They stayed and talked well after everyone else had gone. They both quit drinking shots before too long, but had nursed their Coronas and then white wine and San Pellegrino. After one a.m. the apartment complex residents stopped coming down to the pool and hot tub, so they decided to give the hot tub a try.
The pool deck was dark, illuminated only by a few sidewalk edge lights, step lights, and the parking lot lights several dozen yards away. Both Dev and Annie wore bathrobes, and carried plastic cups of Chardonnay to the spa. The hot. dry desert air cooled quickly after sunset, and there was a breeze blowing, so it felt much cooler now. “Man, I’ve been in the hot sun all day, but I’m ready for the hot tub,” Dev was saying. He turned on the bubble pumps, set his wine down on the concrete deck, shed the robe, revealing his black Nike bathing suit underneath. then sat on the edge of the spa and let his feet dangle in to test the water. “Perfect,” he said. He took a sip of wine. “I’m glad you could—”
He stopped and gulped. Annie took off her borrowed bathrobe—revealing only her birthday suit. Her breasts were indeed small, but larger than they appeared beneath her dress, and incredibly firm. Her shoulders and arms were not just well- toned—they were ripped, as were her stomach and thigh muscles, lean, taut, and striated. She watched him closely as she eased into the warm bubbly water with a confident, satisfied smile on her face.
“I—I hung a bathing suit on the doorknob for you,” he reminded her
“I know. I saw it. Thank you,” she said. “That was a very considerate thing to do. You don’t mind I didn't use it, do you,
Dev?”
“Are you kid ... I mean, no, not at all. Heels.” She leaned back, her elbows back on the edge of the spa with her breasts tantalizingly obscured within the bubbles on the water’s surface, and sipped her wine. He felt like a dork now, with a bathing suit on, so after he got into the hot tub, he slipped it off and placed it on the edge of the tub.
After several long moments, he stopped trying to get a look at her breasts and relaxed. As always, his attention drifted up to the sky. The nearby buildings and the lights from the parking lot washed out most of the sky, but he could still see a few stars shimmering overhead. “Finally starting to see the summertime constellations,” he said. “That’s Vega, in the constellation Lyra. You can just start to see the head of Scorpio down over the building.”
“Must be a navigator thing, ha ing to learn all the stars and constellations,” Annie said.
‘They still taught celestial navigation in nav school when I went through,” Dev said, “although they phased it out shortly after I left. They taught us how to use a sextant, do a precomp—figure out what the star positions are supposed to be— shoot the stars, sun, and moon, and plot a celestial, pressure, and speed line of position. Get two good star shots with a small bubble and a steady autopilot, add in a good pressure LOP and a true airspeed line from a good air data system, and a good nav could plot your position within five to ten miles.”
“Five to ten miles!” Annie exclaimed.
“I know—ridiculous, huh?” Deverill agreed. “The absolute w orst inertial nav system back then could keep you within a mile or two with an update every thirty minutes. Nowadays, the worst INS gets you within a quarter-mile with one update, and GPS can get us within six feet. But it was pretty amazing to think that navs throughout history fought wars across the oceans with little more than a star to guide them. It’s a lost art.”
“Show me what you're looking at,” Annie said. She picked up her cup of wine and waded over to him, turned around, and sat beside him. then leaned back against his chest. It both shocked and pleased him at the same time. The damned bubbles still obscured her breasts. He put his left arm around her shoulder and across her neck, clasping her right shoulder, and he could feel her nipples against his arm. Stars, Dev, he shouted at himself, think of stars now, celestial navigation, precomps, star tables, air almanacs ...
“Now, what were you looking at?” she murmured. Her head was tilted back against him. the back of her head in the water, but she wasn’t looking at the stars.
“I was trying to look at you,” he said softly, and he bent down to kiss her lips. A bolt of electricity shot through his body, the physiological responder he w as dying hard to distract sprang to life, and he kissed her deeper, harder. She returned the kiss, then took his hand from her shoulder and placed it on her breast “God, Annie, you are so sexy.” She said nothing, but her right hand drifted down to his stomach, then his thigh, and then to his fully attentive and waiting member. She stroked him a couple times. He moaned with pleasure ... and then realized she had stopped. “Annie, please...”
“I can’t, Dev,” she whispered. She reluctantly twisted away from him, moved away from him—not to the other side of the spa out of reach, but definitely apart from him—and laid her head back on the edge of the spa and covered her face. “I’m sorry, Dev. It is not you, believe me ... believe me.”
“Then what is it?” But he knew the answer the second he asked the question: “Luger. You’re in love with him or something.”
“Or something,” she said. “I wanted to, but... I don’t want this to turn into a retribution thing.”
“You mean, sleeping with me just to get back at Luger.” Annie nodded. “I’m sorry, Dev. I mean, you’re greatlooking, and you got a great bod, and you got the eyes, and the butt....”
“Wow. Women really talk like that about guys?”
“Only certain guys,” she said, with a smile. He liked her warm, honest smile. He’d never thought of her as a friend before, only as a colleague and maybe a future conquest, but now he was talking to her like a friend, and he enjoyed it. He still wanted to see her underneath him or on top of him, but it wasn’t an urgent need anymore.
“So what's the story with you two?”
“What’s to tell?” she replied. “I fell for him, I thought he fell for me. But he’s got his work, and that’s pretty much his whole life right now.”
“You said ‘right now’ like you don’t really believe it.” She looked at Dev, angry that he’d said it—and angry that he was right. “Listen, Annie, if you say women talk about men like I know men talk about women, then men and women are more alike than they are different, right?” Annie said nothing. “So the only thing you can be certain about is that you can’t change a guy. Dave Luger will be the same as long as he wants to be, as long as whatever he gets out of work is more important or more pleasurable than what he gets from other people. It sucks, but that’s the way it is.”
“So what do I do about it?”
“Annie, everybody does the same thing,” Deverill said earnestly. “You’re here in this hot tub for the same reason that Colonel Luger is there in the lab—because whatever you’re looking for here, whatever you hoped to find here, is better than waiting alone in your apartment for a man who will probably never come.”
“If I want to be here, then why do 1 feel so bad about it?”
“Because you have feelings,” he replied. “You care about him. You care about what he might think. But you have to trust yourself. Trust your feelings.” He paused, regarding her thoughtfully, then asked softly, “You love him, don’t you?”
“Yes.” -
“You probably haven’t slept with him, but you love him anyway.” She was going to say something angry at him, but she couldn’t—because, dammit, he was right. “Maybe it’s the real thing, then,” he went on. “Maybe you feel guilty because you don’t really want to be here.”
“I should follow my feelings, then.”
“Absolutely.” She rubbed her eyes, then hid them. It seemed as if she was embarrassed to be sitting there with him, afraid she was showing how stupid and naive she was. He drained his wine, then reached for his bathrobe, preparing to leave. “Shall we?”
“Yes.” But instead of leaving, Annie put her hand on his arm, firmly, forbidding him to move. She moved close to him, her face a little fearful but excited at the same time, and she r
eached under the surface of the bubbling water and found him. Despite their very serious, very nonsexual discussion, it sprang instantly back to life like the trouper it was.
“Annie?”
“You said follow my instincts,” she said. She crouched above him, still holding him, then kissed him warmly, deeply, as she maneuvered herself onto him. “I’m following my instincts. This ... is ... where I want to be, right... now.”
TWO
Nellis Air Force Base, north of Las Vegas, Nevada
Several days later
“Jee-sus, look at those suckers haul ass!”
It seemed as if the entire crowd of about two thousand onlookers said the very same thing as two sleek aircraft came into view on final approach to Nellis Air Force Base’s main runway. Even from ten miles out, they were clearly visible. Yet unlike most large aircraft, such as airliners or military jet transports, this aircraft didn’t seem to be flying slower than normal—in fact, like the fighter jets that escorted it, it seemed to be going very fast indeed.
It used the NATO nickname “Backfire.” But in the Republic of Ukraine it was known as “Speka,” meaning “heat,” and that described the Tupolev-22M perfectly. It looked like a very large jet fighter or a small, compact bomber, with a long pointed nose, sleek lines, variable-geometry “swing” wings, and two very big, very noisy afterburning engines. It carried a wide range of weapons, including all of the Commonwealth of Independent States’ air-launched weapons. It had half the pay- Idad of the B-l bomber, but much greater speed and range; and it was air-refuelable, which meant it could attack targets anywhere on the planet on short notice with minimal support. It was sleek, fast, powerful, and even sexy-looking. All of these factors made the Backfire bomber arguably one of the world’s most devastating attack planes.
There were many reasons for Ukraine not to have anything to do with the Backfires, or any expensive offensive weapon system, for that matter. Ukraine, the largest and most populous ex-Soviet republic besides Russia, had one of the smallest gross national products in industrialized Europe—every bit of its industrial output was needed to maintain its fragile existing infrastructure and maintain a modicum of a decent life for its citizens, with hardly anything left over for exports, long-term capital improvement, or warfighting. Despite its geographical and strategic importance, Ukraine spent a fraction of what other countries its size spent on defense, and it would be difficult to maintain the fleet of relatively high-tech planes.
Upon splitting off from the Commonwealth. Ukraine’s entire strategic attitude had changed as well. Ukraine declared itself a “nuclear-free” country, isolated itself from the ethnic and economic turmoil engulfing most of eastern Europe and the Russian enclaves, and resisted joining any outside military alliance. Ukraine had few outside enemies except for its tenuous relationship with its former parent, Russia, so the long- range supersonic Backfires had been considered nothing more than a useless, dangerous money pit. In fact, plenty of countries, including several Middle East countries, had offered as much as one billion dollars each in hard currency for the planes. So they had been too expensive to fly, not apparently vital to the security of Ukraine, and worth billions in badly needed cash.
But times quickly changed, and Ukraine had found it could no longer afford to live in splendid isolation. Russia became more and more reactionary and more aggressive against its former Soviet republics, increasing the pressure on its neighbors to join the new Commonwealth—what many saw as the rebirth of the Soviet empire—or suffer its wrath. When Ukraine had refused to renew its membership in the Commonwealth and at the same time applied for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia had exploded.
In 1995, Russia had staged a series of deadly attacks against military bases in several of its former republics, including Moldova, Lithuania, and Ukraine. Russia had called these bases “suspected terrorist training facilities” and threats against Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and had accused their former republics of persecuting ethnic Russians.
The Russian attacks had been swift and devastating. Only when Russia had attacked NATO warships on the Black Sea had anyone tried to oppose the Russian war machine. Rebecca Furness, at the time the first female combat pilot in the United States Air Force, and her tiny Air Force Reserve unit from Plattsburgh, New York, had flown a series of precision strike raids deep into Russia that had helped stop the conflict before it flared into a general east European thermonuclear war. Patrick McLanahan, flying the original EB-52 Megafortress, had done the same in defending Lithuania against attacks by neighboring Belarus and Russia.
Already devastated by a slow economy, no foreign investment, and a general lack of confidence in its reformist government, Russia had finally refrained from any more military forays for several years. It was completely unable to influence events concerning former close friends Iraq, Serbia, and North Korea. Russia, whose landmass spanned almost half the globe’s time zones and whose natural resources were unmatched by any country in the world, was quickly becoming a third-rate power.
The rise of nationalist, neo-Communist leaders like Valentin Sen’kov had changed all that. Russia had reasserted its influence in deciding the fate of Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo, and it had used considerable military force to subdue the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Ukraine, because of its domineering location on the Black Sea, its large Russian population, and because it hadn’t been properly brought into line during the 1995 conflict, clearly saw itself as next in line if it refused to toe the Russian line.
Ukraine’s answer: stop acting like a target, and start being a true European power and member of the world community. It started a conscription program—every high school student received ten weeks of military basic training as a condition of graduation, and every able-bodied person had to belong to a reserve unit until age forty—and increased defense spending tenfold. Ukraine had beefed up its Black Sea fleet, started training its ground forces using German, Turkish, and American doctrine instead of Russian, and rebuilt its air forces—including reactivating the Tupolev-22M fleet. Since the 1995 conflict with Russia, twelve of the surviving twenty-one Backfire bombers had been returned to service.
The most important change: increased integration with NATO military command structure and doctrine. Full integration would take many years, but the beginning of this important step in NATO’s push toward Asia was taking place now. Two of the supersonic swing-wing bombers were at Nellis Air Force Base in southern Nevada, participating in U.S. Air Force-sponsored joint NATO air combat exercises. They were the most powerful, most anticipated, ex-Soviet warplanes ever to come to America.
“How about we have a little fun, guys?” Captain Annie Dewey asked. The thirty-five-year-old brunette B-1B aircraft commander from the One-Eleventh Bomb Squadron, Nevada Air National Guard, was sitting in the right seat of the Tupolev- 22M supersonic bomber. Per United States regulations, a U.S. military pilot had to be on board every multi-crew-member combat aircraft landing on an active military airbase. The nonstop flight from Ukraine to Las Vegas had taken only nine hours, including two aerial refuelings,
“What do you have in mind?” Colonel-General Roman Smoliy, the crew commander, asked. With his square jaw, gray flattop, piercing blue eyes, square nose, and broad shoulders tapering to thin ankles. Roman Smoliy looked like he had been cast for a Hollywood movie. Smoliy was the chief of staff of the Ukrainian Air Force. Before the conflict with Russia, Ukraine had had a force of two hundred intercontinental bombers, equal to that of the United States, a mix of Tu-95 Bear turboprop bombers, Tu-22 Blinders, and Tu-160 Blackjack supersonic bombers, along with the Tu-22M Backfires. After the war, only fifty had remained. It was General Smoliy’s job to decide if Ukraine should have any long-range bombers at all, and that meant learning how to employ them in battle. “Nothing boring, I take it?”
“How well you know me already. General,” Annie said. She spoke briefly on the radio, got the clearance she was looking for, then s
aid, “Escorts, you’re clear to depart. See ya on the ground.” The two F-16C Falcon air defense fighters, who had been escorting the big Russian bombers on their flight across the United States, wagged their wings and split off. “Okay, General, one-time good deal—all the airspace within thirty miles of Nellis, including over Las Vegas, is yours. Show us what these babies can do.”
General Smoliy broke into a wide grin, then reached across the center console, took Annie’s hand, and kissed it. “Thank you, Captain.” He secured his oxygen mask with an excited SNAP! and took a firm grip on the control stick. “Doozhe priyemno, Las Vegas,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.” He then jammed the throttles all the way to full military power and swept the wings back as far as they could go. He started a tight left turn back toward Las Vegas, his wingman in tight fingertip formation. It did not take long for the formation to overfly the Strip. They had descended to just a thousand feet above ground level. They did two three-sixties over the downtown, using the Stratosphere tower as their orbit point.
After the second orbit, just to make sure as many folks as possible were watching, Smoliy called out, “Dvee, drova, tup!" and he plugged in full afterburners. The two Tu-22Ms easily slid through the sound barrier, booming all of downtown Las Vegas. He then aimed directly for Nellis Air Force Base. Still traveling well past the speed of sound, both heavy bombers flew down the runway only two hundred feet above ground, creating a double rooster-tail from the supersonic shock wave that could be seen twenty miles away.
At the north end of the runway, Smoliy pulled his throttles back to military power, yanked his bomber into a hard ninety- degree right-bank turn, and swept the wings forward, quickly slowing the big bomber down below the sound barrier. By the time they rolled out on the downwind side, they were at the perfect altitude and airspeed for the approach, and Smoliy and Dewey began configuring the bomber for their overhead approach. The second Tu-22M was precisely thirty seconds behind him.
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