EndWar

They were a small piece of a much larger defensive dubbed Operation Slay the Dragon by the JSF, an operation that included all branches of the U.S. and European Federation armed forces, with the Euros focusing on the major city of Edmonton.

Now, back in his barracks, a shirtless Sergeant Rule approached McAllen, cocked a brow, all pierced nipples and twenty tattoos. “Hey, Ray, you got a minute?”

“If this is about what we discussed earlier—”

“Look, man, you set me straight. I’m so squared away that if you brush against me, my corners will cut you.”

“Nice.”

“But I’ll never be Jonesy. Nobody will. Just want you to know that I’m giving you a hundred and ten percent. Always.”

“We’ll see how long it takes for you to create your own shadow. And I hope it’s a pretty long one. The other thing is, I got about eight, nine years on you. In my book, that makes me old school.” McAllen reached out and flicked one of Rule’s nipple rings. “Maybe the Corps’s gotten a little soft on this crap since you hide them under your shirt, but I haven’t.”

“I’ll remove them, Sergeant — if they bother you that much.”

“I just want to be sure we’re on the same page.”

“We are. Good. Now don’t forget to pack an extra sock.”

“Huh?”

“Our suits have all those fancy micro-climate conditioning subsystems, but if the suit fails, you and your family jewels will be glad you got that sock. Trust me.”

Rule grinned. “I hear that, Sergeant.”

McAllen turned and looked the man straight in the eye, then proffered his hand. “The last time I met the Russians, they couldn’t help but fall to their knees and bleed.”

“I hope I have the same effect on them.”

They shook firmly, then Rule rushed off to pack.

McAllen returned to inventorying his gear. He fetched a picture of himself and Jonesy from his footlocker and slipped it into his ruck. They’d been pretty drunk that night, and Jonesy had been the one to get McAllen home. He was like that. Dependable beyond belief. And McAllen had to get it into his head that though no one could replace Jonesy, he had to give Sergeant Rule, nipple rings and all, a chance.

At least the spirit of Jonesy would be heading up into the Great White North, along with the spirit of the Corps.

Whenever they went into battle, every man who had ever been a Marine went with them.

With white-hot chaff flashing beside her wings, Major Stephanie Halverson took her F-35B fighter into another dive, rolling as she did so, then banked sharply to the right, cutting a deep chamfer in the air.

Her pressure suit compensated for what would’ve been excruciating g-forces, keeping the blood from pooling in her legs, yet still she felt the usual and sometimes even welcome discomfort.

One missile took the bait and exploded somewhere above her; she didn’t waste time to check its exact location because the other one was still locked on.

Utilizing all of the jet’s sensors and the helmet-mounted display, Halverson was able to look down through her knees, through the actual structure of the aircraft, and spot the missile coming up from below.

She punched the chaff again.

Then killed the engine and let the fighter drop away like an unlucky mallard during hunting season.

The only problem was, the missile had been designed to “see” whole images rather than just single points of infrared radiation like the heat from her engine.

So that Vympel R-84 with its “potato masher” fins had a decision to make: detonate its thirty kilograms of high explosive in the chaff or continue on to Halverson.

With her breath held, she watched as the missile penetrated the chaff cloud—

And kept on coming.

She cursed, fired up the engine, then started straight for the cargo planes still glowing in her multifunction display.

Okay, steady. Okay.

She pressed a finger against the touch screen, viewing a much clearer, close-up image of the nearest aircraft. She tapped another button, and target designation and weapons status imagery appeared in her HMD. She closed in, the target now being automatically tracked, the crosshairs in her visor locking on the AN-130.

If I get taken out of the fight, I’m bringing a couple of you with me.

She tightened her fist, pressed the button.

Missile away. She pressed again. Missile #2 streaked off a second behind the first.

The radar alarm was still going off.

And there it was, a glowing dot. You didn’t need a key to the display’s symbols to know what that one meant: death.

“Sapphire, this is Siren, can’t shake my last missile, over.”

“Yes, you can, Siren! Chaff again! Come on!”

Aw, what the hell. She popped more chaff then broke into a diving roll that would have left most nuggets barfing in their helmets.

And what kind of miracle was that? The damned missile took the bait and exploded in a beautiful conflagration, the dark clouds traced by flickering light.