The War in 2020

by Ralph Peters

  Instantaneously, the screen flashed a digital image indicating enemy aircraft flying on a northerly axis. The computer had been doing its duty perfectly. It had been programmed to alert to enemy aircraft on a convergent course with the combat squadrons of the Seventh Cavalry. The computer had known of the presence of these enemy aircraft in the sky since they had taken off. But no one had told it to report enemy aircraft passing the regiment. Responding precisely to the demands of its human masters, the computer had not found the penetrating enemy flight of sufficient interest to merit a warning alert.

  "Bandits," Meredith said.

  "Project their route," Taylor told him, his voice heavy.

  Meredith had the computer extrapolate from the enemy's past and present course.

  The line of attack passed directly through Omsk.

  * * *

  Zeederberg was frantic. He had been trying for over an hour to reach any higher station. Without success. He wanted to report his discovery of the American transport. And to make absolutely certain that his superiors still wanted him to deliver his ordnance.

  He looked at the image on the target monitor for the hundredth time. One single American-built wing-in ground. What the hell did it mean? At the same time, he worried that the target would lift off before he was within range.

  The sky began to pale. The on-board computers had regulated the flight perfectly. The bombs would land at dawn.

  They were standoff, guided weapons, loaded with the most powerful compacted conventional explosives available, a new generation in destructive power, with a force equivalent to the yield of tactical nuclear weapons. These would be followed by the latest variety of fuel-air explosives, which would burn anything left by the bombs. The nine aircraft under his command had more than enough power to flatten the extensive industrial site.

  "How long?" Zeederberg demanded from the navigator. He had asked this question so often that it needed no further elaboration. The navigator knew exactly what Zeederberg meant.

  "Eleven minutes until weapons release."

  Beneath the aircraft, the snow-covered wastes were becoming faintly visible to the naked eye.

  "I'm going to try calling higher one more time," Zeederberg told his copilot.

  "I told him," Taylor said. His voice had an unmistakable tone of pain in it which Meredith had never heard before. "I told him to get the hell out of there."

  Everyone in the cabin had gathered around Meredith's bank of intelligence monitors. One showed the unchanging image of the wing-in-ground sitting placidly on the ground at Omsk, while others tracked the progress of the enemy aircraft.

  They had tried everything. Relaying to Martinez. Alerting the Soviet air defenses. But the Japanese-built penetration bombers were jamming everything in their path. Exactly as Taylor's force had done and was still doing.

  Taylor grabbed the hand mike for the command set, trying again. "Sierra seven-three, this is Sierra five-five. Flash traffic. I say again: flash traffic. Over."

  Only the sound of the tormented sky.

  "Sierra seven-three," Taylor began again, "if you are monitoring my transmission, you must get out of there now. Evacuate now. Enemy aircraft are heading your way. You only have minutes left. Over."

  "Come on, Manny," Meredith said out loud. "For God's sake. Think of your goddamned Corvette. Think of the goddamned senoritas, would you? Get out of there."

  The enemy aircraft inexorably approached the red line that defined their estimated standoff bombing range.

  "Manny, for Christ's sake," Meredith shouted at the sky, "get out of there." Tears gathered in his eyes.

  Taylor slammed his fist down on the console. But the image of the transport craft at Omsk would not move.

  Taylor took up the mike again.

  "Manny," he said, dispensing with call signs for the first time in anyone's memory. "Manny, please listen to me. Get out of there now. Leave everything. Nothing matters. Just get on board that ugly sonofabitch and get out of there."

  The console began to beep, signaling that the enemy aircraft were within standoff range of Omsk.

  Zeederberg took a deep breath. Every attempt to reach higher headquarters had failed. And the rule was clear. When you lost contact, you continued your mission. No matter what.

  In the target monitor he could actually make out magnified human figures in the first light of dawn.

  "We're in the box," the navigator told him through the headset.

  Zeederberg shrugged. "Releasing ordnance," he said.

  "Releasing ordnance," a disembodied voice echoed.

  * * *

  Manny Martinez was in the best of spirits. From the last reports he had received over the log net a few hours earlier, the fight was going beautifully. Wouldn't even be much repair work. It sounded like a battle men would bullshit about for years to come. Over many a beer.

  "Hurry up," he called. "It's time we unassed this place." But he said it in an indulgent voice. His men were weary. They had finally gotten the last M-100 repaired. It could be flown to the follow-on assembly area under its own power. A present for the old man.

  And he would not even be late. They could make up the lost time en route.

  The new day was dawning with unexpected clarity. The storm had passed to the southwest, and the night's snowfall had given the tormented landscape an almost bearable appearance. Good day for flying, after all, he thought.

  He breathed deeply, enjoying the cold, clean air, using it to rouse himself from the stupor to which the lack of sleep had brought him.

  Behind him, the mechanics were rolling the repaired M-100 out of its shelter.

  The old man's going to be proud, he thought. Then he strolled toward the transport to treat himself to one last cup of coffee.

  17

  3 November 2020

  "Americans," Takahara repeated.

  Noburu sat down. His eyelids fluttered several times in a broken rhythm. It was a small nervous tic he had developed over the years. The uncontrollable blinking only manifested itself for a few moments at a time, and only when Noburu was under extraordinary stress.

  "That's impossible," he said.

  "Sir," Takahara began, "you can listen to them yourself. The station is broadcasting in the clear. Apparently there is a defect in the encryption system of which the sender is unaware. Everything is in English. American English."

  "It could be a deception," Noburu said.

  Takahara pondered the idea for a moment. "It would seem that anything is possible today. But the intelligence specialists are convinced that the transmissions are genuine."

  "Intelligence…" Noburu said, "does not have a very high standing at the moment. Does Tokyo know?"

  "Sir. I personally delayed the transmission of the news until you could hear it first yourself."

  "We must be certain."

  "Intelligence believes—"

  "We must be absolutely certain. We cannot afford another error. We have already paid far too high a price.

  Americans, Noburu thought. He could no longer speak the word without conjuring the dead faces from his nightmares. What on earth were the Americans doing here? They had no love for the Russians. How could it be? How could it be?

  Everything is a cycle, Noburu mused. We never learn. Misunderstanding the Americans seemed to be a Japanese national sport.

  But how could it be? With the Americans still struggling to hold on to their own hemisphere, where Japanese-sponsored irregular and low-intensity operations had kept them tied down for over a decade. Japanese analysts preached that the United States had accepted its failure in the military-technological competition with Japan, that the Americans had neither the skills nor the funds to continue the contest on a global scale.

  Noburu saw his personal aide, Akiro, making his way purposefully through the unaccustomed confusion of the operations center. What was it that Akiro had said just the day before? That the Americans were finished?

  Now it would fall to him to finish them.


  "Track them," Noburu told Takahara. "Identify who they are, what weapons they're using. We need targetable data."

  "Yes, sir."

  Only yesterday, he had been flying triumphantly above the African bush. Surprising the Americans. Vanquishing them. Today they had surprised him. But it wasn't finished yet. Noburu knew only too well what was going to happen. It had been written by more powerful hands than his.

  The dream warrior had known this too. In his contest with the dream Americans, with their dead and terrible faces.

  "Sir " Akiro addressed him. Noburu could see that the young man had been badly jarred by all this. Unaccustomed to the taste of defeat. Even temporary defeat.

  "Yes?"

  "Sir. Tokyo. On the satellite link. General Tsuji wishes to speak with you."

  Noburu had known that the call would come. It was inevitable. And he knew what the caller would command him to do.

  "I will take the call in my private office," Noburu said.

  "Sir" Akiro and Takahara responded in near unison.

  "Oh, and Takahara. Contact Noguchi. His readiness test is canceled. Instead, he is to hold his unit at the highest state of combat alert." Noburu hated to speak the words. But it was no less than his duty. And he would always do his duty. "But he is to take no further action until he hears from me personally."

  Takahara acknowledged the instruction and turned to its execution. But Akiro seemed to shrink ever so slightly. As Noburu's aide, the younger man was privileged to know the highly classified capabilities of Noguchi's aircraft awaiting a mission at the airfield in Bukhara on the far side of Central Asia. The uncertainty around Akiro's mouth made it clear that he was not nearly as hardened as the uncompromising words that passed so easily between his lips pretended. Yes, words were one thing…

  "Stay here," Noburu told his aide. "I can find my office on my own. Sit here in my chair and pay attention to all that goes on around you today. This is war, Akiro."

  Noburu marched through the half-chaos of his operations center, proceeding down the hall past the room where the master computer soldiered in silence. He stopped at the private elevator that had once served a Soviet general. The guard slammed his heels against the wall as he came to attention.

  Noburu used the few seconds remaining to him to muster his arguments. But he found them fatally weakened by the events of the early morning hours. Why had the Americans — if they truly were Americans — interfered? He knew in his heart he would never convince old Tsuji to behave humanely. But just as it was his duty as a soldier to follow orders, it was his duty as a human being to make one last effort to break the chain of events.

  His office was cool and very clean. Its austerity and silence normally soothed him, but today the empty suite felt like a tomb.

  He sat down at his desk and picked up the special phone.

  "This is General Noburu Kabata."

  "Hold for General Tsuji," a voice told him.

  He waited dutifully, imagining the magic beams that sliced through the heavens to allow him to speak privately with another man so far away. The technology, in its essence, was generations old. Yet, at times, such things still filled Noburu with a sense of wonder. It still amazed him that metal machines could carry men through the sky.

  I'm a bad Japanese, he thought. I don't know how to take things for granted.

  "Noburu?" the acid voice startled him.

  "General Tsuji."

  "I cannot be certain of the view from your perspective, Noburu. However, from Tokyo, it appears that you are presiding over the greatest defeat suffered by Japanese arms in seventy-five years."

  "It's bad," Noburu agreed. Ready to take his medicine.

  "It's far worse than 'bad,' " Tsuji said, loading his voice with spite. "It's a disaster."

  "Yes."

  "I would personally relieve you, Noburu. But I can't. To take you out of there now would be an embarrassment to Japan. A further embarrassment. An admission of failure."

  "I will resign," Noburu said.

  "You will do nothing of the kind. Nor will you do anything… foolish. This is the twenty-first century. And your guts aren't worth staining a carpet. All you can do now is to try to turn things around. Have you got a plan?"

  "Not yet," Noburu said. "We're still gathering information."

  "You know what I mean, Noburu. You know exactly what I mean. Have you formulated a plan for the commitment of Three-one-three-one?"

  Three-one-three-one was Tokyo's code name for Noguchi's command. Everyone else simply referred to them as Scramblers. But Tsuji was a stickler for the details of military procedure.

  "No."

  There was silence on the other end. Noburu understood it to be a calculated silence. Tsuji showing his contempt.

  "Why?"

  "General Tsuji… I continue to believe that the employment of… Three-one-three-one… would be a mistake. We will never be forgiven."

  Tsuji laughed scornfully. "What? Forgiven? By whom? You must be going mad, Noburu."

  Yes, Noburu thought, perhaps. "The Scramblers are criminal weapons," he said. "We, of all people—"

  "Noburu, listen to me. Your personal ruminations are of no interest to me. Or to anyone else. You have one mission, and one only: to win a war. For Japan. And can you honestly tell me, after what we have all seen this morning, that you are in a position to guarantee victory without the employment of Three-one-three-one?"

  "No."

  "Then get to work."

  "General Tsuji?"

  "What?"

  "My intelligence department believes they have broken into the communications network of the attackers."

  "Well. So you haven't been entirely asleep. Have you positively identified the units involved? Do you have any idea of the type of weapons? It's incredible to think that the Russians could have pulled all this off."

  "The intelligence department doesn't think it's Russians."

  Tsuji laughed. "Who then? Creatures from space, perhaps?"

  "Americans."

  "What?"

  "Americans," Noburu repeated.

  "That's insane. Who's your senior intelligence officer?"

  "I believe it to be true," Noburu said. And it was not a lie. He did not need any further intelligence confirmation. He knew it to be the Americans. He had always known it. He simply had not been able to admit it to himself. Everything was so plain. It was ordained.

  "Noburu, if you actually have evidence… if you're not dreaming this up…"

  "It's true," Noburu said. "We're still working out the details. But the Americans are involved."

  There was another silence on the Tokyo end. But this time it was not calculated and carefully controlled.

  "Then get them," Tsuji said suddenly. "Destroy them. Use Three-one-three-one."

  "General Tsuji, we have to think—"

  "That's an order, Noburu. Introduce your Americans to the future of warfare."

  "We're going to get them," Taylor said with forced calm. "Merry, start running the interception azimuths. Stay with them."

  "Yes, sir."

  "We're going to get those bastards," Taylor told the ops center staff. His voice was carefully controlled in volume, if not in tone. He had just watched the destruction of the Omsk site on the monitor. The way a civilian might watch a live television report from a riot or revolution — gripped by the images, but helpless to exert the least influence upon the situation. One moment, the wing-in-ground transport had been lying like a drowsing beast in the clear dawn. Then the screen smeared with the powdery swirls that sheathed the hearts of the bomb blasts. Next came the firestorm. There would be no survivors.

  "We'll have to start turning," Merry Meredith said. "Right now."

  "Flapper?" Taylor called forward through the intercom, "you listening up there?"

  "Roger," the copilot said.

  "Merry's going to plug in the new grids."

  "Roger."

  "Merry," Taylor said. "You and the boys guide
us into a good ambush position. Cue the escort ships to follow us. I'm going forward to talk to the chief."

  Taylor carefully put his headset back in its holder and squeezed out through the hatch that separated the ops cell from the small central corridor. He paused for a moment in the narrow, sterile passageway, closing his eyes, fighting to master his emotions. It was not as easy as it once had been. He remembered Manny Martinez as a bright, innocent lieutenant in Los Angeles, as a struggling horseman in Mexico. The boy had become a man in the years Taylor had known him, yet, he remained young and laughably earnest in Taylor's recollection. Why on earth hadn't the boy listened? He was normally such a fine, dutiful officer. Why, this time of all times…?

  Taylor rubbed at his armpit where the shoulder holster chafed. He knew that the flight of nine Mitsubishi aircraft was not a sufficiently lucrative target to cause a regimental commander to turn back in the middle of a battle. Objectively speaking. The action was unforgivably personal, and militarily unnecessary. He was needed elsewhere. He had to oversee the move into the new assembly areas, the rearming and re-fitting process… well, the rearming would be problematical. The last functional calibration device for the M-100s' main armament had been on the transport back at Omsk with Manny. They would have to fight on with the weapons systems in whatever condition they were in at the end of this day's combat. Taylor had already programmed the master computer to restrict further targets regiment-wide, attacking only the most valuable. But they would need to take stock, to see what remained in terms of immediate combat capability. It was always this way, somehow. You built the finest war machines in the history of military operations. Then you failed to supply an adequate number of the small tools that enabled them to carry on the fight. It was an imperfect world. He would do his best with what he had. And who could say? The day's combat had been so successful that everything just might grind to a halt. You could never be certain. Perhaps Merry was right. And maybe their luck would hold a little longer.

  He had an impossible number of tasks to fulfill. There would be little rest, and the wide-awake pills ultimately carried a price in deteriorating judgment, in a collapsing body. The pills merely delayed the mind and body's failure but could not prevent it.