As the Russian bombers began to fly to the north, Harris and his wingman faded back in their positions until they were a little more than a mile behind them. From here they would watch the bombers retreat.
Harris glanced down to check his fuel. He had just under 2,300 pounds of gas. Plenty to stay with the Blackjacks for another eight or ten minutes, then they would have to head back to base. But he wouldn’t call for any other fighters to come and escort the bombers. By the time Les was out of fuel, the Blackjacks would almost be out of U.S. airspace. It wouldn’t be worth it to scramble two more fighters to escort the bombers for less than one hundred miles.
Harris then took a glance at his wingman as they both faded back from the bombers. They dropped back to two-mile spacing. With two miles between the two formations, Harris felt comfortable enough to take care of some paper work. He knew that when he got back to base his commander and the intelligence branch would want a full report on the intercept. He would need to have good notes if he wanted to remember the details. He reached down to write a few quick lines on the kneeboard that was strapped to his leg.
He was just beginning to write when a blazing flash of yellow caught his eye. He dropped his pencil into his lap and looked up very quickly. The flash was extremely bright and he knew immediately that something was wrong.
As Harris looked forward through his canopy, he sucked in a short gasp of air. A knot of fear began to tighten in his throat as he searched the sky up ahead.
A thick cloud of black smoke and a rolling ball of fire was billowing up through the sky. Tiny black pieces of metal composites were beginning to bounce off of his canopy as he flew through a thin cloud of debris. He frantically searched for the two Russian bombers. He peered through the cloud of black smoke and scattering wreckage to see a single Blackjack as it began to frantically jink and dive through the air.
“Landmass Daggers, hold your fire! Daggers, Daggers, hold your fire! We pose no threat. We are retreating. We are unarmed. Withhold your fire!”
Captain Les Harris reached up and tore off his oxygen mask as he watched the falling debris. He swore and cursed and screamed at the empty air. He knew that somewhere in the scattering pieces of metal were the remains of four Russian aviators. He began to circle the wreckage as it tumbled through the air, hoping against hope that he might see a chute. But nothing was there. Only the smoke and falling debris.
Three minutes later, black and charred pieces of the Blackjack bomber finally began to splash into the North Atlantic.
TWENTY-TWO
The largest military supply center in the Ukraine was very busy. Thousands of tons of war-fighting equipment was being prepared for shipment to the Ukrainian border, now simply referred to as the “Front.” Seven thousand men worked under the blanket of darkness, packing the pallets of the food, ammunition, medicine, clothing, tents, paper, and weapons that were desperately needed to assist the Ukrainian army in their efforts to repel the Russian invasion.
Because these supplies were so critical, Kirghiziakn was the most highly defended target in the Ukraine. No less than thirty-seven anti-aircraft guns surrounded the massive complex. Nine different surface-to-air missile batteries formed a protective ring around the center. This protective bubble extended outward from the heart of the complex for eighty-six kilometers and reached skyward to 70,000 feet. The SA-10 and SA-12 surface-to-air missiles were capable of shooting down everything from fighters to cruise missiles.
Six SU-27 Flankers circled over Kirghiziakn in combat formation, ready to repel any Russian attack. Tucked inside their tiny cockpits, the Flanker pilots were nervous. Their eyes were constantly moving, darting from their cockpit to the sky, to the ground. But it wasn’t the fear of Russian fighters that had them scared. So far, the Russians had chosen to leave Kirghiziakn alone. It was the fear of their own missiles and anti-aircraft guns that made them jumpy. Over the past twelve hours, two Ukrainian fighters had been shot down by friendly fire, one by a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile, another by a barrage of 57mm anti-aircraft shells.
Two combat kills upon their own forces were far too many. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen again. So the Flanker pilots were very alert. None of them wanted to be kill number three.
The night was very dark. The little light that did reflect from the quarter moon was completely absorbed by a thick overcast of snow clouds well before it could begin to illuminate the frozen ground. The city of Kiev, thirty kilometers to the east of Kirghiziakn, was completely black. Every exterior light, from street lamps to front porch light bulbs, had been turned off in an effort to make it more difficult for the Russian bombers to find their targets.
Winding through the darkness was a four-lane highway. It extended west from the center of Kiev to Kirghiziakn, then turned northeast and made its way through the flat grasslands of northern Ukraine toward the Russian border.
A long stream of supply trucks drove along the highway in the darkness. They, too, had turned off their lights in an effort to be less of a target. Nothing would tempt the Russian fighter-bombers like a convoy of supply trucks on their way to the Front. So the trucks drove in complete darkness, their drivers peering through their night vision goggles, watching the tail of the truck up ahead, hoping that no one came to a sudden or unexpected stop.
Kirghiziakn was a huge complex of mile-long warehouses, narrow alleys, and squat administrative offices. High razor-wire fences and guard towers surrounded the complex to protect its cache of food, medicine, and military supplies from the outside world. Most of the materials were stored in long wooden warehouses. Some were kept in more modern brick storage units. But a very small percentage of the materials that were stored inside Kirghiziakn required much tighter security than a simple warehouse had to offer.
This was where the bunkers came in. Inside the wire fences that surrounded Kirghiziakn were twenty-three semi-buried bunkers, their thick cement frames protruding just a few feet above the ground. At one time, these bunkers had been used to protect nuclear bombs and missiles. But the Ukrainian military had ceded their nuclear weapons to the international community several years before. Since then, the contents of these bunkers had been kept a very well-guarded secret.
At 2100 hours, a small covered truck pulled up to one of the bunkers. As the truck coasted to a stop, the bunker’s huge steel doors began to roll open. Three soldiers emerged from the bunker, their submachine guns flung across their backs. They wore white winter overcoats on top of thick, white woven pants. On their feet were Liata, very expensive winter boots that could only be purchased in Italy. The men were all Ukrainians, though most of them were Russian by birth. None of the men wore any rank or insignia. None of them carried any identification.
The men helped to guide the two-ton truck as it backed down the narrow incline that led into the bunker. When the truck was safely inside, the doors were rolled tightly closed.
The men worked quickly. Setting their machine guns aside, they stripped off their heavy overcoats and began to don their gear; heavy insulated pants, long rubber gloves, thin latex hoods, and alien-like face masks with dark protruding eyes.
In the back of the bunker was a single pallet loaded with eight small blue drums. Working together, the men started to load the drums on the back of the truck. Their pace was agonizingly slow. Every movement of the drums was very deliberate. Very careful. Every move was planned and calibrated to ensure that the drums weren’t knocked or jostled in any way.