further need for the jamming support, or that it would interfere with ground ops. You could never trust a grunt. They never understood the big picture, and they thought at the speed of the human foot. Absolutely no grasp of strategic imperatives. And they died broke.
'How's everything going back there, Pete?' Tooth called to his weapons officer, who was currently sending streaks of man-made lightning through the heavens, destroying billions of dollars worth of enemy electronics.
'Just fine, sir. We're putting out so much juice we'll fry pretty near every transmitter between here and the Indian Ocean. They'll be talking with tin cans and pieces of string when the sun comes up. Tokyo's going to shit.'
'Well, you just keep up the good work,' Tooth said. Then he called the navigator. 'Jimmy-boy, you put us back in friendly airspace by dawn, understand?'
'Got it, sir.'
Colonel Johnny Tooth was fully aware that stealth technology and fifth-generation electronic defenses had rendered his aircraft as invisible in the daylight hours as at night. But Tooth nonetheless preferred flying in the darkness. It might be unreasonable, but the ability to wrap himself in the ancient cloak of night just made him feel that much more secure. Besides, he wanted to be back on the ground by lunch, since he had to place a very important phone call. Supporting the Army was one thing, but a real estate transaction was serious.
23
They crucified the men during the night and left the crosses standing just outside the gate. Akiro, who had found it difficult enough to follow Noburu across the sea of bodies, began to gag. The wind flapped the blood-soaked uniforms of the Japanese officers like wet canvas.
The Azeris had not gotten it exactly right, Noburu noted. Here a spike had been driven through the hand instead of a wrist, while on another cross a leg dangled free. Noburu recognized two of the three men as officers from the airfield. Perhaps the third man was a recent arrival he did not know. Noburu looked up at the lolling faces with their expressions of torment and wonder. Behind him, Akiro finished his dry retching.
'At least they killed them,' Noburu said, lowering his eyes to look down between the ranks of burned buildings, across the human flotsam the mob had left in its wake. 'Why?' Akiro begged. 'Why did they do this?' Noburu smiled. 'They think we're Christians. All foreigners are Christians, you see. I'm afraid our allies are not as enlightened as Tokyo might wish.'
Back inside the gates, the bulldozer resumed its grunting. Moving the bodies, clearing an entryway for the relief column that must eventually come. Otherwise, the city was very quiet. The morning light seemed crippled, misshapen by twisting columns of smoke and the smell of death. The bulldozer added to the stink, disturbing the settling filth that had been a man, its blade wrenching open another corpse's bowels. Underneath the reek of mortality the familiar smell of the oil works came sharply up from the coast. A thousand years after they shut down the derricks and refineries, Baku would still stink of oil. And death.
They were waiting, Noburu realized. Down in the labyrinth of the old city. On the waterfront. Or, farther out, in the apartment blocks built to give the workers a foretaste of paradise, and in the disease-culled slums, where families lived under worse conditions than had their most distant ancestors. The streets were empty now. The population had been driven indoors by the light of day, by defeat, plague, and exhaustion. But they were still there. Waiting.
Until the darkness returned. They would come again in the night. Noburu could feel it.
The communications center was a ruin. The intelligence officer speculated that the Americans had employed aircraft from their WHITE LIGHT program. But it was impossible to know with any certainty. The world was so full of surprises. The only thing that was definite was the burned-out stasis of the magical talking machines that directed warfare in the twenty-first century. When the interference finally stopped, only two systems remained functional: an ancient vacuum tube radio set inherited from the Soviets — with which the staff had been able to contact a loyal garrison to the north — and the main computer system. The computer was Japan's pride. It had been built to withstand any imaginable interference. The computer was the castle of the new age, wherein the modern warrior sought his last refuge. Certainly, it was more important than any number of brave Takaharas or subordinates nailed up on crosses.
A black bird flittered down onto one of the foreign dead in the street. Noburu feared some further atrocity. But the bird merely twitched its head back and forth a few times, judging the world, then settled down into the pile of rags as if nesting.
A low humming arose in the distance. The two living, standing men looked at each other.
'The relief column?' Akiro asked.
'Too soon.'
The younger man looked back down at the street with its frozen traffic of papers, glass, and death.
The humming stopped. Another detail of events that would never be explained.
It would be hours before any relief column could arrive. Perhaps even a day or more. Everything was so unsettled. Rough, relayed messages indicated that fundamentalist elements in Iran had called for a holy war against the Japanese in the liberated territories as well as against the Russians. The Azeris were fellow Shi'as, and they had obeyed the call. Perhaps the Sunni populations of central Asia would make common cause in this, as they had in the war against the Soviets. Noburu did not know. Without communications, the world was simply a question mark. But even if they made common cause now, it would not be too long before the Shi'as and Sunnis began killing one another. It was the natural way of this world, as inevitable as the seasons.
Of course, it made no logical sense. But these people lived on a spiritual frontier where the logic of other races or religions had little value. Faith was all.
The masses had responded to the green call of their god, as had some of the rebel units and formations. But others had kept faith with Japan and her military technology. Now there was a civil war within a civil war, and a fractured world was fracturing again into ever smaller, ever more uncontrollable parts. He had known it all in advance. The dream warrior had whispered to him, smiling at Noburu's folly as he attempted to reason with Iranian generals, Arab generals, central Asian generals, each of whom was only waiting for the day when he would fight the other once again, waiting for the day when the Slavs and Japanese would be gone so that the children of God could return their attention to more exclusive massacres.
A relief column had been organized to fight its way into the city from the nearest loyal garrison, according to a message received over the old HF radio. But no one knew what obstacles and ambushes were out there waiting. Ideally, the helicopters and tilt-rotor aircraft would have provided reconnaissance as well as quicker relief, ferrying in troops and ammunition and lifting out the wounded.
But the jamming attack during the night had destroyed the electronics on virtually all of the tactical aircraft in the vicinity. The only option remaining was the dispatch of an armored relief convoy — which would have to drive blindly over mountain roads. There would be plenty of time to wait and worry.
Ammunition. Above all, they needed ammunition. If the mob returned now, they could virtually stroll into the compound.
Noburu had been forced to allow the rear command post to continue to control combat operations. His shrunken staff labored to repair at least a few of the communications systems by cannibalizing others. He could have run the war through the master computer, but he recognized that such an action would be sheer vanity. He needed a functioning headquarters around him. For the moment, the rear had a broader capacity to sort out the damage and revitalize allied efforts. Given the present state of his headquarters, Noburu would have been shooting into the darkness. As it was, he could not even communicate with the rear command post by voice. So he elected to wait. To try to think clearly. He had transmitted only one firm order through the master computer: the Scramblers were not to be employed again without his personal authorization. Beyond that, there was only an emptiness, inability.
Behind him, he heard the indestructible computer singing. A quiet song of electricity and perfection. The computer was ready to do his will. The brilliant machine
