“Stand by, Besstrashny, “ they heard a few moments later. He read off a series of geographical coordinates. “That is your exit point from Alliance waters, Besstrashny. Steer directly for that point. We will be monitoring your departure with patrol aircraft. Any deviation will result in an immediate attack, and this time we will not abort the missiles.”
“Acknowledged,” Boriskov spat. “Combat, Bridge, what’s happening up there? There is a Russian fighter up there?”
“We don’t know if it’s Russian or not,” the tactical action officer responded. “All we know is that one Ukrainian bomber and two Turkish fighters were suddenly shot down. The unidentified aircraft may have been shot down, too — the Turkish fighters seemed to cave lost contact.”
Captain Boriskov smiled and nodded enthusiastically — whoever it was, he should be given a medal, even if he got shot himself. “Did the bombers depart? Where are they?”
“They just shut down radars, but they are still up there, Just outside our antiaircraft missile range.
Too bad — Boriskov would’ve liked one more chance to get that tanker. “What’s the situation around the tanker?”
“Surrounded by numerous vessels and aircraft now, sir,” the radar operator replied. Boriskov went out to the port wing and scanned the horizon aft. There was still a very bright glow where the Ustinov was — it was going to burn for a very, very long time.
He hated to leave a fight like this, Boriskov thought. Another nation had actually shot a supersonic antiship missile at a Russian warship, in the Black Sea — once considered a Russian lake — and he could do nothing but turn tail. It was humiliating.
But as bad as running was to him, the idea of being a part of defending scum like Pavel Kazakov was even worse. If the story that terrorist had told was true, that Russian president Valentin Sen’kov was part of a deal with Kazakov to use the Russian military to help secure land to build an oil pipeline — just to fill their own pockets, that was truly humiliating.
Boriskov didn’t like being pushed around by anyone — not someone calling themselves the Black Sea Alliance, not by a worthless politician, and especially not by a thug like Pavel Kazakov.
TEN
Codlea, Romania
“He let them go?” Pavel Kazakov shouted into the secure satellite telephone. He was in his office at his secret base in central Romania, in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. “That damned destroyer captain was just a few miles away from my tanker, and he let them go?”
“He did not ‘let them go,’ Pavel,” Colonel-General Valeriy Zhurbenko, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, retorted angrily, speaking from a secure communications room in the Kremlin. “He had six large aircraft with antiship cruise missiles bearing down on him. He had two choices — turn around as ordered, or get blasted out of the water. Besides, he thought there was nothing he could do — the terrorists set off an explosive on the tanker, and he thought it was on its way to the bottom of the Black Sea anyway.” Kazakov turned angrily at his satellite television set, tuned to CNN. “Oh really? Then why am I watching the damned Turks off-loading my oil onto their tankers in their harbor?” It was true: there was no fire or explosion on the tanker, at least not one set by the terrorists. Shortly after the Turkish Navy and Coast Guard had arrived on the scene, the tremendous fire in the forward hold had mysteriously disappeared; it had turned out it was in no danger of sinking after all. The tanker had continued under its own power, and pulled into the Turkish Navy base at Eregli. As if by magic, another tanker happened to be at anchor in the vicinity, empty of course, and it was pressed into service transferring oil to it from the Ustinov.
The terrorists were nowhere to be seen.
The stories of the Ustinov’s crew were even more fantastic. There were only two terrorists, they claimed. They were invincible. Bullets bounced off them like spitballs. They carried no weapons. They shot lightning bolts from their eyes and carried rifles taller than a man that fired bullets as big as a sausage that could stop a ship many kilometers away.
“What in hell is going on here?” Kazakov fumed. “I’m surrounded by cowards and incompetents. What is the government doing to get my tanker and my oil back? This amounts to an act of piracy on the high seas! That tanker was flying a Russian flag. What are you doing about it?”
“The Supreme Tribunal is appealing to the World Court on your behalf, as a Russian citizen,” Zhurbenko replied. “Unfortunately, your ship was struck and damaged by illegal activity — namely, the unauthorized discharge of a weapon — in Turkish treaty waters. That brought the matter up before the Turkish military. The vessel was clearly in danger of sinking, both by the terrorists’ acts and the Russian Navy’s actions, so the matter was again transferred to the Turkish Coast Guard, Minister of Commerce, and Director of Environmental Protection. There will certainly be a criminal and a military investigation.”
“This all sounds like bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, General,” Kazakov retorted. “When do I get my ship back? When do I get my oil back? That product is worth twenty-five million dollars!”
“There is another matter, Pavel,” Zhurbenko said.
“And that is?”
“You happen to be under indictment in Turkey for narcotics smuggling, murder, robbery, securities fraud, tax evasion, and a half-dozen other felony crimes,” Zhurbenko said. “It is no secret that you own both the ship and the oil, so both have been seized by the Turkish courts because of your failure to appear in a Turkish court to answer charges against you.”
“What?” Kazakov shouted. “They can’t do that!”
“They can and they have,” Zhurbenko said. “Your bond in all of your indictments equaled precisely five hundred million dollars, which is how much the ship and the oil are worth, so both have been seized by the Turkish courts.”
“I want you to get that ship and that oil back,” Kazakov snapped. “I don’t care what you have to do. Send in the military, send in Spetsnaz, kidnap the Turkish president — I don’t care! Just get them back! I will not be thumb-tied by a bunch of Turkish lawyers and bureaucrats!”
“The government has its own problems right now,” Zhurbenko said. “In case you haven’t noticed, the lid is exploding off our little deal. The taped conversations between Thorn and Sen’kov and between us at Metyor have been broadcast in a hundred countries and twenty languages around the world. When I … when we leaked the details of the deal between Sen’kov and Thorn, we sealed our fate and Sen’kov’s as well. No one is even paying any attention to the American president — the spineless popinjay has admitted everything, and the world loves him for sacrificing so much to rescue his men and women from the evil clutches of the Russians, or some such nonsense. All eyes are on us. And I think Sen’kov may have found a way to insulate himself from this whole mess — after all, he never gave any orders and never authorized any of this.”
“I have plenty to implicate Sen’kov,” Kazakov said angrily. “I have bank records, wire transfers, and account numbers in seven banks around the world. I’ve paid him millions to get him to issue orders and deploy the army in my favor.”
“All his bank accounts are numbered, all anonymous,” Zhurbenko said. “Not one of them points to Sen’kov. Besides, the Russian constitution prohibits Sen’kov from prosecution for anything he does while in office, and if the Duma tries to impeach him — which they will not do, he is too powerful for that — he can simply dissolve it. The worst that will happen to him is he’ll be accused of being a dupe. It is I and the others in his cabinet and security council that will go to prison.”