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
17 of the Syrian airforce.
The high tail plane was unmistakable. The dappled brown desert
camouflage was brightened by the red, white and black rounders with
their starred green centres on the fuselage and the stubby swept wings.
The MIG completed its turn, settling swiftly down and levelling off for
its next strafing run upon the parked vehicles. The pilot's attention
was concentrated on the helpless men cowering amongst the rocks and he
was unaware of the terrible vengeance bearing down upon him on high.
The Brig lined up for his pass, turning slightly to bring himself down
on the Syrian's tail, attacking in classic style from behind and above,
while David dropped back to weave across his rear, covering him and
backing up to press in a supporting attack if the first failed.
The Syrian opened fire again and the cannon bursts twinkled like fairy
lights amongst the men and trucks.
Another truck exploded in a dragon's breath of smoke and flame.
You bastard, David whispered as he levelled out behind the Brig and saw
the havoc that was being wrought amongst his people. It was the first
time he had thought of them as that, his people, and he felt the cold
anger of the shepherd whose flock is under attack.
A line of poetry popped up in his mind The Assyrian came down like a
wolf on the fold, and his hands went purposefully to the chore of
locking in his cannon sselectors and flicking the trigger forward out of
its recess in the moulded grip of the joystick. The soft green glow lit
his gunsight as it came alive and he squinted through it.
The Brig was pressing his attack in to close range, rapidly overhauling
the slower clumsy-looking MIG, and at that moment he knew he would open
fire David saw the Syrian's wing-shape alter. At the fatal instant he
had become aware of his predicament, and he had done what was best in
the circumstances. He had pulled on full flap and while his speed fell
sharply he dropped one wing in a slide towards the earth a hundred feet
below.
The Brig was committed and he loosed his salvo of cannon fire at the
instant that the Syrian dropped, ducking under it like a boxer avoiding
a heavy punch. David saw the blaze of shot pass high, rending the air
above the sand-coloured air-craft. Then the Brig was through, missing
with every shell, spiralling up and around in a great flashing circle,
raging internally at his failure.
At the instant that David recognized the MIG's manoeuvre he reacted with
a rapidity that was purely reflexive. He closed down his power, and hit
his air brakes to punch a little to the speed off the Mirage.
The MIG turned steeply away to port, standing on one wing-tip that
seemed to be pegged into the bleak desert earth. David released his air
brakes, to give his wings lift for the next evolution, and then he
dropped his own wing-tip and went sweeping round to follow the Syrian's
desperate twists with the Mirage hovering on the edge of the stall.
The Syrian was turning inside him, slower and more manoeuverable; David
could not bring his sights to bear, his right forefinger was curled
around the trigger but always the dark shape of the MIG was out of
centre in the illuminated circle of the sight as the aiming pipper
dipped and rose to the pull of gravity.
Ahead of the two circling aircraft rose a steep and forbidding line of
cliffs, . rent by deep defiles and gullies.
The 1VUG made no attempt to climb above them, but selected a narrow pass
through the hills and went into it like a ferret into its run, a
desperate attempt to shake off the pursuit.
The Mirage was not designed for this type of flying, and David felt the
urge to hit his afterburners and ride up over the jagged fangs of rock,
but to do so was to let the MIG escape, and his anger was still strong
upon him.
He followed the Syrian into the rock pass, and the walls of stone on
either hand seemed to brush his wingtips, the gully turned sharply to
starboard and David dropped his wing and followed its course. Back upon
itself the rock turned, and David swung the needle nose from maximum
rate turn starboard to port, and the stall warning device winked amber
and red at him as he abused the Mirage's delicate flying capabilities.
Ahead of him the MIG clawed its way through the tunnel of rock. The
pilot looked back over his shoulder and he saw the IIirage following
him, creeping slowly up on him, and he turned back to his controls and
forced his machine lower still, hugging the rugged walls of stone.
The air in the hills was hot and turbulent, and the Mirage bucked and
fought against restraint wanting to be free and high, while ahead of it
the Syrian drifted tantalizingly off-centre in David's gunsight.
Now the valley turned again and narrowed, before climbing and ending
abruptly against a solid dark purple wall of smooth rock.
The Syrian was trapped, he levelled out and climbed steeply upwards, his
flight path dictated by the rocks on each side and ahead.
David pushed his throttle to the gate and lit his afterburners, and the
mighty engine rumbled, thrusting him powerfully forward, up under the
Syrian's stern.
The eternal micro-seconds of mortal combat dragged by, as the Syrian
floated lazily into the circle of the gunsight, expanding to fill it as
the Mirage's nose seemed to touch the other's tail plane and David felt
the buffeting of the Syrian's slip-stream.
He pressed the cannon trigger and the Mirage lurched as she hurled her
deadly load into the other machine in a clattering double stream of
cannon fire and an eruption of incendiary shells.
The Syrian disintegrated, evaporating in a gush of silvery smoke,
rent through with bright white lightning, and the ejecting pilot's body
was blown clear of the fuselage. For an instant it was outlined ahead
of David's screen, cruciform in shape with arms and legs thrown wide,
the helmet still on the head, and the clothing ballooning in the rush of
air. Then it flickered past the Mirage's canopy as David climbed
swiftly up out of the valley and into the open sky.
The soldiers were moving about amongst their vehicles, tending their
wounded and covering their dead, but they all looked up as David flew
back low along the road. He passed so close that he could see their
faces clearly. They were sunbrowned, some with beards or moustaches,
strong young faces, their mouths open as they cheered him, waving their
thanks.
My people, he thought. He was still high on the adrenalin that had
poured into his blood, and he felt a fierce elation. He grinned
wolfishly at the men below him and lifted one gloved hand in salute
before climbing up to where the Brig was circling, waiting for him.
The artificial lights of the bunker were dim after the brilliance of the
sun. An engineer helped David from the cockpit as his mates swarmed
over the Mirage to refuel and rearm it. This was one of the vital
skills of this tiny airforce, the ability to ready a warplane for combat
in a fraction of the time usually required for the task. Thus in
emergency the machine could return to the battle long before its
adversary.
Moving stiffly from the confines of the cockpit, David crossed to where
the Brig was already in conversation with the flight controller.
He stood with the gaudy helmet tucked under one arm as he stripped off
his gloves, but as David came up he turned to him and his wintry smile