The Dogs of War [antikvár]

PROLOGUEThere were no stars that night on the bush airstrip, nor any moon; just the West African darkness wrapping round the scattered groups like warm, wet velvet. The cloud cover was lying hardly off the tops of the iroko trees and the waiting men prayed it would stay a while longer to shield them from the bombers.At the end of the runway the battered old DC-4, which had just slipped in for a landing by runway Mghts that stayed alight for just the last fifteen seconds of final approach, turned and coughed its way blindly towards the palm-thatch huts.A Federal MIG-17 night fighter, probably flown by one of the six East German pilots sent down over the past three months, to replace the Egyptians who had a horror of flying at night, moaned across the sky to the west. It was out of sight above the cloud layer, as was the runway also hidden from the pilot's eyes. He was seeking the tell-tale flicker of the landing lights going on to bring in. a landing plane, but the lights were out.The pilot of the taxiing DC-4, unable to hear the scream of the jet above him, flicked on his own lights to see where he was going, and from the darkness a voice cried uselessly, 'Kill de lights!* They went out anyway when the pilot had got his bearings, and the fighter above