Chains of Command

TWENTY-FIVE

“We have begun receiving radio broadcasts from the outside,” Colonel of Aviation Petr Panchenko said. “It is my great pleasure to inform you that although Ukrayina is gravely hurt, the Republic is intact.”

The cheer that rose in that conference room was hearty but a bit strained. Panchenko was presiding over a meeting of the surviving officers and senior enlisted staff of L’vov Air Base in western Ukraine, deep within the base’s underground command center. The twenty men and women attending the briefing were exhausted and stressed to the point of breaking, both mentally and physically, but an observer who knew nothing of the grave situation outside their earth, steel, and concrete walls would never guess the circumstances the soldiers were under. Panchenko, as senior officer, had prescribed normal dress and deportment, even after all outside life-support systems had been cut off shortly after the attack. Clean, shaven faces, clean uniforms, and spit-shined boots were mandatory, supervised by regular inspections, and twice-daily exercise periods were required for all personnel. Panchenko was determined that military discipline be strictly maintained despite the horrible tragedy that faced them.

“As we surmised, the Russian invaders conducted no attacks in the Ukraine south of the forty-eighth parallel, with the exception of Krivoj Rog army transport base,” Panchenko continued. “The reason is simple: more Russians live in the Crimea and Azov regions of the Ukraine than any other. The Don region was untouched, primarily because Russia values the coal and ore mining operations there. The capital received only isolated, non-nuclear attacks to outlying military installations. Obviously, the large number of Russians living in Kiev is the reason for this. So far no foreign troops appear to be marching on the capital, although the M21 highway from Vinnica to Minsk and the M10 highway between Kiev and Moscow across Belarus is closed and is clogged with military traffic.”

One officer sitting at the head of the table beside Panchenko was only half listening to the briefing. Captain of Aviation Pavlo Tychina, looking like a sinister Phantom of the Opera with his sterile gauze mask, sat still, eyes straight ahead, arms at his sides. He did not react at all to Panchenko’s words of encouragement, but remained motionless, lost in his own tortured thoughts. The Colonel had told him that such self-imposed misery was selfish and useless and nonproductive — everyone in that bunker had lost someone close to them — but his words made no difference. Tychina allowed himself to mourn deeply — and propped up those thoughts with ones of revenge. Nothing would keep either of those thoughts out of his head. He had the skill and the desire to inflict great pain on the Russians who staged the preemptive attack on his homeland, and nothing would stop him from—

“Captain?” Panchenko was asking, trying to get his attention. His commander’s voice had a sharp edge. “Your briefing, please.”

Tychina didn’t apologize for his inattention, but stiffly rose to his feet. His audience’s eyes were riveted on him, not only because of his horrible wounds but because of who he was and what he had lost. As Colonel Panchenko had said, everyone lost someone in the hell’s fire above, but somehow Tychina’s loss affected them all.

“Comrades, I was asked by Colonel Panchenko to interface with other surviving aviation elements in the country to catalog the national defense strike units, namely, the MiG-23, MiG-27, and Su-17 fighter and fighter-bomber units,” Tychina began. “Unfortunately, that has been almost impossible. The nuclear explosions aboveground created an electromagnetic disturbance in the atmosphere that until recently has disrupted all normal military communications. The BBC, Voice of America, and Radio Europe report that Ukrainian military units near the capital have been attacked by Russian air raids over the past few hours and that all air defense units in the north have been destroyed or have been rendered non-mission effective. We don’t know the full effect of the nuclear attacks against our base or against Vinnica, but I think we must assume that our forces in the north have been destroyed.

“That leaves the Fifth Air Army in Odessa as the only untouched fighter group. So far I have heard no reports about any air attacks into Odessa, so I assume their units are intact and possibly dispersed,” Tychina continued. It was good that Panchenko made him do all this research and act as a sort of intelligence officer — it helped clear his head, got him thinking tactically again, and helped keep his mind off the disaster that awaited him aboveground: “The Fifth possesses one MiG-27 bomber wing, two squadrons of about eighteen aircraft each. We may be lucky enough to have a few elements of Kiev’s Eighth Air Army who survived the conventional bombing attacks and escaped to Odessa, and we know that as many as twenty MiG-23 fighters from our unit and a few MiG-27 and Sukhoi-17 bombers from Vinnica were airborne and may have escaped the nuclear air raids. Therefore, I estimate that we have a force of approximately one hundred fifty, possibly as many as two hundred fixed-wing strike and fighter aircraft. It is completely unknown at this time how many attack helicopters survived — Odessa had lost one hundred and forty Mil-24 attack helicopters in the Fourteenth Combined Arms Division and at least two hundred Mil-8 combat transport helicopters.”

The group was very silent — they knew the devastation was enormous. The Ukraine had had almost two thousand strike planes and helicopters just twenty-four hours earlier — now they had fewer than five hundred, maybe less. How could they ever hope of mounting any sort of counteroffensive? Except for the use of nuclear weapons, which did not seem to be that extensive, the Russians actually seemed to hold back their concentrated attacks, and three-fourths of the Ukraine’s air force had been wiped out. What could they possibly hope to do?

“Thank you, Captain,” Panchenko said, sensing Tychina’s drifting attention and concluding his briefing for him. Tychina nodded and took his seat. To the staff, Panchenko said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know what we’ll find up there. We may in fact be down here for quite some time. The main exit appears to be intact but may have suffered damage, and the escape tunnels may be our best option; I have people checking on them now, and they should be reporting in soon. If we can get out, we may take the risk and evacuate to Odessa soon — assuming they can dig us out of here. In any case, I want you all to remember that we are warriors, combatants, and members of the Ukrayina Air Force. We will use whatever weapons we find up there to take up the fight.” He paused, scanning the faces around him, and finally resting on Pavlo Tychina. “Is that clear, Captain?”

“Yes, sir,” Tychina responded firmly.

Panchenko turned to his intelligence officer for a briefing, but before he could begin, a telephone rang somewhere outside the conference room — it was the first telephone ring they had heard in many hours. A communications technician leaped to answer it. He listened for a moment, covered the mouthpiece, then cried, “Sir! A rescue crew is at the outer door! The door is intact and they are requesting permission to enter!”

Panchenko had no sooner opened his mouth to speak than Tychina was on his feet and sprinting for the door. Panchenko yelled, “Captain! Take your seat!” but it did no good. To the communication technician, Panchenko said, “Clear the security area and weather station, and all personnel, including Captain Tychina, will wear exposure suits and respirators before those doors are opened. Everyone else is to be in the communications center or beyond.” He dismissed the staff and hurried off after Tychina.

As he expected, by the time Panchenko reached the security area just inside the blast doors, the doors had been opened, the hallway was filled with anxious people — none of whom were wearing chemical antiexposure suits or respirators — and Tychina was nowhere to be found. “I ordered this area cleared and authorized personnel to wear protective equipment,” Panchenko said to a senior master sergeant. He couldn’t be too angry because he was anxious to get upstairs as well.

“Sorry, sir, they rushed the door as soon as it was opened,” the senior NCO replied. “The Captain — the Phoenix — ordered me aside.”

The Phoenix — Panchenko had heard that name being muttered around the base and the command center. Tychina’s efforts at turning away the first Russian air raid were beginning to take on almost mystical proportions. The quiet, rather introspective young pilot was turning into something of a legend in L’vov. No doubt it would spread throughout Ukrayina before too long — if Tychina survived his anger and thirst for revenge.

“I gave an order, and I expect it to be carried out, Sergeant,” Panchenko said irritably, “no matter what Captain Tychina tells you. Now clear this hallway.”

As the master sergeant complied with his orders, a man in a silver firefighter’s suit — not a proper chemical/nuclear exposure suit, but it would offer limited protection — approached Panchenko. “Are you the commanding officer here, sir?” Panchenko nodded. “Chief Warrant Officer Usenko, Twenty-oh-four Ordnance Battalion, Seventy-second Motorized Rifle Division, from Kiev. I’m very glad to find you, sir.”

“Thank you for digging us out of here,” Panchenko said with relief. “How bad is it up there?”

Usenko shrugged. “Bad? We didn’t have to dig you out, sir. A few structures and aircraft were on fire, and the petrol-tank farm was burning from a bombing attack — that’s why I’m outfitted like this — but otherwise the base is intact.”

“Intact? How is that possible? We were hit, a direct hit … our dosimeters registered very high radiation counts.”

“Dissipated,” Usenko replied. “The Russians attacked with low-yield nuclear weapons, exploded at high altitude over selected targets. They caused only momentary communications blackouts, a few blast damage effects, and—”

“Casualties, Usenko … what about casualties?”

Usenko’s eyes averted to the floor for a moment, then raised to Panchenko with a tortured, haunted expression. “Too early to tell, sir,” he replied. “Each target complex hit with the subatomic weapons had a few initial casualties, mostly from flashblindness, moderate burns, and shock — less than one-half of one percent casualties and injuries, I’d estimate. The weapons produced virtually no extensive damage — no craters, no fires, no fallout. But as you have determined, transient neutron radiation levels were extremely high, and unprotected individuals may have received a fatal dose. Casualties are expected to be very high in the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours.”

“You mean to tell me … you mean, there are still people up there, alive?”

Usenko looked as if he’d been slapped in the face. He shuffled uneasily, then nodded his head: “Uh … sir, most everyone that was indoors during the attack, those not affected by flashblindness or overpressure, survived. Persons outdoors but protected from the flash and overpressure also survived or were only injured. But they all would have received tremendous doses of radiation, far above lethal levels. Personnel here in the command center and in other underground or shielded facilities are probably safe, but the others … there may be nothing we can do for them.”

“My God … is there any danger of fallout or exposure now? Is it safe to let my command post personnel outside?”

“Russian fighter planes have been patrolling the area, reconnaissance planes mostly, so we’re safe from any more air attacks for now, and as far as the radiation threat, it’s safe, yes, sir,” Usenko responded. “There is no danger of radiation poisoning, and no fallout. It is probably best that your people be briefed on what they are to expect up there, though. We will be asking all available personnel to assist with medical and mortuary services.” Usenko paused, then motioned toward the corridor leading to the surface and asked, “Sir, was that Captain Tychina — the Phoenix? I was hoping he was still alive. I knew he could not die. I wanted to shake that man’s hand.”

Panchenko stared into the darkness beyond the blast doors of his command center, silently praying for his young pilot. Tychina, and all of them, were going to need all the strength they could muster to get through this disaster.

Tychina was determined to sprint the entire one and a half kilometers to the chapel, but the horror of what he saw was like a vacuum that sucked all the energy from his body. Several buildings and structures were burned down, mostly older wooden structures and the ugly billboards with “inspirational” messages on them that were so common to ex-Soviet military bases, and it seemed that every window in sight was gone — not just broken or shattered, but completely blown away. What he then noticed was the flatbed trucks — dozens of them, lined up outside the headquarters building, the central base personnel office, and other administrative buildings. His eyes were drawn to the trucks’ cargo. At first it seemed as if they were unloading tables or medical supplies to set up a triage detail, but when he looked closer he discovered they were loading bodies onto the truck. The bottom rows of bodies were in dark plastic body bags, but they obviously ran out of body bags very quickly because the middle stacks of corpses were covered in sheets, and the stacks above them were covered in clothing, and a few were not covered at all. Each flatbed truck was stacked four or five rows high with bodies, well over two hundred on each flatbed.

But even worse than that sight were the sounds of hundreds of people in agony. For every corpse in those flatbeds, there appeared to be a dozen men and women who were not dead, but horribly injured or maimed from the attack. The sidewalks, the snowy lawns, the entry-ways and hallways of every building had been converted into makeshift field hospitals, where the dying were crying out for help. It was difficult to fully comprehend — the damage to the base itself was not that extensive, yet the casualties were probably in the thousands. Did the Russian nuclear attack miss its target? Did they use some sort of chemical or biological weapon? Tychina saw a few chemical exposure suits, but most of the relief workers had no protective gear at all. Weren’t chemical weapons more persistent than this?

“Look! It’s the Phoenix!” someone shouted. “Phoenix!”

“Where were you when the bombs hit, Captain Phoenix?” someone else shouted. “Why couldn’t you stop this?”

“Shut up!” an officer interjected. “He’s alive and he’s with us! He’s our best pilot — he won’t let us down!”

Tychina nearly stumbled in his hurry to get away. An argument between some of the men in the mortuary detail broke out, some on the side of Tychina and those who were safe in the command center, others who thought that Tychina was on his way to the flight line and cheered him on. Panic seized the young pilot, and he hobbled down the vehicle-clogged street as fast as he could.

But the horrors never ceased. Many were dead in their cars, still behind the wheel or slumped over onto the seat, with a sheen of frost under their nostrils and around their eyes where their dying breath had frozen — they had obviously been there a long time. Most corpses were lying outside, some carrying food or medical supplies, a few carrying other dead souls, probably for medical treatment when they succumbed to the effects of the nuclear weapon the Russians unleashed on the base. Bodies were lining the sidewalks as teams of investigators identified each corpse, tagged it with a baggage tag, moved it clear of the sidewalks and driveways, covered it the best they could with an article of clothing or a sheet, then moved on to the next. Tychina was so transfixed by one body, the corpse of a member of his own squadron, that he nearly tripped over another corpse sprawled in his path. It was like some horrible science-fiction movie about the end of the world.

The base chapel was being used as a mortuary. He asked the sergeant in charge about Mikola Korneichuk, a civilian, and after finding her name not among those who had been identified, was led over to two long rows of corpses of those who had not been identified lined up outside in the snow. The nuclear device set off by the Russians had obviously injected a lot of radiation into these victims, because most had substantial hair loss, huge blisters and lesions all over their faces, bloated skin, and horribly swollen tongues and eyeballs. But Mikki was not among the dead.

“You are Captain Tychina?” the mortuary officer asked him. “You are the pilot that drove the first Russian attack away?” Tychina tried to leave, but the man persisted. “Promise me you’ll destroy the Russians for what they’ve done here, Captain. Promise you’ll avenge the dead.” Pavlo got out of there as fast as he could.

It was easy to commandeer a vehicle — keys were left in the ignitions, and the dead owners were not about to complain. Security patrols were everywhere. Regular patrols allowed Tychina to pass freely after recognizing who he was, but some roadblocks to the officers’ housing area were set up by the local militia, and although he was recognized and his identification was in order, he was told to return to the main base immediately. Tychina wasn’t about to put up with any local weekend warriors with shotguns, so he sped through the roadblock. None of the militiamen bothered to pursue him.

The bachelor officers’ quarters were about three kilometers outside the main base area in one of the base’s many satellite housing areas, a typical bland Soviet-style settlement with many dormitory-style buildings, a park with a few scraggly trees, an exercise area, a small shopette, and an elementary school for the children of young soldiers. Tychina’s dorm was a huge, ugly concrete structure in which each unmarried officer was assigned an efficiency apartment, sharing a kitchen and bathroom with the person next door. The entire building, which housed almost five hundred officers, appeared deserted. He took the stairs two at a time to his fourth-floor room and found the door unlocked.

“Mikki!” He had been braced for the worst, but he never expected this: his fiancée was lying on his opened sleeper sofa, head seductively pillowed by an arm, her hair draped across a pillow as if arranged by a fashion designer. She was wearing a long, heavy flannel nightgown against the chill in the room — power had only recently been restored. She looked beautiful… even in … Pavlo was so overwhelmed that he burst into tears.

Mikola sleepily opened her eyes and smiled at him, the familiar, warm smile he had longed to see. “Hi, baby,” she said sleepily.

She was alive! Thank God Almighty!

“I waited up as long as I could. Give me a moment and I’ll be ready to go with you to the chapel.”

“God, Mikki …!” He rushed to her side and hugged her close, unabashed in his joy, his tears. “I’m so glad you’re safe … dear God, I thought you were in the chapel,” he moaned, burying his face in her hair. “Are you all right? Were you hurt in the attack?”

“No, I wasn’t hurt — scared, but not hurt. I’m still a little tired.” She yawned. “It got so cold in here when the power went off, but the loudspeakers said stay in the room, so I wrapped up in blankets and fell asleep, but I’ll be better, just give me a few minutes, just let me get out of bed and I’ll freshen up and I’ll be ready to go. Oh, I love you so much, Pavlo, I love you so much.…”

Her voice was trailing away, down to a barely audible whisper, as if she were walking away from him. Tychina noticed that she did not return his embrace, but her arms hung loosely at her sides …

… and when he lifted her head off his shoulders to look into her face, her hair dropped off her head like clumps of brittle needles from a long-dead Christmas tree. “Jesus Christ, Mikki …!”

“Pavlo?” Her voice was as faint as the buzz of a hummingbird, even though she was only inches away. “Pavlo, please help me to the chapel, I’m so tired …”

He got off the couch in a near-panic. He had to get her out of here. Had to get her help. She must have gotten a large dose of radiation, Pavlo thought, while she was waiting for him at the chapel. But she survived and somehow made her way back to the dorm room. Except for her hair, it seemed — he prayed — she didn’t receive a fatal dose. Perhaps she could be saved.…

But when he lifted her into his arms to take her downstairs for help, the skin from her left thigh sloughed off like wet tissue paper, exposing muscle caked with dried, blackened blood. Tychina swallowed hard to hold back the tears, laid her back on the bed, and covered her with blankets. “I’ll get help, Mikki,” he whispered. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.” But when he dared look into her eyes, he found them dry and lifeless, clouding up, her perfect mouth slightly open as she tried to draw in her last breath that never came.

“No … Mikki!” he sobbed, thinking perhaps she’d just gone back to sleep. Yes, that was it … she’d need her rest … while he went to get help. He held her close to his chest, his sobs growing harder, the tears falling down on her thin hair. He knew she wasn’t asleep, it’d been a desperate hope, a fantasy. He tried to bargain with God: Just take me, let her live, just take me. She’s too beautiful, too sweet and wonderful and innocent to die. He thought she was dead, had prepared himself for it, tried to muster enough strength to face it when he knew, ultimately, that he would. And yet, finding her alive, seeing her come awake, now … now only to die.

This is too cruel for any man! he raged silently at the heavens. Why? He sobbed even harder, clutching her to him, feeling as if his whole world were collapsing. Not caring whether he lived or died, but only praying for God — for anyone — to bring her back to life.

Mikola seemed so thin, so tiny, to Pavlo as he stapled her identification card to her nightgown and wrapped the body in a blanket. He was about to pick her up and take her down to the car when he heard, “Don’t worry about her, Pavlo. We’ll take good care of her.”

Tychina turned and saw Colonel Panchenko and several members of the command center staff enter the room. A security officer took the body from Tychina’s arms, promising to take personal charge of her until he could make proper arrangements. Tychina was going to follow the security officer out, but Panchenko stopped him with a firm, positive grip on his arm. “Not now, Pavlo. You have work to do.”

The young pilot shrugged out of the senior officer’s grasp and said, “Excuse me, Colonel, but—”

“It’s ‘general’ now, Pavlo,” Panchenko said. “I am the new commander of tactical air warfare for the entire Republic. The national military headquarters was destroyed by Russian air attacks. The chief of staff and the service chiefs escaped, but most of the senior staff was killed. I am transferring command to Turkey.”

“What? What did you say?” This was all too much. His eyes were swollen, and he felt as if his head were spinning. Mikki … Panchenko … what was he saying?

“A Ukrainian government-in-exile has been formed in Istanbul,” Panchenko said. “The Turks have accepted our pleas for help, and the West is promising assistance. All Ukrainian aircraft that have survived the Russian air raids are deploying to a Turkish training air base near the city of Kayseri. I am organizing the Free Ukrainian Air Force there, and you are coming with me … Colonel.”

Tychina looked at Panchenko, and although he could see only the young pilot’s eyes, he knew that Tychina wore a completely stunned expression. “It turns out that not only are you the senior surviving MiG-23 pilot, Pavlo, but you are one of the most experienced Ukrainian pilots alive. I need you to command the provisional fighter wing, and I can’t very well have a captain do it. The promotion is effective immediately. As soon as possible, we will launch whatever aircraft can make the trip and fly to Turkey. Turkish fighter planes are waiting to escort us.”

Pavlo tried to clear his head, concentrate on what Panchenko was saying. He tried to look out the window to see Mikki, but Panchenko’s size blocked his view. He had to let her go … they would try to give her dignity … he refocused, as difficult as it was, as tumultuous as the wave of emotions sweeping over him felt … and forced himself to listen to what Panchenko was saying.

But it wasn’t easy. You just have to get through it, Pavlo. Just as if you were in a plane during an emergency situation. Stay calm, stay under control. Do your job. He returned his attention to Panchenko, who was still talking.…

“I never finished telling you, Pavlo,” Panchenko said solemnly. “We knew this disaster would happen. We, the general staff and the government, knew that the Russians were going to retake Ukrayina. We planned for it. For the past two months we have been shipping weapons and equipment overseas, to Turkey.”

“You have?” Tychina asked, stunned by this revelation. “But why Turkey? And how did you know?”

“We didn’t know, of course, and we hoped we were wrong,” Panchenko explained. “But a war with Russia was inevitable. Conflict over the Dniester was only the spark. Access to the Black Sea ports, removal of nuclear weapons, land and property disputes, free trade, oil, agriculture — the Russians were losing everything of value. Ukrayina wanted to join the West, become a member of the European Community and NATO. Russia couldn’t allow that.

“So the government struck a deal with NATO several months ago to rathole one-third of the weapon stockpiles in Turkey. We’ve been shipping missiles, bombs, spare parts, vehicles, even tech orders and charts to bases in Turkey, right under the noses of the damned Russian naval patrols in the Black Sea. Thousands of tons of equipment and weapons, at least a trainload every week. To pay for the ‘storage,’ the government has been paying cash and signing basing agreements with NATO for access to Ukrayinan waters and ports after the conflict is over. Now we need someone to start setting up our operating base in Turkey. I want you to do it.”

Panchenko kept him in the room until they heard his staff car start up and drive away. What he saw in the young pilot’s eyes encouraged him. When he first entered the room and saw Tychina with the body of his fiancée, his eyes looked like a lost child’s eyes, full of fear and helplessness. When they took the body, he saw utter despair. Now he was relieved to see fire — and the thirst for revenge — in those eyes. It would take a strong hand to turn that drive for revenge into a more positive direction, to turn the blood lust into a calculating, meticulous planner and leader, but he was certain it could be done. The Phoenix would fly again, and this time he would lead a nation’s entire tiny air armada into battle.

Pavlo let Panchenko’s words sink in. So much was happening so fast… but that was the way it always happened in war. Decisions had to be quick and good. Otherwise you were dead. Pavlo swallowed hard, trying not to think about Mikki but about the matter at hand. He had to be a soldier first. His mouth felt unusually dry and his stomach queasy. And yet he was alive, and he was whole.

And he was going after the Russian bastards.

It was they who killed Mikki. It was they who had robbed him of the one love in his life. It was they who devastated his homeland. It was they who killed God knows how many of his countrymen.

He swallowed hard, and with determination he looked into his superior’s eyes: “I will do it. And I will get them.”

“I know you will. I’m counting on it.”

TWENTY-SIX

“I got it straight from the horse’s mouth,” the President said in his deep southern accent as he sat down with his National Security Council staff in the White House Cabinet Room. “President Velichko told me — no, promised me, man to man, that the nuclear attack on the Ukraine was a mistake that will not be repeated, and that he intends to back off. So somebody explain to me why everyone in Europe’s getting all hot under the damned collar?”

The question was not aimed at anyone in particular — a tactic common to the President, designed to make everyone around him uncomfortable and on the defensive — so the men sitting around the table with the President shifted uncomfortably, silently deferring to Dr. Donald Scheer, the forty-two-year-old former professor of economics from MIT who had been chosen as the President’s Secretary of Defense. As unlikely as the choice of Scheer was for Secretary of Defense, this young, highly intelligent Bean-Counter Emeritus, as the press had dubbed him, was the perfect counterpoint to the President’s big, southern, ham-handed approach to dealing with the bureaucracy. The President was the ax, Scheer the scalpel, when it came to dealing with waste, with the budget, with the Washington establishment. “Perhaps you should tell us more about your conversation with the Russian president, Mr. President,” Scheer said.

“I told you the long and short of it,” the President said irritably. “Velichko told me that they were observing the Ukrainian Air Force preparing for a tactical air strike, following the attack on their reconnaissance planes.” The President paused as he noticed one of his advisers shaking his head. “Problem, General?”

“Excuse me, sir, but none of that is correct,” Army general Philip Freeman, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replied. “Our analysis revealed that the bombers the Russians flew over the Ukraine that first night were strikers, not reconnaissance planes. The Russians have a squadron of MiG-25R Foxbat reconnaissance planes within range, but they weren’t used. The Ukrainians did have offensive weapons on board some of their fighters following the Russian assault, but what would you expect after just turning back a Russian cruise missile attack?”

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m getting nothing but noise from everyone involved — the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Romanians, the Germans, the Turks — the list goes on and on,” the President said wearily, chomping one of the famous cigars that he liked but didn’t inhale — even if he wanted to he wouldn’t dare. The First Lady all but shot those who tried to smoke, and she would smell it on him. “All I care about is what I’m seeing in the press and in the intelligence reports. Now, from what you’ve been telling me,” he said to National Security Advisor Michael Lifter, “the Russians aren’t moving into the Ukraine and Moldova in massive numbers. Isn’t that right?”

“That’s right, sir,” Lifter acknowledged. “The Russians said that their attack was simply a response to Ukrainian aggression, that they plan no other moves into the region unless other factions threaten ethnic Russians in Moldova or the Ukraine.”

“They don’t need to move into Moldova in force, sir,” General Freeman said, “because they already had ten thousand troops stationed in the Dniester region before the attack occurred. The air attacks simply weakened all air defense units in the Ukraine, which gives the Russians free air access over the Ukraine, and they bombarded all the Romanian and Moldovan army positions that could threaten those Russian troops in Dniester.”

“Those weren’t Russian troops in the Dniester region, General,” Secretary of State Harlan Grimm said. “Those troops were former Soviet Red Army personnel who stayed in Moldova after independence and who eventually formed a partisan Russian militia during the uprisings.”

“Mr. Grimm, I don’t believe that for a minute,” General Freeman said. “The Russians living in the Moldavian SSR didn’t want to leave the Soviet Union after Moldova declared its independence, so the Red Army simply disbanded one of its military units in-place and had them form the nucleus of a resistance movement.”

“I’m not surprised you see it that way, General,” Grimm said derisively.

“Sir, the point is, the Russians can pull this trick in every vital former Republic,” General Freeman said. “They can do it in the Baltic states, they can do it in Belarus, they can do it in Armenia and Azerbaijan.”

“I’m not interested in what the Russians might do, General.” The President sighed, wishing like hell he could go jogging around the White House track, escape all this shit. “I’m more concerned with the here and now. In fact, the Russians haven’t appeared to have any desire to move in force against the Ukraine or Moldova.”

“It’s a fait accompli, sir — of course the Russians are going to promise to back off. They’ve killed several thousand people already.” General Freeman spread his hands to emphasize his point. “Sir, the question is, what are we going to do about the Russian aggression? We can do nothing and continue to voice our displeasure or we can take some action to show how displeased we are.”

“I don’t see anything we need to do, and nothing we can do, General,” the President said as if the very idea of aggression was distasteful. “If the Russians don’t make any more moves into the Ukraine or Moldova, the matter is over.”

“The government of Turkey doesn’t think so, sir,” Freeman interjected, thinking, What did I expect from a draft-evader, anyway? “President Dalon appears to be very concerned about Russian reconnaissance flights over the Black Sea. The Russians have repeatedly crossed the twelve-mile territorial boundary in the Black Sea, trying to photograph naval bases near Istanbul and catalog Turkish ships in the Black Sea and in the Bosporus. They’ve been paying a lot of attention on the military-industrial complex near Kocaeli, about fifty miles east of Istanbul on the Marmara Sea, as well as general military and supply traffic in the Bosporus Strait and Dardanelles.”

“Let’s try to stick with one problem at a time here, General.”

“It’s all one big problem, sir,” Freeman argued patiently, feeling he was tutoring some ROTC freshmen. “The nuclear strikes in the Ukraine and Romania occurred less than five hundred miles from Turkey, sir, and now Russian bombers and attack aircraft are swarming over the entire Black Sea region. Turkey is getting upset, and they want a pledge by NATO and assistance in defending its borders.”

“We’ve been sucking up to the Turks for almost twenty years,” Scheer sniffed to the President. “Reagan and Bush gave them everything, and they turned around and kicked us out of their country, made war on Greece, and started ethnic genocide against the Kurds in the southeast. Every time we extend assistance to them, they use it to lash out at an opposition group or neighboring country. They want weapons from NATO, but never offensive forces; then, when they do want modern Western fighters, ships, and missiles, they badger us into agreeing to a license-build contract, and our companies lose thousands of jobs. They wanted protection against Iraq and Iran, but when they got ground troops they promptly used their own army to go after Kurdish and Armenian bases.”

Lifter turned to Scheer and asked, “I suppose now they want military protection against Russia, a powerful showing, perhaps a naval and air presence — but not an offensive presence, anything that might be provocative or make the Turkish people think any foreigners are waging war at their expense.”

“They made their request through NATO channels, not through my office,” Scheer replied as if enough said. “General?”

Freeman nodded. “It’s a similar request as was made during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Iraqi-Kurdish conflicts in 1993 and 1994,” Freeman said. “Air and naval defense augmentation, fill-ins for the weapon systems they don’t own. They’re requesting more Patriot missile batteries, air defense artillery, strategic and tactical reconnaissance, and suppression of enemy air defense weapon systems. Defensive systems only.”

The President rubbed his eyes wearily, then scratched his head through all that bush of prematurely gray hair, a sign that he didn’t like any of the options or suggestions being placed in front of him at the moment. “I think this Turkish thing will have to wait,” he said. “We start sending any aircraft to Turkey, and the Russians will think we’re trying to surround ’em and make them negotiate from the business end of a Sidewinder missile. As long as Russia doesn’t threaten the United States and our allies, I see no need to commit any forces up front.”

“Sir, Turkey feels threatened, and they feel isolated,” Freeman interjected. “Right now they’re getting more assistance from the Ukraine than from NATO.”

“You mean because Turkey offered asylum to the Ukrainian government, and the Ukraine is flying planes into Turkey, they’re going to just ignore NATO?”

“Sir, the Ukraine is moving an estimated two hundred combat aircraft into Turkey right now,” Freeman said, “and they’ve already got an undetermined amount of Ukrainian weapons and equipment. Actions not words, sir: the Ukrainians might even assist Turkey if the Russians try anything.”

“Now that’s bull,” the President murmured. “And it’s that ‘undetermined’ shit that’s got me hot under the collar, too. Who approved a shipment like that? NATO? It wasn’t us, that’s for sure. Now Turkey won’t tell us how much Ukrainian gear is in their country or where it’s stashed. Whose side are they on, anyway?”

“Mr. President, we have to decide what our next course of action should be,” Freeman insisted, thinking how much he loathed closet pacifists. “I think sending Secretary of State Grimm to Brussels, Moscow, and Ankara is a good idea; you may consider sending him to Belgrade to confer with the Romanian government, and to Istanbul, where the Ukrainian government-in-exile is located.”

“That would make the Russians real happy,” Secretary of Defense Scheer chimed in.

“The Russians started this thing, and they’ve offered nothing but flimsy excuses for initiating hostile actions,” General Freeman said. “The care and feeding of an alliance is just as important as negotiating with the antagonists, sir. We can’t assume our allies will follow our lead or do what we want them to do, especially when the major ally in question is a Muslim nation that shares a border with the major antagonist.”

“Whatever Turkey wants, Turkey gets, eh, General?” Dr. Scheer said. “Just like ol’ Reagan and his lapdog Bush.”

“We’re doing it because Turkey is important to the West and important to NATO, and because they’re truly being threatened by Russia,” the General said. “I think relations with them is worth a few squadrons and a few ships.”

The President hesitated for a moment longer, then held up his hands as if in surrender and said, “Well, Don, I think we’re going to bust the bank on this one, but I tend to agree with the General, at least on the short term. Okay, General, what do you recommend?”

Freeman couldn’t believe it. The draft-dodger was coming around. “In accordance with your standing rules regarding limitations on overseas deployments and the use of take-along equipment versus using or creating repositioned stores,” Freeman said, “I recommend deploying the 394th Air Battle Wing from New York, flying RF-111G Vampire reconnaissance fighters, KC-135 tankers, and a few F-16 fighters; also three Perry-class frigates from the Sixth Fleet, the Curts, McClusky, and Davis. These frigates are mostly antisubmarine-warfare vessels, but they have a powerful antiship and even an antiaircraft weapons fit.”

“What about these F-111s? Aren’t they offensive aircraft?”

“They have an offensive capability,” Freeman admitted, “but their primary role is reconnaissance and SEAD — that’s Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, what they call ‘Wild Weasel’ or ‘Iron Hand.’ They go after missile sites, radar sites, that sort of thing. The Turks like the F-111, and we’ve based F-111s in Turkey for almost ten years. The 394th Air Battle Wing has eighteen RF-111Gs, twelve KC-135 tankers, and twenty F-16 fighters. NATO will send one of their E-3C radar planes, and we can send a Special Task Force from the Army’s Seventh Air Defense Artillery Battalion with six Patriot missile batteries — that’s twenty-four launchers, four missiles per launcher, no reloads. They’d be operated by U.S. Army personnel only, because the Congressional ban on exporting Patriot missile technology to Turkey is still in effect.”

“As well it should be, after we discovered Turkey trying to steal Patriot technology last year,” Secretary of Defense Grimm added indignantly.

The President looked surprised. He rolled the cigar between his left index finger and thumb. “That’s all the Turks want? From what you said, it sounded like they wanted a couple aircraft carriers, maybe a B-52 wing.”

“They’d like an entire surface-action group and all our F-117 stealth fighters, sir,” Freeman admitted. “We can’t, and shouldn’t, give them everything they want. The Turks like haggling over levels of assistance — they’ll think they’re being set up if we send too much. This deal won’t totally please them — especially when they find out about the Seventh Air Defense Battalion detachment and the 394th Wing.”

“What about them?” the President asked.

“Both units are about one-quarter women,” Freemen replied. “Almost half the aerial refueling tanker crewmembers are women; most of the Patriot missile system instructors are women; even some of the RF-111G pilots are women. The Turks don’t approve of women as soldiers.”

“Screw ’em,” the President said. “They ask for help, they’re getting help. It’s about time we show the world that women can fight just as well as men.”

“There may be cultural problems in sending these forces to Turkey, sir,” Secretary of Defense Scheer offered. “Putting women in uniform and sending them to Turkey might be considered an insult to Turkey, as if we don’t respect them enough, or the Turks might think the women are criminals or head cases. As absurd as it sounds, that’s how they think. They may refuse to work with or even acknowledge our women officers. The women we send to Incirlik Air Base in central Turkey have a lot of difficulties when they go off-base or have to deal with Turkish men.”

“We’ll deal with that problem when it happens,” the President said dismissively. “It’s about time we start showing the world what American female soldiers can do. Maybe we’ll help Turkey join the twentieth century. Don, who’s gonna be in charge of this Turkey operation, and what’re we gonna call it?”

“Admiral John Carruth will be the theater commander, sir,” Sec-Def Scheer replied. “I’ll get together with him and prepare a briefing for you as soon as possible.”

“Good. John’s a good man. Annapolis wild boy, but a few tours in Washington softened him up for me,” the President said. Freeman would have gone a bit further: Carruth, one of General Norman Schwarzkopf’s fleet commanders during the Persian Gulf War, had a reputation as a Washington animal with definite political aspirations, spending more time in Washington — not just at the Pentagon, but on Capitol Hill and the White House — than at his headquarters in Florida or at any of his installations. With the increasing importance of the Navy in U.S. Central Command operations, it was logical that a Navy admiral take command of the previously Army and Marine heavy-command, but with Carruth it was a political stepping-stone given to him by his buddy, the southern President. This operation might take on a distinct naval flavor before too long.

“Yes, sir,” Lifter agreed. “As for a name, General Freeman has the standard computer-generated package name, but we should pick a better one for the press. I suggested Operation Peaceful Hands. Simple, nonaggressive, interdenominational.”

“I like it,” the President said, truly pleased for the first time during the entire meeting. Of course Freeman hated it, but he had no plan to try to change it. Fights with the White House had to be avoided at best and chosen very, very carefully at worst.

The President was truly enthused now. “Hey, you know I can even go to the Ebenezer Baptist Church for Martin Luther King Day and talk about Operation Peaceful Hands without offending anyone. Good job, Don. Get me a press package on these military units with the women in them — I’ll talk that angle up, too. Okay, I think we got a plan of action for that problem right now. Anybody got anything else for me?”

There was a whole slate of things to discuss. The First Lady came in during the subsequent discussions. She was quickly brought up to speed on all the previous topics, and then she joined in as if she had been present right from the very beginning. When General Freeman was notified that the draft military operations order was ready for his review, he excused himself and departed the Cabinet Room. To his surprise, he was stopped by the First Lady, who accompanied him downstairs to the lower lobby.

“I wanted to discuss the deployment of those combat units to Turkey, General,” the First Lady said tightly, her face a smile, but her eyes cold as steel. “I—”

“You’re concerned about the women in the units, how they’ll be treated by the Turks, by the international press, ma’am?”

The First Lady gave Freeman a commending smile and a nod, as if he’d just put the right peg in the hole on “Romper Room.” Freeman was one of the few Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to wear a moustache, thin and dark with no hint of gray, which many women, both in and out of government, found attractive and bold. The First Lady came up to Freeman’s shoulders, and her upraised eyes made her look disarmingly innocent, but Freeman knew better. He had to remind himself of the Steel Magnolia’s background, of her training and education and, most of all, of her aspirations to power — but he had always found her attractive, even desirable. That put him at a distinct disadvantage, and he had to keep himself in check.

“I’m also concerned about how Sam Donaldson and Wolf Blitzer treat them as well, General,” the First Lady said innocently, as if she were protecting lambs from the slaughter. She had a few laugh lines in the corners of her green eyes, and she was a “touchy” person, adept at the slight, casual touch of an arm, the warm handshake extended a second or two longer than expected. She used such gestures even now with Freeman to disarm and persuade, calculating every move.

“I think you’ve proven you can handle them, ma’am,” Freeman said. “I’m not sure if you’ve ever taken on a Turkish mullah before.”

“No, and the President of the United States, or his men and women in uniform serving overseas protecting American allies, shouldn’t have to either,” she said with a sudden edge. “I wanted to know what steps you will be taking to assure that our combat troops deploying overseas will be properly taken care of and given the support and respect they deserve.”

“We’ve had a military presence in Turkey for over forty years, and women have been sent to Turkey for the past twenty-five years,” General Freeman said uneasily. “Relations between the U.S. and the Turks have always been good. The key to that success has been the discipline of our troops and the proper respect paid to the Turkish nation by the American government. As long as we treat the Turks like valued allies and not like Islamic-fundamentalist mountain heathens, we won’t have any problems.”

“Are we treating the Turks as anything more or less than valued allies, General?” she probed, staring at him dead-on.

Freeman knew that anything he said would go directly to the President’s ear, and quite possibly to the press and to Congress as well, so he hesitated before answering, but he finally replied, “I detect an attitude in some circles that might suggest we’re doing Turkey a favor by providing them military assistance.”

“We do tend to jump when they call, General,” she said tightly. “And it does seem as if we give more than they offer in return.”

“All we want is a stable, strong ally in the Middle East,” Freeman said. “We don’t have any allies these days who unconditionally agree to everything we say or want. I think it’s in our country’s best interests to extend to Turkey every possible benefit.”

“An alliance, especially one such as NATO, is a give-and-take affair,” she informed him. “But reasonable people can differ about all that, General. My concern remains the same: can we expect to see any problems crop up with having American women soldiers in Turkey during Operation Peaceful Hands, and if so, what are you going to do about it?”

“The answer to your first question is yes, I do expect some cultural, societal backlash,” Freeman replied. “Asking a Turk to accept a foreign woman to defend his homeland will definitely cause problems — to what extent, I don’t know. The answer to the second question is, we will do our assigned mission until ordered by the President to withdraw. Any soldier, man or woman, who can’t follow orders or who has a problem with any aspect of the indigenous situation will be relieved, removed, and replaced.”

“That doesn’t sound very fair to me, General,” the First Lady said coldly. “A Turkish man whose mind is trapped in the eighteenth century doesn’t like the idea of a well-trained, highly intelligent woman defending him against danger, and the woman has to suffer for it? Don’t our women soldiers have enough to worry about?”

“All our soldiers had better worry about one thing: the threat — and the threat is not from Turkey, but from Russia,” Freeman said, putting on his service cap to signify that he was ready to leave. “They should worry about their level of proficiency; their knowledge about potential adversaries, proper procedures, and their own weapon systems; and about maintaining a winning attitude. Everything else is wrong thinking, inappropriate thinking, and it will only hurt the mission and hurt the force.”

“What if the threat our women soldiers face is an ally, or even one of their own?” she asked. “How are they supposed to deal with that?”

“They don’t deal with that—I deal with that, ma’am,” Freeman said. “And when it becomes a problem, I will deal with it.”

“I know you will, General,” she purred, patting his arm as if to reassure him. “And I consider it my job to deal with such problems as well. I believe in our women soldiers, General. I know they face many more difficulties, real deeply seated societal difficulties, and they need special help to overcome those problems just so they can be given the right opportunity to do their job. I consider it my duty to make sure they are given the proper atmosphere to succeed.” She visually sized up the tall general with a glance, as if to say, your kind doesn’t scare me, then she smiled. “Thank you for listening to me, General — good day.”

When General Philip Freeman stepped into his staff car to return to the Pentagon, he found his jaw muscles tightly clenched, and he had to consciously work to relax them. Christ, why couldn’t that bitch stick to ribbon-cuttings? He was getting it from all sides of this Administration — including one side he never expected. He knew he served at the pleasure of the President, but sometimes he wanted to know exactly what that meant — was it the man himself, or was it everyone around the man, and did that mean everyone?

In certain jobs, certain fields, the women chosen to serve in those positions did outstanding work. Whether or not the environment was influenced or guarded by the First Lady, most of the women serving in the U.S. military were first-rate, and this was recognized by most of their male counterparts. Then why the low-key dressing-down by the Steel Magnolia? Why the veiled threats? Was it just the unknown mystery of Turkey or was something going on he didn’t understand?

That question was going to have to be back-burnered for the time being — deploying an air battle wing, an Army battalion, and three combat vessels and their support units halfway around the world in the shortest time possible would require all his attention, not to mention dealing with the Congressional leadership and the press once the operation was made public knowledge. Philip Freeman reached for the secure telephone in the back of the staff car and got to work.

TWENTY-SEVEN

After being released from the hospital and spending nearly an entire day answering questions for the accident investigation board, Rebecca looked forward to her one-day pass. It would be a good opportunity to check in at Liberty Air, have a quiet dinner someplace, sleep in her own bed, and perhaps see Ed. Her shoulders and legs still hurt a bit from the crash landing, but she wanted nothing more than to get that episode out of her life and get back to normal — if generating her flight to fight a possible nuclear war could be considered normal.

But just getting off-base that day proved to be nearly impossible. As she drove off-base and headed toward home, it felt to Rebecca as if she was abandoning the Air Force in the midst of a crisis, abandoning her unit, even her country. A series of signs along the exit road read, HAVE YOU SIGNED OUT WITH YOUR CQ? BASEWIDE ALERT STILL IN EFFECT — CONTACT YOUR UNIT, and ALERT IN EFFECT — UNAUTHORIZED DEPARTURE PROHIBITED. The line of cars waiting to get into the base was long because the guards were stopping and searching every car, and there was someone at the guards’ gate taking down license numbers of those leaving the base. Rebecca had her twenty-four-hour pass from the flight surgeon taped to the inside of her windshield for the guard to check. The expressions she saw from the guard and from those in the line of cars waiting to enter the base were strange and eerie. She imagined them thinking: Why on earth is she leaving now, with a Defcon Three status?

Her first destination was Liberty Air Service at Clinton County Airport. The place — indeed, the whole airport — looked like it was deserted. Rebecca found all of her airplanes on the ramp, with a thick layer of snow on them. Why they were out here in the snow instead of in the hangar, she didn’t know. Judging by the amount of snow on them, they hadn’t been anywhere in quite some time. That spelled trouble, and Rebecca knew why: with the aircraft accident at Plattsburgh and with the alert aircraft-generation in full swing, the Air Force would have requested the FAA close down Clinton County Airport, only three miles from the base, for security and air traffic control reasons. A sign on the door of Liberty Air confirmed it: her assistant manager, Adam Parker, had left a sign which said, CLOSED DUE TO AIRPORT RESTRICTION, along with his phone number in case of emergency.

She went inside, turned on a few lights, and spent a few minutes reading messages left for her on the computer and checking the schedule. Flights were being canceled by the dozens. She put in a call to Base Operations at Plattsburgh Air Force Base, requesting permission for her planes to be shuttled out of Clinton County Airport as soon as possible. She had friends in Albany, New York, and Portland, Maine, that would let her stage her flying service from there (for a price, of course) while Clinton County Airport was closed, but she would need permission from the FAA and from the Air Force before she could launch her planes. After leaving a computer message with Parker to organize the transfer of operations, she went out to look over the maintenance shop.

There was a surprise for her in one hangar, and now she knew why her planes weren’t in the hangar: the first of her new million-dollar-plus Cessna Caravan cargo planes had arrived, spiffed up with a great big red ribbon and bow. Obviously it was meant as a surprise for her when she finished Hell Week. It even had LIBERTY AIR SERVICE and her company logo painted on the fuselage, and her name painted in elegant calligraphy below the pilot’s-side window. It had been washed, waxed, and polished to a high luster, and the wheels had even been spray-painted with gloss black paint to make them look showroom new.

This was Ed’s surprise, she thought happily. The bank loan wasn’t supposed to have come in for another three or four days, and delivery of the plane itself wasn’t supposed to be for a week after that. Ed Caldwell must’ve hurried things along for her. Yep, the guy could be a sweetheart sometimes. It was the best thing that could have taken her mind off the incident this morning — and she had Ed Caldwell to thank—personally thank if she could catch him. She returned to her office and put in a call to Ed.

The phone was answered on the other end, but whoever had picked it up was obviously distracted with something — or someone — else. Rebecca heard a few giggles, a lot of heavy breathing and groaning, and an unmistakable rhythmic rustling of sheets and bedsprings. Then, a woman’s voice, flushed and husky, finally answered with, “Satan’s garden of delight, Eve speaking. Satan is having his horn polished, but if you’ll leave your name, your number …”

The phone was snatched away from her mouth, and Rebecca could hear Ed’s voice. “I said, let the machine answer it, baby.”

Rebecca slammed the phone back down in its cradle. Well, so much for thanking the sonofabitch. Somebody else was doing it for her. Rebecca didn’t know whether to cry or throw the phone through her office window. She sat there, simmering, furious that she’d let herself be lulled into thinking she was the only one in Ed’s life. That voice on the other end … she knew it from somewhere. Some stupid bleached blonde who worked at the bank, always purring and meowing whenever Ed was around. At least he could have screwed someone with a brain, or a career, or something. But that bimbo … it was just too insulting to think that was her replacement. That Barbie Doll probably didn’t know the difference between the prime rate and prime rib. Rebecca stared at the phone, finally starting to cool down. Well, it really shouldn’t surprise her. They certainly had no agreement on their living arrangements. Although the way Rebecca was raised, growing up in Vermont, where you gave a commitment to someone that counted for something. At least that’s how she’d always felt. Ed obviously had different ideas. Fine. Screw him. He was no different than some of those active-duty assholes she’d had to put up with over the years. Didn’t men ever change?

The pain in her shoulders from the seat harness was coming back, and the room felt decidedly colder. This had been one hell of a fucked-up couple of days, like a roller coaster out of control. Going home was out of the question now. Ed was smart: he would guess that it was she who called, verify it by calling the squadron, finish snaking Marilyn (he was smart, but he wouldn’t pass up a fast screw, either), then head over to her house to explain himself. They would argue, fight, scream and holler; he would be tender, understanding, apologetic, denying everything while reassuring her that she was the only one for him. She would eventually tell him about the crash and the war, and he would tell her about the loan and the plane, and she would collapse in his arms, from exhaustion or surrender or loneliness or fear. He would offer her a massage, dinner, a drink, and they would be back to being an item once more.

Like hell that was going to happen. Maybe in the past, but not now. Who needed that on top of everything else she’d been through? Christ, she wasn’t a masochist. Besides, there was nothing at home she needed, so she decided to head back to the base and crash at the alert facility. Her clothes were there, her flying gear was there, and she was going to get called in by midmorning anyway to start generating her sortie for alert. She closed up Liberty Air without stepping into the new Caravan’s cockpit — no use in getting too attached to it, since she might have to give it back to the bank if she couldn’t start flying again — then headed back to the base.

Her first stop was the base hospital, where she went to the intensive care ward. Mark Fogelman was awake and alert — yesterday she’d been told he was in a mild coma — but he looked as if he should be unconscious just to spare himself a little discomfort. His face, which had hit the instrument panel glare shield so hard it had broken his visor and helmet, was swollen and purple, like a boxer who had taken a pummeling in the ring. There was a thick bandage over his forehead, and his eyes were black and nearly swollen shut. He wore a neck brace, which only served to make his face look even puffier. His shaved head make him look worse.

“Hey, Yot,” Furness greeted him, using the pilots’ favorite nickname for their F-111 weapons officers, “Yot,” which stood for You Over There, on her weapons officer. “You gotta tell the kitchen not to use so much MSG.” She sat down beside him on the bed, opened up her flight jacket, and handed him a brown paper bag with a copy of Penthouse inside. “I smuggled it in past the nurses. It’s my boyfriend’s. I knew it would drive you crazy — that’s why I brought it.”

“Thanks, Becky,” Fogelman mumbled. A wad of cotton had been stuffed inside his upper lip where he had bitten through it. He accepted the magazine, lifted it out of the bag to check out the cover, then smiled a very painful-looking smile. “Contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I love it. You’re my very first visitor.”

“I’m honored, then. How do you feel — as if I couldn’t guess.”

“Shitty,” Fogelman replied. “I see stars everywhere, and I’ve had a splitting headache. Just breathing is painful, so you can imagine what going to the bathroom does for me. Otherwise, I’m okay. How about you?”

“I’m fine. They had me in here for about a day. I’m heading back to the squadron — my predeployment line should be coming up soon.”

“What predeployment line?”

“You mean you don’t know what’s going on?”

“I’ve either been drugged to hell or this ringing in my ears and this pain blocks out everything. What’s going on?”

“We’re generating SIOP alert sorties, Mark,” Furness said solemnly. “Russia invaded the Ukraine and hit ’em with low-yield nuclear weapons. Alpha Flight is uploading nukes, and the rest of the fleet is getting ready to deploy.” If Fogelman’s mouth could have dropped open in surprise, it would have — his eyes widened to nearly normal proportions at her words. “You mean you didn’t know? Nobody told you?”

“I don’t believe it … this really sucks,” Fogelman mumbled, coughing. His head dropped back on his pillow in complete exasperation. “Nobody”—he groaned, staring at the ceiling, trying to control his breathing to combat the pain—”has told me shit. Hembree, Cole, no one has been by since I’ve been awake. I guess I know why now. Shit, a nuclear attack in the Ukraine. It’s not as if we haven’t been expecting something like this — ever since Velichko ousted Yeltsin. Jesus. Who would’ve thought it? And we’re uploading nukes? I haven’t looked over my nuke stuff in a long time. I think I’ll stay here until this is over.”

“Smart move.” She smiled. After a long pause she asked, “They may not have let your folks on base to see you because of the recall and alert,” she offered. It was the only reasonable, less painful explanation as to why he had no visitors yet — unfortunately, she expected the painful reason was the true reason: no one much liked Mark Fogelman, so why should they care if he was in the hospital? “My planes have been grounded out at Clinton County for the same reason. You want me to give your folks a call? When you get a regular room they’ll get you a phone, but until—”

“The doctor called them — left a message.” Fogelman sighed. “They’re off to the Keys for the rest of the winter, I think. It’s no big deal.”

Furness never thought it possible, but she actually felt sorry for the guy. The guy crash-lands an armed bomber and goes into a coma for over twenty-four hours from a severe head injury, and when he wakes up he learns that no one had ever come to see him. Not even his parents or fellow pilots. Even if he was an ass, it still wasn’t right to just ignore the guy. “I’ll call one of your friends. Who was the last one I met? Josette? Judy?”

“It was Josette, but she’s … not available,” Fogelman said, still staring up at the ceiling. Rebecca heard the faint catch in his voice and noticed the glistening of tears. “Just forget it. I’ll be okay.”

“Are you sure?” she asked with genuine concern.

“Yes.” He coughed.

They sat in silence for several long, awkward moments. Then Rebecca sighed. “Hey, the plane made it down in pretty good shape. I met the new MG — in fact, he pulled us out of the cockpit. Turns out I know the guy, from the Persian Gulf War. How about that?” No response. “There’s a story behind how I know the guy, and when you’re out of here I’ll tell it to you over a beer at Afterburners. You won’t believe it.” Fogelman nodded noncommittally and continued to stare at nothing in particular. “Anything else I can get for you? You want some clothes, toothbrush, anything?”

“No.” He sighed.

Furness rolled her eyes in complete exasperation and got to her feet. “Jesus, Fogman, if it’s a pity party you want, this is the right time and place for it. A nuclear incident has happened in Europe, you barely survived a plane crash, and we’re getting ready to go to war with … well, I don’t know who, but we’re mobilizing for a war. But the worst thing of all is that no one has come to see Mark Fogelman in the damned hospital.”

“It’s because no one gives a shit about me.”

“No one came, Mark, because everyone’s busy generating planes and moving nukes around the ramp.” She wasn’t about to say that the real reason was that he was a shit. “You’re warm and safe and dry here, and they’re freezing their butts off trying to get some thirty-year-old bombers up on the line.”

“Well … you came to visit.” He smiled.

“Yeah, and look at me: I crash a plane, my business has been closed down because of the generation, my planes are snowed in, and I’ve got a new plane in my hangar that’s costing me ten thousand dollars a month taking up space that no one can fly and that’ll put me in the poorhouse in two months. On top of all that, I catch my jerk boyfriend sleeping around on me. Your situation looks a hell of a lot better to me right now. In fact, move your skinny ass over — I’m staying here. You go generate my sortie.”

Furness was surprised to see a painful grin spread across Fogelman’s face. “You’re making all this up just to make me feel better, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, right,” Furness said wryly, with a hint of a smile. “Listen, Mark, I’m going to the pad for some rest. I think my line comes up late tomorrow morning, so I’ll come by to visit you in the morning. Are you sure you don’t need anything?”

He paused for a moment, shrugged his shoulders, then replied, “I might as well start looking over my Dash-One to get up to speed on the nuclear stuff. If you brought my flight bag from wherever they’ve stashed it, I’d appreciate it.”

Rebecca looked at him as if she hadn’t heard right. “You … what? You want to read your Dash-One?” This was a new side of Fogelman, Furness thought. Hell, he didn’t usually get into the books unless it was time for his check ride — now he wanted to read it to pass the time! “You got it, Mark.” She got up to leave.

“Rebecca?” She turned toward him. He hesitated, an embarrassed smile on his face, then said, “Thank you for bringing me back okay.”

“We did it, Mark, not just me.”

“No … no,” Fogelman said emphatically. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, Becky. That was the first time I’ve ever flown the G-model with serious malfunctions in it. The thing always worked before, so I never much worried about the systems. When everything crapped out, I was nothing more than a damned passenger. I didn’t realize until then how much I don’t know. If I had a pilot that had the same attitude I had about flying the Vampire, I’d be dead now. Dead.” He paused again, staring at some spot far away, then added, “With a nuke going off in Europe there’s probably thousands of dead, but that doesn’t affect me a fraction of what my own death does. I was ready to punch out. I was ready to drop into the cold Atlantic Ocean hundreds of miles from here rather than trust you with the knowledge and skill I knew you had. I’m a total jerk.”

“Mark, I don’t fly with passengers, I fly with crewdogs,” Furness said, patting his arm. “I won’t step into the cockpit with someone who doesn’t know their shit. You have a relaxed attitude about flying, I’ll admit that, but you’re not unsafe — just casual. We fly simulator missions and take tests all the time, so I know you know your shit. Just don’t give up on yourself. I’ll get your books, and I’ll even get a weapons officer to come out here and give you a briefing. I know the accident investigation board will be out to debrief you as soon as they find out you’re awake. You’ll get lots of visitors now.”

“Thanks, Becky,” Fogelman said. “Back to the real world, huh?”

“If you can call it that, Mark,” Furness said. She gave him a thumbs-up and a friendly smile, a sincere one for the first time in many months, and departed.

“Rebecca!” Lieutenant Colonel Larry Tobias greeted her as she entered the squadron building. He gave her a big fatherly bear hug. A bunch of her Charlie Flight crews were in the mission planning room with their helmet bags and flight gear, getting ready to head out to generate their bombers. “It’s great to see you, Becky. I see you’re on the schedule. How’s Fogman? Have you seen him?”

“He’s pretty beat up, but he’s awake and doing okay,” she replied. “I tried to find Ted, but they say he was released.”

“They let him go home for a couple of days. I guess he got creamed harder than they thought. Some mucky-muck movie guy from New York City came and picked him up in a limo.”

“Stand by for a real shocker,” Furness said. “Fogman wants his pubs. Anyone know where they stashed his books?”

“Fogman wants his tech orders?” Frank Kelly asked in astonishment. “For what — to prop up a nurse’s ass before he screws her?”

“He says he wants to study,” Furness replied, giving Kelly a disapproving glare, “and he even asked for a briefer to get him up to speed.”

“That knock on the head must’ve shaken some cobwebs loose.” Kelly chuckled.

“Hey, the guy’s on the case. Give him a break,” Tobias interjected. Rebecca realized a fellow navigator was actually defending Mark Fogelman. The war, the DEFCON change, and the nuclear-alert generation was pulling this unit together very quickly.

Properly admonished by his WSO, Kelly showed Furness where Fogelman’s pubs bag was. It was in the squadron commander’s office, marked with pieces of yellow tape to signify that they had been inspected by the accident investigation board and were cleared to be returned. A check to be sure that each crewmember’s required onboard publications were up to date was routine in investigations such as this — although they did pubs checks often, Furness would be surprised if Fogelman’s regs were completely up to date. After retrieving the bag, Furness went out to check her scheduled show time to start generating her alert line.

Rebecca had been assigned one of the last alert lines in the follow-on Charlie force, sortie 39. Because Ted Little was on convalescent leave from his minor injuries during the near-collision with the F-16 fighters, Furness was scheduled as the weapons officer, not as a pilot, and paired up with Paula Norton. The sortie was scheduled to come up at ten A.M. the next morning, but a note pinned to the bulletin board advised all crews to be ready to report in two hours early and to show one hour earlier than posted because Maintenance was getting the bombers ready faster as the generation progressed.

Staying at the alert facility was going to be impossible. Every crewmember assigned to Plattsburgh Air Force Base was there, either generating a sortie or already on alert, and they were already three to a room and breaking out the cots to put crews in the hallways. They had packed up her bags and moved her out of her room in the facility anyway — Rebecca noticed the yellow inspection stickers on all her bags, which meant that members of the accident investigation board had checked all her belongings, looking for any evidence of misconduct or inappropriate behavior that might have a bearing on the accident — prescription or controlled drugs, alcohol, a “Dear John” letter, anything.

There was a small bed-and-breakfast hotel downtown near the lake where Rebecca liked to put guests when they came to town to visit, so she checked in herself for the night, then walked the ten blocks or so over to Afterburners, the Plattsburgh aircrews’ customary hangout downtown, for a sandwich.

The place was absolutely deserted.

“Hey, Brandon,” Rebecca greeted the bar’s owner, a huge, bearlike ex-biker type with a full beard and who wore sunglasses twenty-four hours a day. “Can you find me a good table?”

“Hey, pilot, about time someone showed,” Brandon replied, escorting her to the bar and placing a menu in her hand. Rebecca waved off the glass of wine, and the barkeep put a Perrier on ice in front of her instead. Brandon only referred to his patrons as “pilots,” “navs,” “chiefs” for the maintenance guys, “brass” for the commanders, or “legs” for the nonflyers: “You’re the first crewdog I’ve had in here all night. Had to put up with a bunch of legs whining about the Russians and all the noise you’re making out on the airpatch.”

Rebecca looked around the empty bar and asked, “Well, they’re not here anymore, so what’d you tell them?”

“I asked them which sound would they rather hear,” Brandon replied, “the sound of freedom or the sound of Russian bombers screamin’ overhead? I think they got the message — go complain someplace else.”

“Thanks for sticking up for us,” Furness said. She handed the menu back to him. “Burger and fries tonight.”

“Uh oh, sounds like the old man got on your nerves.”

“How in hell do you know that?”

“You only order the gut-bomb and skids when you’re upset at the pencil-pusher,” Brandon replied. “Why don’t you let me take care of the geek for you, honey? The boys need some excitement.” He was referring to his Hell’s Angels buddies that Brandon occasionally rode with — they rarely came to the bar, but when they did they seemed to empty a room real fast. Fortunately they got along well with the military, especially the flyers.

“I can handle him, Brandon,” Rebecca replied, “but thanks. I don’t have many friends who offer to commit mayhem for me.”

“Anytime, pilot.” The big barkeep shuffled off to fire up the grill and deep fryer, leaving Rebecca alone with the big-screen TV in the corner.

The news was switching back and forth from international to national news, and all of it centered on the outbreak of war in Europe. Moldova, Romania, and the Ukraine had been pounded by waves of Russian bombers. Russian President Velichko was shown in the Politburo pounding his fist on the podium, but she couldn’t hear what the voice-over was saying he was ranting about. Thankfully, the use of low-yield nuclear-tipped missiles was not repeated, although the follow-on conventional bombing raids were fierce and probably claimed more lives than the nuclear attacks. For now the attacks were over, but the casualty estimates were astounding — nearly ten thousand dead after the first series of attacks alone. The Ukrainian capital of Kiev had been bombarded and the government had fled, their destination unknown. The Romanian government was dispersed into air raid shelters, even though the capital, Bucharest, was not under attack. Moldova was in the hands of the Russian rebels after the capital of Kishinev was bombarded and the Moldovan and Romanian troops in the western part of the country were pounded by waves of tactical and heavy bombers. Russian military aircraft were patrolling the skies all over the region, enjoying absolute control of the skies.

Now, Russian air bases near the Black Sea, such as Rostov-na-Donu and Krasnodar, were seeing large numbers of smaller jet bombers such as the Sukhoi-24 and -25 and Mikoyan-Gurevich-27 arriving there from interior bases, well within unrefueled striking range of the Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania. The Russian Air Force was encountering little or no resistance. They were taking a breather from the blitzkrieg attack and were now accomplishing a steady generation of tactical forces, preparing for an invasion. Once fully mobilized, she thought, Russia could probably squash Moldova, the Ukraine, and Romania like insects.

Jesus, she thought, if it weren’t right there on the television, she would have sworn the whole thing was like something out of a Dale Brown novel. Maybe — she sighed — that’s where Russia got the idea.

The network news cut away to the local stations. The Burlington TV station aired a teaser about “confusion over the war in Europe” causing an F-111G bomber crash at Plattsburgh Air Force Base. Rebecca noted that there was no mention of the plane being a reconnaissance jet, choosing instead to highlight its bomber role in light of the war in Europe, and she felt sick at the thought of the accident being broadcast to thousands of homes all over the area. Her neighbors, her family, her uncle in Washington would all hear about it soon. Bad enough going through the ordeal without having the whole world know about it.

She was halfway into her burger and fries and beginning to regret ever ordering them when she saw Brandon shaking hands with one of his employees. When the man turned around, she recognized Lieutenant Colonel Daren Mace, the Maintenance Group commander for the 394th Air Battle Wing. “Colonel?”

Mace turned around. He appeared to be annoyed that someone called him by his rank in this place — or perhaps annoyed that he was recognized — then pleased that it was her. Brandon handed what appeared to be a big fold of cash to him, which Mace refused. Brandon stuck the cash in Mace’s shirt pocket and slapped Mace’s chest, a friendly but definitive — and no doubt painful — warning that Brandon was not in the mood to argue. Mace then shook hands with the barkeep, moved to the other side of the bar, and sat next to Furness.

“What was that all about, Colonel?” Furness asked, popping a french fry in her mouth.

“ ‘Daren’ in here, okay, Rebecca? We had a deal: maintenance work on his taps and condenser units, and a little electrical work, in exchange for room and board. Now he—”

“You were staying here? At the bar?”

“He’s got a nice couple of rooms on the second floor,” Mace said. “He lives on the fourth floor. He’s got rooms on the third floor, but I didn’t ask what goes on there.”

She laughed. “Knowing this place, I can guess.”

“Yeah,” Mace agreed. “Anyway, Brandon insisted on paying me for my work anyway. He may be a gangster, but he’s a decent gangster.”

“Well, at least his reputation — and the Harleys outside — keep the college kids and tourists out,” Furness said, “which means more room for crewdogs. How long have you been staying here?”

“A few weeks, right after Air War College, when I found out I was coming to Plattsburgh,” Mace replied, reaching across the bar and pouring himself a glass of Pepsi from the bar gun. “I came in here for a beer and for a phone book and ended up getting a job and a place to stay.”

“What are you doing here now? Aren’t you supposed to be at the base?”

“I’ve been at the base for the past two days straight,” Mace replied wearily. “I told them I need a break. Besides, I had to get this one last job done for Brandon. I’ve got a feeling there won’t be many breaks after tonight.”

“On your night off from fixing airplanes you fix beer taps? Incredible.”

“I guess I’m just an incredible guy,” he deadpanned. “But I just quit. I’m going to miss this place. This was a kind of Bohemian place to work, sort of Greenwich Village. Everything was pretty nice”—he waited until she was going to take another bite of the burger, then added—”except for the food.”

She stopped in midbite and asked, “What’s wrong with the food?”

“Brandon cooks it.”

That instantly destroyed Rebecca’s appetite for good. She dropped the food back on its plate. Mace slipped a five-dollar bill under the plate and said, “Sorry about that, Rebecca. Let’s get out of here and we’ll find you some decent dinner.”

“I’m through with dinner,” Furness said, suddenly feeling queasy, “but I know a good place for coffee. Follow me.” They left the bar, got in Mace’s pickup truck, and drove down City Hall Place toward McDonough Monument and to Rebecca’s bed and breakfast.

The little hotel was right at the end of the Heritage Trail River Walk. From the main enclosed patio, they had a view of the Revolutionary War monument, the canal, and across the marina to frozen Lake Champlain. The bed and breakfast’s hosts served hot fudge sundaes and coffee on the patio in the evenings; both officers promised not to tell on each other as they accepted a small splash of Grand Marnier orange liqueur on top of the chocolate syrup.

“Nice place,” Mace said after trying his sundae.

“I stay here every chance I get,” she replied, licking chocolate and whipped cream off her spoon. “So you work for a biker-bar owner and stay in a biker flophouse. You never looked for an apartment? What were you going to do, stay at Afterburners for your entire tour?”

“Frankly, I never thought about it much,” Mace said dryly. He looked around to be sure no one else was within earshot, then said, “After our … activities … in the Persian Gulf, I’ve always considered my job in the Air Force Reserve as day-to-day.”

“Oh?” she asked, surprised.

Their eyes looked right into each other, as if both knew a secret on the other.

“The Air Force made it clear to me that they weren’t going to stand by me,” Mace said. “I made a tactical decision during the war and I got hammered for it. I consider myself extremely fortunate to still be in uniform, let alone be in command of a maintenance group. I guess I ultimately made the right decision during the war, and that at least one high-powered angel somewhere agreed and is rewarding me by letting me continue in service. I don’t expect that patronage to last forever, though, believe me. I’m not a man of delusions.”

Somehow she knew he wasn’t. They fell silent as the host poured more coffee for his guests. When he left, Furness asked, “Can you tell me about what you were doing out there during the war, Daren? I remember you weren’t on the air tasking order.”

“A lot of sorties weren’t on the ATO,” he said uneasily.

“You had no wingmen, no scheduled tanker, and a bomb load you couldn’t jettison.”

“We can’t talk about this, Rebecca.”

“Why not?”

“You know better than to ask, Major,” Mace said evenly, using her military rank to firmly punctuate his warning. He quickly added, “Besides, it’s the first clear night we’ve had in days, and the coffee is good and strong. Let’s enjoy it.” He pointed out the window toward the south. “I can even see the stars out there. That’s Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Amazing what you remember all the way back to nav school.”

“They have a telescope set up on the upstairs deck,” Furness said. She led him upstairs, then down a side hallway and out a set of French doors to a long redwood patio that had been swept clean of snow. An eight-inch reflector telescope on a motorized equatorial mount had been set up there for the guests. An instruction card on the wall told how to use the telescope and the star drive, but Mace scanned the skies briefly, released the worm-gear drive, repositioned the telescope as if he’d been using it all his life, lined it up on a bright star farther to the east across the lake, using the telescope’s small finder scope, and reengaged the drive.

“Aren’t we going to look at … what’s it called, Sirius?”

“Stars don’t look any different through a telescope — they’re too far away to see the disk,” Mace said. “But you’ll like this.”

When Furness peered through the eyepiece, she inhaled in absolute surprise. “It’s Saturn! I can see the rings … I can even see the shadow on the rings from the planet itself, and a few of Saturn’s moons! How did you know that was Saturn?”

“The weather shop still prepares briefings on which planets and bright stars are up,” Mace replied, “and I still get a weather briefing and forecast four times a day. We still calibrate the sextants on the tankers for celestial navigation, even though the tanker crews rarely use them with their GPS and inertial navigation systems — I even did a few precomps and shot the sun the other day. Once a nav, always a nav.” He pointed to the sky to the south: “There’s Orion with his belt and sword, and Drago the dragon, and Taurus the bull, and the star cluster called the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters.”

As they scanned the night sky, Furness shivered, wrapped her arms around herself, and stepped closer to Mace. He responded by putting an arm around her. “See any more constellations?” she asked.

“Yeah. Darenoid, the frozen naviguesser. Let’s go inside.”

They went inside and headed for the stairs, but Rebecca took Mace’s hand and pulled him toward the hallway to the right. He hesitated, searching her eyes, silently asking if she was sure, relaxing his grip, offering her a chance to gracefully back away. She did not release him, and he followed her three doors down and into her room.

There was no talking, no polite conversation, no more requests or replies. As Daren locked the door, Rebecca walked over beside the bed, kicked off her boots, and, standing before him, began to unbutton his shirt. He held her cold face in his hands as she worked, rolling his eyes in mock agony as her cold fingers touched, then explored, his bare chest. His body was lean, rock-hard, and athletic, his chest was square and muscular, even his back was angular and sinewy. Guys never tailored their flight suits or fatigues, so most men’s bodies looked the same when in a military outfit — and, in fact, most Air Force men were very much alike, trim and fit, maybe toned-up if they were serious about exercise. Daren was not just fit or toned, he was built, Furness thought. Taking off his shirt, revealing his incredible body, wrapping her arms around his rounded shoulders and roaming across his fantastic chest and arms was like unwrapping a late but much-anticipated Christmas present.

Her hands wrapped around to his back, and they kissed. The kiss quickly intensified as both tasted, explored, and sought even more. Her hips briefly moved against him, an unbidden but insistent invitation, touching groin to groin for the briefest of moments. That caused a sudden shiver to shoot through him, not from the cold this time but from the pleasure, and his hands began to work the buttons of her cotton blouse. When that was removed, she waited for him to reach around to undo the fasteners of her brassiere, but instead he stepped back and allowed her to remove her brassiere herself. She used the opportunity to full advantage, doing it as slowly as her pounding heart and quickening breathing would allow, then stood before him, topless, watching his eyes roam across her body and his smile beginning to grow.

She expected the rest of it to be quick and catlike, like Ed — and she had to admit that sometimes she liked that. But Daren wasn’t going to allow it. He went slow, like a long, sybaritic poem, alternatively smothering her with kisses and grasps, then letting her relax with gentle touches and caresses. He was offering her the spectrum of lovemaking, the hard and the soft, observing which she preferred and delighting in every new discovery. She liked her kisses wet and deep, her breasts handled gently but her nipples teased and moistened into full attention, her buttocks and thighs taken in both hands and firmly massaged. As he laid her back on the thick, soft bed and got on his knees before her, he discovered she liked her womanhood treated slowly, carefully, almost reverently, like kissing a baby’s lips, until her breathing became deeper and more audible and her hands moved from the bed, to her own breasts, and then to the back of his head, urging him closer, deeper …

He finally stood before her, his well-developed chest moving up and down breathlessly as if he had run up and down stairs, and he started to undo his belt. She quickly sat up, slid off the edge of the bed to her knees, unfastened his belt for him, and slid his jeans and underwear to the hardwood floor. She wrapped her hand around him, feeling its heat and its incredible hardness, then tasted him, once, twice, three times, as deeply as she could. When she released him, she knew neither of them was going to wait any longer. As Daren picked Rebecca off the floor, laid her on her back on the bed, knelt between her legs, and guided himself into her, she discovered him with absolute delight.

It was the beginning of some of the most passionate lovemaking she could remember. His strength was enormous, and he delighted in making her climax time after time until he finally succumbed himself. They made love long and slow. She had thrown out every rule she’d ever made about sleeping with her fellow military personnel, but she didn’t give a damn … until …

They heard the ring of a cellular telephone. She hadn’t even noticed it clipped to the inside of his jacket, but of course being the Maintenance Group commander, especially during an alert, it would be a required and constant companion. He withdrew from her, kissing her lips and her breasts and murmuring something softly to her, an apology or a wish, something she couldn’t quite hear. But when she looked at him again, his face had completely changed. He had completely changed. He was no longer her tender, passionate lover — he was now her superior officer, the MG of the 394th Air Battle Wing.

He wasn’t on the phone long, and he was reaching for his pants and shirt. “What is it?” Furness asked him.

“They figured out what they’re going to do with us,” Mace said, hurriedly dressing. “We’re deploying. To Turkey. Recon and Wild Weasel operations. There’s a staff meeting in ten minutes. I’ve got my utility uniform in the truck; I’ll have to change out there,” he told her. He put his jacket and boots on, paused, then came back to Furness and hugged her, closely and deeply. They parted, kissed just as deeply, and embraced again.

“I’ll see you … on the flight line,” Mace said hesitantly as he pulled himself away. She could read his thoughts: he wanted to say thank you, to say all sorts of things that lovers say to each other after parting. But his expression, his anxious smile, told her all she needed to know.

“My gear is packed,” she said. She was dressed and ready in no time. “I’ll drive in with you. They’re going to need crews to fly those things out of here.”

His smile returned, and he nodded. She was, he realized with a great deal of pride, a flyer first and foremost.

TWENTY-EIGHT

The entire Ukrainian Air Force was parked on the west ramp of Kayseri Air Base in central Turkey. Colonel Pavlo Tychina shook his head in absolute disbelief. Kayseri was a rather large base, one of the largest Western military bases between Germany and Hawaii, so it would make sense for even a large number of planes to be lost there, but the entire Ukrainian Air Force fit in just eight aircraft parking rows. At L’vov Air Base in Ukrayina, just the MiG-23s at that one base filled twelve rows. This wasn’t an Air Force, he told himself, this was a recreational-aircraft fly-in. But, thank God, Panchenko had spirited spare parts, missiles, tech orders, and charts to Turkey over the past few months.

Now, this was all they had.

Tychina was at the controls of the last MiG-23 fighter plane out of the Ukraine. General Panchenko had led the formation of survivors to Turkey, and Tychina, flying one of the few Ukrayinan planes that carried any weaponry, was bringing up the rear to cover their retreat. He had been allowed to arm his MiG with the standard GSh-23 gun on the centerline gun station, with only one hundred rounds of ammunition — any plane with a cannon was allowed to carry one hundred rounds of ammunition for self-defense — and he was allowed to carry two R-60 short-range heat-seeking air-to-air missiles on the outer pylons. It was not very much protection for anyone, but at the very least it would allow him to engage any enemy planes and hold them off long enough for the others to plug in the afterburners and get away. He also carried one eight-hundred-liter fuel tank on the center pylon.

He was on a high, wide downwind pattern, parallel to the long northernmost active runway of the large Turkish military complex. He was carefully aligning himself with a Turkish F-16 fighter flying about a kilometer ahead of him, matching every altitude and speed change. Tychina knew that if he strayed too far from his escort his brethren — one F-16 directly astern, another high and out of sight somewhere behind him — would attack. His Sirena-3 radar warning receiver was lit up with threats, and had been well before he crossed the Black Sea into Turkish airspace. Fighter tracking radar, surveillance radar, a NATO Patriot surface-to-air missile system tracking radar — they were all locked on. The Ukrayinans might have been cordially invited into Turkey by the host country and by the NATO alliance, but no one was taking any chances here …

… including Tychina, who was constantly rehearsing the sequence of events he’d need to accomplish to turn this approach into an attack. Hit the F-16 in front of him with guns, drop chaff and flares, hit the guy to the right with missiles or guns, then drop to the deck and run like hell until he flamed out over Iraq or Syria — go east and south instead of north and west. He wondered if the Americans or NATO would pull some kind of dirty trick, create a trap. He shook his head: in war anything was possible.

“Ukrainian MiG, Kayseri tower,” the heavily accented voice said on the radio in English, interrupting Tychina’s grim thoughts. “Winds zero-eight-five at ten knots, runway zero-niner, check wheels down, cleared to land.”

“Yes, Ukrayinan MiG, landing now, thank you,” Tychina replied in broken English on the international emergency frequency. Well, if this was a trap, he was too late — NATO had all the surviving attack planes on their base, including the last one. He was committed. If NATO screwed them now, the world could kiss off Ukrayina for good. He flipped the gear-extension lever down, relieving pressure on the hydraulic gear-retraction system which allowed the gear to free-fall, then reached down to the emergency pneumatic gear downlock pressurization handle on the bulkhead near his right leg and began pumping it, which provided backup pressurization for the gear safety downlocks. He continued to pump until all four green gear-down lights came on — the fourth green light signaled that the large ventral fin near the tail feathers had folded up into its landing position — then extended trailing- and leading-edge flaps and set up for the landing.

Turning final, he could see the pristine deserts and low hills of eastern Turkey spread out before him in an incredible panorama, unspoiled even by the extensive oil fields and refineries south and east of the base near the city. Dominating the landscape was Erciyes Dagi, a large volcanic mountain just ten miles south of the city, its sheer walls rising three thousand meters in just a few kilometers, forming almost a spire reaching over four thousand meters above sea level. Kayseri was an industrial megalopolis in the middle of the high desert, but unlike Russian or Ukrainian industrial centers, Kayseri was shiny, freshly painted, almost beautiful. Not a speck of smoke, only a few puffs of white steam or thin smoke. Where was the smog? he wondered. The area north of the volcano was surrounded by farms tended by circular irrigation systems hundreds of meters in diameter, which in the spring would allow crops to flourish in this very inhospitable region. Everything seemed so clean, so impossibly beautiful, that it put L’vov, Odessa, and even the polluted but beautiful Crimea to shame.

As soon as the dual nose gear wheels touched the grooved runway and Tychina extended the four petal speedbrakes and upper wing spoilers, several armored personnel carriers roared onto the runway. As Tychina coasted toward the end, he looked up in his rearview periscope and saw two huge fire trucks and several more APCs converging on him. “Ukrainian MiG, make the first right turn you can and remain on this frequency. Acknowledge.”

“I acknowledge, to turn right, yes I will,” Tychina repeated in his best English. The armored personnel carriers ahead of him had formed a corral that clearly outlined the proper taxiway. As soon as he was clear of the main runway, the armored vehicles closed in and he was ordered to stop and shut down engines.

A Turkish army officer stepped up beside his cockpit, signaling him to open the canopy. As he did so, several armed soldiers took up positions around his plane, but he was happy to see that all of them held their rifles at port arms with the actions open — nonthreatening. After Tychina swung open the heavy canopy, the officer made a hand signal to tell him to keep his hands on the canopy bow, in plain sight. Tychina stood on his ejection seat and did as he was told. Technicians put safety pins in his R-60 missiles, and he could hear them installing some sort of shield around the gun ports and a jack under the fuel tank, presumably as safety measures. Finally, a ladder was placed alongside his plane and he was asked to step down.

Tychina was met at the base of the boarding ladder by a tall, slender Turkish security officer, wearing high calf-length riding boots, his uniform blouse festooned with ribbons and badges, armed with a pearl-handled American .45-caliber automatic pistol in a black leather holster, and smoking a thin cigar — very dangerous around a MiG-23 with weapons aboard. He was flanked by two security guards, both carrying M-16 rifles with M-203 grenade launchers attached. It was very ostentatious firepower for one plane and one pilot, Tychina thought, and he wondered if General Panchenko and the rest of his surviving air force got the same display.

“The next time you disobey my orders and do not follow my escort planes as directed,” the officer said in pidgin Russian, without identifying himself or offering any sort of greeting, “I will shoot you and your Russian piece-of-shit aircraft from the sky. Is that clear?”

Tychina did not reply right away. He stood at attention just a half meter before the Turkish officer, who was several centimeters taller than the Ukrainian pilot, then removed his flying helmet and tucked it into the crook of his left arm. Tychina was wearing a white flameproof hood with cutouts for his eyes and mouth, which got him a few surprised glances at the unusual headgear. Then, with a flourish, Tychina stripped off the mask, transferred the mask to his left hand, and saluted the Turkish officer with his right hand. “Colonel of Aviation Pavlo Tychina, Fifth Air Army, Air Force of the Republic of Ukrayina, reporting as ordered, sir.”

Tychina remained completely impassive, eyes caged, but he could clearly see the Turkish officer’s face blanch, then turn green, and his Adam’s apple bobble as if he were fighting the urge to vomit. One of the guards dropped his M-16 clattering to the ground — Tychina prayed its safety was still on — and promptly vomited on the tarmac despite a hand held up to his mouth; the other stayed at port arms, but he began carefully examining something on the ground and never did raise his eyes again. Tychina held his salute until the Turkish officer could regain his composure and return a shaky hand salute. Tychina pulled a sterile plastic bag from a flight suit pocket, withdrew a fresh gauze mask, and slipped it on.

“I am sorry I do not speak the Turkish language,” Tychina said in English. “I am very happy to be here. Your people very kind. Please, we go to your commanding officer, no?”

“Yes,” the officer said a bit shakily, looking immensely relieved that Tychina had put the face mask on and covered his horrible wounds. “I … I, uh, will take you to meet the commander … Thank you.”

“No, it is I who thank you,” Tychina said. The Turkish officer tried a weak smile, failed at it, then motioned to his vehicle and led the way.

They headed directly for a driveway between the tower and the fire department, but Tychina noticed the rows of Ukrainian planes parked not far to their right. “Please, may we drive by the planes of Ukrayina, sir?” The Turkish officer gave an order to his driver, who made a radio call and turned toward the parking ramp. An armored vehicle parked every thirty meters or so marked the boundaries of the security area — one M113 light tank had to be rolled out of the way so their sedan could pass.

The Ukrainian planes were in remarkably good condition. As expected, most were MiG-23 fighters. As if on cue, the Turkish officer gave Tychina a copy of his list of foreign planes parked there: one hundred and thirteen Ukrainian Mikoyan-Gurevich-23 fighters, thirty-one MiG-27 bombers, and twenty-seven Sukhoi-17 bombers. The Turkish officer’s inventory did not specify which models were present. There were a few two-seat trainer versions — three MiG-23 UB-models and two Su-17 UM-models — both with combat capability. Consistent with the threat of Russian air raids, all of the Sukhoi-17 single-seaters were H- or K-model reconnaissance planes — they would have survived because they were probably all in the air during the Russian bomb runs. They still had the special pylons fitted for long-range fuel tanks, electronic countermeasures pods, and the Ogarkov-213 sensor pod on the centerline station, but all of the external stores had been removed. “Excuse me please,” Tychina asked the Turkish officer, “but did these aircraft arrive with tanks? Pods? Photographic devices?”

“They were removed and have been confiscated, for now,” the officer replied, his voice a bit tense as he wondered — worried — if the Ukrainian would pull off that mask. “Orders. You understand.”

“Yes, thank you,” Tychina acknowledged. As long as he got them back in working order, Tychina thought, he didn’t care if the Turks took a few apart to study or analyze them. He would gladly trade them for missiles and bombs to arm his planes anyway.

The Sukhoi-17 reconnaissance planes were about twenty years old, and although Tychina knew maintenance on these old birds was usually meticulous, the lack of money for spare parts had taken their toll on them, and they looked their age. The Su-17 was an older model Sukhoi-7 single-engine fighter with the outer one-half of its wings cut off and a swinging variable-geometry section added. The round, open “carp nose” design was primitive and cumbersome, providing very little room for a decent attack radar, but the increased performance of the swing-wing addition was a quantum leap over fixed-geometry designs of the time, and eventually the Su-17 comprised over one-third of the tactical air inventory of the old Soviet Union and was widely exported.

Although the Sukhoi-17 strike planes were valuable, the thirty-one MiG-27s were the prize of Tychina’s little attack fleet. They were basically the same as the MiG-23 fighters, but with a greatly strengthened fuselage, lots of armor plating around the pilot, and a big 30-millimeter multibarrel strafing and tank-killing gun replacing the GSh-23 air-to-air gun on the fighter. Most of the MiG-27s here were M-models, about ten years old, with laser rangefinders for precision-guided bombs that could illuminate targets behind and far off to the side of the plane. The-27 could carry just about every weapon in the Ukrainian arsenal — TV-guided bombs, laser-guided bombs, antiradiation missiles, and antiship missiles, as well as air-to-air defensive missiles …

… that is, if Ukrayina had an arsenal anymore. Thank God General Panchenko had had the foresight to worry about a major Russian invasion and sent those weapons shipments here. Panchenko was the hero, not he, Pavlo Tychina. The first order of business would be to organize his aircrews and maintenance technicians to inspect these weapons…

… that is, if he had any maintenance troops here. Tychina had brought pilots, not maintenance troops or technicians. There were no transport planes available to take supplies or survivors out of L’vov — and Tychina assumed it was the same at the other bases — so hopefully General Panchenko arranged for civil transports, overland convoys, or very dangerous sea transportation for the badly needed maintenance guys. These planes weren’t going anywhere without proper support.

“I thank you for taking such good care of Ukrayina’s fighter jets,” Tychina told his host with genuine appreciation.

“You’re welcome,” the Turkish officer replied halfheartedly. He wasn’t sure if Tychina really meant the compliment, since most of the Ukrainian planes looked like shit. They were noisy, smelly, smoky, their radios were bad, and they dropped rivets, inspection plates, large pieces of rubber, and insulation constantly, creating a hazard for the Turkish planes at Kayseri.

They exited the flight line and drove through the base toward the Turkish headquarters. Kayseri Air Base was the most modern, most impressive military installation Tychina had ever seen. The above-ground hangars were huge, thick concrete structures, not weak tin or aluminum over a steel frame like most ex-Soviet facilities in Ukrayina, and Pavlo noticed many gated and guarded ramps leading to underground hangars. Aircraft taxiways were very wide, with enough room for a single Bear-class bomber or several fighter-size aircraft to taxi side by side — many of the taxiways had runway-type markings on them, indicating that they could be used for takeoff and landing if the main runway was in use or damaged.

Although the base was primarily a fighter training base, it was clearly ready for war. Antiaircraft gun and missile emplacements were everywhere, including several Patriot missile batteries and several short-range mobile antiaircraft batteries, including the West’s newest weapon system, a combination 30-millimeter Gatling gun with dual feed (antiarmor and antiaircraft explosive rounds) and eight-round Stinger missile battery all on one fast all-terrain truck, using both radar and electro-optical guidance systems. All air defense units were manned at full strength, despite the freezing temperatures. Tychina noted the detailed attention paid to camouflaging every air defense site with realistic-looking white nets and setting up inflatable decoys and radar reflectors around the base. The headquarters building itself was modern and fairly new, but the camouflage makers on base had actually taken great pains to make it more nondescript, to blend in with the snow. The flagpoles and other monuments around the building had been removed, and nearby buildings had similar defensive positions set up around them to make it harder for enemy invaders to immediately determine which building was the headquarters.

Tychina was surprised to see two of his senior pilots, both from L’vov, seated outside the commander’s office. They were slouched in their seats, totally bored, with their legs extended straight and their boots tipped up on their heels, tapping them together to show how tired and irritated they were. Pavlo turned to see a Turkish security officer seated across from them, glaring at the two pilots in utter disgust, as if he was ready to pull out his pistol and shoot them both — and Tychina knew why.

The two pilots snapped to attention when they saw him approach. Tychina was overjoyed to see two familiar, friendly faces, but he felt some sort of strain in the room and held his exuberance carefully in check until he found out exactly what was going on. “Captain Mikitenko, Captain Skliarenko,” he greeted them in Ukrainian, returning their salutes but then folding his hands behind his back so as to not invite them to shake hands or clasp shoulders, as was customary. Tychina acknowledged the security officer seated across from the two pilots — obviously a guard assigned to the two pilots — who continued to stare disrespectfully at the two young Ukrainians after a polite bow to Tychina.

“Colonel, it is great to see you,” Mikitenko said in Ukrainian. “We’ve been stuck here for the past six hours.”

“They haven’t even let us go to the bathroom,” Skliarenko complained. “I’m about ready to pop. Can you get these guys to let us go to the head, Pavlo?”

On that last sentence, Tychina caught it — the smell of alcohol, strong, fortified Moldovan cherry wine. He leaned closer to Mikitenko and smelled apricot brandy on his breath. “You assholes, you’ve been drinking?” Tychina thundered.

“Hey, c’mon, Pavlo, old buddy,” Skliarenko drawled lazily, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We’ve just been through hell and back. Everyone carries a little nip in the plane — so do you. We just had a little celebration after we landed.”

Tychina whipped his right arm up, throwing off the drunk pilot’s hand on his shoulder. “Attention!” Tychina snapped. Mikitenko snapped to attention once again; Skliarenko was a little slower, his eyes not focusing too well, but he finally moved to attention, weaving unsteadily.

“You bastards could have destroyed any chance we had to regenerate the air force and begin air operations against the Russians,” Tychina raged. Mikitenko noticed a line of blood soaking through Tychina’s sterile mask — he was so agitated that he had burst a stitch or reopened a wound — and the sight made his throat turn dry, his hands shake with dread. “Don’t you two know anything? Turkey is a Muslim nation. Sunni Muslims. You insulted them to the core by bringing booze into their country and drinking it in front of them. You might as well have pissed on their foreheads. And that’s not to mention the fact that it’s against regulations to drink on the flight line or during combat conditions. And you were sitting slouched in those chairs with your feet up like lazy pigs.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Mikitenko interjected, “but we’ve been here for over six hours.”

“Idiots! Sitting slouched in a chair is a sign of disrespect, and pointing the soles of your boots at a Turk is the worst insult you can make,” Tychina roared. “Didn’t you two notice how pissed off that guard is? You were practically goading him into a fight. Now shut your stupid mouths. I want you to speak only when spoken to. You will remain at parade rest as long as you are here, and you will come to attention if you are addressed by anyone. Is that clear?” Both pilots said yes. “Jesus, no wonder this entire country seemed mad at us. I hope we haven’t lost the fight before we had a chance to fight it.”

Eventually Tychina was shown into the office of the base commander. Brigadier General Erdal Sivarek was a short, round man with dark features and hair that seemed to grow out of impossible places all over his body. The two men were introduced by an interpreter (speaking Russian, not Ukrainian), shook hands, and then Tychina was introduced to an older man in white arctic combat fatigues: “May I present Major General Bruce Eyers, from the United States, chief of operations for NATO Forces Southeast.”

Pavlo didn’t understand much of the interpreter’s thickly accented Russian, but he knew what the two stars on the American’s epaulettes meant. He quickly checked the American general out. About five foot ten, probably about 225 pounds, a mean-looking sort of man — or maybe just tough — with very short, cropped dark hair, dark eyes, and built like a small building. The American officer squeezed Tychina’s hand hard, then asked in a loud voice, “What happened to your face there, young man?” Pavlo was about to reply, but Eyers turned to the Turkish general and laughed, “Looks like the en-tire Ukrainian Air Force is filled with either drunks or walking wounded, eh, General?”

“I apologize for my pilots, sir,” Tychina said in English, thinking that the American was admonishing him for the conduct of his two pilots. “They are young and have survived much, sir. Their conduct will not be repeated. We will conduct ourselves with very much respect.”

“Hell, don’t sweat it, chief,” the American said easily. “If I just had my hometown blasted to hell by the Russkies, I’d want to toss down a few stiff ones, too. Jeez.” He laughed again, but turned much more serious when he found that neither officer was joining in the humor. “I’d advise you to keep a tight grip on your boys, and steer clear of the vodka. The Turks don’t go for drinking on this base. It’s a pisser, but hell, that’s the way it’s going to be.”

“Our social customs, General, are not ‘pissers’ to anyone except foreigners, usually slovenly Westerners,” General Sivarek said irritably. General Eyers said nothing, but nodded that he understood — and then he made an impatient sigh and crossed his arms on his chest, which Tychina knew was yet another rude gesture to a Turk. General Sivarek glared at Eyers, who didn’t notice, then said to Tychina, “Hos geldiniz, efendim. I welcome you to the Republic of Turkey and to Kayseri Air Base, Colonel. I am sorry for what has happened to your nation and your home. Under the circumstances, I think we may forgive your pilot’s indiscretion. I will make a Russian-speaking liaison officer available to you and your crews so that there will be no more such incidents.”

“Thank you, sir,” Tychina replied gratefully. “I accept your offer. But I think it’s best to keep my crews under cover and working until we can begin air operations. I’m sure General Panchenko and the general staff will want us to be combat-ready in the fastest time possible.”

“Hold on there, son,” the American general interjected, swaggering a bit now like a bad imitation of John Wayne. “No one here’s talking about any air operations. You don’t have permission to stage any sorties out of Turkey. You can’t even start engines on one of those Floggers without NATO and the President of Turkey giving their okay.” He nodded as respectfully as he could to General Sivarek.

Tychina didn’t understand all that the American was saying — he made no effort to make himself understood to anyone — but he could sense by the tone in his voice, that lazy swagger, that air operations weren’t approved yet. “Excuse me,” Pavlo said, “but I anticipate the Russians will begin a full-scale ground invasion of Ukrayina at any time. This we must not allow. I was told you had stockpiled Ukrainian weapons at this location.”

“We got nothin’ but a hodgepodge of half-assed bombs, rockets, and missiles left over from Afghanistan,” Eyers said dryly, looking at the Ukrainian out of the corner of his eyes as if he were a beggar asking for coins. “They’re outdated first-generation technology that don’t amount to spit and would probably create a hazard for NATO forces anyway. Hell, it’s dangerous enough just having those things sit in storage — I can’t imagine trying’ to upload those things on your aircraft in combat conditions … Hell, it’d be like playin’ with Tonka toys.”

“Excuse me, but we cannot sit here in Turkey while Russian troops march into our country,” insisted Tychina as if the man were an idiot.

“There ain’t much you boys can do about it, is there, Colonel?” Eyers said, cocking an eyebrow. “The only force that can stand up to Russian aggression is NATO and the United States, of course. So far, NATO hasn’t figgered out what to do.

“Now I’ll admit, you got some real interestin’ hardware out there, but it’s all obsolete, my friend. I wish you’d brought us a few of your Su-24s or Su-37s. NATO will determine whether or not you boys can join our coalition forces and try your hand against the Russkies — although frankly I don’t give you a chance in hell. You haven’t trained with NATO forces, you don’t speak the language, you use totally different tactics.”

Pavlo Tychina felt the anger rise to the surface of his skin like a bubble in a boiling cauldron of blood. His breathing became more accelerated, his eyes burning. “I speak English good, sir, very good. And I not need permission from you or NATO to tell me when to fight. You understand?” Tychina turned to General Sivarek and bowed his head politely. “I thank you and your country for welcoming us and giving us the safety. You have given us the opportunity to fight. I ask for fuel and weapons for my aircraft. We will leave aircraft to pay for fuel, and my government will pay; the weapons, they belong to Ukrayina. I require nothing more. We leave soon as possible.”

The Turkish general favored Tychina with a hint of a smile, but then tipped his head back slightly, eyes closed — which Tychina knew to be a “no”—and said solemnly, “I am sorry, but that is not possible, Colonel. General Eyers is quite correct: my country offered protection for your government and your air force, nothing more. It is not a wise policy for your crews to fly with our pilots. NATO crews train several times a year together; Ukrainian crews have never trained with us. If there would be an air battle between NATO and Russia, your planes are too similar to Russian rear-echelon planes, even with Ukrainian markings — and some of your planes still have Russian markings on them. The confusion would be enormous. It would be dangerous and expose both our forces to serious risk.”

“Then we will fly alone, sir,” Tychina decided. “When your planes are not flying, we will fight.”

“That proves how much you know about Western tactics, son.” Eyers chuckled condescendingly. “We don’t pause, we don’t stop, we don’t let up once the ball game gets going. It’s just too dangerous. Some overanxious fly-boy would likely put a Sidewinder up your butt, and it’d be a waste of a good missile. Forget it, chief.”

Tychina took two tightly controlled steps toward Eyers, his fists clenched. “I am not this ‘chief,’ and I am not ‘son,’ sir,” he seethed. “I am Colonel of Aviation of the Air Force of the Ukrayinan Republic—”

“And you’re way out of line, Colonel,” Eyers said, pointing a finger at him as if he were pointing a gun. “We saved your butt from a royal shellacking. You’re on our side of the fence now, son. You stay grounded until we clear up this awful mess.”

Pavlo was incredulous. He didn’t understand all the words, but his tone of voice and his hand gestures said everything — the American general didn’t want his Ukrayinan bombers to leave Turkey. “No! My orders are to prepare my aircraft for combat operations,” Tychina snapped. “We do not stay on ground. We fight.”

“You’ll do as you’re ordered or you’ll be placed under arrest!” yelled Eyers, eyes on fire.

“I was not sent here to wait. I came here to fight,” Tychina explained to both of them, trying to remain calm. “If I am not given permission to prepare to fight, I will recommend to my commander that our forces be withdrawn.”

“Withdrawn?” Eyers’ eyes turned the size of saucers. “You listen to me, you third-world shithead …”

“Enough!” Sivarek ordered, raising both hands in front of the two officers.

“You stay out of this, General,” Eyers said dismissively, waving a hand as if to swat a bothersome insect. “I’m gonna set this pup straight.”

“Hayir. You will not,” Sivarek interrupted. Eyers looked angry enough to commit murder at being shown up by the Turk, but Sivarek went on. “You are my superior officer, General Eyers, but this is still my base and my country, and you are both guests here. Is that understood, sir?”

Eyers said nothing, but only glared at Tychina.

“I understand, sir,” Tychina said. “I am grateful for any help you give.”

“Tamam. We shall leave it at that,” Sivarek said. Eyers stalked away, finding a pitcher of strong, thick Turkish coffee on a credenza nearby and pouring himself a cup. “Colonel, the decision as to what role your fighters and bombers will play in the conflict which is to come must be coordinated with your country and with any other nations that choose to stand against the Russian aggression,” the Turkish officer continued. “So far, none have stepped forward, although NATO — and indeed the entire world — is mobilizing its military forces for intercontinental war, fearful that the Russians may try an invasion of Turkey or the Eastern Bloc republics. We simply have to wait and see.

“We do indeed have a quantity of Ukrainian weapons stored here,” Sivarek went on. “My orders are to guard them, nothing more. They do indeed belong to you, and they will be returned to you at the proper time. For the moment, we need help in inventorying and inspecting the weapons stockpile. Can your crews assist in this?”

“They can, sir,” Tychina said quietly. “I would like to organize training, intelligence, maintenance, target selection, and communications details as well. I am hoping that General Panchenko can send technicians from Ukrayina, but for now I intend on organizing my aircrews to—”

“What you’re going to do, Colonel, is sit tight and don’t do anything unless I tell you to do it,” Eyers declared. “We got you out of your country with your skins, so you owe us. That’s all you need to know. You are dismissed. Report here at seven A.M. tomorrow morning and you’ll be given your duties.”

Tychina saluted Eyers and Sivarek, but the Turkish general held up a hand and asked, “How were you injured, effendi?”

“I was leader of interceptor flight that stopped first raid of Tupolev-95 bombers into Ukrayina,” Tychina explained. “My aircraft was shot out. But I kill many heavy Bear bombers and make others turn away.”

“Yeah, right.” General Eyers chuckled, pouring himself more coffee. “You get yourself blown away but still managed to save the day, huh? I heard that one before.”

“No, I have heard of this man,” Sivarek said, impressed. “The young captain who shot down five Russian bombers and averted the first Russian attack single-handedly. You are a hero, young sir. I congratulate you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Tychina said. He noticed Eyers’ skeptical expression and added, “You think I not tell the truth, General Eyers?”

“If you say it’s true, it’s fine by me,” Eyers said easily. “I’ll bet that yarn impresses the hell out of your girlfriends, that’s for damned sure.”

“My girlfriend is dead, General,” Tychina hissed. “She was killed in Russian attack while waiting for me to marry her.” He held out his arms, his hands and wrists tense, as if he were carrying his dead fiancée. “She died of the radiation sickness. In my arms.”

“That’s too bad,” Eyers said in a low voice, feigning his condolences. “But maybe your revenge is making you not think so clear, chief. You just can’t go charging back into the Ukraine or Russia just like that — they’ll blow your toy planes out there away. Think with your head and not your balls, son.” Tychina’s open hands, still extended as if he were carrying his dead Mikki, curled into tight fists, then dejectedly dropped to his side.

“You ever think about the fact that if you hadn’t stopped those Bears from doing their thing, Russia would’ve never nuked you?” asked Eyers, raising his eyebrows. “Maybe those Bears were just going to hit military targets in Moldova and Romania, not the Ukraine, or maybe they really were just reconnaissance planes like the Russian foreign ministry suggests. If that’s true, what you did was an act of war — against your own people, your own allies.”

Tychina turned to Eyers, pure hatred in his eyes magnified by his face mask. “You Americans, no one invade your home, you do not know how to suffer,” he said. “You talk big about patience and waiting when Russians drop nuclear bombs on Ukrayina. It will be very different if Russians attack America.”

“It’ll never happen, son,” Eyers said confidently. “Ol’ Velichko knows better than to even try it. And don’t try to tell me I don’t know the score, my friend. I was in uniform defending my country long before you had your first wet dream. Back when ol’ Khrushchev was still alive and kicking. Maybe you ought to try listening to how the professional soldiers in the West fight for a change, instead of swinging your dick around looking for a fight. Someone’s liable to shoot it off.”

The young Ukrainian officer decided he was too disgusted by this guy to hang around for another second. “I will go and inspect my crews now, sir,” Tychina said to Sivarek, snapping to attention and saluting. Sivarek returned the salute. “Again, sir, I thank you for helping my country. My countrymen will never forget it. And I apologize for the conduct of my officers; they meant no disrespect to you or your country.” Tychina turned and rendered a salute to Eyers, who simply nodded in return, then departed.

“He is a very brave and determined young man, no?” Sivarek asked Eyers after the Ukrainian had left.

“I think he’s a peasant in a flight suit,” Eyers concluded. He opened the door, then chuckled to himself. “Russia invading the United States — that’s a laugh,” he said. “I don’t know what you see in that kid, General.” Sivarek joined in Eyers’ laughter as he saw the American to the door and closed it behind him — then ceased his laughing and gave Eyers an obscene “fig” finger — clenching his fist, then poking his thumb out between the index and middle fingers — behind his back.

“I see a fighting spirit that you lost long ago, you pompous American ass,” Sivarek said half-aloud. When Sivarek’s clerk returned after seeing the American off, the General told him in Turkish, “I want a meeting of the wing staff at oh-six-hundred hours, and I want Captain Yilmez to give me a complete report of the status of those Ukrainian weapons. Do it immediately.”

TWENTY-NINE

“This is a rather serious turn of events, Mr. President,” Vitaly Velichko, President of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, said. His English was very good — he was educated both in England and the United States — and it felt a bit strange for the American president to hear a British-sounding accent on the other end of the line and then remind himself that he was talking to a Russian.

“Now, you’re not getting upset about a few F-111 reconnaissance planes goin’ to Turkey, are you, Mr. President?” the Chief Executive drawled, his feet propped up on the desk John F. Kennedy had once used and that he’d brought out of storage after his inauguration. He popped some M&Ms into his mouth from a big crystal jar on his desk. He glanced around the Oval Office, listening to the Russian president, but visually taking in his surroundings, ignoring those advisers present for this phone call. Even now, in the midst of an international crisis, he never ceased to be amazed that he’d made it here in the first place. A governor from what so many laughingly called a hillbilly, inbred state, with more than a few skeletons in his personal closet, the pundits had called him a dark horse from the start. Laughed off. Well, they sure as hell weren’t laughing anymore. His eyes focused on a sculpture on a Federal table by the polycarbonate, bullet-resistant-windowed French doors leading to the Rose Garden. The sculpture was a replica of Rodin’s “The Thinker.”

Just what the President reminded himself he needed to be doing now. “We deploy these planes all the time to Turkey and you never seem to mind — heck, we landed them in Riga that one time last year, and a hundred thousand people came out to see them. And after all, Vitaly, they’re just Reservists.” He crunched a bit more on the M&Ms.

“We have great respect for both your Reserve forces and for your weapon systems, Mr. President,” Velichko said firmly. “Our general staff has modeled our new air force after your excellent Enhanced Reserve Program, and, as everyone knows, the F-111 is one of the world’s premier medium bombers.”

“They’re not bombers, Mr. President, they’re reconnaissance planes.”

“Ah. Forgive me, sir. Perhaps my information is faulty. I assumed there was only one model of the RF-111G Vampire bomber based at Plattsburgh, New York, and that the six planes you have on nuclear alert there are the same as the twelve planes that you call reconnaissance planes that are being deployed to Turkey. I must instruct my staff at once to double-check their information for accuracy.”

“They’re not the same plane, Mr. President. We’re sending reconnaissance planes only to Turkey, that’s all,” he said, sinking back in his seat in frustration. He released the “dead man” button on his telephone and said to the others in the Oval Office, “Christ, I didn’t even know how many damned F-111s we had at Plattsburgh — how in hell does he know all this stuff?”

“We released all that information to the press, as part of your openness policy and as a provision of the new START treaty, sir,” Secretary of Defense Donald Scheer said. “I think it’s smart for the American people and the Russians to know exactly how many weapons we have on alert.”

“Yeah, but someone forgot to tell me,” the President snapped, all but spitting out the remains of an M&M.

“Mr. President, be that as it may, the Congress of the People here still have very grave reservations about this deployment,” Velichko continued. “I’m sure you understand our concerns. I have tried to express my total assurance to you that the bombing raids on the military installations in the Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania were an unfortunate and deeply regrettable incident, purely isolated attacks, and will not be repeated. All of our nuclear forces were at full peacetime readiness, which is to say that no strategic forces were operational except for the six hundred launchers and three thousand warheads authorized under the START treaty, and that neither the United States nor NATO was ever in danger.

“That of course has changed since your country and those nuclear powers in NATO have mobilized additional strategic weapons. We fully understand this reaction, we accept it, we have notified you and NATO of our response, and we will not respond in kind but at a greatly lower level than NATO. However, we are very disturbed by this latest move. The deployment of strategic nuclear forces to Turkey is a clear violation of the START treaty and a serious escalation of tensions.”

“Mr. President, let me assure you, we are not trying to threaten or intimidate anyone,” the American president said. “The F-111s are conducting a routine deployment in support of NATO operations. We—”

“Excuse me, Mr. President, but you said they were F-111 aircraft?”

“Yes, that’s what I said, they’re F-111s.” But he paused when he saw one of Scheer’s aides shaking his head. The President released the cutoff button. “What? They’re not F-111s …?”

“Sir, they’re RF-111G aircraft,” the aide said. “There is a distinction. The RF-111G is a reconnaissance and defense-suppression aircraft with a strike capability—the F-111 is a strike aircraft.”

“Well, hell, that’s just a difference in wording.”

“Sir, it’s as different as the Tupolev-22M maritime-interdiction aircraft the Russians sent to Cuba, and the Tupolev-26 supersonic bomber,” Army general Philip Freeman said. “Technically they’re the same plane, but the Tu-22M is considered a maritime reconnaissance and interdiction aircraft only, not a land bomber. Both sides are allowed to send reconnaissance aircraft to forward operating locations, but not strategic offensive aircraft. Calling the RF-111G Vampire aircraft an F-111 bomber is technically an admission that we’re violating the treaty.”

The President rolled his eyes again in irritation, dipping his hand back into the crystal jar. “What bullshit.” He keyed the button on the phone and said, “Excuse me, Mr. President, I meant they’re RF-111G aircraft. They’re reconnaissance planes only.”

“Yes, of course, Mr. President,” Velichko said. “You meant to say RF-111G Vampire aircraft.”

“No, sir, they are RF-111G aircraft,” he insisted, his voice rising a bit. A few members of the President’s Cabinet shuffled uneasily in their seats — it was not good to hear the President interrupting the Russian president during their conversation. The Chief Executive had a trigger temper, and it was just like him to get wound up during this conversation.

“When may I tell my government that we can expect this deployment to come to an end and these RF-111G aircraft return to the United States, Mr. President?” Velichko asked.

“I suppose that’s all up to you, Vitaly,” the President said evenly, a bit of sarcasm in his voice. Secretary of State Harlan Grimm’s heart skipped a beat. The President was baiting the Russian. He was about to speak, but instead held out two hands, urging the President to take it easy and be calm. But the President had crossed the line, and nothing was going to hold him back now. “The Turks think you’re trying to scope out their military bases and that you’re puttin’ the squeeze on ’em to stop supporting the Ukrainian government in exile. You’re makin’ a lot of people nervous, Mr. President, and we had no choice but to respond. You got nothing to worry about from me if you just tell your fly-boys to back off and let things over there cool down. As for the -111s, we’ll keep ’em over there for as long as it’s necessary.”

“I understand, Mr. President,” Vitaly Velichko echoed coldly. “You will keep the F-111s in Turkey for as long as you think is necessary.”

Again, Harlan Grimm, now on his feet while listening in on a dead extension, shook his head, warning the President not to let the Russian put words in his mouth; but the President responded, “That’s right. Mr. President, I don’t want to send those planes to Turkey. They’re just Reservists, and we got young women in that unit that have never been overseas and don’t know what it’s like to be in action. Frankly, I’d rather not send them to a place like Turkey. But your actions in the region are making lots of people very nervous. We can defuse this whole thing by just backing off. It should be put to an end as soon as possible. How about it?”

“I thank you very much for your words, Mr. President,” Velichko replied dismissively. “Thank you very much for speaking with me. Good-bye.” The American chief executive barely had time to respond before the connection was broken.

“Jeez, what an arrogant bastard,” he said as he hung up the phone, popping some more candy in his mouth. “So. Comments?” No one spoke up. “I hate to deal with world leaders over the phone, but talking with Vitaly’s pretty easy. I wish the French prime minister spoke English as well as Velichko. Any other comments?”

No one was about to tell the President that he very well might have insulted the Turks, the women in the Air Force, all military Reservists, and in effect told the Russians that the United States would back off and, essentially, to go ahead with their plans to take over the Ukraine. When there was no response, he said, “Okay, that’s over with. The First Lady is flying up to Plattsburgh to see those bombers off, and you’re going with her, right, Phil?”

“Yes, sir,” General Freeman replied halfheartedly, not at all happy about being on a trip with the Steel Magnolia.

“Good. I know the press coverage makes this whole thing look like a circus, Phil, but I think it’s important to show the American people what we’re doing to respond to the crisis, that we’re not going overboard but that we are responding. My wife wants to get involved in military affairs, and I think it’s good — few First Ladies have shown much interest in the military in the past. Good luck with that.”

Circus was just about the right word for it, Freeman thought. He said, “Thank you, sir,” and departed like a bat out of hell.

THIRTY

With the morning sun glistening off the blue and white polished exterior of Air Force One as a backdrop, the two lines of aircrews snapped to attention as dark-blue security vehicles, Secret Service Suburbans, rolled to a stop, followed by two blue VIP limos and another Secret Service sedan. The crowd of about a thousand people, mostly hastily invited guests and local political friends of the President of the United States, gathered against the security ropes about fifty feet away grew louder and more restless. A podium had been set up so the First Lady could make some remarks, and the red security rope was lined with reporters and photographers. This was a rare opportunity to be allowed access to a military base during an actual combat deployment, and they were taking advantage of every moment.

“What horseshit,” Colonel Daren Mace muttered under his breath. He was watching a group of photographers being chased away from the outer gate of the alert-facility ramp as they tried to photograph the six nuclear-loaded RF-111G Vampire bombers and six KC-135E tankers inside. They were flashing authorization badges, but nothing they had allowed them to photograph the alert birds. “Just shoot ’em, sky cops,” Mace said. “Don’t send them away or arrest them, shoot ’em.”

“Pipe down, Colonel,” Colonel McGwire hissed at him. “They’re coming.”

As the Secret Service detail and Air Force security police surrounded the area, the First Lady stepped out of the first limousine, waving to the crowd. She was wearing a blue flight suit, given to her when she made a flight with the Air Force Thunderbirds the year before, under a winter-weight Arctic flying jacket with a fur hood. In the car with her was Major General Tyler Layton, commander of Fifth Air Battle Force, plus several Secret Service agents. In the second car was General Philip Freeman, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with Governor Samuel Bellingham of New York. The two senior officers joined in the applause of the crowd of guests observing this gathering as the First Lady and the Governor began to work the crowds.

The First Lady shook hands with a number of the dignitaries and friends arranged in front of the podium, then she stepped up to the podium and had General Freeman stand on one side and Governor Bellingham on the other. “Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen,” the First Lady began. “It’s very kind of you to come out on this beautiful but very cold morning to help me, General Freeman, and Governor Bellingham wish Godspeed and good luck to this exceptional group of airmen — and, not to be outdone or forgotten, airwomen—here this morning.”

She spoke in a cold, crisp tone for about five minutes, then got to the heart of the matter.

“I wanted to recognize one more extraordinary group here, and that’s the women of the 394th Air Battle Wing. It was just twenty years ago that the first woman pilot in the modern U.S. Air Force graduated from flight training, and only fifteen years ago when the first woman joined a Strategic Air Command combat crew, and only three years since all aviation positions were open to women. You are all witnesses to history in the making again, ladies and gentlemen, because this is the first overseas deployment of a combat-capable crew with women aviators in it, including America’s first woman combat pilot, Major Rebecca C. Furness, of the 715th Tactical Squadron ‘Eagles.’ “ The First Lady stopped to initiate the applause, then waved over to the RF-111G side. “Becky, where are you?” As scripted, Rebecca stepped forward onto the red carpet and waved to the crowd. The photographers went crazy trying to get a good shot of her.

The First Lady blew her a kiss and gave her a thumbs-up, then turned to the audience. “There are some who say that women aren’t good enough, that they can’t handle the pressure, that they don’t have the right stuff. Well, my friends, take a look at that woman, and her war machine. That’s an American pilot, the best of the best. Rebecca, Eagle Squadron, Griffin Squadron — good luck and Godspeed. God bless you all, and God bless the United States of America. Let’s all help get these professionals on their way, shall we?”

The First Lady accepted the loud applause with a wave and a mind-blowing smile for the cameras, shook hands with the Governor and with Freeman, then made her way down the line along the red carpet, shaking hands with members of both squadrons. She spent extra time with all the female crewmembers, making sure lots of pictures were taken with them, and also spent a few moments with movie star Ted Little, who was back after his sick leave. She did a fast tour of the left wing and underside of the KC-135 tanker, then went over to Furness’ plane.

Rebecca Furness and Lieutenant Colonel Hembree led the First Lady and several Secret Service agents on a walkaround tour of the RF-111G bomber. “These aren’t bombs, are they?” the First Lady asked, her eyes wide, pointing to the objects on the wing pylons.

“No, ma’am … we’ve planned this deployment to be ready for action as soon as we reach our theater of action. So my flight, the first six planes, are loaded with a ready tactical load. The outer pods are radar reconnaissance or electronic photography pods. The middle and inner pylons on each side carries an AGM-88C supersonic antiradar missile, which seeks out and destroys enemy radars, and we also carry a self-protection AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missile on the side of each middle pylon.”

Looking very much like a politician on the stump, the First Lady climbed up the ladder of the maintenance platform and peeked into the cockpit. About a half-dozen photographers and Secret Service agents were on that platform with her, another half-dozen were on another platform on the other side, and more were on “cherry picker” cranes overhead. It was quite a media circus.

What a fucking joke, Daren Mace thought as he glanced at his watch and frowned. It was only ten minutes to their planned engine-start time, but it would take at least fifteen minutes just to get the fucking VIPs out of here, the maintenance stands and cranes moved out of the way, and the crews back in their places. He saw a person come up beside him and said, “Lieutenant Barnes, get Lieutenant Benedict from the Security Police squadron and ask her if she can help get the guests moving toward base operations. The faster we get these rubberneckers out of here, the faster we can get this show on the road.”

“It usually doesn’t work that way, Colonel,” Mace heard a voice beside him say. Mace turned and saw none other than General Philip Freeman, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an aide, and General Cole standing beside him. He snapped to attention and rendered a salute, which Freeman returned.

“General Freeman,” Cole said, “allow me to introduce my new MG and the architect of my wing’s readiness plan, Lieutenant Colonel. Daren Mace. Daren, General Freeman, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

They shook hands and Freeman said, “I’ve followed your career, Colonel, ever since the Persian Gulf War. I was given your wing-readiness report unaltered from General Layton, and frankly I was very worried when the best you could give your unit was marginal readiness. I was glad to see this wing came through when the President asked for you.”

“I take none of the credit for this wing’s success, sir,” Mace said. “We’ve got the best in the business hard at work here.”

“You were saying about all the rubberneckers?”

Mace looked at Cole for a brief instant, received a slight nod, then replied, “Sir, why are all these people here? We’re supposed to be conducting a tactical deployment. Normally these deployments are classified secret up to one hour before departure.”

“The simple answer is, Colonel, that the President and the First Lady wanted it,” Freeman replied with clear resignation. “The more politic answer is that our president wants to avert a major conflict and doesn’t care too much about sneaking up on an adversary — he believes that being upfront about things like troop movements and public policy is a better deterrent to aggression. Your task is to deliver combat-ready aircraft to Turkey despite any political or publicity drills imposed on you. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now there’s something else I want from you. I want to send you to Turkey — but not to Incirlik with the rest of the wing. I’m sending you to Kayseri Air Base. We have a … special aircraft-maintenance task for you. You’ve got a C-17 at your disposal, and I want you to use it.” The C-17 Globemaster, popularly called Mighty Mouse or The Mouse because it was smaller than other Air Force heavy transports but had a larger payload, was the Air Force’s newest heavy transport — there were only twenty in the entire inventory — and because of its special unimproved-field and heavy load-carrying capabilities, it was in heavy demand. It was certainly a very special mission if he had one of these behemoths at his disposal. “We’ve made up a list of the people we want you to bring with you, and you’ll need to bring along as much equipment as you can stuff into a Mouse. You’ll fly back to Cannon Air Force Base to pick up some personnel and equipment there, then head on out to Kayseri ASAP. Any questions?”

Jesus, Mace thought. Kayseri Air Base … He had been there a lot after the Persian Gulf War and during the Middle East War of 1993, mostly recovering bombers that had diverted there after accomplishing bombing raids in Syria and Jordan. He had been stationed at Incirlik Air Base, about 120 miles to the south, but Kayseri, a Turkish training base, was an old hangout …

… as was its sister base, Batman Air Base. The place where they flew the abortive Operation Desert Fire. Just four years after that horrible day, he was on his way back again.…

“Yes, sir. Just one question,” Mace finally replied. “Why me?”

“I’ll give you the usual answer, then,” Freeman replied with a smile, his first, Mace saw, on the entire junket. “You’re the best. I need multitalented troops on this mission, men and women experienced in many types of airframes, troops with both maintenance and aircrew experience, troops who get the job done and who tell the brass to go to hell if it can’t be done. You also know Turkey and Kayseri.”

“I’d just as soon forget,” Mace said with a grimace.

General Freeman nodded, then glanced around them to see where the closest reporter was — obviously too close, because he said in a low voice, “Your experience is needed there, Colonel. You’ve been through a lot — this is your opportunity to kick some ass again. Any more questions?”

“The others can wait, sir,” Mace said. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Excuse me, but I’ve got aircraft to launch.” He crisply saluted Freeman and walked off toward the security police post himself to begin getting the ramp cleared for aircraft to taxi.

As he did, he looked at Rebecca Furness’ Vampire bomber. The First Lady had taken off her flying parka, revealing the very tightly tailored blue flight suit that showed off her magazine-model body to full advantage. She was posing with a couple of female crew chiefs and with Rebecca on the maintenance stand beside the RF-111G bomber while an army of photographers snapped away. Mace shook his head in disgust, then was furious to see reporters and photographers drifting around the bombers, opening access panels on the AGM-88C HARM missiles, looking up into wheel wells and engine intakes. Now each and every aircraft was going to have to be inspected before engine start to make sure a dumb-ass photographer didn’t leave something in an engine that would get sucked inside and FOD (Foreign Object Damage) the damn engine out.

Mace glanced to one side and saw Mark Fogelman. This kid, who was injured badly in the crash landing with Furness only a couple days ago, was up and around and was pronounced fit to deploy with the rest of his squadron. He still looked like hell, with bad bruises on his face and missing a couple of front teeth, but he was dressed and pumped and ready to go. But he had been pushed into the background by the First Lady and the White House handlers and the photographers, probably because he looked like a casualty instead of a crewman. By contrast, Ted Little, the actor, who hadn’t been hurt nearly as badly as Fogelman, wasn’t going to Turkey. The bastard got his Hollywood studio to use a little pressure and extend his convalescent leave.

Several minutes later, when the podium and grandstands and photographers were cleared out of the way, the crews climbed into their aircraft, and on a signal from the First Lady herself, the aircraft started engines and began to depart, Stratotankers first, followed by Vampires. The First Lady stood out in front of Rebecca Furness’ bomber beside a female crew chief, wearing ear protectors and holding two taxi wands, and, mimicking the crew chief’s actions, helped taxi the first RF-111G carrying the first female combat pilot to her first overseas deployment.

Mace was, by this point, ready to barf. God, how he loathed politicians — male or female.

Well, while the First Lady was putting on a show, others in Washington were fighting this war for real. He was glad someone was on the job.

THIRTY-ONE

It was the pride and joy of the Turkish Navy. Laid down on New Year’s Day, 1986, launched on 30 August 1987, Turkish Victory Day, and placed in service one year later, the guided-missile frigate F-242 Fatih was one of the most sophisticated warships in the world. Designed in Germany but license-built at the modern Golcuk naval shipyards southeast of Istanbul, the Fatih was three hundred and thirty feet long, weighed over 2,700 tons, and could reach a top speed of 27 nautical miles per hour. It was a very multinational ship as well, carrying only the best naval weapons from the Western World: an American-made AB-212 antisubmarine-warfare helicopter that could launch British-made Sea Skua antiship missiles; American-designed Harpoon antiship cruise missiles also license-built in Turkey; German Sea Zenith antiaircraft guns with optronic and track-while-scan radar fire-control directors; American Sea Sparrow antiship and antiaircraft missiles; and American-made Mark 32 torpedoes and SQS-56 sonar gear. Once deployed, it was designed to take control of the seas and skies around it for a hundred kilometers.

The Fatih was cruising the northwestern coast of Turkey in its usual circuit of the Black Sea offshore from the Bosporus Strait, along with its escorts, the guided-missile patrol boats Poyraz and Firtina and, not far away, an ex-German Type 209 diesel submarine, the Yildiray, built in Turkey with German assistance and used as an antisubmarine escort for Fatih. Also sailing along with the powerful patrol convoy was the large underway-replenishment oiler Akar, which dwarfed the frigate and its escorts; she was waiting for first dawn to begin transferring fuel and supplies. Normally the Fatih stayed on patrol only for ten to fourteen days, depending on the status of its patrol craft, but with tensions so high in the region all Turkish warships were on almost constant alert, and Turkey’s ten oilers and tenders were very busy in the Black Sea keeping Turkey’s combat fleet in action.

Fatih’s patrol area was one of the most important — control the approaches to the Bosporus Strait and the southwest Black Sea, and defend Turkish territorial waters. Refugee sea traffic from the Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria was extremely heavy in the past few months, especially after the Russian nuclear attack, and people were taking anything that could float into the dangerous Black Sea and trying to escape to the West and to Israel. The Navy’s job was to keep the normal shipping lanes open for international traders that still dared to risk sailing into the Black Sea, and to keep close tabs on the Russian Navy.

A major source of tension between Turkey and Russia lately was the dispersal of Ukrainian Air Force units to Turkey and the news that thousands of tons of weapons and supplies had been secretly shipped from the Ukraine to Turkey over the past few months. Russia had called for a halt to all military assistance from Turkey, and had called any continued shipments or military support “of grave concern” to Russia. They had said it was another example of Western interference in Russia’s internal affairs. The threat was clear: stop supporting the Ukraine or you’ll be considered an enemy also. But if the Russians knew nothing else about Turkish history since 1928, it was that Turkey did not respond to threats — they fought back.

Control and access to the Mediterranean from the Black Sea was the responsibility of the Republic of Turkey, and it was an awesome task. The Russian naval fleet in the Black Sea Fleet alone consisted of over two hundred vessels, including submarines and aircraft-carrying cruisers — the Russians classified its smaller aircraft carriers as cruisers because Turkey does not allow aircraft carriers of any nation to transit its waters — and if allowed to break into the Mediterranean intact, it would quickly dominate the entire region. No fewer than five major naval bases, one army base, and three air force bases were stationed in a three-hundred-mile stretch of territory from the island of Cyprus, through the Aegean and the Dardanelles, across the Sea of Marmara, past the Bosporus, and into the Black Sea — half of Turkey’s 480,000-man active-duty military, the largest in NATO except for the United States and unified Germany, was stationed in this strategic region.

However, the most important military asset to Turkey was in an oval orbit twenty-nine thousand feet over the Paphlagonia Mountains of northern Turkey, about sixty miles north of the capital city of Ankara — a lone E-3A AWACS (Airborne Warning and Command System) radar plane, owned and manned by multinational NATO technicians and flight crews and commanded by a Turkish colonel. The AWACS plane interfaced with every facet of the Turkish and NATO military establishment in the region.

It was almost midnight when the command radio on the bridge of the frigate Fatih crackled to life. “Serpent, this is Diamond, be advised, unidentified aircraft detected at zero-one-three degrees at one-two-zero miles bullseye, angels five, airspeed five hundred knots, heading south, number of targets four. We have scrambled Firebrand flight of eight to intercept.”

“Diamond, Serpent copies.” To Captain Turgut Inonu of the Turkish Navy, skipper of the frigate Fatih, the bridge operations chief reported, “Sir, message from the AWACS radar plane, four unidentified high-speed aircraft north of our position, heading south. Eight F-16 interceptors from Merzifon have been scrambled to intercept.”

“Very well,” Inonu replied. He rose stiffly, stretching the kinks out of his sixty-year-old sea-weary joints. “Sound general quarters. I’m going down to Combat.” As the battle stations alert and klaxon alarm sounded, he donned a helmet and life jacket as he left the bridge and headed below.

Captain Turgut Inonu and his small Bosporus task force had received four or five such alerts each and every day since the current Russian crisis began. These were Russian patrol planes, cruising along Turkey’s twelve-mile territorial limit over the Black Sea. Most times they were MiG-25R Foxbat reconnaissance planes, the fastest fighter planes in the world, which would sometimes scream past the Turkish flotilla at one and a half times the speed of sound and drop bomblike magnesium flares to take pictures at night — the flares were so bright that shore installations sixty miles away sometimes saw the flares and thought the naval task force was under attack.

The Turkish warships were in international waters, so aircraft could legally fly very close as long as they did not pose a threat or do anything unsafe, but the Russian jets never approached closer than one or two miles. The Russians sometimes sent Tupolev-95 Bear reconnaissance planes as well during the day, and they approached within a half-mile or so from the Turkish ships if they were in international waters, but always with a couple of Turkish F-16 or F-4E fighters on their wing and tail.

It was a common cat-and-mouse game in the Black Sea — Turkey sent F-4E and RF-5A reconnaissance aircraft over Russian ships in the Black Sea every day as well, and even Romania and Bulgaria, both of whom had very small air and naval forces, had overwater patrols these days. Nevertheless, Captain Inonu did not want to appear relaxed or overconfident, even for a moment. The Russians had been pledging they would cease all hostile activities and back off, but they still sent patrol aircraft close to Turkish ships, and that bothered Inonu. The Russians were not successfully demonstrating peaceful intent.

The Combat Information Center on the Fatih was a large armored room in the center section of the ship, two decks down from the bridge. It contained two radar consoles for the DA-08 air-search radar; two consoles for the navigation and maneuvering radar controllers; two consoles for the STIR (Separate Track and Illumination Radar) and WM-25 fire control directors, which controlled the Sea Sparrow missiles and the 127-millimeter gun; two sonar operators manning the SQS-56 sonar; two operators manning the radar-warning and signal-gathering systems; and two controller consoles for the TV/infrared/laser fire-control tracking systems for the weapons, one for the front half of the ship and one for the aft hemisphere, which could accurately track and compute attack geometry on aircraft and cruise missiles out to a range of five miles without emitting any telltale electronic energy. Two console operators shared a communications technician/assistant. Each system section (weapons, electronic warfare, and radar) had a director, who reported to the combat officer or ship’s captain. Two seamen also manned a lighted manual vertical-plotting board, situated in the center of the compartment in front of the combat officer’s station, on which all of the information from the various sensor operators was integrated into a readable pictorial display.

Captain Inonu sat in the combat officer’s chair, beside the chief of combat operations who would act as his assistant and communications officer. “Report, Lieutenant,” Inonu ordered as he put on a set of headphones and made himself comfortable in the combat officer’s seat.

“The ship is at general quarters, sir. Battle stations manned and ready, weapons final check in progress.”

“Very well. Communications, this is Combat, broadcast on emergency channels for all aircraft to remain outside ten miles of this task force because of night-flying restrictions and close proximity to resupply vessels. I don’t feel like messing around with the Russian Air Force tonight. Radio the contact and our close-approach restriction to task force headquarters at Sariyer.” Inonu clicked on the intercom. “Radar, have you picked up those Russian aircraft yet?”

“Negative, sir,” the chief of the radar plot section replied. “Should be within range in a few minutes if they stay at five thousand feet. Current position from AWACS plane Diamond has them about one hundred ten miles north of our position.” Inonu was ready to acknowledge the call and ask the chief to remind him of the plane’s status when the chief radioed back immediately. “Sir, message from Diamond, inbound aircraft were declared an air defense item of interest. Targets now closing at over six hundred knots on a missile attack profile.”

“Copy,” Inonu said. Dammit, he knew it, he knew this was going to happen. The fucking Russians! “Combat, go passive.” On intercom, he ordered, “Helm, Combat, get the feed from the AWACS plane and put us on the attack forty-five, and make sure we screen the Akar as much as possible. EW, begin radar countermeasures and decoy dispersal. Signal the task force to disperse and begin countermeasure procedures.” On the shipwide intercom, he said, “All hands, this is the captain in Combat. Air defense is tracking inbound Russian aircraft on a possible attack profile. Go to blackout procedures, go passive on all transmitters, initiate radar decoy procedures. Report in by section when passive condition is set.”

“Message from fleet, sir.”

“Later. Status report first, all sections.”

The one hundred and eighty crewmen of the Fatih, along with the thirty-eight crewmen on each of the patrol escorts, configured their ships for combat operations within seconds. All electronic transmissions that might be intercepted and used as a homing beacon were extinguished; the Fatih could aim its Sea Sparrow missiles and the 127-millimeter dual-purpose gun with steering signals from the NATO radar plane until the targets got within firing range. The helmsman would receive positioning cues from radar plot to position the frigate “on the forty-five”—at a 45-degree angle pointing toward the incoming planes — they could freely swivel the cannon, the Sea Sparrow launcher, and the two Sea Zenith close-in cannon mounts both before and after the planes passed by, and also present as small a radar cross-section as possible to the incoming planes in case they launched an attack.

The helmsman would also try to position the ship as much as possible between the Russian planes and the replenishment oiler Akar to protect it from an antiship-missile attack. Although the Akar was liberally armed with six antiaircraft-artillery guns and a Mark 34 fire control radar, its huge size and poor performance underway made it an inviting target. All four Turkish ships carried radar decoys, which were small, boatlike radar reflectors with heat and electronic emitters on board that would act as decoys to radar-guided antiship missiles. As a last-ditch measure, all four vessels could fire chaff rockets to try to decoy a missile away from the ship, and Fatih had two Sea Zenith close-in weapon system mounts, which used four-barreled radar-guided 25-millimeter cannons to try to destroy an incoming missile seconds before impact.

“Position of the inbounds?” Inonu yelled out. He did not need to address his request to anyone in particular — the radar director should know that information or direct his technicians to respond.

“AWACS has the inbounds one hundred miles north, approaching at six hundred knots, altitude now three thousand feet.”

“Very well.” On intercom, Inonu radioed, “Communications, this is Combat, go ahead with instructions from fleet headquarters.”

“Yes, sir. Fleet requests you protect the oiler to the maximum extent possible and detach it as soon as possible,” the communications officer replied.

“That’s it?”

“Message ends, sir.”

Great, Inonu thought. Not even a “good luck” or a “hang tough. “ Shit. “Comm, I want instructions from Fleet on how to handle this hostile, not a wish list. Request instructions.”

Inonu turned to the ship’s combat officer, a young man named Mesut Ecevit, on his first extended patrol in a frigate after commanding a patrol boat for many years. “What am I forgetting, Lieutenant?” Inonu asked. “Decoys, blackout, passive routine — what else should we be doing?”

The young crewman thought briefly, then responded, “We could get the helicopter airborne … perhaps give the bomber crews something in their face to worry about.”

“Good thought, Lieutenant. I knew there was a reason we got you off the patrol boats.” On shipwide intercom, Inonu radioed, “Flight, Combat, launch the patrol helicopter, have him execute full decoy operations — lights, chaff, radio, the works.” His acknowledgment was the warning to all crewmembers that the helicopter was being launched. The AB-121 patrol helicopter, an American UH-1N Huey helicopter modified for maritime patrol duties, could bring a large Sea Eagle surface-search radar aloft, and he would drop chaff and turn on searchlights and broadcast warning messages to the inbound aircraft — suitably separated from the frigate, of course.

The helicopter would also be available for rescue operations — but Inonu didn’t want to think about that.

General Bruce Eyers was furious to the point of apoplexy. There, to his amazement, stretched out on the tarmac in front of him, were eighty MiG-23 Flogger-G fighters belonging to the Ukrainian Republic. Half were lined up on the main taxiway of Kayseri Air Base right up to the runway hold line; the other half, the fighters not carrying missiles, were lined up on the taxiways parallel to Kayseri’s smaller parallel runway. Two MiGs were on each runway’s hold line, ready for a formation takeoff, and the rest were lined up staggered behind it with only thirty feet between tailpipe and pitot boom. All but the last twenty aircraft or so had engines running — the rest had small, truck-towed pneumatic start carts parked underneath the fighter’s left wing, ready to shoot high-pressure smoke into the fourth-stage compressor section to start the big Tumansky turbine turning in just a few seconds.

Eyers directed his Turkish driver to park his car right in front of the lead fighter’s nose, and after some hesitation and a lot of consternation, the driver finally complied. Eyers considered running out and ordering the pilot to shut down, cracked the door open, thought better about approaching the MiG with its engine running, and grabbed the car’s UHF radio. “Lead MiG-23 aircraft, both of you, shut down your engines immediately. That’s an order!” There was no response. “I said, shut down your engines! Now!” Still no response.

Eyers forgot about the incredible engine noise, stepped out of the sedan, swaggered up to the lead pilot’s left side about fifty feet in front of the left engine intake, drew his Colt .45 automatic pistol, and fired two shots into the sky. The muzzle flash in the darkness was big and bright, and the message was unmistakable. Eyers then lowered the muzzle and aimed the gun at the MiG-23’s engine intake. A single bullet ricocheting around in the intake would certainly destroy the engine in just a few seconds. Turkish Air Force security vehicles screeched out to the runway hold line, and several soldiers aimed their rifles at Eyers. He ignored them. Eyers raised his left hand, showing five fingers, the gun still aimed at the left engine intake. He then lowered one finger, then another, then another.…

The lead MiG-23’s engine abruptly began to spool down, and the leader’s wingman followed suit. All the rest of the MiG-23s waiting for takeoff kept their engines running, but their path was effectively blocked. Eyers signaled to the lead pilot to open his canopy and step down, and after a few moments, he complied. The canopy swung open a small ladder extended on the left side of the plane, and the pilot stepped onto the runway and walked over to Eyers.

The lead pilot, to no one’s surprise, was Colonel of Aviation Pavlo Tychina.

“What in hell do you think you’re doing, Colonel?” Eyers yelled over the noise of the other fighters lined up ready for takeoff. He made a “kill your engine” signal to the other fighters, but it was doubtful anyone could see him or would obey him if they did. “Who gave you permission to taxi these planes for takeoff?”

“Permission? No permission,” Tychina shouted over the noise. “Air attack in progress. Russian bombers attack Turkish ships. We help fight.”

“How did you know an attack was in progress?”

“We hear on radio.”

“What radio? Who gave you a damned radio?” thundered Eyers, ready to chew nails.

“No one give,” Tychina yelled. “Airplanes has radio. We do listening watch — one plane for each frequency. Easy.” Eyers understood: Tychina had his pilots set up a radio listening watch using the aircraft radios — one for high-frequency single-sideband, one for UHF, one for VHF. With an AWACS plane orbiting at twenty-nine thousand feet and with air defense broadcasts relayed across the country, it would be easy for the Ukrainians to pick up the action.

“You’re saying that no one gave you permission to move these planes?” Eyers roared, all but spitting bullets. “I thought I ordered you to sit tight until NATO decided what to do with you.”

“No. We not wait. Turkey under attack by Russia.”

“I don’t give a shit!” Eyers shouted. “I will throw your ass in prison, you Ukrainian sonofabitch! You get up in that Tonka toy of yours and order them to shut down right now!”

By that time General Sivarek had driven up to the group, and the Turkish security guards moved in. The General surveyed the two lead fighters on the runway hold line and the impressive line of MiG-23 fighters behind them, then looked at Eyers, to the gun still in his hand, and then at Tychina. He returned Tychina’s salute, then strode up to Eyers. “What is happening here, General Eyers?” he demanded, eyes ablaze.

“What the hell does it look like, General?” Eyers snorted. “These kids were ready to blast off — at night, without orders from anyone, without permission, without any way of coordinating with Turkish or NATO air defense.”

“You are aware of the attack underway on the Black Sea near the Bosporus, are you not, General?” Sivarek asked.

“What does this got to do with it? General, you just can’t send a gaggle of Soviet fighters up in the sky, mixing it up with NATO aircraft. Where’s the coordination? Where’s the plan …?”

“General Eyers …” Sivarek began, then paused and turned to Colonel Tychina. “Colonel, order your aircraft back to parking.”

“Excuse me, please, General,” Tychina said, horrified by the thought, “but we can still act. We must launch now.”

“It is too late,” Sivarek said. “It would take you at least twenty to thirty minutes to arrive on station, and your fighters have burned too much fuel sitting here on the ground. Order them to return to parking.” Tychina had no choice. He saluted Sivarek, ignoring Eyers, turned, and gave the signal to his planes to turn around and head back to parking. A few minutes later, a maintenance truck with a tow bar came along to tow the two lead aircraft.

As they began moving, Eyers turned to Sivarek. “What is going on here, General? You knew about this? You gave permission for these planes to taxi?”

“Standard base-defense response, General Eyers,” Sivarek said. “When under air raid alert condition, attempt to launch as many aircraft as possible.”

“That’s bullshit, General,” Eyers spat. Sivarek’s eyes narrowed, his anger barely under control. “You launch as many friendly aircraft as possible, not Ukrainian aircraft!”

“They are friendly aircraft, General,” Sivarek snapped. “Can you not understand this? They are here to work with NATO, work with Turkey, to fight the Russians.”

“That hasn’t been determined yet, General,” Eyers declared. “NATO hasn’t issued any—”

“No, NATO has not responded to my country’s plea for help,” Sivarek interjected. “A squadron of reconnaissance planes that will not arrive until tomorrow morning, two naval vessels that will not arrive for four days, and an air defense battalion that is half the size we need that may not arrive for a month. Meanwhile, Turkey suffers an attack by Russia.”

“Well, what in hell did you expect these Ukrainians to do?”

“They will fight, General Eyers!” Sivarek exploded over the roar of Tumansky engines as the MiG-23s began to turn around. “They carry only one hundred rounds of 23-millimeter ammunition and a few missiles, and not all have attack radars. They have almost no fuel for multiple engagements once they reach the Black Sea, and some pilots are suffering the effects of radiation poisoning, but they are willing to fight, and die, for a foreign power. Yes, I gave them permission to taxi, and I was awaiting permission from Ankara to allow them to launch and engage the Russian bombers. You have been quite effective at stopping them.”

“Well, you should’ve let me in on your little scheme here, General,” Eyers said. “You gotta get permission from NATO before you—”

“I do not need permission to decide what aircraft taxi on this installation, General Eyers.”

“This is a NATO base, General,” Eyers retorted. “We funded it, we built it, we upgraded it, and we run it.”

“This is Turkey, General!” Sivarek shot back. “This is my country and my responsibility. You and NATO are guests in this country … and not very good ones at that! It is about time you learn this truth. Captain!” Sivarek’s aide stepped up to his commander and saluted. “Release the Ukrainian weapons and external stores belonging to the Ukrainian Air Force. Then order all maintenance chiefs to begin assisting the Ukrainians in arming their aircraft. Request that Colonel Tychina meet with me and the general staff as soon as possible so that we may discuss the integration of their forces with the Turkish Air Force.”

“You … you can’t do that!” Eyers exploded, all but throwing his hat on the ground in fury and frustration. “Those planes can’t be armed or launched without permission from Brussels! And I don’t want those Ukrainian weapons moved until I get a complete inventory!”

“Your orders mean nothing anymore, General Eyers,” Sivarek said angrily. “Because of you, my country may suffer at the hands of the Russians. I will not allow that to happen again. I will see to it that these Ukrainian aircraft are made ready for air defense and maritime patrol duties immediately, and I will launch them immediately upon receiving permission from my government. You may observe and report your observations to Brussels or to whomever you wish, General, but if you attempt to interfere again you will be placed under house arrest. Captain, order the General’s driver to take the General to my headquarters or to his quarters or wherever he wishes, but move that vehicle off my runway immediately.”

Captain Inonu leaned forward toward the vertical-plot board as the Russian plane icons were erased and moved closer to the center of the board. “Range to inbounds?”

“Ninety miles by AWACS, sir.”

Inonu felt as if he were sitting on a triangle-shaped seat. The Russian bomber was well within cruise missile range now, and could be overhead in just nine minutes. It would take the oiler Akar nearly twenty minutes just to execute a 180-degree turn and head for shore. Akar would have to fight it out just like Fatih and the patrol boats. “Air defense weapon stations, check in.”

“Sea Sparrow crews, up and ready.”

“One-twenty-seven station, up and ready.”

“Sea Zenith station forward, up and ready.”

“Sea Zenith station aft, up and ready.”

“Thank you, weapons.” Captain Inonu knew these crews were ready to go — the section chiefs would have reported in if they were not — but Inonu put the report on shipwide intercom and on the task force network so crews on the patrol boats and crews on the oiler Akar could hear it. Hopefully it would make each and every crewmember stay on his toes.

“Sir, decoy pattern one laid down,” the EW detail reported. A decoy pattern was a thirty-foot-wide by one-hundred-foot group of floating decoys deposited in Fatih’s wake that, hopefully, resembled a large vessel on radar or visually.

“Sir, active Golf-band radar, identified as Tu-22M maritime patrol and targeting radar,” the EW section reported. “Electronic countermeasures capable and standing by.”

No use in staying passive now, Inonu thought — the Russian bomber had a radar fix and a clear shot. Staying radar-silent now would only reduce their own combat effectiveness. “Clear to begin active jamming on downlink and continuous wave signals, EW,” Inonu ordered. “Take down the missile targeting radar as soon as possible. Do not jam their nav radar until they close within thirty miles.” Most maritime patrol planes had infrared sensors that could see out twenty to thirty miles, so few used radar within that range at night unless they were lining up to attack; but in any case jamming non-weapon-related electronics such as ship-to-ship radio or navigation radar was considered a hostile act. Inonu wanted to avoid any charges that he was pushing for a fight — besides, the fight was coming to him plenty fast.

“Copy, sir. Beginning active radar jamming now.”

The “shooting” had started. Even though no actual explosive weapons had been employed by either side, exchanging electronic signals was just as critical and just as important as firing a projectile. Successfully using radar jammers and other electronic tactics could negate billions of lira worth of pyrotechnic weapons. But being in range of jammers meant that they were well within range of other more deadly weapons. Technically, painting a foreign ship with a missile targeting radar was an act of war, but in the Black Sea it was all part of the game. Who would blink first? Who would “escalate” the “conflict” by jamming? Who would shoot first?

“Radar, where are those bombers …?”

“Sir, range sixty miles, altitude two thousand feet, closing speed six hundred ten knots,” the radar officer reported, as if he were reading his captain’s thoughts. “We are still passive on air-search and targeting radars. Shall we lock on now?”

Sixty miles — very close for a high-speed Russian missile attack. A Russian AS-4 antiship missile had a range of over one hundred miles at the bomber’s current altitude. Newer Russian antiradar missiles had a range of only forty to fifty miles, and a gravity bomb attack over a frigate was unlikely, so if the fight wasn’t on in the next fifteen to thirty seconds, these Russians were pissing away their opportunity. But with an AWACS radar plane overhead, the frigate had the advantage — no use in wasting it yet. “Negative. Stay passive until ten miles outside Sea Sparrow range. At thirty miles, I want full-spectrum jamming and active missile targeting — I want to leave no doubts in this guy’s mind that we mean business. Comm, this is Combat, call fleet headquarters again and request permission to engage hostile targets if they do not alter course. Make the request in the clear on the emergency frequency and in English. Is that understood?”

“Copy, sir, make request for permission to release batteries in the clear.” Seconds later, Inonu heard the transmission in his headphones as the broadcast was made on the international maritime emergency channel 16. This would have the ultimate affect of alerting the media and creating a lot of anxiety among all the governments that bordered or accessed the Black Sea, but Inonu wasn’t going to back down.

“Sir, Diamond reports the F-16s have intercepted the Russian bombers,” Communications reported. “Radar scan only. Count is now six Tupolev-22M bombers. No word yet on weapons or … stand by, Combat … stand by for priority red alert.”

Inonu touched the shipwide intercom button. “All hands, stand by for priority red alert.”

“Combat, red priority, red priority, Diamond sends, F-16 interceptor aircraft engaged by Sukhoi-27 fighters. Count unknown.”

Kemal help us, Inonu thought, those fighters must’ve been flying in close formation with the bombers, screening themselves from radar to disguise their numbers. “All hands, this is the captain, Russian bombers had fighter escorts that just engaged our F-16 fighters. Everyone look sharp.”

“Sir, copying mayday calls from two F-16 fighters, range forty miles.”

“Range to the bombers?”

“Getting telemetry, sir.”

Not fast enough, he thought. “Radar, go active, all stations, prepare to engage hostile aircraft.”

“Sir, Diamond confirms three F-16 fighters shot down at forty-two-miles range.”

“Dammit, I want range to the bombers, “ Inonu shouted.

“Sir, radar contact aircraft, range twenty-eight miles, speed six-two-five, altitude five hundred feet.”

“Copy that. All stations, batteries released, clear to engage, repeat, clear to engage. Begin active jamming on all frequencies.”

But that was exactly what the Russian bombers had been waiting for: seconds after the radars on Fatih were reactivated, they heard, “Sir, missiles inbound, many missiles, ballistic flight path.”

“All stations, go passive!” Inonu shouted. “Bearing to incoming missiles?”

“Bearing three-five-zero.”

“Helm, come to course zero-four-five, best maneuvering speed.” That heading would allow all of Fatih’s weapons to be brought to bear on the missiles — they had a better chance of destroying the missiles than dodging them. “Chaff rockets, EW, full salvo. Deploy emitter balloons. All stations, check full passive.” Another last-ditch decoy device they used, primarily against antiradar missiles, was tiny radar transmitters tied to large helium balloons — they made tempting targets for not-too-smart missiles.

“Balloons away, sir.”

“Very well. Bearing to miss—”

But Inonu did not have a chance to finish that last request. He saw the launch indications for the Sea Sparrow missiles, then saw the firing command and heard the steady pounding of the 127-millimeter gun, and then heard the buzzsaw-like scream of the Sea Zenith guns, all in rapid succession — and then the sickening crunch of metal and the sudden vertigo as the normally stable deck heeled sharply over to starboard.

“Ah, poulako,” Inonu swore. “Damage control, report!” But Inonu didn’t need the full report to see that the Sea Sparrow and aft Sea Zenith gun mount were out or faulted — one of the Russian antiradar missiles must’ve hit aft of the number-two stack.

“Sea Sparrow launcher is out,” Inonu’s combat officer reported. “Aft Sea Zenith mount faulted … air section reports minor damage to helo deck.” The report continued with minor fires on the helo deck while the 127-millimeter cannon and the forward Sea Zenith gun battery opened fire again.

“Where are those bombers?”

He was answered by an immense explosion on the portside forecastle, just a few compartments forward from CIC, followed by another smaller explosion abovedecks. Console lights went blank and emergency lights snapped on. “Damage control, report,” Inonu yelled into his intercom. No response. He switched to the backup battery-powered intercom — still no response.

The crewmen sitting behind blank consoles were turned toward their captain, waiting for their orders. None had risen out of their seats, although they clearly heard the sounds of rushing water and knew something bad had happened. Inonu had no choice — deaf and blind down here in CIC, it was no place for his crew.

“One-twenty-seven crew and IR, stay at your posts,” Inonu shouted. The 127-millimeter cannon and the passive infrared/laser tracking system were still functioning, and they might get a shot at the Russian bombers still. “All other crewmen, damage-control procedures.”

Quickly but orderly, all but four technicians and the section directors rushed for the hatch. Each man departing CIC had a damage-control position topside, and they would stay there until relieved or ordered back to CIC. The CIC section chiefs would try to get the gear working again.

As much as he hated to abandon the post, Inonu’s responsibility was now with the ship. Lieutenant Ecevit knew that, and he was standing beside the CIC officer’s seat, waiting to take over. Inonu reluctantly rose. “Lieutenant, take over here,” the captain said. “Thanks for your work, Mesut. You too, chief. If you pick those bastards up on the IR sensor, blast them to hell for me.” The captain clasped his young officer’s shoulder and headed topside.

When Inonu made it up on the portside catwalk to take the outside run to the bridge, the sight that greeted him made him freeze in absolute shock. Fatih had come through the antiradar-missile attack relatively unscathed — the patrol boat Poyraz and the oiler Akar had both been hit, and hit hard. The patrol boat looked like it had its fires under control, although occasionally a lick of flame would shoot skyward as a weapon magazine was blown open or another high-pressure line ruptured. Akar’s aft crew section, where the radars were located, was burning fiercely in two places. The fires had obviously not reached the fuel storage tanks yet, but there was no sign that the fires were under control either. No searchlights or deck lights were illuminated, and none of the lifeboats or motor launches were unstowed or on deck level — that meant that damage-control procedures were being hampered or were nonexistent.

Inonu jumped as the 127-millimeter cannon boomed once, twice, three times — and then Inonu heard them. They sounded like an approaching freight train, like an avalanche, like what it might sound like seconds before being hit by a speeding car. The Russian bombers careened overhead, slicing crudely through the air, rupturing the skies with their huge engines. Inonu knew what would happen next — he had seen American and Italian bombers do attacks on Turkish ships before, but they had only been simulated then — and he covered his ears tightly.…

The supersonic boooms, three of them, rolled over the Fatih seconds later, far louder than his 127-millimeter gun, louder than any gun Inonu had ever heard. The shock wave was so solid against the chill night air that he thought he could feel it, maybe sidestep it or cruise around it. He heard the shock wave retreat across the sea like a giant knife slicing through paper at a thousand miles per hour. Kemal be blessed, he hoped to turn one thousand years of age before he heard that sound.…

Inonu had reached the final ladder that led to the bridge when he realized that the Russian bombers had deliberately flown overhead, but had not dropped any bombs or launched any more missiles. Was the antiradar-missile attack going to be all…? No, he realized, there had to be more. “Mine countermeasures!” he shouted as he raced up the ladder to the bridge. It was too loud to be heard, but maybe a lookout would hear him. “Release torpedo decoys, damn you! Lookouts to the forward rail! Watch for mines.”

But it was too late.

After launching several AS-12 antiradar missiles from long range, the Tupolev-22M bombers had sown strings of shallow E45-75 torpedoes in the path of the frigate and the patrol boats. Activated by the ship’s engine sounds or by detecting the ship’s magnetic influence, the torpedoes activated their electric motors and acoustic sensors, maneuvered themselves around, then launched themselves at their targets at high speed. Before anyone could react, three torpedoes had hit the frigate Fatih and two had hit the stricken patrol boat Poyraz. The weapons were small — the torpedoes’ size was spent in speed and maneuverability, not explosive power — but their effects were devastating enough. Fatih was crippled and listing badly in less than fifteen minutes; the patrol boat Poyraz had capsized, with twelve men trapped below-decks, in less than half that time.

THIRTY-TWO

Good thing the digital avionics and Multi-Function Displays on the RF-111G Vampire translated English measurements into metric, Rebecca Furness thought as she keyed the mike button on her throttle quadrant. “Ankara Air Control Center, Thunder One-Zero flight is with you, level at eight thousand meters, over.”

The voice that replied had twinges of Turkish and British accents in it, which made Furness smile — she had certainly heard a wide variety of accents on this trip. “Thunder Flight, this is Ankara Air Control Center, I read you, level at eight thousand. Turn left heading zero-seven-zero, descend and maintain five thousand meters.”

“Thunder One-Zero flight, roger, left to zero-seven-zero, leaving eight for five thousand meters.”

The new heading put the island of Cyprus on their right wing and the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey on their left. Ahead about eighty miles was the Nur border region between Syria and Turkey, the scene of much combat over the past few years during the Middle East War of 1993 and 1994. In 1993, a combined military effort by Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Yemen to rearm and strengthen Iraq, weaken Israel, and take over the Persian Gulf region (the move was advertised as an attempt to form a strong pan-Islamic fundamentalist nation) threw most of this area in chaos. The decisive military power in the region turned out to be Turkey. With its strengthened military forces, its strategic location, its Islamic heritage, and its strong Western ties, it proved to be a vital factor in allowing the West to drive back a broad-front attack by the Islamic Coalition, as well as negotiate a true ceasefire with the Muslim nations.

This was a pretty pitiful show for such an important ally, Furness thought as she checked out her wingmen around her. Furness was leading a gaggle of twelve RF-111G Vampire bombers, representing the White House response to Turkey’s call for help. The flight was spread out into three groups of four, stacked down five hundred feet from one another and spread out to about two miles apart. Although they were very heavily armed — with defensive weapons only, but potent nonetheless — Rebecca would have expected a much greater response from so powerful a friend, in such a volatile part of the world, especially after that ally had just been attacked. When Kuwait was attacked, the United States had fifty F-15C Eagle fighters from the First Tactical Fighter Squadron in Saudi Arabia in twelve hours, and within three days another two hundred warplanes, mostly Reservists and National Guardsmen, were in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations.

Twelve twenty-five-year-old RF-111G Vampires were sure to be welcomed, but it was not that impressive. She was sure part of it had to do with the President’s decidedly less-aggressive stances than his war-hero predecessor.

“Got the Seyhan River valley and Adana on radar, seventy miles straight ahead,” Mark Fogelman said. He switched to the tactical electronic warfare threat display and peered into the “feed bag,” the black plastic hood around the multifunction cathode ray tube before him. “I’m picking up Echo-3-band search radar from Adana, from Latakia, Syria, in front of us, and from Nicosia behind us. Latakia has a Bar Lock search and intercept radar, probably for an SA-5 SAM system — and I’m picking up Hotel-band Square Pair fire control signals from Latakia, but they aren’t locked on to us. Echo-band height finders out there, associated with the SA-5. Too early to get an ID on the missile, but the bearing is from Syria, so I’m guessing SA-5 system.” He took his eyes out of the CRT hood, called up the missile launch control page for the AGM-88C HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile) on his right-side Multi-Function Display, and checked the indication on the CRT. “I’ve got a good HARM acquisition on the Echo- and Hotel-band radars. Thirty more miles east, and we can kill them. Still not picking up the Lima- or Kilo-band Patriot or Hawk radars in Turkey — they must’ve been nice and shut them down for us.” He took his eyes out of the scope and searched the early morning skies until he located each and every one of the Bravo Flight aircraft. “The flight looks good — looks like people are starting to close in a little. They must be getting antsy with all the bad guys painting us out there.”

“Copy, Mark. Thanks.”

“Copy” was not nearly an appropriate enough response for the stunning transformation that had come over Mark Fogelman. He was a totally different airman. The old Fogelman would have been asleep five minutes into the flight and would have stayed that way until landing — this Fogelman had been awake the entire trip, nearly eighteen hours now. The old Fogelman would have not touched the radar and would never have practiced using the electronic warfare suite to locate and identify radar systems around them — this Fogelman had been giving Rebecca a near nonstop recitation on every electromagnetic bleep within range of their sensors. He had even dry-fired his HARM missiles at simulated targets and run down the proper flight procedures for engaging different threats. The old Fogelman never cared about formation procedures and had considered the control stick and throttles on the right side of the cockpit a nuisance. This Fogelman had been right on top of his formation procedures, constantly checking on his wingmen, recommending flight leader changes and position changes in case someone’s neck was getting tired from always looking in the same direction. He was on the radios constantly, talking to air traffic control and overwater-flight following, and he was into his second roll of SATCOM printer paper because he was sending and receiving so many satellite “ops normal” and weather reports. The most shocking request came when Mark actually asked to fly the Vampire into air refueling contact position behind a tanker. To Rebecca’s surprise, he was actually damn good at it, and had managed to stay in contact position for a good five minutes until a small burst of turbulence knocked him off the boom and he shyly declined to go back in again.

Fogelman finished resetting the altitude bug on the altimeter tape, after converting the desired metric altitude to feet. “Altitude bug set, five thousand to level. Radio two backup set to Incirlik tower frequency.”

It was a good thing he was finally acting like a true officer, because the trip across the Atlantic was a real sonofabitch. Rebecca had filled up three plastic piddle packs. But Fogelman didn’t make one remark about her fidgeting or her quiet cursing, never tried to sneak a peek or embarrass her. At one time she thought he was adjusting one of his rearview mirrors toward her crotch, but the wingmen were shifting positions and he was moving his mirrors to keep them in sight. The lack of confrontation was almost a letdown, but a brush with death would probably change even Satan himself.

After leveling off at five thousand meters, then accepting and complying with another descent to 4,200 meters, or about 14,000 feet, Fogelman tuned the backup radio to the Incirlik Air Base ATIS (Automated Terminal Information System) frequency and was about to direct the rest of the flight to the same frequency when they heard: “Thunder Flight, you have traffic at your eleven o’clock, fifty miles, flight of four F-16 aircraft. MARSA procedures are in effect.” Ankara Air Control Center directed the flight of Vampires to go to their frequency and report to them when they were in contact. It was common for fighters of foreign countries, especially in wartime situations, to escort allied planes through their airspace; Furness had been expecting it.

By wagging her wings, Furness directed the flight of Vampires to close up into fingertip formation, then checked in with the Turkish F-16 flight leader and checked in her flight on the new frequency. When the twelve Vampires were back in close formation, the four F-16 fighters bracketed them in, one fighter in the lead and the others above and behind Charlie Flight. The leader then began to descend; Furness had no choice but to follow. The F-16 leader descended below 12,800 feet, the minimum safe altitude for the Incirlik area. The weather was clear and the visibility was good, but it was still very unusual. “Where in hell are we going?” Furness finally asked.

The flight dropped below 12,000 feet, then below 10,000 feet — now the tops of the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey were well above them. “We’re in the Cardasik River valley,” Fogelman said. He reached behind his seat and extracted the Turkey FLIP (Flight Information Publication), scanned it, and then set several frequencies into the navigation radios and into the nav computers. The VOR and TACAN radios centered on a station straight ahead, and soon the ILS (Instrument Landing System) director bars became active. “It looks like they’re taking us to Kayseri,” Fogelman said. “It’s a Turkish training base, north of a very large industrial city. Very high terrain south, a big-ass mountain over 12,800 feet high. Two parallel runways, two-six left and right.” He reached over and set in the runway heading in Rebecca’s horizontal situation indicator to make it easier for her to visualize the runway setup — to her knowledge that was the first time he had ever reached across the center of the cockpit to adjust one of the pilot’s flight instruments. “Northern runway is the longest, main part of the base north. Inertial winds are from the west, so we’ll probably be landing on two-six left. Field elevation 3,506 feet. Normally has only F-5 and a few F-16s stationed there. Defended by Hawk missile batteries — they probably have Patriot by now — but I’m not picking up anything but search radar and navigation beacons.”

“Mark, I’m sorry about all the things I’ve ever said or thought about you,” Furness said. “Your crew coordination on this deployment has been great. After wanting to wring your neck for so long, now I couldn’t stand the thought of you on anyone else’s crew — I mean that. I think you should get smacked in the head more often.”

“Thanks.” Fogelman chuckled. “You saved my life, what can I say?” He scanned around outside until the other planes were in fingertip formation, then pointed out the window straight ahead: “Field in sight.”

The formation of planes flew west of the city, descended to five thousand feet as they swept north of the field, then turned westbound and lined up on the long runway at Kayseri. The F-16s joined up when the Vampires were five miles from the end of the runway, flew to midfield, then executed an overhead break to enter the visual pattern for landing. Furness did a quick wing jab to the left, indicating that each formation line get in fingertip formation on the left side for a right break, then she swept her wings back slowly to 54 degrees and set 350 knots airspeed. This fast tactical approach allowed the crews to survey the landing runway while still protecting themselves from any ground threats that might unexpectedly pop up.

“Formation’s in,” Fogelman reported. “Everyone looks good. Field elevation set in the altimeter bug, and I’ve got radar altitude plus field elevation set for the altimeter setting. Ready with the before-landing checklist. I…” He hesitated, checked his threat indicators and the RHAWS (Radar Homing And Warning System) scope, and tapped it in confusion. “I just picked up an India-band search radar, low PRF, no bearing or identification. Could be another aircraft just hit us with a ranging radar. See anything out your side?”

Furness scanned the skies all around them, then shook her head. “Nope, it’s clear. Nothing locked on to us?”

“It’s gone now,” Fogelman said. “Too short for a missile track.”

“Well, I hope if they got Hawks or Patriots down there, they’ll use them if any bad guys show up,” Furness said. “Let’s go with the checklist.”

As the formation of Vampires passed over the airfield, Fogelman took a moment to scan the field. He saw an enormous number of fighters parked on the northeast ramp — well over a hundred, with service vehicles, trucks, and weapons-loading equipment scattered around. “Looks like we’re not the only ones here,” he said to Rebecca. “Shitload of planes — they look like British Tornados or Jaguars. NATO must be deploying to this base to set up air ops against the Russians. Jeez, I wish they’d tell us what the hell is going on. I see a Hawk missile site, but no Patriots.” He returned his scan to the wingmen as Furness passed midfield and began a 60-degree right break to the overhead pattern for landing. As she continued the break and the airspeed bled away, she eased the wings forward to 16 degrees, and when she rolled out parallel to the runway, she lowered the landing gear handle, extended the slats and one notch of flaps, and began a slow 190-knot descent for landing. Her Bravo Flight wingmen accomplished the same overhead break every five seconds, while Charlie Flight did the same ten seconds afterward.

“I got a green light from the tower,” Fogelman said. Visibility for the pilot out the right side of the cockpit was poor, so she relied on the navigator to scan the touchdown area for her. “Runway’s clear, no arresting cable, no ice or snow that I can see. Couple of planes on the taxiway moving toward the hammerhead … Jesus, what kind of planes are those?”

“Lead, bandits!” someone shouted on the primary radio. “Ten o’clock high!”

Rebecca’s head snapped left and her eyes scanned the sky … and there, diving down at them from very close in, was a Russian Sukhoi-17 fighter-bomber. Its outline was unmistakable — a long, thin frame, blunt nose, sharply swept wings with the outer section swept forward for better slow-speed performance. It was carrying two small air-to-air missiles that resembled Sidewinders. The jet was low and slow, but it had Rebecca right in its sights. “Lead, break right!” Joe Johnson shouted again in the command radio. “It’s rolling into you! We got it locked up!”

“Don’t you dare shoot at me,” a familiar voice came on the frequency in English. “Hold your fire, number two — don’t you dare put a Sidewinder up my tail. We’re just overshooting a little. Stand by.” To their amazement, when the Sukhoi-17 finally rolled out right beside Furness’ plane, they saw none other than Lieutenant Colonel Daren Mace in the rear seat of the tandem two-place Russian bomber. They then noticed there was no red star or flag on the tail — instead, in large black Latin letters on the camouflaged side were the words FREEZ UKRAYINA AIR FORCE. Even more incredible, the Su-17 was carrying a strange pod that they recognized as an AN/AQQ-901 electronics interface and data pod on one side, and on the other side, it carried an AGM-88C HARM antiradar missile.

“Let us go first — we’re a little skosh on fuel,” Daren Mace radioed, waving happily at Rebecca. With that, the fighter-bomber accelerated ahead of the lead RF-111G, then turned abruptly toward the runway when it was less than one hundred yards in front of Furness’ bomber. Rebecca had to extend a bit to let the Ukrainian fighter land, but in just a few seconds she began her turn to final and set up for the landing. After landing and clearing the runway, Rebecca waited on the main taxiway behind a yellow Follow Me truck as the rest of her flight landed and taxied behind her; then, with wings swept back to 54 degrees, they taxied together to the parking ramp.

The Americans could not believe what they saw — rows and rows of Soviet-made fighters, all loaded with weapons, parked beside the taxiway as far as the eye could see. “Man, this is incredible,” Fogelman exclaimed. “They’re all MiG-23 Floggers except the blunt-nosed one, which is the Su-17 Fitter, right?”

“Not quite,” Furness said. “The ones with the bullet-shaped radomes are the MiG-23 fighters. The ones with the noses that slope downward are MiG-27 attack planes. God, I don’t believe this … five or six squadrons of Soviet fighters at a Turkish air base — and we land twelve RF-111G bombers right in the middle of them.”

The reception for the Americans upon landing was raucous and dramatic. Ukrainian pilots — it was hard not to think of them as Soviets or Russians — were standing on their plane’s wings, madly waving American and Turkish flags as the Vampires taxied past. A few crazy Ukrainian pilots ran out onto the taxiway and patted the sides of the Vampire bombers before being chased away by Turkish security patrols. A reviewing stand with American, Turkish, Ukrainian, and NATO flags had been set up in front of what looked like the base operations building. The Follow Me truck led the RF-111Gs around the reviewing stand into parking places, and one by one they lined up to the left of Furness’ plane, precisely aligning themselves on her. Using hand signals, Furness directed the other aircraft to sweep their wings forward, open bomb bay doors, run up engines to scavenge oil, shut down engines, and open their canopies. Maintenance men put boarding ladders on both sides of the plane, and long red carpets were thrown out leading from the ladder to the reviewing stand, where several vehicles had pulled up and officers began stepping onto the reviewing stand.

The impromptu arrival show worked to perfection, and the growing crowd of pilots and maintenance technicians applauded and cheered wildly …

… until Rebecca Furness removed her helmet and stepped out of the cockpit, her brown hair unfurling.

The Turkish crews were on the right with a small group of Americans, and it was as if a huge switch in heaven had been thrown and all sound was canceled on that side of the reviewing stand. The Turkish aircrews and commanders were stunned. A woman is climbing down out of the lead aircraft? Their astonishment visibly grew as Lynn Ogden and Paula Norton appeared as well. But as if to highlight the silenced Turkish reaction, the Ukrainian crews were cheering, whistling, jumping up and down and yelling like crazy, as if the three flyers were wearing nothing but grass skirts. The Americans were politely clapping and waving, happy to see their fellow wing members arrive safe and sound. The throng of Ukrainian pilots couldn’t be held back any longer, and a large group of them rushed forward, picked up Rebecca and the other two women, and carried them triumphantly on their shoulders to the foot of the reviewing stand. Soon there was a large crowd of crewmembers surrounding the foot of the podium.

Brigadier General Erdal Sivarek looked as if he was going to explode with indignation as the three women were deposited at his feet. He fidgeted slightly, twitching as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands. His hesitation gave the crews enough time to assemble in front of the podium, and Furness called them to attention. She then stepped forward and said in a loud voice, “Sir, the Seven-Fifteenth Tactical Squadron, reporting as ordered.”

Sivarek finally exploded, shouting something in Turkish; then: “Is this some kind of joke? Who is this woman? General, you will explain this to me. What is this woman doing here?”

Major General Bruce Eyers was hopelessly confused. He looked Furness over — she was still holding her salute, which only appeared to be making Sivarek and his staff officers angrier by the second — and decided she was doing nothing improper. He shot her a quick salute so she would lower her arm, then stepped over to Sivarek and asked, “What’s the problem here, General? This is the crew from Plattsburgh — the RF-111G unit you were told about.”

“She is a woman, General Eyers,” Sivarek said angrily. “You Americans sent a … a woman, in a flight suit, to my base, at a time like this?”

“It’s no big deal, General,” Eyers said easily. “I’m sure she’s a good stick. I know they’re just Reservists, but they got some—”

“Reservists? These are Reservists? What is the meaning of this insult, Eyers? Your President sends female Reservists to my country at our hour of need?”

“Get a grip on yourself, General,” Eyers said, chuckling and slapping the Turkish general hard on the shoulder, which he shrugged off. He pointed to the RF-111Gs parked in front of them and said, “She brought those things in okay, didn’t she?”

“Then she is just a ferry pilot?” Sivarek asked. “She is simply bringing the planes here, and the pilots are arriving in more aircraft?”

“Excuse me, sir,” Furness said, “but I’m not a ferry pilot. I’m Bravo Flight commander of the Seven-Fifteenth Tactical Squadron. All we need is fuel and area charts, and we’re ready to begin air operations.”

Sivarek silenced her with a sharp word in Turkish that was so loud and so harsh that his staff officers nearby jumped in surprise. One officer quickly rushed forward and, jabbering away in Turkish, stepped in between Sivarek and Furness. Furness stumbled backward, surprised more than hurt or insulted.

But what really surprised her was the reaction from Daren Mace, who was standing on the podium beside Lieutenant Colonel Hembree, the 715th Tactical Squadron commander, and Colonel Lafferty, the 394th Air Battle Wing vice commander, who had flown in with Mace and the other maintenance and support personnel the night before; not to mention Mark Fogelman. Mace grabbed the Turkish officer from behind and whipped him around so they were face to face. Fogelman rushed forward and, simultaneously with Mace, body-tackled the Turkish officer down onto the tarmac.

Bedlam erupted. Turkish security guards shouldered their rifles and began pulling at the Americans, and that’s when all of the Plattsburgh flyers leaped onto the Turks. More Turkish guards rushed to their comrades’ assistance — and that’s when the Ukrainian flyers rushed the podium. It was unclear exactly what they were doing, but they generally were trying to keep the guards’ M-16 rifles from going off in anyone’s face and trying to help Rebecca Furness up off the ramp and into their eager arms. The Ukrainians’ charge immediately prompted the Turkish flyers, who were clearly outnumbered but as enraged as wild dogs, to enter the melee. Officers were screaming orders. General Sivarek was shouting orders in Turkish, English, Russian, and Arabic, any language he could think of to make himself understood.

But the only thing that stopped the brawl was the sudden blare of a siren just outside the base operations building. It was echoed by several other sirens on the flight line and by others on the base proper. The Turkish, then the Ukrainian pilots quickly untangled themselves and began running for their planes. “Air raid!” Mace shouted, leaping to his feet as soon as the pile of men got off him. “It’s an air raid siren!”

“Jesus!” Lafferty exclaimed, shaking his head. “Get a crew to bring start carts over here, and another crew to get that reviewing stand away from the planes. Furness, tell your crews to taxi your planes toward those aircraft shelters over there. Move!”

The American flyers sprinted for their planes and got into the cockpit. Americans and Turks who had been wrestling with each other just thirty seconds earlier, were now side by side hauling heavy external power carts from next to the base operations building to the waiting Vampires, while Turkish guards were helping Daren Mace and a few Ukrainian pilots with broken planes drag the portable reviewing stand out of the way.

Fogelman raced around his bomber pulling chocks and checking to see if any maintenance access panels had been opened, then climbed up into the cockpit and kicked the boarding ladder away clear of the wheels. “Ladder’s clear!” he shouted to Furness as she climbed inside the cockpit and retrieved her helmet. “Chocks pulled, panels closed, I’m ready to taxi.”

“Okay,” Furness shouted. But they didn’t need to hurry. The power cart was going to another plane first, it was the only one in sight, and there were no tow vehicles or tow bars moving toward them at all. “Nice going, Mark, but we’re not going anywhere right now.”

A few moments later their crew chief, Staff Sergeant Ken Brodie, came by and put their ladders back up on the bombers. “Just one power cart out here,” he explained. “Colonel Lafferty wants us in the air raid shelter until they’re ready to start or tow us.” It was one of the most painful things they had ever done to leave their Vampire behind, armed and ready to fly, and retreat to the safety of the air raid shelter under base operations. Before they reached the front doors, they heard a tremendous double booom! that rattled windows and seemed to shake the ground. Furness jumped. Fogelman, Brodie, and the assistant crew chief, Bordus, ran on ahead.

But Furness saw some movement out of the corner of her eye and saw Daren Mace dragging a long chain from the fire station beside the base operations building out to the bombers, and immediately she ran over to him. “What are you doing, Daren? They said report to the shelters.”

“I talked the firemen into towing planes off the ramp with the fire trucks,” Mace said. “I want to get these planes at least out of the open. You better get inside.”

But she grabbed the chain and began pulling it toward the planes as well. “At least let’s do my plane first,” she said.

“Deal.”

As they dragged the heavy chain out to Furness’ plane and began wrapping it around the nosewheel, she said to him, “Did you start that fight over me, Daren?”

“Heck no,” he lied with a smile. “I was trying to stop your wizzo from pounding the shit out of that Turkish officer. Man, he was great.”

They finished tying the chain around the nosewheel, then extended it out away from the nose and laid it out on the ramp, ready for the fire truck to hook up. Furness said, “You’re a lousy liar, Daren. Thank you. It’s nice to have you here.”

“Right now, I wish we were back at that bed-and-breakfast,” Mace said. “The last thing I want is—holy shit, look out!”

Furness turned toward the runway to where Daren was pointing. Careening out of the clear morning sky on the end of a small stabilizer parachute was a string of two large silver bombs, aligned perfectly with the runway centerline. Except for videotapes of training exercises or file footage from Vietnam, neither of them had actually ever seen a parachute-retarded bomb hitting a target before. They saw the weapon at about two thousand feet in the air, and it fell very quickly.

Its shape, its silver color, its thin profile, its large stabilizer ‘chute — it looked like an American B61 thermonuclear gravity bomb.

For a brief instant, Furness considered running for the air raid shelter, or at least dropping to the ground and covering her eyes. But that was ridiculous and she knew it. A B61 had the explosive power of twenty Hiroshima bombs and would destroy this base, the nearby city of Kayseri, and everything around it for a distance of thirty miles. She didn’t know what a Russian neutron bomb looked like, but at this distance even a fractional-yield nuclear device would kill.

“That boom must’ve been a sonic boom,” Mace said in a low voice. He flashed the middle finger of his right hand at where he guessed the retreating aircraft was in the sky. “A supersonic bomber at high altitude. Long time-of-fall — the plane must’ve been really up there, maybe fifty or sixty thousand feet. He’s gonna get a pretty good bomb score. Lucky son of a bitch.”

All Rebecca could think about doing was reaching for Daren Mace’s hand as she watched the bombs speed toward the center of the runway. She was pleased to find that he was reaching for her hand as well.