what he had been trained to do. If anything, the boy seemed blithely happy.
Ryder's fingers worked over the keyboard as though he were a master pianist playing scales and arpeggios. Taylor, who had worked with computers for so many years, who had even forced himself to study them, despite the fact that his natural interests lay far afield, admired Ryder's confidence and dexterity. Taylor knew enough to understand the complexity of the formulae with which the warrant officer was working, but the boy made it look like the easiest thing on earth.
Such a man could have made a far better living out of uniform. Taylor wondered briefly what story lay behind the warrant officer's boyish features, what had called him so irresistibly to military service. It was one of the wonders of the world that the Army always seemed to come up with the men it needed in a desperate hour.
'Chief?' Taylor said. He could not help interrupting. 'Are we going to make it?'
Ryder brushed away the colonel's concern with a slight gesture. His fingers continued to dance over the keys. 'The tactical stuffs in a different file. They didn't set this program up to be user friendly. I mean, it's a totally different logic system. And I guess they didn't want every Tom, Dick, and Harry destroying their aircraft and tanks and stuff.'
'Chief, if you can only find one thing, find the Scramblers.'
Ryder nodded. Then he paid his full attention back to his labors.
Three heavy explosions sounded in the distance. Taylor and Meredith looked at each other.
'Those were outside,' Meredith said, putting their mutual knowledge into words.
A moment later, Hank Parker came into the room. His face was grimed and he was no longer smiling.
He held out the pork-chop microphone from the radio slung over his shoulder. 'Sir, it's Captain Zwack up in the overwatch bird. The relief columns are all over the city. He can't hold them anymore. His main gun system's gone to shit. He's trying to slow them down with his Gatling gun, but he's almost out of ammunition.'
'What's Nowak say?' Taylor asked, referencing the commander of the diversion force fighting in the building overhead and in the courtyard. 'How's the situation on the ground?'
'They all say the same thing,' Parker answered. 'It's a matter of minutes. If that. If we don't get everybody back up in the air, they'll be able to take us out on the ground.'
Taylor turned to Ryder. 'Come
Suddenly, Ryder pushed back from the console. It was a gesture of triumph. The boy was grinning, and the screen ran from top to bottom with fields of numbers.
'Got them,' Ryder cried. 'We got them. We're into the program.'
'Good work,' Taylor said. 'Let's take them out and get the hell out of here. Merry, you—'
Taylor turned. In the background, Parker's radio crackled with another message from the officer who was flying the rear guard M-100, announcing that he was out of Gatling gun ammunition and begging the raiding force on the ground to hurry before the enemy vanguard reached them. Taylor knew the officer well, a born cavalryman who was in the Army because he loved it, who could have led a life of leisure but chose instead to serve his country in black times. Taylor also knew that, despite the uselessness of his empty weapons, the officer would remain onstation until his comrades joined him in the sky. Taylor knew he would get the same sort of performance from the hardheaded raid commander slugging it out above their heads or somewhere out in the compound. That officer was an all-American ethnic Pole with a sense of honor beautifully out of place in the new century. Every man would remain at his station until the job was done.
Ryder's face had turned pale. He looked up at Taylor with an expression of helpless loss.
'What's the matter?' Taylor said calmly.
'I… I can't tell which system is which,' Ryder said. 'I don't have the right key.'
'Fuck it. Just destroy them all,' Taylor said, beginning to lose his patience.
Ryder shook his head. 'Sir… the way the program's set up… you have to destroy each system individually.' He half-turned back to the console. A flashing star identified an alphanumeric. Ryder tapped a key. The alphanumeric disappeared and the blinking star moved down to the next number.
'See?' Ryder said. 'All you have to do to destroy something is tap the control key. Right here. But you might be destroying anything. Maybe a tank. Or just a radio set. Or one of the scramblers. I can't tell. But you have to hit the key for every single number. And there are thousands in the data base.' Ryder tapped the key again, erasing another number, destroying another unidentified system out on the distant battlefield. 'It's going to take a while,' he said. And he hit the key again.
More explosions sounded from the world beyond the building. A closer blast shook the ceiling. The overhead lights blinked. But the computer had its own miniaturized power source — it was an independent world.
Ryder shifted his full attention back to the computer, striking the control key again each time the star moved down. It seemed to take two to three seconds to destroy each system. So easy. And yet.
'Give me the microphone,' Taylor ordered Parker. 'And get Kozlov in here.'
Parker handed over the mike. Meredith dashed into the hallway to fetch the Russian.
Taylor had forgotten the day's call signs. He had forgotten everything but the business at hand. 'Nowak,' he called the ground force commander, 'can you hear me?' He waited. Hoping. And then the familiar voice came heavily over the comms set. 'Bravo four-five. Over.'
'I want you to disengage. Start pulling out. Get your men loaded up as fast as you can and get into the air. Do it now. Over.'
'Wilco. You need help?'
'Negative. Just get in the air. Zwack's out of bullets. Your ships can do us more good in the air now than your men can do on the ground. We're almost done,' Taylor lied. 'Break. Zwack, you sonofabitch, don't do anything crazy. As soon as Nowak's in the air, I want your ass on the way to Turkey. We're going to exfiltrate individually, and you won't do anybody any good dead. The war's not over yet. You read me?'
'Lima Charlie.' It was the voice of a man who had chosen hard service over the safest life money could buy.
'Don't screw around,' Taylor said. 'Regard my transmission as a lawful order. Out.'
Ryder continued to punch the control key, deleting line after line. But his mood of playful competence was long gone.
Meredith brought Kozlov in from the hallway. Taylor tossed the mike back to Parker.
'Want me to cover the hallway again?' Parker asked.
Taylor considered this officer he had only recently gotten to know. They were all so brave, so fine. What a lucky, lucky country to have such men.
'No,' Taylor said. 'I want everybody to listen to me. Chief, you keep punching that keyboard with your ears open.' Taylor looked at the faces. Meredith, so handsome and bright. Kozlov, with his bad teeth and naive honesty. Parker, a little bulldog of a man. And Ryder. Time had begun to collapse for Taylor. Since he and Noburu had looked into each other's eyes. Ryder blurred into another young warrant officer, a boy hardly known, suffering in a wreck in the African grasslands. It was only a moment before that Taylor had raised his pistol, with ants chewing at his hand, to shoot a boy through the forehead. Then he had blinked his eyes and found himself here.
Ryder sat at the computer, while Taylor raised an invisible hand with an invisible pistol.
No. Never again.
Taylor settled his eyes back on Meredith. A tormented boy growing up late in the streets of a diseased city. An earnest lieutenant, standing stiffly before his commander's desk, while outside combat helicopters churned the night air above Los Angeles.
Manny was there too. And Lucky Dave. But they stood apart from Meredith and the rest of the men, forming a distinctly different group. Taylor knew to which group he belonged. He was overdue for membership.
'Merry,' Taylor said, 'you are now acting force commander. Your mission is to extricate the raiding force and get every ship and every man across the Turkish border. I'm staying.'
'
Taylor briefly closed his eyes and shook his head. 'Goddamnit,' he said softly, 'you're a soldier, Merry. And soldiers take orders.' Outside, the thumping and sputter of battle underlined each word. 'There's no more time. And there's no point in all of us…'
