Some of the bloodiest battles between Albanian gunrunners and Macedonian police and border guards were near the town of Struga, on the northern shore of Lake Ohrid in the Vardar Valley of southwestern Macedonia. It was an easy, straight shot northward up the valley to the Yugoslavian province of Kosovo and the heart of central Europe, and southbound to Lake Ohrid and eventually to the Aegean Sea. The city of Ohrid, a few miles away, was known as the “Jerusalem of the Balkans” because of its combination of Christian — Catholic, Episcopal, Orthodox — and Muslim holy sites, churches, mosques, monasteries, cathedrals, along with several castles and fortifications dating back to the rule of Alexander the Great.
After the attack on Kukes, tensions on the Macedonia — Albania border were at a fever level. Army of the Republic of Macedonia troops, in retaliation for Albanian cross-border raids and skirmishes, were suspected of setting off the two massive explosions at the carpet factory in Kukes, Albania, killing hundreds. The Albanian Army was looking for revenge. Sniper, guerrilla, and sabotage attacks along the border rose in frequency and intensity, threatening to set off a large-scale war. The tiny Army of the Republic of Macedonia boasted more modern weapons than its adversary to the west, supplied mostly by the United States in years past, but Albania had the tactical and numerical advantage. Albania enjoyed a three-to-one manpower advantage, a four-to-one artillery advantage, and a six-to-one armored personnel carrier advantage, and those forces overlooked the Macedonian forces from the mountains along the border.
That’s why it was hard for anyone to understand the reason why the Macedonian Army suddenly commenced an artillery barrage against several security outposts west of Struga. Just before midnight, eyewitnesses claimed that two self-propelled 70-millimeter artillery units opened fire on two Albanian observation posts — little more than wood and rock shacks — that overlooked Lake Ohrid.
The Albanian Army immediately returned fire. The border defense positions were not equipped with any Modern sensors or special equipment for artillery duels at night — no night vision, no counterfire radar — so it was rather amazing that the self-propelled artillery units that were suspected of opening fire first were hit and completely destroyed by the first volley of return fire. But the Albanians didn’t stop there. Once the SPAs were destroyed, the nearest Macedonian firebase was next, then the nearest main base, and finally the city of Struga itself For the next three hours, the Albanian Army pounded the city with artillery and rocket fire from eleven positions overlooking the city, some as far as eight miles away.
“Perfect,” Gennadi Yegorov, the weapons officer aboard the Metyor-179 stealth fighter-bomber, said. “The Albanians are reacting better than we anticipated.”
The plan was simple. Some of Pavel Kazakov’s men in Macedonia had stolen and driven the two artillery pieces — both mobile but not capable of firing a round — from an armory in Bitola. The self-propelled artillery pieces were undergoing maintenance and had had their gun barrels removed, so they looked like just another military vehicle as they rumbled down the highway. In only three hours, they made the drive west to Struga and waited.
Meanwhile, the Mt-179 launched from its secret base near Codlea. With the NATO AWACS aircraft out of the action — it had not yet been replaced until whoever had shot the first one down had been discovered — it was child’s play to make the flight from Codlea across Romania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, and Macedonia to Ohrid. The Mt-179 was loaded with four heat-seeking air-to-air missiles in its wing root launchers, along with four laser-guided missiles in its weapons bay. The Metyor-179 had a powerful imaging infrared and low-light TV sensor in a retractable pod in the nose, along with a laser target illuminator.
Once the dummy self-propelled artillery units were rolled into place and Kazakov’s men hightailed it for safety, the charade began. One quick twin launch on the observation posts from fifteen miles away, a two-minute three-sixty turn, and a second twin ripple launch on the SPAs to erase the evidence, and the stunt was complete. Kazakov’s operatives had placed infrared emitters on the artillery units and near the border observation posts to make it easier for Yegorov to find and attack the targets from maximum range.
“Eta 1’ehchi chim dva palltsa abassat. It was easier than pissing on two fingers,” Ion Stoica remarked, as they started to receive radio messages about the rapidly intensifying fighting between Albania and Macedonia. “That attack had no business working, you realize that? The same with our departure from Zbukovsky and the success of our attack on Kukes.”
“We were lucky,” Yegorov said. “It’s sheer paranoia. Besides, those two were ready to fight anyway — they have been for almost ten years. We just provided a little push to get them going.”
“So we’re contributing to the natural order and progression of political and cultural exchanges between fellow Balkan nations, eh?” Stoica asked, laughing. “I like that. We’re humanitarians, working to make the world a better place by allowing the natural harmony and rhythms of the region to develop.” Their second combat flight was even more successful than the first-and it provided the spark Kazakov needed to set the Balkans ablaze.
Instead of returning to Romania, Stoica and Yegorov flew across Bulgaria and the Black Sea, on their way to a Metyor-owned industrial facility and airstrip near Borapani, Republic of Georgia, the site of another Metyor pipeline. The return flight was smooth and uneventful. The Mt-179 was enjoying a brisk tailwind over the Black Sea that was pushing their ground speed to well over nine hundred kilometers an hour, even with the throttles pulled back to best-range economy power. At forty-one thousand feet, the sky was clear and the visibility unrestricted, with the stars shining so brightly that they appeared close enough to touch. There was a half moon on the rise, but it would be no factor — they would be on the ground long before anyone on the ground could see the aircraft with moonlight. Because of fuel considerations, they had already planned a steep, rapid descent at idle power through Georgian airspace instead of flying through Turkish coastal radar at low altitude, relying on the Tyenee’s stealth characteristics to keep it invisible.
Yegorov offered to watch the aircraft, and Stoica gratefully took a catnap while his weapons officer filled out his poststrike reports and recorded computer logs, with the autopilot handling the aircraft. The autopilot was set for constant-Mach hold, which adjusted aircraft altitude automatically as gross weight decreased so they could maintain the most fuel-efficient airspeed — the Mt-179 very gradually climbed as gross weight decreased, up to forty-five thousand feet, the aircraft’s maximum operating altitude, or a lower altitude set by the pilot.
But Stoica didn’t set the proper maximum altitude. If he had bothered to double-check his weather forecasts from his preflight briefing, he would have read that the forecast contrail level over the Black Sea for their return flight was just over forty-one thousand feet. Yegorov had no autopilot controls in the aft cockpit except for disconnect, and in any case he was too distracted to pay any attention. Visibility directly behind the Metyor-179 was poor from the cockpit anyway, so even if he had looked outside, he would not have noticed anyway …