of flight.
Rising from his hiding place, Tombstone jogged back toward the
helicopter. As he’d feared, the Sea Stallion had been the target of that
strafing run. It rested at a sharp angle now, with flames and black
smoke licking from its port-side fuel tank sponson. If there’d been any
doubt at all that those Migs were hostiles, it was gone now.
There was still a lot of confusion on the palace grounds, with civilians
and reporters milling about with aimless and seemingly random
blunderings, and Russian soldiers standing in almost comic attitudes of
readiness, obviously with no idea what was happening or what they were
supposed to do. First the attack on Boychenko, and now this. The entire
area was a scene of utter confusion.
Pushing through the crowds, Tombstone made his way toward the back of
the White Palace. He could see Boychenko standing there at the top of
the broad stone steps, surrounded by aides and guards, hands at his
sides, looking up with an almost boyish expression of slack-jawed wonder
as six Migs roared overhead. Tombstone walked closer and several of the
guards swung their weapons to aim at him.
Boychenko gestured sharply and snapped something in Russian. The guns
were lowered.
“General!” Tombstone called. “Were those planes yours?”
The general looked at him and blinked. “Nyet. .. no,” he said. “Not
mine. Is navy.”
“You didn’t order that overflight by those Migs?”
“No. Did not. .. order.” His face creased with puzzlement. “They
attack!”
“General, hostile aircraft have just attacked one of the bridges over
the Bosporus and blown it up. Did you order that attack?”
Boychenko blinked helplessly at him a moment, and Tombstone wondered how
much English the man could really understand. Then the general shook his
head, a jerky side-to-side motion. Probably, Tombstone thought, he
understood English better than he could speak it. “Did not order that!
No!”
Boychenko gestured swiftly to Natalie Kardesh and spoke rapidly to her
in Russian. She turned to Tombstone. “The general wants me to ask you.
.. did you just say that his aircraft attacked the bridges over the
Bosporus?”
“Tell him yes. We don’t know yet if the aircraft were Russian or
Ukrainian.” He jerked a thumb skyward. “That overflight, though, was by
aircraft with red stars. Russians. The general says they were navy?”
“Mig-29s with fleet,” Boychenko said, nodding. He didn’t look happy.
“Admiral Dmitriev’s command.”
“Ask him,” he told Natalie, “if it’s possible that the Russian navy
could have been behind that attempt on his life? Or Dmitriev?”
“Is possible,” Boychenko said slowly, following the conversation.
One of Boychenko’s aides, a major named Fedorev, nodded agreement. “I’m
afraid that with Admiral Dmitriev, almost anything is possible. He is.
.. ambitious.”
Tombstone was beginning to fit the larger parts of the puzzle together,
but he was still missing a lot of the pieces. This had the earmarks of
an attempted coup. If this Admiral Dmitriev was trying to take over the
Crimean Military District, it might make sense to combine an
assassination attempt with an attack.
But why the Bosporus bridge? That made no sense at all. .. unless they
wanted the Jefferson and her consorts trapped in the Black Sea, and
somehow that made even less sense than the attack itself.
He cocked his head. “Tell me. Is this Admiral Dmitriev. .. is his full
name Nikolai Sergeivich?”
Fedorev nodded. “Yes, Captain. How did you know?”
“I flew with a Nikolai Sergeivich once. In joint operations in the
Indian Ocean. I was wondering if it was the same man.” The Nikolai
Dmitriev he’d known had been a hard, resourceful, and skillful
tactician. If he were now the enemy. .. Tombstone didn’t like that
thought at all.
“The helicopter’s totaled,” Tombstone said. “We’re not getting back to
the carrier that way.”
Fedorev wrinkled his brow. “”Totaled?'”
“Wrecked. Finished. We have several hundred UN and American military
personnel here, plus a bunch of civilian reporters from several
countries. What are we going to do about them?”
Natalie consulted briefly with Boychenko, then nodded at Tombstone.
“The general says that when they know just what Dmitriev is up to, we
will be informed. Until then, at least, and obviously, we are all the