Page 113 of Hush

“Kurwa!” The Polish pilot cursed and banked hard. His Norwegian counterpart went full throttle, veering away. The radar kept pinging, faster and faster until it turned into one long tone. Missile lock.

“Birdhouse, we are being painted with radar. SAM spike at four o’clock.” Surface-to-air missile threat, down and to their right. “Tally one SAM platform, on the deck. Obscured by trees.”

“Hawk Two, copy. Attempt to locate fixed position and RTB.”

“Birdhouse, request permission to engage.”

Silence.

“Hawk two, permission denied. RTB.”Return to Base.

The Polish pilot cursed again, banking and rolling before spinning into a wingover, trying to slip the radar lock. They should just bug out of there, disappear over the horizon. But, they needed to find that platform, put it on the map. And, even though Brussels didn’t want to blow the Russians’ missiles away, damnit, he did.

He dropped down, opening up his engines and going full throttle. His afterburner kicked on, and he screamed toward the deck, the ground and the trees. His radar pinged back the source of the missile lock, the platform obscured in the forest. Thick pines bowed beneath his jet wash as he kept roaring for the site, only a few hundred meters away.

He ignored the shouts in his ear, Brussels ordering him to veer off. Instead, he armed his rockets. One of the Sidewinder short-range anti-radar missiles under his wing hummed to life, primed and ready to launch. The damn Russians were always pushing, pushing, pushing. They wanted to rebuild their empire, draw Eastern Europe back behind the Iron Curtain. Put his country back under the thumb of Moscow. If Estonia fell, would Latvia? Lithuania? Poland? They were all in a line, dominoes primed to tip over. When would the world stop this?

He could put a chink in the Russians right here, right now. They’d never fire first. They were on Estonian land, on borrowed time, pointing their noses at NATO as they pretended to be a peaceful liberator, assisting a country’s internal civil conflict. They’dneverrisk firing on a NATO jet. Never.

A streak of white light nearly blinded him, a blast that shot up from the forest.

His jet wailed, alarms screaming in double volume. Brussels shouted in his ears. His Norwegian partner pilot bellowed at him, telling him to evade, evade, evade. The smoking trail of two missiles, AMRAAM anti-aircraft fire-and-forget radar-guided weapons, fired by the Russians, were locked onto his jet.

“Taking fire!” he hollered. “Fox Two!” He squeezed the trigger, launching his own Sidewinder at the Russians and their missile platform. He squeezed his eyes closed and prayed, getting out half a muttered word before the Russians’ missiles impacted the underbelly of his F-16.

A mushroom explosion bloomed in the skies over the forest, and flaming metal and shattered fragments of his F-16 fighter jet scattered over the Estonian border and cratered into the occupied countryside. Russian forces looked skyward, staring at the night sky suddenly turned to day. Moments later, a following explosion rumbled out of the forest, another bloom of flame and debris rising and spreading as the Polish fighter pilot’s Sidewinder blew apart the Russians’ missile launch platform.

Brussels spoke to the surviving Norwegian pilot, the radio controller’s voice shattered and shaken. “Hawk three, RTB. RTB immediately.”

“Affirmative Birdhouse.” The Norwegian pilot kicked on his afterburners. His radar pinged, multiple MiGs rising over the Russian border, scrambling to intercept. “Let’s pray that wasn’t the first shot of the war.”

Tom watched the news and President McDonough’s statement on the shoot-down in his suite at the Hyatt. He and Etta Mae had moved into the Hyatt after the fourth threat had come to the courthouse, this one accompanied by a picture of him and Mike walking up the courthouse Annex steps. Someone had been watching them.

Mike had shit a steel-plated brick, going from his usual exuberant cheerfulness—even with the trial looming closer and closer, he still seemed bound and determined to make Tom smile each and every day—to furious wrath. Storm clouds darkened his normally smiling expression, and his blue eyes filled with cold fury. The threats were coming fast and furious now, angry tirades that Tom had let the Russian documents into evidence, that he was nothing more than a Russian plant, that he wanted the U.S. to be embarrassed and humiliated, that he was a Communist and belonged in Russia, and that Tom would be held at fault when Russia outright attacked the United States. He was a traitor to the country, letter after letter after letter said.

Set against all that, Tom practically looked forward to an email, or a tip, or a news alert revealing his Big Gay Secret.

But, as the weeks had passed, nothing ever came. Not a mention, not a hint, not a whisper.

His phone buzzed.[This looks bad.]Mike was in the room across the hall, in one of the three U.S. marshals’ relief rooms. He was surrounded on both sides, with Mike just ten feet away from him, but still worlds away. Since they couldn’t sit together, they texted.

Russians shooting down a NATO patrol plane? For sure.

[Russia claims they were acting in self-defense. That NATO and the pilot were the aggressor. That this proves they need to defend themselves even more.]

McDonough is basically pleading for President Vasiliev to not strike back.

President McDonough’s statement had been an outright beg as much as anything else. “We should not rush into conflict, race our anger into a war that could have been avoided if not for one man standing and saying, ‘I will accept reason. I will listen. I will compromise.’ The world hangs in the balance, President Vasiliev. Do not be the man to condemn this world to suffering.”

Any word from Kris?

Kris had disappeared into Europe and gone radio silent. Mike hadn’t heard a word from him since he’d walked out of his place the night Tom and Mike came over to stay.

[Still nothing. He told me he used to go on long operations all the time. He and his husband worked all over. Real intel gathering takes time, he said.]

Yeah, but… it’s been a month. I’m worried about him.

[Me too.]