“Oh, no,” Ammon said, shaking his head. “It simply can’t be done! You’re talking about some of the most heavily defended targets in the world.”
“No, you’re wrong, Carl,” Morozov replied. “It can be done. We’ve studied it out. It won’t be easy, we recognize that. But we are convinced, in fact, we are certain, that given the right tools, the mission can be accomplished.”
Ammon turned to the charts once again. With his finger, he traced a line from target to target, noting the hundreds of surface-to-air (SA) missile and anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) sites that dotted the way. They were everywhere. SA-6s, SA-8s, and SA-16s sat on nearly every mountain peak. Russian triple A, some of the best in the world, lay hidden in every valley, ready to fill the air with a wall of molten lead and steel. And he hadn’t even considered the hundreds of thousands of ground troops that would also be waiting, many of them armed with deadly shoulder-fired missiles.
A long moment of silence. Ammon finally lifted his eyes.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. The look on his face said it all.
“It’s a suicide mission,” he said flatly. “The targets are too heavily defended and too far away. Look at this,” he jabbed his finger at the chart. “Even the closest target is more than eight hundred miles deep in Russian territory. You just don’t have the range. Not with your fighters. The targets are too far away. It’s a one way-trip, with no chance of success!
“No, gentlemen, I have to tell you, and I’m just giving you an honest assessment, if this is your only hope, then start packing your bags, because it is not going to work. The simple fact is, you don’t have an aircraft. Not for this mission. You will run out of fuel before you hit the first target. And that is to say nothing of the Russian defenses. Thousands of radar-guided missiles and artillery, waiting to blow you out of the sky. And even if your fighters could make it, you don’t have the right kind of bombs to find and destroy mobile or hardened nuclear targets.
“No, it would take an incredibly sophisticated, radar-evading plane—one with incredible range and a huge payload—to complete this mission. And that’s something that you just don’t have.”
Richard Ammon looked up, his eyes bright. He straightened his back and squared his broad shoulders. That was it. He wasn’t lying. He had simply told them the truth.
Morozov fell silent, his eyes unblinking as he evaluated Richard Ammon. The ancient wooden chairs creaked in the silence. Outside, a night wind suddenly blew, shaking the tattered roof of the old cabin and rattling the dusty windows in their frames. No one spoke. Amril shifted his weight against the wall. Ammon studied each man in the room.
“You’re right, of course.” Morozov finally said as he pushed the aeronautical charts out of the way. “We know we don’t have the right aircraft. But ... the Americans do.
“You see, my friend, you’re going back to the States. You and I. We’re going to steal an American B-1 bomber, the most powerful warplane on earth. Then, we’re going to use it to take out Fedotov’s missile sites. And a few other targets as well. Maybe we’ll even head for Moscow! Take out the old man himself! With such a powerful aircraft at our disposal we might as well put it to use!”
Ammon swallowed hard.
“No!” he muttered, his voice softened by fear. “They will know! The Russians will know! They will find the American bomber. And they would have to respond! It would lead to....”
And then he stopped. He finally understood. The blood quickly drained from his face.
Liski smiled and sat back in his chair. Lomov stared down at his hands resting upon the table. Morozov grinned in reply. “Yes, Carl. You now understand. And stealing the B-1 is just the beginning. So believe me when I tell you, once our plan is fully implemented, the United States will be deeply involved in our war.”
NINE
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KIEV, UKRAINE
AFTER THEY FINISHED PLANNING, AMMON WAS ESCORTED TO HIS BEDroom and instructed to get some sleep. Morozov and the other Ukrainians walked outside into the darkness. Amril remained behind in the cabin to keep an eye on Ammon.
It was cold enough outside that the men could see their breath as they talked. In the distance they could hear a wolf, its lone and mournful howl drifting through the dense trees of the forest. The four men spoke in whispered tones, watching each other carefully in the moonlight.
“What do you think?” Morozov asked General Lomov.
“I think you had better watch him,” the general replied quietly. “He’s been away so long. After all these years, who knows where he really stands?”
“I don’t agree,” Prime Minister Yevgeni Golubev jumped in. “He’s had his world pulled out from under him. I think it would be asking too much to expect him to climb aboard without some reservations. But I think, given some time, he will come round.”
“That may be,” Lomov answered. “But still we need to watch him. For one thing, like he said, we are not asking him to work for his country. The country he left no longer even exists. And though he’s Ukrainian, I don’t feel that he has a great sense of loyalty or sympathy toward us or our cause.
“Perhaps if we pay him enough, he will go along, but I doubt it. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who has much interest in money.
“So ... I think we need to watch him very closely. More important, we need to gain some other form of leverage. I am convinced that the girl may be the only thing that will bring him along to our way of thinking.”
“I agree,” Morozov said, turning his attention to the last Ukrainian. “We must find the girl.” Andrei Liski, Director of State Border Defense, returned Morozov’s cold stare.
“We are looking for her,” was all he said. Then, when none of the others looked away, he shrugged his shoulders and offered a further explanation. “Apparently she was warned. They must have had something prearranged. We know that he tried to call her the morning he was forced to eject from his plane. He left her some kind of message ... some kind of code as a warning. By the time we were able to accomplish a voice analysis to confirm it was him, she was already gone.
“But I agree,” he continued. “We need the girl. Mark my words, this man will betray us if given the opportunity. I can feel it. I can sense it. Regardless of his training.” Liski turned a sarcastic eye toward Morozov. “He is no longer one of our own.
“So, we will find the girl. She isn’t trained to survive in such situations. We will have her within a few days.”
“You had better,” Golubev threatened. “We are sending Ammon to Helsinki soon. There he will begin flying the simulator we have developed. Once he has done that, he will quickly realize just how dangerous this mission really is. If you think he has reservations now, wait until he sees how difficult this mission will be.
“We will need the girl by then. If Ammon should waiver, she is the only thing we have to hang over his head.”
General Lomov muttered in the darkness. Liski swatted at some invisible gnat. Golubev nodded, then turned to Morozov to bring up another critical subject.
“When are you getting the money?” he asked.
“I’m leaving tonight.”
“Keep us informed. We need to know as soon as it’s ready. We are almost ready for action.”
Morozov nodded, turned around and walked back into the cabin. The other men watched him leave, then whistling to their guards they gathered their men, climbed into the heavy truck and drove off into the night.
Inside his bedroom, Richard Ammon lay on the moldy mattress. The room was dark and smelled of stale air and moth balls. It was very quiet. He lay there for a very long time.
It was bad. Very bad. Much worse than he had feared.
And one thing was perfectly clear—Morozov and his fellow Ukrainians would kill him if they knew the truth.
He didn’t consider himself one of their comrades. He wasn’t working for them anymore.
Looking b
ack on it, Ammon realized that the seed of his defection was planted on the day he was taken from his family. Even now, more than twenty years later, he could still picture the inside of his Kiev apartment. It was cramped and dingy, and smelled of urine and boiled cabbage. He could remember the scene in vivid detail: the morning that Ivan Morozov came to take him away.
As Morozov entered the apartment, Ammon couldn’t help but notice the whispering voices and sidelong glances in his direction. He watched the yellow-eyed man count out the money, and as his father reached out and took the wad of bills, a great anxiety welled up inside him. Though he was only a child, the arrangement was perfectly clear. His father kissed him lightly on the cheek then picked up his hat and left for work, leaving no explanation.
So it was understandable that Ammon found himself constantly wondering. Why would his father have taken the money? What else had he taken in exchange for his son? A new apartment? A supervisory position at some government office? Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. This one fact was perfectly clear.
He had traded his only son for money. He had traded his child to the state.
But of course, that wasn’t the way it was explained to Ammon. Such cynicism would have never been tolerated in the Sicherheit.
He was only indoctrinated in the glory of his calling. He was one of the chosen few. His mission was of the highest importance. To be allowed to serve in such a high capacity, and to be selected at such a young age, were honors never to be questioned. But Ammon never fully accepted that explanation. He never resolved the doubts from his mind. And though he never knew to what extent the Party had compensated his father, he knew it wasn’t enough. He had lost his entire family. How much money could justify that?
But as the years went by, Ammon learned not to dwell on the past. The Sicherheit saw to that.
Once, when Ammon was twelve years old, he was sitting in a class on moral theory. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was shining outside. As the teacher droned on and on, Ammon grew impatient and began to fidget. For the first hour, he tried very hard to pay attention, but as the time went by, like any twelve-year-old boy, he began to stare out the window and daydream, doodling on the back of his notebook.
Suddenly he was jolted back to the present with a swat. His teacher had slapped him on the side of his head. He looked up in surprise and fear.
“Richard Ammon, I don’t think you were paying attention.” The pupils and teachers in the Sicherheit always referred to each other by their American names.
“Now you know what happens when you don’t pay attention,” the teacher continued. “Such a fundamental lack of self-discipline cannot go unpunished. Such a weakness in character cannot be ignored. You know that, don’t you, Mr. Ammon.”
The teacher began to walk to the front of her class. As she approached her metal desk, Richard Ammon slid out from behind his tiny table and followed her to the front of the room. He knew what was coming, and his head started to pound. He stuffed his hands deep into his front pockets in an effort to protect them from her anger.
The teacher reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a small metal pipe. It was twelve inches long and about as thick as a pencil.
“Hold out your hand,” she said slowly.
Ammon lay his hand on her desk. With a sudden snap, she whacked him across his knuckles. Ammon let out a sudden cry. The classroom winced. The room fell very silent.
“Now Mr. Ammon, you may go back to your desk.”
Ammon turned away from his teacher, holding his bruised knuckles against his chest. He started to shuffle his way down the narrow aisle. He was hurt and angry. That’s what caused him to make the mistake.
“My name is not Richard Ammon,” he muttered as he turned away from the teacher. “My name is Carl.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, Ammon knew that he had made a colossal error. He immediately froze in his tracks, praying that she had not overheard. But the look on the faces of the two young boys in the front row told him the horrible truth.
He heard the teacher’s desk drawer open once again.
“Richard Ammon, turn around.”
Ammon turned to face his teacher, his face ashen and white. “Mr. Ammon, why did you say that?” she asked.
Ammon bowed his head in shame. His mind raced for any explanation. But there was none. He just didn’t know what to say.
The room remained very quiet. Not a student moved in his seat. Ammon could hear the clock as it ticked on the wall. He could hear a push mower being used to cut the spring grass outside the classroom window. He waited for his punishment, wishing that he could cry.
“Richard Ammon, hold out your hand.”
By the time his punishment was over, Ammon’s right hand was a broken and bloody mass of meat. It took more than three months for the nerves and tendons to heal. Even now, he had an unusual lump on his first digit, where the bone had mended in a crooked line. To this day, Richard Ammon remembered the beating.
But he learned his lesson. His name was Richard Ammon. Carl Vadym Kostenko no longer existed. He had died long ago on a cold winter morning when a man named Ivan Morozov had come to take him away.
Yes, the Sicherheit had a way of keeping him focused. After years of experience in training young boys, they knew what it took to keep doubts from their minds. And even after he was planted in the United States and began to enjoy all of its pleasures, it never once even occurred to him to defect. He was a soldier. He had been trained to carry out orders. He was intent on serving his state.
Then Richard Ammon experienced two very significant life-changing events.
First, he lost his country.
Beginning with the fall of the Berlin Wall, nation after communist nation seemed to be utterly swept away. The socialist states that had dominated Eastern Europe for more than fifty years all fell by the wayside, a mere historical footnote in the big scheme of things. Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union, a shattering climax to what had already been an amazing few years. And as he watched his nation crumble, as he watched it split into ever smaller, more independent, and ever less friendly states, as he watched a new atmosphere of trust and cooperation develop between the U.S. and Russia, Ammon realized that it was over. He no longer had a foreign master, for his organization in Moscow would surely have been disassembled. He considered it an entirely new ball game. And from that time forward, he believed that he was on his own. His commitment was served. It was finished. He was alone.
And then an even more important event occurred in Ammon’s life. He met the most beautiful girl he had ever imagined. She was tall and slender, with shoulder-length, silky brown hair. Her dark eyes could make his legs tremble, her smile could light up the room. She had a perfect voice. Calm and measured, it was the most pleasant thing he had ever heard. It was the kind of voice one imagined cooing to a newborn baby or singing softly in the darkness of a quiet night. She was tall—almost as tall as Richard. And poised. And confident. And smart as anyone Richard Ammon had ever known.
Her name was Jesse Morrel. They met at a military reception for a retiring general, a close friend of Jesse’s father. Richard was dressed in his military mess, a dark blue tuxedo with pilot wings and three tiny medals pinned to his chest. As Richard approached his table, he saw her. She sat at her assigned seat beside him, dressed in a shimmering evening gown, her hair brushed back over her shoulders, her dark arms resting shyly in her lap. She was a picture of beauty, a subtle mixture of sophistication and innocence that proved to be completely irresistible. Ammon gulped as he approached the table, suddenly completely unsure of himself. He grinned shyly as he pulled back his chair and sat down beside her. Jesse looked up and smiled as she said hello.
And that was it. From that moment, he was hopelessly in love. Never again would Richard Ammon understand a man’s fear of commitment. Never again would he nod in sympathy when close friends talked of their doubts about love. From that moment on, he knew that he wanted to spend the rest of hi
s life with Jesse Morrel.
Ammon sat down beside the dark-eyed girl, rejoicing in his good fortune. For one awkward moment, they both stared quietly at their empty plates. And then it happened. His mind went completely blank. Utterly, hopelessly blank. A perfect white sheet of nothingness. His mouth felt like the Sahara. His heart pattered like a toy gun. He searched desperately for something to say. Anything. Anything that wouldn’t sound stupid. He stole a quick glance at Jesse. She smiled again in return. His mind took another vacation. What an idiot! What could he say?
Then he felt a light touch on his arm. He looked up once again.
“My name is Jesse,” she said in a quiet tone. “My father is ex-army. They always wear green, but I have to tell you, blue has always been my favorite color.”
Beautiful! That was it! Blue! He would talk about the color blue! He knew all about blue. Blue was easy. What a relief. He had something to say.
“Yes, I’ve always liked blue, too,” he said in his most intelligent tone. “In fact, that’s why I joined the Air Force. My mom always told me, ‘Son, you look best in blue.’”
They both laughed. The awkward silence passed. Ammon’s brain returned from Miami. He could actually think of words with more than two syllables. What a relief. It was nice to have it back.
He and Jesse began to talk. About this, about that. They took to each other almost immediately. They talked through the entire meal, leaving cold steaks and melted Jell-O running all over their plates. They ignored the conversation around them, concentrating on only each other. The dessert was served and the retirement presentations were made without either one of them hearing a word. Two and a half hours later, the dinner party was drawing to a close.
Shattered Bone Page 9
