Borodin pressed a button on his desk and an armed man entered the office. “It is a shame you are not competent enough to do your job. I consider you have harmed our nation and its people.” He turned to the man with the rifle. “Arrest this man and place him under heavy guard. Get him out of my sight!” he demanded.
Rosenco laughed. “Getting rid of me won’t do you any good. You need me to keep this system going. You will lead us to ruin!” he shouted as the guard poked the gun in his ribs and shoved him out the door.
Borodin watched them leave. Rosenco was only one man. He would find someone who could get the job done.
The flight of ten B-1 bombers skirted through the hills and valleys in Eastern Slovakia. The course had been planned out and set into the navigation systems, but Captain Jack Pruitt didn’t like being this close to the ground. This was all mountainous terrain and although the plane’s equipment was supposed to easily handle this, it almost always scared the crews to death. The target was the rail lines in a small town of Bzenica almost in the center of Slovakia. To Pruitt, the whole mission was a screwed up mess. There was no fighter cover, no real intelligence on the target and thrown together in the last minute to satisfy some idea that hitting a rail line in a far off town would end the war. The plane took a sickening lurch upward to skim over one of the myriad of mountains ahead. What came next was equally bad, the downward weightless phase as the aircraft dropped back down on the other side. He heard someone in the crew throw up violently behind him.
“Damn!” cried his co-pilot, Jim Springer beside him. “I told that son of a bitch not to eat a big lunch. You have to clean up any mess you make!” he announced.
Behind the two men, the bombardier-navigator lifted his head out of a bag. He looked dreadful as he grabbed a paper towel and wiped his face. “Screw you Springer,” he said with a shaky voice. Glancing at his gages he called out, “Twenty miles to target. We’ll be turning left soon.”
Within a few seconds the aircraft banked to the left sharply following a valley between the mountain peaks. Pruitt looked out of the cockpit to see that the other bombers had also made the turn. At least being the lead aircraft meant he didn’t have to worry about hitting one of the others.
“We follow the river below all the way in. You should be able to see the train tracks below us,” said the navigator.
“Why don’t we just drop the load here and be done with it,” said Springer.
“Patience, my boy. We mustn’t doubt the wisdom of our superiors,” said Pruitt sarcastically.
Now the plane’s movements were left and right as it glided through the valley between the mountain peaks. True to his word, Pruitt could see both the river and the train tracks running beside it. They passed several small villages along the way. There was also what looked like a major highway running along the same path. Maybe they could take out both at the same time, Pruitt thought.
Up ahead of the aircraft, Pruitt saw a sharp bend in the river. There was a small farming town several hundred yards from the tracks. As they got closer, he saw a train traveling at speed along the track coming towards them.
“Target in sight. Ten seconds to drop,” said the navigator.
Inside the bomb bay, the weapons were already targeted. Suddenly the doors opened and the bombs were ejected into the air under the aircraft. Each weapon located its assigned target and maneuvered to hit it.
On the ground, several farmers heard a rumbling from the large bomber’s engines as they came closer. They couldn’t see them yet, but knew something was coming. Suddenly one of the men shouted and pointed down the valley. They watched as the large planes zoomed forward along the valley, seemingly following the river. Since they were not coming directly toward them, the farmers remained in place, simply watching things unfold before them. There was another shout as one of the men noticed something falling from the planes. Several of the men later related that it seemed that each of the small dots they saw seemed to go in different directions. They watched as an entire stretch of earth along the river seemed to erupt before them, throwing the men off their feet as a deafening roar pierced the air. It was followed by the sound of screeching metal and a loud metallic crash.
Getting up from the ground, the men made their way to trucks and tractors so they could see what happened. Minutes later the road they were on abruptly ended. Looking out over what used to be a peaceful green valley, there was no longer any road or train for over a mile. At the head of the destruction, smoke rose from a train that had run off the tracks and piled up along the side of the destruction left by the bombers. The train had been traveling at high speed. It was evidenced by the way the cars had accordioned up into a huge pile of rubble. Most intriguing was the fact that piled high along the rubble were what looked like wooden tanks, now crushed, splintered and burning. It appeared only a few of the tanker cars in the train had fuel. That was now burning as well. The rest of the cars looked empty. The farmers shrugged their shoulders and made their way toward the train to see if there were any survivors.
After dropping their bombs, the B-1s pulled upwards and reversed course to begin heading home. As his plane turned, Pruitt looked back to see the destruction they had caused. He too noticed the train and now burning tanks. What the hell, he thought.
“They are fake!” shouted a technician watching the results of the bombing run. The watch supervisor went over to look at the display. “See the way the tanks have broken up? These over here are burning. There’s one on its top. The bottom is hollow and unpainted,” the technician pointed out.
“Oh hell,” expounded the watch supervisor as he grabbed a phone and dialed a number. After two rings there was an answer. “Sir, those tank trains we were watching are fake. They’re carrying wooden dummies,” he said.
“I’ll be right in,” said the man on the other end of the line.
Two minutes later Grant Thompson walked into the watch center and stared down at the laser display. It only took a moment for him to see what had happened. “What would make them put fakes on this train?” he asked out loud.
“It only makes sense it’s a decoy for something,” said the supervisor.
Thompson’s eyes widened. “What other trains are on the tracks right now?” he asked.
“There’s a coal train headed up towards Trencin, an agriculture train headed east from Lucenec, a couple of slow freight trains headed north toward Lubotin. Another slow train headed toward Lipany. This isn’t counting the other faster trains we are watching coming in from Lviv,” the supervisor said.
“You’re sure the ones going up north are freight?”
“Yes. The shape of the cars themselves are telling us along with their slow movement. No tanks on those trains,” he said.
“How fast are they going?” asked Thompson.
“Only about forty five miles an hour,” the supervisor said. He made adjustments to the screen and the imaged changed to a slow moving train heading along a track deep in a mountain valley. The tops of each car had a roof with a walking platform in the center. There was actually a person walking along that platform going between the cars. The men watched the train for a moment.