stay ahead of it until its fuel was exhausted, the missile would fall into the sea.
“What’s the gouge? Where’re the bad guys?”
“I think we’re clear. Batman and Libbie’ll be here in a few minutes.
I’ve got you in sight now. Coming up on your five.”
“The damage is on my port side,” Dixie told him. “I think I’m losing fuel from the left wing.”
“On your six and low. Coming around to port. Yeah, buddy. Looks like you took a near one. No blast damage, but your belly and left wing got peppered by shrapnel. So did your left stabilizer. Looks to me like it missed you, but the proximity fuse triggered the thing right under your wing.”
Looking left, he could see Tomcat 210 coming up from behind, just off his wingtip.
“Can you see Mickey?”
“We see him,” Red replied. “Head’s slumped forward a bit. Can’t tell from here how bad he’s hit.”
“Is his oxygen mask on?” Dixie was worried about the pressure loss in the cockpit.
“It’s on,” Red told him.
“How’s she handling, Dix?” Badger added.
“Okay, I think.” Cautiously, he played with his stick, testing the feedback. “I get a bit of flutter when I try giving it some left maneuver flap.”
“Okay,” Badger said. “Let’s not try anything fancy. We’ll escort you back, nice and easy. You can punch out when you’re close to the Jeff.”
“Not if Mickey’s still out of it,” Dixie said, determination giving his voice a hard edge.
“Right. Shit, I wasn’t thinking. Okay, Dix. Let’s come to zero-five-five, and maintain four hundred knots.”
“Copy, Badge. Zero-five-five at four-zero-zero.”
“Let’s take ‘er home.”
Tombstone was alighting from the CH-53 helicopter when he heard the thunder of approaching aircraft. At first, he thought it might be BARCAP Three, which Coyote had told him was coming, but then he realized that the sound seemed to be coming from the Crimean Mountains from north of Yalta.
The sound might be an echo. Sound did strange things between sea and Mountainside. But too many strange things were happening this afternoon for him to be willing to take chances. He waved at the helicopter’s crew, gesturing for them to get out of their aircraft and take cover. After a moment’s hesitation, they scrambled out, and together the men started running toward the White Palace.
The jets appeared with almost magical abruptness, howling in from the mountains, passing above the White Palace complex at an altitude of less than two hundred feet. The planes were so low that Tombstone could look up and see individual pilots, could see the sun-glint of canopies and dark visors, could see the numerals painted on their noses and the prominent red stars on stabilizers and wings.
Mig-29 Fulcrums. Some of the best fighter planes in Russia’s inventory.
Dropping down a shallow embankment that might offer some cover if the Migs started dropping nasty stuff, Tombstone stared after the jets. They were breaking formation now, far out over the sea. He glanced at his watch. BARCAP Three wouldn’t be in their patrol position yet. He didn’t think the Migs were headed for the carrier. Where…
Yes. Two of them were swinging around in a full one-eighty, streaking back toward the White Palace. They came in low, wingtips almost touching; he saw the flicker of their rotary cannon, tucked away at the root of their port-side wings, before he heard the shrill whine of high-speed gunfire above the thunder of their strafing run.
An explosion sounded an instant later, a dull boom echoing from the improvised landing pad on the east side of the palace. The incoming jets lifted slightly, white vapor blossoming off their wings in the moist air as they increased their angles of attack… and then they were howling overhead, rising swiftly as they climbed the face of the mountains inland. A missile streaked into the sky after them, trailing smoke ? a Grail or other shoulder- launched antiair missile released by one of the soldiers on the ground ? but it had been fired too late… or possibly without a firm heat source lock, and it twisted away after a few seconds of flight.
Rising from his hiding place, Tombstone jogged back toward the helicopter. As he’d feared, the Sea Stallion had been the target of that strafing run. It rested at a sharp angle now, with flames and black smoke licking from its port-side fuel tank sponson. If there’d been any doubt at all that those Migs were hostiles, it was gone now.
There was still a lot of confusion on the palace grounds, with civilians and reporters milling about with aimless and seemingly random blunderings, and Russian soldiers standing in almost comic attitudes of readiness, obviously with no idea what was happening or what they were supposed to do. First the attack on Boychenko, and now this. The entire area was a scene of utter confusion.
Pushing through the crowds, Tombstone made his way toward the back of the White Palace. He could see Boychenko standing there at the top of the broad stone steps, surrounded by aides and guards, hands at his sides, looking up with an almost boyish expression of slack-jawed wonder as six Migs roared overhead. Tombstone walked closer and several of the guards swung their weapons to aim at him.
Boychenko gestured sharply and snapped something in Russian. The guns were lowered.
“General!” Tombstone called. “Were those planes yours?”
The general looked at him and blinked. “Nyet… no,” he said. “Not mine. Is navy.”
“You didn’t order that overflight by those Migs?”
“No. Did not… order.” His face creased with puzzlement. “They attack!”
“General, hostile aircraft have just attacked one of the bridges over the Bosporus and blown it up. Did you order that attack?”
Boychenko blinked helplessly at him a moment, and Tombstone wondered how much English the man could really understand. Then the general shook his head, a jerky side-to-side motion. Probably, Tombstone thought, he understood English better than he could speak it. “Did not order that! No!”
Boychenko gestured swiftly to Natalie Kardesh and spoke rapidly to her in Russian. She turned to Tombstone. “The general wants me to ask you… did you just say that his aircraft attacked the bridges over the Bosporus?”
“Tell him yes. We don’t know yet if the aircraft were Russian or Ukrainian.” He jerked a thumb skyward. “That overflight, though, was by aircraft with red stars. Russians. The general says they were navy?”
“Mig-29s with fleet,” Boychenko said, nodding. He didn’t look happy.
“Admiral Dmitriev’s command.”
“Ask him,” he told Natalie, “if it’s possible that the Russian navy could have been behind that attempt on his life? Or Dmitriev?”
“Is possible,” Boychenko said slowly, following the conversation.
One of Boychenko’s aides, a major named Fedorev, nodded agreement. “I’m afraid that with Admiral Dmitriev, almost anything is possible. He is… ambitious.”
Tombstone was beginning to fit the larger parts of the puzzle together, but he was still missing a lot of the pieces. This had the earmarks of an attempted coup. If this Admiral Dmitriev was trying to take over the Crimean Military District, it might make sense to combine an assassination attempt with an attack.
But why the Bosporus bridge? That made no sense at all… unless they wanted the Jefferson and her consorts trapped in the Black Sea, and somehow that made even less sense than the attack itself.
He cocked his head. “Tell me. Is this Admiral Dmitriev… is his full name Nikolai Sergeivich?”
Fedorev nodded. “Yes, Captain. How did you know?”
“I flew with a Nikolai Sergeivich once. In joint operations in the Indian Ocean. I was wondering if it was the same man.” The Nikolai Dmitriev he’d known had been a hard, resourceful, and skillful tactician. If he were now the enemy… Tombstone didn’t like that thought at all.
“The helicopter’s totaled,” Tombstone said. “We’re not getting back to the carrier that way.”
Fedorev wrinkled his brow. “”Totaled?’”
“Wrecked. Finished. We have several hundred UN and American military personnel here, plus a bunch of civilian reporters from several countries. What are we going to do about them?”
Natalie consulted briefly with Boychenko, then nodded at Tombstone.
“The general says that when they know just what Dmitriev is up to, we will be informed. Until then, at least, and obviously, we are all the general’s guests. We can stay here at the palace, or return to Yalta.”
