Cyborg, p.23
Cyborg, page 23
All this went well, as did the flying in the MiG-21, a beautiful machine that Steve flew through dangerously wild maneuvers at low altitude near the airfield. He found himself hammering the fighter to the very edge of its performance, and Tamara's place in the rear seat of the intercepter seemed only to goad him to more severe punishment. It was far worse for her as he wracked the MiG about in punishing high-g maneuvers that weighed her down and drained the blood from her head. She gasped for air, bore stoically his seeming rage in the airplane. Her only comment was that she hoped he would wait to kill himself until after their mission was ended.
Tamara.
He could cope with everything but this woman.
From the moment they arrived at the Scorpion base they had lived together. The situation unnerved him. The first time they were alone, when she stripped in the bedroom in front of him and he stared at her supple body, unable to resist looking at her breasts and her flat stomach, her swelling mound, she returned his stare, eyes level, her expression unclouded. "I will shower first," she said, and walked from the room. He sat in a daze on the edge of his bed until she returned, where she looked at him with curiosity. She dried her dark hair with vigorous movement.
He knew she was not flaunting, not teasing, but it drove him crazy, at once aroused and frustrated him.
She sat on her bed. "Steve."
"What is it?"
"Look at me."
He did, turned away again.
She was still on the edge of the bed, eyeing him frankly.
"We are soldiers together," she said quietly. "You and I, Steve, very soon will be risking our lives. We will depend upon one another to survive. There can be no surprises between us, nothing hidden. Do you want me to hide from you? Here," she gestured with her arm to take in the cottage, "in this small place? That would be foolish. Better to be completely free with one another."
"Any thing you say."
"Good," she said, her voice light and comfortable. She went back to drying her hair. Slowly she stopped, again gave him her full attention. This time there was something different in her voice. "You have an erection, don't you, Steve?"
He didn't believe it.
"If you are ashamed," she said, the voice softer, "I will not look at you." She placed her hand on his arm. "I am sorry," she said suddenly. "Perhaps it is… your limbs. Forgive me if I have offended you. I will go into the other room."
"No," he said quickly. "You saw all that when they were working on me." She nodded, not speaking now. "That didn't bother you. I could tell that."
"It did not bother me," she said. "I have collected the pieces of children's bodies, Steve. Including my own baby brother."
He nodded, not knowing what to say.
"And please remember I have lived with our soldiers in the field. There were times when privacy was impossible. But respect is privacy. I have been like this, nude, before the soldiers. There are times to close off one's mind."
"I suppose so," he said, still dazed.
"Besides, an erection is hardly something to be ashamed of." She smiled. "I am pleased. Now, hurry, or we will be late for dinner."
He undressed and went numbly to the shower.
It was like that the entire week when they were alone, but they never again mentioned the subject.
The last three days were the only time he accepted the relationship on her terms. There wasn't much choice. They were in final training.
Then they sweated out the ghost mission of two jet drones modified to resemble Phantom reconnaissance fighters. A Hercules transport hauled the Firebees to 30,000 feet, where they were dropped free. The drones accelerated to supersonic speed and raced directly for Afsir, climbing steadily to 50,000 feet. The Russians reacted precisely as the Israelis had planned. Radar locked onto the drones. A salvo of missiles burst upward from the defending sites and the "Phantoms" were torn apart in the high, thin air of the stratosphere. Within the hour the Israeli government voiced its denunciation of the unprovoked attack against the reconnaissance aircraft. That was the signal they were waiting for.
The strike was on.
CHAPTER 22
THEY WENT in with precise, split-second timing. The Israelis staged their fighters and fighter-bombers from a dozen different fields in Israel and scattered through the eastern half of the Sinai Peninsula. No large formations to give Russian radar the target on which they could concentrate their defensive fire. A group of fighters flew in darkness against the ever-ready defenses along the Suez Canal, the pilots using terrain-following radar that guided the planes unerringly close to the ground, lifting them through auto-slaved controls to clear hills and other obstacles. The pilots swept in against the formidable missile defenses, launched missiles that soared high through the air at supersonic speed. Each missile was packed with an electronic device that registered on probing Russian radar and sent back the false echo of a full-sized aircraft. No warheads were carried, no targets were struck along the defense line west of Cairo. But the Russians, ears ringing to the Egyptian screams of a full-scale Israeli assault by air, unleashed their missiles in a devastating barrage. The night sky over the Suez exploded into an eye-stabbing display of powerful warheads detonating from sea level to 40,000 feet.
Other fighters raced over the Mediterranean Sea, swinging in wide, curving feints from the north toward coastal targets. No plane fired a shot against the Egyptian targets, but the desired effect was established. Egyptian and Russian defense systems were saturated. Fighters were assigned intercept missions, and within a quarter of an hour after the first register of targets on the Russian radar scopes the entire enemy system was in action—and pinned down to its assigned area of responsibility.
Far to the south, to the west of the Red Sea port of Hurghada, several Israeli formations began to join in the air. Split-second timing was essential to the strike, and two dozen fighter-bombers made their initial pass just beyond the mountains flanking the Red Sea. Again the decoy missiles were the first objects to be picked up on radar. Few defensive missiles were installed in the area, and these entirely within the sprawling Russian airbase complex near Qena. Sending back their radar returns of aircraft, the decoys did their job exactly as planned. Defensive missiles fired in batteries, the powerful rocket boosters blazing fiery trails in the night sky, followed by the brilliant winking flashes of warheads exploding high above the earth. A second wave of decoy missiles howled skyward, and the second defense line of Russian missiles on the ground were fired.
It would take the best of the Russian ground forces at least ten to fifteen minutes to reload, set the guidance systems, track, and fire. They were not given that time. The fighter-bombers raced up along the mountain slopes, then arced over in flight and hurtled close to the ground toward the Qena complex. Every pilot had his selected target to hit. The pilots followed the same procedures that had proven so successful in the Six Day War. The pilots throttled back to reduce their speed, then lowered their landing gear and flaps, and went back to full power. Moving at barely two hundred miles an hour, the airplanes rock-steady, the pilots sat atop superb gunnery platforms. First the rockets, waves of explosive warheads ripping into the missile sites, power plants, antiaircraft guns, fuel dumps, warehouses, barracks, truck depots, and other facilities. As the fighter-bombers swept in closer behind their devastating rocket assault they released their loads of bombs and napalm, their accuracy pinpointed in the glare of fires already started. The initial wave cleaned up the airplanes by bringing up gear and flaps, swept around in wide, low turns and came back for devastating strafing runs with cannon fire. Behind them came a second wave with full ordnance loads. It was a repetition of the classic strikes that had destroyed the Arab air forces on the ground. This time the Israelis added several new touches. The Russian aircraft were hit hard in their sandbagged and concrete-walled revetments. Except for a group of a dozen fighters isolated near the far end of the runway, with a taxiway leading from the revetments right to the starting point for takeoff. Here the Israelis showed remarkably poor marksmanship, and the group of MiG-27 fighters survived the sudden holocaust. This particular point was, of course, completely missed in the frenzy of continuing attacks. Also missed was a single small plane that swept in to the south of the carnage, its run low over the ground unnoticed by the battered defenders. The pilot flew barely eight hundred feet over the local terrain, holding, one hundred ten miles an hour. He held his course carefully, flinched when four fighters thundered by to his right, north of his path of flight. The fighters brought the sporadic ground fire still sputtering from the airbase to bear on their roaring strike. And held the attention of almost everyone on the ground as they swept northward. Far behind them two fjgures tumbled from the small, low, slow-flying aircraft. A static line snapped taut and black nylon blossomed immediately above the falling figures. Neither jumper wore an emergency chute; there would have been no time for its use had the main canopy failed.
Steve Austin and Tamara Zigon barely felt their chutes crack open when the ground rushed up at them. The jump, like everything else this night, was timed with split-second precision. They came to earth a quarter of a mile south of a perimeter road to the airbase, rolled expertly in the sandy ground and were on their feet at once. Steve gathered up his chute and ran swiftly to where Tamara waited. "Any problems?" he asked anxiously.
She shook her head. "Quickly. The chutes." He slipped out of his harness, unfolded a trenching shovel, immediately began digging a deep hole. Tamara opened Steve's pack, removed their uniform caps that might have been lost during the jump. She dropped the pack in the hole with the chutes. Steve pushed in the shovel and used his hands to fill the hole. In the soft sandy soil it would be difficult, he hoped, to discover where the evidence had been buried.
The northern horizon pulsed with light. They took another moment to inspect one another. Their clothing was messed up and torn in several places; the uniforms showed signs of oil and smoke, and they each had facial bruises and cuts. Clear evidence of their having been in a truck that was strafed by one of the Israeli fighters. Evidence they had barely escaped with their lives. The truck? It didn't matter. If they were in the Qena complex long enough for that story to be checked out in the midst of the thundering fires and explosions, they would be in no position to go anywhere.
"Let's go," Tamara urged. They started walking to the road they knew lay several miles to the north. Steve checked his hip holster. The Russian automatic with the stubby silencer was in place. Using the silencer was a risk, but as they both knew, no one would stop to inspect their weapons unless that inspection were compelled by much more dangerous suspicion. Everything else on their persons, except the silencers, which could be twisted free and thrown away, was the genuine article. Their papers, undergarments, equipment, uniforms, wristwatches, all of it, was Russian, manufactured in Russia. Even the silencers had been obtained from a Soviet security office. "If you're in the perimeter area," Shaul Arkham told them, "use the silencers. It will let you eliminate opposition while it is still not in direct physical contact with you. Use your advantage until you must resort to something else." Good advice.
The road lay a dozen yards before them. Blood-red light glowed from the north, fires reflecting from low clouds, the flames punctuated with intermittent blasts and deep, booming thunder. They crouched behind a mound. The immediate visibility was poor but their main interest lay in what traffic might be on the road. The idea was to be spotted walking along the road, not entering it from a field. They had, by now, oriented themselves clearly. Relief maps, charts, reconnaissance photographs—all had contributed to this segment of their training. They moved quickly from the shallow ditch to the road. Steve bent down, felt it with his hand. "Asphalt," he said. "Poor shape. Gets beaten up by the sun pretty bad. But it's what we were told to expect."
They moved toward the northwest. They needed a lift, not only for speed but for its effect in getting them into the heavily guarded base complex, within the perimeter fences and guards. Their papers were in order; their identification showed them to be members of an electronic-maintenance and support organization. This gave them fairly ordinary working requirements, but it also provided them with freedom of movement throughout the entire Qena complex.
"Better have your torch handy," Tamara reminded Steve, speaking in Russian, "in case something comes along the road. Better to signal them than to have us appear out of the dark."
"Good idea." He held the Russian flashlight in his hand, glancing occasionally behind them. They had walked nearly a mile, their concern mounting at the absence of traffic, when Steve heard an engine behind their position, around a bend in the road. They stepped to the side and Steve snapped on the flashlight, moving it in a slow, wide circle. Truck headlights brought their arms up to shield their eyes. Moments later the driver flicked his lights on to dim side-runners and coasted to a stop. He shouted to them in a tongue Steve found incomprehensible, but knew was Arabic. "We're in luck," Tamara said in an aside. "No Russians with him."
She shouted back, using her own flashlight to study the truck cab. Steve saw a look of surprise on the face of the driver as Tamara—identifying herself with her papers and by voice as Captain Nina Tsfasman, and Steve as Major Alexei Kazantsev—answered him rapid-fire in his own tongue. The surprise became delight, and he turned to his helper with a sudden tongue lashing, sending that worthy to the rear of the truck to make room for the two unexpected passengers. They climbed aboard, the headlights went on again, and they were rolling down the road at nearly fifty miles an hour. Steve took every chance to study road features to the sides and ahead of them, confirming his memory of the area, anticipating specific structures or features coming up before them. Tamara spent most of the time talking with the Arab driver, whose pleasure at a foreign woman's mastery of the native tongue became almost embarrassing. Finally Tamara turned to Steve and spoke to him in Russian.
"Our friend here, his name is Hamad, tells me our cargo is a load of electrical supplies. Cables, solenoids, things like that. Does this give you any ideas?"
He thought quickly. "What part of the base is he headed for?" She turned to the driver, conversed rapidly. "Hamad says their authorization is to go directly to the central warehouse," Tamara said. "But he's worried because the warehouse may be in flames. He says the Israelis are devils in the dark and can see like bats. He's also afraid that if the attack continues the truck may be lost with its equipment and he will be in serious trouble."
Steve nodded. "Smart man, Hamad. I think he's going to be in more trouble than he imagines." Tamara looked at him sharply, not replying for a moment as the truck swerved suddenly. Hamad had just missed a large piece of smoking wreckage lying on their side of the highway.
Steve noticed that the glow in the sky was brighter, and now he could see the flames directly, with the sky waxing and waning in color as fires reflected from thick columns of smoke. "Ask him," Steve said, "how far we are from the main gate on this road."
She spoke quickly with the driver, turned back to Steve. "Ten kilometers," she said.
"That's about six miles," Steve said. "There's a bridge ahead of us, isn't there? Goes over a wadi that's dry at this time of the year?"
"There is. What about it?"
Steve kept his face straight ahead, seeming to concentrate on the road. "Can you drive this thing?"
"Yes, of course. But why?"
"We've got to get rid of Hamad and his friend before we cross the bridge." He reached into his tunic pocket for a cigarette, Egyptian, and lit up after offering one to Hamad, who accepted with repeated sharp bows of his head. "If we take the truck in ourselves, we can work our way closer to the planes. Otherwise, we could end up miles away from where we want to be, and no way to get where we want."
There was mild protest in her voice. "But how do we explain their absence?"
"We were strafed and they ran for their lives. It's our best chance, Tam—Nina."
She sighed. "You are right, of course." He could feel her body hardening next to him. "How?" she asked.
"Tell him to stop just the other side of the bridge. Be sure you know where he has the papers for the truck, though."
"All right."
"When he stops I want you to lean forward. Bend down as much as you can and—" A dull booming explosion that showered the air with fiery debris to their right interrupted him for a moment. They could hear Hamad cursing all Israelis. "When you bend down, turn off the ignition. If the road is on an incline, the gears may hold it. Otherwise you'll have to find the brake."
"I know where it is. I have driven several of these machines before." He thought of the thousands of captured vehicles from the Six Day War.
"All right. I'll be leaning over you right after we stop. Just don't move for a few moments. Then I'll have to get the other one in the back."
"What will you do?"
"Never mind. There's the bridge up ahead. Better tell him now." Tamara turned to the driver, speaking rapidly and gesturing. Hamad shook his head, his protests clear to Steve even through the language barrier. Tamara's voice sharpened, and abruptly she changed from the woman he knew to a hard-nosed female Soviet officer, her tone even in Arabic unmistakable. Hamad's eyes widened, and finally he nodded agreement. They were across the bridge and slowing. No traffic ahead of them; Steve bent to look through the right hand mirror. No lights behind. The truck stopped.
"Now," Steve said quietly, and Tamara bent down and leaned forward, reaching for the ignition key. The driver looked with surprise at her and Steve said his name sharply. "Hamad!" The Arab looked up, facing Steve directly, and his left hand, the fist closed in a steel bludgeon, whipped forward. Tamara heard a sickening, wet smack and the form beside her slumped, the front of the skull caved in. Steve was immediately out of the cab, moving to the back of the truck. He banged on the side of the vehicle and the second Arab leaned out. Steve held the fingers of his bionics hand extended and stiffened, and his hand slashed down, the metal edge striking the Arab expertly on the side of the neck. He fell from the truck with a broken neck, dead before he hit the ground.
