2: A Flash of Lightning
"Sorry, Major, but you're dead — two times!"
There was a boyish exhilaration in the voice that remained undistorted or diluted by the radio's rush of static. Gant watched the F-15 curve up and away above the desert, into the pale-blue winter morning. Its wings waggled in mocking salute, then speed and altitude transformed it into no more than a straggling, bright, late star. In another moment it was gone, heading back to Nellis, its practice sortie against his helicopter successfully completed.
Gant was unreasonably, violently angry. Mac began speaking over the headphones like a soothing aunt.
"Shut up, Mac," he warned. "I don't need it."
"Skipper," his gunner insisted, "we ain't ready for this. The guy had us on the plate and served for breakfast before—"
"Mac, can it."
Gant swung the Mil-24D around a weathered outcrop of brown rock standing like a chimney out of the desert floor. He felt the machine was as heavy and lifeless as a toy airplane at a fairground, whirling around a tower on a steel rope. He had been caught like a rookie pilot fresh out of school by the F-15 attacker that had been sent to hunt them down in this simulation of combat. The F-15 had found him five minutes up from Nellis, and within another minute and a half he'd recorded two kills. Gant had been unable to even begin to maneuver the lumbering helicopter evasively, not even with the tumbled, broken desert landscape to aid him. He wasn't ready, not by maybe a couple of weeks.
Below him, on a wide, flat ledge perched above the desert, the MiL-24A sat silently, rotors still, the crew of three already relaxed. One of them waved, infuriating him further. Garcia and his crew were even less ready, and now their ship had rotor head trouble and was stranded.
"Garcia, you called home yet?" he snapped, dropping the unwieldy Russian helicopter toward the flat outcrop of rock.
The ether crackled, but no one answered him. Garcia could not hear him because he was out of the cockpit. Angry, Gant eased the Mil in the backwash of its downdraft off the cliff face until its undercarriage settled. Then he switched off the engines and opened his door. Garcia was ambling across the dust-filled gap between the two helicopters.
"You called them?" Gant shouted.
"Sure thing — right away, skipper. They're sending out a big Tarhe helicopter to lift us off of here." Garcia was grinning, very white and irritatingly. He brushed one hand through his hair now that the movement of Gant's rotors had stopped. "Say, the guy really zapped you, Major — like that!" His right hand motioned like a gun firing.
"We're not ready, Garcia. I know it, you know it."
"We ain't going any place, Major, not till they can repair what's wrong with my ship — one hell of a noise and some really wild—"
"Save it, Garcia. Tell the repairman when the tow truck gets here."
As he turned away, he saw Mac waggle one hand at Garcia to silence him. Gant's mood darkened further.
"Coffee, Major?"
Coffee.
He did not reply, walking away from the machines and the four men who appeared content to wait for the crane helicopter to reach them, lift the Mil off the ledge, and carry it back to Nellis, forty miles northeast. He reached the edge of the flat outcrop. The sun was warm, though the occasional breeze was thin and chilly. The desert below him stretched away on every side, toward mountains to the south, west, and north. Las Vegas lay fifty miles southeast. Nevada. Gant breathed slowly, deeply, and evenly to calm himself; squinting into the pale, empty sky…
… except for the far brown dot, like a speck of dust, which signified an eagle riding thermals up the face of a mountain. He watched the dot float without effort, riding its own element, and felt the sluggish responses and the unfamiliarity of the heavy Russian helicopter through his hands and arms. It was as if he was bound, immobilized both by the machine and the mock dogfight in which he had just engaged.
Unsuccessfully.
Miles away across the desert, a narrow plume of dust followed some invisible vehicle or horseman. Behind Gant, the two Russian helicopters waited like a threat. Chameleon Squadron had been halved in size when their only serviceable Mil had crashed in East Germany and killed its crew and the agents they had picked up on a search-and-rescue flight. These machines were new and unfamiliar. They needed time. Time before they could begin Winter Hawk. The failure in the rotor head of Garcia's machine cut into the time available. The eagle now floated higher, up toward the peak of the mountain, effortlessly carried by rising currents of warmer air. The wind picked at him coldly.
"Coffee, skipper," he heard Mac repeat at his side.
He nodded and took the plastic beaker. Swallowed the hot dark drink.
Mac had interrupted the return of peace. The desert had at least given him that. Long journeys, weekends, and even whole weeks. He could recuperate. The instructorship at Nellis AFB had given him something more satisfying than companions. Now he needed to work with these people — Mac, and Garcia, who would pilot the 24A, and his crew, Lane and Kooper. They were young, inexperienced. Valens had died in Germany the month before and injured this mission in the same moment he burned to death with his experienced crew. Mac was OK — there was Vietnam to share, and reliability. The others…?
"What about that?" Mac asked conversationally, gesturing behind him.
"The men or the ship?" Gant replied, sipping the coffee.
"You ain't fair on them, Major."
"Maybe."
"They're good, Major, my word on—"
"Maybe."
"You can't play loner on this one, Major, you know that."
"Maybe." Gant continued to sip the coffee, watching the distant frail of dust and the dot of the eagle. Mac confined him on the ledge just as certainly as the damage to the rotor head and the fact that he had been no match for a fighter aircraft, not even with the terrain working in his favor. "Yeah, maybe, Mac. They're just not ready. Then, after a pause, he added, "No one is."
'Three weeks, minimum," Mac commented sourly, spitting near his feet. Then, more brightly: "You'll get used to us being around,! Major."
"I have to, Mac."
Mac walked away, back toward people he knew and understood. Gant did not turn to watch him, but continued to squint at the eagle in the dazzling morning air. Just warm enough to lift the huge bird, just warm enough. The trail of dust seven or eight miles away was fading, leaving the desert empty once more.
The mission was unlucky; hasty and unprepared. As if the acquisition of the two Russian machines was in itself enough to guarantee success. He'd flown maybe six or seven squadron missions behind the Curtain, using captured or stolen or mocked-up Russian aircraft. But not, one like this.
They should never have told them the stakes involved — not even him. They were too high, they'd never be ready. They should not have been told. Garcia and his crew hid from the risks by adopting a casual, callow arrogance. He simply tried to prepare, knowing the time was too short. Eighteen months since he'd brought home the MiG-31, the Firefox, from Russia. That mission had had more) chance of success.
He finished the last of the coffee and heard Mac's voice calling him. He realized he had half understood there was a radio call. He turned. Mac was running toward him.
"— today!" he shouted. "Nellis on the set — skipper, they've brought the mission forward to today!"
"Crazy," was all Gant said in reply. It made no sense. He could not believe it, despite Mac's nods, the emphasis of his eyes, and his flushed cheeks. "Those assholes in Washington are crazy, out of their skulls, Mac," he added as belief gripped, forcing anger. "What the hell did they say about that?" He waved his hand violently toward the crippled helicopter.