When a leaked CIA file exposes a president’s explosive secret, pilot Duncan Hunter is thrust into a global chase to stop a vengeful former leader, prevent another vanished airliner, and face a final showdown in Dubai’s tallest tower. Below is an excerpt from Blown Cover by Mark A. Hewitt.

Prologue July 22, 1936 Moscow

Two old men, one white the other black, were led from Stalin’s Office flanked by jackbooted helmeted police. They were shocked at the proclamation that their next stop would be the Lubyanka. Epaulettes of rank and medals of valor and heroism had been ripped from their uniforms and thrown to the floor, an unmistakable sign that their lives had suddenly become worthless. Those who spoke disparagingly of “The One,” the one party in power, were arrested and put in prison for spreading false rumors. Membership in the other party, the prohibited party, would at a minimum, land one in jail. The men had once loyally served the royal family and vigorously switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Their chances of being transferred to a gulag to die miserably of starvation or exposure decreased with every step. Breathing the words “cult” and “Bolshevik” in the same sentence in the wrong company was enough for anyone to be tortured or posed before a firing squad. No time for a blindfold. The secret policemen poked at the two septuagenarians with steely bayonets, encouraging their arthritic legs to move faster. The stripping away of their accoutrements of honor and privilege had been their death sentence.

Across the Soviet Union millions of people were being arbitrarily and capriciously labeled “enemies of the Soviet people.” They were being imprisoned, exiled, or executed. Many escaped the first wave of the purges and ran to the borders with their families. Those that were caught before reaching freedom were punished as traitors on the spot with a bullet in their heads. Those with education and credentials quickly learned intelligence and loyal service to the government were no longer virtues to be admired or an immediate pass out of the country. Dozens of men, women, and children were condemned to mass graves, killed by a gauntlet of eager young men with automatic rifles.

The latest purge of the party, government, armed forces, and intelligentsia was in full bloom. Major figures in the Communist Party, old Bolsheviks, and most of the Red Army generals were being rounded up, brought before a judge or tribunal, tried, and convicted for plotting to overthrow the government. A lucky few received their charges of treason and guilty verdicts directly from the Secretary General, Joseph Stalin.

As the condemned men filed past, six other men in the antechamber waited for the Secretary General to receive them. One of the men smiled with amusement at the sight of the once famous men being hurried out of the building to their own funerals. Two tried not to tremble at the fact that Comrade Joseph Stalin had sent for them. The other three were merely curious why a group of aircraft designers had been summoned for a meeting with the head of the Communist Party.

After thirty minutes of waiting, the ten-foot tall wooden door to the Secretary General office opened. The superannuated Bolshevik leaders of the Soviet Armed Forces and the young aircraft designers, Alexander Yakovlev, Pavel Sukhoi, and Andrei Tupolev, entered. Trailing them with his hands behind his back and still sporting a pernicious smile, was Nikolai Ivanovich Yazhov, the head of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, the law enforcement agency of the Soviet Union. Few knew that Yazhov directly executed the rule of power of the All Union Communist Party. Fewer still knew he was also the head of the Soviet secret police.

The office was dark and caliginous, an ascetic’s cell. Comrade Secretary General Joseph Stalin was hunched over a newspaper. A single Hero of the Soviet Union medal hung from a red tab on an otherwise sterile grey uniform studded by gold buttons and offset with red epaulettes adorned with a large gold star. A thick mustache in the style of Karl Marx hid the end of a half-bent Billiard that hung lazily from the corner of his mouth. Dunhill’s Royal Yacht, which most pipe and cigar smokers found horrendously offensive, and instantly assaulted the men’s noses as they entered the office.

Shuffling feet announced their arrival in the spacious hazy office. Stalin didn’t look up from the papers strewn across his desk. The desk was a simple affair of loose parts, a door-sized slab of tiger oak rested atop a pair of red mahogany file cabinets. A brushed steel lamp with a crinoline-blue glass shade and a rotary dial telephone were positioned at opposite ends of the tabletop along with a crystal and bronze inkwell set purloined from the private desk of Tsar Nicolas II. Behind him a wall map of the Soviet Union hung between gold curtains that were more appropriate for a bordello than an office.

Without looking up Stalin barked as if he were speaking from the balcony of the Kremlin. “Comrades, today we celebrate the remarkable achievements of Comrades Chekalov, Baydukov, and Belyakov who flew their airplane across the North Pole to Udd Island in the Sea of Okhotsk. They established another endurance record for the beloved workers of the Soviet Union! This accomplishment again demonstrates that the air forces of the Supreme Soviet are the most powerful on the continent.” From under a brush of brows he raised his eyes to each man before he continued more somberly, “But I am deeply troubled. I learned this morning an American woman will attempt to fly around the world.” He allowed the news of the aviatrix to waft among the melding of smoke and the uneven breathing of the young men.

There was a hint of malice in his voice. “Don’t we have a strong woman pilot to do such things? Don’t we have airplanes and women pilots that can race this American around the globe for Soviet Russia, for the Motherland?” The Secretary General sat up and packed his pipe. His pomaded, slicked back hair shone in the dull overhead lamps of the office as he waited impatiently for a response.

The men were well aware of their place in the hierarchy of the Soviet aviation industry. At the top was Joseph Stalin, a Bolshevik with an infatuation for airplanes. He would extol the virtues of the brave heroes who took to the sky when it suited him or when it was politically expedient to do so. They also knew the real story of the Secretary General who, from the moment he saw his first aircraft at the Imperial Russian Air Service, quietly lusted for an opportunity to climb in and strap on one of the rickety flying machines. But because of his susceptibility to severe bouts of motion sickness, Stalin was forced to find other ways to partake of the glory of flying airplanes as any injury or show of weakness risked his position in the party.

To glorify and acclaim the Communist Party’s achievements in engineering and aviation, Stalin directed several of the fledgling aircraft designers to build airplanes that would fly higher, faster, and farther. He demanded larger airplanes with more engines and more capacity to challenge the world’s aviation records which were repeatedly set and broken by a growing line of British, French, and American aviators and designers. Despite his efforts Soviet aircraft remained outdated, chronically lagging a generation behind each new advance in French, British and American designs.

In the 1920s, Stalin was incensed when the British aviators, Alcock and Brown, entered the record books for the first non-stop transatlantic flight. A year later Stalin spat on the newspaper announcement that Charles Lindbergh had set the flying world alight with the first solo nonstop crossing of the Atlantic. Stalin was enraged that his pilots and Soviet-built aircraft were not only ill-equipped but also incapable of conducting any flying operation of very long duration. Soviet pilots could barely fly a few hundred miles without encountering a seized engine or structural airframe failure leading to a crash.

Soviet aircraft were flying coffins. Dismemberment and death were real possibilities with early Soviet designs, and aerodromes surrounding Moscow were littered with the bent, mangled, and charred carcasses of flying mishaps. Pilots were crashing aircraft faster than the manufacturers could build them; undertakers were burying pilots faster than the Soviet Union Air Forces could train them. Stalin demanded more designs, more pilots, and more records.

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