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flight yelling at me, I don’t really remember—anyway, I suddenly realized there was going to be another one of these suckers coming at my butt. Because that’s what they did. You’re here, you start to follow, they get you flat-footed. So instead of following, I flick down—yeah, as incredible as that seems, I roll and duck, and I’m not kidding, I look up and I’m six hundred yards from the second MiG’s nose. Nose on nose. He winks—big balls of red and black pop out in front of me. It’s not slow motion. It’s more like I’m looking at a painting. Everything’s stopped. Those flashes are—you ever see that Van Gogh painting of stars at night? ‘Starry Night’ or something?

That’s what it is, and it’s the middle of the day. And I mean, he’s right here, I could have flown right into him.

Popped the canopy and shook hands. But I didn’t use the gun. It happened so fast, I couldn’t.”

Even if his weapon were charged and he was ready to fire, the likelihood of scoring a heads-on shot under the circumstances Hammer described were slim. But he sus-pended his story, blowing a deep puff of smoke into the air from his cigarette to underline his failure.

“So, I turn,” he continued finally. He turned his head to the left, as if watching the MiG pass. “He goes that way.

I’m—slats, flaps, I would have thrown out an anchor, if I could have, to turn and get on his tail. I would have put the engines into reverse. Rewind.”

A long pull on the cigarette took it down to the filter.

Hammer put it in the ashtray thoughtfully and picked up the pack for another.

“So I come out of the turn and the first MiG is right there, three-quarters of a mile. Sidewinder growls again.

Bing. Launch. And just about then the second MiG

splashed my flight leader.”

That was the end of the story, and though Dog waited RAZOR’S EDGE

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for details—such as what happened to the two men in the Phantom that went down—Hammer didn’t offer them.

After a few minutes of silence, he added a postscript:

“Never underestimate the importance of luck.” Then he left the bar, without lighting the second cigarette.

Hammer’s criticism didn’t seem quite so harsh after that. In spite of it, Dog and he became reasonably decent friends. Dog was in his wedding party and had been invited to Hammer’s son’s christening, though he was in Germany at the time and couldn’t attend. The boy, whom he’d met several times, would be four or five now.

Hammer and his wife had waited to have kids, largely because he thought what he did for a living carried a hefty risk for a young family. He’d wanted to wait until he was close to retiring. Then he’d enjoy the kid and be safe—safe for him and the wife.

“Penny for your thoughts,” said Ax, materializing in front of his desk. “I knocked, Colonel—sorry.”

“It’s okay, Chief.”

“Secure line for you. It’s back channel.” Ax pointed to the phone.

Dog hesitated, suspecting the call was from someone in the Pentagon looking for inside information he didn’t have.

“You’re going to want to take it, Colonel,” said Ax, who’d retreated to the doorway. “It’s Brad Elliott. He’s in Turkey.”

Dog nodded, then reached for the phone as deliberately as Hammer had sipped his soda that night.

“Hello, General,” said Dog.

“Colonel, I have some information I’d like to give you, so that you have a full understanding of the situation over here,” said Elliott.

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Elliott introduced small talk into the conversation. Which was just fine with him.

“It’s unofficial, of course,” added Elliott.

“Yes, sir, General.”

“I’m not in the Air Force and I’m not your superior,”

said Elliott. “I don’t believe the planes that went down were hit by missiles, contrary to what the analysts are saying.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” said Dog.

“Tecumseh, how much do you know about Razor?”

In any given week, ten or twelve of the pieces of paper that came across his desk dealt with Razor, the favored nickname for the S-500 mobile deuterium chemical laser system. Ground-based, it was being developed as an antiaircraft weapon and had an accurate range of roughly three hundred miles. Aside from some niggling problems in the cooling system and some glitches in the targeting computer and radar, the system was ready for production. Indeed, Dreamland was slated to receive some of the first production units for its own air defense system any day now.

“I know a little about it,” said Dog.

“My suspicion is that the planes were taken out by a clone. It would account for the fact that the radars weren’t on long enough for a missile to acquire the target. The damage is consistent with a Razorlike weapon.”

“Everything I’ve heard points to missiles.”

“Everything you’ve heard is driven by CIA estimates and conventional thinking,” said Elliott. “The problem is, no one believes Saddam has a laser, so naturally they’re looking for something else.”

Deuterium lasers were cutting-edge weapons, and it was difficult to believe a third world country like Iraq could develop them or even support them. Then again, few people had believed Iraq had a nuclear weapons pro-

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gram until the Gulf War and subsequent inspections.

“If this were the Iranians or the Chinese,” continued Elliott, “everyone would connect the dots. Let me let you talk to someone who was there.”

Before Dog could say anything, Mack Smith came on the line.

“Hey, Colonel, how’s the weather back there?”

“Mack?”

“Hi, Colonel. I bet you’re wondering why I’m not in Brussels. General Elliott borrowed me. He’s on some sort of task force thing, investigating a shoot-down, and since that’s my area of expertise, I hopped right to it.”

Dog rolled his eyes. Elliott obviously said something to Mack, and Mack’s voice became somewhat more businesslike.

“So what do you want to know, sir?” asked Mack. “I’ll give you the whole layout. I saw it. Wing came off clean.

Has to be a laser. Iraqis must have stolen it.”

“Did you take pictures, Mack?”

“Yes, sir. Being processed now. CIA has its head up its ass, but what else is new, right?”

Elliott took back the phone. “You know Major Smith,”

he said, in a tone one might use when referring to a way-ward child.

“Yes,” said Dog. “I’d like to get some of my people on this.”

“I agree,” said Elliott. “Dr. Jansen—”

“Jansen’s no longer here, I’m afraid,” said Dog. Jansen had headed the Razor development team at Dreamland.

“I’ll have to check with Dr. Rubeo to get the people together. If we could look at the damage ourselves—”

“Wreckage was blown up in the tangle Mack got involved in,” said Elliott. “Some of the people from Liver-more who worked on high-energy weapons have been analyzing it for the CIA.”

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“And they don’t think it was a laser?”

“They hem and they haw. The NSA has been picking up information about new radars, and the Iraqis have been working on adapting the SA-2,” added Elliott.

“What’s CentCom’s opinion?”

“Their intelligence people are split. There were a lot of missiles in the air, and at one point the AWACS does seem to pick up a contact near the F-16. On this other shootdown, the AWACS had moved off station and the F-15s were temporarily out of range. Heads are rolling on that.” Elliott’s voice had a certain snap to it, the quick un-derstatement a commander used to indicate someone down the line had screwed up royally. “Their view is that it’s irrelevant to their planning—they have to proceed no matter what the threat. Saddam can’t get away with this.”

Dog agreed that CentCom had to press its attacks, but a weapon like Razor changed the tactical situation a great deal. Razor had considerably more range and accuracy than conventional antiaircraft weapons, and defeating it was much more difficult. Most SAMs would be neutralized by jamming their radar. In Razor’s case, however, that was problematic. The jammer itself was essentially a target beacon, alerting a sophisticated detection system to the plane’s location, giving it all the coordinates needed to fire; once the weapon was fired the electronic countermeasures were beside the point—the ray worked essentially instantaneously. On the other hand, waiting to turn the ECMs on until the laser’s targeting radar became active was nearly as dangerous. In theory, though not yet in practice, Razor could work on a single return—by the time the radar was detected, it had fired. Other detection systems, including infrared and microwave located far from the laser itself, could also be used to give the weapon targeting data, making it even more difficult to defeat.