… and as they reached the stage and stepped up to the podium, Daren Mace could not believe who he saw: along with General Suleyman Isiklar, the base commander of Batman, and General Petr Iosifovich Panchenko, the Ukrainian Air Force chief of staff who had arrived that morning, was Major General Bruce Eyers, U.S. Army, and Major General Tyler Layton, U.S. Air Force — the very same officers in charge of Desert Fire, the abortive nuclear attack against Iraq four years earlier. He suddenly felt a sinking in his stomach.
“Seats,” Isiklar’s aide ordered. Everyone took seats — everyone except Daren Mace. Eyers and Layton noticed the one man still standing, but refused to acknowledge him other than giving him a stern look and an unspoken order to sit down.
Isiklar made a short bow to the portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Republic of Turkey — the portraits and little shrines to Ataturk were everywhere in Turkey, and they were treated as politely as if the man were in attendance — then said to the audience without preamble, “Death to the enemies of the Turkish Republic and to evil aggressors everywhere. We begin our campaign to drive away the Russians tonight, with the help of God, the blessings of Kemal Ataturk, and spearheaded by the brave Ukrainians and the Americans. May I please introduce Major General Bruce Eyers, the deputy commander of NATO Forces Southeast.” Amidst the growls, cheers, and cries from the Ukrainian crewmembers, Isiklar turned the stage over to Bruce Eyers.
Eyers gave Ataturk’s portrait a perfunctory nod, stepped up to the podium, and said, “I am here to inform you that, as of oh-one-hundred hours Eastern European time, in accordance with Article 12 of the North Atlantic Treaty and by unanimous vote of all member nations, the Republic of Ukrayina and the Republic of Lithuania have been formally accepted for full membership in the North Atlantic Alliance. Therefore, in accordance with Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, all member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance have been put on full military alert, including the forces of the United States of America. Although the Congress of the United States has not made a declaration of war, the President of the United States has ordered two hundred thousand troops deployed immediately in support of NATO operations. The government of Turkey has authorized the deployment of one hundred thousand troops on its soil. An attack upon one member nation shall be considered an attack upon us all.”
The Ukrainians went crazy with joy at the news, yelling and cheering like madmen. Colonel Tychina let it go for a few moments, then raised a hand for silence.
“I would like to announce that effective immediately General Petr Panchenko, Chief of Staff of the Air Force of the Republic of Ukrayina, is hereby designated commander of joint NATO air forces, eastern region, and will be the overall air forces commander of NATO units in Turkey, the Ukraine, and Lithuania. He will report directly to myself as NATO task force commander for this emergency. General Panchenko, the command is yours.” Again, the room erupted with sheer bedlam as the crazily happy Ukrainian officers welcomed their leader to the podium.
Panchenko was not proficient in English, so he had Pavlo Tychina translate for him: “The General says that his message is simple and direct. Fellow warriors, today we begin the liberation of Ukrayina.” He waited until the cheering and applause died down, then: “However, we have no illusions of grandeur here. Our force is small, and we are committed to the defense of our host country and fellow NATO member, Turkey, as well as the defense of our homeland. We cannot hope to win this war ourselves. Rather, we must hold out until our NATO brothers can arrive in force. But we will not be idle. As we discovered last night, although we cannot kill the Russian bear, we can sting the hell out of him.
“The suppression of enemy air defenses will be our primary mission,” Tychina continued, translating for Panchenko. “The more effectively and the deeper inside Ukrayina we can destroy Russian air defense weapons and radar sites, on land, sea, and in the air, the more effective NATO air strikes will be. Our mission is to control the skies over the Black Sea and render all Russian-held air and naval bases along the Black Sea combat-ineffective, which should allow NATO forces free access to the Black Sea to open a second front of attack.
“I will conduct a briefing for all flight commanders immediately following this briefing, in which I will outline my objectives and my outline for the first month. The first launch will be at nineteen hundred hours tonight. Our objective will be the Russian naval base at Novorossiysk and the air bases at Rostov-na-Donu and Krasnodar. If we can destroy these two air bases and the naval base, we can relieve Ukrainian Army units in the Don region from Russian air attacks and cut off Russian naval and air units in the Crimea from routine resupply. This concludes my briefing. May God bless and keep us all.”
No sooner had the briefing concluded than Eyers motioned for the senior American officers to follow him into an adjacent room. The door was closed and locked — and Eyers greeted Daren Mace with a large grin. “Why, hello, traitor — I see you remember me.”
“Who are you calling a traitor, Eyers?” Mace hissed. “Who let this psycho in here?”
“I hoped you were dead, Mace,” Eyers said evenly.
“I hoped you were alive so I could kill you myself, you wacko.”
“All right, both of you, shut up,” General Layton interrupted. “General Eyers, can we get on with this briefing?”
“What in the hell is going on here, sir?” Colonel Lafferty asked. “Daren, you know General Eyers?”
“Only by voice — and by smell.”
“You shut your mouth, yellow-belly. Who in hell made you a colonel, anyway? Certainly nobody in my country’s air force.”
“It appears that everyone in this room has had a promotion in the past four years except you, Eyers.”
“I said button it, Colonel,” Layton interjected. “General, like it or not, we’re all going to be working very closely together in the next few hours, so—”
“We ain’t gonna be working together — I’ll be giving the orders, and this time you better be carrying them out, sonny boy,” Eyers interrupted loudly. He stepped closer to Mace, got right in his face, daring him to shrink from him. Mace did not — which only angered Eyers even more. “If I had my way, chicken-shit, I’d put you in leg irons in Leavenworth or at a nice remote radar site in Thule, Greenland.”
“He’s not leaving, General,” Layton said, “and you know it.”
“I know, I know,” Eyers snapped. “It’s a major fuck-up for the Chairman to choose the bastard that chickened out, refused to obey orders, nearly got himself shot down, and nearly killed his pilot during Desert Storm.”
All eyes turned in stunned disbelief at Daren Mace. He said, “They don’t know it, Eyers, because it’s not true. Maybe they don’t know that you were the one who ordered me to launch a nuclear missile on Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War.”
“I should bust you for mentioning that, Mace,” Eyers said. “That’s classified information.” All eyes swung back in even more stunned disbelief at Eyers — but this time, instead of a horribly angry face, they found a pleased, satisfied smile. Eyers said, “Yeah, Colonel, I did order you to launch an attack. It was a lawful order from the President of the United States. I was right to issue that order and you were wrong to refuse.”
“I refused because it was rescinded.”
“It wasn’t rescinded. You guessed it had been, like some goddamned psychic or something. Well, guess what, hotshot? The President has just ordered you to do it again. You’re going to lead another nuclear missile attack against the Russian western air forces military district headquarters at Domodedovo.”