Page 112 of Hush
Ballard slammed shut his padfolio and stood. “I hope you tell yourself that when the bombs are dropping. We aremoments, breathsaway from war. And you’re marching us straight into the line of fire!”
“What are you talking about?” Tom stood, frowning. “What the hell are you talking about? What is going on?”
But Ballard said nothing. He strode out of Tom’s chambers and slammed the door behind him. Tom’s diploma from Georgetown Law School rattled on its nail, and then crashed to the ground, glass shattering into a billion tiny fragments.
He and Mike escaped to Annapolis for dinner, after walking Etta Mae, secreting away for a few hours in an empty waterfront restaurant. They flirted outrageously, hidden in a corner booth, sneaking kisses and holding hands out of sight from the waitstaff. They took the 495 loop to US 1 back to Crystal City and Kris’s place, and by the time they parked, Tom had one hand on Mike’s thigh, squeezing and Mike was breathing hard. They kissed the entire elevator ride up to Kris’s floor and bounced off the walls as they kissed and spun toward Kris’s door. Mike fumbled with the lock, and then they were inside, and Mike kicked the door closed.
Clothes flew. Tom grabbed him, pulled him close. Ran his hands over Mike’s body, until Mike shivered and curled around him. They fell into bed in a tangle, kissing wildly, stroking every inch of skin they could reach.
Tom rolled Mike over and sank down in his lap, over him, taking him inside his body. Mike shuddered, his hands grasping Tom’s hips as Tom went all the way down and started rocking. Tom drove the pace, slow and rolling turning to wild and unrestrained as breathless cries fell from his lips.
Mike held on and tried to breathe, watching Tom seize control. Tom was topping him, topping him from the bottom, and his brain was fritzing out, dribbling from his ears. He desperately tried to hold on as Tom made love to him.
Eventually, he tipped over the edge, and he reached up, grasping Tom’s face and pulling him forward, down, until they were kissing, panting, sharing breaths.
Coming inside Tom was like sharing a part of his soul with him. There was something about ditching condoms, something beyond just the hotter sensations, the slicker feel. Something that united him to Tom, a giving of himself in a primal way. He wanted Tom to keep it, keephim. Keep what he was silently offering, forever.
After, Etta Mae glared at them both from the edge of the bed, standing on her hind legs with her chin on the mattress. They rubbed her head and let her up on the foot of the bed while they cuddled. Tom spoke about the hearing while Mike stroked his hair, and eventually, Tom fell asleep.
Mike stayed up, breathing in Tom’s scent, kissing his forehead and silently promising Tom the stars and the moon, and the rest of his life.
In the morning, they came back to the world, turning on the news as they got ready together in Kris’s bathroom. Russian tanks still hovered at the border of Estonia. More were appearing at the border of Latvia. Belarus, their neighbor to the south, and a perennial ally to Russia, was silent about the Russian troops massing along their own border and trysting into and out of their country.
“The Russian people must defend ourselves from the aggressions of the West,” President Vasiliev said, speaking from the Kremlin. His arm was still in a sling. “The United States thinks they can exterminate the heart of the Russian people. Killme, the Russian president. They and their little dogs, the countries of NATO, think they can bully Russia into submission. That Russia will meekly go away, into the shadows. No!” He pounded his fist on the podium, then pointed at the camera. “Russia will never back down from American aggression! American crimes! We will defend ourselves, and we welcome any nation who wishes to join us in standing against the American and NATO hegemony.”
Over the next week, mayors in the Estonian towns of Narva, Kuningakula, and Saatse crossed the river and delivered letters of secession to the Russian military commanders stationed feet from their towns. Russian tanks rolled across the bridges to cheers and applause, the citizens of the border towns welcoming the Russians as liberators, and not as conquerors.
“The people of Narva, Kuningakula, and Saatse wish to rejoin the Russian Federation,” President Vasiliev crowed over the TV. “If California or Texas were to secede from the United States, would not the United States wish to help their fellow citizens in those states and bring them back into the fold of the larger nation? Did not America fight a war over this very idea? Americans belong together, they claimed. The north and the south! This is no different. Russian people belong with Russia! It is our right, and our national heritage!”
NATO jets buzzed the towns day and night, watching as the Russians entrenched their positions in and around the border towns and surrounding region. More towns fell, joining the secessionist movement. Estonian military units set up along the highways leading into the disputed region and held firm lines on the map, halting the Russian advance.
In theory.
But the Russians had already taken a bite out of Estonia, like they had before in Ukraine. They were on the move.
Chapter 31
July 26th
Twin F-16s, one each from Poland and Norway, split the skies over Estonia.
They were part of the NATO patrol constantly testing the Russians’ mobile air defense radar system, hauled across the border and set up along the line of occupied towns the Russians held in Eastern Estonia. Just like Ukraine, the Russians had moved in and were setting up to stay. Estonia had long preached that they werenotUkraine, that they would not be run over and trampled by the Russian bear. Their armed forces trained and trained and trained to be a speedbump, a burr in the bear’s paw until the rest of NATO could arrive to back them up.
No one in Estonia had believed that their own people would turn around and give the keys to the border—to invade their own country—directly to the Russians. Invite the devil in through the backdoor. Estonia’s border region secession was a political-legal-military quagmire, one that made every NATO head hurt.
Today, NATO wanted to test the Russians’ rapid response to the implied threat of their fighter jet incursion. How fast would Russia scramble their own MiGs in response to their overflight? How many fighters would they send up? Everything was measured. Everything was tracked. NATO command in Brussels listened to the mission, piped directly to the two pilots.
Miles of thick forest spread beneath the two jets. NATO command whispered updates through their radios in heavily accented English. Echoes of the pilots’ breathing, the reverberations of oxygen whooshing through their masks, seemed overly loud in the near-silent cockpit. Sprawling pines and pristine wilderness soared beneath them, the jets screaming over the countryside with barely a whisper of sound in the cockpit. Seemingly picturesque Estonian towns, like pages from a storybook, dotted the landscape. It seemed inconceivable that there was a war brewing beneath their wings, in the silent forests and untouched wilderness below.
Hidden in the trees, though, the Russian invaders lurked.
On both jets, alarms wailed, shattering the serenity of the flight. Sensors screamed, yellow and red indicators flashing as the heads-up display showed radar lock warnings. Both jets were being painted with radar.
They had found the Russians.
And the Russians weren’t playing games. No scrambling of MiGs across the border. Not this time.
The Russians had secretly planted mobile anti-aircraft missile batteries in the dense canopy of alpine trees. Launch platforms stuffed with enough missiles, enough firepower, to down multiple fighter jets.
