Suvorov was solidly in the coup’s collective pocket. “The helicopter’s
destination?”
“South. It may have gone to a military airfield outside Orel. An
airfield still under PRDP control.”
“This,” Krasilnikov said softly, “changes everything.”
Doctorov favored him with a death’s-head smile. “it means, my dear
Comrade Marshal Krasilnikov, that our beleaguered nation’s troubles are
but beginning. If Leonov is alive, the democrats in the army and the
nationalists in the republics will rally to him. It means what we have
feared all along.”
“Da,” Krasilnikov said, and his eyes were fixed on the swirl of
snowflakes dancing through the shattered window of the office. “It
means another civil war. A blood-bath.”
“Come, Comrade. The capital, at least, is ours. As are the northern
military sectors and the bulk of the Red Army. We must compose our
message for the rest of the world.”
“Yes. Before they descend on us like wolves.”
Thunder keened from the gray skies as a trio of MiG-31s roared low over
the city. Krasilnikov cast another quick glance about the ruined
office, then hurried after Doctorov. There was so very much yet to be
done.
CHAPTER 1
Tuesday, 10 March
2115 hours (Zulu -1)
Pri-Fly, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
“Damn but the weather’s dirty tonight.” Captain Matthew “Tombstone”
Magruder stood in Jefferson’s Primary Flight Control, “Pri-Fly” to the
initiated, and worked at not sloshing hot coffee down the Air Boss’s
back. He could feel the pitch to the supercarrier’s deck as she plowed
through heavy seas invisible in the darkness 120 feet below. “For once
I’m actually glad I’m not up there.”
“What, am I hearin’ this right, CAG?” Commander William Barnes grinned
up at him from a coffee mug of his own. “AIR BOSS” was stenciled across
the man’s sweatshirt and the back of his chair, while his coffee mug
proclaimed, “I’m the BOSS.” He was the man responsible for controlling
all air traffic in the carrier’s immediate vicinity from this glassed-in
eyrie, including all launch and recovery operations. “Man, this has got
to be some kind of first.
Usually all I hear is you bitchin’ about what you wouldn’t give to be
able to log more hours.”
“Hours, yes. But not in that. Case Three if ever I saw it.” Case Three
was a bad-weather carrier approach, with a ceiling of two hundred feet
and visibility of a half mile or less. In blue-water operations like
this, with no friendly airfields within range, those limits could
quickly drop to zero-zero, no ceiling, no visibility.
“Hell, the Met boys say it’s going to get even worse,” the Boss said.
He jerked a thumb toward Pri-Fly’s aft windows. “We’re tryin’ to get
these people down before it turns to snow.”
It was raining now, a cold, thin half-water/half-sleet that lashed
across Pri-Fly’s slanted windows. It was also pitch black save for the
rain-smeared gleam of flight-deck acquisition lights and the glow from
the big Fresnel lens apparatus aft and to port, where the Landing
Signals officer and his crew were already talking the next aviator down.
The scene was repeated in black and white on the big PLAT monitor
suspended from Pri-Fly’s overhead. Glancing up at the screen, Tombstone
could see several members of the deck crew, bulky in their cold weather
gear, trotting out of the camera’s range.
“Two-oh-seven,” the LSO’s voice crackled from an overhead speaker.
“Call the ball.”
There was a moment of static, then a new voice sounded from the speaker.
“Clara.” That one code word meant simply that the approaching aviator
could not yet see the ball … or the storm-masked Jefferson.
In normal peacetime operations, the flight deck was shut down when Case
Three conditions dropped below a half-mile visibility–fifteen seconds’
flight time for an approaching aircraft.
“Home Plate, Two-oh-seven,” the voice added a moment later. “Wait one.
Okay, got you! Two-oh-seven, Tomcat ball. Three point three.”
The terse information confirmed for the men adjusting the tension of the
five parallel arrestor wires stretching across the after part of the
flight deck that it was an F-14D Tomcat coming in for a trap, that the
aircraft had 3,300 pounds of fuel left aboard, and that the pilot could
now see the yellow beacon, the “meatball,” of the carrier’s landing