Chains of Command

by Dale Brown

  His gloved fingers were moving as soon as he saw the hit. He was at eighteen kilometers when he fired his last R-23 missile at another bomber, then immediately switched to the heat-seeking R-60 missiles and started searching for a new target. A second bomber exploded, scratching a blazing meteor in the night sky right down to the frozen earth. All of the Tu-95 bombers started ejecting chaff and flares, but mysteriously stayed on course, and the streams of flares were like large lighted arrows pointing right at them.

  Tychina had forgotten all about his wingmen and about everyone and everything else except what Golovko had said before he died: go in fast, shoot at the leaders, and get out.

  The infrared search and track system was effective at about ten kilometers, and the bombers appeared as tiny dots on a semicircular indicator in his cockpit. Tychina shut off the attack radar at that point—no use in broadcasting his position any longer than necessary—lined up the seeker boresight reticle on one of the dots, and activated his first of two R-60 missiles. He could no longer hear the telltale growling sound as the missile’s seeker detected the hot glow of the Tu-95’s huge Kuznetsov turboprops, but he gauged the distance from the readout on his IRSTS indicator and fired the first missile at five kilometers, the missile’s maximum range.

  Too early. It had not locked on to an engine, but a decoy flare. At Mach-1.22, he was traveling almost a half a kilometer per second, and he barely had enough time to select and fire another missile. The impact of the missile on a third bomber was almost instantaneous, and he could feel chunks of metal from the explosion pepper his plane. Tychina ignored the impacts.

  He tried to select another missile, but he carried only two. Damn, what a time to run out of missiles! Tychina switched to his 23-millimeter GSh-23L belly gun pack and fired off a full one-second burst, passing close enough to a fourth Tupolev-95’s counterrotating propellers to feel the incredible rhythmic beating of the huge props against his fighter’s fuselage. The stream of cannon rounds sliced across the bomber’s fuselage, right engine nacelles, and right wing. Tychina cleared for a right turn, saw a Tupolev-95 banking hard right above him with the ventral gun turret aimed at him, and instead threw his MiG-23 into a hard left bank.

  When he cleared left after a full 180-degree turn, he nearly yelled in surprise: not one, but two Tupolev-95s were going down. The bomber he hit with cannon fire must’ve turned right into the path of another bomber, because there were two blobs of fire spiraling to earth. He couldn’t see the rest of the bomber formation, but another radar sweep told the story—the bombers were heading north again. He had done it! The attack was over! He had—

  Tychina saw the missile in its last one-fifth-of-a-second of flight, with a large plume of yellow fire encircling a small black dot, just before the small R-73A missile fired from the pursuing Russian MiG-29 fighter plowed into his MiG-23 and tore off his entire right wing. His head hit the right rear side of the cockpit, finally rendering him unconscious, as the fighter swung wildly to the left and started a lazy spin to the earth.

  But luck, even a last bit of good luck, was on his side. The loss of the canopy after the first missile’s near-hit had fired all but the last few ejection-seat squib charges and armed the seat. When the fuselage fuel tanks ruptured and exploded from the hit, the shock and vibration caused the ejection seat to fire Tychina’s unconscious body clear of the stricken fighter. The seat was automatic and worked properly. Tychina continued in free-fall until about four thousand meters’ altitude, when the automatic baro timers fired, releasing his seat harness and tightening a strap along the inside of the seat that snap-launched him from his seat. That action automatically pulled the parachute ripcord, and Tychina was under a full parachute canopy by the time he reached two thousand meters.

  Unable to steer himself clear, Tychina landed in a stand of poplar trees that mercilessly raked his face and chest like a wild animal.

  Townspeople and firemen from the village of Myzovo cut him down several minutes later and found him still alive, nearly conscious, and amazingly unhurt, except for his face and torso, which were horribly disfigured by the trees and by his last seconds in the cockpit of his plane.

  But he would live to fly and fight another day.

  His victory over the Russian invaders that night would turn out to be the rallying cry for a nation.

  ELEVEN

  The White House Cabinet Room, That Evening Eastern Time

  “Valentin Sen’kov hit the nail right on the head,” the President said. He was meeting with his National Security Council staff in the Cabinet Room of the White House, next door to the Oval Office. Unlike the rest of them, the President was dressed casually in slacks and a sweatshirt—even the First Lady, who was sitting on the President’s right beside the Vice President, was dressed in business attire. “He predicted that Velichko would go after the Ukraine, and he did it.”

  That got a very demonstrative reaction from General Philip Freeman, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “Excuse me, sir, but Secretary Scheer and I briefed you on the need to provide support for our NATO allies against an obviously bold and provocative Russia. Now, I never would have expected Velichko to go so far as to invade a fellow Commonwealth country, especially the Ukraine, but the handwriting’s been on the wall.”

  “I hardly think dismissing Mr. Sen’kov’s observations in favor of your own is constructive here, General,” the First Lady admonished, glaring at him. “I think what’s needed here are a few ideas on how to deal with this event.”

  What Freeman wanted to say was, Why don’t you ask your pal Valentin Sen’kov? What he did say was, “Very well, ma’am, I and Mr. Scheer do have some recommendations.”

  “We feel it’s essential to pledge full support to our NATO allies, Mr. President,” Scheer said. “We need to show them in no uncertain terms that we will not allow Russia to intimidate them. President Dalon of Turkey has requested some assistance, mostly in defensive armament and aircraft, and I recommend we authorize that aid.”

  “More aid to Turkey?” Secretary of State Harlan Grimm retorted. “Sir, Greece is crying bloody murder about our support for Turkey after the Islamic Wars—they think we’re arming Turkey so they can retake Cyprus. Besides, we banned high-tech-weapon exports to Turkey for a reason—if they don’t get what they want, they try to steal it. We caught them red-handed with truckloads of Patriot missile technology they tried to steal from Israel.”

  “Sir, we need to stand by our allies,” Freeman repeated earnestly. “If we don’t, not only the allies, but Russia as well, will think we don’t care what happens in that part of the world. And that invites disaster.”

  “If I can’t get a consensus in my own Cabinet,” the President interrupted, “it must mean we haven’t got a solution yet. I need more information—on Turkey, on the state of the alliance, on what Velichko has in mind. I think a NATO ministers’ meeting in Brussels is in order.”

  “Let’s bring them over here and down to Miami Beach, where it’s warm,” the First Lady chimed in. She got an appreciative chuckle from that remark.

  “Good idea, honey,” the President said. “And I need a face-to-face with Velichko, in Europe. Can you make it happen, Harlan?”

  “Unlikely, Mr. President,” Grimm replied, “but I’ll work on it.”

  “All right. Anything else I need to consider?”

  “Excuse me, Mr. President, but there’s a whole list of things we need to consider,” General Freeman said. “I’m really disturbed about the latest Russian air attack in Europe. The Russians appear to be using their heavy bombers for much more than antishipping and maritime reconnaissance—they had ground attack weapons on board. This is a whole new threat being posed by the Russians, and I think we ought to respond to it.”

  “How?” asked the President, interested.

  “I, and several members of the Joint Chiefs, feel the Russians’ actions in Europe warrant Strategic Command gaining the bomber alert force and … going back into the nuclear strategic deterr
ent mode again.”

  Freeman could have taken off all his clothes and mooned the entire National Security Council and gotten a more muted reaction than he received just then—and the most vocal voice was that of the Steel Magnolia. “Have you lost it, General?” she sneered. “You want to go back to round-the-clock alert with nuclear bombers and missiles? You want to start orbiting the Arctic Circle with B-52 bombers again? I thought the Strategic Air Command was dead.”

  “Ma’am, let me explain.”

  But the room was in complete dismay. Donald Scheer leaned over to Freeman and whispered, “Nice try, Phil.”

  “I think everyone’s voiced their opinion on that idea,” the President said with a smile. “Now, is there anything—”

  “Mr. President, I do think this is important,” Freeman pressed on, surprised by the completely negative reaction. “Sir, I’m not talking about going to war, and no, ma’am, I’m not talking about airborne alert—we did away with that in the sixties. I’m talking about sending a credible, rapid, and powerful message to President Velichko—back off or we’ll be back in the Cold War business again. I’m talking about taking one-third of our long- and medium-range bombers, about one hundred aircraft, plus three hundred single-warhead Minuteman III land-based missiles, and putting them on alert. We practice it, it’s very safe, and my staff has been gathering data on how rapidly we can accomplish this.”

  The members of the National Security Council quieted down a bit after hearing some of the actual numbers. Not long ago, there used to be over three hundred bombers and over a thousand land-based missiles on alert—Freeman was suggesting a much smaller number, about one-third of what used to be a common thing. “How exactly would we accomplish this?” Michael Lifter, the President’s National Security Advisor, asked.

  “We’re already putting out feelers to the units that will be affected,” Freeman replied, “getting hard numbers about what they have available and how fast they can get it all together. Right now the book says four days from whenever the President says ‘go.’

  “An order comes down from here to Strategic Command in Omaha—the Strategic Air Command has gone away,” he said pointedly to the First Lady, “but it’s been replaced with Strategic Command, which is the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff in peacetime and in effect transforms into the Strategic Air Command in wartime. They execute the war plan that we approve. Strategic Command gains aircraft and crews from the Air Force Air Combat Command and other major military commands and assumes operational control of all the nuclear weapons in our arsenals. The commander in chief of Strategic Command, General Chris Laird, reports directly to the President. General Laird becomes responsible for the survival of his forces and for carrying out the emergency war plan, called the Single Integrated Operational Plan, or SIOP.”

  “World War Three,” the First Lady declared.

  “We hope not, ma’am,” Freeman said. “The primary purpose of the alert force is deterrence. We’re hoping that having nuclear-loaded bombers on round-the-clock alert will keep President Velichko from trying anything against NATO.”

  “So it’s MAD all over again,” the First Lady interjected again. “Mutually Assured Destruction. The balance of terror.”

  “It’s also a way to assure our allies that we’re ready to act in case an attack occurs,” Freeman said, looking right at the Steel Magnolia, not the President. “And it is a response to the Russians’ newest threat of putting land-attack long-range cruise missiles on their reconnaissance and maritime aircraft. As you know, there are Backfire bombers stationed again in Cuba—the Russians claim these are only long-range patrol planes, but we know now that they could have a land-attack capability and could very easily strike half of the continental United States.”

  “All right, General,” the President said. “I think I’ve heard enough. I think it’d be a very wise precaution to investigate putting bombers on alert again. At the very least, it’s a bone we can toss to Dalon and the other allies.”

  “Sir, with Russia knocking at Turkey’s front door, do you think it’s wise to just be tossing bones?” Scheer asked. “Perhaps a more positive move is warranted.”

  “You-all put together what you think that move should be, and I’ll look at it,” the President said. “Like I said, I need information. The General has given me plenty to think about, but I need more input from the other members before I can decide.”

  “At the very least, Mr. President,” Freeman said quickly, guessing that the President was on the verge of ending this meeting, “allow my staff to brief you on the emergency-action procedures, including responding to the airborne command post and establishing remote and mobile communications with the National Military Command Center.”

  “Sure, Philip,” the President replied, winking away a very concerned glare from his wife. “I think we can squeeze it in tomorrow morning. How about a power breakfast meeting, say, after the First Lady’s Health and Human Services breakfast meeting?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but the First Lady doesn’t have Top Secret-SIOP-ESI clearance,” Freeman said firmly. “She can’t attend these briefings.”

  “She can’t?” the President asked incredulously. “How do you figure, General? She can sit in on NSC meetings, she can come and go in the Oval Office at any time—but she can’t sit in on a briefing on how to use the doohickey in the briefcase that Navy officer follows me around with all the time?”

  “Under current law—”

  “Let me have Carl Abell look into it,” the President said in a slightly perturbed tone, referring to the White House counsel. “He’ll get together with you and whoever else we need and get her a clearance.”

  Freeman said, “Very good, sir,” and he smiled and pretended not to take offense at the smug, satisfied expression the Steel Magnolia gave him right then.

  TWELVE

  Grand Isle, Vermont

  January 1995

  The alarm rang at five A.M. Rebecca C. Furness was already awake, so she quickly slapped the alarm clock silent, then dove back under the covers. The bedroom was cold, so she exposed only her head and her flannel-nightshirt-covered shoulders above the thick down comforter. The chill air was sharp, and as she breathed it in it seemed to fill her body with energy. There was no place like Vermont in wintertime, she thought, even at a frosty five A.M.

  The man beside her in the bed rumbled his displeasure when the alarm went off, but he went back to his gentle snoring a few moments later. Furness playfully decided that he shouldn’t be allowed to go back to sleep if she had to get up, so she put her hands under the thick comforter and ran them along his shoulders and neck. She was surprised at how cold his skin felt. It was only about 45 degrees in the bedroom—few real second-story country-home bedrooms were heated—but Ed Caldwell insisted on sleeping in the nude regardless of how cold it was. After all, Ed would say, only little boys sleep in bedclothes—even if he died of hypothermia, he would never wear anything to bed.

  Her hands moved down to his back, then to his buttocks and the back of his thighs. Despite only being in his late thirties, a few years younger than herself, Ed already had a small set of “love handles” developing on his waist, but their skiing weekends and his job kept him in pretty good shape otherwise. Rebecca hoped the little bit of cold air drifting across Ed’s back and shoulders or her warm touch would wake him up. It would be at least a week before they would see each other again. She wanted to snuggle, talk a bit.

  Caldwell pulled the comforter tightly over his shoulders, piled them up around his neck to seal out the cold, and sleepily snorted his disapproval at being disturbed. Five A.M. was definitely too early for Ed. Disgruntled, Becky rolled out of bed, slipped on a robe and a pair of moccasins, and made her way downstairs to make coffee.

  Sunrise was still an hour or so away, but the brightening skies to the east rising over the Green Mountains was still spectacular. Furness’ house was on the eastern shore of Grand Isle, a large island in Lake Champlain between northern
New York State and northern Vermont, and a large picture window in her living room opening up on the lake afforded a spectacular view year-round. She could see as far south as the Highway 2 bridge running from Mallets Bay to South Hero. On clear nights she could see the glow of the city of Burlington on the horizon about thirty miles to the south. The lake was not frozen yet, but the white carpet of ice was running farther offshore every morning and would soon form a near-solid five-mile-wide bridge to the Georgia Plains of northwestern Vermont.

  Rebecca Furness lived on a small, secluded plot of land she rented from her uncle, a United States senator from Vermont, nestled between Knight Point State Park, the Hyde Log Cabin Preserve, and Grand Isle State Park. Grand Isle was mostly state parks nowadays, with only three small settlements remaining on the entire forty-mile-long island. Furness’ uncle used his influence and was able to get his small plot of land on the shore designated as a wildlife habitat, which kept the developers, the hunters, the skiers, and the state parks commissions from taking his land. The island was like a large, annual version of mythical Brigadoon—it came alive only during the fall for tourist “colors” season, and slept in blissful, isolated peace for the rest of the year, with only a handful of persons a day taking the short ferry ride from Grand Isle to Plattsburgh, New York, or the longer drive on Highway 2 through Grand Isle north almost to the Canadian border.

  The house was actually an old barn that had been remodeled into a residence, after the original farmhouse burned down some years ago. Rough-hewn logs and boards made up the ceiling, and huge round rocks plowed up from the surrounding fields made up the big double-sized fireplace. The kitchen was the main room of the house, with a small dining area near the back porch and a huge black cast-iron stove and oven. The large old-style wood- and gas-fired stove provided most of the heat for the house, and even though she would be leaving soon, Rebecca automatically slid another round dry log onto the red-hot coals in the firebox. Normally she would boil water for coffee in the big copper kettle, but she was in a hurry this morning, so she settled for the Mr. Coffee. The thing looked so out-of-place in the house.