Ralph Peters (49 page)

"
What?
"

"
My intelligence department believes they have broken into the communications network of the attackers.
"

"
Well.
So you haven't been entirely asleep. Have you positively identified the units involved? Do you have any idea of the type of weapons? It's incredible to think that the Russians could have pulled all this off.
"

"
The intelligence department doesn't think it's Russians.
"

Tsuji laughed.
"
Who then? Creatures from space, perhaps?
"

"
Americans.
"

"
What?
"

"
Americans,
"
Noburu repeated.

"
That's insane. Who's your senior intelligence officer?
"

"
I believe it to be true,
"
Noburu said. And it was not a lie. He did not need any further intelligence confirmation. He knew it to be the Americans. He had always known it. He simply had not been able to admit it to himself. Everything was so plain. It was ordained.

"
Noburu, if you actually have evidence ... if you're not dreaming this up . . .
"

"
It's true,
"
Noburu said.
"
We're still working out the details. But the Americans are involved.
"

There was another silence on the Tokyo end. But this time it was not calculated and carefully controlled.

"
Then get them,
"
Tsuji said suddenly.
"
Destroy them. Use Three-one-three-one.
"

"
General Tsuji, we have to think—
"

"
That's an order, Noburu. Introduce your Americans to the future of warfare.
"

"
We're going to get them,
"
Taylor said with forced calm.
"
Merry, start running the interception azimuths. Stay with them.
"

"
Yes, sir.
"

"
We're going to get those bastards,
"
Taylor told the ops center staff. His voice was carefully controlled in volume, if not in tone. He had just watched the destruction of the Omsk site on the monitor. The way a civilian might watch a live television report from a riot or revolution—gripped by the images, but helpless to exert the least influence upon the situation. One moment, the wing-in-ground transport had been lying like a drowsing beast in the clear dawn. Then the screen smeared with the powdery swirls that sheathed the hearts of the bomb blasts. Next came the firestorm. There would be no survivors.

"
We'll have to start turning,
"
Merry Meredith said.
"
Right now.
"

"
Flapper?
"
Taylor called forward through the intercom,
"
you listening up there?
"

"
Roger,
"
the copilot said.

"
Merry's going to plug in the new grids.
"

"
Roger.
"

"
Merry,
"
Taylor said.
"
You and the boys guide us into a good ambush position. Cue the escort ships to follow us. I'm going forward to talk to the chief.
"

Taylor carefully put his headset back in its holder and squeezed out through the hatch that separated the ops cell from the small central corridor. He paused for a moment in the narrow, sterile passageway, closing his eyes, fighting to master his emotions. It was not as easy as it once had been. He remembered Manny Martinez as a bright, innocent lieutenant in Los Angeles, as a struggling horseman in Mexico. The boy had become a man in the years Taylor had known him, yet, he remained young and laughably earnest in Taylor's recollection. Why on earth hadn't the boy listened? He was normally such a fine, dutiful officer. Why, this time of all times . . . ?

Taylor rubbed at his armpit where the shoulder holster chafed. He knew that the flight of nine Mitsubishi aircraft was not a sufficiently lucrative target to cause a regimental commander to turn back in the middle of a battle. Objectively speaking. The action was unforgivably personal, and militarily unnecessary. He was needed elsewhere. He had to oversee the move into the new assembly areas, the rearming and re-fitting process . . . well, the rearming would be problematical. The last functional calibration device for the M-100s' main armament had been on the transport back at Omsk with Manny. They would have to fight on with the weapons systems in whatever condition they were in at the end of this day's combat. Taylor had already programmed the master computer to restrict further targets regiment-wide, attacking only the most valuable. But they would need to take stock, to see what remained in terms of immediate combat capability. It was always this way, somehow. You built the finest war machines in the history of military operations. Then you failed to supply an adequate number of the small tools that enabled them to carry on the fight. It was an imperfect world. He would do his best with what he had. And who could say? The day's combat had been so successful that everything just might grind to a halt. You could never be certain. Perhaps Merry was right. And maybe their luck would hold a little longer.

He had an impossible number of tasks to fulfill. There would be little rest, and the wide-awake pills ultimately carried a price in deteriorating judgment, in a collapsing body. The pills merely delayed the mind and body's failure but could not prevent it.

He knew that a better officer would never have turned to take revenge on nine aircraft that had already disposed of their ordnance.

But there were some things a man could not leave undone.

Taylor worked his way into the cockpit, dropping himself into his seat. He motioned to his copilot to remove the three-quarter flight helmet the old warrant officer wore in his dual role as copilot and weapons officer.

"
Flapper, you've been working with these birds since they were scribbles on a blueprint. Tell me honestly—will we be wasting our time going after those fast movers?
"

Chief Krebs made the face of a careful old farmer at an auction.

"
Can't say for sure. Nobody ever figured on M-l00s getting in a dogfight with zoomies. That's blue-suiter work. I mean, helicopters, sure. Knock 'em out of the sky all the day and night.
"

"
But?
"

The old warrant officer smiled slightly, revealing teeth stained by a lifetime of coffee and God only knew what else.
"
Well, I don't see a damned reason why it
can't
be done. If we get a good angle of intercept. The guns are fast enough. And we've got plenty of range. The computer don't care what you tell it to kill
.
And these babies are pretty well built. They'll take a hell of a shaking. Superb aeroelastics. No, boss, I'd say, so long as we can get a good vector ... I mean, no forward hemisphere stuff. . . those Mitsubishis have a very low radar cross-section head-on. And they're fast. No, if we can just sneak in on them between, say, nine and ten o'clock, we just might take them down.
"

"
I can mark you down as a believer?
"
Taylor asked.

Krebs shrugged.
"
What the hell. Anyhow, I'm anxious to see what these babies can really do.
"
The old warrant grinned, a savvy farmer who had just made the bargain he wanted.
"
If nothing else, it's going to give them Air Force hot dogs something to think about.
"

Taylor settled his hand briefly on Krebs's shoulder. The old man was nothing but gristle, bone, and spite, as sparse as the hill country from which a spark of ambition had led him decades before. Then Taylor went back into the operations cell.

"
We'll have to go max speed,
"
Captain Parker, the assistant S-3, warned him.
"
Our biggest problem's going to be fuel.
"

"
Can we make it?
"
Taylor asked.

"
Barely. We'll have to divert into the nearest assembly area.
"

"
First Squadron's site?
"

"
Yes, sir. We'll be running on empty after the interception. We'll have to stop off at Lieutenant Colonel Tercus's gas station at AA Silver.
"

"
Silver. That's the one by Orsk, right?
"

"
Yes, sir.
"

Taylor nodded. All right.
"
Anyway, I like the sound of it. Omsk to Orsk. Sounds clean.
"

"
Actually,
"
Merry Meredith interrupted,
"
the assembly area's offset from the city. It's near a little hamlet called Malenky-Bolshoy Rog.
"

"
Whatever,
"
Taylor said.
"
Lucky Dave and I are going to need to talk, anyway, and he's riding with Tercus.
"
Taylor straightened as fully as he could in the low-ceilinged compartment.
"
Now, let's get the bastards who got Manny.
"

Captain Jack Sturgis of Bravo Troop, First Squadron, Seventh United States Cavalry, felt a level of exhilaration he had not known since his high school basketball team won the game that took them to the state semifinals. He had been in combat. And not only had he done everything right—he had not even been afraid. Not really. Not once things got going. Basically, in Sturgis's newly acquired view, combat was a lot like sports. You got caught up in it, forgetting everything: the risk of personal injury, even the people watching you. Something inside of you took over. It was an incredible thing. He had read novels in which the heroes always felt sad and kind of empty after a battle. But he felt full of life, bursting with it. He had seen combat. And he had come through it just fine.

His troop had its major engagement well behind it. Now they were simply flying picket duty over empty expanses, keeping an eye on the regiment's left flank and steadily making their way toward their follow-on assembly area. They had flown out from under the snow, and the sky was clear at the southernmost edge of the regiment's deployment. Everything was perfect.

"
Two-two, this is Two-seven,
"
his wingman called.
"
So where's this place again? Over.
"

"
This is Two-two. Orsk.
Orsk
, for God's sake. And don't get lazy on me. We're going to be flying back into the snow when we turn northwest.
"

"
Think they'll cut us loose, if things quiet down? I'd really like to meet a couple of Russians before we go home.
"

Sturgis knew exactly what the lieutenant meant. He wanted to meet a few Russian
women.
Just to check them out. Sturgis had nothing against the idea himself. But he felt he had to maintain a mature face before his subordinate.

"
Just keep your mind on the mission. Anyway, Orsk isn't exactly Las Vegas, near as I can tell. And you know the old man. He'll give you a medal before he'll give you a break. Over.
"

"
We kicked some ass, though. Didn't we?
"

"
This is Two-two. Save the bullshitting for when we're on the ground. Maintain basic radio discipline.
"

Captain Jack Sturgis, former member of an Ohio State semifinalist basketball team and presently a United States Army officer, meant well. He wanted to get it right, and he had no way of knowing that the encryption device on his troop internal net had already failed over an hour before. His set could still receive and decode incoming encrypted messages, but, whenever he broadcast, his words were clear for all the world to hear. The state of encryption devices had become so advanced that none of the design engineers working the
"
total system
"
concept for the M-100 had considered building in a simple warning mechanism to indicate such a failure.

The engineers were not bad engineers, and the system's design was a remarkably good one, overall. The M-100 had proved itself in battle. But it was a very, very complex machine, of the sort that legitimately needed years of field trials before reaching maturity. The United States had not had the years to spare and, all in all, we were remarkably lucky with the performance of the M-100, although Cap
tain Jack Sturgis might not have agreed, had he known what was waiting for him.