John Barnes - Directive 51

Howard sniffed. “I don’t smell any—just the sulfur from those bombs.”

Lenya told them no charge, rain check, and she’d take care of paying Michiko. “Reminds me when I’m still one of the girls, back in Brooklyn,” she said. “I had me a real good customer, one day he goes out, turns on his car, boom, he’s not a good customer no more. I even gone to his funeral and cried, especially when I seen he had a pretty wife and a bunch of kids. Never did heard what that was all about. You boys ain’t have no enemies?”

“Just bums going after the recyclables,” Isaac said.

“There’s a bum in my recycling cart this afternoon. I chase him away. He tells me God loved me anyway.”

“I doubt it was him,” Howard said.

As they drove through town, keeping it to about fifteen miles per hour from fear of the gas tank and because of the shattered windshield, Isaac said, “You know, old Lenya will still be feeling generous about that rain check tonight, but she might not in a week. It’s only about three miles, we could walk back in an hour. I say we park this thing, walk on in, let Lenya spoil us, and maybe catch the last of Game Seven and have us a steak at Mary’s. Hitch a ride or take a cab after. It’s been a day.”

“Me too, on everything,” Howard said.

“Green Leader, Green Flight is authorized to cross over into Aksai Chin. The American satellites have laid you an intercept course at 321 degrees 9 minutes; we’re relaying it to your computer now—”

The flight leader passed orders to the other three planes in his flight. “Looks like we’re cleared to go get them.”

“How was it authorized so quickly?” Green Two, the pilot of one of the two fighters in the flight, asked.

Normally the flight leader would have reprimanded the excess chatter, but he was excited and nervous himself. “They told me the Americans told—not asked—Beijing and Islamabad to let us do this.”

The four Sukhoi jets of Green Flight flew on, high above the spectacular, deadly wastelands: the Aksai Chin, a flat, featureless saline desert surrounded by the high Himalayas. It could be reached by road for less than half the year, was more than three miles high with almost no rainfall, and offered death by thirst, starvation, or exposure at all times of year; three nations and one liberation movement claimed it, but not one of them would have expended a single life to maintain the claim.

China patrolled there more often than the other nations, but today India was there first with the requested flight of two fighters and two fast reconnaissance planes to the target. Swift agreement by all parties that this was strictly a favor to the Americans and reflected nothing else had been enabled by their shared perception that the United States was about to go utterly berserk.

Dawn overtook Green Flight. The old silver Sukhois glinted with steely fire in the abrupt daylight, and the missile pods on two of them, camera package on the third, and radar/communications boom on the leader stood out like diagrams of themselves.

“I have it on radar,” the flight leader reported. “Confirming orders: We are to secure as many photographs as feasible, while repeatedly warning them; if we are defied, or not answered, we are to shoot them down at the last feasible prudent time.”

“Those orders are confirmed, Green Leader.”

Feasible prudent time. I suppose it wouldn’t be prudent if it weren’t feasible, and maybe vice versa. Green Leader shrugged the thought off; the phrase was obviously just cover for his superiors if anything went wrong.

The high peaks off to their east dazzled them like monster flashbulbs as the morning sun found angles from glaciers and snowfields into the pilots’ eyes. Long, deep shadows extended across the salt plain below, crawling visibly back toward the mountains in the first moment of dawn. In late October, the mountains were piled high and deep with snow; they would have been snowcapped even in July, but for practical purposes that inaccessible, high, far land below them had been in winter for more than a month.

Coordinating with an American satellite operator, two of their own radar operators, and what must be an American observer relaying information from a Chinese or Pakistani radar, they moved in on the target. “Green Leader, this is Green Three.” That was the camera plane. “I have him on visual, Green Leader, proceeding to close with him.”

They turned to follow Three and then they all saw it: a white 737 flying at what must be about its max cruising altitude, gleaming white in the morning sun. In moments they had closed with the white plane and were circling it in the air like American Indians around a covered wagon in one of their old Westerns. The 737 neither deviated from its course nor answered any radio hails, though there was a soft hiss in one distress channel.

“Green Three, do you have a clear photo of that tail?”

“Several. Yes, and in close, you can clearly see that it used to display a red Lion Airways logo, under that runny, patchy paint. I’m going in close to see if I can see anyone in the cockpit and perhaps photograph them.”

“I’ll follow you in for a look, myself.”

After two passes, and with just thirty kilometers left in authorized airspace, Green One and Three had seen no evidence of life; the 737 continued to fly on a constant heading and altitude. Nothing moved in any window. The recon planes backed off to observe.

“Green Two and Green Four, we’re clear now. You are authorized to close in and fire at will.”

Two and Four accelerated past them, taking up positions at an angle behind the white airliner. R-73s lashed out in long white streaks. Two’s rocket blew the port engine to fiery bits, and the wing fell away; as the airliner tipped, the second R-73 tailpiped the remaining engine, stripping off the starboard wing. The airliner’s fuselage tumbled wildly downward, end over end; the rest of Green Flight circled while Green Three descended for better pictures of the impact.

The fuselage slammed into the gray-white, stony ground and vanished in a great blob of white-hot flame. Green Three peeled away; a collision with wreckage thrown into the sky might have doomed him to crash into the nightmare void of the desert below.

“Did you get spectroscopy, Green Three?” Green Leader asked.

“The instruments say we’ve got everything we’re supposed to get. That was quite an explosion. I wonder what they had on board?”

“They’ll know when they analyze your recordings, but you know they’ll never tell us . All right, let’s head for home, we have a storm coming, and I don’t want to be here when it hits.” They wheeled and headed for home, four contrails tipped with silver spearheads; with nothing but itself to burn, the wreckage burned briefly, smoldered a little longer, and was as bitter cold as everything around it before noon.

When Jason reached to knock on the door of Room 215, it opened. Suburban dad-type, knit polo shirt, cheapie chinos, penny-for-the-love-of-god loafers. “Hi, I’m Zach. I’d rather not be too close to what you have there, so I’m going to prop this door open”—he did—“and walk over to the Denny’s across the street. I’ll be having coffee at the counter. My stuff’s already in the car so here’s the key to the room.” He tossed the card onto the bed. “Are you carrying anything plastic you need to keep?”