love you, you know.”
She didn’t answer, and Tombstone knew that their relationship was truly over.
Gunfire continued to bark and crackle from the east side of the ridge, Boychenko’s Spetsnaz holding off yet another charge by the naval infantry. One charge, a few minutes ago, had come close to sweeping over the defenders’ position; that one Russian marine had actually made it all the way to the American position, shouting the naval infantry’s battle cry “polundra” ? very roughly translated as “Look out below!” ? before a U.S. Marine had shot him.
It was the only time all morning that any of the Americans had actually gotten into the battle. Tombstone had ordered everyone in the group, including the Marines and the SEALS, to stay out of the fighting if they possibly could. Their small numbers could add nothing to the larger battle raging up and down the ridge around them; their participation would only guarantee that some of them would be killed.
And at the moment, Tombstone could see nothing in this desolate and war-torn country worth dying for.
He was giving a lot of thought to alternatives, just now. The SEAL, Doc, Was in a corner on the other side of the wrecked house, still trying to raise someone on the satellite communications gear, but so far he’d only been able to pick up coded transmissions. He’d hoped to reach Jefferson directly, but either the signal was being jammed, or human error had put the carrier on a different channel from the one he was trying to reach. Those channels that they were able to listen in on either weren’t picking up their transmissions, or else those transmissions were being ignored in the general confusion of the moment.
Nothing, he reminded himself, goes as planned in war.
The problem was, there were several tanks coming up the east side of the ridge, four of the odd-looking PT- 76 amphibious tanks designed to swim rivers. Those tanks, along with a number of armored personnel carriers, were still positioned squarely between Boychenko’s Spetsnaz and the American beachhead. The Spets forces had not expected heavy fighting; the idea had been for them to serve as a blocking force on that ridgeline and to provide perimeter defense as the Americans pulled out, not fight a major ground action with elite forces. Boychenko seemed less than eager to press the attack.
But if he didn’t, Tombstone and Pamela and Natalie and the rest were likely to be guests in this country for quite a long time to come.
“Hey, Captain!” Doc called suddenly.
“You get ‘em?”
“Still can’t raise Ops, but I think we’re tapped into the aircraft tactical channel. I can hear the pilots talking to one another.”
“You can!” Tombstone sprang to his feet. “That’s great. Let’s hear!”
Doc led him to the wall where the satcom device had been set up, its small antenna pointed carefully at a particular patch of sky in the south. He took the headset Doc handed to him and pressed it against his ear.
“Tomboy! Tomboy!” was the first thing he heard. “You okay?”
“I’M okay, Dix,” was her reply. “Just a little singed on the outside!”
Quickly he pressed the transmit key. “Tomboy! Tomboy! This is Tombstone! Do you copy?”
There was a moment’s pause. Then, “Tombstone?” He could hear the surprise in her voice. “Is that you?”
“I see you strapped on your Tomcat, like I told you to,” he said, using the incident at the palace to positively identify himself.
“Damn it, Tombstone! Where are you? What are you doing on this channel?”
“I’m on the back side of a ridge west of Arsincevo. We’re having a little trouble getting through to the beach. Think you can help us?”
“I’ll see what I can do. Give me your tacsit.”
He began describing their situation.
Tomboy was out of missiles, but she still had the Tomcat’s left-mounted M-61A1 20mm rapid-fire gun, and almost five hundred rounds remaining of her original 657. She dropped through the sky, leaving the furball of the mass aerial battle above and behind, flashing in an instant low above the row upon row of fuel tanks, and the twisted, black columns of smoke marking dozens of raging fires.
That ridge… that would be where the Boychenko Russians ? and Tombstone ? were holding off the approaching naval infantry detachment.
“Okay, Tombstone,” she said. “I see the ridge. Talk to me.”
“We’ve got three, maybe four PT-76 tanks,” he told her. “They’re on the east side of the ridge, moving toward the top in a line-abreast formation, about two hundred meters from the crest. I can see them pretty well from here. Doesn’t look like there’s too much ground cover, so you ought to have a clear shot.”
“I think…” She stared ahead through her HUD, straining to see.
“Watch it, Tomboy,” Hacker called from the rear seat. “I’ve got a Gun Dish paint!”
“Ah, Tombstone, this is Tomboy,” she called. “Your band of gypsies happen to have a Zoo in the parade?”
“That’s a negative, Tomboy. No Zoos.”
“Okay. We’ve got one in the area. If you see it, give me a yell, will you?”
“Will do.”
There they were. She could see the tanks now, four of them stretched out in a line almost directly ahead. She only had an instant to react, and she had to aim and fire by instinct. Her thumb closed on the trigger, and she felt the vibration as her six-barreled Gatling gun screamed white death at four thousand rounds per minute.
A white cloud appeared on the naked slope of the ridge just short of the first amphibious tank. Holding the aircraft steady, she walked that cloud along the slope, sending it smashing into the first tank, then adjusting slightly to the left to hit the second.
At better than four hundred miles per hour, she roared overhead so fast that the terrain was a gray-brown blur, though she had a brief instant’s impression of men in camouflage uniforms on the ground, some running, some falling, some simply standing and staring up at her with mouths agape. One tank, at least, was burning, and she thought she’d hit another one, but now she was out of sky and out of time. She pulled back on the stick, climbing hard.
Tombstone and Pamela were peering over the shattered wall of the building when the Tomcat rose from behind the crest of the ridge, a huge, gray bird riding fire and thunder. An explosion fireballed on the ground beyond the crest.
“You know, Matt,” Pamela said as the F-14 clawed for sky, turning back over the Arsincevo Valley with sun flashing from its wings, “I’m beginning to think she’s more your type. I think you must have a lot in common with her.”
Tombstone looked at Pamela, defensive… and then he saw her tired smile. He grinned, a bit ruefully. “Maybe you’re right. I do like her style!” He still couldn’t deny the feelings he had for Pamela, but he was able to accept the simple, cold fact that their relationship really did have no future. He understood, he thought, what Pamela must have been going through and why she wanted to end their relationship.
And maybe, after all, that would be best.
Tomboy was bringing her F-14 in for another strafing run.
He stood up behind the wall, exposing himself to fire from below so that he could see. Dust and smoke erupted from a third PT-76; from further down the valley, a squat, ugly-looking tracked vehicle with a low, open turret slewed quad-mounted 23mm cannons and opened fire. “Tomboy!” he yelled. “ZSU on the road-“
“I’m hit! I’m hit!” he heard her calling. White smoke was streaming aft from her Tomcat as she hurtled past the east face of the ridge, angling toward the sea eight miles away.
“Tomboy!”
“I’m… okay,” he heard her say. “We’re okay, but I don’t think we’re going to make it back to the Jeff.”
“Get some altitude!”
