The chief of staff touched him. “Comrade Commander, can I help you?”
“I’m all right,” Anton said, pushing by. “I’m all right. I’ll be back in a moment.”
He blundered at the tentage, extricating himself with difficulty. Outside, he had to step carefully across deep ruts cut by the vehicles as they positioned themselves between the trees. He looked around, trying to spot the perimeter guards. He did not want anyone to see him.
His intestines bit him again, struggling to empty themselves. Anton staggered. He decided that he could not worry who saw him. He touched a tree trunk for stability and caught himself around an antenna line. He broke free in an angry fit, charging past the tethers. Bushes caught his trousers.
He forced himself to march a little longer, to put a few low shrubs between his act and the field command post. Then he tore at his clothing, stripping down. He lowered himself against the trunk of a tree in his agony, straining to crouch on burning calves.
He knew he had failed. He had failed at everything for which he had spent his lifetime preparing. Now his father was trying to rescue him. He had even corrupted his father.
Anton stared, sweating, up through the trees. The sky shone a hot, magnificent blue. He wheezed, waiting for his body to finish punishing him. He felt that all of his strength was at an end.
The roar of the jets came up fast. They flew very low. It was a big, rushing noise, commanding in its power. The jets, he thought. Already. His father had sent him these gifts.
But the forest began to burn around him. He was on his side, lying in dampness. Another blast picked him up and slapped him against a tree. He sagged, crying. The noise engulfed him. He wasn’t certain whether the ground was shaking or if he was shaking on top of it. He felt as though he were tumbling. He was tumbling in the waves, playing with Zena. It was Cuba, and the sea was salty and warm, and the sky was a splendid cloudless blue. And the sun. The sun came closer and closer. And he rolled in the sea. It was too rough for Zena. He called to warn her. And the enormous sun came closer still, colliding with the earth.
Anton opened his eyes. Everything around him was on fire. Then he realized that he was burning, too. His hands were burning. The rags around his ankles were burning.
He scrambled to his feet, stumbling, waving the torches of his hands.
Zena, he cried out, or thought he cried out. Father. Not like this, god, not like this.
Twenty-three
Sobelev had lost his confidence. He expected death to come up and meet him on each next flight. He had worn himself through fear into resignation. He would go on doing his technical best to kill the enemy until the enemy killed him. The losses on both sides had scoured the skies of the masses of aircraft evident, despite the poor weather, on the first day of hostilities. Now the air efforts were concentrated against key points, and there were great expanses of nearly vacant skies.
Sobelev flew low. He would have liked to fly even lower, but the number of losses to power-line strikes had been appalling. There were too many towering pylons, with their long, ropy lines set like nets to catch the very best pilots.
He had lost his wingman on a run against the autobahn bridge between Wiesbaden and Mainz. He hit his target, but the strike did not seem to do any significant damage. His lieutenant went down and the bridge stayed up — it was an enormous structure — and the enemy retained its use.
It took all of Sobelev’s experience and talent to fly the aircraft now. Exhausted, he continued to worry that his own error would get him before the enemy did. He had a terribly difficult mission this time. Close support of ground forces in a battle with no clear front line. He had never believed that pilot training for close air support was really adequate, but he prided himself on his professional skills, and he did his best to improve himself. He had spent endless hours in the flight simulator, although he never really felt that the simulations were of sufficient quality. The voice commands never had the panic encountered on a real battlefield. Still, whatever the deficiencies of the system, the ground troops continued to scream for air support.
“Zero-Five-Eight, Zero-Five-Eight, I think I’ve got you on my radar.” It was the target control and identification post. “Is your wingman hugging you tight? I can’t discriminate.”
“This is Zero-Five-Eight. No wingman. Solo sortie.”
“Roger, Five-Eight. I am vectoring you on an azimuth of two-four-five from your known point. You are about to become army property.”
The ground rushed by under the belly of the aircraft, and the treetops seemed to surround the fuselage. Sobelev’s tired mind fought to maintain control, to make everything hold together.
“Roger, I have the known point.”
“You’re in the box, Five-Eight. Passing you directly to your tactical controller.”
A new voice came up. “North Star, this is Orion. Passing this one directly to the forward.”
“Roger, Orion. Did you copy that, Five-Eight?”
“Heading, two-four-five,” Sobelev confirmed. “Waiting for voice from your forward.”
Sobelev did not like this kind of mission. He preferred to know in advance exactly what kind of target he was going in after and exactly where it was located. But the Third Shock Army sector was apparently in trouble, and every available aircraft had been scrambled with only the vaguest of mission briefings. Now Sobelev had no idea if he would be directed against tanks or infantry, artillery positions or an enemy command post. And any one of those targets would be very, very difficult to identify from a hurtling aircraft flying low. The controller on the ground had to do his job correctly, or the mission was wasted.
Sobelev flew right through an artillery barrage. The aircraft shook and nearly bolted from him. We’re down in the shit now, he thought.
“Unidentified forward, this is Five-Eight. I’m climbing. Tell me when you have me visual.” Sobelev mastered the aircraft up into the sky, hoping that none of the air-defense troops, either Soviet or enemy, would decide to knock him down.
Everything went incredibly fast. Below him, lines of military vehicles crowded the roads, and clusters of equipment blurred by in the fields where units had deployed. In most cases, it was impossible to identify the vehicle types. Columns of smoke marked a nearby engagement, and islands of fire soon developed into an archipelago along the trace of the main road.
“Five-Eight. I have you visual,” the forward air controller called. “Decrease speed.”
Like hell, Sobelev thought.
“Marking own troops with green flares,” the controller said, rushing the words. “Hit the far treeline, hit the treeline.”
Just in front of his aircraft, Sobelev caught sight of the flares arching into the sky above billows of black smoke.
“Visual on your markers. Here we go.”
Sobelev corrected slightly on the flares and searched beyond the smoke for the designated treeline in the last quick seconds. He thought he had it, hoping it was the correct one. Terrain features rushed up so fast he could not see any enemy vehicles at all. He saw nothing but a fringe of trees.
He half heard the controller verifying that he was on the correct heading as he cast off his ordnance. Ground-attack aircraft had stopped doing initial orientation passes after the first day of the war.
Behind his tail section, the entire planet seemed to shake. The aircraft shimmied, and Sobelev prayed that it would just hold together and do what his fingers ordered it to do. He came out in a hard turn, heading back toward home.