Ralph Peters (41 page)

Merry Meredith had just finished praying when Taylor squeezed into the operations center. Neither the assistant S-3 captain nor the two NCOs who shared the crowded chamber with Meredith had realized that the intelligence officer was praying, since Meredith did not join his hands together or kneel or close his eyes. Meredith's prayers were simply moments of silence aimed in the general direction of God, along with a few unspoken pleas. Just let me get through this. Let me see Maureen again. Let me hold her. Let me get through this. Please. And that was it.

Meredith was not a religious man. But, following repeated experiences in Los Angeles and Mexico, he had come to accept this particular form of cowardice in himself. In times of peace, he would never have dreamed of wasting a Sunday morning in church. But, on the edge of battle, God invariably loomed large.

"
What's up, Merry?
"
Taylor asked, holding on to an overhead brace with one hand. His shoulder holster stood away from his uniform, and the reddish light from the control banks and monitors made the colonel's scarred face appear to be on fire.

"
We're looking good, sir,
"
Meredith said.
"
The bad guys are still just sitting there, fat, dumb, and happy.
"
He tapped at a button.
"
Look at this. It's the target array at Objective Ruby. If the M-l00s just work at fifty percent of capacity
...
"

"
Still no indication that the enemy have picked us up?
"
Taylor asked.

Meredith understood the wonder in Taylor's voice. It was hard to believe that the regiment had made it this far. From Kansas to the edge of hell. Their luck only needed to hold a little longer now.

"
Not a sign, sir. No increase in comms. No enhanced air defense readiness. No interceptors up. No ground force dispersal. It's almost too good to be true.
"

Taylor wiped his hand across his jaw, his lips.
"
I'm concerned about Manny. The Japs
must've
picked us up coming out of the industrial park. He needs to get his ass out of there.
"

Meredith smiled.
"
Manny's a big boy. He'll be out of there on schedule. Anyway, there isn't even the slightest indication that the enemy has detected anything. We're in better shape than I could've hoped, sir.
"

As he spoke to reassure his mentor, Meredith recalled the unsettling exchange he had undergone just a few hours before. There had been a lull in the communications traffic
on one of the top-secret multiuse feeds, and a friend of his back in Washington had taken advantage of it to call him to the receiver.

"
Merry, good buddy,
"
his friend had said in a noticeably hushed voice, as though some third party might disapprove,
"
listen, you've got to watch your six out there.
"

"
What are you talking about?
"
Meredith asked, unsure whether his friend was simply telling him to take care of himself personally or trying to communicate something larger.

"
Just keep your eyes open. There's something funny going on. The puzzle's still missing some pieces.
"

"
What kind of pieces? Intel?
"

"
I don't know exactly. You know how it is. You just get wind of things. The big boys over here have a secret. We've got this new priority intelligence requirement. It came out of nowhere. And suddenly it's number one on the charts. Something about a
Scrambler
.
"

Meredith thought for a moment.
"
Doesn't mean shit to me. What's a Scrambler?
"

"
Maybe some kind of crypto stuff. I don't know.
They
don't know. That's the whole point. The boys two levels above me are jumping through their asses trying to figure it out.
"

"
Nothing else?
"
Merry asked.
"
No context?
"
He did not much care for the appearance of sudden mysteries when the bullets were about to start flying.

"
Listen, Merry. I got to go. I'm not supposed to be using this feed. You take care. Out.
"

And the voice was gone.

Now Meredith looked across the magic firelight of the electronics to where Taylor stood. He wondered if he should bother the old man with something so nebulous. Impulsively, he decided against sharing the scrap of information. It was insufficient to really mean anything to the old man. And Taylor certainly did not need any unnecessary worries at this point. Meredith mentally cataloged the scrambler business with his file of other unresolved intelligence concerns.

But he felt uneasy. Taylor was staring at him, and the old man's eyes always gave Meredith the uncanny feeling that Taylor could see right into him. He had felt that way ever since the night in Los Angeles when he had almost given up. Now Taylor's gaze made him feel uncomfortable, somehow inadequate.

Meredith tapped a button on his console, moving onto safer ground. A nearby monitor filled with multicolored lines: a hallucinatory spiderweb.

"
'Have a look at this, sir,
"
he said to Taylor.
"
That's their command communications infrastructure in our area of operations. Just wait until the aero-jammers from the Tenth Cav hit them. They won't even be able to call out for a pizza.
"

Taylor smiled, showing a flash of teeth in his devil's face. To a stranger, the scarred mask would have appeared menacing, but Meredith could tell that Taylor was in good spirits. Confident. Ready. Meredith had never known any rational man to be as calm on the verge of contact as Taylor. The cold man turned briefly to the pair of NCOs who staffed the support consoles, exchanging mandatory pleasantries and bullshitting about the bad coffee, bolstering them so they would not think too much of death. Then he turned to Captain Parker, the assistant S-3, who was standing in for Heifetz while the S-3 rode herd on the First Squadron. Captain Parker was fairly new to the regiment, and very new to Taylor.

"
How do we look on the ops side?
"
Taylor asked.

The captain stood up formally.
"
On time and on-line, sir.
"

"
Sit down, sit down,
"
Taylor said, slightly embarrassed by the display.
"
First Squadron ready to cross its line of departure?
"

No sooner had Taylor spoken than the regimental command net came to life:

"
This is Whisky five-five. Sweetheart. I say again: Sweetheart. Over.
"

That was it. First Squadron was in Indian country.

The United States was at war.

Taylor slipped on a headset.
"
This is Sierra five-five. Lima Charlie your transmission, Whisky. Over.
"

"
This is Whisky. Red-one, in route to Emerald. 'Garry Owen.' Over.
"

The ordeal had begun. Meredith knew that they all shared the same worries: would the deception gear work? Would they make it all the way to the first series of objectives without being detected? Without the need to fight an unwanted engagement?

Surprise was everything.

"
This is Sierra,
"
Taylor said.
"
Turning on the noise. Good luck. Out.
"
He turned to Meredith.
"
Tell the Tenth Cav to turn on the jamming.
"

Meredith punched his way down a row of buttons, then began to speak into his headset in a measured voice. A part of him was still listening to Taylor, however, watching the old man from the comers of his eyes. Whenever Taylor was physically present, Meredith felt invincible. The old man had the magic, the nameless something that you could never learn from leadership manuals alone.

The command net came to life again.

"
This is Bravo five-five. Sweetheart now. Over.
"

The old man smiled his we-got-these-suckers smile.
"
This is Sierra five-five—
"

"
Hotel nine Lima seven-four,
"
Meredith said into his headset, calling the commander of the Tenth Cavalry's electronic skirmish line.
"
This is Charlie six Sierra two-zero—
"

"
Roger last transmission,
"
Taylor told his mike.

"
—Waterfall. I say again, Waterfall,
"
Meredith enunciated clearly, calmly, wanting to shout.
"
Acknowledge, over.
"

A third net came to life, answered by one of the NCOs.
"
—White one to Diamond—
"

"
—Roger, Sierra. Waterfall now.
"

"
This is Tango five-five. Sweetheart. Sweetheart.

Over.
"

"
Roger, Tango. Break. Bravo, report—
"

Meredith felt both ferociously excited and wonderfully relaxed. Listening to the babble of the multiple sets, watching the monitors flash and the counters running numerics, he was at home. In the brilliant chaos of a tactical headquarters at war.

"
Colonel Taylor, sir?
"
Meredith said in the first communications lull.
"
Got a second to look at this?

Taylor bent down toward the visual display. Countless red and yellow points of light had been superimposed on a map of Soviet Central Asia.

"
Tenth Cav's already kicking ass,
"
Meredith said.
"
The red dots indicate communications centers the heavy jammers have already leeched and physically destroyed. If those stations want to talk, they're going to have to wait until morning and send smoke signals.
"
Meredith made a gesture toward the screen.
"
The yellow dots are the well-shielded comms nodes or those at our range margins. We can't actually destroy those, but they won't be able to communicate as long as Tenth Cav stays in the air.
"

"
Good,
"
Taylor said coldly.
"
Good. Let those bastards feel what it's like to be on the receiving end.
"

In a manner for which he could not account, Meredith suddenly saw the display through Taylor's eyes. And he knew that the old man was looking beyond the Iranian or Arab or rebel soldiers who suddenly found themselves powerless to share their knowledge with one another, looking behind them to the Japanese. Out there. Somewhere.

Taylor glanced at a screen mounted on the upper rack. It displayed the progress of the regiment's individual squadrons. Coursing down their axes of advance toward their initial objectives. Holding their fire. Moving with good discipline. A smaller symbol trailing Second Squadron showed the position of the command M-100 in which they were working and its two escort ships, which also functioned as the commander's hip pocket reserve.

The command net spoke again, demanding Taylor's attention.
"
This is Whisky five-five. Over.
"

"
Sierra five-five. Go.
"

"
This is Whisky. You wouldn't believe the target arrays I'm passing up. The buggers must all be asleep. You sure you don't want us to take them out?
"

"
Negative,
"
Taylor said.
"
Negative. Stick to the plan, Whisky. Save your bullets for the big one. Over.
"

"
It breaks my heart.
"

"
Weapons tight until Ruby,
"
Taylor said.
"
Out.
"
Meredith understood this too: the difficulty of passing by your enemy without doing him harm. Especially now. With everyone aching to open up. To make the first kill.

To see if the megabuck wonders in which they were flying actually worked.

Noburu awoke unexpectedly. His bedding had clotted with sweat. He sensed that turbulent, unusual dreams had done this to him, but as his eyes opened, the delicate narratives of sleep fled from his consciousness, and he could not recall a single detail of the night visions that had broken his accustomed pattern of rest. Yet, even as he could not remember the substance of his dreams, he recognized with absolute clarity what was really worrying him. Although he sensed that his dreams had been of things far away, of lost things, he grasped that the swelling tumor of reality underlying all of this was the matter of the unusual activity in the industrial park outside of Omsk. He still had no idea what was going on there, but all of his soldier's instincts were excited. As if, in sleep, the shadow warrior within him had come to point the way. Noburu believed in the richness of the spirit as surely as he believed in superfast computers. And he knew that his spirit warrior would not let him return to sleep until this matter of the mystery site had been addressed.

Noburu waved his hand at the bedside light and a cool glow surrounded him. He reached for the internal staff phone and keyed it with his fingerprints.

"
Sir,
"
a sharp, almost barking voice responded from the below-ground operations center.

"
Who is the ranking officer present?
"

"
Sir.
Colonel Takahara.
Sir.
"

"
I will speak with him.
"

A moment later, Takahara's voice came over the speaker with a syllable of report only a little less violent than the voice of the junior watch officer.

Noburu felt himself shying from the purpose of the call, as though it were somehow too personal a matter to discuss.

"
Quiet night?
"
he began.

"
Sir,
"
Takahara responded.
"
According to the last reports we received, the Iranian and rebel breakthrough at Kokchetav is meeting only negligible resistance. No change to the situation in the Kuban. We're having more difficulty than usual reaching our forward stations in northern Kazakhstan—but I've already sent a runner to wake the chief of communications. I expect to have the problem corrected shortly.
"

"
How long have the communications been down?
"
Noburu asked, annoyed.

"
Half an hour, sir.
"

Half an hour. Not unprecedented. But Noburu was unusually on edge. Hungover with dreams.

"
What's the weather like in central Asia?
"

There was a pause. Noburu could visualize Takahara straining to see the weather charts, or perhaps frantically querying the nearest workstation.

"
Storm front moving in
"
—the voice came back.
"
It's already snowing heavily at Karaganda, sir.
"

"
The famous Russian winter,
"
Noburu mused.
"
Well, perhaps the communications problem is merely due to atmospherics.
"

"
Yes, sir. Or a combination of factors. Some of the headquarters may be using the cover of darkness to relocate in order to keep pace with the breakthrough.
"

The explanation sounded rational enough. But something was gnawing at Noburu, something not yet clear enough to be put into words.
"
Takahara,
"
he said,
"
if the chief of communications cannot solve the problem, I want to be awakened.
"