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Levant spoke into the microphone on his helmet. "Captain Pembroke-Smythe, stand by the Vulcan crew."
"Standing by Madeleine and ready to fire," Pembroke-Smythe acknowledged from the gun emplacement on the opposite rampart:
"Madeleine?"
"The crew have formed an endearing attachment to the gun, sir, and named it after a girl whose favors they enjoyed in Algeria."
"Just see that Madeleine doesn't get fickle and jam."
"Yes sir."
"Let the first plane make its firing run," Levant instructed. "Then blast it from the rear as it banks away. If your timing is right, you should be able to swing back and strike the second plane in line before it can launch its missiles."
"Jolly good, sir."
Almost as Pembroke-Smythe replied, the lead Mirage broke from formation and dropped down to 75 meters, boring in without any attempt at jinking back and forth to avoid ground fire. The pilot was hardly a top jet driver. He came slow and fired his two missiles a trifle late.
Powered by a single-stage solid-propellant rocket motor, the first missile soared over the fort, its high explosive warhead bursting harmlessly in the sand beyond. The second struck against the north parapet and exploded, tearing a 2-meter gouge in the top of the wall and hurling shattered stone in a shower across the parade ground.
The Vulcan's crew tracked the low-flying jet, and the instant it passed over the fort they opened fire. The revolving six-barrel Gatling gun, set to fire a thousand rounds a minute instead of its two thousand maximum to conserve supply, spat a hail of 20-millimeter shells at the fleeing aircraft as it banked into a vulnerable position. One wing broke away as cleanly as if it had been cut by a surgeon's scalpel, and the Mirage violently twisted over on its back and crashed into the ground.
Almost before the impact, Madeleine was swung 180 degrees and cut loose again, her stream of shells walking into the path of the second jet and smashing it head on. There was a black puff and the fighter exploded in a fiery ball and disintegrated, pieces of it splattering into the fort's outer wall.
The next fighter in line launched its missiles far too soon in panic and banked away. Levant watched with a bemused expression as twin explosions dug craters a good 200 meters in front of the fort. Now leaderless, the squadron broke off the attack and began circling aimlessly far out of range.
"Nice shooting," Levant complimented the Vulcan crew. "Now they know we can bite, they'll launch their missiles at a greater distance with less accuracy."
"Only about six hundred rounds left," reported Pembroke-Smythe.
"Conserve it for now and have the men take cover. We'll let them pound us for a while. Sooner or later one will get careless and come in close again."
Kazim had listened to his pilots excitedly calling to one another over their radios, and he watched the opening debacle from the video telephoto system through the command center monitors. Their confidence badly shaken during their first actual combat with an enemy who shot back at them, the pilots were babbling over the airwaves like frightened children and begging for instructions.
His face flushed with anger, Kazim stepped into the communications cabin and began shouting over the radio. "Cowards! This is General Kazim. You airmen are my right arm, my executioners. Attack, attack. Any man who does not show courage will be shot when he lands and his family sent to prison."
Undertrained, overconfident until now, the Malian air force pilots were more adept at swaggering through their streets and pursuing pretty girls than fighting an opponent out to kill them. The French had made a diligent attempt at modernizing and schooling the desert nomads in airfighting tactics, but traditional ways and cultural thinking were too firmly entrenched in their minds to make them an efficient fighting force.
Stung by Kazim's words and more fearful of his wrath than the shot and shell that had blasted their flight leader and his wingman from the sky, they very reluctantly resumed the attack and dove in single file at the still stalwart walls
of the old Foreign Legion fort.
As if he thought himself "unkillable," Levant stood and observed the attack from between the ramparts with the calmness of a spectator at a tennis match. The first two fighters fired their missiles and banked sharply away before coming anywhere near the fort. All their rockets went high and burst on the other side of the railroad.
They came from all sides in wild, unpredictable maneuvers. Their assaults should have been basic and organized, concentrating on leveling one wall instead of haphazardly attacking the fort from whatever direction suited them. Experiencing no more return fire, they became more accurate. The fort began to take devastating hits now. Gaping holes appeared in the old masonry as the walls began to crumble.
Then, as Levant predicted, the Malian pilots became overconfident and bolder, pressing ever closer before launching their missiles. He rose from behind his small command post and brushed away the dust on his combat suit.
"Captain Pembroke-Smythe, any casualties?"
"None reported, Colonel."
"It's time for Madeleine and her friends to earn their money again."
"Manning the gun now, sir."
"If you plan well, you'll have enough shells left to down two more of the devils."
The job was made easier when two aircraft raced across the open desert wing tip to wing tip. The Vulcan swung around to engage and open fire. At first it looked as though the gun crew had missed. Then there was a burst of flame and black smoke erupted from the starboard Mirage. The plane didn't explode nor did the pilot seem to lose control. The nose simply fell on a slight angle downward and the fighter descended until it crashed into the sand.
