Lightning, p.29
Lightning, page 29
When they had departed Cape Town International Airport, the report had been for clear weather all the way to Progress Station in Antarctica. And it had been…for the first four thousand kilometers of the flight.
But then Antarctica had decided to have a fit worse than his mother had when he’d brought home Aloysha. The shouts, the pounding of fists on the armchair…even in his bedroom that night they’d lain together listening to Mama’s foul mutterings through the thin walls.
In retaliation, he had married the gorgeous Tatar blonde from Kazan—and regretted it ever since. She’d had an extended affair with his commander, which had caused one type of problem. Major Zubov had made sure that Fyodor was always assigned the most distant, longest lasting assignments, keeping him far from Moscow.
Then she’d moved on to his commander in turn, which had caused Fyodor an entirely different type of problem. Major Zubov now assigned him the worst flights and the oldest aircraft in retribution.
It wasn’t his navigator, it was Aloysha who should have her eyes ripped out. Little status-climbing Sterva! Whose bed would she find next, the Russian President’s?
At least that’s what he’d expected, but he’d checked his messages shortly before takeoff. Aloysha’s low voice had left a long, rambling apology of how he’d been the only man to ever treat her properly and how could she make it up to him? She made several very explicit recommendations that, as always with her, had left him aching with anticipation.
He was actually thankful for this long flight. It would place him out of reach for several days while he somehow convinced himself to say Nyet!—when he knew full well he’d say Da!
A new vibration made the control yoke rattle and buzz against his palms.
The massive Ilyushin IL-76 cargo jet had been modified for long range and could fly over nine thousand kilometers when traveling empty. Even with a full load of sixty thousand kilograms, his range would be eight thousand. It would have left him more than enough fuel reserve to return to South Africa when the storm notice had reached them as they crossed the sixtieth latitude south.
However, the damned administrators of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute were cutting corners. In fact, the ARRI were cutting off whole sides trying to keep Russia’s five Antarctic stations operational, down from the Soviet Union’s twenty-three.
One of his grandfather’s favorite topics, while consuming an excess of vodka, was discussing the collapse of the Motherland in a voice far too loud. Grandfather had helped build the Pole of Inaccessibility Station in 1958. Occupied for twelve days, it was the farthest point in Antarctica from the ocean in all directions. The last time it was visited—which happened about once a decade—all that remained of the original two-story hut was the bust of Lenin that had perched at the top and the tip of a radio antenna. The rest had been buried beneath the drifting snow.
The Geographic South Pole, where the Americans squatted in their deluxe super-station, was eight hundred kilometers from the center of the continent. That had taken Russian know-how, Grandfather would pound the table with the bottom of his empty glass, making his point as well as fresh dents in the old wood.
It was Russian stupidity as far as Fyodor was concerned. The traverse in each direction had taken longer than the occupation of the place had lasted.
The question now was, how long would they last?
The freak, mid-December storm was worthy of the dead of winter, not the height of summer.
His four-engine IL-76 “Candid” was one of the largest cargo planes in the world. Which gave the winds buffeting them about something to truly grab a hold of.
It rattled like a tin can of old bolts and screws being shaken by Baba Yaga herself as she strove to raise the demons of the wind. If so, she was depressing good at it.
The IL-76 was so old, thanks to Aloysha dumping Major Zubov, that it didn’t even have a glass cockpit. Fyodor had to fly using all dial instruments. His GLONASS receiver had been mounted on a spindly arm, which had snapped and shattered the receiver two months ago during a rough landing. Maintenance was still waiting for parts, which probably meant the repair order was stalled in Major Zubov’s inbox.
To carry a backup GPS receiver to position himself by using the American satellite system was forbidden.
So it was up to Kolya, seated in the IL-76’s navigation station directly below their feet, to keep them on course. He always managed, and Fyodor was careful not to ask how. Kolya probably used his personal iPhone for GPS positioning.
However, his copilot was a party fanatic—who Major Zubov also wanted as far away as possible—so care was needed not to use American technology in his presence. Fyodor always warned Kolya when his copilot left his seat in case he decided to visit the navigator below.
The IL-76 Candid had a two-story cockpit. Fyodor, his copilot, the engineer, and the loadmaster all had seats in the upper level. There wasn’t much chatter, they were each approaching dead-ends in their careers and only Party-man-copilot didn’t know it. Below them, seated before the curve of the down-and-forward-looking windows and surrounded by his instruments, Kolya sat alone with the best view in the plane.
Somewhere, out in the blinding whiteness below, Kolya would find their landing strip. In mid-December, the snow-and-ice around Progress Station would have melted away enough to expose the hard earth. He hoped they had done a better job of grading since their last landing. He’d thought that it would be their last landing at Progress. How the landing gear remained attached was both a miracle and a testament of old Soviet engineering.
The days of threatening underlings with a trip to the Gulag were gone, again much of grandfather’s disappointment.
However, Fyodor had offered the men responsible for the runway maintenance an assignment to the Navy’s pride and joy if they didn’t take better care of the runway. The country’s sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, was little better than a slave ship. It had to be towed to sea and anchored there for flight operations. It definitely offered crew members a shortened lifespan from hazardous materials, fires, accidents, and numerous other failures. And every person in the Russian military knew it.
The runway had better be perfect this time or he might pass on a dose of Major Zubov’s revenge.
With a gut-churning plunge, and a raucous protest from the wings’ joints, he began his descent from a hundred and fifty kilometers away.
Down into the maelstrom. Which was precisely the descent he already knew he’d be making with the sultry Aloysha when he returned to Moscow.
Because of Major Zubov’s various assignments, Fyodor was exceptionally well practiced at flying old equipment through horrid weather. It was likely that he could have made a safe landing and simply had another bad-weather-flying story to tell.
However, a pair of objects impacted his plane while still at forty-one thousand feet. They hit so close together that they sounded like a single event.
The first piece, a long needle shape the width of a soccer ball, was moving at hypersonic speeds. It drove a shockwave of air ahead of it. The air was so intensely compressed that it burned at twenty-four-hundred degrees.
The object barely slowed as it passed through the copilot from his right shoulder to his left hip. Next, it punched through the floor and vaporized a thirty-centimeter-long section of Navigator Kolya’s thigh before blasting out the bottom of the airplane and continuing on its way. It also destroyed Kolya’s phone, which had been monitoring the American’s GPS system.
The second piece hit at effectively the same instant and speed but ten meters aft.
It was this piece that sealed the IL-76’s fate. It punched a hole through the central fuel tank, and the last of the jet’s fuel began to dump out the hole. All four engines would flame-out from fuel-starvation long before the big plane reached the ground.
The bang of impact and the scorching passage of the first object left Fyodor deaf, blind in his right eye, and covered in second- and third-degree burns from the heat of the object’s passage. He couldn’t feel the copilot’s hot blood sprayed over his right side. He couldn’t hear Kolya’s screams as his femoral artery pumped out his life’s blood, spraying red all over the navigator’s cabin.
In agony, Captain Fyodor Novikin fought the controls all of the way down.
It wasn’t enough to save the plane or any of its crew.
“Certainly didn’t see much of this stuff growing up.” Holly Harper was busy ignoring Mike Munroe’s suggestions that she leave her cozy nest to go out in it.
Hit by a rare snowstorm, Miranda’s personal, private island had been coated a foot deep with fluffy white stuff—a rare event in Washington State’s San Juan Islands. Even rarer, it had happened mere days before Christmas and it was predicted to be cold all week. They were going to have a white Christmas. She’d never had one of those and was looking forward to it. As long as she didn’t have to go out in it.
“You do understand that’s snow, right, Mike? Frozen water. As in cold.”
“Brisk! Besides, compared with where I used to live—”
“Blah. Blah. Denver. Blah. Blah. Skiing. Blah. Blah. I remain one unconvinced Aussie. Where I grew up a cold winter’s day was thirteen degrees—“
“Then you’re fine, it’s only down to twenty-seven this morning.” He waved out the big picture window where the late sunrise glinted off the brilliant snow.
“Centigrade, you Yank. That fifty-five degrees to you. I’m staying here. Besides, my toes are all warm and cozy.”
Mike began making chicken noises. Thankfully, he wised up before she had to hurt him.
Coming this summer.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
USA Today and Amazon #1 Bestseller M. L. “Matt” Buchman started writing on a flight from Japan to ride his bicycle across the Australian Outback. Just part of a solo around-the-world trip that ultimately launched his writing career.
From the very beginning, his powerful female heroines insisted on putting character first, then a great adventure. He’s since written over 70 action-adventure thrillers and military romantic suspense novels. And just for the fun of it: 100 short stories, and a fast-growing pile of read-by-author audiobooks.
Booklist says: “3X Top 10 of the Year.” PW says: “Tom Clancy fans open to a strong female lead will clamor for more.” His fans say: “I want more now…of everything.” That his characters are even more insistent than his fans is a hoot.
As a 30-year project manager with a geophysics degree who has designed and built houses, flown and jumped out of planes, and solo-sailed a 50’ ketch, he is awed by what is possible. More at: www.mlbuchman.com.
ALSO BY M. L. BUCHMAN
* ALSO IN AUDIO
Thrillers
Dead Chef
One Chef!
Two Chef!
Miranda Chase NTSB
Drone*
Thunderbolt*
Condor*
Ghostrider*
Raider*
Chinook*
Havoc*
White Top*
Start the Chase
Lightning
Romantic Suspense
Delta Force
Target Engaged*
Heart Strike*
Wild Justice*
Midnight Trust*
Firehawks
Main Flight
Pure Heat
Full Blaze
Hot Point*
Flash of Fire*
Wild Fire
Smokejumpers
Wildfire at Dawn
Wildfire at Larch Creek
Wildfire on the Skagit
The Night Stalkers
Main Flight
The Night Is Mine
I Own the Dawn
Wait Until Dark
Take Over at Midnight
Light Up the Night
Bring On the Dusk
By Break of Day
and the Navy
Christmas at Steel Beach
Christmas at Peleliu Cove
White House Holiday
Daniel’s Christmas*
Frank’s Independence Day*
Peter’s Christmas*
Zachary’s Christmas*
Roy’s Independence Day*
Damien’s Christmas*
5E
Target of the Heart
Target Lock on Love
Target of Mine
Target of One’s Own
Shadow Force: Psi
At the Slightest Sound*
At the Quietest Word*
At the Merest Glance*
At the Clearest Sensation*
White House Protection Force
Off the Leash*
On Your Mark*
In the Weeds*
Contemporary Romance
Eagle Cove
Return to Eagle Cove
Recipe for Eagle Cove
Longing for Eagle Cove
Keepsake for Eagle Cove
Henderson’s Ranch
Nathan’s Big Sky*
Big Sky, Loyal Heart*
Love Abroad B&B
Heart of the Cotswolds: England
Path of Love: Cinque Terre, Italy
Where Dreams
Where Dreams are Born
Where Dreams Reside
Where Dreams Are of Christmas*
Where Dreams Unfold
Where Dreams Are Written
Science Fiction / Fantasy
Deities Anonymous
Cookbook from Hell: Reheated
Saviors 101
SF/F Titles
The Nara Reaction
Monk’s Maze
The Me and Elsie Chronicles
Non-Fiction
Strategies for Success
Managing Your Inner Artist / Writer
Estate Planning for Authors*
Character Voice
* * *
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Copyright 2022 Matthew Lieber Buchman
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Cover art:
USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) transits Arabian Gulf © US Navy
Lockheed Martin F-35C Lightning II with VMFA-314 at Miramar NAS © Robert Sullivan
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