This is a fictional account of current events
Gedeon was excited and thrilled to be finally piloting his fabulous Sukhoi-34 on a real combat mission again. It had been months since his return from Afghanistan and they had barely allowed him to log any flying hours, much less arm out and fly a mission. Beside him sat his best friend and trusted comrade, Andros, together they formed a deadly team and their success rate against the American funded rebels had won them high praise and acclamations from their superiors at Kursk.
Today's mission was to be the beginning of the liberation of the oppressed Ukrainian people in the Kharkiv region. Their job was to clear the way for ground forces in route to seize the regional seat of power in Kharkiv city. Tasking information would be relayed to them as the mission proceeded.
Gedeon had heard all of the stories from his grade school days and from his parents about the big battles against Nazis in WW II, but never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined himself defending his homeland against that same threat reborn in modern times. How could this be possible? Had the world not already learned their lesson? Had the Europeans and the Americans so soon fallen prey to this evil force? Had Hitler risen from the grave to gain worship as a god?
They had barely crossed into Ukrainian territory forty miles North of Kharkiv when the first tasking order came through, Gedeon made the adjustments to their flight path as Andros programmed the weapons and prepared to release when in range of the targets. He too was pumped to be back in action, but he had visited relatives in Kiev only two years ago and he wondered at how quickly the Country had fallen into the grips of NATO and a Nazi regime.
Twenty miles South of the racing fighter bomber in the small farming village of Prudianka, a seven year old boy named Yeva sat in his fenced in yard at the grassy edge that separated his back yard from the family garden. The Spring thaw had turned the soft garden soil into sticky globs of mud, which were perfect for digging into with the metal toy tractor equipped with a front end loader and a matching dump truck. Yeva's mother kept an eye on the boy from her kitchen window as she went through her tasks in preparation for the evening meal. The boy would be covered in mud and in need of a bath the mother thought, but it was the first day since Winter had set in that it was warm enough for him to get outside. She just could not bear to withhold the opportunity for Yeva to enjoy a good day outdoors for a change, and a good bath was not going to do him any harm.
It was a calm sunny day and the skies were perfectly clear from below in Prudianka, but high above their heads the calm had turned to sudden action and controlled chaos. Ground to air radar was tracking the attacking SU-34 and Gedeon knew that they only had seconds to release their ordinance before they would have to start taking evasive maneuvers. He could feel each shift of weight from the planes pilons as the bombs were released in succession by Andros. When the last bomb, a Fab 500T, was away Gedeon banked left and released chaff to confuse any anti-aircraft missiles that might be on their way to intercept them. Once in the clear and having expended their bomb load the duo took up a position along the border to intercept any Ukrainian airborne threats that might appear in their area of operation.
Happy and oblivious to the drama that was unfolding in the sky, Yeva scooped up another big load of mud and began to reload his freshly emptied dump truck. His ears did not even have time to register the whooshing sound of the bomb before it detonated in front of their small house. The blast wave burst the child's eardrums as it lifted him up and backwards until he slammed into the wooden fence on the other side of the garden. His breath having been knocked out of him Yeva lost conciseness and thus felt none of the splinters of wood, broken glass, and mortar that pelted his limp body.
Within seconds the subconscious brain began to direct the actions of the child's diaphragm, sternum, and lungs so that Yeva, still unconscious, took in a gulp of the dusty, smoke filled air without any objection. The young lad would soon awaken to a new and horrifying world, he was now one of the first of what would soon be thousands of orphans.
One day Yeva is destined to grow up and get the opportunity to thank his liberator's in person, it is the cycle of life on a war torn planet inhabited by fallen men whose minds have been skewed, twisted, and manipulated until that which is good has become evil and the things that are evil have become good.
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