That meant the Metyor-179 had gone up against the West’s most fearsome weapons — first the NATO AWACS radar plane, and now an American stealth bomber with air-to-air weapons — and had prevailed. It was undefeated in battle. it had flown right into the midst of NATO, American, and Russian air defense weapon systems, and was untouched.
That was the reason why he decided to continue. For the first time in his life, he ignored the little voice in his head. It was still telling him to get out, cut your losses and run, but he tuned it out. The Tyenee stealth fighter-bomber was the key. That was his ticket to victory. He had to keep the business side tight, and hope Stoica and Yegorov could handle NATO and the incompetent Americans.
Keep it tight. Deal with the business end like always.
“Sir?” one of Kazakov’s aides interrupted hesitantly. “Those Bulgarian soldiers are waiting at Trailer Seventeen. They are complaining there’s no foreman there.”
Kazakov shook his head. Damned cowards. Sometimes it took a little courage to get something done.
He walked over to a metal case sitting on the desk, unlocked it, and opened the lid. Inside was a series of switches and a large red guarded switch. He flicked three of the switches, then turned a key, which illuminated red lights on the panel.
“Uh … sir? You’ve armed the explosives panel.”
“I know that.”
“Those Bulgarian soldiers. They are up there. They—”
“Shut up,” Kazakov spat. He opened the red safety switch guard and pressed a button. It suddenly seemed as if the ground was a carpet being shaken from two kilometers away — the earth rolled and shook like an earthquake, with its epicenter right under their feet.
High up on the mountains above them, thousands of acres of forests suddenly disappeared in a cloud of flying dirt and debris. Nine square kilometers of the mountain was instantly leveled in a huge notch cut out of the mountains, as if a huge ice cream scoop had swooped in and taken a huge chunk out of the earth in one quick motion.
Kazakov nodded to his bodyguard, then pointed out the window at the dozen Bulgarian soldiers who had stayed behind to watch over Kazakov. The bodyguard smiled, then walked out of the trailer. The soldiers were looking up at the tremendous explosion that had engulfed their comrades, frozen in shock and fear, wondering what to do. The bodyguard simply lined up behind them, set his MP5 submachine gun to full auto, and mowed them down. He waved, and a huge front-loader moved in, scooped up the bodies, then trundled down the access road to carry them up the mountain and dump them within the carnage.
Kazakov gave his aide a warning glance as he calmly shut off the arming panel and closed and locked the lid. “Clumsy Bulgarians,” he said, as his other engineers and technicians rushed into the trailer. “Those idiots must have set off some of the charges and brought half the mountain down upon themselves. How unfortunate.” The engineers stared open-mouthed at their superior and wisely kept silent. A moment later, as Kazakov was about to leave, his walkie-talkie beeped. “What is it now?”
“This is Milos up on the north ridge,” one of the project engineers radioed. “There’s a problem. That explosion appears to have caused a large fracture in the dam. It might give way completely. I sent a man down to the village below the dam and to Sofia to warn them.”
“Fine, fine,” Kazakov said. “Another example of fine Bulgarian workmanship.” He threw the walkie-talkie on the desk in the engineer’s office and headed out to board his private helicopter. How about that? he thought — maybe that Bulgarian Labor Corps officer did know what he was talking about after all.
High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center,
Elliott AFB, Nevada
The C-141 Starlifter transport plane arrived from Ankara, Turkey, shortly after sunset. Like most inbound flights, it was told to taxi directly inside a hangar to unload its cargo and passengers under cover. But there was a very different reason for this plane to do so — it would have seemed strange for spy satellites to take pictures of a welcome-home party.
Every assigned person and employee of Elliott Air Force Base, almost two thousand in all, were on hand, and they gave Captain Annie Dewey, Major Duane Deverill, Lieutenant-Colonel Hal Briggs, and Master Sergeant Chris Wohl a thunderous round of applause and cheers as they emerged from the crew door of the Starlifter. First to greet them was Lieutenant-General Terrill Samson, along with Brigadier-General Patrick McLanahan and Colonel Rebecca Furness. Furness and McLanahan had arrived the night before to a more muted but equally happy reception by the base personnel.
The jubilant crowd surged forward, all wanting to reach out, touch, and congratulate the victorious airmen who had successfully completed their first assigned covert combat mission. Even though they had lost a plane and the Intelligence Support Agency team had lost two men, the agent they’d been sent in to get had been recovered safely, and most important, their fellow Dreamlanders were all safe. That was cause for celebration.
“Welcome back, everyone, welcome back,” General Samson said. “Thank God you’re all right.” He shook hands with each one of them, then turned to the crowd and raised his hands to silence them. “Folks, listen up,” he said. “Before we congratulate these men and women from Aces High and from Dreamland on a job well done, let’s first bow our heads and ask the Lord to welcome the two ISA commandos into his home. We thank them for their supreme sacrifice.”
After a short pause with bowed heads, during which the hangar was as silent as a church, Samson said to the newcomers, “I’m sorry to have to do this, but you’re going to have to do your celebrating as you make your way to another intelligence, operational, and maintenance debrief.”
Can’t we even take a couple hours to relax, maybe take a shower, sir?” Annie Dewey asked. She kept on scanning the crowd, looking for someone. “I don’t think anyone could stand to be in the same room with me for more than sixty seconds.”
“I know you’ve had nonstop debriefs in two continents already,” Rebecca said. “But we need to get the information down so we can formulate even more questions to ask you in the future. You guys know the drill. Every flight is a research test flight. Welcome back. Good work.”
“You may spend the rest of your careers debriefing,” Patrick said, as he shook hands with every one of them. “We’ll have food and drinks for you inside, and I promise we’ll make it as brief as any military debriefing can be.”
Annie Dewey wasn’t satisfied with just a handshake — when she got to Patrick and Rebecca, she gave each one of them an unabashed kiss on the lips. “You guys saved our butts,” she said. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”
“Thank Hal and Chris — they’re the ones who really deserve it.”
“Keep those two away from us, sir,” Master Sergeant Wohl said in his typical gruff voice. “I can’t be in the same building with them anymore without one of them thanking me, touching me, admiring me, or offering to do something for me. It’s making me ill.” He endured another kiss from Annie to punctuate his complaint.
“Spoken like a true American hero, Sarge,” Briggs quipped.
Annie scanned the crowd again. “Where’s David?” she asked in a low voice.
“Getting ready for the operational debrief, I imagine,” Patrick said. “You’ll see him inside.”
“C’mon, pilot, let’s go,” Duane Deverill said, clasping Annie by the waist and arm from behind as if leading her in a tango through the crowded hangar. “Let’s get the bleep-bleep debriefs over with so we can celebrate keeping our asses for a few days longer!” Annie could do nothing else but let Deverill carry her along through the throng of well-wishers.