swooping down with his gun blazing — like an angel of doom. Or the bloody Red Baron. To kill. Jiro Kimura knew all of that because he knew the other pilot. His name was Sasai. He was just twenty-four, rarely smiled, and never made the same mistake twice. This was only Sasai’s third one-on-one flight, but he was learning quickly. just now, Kimura wanted to make Sasai think that he had an opening when he really didn’t. Kimura rocked his wings violently from side to side, first one way and then the other. He was also feeding in forward stick, unloading the plane and accelerating, but Sasai couldn’t see that from two miles above. All he could see were the wings rocking, as if Kimura had momentarily lost sight and was futilely trying to find his opponent. Sasai turned to arc in behind Kimura and put his nose down, committing himself. Kimura waited for several seconds, maybe our, then lit the afterburner and pulled his nose up. The G felt good, solid, as the horizon fell away. Jiro Kimura loved to fly, and this morning he acknowledged that fact to himself, again, for the thousandth time. To fly a state-of-the-art fighter plane in an endless blue sky, to have someone to yank and bank withand try to outwit, then to go home and think about how it had been while planning to do it again tomorrow — what had life to offer that could possibly be sweeter?
When he was vertical, Kimura spun around his longitudinal axis until his wings were perpendicular to Sasai’s flight path; then he pulled his nose over to lead Sasai, who was now frantically trying to evade the trap. Because he was slower, Kimura could turn more quickly than the descending plane, could bring his gun to bear first.
Jiro Kimura pulled the trigger on the stick.
“You’re dead, Sasai,” Kimura said on the radio, trying to keep the satisfaction out of his voice. “Let’s break it off and go home.”
Sasai rendezvoused on Kimura, who consulted his GPS display, then set a course for base. They were over the Sea of Japan above a broken layer of low clouds. Kimura checked his fuel, verified his course on the wet compass, then stretched. The silver airplanes, the sun high in the blue vault overhead, the sea below, the clouds and distant haze — if heaven was like this, he was ready.
If Shizuko could go, too, of course.
He felt guilty that he was contemplating paradise without Shizuko. Then he felt silly that he was even thinking these thoughts.
Well, maybe it wasn’t silly. Real combat seemed to be coming, almost like a terrible storm just over the horizon that no one wanted to acknowledge. We make plans, for next week, next month, next year, while refusing to acknowledge that our safe, secure little world is about to disintegrate.
Jiro looked across the invisible river of air flowing between the planes and saw Sasai in his cockpit. He was looking Jiro’s way. They stared at each other’s helmeted figures for a moment; then Jiro looked away.
Kimura was the senior officer, and leader, of his flight. Then came Ota, Miura, and Sasai. They would fly together as a unit whenever possible.
Alas, Sasai was green, inexperienced. He knew how to use the new Zero fighter as an interceptor, utilizing the radar, GPS, computer, and all the rest of it, but he didn’t know how to dogfight, to fight another aircraft when it was out of the interception parameters.
Neither Ota nor Miura was particularly skilled at the craft, either. The colonels and generals insisted that Zero pilots be well trained in the use of the state-of-the art weapons system, that they know it cold and practice constantly, so all their training had been in using the aircraft’s system to acquire the target, then fire missiles when the target came within range.
“What will you do,” Kimura asked the three pilots on his team, “if the enemy attacks you as you are taking off?”
His junior wingmen looked slightly stunned, as if the possibility had never occurred to them. Their superior officers, none of whom were combat veterans, reasoned that the plane’s electronic suite was the heart of the weapons system, the technological edge that made the new Zero the best fighter on earth: the airframe, engine, and wings existed merely to take the system to a point in space where it could be employed against the enemy. The never-voiced assumption almost seemed to be that the enemy would fly along straight and level while the Japanese pilots locked them up with radar, stepped the computer into attack, and watched the missiles ripple off the racks and streak away for the kill.
The senior officer in the air arm had been quoted as saying, “Dog-fighting is obsolete. We have put a gun in the Zero for strafing, not shooting at other airplanes.” Indeed, the heads-up display — HUD — DID not feature a lead-computing gunsight.
Jiro Kimura didn’t think air-to-air combat would be quite that easy. Whenever they were not running practice intercepts, he had been dog-fighting with his flight members. They didn’t get to do this often; still, they were learning quickly — even Sasai.
They should be able to handle the Russians.
Ah yes, the Russians. This morning at the weekly intelligence briefing, the wing commander had given them the word: Siberia, two weeks from now. “Study the Russian air force and be ready to destroy it.”
“Two weeks?” someone had murmured, incredulous.
“No questions. This information is highly classified. The day is almost upon us and we must be ready.”
Jiro raised his helmet visor and used the back of his glove to swab the perspiration from his eyes. After checking the cockpit altitude, he removed his oxygen mask and used the glove to wipe his face dry. He snapped the mask back into place and lowered his visor.
“It will be a quick war,” Ota had predicted. “In two days they will have nothing left to fly. The Migs, even the Sukhoi-27’s, will go down like ducks.” Jiro Kimura said nothing. There was nothing to say. Whatever was going to happen would happen. Words would not change it.
Still, after he had suited up in his flight gear, before he and Sasai went out on the mat to preflight their planes, he had called Bob Cassidy at the American embassy in Tokyo. Just a short chat, an invitation to dinner three weeks from now, and a comment about an alumni letter Jiro had received from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
He dismissed Russia and Cassidy from his mind so he could concentrate on the task at hand. The clouds ahead over Honshu looked solid, so he and Sasai were going to have to make an instrument approach. Jiro signaled his wingman to make a radio frequency change to air traffic control; then he called the controller.
Three men were waiting for Bob Cassidy when he came out of the back entrance to the embassy. At least he thought there were three — he arrived at that number several minutes later — but there might have been more. As he walked along the sidewalk, they followed him, keeping well back — one behind, one on the other side of the street, and one in a car creeping along a block behind. The guy in the car was the one he wasn’t sure offor several minutes. This was a first. Cassidy had never before been openly followed. He wondered about the timing. Why now?
The one behind him on his side of the street was about medium height for a Japanese, wearing glasses and some sort of sport coat. His stride proclaimed his fitness. The one across the street was balding and short. He wore slacks and a dark pullover shirt. Cassidy couldn’t see the driver of the car. If there were three men he knew about, how many were there that he didn’t?
Undecided as to how he should handle this, he walked the route he always took toward his apartment. When he’d reported to the embassy fifteen months ago, he’d had the choice of sharing an apartment inside the embassy compound or finding his own apartment “on the economy.” He chose the latter. Without children in school or a wife who wanted to socialize with other Americans, it was an easy choice. These men had been waiting for him. They must know where he lived, the route he usually took to get there. They must have followed him in the past and he just hadn’t paid attention. Well, maybe his conversation with Jiro had made him apprehensive, so that was why he was looking now. Actually, he admitted to himself, he felt guilty. Jiro shouldn’t have talked out of school. Oh, he was glad he had, but still … Cassidy felt guilty. A block from home, just before turning a corner, he paused to look at the reflection in a slab of marble siding on a store. The balding man was visible, and, just turning the far corner, the car.
Bob Cassidy went into his apartment building. He collected his mail at the lobby mailbox, then rode the elevator to his floor and unlocked the door to his apartment. He didn’t turn on the light. He sat in the evening twilight, looking out the window, trying to decide what to do. They must be monitoring the telephones at the base, or at the embassy. Jiro was the only member of the Japanese military who had ever told Cassidy anything classified. Oh, as air attache, he routinely talked to Japanese military men, many of whom were personal friends. A dozen of his contacts even held flag rank. The things these soldiers told him were certainly not secrets. He collected common, everyday “this is how we do it” stuff, the filler that military attaches all over the world gather and send
