"God help us!" he whispers, looking incredulously at the window out of which half a dozen planes are chasing the damaged plane, the largest he has ever seen. Radar reflections and reconnaissance reports never once mentioned monsters of this magnitude. Their swiftness is frightening, as if they had jet engines instead of bat-like wings.
With reverence he takes out the cross hanging around his neck, kisses it and repeats the cry for help to the Lord. He knows he was cruel, sharp and unyielding to the recruits. He drove them to exhaustion on the training fields, threw tear gas at them during lunch, and sounded the alarm in the middle of the night to make them run half-naked through the snow and ice. Often he wondered if these kids deserved the excessive training and overwork, and just as oft
