“What? What did you say?” This was all too much. His eyes were swollen, and he felt as if his head were spinning. Mikki … Panchenko … what was he saying?
“A Ukrainian government-in-exile has been formed in Istanbul,” Panchenko said. “The Turks have accepted our pleas for help, and the West is promising assistance. All Ukrainian aircraft that have survived the Russian air raids are deploying to a Turkish training air base near the city of Kayseri. I am organizing the Free Ukrainian Air Force there, and you are coming with me … Colonel.”
Tychina looked at Panchenko, and although he could see only the young pilot’s eyes, he knew that Tychina wore a completely stunned expression. “It turns out that not only are you the senior surviving MiG-23 pilot, Pavlo, but you are one of the most experienced Ukrainian pilots alive. I need you to command the provisional fighter wing, and I can’t very well have a captain do it. The promotion is effective immediately. As soon as possible, we will launch whatever aircraft can make the trip and fly to Turkey. Turkish fighter planes are waiting to escort us.”
Pavlo tried to clear his head, concentrate on what Panchenko was saying. He tried to look out the window to see Mikki, but Panchenko’s size blocked his view. He had to let her go … they would try to give her dignity … he refocused, as difficult as it was, as tumultuous as the wave of emotions sweeping over him felt … and forced himself to listen to what Panchenko was saying.
But it wasn’t easy. You just have to get through it, Pavlo. Just as if you were in a plane during an emergency situation. Stay calm, stay under control. Do your job. He returned his attention to Panchenko, who was still talking.…
“I never finished telling you, Pavlo,” Panchenko said solemnly. “We knew this disaster would happen. We, the general staff and the government, knew that the Russians were going to retake Ukrayina. We planned for it. For the past two months we have been shipping weapons and equipment overseas, to Turkey.”
“You have?” Tychina asked, stunned by this revelation. “But why Turkey? And how did you know?”
“We didn’t know, of course, and we hoped we were wrong,” Panchenko explained. “But a war with Russia was inevitable. Conflict over the Dniester was only the spark. Access to the Black Sea ports, removal of nuclear weapons, land and property disputes, free trade, oil, agriculture — the Russians were losing everything of value. Ukrayina wanted to join the West, become a member of the European Community and NATO. Russia couldn’t allow that.
“So the government struck a deal with NATO several months ago to rathole one-third of the weapon stockpiles in Turkey. We’ve been shipping missiles, bombs, spare parts, vehicles, even tech orders and charts to bases in Turkey, right under the noses of the damned Russian naval patrols in the Black Sea. Thousands of tons of equipment and weapons, at least a trainload every week. To pay for the ‘storage,’ the government has been paying cash and signing basing agreements with NATO for access to Ukrayinan waters and ports after the conflict is over. Now we need someone to start setting up our operating base in Turkey. I want you to do it.”
Panchenko kept him in the room until they heard his staff car start up and drive away. What he saw in the young pilot’s eyes encouraged him. When he first entered the room and saw Tychina with the body of his fiancée, his eyes looked like a lost child’s eyes, full of fear and helplessness. When they took the body, he saw utter despair. Now he was relieved to see fire — and the thirst for revenge — in those eyes. It would take a strong hand to turn that drive for revenge into a more positive direction, to turn the blood lust into a calculating, meticulous planner and leader, but he was certain it could be done. The Phoenix would fly again, and this time he would lead a nation’s entire tiny air armada into battle.
Pavlo let Panchenko’s words sink in. So much was happening so fast… but that was the way it always happened in war. Decisions had to be quick and good. Otherwise you were dead. Pavlo swallowed hard, trying not to think about Mikki but about the matter at hand. He had to be a soldier first. His mouth felt unusually dry and his stomach queasy. And yet he was alive, and he was whole.
And he was going after the Russian bastards.
It was they who killed Mikki. It was they who had robbed him of the one love in his life. It was they who devastated his homeland. It was they who killed God knows how many of his countrymen.
He swallowed hard, and with determination he looked into his superior’s eyes: “I will do it. And I will get them.”
“I know you will. I’m counting on it.”
TWENTY-SIX
“I got it straight from the horse’s mouth,” the President said in his deep southern accent as he sat down with his National Security Council staff in the White House Cabinet Room. “President Velichko told me — no, promised me, man to man, that the nuclear attack on the Ukraine was a mistake that will not be repeated, and that he intends to back off. So somebody explain to me why everyone in Europe’s getting all hot under the damned collar?”
The question was not aimed at anyone in particular — a tactic common to the President, designed to make everyone around him uncomfortable and on the defensive — so the men sitting around the table with the President shifted uncomfortably, silently deferring to Dr. Donald Scheer, the forty-two-year-old former professor of economics from MIT who had been chosen as the President’s Secretary of Defense. As unlikely as the choice of Scheer was for Secretary of Defense, this young, highly intelligent Bean-Counter Emeritus, as the press had dubbed him, was the perfect counterpoint to the President’s big, southern, ham-handed approach to dealing with the bureaucracy. The President was the ax, Scheer the scalpel, when it came to dealing with waste, with the budget, with the Washington establishment. “Perhaps you should tell us more about your conversation with the Russian president, Mr. President,” Scheer said.
“I told you the long and short of it,” the President said irritably. “Velichko told me that they were observing the Ukrainian Air Force preparing for a tactical air strike, following the attack on their reconnaissance planes.” The President paused as he noticed one of his advisers shaking his head. “Problem, General?”
“Excuse me, sir, but none of that is correct,” Army general Philip Freeman, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replied. “Our analysis revealed that the bombers the Russians flew over the Ukraine that first night were strikers, not reconnaissance planes. The Russians have a squadron of MiG-25R Foxbat reconnaissance planes within range, but they weren’t used. The Ukrainians did have offensive weapons on board some of their fighters following the Russian assault, but what would you expect after just turning back a Russian cruise missile attack?”
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m getting nothing but noise from everyone involved — the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Romanians, the Germans, the Turks — the list goes on and on,” the President said wearily, chomping one of the famous cigars that he liked but didn’t inhale — even if he wanted to he wouldn’t dare. The First Lady all but shot those who tried to smoke, and she would smell it on him. “All I care about is what I’m seeing in the press and in the intelligence reports. Now, from what you’ve been telling me,” he said to National Security Advisor Michael Lifter, “the Russians aren’t moving into the Ukraine and Moldova in massive numbers. Isn’t that right?”