Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur (бесплатные версии книг .txt) 📗

were silent again, and then almost timidly Debra asked, What did he say?

What did he want?  'He had a message for you.  'What was it?  And Ella

repeated it faithfully in his exact words.

When she had finished, Debra turned away to face the wall above her

desk.  Please go away now, Ella.  I want to be alone. He asked me to

give him your reply.  I promised to speak to him tomorrow morning.  I

will come to you later, but please leave me now.  And Ella saw the drop

of bright liquid that slid down the smooth brown curve of her cheek.

Mountainously Ella came to her feet and moved towards the door.  Behind

her she heard the girl sob, but she did not turn back.  She went across

the stone jetty and up to the terrace.  She sat before her canvas and

picked up her brush and began to paint.  Her strokes were broad and

crude and angry.

David was sweating in the stiff shiny skin of his full pressure suit and

he waited anxiously beside the telephone, glancing every few minutes at

the crew-room clock.

He and Joe would go on high-altitude Red standby at ten o'clock, in

seven minutes time, and Ella had not called him.

David's depression was thunderous and there was black anger and despair

in his heart.  She had promised to call before ten o'clock.

Come on, Davey, Joe called from the doorway and he stood up heavily and

followed Joe to the electric carrier.  As he took his seat beside Joe he

heard it ring in the crew-room.

Hold it, I he told the driver, and he saw Robert answer the telephone

and wave through the glass panel at him.

It's for you, Davey, and he ran back into the crewroom.

I'm sorry, David, Ella's voice was scratchy and far away.  I tried

earlier but the exchange here Sure, sure, David cut her short, his anger

was still strong.  Did you speak to her?  Yes, Davey.  Yes, I did.  I

gave her your message.  'What was her reply?  he demanded.  There was no

reply. 'What the hell, Ella.  She must have said something.  'She said,

Ella hesitated, -and these are her exact words, "the dead cannot speak

with the living.  For David, I died a year ago.  I, He held the receiver

with both hands but still it shook.  After a while she spoke again.  Are

you still there?  'Yes, he whispered, I'm still here They were silent

again, but David broke it at last.  That's it, then, he said.  Yes.  I'm

afraid that's it, Davey.  Joe stuck his head around the door. -'Hey,

Davey.  Cut it short, will you.  Time to go.  'I have to go now, Ella.

Thanks for everything.  'Goodbye, David, she said, and even over the

scratchy connection he could hear the compassion in her tone.

It heightened the black anger that gripped him as he rode beside Joe to

the Mirage bunker.

For the first time ever, David felt uncomfortable in the cockpit of a

Mirage.  He felt trapped and restless, sweating and angry, and it seemed

hours between each of the fifteen-minute readiness checks.

His ground crew were playing backgammon on the concrete floor below him,

and he could see them laughing and joshing each other.  It made him

angrier than ever to see others happy.

Tubby!  he barked into his microphone, and his voice was repeated by the

overhead loudspeakers.  The plump, serious young man, who was chief

engineer for Lance squadron, climbed quickly up beside his cockpit and

peered anxiously through the canopy at him.

There is dirt on my screen, David snapped at him.  How the hell do you

expect me to pick up a MIG, when I'm looking through a screen you ate

your bloody breakfast off?

The cause of David's distress was a speck of carbon that marred the

glistening perfection of his canopy.

Tubby himself had supervised the polishing and buffing of it, and the

carbon speck was wind-carried since then.

Carefully he removed the offending spot, and lovingly he polished the

place where it had been with a chamois leather.

The reprimand had been public and unfair, very unlike their top boy

Davey.  However, they all made allowances for Red standby nerves, and

spots on a canopy played hell with a pilot's nerves.  Every time it

caught his eye it looked exactly like a pouncing MIG.

That's better, David gruffed at him, fully aware that he had been

grossly unfair.  Tubby grinned and gave him a high sign as he climbed

down.

At that moment there was a click and throb in his earphones and the

distinctive voice of the Brig.

Red Standby, Go!  Go!

Under full reheat and with the driving thrust of the afterburners

hurling him aloft David called, Hello, Desert Flower, Bright Lance

airborne and climbing.

Hello, David, this is the Brig.  We have a contact shaping up for

intrusion on our air space.  It looks like another teaser from the

Syrians.  They are closing our border at twenty-six thousand and should

be hostile in approximately three minutes.  We are going to initiate

attack plan Gideon.  Your new heading is 420 and I want you right down

on the deck.

David acked and immediately rotated the Mirage's nose downwards.  Plan

Gideon called for a low-level stalk so that the ground clutter would

obscure the enemy radar and conceal their approach until such time as

they were in position to storm-climb up into an attack vector above and

behind the target.

They dropped to within feet of the ground, lifting and falling over the

undulating hills, so low that the herds of black Persian sheep scattered

beneath them as they shrieked eastwards towards the Jordan.

Hello, Bright Lance, this is Desert Flower, we are not tracking you.

Good, thought David, then neither is the enemy.  Target is now hostile

in sector, the Brig gave the coordinates, Scan for your own contact.

Almost immediately Joe's voice came in.  Leader, this is Two.  I have a

contact.  David dropped his eyes to his own radar screen and amputated

his scan as Joe called range and bearing.  It was a dangerous

distraction when flying in the sticky phase of high subsonic drag at

zero feet, and his own screen was clear of contact.

They raced onwards for many more seconds before David picked up the

faint luminous fuzz at the extreme range of his set.

Contact firming.  Range figures nine six nautical miles.  Parallel

heading and track.  Altitude 25, 5oo feett.  David felt the first

familiar tingle and slither of his anger and hatred, like the cold of a

great snake uncoiling in his belly.

Beseder, Two.  Lock to target and go to interception speed.

They went supersonic and David looked up ahead at the crests of the

thunderheads that reared up from the solid banks of cumulo nimbus lower

down.  These mountainous upthrusts of silver and pale blue were

sculptured into wonderful shapes that teased the imagination towers and

turrets embattled and emblazoned, heroic human shapes standing proud or

hunched in the attitude of mourning, the rearing horsemen of the

chessboard, a great fleecy pack of wolves, and other animal shapes of

fantasy, with the deep crevasses between them bridged in splendour by

the rainbows.  There were hundreds of these, great blazes of colour,

that turned and followed their progress across the sky, keeping majestic

station upon them.  Above them, the sky was a dark unnatural blue,

dappled like a Windsor grey by the thin striation of the cirrocumulus,

and the sunlight poured down to shimmer upon the two speeding warplanes.

As yet there was no sight of the target.  It was up there somewhere

amongst the cloud mountains.  He looked back at his radar screen.  He