having a lot of trouble reading them back at home plate.”
“All aircraft return to base. Acknowledge.” Stramaglia sounded insistent … angry. But whether it was at the grumbling or at the orders he was required to give, Coyote couldn’t be sure.
“You heard the man,” Coyote said. “Break off! Break off! Herd them out of here, Batman! I’ll stay on him until you’re clear.”
“Roger, Two-oh-one.” Even Batman, who should have known better, sounded like he was plotting mutiny. But the dots representing Ajax Flight on his VDI were turning away, heading back toward the carrier. That left only the MiG to worry about.
He almost hoped the Russian would give him an excuse to finish the job.
Captain Second Rank Terekhov gaped at his radar display, unable, unwilling to believe what it showed. Why were the Americans breaking off? They’d outnumbered him, out gunned him. Yet at the moment when they could have destroyed his aircraft four of them had turned away, and the fifth was doing nothing to close in for a kill.
“Cossack, this is Misha,” he said on the carrier control frequency. “Enemy has discontinued action. Request instructions. Over.” Part of him was afraid the carrier would order him to attack, another part wished that they would. To return home now would be to face punishment … disgrace. Better, perhaps, to follow Nickolaev.
“Misha, Cossack,” the reply came back quickly. His controller sounded almost as shattered as he felt. Not surprising, in view of what had just happened. For all the smug confidence of the High Command, it seemed the Americans were adopting an aggressive posture after all. “Return to base.”
“Acknowledged, Cossack.” He glanced at his fuel gauge. “I will need in-flight refueling to reach you.”
“Understood. A tanker will rendezvous. Cossack out.”
He watched his radar screen carefully as he turned for home, but the lone American fighter continued to circle as before. Terekhov shook his head in wonder. Why hadn’t the Americans followed through on their advantage? Why was he still alive?
CHAPTER 10
It was an opulent room, with wood paneling and a thick carpet, heavy brass lamps gleaming with polish, masterpieces hanging on each wall. The inner sanctum of the Kremlin was a place of power, a sharp contrast to the dirty streets and impoverished, hungry people beyond the ancient stone walls.
General Vladimir Nikolaivich Vorobyev wasn’t listening to the GRU colonel who was finishing the summary of the situation in Scandinavia and the Norwegian Sea. He had seen the report before the meeting convened. Vorobyev was concerned now not with information but with analysis … a quick judgment of how his colleagues might react to the latest news. The coalition of military, KGB, and hard-line party men who had asserted control over the Soviet Union in the wake of the assassination in Oslo was fragile at best. Most of the ten men in the lavish conference room hated most of the others … and each one had his own agenda, his own plans for how to isolate the others and consolidate power.
That was neither unusual nor alarming. It was rivalries and hatreds that supplied the checks and balances that had kept the system running for many long years. He knew how they felt about each other, about him. Everything was factored into his plans.
Let them hate me, so long as they fear me. He remembered that the saying was reputed to have been a favorite phrase of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. Inwardly Vorobyev smiled. What would his good Communist ministers think if they knew he was comparing himself to a Caesar?
“Again and again we were assured that the Americans would not become involved!” That was Ubarov, the newly “elected” President, a stolid, unimaginative man who looked and sounded like Khrushchev but had more of the personality of a Chemenko, a compliant mouthpiece who would do as he was told. Ubarov was being surprisingly vocal today. Perhaps he feared the West more than he feared Vorobyev. Or perhaps one of the other power brokers in the room had primed him beforehand.
That was a mistake Comrade President Vasily Fyodorovich Ubarov would make only once.
The GRU man looked unhappy and glanced toward Vorobyev, but the general merely leaned back in his seat and watched the others thoughtfully.
“If the military had played its part properly, they would not have become involved.” Aleksandr Dmitrivich Doctorov favored Vorobyev with an oily smile. He was the head of the KGB and thus the closest thing to an ally the general had in this room. The KGB had regained much of the power that had been stripped away from the organization in the wake of the failed coup against Gorbachev by the “Gang of Eight,” and Doctorov wielded considerable power. His role in the elimination of Ubarov’s late unlamented predecessor had been crucial, but the army and the KGB still needed each other while the new regime was consolidating its power base. Still, old rivalries ran deep, and the alliance would last no longer than absolutely necessary. “Perhaps we should be concerned with the judgment of our good Admiral Khenkin?”
Vorobyev toyed for a moment with the idea of following Doctorov’s lead and making Red Banner Northern Fleet’s commander in chief a convenient scapegoat. But the navy was still too important to Operation Rurik’s Hammer to risk the turmoil Khenkin’s disgrace would cause. They needed Khenkin to make the plan work.
But of course if Vorobyev backed Khenkin now and there were more failures, Doctorov would have the general neatly boxed in. That was an accepted part of the game of politics in the Kremlin, and Doctorov was a master player. The KGB chief was the sort of man who paid far more attention to his personal position and security than he did to trifling issues of victory and defeat. It was that kind of mentality that had hamstrung the Politburo throughout most of the Cold War and made the reforms of Gorbachev inevitable. But the cures embraced by the reformers had been worse than the disease they were meant to combat, and Vorobyev was willing to tolerate Doctorov as long as the Union could be returned to its old status as a superpower.
“I think the admiral can be considered blameless in this matter,” Vorobyev said smoothly. “This looks more like an accidental escalation. Khenkin’s predictions are rarely wrong, but no one can allow for the tensions of the moment. The Americans fired … but we have no way of knowing if it was premeditated or simply a tactical miscalculation.”
“Surely you are not suggesting we ignore the matter?” Foreign Minister Anton Ivanovich Boltin looked shocked. “Whether the cause was an error or some deliberate Western policy, shots have been fired. The Americans will not ignore that. Not this time.” He paused. “This is not so much a military failure as one of intelligence, though. Surely there were signs that the Americans might be pushed into action.”
Vorobyev studied the Foreign Minister thoughtfully. He had been a reasonably loyal member of the old cabinet, compliant with hard-line policies but apparently close to the President. He was known as a good Party man, but first and foremost as a survivor. Now he seemed to be siding with the military against the KGB, and when a skilled fence-sitter came out clearly on one side or another of a Kremlin power struggle, it was a good indication of where the power lay. There were many lingering resentments between the Party and the KGB. It was hard to forget the days when the KGB had allowed the reformers to consolidate power and outlaw the Party altogether.
“I did not say that we would ignore the situation,” Vorobyev said, carefully ignoring the barbed comment about intelligence failures. He was glad to know the military was still on top in the new power structure, but he didn’t intend to allow rivalries to come out in the open just yet. “Obviously, with tensions as high as they are now there is no question of trying to smooth this matter over with the Americans. Their neutrality would not have lasted much longer in any event. Norway is an old ally of theirs and we were lucky to get as much time as they have given us.”
Boltin nodded thoughtfully. “True enough. In that much, at least, the KGB’s predictions were accurate.” He favored Doctorov with a venomous look, and there were scattered nods around the table from some of the other politicians.
