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Brubaker s jets came screaming at them they did an even more unbelievable
thing. They fell to their knees in the middle of the road, clasped their arms
about their heads and made no effort to escape inevitable death. The tactic so
astonished Brubaker that he gasped,  They re sitting ducks! And some ancient
boyhood training in the mountains back of Denver restrained him.
But when he had zoomed high into the heavens he heard the unemotional voice
of Roundelay:  Clobber those guys. That s their standard trick.Throwing you
off balance.
So the jets wheeled and came screaming back down the road. Not a communist
moved. Not one hit the ditch. They huddled and waited.  Here it comes,
Brubaker whispered grimly, and his finger pressed the trigger. Keeping his eye
upon the kneeling troops, he watched his bullets spray a path among them.  You
wanted trouble, he said weakly.
Roundelay now spotted another column of attacking communists and called in
Cag s division. Brubaker, with sickening detachment, watched the merciless
jets and thought,  Those people in Denver who ridicule air force reports of
enemy dead ought to see this. And he remembered Admiral Tarrant s words:  If
we keep enough planes over them enough hours somebody s got to get hurt. And
when they hurtbad enough, they ll quit.
Page 40
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
 How s your fuel? Roundelay asked.
 Can do one more pass, Cag replied, and the jet pilots, who approached the
speed of sound, watched as the slow little doodlebug SNJ hopped about in
search of fat targets. Brubaker, pulling out of his last bombing run, sped
past the prop plane and for an instant of suspended time the two men looked
casually at each other. Harry saw that the air force man was very thin and
wore a moustache but he saw no more, for a five-inch communist gun, hidden
until then, fired one lucky shot and blew the frail little SNJ completely to
ribbons.
In terrible fury Brubaker launched his jet at the gun and tried to root it
from its cave. He carried his fire almost into the muzzle of the enemy gun.
Then, although his fuel was getting tight, he turned and made another run,
pushing his jet to a deadly speed. He saw the gun, saw the wounded crew and
the shell casings. On he came, firing until his own guns were silent, and the
communists fell away. Then he zoomed aloft to overtake the homeward jets, but
except for his wingman the planes were far away.
 You ought to tell me when you re going to run wild, the wingman protested.
 I really clobbered that one, Brubaker said grimly, but as the two Banshees
soared away from the ravaged battleground with its wrecked artillery and dead
bodies huddled along frozen roads, the enemy gun that Brubaker thought he had
destroyed resumed firing. Mute with outrage, Brubaker wanted to dive upon it
once more but he heard his wingman say,  Their side has guts, too.
Finally, when the roar of battle was past and the jets were far in the wintry
sky Brubaker called,  How s your fuel?
 Thousand five.
His own gauge read just under a thousand and he thought,  I hope Beer Barrel
is bringing us in. Then he heard his wingman cry,  There s Cag, up ahead.
The two jets increased speed to rejoin the flight and all pilots began the
difficult job of trying to spot the task force. Drifting clouds mottled the
sea and made the ships almost invisible, but they had to be within a small
area, for to the east hung the permanent snow line and to the north a new
storm boxed in the fleet, but no one could see the ships.
It was ridiculous. Twelve highly-trained pilots couldn t find a task force of
nineteen ships, including carriers, cruisers and a battleship. For some
perverse reason Brubaker took delight in this limitation of human beings and
thought,You never master this business. Then Cag called,  There s home! and
where absolutely nothing had been visible a moment before the jet pilots saw
the nineteen ships. And Brubaker, seeing them as big as barns on an open
meadow, laughed.
But his relief didn t last because when the jets descended he saw that the
carrier deck was pitching rather formidably, and this meant many wave-offs
because the landing officer would have to wait until the carrier stabilized
itself between lurches, so that you might approach in perfect altitude but
find the deck in a momentary trough and have to go round again. That took
fuel. Because when you got a wave-off you had to pour it on. And there went
your fuel. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]