afterburner while simultaneously turning hard to the left. His last few rounds caught the engine intake and the right engine exploded into flames.
The pilot in the cockpit was motionless. As Thor flashed by, he caught a glimpse of the shattered helmet, the spreading redness coating the inside of the cockpit.
Just as he cleared the other aircraft, it erupted into flames. The force of the explosion buffeted him as he swept by, tilting the tail of his Hornet up slightly.
“Two of them,” Hopalong shouted, victory plain in his voice. “Ain’t nothing can mess with a Marine Hornet,
Despite the jubilation in his wingman’s voice and the sheer relief of being free of the fighter on his tail, Thor felt a creepy sensation. Splash a Tomcat — not something he’d ever thought he’d hear a Hornet pilot say. Tomcats were American aircraft, or owned by America’s allies across the world. You fought side-by-side with them, not against them.
“Where’s everybody else?” Thor asked, scanning his own HUD and answering the question even as he asked it.
“To the west,” Hopalong answered. “Hot Rocks and Lobo are taking on the one that’s left in their pair, and the rest of them are out of action.”
“Maybe. So where the hell did they go?” Thor asked. He looked down at the fuel gauge and groaned. The two short spurts on afterburner had been critically necessary, but he’d expended over half of his remaining fuel. “And more importantly — where the hell are
“Not to worry, Thor.” Lobo’s cool, sardonic voice came over the circuit just as the final enemy Tomcat burst into flames. “That’s the good thing about carrier aviation. You take your airfield with you.
“What about the rest of our people?” Thor asked. “We can’t just leave them back there.”
“We can and we will,” Lobo snapped. “What exactly did you plan to do, strafe the airfield then dive bomb on your empty fuel tanks?”
“Marines don’t leave Marines behind,” Thor countered.
“They do when there’s no other way. Now get your ass into formation and let’s plug and suck. We’ll pick up some reinforcments and be back. And this time, we’ll be ready for them.”
Thor clicked his mike twice in acknowledgment. Cassidy moaned softly and said, “Man, I love it when she talks dirty.”
By the time the air was crowded with aircraft overhead, Pamela had covered another one hundred yards. The wall of trees loomed up at her another forty feet away, dark and alluring as the waves of noise and destruction washed over her. The pain in her shoulder, the same one she’d injured before, was gnawing at her consciousness now, insisting that life would be so much easier if she’d just stop moving for a few moments — maybe a minute, no longer, just enough time to let it ease up some. A short rest, that’s what she needed. Very short. And then she’d go back to crawling on gouged and bloody hands and knees toward the forest so far away.
She’d just started to let herself sink down to the ground when two arms clamped down around her waist. They lifted her, taking the weight off her screaming shoulder, and just for a moment she thought she was flying through the air again, experiencing those pain-free moments she’d had before hitting the ground.
Then the bottoms of her feet found the ground underneath them and the arms slid up higher, rucking her blouse high around her armpits. “Come on, lady, you can walk. Get moving.”
Through a blur of pain and disorientation, she stared at the face. Familiar, she knew him… where had she…?
Murphy. The last few minutes and hours came crashing back down on her, sending her reeling in his arms. “Come on,” he said, and swore quietly. “We got to get out of here.”
She stumbled along, regaining her balance as she went, with one of Murphy’s arms still around her waist. It went faster now, and she could see that the tree line was just in front of them. She wiggled in his arms, twisting back around for a look at the aircraft in the sky. Two were just breaking to either side of the camp, low enough that she could see the markings on the tail assemblies as they climbed away from their targets.
Greek. She squinted back toward their course and saw the second wave. More Tomcats — Greek? No, the lighter aircraft just behind them were Hornets, so the Tomcats were probably American. And probably off
“Damn you, can’t you stop for a single moment?” With a vicious jerk on her injured shoulder, Murphy dragged her into the stand of trees. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
She pulled free of him, cutting off the low moan that rose involuntarily in her throat as pain shot through her shoulder. “Yes, I get it. If I didn’t, I’d still be back in the camp.”
“Easy,” he said, and forced a canteen up to her lips when she’d emptied her stomach. “You’re safe now.” The ground shuddered under them as secondary explosions from the first wave of bombs tore through the structure she’d just been in. Panic reeled through her. A thin laugh broke out from her lips. Safe — as if she’d ever be safe again, as if the term had any meaning whatsoever with five hundred pound bombs pulverizing the ground so close by.
As if reading her thoughts, Murphy said, “We’ve got to keep moving. They get off course a little, we’re toast.”
Pamela drew in a deep, shuddering breath and fought for her self-control, reaching deep for reservoirs of strength she wasn’t certain she had. Somewhere inside, she found an iron core of determination founded on the realizations she’d had on her role in the world. “I’m okay now.” She looked up into his battered face, then down as his bare feet. “Thanks. I wouldn’t have made it without you.”
He looked away. “It’s okay. Just don’t do anything stupid and get me killed, all right?”
She nodded. “Can you walk?” she asked, pointing at his bleeding and battered feet.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Let’s go, then. Which way?”
He pointed deeper into the woods, and said, “We’ll break out before long, but right now the only thing I care about is getting away from ground zero, you know? We’ll worry about making our way back into Greek territory after the bombing stops.”
“Okay.” She looked back toward where she’d come from and saw that she’d managed to drag her camera all the way along with her. “I need that.” Without waiting for his agreement, she covered the forty feet separating her from her gear, snatched it up with her good hand, then ran back into cover with him. “We can go now.”
He shook his head in disgust. “Like I said — you never stop, do you?”
She started to explain, then settled for, “You’re right. I don’t.”
The stand of trees proved to be far too small to even be called a copse. Instead, it was a narrow strip running between two cultivated fields and the larger stretch that held what had been the Macedonian’s camp. They broke out on the other side of it only four minutes after they started walking.
“Which way?” Pamela asked.
He pointed back in the direction the fighters had come from. “That way. We can stay in cover for a while longer and at least we know we’re traveling in the right direction. I’ll recognize some of the landmarks as we go, although they’re going to look different from ground level than they did from the air.”
They moved more slowly now, conserving their strength. The sound of the explosions gradually grew fainter, not as much due to any great distance that they covered but simply from the screening effect of the trees. Within a few minutes it started to sound like distant thunder again.
