Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 19

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moved over the massed array of switches, instruments and controls like

those of a lover as he began his pre-flight check.

In the confined space of the bunkers the jet thunder assaulted the

eardrums, their din only made bearable by the perforated steel baffles

set into the rear of the structure.

The Brig looked across at David, his head enclosed in the garishly

painted helmet, and gave him the high sign.

David returned -it and reached up to pull the Perspex canopy closed.

Ahead of them, the steel blast doors rolled swiftly upwards, and the

ready lamps above them switched from red to green.

There was no taxiing to take-off areas; no needless ground exposure.

Wing-tip to wing-tip they came up the ramp out of the bunker into the

sunlight.  Ahead of them stretched one of the long brown runways, and

David pushed open his throttle to the gate, and then ignited his

afterburners, feeling the thrust of the mighty jet through the

cushioning of his seat.  Down between the fields of green corn they

tore, and then up, with the swooping sensation in the guts and the

rapier nose of the Mirage pointed at the sapphire of the sky that arched

unbroken and unsullied above them, and once again David experienced the

euphoria of jet-powered flight.

They levelled out at a little under forty thousand feet avoiding even

altitudes or orderly flight patterns, and David placed his machine under

the Brig's tail and eased back on the throttles to cruising power, his

hands delighting in the familiar rituals of flight while his helmeted

head revolved restlessly in the search routine, sweeping every quarter

of the sky about him, weaving the Mirage to clear the blind spot behind

his own tail.

The air had an unreal quality of purity, a crystalline clarity that made

even the most distant mountain ranges stand out in crisp silhouette,

hardly shaded with the blue of distance.  In the north the Mediterranean

blazed like a pool of molten silver in the sunlight, while the sea of

Galilee was soft cool green, and farther south the Dead Sea was darker,

forbidding in its sunken bed of tortured desert.

They flew north over the ridge of Carmel and the flecked white buildings

of Haifa with its orange gold beaches on which the sea broke in soft

ripples of creamy lacework.  Then they turned together easing back on

the power and sinking slowly to patrol altitude at twenty thousand feet

as they passed the peak of Mount Herman where the last snows still

lingered in the gullies and upon the high places, streaking the great

rounded mountain like an old man's pate.

The softly dreaming greens and pastels delighted David who was

accustomed to the sepia monochromes of Africa.  The villages clung to

the hill-tops, their white walls shining like diadems above the terraced

slopes and the darker areas of cultivated land.

They turned south again, booming down the valley of the Jordan, over the

Sea of Galilee with its tranquil green waters enclosed by the thickets

of date palm and the neatly tended fields of the Kibbutzim, losing

altitude as the land forsook its gentle aspect and the hills were riven

and tortured, rent by the wadis as though by the claws of a dreadful

predator.

On the left hand rose the mountains of Edam, hostile and implacable, and

beneath them Jericho was a green oasis in the wilderness.  Ahead lay the

shimmering surface of the Dead Sea.  The Brig dropped down, and they

thundered so low across the salt-thickened water that the jet blast

ruffled the surface behind them.

The Brig's voice chuckled in David's earphones.  That's the lowest you

are ever going to fly, twelve hundred feet below sea level.  They were

climbing again as they crossed the mineral works at the southern end of

the sea, and faced the blasted and mountainous deserts of the south.

Hello, Cactus One, this is Desert Flower, again the radio silence was

broken, but this time David recognized the call sign of command net.

They were being called directly from the Operations Centre of Airforce

Command, situated in some secret underground bunker at a location that

David would never learn.  On the command plot their position was being

accurately relayed by the radar repeaters.

Hello, Desert Flower, the Brig acked, and immediately the exchange

became as informal as two old friends chatting, which was precisely what

it was.

Brig this is Motti.  We've just had a ground support request in your

area, he gave the coordinates quickly, a motorized patrol of border

police is under sneak lowlevel attack by an unidentified aircraft.  See

to it, will youz, Beseder, Motti, okay.  The Brig switched to flight

frequency.  Cactus Two, I'm going to interception power, conform to me,

he told David, and they turned together on to the new heading.

No point in trying a radar scan, the Brig grumbled aloud.  He'll be down

in the ground clutter.  We'll not pick the swine off amongst those

mountains.  just keep your eyes open.  'Beseder.  David had already

picked up the word.  The favourite Hebrew word in a land where very

little was really okay.

David spotted it first, a slim black column of smoke beginning to rise

like a pencil line drawn slowly against the windless and dazzling cobalt

blue of the horizon.

Ground smoke, he said into his helmet microphone.  Eleven o'clock low.

The Brig squinted ahead silently, searching for it and then saw it on

the extreme limit of his vision range.  He grunted, Rastus had been

right in one thing at least.  The youngster had eyes like a hawk.

Going to attack speed now, he said, and David acked and lit his

afterburners.  The upholstery of his seat smacked into his back under

the mighty increase in thrust and David felt the drastic alteration in

trim as the Mirage went shooting through the sonic barrier.

Near the base of the smoke column, something flashed briefly against the

drab brown earth, and David narrowed his eyes and made out the tiny

shape, flitting swiftly as a sunbird, its camouflage blending naturally

into the backdrop of desert, -so it was ethereal as a shadow.

Bandit turning to port of the smoke, he called the sighting.

I have him, said the Brig, and switched to command net.

Hello, Desert Flower, I'm on an intruder.  Call strike, please.  The

decision to engage must be made at command level, and the answering

voice was laconic, and flat.

Brig, this is Motti.  Hit him? While they spoke they were rushing down

so swiftly that the details of the little drama being played out below

sprang into comprehension.

Along a dusty border track three patrol vehicles of the border police

were halted.  They were camouflaged half tracks, tiny as children's toys

in the vastness of the desert.

One of the half tracks was burning.  The smoke was greasy black and rose

straight into the air, the beacon that had drawn them.  Lying

spreadeagled in the road was a human body, flung down carelessly in

death, and the sight of it stirred in David a deeply bitter feeling of

resentment such as he had last felt in the bullring at Madrid.

The other vehicles were pulled off the track at abandoned angles, and

David could see their crews crouching amongst the scrub and rock.  Some

of them were firing with small arms at their attacker who was circling

for his next run down upon them.

David had never seen the type before, but knew it instantly from the

recognition charts that he had studied so often.  It was a Russian MIG

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