Shadow Flight

Vulture's Row — Observation deck on superstructure (island) of carrier.

Introduction

THE SOVIET UNION

The Soviet economy had been disintegrating in the ruins of perestroika and glasnost.

Industrial growth had mired at less than 1 percent, and food production had fallen 32 percent short of the nation's needs. Absenteeism had become rampant as thousands of workers abandoned their jobs, shouting, "We pretend to work while they pretend to pay US."

National polls conducted during January 1990 had indicated that 97 percent of the Soviet citizens felt that the economic situation was critical, if not completely out of control. The nation's patience, after years of perestroika, had run short. The domestic crisis threatened both the integrity and the political stability of the state.

The president of the USSR, beset with national animosities and Kremlin challenges, had become desperate in his attempt to hold the disintegrating Communist system together. Mikhail Gorbachev, when faced with increasing pressure to revive the moribund economy, had called a plenary session of the Communist party's Central Committee during February 1990. The 249-member committee had agreed to the president's plan to discard the Communist party's seven decades of monopoly on power. Gorbachev, arguing persuasively for a step toward democracy, had opened the door to political competition.

The astonishing shift in the dominance of power had shaken many hard-line conservatives. The idea of casting aside total power and risking their positions under a system of political pluralism frightened the party members. Insurgents within the Central Committee, who had grudgingly voted for the multiparty plan, were confident that the large core of Communist hard-liners would win control again when the new system collapsed in anarchy. The Soviet military, led by deep-rooted conservatives, had the raw power to crush any political opposition.

Gorbachev, moving swiftly, convinced the Congress of People's Deputies to grant him unprecedented broad powers to save the Soviet Union from total collapse. With the world looking on, the Communist leaders watched in humiliation as the influence of the Politburo was methodically shifted to a Cabinet style of presidential council. The key members of the council included the defense, finance, and foreign ministers, along with the head of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti (KGB, the Committee for State Security).

The director of the KGB, feeling his power and authority slowly being eroded, had quietly aligned with hard-core critics who believed in a revolution from below. Many key hard-liners, watching the riots grow more violent, had been afraid that the expanding chaos would lead to civil war in the Soviet Union.

The growing number of discontented civilian and military leaders had discussed a conservative backlash to end demokratizatsia. A number of expelled Politburo members, filled with rage and embarrassment, had openly supported a military coup to quickly restore stability in the Soviet Union.

The KGB chief, Vladimir Golodnikov, who was convinced that the military leaders would reinstate the Communist party to absolute power, decided to implement a bold plan of his own. The first step was to get his hands on the American's B-2 bomber. The ambitious operation, worked out in secret by the chief during November 1989, was an intricate plan to acquire the radar-evading aircraft, reverse engineer the B-2, then manufacture clones when the military regained power.

Golodnikov was confident that he had thought of a political escape route for every contingency. If the plan succeeded, the chief would be held in high esteem by the leaders of the revived Communist party. If it failed, he would deny all knowledge of the operation.

The KGB Directorate, proceeding cautiously, had closely monitored the B-2 budget reductions. The Russian contingent in Washington, D. C., had lobbied tenaciously to either cancel the B-2 program or limit the number of aircraft produced each year. When production of the Stealth bomber was curtailed sharply, the KGB chief decided to take advantage of the situation. Golodnikov could now count on the American Stealth program to remain stagnant, and a vast strategic advantage would thereby be gained for the Motherland.

Prologue

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, CALIFORNIA

6:50 A. M.

Gennadi Levchenko leaned against the side of his Lincoln town car, braced his elbows, then stared at the B-2 through his binoculars. The senior KGB officer, dressed in khaki-colored slacks, brown loafers, and a green windbreaker, blended in with the throngs of spectators watching the Stealth bomber accelerate down the runway on one of its routine test flights.