SEVENTEEN
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PASHITA 87 OVER SOUTHERN UKRAINE
THE ENLISTED MEN INSIDE AIRCRAFT NUMBER 8-0564 WERE YOUNG and brutal by training and nature. They were Asiatics, hard men from far eastern Siberia and the northern republics. Human suffering was no mystery to them, for it had hardened the minds and hearts of their people for the past thousand years. The officers, culled from elite Russian units and thoroughly trained for this special duty, were some of the best warriors Russia had ever produced. They were intelligent and demanding and, teamed with the brutal Asiatics, they made a frightening combat team.
The interior of the Russian IL-76 transport was illuminated only by two small green lights, one on each end of the troop compartment. Inside the cabin, the seventy-five fully equipped warrior soldiers sat on the thin nylon-webbed seats that stretched along both sides of the aircraft, packs at their feet, AK-47 machine guns across their laps. Tight parachutes were strapped across their chests, and as they flew inbound to the Drop Zone (DZ), they continually checked each other’s rigging to make sure that everything was in order. The men’s faces had been painted black and gray to merge with the night shadows. None of them wore any rank or insignia on their uniforms. Only small silhouette of a black hog sewn across each of their shoulders identified the unit.
The Ninth Airborne Division. The Black Hogs. The most battle-hardened troops the Russians had to offer.
If the Ukrainians had suspected that the Black Hogs would be held in reserve to battle across the Ukrainian border-front, they were mistaken. In a brilliant move by Fedotov, the Hogs had been ordered to attack the port city of Sevastopol, home of the Black Sea fleet, prize of the Ukrainian navy. From there, the Hogs, along with six reinforcement divisions, would begin to battle northward toward the main battle group that would then be pouring across the Ukrainian border.
It was 0200 hours. In fifteen minutes, they would be over the DZ. Ural Moon would be one of the first aircraft to fly over the target in a finely orchestrated plan of flying aircraft, falling men, and parachuting machinery and equipment. Two hundred twenty-six aircraft would fly over the exact same piece of earth within just seventeen minutes of each other.
The Russians anticipated a significant number of casualties even before the invasion got into full swing. A midair collision between some of the transports was almost inevitable. Some soldiers would parachute out of an aircraft, only to have another transport fly through the clutter of descending men. There would also be parachute failures. As a statistical average, .05 percent of the seventeen thousand Russian soldiers to jump would have a parachute that failed to open. And finally, there was the possibility of becoming a “buterbrod krovi”, or “blood sandwich”. That was what the paratroopers called it when a tank or armored personnel carrier descended by its parachute silently out of the pitch black sky to land on an unwary soldier, crushing him into the ground.
As the IL-76 proceeded inbound to the DZ, the two pilots and the radar navigator in the cockpit were carefully watching their radar screens. They were the eighth aircraft in a ten-ship formation that stretched out in a long trail at twenty-two thousand feet. Each transport was stacked two hundred feet above their leader in an effort to ensure that they wouldn’t hit any of the preceding paratroopers who had jumped seconds earlier.
This jump was going to be a HALO, or High Altitude, Low Opening. The paratroopers would cast themselves from the aircraft and free fall to 2,000 feet before they would pull on the D-ring that hung at their chest to open their parachutes. This would allow the transports to stay above and out of the range of most of the anti-aircraft fire, while at the same time, allowing the paratroopers to descend very quickly into the DZ. Another reason that the paratroopers would wait until they were very low before popping their chutes was the fact that if they opened their parachutes from a high altitude, the winds aloft would carry them for miles, spreading men and equipment all over the city of Sevastopol.
HALOs had many tactical advantages, but they were not perfect. Perhaps the worst thing about them was that they left the formation of lumbering transports exposed to any surface-to-air missiles or fighter aircraft that might be protecting the target.
But that wasn’t supposed to be a problem tonight. Russian military intelligence had reported that the Ukrainians had moved almost all of their fighters and most of their army forward to guard the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainians apparently never suspected that the Russians would make a move for the Black Sea fleet or Sevastopol on the first night of the conflict. Russian intelligence had gone to great lengths to assure the Black Hog commanders, as well as the IL-76 aircrews, that the Ukrainians would be wholly unprepared to defend the target.
When the Ural Moon was three minutes from the DZ, the jumpmaster illuminated a red light. Immediately, the men stood up and donned their combat packs. Ahead of them, another formation of transports began to drop their load of light tanks, armored personnel carriers, and small trucks. The men of Ural Moon wouldn’t jump until all of that heavy battle equipment was safely below them.
Everything was quiet aboard the Ural Moon. They were only two minutes out from the DZ. The pilots concentrated on maintaining their position in the formation. The jumpmaster readied his men.
Suddenly, tiny yellow lights began to flicker all over the radarscope. High-pitched warbles screamed in the pilots’ ears to warn them of multiple missile launches. Huge plumes of smoke and fire emanated from the SA-6, SA-2, and SA-10 missile sites as they came to life. The pilots watched in terror as the missiles arched upward at nearly four times the speed of sound.
Something wasn’t right. There were far too many missiles. How could their intelligence have so badly underestimated the number of missiles that were protecting Sevastopol? As the pilots watched the spectacular display, they both swore under their breath and vowed revenge upon their intelligence officers.
The navigator didn’t have a window, but he watched his combat radar screen as a small dot, very bright and incredibly fast, homed in on the lead aircraft in their formation. The two lights merged and blipped and then disappeared from the screen. For just a second, the navigator wondered what it would feel like to suddenly be falling from the sky. He thought of his good friend, Oleh Demyanov, who was in the lead aircraft that had just been blown to pieces, and in his heart he said a quick good-bye.
Missiles and aircraft were beginning to scatter all around him. Some of the aircraft in the formation were starting to turn away from the target, but the crew inside the Ural Moon were determined to hold their position. They were now only ninety seconds out from the DZ.
Ninety seconds to hold their position. Ninety seconds to maintain a constant heading and altitude, despite the fact that white trails of explosive missiles were tracking in on their targets. Ninety seconds of terror and fire, screaming radios and exploding aircraft, white missiles and falling debris.
The pilots in Ural Moon saw another missile as it impacted the fourth aircraft in the formation. The explosion illuminated their faces with its brazen white light. In the flash, the pilots could clearly see bodies falling through the sky. They watched the stricken IL-76 pull violently upward as it spun and twirled out of control. As the aircraft climbed and turned, it nicked the wing of the transport that was flying directly behind it, sending them both into a fiery dive.
Another missile exploded right next to the third aircraft. And that was it. The integrity of the formation was completely destroyed. Like a huge flock of lumbering vultures, the IL-76s began to scatter in every direction.
The result was chaos. Two IL-76s below the Ural Moon collided as they both turned and dove for the ground. Others began to spit their paratroopers out so early that they had no chance of landing in the DZ. Instead the soldiers would find themselves on the ground, outside of the perimeter of their friendly forces.
The Ural Moon was the only aircraft within the formation that continued to fly in positio
n. It was now only thirty seconds from the DZ. In the back of the aircraft, the jumpmaster was getting ready to open the two huge clamshell doors that would allow the soldiers to jump out in rows of four. The paratroopers were all standing, holding to the sides of the aircraft, ready to jump in a gaggle of flailing arms and blowing air.
Then the pilots saw another missile approach. They watched in terror as it homed in on their aircraft, already climbing through six thousand feet and accelerating upward at an incredible speed. The pilot at the controls reacted instinctively as he threw the aircraft into a sharp, turning dive. He turned the transport toward the oncoming missile, trying to give it the smallest possible radar return to home in on. He pulled his four engines back to idle as his aircraft built up speed in the dive. The nose of the IL-76 was pointed directly at the missile, which was now closing at over 2,000 feet per second. To the pilot, it looked like a flaming telephone pole. Just as the missile was about to impact the transport, the pilot pushed over once again and then pulled back hard on the yoke. The aircraft’s nose tracked violently down and then up, forcing the aircraft to porpoise through the cold air.
But it worked. The missile sped on by them, arching upward into the night sky before its rocket engine depleted its fuel. The warhead exploded harmlessly in the air, six thousand feet above its intended target.
The pilot let out his breath, and relaxed his death grip on the control stick. They had defeated the missile. He could hardly believe it was true.
They were now only fifteen seconds out from the DZ. Although they were much lower than they were supposed to be, they were still in a position to drop. In his headset, the pilot heard the jumpmaster counting down to his paratroopers. In seconds they would be falling from the sky.
Suddenly, there was a shattering explosion as the air boiled around them, then the noise of metal wrenching apart. A tearing sound filled the air and penetrated the cockpit, emitted from the bowels of the aircraft with a long and terrible groan. The pilot instinctively screamed. He knew he was dead. Another surface-to-air missile, this one unseen, had exploded just thirty feet from the left wing. The Ural Moon immediately rolled onto her back, a result of the enormous aerodynamic forces that were exerted upon her as her left wing shattered and then abruptly separated from the fuselage. For just a fraction of a second, the aircraft flew backward and upside down before it began to roll and spin violently toward the earth.
Inside the troop compartment, most of the seventy-five soldiers were thrown against the walls and ceiling of the aircraft by the centrifugal force. Their knees buckled and their arms were pinned to their sides. They could hear and feel the structure of the IL-76 bend and twist as the aircraft tumbled through the air. A gaping hole was ripped along the left side of the aircraft where the wing root used to be. A violent wind filled the cabin with a horrible noise. Discipline and order were quickly replaced by a dark despair.
A handful of lucky soldiers were sucked out of the aircraft and into the night sky where they could safely descend in their parachutes to the marshlands below. A few more pushed themselves out of the already open door, fighting against the centrifugal G-forces that were trying to pin them inside. But most of the paratroopers rode with the Ural Moon as she spun to the ground, howling and scratching at the darkness as they fell.
The Ural Moon impacted the side of a small hill and burst into flames. Within minutes, the only recognizable part of aircraft number 8-0564 was the core of its four jet engines. Everything else, from the composite structural spines to the pilot’s seats, was melted into a semifluid aluminum goo. Eighty-thousand pounds of burning jet fuel would do that to an aircraft. Inside the wreckage, only a few skeletal remains and charred weapons would ever be recovered.
No accident investigation board or review panel would ever be convened to determine what had caused the deaths of so many men. No one would ever try to identify the human remains or give them a proper buria1. Instead, the wreckage was bulldozed into a large pit and then covered up, along with a burned-out tank and some unexploded ordinance that was discovered nearby. The exact location of the pit was forgotten. Such was the indignity of death during war.
Huge searchlights illuminated the sky over Sevastopol as thousands of Russian paratroopers descended onto the airfield. White and blue tracers arced upward to meet the descending paratroopers, making them easy targets for the Ukrainian forces. Although there was some question in the minds of a few of the Ukrainian officers as to the legality of firing upon an enemy soldier who was still descending in a parachute, none of them considered withholding their fire.
So the Ukrainian ground forces continued to light up the sky as they fired upon the descending paratroopers, while their missile batteries sent salvo after salvo of missiles up into the darkness. An occasional explosion encouraged them onward as they fired upon the transports that flew four miles above their heads.
But in the end, it didn’t make all that much difference. The Ukrainians were wholly unprepared, and thus were outnumbered, out-trained, and outgunned. Within twelve hours, seventeen thousand Russian paratroopers were on the ground in Sevastopo1. The Russians quickly secured a defensive parameter around the airfield. Further reinforcements were quickly flown in. Within a day, more than thirty thousand Russian soldiers, along with their armor and equipment, were grouping into squads and regiments along the outskirts of the city. Within fifty-six hours, the Ukrainian port commander was forced to surrender what remained of his defensive forces. The Sevastopol operation would go down as one of the largest and most successful aerial assaults in the history of modern day war.
The Russians soldiers continued pouring in—the line of holding Russian IL-76 transports stretched through the sky for twenty miles as the aircraft waited their turn to land at the captured base and unload their troops and equipment. The Black Hogs began to fan out through the city, taking control of the area’s major communication lines, power supplies, radio and television stations, industrial centers, and military facilities. Terror fell upon the port city like a dark winter snow—heavy and bitter and cold. The streets ran red with the blood of cowering civilians and poorly trained home-soldiers who were hopelessly attempting to protect their families and homes. The captured Ukrainian troops, what few there were, were taken to the rusty docks that lined the Black Sea and loaded onto transport ships, which acted as POW holding facilities. There, the officers were separated from the enlisted. Late in the night on the second day of the invasion, the officers were loaded into the back of transport trucks, taken out to the country and shot twice in the head. Their bodies were then burned in mass crematoriums made of huge pits of burning oil.
Throughout the city, Russian soldiers began to enjoy the spoils of war. Russian officers looked away as their men raped and plundered with abandon, a reward for a job well done. The Hogs knew that they only had a few days to pillage the city before they would battle again, and they sought to take advantage of the opportunity in a violent and brutal way.
Soon, they would begin their long and deadly march northeast-ward—toward the mass of Ukrainian soldiers that were waiting for them along the five-hundred-mile stretch of Russian front. Moving across the unprotected belly of the Ukraine, they would attempt to meet up with other divisions of Russian ground troops that were even now battling their way across the heavily defended border. Approaching from the enemy’s rear, they hoped to pin them from two sides, wedging the outgunned Ukrainian forces in a crushing vice.
As the Hogs were landing in Sevastopol, one thousand kilometers to the north, along the Ukrainian border, the war raged in full force. Twenty Russian divisions, along with their tanks and field artillery, hacked at the Ukrainian forces in a coordinated land-air attack. Supported by waves of supersonic fighters and thousands of crushing 120 millimeter guns, the Russian soldiers pounded soft spots along the Ukrainian front. Batteries of deadly, multiple-rocket-launchers and hundreds of laser-guided rockets fired from attack helicopters rained exploding metal upon the hunkered-down defens
ive forces. Thirty kilometers behind the front, two thousand Russian T-80 tanks waited for any opening, prodding for any hint of a weakness, pushing at every fracture, in hopes of punching a hole through the enemy lines.
EIGHTEEN
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HELSINKI, FINLAND
ANDREI LISKI, THE UKRAINIAN DIRECTOR OF STATE BORDER DEFENSE, opened the door into Richard Ammon’s room without knocking, then walked silently over to sit on a black metal chair. The room was a small cubicle built from gray cinder block and white cement. Besides the black chair, the only other furniture in the room was a short bed and the small wooden desk where Ammon sat reading.
Ammon immediately recognized him as one of the four Ukrainians he had been introduced to that first night in the cabin. He was so frail. So droopy and thin. Ammon remembered him well.
Neither man spoke for a moment as Liski surveyed Ammon’s sparsely furnished room. From where he was sitting, he could touch the foot of Ammon’s bed, and he reached over to push on the bed springs, as if to test them for comfort and strength. After compressing the bed several times, he smoothed out the covers, then turned to Richard Ammon.
“Have you found everything to your liking so far?” he asked. “We want you to be as comfortable as possible.”
Ammon couldn’t tell if Liski was serious, or just trying to make light of his obviously uncomfortable living conditions. Ammon studied Liski for a moment before he answered. The expression on Liski’s face didn’t change, and Ammon decided he probably wasn’t the kind of man who sported a great sense of humor. He decided to keep his answer simple. “Everything is fine,” was all he said.
Liski pointed to the huge manual that was laying on top of Ammon’s desk and then asked, “Do you feel that you have enough information now? Or is there something else we could get you?”
Shattered Bone Page 18
