Red Army

Shit, Sobelev thought. "Just stay with me," he answered. "We're going to do just fine."

Sobelev sympathized with the lieutenant's nervousness. It was their second combat mission of the day, and today was the lieutenant's first taste of war. If Afghanistan had been this bad, Sobelev thought, I might have quit flying.

"Stay with me, little brother. Talk to me."

"I'm with you, Fifty-eight."

"Good boy. Target heading, thirty degrees."

"Roger."

"Keep those wings level now . . . final reference point in s i g h t . . . go to attack altitude . . . talk to me, Fifty-nine."

RED ARMY

"I have the reference point."

"Executing version one."

"Correcting to follow your approach."

"On the combat course . . . now . . . hold on, it's going to be hot."

"Roger."

"Target. . . ten kilometers . . . steady . . . I have visual."

Sobelev saw the airfield coming up at them like a table spread for dinner. Enemy aircraft continued to land and take off.

"Hit the apron. I've got the main runway."

"Roger."

Air-defense artillery suddenly came to life in their path, drilling the sky with points of light.

"Let's do this clean . . . hold it . . . hold straight. . . straighten your wings."

In Afghanistan, you flew high and tossed outdated ordnance at the kishlaks with their mud buildings that had not changed for a thousand years. The bombs changed them in an instant.

Sobelev was determined to bring his wingman out. Wingboy, he thought, children at war, already forgetting how young he had been on his first tour of duty in Afghanistan.

Sobelev led them right into the general flight paths of the NATO

aircraft taking off, making it impossible for the air-defense guns to follow them.

"Now."

The lieutenant shouted into the radio in childish elation. The two planes lifted away from the enemy airfield, and, as they banked, Sobelev caught a glimpse of the heavy damage that already had been dealt to the base by previous sorties. Black burned patches and craters on the hardstand. Smoking ruins in the support area. Emergency vehicles raced through corridors of fire. Sobelev heard his flight's payload detonate, adding to the destruction.

"Let's go home, little brother . . . heading . . . one . . . six . . . five."

An enemy plane suddenly shot straight up in front of Sobelev. He recognized a NATO F-16. As the plane twisted into the sky, disappearing from view in the grayness, Sobelev's mouth opened behind his face mask.

He had never seen a plane . . . a pilot. . . maneuver like that. It shocked him.

After a long, long few seconds, he spoke. "Hostiles, Fifty-nine . . . do what I do . . . do exactly what I do . . . do you understand?"

"Roger." But the exuberance was gone from the lieutenant's voice. He, 91

Ralph Peters •

too, had seen the enemy fighter's acrobatic climb. Now they both wondered where the enemy aircraft had gone. Sobelev looked at his radar screen. It was a mess. Busy sky.

"Follow me now, Fifty-nine," Sobelev commanded. And hope I know what I'm doing.

Major Astanbegyan leaned over the operator's shoulder, watching the scanning line circle the radar display.

"Does anyone respond to query?" the major asked.

"Comrade Major," the specialist sergeant said, with weary exaspera-tion in his voice, "I register responses. But it's all so cluttered that they intermingle before I can sort targets. Then the jamming starts again."

Astanbegyan told the boy to keep on trying. He was beginning to feel like a unit political officer in his struggle to maintain a positive collective outlook in the control staff. He had begun the morning by shouting when things went wrong, but he had soon shouted himself out. There were so many unanticipated problems that he quickly realized he was only making the work harder. Now he simply did what he could to keep the entire air-defense sector from collapsing into anarchy.

He turned away from the boy at the console. He knew the sergeant was trying, that he sincerely wanted to do what was right. The officers manning scopes and target allocation systems were doing no better. The NATO aircraft were using the same penetration corridor in sector as those of the Warsaw Pact, and it was a hopeless muddle. Out on the ground, the batteries were operating primarily on visual identification.

The battle management computers were a disappointment as well. So far, they were handling systems location and logistics data fairly well—or seemed to be, since there was no way of knowing how accurate all of the inputs and outputs were at this point. But the sorting and assigning of targets was going badly. Astanbegyan had no doubt that aircraft were being knocked out of the sky. He had over a dozen reported kills. But he was less certain about who was being shot down.

"Comrade Major," a communications specialist called to him. "The commander of Number Five Battery wishes to report."

"Take his report, then."