“The moral of my story, daughter, is this: when the enemy thinks he has you trapped, that is the best time to turn his overconfidence against him.”
The Commander nodded. “We have four of the Su-25T aircraft from our sister regiment, Alexandra Dmitrievna. And this is a chance that must not be missed. We will turn this trap against the mujahids. I will allot two of the new Rooks, to you and to Vasily. Vasily will plan the loadouts, he is the more skilled in air-to-ground work. We are taking a risk this way that the cursed mujahids have yet more of the damned Mirages of the Iranians, or MiG-29s. If so, the newer Rook is capable of R-73 carriage and this will be your task. Between the two of you, you must buy time for the Americans to get their aircraft into position to strike the base, and you must protect the transport at all costs. Once it is away, do as much damage as you can. We may have a chance to kill the Sheikh himself on this raid. Our aircraft will follow the American strike, and this time we will raze Suhumi to the ground, regardless of the Georgians’ objections. You must convince this Bones to follow the Sheikh’s instructions, to the letter, and we will end this once and for all.”
I could hear my flight, the C-17, approaching the hangar. I stood, saluted my Commander. “I will do my best, sir.”I saluted my father as well. He is on the Air Force staff, now. A general officer. Military protocol should be observed, no? But Father is not as stiff as I, or as the Commander, with whom he faced danger so many times. Of course, he insisted on embracing me in the traditional Russian way, before escorting me to the American aircraft.
“Take care, Shoura. Your mother will not forgive me your loss. And I would not forgive myself, either.”
“I will, Father. And I will remember your advice.” I turned and the American loadmaster helped me onto the aircraft, showing me to a place in the webbed seating as the rear ramp was lowered, cargo being offloaded for the A-10 and F-15 groups here.
Father turned, and walked back to the hangar, where the Commander waited for him, and together they went inside, leaving me only with my thoughts, as before. And now, I must convince Bones to listen to Kemal’s words, and help us to kill the Sheikh as well as rescuing his men.
I wonder how he will react?
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System Specs
- AMD Athlon 3000+ processor
- MachSpeed N2PAP-Lite motherboard with onboard Aureal AC97 sound
- ATi Radeon x800 Pro
- 1GB Kingston PC2700 DDR DRAM
- Creative 12x CD-ROM
- Maxtor 40GB main drive
- DirectX Version 9.0c
- Windows XP Home with SP2
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