war movies, but different when you’re really in it.”
“Da,” Komanov agreed. It was no fun at all, even in his bunker, but especially out here. The sergeant lit up a cigarette, a Japanese one, and held on to the overhead grip to keep from rattling around too much. Fortunately, the driver knew the way, and the Chinese artillery abated, evidently firing at random target sets beyond visual range of their spotters.
It’s started, Jack,” Secretary of Defense Bretano said. ”I want to release our people to start shooting.”
“Who, exactly?”
“Air Force, fighter planes we have in theater, to start. We have AWACS up and working with the Russians already. There’s been one air battle, a little one, already. And we’re getting feed from reconnaissance assets. I can cross-link them to you if you want.”
“Okay, do that,” Ryan told the phone. “And on the other issue, okay, turn ’em loose,” Jack said. He looked over at Robby.
“Jack, it’s what we pay ’em for, and believe me, they don’t mind. Fighter pilots live for this sort of thing—until they see what happens, though they mainly never do. They just see the broke airplane, not the poor shot-up bleeding bastard inside, trying to eject while he’s still conscious,” Vice President Jackson explained. “Later on, a pilot may think about that a little. I did. But not everyone. Mainly you get to paint a kill on the side of your aircraft, and we all want to do that.”
Okay, people, we are now in this fight,” Colonel Bronco Winters told his assembled pilots. He’d gotten four kills over Saudi the previous year, downing those poor dumb ragheaded gomers who flew for the country that had brought biological warfare to his own nation. One more, and he’d be a no-shit fighter ace, something he dreamed about all the way back to his doolie year at Colorado Springs. He’d been flying the F-15 Eagle fighter for his entire career, though he hoped to upgrade to the new F-22A Raptor in two or three more years. He had 4,231 hours in the Eagle, knew all its tricks, and couldn’t imagine a better aircraft to go up in. So, now he’d kill Chinese. He didn’t understand the politics of the moment, and didn’t especially care. He was on a Russian air base, something he’d never expected to see except through a gunsight, but that was okay, too. He thought for a moment that he rather liked Chinese food, especially the things they did to vegetables in a wok, but those were American Chinese, not the commie kind, and that, he figured, was that. He’d been in Russia for just over a day, long enough to turn down about twenty offers to snort down some vodka. Their fighter pilots seemed smart enough, maybe a little too eager for their own good, but friendly and respectful when they saw the four kills painted on the side panel of his F-15-Charlie, the lead fighter of the 390th Fighter Squadron. He hopped off the Russian jeep—they called it something else that he hadn’t caught—at the foot of his fighter. His chief mechanic was there.
“Got her all ready for me, Chief?” Winters asked, as he took the first step on the ladder.
“You bet,” replied Chief Master Sergeant Neil Nolan. “Everything is toplined. She’s as ready as I can make her. Go kill us some, Bronco.” It was a squadron rule that when a pilot had his hands on his aircraft, he went only by his call-sign.
“I’ll bring you the scalps, Nolan.” Colonel Winters continued his climb up the ladder, patting the decorated panel as he went. Chief Master Sergeant Nolan scurried up to help him strap in, then dropped off, detached the ladder, and got clear.
Winters began his start-up procedures, first of all entering his ground coordinates, something they still did on the Eagle despite the new GPS locator systems, because the F- 15C had inertial navigation in case it broke (it never did, but procedure was procedure). The instruments came on-line, telling Winters that his Eagle’s conformal fuel tanks were topped off, and he had a full load of four AIM-120 AM-RAAM radar-guided missiles, plus four more of the brand-new AIM-9X Sidewinders, the super-snake version of a missile whose design went back to before his mom and dad had married in a church up on Lenox Avenue in Harlem.
“Tower, this is Bronco with three, ready to taxi, over.”
“Tower, Bronco, you are cleared to taxi. Wind is three-zero-five at ten. Good luck, Colonel.”
“Thank you, Tower. Boars,