Black Ghosts (35 page)

“Both,” said the young man, turning to type something on his keyboard. Several seconds later, the map of Russia's northern coast blacked out and the area Androva was interested in appeared. There were green, blue, and red circles covering almost the entire map, with smaller yellow circles covering the gaps.

“What do the colors represent?” asked Androva.

“Those are the various radar frequencies. X band, Y band, and the combination. Those are the red, green, and blue circles.”

“What are the yellow ones?”

“Those are activated only during emergencies. They are mobile radars, mounted on trucks. They are used to close any possible gaps in the coverage.”

“Could they be activated now?”

“No. You have to put the mobile units in place first, then activate them.”

“So if I had a copy of this map, I could get into Russian airspace without detection?”

“Smugglers do it all the time. Once we're in control, the general plans to close the gaps.”

“Yes, but for now?”

“You could very well get in, but only with very small airplanes or big ones that fly very, I mean very, very low.”

“Can you show me the Moscow airports on this map?”

He typed another set of codes into the computer and a series of colors lit up the screen. She stared at them for a moment. “Any others?”

“No, not airports.”

“What, then?”

“Well, we do have a list of emergency landing strips. You know, parts of highways, areas of flat terrain, and incomplete airfields.”

“Put them on.” Her voice was tight.

An extensive series of red dots flickered on. She grinned. “There they are,” she said. “Only three options.” She grabbed a piece of paper from the young man's desk and with his pen wrote down several names, copying from the map.

“Where do we have friendly helicopters?”

“At Zelenograd Airfield, it's a military base—”

“I know what it is.” Her voice was harsh. She needed the young man no more. “Get me the officer in charge.”

“Yes, Major.” After a short and frantic attempt on his part to move fast, he handed her the receiver.

“This is Major Androva.”

“What is the status of this call?” asked the voice on the other end of the line.

“Phazar,” she answered, using the code name—meaning “blaze”—which was the active code for the final stage of Operation Czar.

“This is Colonel Techyanov. What can I do for you?”

“I need you to send helicopters to check the following locations.” She read the names to him.

“I can only spare one ‘coper at the moment, Major.”

“This is of vital importance.”

“I will have him in the air as soon as we hang up.”

“I need to be informed immediately once you have found any suspicious activity in any one of those locations.”

“I will keep you informed, Major.”

 

 

 

“Tallinn Tower, this is Zebra Tango seven ninety-nine, en route to Gorky, over.”

“Zebra Tango seven nine nine, this is Tallinn Tower. Welcome to the Republic of Estonia, keep your heading of 275 at thirty-five thousand feet, routing alpha six nine two.”

“Thank you, Tallinn, I will direct through Novograd.”

“Zebra Tango, do you want me to raise Novograd for you?”

“No thanks, I will take it from here.”

“Have a nice trip.”

“What now?” asked Mario, seated behind Dan, the pilot, on board the jumbo that was heading toward Russian airspace at nine hundred kilometers per hour.

“Looks like they're not aware that the real flight to Gorky from Sweden was delayed.”

“I guess Larry took care of that. He said he had a friend at the Swedish intelligence who could do just about anything.”

“Be great if he could take over this operation,” Archie, the second pilot, remarked with a yawn. “I'm tired, and the hard part is still ahead.”

“Six minutes to disconnect,” said Dan, becoming very tense. “Taking out of auto.” He flicked a series of switches.

“Closing auto,” Archie said, reaching down to another set of switches. “Ready?”

“Disconnect.”

The plane dropped slightly, swaying from side to side until Dan got full control of it. “Four minutes to range,” he said, watching as the small blip on his console radar slowly came closer to the rim.

“Once we get out of their radar range, we drop to tree height and make the rest of the way almost on the ground. From the looks of it, we have enough gas for one round. I hope they have the field ready, because I'm going down whether I can see it or not.”

 

 

 

“Ivan Four requesting permission for takeoff.”

“You are clear for takeoff, Ivan Four.”

“Do you have the location plotted?” Captain Oleg, the Mi-8 assault helicopter pilot, asked the navigator sitting in the copilot's seat. These were not the glorious old days when all positions were filled and a full crew meant a full crew. With the cutbacks, Oleg couldn't remember the last time he'd flown with a co-pilot. With the fuel shortages, he couldn't remember the last time he had participated in an exercise. The only thing he got to do these days was fly politicians around, and for some reason there was always enough fuel for that. In protest, he had stopped wearing the pilot's wings he had worked so hard to get, as had many of his friends. We don't need wings to be taxi drivers, they said.

In the last few days, however, things had changed somewhat. They were flying military missions, taking various high-ranking officers from one troop location to another. Oleg couldn't exactly put his finger on it, but there was an excitement in the air. The brass he was flying around seemed cheerful, optimistic. He actually saw officers salute each other with a smile.

And now this order to search for anything he might regard as suspicious. They were leaving to him the decision as to what might look suspicious. They'd given him three locations to check out, and he was going to do exactly that—as fast as he possibly could. Whatever was going on, he was happy about it. Even if he wasn't sure exactly what it was.

“Take heading one nine seven,” the navigator said. “We should be there in four minutes. It's a strip of highway just outside of Pushkino. Then we head zero eight two. That's an old military airport which has been closed for years.”

“Is that near Klimovsk?”

The navigator looked back at the map, “Yes. About two miles south of the town.”

“I trained there many years ago. And the third location?”

“Kolomana. They were building the new airport there when they ran into communication problems.”

“Didn't they test the array there?”

“I don't know. I was never there. I just read about it a few weeks ago. They're having an investigation into the money they poured into that place.”

Scattered clouds were obscuring sections of the star-filled sky. They were flying at four thousand feet, which was low enough to see just about everything but high enough to stay out of the way of the occasional power line or angry farmer with a shotgun.

“There is our first location,” Oleg said. “I'm going in for a better look.” The helicopter banked sharply and dived almost three thousand feet, stabilizing over the deserted strip of highway. They flew a circle around the area. Then, just to be sure, Oleg brought the helicopter down, almost touching the road. He turned on his night-vision goggles and searched.

“Nothing,” he said finally. Almost at once, he was back at his flight level, heading for the second location. He repeated the procedure over the deserted airbase. When he again saw nothing, he reported back to base that he was now heading for the third location, as the first two were clean. He got the go-ahead and turned his chopper toward Kolomana and the deserted airfield.

Oleg calculated that the flight would take about fifteen minutes, as he wanted to see also if there was anything suspicious on the way. Three minutes in, he heard a rumble, gradually getting louder and louder. Both men looked with their night-vision goggles at the sky around them. The sound was of a big plane with large jet engines, closing in from a distance. But they saw nothing. The sky was clear—until the navigator yelled over the microphone, almost tearing Oleg's eardrum.

“Pasmatry, pasmatry!” he shouted, pointing down. Look, look!

What Oleg saw was something he had never seen before. Almost two thousand feet below them, a giant four-engine monster was hurtling through the air. It seemed to be skimming the tops of the trees.

At first, Oleg couldn't quite make it out. He had never seen such a plane from this angle. Then he recognized the hump on the front section of the fuselage and saw that it was a jumbo jet. As it swept below, opening a larger distance between itself and the helicopter, the first air waves began to shake the chopper. From this angle, Oleg couldn't make out what markings it carried, but as he fought to maintain control of the helicopter, he knew he had definitely seen something very unusual. He would head for the third location, just to check if the plane had landed there. Then he would inform his control tower of what he had seen.

“Boshey moyeh,” said the navigator. “What the hell was that?”

“A Boeing seven four seven,” said Oleg, sounding like a fisherman who had just made his biggest catch ever.

 

“Yuri!” Edward called to his big host.

“Da,” came the reply as the man appeared in the doorway that suddenly seemed very small with him standing there.

“Could you ask him—” Realizing that Yuri's English left much to be desired, Edward turned to Sokolov for a translation.

“I speak English, no need translate.” Yuri sounded offended.

“Very well.” Edward turned to face him. “What do you have in the way of defense around this place?”

“Not need defense. No one know this place.”

“Still, you had the men that stopped me.”

“We have men in hangar, and some in forest.” He raised his hand, making a horizontal circle in the air. “Have people around and on roads. This place we use all time. Sergei make much money in this place.”

“Do you have communication with your people?” Edward made a gesture as if bringing a phone to his ear.

Yuri drew a small walkie-talkie from his pocket. “Da, can talk to people.” As if to prove the point, he brought the device to his ear, pressed the button and said something in Russian. He then let go of the button and after a short squelching sound the answer came. It was brief. The big man smiled. “No one on road,” he said.

“Thanks.” Edward felt better. There were so many things he had to do and take care of, he was starting to worry that he might forget some tiny detail or other. This was different from when he was in the service. Then, it was all laid out, the plans were in place, and all he had to do was stick to them. There were sometimes minor deviations, but they were the exception. This operation into which he'd been tossed with little warning was all deviations: The basic plan and proper procedure was the exception. From up close, the enemy looked much stronger and more ominous than it did from a distance. It was everywhere, and in control of everything.

“So in fact,” he said to Sokolov after a moment of quick thought, “the Black Ghosts have already won the war. It's only a matter of advertising it.”

“That is quite correct.” Sokolov nodded.

“A hell of a time to be leaving the ship.”

Sokolov smiled sadly. “You are right.” After a short pause he said, “You wanted to know about the bunker.”

He gave Edward a precise description of the bunker's position and location. It lay, he said, in a hillside area in a shallow, partially wooded valley consisting mostly of farmland. Across the valley, half a mile off, was a small village accessible from a different route, which afforded some opportunities for observing activity in and around the bunker. The tree cover shielded the bunker from closer observation but also provided a possible means to approach it unobserved.

Sokolov advised against attacking the bunker by night. Until General Rogov left with his men and equipment, the bunker would be a stronghold of military might. Sokolov estimated that Rogov would be leaving the bunker about nine the following morning.

He would proceed to the Kremlin. By then, the Elite Guard of Russian troops that was scheduled to secure the Kremlin for the duration of the American president's visit would have arrived at Sheremetyevo, from where it would travel by truck to the center of Moscow. They were indeed the best and most loyal of Russian troops, but their loyalty was to Rogov's version of Russia, not President Konyigin's. “I hate the thought,” Sokolov said, “that I'm helping that pig Konyigin in any way. He is the lowest form of life on this planet.”

“He's a politician. That's what politicians are. That's what democracy is all about.”

“Exactly the reason I think it's the worst idea I ever came across. What's the point if you end up having people like Konyigin run things? This will be the end of Russia.”

Edward smiled. He had watched his new friend walk straight into it and not even see it. “In a democracy, my friend, if you don't like the leader, you, the people, can vote for someone else and change him. Then you can change the next one, and so on, until you find one you like. Then you keep him for a while. Better than one jerk, like your General Rogov, in power and be stuck with him for the rest of his life. You were so close to helping him take over, and now here you are fighting against him. Doesn't that tell you something? There is no substitute for democracy, not yet anyway.”