Ralph Peters (46 page)

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

3 November 2020

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.