“Yes General,” Bondarev said. “I’ll lead the air attack myself.”
Potemkin appeared to think carefully, “Ordinarily I would say your place is here, overseeing our operations over Alaska. But within these walls Comrade Major-General, a newsworthy victory wouldn’t hurt you right now. No one is blaming you directly for the losses these US aircraft have inflicted behind our line of control, but…”
“But they are…” Bondarev finished for him.
Potemkin gave him a wry smile. “We move on Nome in three days. These pinprick attacks have not impacted the schedule for LOSOS, but they must be stopped.”
“I’ll see to it,” Bondarev assured him. He turned to his second in command, Akinfeev. “You know what to do, get the wheels in motion.” He turned back to Potemkin. “And if the Americans dare come north against us, I will hold them back.”
“Good, good. Tell me Major-General, is there anything you need?” Potemkin asked, expansively. “I can’t magically make a replacement squadron of Hunter pilots available, but how about fuel, weapons, food?”
“Yes Comrade General. I do have one request,” Bondarev said. "A squadron of F-47 Fantoms.”
Potemkin glowered at him, “Very droll, Major-General.” He nodded towards the others, “Comrades would you leave us for a moment?”
Butyrskaya smirked as she left the room, Akinfeev looked mildly panicked and Arsharvin shot him a look of sympathy, none of which reactions were particularly helpful. “Sit, sit,” Potemkin said, indicating the chair opposite him and pulling his coffee cup closer. He watched as Bondarev seated himself, and waited a beat longer, looking into his eyes. “I served under your Grandfather. You don’t look much like him.”
“I’m told I get my looks from my mother comrade General,” Bondarev replied, carefully.
Potemkin raised his eyebrows, “Really. And how about your loyalties Bondarev? From whom do you take those?”
“My… what?” Bondarev replied. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question General.”
Potemkin looked out a window, as though regarding the dark sky, “I’ve followed your career from afar. Progress Party darling. Lukin’s protégé. But the Party is not what it once was, and Lukin is… no more.” He waved his hand at the window, “A storm is gathering. When it breaks, where will your loyalties lie?”
Bondarev frowned, “My loyalties are with our homeland, with the Rodina, comrade General. Is that in question?”
“Ah. But the Rodina is many things, is it not?” Potemkin said enigmatically, turning in his chair to drill Bondarev with his gaze again. “Not just one thing. It is the earth beneath us, the sky above, the songs we sing and food we eat. But what Russia really is, who we are, depends on who leads it. Would you agree?”
If there had been witnesses to this conversation, Bondarev would be suspicious he was being led into a trap, to committing an error of speech that could be used against him. But only himself and Potemkin were present. This was something else and he decided neutrality was his best play until he could work out what.
“My grandfather frequently used a quote to sum up how he felt about serving in the VVS, General,” Bondarev said. “I have lived my life by those words. With your permission?”
Potemkin raised an eyebrow, “By all means.”
“He used to say ‘Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, and what you will be’.”
Potemkin smiled, “Yes, I think I remember him saying that. A quote from Lenin, was it not?”
“No comrade General, it was Douglas MacArthur I believe. If there was nothing else, I must attend to the matter of Little Diomede.”
“Something big is going down,” Perri said. “Hook up the radio will you?” He had taken the scope off his rifle and was peering through a shrapnel hole in the water tank, which was easier than looking through one lens of the binoculars. He and Dave had made themselves a pretty cool nest, spreading out their sleeping bags on the bottom of the tank so they could sit in relative comfort. They’d been through the cantonment and salvaged a couple of wooden boxes that they could fit through the manhole, along with bottled water, canned fruit and vegetables and unspoiled dry food like breakfast cereals they’d recovered from the larder of a destroyed mess hall. They had a big juice bottle for pissing in, so the only time they had to leave the tank was if they needed to crap, and they had even found a few rolls of dry toilet paper for that.
What Perri was seeing was a whole bunch of activity on the airfield. He had been counting aircraft, but it was hard, because they were not only parked out beside the airfield or on the apron, but also under camouflaged canvas shelters behind walls made of barrels and sandbags. He figured there were at least fifty jets and maybe six propeller driven transports, plus three helicopters, distributed around the airfield. The jets had been taking off and landing in pairs, about every thirty minutes to an hour, with the largest a single flight of three which had departed about a half hour earlier. That had also been a little strange, because they had seen a large airliner style aircraft circling overhead, and then the three jets had taken off, fallen into formation with it, and then all of them had headed north.
But now he saw a large number of trucks and aircrew running around, and about ten jets were taxiing out, forming a line on the single runway, clearly getting ready for take-off. He could see the engines had been started on another four or five, and even more were being pulled out of their hangars by towing trucks.
Even from inside the tank, two miles away from the airfield, the building roar of jet engines was palpable.
“Here you go,” Dave said, handing him up the radio handset. “Have you seen anyone we know out there?” They hadn’t seen the hostages from Gambell since they had been taken into the town, and both boys were wondering how they were doing. Their families were over there. And it was hard to shake the image of those mass graves, the small shoes and gloves lying half buried in the dirt.
“No, nothing,” Perri said, then squeezed the button on the handset. “Hey what was that stupid codename Sarge asked us to use instead of our names?”
“White Bear?”
“Yeah, thanks.” Perri clicked the button on the radio handset. “Sarge, are you there, this is White Bear, come in?” He had to repeat the call a couple of times, but that was normal. Sarge always answered eventually.
“Sarge here White Bear, how are you doing?”
“Doing just fine thanks Sarge,” Perri said. He put his eye to the hole in the tank again. “Sarge, I count about fifty or sixty different aircraft on the base here. I can give you a run-down later, but I need to tell you, something big is happening.”
“Tell me exactly what you see, son,” the man said calmly.
“I see about twenty aircraft getting ready to take off, maybe more,” Perri said. “I think they’re mostly combat drones, Hunters, and Sukhoi-57s.”
“When you say, ‘getting ready’, exactly what do you mean?”
As Sarge spoke, the first of the jets roared down the runway and lifted into the air. Perri held his hands up to his ears, then lowered the mike to his mouth again, “Did you hear that? I mean they are all taking off, that was the first one!”