The Kremlin Phoenix

by Renneberg, Stephen

  Sorokin glanced at the list. “Twenty seven? Is that all?”

  “Yes sir,” the adjutant replied. “One British, one Australian, the rest American.”

  The general passed the list to a lieutenant, whose job it would be to ensure every man was accounted for.

  Sorokin turned to Craig. “You should be the one to tell them.”

  Craig hesitated, unsure what to say to men who’d spent most of their adult lives as secret prisoners of an undeclared war. “We’re here . . . ,” he began falteringly, then he had to take a deep breath to steady his emotions. “We’re here to take you home.”

  For a moment, the prisoners looked stunned, not comprehending what they’d heard, then they whispered to each other, “What did he say?. . . It’s a trick! . . . Did he say home?”

  Craig took a few steps toward the men. “Is there a Colonel Jack Balard here?”

  Heads looked left and right, searching for the youngest member of their group, then a man about Craig’s height with graying hair moved slowly forward through the press of men. He used a walking stick and had a thin scar across his forehead.

  “I’m Colonel Balard.”

  For a moment, Craig was mesmerized by the first sight he’d had of his father in many years. The only images he knew were photographs of a confident aviator, the only memories were of a young energetic man. This old hobbled prisoner with a face marked with lines and sunken eyes shrouded in darkness was a stranger.

  Craig approached his father, staring into vaguely familiar eyes. “I have something for you,” he said, offering his hand, palm up.

  Colonel Balard looked down at the dull metal shapes in Craig’s hand, confused. He took his dog tags and turned them over. “How’d you get these?” he asked, studying the young man before him, sensing a strange familiarity. “Do I know you?”

  “You did, a long time ago,” he said with tears forming in his eyes. “My name is Craig John Balard.”

  Colonel Balard stared at the younger reflection of himself, groping for understanding. “Craig? . . . Craig!” He took a step toward his son, about to embrace him, then stopped, bewildered by an awkward unfamiliarity. “You’re so . . . big.”

  Craig took the remaining step and hugged his father, then they were both slapping each other’s backs and laughing as tears rolled down their cheeks. Decades vanished in a heartbeat. Finally, Craig whispered, “We’re going home, Dad. We’re going home!”

  * * * *

  The two SU-25’s passed over Zamok Branka for the last time, then banked away towards their base as Craig and his father boarded the big transport helicopter. They took their seats, with Valentina, Siyansky and Yashin, halfway down the Mi-26’s fuselage, while the air force soldiers, who’d been covering the camp guards, ran to the chopper.

  All of the freed prisoners watched Zamok Branka through the chopper’s open rear door, hardly able to believe they’d never see it again. Most had resigned themselves to dying in their Siberian prison, and were now filled with uncertainty about the future. There’d been escape attempts, but all had failed when exposed to the vastness of Siberia, it’s freezing weather and the difficulty of the language. Consequently, as the men had aged and the hopelessness of the task crystallized, the number of escape attempts had dwindled to nothing. Colonel Balard himself had escaped once from the old gulag, evading capture for nine days before eventually being returned to the camp, starving and exhausted.

  It seemed such a long time ago now.

  Once all of the soldiers were aboard, an air force crewman closed the cargo door, cutting off their view of the compound. The Zamok Branka inmates each felt a strange sense of loss, remembering the men who’d never go home and marveling at how suddenly the nightmare had ended. An eerie silence filled the cavernous cargo hold as the freed internees exchanged smiles and hopeful looks.

  The Mi-26’s two big 11,000 horse power engines roared to life, and the enormous helicopter lurched into the air. The men began to cheer as the chopper picked up speed, and soon Zamok Branka was left far behind.

  * * * *

  The SVR unit in Irkutsk Oblast detected the arrival of the Mi-26 within an hour of it landing at Bratsk Airport. They reported the unscheduled arrival without realizing the significance, but in Moscow, the routine report was paired with a message from Zamok Branka, describing the use of the same type of helicopter by the air force to evacuate the center’s detainees. Soon after the connection was made, Nogorev was advised as to where his quarry had gone.

  He immediately commandeered a small Forestry Department helicopter for the flight east to Bratsk. The long range helicopter was used to spot forest fires and track poachers, and had room only for the pilot and two passengers. Nogorev had taken Chernykh with him, while the remainder of the surveillance team followed in the refrigeration truck, although considering the distance they had to cover, he doubted they’d reach the airport in time.

  The remote Siberian runway at Bratsk was used by both civilian and military aircraft, with the air force occupying a sprawling area to the south west. The chopper pilot, experienced from long years skimming tree tops pursuing fur poachers, had no difficulty staying below the base’s radar. When they landed several hours after sunset near the civilian terminal, the tower demanded they identify themselves, but at Nogorev’s insistence, the pilot ignored the request.

  Nogorev and Chernykh slipped away into the darkness before airport security had even been alerted to the unauthorized landing, then the small helicopter flew off across the runway towards the north west. They worked their way around behind the civilian terminal and through woodlands south of the runway towards the air force controlled end of the airport. After crossing the border between civilian and military zones, they saw a gleaming white twin-engined Aeroflot passenger jet taxiing towards the large concrete apron in front of the air force control tower.

  Chernykh studied the aircraft through his field glasses as the jet powered down its engines. “It’s an Airbus A320. Must have just landed,” he said as a tanker truck pulled up beneath the jet and ground crew prepared to refuel the aircraft.

  Guessing they still had a few hours before the plane would be ready to takeoff, they crept through the forest south of the airstrip, crossing a taxiway that led to twelve revetments, where combat aircraft could park safe from bomb damage. Soon they came upon a long concrete apron, where two old IL-76 transports were parked in front of a large white hanger. The lights in the building were out and the only sign of life came from the control tower several hundred meters away. The tower, and the rectangular building beneath it, were both well lit, while the Mi-26 helicopter stood empty nearby.

  Nogorev was about to break cover and head towards the hanger when he heard movement to their right. Two base defense troops and a guard dog strolled along the tree line towards them, senses dulled from long months of boredom. Nogorev signaled Chernykh to wait until the airfield guards were almost on top of them. The dog sniffed their scent and turned towards the trees curiously, unnoticed by the guards. When the whisper of a silenced pistol sounded, the dog yelped and collapsed, finally drawing the attention of the confused guards. Two more soft whispers sounded, and both guards fell to the ground before they ever understood the danger. Nogorev and Chernykh pulled the dog and the guards back into the forest, where they quickly stripped the soldiers of their clothes and weapons.

  A few minutes later, the two Spetsnaz soldiers dressed as base defense troops, strolled casually towards the large building: part hanger, part warehouse. They searched the building, finding two packed parachutes, which they slung over their shoulders like backpacks, then walked casually past the IL-76 transports toward the passenger jet.

  The tanker crew had hoses connected and were pumping fuel into the jet as Nogorev and Chernykh approached. Overall clad mechanics, performing routine engine checks barely noticed them and never wondered where the guard’s dog had gone, or why they carried backpacks.

  Several compartment doors were swung open beneath the
fuselage, as mechanics climbed in and out of the bowels of the aircraft, readying it for take-off. Nogorev found an open cargo compartment containing several pallet loads of freight, which the jet had been unable to offload before being diverted to Bratsk. He ensured they weren’t being watched, then they climbed up into the cargo compartment and took cover behind the pallets.

  For the next hour, they listened as mechanics went over the aircraft before eventually slamming the hatches shut, one by one. When their compartment was sealed with a metallic clang, several tiny lights activated, giving Nogorev enough light to see by as he drew his knife and began prying open the flimsy metal panel leading forward.

  Nogorev had resigned himself to being unable to recover the Party funds now, but he was determined to ensure they didn’t fall into enemy’s hands. That meant he could not allow Craig Balard, or the secret of Zamok Branka, to leave Russian air space.

  * * * *

  November 17, 2280

  Captain Wilkins entered the control room in the early morning, station time, bleary eyed and half asleep. “I take it you’ve figured out why Craig Balard asked us that question?”

  “I think so,” Mariena said. She’d slept little in the nearly two weeks since their last temporal transmission, trying to piece together what was happening at Craig’s point on the timeline. “It’s to do with his father.”

  “But we went over that,” Wilkins said. “His father never flew in that squadron.”

  “I know that’s what the official historical record says, but Craig Balard said he was trying to get his facts straight, facts about a US air force motto. Craig Balard never served in the military, but his father did, in the US air force.”

  “That’s a tenuous connection.”

  “By itself, it is. So I asked Commander Zikky to get every piece of information we could find on Craig Balard’s father and run it against the entire composite dataset, everything we’ve uploaded from all the exchanges.”

  Captain Wilkins glanced at Zikky sitting in front of his twelve screen console, four screens wide, three high. “Everything? The sum total of human knowledge?”

  “Yeah.” Zikky nodded wearily. “Nothing fancy, just a quick first pass data match.”

  Wilkins turned back to Mariena. “You wouldn’t have a obsessive personality disorder by any chance?”

  “You know I haven’t, or I would never have qualified for the SEIII mission.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Colonel Jack Balard’s dental records were in the US air force medical archive.”

  “Dental records?” Wilkins said incredulously.

  “We got a match with a Russian air crash investigation report,” she said. “Over three dozen people were killed, most unidentified. The plane was destroyed on take-off. Unfortunately, the forensic investigators were never able to find matching dental records to most of the dead. Once the Russian army was running the country after the coup, they classified the report and blocked access to overseas information – probably because they already knew who was on the plane.”

  “After I matched Colonel Balard’s dental records to the forensic report,” Zikky said. “I ran a search of the dental structures of the other unknown victims against Craig Balard’s New York dental records, and of course, he was there.”

  “They were storing that information back then?” Wilkins asked.

  “Cloud data bases were just coming in,” Zikky explained. “Nothing like our global data exchanges, but once the data was digitized, it was stored forever, moved from server to server, until I uploaded it to the station’s memory core.”

  “There was no trace of Craig Balard’s death,” Mariena said, “because his body was never identified.”

  “When did this plane crash happen?” Wilkins asked.

  “A few days after I answered Craig Balard’s question – in this timeline.”

  “Can we fix a plane crash?”

  “We have to,” Mariena said. “The problem is, it wasn’t an accident. We know when it happened, we have unclassified catering records that tell us when and where a small group of people were fed, and we have detailed plans of the airport itself.”

  “So you have time and place,” Wilkins said optimistically.

  “What we don’t have is a precise fix on Craig Balard, just a guess as to the area he is located in. It means this next transmission will be messy. We’re going to have to fire the equivalent of a temporal shotgun to get the message to him.”

  Captain Wilkins gave her a puzzled look. “What’s a temporal shotgun?”

  * * * *

  Present Day

  The Zamok Branka survivors slept in the ground level of the control tower building, some in small uncomfortable plastic chairs, others on hard floor tiles. What blankets could be found by the air force had been distributed to the oldest men first. Craig had managed barely an hour’s sleep sitting up, while his father had hardly stirred since midnight. He shifted position for the hundredth time as he heard a catering van pull up in front of the control tower. Craig watched absently as two men climbed out and began unpacking breakfast trays prepared by the civilian canteen. It was a simple meal that would have to sustain them on a long flight, where no meals would be served.

  A chorus of female voices sounded in perfect unison. “Craig Balard, do not board the Airbus A320. It will be destroyed on take-off!”

  Craig snapped fully awake to see Mariena standing three meters away. She was also standing off to his right. He stood up, confused, and saw her again at the far end of the long rectangular building. He spun around, finding a scattered row of Marienas stood near the wall. Other Marienas stood on the tower stairs, in the control room above, and in each of the lavatories and small store rooms at the back of the control tower. More Marienas stood outside, encircling the control tower building, all speaking as one, all perfectly identical.

  Old men, Russian Air Force officers and several armed guards looked around in astonishment, as all of the apparitions repeated the message together. Throughout the control tower building, men approached the holograms curiously. Some tried touching her, only to find their hands pass through her. Others tried to speak to her, and were baffled why she failed to respond.

  Craig fished Valentina’s cell phone from his pocket. I’m here, he tweeted. How will the plane be destroyed?

  The assembled Marienas listened as Zikky read out Craig’s tweet, then they spoke as one. “The Russian Army know you’re there. They’re sending forces to stop you taking off.”

  Murmurs of fear and confusion spread through the Zamok Branka detainees as they realized their escape was about to fail.

  How long have we got?

  “Your plane was destroyed at six AM,” the Marienas answered as one, “on the runway.”

  Craig glanced at the clock on the wall. It was just 4.30 AM. Do you know when the army arrives?

  “No. Only that they start shooting when you board the plane.”

  Thanks, Craig tweeted.

  General Sorokin approached Craig with an alarmed look as all of the Marienas disappeared simultaneously. “What’s going on?”

  “General, we need to go up into the control tower, see if the army is outside the airfield.”

  Sorokin suppressed his confusion, then nodded and led Craig to the tower elevator. While the elevator rumbled upwards he asked, “Who was that woman?”

  “My guardian angel,” Craig replied. “You can trust what she says, she’s been right before.”

  When the doors open, they hurried out into the control room where two air traffic controllers were wondering where the female hologram had gone.

  “Binoculars!” Sorokin demanded.

  The air traffic controllers handed Sorokin and Craig a pair each, which they used to scan the outskirts of the airfield. At the far end of the runway, Craig spotted a truck moving through the trees, towing an artillery piece. A short distance behind it, was another.

  “Over there!” he said, pointing.

  S
orokin turned his binoculars towards the approaching artillery battery. “Those guns could hit us on the runway.”

  “But the guns are being towed,” Craig said thinking aloud. “And she said the plane blew up at six. That gives us over an hour, General. We can still make it, if we takeoff now.”

  Sorokin watched the artillery battery a moment longer, then nodded. He turned to the air traffic controllers. “We’re taking off immediately.”

  “Yes, sir,” the senior controller said.

  When they were in the elevator, heading back down to the ground floor, Sorokin asked, “How did she know?”

  “Twenty twenty hindsight,” Craig said.

  Sorokin gave him a puzzled look as the elevator doors opened. The general ordered his guards to move the Zamok Branka survivors onto the A320 and sent the pilots on ahead to began pre-flight checks.

  “What’s happening,” Valentina asked.

  “The army’s bringing up artillery,” Craig said. “We’re taking off before they can fire.”

  “How long do we have?” Colonel Balard asked.

  “A few minutes,” Craig said, “No more.”

  Craig and Valentina thanked Sergeant Siyansky and Corporal Yashin, who had remained overnight waiting for a flight back to the Krasnoyarsk Air Base, then joined the procession of old men ambling out towards the A320. Ground crew had already towed external stairs into position to allow them to board, having completed pre-flight fuelling and maintenance checks. Sorokin’s lieutenant took up position at the base of the stairs, diligently ticking off each name as the detainees climbed aboard.

  Once inside, Craig and his father selected seats in business class, across the aisle from Valentina and General Sorokin, who would serve as the Prime Minister’s emissary while the crisis lasted. Soon the engines began to whine as the aircraft taxied towards the end of the runway. A nervous buzz filled the plane as the old pilots peered through the aircraft’s windows, searching for the artillery pieces being set up just beyond the airfield.