CHAPTER 59
No need.
The plane bumped through a line of turbulence.
Total distance from Stockholm to Ramstein Air Base was right at eight hundred miles.
So they were pushing the plane’s range with only a couple hundred miles to spare.
The coast below had a crazed outline with craggy juttings.
He spied the blue expanse of the Baltic ahead, its surface dotted with ships.
An alluring pocket of waning wheat fields and apple orchards stretched for miles.
Smoke belched from the chimneys of fishing hamlets nestled close to the water.
“I appreciate this,” Ivan said. “They would kill me.”
“They may still.”
“I have faith in red, white, and blue. You protect me.”
“What are you going to do with your life? You’ll always be looking over your shoulder.”
“Nothing new there. But I would like to live in Texas or Arizona. I read about those places. Lots of desert. I tired of the cold. No more for me.”
“Arizona would be a nice place to live. But you better like red sand. There’s a lot of it.”
“Americans take freedom for granted. You expect it. Demand it. But I doubt many understand its meaning. Have it taken away. Then you will understand. Russia now is awful place to live.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, and he left Ivan to his thoughts. Flying had always been therapeutic. The perfect place to clear your head. This had to be tough for the burly Russian, no matter how negative he felt about his homeland. Leaving your home forever was never easy.
“My wife would love this,” Ivan said. “She was good woman. Hated Franko. I do this for her. She once told me a story. I have thought of that many times since she died.”
He needed a distraction. “Tell me.”
And he listened as Ivan explained that, once upon a time, there was a colorless horse.
All of his shades were grays, blacks, and whites.
His lack of color had made him so famous that the world’s greatest painters came to his barn to try to add color.
None of them succeeded, as the tints would always just drip off his skin.
Then along came Pigger, the crazy painter.
A strange guy who traveled about, happily painting with his brush.
But that was the thing.
He never actually applied paint to the brush.
He just moved the bristles about in the air as if to paint. So when he said he wanted to color the horse, everyone laughed.
But Pigger was serious.
He entered the horse’s stable and whispered in the animal’s ear, moving his dry brush up and down the body. To everyone’s surprise the skin started to take on a vivid chestnut color. He then spent more time whispering to the animal, and the result was beautiful.
Everyone wanted to know his secret.
Pigger explained that his painting was meaningless. Instead, he managed to bring out the horse’s color with a phrase he kept whispering in the animal’s ear.
In just a few days you will be free again.
Seeing how sad the horse was in his captivity, and how colorful and joyful the prospect of freedom seemed, his owner set the horse free, where never again would he lose his color.
“My wife wise,” Ivan said. “Freedom is what gives life color. That should never be forgotten.”
He could not argue with any of that. But unlike the horse’s situation, here there was no one to have pity on the oppressed and set them free.
Just the opposite in fact. Which did not bode well for Ivan.
The sun shone through scattered clouds, reflecting a glare from one of the metal window frames.
Off the tip of his port wing he saw they were passing Gotland Island to the east with its flat lush countryside.
He caught a glimpse of the wooden windmills on the closer ?land Island, with its long sandy beaches.
He ticked off more of the geography learned from the chart.
The narrow ?resund Strait separated Sweden from Denmark, draining north into Kattegat Bay and south into the Baltic.
Three islands dotted its choppy waters. Copenhagen’s international airport sat on the largest of those.
He’d have to angle to the southwest toward Bornholm Island and avoid its restricted airspace.
Surely the air traffic controllers had noticed his presence, but he assumed the Swedes had alerted them.
Or at least he hoped so.
The EMB’s wings skipped air.
Engines sputtered, then quickly refired.
What the hell?
The right wing sheared from impacts and the ailerons went loose. The plane arched right as the starboard side failed to respond to commands. He compensated by working the yoke.
“What was that?” Ivan said.
The answer came as a jet roared past overhead. The sound of high-performance engines tore through the air and a gentle rumble shook the sky.
“Cannon fire,” he said.
The fighter’s delta-winged triangle disappeared in the distance, but a vapor trail indicated a turn for another approach.
“That’s a Russian fighter,” he said.
He worked the rudder and used air speed to regain some semblance of control. The EMB’s engines screamed at each other like an arguing soprano and baritone. One thought rushed through his brain. The EMB was little match for modern avionics, cannons, and radar-guided missiles.
But they’d had no choice.
To upgrade would have drawn suspicion, alerting the Russians, and the whole idea was to bait the trap and flush out the mole.
Back in the navy a target like the EMB was called a grape.
Because it was so easy to squash.