Bob Cassidy couldn’t suppress a smile. They were sitting in the student union at Cal Tech, where Lacy was working on a masters in electrical engineering. With his military haircut, trim physique, and neat, clean clothing, he looked out of place among the longhaired, sloppily dressed techno-nerds, or so Cassidy thought. But to each his own. Isn’t that the mantra of our time?
“Russia.”
“I suppose you’ve been reading the news, watching the mess on TV?” Cassidy said conversationally. CNN was devoting half of each day to the invasion and half to the falling stock market, which was down to 17,800 now. Just now scenes from Vladivostok were showing on the television at the other end of the room, although the commentary was inaudible. There, a map, showing the Japanese thrusts. Two students were watching. The rest were eating, reading textbooks, holding hands, talking to one another. One was playing a portable video game. “Oh, a little,” Clay Lacy replied, glancing at the television. “But I’m so busy. If the world were coming to an end, I wouldn’t have time to do more than glance at the headlines.”
“This story is not quite that important,” Cassidy acknowledged. “Still, we could use you in Russia. You could go back to school when it’s over, maybe in a year or so. Do some flying, pocket some change, help out Uncle Sam.”
“It didn’t look like we were ever going to have a war,” Clay Lacy explained. “At least during my career. That’s why I got out. That “Peace is our profession’ BS is a real crock.”
Cassidy finished his coffee. “You aren’t CIA, by chance?” Lacy asked. “Just plain old U.s. Air Force.”
“You wouldn’t say if you were CIA, would you? You’d say you were in the Air Force.”
“You’ll have to trust me, Lacy.”
“No offense, sir.”
“Ask me no secrets and I’ll tell you no lies.”
Cassidy’s mood was growing more foul by the second. Lacy was a flake. Perhaps he would be better off without him. After a bit Lacy said, “The F-22 is one hell of an airplane,” almost talking to himself. “So is the new Zero, they tell me,” Cassidy muttered. “If a man missed this fight, he might regret it all his life.”
“I doubt that,” Cassidy snapped, Jiro Kimura flashed into his mind.
He bit his lip. “All his life, “It won’t be happy with the he might wonder,” Lacy insisted. easy,” Bob Cassidy remarked, more than a little un-way this conversation was going. Lacy looked intense. Too intense. Now Cassidy was almost certain the man was a nut. “Flying was almost a religion with me,” Lacy said after a moment. “With me and my friends. We all thought that way. Didn’t think I would ever leave it, but …” He shrugged. “That’s the way things go. I got tired of the peacetime routine. Got tired of the annual budget slashing in Congress. Tired of the eternal cutbacks and resizing and reductions in force. It’s a conspiracy, slashing the defense budget so far that America can’t defend itself. It’s a conspiracy by foreigners, to throw open our borders. They’ve always been against everything American.” Cassidy said nothing. Lacy went on, “Of course, I’ve never been in combat. Can’t honestly say how I’ll handle it, because I don’t know. I thinsteverything will be fine. I won’t pee my pants. I won’t forget to retract the gear or arm the gun. I will manage to do what they trained me to do.”
“Hmm,” Cassidy said. “I always thought I could kill someone if I really had to. If there were no choice. Then I could do what I had to do. But to go to Siberia to strap on a plane to fight Japanese pilots…, well, the whole thing is slightly unreal. Sitting here, I can feel the doubt. It’s tangible. I don’t know if I could kill anyone, Colonel.”
“Well, if you have tangible doubts, Clay, you—“
“I think I could, you understand, but I don’t know for a fact.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No one could know, until it happened to them.”
“Not everyone is cut out for—“
Lacy mused, “Maybe that’s why I’m here, instead of still in uniform.” He frowned. Now he looked at Cassidy with a start, as if suddenly realizing he was talking to a colonel. “I probably shouldn’t be saying these things,” he added hastily. “It’s a complicated world we—” I’ll think about it, sir. Let you know. Do you have a telephone number?”
Cassidy thought for several seconds before he gave the man a card. “Don’t do anything rash,” he told Lacy. “At night, I miss the flying the worst. I can close my eyes and feel myself blasting through space.”
“Think about it carefully.”
“Maybe I—“
“Kill or be killed. The Japs are pretty damn good, Lacy. The Zero drivers will punch the missiles off the rails and they’ll be coming hard. If you don’t handle it right you’re gonna be toast. Even if you handle it right, you may get zapped.”
“You tell me you want to go, Lacy, you better be sure. I don’t want your blood on my hands. I’m toting enough of a load through life as it is.”
“I’ll think it over and call you, sir,” Clay Lacy promised. When Lacy had gone to class, Cassidy put a check mark beside his name on the list. Okay, he’s a nutcase, but if he can fly the plane and pull the trigger, he’ll do.
9
“Svechin has been into the torpedo juice again.”
“Anybody else?”
“Three or four of them have been sipping it, Captain. They do it because Svechin eggs them on.”
Pavel Saratov eyed the chief of the boat, a senior warrant, or starshi michman, who averted his gaze. “They haven’t been paid in five months, sir.”
“I know that.”
“They ask why we are here.”
“There is a war. We defend Mother Russia.”
“Ha! There is no money. There is no food. There is no clothing. The electricity is off half the time. There is no medicine, no vodka, no tobacco. The politicians are all thieves, children are sick, people are dying from pollution, industrial poisoning.”
Saratov rubbed his face, then his head. The chief continued: “We don’t have a country. That is what the men say. We left our families to starve in the dark and sailed away to drown at sea. If the Japanese want Siberia, let them have it. We might be better off under the Japanese. I hear they eat regularly.”
“The men say that?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“What is your opinion?”
“That is what the men say.”
“And you? Answer me.”
The chief’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “The men think we are doomed. That we have no chance. The P-3’s will find us again. We should surrender while we are still alive.”
“And you?”
“I am a loyal Russian, Captain.” Saratov said nothing. “We might sail to Hawaii,” the chief offered tentatively. After a moment of silence, he added, “Or the Aleutians. Ask for asylum from the Americans. I wish I were an American.”
Saratov played with the chart on the desk. Off to one side lay the messages. The Japanese had taken Nikolayevsk, Petropavlosk, and Kor-sakov. The Japanese had parachuted into Ostrov and Okha on Sakhalin Island, where Russian troops were resisting fiercely, according to the Kremlin. The Japanese had attacked Magadan and Gavan — no mention by the Kremlin of Russian resistance. Unconventional warfare teams had taken four emergency submarine resupply bases on the northern shore of the Sea of Okhotsk and in the Kurils — probably less than a dozen well-trained men in each team. Saratov was certain that all these conquests had been ridiculously easy. The four sub resupply bases didn’t even have troops assigned anymore, not since the turn of the century. The officer who decoded these messages, Bogrov, had whispered the news to two friends, who whispered to friends. Every man on the boat had heard the news by now. “Bring Svechin to the control room in fifteen minutes.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
