Luke had been utterly exhausted when they loaded him into the back of a truck after he had been wounded. Even though he heard the near-constant sound of gunfire, tanks, explosions, helicopters, aircraft, and the occasional bullet hitting their vehicle as they drove out of the city and onto the E-40 highway, he soon fell asleep.
The medics yelled at him, “You need to stay awake!”
“Well, you shouldn’t have given me a shot of morphine then,” Luke grumbled in a sleepy haze, and then he went right back to the world of dreams.
When he woke up next, he felt comfortable and strangely clean. As he slowly opened his eyes, he saw white ceiling tiles above him and a light shining overhead. As he regained more of his senses, he realized his head was resting against a pillow and he had a blanket over him. He raised his right arm to rub his eyes. He felt some stitches on his left cheek, and saw an IV in his right wrist.
“I must be in a hospital,” he realized, “but where, and what day is it?”
Just then, a nurse walked over to the side of his bed. “Ah. Hello Master Sergeant Childers. Glad to see you are awake. I’ll go get the doctor,” she said kindly, and then darted off before he had a chance to ask her anything.
A few minutes later a clinician walked into his room and came over to his bed. “Good afternoon Master Sergeant. It’s good to see you up. You had been unconscious for a while,” the doctor said, reading from his medical chart as he spoke.
Luke could see he was a military doctor, and an American, which meant they had broken out of the Russian lines and made it back to safety, or at least he had somehow. “How long have I been out? What about the others in my unit?” he blurted out impatiently.
The doctor held up a hand to tell Childers to slow down. “I know you have a lot of questions, and I will do my best to pass along what little information I know. You were brought to Germany two days ago, along with several hundred additional soldiers who escaped from Kiev. I cannot tell you anything about your unit, or who else made it out. I only know that many hundreds of wounded soldiers were evacuated.”
Luke processed that information for a moment before shooting out his next question. “How bad am I hurt, and how soon can I get back to my unit?”
The doctor smiled at the spunk of the man in front of him. “The good news is you are not in that bad of shape. You needed a few stitches on your left cheek and left arm from what appeared to be a shrapnel wound. You had several pieces of shrapnel in both of your legs that we took out, and a bad contusion on your lower back. You are going to be sore and will need some time to recoup, but with a little bit of physical therapy you should be able to return back to duty within a month, maybe two, pending nothing gets infected.”
Childers let out a sigh of relief.
Just as the doctor was about to leave, he turned around and said one more thing. “By the way, congratulations on your promotion, Master Sergeant. I was told you had been in constant contact with the enemy the last month and a half, but the promotion came through nearly a month ago.” The doctor shook his hand and then left to go see the next patient on his rounds.
Luke laid there for a minute, just thinking. Another voice interrupted his thoughts, and then he suddenly realized that there were two other soldiers that were patients in the same room with him. He hadn’t even noticed them up to this point.
He overheard one telling the other, “Hey, I just read in this newspaper that the nurse gave me that a lot of NATO units that had been trapped in Kiev broke out and made it back to the NATO lines.” The two soldiers chatted with each other about it, speaking as if some sort of miracle had occurred.
Luke felt better, knowing that a lot of his unit had probably made it out. Filled with a renewed sense of peace, he closed his eyes. Almost instantaneously, he fell asleep. He did have six weeks of sleep deprivation to catch up on, after all.
Note: The following chapter begins about 18 months before the start of hostilities in Ukraine, and the timeline continues forward from that point.
Election Meddling
It was a beautiful day in Moscow. The sun had finally broken through the clouds and the summer flowers were in full bloom. Zhang Dejiang made a mental note to find time to take a short walk outside to enjoy the sun on his face, even if just for a few minutes before he boarded his plane back to Beijing. He finished tucking his shirt into his pants, looked down and slipped on his black dress shoes, freshly polished for that day’s meeting.
This was the last day of a three-day trip to Moscow to discuss a wide range of security issues, to include the American general election. This afternoon, however, was reserved to specifically discuss the final details for the post-American election world and what it would look like. More importantly, they were to strategize how Russia and China were going to assert their national wills on a greatly weakened America.
As he finished getting dressed, he motioned for his secretary, a beautiful young woman who had accompanied him on this long trip from home, to make sure he had his tie on straight. She made sure he looked polished, which was one of her primary duties. He gave her a quick nod of acknowledgement, which was the highest form of praise she received from him.
“Make sure my belongings and gifts are brought to my aircraft while I head off to my final meeting,” he directed.
“Yes, Sir,” she replied.
Zhang walked through the elegantly decorated lobby of the hotel and stopped for just a minute to marvel at the intricate crown molding and designs on the walls and ceiling. He really enjoyed staying at this particular hotel when he traveled to Moscow. “One of these days, I’ll bring my wife here,” he thought.
His deputy, a man named Liang Zhang Wei, signaled that their vehicle was ready to take them to their next meeting. Zhang joined Liang as the two of them left the lobby and entered the covered entrance where their vehicle was waiting. One of the hotel doormen held the door open for them as both men got in, gently closing it as the vehicle began to pull away.
Zhang looked for some reassurance from his counterpart, Liang. “Is everything ready on our end? Is there anything I need to be concerned about before we meet with the Russians?” he asked curtly.
While their upcoming meeting was to discuss the post-American election policy their two governments would take, Zhang also knew they would be discussing the Russian plans for Ukraine and China’s plan for Mongolia and Southeast Asia. It was imperative that the two countries coordinate their operations together so they could collectively benefit from the West’s inability to respond to multiple crises at one time.
“Yes, Chairman. Everything is in order, and has been prepared as requested,” his deputy responded with confidence.
Zhang trusted every word that came out of Liang’s mouth, on any topic. Liang was a brilliant and politically savvy man. Zhang was grooming him to one day become his successor, which is why he had been brought along on this trip and given such a high-profile position within his office. As the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, Zhang was the third highest ranking person in China. He was a man with great power and influence. Zhang was also the deputy and de facto head of the National Security Commission, which is why he was meeting with his Russian counterpart at the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
As their vehicle pulled up to the side entrance of Lubyanka, several security guards motioned for the vehicle to stop, and one of them held open the passenger side door for Zhang to exit. After several minutes passed while they cleared security, Zhang and his deputy Liang were escorted into a secured conference room to meet with Ivan Vasilev. Ivan had a long history both within the FSB and its predecessor, the KGB. He was trusted by both Prime Minister Mikhailov and President Petrov, which said a lot considering how selective those men were in garnering confidence.