Edge of Honor

by Richard Herman

  Noreen Coker was a congresswoman from Los Angeles and one of Maddy’s best friends. They had met in the California state legislature when they were freshmen, Maddy a senator, Noreen an assemblywoman. At the time, Coker weighed more than 250 pounds and was given to flashy clothes, wild hairdos, and outrageous statements. But Maddy saw through the facade. Underneath was an extremely intelligent and shrewd politician who knew what it took to get elected and how to get things done. Later, Coker had gone on to the House of Representatives and when Maddy arrived in Washington as the vice president, the old friendship was rekindled.

  Within a month of her arrival, Maddy had gathered Noreen and a small coterie of friends around her as personal advisors and a support group. After she had become president, the group became known as the Kitchen Cabinet and were often called the ultimate insiders. To a person, they were discreet, totally honest, and completely loyal. But Noreen was more. She was a she-bear protecting her young when it came to her friend.

  Inside the dressing room, Noreen automatically flicked on the TV. It was set to C-SPAN and a commentator was standing in front of the Capitol, microphone in hand. “Only Senator Leland voted against Gen. Robert Bender’s appointment as ambassador to Poland. Inside sources were surprised that Leland even let the committee consider Bender’s appointment, much less come to a quick vote. Could this signal the end of the Senator’s long hostility to the Turner administration?”

  “Don’t bet on it, child,” Noreen said to the TV. She listened to the soundbites from the committee hearing. “Oh, you did good, Bobby Bender.” She turned to Maddy who was almost dressed. “Our boy got a slam dunk this time. But Leland is hard on rebounds. He’ll be back.”

  Maddy pulled on her shoes. “I knew the committee would like him.” She didn’t mention the deal Kennett had struck with Leland.

  Gostomel Air Base, Ukraine

  The women walked across the parking apron of the semi-deserted air base fifteen miles north of Kiev. They were all young and pretty and carried their own luggage. Most walked in silence, but a few of the sixteen-year-olds, happy to be out in the night air after being cooped up in the shabby barracks for over a week, chattered about their new jobs in the West. They formed a single line waiting to board the Ilyushin I1-76. The I1-76, the workhorse of Russia’s Military Transport Aviation, was not what they had expected. The high-wing, T-tailed, four-engine cargo plane bore a striking resemblance to the old U.S. C-141 StarLifter that had been retired from active service.

  Only one woman showed any hesitancy about giving up her passport to the man checking off their names. But a sharp command from one of the guards escorting the women ended that. Like the others, she handed over her passport and walked up the ramp and into the lighted cargo deck. No seats had been rigged and she sat on her suitcase. The man collecting the passports did a quick count. “Forty-seven fresh cunts,” he said, speaking Russian. He handed over a small aluminum suitcase to the men guarding the women. They huddled around and quickly counted the money. “Yes?” the first man asked. “All is correct?”

  The man holding the suitcase replied in Russian. “As agreed, two thousand dollars each, ninety-four thousand dollars U.S.” He spoke to the others in Ukrainian and they trooped off the aircraft, leaving the women to their new masters. The I1-76 started engines and taxied for the runway. Within minutes, it was airborne and turned to the northwest, heading for Minsk in Belarus. The creaky aircraft never climbed above 12,000 feet for the thirty-minute flight and only made one radio call when it crossed the border into Belarus.

  The radar antenna on top of the 345-foot tower outside Bialystok, Poland, swept the horizon every five seconds. The twin parabolic reflectors were stacked one above the other and rotated in unison, feeding information through a cable net to a bunker two miles away. A sign over the bunker’s blast doors announced it was the home of CROWN EAST, the easternmost of three radar early-warning and ground-controlled intercept sites that formed a chain across central Poland. Inside the bunker, the radar operator on duty noted the track of the I1-76 in his log and marked it down as routine traffic. He did not bother to track it to Machulishche, an old Soviet air base outside Minsk, Belorusskaya, nor to wake the tactical-threat officer.

  A follow-me truck was waiting for the I1-76 when it cleared the runway at Machulishche. The big plane lumbered after the truck, following it to a remote parking apron where heavily armed guards surrounded two low cargo-carrier trucks loaded with pallets. The I1-76 shut down its engines as the first cargo carrier backed up to the aircraft’s loading ramp. The first three pallets were quickly pushed on board and the truck pulled away. The women had to move to make room for the cargo and most stood beside the stacks of white plastic-wrapped bricks, holding onto the cargo netting. The high-grade cocaine was worth more than they were.

  The second cargo carrier pulled up and three more pallets were rolled on board. Like the cocaine, there was no attempt to disguise the half-kilo bricks of tarry hashish. A third truck rolled up and a line of men formed a chain to pass cardboard boxes on board. The boxes were broken open and the bricks of high-potency marijuana, sensimilla to be exact, were stowed around the pallets, filling the cargo deck. Finally, the women were left sitting on top of the drugs.

  Less than an hour after landing, the I1-76’s pilots started engines and made one radio call. On the other side of the airfield, two pilots walked leisurely out of an underground bunker. The cargo plane taxied for the active runway and, without waiting for clearance, took off into the clear night. But this time, the I1-76 leveled off at 5,000 feet as it headed directly for the Polish border, 160 miles away.

  The two pilots walking across the apron climbed into their waiting Sukhoi Su-35 fighters and strapped in. The Su-35s were a single-place, twin-tailed, twin-engined fighter about the same size as the U.S. F-15 Eagle. An observer, unable to see the foreplanes mounted above the intakes, might confuse the two. But unlike the Eagle, which went out of production in the early 1990s, the Su-35s were brand new and, with their advanced avionics, a serious threat to the United States’ newest fighter, the F-22 Raptor. The pilots finished cocking their jets for a scramble. Now they had to wait.

  The radar operator sitting in the darkened bunker at Crown East swore silently in Polish. The P-50 radar, known to NATO as Barlock, was going out of calibration—again. The Polish Air Force had inherited the system from the Warsaw Pact and it was showing its age. The operator cursed the radar’s Soviet makers and manually tuned it. A blip caught his eye. Then it was gone. He retuned the radar and caught it again. He noted the azimuth and distance: 075 degrees at 150 nautical miles. He called out the target and the plotter stirred to life, angry at having her sleep disturbed. She plotted the target on the Plexiglas situation board at the back of the room.

  “An airliner taking off out of Minsk,” the young woman muttered.

  “It’s tracking toward us. I don’t have a flight plan and there is no radar transponder. It should be squawking a code.”

  The girl shrugged. “Russian maintenance.” They had heard all the rumors about the deplorable state of Russian aircraft.

  The operator studied the scope. “It’s definitely heading toward us. Still no squawk. Wake the tac officer.” The tactical-threat officer stumbled out of his cubicle and zipped up his pants. He rubbed his eyes as he looked over the radar operator’s shoulder. “I have an unknown, sir. No flight plan or IFF squawk.” Again, the operator called out the azimuth and distance for plotting as he activated the computer’s automatic tracking system. Much to his surprise, it worked and a readout appeared on the scope. “The target is still heading directly for us.” He changed the antenna into sector sweep for confirmation. “Maybe it’s an airliner headed for Warsaw with a malfunctioning transponder. You know the Russians.”

  “They still act like they own the world,” the tac officer muttered. He bit his lip. It was still a bogie, an unknown target, that would penetrate Polish airspace in eighteen minutes. “Notify sector command,” he ordered,
sending the problem upstairs. The radar operator made the radio call without bothering to activate the encryption circuits.

  The controller at sector command answered immediately, his voice loud and clear over the clear radio channel. “A single target at that speed and altitude is no threat. It’s probably a Vnukova flight.”

  “Damn,” the radar operator said. Vnukova was the call sign for Russian diplomatic aircraft with special overflight rights left over from the days of the Warsaw Pact. The name came from the airport twenty miles southwest of Moscow where the flights supposedly originated. “They’re still required to file a flight plan and be transmitting the proper IFF code for identification.”

  “Their whole system is screwed up,” sector control answered. In six words, he had explained the lack of a flight plan and IFF squawk.

  “Why not a Bravo?” the radar operator ventured. A Bravo was a practice scramble of fighters setting air-defense alert. “We can use the practice.”

  Sector control considered it. Fuel and flying time were very costly and he’d have to justify the scramble. But the pilots did need the practice. He hit the Klaxon button. The two fighter pilots in the alert facility next to sector command were jolted out of a sound sleep and they raced for their waiting aircraft, two F-16s recently purchased from the United States.

  The intelligence listening post at Brest in Belarus had monitored Polish communications for years and was still manned. The technician on duty intercepted the radio call between Crown East and sector command scrambling the F-16s and passed it on as a routine matter. Normally, it would have died in the bowels of the military command structure. But on this particular night, the system worked as designed and a green light from the Minsk control tower flashed at the Su-35s sitting alert on the ramp. Immediately, the Su-35s’ big Saturn AL-35 turbofan engines spun to life and the fighters fast-taxied for the runway. The pilots made a formation takeoff in afterburner, not because they required the extra thrust, but for the fun of it. Besides, the air force wasn’t paying for the fuel.

  They needed less than 4,000 feet of runway to become airborne. They climbed to 400 feet and did a tactical split at the end of the runway, falling into an easy route formation 200 feet abreast. Both pilots slaved their autopilots to the terrain following/avoidance radar and dropped to 150 feet above the ground. Satisfied the system was working, they accelerated to .96 Mach, 630 nautical miles per hour. They would catch the I1-76 in thirteen minutes, just before it penetrated the Polish airspace.

  The two F-16s the Polish pilots were flying were not new aircraft. However, they had been completely refurbished by General Dynamics and equipped with zero-time engines before being sold to the Polish Air Force. Ultimately, the program would lead to the Poles manufacturing F-16s under a licensing agreement. But so far, the program was stalled because of American refusal to include more highly advanced avionics, or black boxes, that upgraded the F-16s’ capability. Still, the Polish pilots loved the hot performance and reliability of the jet. They only wished they had more of them and could log more flying time.

  Considering they had started cold from a sound sleep, the scramble went smoothly enough. The F-16s were at the end of the runway, ready for takeoff, in nine minutes. But sector command delayed their takeoff while they tried to establish radio contact with the approaching I1-76. Lacking success, the controller finally launched the two F-16s when the I1-76 was thirty miles from the border.

  The handoff to Crown East was routine and the radar operator directed the F-16s to enter a racetrack pattern fifty miles back from the border with one leg oriented toward the incoming bogie. Now three different agencies, sector command, Crown East, and civilian air-traffic control, were trying to establish radio contact with the oncoming I1-76. There was still no response and the tac officer in the bunker passed control over to his weapons officer, the radar controller in charge of directing the actual intercept. Like many officers in the Polish Air Force, she was young and new at her job. And this was her first live intercept. The I1-76 penetrated Polish airspace.

  Her voice shook as she broke the two F-16s out of orbit. “Archer One and Two, you have a bogie at zero-seven-zero degrees, forty-five nautical miles. Fly vector zero-seven-zero. Visually ID and report only. Weapons safe.”

  “Weapons safe,” Archer One replied, making sure his master arm switch was in the off position. He broke out of orbit and set his airspeed at .85 Mach, 510 nautical miles per hour.

  “I have contact, on the nose, at forty miles,” Archer Two called over the radio. His pulse-Doppler radar had easily found the I1-76 and he locked it up. Almost immediately, the APG-68 radar broke lock. “Negative lock,” he radioed. He tried again with the same results. Then he remembered to check his radar-warning receiver to see if he was being jammed. There was no symbol on the warning display, only a chirping tone in his headset. He disregarded it.

  Archer One also had the I1-76 on his radar and was experiencing the same problem. Then it hit him. Their radars were interfering with each other. “Turn your radar to standby,” he ordered, keeping his own radar in 120-degree, four-bar scan. Now he tried to lock up the target. Nothing. The weapons officer at Crown East continued to direct them into the intercept, giving them headings to set up a stern conversion.

  The two Su-35s were still on the deck, directly underneath and at cospeed with the I1-76. Their radars detected the two oncoming F-16s and their wingtip jammer pods successfully jammed the F-16s’ radar, hiding their presence and denying the F-16s a radar lock-on. Automatically, the fire control system in the lead Su-35 sorted the threat and assigned targets to the R-77 missiles carried on the fuselage underneath the intakes. The R-77 was the most advanced air-to-air missile in the Russian inventory and nicknamed the “AMRAAMSKI” as it was comparable to the United States’ highly advanced AMRAAM, or Advanced Medium-range Air-to-Air Missile. When the data had been downlinked, an in-range marker flashed on the aircraft’s wide-angle HUD. The pilot hit the pickle button on his stick and two missiles leaped off the rails. Now they waited.

  Archer One, the lead F-16 pilot, kept scanning the night sky outside. “Do you have a visual?” he radioed.

  “No visual,” came the answer.

  “The bogie is at your two o’clock, ten miles, slightly high,” the weapons controller at Crown East radioed. “Fly zero-three-zero.” She was directing them away from the I1-76 to give them turning room to convert to the bogie’s stern. The two F-16s turned to the new heading, still searching the sky for a visual contact.

  “We should see his lights,” Archer Two radioed.

  “Looking,” Archer One replied.

  But they had never been taught how to do a proper visual scan, especially at night, and they never saw the two rocket plumbs arcing up at them from their deep four o’clock position.

  “Archer One, right turn to two-five-zero,” the weapons controller radioed, turning the interceptors back into the bogie. “Target will be coming from your three o’clock to your nose, two miles, slightly high.” No answer. “Archer One, how copy?”

  “What happened?” the tactical officer demanded.

  “I don’t know,” the weapons controller replied. “I’ve lost all contact.” She went through the lost-communications procedures while the radar operator retuned the radar. Nothing.

  “You stupid woman!” the tac officer shouted. “Two aircraft just don’t disappear.”

  The radar operator’s voice came through their headsets. “The bogie is squawking now and we are in radio contact. He’s using a Vnukova call sign; a diplomatic flight. He’s calling for landing at Modlin.” Modlin was an air base twenty miles northwest of Warsaw where the Russians had landing rights.

  “Has the Vnukova flight seen the F-16s?”

  “He claims not,” came the answer.

  “What happened?” the tac officer asked. There was no answer.

  SIX

  Moscow

  The motorcade of two black Mercedes-Benzes sandwiching the Bentley hurtled down th
e center of Granovsky Street. It was a throwback to the 1970s, the heyday of Soviet rule, and policemen waved off traffic and pedestrians, clearing the way to the Kremlin’s Borovitsky Gate. The barrier at the gate was raised and one of the three guards managed to wave them through, not bothering to salute. The motorcade drew to a halt in front of the Red Steps and Mikhail Vashin climbed out of the Bentley. He stood in the cool morning air, savoring the moment. Deep in his soul, his peasant heritage told him that fall was in the air and to prepare for winter. But his days in the cold were over. The spring of Mikhail Vashin was about to begin.

  He climbed the steps and entered the building. Viktor Kraiko, the president of the Russian Federation, and Yaponets were waiting to escort him. “The guards at the gate,” Vashin said to Kraiko. “Sloppy. Fix it.”

  “He can’t,” Yaponets said. “But I can.”

  Vashin grunted. Yaponets got things done, often with a mere word or look of disapproval. He was a man with authority, a trait Russians understood instinctively. Vashin handed his overcoat to Kraiko who passed it on to an aide. “Tell me, Viktor Ivanovich, who controls the Security Council today?”

  “I do,” Kraiko answered, trying to sound confident. Russian politics were a shifting quagmire of quicksand that changed with each tide.

  “The meeting will go smoothly?”

  “Rodonov will be difficult. He has questions about last night.”

  Vashin snorted again. Vitaly Rodonov was the minister of defense and the last stumbling block in his way. So far, Kraiko’s advice to avoid a direct confrontation with Rodonov had been sound. But that time had ended.

  Two guards opened the doors to the ornate conference room where the Soviet politburo once met. The men waiting inside were silent as Kraiko took his seat at the head of the table. The meeting supposedly was Kraiko’s idea. But they all knew the truth of it. Kraiko played his role to the hilt and motioned Vashin to the podium at the bottom of the table. Arranged on Vashin’s right were the most powerful leaders of Russian organized crime. On his left were the same men of the Security Council who had attended Boris Bakatina’s funeral. But this time, the minister of defense was present, completing their number.