«Yes, but what about Elva Thompson?»
«For the moment, she's where she can do us no further harm and the Red Flames no good. The Norfolk shadow headquarters is still just that. We're not proposing to give the shadow any real substance, either, not as long as she's there. When my estimate is that she's outlived all her usefulness, we'll have her killed. Make it look like an accident, you know. We don't want to tell the Red Flames any more than necessary about our internal security.»
«Quite right,» said Blade. He found it almost a relief that R-like J-could use the blunt, honest word «kill.» Too many intelligence people were committed to euphemisms like «terminate.» Both R and J had the courage to look what they were doing squarely in the face and call it by its proper name.
It was also a relief to know that Elva's fate had been decided. He was not quite indifferent to the idea of her death, not after what there had been between them. He was much less indifferent to all the deaths her treason had caused. Elva Thompson would be no real loss to anyone except her masters in Russland.
R went on. «There's another project I want started, and I want you on it.»
«What's that, sir?»
«Contingency planning for action against the dragons, when they start landing in Englor.»
«When, sir?»
«I believe Miss Haran, Blade. Don't you?»
Blade laughed. «Absolutely, sir. But-isn't this intruding on the Plans and Operations people?»
«It is. But with General Strong's attitude, I doubt if one single lieutenant is going to be assigned to plan how to fight off dragons. That's going to mean trouble when they land, no matter how much planning we can do at Special Operations. But if we do something, it may cut the damage.» He smiled grimly. «Also, it will help tighten the noose around the neck of our mutual friend General Sir Morgan Strong.»
Chapter 19
Lieutenant Colonel Michael Morris, commanding officer of the Second Battalion, Duke of Pembroke's Own Light Infantry, was bored. This was not an uncommon or unexpected situation, even in wartime and even for a field-grade officer. He still didn't care for it.
It was waiting for orders that had become boring. The battalion was assigned to the Seventy-first Infantry Brigade, one of five brigades trained and equipped to operate out of helicopters. Three of the others already formed the First Airmobile Division, assigned to the Eighth Army in Gallia. The rumor was that one more of the airmobile brigades would be assigned to Eighth Army reserve. Would it be the Seventy-first Brigade or the Fifty-ninth, down in Cornwall?
Morris hoped it would be the Seventy-first. After thirty years in the army, it was maddening to come to the edge of war in command of a fine battalion without being sure of being able to take it into action.
He rose from his chair, buttoned up his field jacket, picked up his swagger stick, and headed for the door of the hut. A little walk would put some fresh air into his lungs and perhaps push some of the boredom out of his mind. Then a drink in the mess hall, or perhaps two-no more than that-and then to bed. He pushed open the door and stepped out into the night.
As he did, he sensed something large and dark passing low overhead, something also long and thin. He caught a glimpse of what seemed to be broad wings spreading far out on either side. That made no sense. Neither airplanes nor helicopters made so little noise when they were so low, and who would be coming down in a glider here at this time of night? Who, except-? Then Colonel Morris snatched his sidearm from its holster and broke into a run. The damned Russlanders were staging a glider raid!
He'd taken barely half a dozen steps when a raw orange light flared in the darkness ahead among the tents of the battalion's rifle companies. Screams of pain and terror rose along with the light. Colonel Morris stopped dead, his eyes telling him what was moving among the tents but his mind refusing to register the message.
A dragon towered there among the tents, a dragon that might have escaped from some illustration in a book of tales for children. A fanged and scaled head rose on a long neck, with great yellow eyes glaring out on either side of the long snout. From that snout, orange flame roared like the jet from a flamethrower. Morris smelled the raw, wrenching foulness of methane and gagged as the dragon belched flame again.
The neck swept down into a massive body supported on four claw-footed legs, now spread wide. Morris found his stomach quivering as he caught sight of a soldier writhing under one of those feet, blood oozing from him as the dragon's weight slowly crushed him into the ground.
Behind the body a long tail stretched off into the darkness, and on either side of the body spread immense wings. Morris saw one of those wings lash forward into the faces of half a dozen soldiers as they scrambled out of their tent. They stopped. The great head swung toward them, the flames gushed out, and more screams rose horribly into the night. Four of the men went down, writhing and rolling frantically. Two panicked and ran, flames streaming from hair and clothing.
They did not get far. Out of the darkness another dragon came sweeping down to land almost in front of them. It seemed disoriented for a moment. Hope leaped up in Colonel Morris that it would overlook the fleeing men, or miss them if it struck.
Then the great scaled head dipped, fanged jaws closed, and one of the men shrieked as the dragon lifted him high. A moment later he heard an echo as the dragon's tail smashed into the other soldier. He flew twenty feet into the air, landing with the ghastly limpness of a man whose bones have all been smashed in a single blow.
A third dragon whispered overhead, and a fourth. Somewhere a machine gun sent up tracer at the last dragon. One wing folded up in midair, and the monster plunged down to the ground faster than the others. But it moved and roared and flamed just as fiercely, no more harmed by the fall than if it had been a block of solid steel.
«Sharpshooters!» roared Morris, in a voice that would have carried over the uproar made by a dozen dragons. «Sharpshooters! Turn out and open fire! Aim for the eyes!»
Yet another orange flare in the darkness, and then a far larger one as some part of the ammunition store exploded. Bits of flaming debris arched high into the sky and dropped all around Colonel Morris, trailing smoke. The glare from the explosion lit up a fifth dragon gliding in, and then a sixth.
A new kind of light flared in the darkness, and the flame trail of an antitank rocket streaked upward. It caught the sixth dragon where the long neck joined the body. The dragon doubled up in midair and fell. It did not move when it landed, its roars were feeble, and only a tiny jet of flame flickered around its jaws.
Morris let out a shout of triumph. «They can be killed, men! They can be!» He had not realized until this moment that he himself had thought the dragons invulnerable, monsters from another world where nature was not as it was in this one. «Antitank and heavy weapons men, back up the sharpshooters! Everyone else stand clear and cordon off the area!»
Colonel Morris said no more, because he had no more breath. He realized that he'd been shouting more like a sergeant major on a drill field than an officer commanding a battalion. But there'd been no other way to get his orders through or relieve his own feelings of being caught up in a nightmare.
He turned and dashed back to his hut, charging through the door so fast that he nearly took it off its hinges. He snatched the telephone off the desk and furiously punched in the numbers of Brigade Headquarters.
«Hello, Brigade? Morris of the Pembrokes. We've got a spot of trouble here. The camp is under attack by fire-breathing dragons. What? I am perfectly sober, and I assure you that I am not joking.