The War in 2020

simply felt weighed down by the empty, uncomfortable drudgery of it all.

Once, he flew over a village where corpses lay at random intervals in the dirt street, bloating in the sun. Plague. His hands jerked at the controls. But the effect was ultimately no more than that of watching a troubling film clip. He simply banked his helicopter away, rising into the clean blue sky.

The last morning seemed especially clear, and the air still had a freshness to it when they took off. The mission was as routine as could be. Patrol south along the Lualaba River trace toward Zambia. No wild-assed flying. The squadron commander had delivered a stem lecture to all of the pilots the day before, after a lieutenant had nearly crashed his Apache trying to get a photo of what he swore was a cheetah. So it was going to be a day of dull formation flying, with no reason to expect anything out of the ordinary. The squadron S-2 had even stopped delivering regular threat updates.

Taylor was in a down mood, and he was unusually snappish with his subordinates over the radio. He had received word that one of his classmates from Fort Rucker, a man who was almost a close friend, had died of Runciman's disease back at the lOlst's main command post. The death was absurd, since Chuckie Moss had the least dangerous assignment imaginable — chauffeuring general officers around in the best-maintained helicopter in the division. Chuckie was recently married, a bit of a clown, and not yet thirty years old. For him to have died, when there had not even been any combat, seemed absurd and inadmissible.

Taylor's thoughts strayed in disorder. Remembering Chuckie on a wild weekend down in Panama City, Florida, his thoughts tumbled into bed with an old girlfriend. Joyce Whittaker. An absolute wild woman. He could remember Chuckie, beer in hand, laughing about the noise and declaring that old Joyce was a gal of considerably more energy than judgment. And he remembered Joyce's body glazed with sweat, her eyes closed, as the scrublands slipped away under the belly of his aircraft. The sunlight began to dazzle through his face shield, and he wriggled out of his survival vest in preparation for the impending heat.

They were barely ten minutes out of the field site when the radar on Taylor's bird milked out, its screen frothing with pale discolorations. Taylor assumed it was an equipment malfunction, since the new electronics on the A5 Apaches were finicky on the best of days, and the dust of the field site was hard on them.

'One-four, this is Niner-niner,' Taylor called to the aircraft flying echelon right to his own. 'My radar's crapping out. You've got sky watch.'

'This is One-four,' a worried voice came through the headset. 'I'm all milked out. What the hell's going on?'

Suddenly, the voice of an old chief warrant officer cut into the net from one of the trail birds:

'Goddamnit, we're being jammed.'

Taylor realized instantly that the chief was right, and he felt stupid for missing the obvious, as though he had been half asleep. No one had expected hostile activity.

'All ponies, all ponies, open order. Now. Prepare for possible contact,' Taylor commanded. Immediately, he could feel his troop's formation spread itself across the sky.

The radar screens remained useless. But no enemy appeared to the eye. Taylor wished he had a few scout aircraft out front, but the scout flights had been discontinued as unnecessary, since there was no real threat of hostile action.

'Sierra six-five, this is Mike niner-niner, over,' Taylor called, trying to raise flight operations back at the field site.

Static.

'Sierra six-five, this is Mike niner-niner. Flash traffic. Over.' Nothing. A low whining that might have been nothing more than engine bleed.

'Sierra—'

On the periphery of his field of vision, an intense flash replaced one of his helicopters in the sky. Lieutenant Rossi. In the wake of the flash, the distorted flying machine plummeted to earth as Taylor watched. The autorotation failed to work, and the ship dropped straight down and hit so hard that sections of the fuselage and subassemblies jumped away from the wreck, lofting back into the sky, as the frame disappeared in a cloud of fire.

Taylor's eyes dazzled, and the world seemed to crack into a mosaic. His voice continued to pursue a previous thought, 'Sierra six-five…'

'Jesus Christ,' a voice shouted over the troop's internal net. 'Jesus Christ.'

Taylor frantically scanned the horizon.

Nothing. Absolutely empty. Clear hot blue.

'Allponies. Take evasive action. Countermeasure suites on. ' The control panel reflected the anxious actions of his weapons officer, a new boy Taylor hardly knew. 'One-one,' Taylor ordered, 'break off and check the site for survivors… break…' Taylor radioed the chief warrant officer in the trail bird. 'One-three, what do you have back there? Somebody on our six?'

'Negative. Negative.' The chief's voice was high-pitched with excitement. It was the first time in their year-long acquaintance that Taylor had heard the least emotion in the man's voice. 'Niner- niner, that was a frontal hit. And there ain't no survivors. Rossi and Koch are dead meat, and we're going to need One-one if we get into a dogfight.' Taylor felt a surge of fury at this questioning of his authority. But, in a matter of seconds, he realized the chief was right.

He felt so helpless — there was no enemy to be seen, either in the air or on the ground.

'One-one, disregard previous instructions. Rejoin formation.'

'Roger.'

Apaches aren't supposed to crash like that, Taylor told himself. Apaches don't burn. Apaches don't break up. Apaches don't—

'Where the hell are they?' Taylor demanded of the microphone. 'Does anybody see anything?'

'Negative.'

Negative, negative.

'One-four, can you see anything?'

'My eyes are fucked up.'

'Somebody's got a goddamned laser out here. A big goddamned laser,' the chief interrupted, his voice impassioned with the suddenness of the revelation. 'That was a goddamned laser hit. I seen that shit out at White Sands.'

Impossible. The South Africans did not have laser weaponry. Nobody had tactical lasers, except for a few specialized blinding devices. Nonlethal stuff. Killer lasers were for stationary space defense, strategic shit. No one had yet managed the power source miniaturization required to make the weapons tactically feasible.

Taylor felt lost in the big, empty sky. All he could think to do was to continue flying. Even though he felt very afraid, flight suit soaking with sweat and his skin rashed red and white. He wanted to turn and scoot for the safety of the field site. But that was not the way cavalrymen behaved.

He tried again to raise flight operations. 'Sierra six-five, this is Mike niner-niner. Possible enemy contact, I say again—possible enemy contact. '

With no further warning, another of his aircraft flashed white and gold, then tumbled crazily out of the sky. This time, the Apache began to disintegrate while it was still in midair.

'Down on the deck,' he ordered his remaining helicopters. 'Get right down on the goddamned grass.' He hoped that he could hide his ships from the unseen enemy by flying absolute-minimum nap- of-the-earth. 'Taking her down,' he told his weapons officer. 'Hold on.'

He wanted to shoot back. To fire at something. He even had the urge to fire into the empty sky. Anything not to passively accept the fate of the two lost aircraft.

'There they are,' the old chief warrant officer called over the net. 'Two o'clock high.'

When he looked up through the canopy, Taylor could barely make out the distant black specks on the horizon. His eyes hurt, tearing, reluctant to focus.