"Yes, ma'am, that's true."
"Well, I'll tell you something, Colonel. Someone up in the Adriatic really put his foot in it the other day. I've wanted to see the special-warfare people put out to pasture for a long time now. And I think someone has just given me the weapons I need to see that done!"
For several minutes now, the NAMC had been taxiing slowly along the runway. Now, the roar of the aircraft's engines thundered louder and louder, until Kingston could feel the fuselage shuddering around her. There was a gentle shove of acceleration, and then the aircraft lifted clear of the runway, rising higher and higher. The airport dropped away astern, replaced by the steel-gray waters of the Thennaic Gulf. North, across the bay, she could see the city of Salonika, could even pick out the stubby thrust of the city's famous White Tower on the waterfront. Then the panorama was blotted out by a dark gray fog that grew swiftly lighter. Moments later, sunshine exploded in through the windows; the plane was above the cloud deck now, banking gently toward the right.
For the first time in several days, Kingston allowed herself a less than optimistic thought. Things were not going well here, with her mission, with the people she'd been seeing. She wondered if her presence here was making any difference at all.
It was this damnable situation in the Balkans, a situation already critical, and rapidly going out of control. She was beginning to think that nothing that she, Washington, NATO, or anybody could do was going to be of any help. And how the hell was she supposed to do her job when those military buffoons insisted on playing their games?
Several times during the past year, NATO — under pressure from the U.S. — had launched punitive air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs in an attempt to stop their wholesale slaughter of Bosnian Muslims. Somehow, that war had continued… and lately two new wars had been added to the flames already devouring the Balkans. One was the renewed warfare between Croatia and Serbia; for some time now, the Croatians had been rounding up Bosnian Croatians who'd fled their war-torn homeland and forcing them to "volunteer" for service in the various Croat militias, first to fight the Bosnian Muslims, and lately to take on the Serbian militias as well.
The second new outbreak of fighting was even more worrisome, for it threatened to spill over across the borders of the various states that once had made up Yugoslavia and engulf other nations in the region. If that happened, well, all of those impassioned speeches she'd delivered in the House about how large military forces were no longer necessary now that the Soviet Union was gone could very well blow up in her face. The United States was a hairbreadth from war, and sometimes it seemed like every step her country took was exactly the wrong one.
The root of this latest problem was an ancient and unhappy land called Macedonia, divided since 1913 when the Treaty of Bucharest had partitioned the nation among its four neighbors. The biggest chunk had gone to Serbia, and after World War II it had been incorporated as a republic within the Yugoslav Federation. Smaller slices had been gobbled up by Albania to the west and Bulgaria in the east. The southern portion had gone to Greece, which itself had won independence from the Ottoman Turks only eighty-three years before.
Greek Macedonia today was the largest single region in Greece, as well as its most productive. Salonika, its capital, was the second largest city in Greece. There were still those who wanted to see a united and independent Macedonia, however; the International Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, the IMRO, had waged a bitter terrorist war throughout the first half of the twentieth century to achieve that end. Early in World War II, Bulgaria's claims to Macedonia had led to that nation's alliance with Nazi Germany and her occupation of Macedonia in 1941.
With the breakup of Yugoslavia, Macedonia had again become a potential problem in the area. Yugoslav Macedonia had declared its independence and applied for membership with the UN; Greece had blocked the application, insisting that it had all rights to the ancient name "Macedonia," which it was not going to share with this northern upstart. The matter had been only partly resolved when the two parties had finally agreed that the new republic would be called "The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia," a temporary compromise that pleased no one. With independence from Serbia in April of 1993 had come UN peacekeeping troops, including three hundred Americans, and the UN-mandated requirement to maintain an embargo against what was left of Yugoslavia… an economic disaster for an area that depended on trade with Serbia for survival.
But Macedonia was at the very center of a potential international firestorm. Serbia wanted Macedonia back, a part of the historical "Greater Serbia." Greece too wanted northern Macedonia to again come under Serbian rule, because a free Slavic Macedonia gave too many ideas to Greek Macedonians. The IMRO still existed and still had the goal of liberating all of Macedonia, north and south, and uniting it as an independent nation.
For that reason, Greece and Serbia were cooperating with one another on the problem, for both nations had reasons to keep a lid on Macedonian nationalism. Other countries in the region, though, saw it differently. Bulgaria was flexing its muscles with a rather cynical demand for Macedonian independence. Bulgaria's claim to Macedonia went back before World War I. It was no secret that Serbia had its eye on the possibility of a Greater Bulgaria, one that included at the very least northern Macedonia. Albania felt the same, and for the same reason, with the added twist that Tirand had a long-unsettled grudge with Serbia over Kosovo Province, which once had belonged to Albania and still had a large, ethnic Albanian population. Turkey, the bitter historical enemy of Greece, supported Macedonian independence, if only to see Greek power in the region weakened.
And as for the Macedonians, well, they saw themselves as the heirs of Alexander the Great, even if they were historically Slavs for the most part rather than Greeks. Most saw no reason why their national pride and character should be stifled, especially now that the world was changing and nationalistic ideals were blowing freely in the wind. All too many Macedonians, on both sides of the Greek-former-Yugoslav border, Kingston thought, would love to see an independent Macedonia that stretched clear from Serbia to the Aegean, from Bulgaria to the Adriatic.
And in all of that political turmoil and suffering, all of that bluster, threat, and counterthreat, there were painfully few options that did not lead to a war that would ravage every nation from Croatia and Hungary to Greece, Albania, and Turkey. Once that happened, an even larger War, one involving NATO and the United States, and probably Russia as well, was a near certainty.
And the damned U.S. military had just gone and stuck a pin in Serbia. It was enough to make a grown Congresswoman cuss.
"Oh, shit," Winters said suddenly.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Uh, sorry, Congresswoman." Winters leaned across the empty seat beside him and peered out the plane's window. Kingston glanced out her own window curiously. Everything looked perfectly normal to her. Sunlight dazzled off a solid mass of snow-white clouds, seemingly just below the plane's wings.
"Colonel, what is the matter?"
"That's damned peculiar."
"Is there a problem, Colonel Winters?" Mantzaros asked, walking up the cabin's central passage.
"Damn right there is," Winters muttered, more to himself than to those within earshot.
"Colonel, please," Kingston said tiredly. "I'm in no mood for your military theatrics."
"Beg your pardon, Congresswoman, but we're flying the wrong way."
She laughed. "Really? Your Boy Scout manual told you to check for moss on the north side of the plane?"
"No, but common sense tells me that if the sun is behind us and to the right at ten o'clock in the morning, we must be flying northwest. And we've been flying northwest for a good five minutes now."