“Sir, there’s someone here I think you should talk to.”
The colonel turned and looked at the captain. “Who is it? What do they want?”
“It’s one of the tanker pilots, sir. He has something he wants to add to his official statement. Something about seeing a small boat near the crash site. I don’t know, sir. Why don’t you come and see what you think?”
For the next half hour, the colonel listened carefully as one of the tanker pilots described what he had seen the night before. It looked like a small speedboat, he remembered, heading northeast away from the crash site at a very high speed. He had only caught the briefest glimpse of it in the moonlight while they had been orbiting at two thousand feet. But he was certain it was there. He had clearly seen the splash its bow made in the moonlight and he had even seen its wake spreading out behind it as it ran. There was a boat in the area, he was certain of that. A small craft, but very fast, and it was operating without any lights.
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Wood muttered. “A small boat, out in the middle of the night, more than a hundred miles from shore, at the exact location of the downed pilot. It sounds very odd. So think. Think very carefully. What else could it have been?”
The tanker pilot met Wood’s eyes with a cold and self-assured stare. “It was a small boat, colonel. I know that. Now who it was, and why it was there, I guess that’s something you ought to look into. All I’m telling you is what I saw.”
For two days Colonel Wood stewed about what the captain had told him. Three times he interviewed him again, hoping to find some crack in his story, hoping the pilot would rethink what he saw, hoping it would just go away. But the captain held firm, and so, much as the colonel hated to open such a rotten and unpromising can of worms, he felt compelled to follow his instincts. Late in the evening on the third day after the accident, he sent a highly encrypted message to a very small and crowded office deep in the bowels of the USCOM building at Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.
TO: Director, Internal Counter-Espionage Division (ICED)
FR: President, Accident Investigation Board, F-16-12-21
RE: USAF Directive 99-03
Sir:
We find ourselves in the midst of a class A accident investigation involving a Captain Richard Ammon, 445-78-932l.
Although insignificant and completely unsubstantiated at this time, there are certain factors which lead me to believe that it is at least possible that espionage and/or sabotage may have played a part in this accident. These factors include, but are not limited to the following unusual considerations:
— Captain Ammon’s body has not been recovered.
— The sudden explosion onboard the incident aircraft cannot be explained, nor does the eyewitness account of the explosion fall in place with what we would expect from a fuel-feed fire.
— Witness places an unidentified watercraft in the vicinity of the accident at the time rescue attempts were under way.
In accordance with Air Force directives, I am therefore advising you of my intention to seek further latitude in this investigation than would normally exist. If you have any information which could be of any assistance, please advise.
Colonel Wood
Board President
Less than five minutes after Colonel Wood had sent the message, Lt Colonel Oliver Tray, assistant director, ICED, walked over to the huge office vault and pulled out a top secret binder marked:
Ammon, Richard
codename “BADGER”
With the encoded message from Colonel Wood in hand, he returned to his desk and sat down. It had been a very long time since the BADGER file had been opened. Now, here he was, opening the file for the second time in less than three days. Lieutenant Colonel Tray removed the red “TOP SECRET” cover sheet and started to read. Five hours later, he called his wife to tell her he wouldn’t be home until long after supper.
FIVE
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yevgeni Oskol Golubev Was waiting on the cement tarmac, standing in front of a dull brick reception building that was used exclusively for visiting dignitaries. Sevastopol was the headquarters for the Ukrainian Black Sea fleet. Because of its location on the southwest tip of the Crimean peninsula, and its proximity to the warm waters of the Black Sea, Sevastopol was one of the warmest cities in the Ukraine.
In the distance, through the smog and haze, Golubev could see the gentle roll of the Krymskiye hills that lined the south side of the peninsula. To the south lay the harbor, with its many huge ports and docks used by the Black Sea Fleet. During the height of the cold war, Sevastopol was one of the jewels of the Soviet industrial crown. But that was long ago. Now, more than a generation had been born and raised in the shanty towns that surrounded the port city. The air, once crisp and clean, now reeked of oily smoke and rusty decay as the smokestacks of the harbor belched forth their gaseous toxins to mix with the humid air that blew in from the Black Sea. Once a favorite vacation spot of Russian Czars, the beaches were now too polluted to be enjoyed.
The day was very warm, especially for this late in the summer, and sweat beaded Golubev’s back as he paced the tarmac. As the gusty hot air blew in his face, Golubev wished again that he could have waited in the coolness of his air conditioned car. But the General had been quite specific in his request. “Meet me on the tarmac and come alone.” So here he stood, his own car and driver parked some fifty paces behind him. Further back along the fence stood another black sedan. This one contained four security personnel. They watched through tinted windows as their boss walked and fidgeted on the tarmac.
Golubev looked up into the sky once again to watch the Soviet SU-27 make its final approach and landing. As he observed the fighter, it passed over the last of the runway lights. He heard the roar of the engines diminish when the pilot pulled both of his throttles back to idle. The aircraft touched down lightly only eight hundred feet down the runway.
Inside the cockpit, General Victor Lomov extended the speed brakes as he watched the airspeed indicator. Once he slowed below 150 knots, he began to pull the nose of the aircraft back up into the air. This exposed the underside of the fuselage and wings to the wind and helped to slow him down. As the aircraft slowed below 110 knots, he lowered the nose back onto the runway and then gently applied the wheel brakes. The aircraft decelerated rapidly and the general popped opened his canopy as soon as he slowed to taxi airspeed.
Because this was a surprise inspection, no officers from the base had yet come to meet him. Even now, as he taxied off the runway, they were just being notified of his arrival. It would take several minutes before they would have time to assemble the appropriate generals and senior staff. Several more minutes would pass before they could make their way to the operations center to meet him. It was time the general needed and would use.
As the Commanding General of the Ukrainian Forces, General Victor Lomov made frequent surprise inspections. It was not unusual for him to show up unannounced at one of his bases and ask the local commander if he could have a look around. It was both something he enjoyed and an extremely valuable motivational tool. But this inspection was unusual. He had invited Prime Minister Golubev to meet him and accompany him as he inspected the base. It was the first time he had extended an invitation to the Prime Minister to accompany him on an inspection. The story would be that he was so proud of the base’s ability to maintain combat effectiveness that he wanted Golubev to see for himself.
The general taxied the small fighter to the tarmac and shut down the engines with his nose facing the waiting Prime Minister. He was pleased to see the man was alone, but he knew that they only had a few minutes to talk before they would be surrounded by insistent aides.