horizon.
Infrared photography was an especially valuable tool for intelligence
work.
Batman had examined IR photos which showed the heat shadows of aircraft,
identifiable traces marking where planes had been parked on an airfield,
hours after they’d been moved; he’d seen infrared shots of oil storage
tanks which revealed the level of oil inside as though the tanks
themselves were transparent; he’d seen shots of hot vehicle engines
gleaming like bonfires through layers of foliage or camouflage netting.
IR scans of the That jungle would reveal hidden trails just as clearly.
The cleared, hard-packed ground of foot trails or roads gave off
different levels of heat than the loose humus around it, and the jungle
could not entirely conceal the patterns of temperature differentials.
Jungle roads were clearer still, and vehicles would show up like burning
flares.
Batman glanced out the canopy. To starboard, toward the north, lay
Burma. There was an air base off that way, fifty kilometers distant.
Mong-koi, it was called. He remembered the MiGs that had come across
the line four days earlier. He could see nothing but jungle mountains,
partly masked by clots of drifting cloud.
To the south, Price Taggart’s Tomcat drifted lazily off the starboard
wing. “Two-oh-three, this is Two-three-two,” he said over the radio.
“You with me, Price? We’re starting our run.”
“With you, Batman,” Taggart’s voice replied in his helmet. “Lead the
way.”
“We have signal lock,” Malibu said, “Beginning run … now.”
Images picked up by TARPS could be stored or beamed back to a base for
immediate processing. This time around, the images would be held for
analysis on board Jefferson.
“Smile down there,” Batman said. “You’re on Candid Camera.”
The minutes dragged on. Though TARPS technology allowed the
reconnaissance aircraft to move at a reasonably high speed–Batman was
cruising at nearly five hundred knots–the need to stick to a particular
course was irksome to any fighter pilot. It made him feel predictable,
and therefore vulnerable. Not that there was evidence of anything more
hostile in that green maze than cobras and malaria. Now if there’d been
a SAM site or two down there …
Becky was supposed to be in town for a few more days. He wondered if
CAG would relent and bring him back in time to enjoy another run into
Bangkok.
“Hey, Batman? You see something there?”
Malibu’s voice over the ICS snapped Batman’s attention back to his VDI.
The camera feed from the TARPS pod showed the IR line scan on the
screen, a shifting picture in black and white. Odd. There were
dazzling points of light down there. Cooking fires?
“I think we have stumbled across one of those quaint and charming tribes
of native hill people you’ve heard tell about,” he said. It seemed
strange, though. There were a lot of fires down there.
He held the Tomcat in straight, level flight, throttling back to less
than four hundred knots at an altitude of three thousand feet. He
dismissed the idea that he’d caught a band of smugglers. If that was a
camp of some kind hidden beneath the jungle canopy, it had a population
numbering in the thousands. He could see the engine flares of trucks
now, too. It looked like he’d stumbled across some sort of army.
An army. Those weren’t That troops down there, not that many, not in
this area.
Batman’s eyes strayed to the northern horizon, encountering unrelieved
green. That whole region was a regular breeding ground for armies, most
of them the personal guards of drug lords. No doubt some of them were
operating on this side of the border as well.
Whatever it was down there, it was damned big. “I wonder what they’re
going to make of this back at U Feng,” he said to Malibu.
“Damned if I know. Want me to call it in?”
“Let’s finish the run first. Good God! There’s no end to them! Just
what the hell have we found anyway?”
1248 hours, 17 January
Mong-koi, Burma
“General Hsiao! Major Sai is calling! The Burmese radio operator
pressed the telephone handset against his ear. Around him, other men in
Burmese army uniforms sat at the radar consoles which filled the