those few moments they must find and kill the enemy.
David lay back in his seat and watched with fresh wonder as the sky
turned darker blue and then slowly became the mid-night black of space,
shot through with the riM prickings of the stars.
They were at the top edge of the stratosphere, high above the highest
clouds or signs of weather as known to earth. Outside the cockpit the
air was thin and weak, insufficient for life, hardly sufficient to keep
the jets of the Mirage's engines burning, and the cold was a fearsome
sixty degrees of frost.
The two aircraft slowly ran out of energy, and they came out together at
the top of a mighty parabola. The sensation of flight was gone, they
swam through the dark forbidding oceans of space and far below them the
earth glowed strangely, with a weird unnatural light.
There was no time to admire the view, the Mirage was wallowing in the
thin and treacherous air, her control surfaces skidding and sliding
without bite.
Joe was on the target, tracking quietly and steadily and they came round
carefully on to the heading, with the aircraft staggering mushily and
beginning to fall away from these inhospitable heights.
David stared ahead, holding the Mirage's nose up for sustained altitude
but already the stall warning device was flicking amber and red at him.
He was running out of time and height.
Then suddenly he saw it, seeming startlingly close in the rare air,
ghosting along on its immense wings, like a black manta-ray through the
sable and silent sea of space, ahead and slightly below them, calmly and
silently, it drifted along, its height giving it a false sense of
invulnerability.
Desert Flower, this is Bright Lance visual on the intruder and
requesting permission for strike. David's cool tone hid the sudden gust
of his anger and hatred that the sighting had released.
Report your target, the Brig was hedgin& it was a dangerous decision to
call the strike on an unknown target.
Desert Flower, it's an 11yushin Mark 1 7-11. No apparent marines.
It needed no marking, it could only belong to one nation. David was
closing fast, he could fly no slower than this, and he was rapidly
overhauling the other machine. Those huge wings were designed to float
upon the feeble air of the stratosphere.
Closing fast, he warned Desert Flower. Opportunity for strike will pass
in approximately ten seconds. The silence in his headphones hummed
quickly, and he readied his cannons and watched the spy plane blowing up
rapidly in size as he dropped down upon it.
Suddenly the Brig made the decision, perhaps committing his country to
heavy retaliation, but knowing that the spy plane's cameras were
steadily recording vital details of their ability to resist aggression,
information that would be passed quickly to their enemies.
David, his voice was curt and harsh, this is the Brig.
Hit him? Beseder. David let the Mirage's nose drop a fraction, and she
responded gratefully. Two, this is leader attacking. 'Two conforming.
He went down on the Ilyushin so fast, that as she came into his sights
he knew he had time for only a few seconds of fire.
He pressed the trigger with the aiming pipper on the spy plane's wing
roots, and he saw her rear up like a great fish struck by the steel of
the harpoon.
For three seconds he poured his cannon shells into her, and watched them
flash and twinkle against the massive black silhouette. Then he was
through, falling away below the giant's belly, with his power spent,
dropping away like the burned-out shell of a rocket.
Joe came down astern of him, backing up the attack, and in his sights
the spy plane hung helplessly on its wide wings, its long rounded nose
pointing to the black sky with its cold uncaring stars.
He pressed the trigger and the plane broke up amidst the bright flashes
of exploding cannon shells. One wing snapped off at its roots and the
carcass began its long slow tumble down the heavens.
Hello Desert Flower, this is Bright Lance leader.
Target destroyed. David tried to keep his voice level, but he found his
hands were trembling and his guts were aching cold from the spill-over
of his hatred that not even the enemy's death could expunge.
Again he pressed the button to open the flight net. Joe, that's one
more for Hannah, he said, but for once there was no reply, and after he
had listened in vain to the throb of the carrier beam for a few seconds
he closed it, and activated his doppler gear for a homing signal, and
silently followed him back to base.
Debra had been a steadying and maturing influence, but now David reacted
so wildly to her going that Joe had to continue his role of wing man,
even when they were off base.
They spent much of their leisure time together, for although they seldom
mentioned their loss, yet the sharing of it drew them closer.
Often Joe slept over at Malik Street, for his own home was a sad and
depressing place now. The Brig was seldom there in these troubled
times, Debra gone and his mother was so altered by her terrible
experience that she was grey and broken, aged beyond her years. The
bullet wound in her body had closed, but there was other damage that
would never heal.
David's wildness was a craving for the forgetfulness of constant action.
He was only truly at peace when he was in the air, and on the ground he
was restless and mercurial. Joe moved, big and calm beside him,
steering him tactfully out of trouble with a slow grin and an easy word.
As a consequence of the downed spy plane, the Syrians began a policy of
provocative patrols, calculated infringement of Israeli air space, which
was discontinued as soon as retaliation was drawn. As the interceptors
raced to engage they would swing away, declining combat, and move back
within their own borders.
Twice David saw the greenish luminous blur of these hostile patrols on
the screen of his scanning radar, and each time he had surprised himself
with the icy feeling of anger and hatred that had lain heavy as a rock
upon his heart and lungs as he led Joe in on the interception.
Each time, however, the Syrians had been warned by their own radar and
they had turned away, increasing speed, and withdrawn discreetly and
mockingly.
Bright Lance, this is Desert Flower. Target is no longer hostile.
Discontinue attack pattern. The Syrian MIG 2i's bad crossed their own
frontier, and each time David had answered quietly, Two, this is leader.
Discontinuing attack pattern and resuming scan.
The tactics were designed to wear on the q& of the defenders, and in all
the interceptor squadrons the tension was becoming explosive. The
provocation was pushing them to the edge of restraint. Incidents were
only narrowly being averted, as the hot-bloods crowded their
interceptions to the very frontiers of war. Finally, however, there had
to come intervention from above as Desert Flower tried to hold them on a
tighter leash.
They sent the Brig to talk to his crews and as he stood on the dais and
looked about the crowded briefing room, he realized that it was unfair
to train the hawk and then keep the hood over his eyes and the thong
upon his leg, to hold him upon the wrist, when the wild duck were
flighting overhead.
He started at a philosophical level, taking advantage of the regard that
he knew his young pilots had for him.