by Tal Bauer
Eventually, he tipped over the edge, and he reached up, grasping Tom’s face and pulling him forward, down, until they were kissing, panting, sharing breaths.
Coming inside Tom was like sharing a part of his soul with him. There was something about ditching condoms, something beyond just the hotter sensations, the slicker feel. Something that united him to Tom, a giving of himself in a primal way. He wanted Tom to keep it, keep him. Keep what he was silently offering, forever.
After, Etta Mae glared at them both from the edge of the bed, standing on her hind legs with her chin on the mattress. They rubbed her head and let her up on the foot of the bed while they cuddled. Tom spoke about the hearing while Mike stroked his hair, and eventually, Tom fell asleep.
Mike stayed up, breathing in Tom’s scent, kissing his forehead and silently promising Tom the stars and the moon, and the rest of his life.
In the morning, they came back to the world, turning on the news as they got ready together in Kris’s bathroom. Russian tanks still hovered at the border of Estonia. More were appearing at the border of Latvia. Belarus, their neighbor to the south, and a perennial ally to Russia, was silent about the Russian troops massing along their own border and trysting into and out of their country.
“The Russian people must defend ourselves from the aggressions of the West,” President Vasiliev said, speaking from the Kremlin. His arm was still in a sling. “The United States thinks they can exterminate the heart of the Russian people. Kill me, the Russian president. They and their little dogs, the countries of NATO, think they can bully Russia into submission. That Russia will meekly go away, into the shadows. No!” He pounded his fist on the podium, then pointed at the camera. “Russia will never back down from American aggression! American crimes! We will defend ourselves, and we welcome any nation who wishes to join us in standing against the American and NATO hegemony.”
Over the next week, mayors in the Estonian towns of Narva, Kuningakula, and Saatse crossed the river and delivered letters of secession to the Russian military commanders stationed feet from their towns. Russian tanks rolled across the bridges to cheers and applause, the citizens of the border towns welcoming the Russians as liberators, and not as conquerors.
“The people of Narva, Kuningakula, and Saatse wish to rejoin the Russian Federation,” President Vasiliev crowed over the TV. “If California or Texas were to secede from the United States, would not the United States wish to help their fellow citizens in those states and bring them back into the fold of the larger nation? Did not America fight a war over this very idea? Americans belong together, they claimed. The north and the south! This is no different. Russian people belong with Russia! It is our right, and our national heritage!”
NATO jets buzzed the towns day and night, watching as the Russians entrenched their positions in and around the border towns and surrounding region. More towns fell, joining the secessionist movement. Estonian military units set up along the highways leading into the disputed region and held firm lines on the map, halting the Russian advance.
In theory.
But the Russians had already taken a bite out of Estonia, like they had before in Ukraine. They were on the move.
Chapter 31
July 26th
Twin F-16s, one each from Poland and Norway, split the skies over Estonia.
They were part of the NATO patrol constantly testing the Russians’ mobile air defense radar system, hauled across the border and set up along the line of occupied towns the Russians held in Eastern Estonia. Just like Ukraine, the Russians had moved in and were setting up to stay. Estonia had long preached that they were not Ukraine, that they would not be run over and trampled by the Russian bear. Their armed forces trained and trained and trained to be a speedbump, a burr in the bear’s paw until the rest of NATO could arrive to back them up.
No one in Estonia had believed that their own people would turn around and give the keys to the border—to invade their own country—directly to the Russians. Invite the devil in through the backdoor. Estonia’s border region secession was a political-legal-military quagmire, one that made every NATO head hurt.
Today, NATO wanted to test the Russians’ rapid response to the implied threat of their fighter jet incursion. How fast would Russia scramble their own MiGs in response to their overflight? How many fighters would they send up? Everything was measured. Everything was tracked. NATO command in Brussels listened to the mission, piped directly to the two pilots.
Miles of thick forest spread beneath the two jets. NATO command whispered updates through their radios in heavily accented English. Echoes of the pilots’ breathing, the reverberations of oxygen whooshing through their masks, seemed overly loud in the near-silent cockpit. Sprawling pines and pristine wilderness soared beneath them, the jets screaming over the countryside with barely a whisper of sound in the cockpit. Seemingly picturesque Estonian towns, like pages from a storybook, dotted the landscape. It seemed inconceivable that there was a war brewing beneath their wings, in the silent forests and untouched wilderness below.
Hidden in the trees, though, the Russian invaders lurked.
On both jets, alarms wailed, shattering the serenity of the flight. Sensors screamed, yellow and red indicators flashing as the heads-up display showed radar lock warnings. Both jets were being painted with radar.
They had found the Russians.
And the Russians weren’t playing games. No scrambling of MiGs across the border. Not this time.
The Russians had secretly planted mobile anti-aircraft missile batteries in the dense canopy of alpine trees. Launch platforms stuffed with enough missiles, enough firepower, to down multiple fighter jets.
“Kurwa!” The Polish pilot cursed and banked hard. His Norwegian counterpart went full throttle, veering away. The radar kept pinging, faster and faster until it turned into one long tone. Missile lock.
“Birdhouse, we are being painted with radar. SAM spike at four o’clock.” Surface-to-air missile threat, down and to their right. “Tally one SAM platform, on the deck. Obscured by trees.”
“Hawk Two, copy. Attempt to locate fixed position and RTB.”
“Birdhouse, request permission to engage.”
Silence.
“Hawk two, permission denied. RTB.” Return to Base.
The Polish pilot cursed again, banking and rolling before spinning into a wingover, trying to slip the radar lock. They should just bug out of there, disappear over the horizon. But, they needed to find that platform, put it on the map. And, even though Brussels didn’t want to blow the Russians’ missiles away, damnit, he did.
He dropped down, opening up his engines and going full throttle. His afterburner kicked on, and he screamed toward the deck, the ground and the trees. His radar pinged back the source of the missile lock, the platform obscured in the forest. Thick pines bowed beneath his jet wash as he kept roaring for the site, only a few hundred meters away.
He ignored the shouts in his ear, Brussels ordering him to veer off. Instead, he armed his rockets. One of the Sidewinder short-range anti-radar missiles under his wing hummed to life, primed and ready to launch. The damn Russians were always pushing, pushing, pushing. They wanted to rebuild their empire, draw Eastern Europe back behind the Iron Curtain. Put his country back under the thumb of Moscow. If Estonia fell, would Latvia? Lithuania? Poland? They were all in a line, dominoes primed to tip over. When would the world stop this?
He could put a chink in the Russians right here, right now. They’d never fire first. They were on Estonian land, on borrowed time, pointing their noses at NATO as they pretended to be a peaceful liberator, assisting a country’s internal civil conflict. They’d never risk firing on a NATO jet. Never.
A streak of white light nearly blinded him, a blast that shot up from the forest.
His jet wailed, alarms screaming in double volume. Brussels shouted in his ears. His Norwegian partner pilot bellowed at him, telling him to evade, evade, evade. The smoking trail of two missil
es, AMRAAM anti-aircraft fire-and-forget radar-guided weapons, fired by the Russians, were locked onto his jet.
“Taking fire!” he hollered. “Fox Two!” He squeezed the trigger, launching his own Sidewinder at the Russians and their missile platform. He squeezed his eyes closed and prayed, getting out half a muttered word before the Russians’ missiles impacted the underbelly of his F-16.
A mushroom explosion bloomed in the skies over the forest, and flaming metal and shattered fragments of his F-16 fighter jet scattered over the Estonian border and cratered into the occupied countryside. Russian forces looked skyward, staring at the night sky suddenly turned to day. Moments later, a following explosion rumbled out of the forest, another bloom of flame and debris rising and spreading as the Polish fighter pilot’s Sidewinder blew apart the Russians’ missile launch platform.
Brussels spoke to the surviving Norwegian pilot, the radio controller’s voice shattered and shaken. “Hawk three, RTB. RTB immediately.”
“Affirmative Birdhouse.” The Norwegian pilot kicked on his afterburners. His radar pinged, multiple MiGs rising over the Russian border, scrambling to intercept. “Let’s pray that wasn’t the first shot of the war.”
Tom watched the news and President McDonough’s statement on the shoot-down in his suite at the Hyatt. He and Etta Mae had moved into the Hyatt after the fourth threat had come to the courthouse, this one accompanied by a picture of him and Mike walking up the courthouse Annex steps. Someone had been watching them.
Mike had shit a steel-plated brick, going from his usual exuberant cheerfulness—even with the trial looming closer and closer, he still seemed bound and determined to make Tom smile each and every day—to furious wrath. Storm clouds darkened his normally smiling expression, and his blue eyes filled with cold fury. The threats were coming fast and furious now, angry tirades that Tom had let the Russian documents into evidence, that he was nothing more than a Russian plant, that he wanted the U.S. to be embarrassed and humiliated, that he was a Communist and belonged in Russia, and that Tom would be held at fault when Russia outright attacked the United States. He was a traitor to the country, letter after letter after letter said.
Set against all that, Tom practically looked forward to an email, or a tip, or a news alert revealing his Big Gay Secret.
But, as the weeks had passed, nothing ever came. Not a mention, not a hint, not a whisper.
His phone buzzed. [This looks bad.] Mike was in the room across the hall, in one of the three U.S. marshals’ relief rooms. He was surrounded on both sides, with Mike just ten feet away from him, but still worlds away. Since they couldn’t sit together, they texted.
Russians shooting down a NATO patrol plane? For sure.
[Russia claims they were acting in self-defense. That NATO and the pilot were the aggressor. That this proves they need to defend themselves even more.]
McDonough is basically pleading for President Vasiliev to not strike back.
President McDonough’s statement had been an outright beg as much as anything else. “We should not rush into conflict, race our anger into a war that could have been avoided if not for one man standing and saying, ‘I will accept reason. I will listen. I will compromise.’ The world hangs in the balance, President Vasiliev. Do not be the man to condemn this world to suffering.”
Any word from Kris?
Kris had disappeared into Europe and gone radio silent. Mike hadn’t heard a word from him since he’d walked out of his place the night Tom and Mike came over to stay.
[Still nothing. He told me he used to go on long operations all the time. He and his husband worked all over. Real intel gathering takes time, he said.]
Yeah, but… it’s been a month. I’m worried about him.
[Me too.]
I still don’t understand what he and his team are really doing over there. Is it a rescue mission? Intel gathering? …covering tracks from an operation gone wrong?
The last was uncomfortably possible. Maybe even probable. Renner had filed a sealed protest alleging government misconduct related to discovery. When Ballard turned over the files Tom had ordered him to provide, he’d handed Renner a single sheet of paper from the CIA.
“All documents that may or may not have pertained to CIA Station Moscow and Vadim Kryukov destroyed per information-handling requirements when U.S. Embassy Moscow security breached during Moscow riots and subsequent CIA officer detainment.”
Everything the CIA had in Moscow on Kryukov, on the operation the Russians insisted had been run out of the Moscow station by the U.S. government, and everything else, had been destroyed. It was standard operating procedure when an embassy was breached. Destroy everything.
Had they destroyed the truth as well? Covered their tracks? Protected the U.S. government?
[You know… this isn’t a good thing to say… but I kind of wish Desheriyev hadn’t missed. The world would be better if Vasiliev were gone.]
Tom sighed. Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
The news shifted, moving from President McDonough’s statement to the DC Sniper Trial. “Tomorrow morning, the trial the entire world has been waiting for will begin. Vadim Kryukov, alleged mastermind behind the DC Sniper’s terrorist acts, will stand trial for the attempted assassination of Russian President Dimitry Vasiliev, three Secret Service agents, and one Russian presidential security service officer. Kryukov has maintained his innocence, but Bulat Desheriyev, the DC Sniper, identified Kryukov as his handler. His testimony will be used in the trial against Kryukov.”
The anchor paused, gazing serenely at the camera like the world wasn’t hanging in tatters. “Russian President Vasiliev has stated that the outcome of this trial will determine all future relations between Russia and the United States.”
The camera cut to an interview with President Vasiliev, sitting in a chair, looking strong and healthy, but still with his arm in his sling. Still sporting the wound of a sniper attack on U.S. soil “This trial is the absolute definition of justice,” Vasiliev said, his voice slow, his words falling like hammers. “The United States will either show, conclusively, that they were behind this attack. Were culpable. Were, indeed, the planners behind this assassination attempt. Or—” He threw one hand up, scowling. “They will cover up their malfeasance as they have always done for decades. But this time.” He leaned forward, and his eyes twinkled. “They have been caught. And they will not get away with their tricks.”
It was all coming down to Tom. His trial. His courtroom.
[You all right?]
Tom squeezed his eyes closed. He should have ditched this trial when he had the chance. He should have pushed it off into Fink’s hands and let him have it, the entire political hot potato, and skipped into the sunset with Mike. He should never, ever have gotten involved.
But if he hadn’t, where would the world be now? Would the case have even gone to trial? Or would Ballard and whoever Fink had handpicked have already decided the outcome, forced a plea agreement, or even shipped Kryukov and Desheriyev off to a black site for enhanced questioning? Made them disappear?
Or, have an accident in prison? Untimely accidents had a way of cropping up, so unexpectedly.
He hated that he could think of his fellow judges and the U.S. Attorney that way. But he could. He could imagine it, them arranging dark room deals that made his skin crawl.
Was he some vanguard of liberty for all accused, the standard bearer for truth spoken in the face of unshakable power? Somehow, he’d turned into one. The White House—and Ballard—had gone deathly silent on the trial, and he practically felt the cold stare of their eyes in the center of his back. The president’s disdain, like a hand pressing him down and down, until they could stamp him out. The Russian press was now calling him the ‘last best hope for truth in the Western World’.
If there was one thing he never wanted to be, it was a puppet for the Russian press.
Tomorrow it would begin. Ballard would present the United States’ case, and Renner would
present his in return. The jury would choose the victor, and to the victor went the spoils. Freedom or war. Peace or disaster. The world waited with bated breath for proof of American conspiracy, dark secrets laid bare, exposed for global censure. Russia’s promise, that they would not allow any injustice to be suffered in the world, hung like a pall.
How would this play out?
What did he do?
I’m exhausted. He swallowed. When this is over, let’s run away.
[Okay. I’ll go anywhere with you. As long as wherever we go lets us bring Etta Mae, too.]
He smiled. Just like that, Mike could get him smiling again. And, just like that, he was reminded of how close they had grown, how deeply intertwined their lives had become. At the drop of a hat, Mike would run away with him.
God, he just wanted this to end. The anticipation was worse than everything else, the waiting, the excruciating days and nights of wondering what would come next, what would the outcome be? How far would this go? How bad could it get? No one knew the answer, unfortunately, and they were stuck in a perpetual limbo, a freefall that stretched on and on and on, always clenching against the sudden and inevitable splat against the unforgiving ground.
When it was finally over, though, there would be Mike. Mike, and his smile, and his open arms. And, maybe even his love. They hadn’t said it. It was too soon, really. They were only a few months in, but Tom was feeling it. Had felt it. He hoped, God he hoped, that Mike did too.
I’m going to get ready for bed.
He ran through his night routine, brushing his teeth, changing into fresh boxers and an undershirt. Washing his face, and then rubbing Etta Mae’s ears. Kissing her nose as she huffed, rolling over to escape his touches as she snored on the couch in his suite. He plopped into bed, and he pulled his phone close. He opened up the video caller and dialed Mike’s number.