Enemies

FIFTEEN

Tombstone skimmed quickly through the preliminaries in the message, running his finger down the margin as he read the standard words of most OPORDS. Timing, targets… important, but not his major concern.

There it was. His finger paused over the offending paragraph. Command relationships—damn.

He looked up into Arkady’s genial face and scowled. “Just what is this second strike supposed to accomplish?” he said quietly.

“What the first did not. To cut the throat of the Macedonian command and control forces. Had your pilots done as they were ordered, this second strike would not be necessary,” Arkady said in the same tone of voice, his words intended for Tombstone alone.

Arkady turned away to face the rest of the assembled forces. In addition to the pilot commanders from previous briefings, the commanding officers and their weapons officers from the two cruisers were there. “My staff — the UNFORGREECE staff — will discuss with you the details of your particular roles in the next twenty-four hours. As you can see from your packages, this will be the single decisive blow against the rebel forces. I am pleased to welcome you to UNFORGREECE and look forward to working with you.”

Arkady nodded in the direction of Admiral Magruder. Looking at him, Tombstone could never have guessed that just days earlier Arkady had been agitating to have Tombstone removed from the theater of operations.

Why did he change his mind? Tombstone thought that if he could find the answer to that one question, he’d know the answers to the rest of them.

Arkady was speaking now, his voice warm and congenial. “As you can see, we have a wealth of talent here to advise us on the best use of UN forces. However, I also direct your attention to paragraph four. All mission decision will be made by UNFORGREECE in order to deconflict disposition of forces. Any questions regarding that provision should be addressed to my staff immediately.”

And not to Admiral Magruder. The unvoiced caveat was clear.

No one moved. All eyes were fixed on Tombstone. While the habit of obedience was deeply ingrained, so was the loyalty they felt to this one man, the one who’d brought them safely home from so many other battles.

Tombstone sat immobile and considered his options. The gauntlet had been thrown down. Right now, right here, Arkady was challenging him. And in front of his own people.

Yet not his people, not this time. He felt the cheap paper of the message slide between his fingers, negating anything he could possibly say about the procedures Arkady had outlined. As wrong as it felt, and terribly wrong — Arkady was right.

Tombstone gave a small nod, an almost imperceptible inclination of his head. He felt the tension in the room break as each officer realized that while they might some day be called to choose sides, to make hard decisions, it wouldn’t be just now. That moment was postponed — not finally settled, but at least held in abeyance while they occupied themselves with matters that they knew better.

Arkady beamed in triumph. “Well, then.” He turned to Colonel Zentos, who was standing off to one side. “My chief of staff will conduct the remainder of the briefing. I will see you in battle, my comrades.” He turned and left the room, leaving a deeply worried Tombstone behind him.

The noise of forty aircraft in various stages of startup flooded across the tarmac, warm and welcome to Thor’s ears. There was nothing like it, not even on the flight deck of a carrier. This was a real strike.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” The Marine Corps lieutenant colonel assigned to the detachment was blunt. “They blow the SAR effort last mission and expect us to roger up on following them in again.” He pulled his shoulders back and stuck his chest out. “At least there’s some serious SAR planning this time. And better intelligence on the SAM sites.”

“We asked for that last time,” Thor said. Maybe the bird colonel could extract more information from Arkady’s staff than Thor had been able to, but he doubted it. Their orders were clear — regardless of how they personally felt about the mission that had been laid out for them, the president had made his wishes clear.

Not that there was much to complain about in the mission planning. On the face of it, it seemed competently done. A wave of Tomahawk missiles to soften up the area, specially targeted to seek out suspected command and control points. Then electronics birds with HARM missiles leading the charge, taking out any remaining radar sites to avoid a repetition of the disaster of the first strike. Two waves of fighters again, the first composed of Greek aircraft, the second a mixed bag of U.S. and other forces. A final sweep through by a couple of Tomcats, one loaded with TARPS, the other with dumb bombs and orders to pick up any targets that the more structured waves had missed. A couple of drones for BDA, some of the high-tech ones that had been flooding the fleet since Hong Kong. He wondered a little at that, exposing that much advanced technology to possible compromise.

Five SAR helos, all with fighter protection. The Americans had drawn four of those assignments in addition to their attack tasking. Special forces on standby for any hostile extractions. Even the Marines hadn’t been able to find much fault with that part of the plan.

The only real problem was the attack itself. The whole thing was starting to remind Thor entirely too much of Vietnam. Telling who was a civilian and who was a combatant was the first problem. The second was that rebel forces such as the Macedonians rarely operated out of fixed positions. Sure, there’d be some structures that could be identified as command centers. But if the Macedonians had any sense, their actual commanders would be somewhere else.

Thor started his walk-around of the aircraft, running through the checklist. Some people might skimp on the routine items, counting on the ground crew to catch any major problems, but not a Marine. And most particularly, not this Marine.

Finally, he was ready. He popped down the first rung of the boarding ladder and started crawling up the side of the Hornet. Her skin felt smooth and thin under his fingers. He pulled himself up and over the edge of the cockpit, easing down into his seat. A plane captain followed him up and helped him buckle in. At the last moment, the young corporal pulled the safety pins from the ejection mechanism.

“Semper Fi, sir,” he said.

“Semper Fi, Marine.” Thor flipped open the pre-start checklist, worked his way through it, then followed the corporal’s hand signal to start engines. When they were both, major and corporal, completely satisfied that the Hornet was good to go, the corporal snapped into a picture perfect salute. Thor returned it from the cockpit and released the brakes.

“This one’s for you, Murph,” he said aloud as he taxied toward the runway. “And for me.”

The ship rocked slightly in the gentle current. She was making bare steerageway, just enough forward speed to enable her to retain rudder control in case she needed to maneuver. At two knots, she seemed to rest gently upon the surface of the ocean rather than steam through it.

“All stations report ready, Captain,” the TAO said.

Captain Daniel Heather nodded. “Any last words from UNFOR?”

“No, sir.” The TAO held up a sheet of paper. “The last message we got was that the strike was airborne and would remain in orbit over the airfield until we’d launched.”

“Very well.” Captain Heather glanced at the chronometer on the wall, then double-checked the time displayed on the edge of the computer screen. “Thirty seconds, I make it.”

“Yes, sir.”

He waited, watching the digital figures click over on the screen. A routine launch — if any weapon launched in anger could be called routine. But if anything, there was less tension in Combat than there’d been during their last exercise firing. Then the spacious compartment had been stuffed with civilians, contractors, and CRUDES staff all wanting to offer their opinions and assistance.

Assistance. More like a pain in the ass than anything. In Navy tradition, it was one of the three great lies in the world: “I’m from the staff, I’m here to help.” What they were really there to do was grade the entire ship on how the evolution was conducted, looking at everything from how well the watchstanders in Combat did their jobs to whether the galley managed to get meals on the table on time.

Well, this time there was just one grading criteria. And that was how well JPJ put a huge, smoking hole in one particular spot in the ground.

In actual fact, the Tomahawks were relatively easy to fire. A separate weapons console housed the software, but the actual targeting package for the terrain-following missing was loaded into the missile from a CD. The shape of the terrain, the points it could check its flight path against, the speed of the missile, all were out of the control of the ship. As long as they were in the basket, in the piece of area designated as the launch area, and as long as they got the weapon off on time, everything should go just according to plan.

“Ten seconds,” the TAO announced. “Weapons free. Tomahawk, you have permission to fire.”

“Permission to fire, aye, sir.” The petty officer first class perched on a stool in front of the Tomahawk Engagement Console, or TEC, had his finger poised over the keyboard. “Five seconds, sir.”

The final moments clicked by without incident. A low shudder ran through the ship and a faint ringing as the launch warning buzzer on the forecastle sounded. It was almost anticlimactic when the petty officer announced, “Missile away, sir.”

Almost immediately, the Tomahawk sprang into existence on the tactical console, a missile symbol with a long speed leader attached. It headed off at an angle from the ship for the first waypoint.

The waypoints were intermediate stations that the missile would pass through on its way to landfall. Constructing them was one of the few tasks a ship had, and the final waypoint and course change were designed to put the missile exactly over a point its electronic memory would recognize. From that point on, it would be guided solely by the terrain map, with an ever-decreasing tolerance for errors.

USS Jouett, a cruiser, would be launching her missiles as well in thirty seconds. Two missiles, each with its own target, and then the air bombardment. With any luck, there’d be nothing left of the rebel forces.

“Good work. Now comes the hard part,” Captain Heather announced. He settled back into his chair to wait.

“Devil Dog 202, you are cleared for takeoff.” The tower’s voice sounded almost bored.

“Roger, Devil Dog 202 cleared for takeoff,” Thor acknowledged. He shoved the throttles forward, feeling the Hornet surge forward around him. God, but this was an aircraft that loved to fly!

He rolled out and rotated with plenty of runway left, old habits learned the hard way in carrier aviation dying hard. He was the third aircraft in the launch sequence, behind two Tomcats. Queued up on the runway behind him were an assortment of other fighter aircraft, some quite capable and some barely airworthy. It had been clear to him that the Americans had better make damned sure they hit their targets, because he wasn’t sure how many of the others would be able to find their IP, much less their targets.

The Hornet burbled for a moment close to ground, then the full effect of the engines kicked in and she soared like a bird. Thor hauled back, climbing at a hard angle, wondering whether he’d catch any flak from the air traffic controller. From the two-dimensional radar now tracking him, it would appear that he was virtually standing still in the sky, showing a remarkably low speed over ground with all of his power poured into gaining altitude.

“Three, you got a problem?” the lead Tomcat asked. “Maybe with your horizon?”

“Negative, Lead, all green back here,” Thor said. “Just heading for altitude.”

“Right.” Lead appeared to be about to let it pass without further comment, then said, “Tanker’s not for another fifteen mikes, Three. You think you can wait that long?” A double click of the mike from Two substituted for a laugh.

“I’m fine, Lead. Thanks for asking.” Thor cut back his rate of ascent to that of the more heavily laden Tomcats.

That was the one drawback to the Hornet — at least from the Tomcat’s point of view. The lighter, more maneuverable Hornet could carry less weapon weight, and had correspondingly smaller fuel tanks. They needed a quick plug and suck at the tanker just about any time they could get it.

But there were advantages to being the smaller fighter, too. They could meet the MiG on a MiG’s terms, not expending fuel in the vertical game a Tomcat had to play. And, even more importantly, the Hornet was the platform of choice for close air support, providing firepower to troops on the ground. For a mission like this, one that required precision bombing to hit small, easily concealed targets, the Hornet was the airframe of choice. Finally, the Hornet had one last feature that none of the Tomcats could claim — each airframe was younger and required far less maintenance hours per hour of flight than the massive, aging F-14s.

The first landmark slid by on Thor’s right. He checked his chronometer — right on schedule. The Tomcats were formed up in a tight pair ahead of him, and Thor’s own wingman was tucked in tight. He craned his neck around for a visual check and got a thumbs-up from the young captain in the cockpit.

Four more minutes. That was the one good thing about fighting a war in Europe — everything was closer together.

Arkady stared at the radar picture of the surrounding area, then transferred his gaze to the small-scale topographical map mounted on the forward wall. The suspected locations of the enemy camps were laid out in red, a square enclosing an X marking what his staff believed were the headquarters. More symbols denoted the light mechanized infantry, the two lone tanks that the Macedonians had acquired from defectors from the Greek forces, and the anti-air sites now annihilated. The ingress and egress routes were laid out in white.

“Sir. The Tomahawks.” His radar technician pointed at the screen. “Right on time, General.” The missiles symbology coupled with the impressive speed leaders left no doubt as to the identity of the airborne contacts.

“No,” Arkady said immediately. “Those can’t be the Tomahawks. They’re off course — they’re antiair missiles.”

“General, the speed doesn’t fit,” the technician said, a puzzled expression on his face. “Antiair missiles go much faster.” He tapped the symbols on his screen. “These have to be the land attack missiles, sir.”

“You’re contradicting me?” Arkady snapped.

The technician turned pale. Every soldier in the camp knew what had happened to Spiros, and there was a silent pact among them all to never suffer the same fate. “General, my apologies. Clearly, I’m mistaken. Antiair rounds inbound on… uh…” The technician paused, at a loss.

“On the lead wave of the strike,” Arkady supplied. “They know that the first wave is composed entirely of Greek aircraft. This is clearly an attack by the American forces on our units.”

“On our aircraft,” the technician said eagerly.

“Warn them,” Arkady said. “In Greek, not English.”

The technician picked up his microphone, his thoughts whirling, and tried to compose a standard phraseology warning to his forces, but he couldn’t get his mind focused on the problem. Finally, he settled for, “Attention, all Greek aircraft. The Americans are firing antiair missiles at you from their ships. You are ordered to… General?” He looked up for guidance.

“Continue the mission as briefed, regroup at Point Delta, then destroy the American aircraft. They have committed a hostile act,” Arkady said. He listened while the technician repeated his words verbatim, then turned to his chief of staff. “Have the guards take all American military personnel into custody. And bring Admiral Magruder to me here.”

Xerxes had roused them an hour before first light. Three hours later, they made it to the camp. Pamela was exhausted. She was used to roughing it while reporting from the field, but at least she usually had a decent sleeping bag, sometimes a tent. A cold night curled up against a rock with a thin blanket for protection from the wind had left her exhausted. What little sleep the cold hadn’t stolen fell prey to her own speculations about whether or not the Macedonians intended to torture Murphy.

She’d tried talking about it with the Marine, but he’d refused to answer her questions. Whether it was exhaustion or his own dread of what the next day might bring, she couldn’t tell. When she persisted, Xerxes threatened to gag her.

When they’d finally made it to the secondary camp, untouched by any bombing run, Xerxes had had them separated immediately. An old, taciturn sergeant had silently showed her to a tent and taken up a guard position outside the front flap. When she’d tried prying up a back corner, exploring the possibilities for regaining her freedom of movement, he’d been there waiting for her. Finally, she gave in to the exhaustion and collapsed on the cot. For the first time in thirty-six hours, she was warm.

The noise outside had awoken her two hours later. She groaned as she crawled out of the sleeping bag, every injury aching anew. She pushed aside the tent flap to discover her guard was gone.

In the small clearing in the center of the camp, Murphy lay sprawled on the ground. She darted out and knelt down next to him, staring in horror at his bloody face. When Xerxes had said that Murphy would talk, she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the menace underlying the words. Now, confronted by the bloody evidence of the Macedonian’s handiwork, she could no longer avoid it.

She turned to face Xerxes. “Torture.”

Xerxes shook his head. “He fell.”

“Right.”

He took two steps toward her and reached out one hand for her shoulder. She flinched back. An expression of disappointment and regret flashed across his face, to be immediately replaced by something colder. “I had thought more of you. Think this through. If we had truly resorted to torture, would I bring you here? Give you the opportunity to talk to him, to see what we’d done.” He shook his head.

“I can talk to him?” she asked cautiously.

“Go ahead.” Xerxes looked sullen now. “Ask him what happened.”

She knelt down beside the battered figure stretched out on the cot and touched his shoulder gently. Murphy groaned, then his eyes opened, staring out in the distance unfocused.

“Murphy? Can you hear me?” she asked.

He groaned again then tried to speak.

“Water,” Pamela snapped. Xerxes filled a plastic cup with water and handed it to her. She leaned over the cot and tried to prop him up while she held the cup to his mouth. He was just barely conscious enough to try to help her guide the cup. He sucked down two noisy gulps then paused to take a breath.

“More?” she asked. He nodded, his expression already clearly more focused. He levered himself up into a sitting position and took the cup with shaky hands. As he drank the second cup of water by himself, his eyes refocused and found Xerxes standing quietly in the corner. Murphy stared at her impassively as he slowly drained the cup.

“What happened to you?” Pamela asked after he declined more water.

“They caught me trying to depart their hospitality,” he said, his face still expressionless. “A couple of guards were trying to drag me back to camp. I wasn’t too wild about the idea.”

“They beat you?” she said, still not looking at Xerxes.

He shook his head reluctantly. “No. I tripped. Once I was down, one got handcuffs on me. Then the rest of them showed up and hog-tied me for the trip back. I got in a couple of licks though — kicked one guy in the face pretty hard.”

“And broke his jaw,” Xerxes said, speaking for the first time.

“Too bad,” Murphy said, no trace of remorse in his voice.

“And you,” Xerxes continued, crossing the room to tower over the Marine pilot. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m just peachy, thanks.”

“Good. Fit enough for a little hike?”

“Probably.” Murphy’s eyes were guarded now, as though he were trying to decide whether to admit it. “If the ribs hold up.”

“What’s wrong with your ribs?” Pamela asked. She reached out as though to examine him, and he flinched back.

“Cracked a couple in the ejection, maybe. Might be just a strain. It’s no big deal,” he said reluctantly. She got the impression that little would be more distasteful to him than admitting physical weakness.

“Good. You’ll let me know if they get too uncomfortable, then,” Xerxes said. “I’m sure we can arrange other transportation for you.”

She stood, feeling the pain in her knees as she did so. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere else. I thought you would have learned by now not to bother asking that sort of question.”

“I always ask questions.”

“I don’t always answer them.”

For a moment, it was as though they were the only two people in the room. Murphy was forgotten as their eyes locked and something more passed between them than just a simple question for information and a refusal to give it. Finally, Pamela looked away.

“There’s likely to be another strike,” Xerxes said finally. “We’re moving camp.”

“You’ve got pretty good intell,” Murphy said. Xerxes didn’t answer.

Moving camp. Pamela glanced at Murphy and knew immediately why he’d minimized his injuries. Movement meant a degree of disorder, and maybe another chance to escape. He’d take that opportunity any time it presented itself, no matter how small the odds for success, no matter how many beatings they administered.

Just like the Marines would be back to get him. That was one of the primary tenets of their brotherhood, that no Marine left another.

So Xerxes was right. They’d be back, both to finish what the earlier strike had started and to look for Murphy.

And to kill as many of the rebel Macedonians as they could in the process.

So where does that leave me? Rooting for Murphy or for the Macedonians? Every time she thought she finally had the answer, some new angle or perspective upset her carefully reasoned approach to the question. Now, staring at the two faces so much alike, both grim, haggard and determined, she knew what her only choice could be.

A sense of peace descended on her, coupled with not a little sadness. The comfort of righteousness, the strength one found fighting for a cause would forever be denied to her. She thought of Xerxes’s charge that she would never know what it was to lose friends in battle because she chose no sides.

But he’d gotten it wrong. It wasn’t that she had no side — it was that they were all hers. The Macedonians, the Greeks, the Americans…despite her nationality, each death was one that mattered to her as a person, as the story of how the war affected that individual. She was denied the luxury of seeing the other side as inhuman, faceless creatures. To her, and to the other men and women who brought the rest of the world to each conflict, each warring faction was composed of human beings. They mattered. They had to. Because only when she could show that side of war to the rest of the world would the civilized nations bring enough pressure to bear on the combatants to stop the bloodshed.

That was her role as a reporter. To bring the facts to the world, to force the international community to intervene. And if she had to have a side to claim as her own, then let it be that one — the side of peace.

Xerxes must have seen something odd in her expression. He stepped away from her to the door of the hut and barked out an order, his voice harsher than she’d heard before. Running footsteps answered him, then a sound like early summer thunder far away.

No. Not thunder. Fear surged through her, shattering the peace that understanding had brought her.

Not thunder at all. Bombers.

Thor dipped the nose of the Hornet down slightly for the barest moment, exposing more of the ground under him to view. Not that he really needed a visual, not following in the path of the Tomcats, not with his own HUD indicating he was on course, on time. And especially not with the streamer of smoke and fire billowing up to his left, evidence of the deadly accuracy of the Tomahawk attack on a fuel and weapons dump. No, visual contact with the ground was simply a final confirmation of what he already knew — that they were dead on in their ingress run.

“Five seconds,” Tomcat Lead warned. “Hold your positions and don’t screw up the egress. Break left if you get hit. SAR and Special Forces are only one mike out.”

Thor waited for Two to acknowledge, then said, “Three.” His wingman followed with, “Four.”

“Alright. Let’s give them hell.” Tomcat Lead began his descent, falling away in a graceful arc, his wingman dropping in slightly to the left and behind him. Thor counted off three seconds, then followed them down.

Closer to the ground now, with trees rushing by underneath him he could truly feel the effect of the Hornet’s speed. Individual trees whipped by, barely visible long enough for him to take note of them before they flashed out of view. Three small buildings spaced perhaps a mile apart, a herd of something — goats, perhaps? — between them. An older burnt-out house, all details he recognized from the satellite photos.

There, just ahead and to the left. An odd patch in the undergrowth, natural enough from a distance but with hard glinty highlights in it as they approached. Could have been quartz formations or rocks if they’d been in a different part of the world, but not here. He’d seen the blowups of the area, taken note of the carefully outlined trucks and encampments the photo intelligence technicians had picked out. It would have been clear enough even without the infrared shots that showed warm engines, campfires, and people moving about underneath what was trying to appear as a simple forest. Smoke from the Tomahawk attack was blowing across the area now, further obscuring the picture.

The camp. Human intelligence sources had confirmed with the locals what the intelligence specialists already knew. And what the people on the ground, in a few short seconds, would know beyond all hope of redemption.

Xerxes shoved Pamela to the ground then rolled her under the cot. “Take cover!” He followed her in under the scant shelter of the flimsy wooden frame. It bent then flexed upward. Although her vision was partly blocked by Xerxes body, she caught a glimpse of a darkly tanned foot flashing toward the door.

“No!” She tried to shove him out of the way so that she could escape the illusion of the safety of the cot. Better to take her chances in the open away from the structures.

Xerxes shoved her back against the wall of the hut as though determined to hold her in the death trap that she knew this building surely was. She started to fight back by reflex, her hands clawing at his face, then realized that there was only one way out. Instead of reaching toward him, she flattened her hands and jammed them straight up.

The cot bucked up. It started to settle back down on them, one aluminum leg headed straight for her face, but she got her feet up and kicked. It rose again, rolling now, and clattered over on its side. The noise was lost in the all encompassing thunder of aircraft directly overhead.

Pamela bolted to her feet, narrowly eluding Xerxes’s frantic grab for her ankle. Let him die here if he wished, but she wasn’t going to. Not now. Not this time. She ran for the door, snagging her camera bag strap with one hand as she went. As soon as she hit the door, she cut hard to the right and started running.

God, no strafing. Not this time. She remembered how close the deadly rounds from the Hornets had come when they were clearing the area around Murphy. It was her fault that the Macedonians had gotten him, her fault alone. If she hadn’t dragged Xerxes down from the observation point, they’d never have been within range to take him prisoner.

The feet — Murphy’d left without his boots. For a split second, she almost thought about running back in to the shelter to look for them, but dismissed it almost instantly. There was no time, none at all. She’d be lucky if she made it out of range before the first—

Her world exploded. The ground under her feet heaved up as though trying to rid itself of a flea, bucking and jolting harder than the worst earthquake she’d ever imagined.

The first blow catapulted her forward, and the ground that rose up to meet her seemed far closer than it had any right to be. She hit hard, landing on her right shoulder and rolling immediately over to smash her face into the hard-beaten ground.

Then the second explosion, harder and more violent than the first, but almost inaudible. She shook her head as it tossed her into the air, gravity slamming her back down a second later into the still-reeling earth. It was oddly disorienting, the earth reeling underneath her, dust and flames and debris rising up from the remains of the camp, complete chaos in utter silence.

She lay facedown on the ground, her arms crossed over the back of her head. She waited.

More explosions, or perhaps aftershocks — she couldn’t tell exactly which with no sound involved. It seemed as though she were alone in the midst of devastation, cupped in a giant hand that repeatedly picked her up and then threw her at the ground.

She felt something give in her shoulder, and the pain started then. At first it was indistinguishable from the noise and the violence that seemed to have taken root in the earth.

The shaking stopped. She lay on the ground, scarcely able to breathe with the fear pounding through her veins. Finally she tried, drawing in a deep shuddering breath as though her lungs had forgotten how to breathe. She coughed, started hacking hard. The air was almost solid with dust, debris and smoke.

Get away… got to get away. The refrain beat steadily in her head. She couldn’t understand exactly why — something about a camp was dangerous. All she knew was that she had to move, had to try, regardless of whether she could breathe or not.

She rolled over, still hacking and coughing, then rolled again as she realized she was now on her back, staring up into black smoke and bits of burning wood. She made it to her hands and knees, then tried to push herself upright.

The pain now, hard and demanding, threatening to consume her just as the early fury in the earth had. She felt herself scream but heard no sound — and kept moving. If she couldn’t stand, at least she could crawl.

She quickly discovered that her right shoulder would take no weight at all. Even trying to use it to push herself forward brought on waves of agony that threatened to rip her consciousness from her. She still couldn’t breathe well, but traces of oxygen were somehow seeping into her lungs. She held on hard to her consciousness and crawled.

The soldier watched as the compound below him exploded. He was far enough away to be well clear of the devastation, positioned just to the east of the path the attacking aircraft would use to clear the area. It was a good position, a fine position, one he’d carefully scouted at General Arkady’s request. He’d been particularly careful to select a vantage point that would almost guarantee him a direct hit.

More secondary explosions now, the muffled whump-whump of stores of POL — petroleum, oil, and lubricants — catching up fire. The fire below took on the billowing black form characteristic of the ignitable agents involved. The sound reached him as mild overpressures, each one popping his ears and gently buffeting his body as they reached him.

Soon, very soon now. He had seen the aircraft inbound then lost them briefly behind another rise. The increasing smoke and fire was a problem as well, but he’d taken that into account in selecting his position and the prevailing winds were carrying most of it away from him. He’d have five seconds, maybe six. More than enough time to sight the Stinger in on the aircraft, follow it for a moment to make sure he had a lock, then toggle off the missile. A second Stinger canister lay at his feet, just a precaution. He doubted he’d have time to use it, but it was necessary insurance in case something had been damaged in the climb to the hilltop on the first missile.

He could still hear the aircraft engines, even over the explosions, the roar of the fire and the faint screams coming from the camp. The aircraft sounded higher in pitch now, indicating that they’d changed course and were heading back toward him. He shifted the missile slightly on his shoulder and peered through the sighting mechanism, ready for his target.

All of the planning, all of the preparations had been conducted with the utmost secrecy. General Arkady himself had approved the final plans, his site selection, and his chief of staff had personally brought the two Stinger tubes to his house in town. You could tell when professional military men were involved, the patina of expertise applied to the entire mission.

There was only one thing that puzzled him, a question that he hadn’t dared to ask. He suspected he knew the answer, but the less he knew, the more likely he was to survive the aftermath of this attack.

Just why did General Arkady want him to shoot down a Greek Tomcat?

Sweat rolled down Helios’s neck, soaking into the gold Nomex shirt he wore under his flight suit. The damp fire-retardant fabric chaffed again the stubble of beard, creating an almost unbearable itch. Helios took his hand off the throttles long enough to run one finger around the inside of his collar and chase it. Perhaps he’d made it worse by not shaving this morning, but it was a squadron tradition that men went into battle unshaven. Exactly why, he’d never figured out, but such was the case with many traditions.

He dug one nail into the worst spot and scratched, his eyes still keeping up the scan between sky, instruments, and wingman. The scan, the all-important scan — too many aviators died when they let themselves get distracted and failed to keep up their scans. They forgot that the single most important priority, no matter what other hell was breaking loose, was to fly the aircraft.

Finally the itch abated. He placed his hands back on the throttle and tweaked up the volume on the squadron common net. The howls of triumph and exclamations of exhilaration were still crowding the airwaves. He’d give them a few more minutes to glory in the results of the attack before he ordered circuit discipline restored for their approach on the airfield.

He’d just reached for the transmit switch when he noticed the thin tracer of smoke off to his left. His eyes sought it out, and alarms started going off in his head before he’d fully consciously comprehended what he was seeing. His hands were already moving, throwing the lead Greek Tomcat into a hard break to the right.

The circuit went dead as the other pilots saw his maneuver, then the reason for it. The orderly formation disintegrated into a mass of aircraft scrambling for altitude and distance.

Helios’s Tomcat had just turned through ninety degrees when the Stinger found it. The RIO had decided that despite the maneuver, they weren’t going to outrun the missile. His hand was tight around the ejection handle and yanking down as the missile found him.

Helios couldn’t be sure exactly what was happening. One moment he was in his aircraft, riding home on the joyous cries of the rest of his squadron. The next he was hurtling through the air, stripped of the comforting protection of his Tomcat, the wind battering him like sandpaper and howling in his ears. There was a brief moment of silence as he reached the apogee of his ejection arc from the aircraft, a moment when the wind seemed to die down to nothing and he hung motionless in the air. A fleeting sensation of every dream he’d ever had about flying like a bird — then the air around him exploded into fire, sound and fury. The force tumbled him away from the aircraft, sweeping him before it like so much debris. He somersaulted in the air, head over heels with his ejection seat straps still holding him hard in the seat. Just at one of the rare moments when his feet were toward the earth, the parachute deployed. The force jerked him up and away from his tumbling descent toward the earth as though he were a puppet.

He stared up, panicking, wondering if the parachute had caught him at the right angle or whether it would spill open and send him plummeting to the ground without a hope of survival. He held his breath, hanging motionless for a moment until he was sure the chute had taken a solid bite out of the air, then swiveled around to look for his backseater.

There were no other chutes. He could see the other Tomcats splayed across the sky, saw one brave soul break off and head back down toward him. He twisted in his seat pan, trying to look behind him to see if his backseater had somehow made it out, but the parachute held him oriented toward the west.

At least his chute had opened. His mind was racing now, going through the ejection procedures they’d drill so often in preparation for just this moment. The swaying motion of the parachute was increasing, inducing nausea, although it seemed like the earth was moving rather than him. He caught the risers, pulled around to stabilize the chute and took another look for his wingman.

There, off to the north. A chute, collapsed and streaming behind a dark figure underneath it. He felt a wash of anger that his backseater would die so, coupled with a feeling of relief and gratitude that he’d survived himself.

The ground was racing up toward him now, harder and faster than he remembered from his practice jumps. He drew his knees up and tried to remember how to relax and let his legs take the shock, already mentally walking through the steps.

Something hard slapped against his face. He took his hand off the risers long enough to touch it and saw blood on his hand when he drew it back. Another hard sting on his leg, then a thin streamer of blood coursing out, some of it soaking into the fabric of his shredded flight suit, the rest keeping pace with his body as he fell. He felt a brief sensation of increasing speed and looked up.

Dread flooded through him. The parachute above him was spattered with spots of blue and red — no, not spots. Holes. Shrapnel from his aircraft, some of it burning, some of it just brutally razor sharp, was peppering his chute and his body.

One of the risers parted, the upper segment flailing against the canopy while the part he held still clutched in his hand wrapped itself around his wrist.

He was screaming now, damning the gods and the fates that would let him survive the missile, survive the ejection only to be destroyed a mere three hundred feet from the safety of the ground.

The ground. It was rushing up at him now at an incredible rate, each individual feature now distinct and dangerous. He tried to steer the remnants of the parachute toward a patch of cleared ground and grass, but more risers were being severed each second.

He seemed to be level with the ground now, and in a moment of insanity he wondered whether he’d already landed. Landed, and survived.

Then he hit. His feet touched down first, knees bent as he’d been taught, and hope lasted a moment longer. He felt as much as heard an odd, ominous crack, then his legs gave way. He twisted to the left, slammed into the ground on his side and bounced back into the air. For a moment he though he’d imagined the initial impact, then he hit the ground again.

The cycle repeated itself endlessly, with time frozen at the first moment that he’d touched the ground. There was no pain, not yet, just the curious and altogether annoying sensation of trying to land on the ground, trying his damndest, and having the earth toss him back up into the sky again. Dirt, grass and sky reeled through his line of sight and he stopped trying to differentiate one from the other beyond the simple fact that blue meant he was being crushed against the green, and green meant he was about to be.

Finally, two hundred feet away from where he’d first hit the ground, the pilot’s body made one last slow arc into the air and landed for the last time.

Thor watched as the Tomcats leaped up into the air and peeled away to the left and the right, suddenly four thousand points lighter without bombs on their wings. Lead punched through the Tomahawk smoke flume and reappeared almost instantly, his aircraft now dulled with a thin film of ash.

Thor counted to three, then pickled off his own load, breaking left just as gravity wrenched the last one off his wings. He felt the Hornet jolt upward, the engine’s power now applied just to airframe, fuel load and pilot without the heavy weapons.

Thor came around hard, standing the Hornet on its wingtip until he reached the reciprocal course. The Tomcats were high above him now and still climbing, each one gouting afterburner fire out of its tailpipes. He followed them up, increasing his rate of ascent in order to try to avoid their jet wash. He caught a flash of steel off to his right as his wingman followed.

“How’d it look?” he asked the other Hornet.

“Good hit, good hit,” the younger officer said, his enthusiasm patent in his voice. “Man, if I could have pulled a run like that in the pipeline, I’d be a fucking general by now.”

“Yeah, felt solid to me,” Thor said. They’d have to wait for the BDA but he was willing to stake some mighty stiff drinks on being dead on target.

“Cut the chatter,” Tomcat Lead ordered, his voice harsh. “We got some problems.”

“You hit?” Thor asked. He hadn’t seen any antiair installations except the two the HARMS had taken out, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been any. Still, Lead could have called out a warning as soon as he’d—

“No, not that. Button two,” Lead ordered.

Thor clicked over to the private circuit in use only between the American aircraft. It was encrypted, ensuring that anyone scanning the frequencies couldn’t pick up their conversation. “What gives?” he asked.

“Looks like we got a problem with the Greeks,” Lead said. “Look at their disposition. Doesn’t look to me like they’re wanting to tank and head home.”

Thor glanced down at his fuel indicator. Not critical yet, but lower than he liked. He swore silently at himself for pulling the hot dog maneuvers with the steep angle of ascent as they’d left the airfield.

“They’re high-low,” Lead continued. “And they’re not RTB as briefed. They’re sitting there in a fighter sponge like they’re waiting for someone. One guess as to who that might be.”

“What the hell are they doing?” Thor asked. “Surely they’re not—” The hard warble of his ESM gear cut him off, the tone indicating that it had detected radar guidance signals from an air-to-air missile.