by Dale Brown
"If he volunteers, he can go."
"Well, I don't know that—"
"Have you ever heard of a Marine who didn't volunteer for combat?"
"Um, no sir. But even so, you're still one short."
"No, we're full up. I'll fly Boomer." Samson rose. "Get the others into my office right away. I don't care where they are. Get them. Now. We have a job to do."
V
Voyeurs at the Edge of Battle
Dochia, Romania
28 January 1998
0500
It was the last time he'd see her.
They'd lain in bed all night, not talking, only their sides touching. Stoner slid away from her now, unsure of himself.
Had there been real emotion from the very beginning, lust, or gratitude because of her help? Something vulnerable and simple, frail, unworthy of a spy?
No matter how you steeled yourself — how you stole yourself away, hid the vulnerable part of the soul that everyone had behind a wall, in order to do your job — there was some small slither of humanity left, some piece of flesh vulnerable at the edge.
Stoner pulled on his pants, slipping in the button at the waist. They were loose. He always lost weight on a mission. Another week and he would need a belt.
Shirt on, he unrolled a fresh pair of socks and sat on the bed, his back to her.
Temptation lingered, her perfume and his sweat mixing in the stuffy room.
He took his shoes, ignored his chance for one last glance, and left.
* * *
A half hour later,Stoner turned his motorcycle off the main road just north of Bacau, riding down a narrow dirt trail that formed a horseshoe between a farm field and the road. Danny Freah was already waiting, sitting in a borrowed Romanian jeep. Stoner drove past quickly, checking the area, then spun back, kicking up dirt and rocks as he skidded to a stop next to Danny's window.
"How goes it?" asked Freah. He was dressed in civilian clothes, jeans and a heavy jacket.
"I'm OK. You?"
"This Romanian coffee could wake the dead," said Freah, holding up a plastic travel mug.
"One of Locusta's aides called me last night," Stoner told him. "They're going ahead with the raid tonight. Assuming they get approval."
"Yeah, I heard. Locusta's chief of staff called Colonel Bas-tian." Danny took a sip of the coffee, wincing as he swallowed. "You think their president's going to approve?"
Stoner shrugged. He had no idea. If he had to, he'd sneak into Moldova himself and check on the sites. It'd be far more dangerous, but in some ways much easier: He wouldn't have to worry about anyone but himself.
Danny took another pull from the coffee and once again made a face.
"If it's so bad, why are you drinking it?" Stoner asked.
"I guess I like the pain," said Danny. He laughed softly.
Stoner pulled a blank piece of paper from his shirt pocket. "You got a pen?" he asked.
Danny handed him one and he wrote out the directions to the house where Sorina was holed up.
"She's expecting you in an hour," Stoner said. "Be careful. She's pretty tough."
"Mind if I ask you a question?"
Stoner tensed, expecting that Danny would ask if he'd been sleeping with her.
Would he lie?
No. Tell the truth. No sense not to. "Aren't you freezing your buns off on that motorcycle?" asked Danny.
Stoner tried not to show his relief that the question wasn't the one he expected.
"It's handy. And it's what I have."
"If there were time, I'd ask to take it for a spin."
"Next time I see you," said Stoner.
"Deal."
"Good luck, Captain."
"Same to you. I don't trust Locusta much."
Stoner smirked, but instead of answering, he revved the bike and started in the direction of the Romanian army camp.
Dreamland
27 January 1998
1900 (0500 Romania, 28 January 1998)
Breanna felt her heartbeat rise as Soomer's big engines cycled up, their massive thrust sending a rhythmic shudder through her spine as the afterburners lit. Despite the immense thrust, the big plane seemed to hesitate ever so slightly, her wheels sticking for a brief instant to the concrete pavement.
And then everything let go and she felt herself pushed back in the seat as the B-1 rocketed forward, quickly gathering momentum. Wind swept beneath the aircraft's wings and Boomer lifted off the ground, her nose pushing upward like the proud head of an eagle taking flight.
"Retract landing gear," said General Samson, sitting next to her in the pilot's seat.
"Cleaning gear," said Breanna as she did just that.
The big plane continued to climb, moving through 2,000 feet, through 3,000, through 4,000. Airspeed shot past 360 knots. It was a jolt compared to a Megafortress's takeoff, but by B-1 standards it was almost lackadaisical. Breanna told herself to stop comparing the planes and just fly.
There was a tickle in her nose. She hoped she wasn't getting a cold.
"Big Bird to Boomer. I have you in sight," said Sleek Top from the other B-1B/L. His voice was so loud he drowned out the engines.
"Boomer," acknowledged Samson. "How are you looking?"
"Purring like a kitten, General," responded Sleek. "We have your six."
"Roger that."
"First way marker in ten minutes, General," said Breanna. "Systems are in the green. Fuel burn is a little lighter than originally computed."
"Hmmmph."
"We have a bit more of a tailwind," said Breanna, explaining the difference.
"Good, Captain. Stay on it."
Not too many pilots would have been miffed that they were getting better mileage than expected, but that was Samson. His tone tended to be a bit gruff, but it wasn't anything Breanna wasn't used to from her father. In many ways the two men were similar — no wonder they couldn't stand each other.
* * *
General Samson checked his course on the computer screen. While he'd flown this B-1 during an orientation flight a few weeks before, it still felt a bit odd. In nearly every measurable aspect, the plane was superior to the "stock" B-1Bs he was used to. It was faster, a hair more maneuver-able, and could fly farther without refueling if the tanks were managed properly — which was almost a given, since the computer did the managing.
Boomer's internal bomb bays were taken up by the laser, but the weapon's comparatively lighter weight meant a heavier bomb load could be carried on the wings and fuselage. In this version, the aircraft didn't need the offensive and defensive systems officers; their jobs were completely replaced by the computer. The computer could even take over most if not all of the piloting tasks — not that Samson was about to give it the opportunity.
Still, there was something about Boomer and its sister ship, Big Bird, that bothered him. It was almost too slick, too easy to fly. It wasn't going to keep a pilot on his toes the way an older ship would.
But what the hell. It was good to be flying again, and even better to lead a mission. Samson knew there'd be flak from above at some point, but if Colonel Dog Bastian could do it, so could he.
Maybe it would earn him a new nickname: the Flying, Fighting General.
Now that was the sort of thing that helped you get confirmed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Bucharest, Romania
28 January 1998
0900
Alin Voda's political career had started in the most unlikely way when, at age seven, a family friend gave him a trombone. It was a worn instrument, with many scratches and two dents in the playing tube; the bell of the horn had been pushed slightly to one side. Even an accomplished musician would have had trouble coaxing a winning sound from the instrument. But it lit a fire in Voda's brain. He took lessons at his local elementary school, and within a few months had devoured the teacher's small store of sheet music. His notes, strained by the condition of the old horn, did not always have the best tone, but Voda's enth
usiasm for the music burned so hot that it infected anyone who heard him.
His teacher happened to have a better trombone in storage, and one day decided to loan it to Voda, letting the boy play it first at school, and then, within a week or two, at home. The sound of the instrument was a revelation, and Voda's passion, already great, doubled. By the end of the school year he could play at the level of a competent teenager, and certainly practiced as much.
During the summer vacation, Voda returned to his own instrument, and immediately felt its limitations. It was not just the sound of the battered horn; trombones played in a relatively limited range, and while there was much to be mastered, it already seemed to the eight-year-old that the range would be too limited for his imagination. He was thinking and dreaming in notes.
Wild riffs played through his head. If a painter might be said to see the world in colors, Voda had come to hear the world in music. He pestered his parents — poorly paid workers for the state — to find him a piano. Even a used instrument was out of the question, but the same friend who had given him the trombone had a brother who was a janitor at a local school. Thanks to his job, he had the keys to the basement where the music room was, and one day the friend arranged for the brother to meet Voda and his mother so the boy could plunk on the piano.
Within a few minutes, Voda had figured out how to transpose the notes he played on the trombone to the keyboard. His playing was not good by any means; the piano itself was old and some of the keys fidgety, so none of the songs were recognizable except to Voda. But again, it fired his imagination.
He pestered his parents and the friend to allow him to return. A week later, he was able to coax a melodious version of a Romanian folk song from the instrument; after about fifteen minutes of playing it back and forth, his mistakes morphed into a pleasant improvisation, his mind hearing the notes as they might be, not necessarily as they had been originally intended.
The music attracted the attention of the school's principal, who happened to be working upstairs in his office. When he came down to investigate, he was surprised to see a thin, somewhat undersized eight-year-old at the keyboard. While the janitor and Voda's mother froze in fear that they were about to get into trouble for sneaking into the building, the principal strode to Voda. When the boy finished, the older man — a modest amateur pianist himself — began asking questions about the song and, eventually, about Voda's training, or rather, lack of it.
From that point on, coincidence no longer played a part in Voda's musical career. Admission was arranged to a special school in Bucharest, where he had access to some of the best teachers in the country. While the routine of becoming a true artist — the endless hours of practice and study — often bored Voda, it did not dull his love of music. He continued to throw himself into the work, making his fingers produce the notes he imagined in his head.
The teachers were divided over whether the boy should be considered a true "prodigy" or simply an extremely talented and gifted young man. Initially, his public concerts were limited to small performances at the school. He did not particularly stand out at these, not only because of the talent surrounding him on the program, but because the pieces he played tended toward the obscure and difficult. But those who knew what he did in the practice rooms never undervalued his talent, and pushed him to improve.
At fifteen, Voda discovered Mozart. Naturally, he'd played many Mozart pieces over the years and had a general understanding of the great composer's work, but until then he never understood the music the way an artist must understand it. Ironically, the moment came while playing the overture for Don Giovanni, not generally considered a pianist's showpiece when compared to the rest of Mozart's oeuvre. As he began the third measure, the notes suddenly felt different. For Voda, it was as if he had pushed open the door of a fabulous mansion and strolled in, suddenly at home.
His first performance of a Mozart piece at the school — Sonata K 310 — was a sensation. The small audience leaped to its feet when he concluded, and applauded so long that he had to do an encore. Within weeks he had his first concert outside the school's auspices; by the time he was eighteen, he was touring the country, playing on his own. He visited Russia and Warsaw. With classical music much more popular behind what was then the Iron Curtain than it was in the West, Voda became an emerging superstar and a national hero.
And then, when he was twenty years old, he made a mistake that changed his life. He played the folk song that the principal had overheard him play at the very beginning of his studies.
It was a second encore after a performance in Bucharest that mostly consisted of Mozart sonatas. It did not fit the program in any way. He hadn't thought of the tune in years, and certainly hadn't played it, or even planned to play it, since his education began.
There was a good reason not to. The Romanian government, in one of its periodic fits of paranoia, had banned all nationalistic movements and displays. The move was really a crackdown on dissidents, whom the government believed were using nationalistic sentiments to stir resentment against the regime. For whatever reason — some critics of the government believed it was looking for more backing from the Soviet Union — the ban extended to all the arts, and extended so far that a musical play based on a folk tale cycle was canceled two days before its opening in Bucharest: the day before Voda's performance.
It was never completely clear, even to Voda, why the song came into his head that evening, or why he allowed it to flow from his brain to his fingers. Perhaps he intended it as a protest against the state, though he had never harbored such political feelings before then. Maybe it was just misplaced nostalgia. In any event, the crowd heard it as a political statement, and their response was beyond anything he could ever have imagined. Had he stood up and declared himself king at the end of the concert, they would have gladly taken him on their back and carried him to the castle.
He did nothing of the sort. He bowed, went to his dressing room, and later walked to the small apartment he kept a few blocks away. He was sleeping soundly at two in the morning when a troop of policemen broke in and arrested him. He was held in jail for six months, put on trial secretly, and sentenced to six years imprisonment for "treasonous behavior."
It was there that Voda found his second career. Unlike music, politics was for him a difficult and unfriendly art. He came to it reluctantly, at first puzzled by the way other prisoners looked toward him as a leader. What they saw as an act of resolute defiance against overwhelming odds, he still viewed as a confused and confusing mistake. Only gradually did he come to understand the principles the dissidents were risking their lives for.
Democracy had never seemed magical to him. Surely a man should have control over his own life, but how far should that control extend? Used to long days of practice and grueling performance schedules, Voda didn't think it should go very far.
When he was let out of jail at the end of his sentence, Voda found that he was no longer allowed to perform. He began moonlighting in small venues as a poorly paid piano player performing covers of popular songs. As long as he did not use his real name and stayed away from classical music, he remained unmolested by the authorities. The gigs paid enough for a very modest apartment, and kept food on the table, though it had to be supplemented by dinners at the cafes where he played.
With his days largely free, Voda drifted toward the dissidents he'd known in jail, meeting them occasionally for coffee or a walk around town. Gradually, he began doing small things for the freedom movement — nothing brave, nothing outlandish, nothing even likely to earn him time in jail.
Until, in a fit of pique at a government decree against another musician who had dared play a piece by an American composer at a public concert, Voda gave an impromptu outdoor concert at Piata Revolutiei — Revolution Square, in the center of the city. For an hour, playing on a poorly miked upright piano, he serenaded the city with a selection of Mozart pieces he hadn't played in public for years. By the time the police moved in, the crowd h
ad grown to over 10,000. Men, women, and children pushed and shoved away the first group of policemen who tried to drag him off. Water cannons were brought in; Voda continued to play. His last song was the overture of Don Giovanni. The music continued to soar in his head even as the clubs beat him over the back.
Two of his fingers were broken in the melee, though it wasn't clear whether it had been done purposely. This time he was put in jail without a trial.
That was in April 1989. Eight months later a far larger crowd gathered at Piata Revolutiei to denounce and chase out the country's dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. Voda was released from jail a few days later. He stood for parliament and was elected. From there his rise to president seemed almost preordained. Voda felt as if it was his fate — an increasingly heavy fate as time went on.
The end of the dictator brought considerable problems to the country. The guerrillas were a sideshow in many ways, annoying, deadly, but more a distraction than a real threat, at least as far as he was concerned. The economy needed to be jump-started. The manufacturing sector was stuck in the 1940s or worse, and agriculture was so underinvested that horses were used to plow fields. Ethnic differences that seemed nonexistent under the dictator became extremely divisive, fanned by politicians trying to boost their own careers.
Foreign relations were a nightmare. Russia pushed hard to bring Romania into its sphere of influence. Voda saw the country's future residing with the West, but deep-seated prejudices among many of the Europeans, especially those in Germany and France, had caused their politicians to drag their feet. On a personal level, Voda couldn't stand most foreign leaders, whom he thought were bigots and thieves. Even the Austrians tried to cheat Romania when the gas pipeline deal was brokered. At times, Romania's only true ally seemed to be the United States, which was pushing for it to join NATO. But even the U.S. could be fickle.
Voda got along personally with the American ambassador, who claimed to own the CD he had recorded when he was just twenty-one. He had met President Martindale twice, not nearly enough to form a real opinion of the man.
