Chains of Command

PROLOGUE

Buoyed by crisp, cold air, the tandem two-seat Mikoyan-Gurevich-23UB fighter leapt into the air on a tongue of flame like a tiger pursuing its prey through the trees. Pavlo Grigor’evich Tychina, a Captain First Class of Air Defense Aviation of the Fourteenth Air Army, L’vov, Ukrainian Republic, moved the gear handle to the UP position as soon as he saw the altimeter swing upward. It was such a great day for flying, with light winds and near fifty-kilometer visibility, that Tychina didn’t even mind when the LOW PNEU PRESSURE warning light came on. He simply started pumping the emergency manual landing gear pressurization handle near his right knee to build up enough pressure in the gear uplock system to fully raise the landing gear. Nothing was going to spoil this flying day, even this cranky twenty-year-old warplane.

Tychina, a twenty-eight-year-old pilot and flight commander in the Ukrainian Air Force, immediately dropped his oxygen mask and took a deep breath, like a platform diver who had just risen to the surface after a deep dive, then swung a small auxiliary microphone to his lips. He never liked flying with his oxygen mask — it was unnecessary anyway, since they rarely flew above four or five thousand meters where oxygen was really necessary. Flying in southeastern Europe was generally pretty good, as long as you stayed above the smog level of about one thousand meters. He raised flaps and slats passing 450 kph (kilometers per hour), then checked out the right side of his cockpit canopy on the progress of his wingman for today’s orientation flight.

His wingman was an F-16D Fighting Falcon fighter from the Republic of Turkey. The sleek tandem two-seat fighter and attack plane was on a goodwill visit, representing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Since the Ukraine had applied for NATO membership earlier in the year, NATO member countries had been doing more and more of these exchange flights, getting to know their Ukrainian counterparts. While these exchange flights were taking place, Turkish radar controllers and military commanders were inspecting Ukrainian radar facilities and military bases, and Ukrainian military commanders and politicians were doing the same in Turkey, Germany, Belgium, and even the United States. Pavlo Tychina never thought he would ever see his country join a Western military alliance, and he never expected that the West would ever so heartily embrace his country in return.

Someday soon, Tychina thought, the Ukraine will be wealthy enough to build planes like the F-16. Hell, Turkey was an agricultural country, not much more industrialized than the Ukraine, but they were license-building F-16 Falcons there and even exporting them to other countries. He shook his head in disgust. The Ukraine should sell off its MiG-23s, MiG-27s, and Sukhoi-17s. The F-16, as both a fighter and attack plane, could replace them all. That’s what they should buy: F-16s. It might take fifty MiGs to get one well-equipped F-16, but so what? Everyone knew the F-16 was at least fifty times better than the MiG-23.

His fantasy of flying an F-16 Fighting Falcon emblazoned with a Ukrainian flag on the tail was just that, a fantasy, so Tychina turned his attention to his backseater: “Are you all right back there?” he called back on interphone in English.

“I’m doing fine, sir,” came the reply. Tychina had an American “Combat Camera” military cameraman from March Air Force Base in California in the back seat of the MiG-23UB, filming this entire flight. NATO cameramen and producers had been at L’vov Air Base in western Ukraine and other bases all week, conducting interviews and taking pictures. It was a far cry from the old Soviet multilayered secrecy and isolation. But it made Tychina and his comrades feel good, as if they had finally joined the family of nations, as if they belonged to something other than the stifling, soulless Soviet-Russian domination.

As soon as they passed 650 kilometers per hour airspeed, Tychina swept his MiG-23’s wings back to 45 degrees, and the ride smoothed out considerably. They maneuvered east to stay away from the Polish and Slovenian border, then leveled off at three thousand meters. The visibility was well over 160 kilometers. The mountains ringing the Black Sea and the Crimea were beautiful, there were plenty of natural landmarks to help orientate a distracted pilot, and air traffic control restrictions were fairly relaxed, even when flying close to the Russian and Polish borders. The Polish air traffic controllers liked trying their Ukrainian and English out on the MiG pilots.

That was not true of Moldova, unfortunately. For nearly five years a conflict had been raging between ethnic Russians and ethnic Romanians in the former Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. Since Moldavia declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, becoming the Republic of Moldova, the Russians living in the Republic, especially the rich landowners and factory owners in the Dniester region, were afraid that they would be persecuted by the ethnic Romanian majority. Moldova used to be part of Romania, back before World War II, and there was a lot of talk about Moldova realigning itself with Romania once again — hell, they even changed the name of the capital city of Moldova, Kishinev, back to its original Romanian name, Chisinau, just like they changed Leningrad back to St. Petersburg in Russia.

Russian fat cats living in Moldova, with their huge farms and modern German-designed factories, were very nervous — even terrified — that Romania might take away the Russians’ land and property in Moldova upon reunification, so they rebelled against the Moldovan government, Tychina remembered from his intelligence briefings. That really took a lot of balls — Moldova was still part of the old Soviet Union when the Russians in the Dniester region “claimed” their “independence.” But then those guys always had balls bigger than their brains. The new Moldovan government was pissed, of course, but they couldn’t do anything because most of their Russian troops sided with the damn Russians in the Dniester region. The former Russian armies, located mostly in two cities in Dniester, Bendery and Tiraspol, were twice as strong as the rest of the Moldovan army.

In comes Romania, offering its military forces to help Moldova retake the Dniester region. Russia steps in, telling Romania to stay out, and backing up their warning with flights of warplanes from Minsk, Brest, Br’ansk, and Moscow. Only problem was, Russia never bothered to ask permission of the Ukraine before sending warplanes into Moldova. A joint Commonwealth of Independent States agreement allows joint military maneuvers and provides for common defense between Russia and the Ukraine, but it says nothing about using a member nation’s territory as a staging ground for attacks on another country. The Ukraine insisted on a cease-fire, negotiations, and territorial sovereignty; Russia insisted on free overflight and full support from the Ukraine. Naturally, Moldova distrusted both Russia and the Ukraine. It was actually kind of silly: the Ukraine was big, but it was less than one-tenth the size of the Russian Federation in every respect, including the category that mattered here — military strength. Russia could squash Romania, Moldova, and the Ukraine without working up a sweat.

In any case, no one trusted anyone these days, especially not the Russian President Vitaly Velichko, a hard-line nut who had seized power from Yeltsin, who was now living in Siberian exile. So the Moldovan-Ukrainian border area was strictly off-limits, as was the Russian-Ukrainian border. Moldovan air defense units had been taking surface-to-air missile shots at any and all unidentified aircraft straying near. They were usually shoulder-fired SA-7 rounds or small-caliber antiaircraft artillery stuff — not a real threat to fighters above two thousand meters or so — but it was best to give the trigger-happy Moldovans a wide berth.

“So what would you like to see?” Tychina radioed over to the F-16 crew. The F-16D two-seater also carried a Combat Camera photographer, taking films and still shots of the MiG-23. This was really just a technical flight so the photographers could set up their camera mounts; later in the day they would tow some aerial targets over the Black Sea and let the F-16s and MiG-23s shoot them down, then go over to the bombing ranges in the “Bunghole” region of northwestern Ukraine and let some MiG-27s show their stuff alongside the F-16. “The Carpathian mountains farther south perhaps, and the Crimean Mountains along the Black Sea are very nice,” Tychina was saying.

“We’d like to try some low-level stuff and tight turns,” the chief photographer radioed back, “so we can torque down our camera mounts.”

“Okay,” Tychina replied in his best English, which he had an opportunity to practice more and more these days. “We must stay above one thousand meters because of the … visibility, but low level is better.” By “visibility” he meant smog.

“We got a target on radar at two o’clock position, sixty miles — that’s one hundred and ten kilometers — low, about two thousand … ah, I mean, about six hundred meters altitude,” the pilot of the Turkish plane radioed over. He was a big shot in the Turkish Air Force, a colonel or general, and he was always showing off for the cameras. “Let’s go get him, shall we?”

Tychina turned his Sapfir-23D search radar to TRANSMIT but did not bother searching for the target — the radar had a maximum range of only one hundred kilometers, and for targets that far below them, they had to be practically right on top of them before the radar would pick them up. “Ukrainian radar coverage is poor in that area,” Tychina said. Radar coverage in the Ukraine was poor everywhere, but he wasn’t going to admit that, either. “We should get permission first.” He switched over to his secondary radio and said in Ukrainian, “Vinnica radar, Imperial Blue One flight of two, overhead Vojnilov at three thousand meters eastbound, flight code one-one-seven, request.”

It took a moment for the controller to look up his call sign and flight plan, then find his blip on radar; then, in very impatient Ukrainian: “Imperial Blue One flight, say your request.”

“My VIPs request permission to descend to five hundred meters and accomplish a practice intercept on the low-flying aircraft currently at our twelve o’clock position, one hundred ten kilometers. Over,” said Tychina.

There was another long pause, probably so the controller could look up the flight plan and, more importantly, the passenger status code of the aircraft they wanted to intercept. Most politicians and a few senior officers didn’t like fighters, even unarmed ones, flying too close.

“Imperial Blue One flight, you say you have an aircraft near Cortkov at five hundred meters?”

“That is affirmative, Vinnica. Stand by.” On the interplane frequency in English, Tychina asked the Turkish general, “Sir, in what direction and what airspeed is that plane headed?”

“He is headed south, heading one-seven-zero, speed three hundred knots,” the general responded. “He is not transmitting IFF identification codes.”

Tychina forgot that the advanced pulse-Doppler radars on the F-16 Fighting Falcon could not only see low-flying targets at incredible distances, but could even interrogate identification beacons. He keyed the secondary radio mike: “Vinnica, target heading south at five hundred fifty kilometers per hour, not transmitting any identification beacons.”

“Imperial Blue flight, acknowledged, stand by.” There was another long pause, and that made twenty-eight-year-old Pavlo Tychina very uncomfortable. He could feel his fine flying day going to hell real fast. “Imperial Blue Flight, you are ordered to immediately intercept and identify the target aircraft,” the controller finally said in Ukrainian. “The aircraft is unidentified and is below my radar coverage. Report identification immediately on this frequency.”

“Imperial Blue One Flight, acknowledged.” He sighed. What in the hell … had they stumbled onto an unidentified aircraft, a possible intruder? On the primary radio, Tychina radioed: “General, the regional radar command has ordered us to intercept this aircraft. I am not picking this target up on my radar, and he is too low for a vector from ground intercept. Can you assist me?”

“My pleasure, Pavlo,” the Turkish pilot replied. “I am in the lead. Stay with me as best you can.” And with that, the F-16 Falcon shot out ahead of the MiG, its afterburner rattling Tychina’s wings and canopy. Tychina hit the afterburners on the MiG-23—which, unlike the F-16, did not light off in zones but came on full blast with a powerful bang! — then swept his wings back to 72 degrees. In the blink of an eye they were at Mach-one and had descended to barely more than three hundred meters above ground.

The visibility was less than twenty kilometers down here because of smog. Tychina’s mind raced through a high-detail map of the area, trying to remember if there were any power lines or tall smokestacks in this area, but he was doing all he could just to keep the small F-16 in sight. They did a few sudden climbs when the Turkish general found a few power lines, and Pavlo swore they flew under a tall high-tension line strung across the Zbrut River.

There!

“Contact,” Tychina called out. It was an Ilyushin-76M cargo plane, a large four-engine military transport. This was the military version of the similar civilian cargo plane — that was apparent as they closed in because …

… the Il-76 opened fire on them with its two tail-mounted 23-millimeter twin-barrel machine guns.

“Kemal damn them!” the Turkish officer screamed angrily on the radio. He immediately banked right and extended to get out of the gun turret’s cone of fire. Tychina banked hard left and climbed. Once he was above the Il-76 and forward of the plane’s wings, he knew he was safe. The plane had Aeroflot markings and a Russian flag painted on the vertical stabilizer …

… It was definitely a fucking Russian plane!

The Turkish general was still swearing, half in Turkish, half in English: “That bastard fired on us!”

“Stay out of the cone of fire!” Tychina told him. On the backup radio, Tychina called out, “Vinnica control, Imperial Blue One Flight, we have been fired upon by a Russian Ilyushin-76 transport aircraft. Repeat, we have been fired on by a Russian Il-76. Request instructions!”

There was no response, only the hiss of static — they were far too low to be picked up by Vinnica.

Tychina switched the backup radio to the international VHF emergency frequency, 121.5, and said in Russian, “Unidentified Russian transport plane near the town of Kel’mency, this is Imperial Blue One flight of two, Air Force of the Ukrainian Republic. You are flying illegally in Ukrainian airspace. Climb immediately to five thousand meters and identify yourself.” He repeated the instructions in English and Ukrainian, but the big transport kept right on flying. Soon the Russian Il-76 transport had reached the Moldovan border, and Tychina could pursue it no longer. He turned northwest and started a climb so he could regain radio contact with Vinnica, watching it carefully.

“Those bastards,” the Turkish general cursed on the primary radio, “if I only had some rounds in my cannon, I would have nailed that son of a bitch for good. I never thought I’d ever let anyone fire at me without returning fire. Shit.”

Tychina deselected the radio for the moment so he would not have to listen to the excitable Turk’s cursing. On the backup radio, he radioed: “Vinnica, this is Imperial Blue One Flight, how do you read?”

“Loud and clear now,” the controller replied. “We could not hear you, but our remote communications outlets picked you up and relayed your calls. Do you have the Ilyushin in sight?”

“Affirmative,” Tychina replied. “It is … my God…!”

Just as he visually reacquired the big transport, he saw several white streaks of smoke erupt from the snowy forests below and hit the Ilyushin-76 transport.

Those were surface-to-air missiles, being fired from just across the Moldovan border …

“Vinnica, this is Imperial Blue One Flight, the Ilyushin has just been hit by Moldovan surface-to-air missiles. I see two … three missiles, small, probably SA-7 portable … the Ilyushin is on fire, its left engines are on fire, it is trailing smoke … wait! Vinnica, I see parachutes, the crew is … no, I see a lot of parachutes, dozens! Vinnica, paratroopers are exiting the cargo area via the rear cargo ramp. Over two dozen, one after another … I am turning southeast to maintain visual contact … Vinnica, are you reading me?”

It was the most incredible sight Tychina had ever seen. Like a giant whale being attacked by tiny sharks, the Ilyushin-76 was being peppered by man-portable SA-7 heat-seeking missiles. As it descended, its entire left wing on fire, it was disgorging dozens of paratroopers. Most of the paratroopers never made it — Tychina saw lots of jumpers but very few parachutes. The plane was so low now that there wasn’t time for the jumper’s parachutes to fully open before they hit the frozen Moldovan ground. Then, in a spectacular cloud of fire, the Ilyushin rolled onto its left side, crashed, and cartwheeled for at least five kilometers across the earth, leaving bits of metal and bodies under streaming parachutes in its path.

Christ, it had finally started, Tychina thought in a cold sweat. The fucking Russians and Moldovans were at each other’s throats. Worse, he knew, just knew the Ukraine would be pulled into it as well. In fact, already had been, when the arrogant Motherland decided it could fly over Ukrainian airspace as well as shoving the Black Sea Fleet through their waters … all without permission. Tychina grimaced at the thought of what could happen next. Up until now it had been little more than a bit of sparring and some macho posturing.

But this … this, Tychina feared, was just the kind of incident that could be a prelude to something much bigger.

And deadlier.

“One hundred and forty SPETSNAZ paratroopers, ten crewmen, and a two-hundred-million-dollar transport, all killed by a quarter-million dollars’ worth of missiles,” Army general Philip T. Freeman, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, summarized from the report before him. He was in the National Military Command Center, the main military command post and communications center in the Pentagon, previewing the briefing and the edited videotape he was going to give to the National Security Council and the President of the United States in just a few hours. Freeman knew that this briefing was not just important, but vital in determining what the United States’ response to this incident was going to be — especially for a President that was busy trying to drastically downsize not just the military’s size, but its power and influence in American life as well. After thirty years in uniform, Freeman had learned how to play the game.

Philip Freeman was a tall, distinguished-looking man, with close-cropped dark hair that had gone gracefully, tastefully gray on the sides, and small, quick eyes. He rose through the ranks from a know-nothing Army ROTC second lieutenant from Niagara University in New York, two tours in Vietnam as an artillery and mortar platoon commander, a tour at NATO Headquarters in Belgium, innumerable professional military courses and staff positions, commander of U.S. European Command, Army chief of staff, and assistant to the President’s National Security Advisor, before becoming the highest-ranking military officer in the United States.

Freeman had been privileged to be a witness of the tremendous sea changes that had occurred in the world over the past five years. Unfortunately, now it seemed as if he was seeing a reversal of those changes — just as quickly as change happened, regional and ethnic conflict was threatening to tear it all apart just as quickly.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff and representatives of the President’s National Security Council staff had just viewed the incredible videotape shot by U.S. Air Force cameramen in the backseats of Turkish and Ukrainian fighter planes. They saw the entire intercept, heard the radio calls — the cameramen used “Y” cords to plug their video cameras into the fighter’s interphone — and saw the big Russian transport get blown to pieces by Moldovan surface-to-air missiles.

“No one survived?” Air Force general Martin Blaylock, the curmudgeonly chief of staff of the Air Force, asked. “I saw several ‘chutes …”

“Our information comes from press releases and official memoranda from the Moldovan government,” Albert Sparlin, assistant deputy director for Eastern European Affairs of the Central Intelligence Agency, replied. Sparlin was providing a lot of background data on the incident, stuff the Defense Intelligence Agency normally does not gather on its own. “I wouldn’t exactly call it reliable information. If the Moldovans or Romanians captured any Russians, the first thing they’d do is declare them dead — it’s easier to extract information from a prisoner who thinks he’s dead than one who knows he’s alive. Judging by the tape, several may have survived. But the Moldovan Army pulled off a big one.”

“Great. The Russians are ready to blow Moldova off the map over this Dniester stuff — if they find out they’re violating their prisoners, they’ll kick their asses for sure,” Freeman said, feeling a headache coming on.

Everyone assembled in the Command Center knew that when the Russians living in the Dniester region declared themselves independent from Moldavia and formed the Dniester Republic, it had gone up Moldavia’s ass sideways. And, of course, Mother Russia couldn’t wait to step in and “help” Dneister remain a separate Republic from the despised Moldavians. They knew that it all went way back to when Moldava was once a province of Romania. Moldova was ceded to Russia in 1940 as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. They have, and always will, loathe the Russians and the Russians have felt, thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, very proprietary of Moldavia (even though the country declared independence from the then-USSR in 1991). The Russians felt especially proprietary now with regards to Dniester. It was a situation that had been brewing to the boiling point.

“All right,” Freeman continued, “I’ve got your staff recommendations, so let’s put all this together so I can recommend a military course of action.”

“If the President even asks you for one,” scoffed Admiral Robert Marise, Chief of Naval Operations.

There was a general nod of agreement around the table at that remark. The President, a young southern Democrat, had to be the most blatantly antimilitary president to come along since Rutherford B. Hayes. In the President’s eyes — and, it was noted, in the eyes of his powerful wife, a former attorney who was known around Washington as the Steel Magnolia — the military was nothing but an overblown, unnecessary cash drain that needed to be plugged.

“Russia has publicly threatened Moldova for shooting down the transport,” Freeman went on, “and accused Romania of supplying the weapons, and even accused the Ukraine and Turkey of assisting in the downing by broadcasting and highlighting the transport’s position with the fighters. They think Turkey is assisting the Ukraine, like Romania is assisting Moldova, in driving out all ethnic Russians from their lands and their high positions in these former republics’ governments.”

“You think Russia has named all of its potential targets for retaliation in that statement, Philip?” Marine Corps commandant Roger Picco asked.

“I’m sure of it, Roger,” Freeman grumbled. “The border incursions, the sniper attacks, the firefights, the angry words have all been intensifying over the years. Now, ever since Turkey has come out in favor of Ukraine’s admittance into NATO, not to mention its condemnation of Russia for its aggressiveness in the Black Sea region, Russia has been rattling the saber even harder. They say they’re being backed into a corner: I say they see their buffer states and regional influence disappearing, and they want to stop the hemorrhaging. The hard-liners have taken charge, gentlemen. We can’t afford to just sit back and wait for this thing to blow up in our face.”

“But selling any sort of military action to the President will be nearly impossible.” Admiral Marise sighed in exasperation, as if his earlier remark hadn’t been understood. “He doesn’t want to know about the chances of success or failure — he assumes we’ll come out of it unscathed — but he’ll want to know how much it will cost.”

“And then, when Congress comes up with a number,” added Army general Patrick Goff, chief of staff of the Army, “the President believes them instead of our figures.”

“I didn’t ask for a commentary, gentlemen,” Freeman interrupted. “And we should know better than to air our dirty laundry in front of someone who’s not wearing a primary-colored suit.” He looked right at the CIA representative.

Sparlin of the CIA laughed along with the Joint Chiefs, then added, “Hey, I’m with you guys — when the President’s not hammering away at the Pentagon budget, he’s taking a flamethrower to our intelligence budget. But I see big problems in Eastern Europe if we don’t do something. Russia lost its access to the Black Sea and the Baltic when the Soviet Union broke up. They got it back when they formed the Commonwealth of Independent States, but now that the CIS has broken up, they’ve lost it again. Russia’s not going to stand for that, especially not that wild-card Velichko. This Moldova thing might be their best opportunity to take action.”

“Then we have to convince the President to act — diplomatically as well as militarily,” General Blaylock of the Air Force decided. “We lost a lot of face when Germany led NATO in the Yugoslavia crisis. We tossed in a few planeloads of MREs and managed to get a few C-130s shot down over Bosnia — then Germany leads NATO into the region, and everyone comes to the bargaining table. We still got egg on our face from that one. Now do we want Turkey to take the lead in doing something about the Russian crisis or just play with ourselves?”

Freeman shrugged. “I don’t want a plan of action just for the hell of it — I need a plan that’s doable, that’ll position our forces in the best possible manner if Russia decides to bust loose. My idea is to support Turkey, to unify and strengthen the NATO allies. If we tighten up NATO and show the Russians we still got a strong, unified military alliance opposing them, the Russians might think twice before starting any large-scale operation.”

“So you’re going to tell the President — and our demure First Lady — to stop making speeches condemning the joint military operations between the Ukraine and Turkey?” Admiral Marise asked skeptically. When dealing with the chief executive of the United States, everyone knew it was always two-on-one — the President and his wife versus everyone else. But in their few confrontations, General Philip Freeman actually seemed to have a handle on the opinionated, sometimes volatile First Lady — if not cordial or friendly, at least their meetings had been mutually respectful. He just didn’t care for women who kept their maiden name and their husband’s all in one.

“Hey, I don’t like the Turks flying F-16s close to the Russian borders,” Freeman replied, “or having the Turks doing practice bomb runs in a new bombing range that ‘just happened’ to have been constructed close to a Russian cabinet member’s dacha near the Black Sea, or having the Turks reportedly accepting surplus weapons and equipment from the Ukraine for safekeeping.”

“It’s not a rumor,” Sparlin interjected. “It’s the truth. They averaged ten cargo ships per day until the Washington Post broke the story last month.”

“Turkey says it’s not true, so we believe our ally.” Freeman sighed. “The point is, I wish Turkey would play straight with us a little more. But yes, I’m going to recommend we support Turkey — all of NATO, but especially the Turks. Turkey has asked for more Patriot missile batteries and defensive aircraft, and they want to buy our surplus F-111 aircraft. I’ll recommend we go ahead with the deal.”

“Good luck,” someone chuckled.

“Thanks a heap. Okay, what else do we need to think about?” Freeman asked. “Let’s say the President does nothing about the Russians until well after the shooting starts, but then the country and the allies go into a panic when the Red Army starts rolling across the Ukraine, and the President finally decides he better do something. What are we going to want or need? What can we do to get it into better position once the shit hits the fan?”

There were several ideas tossed around the table, but one comment from Air Force general Martin Blaylock got everyone’s attention like nothing else: “Maybe we should consider the absolute worst-case scenario, Philip. What if the Russians try to invade the Ukraine, they drag Turkey into it, Russia nails Turkey, NATO gets dragged into it, and the Cold War heats up overnight? Let’s think about putting our Reservists on nuclear alert — putting the B-1s, B-52s, maybe the F-111s and B-2 bombers on alert, with Reservists, and the boomers back on patrol. What then?”

It was the question to end all questions. As a major cost-cutting measure, the President had slashed the size of the active-duty military forces by nearly half. But to appease those worried about readiness, he increased the size of the Reserves and Guard to their highest levels yet — there was almost parity between active and Reserve force levels. The cost savings were enormous. But many front-line units were now manned by Reservists, especially in Blaylock’s Air Force. If ninety B-1 bombers went on nuclear alert, as many as twenty of them would be manned by Reservists. If the B-52s went on alert, over half of them would have Reservists on board …

… and in all Air Force flying units, as many as one-fourth of the aircrews would be women as well.

“Good point, Marty,” Freeman said. “I think we can see that scenario happening here. I know you’re pushing for chairman of this gaggle, Marty, so I’ll bet you have a rundown on what we’d have to do and what we’d have if we went ahead and did it, am I right?”

“You’ve got that right, sir,” Blaylock said. “I got together with CINC-Strategic Command, Chris Laird, and put together a dog-and-pony show for you. I’d like to bring him in and lay it on you.”

“No,” Freeman replied. His response stunned the Joint Chiefs — but he raised a hand to settle them all down, and added, “I want that briefing, but I want the whole National Security Council, including the President and Veep, to hear it. Let’s get General Laird in here ASAP and set up a meeting.”

“Yes, sir,” Blaylock said, then, with an evil smile, added: “But remember to double-check to make sure the First Lady’s calendar is clear.”

No one laughed.

“No, no, no,” U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel Daren J. Mace shouted over interphone. “If you go in hot, Lieutenant, you can’t dick around — and don’t you dare touch those throttles. IP inbound to the target, you’re at military power, and you stay there unless you need to plug in the afterburners. Understand?”

“I think I overshoot,” Lieutenant Ivan Kondrat’evich of the Ukrainian Air Force replied. He and Mace were flying in a tandem two-seat Ukrainian Sukhoi-17 “Fitter-G” attack plane, over a bombing range in eastern Turkey. They were practicing bombing and aerial gunnery with Turkish F-16 fighters and other NATO aircraft. “I too high, I go around.”

“No way, Ivan,” Mace said. “You go in hot, you burn your target. Show me your moves, Ivan.”

“I not understand, Colonel Daren.”

“Like this. I got the aircraft.” Mace grabbed the control stick in the backseat of the Su-17, made sure the throttles were up into military power, and rolled the Su-17 inverted. As expected, the big, heavy fighter-bomber sank like a stone. “Wings to forty-five,” Mace ordered. Kondrat’evich moved the Sukhoi-17’s wing-sweep handle to the intermediate setting — the backseaters did not have wing-sweep control, a serious design flaw — which gave them a much rougher ride at this high airspeed but gave them much more precise control. The big fighter was now aimed at an impossibly steep angle, and the altimeter was unwinding as if it had an electric motor driving it down. Since he had very little forward visibility, the only way Mace could see the target visually was to look out the top of the canopy while they were inverted and try to line up as best he could.

At two thousand feet above the ground, Mace rolled upright. “You got the aircraft,” he shouted to Kondrat’evich in the front seat. “Now kill that bad boy.” Instead of firing the guns, however, Mace felt the young Ukrainian pilot pop the Su-17’s four big speedbrakes. “Don’t do that! Retract your speedbrakes, Ivan.” He did so. “Now kill the target, Ivan, now!”

With Mace’s hand on the control stick helping him line up, Kondrat’evich pressed the gun trigger on his control stick. The two 30-millimeter Nudelmann-Richter NR-30 cannons, one in each wingroot, erupted with a tremendous shudder, and a visible tongue of fire at least thirty feet long seared the sides of the Su-17. “Richter” was a good name for that cannon: they had fired only about eighty rounds at the target, an old Soviet tank, but the huge 30-millimeter “soda bottle” shells completely ripped the tank apart and probably slowed the Su-17 down a good fifty knots, even though they were in a screaming descent. “Good shooting, good kill,” Mace said. “Recover.”

There was no reaction, and Mace was ready for it. Many young attack pilots, especially if they transition from air-to-air fighters, get a bad case of “target fixation,” or keeping their noses pointed at the target after completing the attack. Perhaps it was a holdover from firing radar-guided missiles, which usually required the pilot to keep his nose aimed at the enemy to radar-illuminate the target so the missile could home in; or maybe it was just a fascination with seeing a hapless ground target die. In any case, a lot of ground attack crews kill themselves by forgetting to pull up after firing their weapons.

“I got the aircraft!” Mace shouted, hauling back on the stick with both hands. At first he was actually fighting Kondrat’evich, who wanted to push the nose down so he could keep the target in sight, until the young pilot realized how low they were. “Wings to thirty!” he shouted, and Kondrat’evich swept the wings full forward to 30 degrees so they could get every ounce of lift and control possible. They finally got their nose up and began a safe climb at only sixty feet above the ground.

“Good dust, Kiev Three, good dust,” the range controller called out.

“What does that mean?” Kondrat’evich asked.

“That means they’re congratulating us for flying so low but not hitting the ground and killing ourselves, Ivan,” Mace replied. “Ivan, you’re doing ground attack now, not fighter tactics. There are no ground attack weapons in the inventory that require you to keep your nose pointed at the ground after pulling the trigger.” Actually, the Ukrainians had one, the AS-7 “Kerry,” but it was an obsolete weapon and they were training for gunnery and Maverick-style TV, imaging infrared, or laser-guided weapons, not old-style radio-controlled missiles. “Shoot, then scoot — don’t hang around to admire your handiwork. You understand?”

“ ‘Shoot, then scoot,’ “ Kondrat’evich mimicked. “Climb or die, eh?”

“You got it,” Mace agreed. “Climb or die. Now get on your egress heading and get up to your assigned altitude before your wingmen think you’re a bad guy.”

“I understand,” Kondrat’evich said, making the turn and climbing to five thousand feet to join up on his formation leader. “But it is a very good day to die today. You think so?”

Mace dropped his oxygen mask, looked at the bright sun and clear blue cloudless sky around him, and clicked his mike twice in reply. Yes, he agreed, it was a pretty good day to die.

Back on the ground a few minutes later, Ivan Kondrat’evich was so happy with his performance that he was out of the cockpit and running to join up with his fellow Ukrainian pilots almost before the engines were shut down. Mace had to smile as he watched the exuberant young pilot darting about the tarmac, slapping his buddies on the shoulder, cajoling them for some screw-up they did. When their operations officer came by a few minutes later to tell them their gunnery scores, Ivan practically did cartwheels on the frosty ramp. Mace could tell their scores were good. Despite a few lapses in concentration, Kondrat’evich was a good stick. A few more years and a couple weeks at RED FLAG, the U.S. Air Force air combat exercise in Nevada, and he might just live to see age thirty.

It was a long time since Mace had been that happy after coming back from a mission, and even longer since he’d seen age thirty. Mace was a tall, rugged-looking man, with close-cropped blond hair and dark green eyes. Six foot, 180 pounds of naturally well-defined muscle, Mace would have been Central Casting’s dream for a war movie. A younger, less-weathered Robert Redford, they would have said. He was a former enlisted man in the Marine Corps for two years, with an assignment as a weapon systems specialist at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, California, first in the A-4 Skyhawk and then in the F-4 Phantom. It was the big, powerful Phantom that ignited his desire to fly military jets — in two years on the flight line, he had never flown in the planes he fixed — so he applied for officer candidate school. But the Marine Corps was looking for more infantry soldiers, not more officers, and the only place he could get accepted for officer training was Air Force ROTC at Eastern New Mexico State University.

He graduated in 1974 with a degree and a commission in the United States Air Force. He entered navigator training virtually on the very day the U.S. embassy in Saigon was being overrun by the Viet Cong. His years as a prior enlisted man helped him past the “new guy” syndrome common to second lieutenants, and studying hard in military classes was something the Marine Corps hammered home. Mace graduated top of his nav class in 1975, and got an assignment in the F-4E Phantom II at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia.

But it was during a Tactical Air Command bombing exercise in Nevada that Mace was introduced to the F-111 “Aardvark,” and he was hooked forever. He cross-trained to the sleek, sexy-looking FB-111A in the Strategic Air Command in 1980, shortly after pinning on captain’s bars, and was assigned to Pease Air Force Base, New Hampshire, in 1982, pulling strategic alert duties with nuclear-loaded Aardvark bombers. He and the FB-111A became one. He became an instructor, simulator panel operator, senior navigator, and wing weapons officer, shuttling between Pease and Plattsburgh Air Force Base in New York, the only two FB-111 bases in the country.

Daren Mace wanted to be involved in every aspect of the F-111 mission. He became instrumental in ushering in the new digital avionics modernization program for the Aardvark’s weapon and navigation systems, won Strategic Air Command’s Bombing and Navigation Competition once as S-01 senior instructor navigator, and participated in tests of several new weapons for the FB-111, including the AGM-131 SRAM II attack missile, the AGM-84E SLAM (Standoff Land Attack Missile), and the AIM-9 Sidewinder self-defense missile. As the nuclear deterrent role of the FB-111 diminished, Mace saw to it that SAC crews adopted skills in non-nuclear bombing tactics, and he helped design and test new weapons and new missions for the F-111, including “Wild Weasel” enemy air defense suppression and tactical reconnaissance. He was an expert in high-threat bomb delivery tactics, precision-guided munitions employment, and defensive tactics.

He was at Pease as the DONB (Deputy Commander for Operations, Navigation, Bombing) in 1989 when the decision was finalized to transfer the FB-111 to Tactical Air Command and close Pease Air Force Base. Mace began shuttling FB-111s to McClellan Air Force Base in California to begin their conversion to the F-111G, giving them full integration with Tactical Air Command units. While at McClellan, a major aircraft maintenance and repair facility, he learned more about the inner workings of the Aardvark than ever before — his training as a former Marine aircraft mechanic helped him. In just a few months, Daren Mace was recognized as one of the country’s leading experts on the F-111 weapon system.

Then, in 1990, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. America at war. A secret assignment, no questions asked. In one fateful night, Daren Mace’s life was turned upside down. Nothing was the same ever again.

After Desert Storm, Mace wanted to get as far away from the United States, as close to virtual exile, as one could get. He still had his wings, but he rarely flew — completely by choice. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel without fanfare in 1992, was allowed to attend Air War College, and was then sent to Turkey in 1993 for his third overseas assignment.

The Islamic Wars of 1993 and 1994, in which a strengthened Iraq, allied with Syria, Jordan, and other radical Muslim nations, tried to throw the entire Persian Gulf region into chaos once again, signaled the rebirth of Daren Mace. As weapons officer for the 7440th Provisional Wing at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, Mace supervised the weapons requirements for a hastily formed NATO coalition, successfully arming every strike aircraft that was sent to him in the first few critical weeks of the outbreak of war. He helped keep two hundred Turkish, U.S. Air Force, Saudi Arabian, and a few Israeli aircraft in fighting shape until help could arrive in force. Daren Mace did everything — refuel planes, upload bombs and missiles, change engines, and even flew as a weapons officer in F-15E, F-111F, and F-4E and — G fighter-bombers.

Now, as senior weapons and tactics training officer of the Thirty-Seventh Tactical Group at Incirlik Air Base, it was Mace’s job to help train NATO crewmembers on how to fight together as a team. He had many crews rotate in from all over the world, including F-111s, and in the past few months he started to get MiG-27 and Sukhoi-17 planes and crews from the Ukraine and Lithuania training with NATO forces. He got to fly — and fix — them all, but he loved it. It was an exciting time to be in Turkey …

… that is, Mace thought, if it wasn’t for the Russians. The closer the Ukraine got to full integration with NATO and eventual full NATO membership, the testier and more forceful, even unpredictable, Russia was getting. At the same time, it seemed the United States was getting weaker by the day. Mace saw lots of Reservists at Incirlik, including units that he knew used to be active-duty ones but were now either full, partial, or Enhanced Reserve Program bases. Now was not the time to downgrade the military, he thought — it was time to gear up. All they had to do was check the winds.

As Mace gathered up his gear and stepped out of the cockpit of the Sukhoi-17, he was met by the group commander, Colonel Wes Hardin. “Hey, hotshot, how did it go?”

“Except for almost getting myself killed, great,” Mace replied.

“I saw on the range video,” Hardin said. “You had about a tenth of a second to live, you know that.”

“Sixty feet is as good as sixty miles. I take it by the way young Ivan is jumping around that we did good.”

“You did good. Two for two. You’re making it look too easy.” He motioned to a pod mounted on the right wing fixed section, inboard of the swiveling section of the wing. “The electronics interface pod worked good?”

“Sure did,” Mace said. The AN/AQQ-901 electronics interface pod was designed to give older Soviet-made aircraft the look and feel of modern warplanes by giving them all the necessary electronic “black boxes” in one easily installed unit that did not require massive aircraft modifications. The pod provided satellite navigation updates by the U.S. GPS or Russian GLOSNASS constellations; a ring-laser gyro for precise heading and velocity information; a MIL-STD data interface bus for precision weapons such as Western laser-guided bombs and inertially guided missiles; and sophisticated weapon targeting and monitoring capability.

Someday when the Ukraine joined NATO, it would have access to very sophisticated weapons like the British Tornado or the American F-16 and F-111 fighter-bombers, but for now they had to settle for their old Soviet equipment with a handful of high-tech electronics pods to bring them up to Western standards. Even so, it took nothing away from the Ukrainian crew’s ability to fly and fight.

“These Ukrainian kids are good,” Mace replied. “They need to fly their planes, not just drive them. They need to think in three dimensions. But once you show them how to do it, man, they go out and do it. I pity the next guy who has to fly with Kondrat’evich — he’s going to spend a lot of time upside down, I think. So who’s my next victim?”

“Nobody, Daren,” Hardin said. “I got news for you. I don’t know if it’s good news or bad news, but I got plenty of news.”

Mace had been expecting this ever since passing twenty years as an officer — he was not going to be allowed to make full colonel. “Get it over with, Wes. When’s my retirement party?”

“Last month,” Hardin said. “You were officially RIFed as of last month.”

The RIF, or Reduction in Forces, was the current Administration’s ongoing program to reduce the size of the U.S. military to below one million members by 1996. The cuts were far-reaching and relentless. Mace wasn’t surprised to find himself on the hit list, but now that it really hit him, it hit hard. “So when’s my DOS?”

“You don’t get a date-of-separation, Daren — you get a Reserve commission, effective last month,” Hardin said. “You got thirty days to decide whether you accept it or not. Your thirty days expires in … oh, about five minutes.”

“Hell, then let’s go to the club and celebrate my last few minutes in the service, Wes,” Mace said, “because I’m not accepting a Reserve commission. You work just as damn hard as an active-duty type, but for half the money. Tell our wonderful President and his crew, thanks but no thanks. Forget it. Let’s get drunk.”

“If you accepted the Reserve commission, it comes with a new assignment.”

“Who cares? I don’t want it,” Mace said, shaking his head.

“How about Maintenance Group commander of the 394th Air Battle Wing at Plattsburgh Air Force Base, Daren?”

Mace stopped and stared at Hardin. “I said I don’t … what did you say, Wes?”

“You heard me, hotshot,” Hardin said with a smile. “MG of the hottest base in the force. This is your base, my man, your plane. You developed the design data for the RF-111G reconnaissance and Wild Weasel variant, you test-flew the -111 with HARM antiradar missiles and photo pods on them. This is the assignment you should have gotten. You accept this, you’re sure to make full bird colonel in two to four years.”

“Isn’t this the unit that’s supposed to be prima donna central?” Mace asked. “Full of mama’s boys and weak-dicks …?”

“And flybabes too, Daren,” Hardin reminded him. “Six or seven women on the -111 side, including Paula Norton, the big-titted blonde who did the hot-pants poster a few months back, the ex-NASA astronaut …?”

“Shit, Wes, flying with women?” Mace said. “It’s just… ah, hell, weird. Especially in the -111, sitting side-by-side. It’s too strange.”

“Welcome to the new military, son.”

“And Furness, the first female combat pilot — she’s there, right?” Mace interjected. “A real winner, huh? Busts guys’ balls and eats ’em for lunch.”

“The Iron Maiden, Rebecca Furness.” Hardin laughed. “Yeah, she’s one of the flight commanders now, transitioning crews from training flight to mission-ready. I don’t know if ‘iron’ describes her ass or her chastity belt. Do you want to find out or not? Daren? What about it?”

But Mace wasn’t listening. That name … Rebecca … as well as the thought of returning to the RF-111G he loved so much … the RF-111G, the reconnaissance and Wild Weasel variant of the F-111G, which used to be known as the FB-111A.

He flew the F-111G years ago, during Operation Desert Storm — the only time the FB-111A/F-111G model had ever been flown in actual combat. He flew a combat mission on the morning of January 17, 1991, along with thousands of other Coalition forces — except he wasn’t part of Desert Storm. His classified mission was called something else. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to block it out. For so long now he had. And yet, in his heart, he knew he could never escape that terrible incident, even if he tried. It would always be a part of him. The memories seemed as real as yesterday.…