herself forward brought on waves of agony that threatened to rip her consciousness from her. She still couldn’t breathe well, but traces of oxygen were somehow seeping into her lungs. She held on hard to her consciousness and crawled.
The soldier watched as the compound below him exploded. He was far enough away to be well clear of the devastation, positioned just to the east of the path the attacking aircraft would use to clear the area. It was a good position, a fine position, one he’d carefully scouted at General Arkady’s request. He’d been particularly careful to select a vantage point that would almost guarantee him a direct hit.
More secondary explosions now, the muffled
Soon, very soon now. He had seen the aircraft inbound then lost them briefly behind another rise. The increasing smoke and fire was a problem as well, but he’d taken that into account in selecting his position and the prevailing winds were carrying most of it away from him. He’d have five seconds, maybe six. More than enough time to sight the Stinger in on the aircraft, follow it for a moment to make sure he had a lock, then toggle off the missile. A second Stinger canister lay at his feet, just a precaution. He doubted he’d have time to use it, but it was necessary insurance in case something had been damaged in the climb to the hilltop on the first missile.
He could still hear the aircraft engines, even over the explosions, the roar of the fire and the faint screams coming from the camp. The aircraft sounded higher in pitch now, indicating that they’d changed course and were heading back toward him. He shifted the missile slightly on his shoulder and peered through the sighting mechanism, ready for his target.
All of the planning, all of the preparations had been conducted with the utmost secrecy. General Arkady himself had approved the final plans, his site selection, and his chief of staff had personally brought the two Stinger tubes to his house in town. You could tell when professional military men were involved, the patina of expertise applied to the entire mission.
There was only one thing that puzzled him, a question that he hadn’t dared to ask. He suspected he knew the answer, but the less he knew, the more likely he was to survive the aftermath of this attack.
Just why did General Arkady want him to shoot down a Greek Tomcat?
Sweat rolled down Helios’s neck, soaking into the gold Nomex shirt he wore under his flight suit. The damp fire-retardant fabric chaffed again the stubble of beard, creating an almost unbearable itch. Helios took his hand off the throttles long enough to run one finger around the inside of his collar and chase it. Perhaps he’d made it worse by not shaving this morning, but it was a squadron tradition that men went into battle unshaven. Exactly why, he’d never figured out, but such was the case with many traditions.
He dug one nail into the worst spot and scratched, his eyes still keeping up the scan between sky, instruments, and wingman. The scan, the all-important scan — too many aviators died when they let themselves get distracted and failed to keep up their scans. They forgot that the single most important priority, no matter what other hell was breaking loose, was to fly the aircraft.
Finally the itch abated. He placed his hands back on the throttle and tweaked up the volume on the squadron common net. The howls of triumph and exclamations of exhilaration were still crowding the airwaves. He’d give them a few more minutes to glory in the results of the attack before he ordered circuit discipline restored for their approach on the airfield.
He’d just reached for the transmit switch when he noticed the thin tracer of smoke off to his left. His eyes sought it out, and alarms started going off in his head before he’d fully consciously comprehended what he was seeing. His hands were already moving, throwing the lead Greek Tomcat into a hard break to the right.
The circuit went dead as the other pilots saw his maneuver, then the reason for it. The orderly formation disintegrated into a mass of aircraft scrambling for altitude and distance.
Helios’s Tomcat had just turned through ninety degrees when the Stinger found it. The RIO had decided that despite the maneuver, they weren’t going to outrun the missile. His hand was tight around the ejection handle and yanking down as the missile found him.
Helios couldn’t be sure exactly what was happening. One moment he was in his aircraft, riding home on the joyous cries of the rest of his squadron. The next he was hurtling through the air, stripped of the comforting protection of his Tomcat, the wind battering him like sandpaper and howling in his ears. There was a brief moment of silence as he reached the apogee of his ejection arc from the aircraft, a moment when the wind seemed to die down to nothing and he hung motionless in the air. A fleeting sensation of every dream he’d ever had about flying like a bird — then the air around him exploded into fire, sound and fury. The force tumbled him away from the aircraft, sweeping him before it like so much debris. He somersaulted in the air, head over heels with his ejection seat straps still holding him hard in the seat. Just at one of the rare moments when his feet were toward the earth, the parachute deployed. The force jerked him up and away from his tumbling descent toward the earth as though he were a puppet.
He stared up, panicking, wondering if the parachute had caught him at the right angle or whether it would spill open and send him plummeting to the ground without a hope of survival. He held his breath, hanging motionless for a moment until he was sure the chute had taken a solid bite out of the air, then swiveled around to look for his backseater.
There were no other chutes. He could see the other Tomcats splayed across the sky, saw one brave soul break off and head back down toward him. He twisted in his seat pan, trying to look behind him to see if his backseater had somehow made it out, but the parachute held him oriented toward the west.
At least his chute had opened. His mind was racing now, going through the ejection procedures they’d drill so often in preparation for just this moment. The swaying motion of the parachute was increasing, inducing nausea, although it seemed like the earth was moving rather than him. He caught the risers, pulled around to stabilize the chute and took another look for his wingman.
There, off to the north. A chute, collapsed and streaming behind a dark figure underneath it. He felt a wash of anger that his backseater would die so, coupled with a feeling of relief and gratitude that he’d survived himself.
The ground was racing up toward him now, harder and faster than he remembered from his practice jumps. He drew his knees up and tried to remember how to relax and let his legs take the shock, already mentally walking through the steps.
Something hard slapped against his face. He took his hand off the risers long enough to touch it and saw blood on his hand when he drew it back. Another hard sting on his leg, then a thin streamer of blood coursing out, some of it soaking into the fabric of his shredded flight suit, the rest keeping pace with his body as he fell. He felt a brief sensation of increasing speed and looked up.
Dread flooded through him. The parachute above him was spattered with spots of blue and red — no, not spots.
One of the risers parted, the upper segment flailing against the canopy while the part he held still clutched in his hand wrapped itself around his wrist.
He was screaming now, damning the gods and the fates that would let him survive the missile, survive the ejection only to be destroyed a mere three hundred feet from the safety of the ground.
The ground. It was rushing up at him now at an incredible rate, each individual feature now distinct and dangerous. He tried to steer the remnants of the parachute toward a patch of cleared ground and grass, but more risers were being severed each second.
He seemed to be level with the ground now, and in a moment of insanity he wondered whether he’d already landed. Landed, and survived.
Then he hit. His feet touched down first, knees bent as he’d been taught, and hope lasted a moment longer. He felt as much as heard an odd, ominous
