Jeremy was waiting
for them when they arrived at the training base. There had been no issues at
all there. Jeremy had accepted James as his commanding officer before greeting
him as an old and dear friend. After they were all settled in Jeremy had taken
them all out for a night on the town. That had done wonders to bring the group
together. The next two days were spent meeting and planning. The third day the
rest of the squadron reported back. That had been a very long day. After the
first meeting, James had left the pilots to the others. He had spent his time
meeting and greeting the ground crews for the squadron. If he didn't have a
great relationship with them then nothing would work right. At first they
seemed to be more upset about him being with them than anything else. However,
by the end of the day they had started to understand that this Colonel saw them
as a critical part of his squadron. They were beginning to see him as someone
who needed and wanted them to be a part of everything. That evening James held
another meeting with the entire squadron. He made it clear to all of them that
he expected each of them to be a part of a finely tuned weapon. He made it very
clear to everyone that he knew his life depended on his ground crew and that he
trusted them completely with it. He also made it clear that he expected that
same trust between every pilot and crew. If there was a problem on either side
he wanted to know about it too. He also announced who the flight leaders were
and told the rest he would let them know who they would be flying with after
they all had time to fly together.
They spent the next
few days and some of the nights doing just that, flying together. When it was
time for the trip to their new base every flight was filled out and the ground
crews were a part of the family too. The five man flight size made pairing
hard, but it had a purpose too. Due the demands involved in learning to fly the
new F/A-48 there were a lot of inexperienced pilots in each new squadron. The
two least experienced pilots in each flight always flew wing with the flight
leaders. One of them might fly singly with the flight leader or they might fly
together with him in a three plane group. On rare occasions they might even get
to pair up and fly together without the flight leader. It gave them a chance to
spend as much time as possible flying with an experienced pilot before they had
to take a new wingman on, to train themselves. James was thankful that he had a
highly experienced set of flight leaders. The youngsters were good pilots, but
they all thought they were invincible. That could be fatal in a fighter jet,
even on a good day. The trip over went smoothly and the next few weeks went
smoothly around the base too. That couldn't last forever though. It all ended
just after James assumed full command at Spangdahlem Air Base. The Russians
seemed to have been waiting for Lt. General Madison to leave before they
started anything.
It was summer in
Europe so heating wasn't a major issue yet, but fuel for vehicles and industry still
was. Russia had quietly announced they would be reducing the flow of oil out of
Slovakia by nearly half. That line flowed into the Czech Republic and then
split off to supply many other nations. It was the major line of supply for the
Czech Republic and southern Poland. A reduction of that size would cripple
economies and might cause the collapse of the governments. The Russians were
increasing production at all of the refineries that were under their control
for themselves. They were also reducing the flow of natural gas, but not as
much, not yet. The results were more immediate than would have been expected by
many. There were major protests and even riots in numerous nations almost
overnight. Some of them weren't even going to be directly affected by the
reductions. There was little doubt that most of those protests were being
instigated from outside. It had been Russia that had made the news so public
after all. James could do little about any of it at first. That quickly changed
when the militaries in several of the nations had to step in to control the
riots.
Instead of easing
the situation they seemed to have inflamed it. Soon the people and parts of the
military were in open revolt against those standing governments. The
governments had immediately appealed to NATO for help and that in turn had
resulted in James becoming involved. He was ordered to provide support for
ground units of both NATO and the forces remaining loyal to the governments.
James soon found himself involved in numerous small engagements. It was very
hard to do a lot without risking civilian casualties, but that was his task.
James spent a great deal of his time in the air over the next few days. He soon
found that now Lt. Colonel Peter Kemp was among the best at breaking up
conflicts without actually using much force. Peter had quickly been placed in
command directly behind James during these ground support actions. He was less
senior at his new rank than either of the other two Lt. Colonels, but his experience
and knowledge in these situations was worth far more than seniority to James.
Days turned into weeks and most of the nations regained some control. The Czech
Republic remained very much in turmoil though and as the weeks became months
that turmoil started to spill over borders.
Once again James and
others were convinced that the conflicts were being instigated intentionally.
The first couple of incidents seemed minor, but James knew that they were
anything but minor. He had managed to avoid becoming involved in those small
incidents, but if they grew in size he might be unable to do that. Slovakia
still had a government and military separate from Russia, but they were nothing
more than puppets on a string to Russia. Intelligence clearly showed that
Russian troops and even heavy armor was being moved closer to the borders and
closer to the conflict areas. It would only be a matter of time until one of
those conflicts between the Slovakian military and the people of the Czech
Republic involved some Russian troops. If and when that did happen, James had
little doubt of what would follow. The Russians would have an excuse to take
direct action. Once the Russians were directly involved James wasn't sure what
would happen. If they crossed the border into the Czech Republic it would be
seen as an open challenge, but if James took any action too soon that might
also be seen as an act of war.
James was in
constant communication with General Madison as well as the current NATO
commander in the Czech Republic. At least the NATO commander was an American,
Colonel Kirby Phillips. The problem was they wanted James to find a way to
prevent this from involving the Russians and James saw little chance of doing
that if the conflicts between these two nations continued. It was very unlikely
they would stop anytime soon either. The lack of oil had started to have a
noticeable impact now. Both The Czech Republic and Poland were feeling it.
Gasoline was being rationed and so was fuel oil. It wasn't even that cold yet.
Once winter arrived in force the situation was likely to get a lot worse very
rapidly. In order to reduce the tensions the Czech Republic had allowed more
oil to continue to flow on to other nations than the people inside the country
wanted them to allow. That had caused more problems, but once the cold hit it
might cause a disastrous reaction from the public in the Czech Republic. It
didn't help the situation any that James was so far away from it. It took time
to get in the air and reach the area. They couldn't keep planes in the area
without looking like they were the ones pushing things. It was a very
problematic situation, with few possible solutions.
No comments:
Post a Comment