Jake Grafton climbed back down the ladder to the concrete. Spiro Dalworth was standing there with the Russian lieutenant, the only officer on the base who had talked to them.
“Spiro, tell this clown to take me to the base commander.”
Dalworth fired off some Russian. When it didn’t take, he repeated it.
The Russian pilot’s eyes got large, but he whirled and started walking. Jake Grafton and Spiro Dalworth stayed two steps behind him.
The base commander had his office in a crumbling concrete building with the Russian flag on a pole out front. He was a rotund individual with a lot of gold on his epaulets. A general, probably.
“Someone sabotaged my airplane, hammered a steel pin into the ejection seat so that it will not function properly. Tell him.”
Dalworth did so. The general looked skeptical.
“I want two different airplanes. And I want his people to arm them while we watch.”
This time the general fired off a stream of Russian and gestured widely.
“He says that you are mistaken. You know nothing of this airplane, which is a fine airplane. Combat-tested in Afghanistan. His men are all veterans and take excellent care of their equipment. This is a frontline fighting unit, not—”
“Pick up his telephone. Call the Kremlin in Moscow. Ask for Yeltsin.”
To his credit, Dalworth didn’t hesitate. He reached for the telephone as if he were going to order a pizza. When he asked the operator in Russian to get him the Kremlin operator, the general came out of his chair with a bound.
Jake was ready. He pulled the .357 Magnum revolver from his armpit holster and fired a round through the top of the general’s desk. The gun went off with a roar that the walls of the room concentrated into a stupendous, soul-numbing thunderclap. The bullet punched a nice hole in the top of the wooden desk and a long splinter came loose. Dalworth almost dropped the telephone.
The general froze, staring at Jake, who looked him straight in the eye as he returned the pistol to the holster under his leather flight jacket.
The door flew open and a soldier with a rifle appeared. Dalworth said something to the general and made a shooing motion to the soldier, who finally backed out of the room and closed the door.
Dalworth started talking on the telephone. After three or four sentences and a wait, he looked at Jake expectantly.
“Tell them that this general doesn’t understand that he is to cooperate.”
“Tell them that the two airplanes he wants us to fly have been sabotaged.”
“Tell them that I want two good airplanes armed to the teeth, and I want them now, as President Yeltsin promised the president of the United States.”
Dalworth translated each sentence in turn and listened a moment, then held out the instrument to the Russian general, who accepted it reluctantly.
When the general finally hung up the phone, he stood, straightened his uniform jacket as he snarled something at Dalworth, jerked his hat on and headed for the door.
“We are to follow him, Admiral. From what I could tell, he was bluntly told to cooperate or face the music.”
Jake grunted and strode after the general.
The Russian general stood in the middle of the parking mat and gave orders fast and furiously. He pointed, first at the planes Jake and Rita were to fly, then at the row of Su-25s still sitting in their revetments.
The general was in fine form, with officers and enlisted saluting and trotting obediently when Rita approached Jake. She held out her hand. In it were five coins, rubles.
“I found these glued to the stator blades inside the intakes of the plane I was to fly.”
Jake nodded. The coins would have stayed glued while the engines were at idle, but when the engines were accelerated to full power for the takeoff roll the coins would have come unstuck and been sucked through the compressors, which would have started shedding blades seconds later. The predictable result would be catastrophic engine failure and perhaps fire just as the aircraft lifted from the runway with a full load of weapons. It would be a spectacular way to die.
The airplane switch took an hour. New planes were pulled forward with a tractor and topped off with fuel. Two arming crews took the 250-kilogram bombs off the sabotaged planes and manhandled them onto the racks of the new ones. Another arming crew serviced the 30mm cannon on each plane with belts of ammo. While all this was going on, Rita inspected each aircraft, examined the fuses on the bombs, looked at each arming wire.
She was still at it when the general told Dalworth the planes were ready, and he translated this message for Jake. Grafton turned his back on the airplanes and stood looking toward the office building. The telephone lines went to a pole that also carried the lines from the hangars. These lines went off to the east until they disappeared behind some buildings that looked like enlisted barracks.
Above them clouds floated southeast. Patches of blue were visible in the gaps. The clouds were puffy, full of moisture.
When Rita was finished, she came over to Jake. “Whenever you’re ready, sir.”
The Russians had G-suits, torso harnesses, oxygen masks and a variety of helmets arranged upon the hood of a tractor. The two fliers donned the flight gear carefully and tried on helmets until they found ones that fitted snugly.
“I’ll lead,” Jake told Rita. “You follow me as soon as I begin my takeoff roll and rendezvous in loose cruise. I want you above me. We’ll spend the day below two hundred feet and only climb when the target is in sight. The radio has four channels — we’ll use channel one. Get a radio check on the ground and then stay off the radio except for emergencies.
“When we’re airborne, I’m going to arm my gun and shoot out the telephone box on the edge of the base. Once you arm your weapons, don’t de-arm them. Our old equipment would always chamber a round on arming and leave the round in the chamber when you disarmed it, so the gun jammed the second time you hit the arming switch. I don’t know how these guns are wired but let’s take no chances.”
“Yessir.”
“Got any advice on how to fly this thing?”
“Be smooth,” Rita Moravia said. “Let the plane fly itself. No sudden control inputs — don’t force it to do anything. Stay in the center of the performance envelope as much as possible. Visually check every switch before you move it. Be ready every second. Don’t ever relax.”
“You got your mil setting for the bombsight?”
“One hundred ten mils.”
“Okay.”
“Rita, if anything happens to me, bomb that missile storage hangar. No matter what.”
“Aye aye, sir.” She said it matter-of-factly, without inflection.
Jake Grafton wanted to ensure that he was properly understood. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, do whatever you have to do to destroy those missiles.”
“I understand.”
He examined her face. She was a beautiful woman, but right now she wore a look of confidence and determination that would have set well on any man Jake had ever flown with. Satisfied, Jake turned to Dalworth.
“Stay with the helicopter. Don’t let the pilot wander off. Wave money at him if you have to. And don’t let anyone here touch that machine. If we aren’t back in three hours, get the hell out of Dodge.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Let’s get at it,” Jake Grafton muttered to Rita as he pulled his helmet on.
“Oh, Admiral,” Rita said. “Thanks.”
Jake looked at her, not quite clear on what she meant. She drew herself to attention and saluted.
He nodded at her and a puzzled Spiro Dalworth and, with his charts in one hand and his helmet in the other, walked toward his plane.