Red storm rising - By Tom Clancy Page 0,199

for the first time Pavel Leonidovich Alekseyev had led-- really led!--men in combat, and he had done well. Alekseyev knew it--he had done well!

"There is no time to argue. You have your task and I have mine," the man said.

"You know the situation?"

"Fully. There is a vehicle in the back to return you to headquarters."

Alekseyev held the bandage to his head--Sergetov hadn't tied it properly--and walked out the back of the shop. Where the door had once been, he found a gaping hole. A BMD infantry carrier was there, its motor running. Alekseyev got in and found a medical orderly who clucked over the General and went immediately to work. As the carrier pulled off, Alekseyev listened to the noise of combat diminish. It was the saddest sound he had ever heard.

LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, VIRGINIA

There was nothing like a Distinguished Flying Cross to make a person happy about flying, and she wondered if she might be the first female Air Force pilot to have one. If not, Major Nakamura decided, what the hell? She had a gun-camera videotape of all three of her Badgers, and a Navy pilot she'd met in Brittany before catching a flight Stateside had called her one damned fine pilot, for an Air Force puke. After which she had reminded him that if the dumbass Navy pilots had listened to her, maybe their air base wouldn't be in a body and fender shop. Game, set, and match, she grinned, to Major Amelia Nakamura, USAF.

All the F-15s that could be ferried across the Atlantic had been ferried, and now she had another job. Only four of the 48th Fighter Interceptor Squadron's Eagles were still at Langley. The

rest were scattered up and down the East Coast, including the two pilots who were qualified for the ASAT antisatellite missiles. As soon as she'd heard that, she had made a phone call and informed Space Command that she was the Eagle driver who had worked out the ASAT flight profile, and why take a combat pilot off the line when she could handle the mission very well, thank you.

She checked to make sure the ugly missile was properly attached to the airframe. It had been taken out of secure storage and reexamined by a team of experts. Buns shook her head. There had only been one real test of the system before a moratorium had been slapped on the project. A successful test, to be sure, but only one. She hoped it would work. The Navy really needed help from the Air Force pukes. Besides, that A-6 driver was cute.

The major finished her walkaround, taking her time--her target wasn't over the Indian Ocean yet--then strapped herself into her Eagle, ran her eyes and hands over the gauges and handles, adjusted the seat, and finally input the numbers painted on the wall of the aircraft shelter into the aircraft's inertial navigation system so that the fighter would know where it was. Finished, she began to fire up her engines. Her flight helmet protected her from the shriek of the two Pratt and Whitney engines. The needles on her engine gauges rotated into proper position. Below her, the crew chief gave the aircraft a careful examination, then waved to her to taxi the aircraft into the open. Six people were out there, standing behind the red warning line to protect their ears from the noise. Always nice to have an audience, she thought, ignoring them.

"Eagle One-Zero-Four ready to taxi," she told the tower.

"One-Zero-Four, roger. You are cleared to taxi," the tower controller replied. "Wind is two-five-three at twelve knots."

"Roger that, One-Zero-Four is rolling."

Buns brought her canopy down. The crew chief snapped to attention and gave the major a perfect salute. Nakamura answered it with panache, advanced her throttles slightly, and the Eagle fighter moved off to the runway like a crippled stork. A minute later, she was in the air, a silky smooth feeling of pure power enveloping her as she pointed her Eagle at the sky.

Kosmos 1801 was just completing its southbound leg, bending around the Straits of Magellan to head north over the Atlantic. The orbital pass would take it two hundred miles off the American coast. At the ground-control station, technicians prepared to switch on the powerful sea-surveillance radar. They were sure an American carrier battle group was at sea, but had been unable to locate it. Three regiments of Backfires were waiting for information that would allow them to repeat the feat accomplished on the second day