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Aeroflot flight 1004 took off in good order from Domodedovo airport at 1:50 P.M., Moscow time, bound for Kaliningrad. On board were several high ranking officers of Russia's military, flying to Kaliningrad to take part in the Zapad, the annual military exercise designed to show off Russian strength. Aside from training Russian forces in a realistic manner, the maneuvers were meant to intimidate Europe and show a determined face of Russian steel to NATO. This year's exercise was focused on the Baltic states, placed like low hanging fruit on the Federation's western border.
General Andrei Mikoyan sat with his friend, Admiral Pyotr Sokolov, in the first class section. The two men were sharing a bottle of brandy and stories about their wives and mistresses. Mikoyan commanded the Western Military District. Admiral Sokolov commanded the Northern Fleet. Both men were key to the success of the exercise. Both men would be major players if it ever came to war with the West.
Sitting in the row behind them were Lieutenant General Kiril Vasiliev and Lieutenant General Leonid Popov. Vasiliev was a logistical genius. It took a kind of genius to efficiently design the disposition of troops and supplies for an exercise involving a hundred thousand men. He was responsible for much of the complex planning needed to pull it off.
Lieutenant General Popov commanded missiles in the aerospace forces. During the maneuvers the missiles would be deployed as in time of war, although they would not be launched. Everything had been designed to make the exercise as real as possible.
Vasiliev was absorbed in a thick notebook describing the first day of the exercise. Outside and below the cabin windows, the city of Smolensk lay off to the left.
The drone of the jet engines was soothing. Kaliningrad was a geopolitical oddity left over from World War II, lodged between Poland and Lithuania. It was a two hour flight from Moscow. Popov settled back into the comfortable seat for a nap.
The note of the engines changed. The plane banked. Brandy sloshed from Admiral Sokolov's glass, spilling onto his tray table.
"Damn," Sokolov said.
"What was that?" Mikoyan asked.
"I don't know. I'm going to have a word with that pilot when we land. Waste of good liquor."
He mopped up the spill with a napkin. He picked up the bottle to refill his glass. The plane suddenly rolled and nosed down into a vertical dive. The bottle, the glass, everything loose in the cabin, flew into the air and smashed against the cabin ceiling.
"What's he doing!" Mikoyan shouted.
Cries and shouts filled the plane. The sound of the engines rose to a scream. The plane arrowed into the ground a few miles north of Smolensk and vanished in a thunderous explosion of red and orange flame. Black smoke from the wreckage climbed high into the air, visible from miles away.
An oblong object hurtled out of the sky and buried itself in the rich, black earth of a farmer's field, a quarter-mile away.