White Swan: Ukraine Wins!
“Are we ever going to bug outta here, Rattle?” Thibido asked wearily. The two men stood next to each other on a serving line in a makeshift kitchen. Thibido was ladling out bowls of stew while Craigen dished out spoonfuls of vegetables.
“I don’t know for sure, but HQ seems to think that the Russians will pull out of Ukraine soon." Craigen concentrated on not spilling the contents of his spoon, and he made sure to look the elderly man he was serving in the eye and give him a warm smile. “If that happens, we'll need to be prepared to push forward across the border and start doing assessments again.”
“I like the sound of that!” Thibido‘s grin was broad and toothy. “You know I don’t mind doin’ any honest work, but it’s just plumb wrong to use our team for this purpose.” He waived around the kitchen serving line. Mercifully, there was no longer anyone waiting to be fed. “Our donors put up good money to send us here to deliver and build shelters. This here just seems like busywork to me.”
Craigen’s stretched for a moment to ease the ache in his back. “There hasn’t been any letup in the number of people coming through this checkpoint, that’s for sure. But if we deploy forward into Ukraine, I’m worried about how the others are going to hold up. We've been running really hard for a long time now.”
“Aw, they’ll be fine." Thibido picked up the now-empty pot and brought it to the sink to wash. "We thrive on doin’ what we do the best. We’re a Response Team! We get in first and do the initial assessments; that's our specialty."
Craigen beamed, “You get the Choir together, and we’ll start planning for the possibility of extending our mission.” He stripped off his plastic serving gloves and discarded them into a nearby trash can, “I’ll let them know at the Cluster meeting tonight that PIRA will be ready if they decide they need us.”
Craigen practically danced through the tent door when he returned from the Cluster meeting. He clapped his hands together and announced, “I’ve got amazing news!” He tried to convey a sense of the magnitude of the information he’d learned. The whole Choir looked at him expectantly, and Craigen didn't fail to deliver. “The war’s over!”
“What? How?” Bolanger was the first to ask, but all the team members were buzzing with questions.
“Hold on, hold on.” Craigen held his hands up to fend off the barrage. “This all happened just a couple hours ago. I don’t even think it’s made the news yet. But they had a Ukrainian jet pilot Kamikaze into the Kremlin.”
After an initial shocked hush, everyone began talking excitedly, and Craigen had to settle them down again. "They showed us some video footage at the Cluster meeting. Oh man, when you see it your jaw’s gonna hit the floor. Somebody try to find it online. Every news station in the world is going to be carrying it.”
“What happened, Rattle?” Thibido asked.
"You know those MiG-29s Poland sent to Ukraine?"
“Yeah.”
Craigen's eyes grew huge, and he held up his hands to get their attention, "You're never going to believe this, but Zelenskyy took all twenty-eight of them, along with a bunch of unmanned drones, and flew them in a suicide mission straight to Moscow."
Kedzierski gasped, “Oh my…”
“Yeah, right?” Craigen’s face was flushed. “Between the Russian Air Force and the air defense artillery, all but one Ukrainian MiG was shot out of the sky. And that guy…” Craigen’s chest heaved with excitement, "You're really not going to believe this, but they’ve got that guy on radio deciding to crash his jet into the Kremlin. They ordered him not to, but he was out of missiles, and he wanted the drone that was with him to get it all on camera. I swear I saw the footage, and it's just like watching 9-11 all over again. The plane screams in from the left and then slams into Red Square. St. Basil's Cathedral is burning!"
“You gotta be kiddin'." Thibido covered his open mouth. Then he finally exclaimed, "Whoowee! Ain't dat somethin’. I guess ‘ole Putin finally messed with the wrong guy.”
“I’ve got it!” Bolanger called out from the table where she was clicking buttons on her tablet. Everyone crowded around to get a better look. There before their eyes were the multi-colored onion domes engulfed in flames while a group of firefighters and emergency responders looked on helplessly.
After a while, Kedzierski snapped impatiently. “Please, can you all keep it down? I can’t hear what they’re saying.”
“They ain’t speakin’ English, Curly.” Thibido offered.
Kedzierski pulled her face away from the monitor screen, “I’m trying to read the subtitles. I’m worried. Oh Rattle, this could lead to a nuclear war!”
“No, that’s what everyone at the Cluster meeting thought too.” Craigen’s voice was apologetic, “I forgot to tell you the rest. Zelenskyy got on the air and announced that if Russia wanted to escalate the war, so be it. He didn't care if the whole world burned down. He just wanted payback. By the grace of God, the Russians backed down, and now Putin’s been arrested at his home, along with several members of his cabinet and at least two of his generals.”
“I don’t understand,” said Bolanger. “Just a single plane crashed into the Kremlin and the Russians back down? That can’t be right. They survived Stalingrad, Hitler, and Lenin… one plane would never be enough to make the Russians stop fighting…”
Craigen thought about this, “It could be that the suicide attack is just the symbol, Dee. You know the Russian economy’s been in freefall since the American oil and gas started flooding the markets. There was no chance of the Russians escaping an economic depression.”
Bolanger was obviously repulsed by this idea. “So you really think the decision to fill the world with pollution is what won the war? More oil isn’t the solution!”
Craigen took a step back. "I'm not making any judgments, Dee. All I know is that whoever's running the Russian government right now has made it clear that they are pulling out of Ukraine immediately. The war’s over, and that's good enough for me!”
“At least it’s not WWIII.” Kedzierski said softly.
"Drill, baby, drill!" Thibido crowed.
Bolanger crossed her arms and turned away.
Behind her back, Craigen just rolled his eyes. But Bolanger's evident displeasure brought him back down to earth. "Listen up, everybody. This doesn't mean our mission's over. There's still a lot of desperate people out there. There gonna need us to get out there and do what we do best. PIRA's work is just getting started."
Craigen was happy. They were on the move again, but this time they only managed to hustle up three trucks with drivers. They didn't have any tents or other equipment for refugees; they were only assigned to go in and do assessments. He rode in the back seat of the lead vehicle with Kedzierski and Jones. Kedzierski was working the GPS.
His euphoric feelings didn’t last more than a few miles along the bombed-out and congested road they traveled along. The PIRA team was about halfway back in a massive convoy heading east into Ukraine. The road became blocked at the first bridge leading into the town of Mayake, and over a dozen men had to get out of their vehicles to push disabled cars and trucks out of the way. Most of them were just out of gas, but some had been blown up.
After another agonizingly slow couple of hours traveling along the M-15 highway, Craigen keyed the walkie-talkie app on his smartphone and radioed the other PIRA trucks. "We're coming up at a significant landmark ahead. It's the two towers roundabout. Tell your drivers we will be taking the third exit from the roundabout. I say again, the third exit. It's the road heading north the Kyiv. They ought to know which one it is.”
“10-4, Rattle.” Thibido seemed to enjoy the walkie-talkie feature, which he used with a healthy dose of the jargon common to the American CB radios. "Are we gonna split off from the main convoy, or stick with 'em? C'mon back."
“No Scooter,” Craigen resisted the urge to echo the jargon. “We’re splitting off from the main body. They’ve got us heading out to some of the rural areas north of Odesa.”
“Rattle, this is Dee.” Bolanger sounded concerned. “Our driver wants to know if we’re going all the way to Kyiv.”
“No. Tell him no, Dee. We’re just going a couple miles north of Odesa. Around Dachne. Ask him if he knows where Dachne is.”
There was a long pause while Bolanger confirmed. “Yes, he knows that town.”
“Good. That’s where we'll stop, and I'll give you your assignments."
“OK, I’ve got to head into Odesa tonight and try to find the Cluster meeting.” Craigen took a break from unloading some supplies from his truck to gather his team together. “What’d you guys come up with? Curly, you first.”
Kedzierski unrolled a big map on the hood of the truck. "Right. We went up over here to Altestove. It's a pretty small town. It's a lot more modern than some of the places we've been, but it's basically a rural suburb. We found a guy that I guess you could call the mayor, but he seemed pretty suspicious of us."
“You mean they weren’t cheering the American liberators?” Craigen’s comment contained a tinge of sarcasm.
“You picked up on that too?" Kedzierski shared a knowing look, "I think that people are just coming to terms with the war's ending. They seem glad to see us, but I suspect that there is a lot of mistrust about the American involvement."
Craigen frowned, adding this bit of information to the mental map he was building, “Well, anyway, what about the need for shelter? Do you have a population estimate?”
Kedzierski sighed, “Altestove sits right along the E95 highway. With all the traffic and people moving everywhere, I’d have to guess somewhere in the range of three to five thousand people needing shelter. But that’s a rough estimate.”
“Got it.” Craigen jotted down some notes. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, they didn’t get bombed too much, although at the beginning of the war there was a Ukrainian rocket artillery regiment stationed there. Once that unit left town, things settled down quite a bit.”
“So, there’s not a lot of wounded?”
“Not wounded, no. But there is a lot of sickness in Altestove. The mayor seems to think that it's because the water treatment plant was destroyed and everybody's been drinking out of the river. There could be a real problem with water-borne illness unless we can get a purification team on site."
Craigen just nodded and kept writing. “Dee, how about your duet? What did you find in Kholodna Balka?” He struggled with the pronunciation for a moment and then gave up.
“Kholodna Balka," Bolanger corrected, "We found catacombs."
Craigen looked up sharply. "What?”
“Catacombs,” Bolanger repeated. "Huge ones, they go for miles. I've never seen anything like it."
Craigen put down his pen. “You mean like the place where they bury people?”
“Yeah.” Bolanger nodded. "Well, yeah, they have buried some people in there. But it's really an old mine network. I guess they have mines like this throughout the region. They're massive."
“Wow.” Craigen leaned back and raised his eyebrows. “Who would have thought that?” The question was rhetorical. “What about the need for shelter? Population estimate?”
“There’s a big population in Kholodna Balka. Maybe eight or even ten thousand. It's hard to estimate. They’ve got Ukrainian guerilla camps scattered all through there. Men, women, and children are hiding out everywhere, taking advantage of the caves to stay out of the weather. They’re burning wood or anything they can find for fuel. Almost all of them have been blown up or shot at. They’re in really bad shape.”
“Lot of wounded then?”
“Yeah. Tons of wounded.”
“OK, got it.” Craigen returned to making notes. When he finished the page he was writing on, he gave his own report. “I drove with Scooter’s duet all around Dachne. There was a lot of bomb damage, but no corpses in the streets like they are finding in Odesa.” The team paused for a moment; the news was filled with images of atrocities the retreating Russians had committed. “We didn’t find any kind of mayor, but I can tell you that we got a lot of hard stares out here. The people seemed genuinely upset at our presence. The few we did talk to complained that they didn’t need a bunch of Americans giving treating them like victims.”
“They about ran us out of town," Thibido added.
Craigen nodded, “I guess I don’t blame them for wanting to get foreigners out of their country. They did tell us that we should just drop off any relief supplies and let them take care of business themselves. What they really wanted was tools to fix their houses.”
“What’s the call, Rattle?” Kedzierski wanted to know.
“Well, based on these reports, I’m leaning towards recommending we focus on Kholodna Balka,” Craigen said. “What do you think?”
“There are never enough resources for an operation like this, but what PIRA is bringing seems best suited for the injured folks hiding out in those catacombs." Kedzierski agreed, and the others nodded.
“That’s what I’m talking about.” Craigen grinned and clapped Thibido on the shoulder. “PIRA’s in the house, making the world a better place!”
“I wouldn’t get too excited, Rattle.” Bolanger frowned.
“Why’s that?”
“Didn’t you hear?” She waived her notebook, “Zelenskyy’s really criticizing the West’s response to the Russian invasion. He says Ukraine will never be safe until they have their own nuclear weapons.”
“Oh no…” Kedzierski moaned softly, crossing her arms protectively in front of her.
Craigen was still for a long moment and then let out a sigh. "Well, after all this, I would guess that every country on earth is going to want to get their own bomb now. We might be heading for a really dark future.”
You are the Chief Operations Officer, you make the call:
Choose Option 1: Congratulations, your team is performing superbly and rendering a tremendous service to the humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine. Against all odds, the Ukrainian people have dealt a decisive blow against the Russian invaders. Choose this option if you wish to return to the start point and explore other possible outcomes.
Choose Option 2: Congratulations, your team is performing superbly and rendering a tremendous service to the humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine. Against all odds, the Ukrainian people have dealt a decisive blow against the Russian invaders. Choose this option if you wish to rest on your laurels and end this exercise in Directed Fiction and continue to the solutions page to learn more about how these scenarios were developed.