The Lotus Eaters

Yakubovski didn't miss a beat. 'About fifty or sixty aircraft, maybe half of them strike aircraft.'

'Okay. If I can meet and defeat something that size, then they'll have to go to larger, less efficient, strike packages, that are also less deadly on a per aircraft basis?'

'Yes, which for all the reasons mentioned, plus the difficulty of planning and coordinating a major strike, will not come all that often.'

Carrera lowered his head, closed his eyes and held up one finger for silence. He pictured, in his mind's eye, a major air raid coming in to Balboa . . .

'So I need to be able to defeat a raid of sixty aircraft?' he mused.

'Something like that,' the Volgan agreed. 'If you're willing, it might be well to plan for twice that. In fact, we have.'

'What does that take?'

'Besides the barrage balloons you are calling 'Project Sarissa,' and the lavish air defense suite you are building, either two hundred or so fairly modern fighters or three to four times that in obsolete fighters with some improved capabilities. We recommend the latter.'

'Why?'

Grishkin answered. 'Partly it's cost, Duque. Two hundred modern fighters, on their own, without even counting training and maintenance, will cost more billions than you can lightly afford. Six or seven or eight hundred obsolete fighters cost . . . well,' Grishkin handed Carrera an advertisement, torn from a newspaper printed on yellow paper.

'You're shitting me,' Carrera said. 'Under twenty-five thousand FSD for a depot rebuilt Artem-Mikhail 82 Mosaic-D? That's a typo, right? They left off a zero or two?'

'No, Duque, it's not a typo. In fact, it's practically an attempt at piracy. Larceny, anyway. I ran down—I have my contacts after all—the original source for the aircraft and the markup in that advertisement has been quite high. For that price we can get the aircraft, several replacement engines, and spare parts for years of operations. And for a few hundred thousand FSD, each, we can upgrade the things to where they would have a reasonable chance of killing TU fighters and strike aircraft at about two for five. If you are willing to risk men in training, we might get that up to three for five.'

'They'll bomb the shit out of our airfields and we'll never get a plane off,' Carrera objected.

Grishkin laughed and wagged a finger. 'Oh, no, Duque. The AM-82 is very rough field capable. Moreover, we can get true vertical takeoff for them, or at least for some of them, in the form of a Zero Length Launch system. This is basically a trailer mount with a blast shield and some Rocket Assisted Take Off, or RATO, bottles mounted to the plane. They've been done. They work. Nobody's ever really used them because guided missiles took over. In your case, and Balboa's, they might make more sense.'

Carrera shrugged. Maybe. Air war was not really his forte.

'Explain to me how you see an air war developing,' he said.

Grishkin pointed. 'Fuckoffski, you're up again.'

Yakubovski stood and said, 'Still using the TU as a template, Duque, the first attack will probably come en masse. Your Air Defense Artillery would unmask, briefly, but shut down, run and hide as soon as the individual systems and batteries have any reasonable excuse to. The TU would then pound a lot of empty jungle. Oh, sure, they'll hit legitimate targets, too. We aren't saying this will be easy.

'After a day or two of that, maybe three at the most, the TU would declare 'air supremacy' or make some such meaningless public relations point.

'At that point, expect the TU to go to the more efficient conveyor belt type of operation. After putting up with that for a few days, you unmask your air defense, lift your aircraft, and attack with very heavy odds in your favor to engage a smallish TU strike package. Hurt it badly, even if it hurts you, too.

'The TU then has to revert to larger, all capacity, aerial task forces. The Legion hides for a while.

'After a bit, you could expect the TU to again declare 'air supremacy' and go back to conveyor belt operations. Once again, the Legion hits a small raid and hurts it.

'At about that point they'll try to get clever and do small raids but with a larger air to air group waiting to ambush. You ignore all such attacks until the larger group is not in evidence. Small fishing boats, coast watchers, and spies, plus whatever technical intelligence you can develop, will be important here. The effect is still virtual attrition on the TU, since planes not bombing are . . . well . . . not bombing, which is fine.'

Yakubovski sighed. 'I know, we all know, you've never told us your end game. Still, a blind man could see that, if you can drive out the TU and if the TU later lands, you must attack and crush that landing. Now imagine you can time it so that your artillery prep for that counterattack begins just as a TU air raid is departing.'

'The TU's going to say, 'Oh, shit,' and start trying to assemble a major strike package. But the ground pounders are going to be screaming bloody murder for support. Politically, that will force the TU air forces to start scrambling and trying to assemble whatever can be assembled to help the ground pounders. Then your AM-82s lift. Your barrage balloons lift. Your ADA unmasks. The TU comes in, but in small groups and facing something truly awful, old planes, but a lot of them, and with good weapons, and a thick air defense umbrella.

'You're going to pay, of course. We're undecided about whether the air force you must build will be annihilated, or just butchered. The smart money is on annihilated. But you can get the time, through expending their lives and planes, to fight and win a battle on the ground.'

Carrera looked questioningly at Lanza. His return look as much as said, They convinced me, boss. Though the idea of my boys being sacrificial lambs is not something I'm too comfortable with.

'How far along in planning are you?' Carrera asked.

'Very far,' Lanza answered. 'Costs, Tables of Organization and Equipment, training programs, instructor requirements, land usage, facilities . . . give us the money and we can start tomorrow. The boys have even done