Chains of Command

by Dale Brown

  “Zero-One, roger,” Furness replied. Well, so much for their plan. This was going to be a long fucking day. She had heard no reports on where her wingmen were—it was time to catch up on the joinup. She asked, “Okay, Mark, where’s—”

  Suddenly she heard Joe Johnson over the primary radio say, “Lead, Zero-Two, I’m overshooting, move out a little bit,” in a rather urgent tone of voice. Furness looked out the right cockpit canopy and gasped in panic. Joe Johnson in Thunder Zero-Two was not just overshooting a bit—he was ready to collide. His overtake had been much too fast; his power was high during the climb, and the level-off surprised him.

  “Jesus … dammit, what in hell are you doing!” She was about to yank the control stick over to bank away, but her right wingtip would collide with Zero-Two if she did that. Instead, she eased the stick down to lose some altitude. Slowly, the two planes slid away. “Shit, Mark, you’re supposed to be watching the rejoin!”

  “I was watching it,” Fogelman seethed.

  “You watch the rejoin until they’re stabilized in fingertip, and you do nothing else,” she fired back. “When you got aircraft closing into fingertip, forget the radar, forget the INS, and concentrate on the rejoin. Christ, that was close!”

  Johnson knew he had come close too: he said on the backup radio, “Sorry about that, lead. Just wanted you to get a good look at our underside.”

  “Thunder Flight, this is not a damned race,” Furness shouted on the backup radio. She didn’t care if the command post or the generals at Plattsburgh could still hear her—the near-collision was way, way too close for comfort: “Smooth and gentle on the rejoins. Zero-Three, say range.”

  “Two miles from Zero-Two,” Paula Norton replied. Her voice sounded a little shaky—she had undoubtedly seen that near-collision as well. “We’ve got you both in sight. I’ve got Zero-Four on my wing already. He’s checked me out already, too.” Frank Kelly, an experienced F-111 pilot, had “cut off the corner,” joined on Paula Norton’s right wing, and had even accomplished a visual inspection. He would simply follow Norton in as she rejoined with Furness and Johnson.

  “I want nice smooth turns and no abrupt power changes,” Furness said. “Weather looks good in the orbit area. Lead’s at 82 percent.”

  One by one, as they headed southwest toward the first checkpoint, the four bombers joined together. The first sequence of events was an aerial refueling over northern New Hampshire. The rendezvous with the New Hampshire Air National Guard KC-135E tanker from Portsmouth Air Force Base was uneventful and smooth.

  One by one, the formation split up while in the refueling anchor. Two minutes before Zero-Two’s end air refueling time, Johnson accomplished a rendezvous to precontact position and then performed a practice emergency “breakaway”—the receiver would chop power and descend rapidly, the tanker would shove the power in and climb, and the other planes would stay on the tanker’s wing. Rebecca remembered lots of practice breakaway maneuvers, both in the KC-135 and KC-10 tankers … and she was glad to be on the receiver side. She remembered back to those long hours flying over the desert during Desert Shield and Desert Storm as a KC-10 tanker pilot, refueling just about every kind of aircraft in the world—and she remembered how vulnerable the tanker was to any nearby danger. Especially the time during the emergency refueling with the stricken F-111G in the opening day of the war.

  God, that seems like ages ago. She tossed it out of her mind and focused completely on getting into that comfortable state of mind where you feel that you’re ahead of the aircraft, anticipating the sequence of events—finally in control of the situation. It was a little rocky starting out, she thought, but it was all coming back to them now.…

  Miracles never ceased.

  EIGHTEEN

  L’vov Air Base, the Ukraine, That Same Time

  Mikola Korneichuk pushed her way through a rather large crowd of hospital workers, patients, and bystanders on her way to the hospital front desk. The well-wishers shouted congratulations to the dark-haired, dark-skinned beauty, but she hardly heard one word—her eyes, her heart, her soul were focused only on one extraordinary man.

  “Pavlo!” she shouted as the last few onlookers stepped aside to let her pass. The tall flying officer at the outprocessing desk finished the paperwork he had been working on, signing his name with a flourish on the last release form.

  Aviation Captain First Class Pavlo Grigor’evich Tychina smiled from behind an antiseptic cotton mask covering part of his face, at hearing his girlfriend’s voice. The mask was trimmed at the top, which allowed his curly brown hair to show and partially conceal the mask. Bandages and pads covered his nose and ears, but it was obvious that they were damaged—his left ear and his nose looked as if they were missing completely. Although Tychina wore a flight suit and heavyweight flying jacket—a new one, not the one in which he had bailed out—it could be seen that the upper part of his torso was covered with bandages, and his neck was thickly wrapped. “Mikki!” he shouted in return. He turned to greet her, but held back.

  She paused, taking his hands warmly, her eyes narrowing with concern as she sensed something in his mannerisms. “Pavlo? What is it?”

  “I … I’m happy to see you, Mikki …” But he was pushing her away. Fearing that she might be repulsed by the sight of him, he was trying to keep his distance, not forcing her to get too close because of the onlookers surrounding them.

  “Pavlo … Pavlo, damn you …” Mikola rushed into his arms and kissed him. The hospital staff surrounding them gave them an appreciative “Ahhh …” But as the kiss became more prolonged, they broke out into enthusiastic cheers and whistles. She finally released him, hugged him, then took his hand and led him to the hospital doors amidst wild cheering.

  The sunshine was dazzling outside the hospital. Pavlo breathed in the crisp, cold air, thanking God and the stars above for letting him live. “All I want to do,” Pavlo said, letting great gusts of steamy breath escape from the cotton mask’s mouth slit, “is to stand out here and drink it in.”

  “We’ll freeze to death, Pavlo,” Mikola said, shivering. “So. Your place or mine?”

  “Headquarters first,” Tychina said. “I’m going to report back to duty right away.”

  “Report back to— Pavlo, you shouldn’t even be out of the hospital yet!” Korneichuk protested. “You should be in bed and off that left leg! You just survived a high-speed, high-altitude ejection. What on earth makes you think you can go back on duty?”

  “Because my injuries aren’t serious, and we’re at war,” Tychina replied as if she should even have to ask. “I didn’t say I’d be flying, although I think I’m well enough to fly. They’re going to need every soul available to mobilize the armed forces if Russia wants to fight.”

  “If Russia wants to fight, the best the Ukraine can do is negotiate and beg for help from the West,” Korneichuk said grimly. “They can slaughter us like sheep if they decide to invade.”

  “They can try to slaughter us,” Tychina said, shaking his head as they walked away from the hospital. “And there may be little hope for us. The Ukrainian armed forces were designed to resist an outside invader until help arrived from Russia—not fight against Russia. But it’s important to fight, Mikki. Whoever the invader is, it is important to fight.”

  A convoy of trucks carrying base security soldiers rolled by just then, and the truck’s driver started to beep his horn when he recognized the young fighter pilot who, almost single-handedly, fought off the Russian air invasion. Soon every soldier in the back of the truck was cheering, and then the entire convoy of ten trucks joined in. Like the scene at the hospital, it was a stirring moment for the young pilot—and for her. Mikola Koneichuk began to realize what her lover was saying: one man’s actions could make a difference. Seeing the enthusiastic faces of the men driving by in the trucks, in the faces of those she saw at the hospital, she could no longer say with certainty if her country would be defeated so easily by any foe—even Russia.

  It wa
s less than a kilometer to air army headquarters, but it took the couple over an hour to make the short walk because of the numbers of well-wishers who stopped to congratulate Pavlo on the way. Many of them offered the couple a ride, but Pavlo would simply put his arms around Mikola and say, “Would I deprive you unfortunate cretins a chance to glimpse this beautiful woman as you drive by?”

  Korneichuk felt enormous pride and love for this man. His life, in many ways, had been so typical of young men in the then-USSR. Born in 1967 in Brovary, near Kiev, Pavlo was the son of Russian parents who made them very proud when he became a member of the Komsomol (Young Communists) and graduated with honors from the Gritevets Higher Military Aviation Academy in Char’kov, Ukraine SSR in 1987. After that, Pavlo was assigned to the Twenty-fourth Air Army in Tallinn, Estonia SSR, flying combat, strike, and maritime patrols in the Black Sea region in MiG-23s and MiG-27s. When the Ukraine declared independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991, Pavlo gave up all privileges in the Russian/Soviet Air Force and accepted a commission in the fledgling Ukrainian Air Force. He did the same duties he’d always done for the Russians, except now it was for his true homeland. As his career moved quickly forward in the new Air Force, he became a flight instructor and flight commander just a year ago. Neither one of them could have guessed what had just happened, barely one year later.

  She knew that he had almost been cut out of her life once, and that she should not allow it to happen again. She had always had doubts about being the wife of a military officer, especially a military pilot’s wife, and she was never sure if that was the kind of life she wanted. But she now realized that, as difficult as life was in the Ukrainian Air Force, a life without Pavlo Tychina would be even worse. “Pavlo?”

  “Yes?”

  “I … I want to ask you something.” She stopped, and Tychina turned to face her. “I’ve thought a lot about us, and … and …”

  He reached up with leather-gloved hands and encircled her face. “I know what you’re going to say, my love,” Tychina said. “Believe me, I love you with all my heart and soul, and I want nothing more than to be with you forever. But I … I’m not … I just think you should wait. I don’t want to pressure you into something you might regret.”

  “Regret? What could I possibly regret?”

  Sadly, slowly, Tychina removed his fur hat, then pulled off the cotton antiseptic face mask. Pavlo’s face was a maze of scars and lacerations, some requiring extensive stitches to close; others were so deep that they had to be kept open to allow pus to properly drain. His nose was heavily taped, but it was obvious, too obvious, that he no longer had a nose. A deep scar missed his left eye by millimeters, making his left eyelid look as if it were twice as large as normal, and it slanted upward, giving him a sinister Oriental appearance. His eyebrows and eyelashes were burned or shaved off. The scars continued down his throat—Mikola saw where a trachea tube had been inserted in his throat sometime during his surgery—and Pavlo revealed enough of his chest for her to see that the injuries continued far down his torso. It was a wonder to her that he could stand the pain without screaming.

  “Do you understand now, Mikki?” Tychina asked quietly. “I look at myself in the mirror, and I am sickened! I begged my best friend to bring a gun and kill me, but it would be a waste of a bullet that could be used to kill invading Russians. The only thing that keeps me from ending my pain is my desire to keep the Russians off my homeland. I will not compel you to be with a man like me.”

  “With a man like—” Mikola stepped closer to him, reaching up to his face. He recoiled from her, but she took his horribly disfigured face in her hands and held it. “You are the bravest, kindest, most loving man I have ever known, Pavlo Grigor’evich,” she said. She kissed his scarred lips, holding the embrace until he finally relaxed and returned her kiss. She released him, then, still holding his face in her hands, said, “And if you don’t marry me right away, Pavlo, you and I will both regret it.”

  “Are you sure, Mikki?” Another kiss gave him her answer. “Then yes, I would regret it for the rest of my life if I lost you. If you’ll have me, Mikola, will you be my wife?”

  Her tears of joy and her kiss was all the answer he required.

  As they got closer to headquarters, which was only a few blocks from the flight line, they could hear the roar of dozens of jet engines. Pavlo could see more planes than normal parked on the ramp. Instead of just MiG-23 fighters and older Sukhoi-17 attack aircraft parked out there, there were a lot of Mikoyan-Gurevich-27 and Sukhoi-24 bombers. Although the MiG-23 had a integral bombing capability and the Su-17 was a capable, proven bomber, the MiG-27 and Su-24 were true high-tech supersonic bombers. The Su-24 was newer, faster, and deadlier than the Su-17 or MiG-27, and could carry up to eight thousand kilograms of ordnance, far more than any aircraft in the Ukrainian inventory, and it was also capable for use as a tanker to aerial-refuel other Sukhoi-24s for long-range bombing missions. Most Su-24s in the Ukraine were based in Odessa and Vinnica, so obviously substantial strike forces were being moved farther north to counter an expected Russian ground advance into the Ukraine. The smell of war was as powerful as the smell of burning jet fuel—and, truthfully, it both sickened and electrified Pavlo Tychina.

  The entrance to the air army headquarters building was heavily guarded now. The guards allowed both Tychina and his new fiancée to enter the foyer, but because the base was on a war footing they could not allow Mikola to proceed past the security desk. Before proceeding, Pavlo made a few phone calls from the security desk, then turned to Mikola: “I’ve made an appointment with the wing chaplain,” he said. “He has agreed to marry us later this evening.”

  She threw her arms around him, ignoring the guards and staff officers filing around them. “When, Pavlo? When can we go?”

  “I’ve got to check in with the command center and speak with the commanding general,” Tychina said. “He’s old-fashioned, and he’d probably expect me to ask permission to marry. The chaplain will marry us in the base chapel in three hours, so you have that long to call your friends and ask them to meet us. I’ll see you at the chapel then.” She kissed him once again and, with her eyes glistening from tears, hurried off to make the wedding arrangements. Tychina checked in with the security guards, then proceeded toward the underground command center—undoubtedly, the air army commander would be down in the deep underground war room rather than up in his fourth-floor office.

  A stairway took Tychina three floors down, where his identification was checked once again. Security was extensive, but Tychina was greeted warmly by security and wing staff members alike as he made his way to the command center. A curved, truck-sized ramp led one more floor down, past intelligence, combat planning, and meteorological offices, through another set of steel blast doors, and then into the command center itself. A few of the guards in the security cubicles let themselves out to shake Tychina’s hand, and a few curious ex-flyers wanted him to lift his antiseptic mask up so they could see his scars and lacerations. Tychina was happy to see that no one that he could detect was repulsed by his appearance, and he knew he was fortunate. The Ukrainian Air Force was small, very close-knit, and supportive-unfortunately, he thought as he entered the main command center, it usually took a great disaster such as this to remind himself of how lucky he was to serve with such fine soldiers.

  After checking in with the final security unit, Tychina met up with Colonel of Aviation Petr Iosifovich Panchenko, the deputy commander of operations of L’vov Air Base. Panchenko, nearly fifty years old, with a bald head and stone-gray eyes, was one of the few senior officers on base that Tychina really enjoyed working with—probably because Panchenko had risen through the ranks in his thirty years of service from a pneumatics technician, to weapons officer on attack helicopters, to rotary and then fixed-wing pilot, to the third-highest-ranking officer on base. He was a former Communist and very influential in the old Soviet Air Force, and could have been Chief of Staff of the Ukrainian Air Force or even Mar
shal of Military Forces, the highest-ranking military man in the Ukraine, or even Minister of Defense, had it not been for his past Communist Party affiliation and his formerly close ties to Moscow. Best of all was Panchenko’s pro-flyers attitude—he still wore a flight suit as his standard utility uniform, even in headquarters.

  “Captain Tychina?” Panchenko asked with surprise. “Dobri dyen, man, you’re out of the damned hospital? How do you feel? Jesus, come on in here.” Panchenko led Tychina through the communications center, past the battle staff conference room, and into a suite of concrete-walled offices reserved for the wing staff when they were in combat conditions. “I was going to visit you tomorrow, and I expected to see you either in traction or surrounded by beautiful nurses.” He examined the sterile mask, then silently motioned for Pavlo to remove it. Penchenko’s eyes narrowed slightly when he saw the horrible lacerations, but soon he stepped over to Tychina, put his hands on his shoulders, and said in a low, sincere voice, “You look like hell, Pavlo. You really do. But I’m damned glad to see you up and around.”

  “I’m reporting for duty, sir.”

  “You’re … what? You want to start flying again?” he asked incredulously.

  “I’m ready, sir.”

  “Did you get your medical degree on your last leave, Pavlo? Are you an expert now? Why don’t you just take it easy for a few days and—”

  “The Russians cut me up, sir,” Tychina said in a low voice, “but they didn’t hurt me. I can see, I can walk, I can fly, I can fight. I counted at least thirty new airframes on the ramp—do you have enough pilots to go with them? I should remind you that I’m checked out in every swing-wing fighter in the inventory.”