Chester D. Campbell
Overture to Disaster
Cast of Characters in Overture to Disaster
Col. Warren (Roddy) Rodman, special operations helicopter pilot
Yuri Shumakov, chief investigator for Minsk city prosecutor
Burke Hill, Worldwide Communications Consultants chief financial officer, clandestine group director
Gen. Valeri Zakharov, #2 in the Second Chief Directorate
Maj. Nikolai Romashchuk, Zakharov's protege
Gen. Philip Ross Patton, Chief of Staff
Maj. Juan Antonio Bolivar, Air Staff intelligence officer
Capt. Peter (Dutch) Schuler, Colonel Rodman's co-pilot
Tech Sgt. Barry Nickens, helicopter flight engineer
Sgt. Jerry Nicken, Barry's younger brother, also flight engineer
Sgt. Ian McGregor, member USAF Band, Lila Rodman's boyfriend
General Wackenhut, Retired, Captain Schuler's father-in-law
Chief Master Sgt. Clinton Black, Retired, former Air Staff intelligence NCO
Maj. Mike Hardin, Delta Force leader
Gen. Fredrick Parker Strong, Retired, former Secretary of State
Chairman Latishev, Belarus head of state
General Borovsky, head of Belarus KGB
General Nikolsky, army second in command
Sergei Perchik, Minsk city prosecutor
Capt. Anatoli Shumakov, Soviet Army 48th Division officer, Yuri's brother
Paul Kruszewski, KGB identification specialist
Omar Khan, Minsk militia detective
Selikh, crime lab forensic analyst
Vadim Trishin, former Soviet soldier, lives in Brest
Larisa Shumakov, nurse and wife of Yuri
Petr and Aleksei, sons
Oleg Kovalenko, chief investigator for Kiev prosecutor
Col. Ivan Oskin, Ukrainian Defense Ministry
Pablo Alba, director of operations, Aeronautica Jalisco
Maria, Aeronautica Jalisco office worker
Señora Elena Castillo Quintero, wealthy businesswoman
Manuel, Quintero's butler
Rafael Madero, influential leftist politician
Julio Podesta, sidekick of Major Romashchuk
Bryan Janney, journalist investigating Foreign Affairs Roundtable
Sergio Muños, customs officer, Aeropuerta International Benito Juarez
Nathaniel Highsmith, president
Brittany Pickerel, research assistant
Roberto Garcia, manager of Mexico City Office
Jerry Chan, manager of Seoul Office
Bernard Whitehurst, chairman, international banker
Laurence Coyne, president
Adam Stern, a.k.a. Baker Thomas, ex-CIA, known as "facilitator" or "enforcer"
Senator Thrailkill of Pennsylvania, chief opponent of the B-2 bomber
Dr. Geoffrey Wharton, National Security Adviser to the President
Bradford Pickens, Director of the FBI
Jack McNaughton, Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI
Fred Birnbaum, FBI agent, instructor at Quantico
Clifford Walters, FBI agent, son of Burke Hill
Walker Holland, General Patton's personal lawyer
Leslie Hall Rodman, Colonel Rodman's wife
Renee and Lila, daughters
Lorelei Hill, Burke Hill's wife, head of Clipper Cruise & Travel
Liz and Cam, Hill twins
Brenda Beasley, Lori Hill's executive assistant
Drs. Chloe and Walter Brackin, close friends of Lori Hill
Murray Bender, a.k.a. Greg, ex-CIA, provider of diverse bits of intelligence
Weasel, document forger recommended by Bender
Haskell Feldhaus, runs Advanced Security Systems, bankrolled by Adam Stern
Sarge, ex-cop employed by Feldhaus
Max, hit man used by Adam Stern
Pepe, leader of Peruvian Shining Path team of terrorists
Ivan Strelbitsky, hardline Russian legislator
PART I
ONE SUCCESS, ONE FAILURE
1
Where endless rows of towering green cornstalks had recently swayed in the summer breezes, drab olive-colored canvas tents marched in orderly columns across the idle fields. The smell of rotting vegetation tinged the air. To the indignant manager of the besieged collective farm, tucked away in the Nikolayev Oblast a hundred kilometers north of the Black Sea, the tents were as out-of-place as mushrooms in a desert. A thick-necked bull of a man, he had snorted and stomped over the order to rush completion of the fall harvest to make way for the troops of a motorized rifle battalion. "Nearly empty food stores, people standing in endless lines. Nobody gives a damn," he said to a bored bureaucrat. "When the army comes blundering through the countryside, like some horde of Cossacks, my farmers get no better treatment than animals." Had he known the full extent of the planned maneuver, and its destructive conclusion, he would have been even more shocked and chagrined.
In an open area beyond the tent city, a group of soldiers, gas masks at their sides, had gathered for a briefing by the commander of a company of chemical troops. Unnoticed by the soldiers, a long, black, official-looking Chaika roared down a nearby dirt road, leaving a roiling cloud of brown dust in its wake. Following closely was a military-style truck, its rear shrouded by a canvas cover.
A cluster of weathered wood and metal storage buildings had been centrally located on the farm like an isolated barnyard. The largest structure, emptied of its time-worn tractors, now bore a sign over its doorway that warned "No Smoking! Munition Storage Facility." Razor-like barbs of concertina wire flanked the road a hundred meters below the ramshackle buildings.
In front of the makeshift armory, a tall, muscular young man watched uneasily as the limousine stopped at the guard post along the road. He saw the sentry salute, speak to someone in the rear seat, then wave the vehicle into the compound. Standing there in his combat uniform and dusty boots, pistol dangling from his belt, fists jammed against his hips, a deep frown scarring his round Slavic face, Captain Anatoli Shumakov shook his head. What now? He had already suffered through a visit earlier in the day by a colonel and a major from 48th Division Headquarters in Kharkov. It had involved only a useless lecture on security and fire safety, but ever since the distressing investigation that had dragged agonizingly over the past several months, any sudden appearance of high-ranking officers left him with a knot in his stomach.
Captain Shumakov was a good soldier and proud of it. The youngest captain in his division, he had worked hard to get where he was. The army was like a demanding bride, and he gladly gave her his best. That had made it even more difficult to accept the unfairness of the charges against him. Officially, he had been exonerated of complicity in the theft of automatic rifles under his control, but he knew there were some who harbored lingering doubts. Now he had been saddled with weapons considerably more sinister than anything he'd had to deal with before.
Shumakov was surprised at sight of the KGB uniforms in the Chaika. An elite team of KGB spetsnaz troops, experts in chemical and biological warfare, were due in, but not until tomorrow. They would provide hands-on training in methods of dispersing highly sophisticated toxic agents. As with nuclear armaments, the Committee for State Security controlled access to the C/B arsenal. The material entrusted to the Captain's care had been delivered only yesterday from a C/B warfare production center in the Kharkov area. He would be damned happy when they came to reclaim it. He didn't understand the rationale that would permit use of such weapons in the first place. Maybe warfare was inherently uncivil, he thought, but it didn't have to be barbaric. That was one area in which he took issue with the army brass. In Afghanistan, he had seen the results of the so-called "one-breath anesthesia." The rapid-acting incapacitant had done its work so quickly that people were frozen in position like mannequins in a store window.