebs's life and now his face glowed with the sort of pride a man might take in the spectacular success of his child. "No," he assured them all, "they'll be crying fit to flood the Potomac." He patted the side panel of the cockpit the way one of his gray-suited ancestors must have patted the flank of a horse. "They're going to tell you these babies are too good for dumb grunts like us."
"Merry," Taylor said, "I want you to call up our Russian friends. Get Kozlov. Or, better yet, go straight to old Ivanov. Ask them… ask them if they would please send a detail out to the staging area. See if there's anything… see if… damn it, you know what I mean."
The bodies. Anything identifiable. To bury in their native soil.
"Yes, sir," Meredith said.
"Parker?"
"Yes, sir?" the assistant S-3 replied.
"What's your first name?"
"Horace, sir."
"No. I mean, what do people call you?"
"Hank."
"Okay, Hank. While Merry's calling our Russian brethren, you can start reprogramming our route. Just get us to the AA Silver as quickly as possible. Head straight for Orsk."
"Do you think they're lying?" General Ivanov asked.
"No, sir," Kozlov said. "The picture's still a bit muddy— we've got so many gaps in our coverage — but it's evident that the Iranians think they've just been struck by the wrath of God. Their communications discipline has fallen apart completely, and they're cursing the Japanese for all they're worth." Kozlov touched a dead tooth with his tongue. "It almost sounds as though the Japanese are going to have a mutiny on their hands. If they can't manage to pull things back together in short order."
"And the Japanese themselves?"
"Harder to tell."
General Ivanov paced across the room. He stopped in front of a wall that bore cheaply framed prints of the heroes of Russia's bygone wars with Islam in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Suvorov, Yermolov, Paskevich, and half a dozen others. Kozlov could feel a deep sadness in the general as his illustrious predecessors confronted him with his failures from a remove of two centuries.
"Incredible," Ivanov said, turning back to Kozlov. "Simply incredible. Even if the Americans are exaggerating the numbers twice over. It's virtually unthinkable."
"It provides us with a real opportunity," Kozlov said. Ivanov lowered his eyebrows. The expression on the general's face did not make sense to Kozlov under the circumstances.
"I mean, in order to mount local counterattacks, sir," Kozlov continued. "To stabilize the lines. And then — well, who knows? If the Americans have really—"