Without remorse - Tom Clancy [128]
And Zacharias took another swallow, still numb, still disoriented, and even more confused than ever.
'Good man,' Grishanov said. 'I have never said this, but you are a courageous man, my friend, to resist these little animals as you have.'
'Have to,' Zacharias gasped.
'Of course you do,' Grishanov said, wiping the man's face clean as tenderly as he might have done with one of his children. 'I would, too.' He paused. 'God, to be flying again!'
'Yeah. Colonel, I wish -'
'Call me Kolya,' Grishanov gestured. 'You've known me long enough.'
'Kolya?'
'My Christian name is Nikolay. Kolya is - nickname, you say?'
Zacharias let his head back against the wall, closing his eyes and remembering the sensations of flight. 'Yes, Kolya, I would like to be flying again.'
'Not too different, I imagine,' Kolya said, sitting beside the man, wrapping a brotherly arm around his bruised and aching shoulders, knowing it was the first gesture of human warmth the man had experienced in almost a year. 'My favorite is the MiG-17. Obsolete now, but, God, what a joy to fly. Just fingertips on the stick, and you -you just think it, just wish it in your mind, and the aircraft does what you want.'
'The -86 was like that,' Zacharias replied. "They're all gone, too.'
The Russian chuckled, 'Like your first love, yes? The first girl you saw as a child, the one who first made you think as a man thinks, yes? But the first airplane, that is better for one like us. Not so warm as a woman is, but much less confusing to handle.' Robin tried to laugh, but choked. Grishanov offered him another swallow. 'Easy, my friend. Tell me, what is your favorite?'
The American shrugged, feeling the warm glow in his belly. 'I've flown nearly everything. I missed the F-94 and the -89, too. From what I hear, I didn't miss much there. The -104 was fun, like a sports car, but not much legs. No, the -86H is probably my favorite, just for handling.'
'And the Thud?' Grishanov asked, using the nickname for the F-105 Thunderchief.
Robin coughed briefly. 'You take the whole state of Utah to turn one in, darned if it isn't fast on the deck, though. I've had one a hundred twenty knots over the redline.'
'Not really a fighter, they say. Really a bomb truck.' Grishanov had assiduously studied American pilot's slang.
'That's all right. It will get you out of trouble in a hurry. You sure don't want to dogfight in one. The first pass better be a good one.'
'But for bombing - one pilot to another, your bomb delivery in this wretched place is excellent.'
'We try, Kolya, we surely do try,' Zacharias said, his voice slurred. It amazed the Russian that the liquor had worked so quickly. The man had never had a drink in his life until twenty minutes earlier. How remarkable that a man would choose to live without drink.
'And the way you fight the rocket emplacements. You know, I've watched that. We are enemies, Robin,' Kolya said again. 'But we are also pilots. The courage and skill I have watched here, they are like nothing I have ever seen. You must be a professional gambler at home, yes?'
'Gamble?' Robin shook his head. 'No, I can't do that.'
'But what you did in your Thud ...'
'Not gambling. Calculated risk. You plan, you know what you can do, and you stick to that, get a feel for what the other guy is thinking.'
Grishanov made a mental note to refill his flask for the next one on his schedule. It had taken a few months, but he'd finally found something that worked. A pity that these little brown savages didn't have the wit to understand that in hurting a man you most often made his courage grow. For all their arrogance, which was considerable, they saw the world through a lens that was as diminutive as their stature and as narrow as their culture. They seemed unable to learn lessons. Grishanov sought out such lessons. Strangest of all, this one had been something learned from a fascist officer in the Luftwaffe. A pity also that the Vietnamese allowed only him and no others to perform these special interrogations. He'd soon write