The War in 2020

14

Down the hill from the suburban home where George Taylor passed his childhood lay an orchard. Lost between some dead farmer's dreams and a developer's vision, the untended trees had gone wild. When you walked down from the careful plots of television-neighborhood houses, through the no-man's-land of cleared fields yet unbuilt, the paved road turned to gravel, then to red dirt. The last sewerage connection guarded the edge of civilization like an undersized cement and steel pillbox. Birds rose at your footsteps, and, in the summer, dull snakes sunned themselves in the dust. The tangled orchard encompassed a ravine that was perfect for rock fights (no rocks above a certain generally acknowledged size, and no aiming above the waist).

This little wilderness was unkempt, as are the very young and the very old. The trees were very old, and the denimed warriors who ran howling between them were very young. George Taylor was the youngest of the tribe, and one of the wildest, driven by his fear that his fears might be discovered by his older companions. Looking back with the genius of an adult, he could only shake his head at the terrified recklessness he had tried to pass off as a bravery he had never, ever felt.

When George Taylor was very young, the oldest member of the band with whom he explored the world was a strong, loud boy named Charlie Winters. One of Taylor's first clear memories was of being together with other males drafted by Charlie for a special expedition down to the orchard. Armed with sticks, the file of boys passed out of the brightness of the morning into the golden-green twilight of the grove. Charlie went first, searching through the brambles and tramped paths for the way he had gone the afternoon before. Amid the gnarled branches with their spotted, unworthy fruit, Charlie had discovered a perfect apple. But there were problems: the treasure dangled from a forbiddingly high branch and, still worse, no climber could retrieve it, since it grew very close to the gray pulp of a wasps' nest.

Each of the boys came from homes where select apples lay disregarded in decorative baskets. Candy was by far the preferred sustenance of the tribe. But the apple in the orchard was a jewel, not least because Charlie claimed it to be such. The chief had spoken, and the wild fruit took on something of the mystery of lost worlds, dangling in the wild grove where there was just enough sense of danger to thrill a boy's heart.

Charlie had devised a plan. At his command, they would all throw rocks at once, knocking the apple off the branch. It was a good combat plan, brutal and direct, save for a single hitch: one boy would need to position himself immediately beneath the branch, in order to catch the fruit and make off with it before the surprised wasps could strike.

The leader looked around for volunteers.

Not one of the bold band stepped forward.

"Come on," Charlie said. "It'll be easy. We can do it."

All eyes rose to the high branch and its treasure. The wasps' nest swelled with a terrible splendor, and the lazy local activity of its guardians began to seem far more menacing than any of the boys had previously realized.

"Georgie," Charlie said. "You're the smallest. The wasps'll have more trouble spotting you. And you can run fast."

The last claim was a lie. He always came in last in the sudden races with the older, longer-legged boys.

Taylor did not answer. He simply looked up at the hideous sack of the wasps' nest. Afraid.

"Ain't afraid, are you?" Charlie demanded.

"No," Taylor replied. He wanted to run away. To go home and immerse himself in some other game. But he feared being called a baby. Or a puss.

"Well, prove it. I think you're chicken."

"Yeah," a third voice joined in, "Georgie Taylor's a chicken." The attack came from a gray, indefinite boy whose name Taylor would forget over the years.

"I'm not chicken," Taylor said. "You're more chicken than I am." And he forged his way down through the briars and thirsty brush.

He positioned himself as directly below the apple as he could, staring up to keep his bearings. It was very hard. The sun dazzled down through the leaves, blackening the boughs and making him faintly dizzy.

"You ready?" Charlie called.

"I guess so," Taylor said. But he was not ready. He would never be ready. He was indescribably afraid.

"Get ready," Charlie commanded. "Everybody, on three."

The boys clutched their rocks. Taylor shifted nervously, trying to see the apple clearly up in the tangle of brilliance and blackness.

"One… two… three."

Everything happened with unmanageable speed. Shouts, and the whistle of projectiles. A blurred disturbance in the world above his head. Cries of alarm as far too much came falling: a spent stone clipped his shoulder and the apple fell just beyond his grasp. Beside it, the cardboard waste of the wasps' nest landed with a thud.

He reached for the apple. But it was no good. The wasps were already at him. He ran. The world exploded with disorder. He swung his arms, howling at the living fires on his skin. A wasp flew at his mouth.

Everyone else was gone. He ran through the wilderness alone, scrambling through a world of relentless terror that would not stop hurting him. He raced through thorns and sumac, batting his paws at the wasps, at the air. Crying, screaming, he clawed his way up the dirt bank of the ravine and burst from the poisonous gloom, imagining that the wasps would have to quit now that he had escaped their domain and regained the freedom of the clear blue day.

But the remarkable pains would not stop. The creatures droned, plunged, pelted him. Far ahead, nearly back to the world of paved streets and perfect houses, he saw his comrades in full retreat.

Charlie slowed briefly to yell, "Come on, Georgie."

The older boy was laughing.

Seated in the cockpit of his war machine, leading his grown-up warriors into battle, Taylor found himself wondering to what extent he was still the boy standing under a wasps' nest, while other, distant figures threw the stones.

Things had already begun to go wrong. The United States Air Force had been scheduled to fly a strategic jamming mission along the old prerebellion Soviet-Iranian border, wiping out enemy communications over tens of thousands of square kilometers. But the ultrasophisticated, savagely expensive WHITE LIGHT aircraft remained hangar-bound, grounded by severe weather at their home base in Montana. Taylor's regiment and the electronic warfare support elements from the Tenth Cavalry would be able to isolate the operational battlefield with the jamming gear available in-theater, but the enemy would retain his strategic and high-end operational communications capability. An important, if not absolutely vital, part of the surprise blow would not be delivered.

Locally, a lieutenant in the Third Squadron had disobeyed the order to lift off with his automatic systems in control. Hotdogging for his crew, he had attempted a manual lift-off in the darkness and had flown his M-100 into mercifully inert power lines. Thanks to the safety features built into the M-100, the lieutenant and his entire crew had survived the crash with only some heavy bruising, some missing teeth, and one broken arm. But the regiment had been robbed of another precious system before the battle had even begun. Controlling his temper over the incident, unwilling to exchange the image of control for the brief pleasure of public anger, Taylor nonetheless promised himself that the lieutenant would soon have the opportunity to seek a new line of work, if he and his regimental commander both survived the war.

Things had already begun to go wrong. But they were not yet sufficiently fouled-up to rattle Taylor. One of the very few truths that his long years of service had taught him was that military operations were simply fucked-up by their very nature. The selective maps and decisive arrows that made everything appear so obvious and easy in the history books and manuals were invariably instances of radical cosmetic surgery on the truth. Behind those implacable graphics lay scenes of indescribable confusion, misunderstanding, accidents (both terrible and felicitous), and the jumbled capabilities, failures, fears, and valor of countless individuals. Warfare was chaos, and the primary mission of the commander was to impose at least marginally more order on that chaos than did his opponent. The reason that military discipline would always be necessary was not simply to ensure that the majority of men in uniform would fight when ordered — that was only a small part of it. Discipline was necessary because every military establishment existed constantly on the edge of disaster, from the humbler inevitabilities of crushed fingers in the peacetime motor pool to the grand disasters of war.

Taylor would not receive the promised support of his nation's air force, and he had lost one of his war machines to the antics of a uniformed child. But his regiment was largely in the air — forty-six M-l00s had lifted off, thanks to the last-minute achievements of Manny Martinez and the regimental and squadron motor officers. The electronic warfare birds from the Tenth Cav were on station. And there was still no sign that the enemy had discovered the American presence. In less than ten minutes, the First Squadron would cross its line of departure, followed quickly by the Second Squadron, then by the Third. So far, the untried war machines seemed to be working just fine, and their electronic suites enriched and thickened the darkness through which they would pass to strike their enemies. No recall order had arrived from the nervous men in Washington, and soon the Seventh United States

Regiment of Cavalry would have slipped its last tether. Somewhere behind a welter of new enemies, the old enemy waited.

Overall, Colonel George Taylor considered himself a very lucky man.

"Take the wheel, Flapper," Taylor told his copilot, Chief Warrant Officer Five Elvis "Flapper" Krebs. Since Zaire, Taylor had always chosen his personal crew from the oldest, toughest, and sourest men available. "I'm going back to the operations center."

"Got it," Krebs said in an offhanded southern voice that implied that Taylor's presence was superfluous. Like Taylor, Krebs had served long enough to remember the old days when the U.S. Army still held Cobra gunships in its inventory. The two men had grown up on the Apache, but they could remember the look of the Cobra's deadly panatela fuselage in flight. They had seen enormous changes in the technology of war, and the coming hours would either inaugurate yet another new stage, or mortally embarrass their nation.

"Send you up a cup of coffee, Chief?" Taylor offered as he finished unstrapping himself from his padded seat in the center of a display of electronic riches.

"Naw," Krebs said. "I'm about as wired as I need to be." The studied casualness of the man's tone always brought Taylor to the edge of laughter. Krebs was overdue for retirement — he had been extended to assist in the formation of the Army's first regiment of M-l00s, having served for years in the developmental process and as a test pilot. To Taylor, he was one of the last of a vanishing breed, the crusty, mean-mouthed, generous-spirited old warrants who made the Army fly. Their shared experiences laid down a bridge between Taylor and Krebs that few other men in the regiment would dare attempt to cross. Bad times that added up to a life well-spent.

As a young warrant, Krebs had seen his first combat in Panama, in December of eighty-nine. There was a story that he had overflown the barracks of a holdout Panamanian Defense Force unit, dropping homemade leaflets that read: "Merry Fucking Christmas." Not long afterward, the Army had sent him to Saudi Arabia during the great deployment of 1990. Old Flapper had been through it all.

Taylor squeezed his shoulders through the short passageway that led back into the command and control center. Where the standard M-l00s had a compartment for a light squad of dragoons equipped for dismounted fighting, the command-variant ships had been outfitted with a chamber crammed with the latest miniaturized communications and information-processing systems. The compartment was environmentally controlled and stabilized. Entering it, you were treated to a spectacle of colored lights from nine monitor screens of various sizes displaying everything from real-time images of the battlefield relayed from space reconnaissance systems to graphic depictions, in glowing colors, of the war in the electromagnetic spectrum. It always reminded Taylor of a magic cave where the invisible world became palpable. You could see the ferocious demons that hid in the air, invisible to the naked eye, or you could call up distant lands of wonder. Even the first-level secrets of life and death became available here, in the displays of enemy systems targeted, of friendly systems lost, of available ammunition and deadly energy sources. The commander, with his skeletal staff, could use radar imagery to erase darkness, clouds, or fog, allowing him a god's-eye view that penetrated the witch's sabbath of the battlefield. The commander could monitor the sectors in which his subordinates fought with greater ease than a civilian could watch television. Changes in angle, in levels of magnification, in enhanced color contrasts, and the visual evocation of waves of energy, it was all there lurking under a button or a switch. The voice of God had its source here too. Alternative-use laser systems allowed instantaneous encrypted communications with similarly equipped stations anywhere in the world, and huge volumes of data could be entered into or transmitted from the M-l00's standard on-board computers in the middle of combat.

It was a marvelous machine. The on-board and external integrated target-acquisition systems were so capable and versatile that, during training flights, playful crews used them to track small game on the prairie from a distance of dozens of kilometers. The miniaturized "brains" were so powerful and so crammed with both military and general knowledge that they could be ordered to fuse data from all available reconnaissance systems in order to search for any parameter of target — such as the pinpoint location of each blue 2015 Ford on the highways of North America in which two adult occupants were riding and the fuel tanks were less than half full. The microsecond sort capabilities were so powerful that none of the experts in the regiment had been able to enter a problem which could stump the system. You could charge the target-acquisition system to locate distant plantations of yellow roses — or every enemy combat vehicle with a bent right front fender. The system was so swift that human beings simply could not handle the target volume without extensive automated support, and the M-100 was designed to fight on full automatic, relying on its human masters for key decisions, for overall guidance, for setting or revising priorities, and for defining operational parameters. Every on-board system could be employed under manual control, if necessary, but such a reduction in the system's overall capabilities would only be accepted, according to the draft doctrine, in the most exceptional circumstances. Technically, this most potent air-land warfare machine ever built had the capability to carry on the fight indefinitely even after its human crew had perished. Taylor once overheard a young pilot joke that the M-100 made every pilot a general. What the pilot had meant was that the M-100 let every man who sat at its controls play God without getting his hands dirty.

Taylor was willing to admit that he himself could not fully imagine all the implications this untried system might have for the battlefield. But he was certain of one thing: despite the technological wonders under the modern warrior's hand, that hand would manage to grow very dirty indeed.

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."

"Sir."

"Modem armies… without communications…"

"Sir. The problem will be corrected. Sir."

"Anything else to report?"

Takahara considered for a moment. "Nothing of significance, sir. Colonel Noguchi called in for final clearance for his readiness drill."

Air Force Colonel Noguchi. In charge of the Scramblers. The man was a terrible nuisance, staging one readiness test after another, flying dry missions. Aching to unleash the horrible, horrible toys with which Tokyo had entrusted him. Noburu understood, of course. You could not give a military man a weapon without inciting in him a desire to use it. Just to see.

But Noburu was determined that he would finish this business without resort to Noguchi and the monstrous devices. Let the colonel fly his heart out behind friendly lines. Noburu was not going to give him the chance to make history.

I'm too old for this, Noburu thought. He had always been told that the heart hardened with age, but if this was so, then he was a freak. As a young man, he had not understood concepts such as mercy, humanity, or even simple decency. He had loved the idea of war, and he had loved its reality, as well. But now his youthful folly haunted him. He had been a very good officer. And he was still a very good officer. Only it was much harder now. He knew he was responsible for every crude bullet that tore human flesh out there on those distant battlefields. Even the side for which the victim fought mattered less now. All men, he had reluctantly, painfully realized, truly were brothers, and he had misspent his life in a manner that could never be forgiven.

It was too late now. All he could do was to try to dress it all in a few rags of decency.

Colonel Noguchi was an excellent officer. Exactly the sort Tokyo sought out for promotion these days: a heartless technical master. Starving for accomplishment, for glory. Noburu had decided that such men needed to be saved from themselves. And the world needed to be saved, as well.

Noburu thought briefly of his enemies. Surely they hated him. Even if they did not know the least bit about him, they hated him. They hated him even if he had no name, no face for them. They hated him. And rightly so. Yet, they would never know how much he had spared them.

My fate is written, Noburu thought, even if I cannot yet read it. I will play my role. And I still hold the power. Noguchi can fly his readiness test. And he can dream.

"Are you still there, Takahara?"

"Sir."

"Review Colonel Noguchi's flight plan. I don't want his systems anywhere near the combat zone."

"Yes, sir. Shall I order the test delayed?"

"No. No, not unless it's otherwise necessary. Just review the flight plans. As long as they're sensible, the drill can go ahead."

"Yes, sir."

"And, Takahara? I just wanted to be certain that the mission to strike the target in the vicinity of Omsk is proceeding on schedule."

Silence on the other end. Although Takahara was a very capable officer, the Omsk strike would not be foremost in his mind. It was only a minor detail in the management of a vast battlefield. Noburu pictured his subordinate hurrying through the automated target folders, growing angry at himself and the dark-circled night staff around him. Takahara was particularly abrasive, and he had been selected for the night watch because he had the temperament to keep everyone awake and full of nervous energy. Now Takahara would behave like a beast toward his subordinates for the rest of the night, embarrassed at this perfectly reasonable lapse in knowledge. Noburu was sorry for the junior officers on duty. But there was nothing to be done.

"Sir" — Takahara's voice returned. "Mission Three-four-one is in the final stages of physical preparation. Takeoff is scheduled within… let me see… excuse me, sir. The mission is already in the air."

Embarrassment at his error filled Takahara's voice with a wonder that promised quite an ordeal for the night crew. "Who is the mission commander?"

Takahara had already armed himself against that question. "Sir. Air Captain Andreas Zeederberg of the South African Defense Force."

"Contract employee Andreas Zeederberg," Noburu corrected the man automatically. Then he was sorry. This was already a phone call Takahara would take too much to heart and long remember, even though Noburu intended the man no harm. He remembered his father's admonition of years before, that a commander had to handle words as though they were sharp knives, for the least careless word could make a very deep wound.

"Sir," Takahara said, the obedient word filled with harnessed rage, "the aircraft will be—"

"That's enough. Really. I only wanted to be certain that the mission would be executed on schedule. I want to be sure that the target is destroyed. By dawn."

"Sir."

"That's all. Good night." And Noburu touched the device to turn it off.

Perhaps, of course, it was all merely a dream. A lew Russians trying desperately to keep warm in the rums of their economy. Perhaps those heat signatures at Omsk were nothing at all, and he was only growing old and eccentric. But Noburu would have gambled a great deal that his instincts were right. At any rate, the new day would bring an answer. He reclined on the sleeping cushions, trying to gather some warmth from the sweat-brined bedclothes. He considered calling an orderly to bring him fresh linen. Then he decided not to bother. There was a part of him that did not really want to go back to sleep, afraid of what dreams might come to him next. The worst was always the one about the Americans in Africa. He did not think he could bear that one right now.

Manny Martinez liked working with his hands. Increasingly, his work kept him behind a desk, and he liked that too — in a sense, it was the white-collar job to which he had aspired as a scholarship student at Texas A&M. But, whenever he sat too long over paperwork, he heard the mocking street-corner voices from his youth in San Antonio: "Hey, man. You call that work? Come on, man. That ain't no fucking work." So, just as he enjoyed skinning his knuckles on the vintage Corvette he was restoring back home, he welcomed the occasional opportunity to get a bit of grease under his fingernails working on military equipment. Doing real work. Even when the conditions were as bad as they were now.

"Just hold it up there a little longer," the motor warrant told him. "I almost got her, sir."

Martinez pushed up with his cramped hands, feeling the bite of the cold in his fingers, in his toes, along his motionless legs. He lay on his back, twisted awkwardly to make room for the warrant and his mechanic assistant in the narrow access breech at the back of the M-l00's engine compartment.

"No problem, Chief," Martinez told the warrant. "Take as long as you need." He tried to sound manly and cheerful. But the dull ache down through his forearms made him silently wish the chief would get on with it. It was very cold.

"Give me that other insert," the warrant told the mechanic, gesturing back across Martinez's body. The mechanic scrambled backward and began rooting about in a toolbox. It was difficult to see using only the low-light-level lanterns. "That one, goddamnit."

More crawling and sorting in the semidarkness.

"You want me to have Nellis take over for you, sir?" the warrant asked Martinez.

"Just do what you have to do, Chief. I'm all right," Martinez lied.

It hurt. But it was a good hurt. The tired ache that said, yes, I'm doing my part too. See? I'm pulling with you.

A voice from outside the compartment called loudly: "Hey, you guys. Major Martinez in there with you?"

"Yeah, he's here," the warrant officer bellowed before Martinez could answer for himself. "What you want with him?"

"Colonel Taylor's on the comms link. He wants to talk to Major Martinez."

"Chief," Martinez said, "I've got to go." He was at once relieved that he would no longer have to brace the heavy panel and ashamed that he was so relieved.

"Yeah, I guess you better go, sir. You. Nellis. Get in here and take over for the major."

A bony knee poked into Martinez's waist. "Excuse me, sir," a very young voice said, following which the speaker rammed an elbow into the side of Martinez's head, just where the jaw touches the ear.

Martinez almost barked at the mechanic. But he knew the blows were unintentional. Tired men working in a cold, cramped space.

"Get your hands under it," Martinez said, waiting until he felt the boy's fingers looking for a space beside his. "You got it now?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right. I'm letting go. It's heavy."

"Got it, sir."

Martinez carefully withdrew his hands. The panel sagged slightly, but the boy caught the weight and pushed it back upward.

"Jeez," he said "lt's heavy."

"Shut up and hold it," the motor warrant told him As Martinez eased back out of the compartment, the warrant said, "Thanks for the help, sir," in a halfhearted voice that sounded to Martinez like a form of verbal urination Martinez knew that, as soon as he was out of earshot, the warrant would be complaining to the young mechanic about "real" officers. But it didn't matter.

Outside of the M-100, the work hall was as black as the depths of a tomb Martinez turned on his hooded flashlight and followed its red trail across the metal and concrete litter of the floor. He could feel the cold burning right up through the soles of his boots. It was a miserable place and he would be glad to see the last of it.

Outside the snow was failing heavily now and the earth was sufficiently luminous for him to switch of the flashlight. The snow crunched underfoot and burst wet against his eyes and cheeks, swirling and settling drifting across the wasteland Martinez headed for the dark, solid outline of the last wing-in-ground transport. All of the others were gone, en route to the follow-on assembly areas, and this last machine was ready to lift out of the snow-clad ruins as soon as they had taken care of the last repairs. There was one last salvageable M-100, the one Martinez had been laboring over personally half of the night.

One of the crewmen had been on the lookout. He opened the forward door at Martinez's approach. Behind the man's silhouette, the blue-lit interior promised warmth, and Martinez felt greedy for a little comfort now. It was a long damned way from Texas, he told himself.

He hauled himself up into the transport, dusting off the snow. Wasting no time the guard sealed the door behind the supply officer and the lights came up automatically, dazzling Martinez.

"Over here. sir," an NCO called, offering Martinez a headset. "Want a cup of coffee maybe?"

Coffee. As the regimental S-4, there were only three essentials he had to provide to make the Army get ammunition, fuel, and coffee. All the rest — rations, bandages, spare parts — were relatively minor concerns, especially to the NCOs. It was the one crucial vulnerability that no enemy of the United States had ever identified: take away the Army's coffee and its morale would plummet, with battle-hardened NCOs lurching groggy-eyed toward suicide.

"Sounds great," Martinez said. "Let me just talk to the old man." He pulled off his cap and adjusted the headset. "What the hell's my call sigh again?" he asked himself out loud, scanning the cheat sheet the comms NCO had affixed to the interior of the fuselage. He found the alphanumeric, shaking his head at the ease with which it had slipped his mind.

"Sierra five-five, this is Sierra seven-three. Over."

All around him, the logistics and liaison nets crackled. He was just about to transmit again, when Taylor's miniaturized voice told him.

"Wait, Seven-three."

The old man was working another net. Martinez imagined how it must be at the moment for Taylor and Meredith, the amphetamine excitement of working the command and control system as the regiment neared combat. Then the thrill and danger of combat itself. Martinez both envied his comrades the excitement and shamed himself with the thought of their greater risks and responsibilities. He knew how essential a properly functioning support system was, before, during, and, especially immediately after combat. But he could not help feeling that the others were doing the real work.

In the background, he heard a squadron S-4 reporting his subunit's fuel account status over the voice link. The report could have been handled more efficiently through the digital circuit. But Martinez understood that the other man was experiencing the same feeling of inadequacy as he was feeling himself. The desire to do something, to make a personal contribution. it was hard not to be out there within the sound of the guns.

"Sierra seven-three, this is Sierra five-five. Over."

Taylor. The sudden voice in his headset startled Martinez, just as an NCO put a gorgeously hot mug of coffee into his hands. Martinez caught the mug and wrapped both palms around its nearly scalding warmth, then keyed the mike with his voice:

"Sierra seven-three. Over."

"Status report. Over."

"Support operation on schedule," Martinez said. All of the fuelers and the carryalls are under way. I've only got one WIG and one Mike-100 left here with me. Over," There was a brief silence that Martinez did not quite understand, then Taylor's voice returned. Martinez could hear the exasperation hiding behind the studiedly calm inflection.

"You mean you're still at the initial site? Over.

"Roger. I've just got a skeleton crew of mechanics with me. We're still working on three-eight. Chief Malloy thinks we can get her back up."

Another pause. Then: "What's your estimated time of departure?"

"As soon as we get three-eight back up. We're all ready to go, except for that. I've got the operational calibrator on the WIG with me. I'll oversee its displacement. We're in good shape. When the squadrons close on their follow-on sites, we'll be waiting for them. Over."

"Manny," Taylor's voice came earnestly over the secure net, "don't fuck around. I know you're trying to do the right thing. But, if you can't get three-eight back up, just blow it in place. I want every last trace of an American presence out of there by dawn. We've got to keep the bad guys guessing. And I don't want to do anything to compromise the Russian security plan. Those guys have done a good job. Besides, some goddamned Jap space system might have picked us up moving out of there. You need to get moving. Over."

"Roger. We're almost done." Martinez knew in his heart that they could get three-eight into good enough shape to follow the WIG under its own power. He intended to bring Taylor the M-100 as a prize, to show that the support troops, too, could do their part. "See you at Platinum. Over."

"Don't wait too long to get out of there," Taylor's voice warned him. The tone of admonition was softer, almost fatherly now. "Blow that bird if you can't get her up. And good luck. Out."

Martinez tugged off the headset, then put the cup of warm liquid to his chapped lips. It was odd. You were supposedly conditioned to do your duty to the country, to the Army. But he could not help feeling that his most important duty was to Taylor. He did not want to let the old man down.

Sipping the coffee, steeling himself to go back out into the cold darkness that lay between midnight and the sensible hours, he thought of a brilliant spring day in Mexico. They had been over in the Orientale on a special mission, and everything had gone well. No blood spilled. Just a dirty white flag and rebels throwing their weapons out into the street. After the last of their quarry had been gathered in, Taylor turned to Meredith and Martinez and said, "What the hell. Let's go for a ride, boys." And they had ridden up through the first pale green to where the rocks began, with Martinez struggling to stay on his horse. They followed an ancient, barely discernible trail up to a high canyon, where there was a well and a ruined shack. They tied the horses in the shade and climbed on foot to the nearest peak. And an odd thing happened. No one said a word. They just sat down in the sharp air and stared out over a brown world jeweled here and there with greenery, and the clear blue sky felt as soothing as a mother's hand. Taylor seemed to have forgotten all about his companions. His devil's face pointed off into the distance.

It was as if he had commanded the two younger men to hold their peace, to simply accept the world as it was. And Martinez's eyes opened. Nothing ever looked as beautiful to him again as that bare, thirsty landscape. The world was unspeakably beautiful when you finally shut your mouth and sat down and let yourself see. Time grew inconstant, as irregular as the breezes that whisked around the mountaintop and disappeared. When Martinez glanced at Taylor, the older man's eyes were closed, and he looked uncharacteristically peaceful. Even the scars on his face did not seem so pronounced, as if they had softened into his skin, tired of chastening his life. It was as if Taylor belonged on that peak, the way the broken stones belonged. A white scorpion scuffled its way through the rocks as Martinez watched peacefully, knowing it was not going to hurt them. There was no reason to hurt anyone or anything that day. Everything belonged just as it was. While the high cool air carried off the last of the sweat that made your shirt so heavy.

Then it was time to go. In order to make it back down to the village while there was still enough light. Taylor just stood up without a word and they all stumbled down to the horses, belatedly sharing a canteen of sour water. Martinez had hoped that there would be more days like that. But a week later, they were involved in a dirty little bloodbath. and after that there were other things to think about.

15

"Ruby minus ten minutes," the copilot said.

"Roger," Heifetz responded. "Combat systems check." He glanced down at the control panel. "Weapons suite?"

"Green."

"Target acquisition suite?"

"Green."

"Active countermeasures suite?"

"Green."

"Go to environments check."

"Roger," the copilot said.

Throughout the regiment, Heifetz knew, other combat crews were running through the same drill. Making sure. One last time.

The environments check took them through the range of visual "environments" in which they could choose to fight. The forward windscreens also served as monitors. The first test simply allowed the crew to look out through the transparent composite material the way a man looked through a window. Outside, the night raced with snow, the big flakes hurrying toward the aircraft at a dizzying speed.

"Better and better," the copilot remarked. The storm meant that even old-fashioned visually aimed systems on the ground would have added difficulty spotting their attackers

"Go to radar digital," Heifetz said.

The copilot touched his panel, and the night and the rushing snow disappeared. The big windscreens filled with a sharp image of the terrain over which they were flying, as though it were the middle of a perfectly clear day. "Ruby minus eight minutes," the copilot said.

Heifetz briefly admired the perfection of the radar image before him. The view had the hyper-reality of an especially good photograph, except that this picture moved with the aircraft, following the barren plains gone white under the snow and the sudden gashes and hills of waste that marked the open pit mines scarring the landscape. Then he said: "Go to enhanced thermal."

The copilot obliged. The windows refilled, this time with heat sources highlighted over a backdrop of radar imagery. "Target sort," Heifetz directed.

Immediately, each of the heat sources that the on-board computer had identified as a military target showed red. Hundreds of targets, near and far, filled the screen, as though the display had developed a case of measles. Below each target, numbers showed in shifting colors selected by the computer to contrast with the landscape. These were the attack priorities assigned by the computer. As the M-100 moved across the landscape, the numbers shifted, as new potential targets were acquired and others fell behind. "Jesus," the copilot said. "Just look at that.

Heifetz grunted. It was as close as he would allow himself to come to admitting that he was impressed.

"Makes you just want to cut loose," the copilot said. "Blow the hell out of them."

"At Ruby."

"Ruby minus seven," the copilot reported.

"Go to composite," Heifetz said.

The next image to fill the screen resembled the daytime" digital image, with targets added as points of light. This was a computer-built image exploiting all on-board systems plus input from space systems and a programmed memory base. In an environment soaked with electronic interference, or where radar countermeasures buffeted a single system, the computer reasoned around the interference, filling in any gaps in real-time information from other sources. The result was a constantly clear pure-light image of the battlefield. Further, if a particular target held special interest for the crew, they had only to point at it with a flight glove and the magnified image and all pertinent information appeared on a monitor mounted just below the windscreen.

"Ruby minus six," the copilot said. "Initial targets on radar horizon."

"Roger," Heifetz said. Then he entered the command net, calling Lieutenant Colonel Tercus, the First Squadron's commander, with whom he was tagging along. "Whisky five-five, this is Sierra one-three. Over."

"Whisky five-five, over," Tercus responded. Even over the comms net, the squadron commander managed to sound dashing, flamboyant. Tercus stretched the regulations when it came to the length of his hair, and he wore a cavalryman's heavy mustache that would have been permitted on no other officer. Tercus was simply one of those unusual men in the Army who managed to make their own rules with baffling ease. Tercus seemed to be the eternal cavalryman, and he was always ready for a fight. In the past his valor had always outdistanced his occasional foolishness, but Taylor was taking no chances today — and so he had sent Heifetz along to make sure Tercus did not gallop out of control. "Superb officer," Taylor had remarked to Heifetz, "as long as you keep him in his sandbox."

"This is Sierra one-three. I've been off your internal. Status report. Over."

"Roger," Tercus responded. "All green, all go. Ruby minus five. Going to active countermeasures at minus three. Jeez, Dave. You been watching the target array? Unbelievable."

"Roger. Active countermeasures at minus three. Weapons free at minus one."

"Lima Charlie. And another great day for killing Indians. Over."

"One-three out," Heifetz said. He turned to his copilot.

"Maintain composite."

"Composite lock. Alpha Troop diverging from main body."

"Roger. Stay with them." Alpha Troop had been assigned the mission of striking the Japanese-Iranian repair and yards at Karaganda, while the remainder of the squadron went after the headquarters and assembly areas of the III Iranian Corps. Heifetz had elected to maneuver along with Alpha Troop, since the squadron commander would remain with the main body of his unit. Heifetz could assist in controlling the action — and he could add additional firepower for Alpha Troop's big task.

"Ruby minus three."

Activate jammers. For all his selfdiscipline. Heifetz could not help raising his voice. He felt the old familiar excitement taking possession of him.

"Jammers hot," the copilot said. "Full active countermeasures to auto-control."

There was no change in the sharp image that filled the M-100's windscreen. But Heifetz imagined that he could feel the electronic flood coursing out over the landscape. The simple stealth capabilities and passive spoofers had hidden the systems on their approach to the objective area. Now the attack electronics would overwhelm any known radar or acquisition systems. Enemy operators might see nothing but fuzz on their monitors, or they might register thousands of mock images amid which the First Squadron's birds would be hidden. The jammers even had the capability to overload and physically destroy certain types of enemy collectors. The latest technology allowed powerful jamming signals to "embrace" enemy communications, piggybacking on them until they arrived at and burned out the receiving-end electronics. It was a war of invisible fires, waged in microseconds.

"Ruby minus two," the copilot said, "That's Karaganda up ahead, on the far horizon."

"Sierra five-five, this is Sierra one-three, over," Heifetz called Taylor.

The old man had been off the radio set for a few minutes, but now his voice responded immediately.

"This is Five-five. Go ahead. One-three. Over."

"Objective area visual now. All systems green. Jammers active, No friendly losses en route."

"Good job. One-three. Give 'em hell."

Heifetz almost terminated the communication, Taylor's voice had seemed to carry a tone of finality and haste, of no more time to spend on words. Spread over a breadth of a thousand nautical miles, the regiment was moving to battle, shifting its support base, entering the unknown. Taylor had a thousand worries.

But the colonel was not quite finished speaking to Heifetz. Just before the operations officer could acknowledge and sign off, Taylor's voice returned:

"Good luck. Dave."

The tone of the small mechanical voice in his headset somehow managed to convey a depth of unashamed, honest emotion of which Heifetz would not have been capable. The three syllables reached into him, making human contact, telling Heifetz that he mattered, that he should have a future, not merely a past. That at least one man in the world cared for him. That he, too, mattered on a personal level.

Damn him. Heifetz said to himself, meaning just the opposite, as he fought down a wave of emotion.

"And good luck to you," Heifetz said. His voice sounded stilted and insufficient to him. Suddenly, he wished that he had made the effort to sit down and speak honestly to Taylor at least once, to explain everything, about Mira, about his son, about the loss of beauty, the loss of the best part of himself along with his family and his country. Just once, they should have spoken of such things. Taylor would have understood. Why had he been so proud? Why couldn't men reach out to one another?

"Ruby minus one minute," the copilot said.

"Unlock weapons suite."

"Shooters to full green."

No sooner had the copilot touched the forward controls than Heifetz felt a slight pulsing in the M-100. The high-velocity gun had already found its priority targets. The feel under Heifetz's rump was of blood pulsing from an artery. The stabilization system on the M-100 was superb, but the force of the supergun was such that it could not all be absorbed. Slowly, after hundreds of shots, it would lose accuracy and need to be recalibrated.

But that was in the future. Right now, the gun was automatically attacking distant targets that remained well beyond the reach of the human eye.

The visual display blinked here and there where targets had already been stricken. Dozens of successful strikes registered simply from the fires of the company with which Heifetz was riding.

"Ruby now, Ruby now" the copilot cried. Look at that. The sonofabitching thing works."

Heifetz glanced down at the master kill tally that registered how many effective strikes the squadron had managed. Barely a minute into the action, the number— constantly increasing — was approaching two hundred kills. His own system had taken out fourteen, no, fifteen—sixteen enemy systems.

Lieutenant Colonel Tercus's voice came ringing over the command net, rallying all the members of his squadron, yelling down the centuries:

"Charge, you bastards, charge!"

One of his subordinates answered with a Rebel yell. The elation was unmistakable. Almost uncontrollable. Even Heifetz wanted to leap from his seat.

He recalled something an Israeli general officer had told him many years before. When he had been young. And invincible.

"Only the soldier who has fought his way back from defeat," General Lan had confided, "really understands the joy of victory."

The counter showed that the brilliant machine in which Heifetz was galloping through the sky had already destroyed thirty-seven high-priority enemy combat systems. Make that thirty-eight.

For the first time in years, David Heifetz found himself grinning like a child.

Senior Technical Sergeant Ali Toorani was very disappointed in the machine the Japanese had given him. They had fooled him, and the thought of his gullibility filled him with anger. The Japanese had been alternately falsely polite and unforgivably superior at the training school on the outskirts of Teheran, but he had been told that they would give the Faithful infallible weapons, weapons far more perfect than those of the devils in the north and to the west. He had believed, and he had struggled to learn, while the Japanese had been inhuman in their expectations of how much a man could study.

He had been proud of his mastery of the radar system, and he had possessed great faith in his abilities and in the machine. He had learned how to read all of the data, to comprehend what the displays foretold. He had acquired great skill. And he had even attempted to perform the maintenance tasks the Japanese demanded, although such menial labors were far below the station of a senior technical sergeant. Usually, he performed the maintenance when no one was around to see him. And the methods seemed to work. Even when the other machines broke down, his continued to function. He had done great things with his radar machine in this war.

But, in the end, the Japanese devils had lied like all of the other devils before them. Even when you humbled yourself to work like the lowest of laborers to care for the machine, it failed you.

Ali looked at the screen in despair and rising anger. The night had been quiet. There were no Russian airplanes or helicopters in the sky. There had been fewer and fewer of them over the past weeks, and now the skies belonged entirely to his own kind.

But, without warning, the screen set into his console had washed with light. According to the Japanese instructors, such an aberration was impossible. Now the treacherous screen registered thousands of elusive images, each one of which purported to be an enemy aircraft of some sort. Such a thing was impossible. No sky could ever be so crowded. Anyway, the Russians had few aircraft left. The machine was simply lying.

Ali stood up in disgust and turned away from the useless piece of devilry. He stepped through the gangway into the next cell, where his friends Hassan and Nafik were also working the late shift.

"God is great," Ali said, greeting his friends. "My machine doesn't work tonight."

"Truly, God is great," Hassan responded. "You can see that our Japanese machines do not work properly, either. The headphones merely make a painful noise."

"The Japanese are devils," Nafik muttered.

Captain Murawa's day was long and bitter, and his sleep was deep and hard. Until now his life had given him no cause to question the wisdom of his superiors. To be Japanese was to feel oneself part of the dominant political and economic power on earth, and to be a Japanese officer was to be part of a military whose abilities — if not actual forces — whose technological might, had humbled the great powers of the previous century. First, the United States, a flabby, self-indulgent giant, had received its lesson in Africa, where Japanese technology had savaged the ignorant Americans. And now it was the turn of the Russians, who had vet to put up any resistance worthy of the name. Yes, to be a Japanese officer, especially one of the new elite of electronic engineering officers, was a very fine thing. The entire world respected you.

It was a terrible feeling for Murawa to suddenly discover doubt in himself.

He hated the Iranians. He hated their indolence and filth, their inability to deal with reality as he knew it and their assumption that all things were theirs by due. Their criminal neglect of expensive military equipment was bad enough, what with their passive resistance to the accomplishment of basic maintenance chores, the neglect of a desert people to perform a task as fundamental as changing sand and dust filters, and their reluctance even to check fluid levels. But their social behavior was far worse. Murawa's image of the Iranians was of spoiled, bloodthirsty children. When their expensive toys broke — invariably through their own fault — the children threw temper tantrums, blaming the toymaker's deceit and bad faith — or lack of skill, an accusation Murawa found especially cutting and unjustified. The Japanese equipment that had been provided to the Iranians was the best in the world the most effective and most reliable. Easy to operate and maintain, it required willful misuse to degrade its performance. It was, in fact, so simple to operate most of the combat systems that even the Iranians had been able to employ them effectively in combat.

The colossal repair effort had long since overrun its estimated costs. For want of a bit of lubrication or simple cleaning, major automotive and electronic assemblies were destroyed. Outrageously expensive components required complete replacement rather than the anticipated repairs. And the Iranians merely jeered: You have sold us goods of poor quality. You have broken your promise. You have broken faith. Murawa was sick of hearing it, and he did not know how much longer he would be able to control his temper. His military and civilian-contract repair crews were exhausted. And the effect of seeing their hard work result only in less and less care on the part of the Iranians and ever greater numbers of fine Japanese systems showing up ruined in the Karaganda repair yard — some for the second or third time — well, it was very bad for morale. Instead of being rewarded, their labor only turned them into fools.

Today, a barbarous crew of Iranians had turned in a kinetic-energy tank whose prime mechanisms had been hopelessly fouled by dirt. The vehicle would have been merely one out of hundreds — but the savages had played a trick. Struggling to contain their laughter, they had loitered in the reception and diagnostic motor pool. No one paid much attention, assuming they were simply typical badly disciplined Iranian troops, loath to return to duty. But, when a Japanese technician began climbing into their tank, they stopped laughing and watched with rapt attention. Only when the technician clambered madly out of the vehicle, screaming at a volume that tore the throat, did the Iranians resume their gaiety. They laughed like delighted children.

The Iranians had released a poisonous snake inside the crew compartment. Now a critical member of Murawa's team lay in the sickbay, delirious and possibly dying. And all the Iranians had offered in leaving was the comment that:

"God is great."

Murawa had wanted to shout at them, "If your god is so great, let him fix your damned tank." But it would have been unacceptable. Un-Japanese.

The incident had released a torrent of doubts that he had long been suppressing. He doubted that the wise, high men who led Japan truly understood all of this. He doubted that the Iranians would ever be faithful allies to anyone. Hadn't the Americans learned the hard way, almost half a century before? The Iranians were all too convinced of their own bizarre superiority. The world owed them everything. They understood neither contractual relations nor civilized friendship. What elusive concept of honor they had was little more than vanity soaked in blood. They could not even tell the truth about simple matters, as though honest speech were biologically impossible for them. Why on earth had Tokyo backed them? What would happen when the Iranians and the rest of the Islamic world turned again? Murawa could not believe that he was the only person to see the truth.

He wished he were home in Kyoto. At least for one night. Murawa felt lucky to have been born in that most precious, most Japanese of cities, so unlike Tokyo with its compromises with Western degeneracy. There was nothing more beautiful than the gardens of Kyoto in the autumn. Unless it was the Kyoto girls, with their peculiar, disarming combination of delicacy and young strength. Certainly, they were unlike the gruesome women of Central Asia in their dirty, eerie costumes, with their gibbering voices. Those with plague scars — obviously untreated in this primitive environment — were only grimmer than the rest by a matter of degree. There was no romance in Central Asia for Murawa. Only ugly deserts interrupted with excavation scars and cities erected madly in the middle of nowhere, choking with half-dead industries whose principal product seemed to be bad air. It was like taking an unpleasant journey back through a number of bygone centuries, collecting the worst features of each as you went along. Central Asia made Murawa feel sick in spirit, and he was grateful for each new day that his body did not sicken, as well.

Apparently, it was not only the Iranians who were a problem. At the maintenance councils back at headquarters, Murawa had spoken with fellow officers who served with the Arab Islamic Union forces. Their tales made it plain that there was little to choose between their charges and Murawa's.

Despite unprecedented successes, the front was beginning to bog down. There was no military reason not to press on now. The Russians were clearly beaten. But each new local breakthrough proved harder to support and sustain logistically. The Iranians and the Arabs had gone through so many combat systems that they had too little left for the final blow. Their leaders barked that Japan was obliged to replace their losses. But even Murawa, a mere captain, knew that the additional systems did not exist. Japanese industry had gone all out to provide the vast forces already deployed. And, even if additional systems had been available, it would have been impossible to transport them all from Japan to the depths of Central Asia overnight. The prewar buildup had taken years.

The Iranians refused to understand. Murawa worked his crews until the men literally could no longer function without sleep. He sought desperately to do his duty, to return enough combat systems to the fighting forces to flesh out the skeletal units pointed northward. And all he heard were complaints that had increasingly begun to sound like threats.

Now all he wanted to do was sleep. It had been a hard day, a bad day. Sleep was his only respite and reward.

The explosions woke him.

Murawa had been dreaming of red leaves and old temple bells. Until suddenly the bells began to ring with a ferocity that hurled him out of his repose. He spent a long moment sitting with his hands clapped over his ears in a state of thorough disorientation.

The noise was of bells loud as thunder. Louder than thunder. The walls and floor wobbled, as though the earth had gotten drunk. Earthquake, he thought. Then a nearby explosion shattered all of the glass remaining in the window of his room and an orange-rose light illuminated the spartan quarters.

My God, he realized, we're under attack.

He grabbed wildly for his trousers. He was accustomed to seeing the mechanical results of combat. But he had never felt its immediate effects before. Once, he had seen an old Russian jet knocked out of the sky at some distance.

But nothing like this.

The huge noise of the bells would not stop. It hurt his ears badly, making his head throb. The noise was so great that it had physical force. The big sound of explosions made sense to him. But not the bells.

The sound of human shouting was puny, barely audible, amid the crazy concert of the bells.

He pulled on his boots over bare feet and ran out of his room, stumbling down the dark corridor toward the entrance of the barracks building. The Iranian military policeman on guard duty huddled in the corner of the foyer, chanting out loud.

"What's going on?" Murawa demanded in Japanese. But he was not really addressing the cowering Iranian. He hurried out past the blown-in door, tramping over glass and grit.

Outside, heavy snowflakes sailed down from the dark heavens. The white carpet on the ground lay in total incongruity with the array of bonfires spread across the near horizon.

The motor park. His repair yards.

He watched, stunned, as a heavy tank flashed silver-white-gold as if it had been electrified, then jerked backward like a kicked dog. Nearby, another vehicle seemed to crouch into the earth, a beaten animal — until it jumped up and began to blaze.

With each new flash, the enormous bell sound rolled across the landscape.

The bells. His tanks. His precious vehicles. His treasures.

What in-the-name-of-God was going on? What kind of weapons were the Russians using? Where had they come from?

Another huge tolling noise throbbed through his skull, and he briefly considered that the Iranians might have turned on them. But that was impossible. It was premature. And the Iranians could never have managed anything like this.

He pointed himself toward the communications center, feet unsure in the snow. He brushed against an Iranian soldier whose eyes were mad with fear, and it occurred to Murawa belatedly that he had come out unarmed. The realization made him feel even more helpless, although a sidearm was unlikely to be very effective against whatever was out there playing God in the darkness.

He ran along the accustomed route — the shortest way— without thinking about the need for cover. The air around him hissed. At the periphery of his field of vision, dark figures moved through the shadows or silhouetted briefly against a local inferno. He was still far too excited to seriously analyze the situation. His immediate ambition was limited to reaching the communications center. Someone there might have answers. And there were communications means. Other Japanese officers and NCOs. The comms center called him both as a place of duty and of refuge.

He almost made it. He was running the last gauntlet, slipping across the open space between the devastated motor parks and the administration area, when a force like a hot ocean wave lifted him from the earth and hurled him back down. The action happened with irresistible speed, yet, within it, there was time to sense his complete loss of orientation as the shock wave rolled him over in the air exactly as a child tumbles when caught unexpectedly by the sea. For an instant gravity disappeared, and time stretched out long enough for him to feel astonishment then elemental fear before the sky slammed him back against the earth. In the last bad sliver of time, he thrust out a hand to protect himself. It hit the ground ahead of his body, at a bad angle, and his arm snapped like a dry biscuit.

He lay on the earth, sucking for air. He felt wetness under his shoulder blades. He raised his head like a crippled horse attempting to rise. He felt impossibly heavy.

He tried to right himself, but it simply did not work. He almost rolled up onto one knee, but he found that his right arm would not cooperate. When he realized that the dangling object at the end of his limb was his own hand, a wave of nausea passed over him. There was blood all over his uniform, all over his flesh. He could not decide where it had originated. The world seemed extraordinarily intense, yet unclear at the same time.

He dropped the broken limb, hiding it from himself. The snow turned to rain.

He collapsed, falling flat on his back. Cold rain struck his face. He could see that it was still snowing up in the heavens. A white, swirling storm. The stars were falling out of the sky. He felt the cold wetness creeping in through his clothing, chilling his spine, his legs, even as the exposed front portion of his body caught the warmth of the spreading fires. He lay between waking and dreaming, admiring the gales above his head and blinking as the snow turned to rain in its descent and struck him about the eyes.

He waited for the pain, wondering why it would not come.

"I'm all right," he told himself. "I'm all right."

The sound of the bells had stopped. In fact, the world was utterly silent. Yet the flashes continued. The pink wall of firelight climbed so high into the heavens that it seemed to arch over the spot where Murawa lay.

What was wrong? Why couldn't he get up? Why was everything so quiet?

The sky's on fire, he thought.

What was happening?

The fuel dump, he decided lucidly. They've hit the fuel dump. The Iranians had been allowed to manage it themselves, and expecting no further threats from the Russians, they had been careless, neglecting to build earthen revetments or even to disperse the stocks.

It's all burning, he thought resignedly. But why couldn't he get up? It seemed to him that he had almost made it to his feet at his first attempt. But now his muscles would not pay attention to him.

It crossed his mind that they would have to send him home now. Back to Kyoto.

Where was the pain?

Gathering all of his will and physical strength, Murawa hoisted himself up on his good elbow.

Everything was on fire. It was the end of the world. There should have been snow. Or mud. But dust had come up from somewhere. Clouds and cyclones of dust, flamboyantly beautiful. The burning world softened and changed colors through the silken clouds.

He began to choke.

The world had slowed down, as if it were giving him time to catch up. As he watched, a tracked troop carrier near the perimeter of the repair yard rose into the sky, shaking itself apart. He could feel the earth trembling beneath his buttocks.

Ever so slowly, dark metal segments fell back to earth, rebounding slightly before coming to rest.

He was choking. Coughing. But he could not hear himself coughing, and it frightened him.

Yet, it was all very beautiful in the silence. With the universe on fire.

Where was the pain?

He saw a dark figure running, chased by fire. The man was running and dancing ecstatically at the same time, flailing his arms, turning about, dropping to his knees. Then Murawa's eyes focused, and he saw that the man was burning, and that there was no dance.

Murawa collapsed back into the mud created by his own wastes. He wished he had not forgotten his pistol, because he wanted to be dead before the fire reached him.

Lieutenant Colonel John Reno's squadron had nearly completed its sweep along Engagement Area Emerald. Charlie Troop was finishing up the turkey shoot outside of Atbasar, and Alpha and Bravo had reformed into an aerial skirmish line that stretched for thirty nautical miles from flank to flank. His squadron alone had accounted for the destruction of, at latest count, two thousand four hundred and fifty-six enemy combat vehicles or prime support rigs, and they had not lost a single M-100. Reno had read his military history, and it seemed to him that his squadron's attack constituted one of the most lopsided victories on record. His father might have made it to four-star general, but the old bugger had never had such a victory to his credit. It was a glorious day.

There were only two real problems, in Reno's view. First, the regiment's other two squadrons had performed equally well. First Squadron even had a higher kill tally, although it was unfair to count them equally, since First Squadron had been able to run up the numbers by completing the destruction of all the vehicles massed and awaiting repair at the Karaganda yards. Still, there were ways of presenting yourself that made it clear to the media that your accomplishment had actually been the greater. The second problem, however, was considerably more formidable.

Taylor. Reno despised the sonofabitch. Neither did Taylor go to very much trouble to disguise his distaste for John Anthony Reno.

Reno understood why, of course. Taylor was a misfit. A misfit who just happened to have a string of lucky breaks. A misfit who surrounded himself with other misfits. That good-for-nothing kike Heifetz. So superior. After the Jews had gotten their asses kicked into the sea by the ragheads, for God's sake. It was positively unhealthy, the way Heifetz lived all alone in a bare apartment. With no apparent interest in women. And then there was Taylor's kiss-ass black boy, flaunting his red-haired wife in front of everybody all the time. They were like that, though. Always had to marry a white woman to prove they'd made it. Reno grinned, imagining the couple's embraces. Meredith's wife was an exceptionally attractive woman, and it was unfathomable why she would have thrown herself away on that colored ape. What on earth could she see in him? Of course, the worst of them all was that Martinez. A little wetback sand nigger. With a college degree. Fancied himself quite the playboy too. Worthless as a supply officer. No sense of priorities. Wouldn't dream of helping out a brother officer when there was a little problem with the books. Of course, they always went for the jobs like that. So they wouldn't have to mix it up out in the fighting. Why, Martinez was probably fast asleep somewhere, warm and safe. While better men were out doing his fighting for him. No, Taylor was as despicable as he was selfish. Surrounding himself with oddballs. Taylor's staff was a downright embarrassment to the Army. Christ, even the

Russians had picked up on it. Whereas your Russian got along just fine with a man like John Reno. Not that the Russians were anything to write home about.

And what was Taylor going to do? Well, Reno was certain, the sorry old bastard was not about to give credit where credit was due. No, if anything, he'd penalize John Reno just for having the good fortune to be born a general's son, for having a presentable wife from a good old Philadelphia family, for being all of the things that George Taylor could never be. Why, on his mother's side, Reno could trace his military ancestors back to the prerevolutionary frontier militia.

And that was the whole point. Taylor did not understand anything like that. Tradition. Honor. In another age, in a less confused army, Taylor would have been lucky to make sergeant.

And his face. You couldn't even introduce him to anyone. Then there was the rumor about the little tramp back in D.C.

Well, Reno was an insider. And he knew that Taylor had just about peaked. Oh, if this operation continued to go well, he might make brigadier general. But that was really about it. Taylor just didn't look the part of a very senior officer. And he certainly didn't act it. No, Taylor had made too many enemies over the years.

The fact of the matter was simply that the Army did not need characters like that. It continued to amaze Reno that Taylor had made it as far as this.

He had heard it repeated that George Taylor was the type of officer who was always ready to take on the dirty jobs. That hardly surprised Reno, since Taylor struck him as a dirty man.

He let his fantasies run for a moment. The best thing that could happen, of course, would be for Taylor to become a combat casualty. Not necessarily a fatality — since that might turn him into a hero. Just incapacitated. That would mean that Reno, as the senior squadron commander, would take over as acting commander of the regiment on the field of battle. Now that would be an opportunity.

"Saber six, this is Lancer," his internal comms net interrupted him. Reno made it a practice to assign colorful names to the stations within his own net, although it was forbidden by regulation. You had to add a bit of dash to things, if you were going to compete with show-offs like Tercus over in First Squadron.

"This is Saber six, over."

"We've got one," the other station said. "Looks perfect. Isolated. No nearby combat reserves. It's ours for the picking. Over."

"Roger. Report approximate size."

"Looks like eight box-bodied vans backed into a cluster. With a few dozen utility vehicles scattered about. No shooters."

Reno thought for a moment. The site sounded just about perfect. Safe. Manageable. They could do it quickly. Get it over with. Taylor wouldn't even know about it until it was too late to do anything about it.

"This is Saber six," Reno said. "Transmit grids to my navigational aids. Take out the support vehicles, just to be on the safe side, then have the dragoons secure everything. I'm on my way. Break. Second Saber, this is Saber six. Take over the squadron. I'm going to help Lancer capture an enemy headquarters site. Out."

Taylor was a fool, Reno thought as he strolled through the picturesque, carefully spotlit wreckage of the enemy field headquarters. It was really a very minor facility. But you wouldn't be able to tell that from the photographs.

"Sir, if you could just move a little bit to your left. There. I'm getting too much backlighting," Reno's staff photographer said. The enlisted man raised his camera to his eye.

"Well, move your goddamned lights," Reno said irritably. Taylor had scratched the idea of any dismounted operations except in emergency situations. But this was, of course, simply a matter of seizing the initiative. Taking advantage of the opportunity to capture an enemy headquarters. No one could challenge him on that. And the press would love it.

Reno stepped over an Iranian body. He waved his hand at the photographer.

"No. Too gory. Wait until we get outside and we'll take a few shots with the prisoners."

The media would be desperate for photos. The Pentagon would try to fob off "strategic" imagery that meant little to the unpracticed eye. The press would be only too grateful for on-the-ground human interest pictures, complete with the tale of a daring raid on an enemy headquarters.

Reno descended the ladder from a ruined van and stepped out into the darkness.

"Where the hell are the prisoners?"

"Over here, sir." A flashlight clicked on, lighting the way.

Reno turned to his photographer. "You're sure you've got the right goddamned film in?"

"Yes, sir. No problem, sir. The pictures are going to be great."

Reno's boot caught something heavy and slightly giving and he almost fell face forward in the snow and mud. He slammed his boot down into the object to steady himself.

"What the hell's this?" he demanded angrily.

"Sir," a voice came out of the darkness. "That's one of the friendly casualties. When we were dismounting, the Iranians—"

"Get him the hell out of here," Reno snapped. "You," he told the photographer. "No more pictures until all of the casualties have been cleared away. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

Reno's dismounted cavalrymen scrambled to clear their fallen comrades from the scene, while the photographer arranged his battery-powered spotlights. In a few minutes, the photo session was able to resume.

Reno stood proudly in the cones of light, jauntily training an automatic rifle on a group of Iranian officers and men whose hands reached up to catch the falling snow.

It was a great day to be an American, Reno thought.

Air Captain Andreas Zeederberg of the South African Defense Force was in a bad mood. His deep penetration squadron had been only fitfully employed during the offensive, and now, promised a high priority mission, he found himself leading his aircraft against a rust heap.

"Old Noburu's got an itch," his superior had told him, "and we've got to scratch it."

There were not even any verified military targets in the Omsk industrial complex. But, what the Japanese wanted, the Japanese got. Zeederberg liked to fly, and he liked to fight. But he was getting a bit weary of Japanese imperiousness. And now there was a damned outbreak of Runciman's disease back at base. The squadron's energies would have been better spent in displacing their entire operation to a new, uninfected site. Instead, they were wasting mission time bombing big pieces of junk into smaller pieces of junk.

Zeederberg smiled, despite himself. He pictured some poor old sod of a night watchman in the Omsk yards when the enhanced conventional explosives started going off. Wake up, Ivan. There's a nice little cossack.

In a way, you had to pity the Russians. Although they had certainly made a cock up out of their country, Zeederberg would have felt more at home fighting on their side against the Iranian brown boys. Still, you took your shilling and did what you were told.

Old Jappers with a touch of nerves. And everything going so well. They wanted the Omsk site leveled. Completely.

What's the hurry? Looking at the overhead photos, Zeederberg had figured that, if only they were patient, the place would fall apart on its own.

Suddenly, the aircraft leapt up into the darkness, then dropped again, bouncing his stomach toward his throat.

"Sorry about that, sir," his copilot said. "We're entering a bit of broken country. Nasty bit of desert. I can take her up, if you like. Two hundred meters ought to more than do it."

"No. No, continue to fly nap-of-the-earth. We will regard this as a training flight. We shall make it have value."

Zeederberg snapped on his clear-image monitor, inspecting the digitally reconstructed landscape. Barren. Utterly worthless country.

His copilot glanced over at him. "Makes the Kalahari look like the Garden of Eden," he said.

It occurred to Zeederberg that men would fight over anything.

"We'll hit a sort of low veld to the north, sir," the copilot continued.

The navigator's voice came through the headset, unexpectedly nervous and alive. "I've lost Big Sister. I think we're being jammed."

"What are you talking about?" Zeederberg demanded. He hurriedly tried his communications set.

White noise.

"Any hostiles near our flight path?"

"Nothing registers," the weapons officer responded. "Looks like clear flying."

Probably the damned Iranians, Zeederberg decided. Jamming indiscriminately. "Keep your eyes open," he told the commanders of the eight other aircraft in his squadron, using a burst of superhigh power. "Minimize transmissions. Move directly for the target area. If we lose contact, each aircraft is responsible for carrying out the attack plan on its own."

The other aircraft acknowledged. It was a bit difficult to hear, but they possessed the best communications gear the Japanese had to give, and they were flying in a comparatively tight formation. The messages could just get through. But communicating with a distant headquarters was out of the question. The jammers, whomever they belonged to, were very powerful.

Zeederberg felt wide awake now, despite the heaviness of the predawn hour. The jamming had gotten his attention. The on-board systems read the interference as broadband — not specifically aimed at his flight. But you could never be too careful.

The mission was growing a bit more interesting than he had expected.

"Let's go with full countermeasures suites on," he told his copilot. "I want to isolate the target area as soon as we're within jamming range. And then let's do another target readout. See if they've got the digital sat links jammed too."

The copilot selected a low-horizon visual readout of the target area from a triangulation of Japanese reconnaissance satellites. The seam-frequency links still operated perfectly, making it clear that the hostile jamming was directed primarily at ground-force emitters.

At first glance, the imagery of the industrial park looked as dreary and uninteresting as it had the afternoon before, when Zeederberg had carried out his mission planning. Warehouses, gangways, mills, derelict fuel tanks.

"Wait" Zeederberg said. He punched a button to halt the flow of the imagery, sitting up as though he had just spotted a fine game bird. "Well, I'll be damned."

He stared at the imagery of the wing-in-ground tactical transport, trying to place it by type. The craft certainly was not of Soviet manufacture. He knew he had seen this type of WIG before, in some journal or systems recognition refresher training. But he could not quite put a designation to it.

"Ever seen one of those?" he asked his copilot.

"No, sir. I don't believe I have."

"And there's only one of them."

"That's all I can see."

"What the hell, though?" He had almost missed the ship. It was well camouflaged, with the sort of attenuated webbing that spread itself out from hidden pockets along the upper fuselage. The kind the Americans had pioneered.

"Christ almighty," Zeederberg said quietly. "That's American. It's bloody American."

There was a dead silence between the two men in the forward cockpit. Then the navigator offered his view through the intercom:

"Perhaps the Russians have decided to buy American."

Zeederberg was hurriedly calculating the time-distance factors remaining between his aircraft and their weapons release point.

"Well," he said slowly, figuring all the while, "they're about to find it a damned poor investment."

16

Daisy stared wearily at her face in the washroom mirror, glad that Taylor could not see her now. Her unwashed hair was gathered back into a knot, exposing the full extent of the deterioration of her complexion. She always broke out when she was overtired and under stress. Washing her face had helped her regain her alertness, but it had certainly done nothing for her looks. Hurriedly, she tried to apply a bit of makeup. She had never been very good at it.

Everyone back in the situation room was jubilant. The President, who had campaigned on a platform that barely acknowledged the existence of the military, was like a child who had discovered a wonderful new toy. He had no end of questions now, and the assorted members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff crowded one another out of the way to answer them. Bouquette was in his glory. The intelligence picture had apparently been dead-on, and the initial reports and imagery from the combat zone made it clear that the operation was already a resounding success, even though the U.S. force was still fighting its way across the expanses of Central Asia. There was not a single report of an American combat loss at this point, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs kept returning to the intelligence workstation every few minutes to verify what he had just been told, unable to believe the extent of his good fortune. The chairman had repeatedly shaken Bouquette's hand, congratulating him on the intelligence preparation of the battlefield.

"Now that's the way intel's supposed to work," the chairman had said, smiling his old country-boy smile.

Bouquette, recently returned from a shower and a meal, his clean shirt a model of the purity of cotton, had drawn Daisy off to the side. Forgetting what a mess she looked, she had imagined that Bouquette was going to suggest some private victory party a bit later on. But he had only said:

"For God's sake, Daze, not a word about this Scrambler business. They're as happy as kids in a candy store. They've completely forgotten about it, and there's no point in causing the Agency any needless embarrassment."

For all of their trying, the assembled intelligence powers of the United States had been unable to come up with a single additional scrap of information about the Scramblers.

"It could still be important," Daisy said. "We still don't know."

Bouquette raised his voice. Slightly. Careful not to draw unwanted attention to their conversation.

"Not a word. Daze. Regard that as an order." He shook his head. "Don't be such an old maid, for God's sake. Everything's coming up roses."

And he turned his attention back to one of the National Security Council staffers, a female naval officer with a tight little ass squeezed into a tight little uniform. Perhaps, Daisy thought resentfully, the two of them could go sailing together.

The President had decided that he absolutely had to talk to Taylor in the middle of the battle, to congratulate him. Taylor's voice, in turn, made it clear that he definitely had more pressing matters to which to attend, but the President had been oblivious to the soldier's impatience. The thanks of a grateful nation…

Daisy had to leave the room. She hurried down the hallway, past the guards, to the ladies' room. The tears were already burning out of her eyes as she shoved her way in through the door.

They were all such fools, she told herself, inexplicably unable to be happy. She sat down in a stall and wept.

Something terrible within her, a hateful beast lurking inside her heart, insisted that all the celebrating in the situation room was unforgivably premature.

Noburu stared at the image on the oversize central screen, trying hard to maintain an impassive facial expression. All around him, staff officers shouted into receivers, called the latest shred of information across the room, or angrily demanded silence so that they could hear. Noburu had never seen his headquarters in such a state. Neither was he accustomed to the sort of picture that now taunted him from the main monitor.

It was a catastrophe. He was looking at a space relay image of the yards at Karaganda. The devastation was remarkable, and as he watched, secondary explosions continued to startle the eye. He had already reviewed the imagery from Tselinograd and Arkalyk, from the Kokchetav sector and Atbasar. Everywhere, the picture was the same. And no one knew exactly what had happened. There was no enemy to be found.

The first report of the debacle had come by an embarrassingly roundabout path. An enterprising lieutenant at Karaganda, unable to reach higher headquarters by any of the routine means, had gone to a local phone and called his old office in Tokyo with the initial report of an attack. Amazingly, the old-fashioned telephone call had gotten through where the latest communications means had failed, and the next thing Noburu knew he was being awakened by a call from the General Staff, asking him what on earth was going on in his theater of war.

It was a catastrophe, the extent of which was not yet clear to anyone. Especially to the poor Russians. Oh, they had pulled off a surprise all right. They had caught their tormentors sleeping — quite literally. The Russians had made a fight of it after all. But the poor fools had no idea what they had brought upon themselves.

He knew there would be another call from Tokyo. And he knew exactly what the voice on the other end would say.

I did not want this, Noburu told himself. God knows, I did not want this.

If only he could have foreseen it somehow. Prevented all this. He closed his eyes. The dream warrior had known, had tried to warn him. But he had grown too sophisticated to pay attention to such omens.

The spirit had known. But Noburu had not listened. And now it was too late. For everyone.

"Takahara," he barked, wounded beyond civility.

"Sir"

"Still nothing?"

Takahara was a cruel man. And, like all cruel men, embarrassment before a superior left him with the look of a frightened child.

"Sir. We still cannot find the enemy. We're trying… everything."

"Not good enough. Find them, Takahara. No matter what it takes."

It was time to be cruel now. In the hope that somehow he might still compensate, might prevent the unforgivable horror he knew was coming.

"Sir." Takahara looked terrified.

"And I want to talk to the commander of that bombing mission to the Omsk site."

Takahara flinched. "Sir. We have temporarily lost contact with mission Three-four-one."

"When? Do you mean they've been shot down? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Sir. We have no indication that the mission has been… lost. We simply have had no contact with them for some time. The interference in the electromagnetic spectrum has reached an unprecedented level…"

Noburu turned away. His anger was too great to allow him to look at the other man. It was more than anger. Fury.

Omsk. Why had he failed to trust his instincts? He had known that something was terribly wrong the minute Akiro had pointed out the heat source anomaly in the abandoned warehouses. Why had he waited to hit them?

No one had suspected that the Russians still possessed such a capability to strike back. Japanese intelligence had missed it entirely. And why had the Russians waited so long to employ these new means of destruction? Why hadn't they employed these superweapons — whatever they were — immediately? When it might still have made a difference?

It was too late now. All the Russians had done was to call down a vengeance upon themselves that would be the one thing future historians remembered about this war. The one thing with which his name might be associated in the history books.

It would have been better for the Russians if Japanese intelligence had detected their preparations. The Russian deception effort had been too skillful for their own good.

The shadow warrior had known all along. And now he was laughing.

"Takahara."

But there was no need to shout. When he turned, Noburu found that the colonel had never left his side.

"Sir."

"Assuming those aircraft have not been shot down… or have not for any reason aborted… when will the bombing mission reach Omsk?"

Takahara glanced over at the row of digital clocks on the side wall, where the staff officers could instantly compare the world's crucial time zones.

"Momentarily," Takahara said.

"Go out and track him down," Taylor snapped. "You tell Tango five-five I want to speak with him personally. Now. Out."

Taylor drew off his headset, ruined face betraying disgust. Meredith had been in the midst of a detailed coordination call with the Tenth Cav, whose jammers had no more time on station, when the rising irritation in Taylor's voice caught his attention. He finished up his business and turned to the old man.

"Reno again?"

Taylor nodded. "The bastard's down on the ground. God knows what he's up to. His comms NCO doesn't know of any problems. But I wish the sonofabitch would follow orders."

Meredith understood Taylor's frustration. Reno would have to do something colossally foolish before he could be disciplined — and even then the general's son would get off lightly.

"Don't let it get to you, sir," Meredith said. "Come on. We ought to be popping champagne corks. It's a great day. A historic day."

"Merry," Taylor said, looking at the intelligence officer in earnest, "it's not over yet. This is when it gets dangerous. With everybody patting themselves on the back and trying to calculate how long it's going to be until they can get back home and give mama a squeeze. It only takes a single mistake…"

It was one of the rare occasions when Meredith disagreed with Taylor. The old man worried too much sometimes. The system had worked even better than expected. They had virtually destroyed the enemy's ability to carry on the war in sector and not a single friendly loss had been recorded. The mission was entering its final stage and they were about to turn into the last leg of the flight that would take them to their follow-on assembly areas. It was a time for Taylor to feel vindicated, avenged. The man's entire adult life had been pointed toward this day. And now he was being a spoilsport.

Meredith decided to shut up. He was feeling good, and if Taylor chose to squander the moment, it was up to him. Turning back to monitor the intel feeds, Meredith smiled to himself and played at phrasing the lines he would one day inflict on his grandchildren:

"I was with Taylor in Central Asia. Yes, sir. Me and Colonel George Taylor and the Seventh Cavalry. I was his right-hand man, you know. Why, during the battle Taylor and I were no farther apart than we are, boys. His face looked as though it had been painted up for war, just like a tribal chief. But he was a good-hearted man, really. Oh you wouldn't call him cheerful. But he was always good to me. He and I went way back, of course. Why, we were thick as thieves…"

"What the hell are you so tickled about?" Taylor demanded. But When Meredith looked around to answer, he saw that the old man was only bemused by the intelligence officer's behavior. A faint, halfhearted smile had crept over Taylor's mouth.

"Nothing, really," Meredith said. "I was just thinking, sir."

"Maureen?"

"No," Meredith said honestly, picturing his wife with her china skin and autumn hair for the first time in hours. "No, I'm saving her for later."

Taylor turned businesslike again. "Let's give Manny a call and update him on the situation. Knowing him, he's probably feeling guilty as hell at missing the battle." Meredith asked one of the NCOs to pass him the earphones for the logistics net. He glanced at the list of call signs on the wall, then spoke evenly into the microphone: "Sierra seven-three, this is Sierra one-zero. Over." He used his S-2 suffix.

Nothing.

"Probably smoking and joking," Taylor said. "Use my call sign. That'll get their attention."

"Sierra seven-three, this is Sierra five-five, over."

The two men waited, smiling, for Manny's anxious voice.

Taylor shook his head, almost laughing. "You remember that time in Mexico, when—"

Meredith began frantically throwing switches. He had not been paying sufficient attention. Now he recognized the tones he was getting in the headset.

"What's wrong?" Taylor asked.

Meredith ignored him for a moment. He wanted to be sure. He called up a graphic depiction of the state of the electromagnetic spectrum to the north of their present position, roughly where Manny should be. Somewhere between Omsk and the follow-on assembly areas.

"Merry, what the hell's the matter?"

Meredith looked up from the console. "Heavy jamming up north. Not from our side. The parameters are all wrong. The bastards might have slipped something by us."

He commanded the ship's master computer to do a sort: identify any hostile changes in the sector to the north.

Instantaneously, the screen flashed a digital image indicating enemy aircraft flying on a northerly axis. The computer had been doing its duty perfectly. It had been programmed to alert to enemy aircraft on a convergent course with the combat squadrons of the Seventh Cavalry. The computer had known of the presence of these enemy aircraft in the sky since they had taken off. But no one had told it to report enemy aircraft passing the regiment. Responding precisely to the demands of its human masters, the computer had not found the penetrating enemy flight of sufficient interest to merit a warning alert.

"Bandits," Meredith said.

"Project their route," Taylor told him, his voice heavy.

Meredith had the computer extrapolate from the enemy's past and present course.

The line of attack passed directly through Omsk.

Zeederberg was frantic. He had been trying for over an hour to reach any higher station. Without success. He wanted to report his discovery of the American transport. And to make absolutely certain that his superiors still wanted him to deliver his ordnance.

He looked at the image on the target monitor for the hundredth time. One single American-built wing-in ground. What the hell did it mean? At the same time, he worried that the target would lift off before he was within range.

The sky began to pale. The on-board computers had regulated the flight perfectly. The bombs would land at dawn.

They were standoff, guided weapons, loaded with the most powerful compacted conventional explosives available, a new generation in destructive power, with a force equivalent to the yield of tactical nuclear weapons. These would be followed by the latest variety of fuel-air explosives, which would burn anything left by the bombs. The nine aircraft under his command had more than enough power to flatten the extensive industrial site.

"How long?" Zeederberg demanded from the navigator. He had asked this question so often that it needed no further elaboration. The navigator knew exactly what Zeederberg meant.

"Eleven minutes until weapons release."

Beneath the aircraft, the snow-covered wastes were becoming faintly visible to the naked eye.

"I'm going to try calling higher one more time," Zeederberg told his copilot.

"I told him," Taylor said. His voice had an unmistakable tone of pain in it which Meredith had never heard before. "I told him to get the hell out of there."

Everyone in the cabin had gathered around Meredith's bank of intelligence monitors. One showed the unchanging image of the wing-in-ground sitting placidly on the ground at Omsk, while others tracked the progress of the enemy aircraft.

They had tried everything. Relaying to Martinez. Alerting the Soviet air defenses. But the Japanese-built penetration bombers were jamming everything in their path. Exactly as Taylor's force had done and was still doing.

Taylor grabbed the hand mike for the command set, trying again. "Sierra seven-three, this is Sierra five-five. Flash traffic. I say again: flash traffic. Over."

Only the sound of the tormented sky.

"Sierra seven-three," Taylor began again, "if you are monitoring my transmission, you must get out of there now. Evacuate now. Enemy aircraft are heading your way. You only have minutes left. Over."

"Come on, Manny," Meredith said out loud. "For God's sake. Think of your goddamned Corvette. Think of the goddamned senoritas, would you? Get out of there."

The enemy aircraft inexorably approached the red line that defined their estimated standoff bombing range.

"Manny, for Christ's sake," Meredith shouted at the sky, "get out of there." Tears gathered in his eyes.

Taylor slammed his fist down on the console. But the image of the transport craft at Omsk would not move.

Taylor took up the mike again.

"Manny," he said, dispensing with call signs for the first time in anyone's memory. "Manny, please listen to me. Get out of there now. Leave everything. Nothing matters. Just get on board that ugly sonofabitch and get out of there."

The console began to beep, signaling that the enemy aircraft were within standoff range of Omsk.

Zeederberg took a deep breath. Every attempt to reach higher headquarters had failed. And the rule was clear. When you lost contact, you continued your mission. No matter what.

In the target monitor he could actually make out magnified human figures in the first light of dawn.

"We're in the box," the navigator told him through the headset.

Zeederberg shrugged. "Releasing ordnance," he said.

"Releasing ordnance," a disembodied voice echoed.

Manny Martinez was in the best of spirits. From the last reports he had received over the log net a few hours earlier, the fight was going beautifully. Wouldn't even be much repair work. It sounded like a battle men would bullshit about for years to come. Over many a beer.

"Hurry up," he called. "It's time we unassed this place." But he said it in an indulgent voice. His men were weary. They had finally gotten the last M-100 repaired. It could be flown to the follow-on assembly area under its own power. A present for the old man.

And he would not even be late. They could make up the lost time en route.

The new day was dawning with unexpected clarity. The storm had passed to the southwest, and the night's snowfall had given the tormented landscape an almost bearable appearance. Good day for flying, after all, he thought.

He breathed deeply, enjoying the cold, clean air, using it to rouse himself from the stupor to which the lack of sleep had brought him.

Behind him, the mechanics were rolling the repaired M-100 out of its shelter.

The old man's going to be proud, he thought. Then he strolled toward the transport to treat himself to one last cup of coffee.

17

"Americans," Takahara repeated.

Noburu sat down. His eyelids fluttered several times in a broken rhythm. It was a small nervous tic he had developed over the years. The uncontrollable blinking only manifested itself for a few moments at a time, and only when Noburu was under extraordinary stress.

"That's impossible," he said.

"Sir," Takahara began, "you can listen to them yourself. The station is broadcasting in the clear. Apparently there is a defect in the encryption system of which the sender is unaware. Everything is in English. American English."

"It could be a deception," Noburu said.

Takahara pondered the idea for a moment. "It would seem that anything is possible today. But the intelligence specialists are convinced that the transmissions are genuine."

"Intelligence…" Noburu said, "does not have a very high standing at the moment. Does Tokyo know?"

"Sir. I personally delayed the transmission of the news until you could hear it first yourself."

"We must be certain."

"Intelligence believes—"

"We must be absolutely certain. We cannot afford another error. We have already paid far too high a price.

Americans, Noburu thought. He could no longer speak the word without conjuring the dead faces from his nightmares. What on earth were the Americans doing here? They had no love for the Russians. How could it be? How could it be?

Everything is a cycle, Noburu mused. We never learn. Misunderstanding the Americans seemed to be a Japanese national sport.

But how could it be? With the Americans still struggling to hold on to their own hemisphere, where Japanese-sponsored irregular and low-intensity operations had kept them tied down for over a decade. Japanese analysts preached that the United States had accepted its failure in the military-technological competition with Japan, that the Americans had neither the skills nor the funds to continue the contest on a global scale.

Noburu saw his personal aide, Akiro, making his way purposefully through the unaccustomed confusion of the operations center. What was it that Akiro had said just the day before? That the Americans were finished?

Now it would fall to him to finish them.

"Track them," Noburu told Takahara. "Identify who they are, what weapons they're using. We need targetable data."

"Yes, sir."

Only yesterday, he had been flying triumphantly above the African bush. Surprising the Americans. Vanquishing them. Today they had surprised him. But it wasn't finished yet. Noburu knew only too well what was going to happen. It had been written by more powerful hands than his.

The dream warrior had known this too. In his contest with the dream Americans, with their dead and terrible faces.

"Sir " Akiro addressed him. Noburu could see that the young man had been badly jarred by all this. Unaccustomed to the taste of defeat. Even temporary defeat.

"Yes?"

"Sir. Tokyo. On the satellite link. General Tsuji wishes to speak with you."

Noburu had known that the call would come. It was inevitable. And he knew what the caller would command him to do.

"I will take the call in my private office," Noburu said.

"Sir" Akiro and Takahara responded in near unison.

"Oh, and Takahara. Contact Noguchi. His readiness test is canceled. Instead, he is to hold his unit at the highest state of combat alert." Noburu hated to speak the words. But it was no less than his duty. And he would always do his duty. "But he is to take no further action until he hears from me personally."

Takahara acknowledged the instruction and turned to its execution. But Akiro seemed to shrink ever so slightly. As Noburu's aide, the younger man was privileged to know the highly classified capabilities of Noguchi's aircraft awaiting a mission at the airfield in Bukhara on the far side of Central Asia. The uncertainty around Akiro's mouth made it clear that he was not nearly as hardened as the uncompromising words that passed so easily between his lips pretended. Yes, words were one thing…

"Stay here," Noburu told his aide. "I can find my office on my own. Sit here in my chair and pay attention to all that goes on around you today. This is war, Akiro."

Noburu marched through the half-chaos of his operations center, proceeding down the hall past the room where the master computer soldiered in silence. He stopped at the private elevator that had once served a Soviet general. The guard slammed his heels against the wall as he came to attention.

Noburu used the few seconds remaining to him to muster his arguments. But he found them fatally weakened by the events of the early morning hours. Why had the Americans — if they truly were Americans — interfered? He knew in his heart he would never convince old Tsuji to behave humanely. But just as it was his duty as a soldier to follow orders, it was his duty as a human being to make one last effort to break the chain of events.

His office was cool and very clean. Its austerity and silence normally soothed him, but today the empty suite felt like a tomb.

He sat down at his desk and picked up the special phone.

"This is General Noburu Kabata."

"Hold for General Tsuji," a voice told him.

He waited dutifully, imagining the magic beams that sliced through the heavens to allow him to speak privately with another man so far away. The technology, in its essence, was generations old. Yet, at times, such things still filled Noburu with a sense of wonder. It still amazed him that metal machines could carry men through the sky.

I'm a bad Japanese, he thought. I don't know how to take things for granted.

"Noburu?" the acid voice startled him.

"General Tsuji."

"I cannot be certain of the view from your perspective, Noburu. However, from Tokyo, it appears that you are presiding over the greatest defeat suffered by Japanese arms in seventy-five years."

"It's bad," Noburu agreed. Ready to take his medicine.

"It's far worse than 'bad,' " Tsuji said, loading his voice with spite. "It's a disaster."

"Yes."

"I would personally relieve you, Noburu. But I can't. To take you out of there now would be an embarrassment to Japan. A further embarrassment. An admission of failure."

"I will resign," Noburu said.

"You will do nothing of the kind. Nor will you do anything… foolish. This is the twenty-first century. And your guts aren't worth staining a carpet. All you can do now is to try to turn things around. Have you got a plan?"

"Not yet," Noburu said. "We're still gathering information."

"You know what I mean, Noburu. You know exactly what I mean. Have you formulated a plan for the commitment of Three-one-three-one?"

Three-one-three-one was Tokyo's code name for Noguchi's command. Everyone else simply referred to them as Scramblers. But Tsuji was a stickler for the details of military procedure.

"No."

There was silence on the other end. Noburu understood it to be a calculated silence. Tsuji showing his contempt.

"Why?"

"General Tsuji… I continue to believe that the employment of… Three-one-three-one… would be a mistake. We will never be forgiven."

Tsuji laughed scornfully. "What? Forgiven? By whom? You must be going mad, Noburu."

Yes, Noburu thought, perhaps. "The Scramblers are criminal weapons," he said. "We, of all people—"

"Noburu, listen to me. Your personal ruminations are of no interest to me. Or to anyone else. You have one mission, and one only: to win a war. For Japan. And can you honestly tell me, after what we have all seen this morning, that you are in a position to guarantee victory without the employment of Three-one-three-one?"

"No."

"Then get to work."

"General Tsuji?"

"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 Captain Jack Sturgis might not have agreed, had he known what was waiting for him.

"Orsk," Noburu said.

"Sir," Colonel Noguchi barked through the earpiece, "I can have my aircraft off the ground in a quarter of an hour. We can complete the mission planning while airborne."

"That's fine," Noburu said. "The intelligence department will pass you the frequency tracks on which the Americans are broadcasting. You will have to pay close attention. We still cannot detect them with radar or with any other means. Their deception suites are far more advanced than any of us would have believed of the Americans. It may be hard to get a precise fix on them until they are actually on the ground."

"It doesn't matter," Noguchi said. "The Scramblers are area weapons. If they are within a one hundred nautical mile radius of Orsk, the Americans will be stricken."

Noburu wondered what the current population was of the city of Orsk. No. Better not to know, he decided.

"Noguchi?" he asked in genuine curiosity, "how do you feel?"

The colonel was taken aback by the question, which he frankly did not understand.

"Sir," he responded, after a wondering pause, "my spirits are excellent. And my health is very good. You have no cause for worry."

"Of course not," Noburu said.

Lieutenant Colonel Reno knew that everything was going to be all right. He had monitored Taylor's message on the command net as Taylor turned over control of the regiment to Heifetz so that Taylor himself could fly off on a personal glory hunt. No matter what he himself did, Reno knew, there could be no serious threat from Taylor now. The old bastard wasn't so sly after all. He had compromised himself. Any subordinate with half a brain would have no difficulty portraying Taylor's action in an unfavorable light. By stretching it a little bit, you could even make the case that Taylor had deserted his post.

"Bronco, this is Saber six," Reno told the microphone.

"Bronco, over."

"Have you gotten that damned problem fixed, Bronco?" From his command M-100, Taylor had electronically imposed limits on the range of targets the regiment's systems were free to attack. Taylor claimed he wanted to preserve a combat-ready force, now that the last functional calibrator had been lost.

But Reno was no fool. The regiment had been so successful — unimaginably successful — in destroying the enemy's ability to wage technologically competent warfare in the zone of attack that Reno suspected there might not be another battle. At the very least, things would settle down into a stalemate, with both sides materially exhausted and incapable. The likeliest scenario, from Reno's point of view, was that the politicians would get involved and there would be a negotiated settlement. Which meant that today might be the only chance a man got to prove his abilities.

"This is Bronco. The problem's fixed. We're ready to resume contact. Over."

"Good work. Now let's start running up those numbers again."

It had required some effort to override the restriction Taylor's master computer had imposed on his M-l00s. But the weapons were free again now. In fact, they could attack a wider range of targets now than they had been permitted at the beginning of the day's hunt. Reno saw nothing wrong with spending a few extra rounds on the odd truck or range car. The important thing, at this point, was to run up Third Squadron's number of kills. And, given that the other two squadrons were under strict limits from here on out, Reno figured his score was likely to come out the highest, after all.

A good officer had to take the initiative.

"Are we going to make it?" Taylor asked.

The set of Flapper Krebs's face was unmistakably tense beneath the incomplete helmet.

"It's going to be close," the warrant officer said. "Damn close. The sonsofbitches have picked up speed. They must be scared as hell about something."

Taylor glanced at the man with concern. Then he got on the intercom.

"Merry, do you have any indication whatsoever that those bandits have picked us up?"

"No, sir."

"It looks like they're running scared. They're heading south fast."

"Might just be nerves," Meredith said. "Scary sky out there. They picked up speed, but there's been absolutely no deviation in their course. They're coming down the slot straight as an arrow."

"Roger. Parker," he said, addressing the assistant S-3, "how do we look on angle of intercept?"

"I know the chief wants to take them from behind," the captain said, "but the best we're going to do is about a nine-o'clock angle of attack. Maybe even a little more forward than that. If we try to get too fancy, we're going to lose them. They're just moving too fast."

Taylor looked over at Krebs, whose hands remained perfectly steady on the controls, ready to override the computer if it became necessary.

"What do you think, Flapper?"

Krebs shrugged. "Give it a shot."

"Merry?" Taylor asked, working the intercom again, "are the "target parameters locked in?"

"Roger. Nine Mitsubishi 4000s. Alteration to program accepted."

"Flapper?"

"I got it. Weapons systems green."

"Okay," Taylor said. "Let's do a temporary delete on everything else. Keep all sensors focused on those bastards."

"Roger."

"Range?"

"Two hundred miles and closing."

"Colonel?" Krebs said to Taylor, "I can't promise you this is going to work. But I can guarantee you it's going to be quick. We're only going to get one chance."

"Roger. Parker, do a double check on our escort birds. Make sure their computers are on exactly the same sheet of music."

"Roger."

"One chance," the old warrant repeated.

Zeederberg was anxious to get back down on the ground. He had been out of contact with higher headquarters for hours, and the level of electronic interference in the atmosphere was utterly without precedent in his experience. Something was wrong. Even his on-board systems were starting to deteriorate, as though the electromagnetic siege was beginning to beat down the walls of his aircraft. He could no longer communicate even with the other birds flying in formation with his own, and the sophisticated navigational aids employed for evasive flying were behaving erratically. The formation had been reduced to flying higher off the ground than Zeederberg would have liked, and all they could do was to maintain visual contact with each other and head south at the top speed their fuel reserves would allow.

They had destroyed the target. Mission accomplished. The standoff bombs had proven accurate, as always, and what the bombs had not flattened, the fuel-air explosives burned or suffocated. Zeederberg hoped it had been worth it. The only confirmed enemy target he had been able to register had been that single American-built wing-inground transport. Perhaps there had been other equipment hidden in the maze of old plants and warehouses. Undoubtedly, the Japanese knew what they were doing. But during the mission brief, no one had warned them to expect a density of electronic interference so thick it seemed to physically buffet the aircraft. Something was terribly wrong.

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—"

"Stop talking nonsense, Kozlov."

A diseased tooth telegraphed a message of startling pain throughout Kozlov's jaw.

"There are things of which you know nothing," General Ivanov said bluntly. "The situation is more complex than you imagine. I want you to get the staff moving. Draw up hasty plans that specify the maximum troop dispersion that the integrity of the defense will permit. And don't waste a minute. Send out preliminary orders immediately."

"But… we promised the Americans that we'd support them, that we would attack…"

"The situation does not permit it."

"But—"

The Americans were having a splendid day, covering themselves in glory. Their only setback appeared to be a minor air strike on the tail end of their support establishment out at the industrial complex. But, for Kozlov, things were going from bad to worse. There were rumors of extraordinary KGB activities in Moscow, including a wave of arrests without precedent since the long period of turmoil in the wake of the Gorbachev era. The security services had already run out of control in the rear of the combat zone, executing "traitors," while the front collapsed into ever greater chaos. Now, on top of everything else, it appeared that there was a significant secret about which he knew nothing. He had served with Ivanov since their days together in Baku, in the reoccupation army, and it stunned him to be so little trusted. He realized that the secret must be a very important one indeed.

His teeth ached unmercifully. He worried that he would have to have them removed. All of them.

"Comrade General," Kozlov began again, "can you please tell me what's going on? How can I direct the staff? How can I plan effectively when I don't know what's happening?"

Ivanov had turned away again, positioning himself before the lithograph of Suvorov's old greyhound face. "Simply do as you're told, Viktor Sergeyevich. Disperse our forces to the maximum extent compatible with the maintenance of the defense and unit integrity."

What defense? The little islands of half-frozen units stranded on the steppes, unsure of which way to point their empty weapons? And what unit integrity? The fantasies of the wall charts in headquarters where the latest information was three battles old? The true unit designators of regiments and divisions that had been slaughtered, forgotten by everyone but God and a few obscure staff officers?

The lessons of Russian history were clear to Kozlov. When the heavens were collapsing overhead, the only thing left to do was to counterattack. With bayonets. With stones and fists, if necessary. The Americans had shown them the way. And now it appeared that it was all for nothing.

"There is little time," Ivanov said, with despair suddenly evident in his voice.

"Yes, sir," Kozlov responded. He turned to leave and carry out the general's order.

"Viktor Sergeyevich?" Ivanov called out after his subordinate. The practiced severity of his voice relented slightly, reminding Kozlov of better days when they had served together under clear blue skies. "Don't be too impatient with me. You'll understand soon enough. Too soon, perhaps." The general moved wearily toward the plush chair behind his oversize desk. But he did not sit down. Instead, he braced himself with an old man's hand on the back of the chair and stared past the younger officer.

"You see, it's like a game," Ivanov said, "in which we are now merely interested spectators. First, the Japanese underestimated the Americans. And now the Americans are terribly underestimating the Japanese."

18

Scrambled eggs. Pale, overcooked, then left sitting too long on a serving tray, they were by no means the finest scrambled eggs Ryder had ever encountered. Liberally dusted with salt and pepper, they tasted of little more than pepper and salt. Further tormented with several hearty splats of the Louisiana Hot Sauce one of Ryder's fellow warrant officers carried with him everywhere in the world, the eggs finally took on a hint of flavor reminiscent of the dehydrated atrocities served up on maneuvers. The portion was meager, the texture resilient, and Ryder had to remove a short black hair from the margarine-colored clump. These were, at best, imperfect scrambled eggs. But Ryder was wordlessly grateful for them, just as he was grateful for the woman.

Breakfast in the threadbare Moscow hotel was always unpredictable in its details. The detachment of staff personnel from the Tenth Cavalry, waiting grumpily in their civilian clothes, received whatever happened to be available on that particular day in the capital of all the Russias. There was always bread-occasionally stale — or a bit of pastry dripping with weary cream. Sometimes cheese appeared, or even carefully apportioned slivers of ham. On days when the inadequacies of the system decided to assert themselves, the yawning waiters presented formless, nameless, sickness-scented constructions few of the Americans were brave enough or sufficiently hungry to eat.

Once, shredded cardboard fish in gelatin had been lurking in wait for the early risers — the waiters had been uncharacteristically animated, insisting that the fish was a great delicacy. The sole saving grace of the meal was the scalding gray coffee, which, blessedly, never seemed to run out.

And so, presented with this sudden gift of scrambled eggs, delivered straight from heaven with only the briefest of layovers in the Russian countryside, Ryder felt as though his life had accelerated into a realm of fresh possibilities, as though Christmas had come unexpectedly early along with this withered mound of cholesterol.

The woman was primarily responsible for this bloom of optimism, of course. The eggs were merely a gracious answer to the real physical appetite his night with Valya had excited in him. He could not remember the last time he had been this hungry, and despite the little sleep he had managed, he did everything with alacrity, whether spreading the slightly rancid butter on his bread, drinking the burning coffee, or thinking about the future.

He would see her again. In the sweat-stale morning she had jarred him by bolting from the bed, jabbering in Russian. He had finally reached the stout fortress walls of real sleep, and the first moments of waking had an aura of madness about them. Torn away from him, the girl spit words into the darkness as she noisily tried to find her way. The brain behind his forehead had gone to lead. He turned on the bedside lamp and saw Valya wrestling her slip down over her head and shoulders. It looked as if a white silken animal were attacking her. The instant froze in his memory — the still visible breasts suggesting themselves from the thin chest, the flat white belly, and the trove of low hair glinting like sprung copper wires. Patches of glaze topped her thighs. Then the white cloth fell down like a curtain, and the eyes of a smart animal took his measure.

"I'm late," she told him, speaking English.

"What?"

"I'm late. It's terrible. I must go."

"What? Go where? What's the matter?"

With an unbroken series of movements, she scooped up her stockings, turned about, and dropped her bottom on the side of the bed, then leaned back and kissed him over her shoulder. It was the kind of noisy, quick kiss offered a child. She leaned forward and began working her panty hose over her toes.

"But I have told you. I am a schoolteacher. I must go to the class."

"Valya," he said, trying the name in the light. "Valya…" He reached out toward her, capturing the paucity of a breast in his hand.

She offered him a little moan, half sex and half impatience.

"But you must understand," she said, going about the merciless business of dressing as she spoke, "even if I want to stay, I must go. For the children."

He trailed his hand downward from the breast he had kissed raw, tracing her frailness beneath the fabric. "Valya… I'm glad about what happened last night." She looked at him quizzically, panty hose stalled below her knees.

"I mean," he went on, "I'm glad you stayed. That you stayed with me."

"Oh, yes," she said. "Everything is nice." And she bounced to her feet to draw the hose over her slender thighs. Her slip rose on the back of her hands, and he wanted terribly to pull her back down, to lift the fabric a little higher still and to plunge back inside her, without the least further preparation. He felt as though he wanted her more fiercely now than he had at any time during the night, when he had only to turn her to him and briefly warn her with his hand.

"Can I see you again?" he asked carefully. "Will you have dinner with me again tonight?"

She looked at him as though he had surprised her utterly. Then she smiled:

"Tonight? You wish for us to have dinner again?"

"Yes. If you don't have other plans."

"No, no. No, I think this is a very good idea… Jeff." She threw herself back down on the bed, kissing him again, first on his morning-dead mouth, then along the flat field of muscle between shoulder and breast. "You are so wonderful," she said quickly. "I thought you do not want to see me anymore."

Before he could get a grip on her, before his body could insist that she delay her departure, she slipped away from him again, stepping into her red dress. Ryder did not know much about Russian classroom customs, but he was pretty sure she was going to go home and change rather than confront the system in that particular outfit.

"Tonight," she said gaily. "And at what hour?"

Work crowded back into his mind. He knew there would be a tremendous amount to do. In the wake of the breakthrough with the Japanese computer system. He would be a focal point of the exploration effort. The timing was terrible.

"Around eight?" he said, reaching for a compromise between duty and desire. Standing there on the verge of leaving, the woman looked as vulnerably beautiful to him is any woman had ever appeared. With her face that wanted washing for yesterday's makeup and her rebellious hair. "But wait for me, if I'm not there exactly at eight. Please. I might be running late. On business."

"Oh, yes," she half sang. "I will wait for you. We will have dinner with one another. And we will talk."

"Yes," he said. "We have a lot to talk about."

Then she was gone, in the wake of a blown kiss and the slam of an ill-mounted door. Her footsteps died away in the early gloom of the corridor.

While showering, he had been stricken by a sudden fear. He hurried, towel-wrapped, back into the bedroom. Frantically, he rifled through his wallet, then checked his other valuables.

His watch and the holstered computer were still in place. No money was missing. His credit cards lay neatly ranked in their leather nest.

He stood by the nightstand, dripping, ashamed of himself for suspecting her. Then the remembrance of her excited him so powerfully that he had a hard time tucking himself into his shorts.

He went down to breakfast with a gigantic emptiness in his belly, ready to eat every slice of brown bread on the table. And to his wonderment, the waiter laid a plate of scrambled eggs before him.

He sat across from Dicker Sienkiewicz, the granddaddy of the staff warrants. When the question involved the order of battle of foreign armies, Dicker could beat most computers to the answer. And he had phenomenal connections. He seemed to have a personal line to every other veteran who had survived the series of reductions-in-force that had devastated the United States Army back in the nineteen nineties. He was also, in Ryder's view, a good man. Bald-headed and requisitely grumpy, he would nurse a beer or two in the bar with the other warrants, but then he would go back to his room, alone, to continue the day's work. Ryder felt he was a kindred spirit, despite the gap in their ages, and he trusted the old man.

When the waiters faded beyond hearing distance, Dicker leaned across the table toward Ryder.

"Heard the news, Jeff?"

Ryder looked at the other two warrants who shared the table, then back toward Dicker, shaking his head. He forked up another load of scrambled eggs.

Dicker leaned even closer, whispering. "The attack went in last night. I have it from a good source that the Seventh's kicking butt." The older warrant smiled slightly, but proudly. His Army was back in the field and doing its duty.

"That's great,'' Ryder said, reaching for another piece of bread.

Dicker nodded. "You know, I've got an old buddy down with the Seventh. Flies for old man Taylor himself. Flapper Krebs. I wonder what the hell he's doing right now?"

One of the other warrants, whose age fell between that of Ryder and the bald-headed veteran, said, "Yeah, I know Krebs. All dried-up and used up. Kind of like you, Dicker."

The older warrant reddened right up through the desert of his scalp. The other warrants loved to tease him, since he never failed to rise to the bait.

"Chief Krebs," he said angrily, "could chew you up and spit you out. Why, I remember back in Africa—"

His tormentor made a face of mock curiosity. "What the hell were you doing in Africa, Dicker? Vacation or something?"

The teasing inspired the old warrant to begin a lengthy defense of the achievements of a long career. Ryder waited politely, if impatiently, until he could get a word in, then asked quickly:

"Dicker, you going to eat those eggs?"

"Well, fuck me dead," Ryder's third tablemate said, looking up from the wreckage of his breakfast.

Ryder looked in the indicated direction. Colonel Williams, the commander of the Tenth Cavalry, had entered the dining room. It was the first time during the deployment that Ryder had seen the colonel, who spent his time out at the field sites, directing the actions of his electronic warfare squadrons. It was apparent that something important was going down, since Colonel Williams had marched right in wearing his field gear over a worn-looking camouflage uniform. His boots marked his progress with traces of mud. The colonel looked impatient.

Lieutenant Colonel Manzetti, the senior officer in the staff detachment billeted in the hotel, erupted from his table, dropping his napkin on the floor as he hurried toward the regimental commander. Manzetti chewed and swallowed as he maneuvered through the tables. The lieutenant colonel was a holdover from the days before Colonel Williams had been given the command with the mission of clearing out the deadwood and the homesteaders, and Manzetti's haste to intercept Williams reminded Ryder of the movement of a frightened animal.

The two officers nearly collided. Colonel Williams stood with his hands on his hips, braced off his web belt. Manzetti sculpted excuses with his hands. It was impossible to hear what they were discussing, but the situation did not appear to be promising.

"Wonder what's up?" Ryder said to his tablemates. He lifted the last forkful of scrambled eggs to his lips, catching the woman's scent off his hand, despite his shower.

Tonight, he promised himself.

As the warrants watched in collective horror Manzetti suddenly pointed toward their table. Without an instant's delay Colonel Williams headed their way, leaving the lieutenant colonel behind with a devastated expression on his face. Williams looked angry.

"Oh, shit," Dicker muttered.

A warning bell sounded in Ryder's head, and the stew of eggs began to weigh heavily in his stomach.

"This can't be good news," said the warrant who had been tormenting Dicker. Each of the warrants carefully avoided looking at the approaching colonel, making a careful show of breakfasting.

Ryder already knew this had something to do with him. The cracking of the Japanese computer system had been too important an achievement to leave unexploited. Due to the special classification of his work, even Ryder's tablemates did not know exactly what had occurred the day before. But Ryder knew beyond any doubt that Colonel Williams had digested the information.

The colonel stopped just short of their table. Towering above them. Tucker Williams was a veteran of every shooting match in which the United States had been involved since the Zaire intervention. He was notoriously zealous and uncompromising, and when he was angry, the outlines of his RD scars showed through his cheeks and forehead, despite the artistry of the Army's plastic surgeons. He was said to be an old pal of Colonel George Taylor, the Army's number one living legend, and the scuttlebutt had it that one thing Williams and Taylor unmistakably held in common was that dozens of comfortable, satisfied midcareer officers had resigned rather than go to work for either man.

Williams's face looked smooth and unscarred now. He no longer appeared angry, and Ryder felt partially relieved.

All of the warrant officers stood up in the colonel's presence, although Dicker Sienkiewicz rose slowly, asserting his bone-deep warrant-officership.

"Chief Ryder?" Williams asked, briefly scanning their faces before his eyes settled on the right man. The colonel had not yet had sufficient time in command to thoroughly learn all of their faces, and there were no name tags on the warrants' ill-fitting civilian suits and sport jackets. "I need to talk to you." He glanced at the other warrants. "The rest of you guys just get on with your breakfast. Chief," he told Ryder, "you come with me."

There was no secure area within the hotel, and the colonel simply headed for a barren table a bit removed from the breakfast crowd, waving away concerned waiters as though they were of less consequence than flies. Ryder followed the big man across the room like a guilty convict awaiting his sentence. He could hardly believe the change in himself. Normally, he was as dutiful as an officer could be. He lived for his work. Since the divorce. And here he was, in the midst of the real thing at last, perhaps even a key player, and he could not help thinking fearfully of a woman he had met only the evening before. A foreign, unexplained, officially disapproved woman.

"Take a seat, Chief," the colonel said. He sat down heavily across from Ryder, slapping his field cap down on the tabletop. He did not bother to remove his carrying harness or the stained field jacket.

Williams looked at Ryder with the penetrating, don't-dare-try-to-bullshit-me eyes the Army had taught the young warrant to associate with leaders who got things done.

"Sounds like you broke the bank, Chief," Williams said. "Congratulations."

Ryder nodded his thanks, unsure of himself.

The colonel glanced around the big room one more time, making sure that no waiters would descend on them.

"What a clusterfuck," the colonel said in disgust. "I can see I'm going to have to clean up this sideshow. Christ, I never saw such a bunch of hungover pussy-hounds. It's amazing you've gotten anything accomplished at all."

Ryder looked down at the tablecloth.

"Chief," the colonel said, "I'm going to get you out of this and give you a chance to do some real work. Not that what you've already done isn't top-notch. But it's just the beginning. You've opened up a world of new possibilities for us. Goddamnit, are you listening to me?"

Ryder stiffened, shocked by the colonel's apparent ability to see inside him.

"Yes, sir. I'm listening."

"Well, we've got a hell of a show going on downcountry. And it's far from over, if an old soldier's instincts are worth a damn. I've been up all night, working on a very special contingency plan with my field staff. Thanks to you. Son, do you realize that the President of the United States has

already been briefed on your… achievement yesterday?" Ryder had not known.

"That's right," Williams continued. "The goddamned President himself. And we've been busting our asses to come up with a con-plan to exploit what you've given us. Now we're just lacking one piece." The colonel looked at Ryder.

"What's that, sir?"

"You. We need you downcountry. And I'll tell you honestly — if we implement this plan, it might be dangerous as hell." The colonel laughed happily. "But you'll be in good hands. You'll be working under an old friend of mine. He and I go back to a tent in the Azores. Now, he doesn't know shit about all this yet. He's a little busy at the moment. But I know old George Taylor well enough to know what I can sell him and what I can't. And he'll buy this one, all right. He'll see the beauty of the thing." The colonel smiled, recollecting. "Anyway, we're going to put you to work. Lot of details to iron out. With any luck, we may never have to execute this plan. But, by God, we're going to be ready."

"Sir… if you're talking about actually entering the Japanese control system, we're going to need some support from the Russians. They've got the—"

"Taken care of." The colonel waved his hand. "I wasn't born yesterday, Chief. You'll have everything you need before you link up with old Georgie Taylor." Williams looked around in resurgent annoyance. "Chief, you just go on up and pack your things. Meet me in the lobby in half an hour. I'm going to have a cup of coffee and take a good shit. Then we'll get on the road and I'll fill you in on what's really happening. There's a bird waiting to take us both downrange."

"Half an hour?" Ryder asked meekly.

"Clock's ticking, Chief."

"We… won't be coming back here, sir?"

The colonel surveyed the room in disgust. "Not if I can help it. So don't leave anything behind, Mr. Ryder."

Shut into the arthritic elevator, Ryder closed his eyes and dropped his head and shoulders back against the wall, tapping his skull against the cheap paneling. The device rattled and rose, its motion stirring up a smell of ammonia and stale cigarettes. He was ashamed. He could think only of the woman, and thinking of her made him feel sick.

Ryder made a last stop at Dicker Sienkiewicz's room. The old man was gathering papers and paraphernalia into his briefcase, arming himself for another day's routine.

"So what did the old man want?" he asked Ryder.

"I got to go. Downcountry."

The older man stopped packing his briefcase and looked at his younger comrade.

"What the hell's the matter, kid?"

"I just got to go. Special project. Downcountry. Listen, I need your help. Please, Dicker." Ryder pulled out a sealed white envelope. "There's this girl — this woman— I've met…"

"The blondie? From last night? In the bar?"

"Yeah. That's the one. Listen, she's okay. She's really okay."

The older man smiled. "So I'm convinced. And not a bad looker."

"She's not just another… she's really all right. I promised I'd meet her tonight. At eight. For dinner. Christ, I don't want her to think I just…"

"So you want me to give her that?" Dicker said pointing to the letter in Ryder's hand.

"Please. It's important. It's just a note. I tried to explain."

"I'll see that she gets it."

"You'll recognize her okay?"

Dicker smiled. "Do bears crap in the woods? I still remember women I seen on the subway thirty years ago."

"Listen, I got to go. The old man's waiting."

"All right. Don't worry about a thing, kid. You just take care of yourself. And good luck with whatever the hell you're up to."

"Same to you. See you, Dicker."

"See you."

Chief Warrant Officer Five Stanley "Dicker" Sienkiewicz watched the boy go down the hall, then shut the door. The kid was clearly rattled. Big things in the wind. The old warrant felt a little left out, neglected. Once, he would have been considered indispensable when things got serious. But there was a new generation coming up. Educated. And so fast off the mark.

You don't know when you got it good, Dicker told himself. At your age you just ought to be grateful for a warm bunk at night. Let those young studs go out and freeze their asses off.

He sat down on the side of the bed, staring at the burn-spotted carpet. He tapped Ryder's letter against his free wrist, thinking of other things. Then he roused himself slightly and considered the envelope. He turned it over. Ryder had scrawled a name on it: Vallia.

Dicker shook his head. He remembered her, all right. A good-looker. But trouble, if he ever saw trouble walk in on two legs. He was no puritan. But he knew that the women who bobbed up in Moscow hotel bars were not notable for their trustworthiness or general moral merit.

The kid was too young to have his head screwed on straight. And Dicker knew that the boy had had a bad time with his divorce. Odd how that went. Some men went hog wild. Others turned inside. Or made bad decisions.

Dicker genuinely liked Ryder. He did not want to betray his trust. But there was plenty more pussy where that one had come from, and Dicker had no wish to see the boy get himself in a fix over some little Russian tramp.

With a sigh, the old warrant tore the envelope in half, then into quarters, dropping the shreds in the nearest wastepaper basket.

The snowflakes fell like countless paper shreds. At first it had seemed as though the squadron had flown beyond the reach of the snowstorm, but as they skimmed above the wastelands, following the long arc of their assigned route, they gradually turned to the northwest and met the snow again. Heifetz had come forward from his ops cell, which mirrored the setup in Taylor's command M-100. He had just had an exasperating exchange with Reno up in the Third Squadron, and coming atop the cascade of events and emotions of the past hours, it had temporarily drained him. He took a break and squeezed up behind the pilots' positions. He did not sit down. Back in the ops cell, his world was of reality at a remove, registered through monitors and digital displays. Up here, where the copilot had cleared the windscreens of technical displays, he could remind himself of the world as the eye was meant to see it: cold, white, rushing toward him.

Immediately after Heifetz's exchange with Reno, Taylor had resumed command of the regiment. One of Taylor's two escort birds was having problems — evidently the result of the stress the system had undergone when engaging the enemy's jets — and Taylor was attempting to nurse the failing system along. But that particular difficulty had not stopped Taylor from flexing his authority over the regiment through the magical command and control mechanisms that the new century had deposited in the hands of its soldiers. All of the greater matters appeared to be in order now, with the three squadrons cruising toward their follow-on assembly areas, bristling with electronic armament as they burrowed into the sky.

Taylor had made short work of the enemy aircraft that had hit the old support site at Omsk, and Heifetz hoped that the action had offered Taylor a bit of the primeval absolution men felt upon killing in turn the enemy who had killed their kind. That old indestructible joy in blood that you would never scrub out of the human character.

Heifetz knew that Taylor would take Martinez's death hard. Taylor would feel responsible for every soldier he lost, and he would be furious when he caught up with the reports of Reno's unnecessary casualties during the squadron commander's unauthorized glory raid. But there was an inevitable difference in the intensity of feelings in the wake of the death of a half-familiar face or rostered name and the loss of a man with whom you had lived, struggled, and shared raw strips of your life.

Martinez had been a decent boy. Outwardly a bit of a joker, unable to settle his heart on any individual girl at an age when most officers were married with children. To Heifetz, a connoisseur in the matter, Martinez had seemed a bit haunted by his background. Capable, always surprisingly capable. And dutiful. With his sports car waiting for him late at night outside the headquarters building, the treasured machine facing the light-gilt office windows like an ignored sweetheart. Heifetz was sorry now for the exchanges that had been too peremptory, for the times he had passed by the younger officer's table in the mess hall. For his own ceaseless self-absorption.

But Reno, in his rude selfishness, had been more than a little right. "For Christ's sake," Reno had complained across the empty sky, "we've just hit the jackpot, and you're worrying about pennies."

For once, Heifetz did not think the turn of phrase had been a conscious ethnic slur on Reno's part. Which made it doubly painful to accept the accuracy of the observation. He was, Heifetz recognized, indeed the kind of man who allowed himself to become obsessed with life's small change: the perfect staff officer.

Yes, they had hit the jackpot. As painful as the combat losses had been, they had been brilliantly minor in relation to the devastation the regiment had spread across the vast front. Quite literally, all of the equations of the battlefield would have to be calculated anew. It was a triumph of the sort that sent the amateur historian reaching back for fabled names.

And yet, Heifetz thought wistfully, it was a death knell too. For the older generation of soldiers. For men such as David Heifetz. When he was a young man, he had gone to war mounted in his steel chariot. He and his gunner had selected the target, found the range, fired… and now the new rules reduced his kind to pushers of buttons, throwers of switches. He had always maintained that man would forever remain the central focus of combat. Now he was no longer so self-righteously certain.

He was certain of so little, really.

"Everything okay, sir?" the copilot asked back over his shoulder, unaccustomed to finding Heifetz astray.

"Yes," Heifetz said. "I am only looking at the snow."

"Going to make it a hell of a lot harder to hide these babies in the assembly area," the copilot said. "Pisser, ain't it? When they designed the automatic camouflage systems, they never did think about snow, did they?"

"We'll manage," Heifetz said. He really did not want to talk.

"Yes, sir," the copilot said quickly, afraid he had gone a step too far with the coldhearted warrior at his shoulder. "We'll work it out."

Heifetz looked at the streaming snow. There was so little of which he could be certain now. He had entered the battle with an almost religious zeal, with a peculiar kind of joy burning in him. As the enemy's casualties mounted he had felt avenged. He knew that the Iranian or rebel tank crews concussed or sliced or burned to death were not the same men he had faced years before on the road to Damascus. The Iranians, of course, were not even Arabs. But they shared the same primitive guilt. The religion, the view of the world, the moral and spiritual proximity. Yes, he was a prejudiced man. And where was the man without prejudice? Where was the fabled good man? In this world, where having a different word for God meant a death sentence, where a different shading in the skin reduced you to the status of an animal? Where was the justice, Lord?

He knew. He knew exactly where the source of goodness flowed. And it shamed him with an inexpressible thoroughness. All these years, he had lived the life of the zealot in his chosen desert, insisting that he was denying himself everything for Mira, for his son. To avenge them.

Today, as the kill counters boosted the American score with dizzying speed, he had had his revenge. And that was the problem. It had been, unmistakably, his revenge. It had nothing to do with Mira or the boy, really.

Mira had lived on the side of forgiveness, of atonement, even for the sins of strangers. He knew that had she been able to speak to him after her death by force and fire and the man-made light of God she would have spoken softly. She had never asked him to turn his back on the world. He had done it of his own volition, because it satisfied a need in him. He remembered her in light the color of lemons, her temples dark with sweat, as she labored over bundled reports in her office. Mira, the lawyer who worked for a laborer's wage, to atone for her country's sins. The rights of Palestinians. And if the brethren of those whom she struggled to shield had brought about her death, she would have forgiven them too. She was a being of unlimited forgiveness. She had never ceased forgiving him.

All of the self-righteous rituals, the self-denials, had been sins against her. He knew what she wanted. She wanted him to live. To go on. But he had defied her, nourishing his delicious guilt, forever ripping the scabs off the sores in his spirit. It had been for himself, all of it. The fortress of sacrifice in which he hid from life. And the killings, the killings, the killings.

Mira had never asked for that. Not for any of it. Mira had never asked for anything but love. And he had conditioned the boy to ask for even less.

Impulsively, he pulled his wallet from a hind pocket of his uniform. His fingers probed behind an identification card and a driver's license, reaching into the darkness where the photograph had lain hidden for so long. The ancient wallet began to tear at the unaccustomed stress on its seams.

The wrinkling and discoloration of the photograph disappeared in a moment's recognition. Mira. The boy. The sort of smile a good heart musters at the end of a long, hot afternoon. He had thought he remembered each detail of the photo, each nuance of light. But he had been wrong. He had forgotten how beautiful Mira had been. He had forgotten the boy's smallness, the mild unwillingness to look at the camera or the man behind it. He had forgotten so much.

Forgive me, he said. And he began to tear the photograph into tiny flakes, starting with an upper corner and going methodically about the business, ensuring that no man would get an inkling of the nature of the waste as the aircraft was groomed in the wake of battle.

The copilot looked back over his shoulder at Heifetz. For a moment it seemed as though he were about to speak. Then he thought better of it and turned his attention back to the controls.

Colonel Noguchi sat behind the controls of his aircraft. He felt ready, fierce, vindicated. They had needed him after all. Old Noburu, with his womanly niceties, had been swept aside by the course of events. It was time for new men to enter the field. It was time for the new machines.

The Americans had blundered. He, too, had been surprised to learn who his new enemies were. But it did not natter. In fact, it was better. The Americans had not earned their lesson. Now he would teach it to them with unforgettable clarity.

Some young American officer had given the game away. Slabbering naively on the airwaves. Telling everything. The city: Orsk. The name of the assembly area: Silver. Even revealing his personal feelings. It was unthinkable to Noguchi that an officer would betray his emotions to his subordinates.

Direction-finding based upon intercepts was, of course, far more difficult than it had been in decades past, thanks to ultra-agile communications means and spoofer technology. But, for every technological development in the science of warfare, there was ultimately a counterdevelopment. The Japanese arsenal had been just adequate to crack down the Americans.

Once the intercepts had revealed the general orientation of the American unit, intelligence had been able to steer advanced radars and space-based collectors to the enemy's vicinity. The new American systems proved to be very, very good. Unexpectedly good. Even the most advanced radars could not detect them from the front or sides. But the rear hemisphere of the aircraft proved more vulnerable. The returns were weak — but readable, once you knew what you were looking for.

Now the enemy's location was constantly updated by relay, and Noguchi was able to follow the Americans quietly as he led his flight of aircraft in pursuit. He would have liked to see one of the new enemy systems with his own eyes, out of professional curiosity. But he certainly was not going to get that close. Noguchi believed that he had conquered his innate fears of battle, that he had turned himself into a model warrior. But once the Scrambler drones were released from the standoff position, he had every intention of leaving the area as swiftly as his aircraft could fly.

"This is Five-five Echo." A young voice. Earnest. Frightened. "I've got to put her down. The control system's breaking down."

"Roger," Taylor answered calmly, struggling to conceal the depth of his concern from the pilot of the troubled escort ship. "Just go in easy. We'll fly cover until you're on the ground. Break. Five-five Mike, you cover from noon to six o'clock. We'll take six to midnight, over."

"Roger."

"This is Echo. I've got a ville coming up in front of me."

"Stay away from the built-up area," Taylor ordered.

"I can't control this thing."

"Easy now. Easy."

"We're going down." The escort pilot's voice was stripped down to a level of raw fear that Taylor had heard no more than a dozen times in his career. The first time had been on a clear morning in Africa, and the voice had been his own.

"Easy," was all he could say. "Try to keep her under control."

"— going down—"

The station dropped from the net.

"Merry. Hank. Get a clear image of the site. Get a good fix on him." Taylor switched hurriedly to the regimental command net. "Sierra one-three, this is Sierra five-five. Over."

For a nervous moment, the answer failed to come. Then Heifetz's voice responded:

"Sierra five-five, this is Sierra three-one. Over."

"You've got the wheel again. I've got a bird down. Over."

Even now, Taylor could not help feeling a twinge of injured vanity. The sole M-100 that had gone down, for any reason, had been one of his two escort ships. Although the escort ships were responsible for his safety, he was also, unmistakably, responsible for theirs as well. And the loss was clearly his fault. For going after the enemy fast movers. He had asked too much of the M-l00s.

"The one that was having trouble?" Heifetz asked. "Roger. Not sure what happened. We're putting down to evacuate the crew."

"Anything further?"

"Just keep everybody moving toward the assembly areas," Taylor said. "Looks like I'm going to be coming in a little late. Over."

"Roger. See you at Silver," Heifetz said.

"See you at Silver. Out."

Good old Lucky Dave, Taylor thought. Thank God for him.

The assistant S-3 had locked the image of the downed craft on the central ops monitor. It looked like the bird had gone in hard. There was a noticeable crumpling in the fuselage, and shards of metal were strewn across the snow. But the main compartment of the M-100 had held together.

"Five-five Echo, this is Sierra five-five. Over." Taylor gripped the edge of the console, anxious for a response, for a single word to let him know that the crew had survived.

Nothing.

"Oh, shit," Meredith said. "Company."

The officers crowded around the monitor, edging out the nearest NCO. The standoff image showed the wreck about two kilometers outside of a ruined settlement. Small dark shapes had already begun moving toward the downed M-100 from the fringe of buildings.

"What do you think, Merry?"

"Personnel carriers. Old models. Soviet production."

"Any chance they're friendlies?"

"Nope," Meredith said immediately. "Not down here. Those are bad guys."

As if they had overheard the conversation, the personnel carriers began to send streaks of light toward the crash site.

"Chief," Taylor called forward through the intercom, "can you take them out?"

"Too close for the big gun," Krebs answered. "We'll have to go in on them with the Gat. Going manual. Hold on, everybody."

"Five-five Mike," Taylor called to the other escort M-100. "You've got the sky. We're going in—"

A sudden swoop of the aircraft tossed him backward against the opposite control panel.

The wrong voice answered Taylor's call. It was the downed pilot. Still alive after all.

"This is Five-five Echo. Can anybody hear me? Can you hear me? We're taking fire. We're taking hostile fire. I've got some banged-up troopers in the back. We're taking fire."

"Mike, wait," Taylor told the net. "We hear you, Echo. Hang on. We're on the way."

In response, the M-100 turned hard, unbalancing both Taylor and Meredith this time.

"Come on," Hank Parker said to the monitor, as if cheering on a football team in a game's desperate moment.

"I'm going forward," Taylor said, and he pushed quickly through the hatchway that led toward the cockpit, bruising himself as the aircraft dropped and rolled.

By the time Taylor dropped into his pilot's seat, Krebs had already opened up with the Gatling gun. It was the first time all day they had used the lighter, close-fighting weapon.

"I've got the flight controls," Taylor told Krebs. "Just take care of the gunnery."

"Roger." The old warrant officer unleashed another burst of fire. "Good old weapon, the Gat. Almost left them off these babies. Damned glad we didn't."

Down in the snowy wastes, two enemy vehicles were burning. The others began to reverse their courses, heading back for the cover of the blasted village. Taylor manhandled the M-100 around so that Krebs could engage a third armored vehicle. Then he turned the aircraft hard toward the downed bird.

"Echo, this is Sierra," Taylor called. "Still with me?"

"Roger," a frantic voice cried in the headset. "I've got casualties. I've got casualties. "

"Take it easy. We're coming."

"My ship's all fucked," the voice complained, its tone slightly unreal. "We'll never get her off the ground." Taylor, having had the privilege of an overhead view of the wreckage, was startled that the pilot had given even a moment's thought to attempting to get airborne again. Battle reactions were never fully rational, never truly predictable.

"No problem, Echo," Taylor said. He passed manual control of the aircraft back to Krebs so that he could concentrate on calming the downed pilot, steering him toward rational behavior. "No problem. You've done just fine. Just take it easy. We're coming down to get you out of there. Break. Five-five Mike, you watching the sky for us?"

"Roger. All clear."

"Okay. Have your copilot keep an eye on the ground, just in case our little friends try another rush from the village. Break. Echo, can you get your crew and the dragoons out of the aircraft? If so, rig your ship to blow."

"I can't," the voice came back, nearly hysterical. "What's the problem?"

"My legs, my legs."

"What's the matter with your legs?"

"I think they're broken."

Taylor fought with all his might against flickering visions from an earlier time, of earlier wrecks, in a land that had never seen snow.

"Can your copilot get things going?"

Silence. Then:

"He's dead."

Taylor closed his eyes. Then he spoke in a beautifully controlled voice:

"Echo, this is Sierra. Just take it easy. We'll have you out of there before you know it. Try to think as clearly as you can. Now tell me. Is anybody fully capable in the dismount compartment?"

"I don't know," the pilot answered. His voice had calmed a little, and the tone was almost rational. "The intercom's out, and I can't move. Oh, my God. We've got a fire. We've got a fire."

"Flapper, get us the hell down there," Taylor barked. The injured pilot had lost all control of himself now. "Oh, God," he pleaded to the radio, "please don't let me burn. Please don't let me burn."

"Just hold on," Taylor said, trying to remain controlled himself. "We're almost there."

"Please… please…"

"What about your fire suppression system?" Taylor demanded. "Can you operate it manually?"

"I can't move. Can’t. Please. Oh, God, I don t want to burn. Don't let me burn."

As it descended the M-100 turned so that Taylor could see the wreck again. It was very close now. And there was, indeed, a fire. In the forward fuselage, where the pilot’s exit hatch was located.

Then Taylor saw one hopeful sign. At the rear of the downed M-100, a soldier was on his feet. He had already lain two of his comrades in the snow, and he was headed back inside the burning aircraft.

Taylor’s ship settled, and he lost sight of everything in the white-out of blown snow.

"Echo," Taylor called. "We’re on the ground. We're coming to get you."

" — burning—" The voice of an agonized child.

The M-100 had not yet made its peace with the ground, but Taylor leapt from his seat, scrambling back toward the exterior hatch.

"Stay with the bird," he ordered Krebs.

Taylor’s shoulder holster snagged briefly on a metal projection He tore it loose and bent to wrestle with the dual levers that secured the hatch. The covering popped outward and slid to the side with a pneumatic hiss.

A rush of cold air struck Taylor’s face. He dropped into the snow and it fluffed well above his ankles. The noise of the M-100 was overpowering on the outside, but he nonetheless began to shout at the dark form lugging bodies through the snow a football field away.

"Move them further off. Get them further away."

The distant soldier did not respond. Unhearing in the wind and the big cloud of engine noise. Meredith came up on Taylor’s left, followed by one of the NCOs from the ops center. Together, the three men ran stumbling through the snow, the NCO carrying an automatic rifle at the ready and glancing from side to side.

A billow of fire rose from the central fuselage of the downed craft.

"Jesus Christ," Taylor swore.

The NCO slipped in the snow at his side, then recovered. Up ahead, the soldier involved in rescuing his comrades paid them no attention whatsoever. He drew another body from the burning machine.

Taylor ran as hard as his lungs and the snow would allow. Even though he had left the comms net far behind, he still imagined that he could hear the pleas of the trapped pilot.

From somewhere off to the right, behind the veil of the snowstorm, weapons began to sound — hard flat reports against the whine of the M-100 waiting behind Taylor's back. Small arms. The enemy were coming dismounted this time. There would be no obvious targets for the escort bird flying cover.

Meredith was quick, with a quarterback's agility, and he reached the rear of the downed bird ahead of the others. He was shouting at the soldier, even as he tried to help the man with his human burden.

More firing.

Taylor and the NCO came up beside Meredith and the rescuer. On the verge of speech, Taylor was silenced by the sight of the boy's face. Bruised and swollen, the expression was nonetheless strikingly clear. The boy was in shock. He was dragging his comrades out of the wreck automatically, conditioned to the task. But he had no real consciousness of anything around him.

"Sarge, you come with me," Taylor ordered. "Merry, this mess is yours."

Taylor dodged a severed block of metal and ran up around the M-100's stubby wing and flank rotor, howling wind at his back. He leapt at the pilot's hatch, grabbing the recessed handle despite the nearby flames.

"Fuck," he shouted, recoiling and shaking his scorched hand.

The door was locked from the inside.

The NCO passed him, heading straight for the cockpit. Standing on the tips of his toes, the man could just look inside.

"Is he all right?" Taylor shouted.

"Can't see. Goddamned smoke."

"We'll have to smash in the windscreen."

The NCO looked at the fragile assault rifle in his hands. "No way," he said matter-of-factly.

A burst of fire reached the M-100 and danced along its armored side, ricocheting.

"Fuck it," Taylor shouted. "Just see if you can pick out where the shooting's coming from. I'll try to get to the engineer kit."

He doubled back to the rear of the wreck. Somehow, Merry had convinced the dazed soldier to drag his comrades to a spot more distant from the flames and smoke— and closer to Taylor's ship.

Merry's coffee-colored cheeks had grimed with smoke. He came up to speak to Taylor, but with hardly a glance, Taylor pushed past him, darting up the ramp into the smoke-filled dismount compartment built into the rear of the M-100.

His lungs began to fill up immediately, and he could not see. He knew the ammunition was all stowed in specially sealed subcompartments, but he had no idea how much longer the linings would resist the heat.

He stumbled along an inner wall, tapping over the irregular surface with a blistered hand. He was searching for the compartment where the pioneer tools were stowed — shovels and pickaxes for digging in. It was hard to judge the distance and layout in the smoke.

He almost collapsed in a faint. Instead, the near-swoon shocked him with adrenaline, and he hurriedly stumbled back out into the fresh, biting air.

The cold scorched his lungs. He bent over, hands on his knees, choking. His breath would not come. He realized he had come within an instant of going down with smoke inhalation. Probably dying.

The world swirled as if he had drunk too much. He fought to steady himself, to master his breathing. More shots rang out through the storm. Were they closer now?

He straightened, gulping at the cold. He tried to remember the exact distance to the compartment where the manual specified the stowage of the squad's pioneer tools. He had helped write the damned thing, but now it was a struggle to remember. Left wall, wasn't it? Third panel, upper row.

"You all right, sir?" Meredith called. His voice sounded flat and weak against the noise of flames, wind, distant engines, and pocking gunfire. The younger man came up and put a hand on Taylor's shoulder.

"No time," Taylor said, knocking the hand away. "Just get the wounded on board. Go."

Taylor plunged back into the smoke.

The acridity drew tears from his eyes and he had to shut them. He held his breath. Feeling his way like a blind diver, all he could sense was heat.

Suddenly the latch was under his hand, hot and firm. He yanked it, breaking open fresh blisters. The gear had shaken loose in the crash, and a falling shovel nearly struck his head. Just in time, he caught it by the handle.

There was no more time. He felt the dizziness welling up. Coming over him the way a blanket came down over a child. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to surrender to it.

Taylor stumbled back out into the snow, falling to his knees and dry-retching. His eyes burned and he could barely see through the forced tears. He dropped his head and shoulders into the snow, trying to cleanse himself of the smoke and heat. When he tried to rise, he stumbled.

On the horizon he could just make out Merry carrying a body over his shoulder.

Taylor forced himself to his feet. He rounded the side of the wreck at a dizzy trot, hugging the shovel to him. Mercifully, the fire seemed to be spreading very slowly; the resistant materials in the M-l00's composition were doing their job.

The NCO had his back to Taylor, assault rifle held up in the position of a man who wished he had a target at which to fire. As Taylor came up beside him the NCO jumped backward, as if he had seen a great snake.

The man crumpled, still holding fast to his weapon as the snow all around him splashed scarlet.

He was dead. Lying openeyed and openmouthed in the storm. More bullets nicked at the wreck, rustling the air above the crackle of the flames.

Still dazed from all the smoke he had drunk, Taylor wrenched the rifle from the NCO's hands and raised it to send a warning burst out into the whiteness. But the weapon clicked empty.

Taylor slapped the man's body, searching the pockets for additional magazines. The man had been working with his battle harness stowed for comfort, and he had come outside without it. Now there was no more ammunition to be found.

Taylor discarded the rifle and drew the pistol from his shoulder holster. There were no targets, but he fired anyway, two shots, as a warning. Then he shoved the pistol back into its leather pocket and picked up the shovel again. Slipping in the snow and mud, he ran at the cockpit, swing the tool with all his might.

It only bounced off the transparent armor of the windscreen.

He smashed at the barrier again. And again. Then he drove the blade as hard as he could into the synthetic material.

It was useless. The windscreen had been built to resist heavy machine gun fire. His efforts were ridiculous.

But you had to try, you had to try.

A single round punched the nose of the aircraft beside Taylor's head. He dropped to his knees, discarding the shovel and drawing his pistol again. What the hell, he thought furiously. If it's got to end here, so be it. But it's going to cost the sonsofbitches.

A burst of fire erupted just behind him. But his old warrior's ear recognized the sound as coming from a friendly weapon. The sharp, whistling signature of his own kind. Then he glimpsed Meredith coming up low along the side of the wreck, automatic rifle in his hands.

The younger man was short of breath when he got to Taylor's position. "Come on, sir," he begged. "We've got to get out of here."

"The pilot," Taylor said adamantly.

"For God's sake, sir. He's gone. The smoke would have got him by now. The goddamned windscreens are black."

Yes, The smoke. Better smoke than fire. The smoke would even have been welcome, in a way.

A sudden volley played an ashcan symphony on the side of the wreck.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Meredith said.

Yes, Taylor realized. Meredith was right. There was no more point to it. It had become an empty gesture. And it was only results that mattered.

They would all be waiting for him. He knew that Krebs would never lift off without him. Even if it meant that everyone on board perished. And he did not want to be responsible for any more unnecessary deaths.

A part of him still could not leave the site.

Meredith fired two shots out into the blowing whiteness, then followed them with a third.

"Come on, you bastards," he screamed.

Meredith With his wife and a golden future waiting for him,

"All right," Taylor said with sudden decisiveness He reached for the dead NCO and ripped off the man's microchip dog tag. "Let's give them another couple of rounds, then run like hell."

"You got it," Meredith said.

The two of them rose slightly and fired into the storm, wielding a rifle and a pistol hardly bigger than a man's hand against the menace of a continent.

"Move," Taylor commanded.

The two men ran sliding through the sodden snow that ringed the heat of the wreck. Meredith was well in the lead by the time they rounded the aft end of the downed M-100. He turned and raised his rifle again, covering Taylor

"Goddammit just run," Taylor shouted.

They took off on a straight line for the dark outline of the command ship. The big rotors churned the sky in readiness. The underlying rumble of the engine promised salvation.

Krebs had seen them coming He had increased the power to the upended rotors and soon the noise was so loud that Taylor could no longer hear the rounds chasing him. Up ahead, the M-100 began to buck like an anxious horse Then Krebs steadied it again

Taylor ran as hard as he could. I don't want to get shot in the goddamned back, he thought. Not in the goddamned back.

The M-100 grew bigger and bigger, filling up Taylor s entire horizon.

His lungs ached.

"Come on," Meredith screamed at him.

He hated to leave the bodies. There was enough guilt already. Enough for a long, long lifetime.

Not in the back, he prayed, running the last few yards.

He felt Meredith's arms dragging him up into the hatch.

Krebs began lifting off before Meredith and Taylor could finish closing the hatch behind them. The ground faded away before their eyes. The universe swirled white. Then the hatch cover slammed back into place.

The two men dropped exhaustedly onto their buttocks, cramped in the tiny gangway. They looked at each other wordlessly, each man assuring himself that the other had not been touched by the send-off bullets. They were both covered with grime and with the blood of other men, and Meredith's eyebrows and close-cropped hair bore a fringe of snow that made him look as though he had been gotten up for an old man's part in a high school play. As Taylor watched, the S-2 wiped at the melting snow with a hand that left a bloody smear in its wake.

Taylor flexed his burned paw. Not too bad. Slap on a little ointment.

The M-100 climbed into the sky.

Taylor dropped his head back against the inner wall of the passageway, breathing deeply in an effort to purge his lungs of smoke and gas.

"Aw, shit," he said.

They had to gain sufficient standoff distance before they could use the main armament to destroy the remainder of the wreck. The Gatling gun would never have penetrated the composite armor. While they were gaining altitude, Meredith gave Taylor the rest of the bad news. Of the soldiers carried out of the rear compartment, only the shocked boy and one evident concussion case were alive. The remainder of the light squad of dragoons had died, victims either of the impact or of smoke inhalation. The command M-100 bore a cargo of corpses down in its compact storage hold.

"Goddamnit, Merry," Taylor said, "the ship shouldn't have gone down that hard. Just not supposed to. And the fire suppressant system's a worthless piece of shit."

Meredith patted an inner panel of the aircraft with exaggerated affection. "We still don't know exactly what happened, sir. Could've been a computer malfunction. Anything. Overall, these babies have been pretty good to us today."

The two men felt a quick pulse under the deck as Krebs delivered a high-velocity round that would shatter the wreck back on the ground beyond recognition.

"Anyway, Merry," Taylor said, "thanks." He gestured with a blistered hand. "For back there."

Meredith looked embarrassed.

The two men sat just a few moments longer, drained, and heavy now with the knowledge that they both had to get back to work as though nothing had occurred. So much depended on them.

"I wonder how Lucky Dave's doing," Meredith mused. He glanced at his watch. "First Squadron ought to be on the ground at Silver by now."

Noguchi trembled. He had never doubted his personal bravery, certain that he was somehow superior to average men with their average emotions. He had, until this hour, envisioned himself as a warrior with a marble heart, armored in a will of steel. But now, as he counted down the seconds before unleashing his weapons, his flying gloves clotted to his palms and his lower lip ticked as he counted to himself without realizing it. He fixed his eyes straight on, although the shield of his flight helmet would have prevented any of the crew members from seeing the uncertainty in them. He could not bear the thought that other men might scent the least fear in him.

It was the weapons themselves that frightened him. The glorious kamikaze pilots of yesteryear had been faced with so clean a proposition: to die splendidly and suddenly for the emperor, for Japan. Dying held little terror for Noguchi, who envisioned it as the door to an uncomplicated nothingness. What frightened him was the condition in which he might have to live, if anything went wrong with the Scramblers.

The counter stripped away the seconds.

They had almost reached the optimal release point for the drones.

And if something went wrong? If the Scramblers activated prematurely? If he was unable to turn his aircraft out of the Scramblers' reach with sufficient speed? If the effective range of the Scramblers proved even greater than projected? If ground control brought his aircraft back on the automatic flight controls, with a terrible cargo? There were so many ifs. The Scramblers had never even had a real field trial — it would have been impossible. And the experiments on animals could not be regarded as conclusive.

The thought that the Scramblers might touch back at him, might caress him, their appointed master, with their power, left him physically unsteady and incapable of rigorous thought.

He glanced again at the monitor. Within half an hour of touching down, the Americans' automatic camouflage systems had done a surprisingly good job of hiding the aircraft — even though it was evident that the mechanical measures had not been designed with the anomalies of a snow-covered landscape in mind. Of course, the Scramblers would affect everything over a huge area — but it was reassuring to know that the prime target was exactly where the transmissions had promised it would be.

"Sir?" A sudden cry turned Noguchi's head. The voice was that of the copilot beside him, squeezed up the scale of fear.

"What is it?" Noguchi asked savagely.

The man's eyes were impossibly wide with fear.

"It's time, it's time."

Panic razored through Noguchi. But when he turned back to the instrumentation panel, he saw that there were still several seconds left. His copilot had lost control. Unforgivably. Like a woman or a child.

"Shut up, you fool," Noguchi told him. But he did not look back at the man. He remained afraid that his face might reflect too much of the weakness revealed on his subordinate's features.

Noguchi struggled to steady himself. But the mental images challenged him again, attacking his last selfdiscipline with visions of the condition in which a faulty application of the Scramblers might leave him.

No. No, he could not bear to live like that.

A thousand times better to die.

He locked his eyes on the digital counter, finger poised on the sensor control that would release the drones. Seven.

All my life Six.

I have been Five.

aimed like an arrow

Four.

toward

Three.

this

Two.

moment.

One.

"Banzai," Noguchi screamed, tearing his throat.

He touched the release sensor.

"Banzai," he screamed again.

"Banzai," his crew echoed through the intercom.

He took personal control of the aircraft and banked as hard as he could.

"Clean release," he heard in his helmet's tiny speakers. One by one, the other aircraft in his flight reported in. Clean release, clean release.

Noguchi found his course and ordered all of the aircraft under his command to accelerate to the maximum. Behind them, the undersized drones sped quietly toward a place called Silver.

"Roger," Heifetz reported over the command net. "Everybody's tucked in. Assembly Areas Gold and Platinum report fully secure status. We have no systems losses. The Tango element took five KIA and eleven WIA during ground contact with an Iranian headquarters site, but I think you might want to get the details straight from him." Taylor's voice returned. He sounded unusually raspy and stressed to Heifetz. "Everything okay at your site?"

"Basically. There was a small site-management problem. Part of Silver was already occupied by Soviet support troops. There's no coordination. Their system's gone to hell. One unit opened fire on us before we got it all sorted out."

"Casualties?"

"No. We were lucky. Now we have what they used to call 'peaceful coexistence.' "

"Christ," Taylor said. "That's all we need. Gunfights with the Russians."

"It's all right now. Tercus is putting his boys into good hide positions. He's very impressive."

"All right. We should be at your location in approximately forty minutes," Taylor said. "I've got a probable heavy concussion casualty on board and another soldier in ambulatory shock. We'll need medical support when we come in."

"Roger. We'll be waiting. Over."

"Five-five out."

Heifetz laid down the hand mike. Such a good day, he thought. It was bewildering how such a good day could be formed of so much death. A Jericho of steel, he said to himself, thinking of the Japanese-built war machine that had tumbled into ruin across the morning.

It was enough for him. He had already made up his mind. He simply did not know how he was going to break the news to Taylor.

He would finish the campaign. Then he would resign. He had squandered so much of his life in confusion, in self-deception, in the deep dishonor of the honorable man of mistaken purpose. He had been a good soldier, of course. In all of the outward respects. Now it was time to stop before he became a bad one.

He was going to go home. To the new home his fellow refugees were building in the Israeli settlements in the American West. Turning yet another desert into a garden. He did not know exactly what he would do, or for what he might be qualified after so many years in arms. But he knew with iron certainty that he would manage. He was not afraid of a little dirt under his fingernails, if it came to that. And he did not need much.

For an instant he regretted the years of salaries he had donated to the American-Israeli relief fund. Then he dismissed the consideration, ashamed of himself. It was better this way. To start clean. Without the false security that too much money insinuated into a man's soul.

Perhaps there would even be a woman. He recognized now that Mira had never asked for his celibacy. No, he had wronged her that way too. She had been so much better than that. She would have wanted him to love again, to the meager extent of his abilities.

All of his adult life had been spent doing the wrong thing, for the wrong reasons. He only hoped there was still time to put it right. He was going to allow himself to live again. And, this time, it truly would be for Mira. He would turn his face back toward the light.

Heifetz picked up the helmet that he always wore in the field to set the right example for his subordinates.

"I'm going outside to take a piss," he told his ops crew.

The cold was beautifully clean, and he thought of Taylor. It would be good to see him at the end of such a day. Taylor was his closest semblance of a friend. He did not yet have the words to explain to Taylor about resigning, but that could wait. Taylor had to concentrate on other things now, and Heifetz was determined to help him as best he could. There were plenty of problems waiting to be resolved, especially with the loss of the last functioning weapons calibrator back at Omsk. But, somehow, he and Taylor would find solutions. Heifetz pictured himself beside Taylor, leaning over a map, shaping destiny with a marker pen. The two men did not even need words to understand each other.

Heifetz tramped through the snow toward an undernourished-looking stand of trees. The white trunks and branches looked feminine and tubercular. It struck him that this country was poor in so many ways.

His musings were interrupted by the sight of a startled young captain who had been squatting in a little snow-smoothed hollow. The captain had twisted over to clean himself above a display of steaming shit.

The younger man straightened at the sight of Heifetz, discarding the smudged paper from his hand and grabbing for his distended coveralls.

Heifetz could not help smiling. Life went on, after all.

"At ease," Heifetz commanded. "Continue with your mission, captain."

The young officer stammered something unintelligible, and Heifetz turned to urinate against the slender tilt of a tree trunk.

A more distant voice called Heifetz by his rank and last name. There was no escape, not even for a moment. Heifetz glanced back toward his M-100 and saw one of the staff NCOs trotting bareheaded toward the little grove. Have to tell them to keep their damned helmets on when they come outside, Heifetz thought. Like children. After combat, the natural tendency was to over-relax. To drop your guard and decline into slovenliness.

Heifetz shook himself vigorously, then tucked the cold-tightened bit of flesh back into his uniform. Too long unused for its higher purpose, he teased himself.

The NCO hurried toward him, hopping through the snow.

"Lieutenant Colonel Heifetz, sir. Lieutenant Colonel Reno's on the net. He says he's got to talk to you personally."

Heifetz nodded in weary acquiescence. Then he turned to the ambushed captain, who was hurriedly doing up his uniform.

"You know what the biggest problem is with the U.S. Army?" Heifetz asked. The captain had the sort of wholesome, handsome features Heifetz had come to associate with a peculiarly American invulnerability to intellect. After a moment's rumination, the captain resettled the web belt around his athlete's waist and said nervously, "No, sir."

"We talk too much," Heifetz said. But he could see from the captain's features that the triteness of the observation had disappointed the younger man, who apparently had expected a revelation of far deeper profundity.

"We talk too much," Heifetz repeated. He smiled gently and turned back toward his place of duty.

Captain Jack Sturgis couldn't believe it. He had actually seen Lucky Dave Heifetz smile. He wondered if he would ever be able to convince his friends of what he had seen.

He began to reconstruct the tale in his head. He immediately discarded the bit about his physical situation during the incident. Then he reconsidered, and modified his role into the more manly one of fellow-pisser-on-nearby-tree. How exactly had Heifetz put it? About the Army's biggest problem? Pretty dumb, really. Nothing much to it. Sturgis poked at Heifetz's words for some hidden meaning: "We talk too much." Did he mean, like, too much talk and not enough action? Or just too much talk, period?

Goddamn, though. There he was, with Lucky Dave Heifetz. The man who had never been known to crack a smile, the cradle-to-grave soldier. And the old bugger comes through with this big toothy grin.

He wished he had a witness. Then he recalled the more personal details of the encounter and decided that he was glad there had been no witness, after all.

Maybe Heifetz had just been laughing at him?

Naw. Old Lucky Dave had seen plenty of guys taking a dump before. No, it probably meant that things had gone really well. That they had really torn the enemy a new asshole.

Yeah. Now that could be tied into the tale very nicely. "Even old Lucky Dave was happy. Should've seen it, guys. Smiling. Bigtime."

Lucky Dave Heifetz, the terror of the regiment. The guy who was reported never to have felt a single human emotion in his life.

Sturgis had been disconcerted by the unexpected appearance of a second party during his evacuation procedures — and Lucky Dave, of all people. All things considered, however, he figured it was worth it. For the tale he would have to tell. And for the reassurance Heifetz's good mood had given him.

They had met the enemy — and knocked their dicks in the mud.

He had been worried, of course. He had never been in combat before, and he had read lots of war novels and seen plenty of movies and heard how tough it all was from the veterans. They said you never knew who was going to break down and turn out to be a pussy.

Well, now he knew. He was no pussy. He had what it took proven in battle. As he trudged back toward the camouflaged position of his M-100, Jack Sturgis luxuriated in visions of a great military career. Someday he might even be as famous as the old man, Colonel Taylor. Or even more famous. He had no intentions of becoming disfigured, however. He didn't want to look like Taylor. Sturgis cast himself in a far more romantic light, and no vision of success was complete without a complementary vision of well-disposed women.

Sturgis took a deep breath. It was a wonderful thing to be a soldier. To be a real combat leader.

A snowflake caught at the corner of the young man's eye. He paused to wipe it away, touching a gloved hand to his shying eyelash.

And Captain Jack Sturgis jerked perfectly upright, gripped by a pain the intensity of which no human animal had ever before experienced.

19

"Sierra five-five, this is Saber six. Sierra five-five, this is Saber six…"

Taylor knew immediately that something was seriously wrong when he heard Reno's voice on the command net. The general's son was always careful to maintain a studied coolness over any open communications means, except when he was verbally destroying one of his subordinates, or in combat, when his voice screamed for medals, awards, citations. Now Reno's voice strained with emotion and he had done something which he never had done before. He had used the call sign "Saber six" on Taylor's net.

Taylor knew that Reno affected the call sign on his squadron's internal comms, but the man was always careful to use his proper call sign on the regimental command net, both because Taylor made it plain that he disapproved of unauthorized nonsense and because "Saber six" was a timeworn cavalry handle reserved for regimental commanders — not for the subordinate lieutenant colonels who commanded squadrons.

"Tango five-five, this is Sierra five-five. Over."

"This is Saber — I mean, Tango five-five. I can't contact anybody at A A Silver. I was on the horn with the One-three, and he just cut out in midsentence. I've tried calling Whisky five-five, but I don't even get anything breaking up. Nothing. Is something going on down there? What's going on?"

"Tango, this is Sierra. Wait. Sierra one-three," Taylor called Heifetz, "this is Sierra five-five. Over."

Taylor waited. Around him, he could feel the tension in Meredith and Parker, as well as the concern of the surviving staff NCO. The crowded cabin stank with sweat and dried blood, and at the very back the shock case sat dully beside the bunk they had jerry-rigged for the soldier with the concussion.

Nothing.

Taylor knew that something was wrong. This was not a single comms malfunction. It was funny how you knew. The instinct you developed over the years of living in the proximity of death.

"Sierra one-three," Taylor tried again, "this is Sierra five-five. I cannot hear your station. If you are monitoring my transmission, meet me on the strat link, over."

He knew that something was wrong. Yet, he struggled against knowing it. He turned to the special satellite communications link that was normally reserved for conversations with the nation's highest authorities.

Meredith was already keying the system. Then they all waited again, while in the background Reno pleaded for attention and answers over the regimental command net.

They waited for five minutes. But there was nothing. The heavens were dead.

Finally, Taylor turned back to the command net, determined to make one last attempt.

"Any Whisky station, any Whisky station," he called First Squadron, his words reaching out toward Assembly Area Silver, "this is Sierra five-five. How do you hear this station, over?"

Nothing.

Suddenly, the comms set fuzzed to life. But it was only Reno with another plea for information. The man was badly shaken.

Taylor ignored him. He turned to Meredith.

"How long until we reach Silver?"

Meredith glanced at the panel. "Fifteen minutes. Do you want to divert until we find out what's going on, sir? We might just be able to make the northeast edge of AA Platinum before we run out of fuel."

Everyone looked at Taylor. There was a heaviness in the cabin's air that sobered each man like the sight of a dirt-encrusted skull.

"No," Taylor said. "We're going in. We're going to find out what the hell's going on."

Taylor called ahead to Second Squadron at Platinum, just outside of Orenburg. The squadron commander had been monitoring the traffic on the net, digesting it and maintaining radio discipline.

"If you lose contact with me," Taylor said, "you are to assume command of the regiment." Everyone knew that Reno was the senior squadron commander by date of rank. But Reno was in no condition to lead the regiment at the moment. If he ever had been.

Reno did not contest the message that had been sent openly for all command net subscribers to hear.

Well, Taylor thought, I've still got Second and Third squadrons. If worse comes to worst.

"Contact the escort element," Taylor told the assistant S-3. "Tell them we're going in ready to fight."

Meredith did not believe in ghosts. Even as a child, the dark had held no power over him, and the demonic tales each generation felt compelled to recast and retell simply bored him. The only witchery of interest had been the spell of the eighth-grade blonde with whom he shared his first date. Guaranteed a safety net of their mutual friends, she agreed to go with him to see a film that had captured the attention of young America for a split second. Their friends were noisy, probingly teasing, and, finally, unmistakably separate in the gloom as popcorn smells meandered above the tang of cleaning solution. When the seating lights died and the screen began to redefine the universe, a vault door shut over the mundane cares of homework and team tryouts. Actors labored to convince him of scarlet, improbable horrors, but their exaggerated agonies were nothing compared to the doubt he felt in the long minutes before his classmate took his hand. Unlearned, she gripped him with athletic ferocity as a once-human beast rampaged across a film set. He remembered feeling mature and very strong then, with his unwavering eyes and unquestioned command of the fingers another child had anxiously intertwined with his. These dressed-up unexamined fears were of too primitive an order to move him, and he grew older in a world where hauntings always turned out to be headlights reflecting off a window, and "supernatural" was merely a word from which ill-dressed hucksters tried to wring a profit. His devils had always lurked elsewhere, beyond the reach of vampire, astrologer, or special-effects wizard, and the last time the hackles on the back of his neck had alerted had been under the torment of a woman's fingernails, before love settled in and the woman became his wife.

The last time. But now his wife was half a world away, and the ghostly white snow fields unnerved him with their stillness. Translated through the monitor screen, the imagery of Assembly Area Silver had an unmistakable quiet about it that frightened him with its wrongness. It was eerie, unnatural. It occurred to him for the first time that silence could have a look about it, an intrusion across sensory boundaries that jarred the working order of his mind. The silent display of M-l00s, partially camouflaged and dispersed over a grove-dotted steppe, was somehow so insistently incorrect that he could feel his body responding even as his mind struggled to process the information into harmless answers.

First Squadron was supposed to be quiet, lying still in hide positions. The goal was to blend into the landscape, to avoid offering any signs of life to searching enemy sensors. To play dead. Even beyond that — to become invisible. The problem was that the M-l00s burrowed so neatly into the snow fields had achieved the desired effect too well.

No unit was ever completely silent. No unit was ever so disciplined that it could avoid twitching a human muscle or two for the practiced eye to spot. Perfection in camouflage and deception operations was, a matter of degree.

But the First Squadron site had a special, unbearable silence about it. It had begun with the refusal of every last oral communications channel to respond to Taylor's queries. They all had assumed that First Squadron had been hit and hit badly by an enemy strike. Then Meredith tried a computer-to-computer query.

Each computer in First Squadron responded promptly when contacted. Data passed through the heavens instantly and exactly. The machines continued their electronic march through the endless battlefields of integers. It was only their human masters that made no reply.

The first imagery Meredith called up had filled them with a sense of relief. Yes. There they were, all right. Carefully dispersed M-l00s. There was not a single indicator of battle damage. The snow drifted across the site with blinding purity, and when you looked carefully, the concealed contours of the M-l00s on the ground betrayed no trace of destruction. The squadron looked exactly as it was supposed to look, and it occurred to Meredith that the whole business just might be a bizarre communications anomaly.

It was only the feel that was all wrong.

"Run a systems check on our environmental seals," Taylor ordered.

"You figure chemicals, sir?" Meredith asked.

"Could be. I don't know. Christ," Taylor said quietly, "I've seen week-old corpses that didn't look that dead."

"Nerve agent strike?"

Taylor bent closer to the imagery, narrowing his eyes, obviously straining to achieve a greater intensity of vision. "That's what I'd have to bet, if I were betting. But it doesn't make any goddamned sense. Even if a strike had caught some of the birds with their hatches open, others would have been sealed. If only because of the cold. And the automatic seals and the overpressure systems would have kicked in." He backed away from the monitor, touching his eyes with thumb and forefinger, weary. The palm and back of his hand had been wrapped in gauze that already showed dirt. "It just doesn't make any sense, Merry. If it was nerve gas, or any kind of chemicals, somebody would have survived. The autosensors would have alerted, and we would have had more flash traffic calls coming in than the system could've handled." He shook his head very slowly, then touched the edge of the gauzed hand to his hairline. "It just doesn't make any sense."

"Looks like a ghost town," Hank Parker said. The clumsy, too-colorful image annoyed Meredith, and he almost made a dismissive comment. Then he realized, with a chill that ran along his arms, legs, and spine, that the assistant S-3's comment bothered him so much not because it was naive but because it was precisely correct. There was no town in the imagery, and Meredith did not believe in ghosts, but the feel that rose from the monitor like cold air was exactly the feel of a ghost town — of a no-nonsense, technologically affluent military kind.

"Rapper," Taylor called through the intercom, "get us down there as fast as you can. Get a fix on the S-3's bird and put down right on its ass."

"Roger."

"Sir?" Meredith said, suddenly forgetting his personal alarm and remembering his duty, "are you sure you want to put down? If there's something down there we don't know about… I mean, the regiment needs you. We could direct one of the other squadrons to send in a recon party, do it right…"

"I don't want to wait," Taylor said.

"Neither do I," Meredith said truthfully. "But we've got to think about the big picture. We've got to—"

"Be quiet, Merry. My mind's made up." There was a tautness in the voice that Meredith had never before suffered.

Something was terribly, inexplicably wrong. Each man in the cabin knew it, but none of them could bring it out in words.

"What's that?" Taylor demanded, stabbing a finger at the monitor. As the M-100 approached the heart of the site, the on-board sensors picked up greater and greater detail.

Meredith squinted and saw only a black speck. He touched the selector pencil to the screen and the lens telescoped down.

It was a body. A man's body. Where before there had been only the disguised outlines of machinery and the insistent silence.

"He's moving," Parker said.

They all bent down over the monitor, each man's stale breath sour in the nostrils of his comrades.

Yes. It was unmistakable. It was definitely a man, in uniform, and he was moving. He was lying on his back, making jerking, seemingly random gestures at the sky.

"What in the name of Christ?" Taylor whispered.

The unintelligent, wasted movement of the man's limbs came erratically. But he was unmistakably alive, although the snow was beginning to bury him. The man's movements reminded Meredith of something, but he could not quite place it.

"Get us down on the ground, goddamnit," Taylor roared.

It seemed to Meredith that Taylor had just realized what was going on. But the old man seemed to have no intention of sharing his knowledge.

"Yes, sir," Krebs's voice came back through the intercom, just a second late. The old warrant officer's voice seemed to tremble, astonishing Meredith, who had grown used to Krebs's theatrical toughness.

The sensors on the M-100 were very efficient, and although they were still several kilometers from the thrashing soldier's location, Meredith could already begin to make out the exact contours of the body, even the more pronounced facial features. He almost thought he recognized the man.

Suddenly, he realized what the man's unfocused pawings reminded him of: a newborn infant.

"Get a grip on yourself, Merry," Taylor said gently.

Meredith shook his head and wiped his eyes. He could not bring himself to look at Heifetz again. Or at any of the others.

"I'm going to be sick," he said.

"That's all right," Taylor told him. The old man's voice labored to steady him. "Just go outside. It's all right to be sick."

Meredith did not move. The smell of human waste hung thickly in the ops cell of Heifetz's M-100. Meredith closed his eyes. He did not want to see any more. But, behind his eyelids, the image of the last several minutes grew even grimmer.

"I'm going to be sick," Meredith said again. He could feel the" tears searching down over his cheeks for a streambed, seeking out the lowest hollows and contours of flesh.

Taylor took him firmly by the arm.

"Don't let it beat you," he said. "I'm going to need you, Merry."

"I can't," Meredith said, "I just can't," although he had no clear idea of what it was he could not do.

"It's all right."

"My God."

"I know."

"Oh… my God," Meredith said. He felt another wave of nausea. But it was not quite strong enough to set him in motion.

"Let's go outside for a minute." Taylor said. "We'll both go." He spoke as though he were addressing a good child in a bad hour. Meredith could not understand it. Not any of it. And he could not begin to understand how Taylor could be so calm.

Unwillingly, Meredith looked around again. It was a little better now. When they had lugged the young captain's snow-dusted body into the shelter of Heifetz's M-100, they had found Lucky Dave and the crew spilled over the floor like drunkards, eyes without focus, limbs twitching like the bodies of beheaded snakes, mouths drooling. The smell of shit had soaked out through their uniforms, and they made unprovoked noises that seemed to come from a delirium beyond words. Taylor had immediately put Meredith to work, untangling the men's limbs, repositioning them onto their bellies so they would not choke on their spittle.

"What is it?" Meredith had demanded. It took all of his willpower to assist Taylor in repositioning the stricken soldiers. It was especially difficult with Heifetz. "What is it?

"I'll tell you later," Taylor had said patiently. "Just help me now."

Meredith had set his hands upon his fellow officers and the crew NCOs with the combination of trepidation and over-resolute firmness he might have employed with plague victims. Yet, these men were unmarked by evident disease. The warmth of their skin seemed normal. Nor were there any signs of wounds, except where one NCO had tumbled forward, breaking his nose. The man snorted blood like an ineptly shot animal as they laid him down properly.

Then Meredith needed to stand, as the nausea grew stronger. He saw Lucky Dave's eyes, and for a moment he thought they were staring at him. But it was only a trick of angles and light. There was no recognizable human expression on Heifetz's face. Only an unintelligent confusion of muscles.

"Let's go outside," Taylor repeated. He held Meredith firmly by the upper arm, and he steered him as carefully as possible over the closely aligned bodies.

The bloody-nosed NCO began to grunt loudly and rhythmically. Meredith recoiled, as if a corpse had bitten him. But Taylor had him in a close grip. He directed the younger man toward the rear hatch.

"Watch your step, Merry," he said.

The clean, cold air cued the sickness in Meredith's stomach. He stumbled down onto the snow-covered earth and began to retch. Taylor loosened his grip slightly, but never quite relinquished control of Meredith's arm.

When he was done, Meredith scooped up a handful of clean snow and wiped his mouth. He chewed into the cold whiteness. The regimental surgeon had counseled the men not to use snow to make drinking water, since the regional pollution had reached catastrophic extremes. But Meredith instinctively knew that anything was cleaner than the waste remaining in his mouth.

"It's all right," Taylor said.

Meredith began to cry hard. He shook his head. He knew that something was terribly, horribly wrong. None of his experiences offered a frame of reference for this. He could not understand what his eyes were seeing. He only knew that it was hideous beyond anything in his experience, without having any conscious understanding of why.

"What happened?" he asked, begging for knowledge.

"Quietly," Taylor said. "Speak quietly."

Meredith looked at the colonel. The cold made the old man's scars stand out lividly. But the sight of Taylor's ruined face was nothing beside the inexplicable condition of the men inside the M-100.

"Why?"

"Just speak quietly."

"Why? For God's sake, what's the matter with Lucky Dave? Is he going to be all right?"

"Merry, get a grip on yourself. We have work to do."

"What's going on?" Meredith demanded, his voice almost a child's.

"You have to keep your voice down. They might hear you. Let's not make it any worse for them."

Meredith looked at Taylor in shock. It had never occurred to him that the ruptured behavior of the men they had found might include consciousness of the speech of others. It was too incongruous. The men had obviously lost their minds. Their eyes didn't even focus. They were shitting and pissing all over themselves.

"Listen to me," Taylor said quietly. The snow was beginning to decorate his shoulders. "I think they hear us.

I think they hear every word. They just can't respond."

Meredith stared at the devastated face in front of him, not really seeing it.

"Listen to me carefully, Merry," Taylor began. "Ten years ago, when you were off studying your Russian, I was involved in some unusual programs. Between L.A. and our little jaunt down to Mexico. We were working like mad, trying to come up with alternative technologies for a military response to the Japanese. The M-l00s are one result of all that. But there were a lot of other projects that didn't make it all the way to production. For a variety of reasons." He shook Meredith by the arm. "Are you all right? Are you listening to me?"

Meredith nodded, with the acid aftertaste of vomit and snow in his mouth.

"We tried everything we could think of," Taylor said. He shook his head at the memory, loosening snow from his helmet. "Some of the ideas were just plain crazy. Nonsensical. Things that couldn't possibly have worked. Or

that needed too much development lead time. But there was one thing…"

Meredith was listening now. Hungry for any information that would explain events that his mind could not process. But Taylor kept him waiting for a moment. The colonel stared off across the whitened steppes, past the waiting M-100 that had brought them to this place, past another ship half-buried in the snow, to a faraway, indefinite point that only Taylor's eyes could pick out.

"It was out at Dugway. You had to have every clearance in the world just to hear the project's code name. Some of the whiz kids out at Livermore had come up with a totally new approach. And we looked into it. We brought them out to Utah, to the most isolated testing area we had, to see what they could do. They didn't care much for the social environment, of course. But once we turned them loose, they made amazing progress." Taylor paused, still staring out through space and time. "They came up with a weapon that worked, all right. Christ almighty, we could've finished the Japs within a year. As soon as we could've gotten the weapons into the field. But we just could not bring ourselves to do it, Merry. I mean, I think I hate the Japanese. I suspect I hate them in a way that is irrational and morally inexcusable. But not one of us… not one of the people that had a say wanted to go through with it. We decided that the weapons were simply too inhumane. That their use would have been unforgivable." Taylor looked down at the snow gathering around their boots and smiled softly. "I thought we were doing the right thing. The scientists were disappointed as hell, of course. You know, the worst soldier I've ever known has a more highly developed sense of morality than the average scientist. Anyway, I really thought we were doing the right thing. I guess I was just being weak." He shook his head. "It looks like the Japanese have made fools of us again."

"But… what was it?" Meredith asked. "The weapon?" Taylor raised his eyebrows at the question as though further details really were not so pertinent. "It was a radiowave weapon," he said matter-of-factly. "Complex stuff to design, but simple enough in concept. You take radio waves apart and rebuild them to a formula that achieves a desired effect in the human brain. You broadcast, and the mind receives. It's a little like music. You listen to a song with a good beat, and you tap your foot. A ballad makes you sentimental. Really, sound waves have been manipulating us for a long, long time. Well, the boys from Livermore had been screwing around with jamming techniques for years. Same principle. They started off small. Learning how to cause pain. The next step was to focus the pain. And so on. You could cause death relatively easily. But that was too crude for men of science. They went beyond the clean kill. And we developed… well, compositions, you might say, that could do precisely focused damage to the human mind." Taylor looked at Meredith. "Think back to your military science classes, Merry. And tell me: is it preferable to kill your enemy outright or to incapacitate him, to wound him badly?"

"To wound him," Meredith said automatically.

"And why?"

"Because… a dead soldier… is just a dead soldier. But a wounded soldier puts stress on the enemy's infrastructure. He has to receive first aid. Then he has to be evacuated. He requires care. A dead soldier makes no immediate demands on the system, but a wounded man exerts a rearward pull. Enough wounded men can paralyze—"

"Exactly. And that's it, Merry."

"But… how long until it wears off? When are they going to be all right?"

Taylor strengthened his grip on Merry's arm. Merry, it doesn't wear off. Christ, if it did, we would have fielded it in a heartbeat. The effects are irreversible. It's a terror weapon too, you see."

Meredith felt sick again. With a deeper, emptier, spiritually dreary sickness.

"But… you said they might be able to understand us?"

Taylor nodded. "It makes no difference to recovery. In fact, that's the worst part, Merry. You see, if the Japanese are using approximately the same formula we came up with, Lucky… Colonel Heifetz and the others have not suffered any loss in intelligence, or in basic cognitive recognition. What the weapon does is simply to destroy the victim's control over his voluntary muscles. There's some collateral deterioration on the involuntary side, as well, but basically you can focus the damage. See, that's the beauty of the weapon — the victims remain fully intelligent human beings, even though they are physically utterly incapable of controlling their basic bodily functions. They cannot even tell their eyes where to look. But they still process what their eyes happen to see. That way, by presenting your enemy with a mature, living intelligence, you rob him of the excuse to lighten his load with conscience-free euthanasia — you're not killing a thing. You'd be killing a thinking, feeling human being who lost the use of his body in the service of his country." Taylor snorted. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

Meredith did not understand how Taylor could speak so calmly.

"Merry. You need to pull yourself together now. We need to help them as best we can. And then we've got to get back into the fight."

Meredith stared at the scarred, scarred man as though he were crazy. What on earth was he talking about? Help them? How? And what would be the point of getting back into any fighting now? If this was all that was waiting at the end of it.

"Count your blessings," Taylor told him. "If that escort bird hadn't gone down… well, that's war, Merry. Some die, and others live. Luck of the draw."

"I can't," Meredith said. Again, he had no clear idea as to what it was he could not do. But he felt panic seizing him. "I just can't function. I give up."

Taylor's hand came up like lightning. He slapped Meredith so hard across the face that the younger man reeled and almost fell. Dazed, he could taste blood in his mouth. It was a far better taste than the vomit and snow had left behind.

Taylor caught him with both hands this time. The grip was noticeably weaker under the bandaged paw. He held Meredith upright, pinning the younger man's arms flat against his sides.

"Merry. Please."

Meredith tried to bond himself to reality. But this was a world out of horrific medieval paintings.

"Merry, I need you now," Taylor said. "You're a very brave man, and you've proved it time and again. I need you to be brave now. Because, if you can't handle this, think of the effect it's going to have on the others."

"All right," Meredith said slowly, emptily. The slap had jarred him, and he was still unsure of everything, but in a different way.

"Merry," Taylor begged, "we can't give up. You don't see it, but I do. They're all going to want to give up now, and we can't let them. It's up to us."

Meredith did not understand what Taylor was talking about. Who was going to give up? And to give up what? "We won't give up," Meredith said flatly.

"That's right. We're not going to give up. Now listen to me." Taylor's voice took on the cold, clear tone it always had when he needed to give complex instructions under pressure. "I want you to go back to our ship. You go back there and get on the horn. Call Manny—" Taylor caught himself. For a moment, the two men looked at each other with eyes that met yet shared nothing. Then Taylor regrouped: "Call the assistant S-4. He'll be at the support site in Gold. Tell him to off-load every available wing-inground except the fuelers and get them down here to Silver. And I want the regimental surgeon on board, with every immediately available physician's assistant and medic. Call the assistant S-4 first. It's going to take him the longest. Then call Second Squadron over at Platinum. They're the closest. Tell the commander I want his scouts down here double-quick. Use the top-end secure. Explain that we have casualties. The scouts need to search each troop's local assembly area, just in case anybody else is lying out in the snow like that captain."

"Captain Sturgis," Meredith offered. He had known the officer slightly. An overgrown kid with a habit of bringing his sex life a little too close to the flagpole.

"Yes," Taylor said. "Sturgis. Anyway, get going. Get them moving. And prepare yourself, Merry. Please. I know you're with me. You just have to hang tough. Because we're going to have panic from here to Washington."

"All right," Meredith said. And, for the first time, there was a glimmer of capability in his voice. He realized that he was going to make it. He would do his duty. He just needed a little more time. "Anything else, sir?"

Behind the scars and grime on Taylor's face, Meredith imagined that he saw a look of defenseless gratitude. A very brief revelation of the weakness Taylor felt himself.

"No," the colonel said. "You just get that much done. Then stay on the net to take care of any necessary damage control. I don't think the enemy have picked up on the other squadrons, or they would've hit them too. It's going to be all right, Merry."

"Yes sir."

Taylor finally let go of Meredith's arm, and turned back toward Heifetz's M-100.

Captain Horace "Hank" Parker had been through an interesting day. While he had deployed to Mexico, the assignment had come too late in the intervention for him to see any real combat, and today marked the loss of his battlefield virginity. He had done his best, sensing that it was somehow inadequate — especially in the presence of Colonel Taylor, a man he held in awe. He could not help being jealous of the easy camaraderie between the S-2 and the commander, and he had felt very much like an outsider at first. He knew very well that Taylor would have preferred to have Heifetz himself on board, instead of his far less experienced assistant.

Still, he had done his best, always doubting himself a little, but somehow avoiding major errors. A few hours into the battle he had relaxed, experiencing the odd sense that modem combat was almost identical to playing games in an amusement arcade in a shopping mall. All screens and images and numbers. You racked up the most points on the board, and you won. It had been surprisingly difficult to picture a real flesh-and-blood enemy out there.

Then that intangible enemy had reached out and hit the old staging area at Omsk. People he knew personally had died, and the game had turned out to be real after all. Then things had begun to move with such speed that it all blurred. There was the ambush of the enemy planes, after which Taylor surprised him by asking his first name, then calling him Hank — that had been better than receiving a medal, coming in the lonesome hour it did. Then Meredith had dismissively ordered him to stay with the comms sets while he and one of the NCOs followed Taylor out to try to rescue the crew of the downed M-100. He had obeyed faithfully, as the noise of gunfire reached into the controlled environment of the ops cell, frightened by his helplessness to influence events, waiting. Then the NCO had failed to return, and the casualties found a place in the cramped compartment, and death seemed to be sneaking closer and closer. The arcade game stakes were rising uncontrollably.

And now this. Waiting again. In an atmosphere of death. Afraid and uncertain, with Colonel Taylor and Meredith gone off into the silence. What was happening out there? " Parker waited in the ops cell with Meredith's shop NCO, who was also an ops backup in the austere modem Army. Both men hated the ominous quiet, and they agreed on it out loud. But they could not bring themselves to say much else.

They sat. Waiting. Imagining.

What was going on?

Without warning, the strategic communications receiver came to life.

Parker scrambled to put on the headset, then his fingers reached clumsily for the unfamiliar controls. Usually, Meredith or Taylor worked this set. Before he had begun to master the situation, the call came again.

"Yes," Parker answered hastily, "this is Sierra."

"Hold for the President," the voice said.

A moment later, a voice Parker knew only from television broadcasts came through the earpieces.

"Colonel Taylor?" the smooth, instantly recognizable voice began, "Colonel Taylor, one of your subordinate commanders has just contacted us with an emergency message. Lieutenant Colonel Reno claims—"

"Uh, sir?" Parker interrupted, instantly regretting both that Taylor was not immediately at hand to rescue him and that, in the last election, he had voted for the other candidate. Somehow, he suspected that the President would be able to tell about the miscast ballot. "Sir, this isn't Colonel Taylor. I'm just…like an assistant. Colonel Taylor's outside."

"Oh," the President said. "Excuse me."

Indeterminate noises followed from the distant station. Like miniature moving men hurriedly cleaning out a doll-house. A new voice came up on the net:

"Soldier, this is General Oates. I want you to go find Colonel Taylor, wherever he is. The President of the United States wants to talk to him."

"Yes, sir," Parker said. He moved very, very quickly. Not bothering to search for his helmet, he launched himself out through the rear hatch and nearly collided with Meredith.

"Whoa," Meredith said. "Where're you going?"

"Major Meredith, sir? Where's Colonel Taylor? The President wants to talk to him."

Meredith seemed to take the news with reprehensible calm. He was well-dusted with snow, as though he had been standing outside for a long time. For a moment Parker did not even think Meredith had understood him correctly, and he opened his mouth to repeat his message.

Meredith beat him to it. "The colonel's over there. In the ops bird." He pushed past Parker into the waiting M-100.

Parker plunged through the blowing snow. He high-stepped and slapped his way through the cold, imagining vaguely that one wrong move would bring far worse punishments down upon his head than anything battle might devise. He wished he were a faster runner, and he wished he were not such a fool.

He rounded the back end of Lieutenant Colonel Heifetz's M-100 and hauled himself up through the open hatch without a pause. He was about to howl his news at Taylor when the scene inside the ops cabin froze the words on his lips.

Heifetz's personal crew — men Parker worked with every day and knew as well as shared duty allowed — lay ranked along the narrow floor. It was immediately apparent that they were all alive, and it was equally apparent that something was revoltingly wrong, although the details of the scene made no real sense to Parker. He had seen the image of the soldier sprawled in the snow, fooling his limbs at the sky, but he had assumed that the disjointed movements were the result of pain, of a wound. Now Parker was confronted with a cabin full of squirming bodies, each man making similarly inept movements without pattern or warning. There was a strong foul smell, and the nearest man made mewling noises that made Parker want to back right out of the hatch and get away.

"But the sight at the end of the cabin held him. Colonel Taylor sat upon the floor, cradling Heifetz's head in his lap. Taylor was whispering softly to the S-3, the way Parker whispered to his twin daughters when they were sick. The colonel smoothed his unbandaged hand back over Heifetz's thinning hair, repeating the gesture again and again.

Parker did not know what to do. Then he remembered in panic: the President.

"Colonel Taylor, sir," he said too loudly. "Sir, the President is on the line. The President wants to talk to you." Taylor looked up briefly. The fright-mask face was very calm, almost expressionless.

"Tell him I'm busy."