The War in 2020

'Assuming those aircraft have not been shot down… or have not for any reason aborted… when will the bombing mission reach Omsk?'

Takahara glanced over at the row of digital clocks on the side wall, where the staff officers could instantly compare the world's crucial time zones.

'Momentarily,' Takahara said.

* * *

'Go out and track him down,' Taylor snapped. 'You tell Tango five-five I want to speak with him personally. Now. Out.'

Taylor drew off his headset, ruined face betraying disgust. Meredith had been in the midst of a detailed coordination call with the Tenth Cav, whose jammers had no more time on station, when the rising irritation in Taylor's voice caught his attention. He finished up his business and turned to the old man.

'Reno again?'

Taylor nodded. 'The bastard's down on the ground. God knows what he's up to. His comms NCO doesn't know of any problems. But I wish the sonofabitch would follow orders.'

Meredith understood Taylor's frustration. Reno would have to do something colossally foolish before he could be disciplined — and even then the general's son would get off lightly.

'Don't let it get to you, sir,' Meredith said. 'Come on. We ought to be popping champagne corks. It's a great day. A historic day.'

'Merry,' Taylor said, looking at the intelligence officer in earnest, 'it's not over yet. This is when it gets dangerous. With everybody patting themselves on the back and trying to calculate how long it's going to be until they can get back home and give mama a squeeze. It only takes a single mistake…'

It was one of the rare occasions when Meredith disagreed with Taylor. The old man worried too much sometimes. The system had worked even better than expected. They had virtually destroyed the enemy's ability to carry on the war in sector and not a single friendly loss had been recorded. The mission was entering its final stage and they were about to turn into the last leg of the flight that would take them to their follow-on assembly areas. It was a time for Taylor to feel vindicated, avenged. The man's entire adult life had been pointed toward this day. And now he was being a spoilsport.

Meredith decided to shut up. He was feeling good, and if Taylor chose to squander the moment, it was up to him. Turning back to monitor the intel feeds, Meredith smiled to himself and played at phrasing the lines he would one day inflict on his grandchildren:

'I was with Taylor in Central Asia. Yes, sir. Me and Colonel George Taylor and the Seventh Cavalry. I was his right-hand man, you know. Why, during the battle Taylor and I were no farther apart than we are, boys. His face looked as though it had been painted up for war, just like a tribal chief. But he was a good-hearted man, really. Oh you wouldn't call him cheerful. But he was always good to me. He and I went way back, of course. Why, we were thick as thieves…'

'What the hell are you so tickled about?' Taylor demanded. But When Meredith looked around to answer, he saw that the old man was only bemused by the intelligence officer's behavior. A faint, halfhearted smile had crept over Taylor's mouth.

'Nothing, really,' Meredith said. 'I was just thinking, sir.'

'Maureen?'

'No,' Meredith said honestly, picturing his wife with her china skin and autumn hair for the first time in hours. 'No, I'm saving her for later.'

Taylor turned businesslike again. 'Let's give Manny a call and update him on the situation. Knowing him, he's probably feeling guilty as hell at missing the battle.' Meredith asked one of the NCOs to pass him the earphones for the logistics net. He glanced at the list of call signs on the wall, then spoke evenly into the microphone: 'Sierra seven-three, this is Sierra one-zero. Over.' He used his S-2 suffix.

Nothing.

'Probably smoking and joking,' Taylor said. 'Use my call sign. That'll get their attention.'

'Sierra seven-three, this is Sierra five-five, over.'

The two men waited, smiling, for Manny's anxious voice.

Taylor shook his head, almost laughing. 'You remember that time in Mexico, when—'

Meredith began frantically throwing switches. He had not been paying sufficient attention. Now he recognized the tones he was getting in the headset.

'What's wrong?' Taylor asked.

Meredith ignored him for a moment. He wanted to be sure. He called up a graphic depiction of the state of the electromagnetic spectrum to the north of their present position, roughly where Manny should be. Somewhere between Omsk and the follow-on assembly areas.

'Merry, what the hell's the matter?'

Meredith looked up from the console. 'Heavy jamming up north. Not from our side. The parameters are all wrong. The bastards might have slipped something by us.'

He commanded the ship's master computer to do a sort: identify any hostile changes in the sector to the north.

Instantaneously, the screen flashed a digital image indicating enemy aircraft flying on a northerly axis. The computer had been doing its duty perfectly. It had been programmed to alert to enemy aircraft on a convergent course with the combat squadrons of the Seventh Cavalry. The computer had known of the presence of these enemy aircraft in the sky since they had taken off. But no one had told it to report enemy aircraft passing the regiment. Responding precisely to the demands of its human masters, the computer had not found the penetrating enemy flight of sufficient interest to merit a warning alert.

'Bandits,' Meredith said.

'Project their route,' Taylor told him, his voice heavy.

Meredith had the computer extrapolate from the enemy's past and present course.

The line of attack passed directly through Omsk.

* * *

Zeederberg was frantic. He had been trying for over an hour to reach any higher station. Without success. He wanted to report his discovery of the American transport. And to make absolutely certain that his superiors still wanted him to deliver his ordnance.

He looked at the image on the target monitor for the hundredth time. One single American-built wing-in ground. What the hell did it mean? At the same time, he worried that the target would lift off before he was within range.

The sky began to pale. The on-board computers had regulated the flight perfectly. The bombs would land at dawn.

They were standoff, guided weapons, loaded with the most powerful compacted conventional explosives available, a new generation in destructive power, with a force equivalent to the yield of tactical nuclear weapons. These would be followed by the latest variety of fuel-air explosives, which would burn anything left by the bombs. The nine aircraft under his command had more than enough power to flatten the extensive industrial site.

'How long?' Zeederberg demanded from the navigator. He had asked this question so often that it needed no further elaboration. The navigator knew exactly what Zeederberg meant.

'Eleven minutes until weapons release.'

Beneath the aircraft, the snow-covered wastes were becoming faintly visible to the naked eye.

'I'm going to try calling higher one more time,' Zeederberg told his copilot.

'I told him,' Taylor said. His voice had an unmistakable tone of pain in it which Meredith had never heard before. 'I told him to get the hell out of there.'

Everyone in the cabin had gathered around Meredith's bank of intelligence monitors. One showed the unchanging image of the wing-in-ground sitting placidly on the ground at Omsk, while others tracked the progress of the enemy aircraft.

They had tried everything. Relaying to Martinez. Alerting the Soviet air defenses. But the Japanese-built penetration bombers were jamming everything in their path. Exactly as Taylor's force had done and was still doing.

Taylor grabbed the hand mike for the command set, trying again. 'Sierra seven-three, this is Sierra five-five.