“Yes, you can,” he said firmly.
“How do you know that?”
“Because you’re here, and you’re wearing the uniform, and you’re under this bomber preflighting these weapons,” Mace said. “Everyone here on this base can do it. If they can’t do it, they end up basket cases like Lynn Ogden or sniveling cowards like Ted Little — or dead like Paula Norton and Curt Aldridge. You’re here because you and Mark Fogelman had the skill and the drive to make it. I hate to talk like this about the dead, Rebecca, but you’re here and they’re not because you’re better than they were, pure and simple. If Mark didn’t get his wake-up call when you got nailed by those F-16s, if he didn’t pick up his books and get his briefings and screw his head on straight while he was in the hospital back in Plattsburgh, you’d be dead or injured or grounded and someone else would be flying this mission. Crewdogs don’t make it because they don’t have the mental capacity, the skill, or the courage to kill.”
She didn’t know what to say, but took his hand and squeezed it to show her thanks. “Plus,” Mace added, “you can do it because you got me.”
His joke finally broke the tension, the unmovable fear burning in her head. She rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, please—give me a break.”
“This is my baby, Rebecca. This beast and I are one. If it can be done, we will do it.”
When they exited the bomb bay and finished their preflight inspections, they noticed Colonel Pavlo Tychina standing in the partially open doorway; a security guard was blocking his path. Both Furness and Mace stepped out of the hangar to greet him.
“I shake the hands of all brave crews before an attack,” Tychina said. He motioned to the Vampire behind Mace and Furness. Unlike the Charlie-Flight aircraft, the four Bravo-Flight bombers carried external fuel tanks on the number-two and seven nonswiveling pylons, as well as AGM-88 HARMs on stations three, four, five, and six, and AIM-9P Sidewinder missiles on stations three and six — and, of course, the first two Vampires carried SRAMs in the bomb bay. “Extra fuel tanks on an eight-hundred-mile round-trip mission, Major Furness? I not know this.”
Furness was a bit confused by his question. “We’ve got the legs to go all the way, sir,” she replied, “but a little extra gas never hurt.”
“Ah. Yes, of course.”
But Pavlo Tychina still seemed confused. “It’s more like two thousand miles on the sortie, sir, not eight hundred,” Mace added. “We’ll need the extra gas in case we need to use ’burners.”
“Two thousand miles, Colonel?” Tychina asked. “I not understand.”
Furness and Mace finally got the message: “Sir, the mission against the bunker complex? Domodedovo? Near Moscow?”
“I know Domodedovo,” Tychina said, his puzzlement slowly turning into anger, “but I not know about mission. You have a mission to attack Domodedovo?”
“Oh my God,” Mace muttered, “you don’t know about the air-strike, Colonel Tychina? Rebecca, we should fill him in right away.”
“No shit.” Furness waved to the shelter guard, telling him that Tychina was authorized to accompany her, and after he was searched and left his helmet bag and equipment with the guard, she took Tychina over to the bomb bay. Tychina’s eyes grew wide as he peered at the missiles nestled in the bomb bay.
“These are bombs?” he asked. “Very strange bombs. Antirunway weapons, perhaps?”
Furness hesitated for a moment, then led Tychina and Mace back out of the hangar and away from the guard post, out of earshot of everyone. “No, sir, they’re nuclear cruise missiles,” she told him. “We have a new additional mission, Colonel — after leading your strikers against your three targets, Bravo Flight is going to launch a nuclear attack against Domodedovo Air Base, near Moscow. Russian president Velichko is supposed to be holed up in the underground bunker there. Those missiles will destroy the bunker and Velichko.”
Tychina’s eyes grew wide behind his sterile gauze face mask. “No! Is it true what you say?”
“It’s true, sir,” Furness said. “I … I assumed the Ukrainians knew about this. I think General Panchenko should be informed of this right away.”
“I don’t think anyone else in NATO knows about it except General Eyers,” Mace said. “He’s the one who planned it.”
“Eyers?” Tychina retorted. “Bruce Eyers is big bullshit. I no like him. Why your government not tell Ukrayina about this secret mission?”
“I don’t know,” Furness replied. “Maybe because Ukrayina doesn’t have the capability of delivering this kind of weapon.”
“What you mean?” Tychina asked. “My men, we can do anything, fly anywhere. You only fly four Vampire planes into Russia? You have no escorts, fighter escorts? We escort.”
“No air patrols,” Mace said. “We go in with antiradar weapons and our Sidewinders only. No fighters can keep up with us.”
“What you saying? I can keep up with you, Colonel Daren. My MiG-23s, they can escort you into Russia.”
“Your fighters don’t have the legs — er, they don’t have the fuel reserves, sir,” Furness said. “We researched it. It’s impossible.”
“And you can’t fly terrain-following altitudes,” Mace added. “We’ll be down at three hundred feet or below the entire flight.”
“Anything you can do, I can do,” Tychina said. “You fly low, I fly low. You fly to Moscow, I fly to Moscow. I escort you.”
“Sir, there’s only six hours to launch,” Furness said. “You can’t reconfigure your fighters in time.”
“You say nee, nee, I say tuk,” Tychina said. “I do it. You come off-target at Rostov-na-Donu, I find you, I rendezvous.”
Furness and Mace looked at each other. Furness said, “If he can do it, Daren …”
“I can get him a chart and a threat map during the weather and final mission briefings,” Mace said. “If his MiGs have IRSTS, they can track us without us using lights or radios.”
“I go now. I report secret mission to General Panchenko, and I fix planes. I see you.” The young colonel picked up his flight gear and trotted away, flagging down a maintenance truck and hopping a ride back to headquarters.
“Well, well,” Daren Mace said to Furness as they watched Tychina race off. “Maybe the Iron Maiden isn’t quite as hard as I thought. In fact, that was a very unauthorized thing to do.”
“Hey, we’ve been given a mission to do and I’m going to do it.” Furness shrugged. “Now, I don’t know why the Ukrainians weren’t told about our mission, but if Colonel Tychina can get us some fighter escorts, at least part of the way into Russia, I’ll take it. I’m following orders, but I’m also looking out for my butt. And yours.”
“In that case let’s finish up this preflight and catch up with Pavlo,” Mace said. “I have a few ideas that might turn this whole stinking mission around for us.”
FORTY-ONE
The launch began at nine P.M.
The Charlie Flight RF-111Gs launched first — they had more than enough gas for this mission — followed by the Bravo Flight Vampires, then the Sukhoi-17s and the Turkish F-16s. The F-16s would provide air coverage over the Black Sea, but would not cross into Russia. Finally launched were Mikoyan-Gurevich-23s, then MiG-27s, and lastly ten very strange-looking MiG-23s and Su-17s. Eight MiGs and two Su-17s were festooned with fuel tanks: one nine-hundred-pound standard centerline tank; one tank on each swiveling wing section, which would prevent the wings from being swept back past takeoff setting until the tanks were jettisoned; and one tank on each fixed-wing section, for an incredible total of five external fuel tanks — the external fuel load was equal to the plane’s total internal fuel load, effectively doubling the fighter’s range. Instead of six air-to-air missiles, the MiGs carried only three: one AA-7 radar-guided missile on the left-engine intake pylon and two AA-8 heat-seeking missiles on a double launcher on the right. The Sukhoi-17s were configured similarly, but with special stores on the two fuselage pylons instead of missiles.