or as a free homeland.
Those demands, Tombstone reflected, would muddy the waters a bit but had
no chance at all of being realized. Neither the Russians nor the
Ukrainians were willing to relinquish the embattled little triangle of
land, and for damned sure they weren’t going to turn it over to the
Tatars.
Looking up, Tombstone watched as soldiers picked up one of the bodies of
the would-be assassins. “You think they tried to kill the general to get
their homeland back?”
Abdulhalik tried to shrug and winced with the pain. “Ah! Well, it makes
sense, yes? There are several radical Tatar independence groups. Any
could have done this to further their cause.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean they did it.” He shook his head. “What
would they achieve by killing Boychenko? Besides getting themselves
stepped on, I mean?”
Abdulhalik didn’t answer. He was unconscious. Tombstone finished his
bandaging job and signaled for a stretcher team as they approached the
stage. Joyce joined him a moment later.
“You look thoughtful,” she said.
“Hmm. Abdulhalik thinks this was the work of a Tatar nationalist
movement.”
“Terrorists?”
“Yeah. But it just doesn’t make sense.”
“Terrorism doesn’t make much sense.”
“No, I mean, this is really far-fetched. What could they hope to achieve
with this? If I were a terrorist group who wanted the Crimea back, but
with no chance in hell of seeing my aims realized. ..”
His voice trailed off as he followed the chain of logic.
“Come on,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“The helicopter. That’s probably where they’re taking Boychenko, and I
want to get there before they take off.”
“Why? Are you hitching a ride back to the Jeff?”
It was a tempting thought, though Tombstone and the other Navy personnel
ashore, except for Tarrant’s staff, of course, were all supposed to
remain in Yalta while the UN people took charge. But Tombstone had other
ideas.
“No. I want to get on the radio. I think we may have problems.”
She had to hurry to keep up with his long pace as he strode toward the
east side of the palace. “What kind of problems?”
“I think Boychenko was only one of several targets,” he told her. “And
I’m afraid the Jeff might be next on their list!”
CHAPTER 17
Thursday, 5 November 0954 hours (Zulu +3)
Black Leader Over the Black Sea Major Yevgenni Sergeivich Ivanov divided
his attention between the radar display and the view out the cockpit.
Flying a high-performance attack aircraft at extreme low altitude was
always a challenge; he was skimming the waves of the Black Sea at an
altitude of less than fifty meters, where the slightest hesitation, the
least miscalculation would slam him and his aircraft into the sea at
Mach 1.1.
He was flying a Mig-27M attack aircraft, hurtling along at just above
the speed of sound, the variable-geometry wings swept back along the
aircraft’s fuselage like the folded wings of a stooping hawk.
Ivanov was an experienced pilot, as experienced as any in Soviet Frontal
Aviation. At thirty-eight, he was old for a combat aviator, but he’d
been flying a fighter of one type or another for over fifteen years. His
first combat missions had been over Afghanistan. Later, he’d volunteered
for a special Frontal Aviation program that transferred him temporarily
to navy command, and he’d spent five years learning how to land on the
deck of the new Soviet nuclear aircraft carrier Kreml, then teaching
other, younger aviators how to do the same.
With that experience, he was part of a very special fraternity, one of
the smallest and most demanding in the world, the brotherhood of pilots
trained to operate off the deck of an aircraft carrier. He’d flown off
the Kreml in the Indian Ocean, during the India-Pakistan crisis, and
again in the great naval battle off the Norwegian coast, the engagement
during which the carriers Kreml and Soyuz had both gone to the bottom.
With his ship shot out from beneath him while he was in the air, Ivanov
almost hadn’t made it home. Short on fuel, he’d nursed his damaged
aircraft back across Norwegian and Finnish territory to land at a small
airstrip outside of Nikel.