The Silver Falcon Virtual Book Tour

Book Excerpt

PROLOGUE

Verkhnaya Zaimka Air Base

Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Buryatia

USSR

July 1977

         Ilya Dubrovsky shot to his feet when the Polkovnik entered the sparse conference room. Although Dubrovsky was a Podpolkovnik himself and thus was just one rank below the colonel who was now staring at him with a file in his hand, there was no feeling of comradeship here, not in this room, not on the entire base, as far as Dubrovsky could tell. It was all business, and he had a feeling he was about to find out it was serious business indeed. Why else would he be here?

         “Colonel Lytkin!” Dubrovsky barked the name as he saluted. “Lieutenant Colonel Dubrovsky, reporting as ordered, sir!”

         Lytkin returned the salute with an irritable wave that would have bordered on insolence, had it been directed at a senior officer. “Welcome to Verkhnaya Zaimka, Dubrovnik.”

         “Thank you, sir. And, uh, it’s Dubrovsky.”

         The colonel shook his head. The younger man could see gray bags under the colonel’s eyes, indicating a recent lack of sleep. Perhaps due to this very project, whatever it might be. “Sorry,” he said. The colonel sat at the head of the table and indicated the first chair to his left. “Please, sit.”

         Dubrovsky had to order himself to relax. He slid into the chair and placed his service cap on the table in front of him. He’d already looked around the room, but now he did so again as the colonel fussed with the file. The wooden walls were decorated with stock photos of Soviet Air Force planes. His own skill as a pilot was negligible, but he knew he was here because of his expertise in aerodynamics, not as a pilot. Still, he recognized most of them. There was the MiG-25, one that he had actually flown during training. Another was the Tu-95 turboprop bomber. But there were some he didn’t know. For a moment, he feared there would be a quiz. A cold ball of panic welled up inside him. He knew NATO aircraft backwards and forwards, but his own country’s inventory was largely—

         “Let us begin, Dubrovsky,” the colonel said. “My time is valuable here, and I’m sure yours is, too, back at Gromov.”

The younger man had been posted at Gromov Flight Research Institute near Moscow for three years, ever since his superiors had taken note of his exceptional grasp of aerodynamics. “It is, sir,” he said, “but I serve the Soviet Union, wherever the Rodina sends me. How may I be of service here?”

         Lytkin pushed the file across the table. “I am told you are familiar with these first two aircraft,” he said.

         Dubrovsky opened the file and immediately recognized the airplane in the first photo. What had been an airplane at one time, anyway. “This is an American U-2 spy plane,” he said, noting the remains of the long, narrow fuselage and the even longer wing. Wait, could this be…? He held up the photo to take a closer look. “This is the one we shot down in ’61, isn’t it?”

         “It was 1960, to be precise,” Lytkin said, “but yes, it is the one piloted by the American spy, Powers.”

         “A credit to our air defenses at the time, to bring down the plane the Americans considered invulnerable.”

         Lytkin smiled. “Yes, our defenses were able to shoot him down, but we knew Powers was coming, almost from the moment he took off from Pakistan. Our radar network saw him over Uzbekistan, but he flew another two thousand kilometers before the SAMs took him down near Sverdlovsk. Two thousand kilometers, Dubrovsky. If it had been a bomber, Moscow itself might have been obliterated without us firing a shot. I’m sure you studied the case at Voronezh.”

         Dubrovsky nodded but couldn’t prevent a nervous swallow. He was well aware of the capabilities of the American B-52 strategic bombers, but unlike the U-2, the bombers could not fly above the range of Soviet interceptors. Thankfully, the S-75 Dvina missiles had done their job to bring down Powers. Dubrovsky had indeed become familiar with the U-2 incident at Voronezh Military Aviation Technical School, the Soviet equivalent of the U.S. Air Force Academy, without the pretty mountains in the distance.

         In any event, in the years since Powers, the USSR and its main adversary had grown to rely on intercontinental ballistic missiles for their primary means of retaliation, in case the other side decided to shoot first. Dubrovsky liked to think his country’s leadership had never seriously considered such a thing. As for the Americans, well, they hadn’t fired a shot yet, had they?

The U-2 was certainly interesting, but he still had no idea why he had been brought here, to this remote area near Lake Baikal in the south-central region of his vast country. He suspected it didn’t have anything to do with a seventeen-year-old aircraft that was now obsolete, besides being in pieces somewhere in a Soviet military hangar. Perhaps the second photo would provide some enlightenment. He set the U-2 picture aside and considered the next one. It was a color photo of something that looked right out of Star Wars, the new American science fiction film. Dubrovsky had seen a bootlegged copy just two weeks ago. He studied the photo, and then the realization hit him. “Sir, is this the new American stealth fighter?”

         “It is,” Lytkin said, “and I caution you that it is not to be spoken of outside this room, and only during this meeting. Our friends at KGB will not be pleased if they find out you told anyone about this photo.”

         “Of course, sir,” Dubrovsky said, fighting to tamp down his excitement. He looked at the picture. Even standing still on the floor of a hangar, the swept-winged beauty looked ready to leap into the sky. “Are there any other photos?” he asked. “We have been working on a similar design, but this appears to be much further along than our research has taken us.”

         “There are no other pictures, unfortunately. I am told this is an experimental airframe that will fly within six months. It was built by their Lockheed company. The code name is HAVE BLUE.”

         Dubrovsky was thunderstruck. Soviet engineers were at least seven, probably eight years away from producing a stealth-capable airframe that could do anything other than look good in drawings. “They are that far ahead of us?”

         “Unfortunately, yes,” Lytkin said. “I know you have been working on our own stealth project, in particular an airframe that would allow for high-altitude reconnaissance to a degree Powers and his CIA superiors could only dream of.” He reached forward and took the file, closing it as he brought it closer to his chair. Dubrovsky almost protested, catching himself at the last moment. There were more photos in the file. What might they show? More secret American planes? Perhaps their latest space vehicle? Now, that would be truly exciting. Like every Russian boy, Dubrovsky had at one time dreamed of being a cosmonaut, but his skill as a pilot was not nearly enough to qualify him to go into space. Truly a pity.

         “As you could see, there are more photos in here,” Lytkin said, “but I think you should come with me. Seeing, as they say, is believing, and what I am about to show you, Dubrovsky, is, I would say, best experienced in person.”

         “I am…well, ‘intrigued’ is not quite adequate enough of a word, Colonel.” In truth, the young engineer was also feeling something a bit more pressing: a growing urge to relieve himself.

         Lytkin smiled. “I thought you might be.” He stood, followed quickly by the younger officer. “Follow me.”

         “Yes, sir. And, if I may ask, where is the nearest latrine?”

***

         Lytkin led him outside, where a UAZ-469 vehicle awaited, engine running, a sergeant standing at the ready. He opened the left rear door as the officers approached and Dubrovsky squeezed himself into the back seat, followed by Lytkin. “Hangar 10,” the colonel ordered when the sergeant was behind the wheel, and no time was wasted as the driver threw the machine into gear and jammed on the accelerator.

         It only took a minute to reach a small hangar, which had a feature Dubrovsky hadn’t seen anywhere else on the base: armed guards. The UAZ pulled to a stop in front of the main entrance and the sergeant got out to open the door for Lytkin. Dubrovsky took it upon himself to exit the vehicle on the passenger side, where he encountered a stern-looking pair of guards wearing the insignia of the Devyatka, from KGB’s Ninth Chief Directorate. He’d seen them before, and knew they were deployed around the nation to guard the country’s most sensitive military installations, including nuclear weapons storage facilities. Could that be what was inside this hangar? He doubted it. Why would Lytkin want to show him a hydrogen bomb? Still, he felt goose bumps on his forearms, in spite of the warm weather.

         The colonel was in command of this base but still had to issue a password for the guards to let him through, and they demanded to see Dubrovsky’s identification. He dutifully produced his propiska, the internal passport every Soviet citizen over sixteen was required to carry at all times. They also examined his Soviet Air Force identification card. Satisfied, they nodded to the colonel and Lytkin led the way into the hangar.

         At an internal doorway there was another check of documents, and this time Lytkin had to produce his as well. They proceeded into a small room and the outer door closed behind them with an audible sucking sound. Dubrovsky turned around in surprise. “A climate-control system,” Lytkin said. “Nothing to be alarmed about.” There was yet another door in front of them, looking like something Dubrovsky might have seen on a submarine. Next to it was a small panel with what appeared to be a radio and a touchpad similar to one of the newer telephones being introduced in the West. Dubrovsky had seen them on a West German TV show a few months ago, when he was on leave in Vienna.

         Lytkin paused as he reached out for the pad. “Dubrovsky, I trust you understand that what I am about to show you is classified ‘Most Secret’?”

         “Of course, sir.”

         The colonel gave him a stern look. “If you were to speak of this to anyone outside of this base, in fact to anyone other than to me personally, our Devyatka friends outside, or some equally determined comrades of theirs, would take you away to someplace that I assure you would be most uncomfortable. And then they would come for me.”

         “I understand, sir. I do have a very high security clearance, as you know.”

         “Yes, but for this, I still had to get confirmation from my superiors at 1^st Red Banner Air Army, and they had to get it from Moscow, from the very top. That should give you an indication of the importance of what I am about to show you.” The colonel paused, for what might have been dramatic effect, but the younger man sensed something else: a tinge of fear. The colonel’s eyes flitted to the inside door, and then back to Dubrovsky. The fear was gone now. Dubrovsky recalled that the general had been a decorated aviator in the Great Patriotic War. There’d been a photo in the conference room of a dashing young pilot in the cockpit of his Yak-3 fighter, with six German crosses on the hull below him. A man who had stared down death in the skies, and yet was still fearful of something in this hangar? Dubrovsky had to make an effort to keep his hands from shaking.

Back in full command now, the colonel said, “You are to have a new assignment. You will be working for me, here, on a project that is considered extremely vital to the interests of the Soviet Air Force and the Rodina herself. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

         “Yes, sir.” Dubrovsky felt his knees beginning to weaken. What could possibly be more important than what he had recently begun working on, which was the aerodynamics of the first Soviet spaceplane?

         It was as if the colonel was reading his mind. “Your work on Project BURAN has been duly noted. We are in need here of a talented aerodynamics engineer. You are said to be one of the best in the Soviet Union.”

         “Thank you, sir. May I ask what it is that I will be working on?”

         Lytkin paused, took a deep breath, and stared at the inner door. He appeared to contemplate something, then turned back to Dubrovsky. “You are aware that we are close to Lake Baikal.”

         “Yes, sir. I flew over it on the approach to the base. Very beautiful.”

         “Yes, and very deep, as well. The deepest lake in the world, in fact. And very large, with more water than all of the Great Lakes of North America combined. Its maximum depth is over sixteen hundred meters.”

         “That is…very deep indeed, sir.”

         “Yes. Consider, Dubrovsky, that the nuclear submarines of our Red Banner fleets typically cruise at five hundred meters.”

         “I see, sir.” In fact, Dubrovsky was now becoming confused. What did his work as an aerospace engineer have to do with submersibles? Feeling at least a little more self-assured now that Lytkin had decided to take him into this supreme confidence, he said, “I must confess, sir, that I am at a loss to understand how I may be of service for a project that involves deep diving in a lake.”

         “Oh, that part is over with,” Lytkin said with a smile. “Our Navy comrades were most helpful in the first phase of our project. You see, Dubrovsky, it was something that we found in the lake that brought you here.”

         “’Found,’ sir?”

         “Yes. Fortunately, it was not in the lake’s deepest part. It rested on the bottom at about a thousand meters, well within the capabilities of our brave sailors to recover.” He chuckled. “You know, I have been in the cockpit of our best high-altitude interceptors, at over ten thousand meters of altitude. That MiG-25 you saw in the photo, in the conference room? That was mine. Ten thousand meters up, though, is a lot different than a thousand meters underwater, in my opinion. Even at ten thousand meters, I could bail out from my aircraft and survive. Theoretically, anyway. Powers ejected at nineteen thousand meters, and he made it. But try escaping from a submersible at a thousand meters, and…”

         “We would be crushed, instantly,” Dubrovsky said.

         “Exactly. So, you can understand that the commander of the naval detachment that performed this very dangerous mission received not just one, but two bottles of very expensive vodka from me when he brought his catch to my base.”

         “I…”

         “Well, enough of this chatting. It is time for me to show you what you will be working on for me, my young friend.”

         Lytkin punched a code into the number pad. Dubrovsky heard gears turning from somewhere in the wall, and then the door released with a hiss and swung outward. The colonel gestured toward the doorway. “After you.”

         Lieutenant Colonel Ilya Dubrovsky stepped through the door and encountered the future.

– Excerpted from The Silver Falcon by David Tindell, KDP Select, 2025. Reprinted with permission.

 

Author Interview

• At what point did you decide to be an author and what was your path to publication?

    I was inspired to begin writing by two great English teachers I had in school back in Potosi, a little town on the Mississippi, Mrs. Millman and Mrs. Leonard. I started writing short stories in high school, won some awards in college, and then real life intervened, as it often does. I self-published a novel in 2000, a science fiction thriller titled Revived, but things didn’t start to take off until Amazon’s KDP got rolling in the early 2010s. The White Vixen came out in 2013 and the 4th book in that series, The Silver Falcon, launched in March. Plus there have been two stand-alones and another 3-book series besides.

• What do you do when a new idea jumps out at you while you’re still working on a book? Do you chase the squirrel (aka “UP syndrome”) or do you finish your current project first?

    I usually make some notes about the new idea, and when I take a break from the WIP, I’ll tinker around with the new one, maybe filling in more of an outline or a character bio. I might ask the members of my writers group about it to get their input. Plus, my wife Sue always has some ideas.

• Who is your favorite character to write, and why is that person your favorite? If picking a favorite character would be like picking a favorite child, which character seems to be the most demanding or your attention and detail as a writer?

   The one that’s most demanding is Jo Ann Geary, the White Vixen. First, because she’s a woman, and I’m not. Fortunately, I’m married to one, so I get Sue’s input on how Jo might be thinking about this or that. Plus, Jo is an accomplished martial artist, an expert in several disciplines. I have black belts in two disciplines, taekwondo and ryukudo kobojutsu (Okinawan weaponry), so when I’m planning a fight scene, I usually consult my sensei to make sure what I want to write is actually possible, and how it would work.

• Describe your writing process. Do you outline, plot and plan, or is your writing more organic?

   Once I have my initial idea fleshed out a little, I start an outline. I’ve seen outlines that are so detailed it’s almost the book itself, but mine are just general guidelines. Sometimes I get off on a tangent and then I have to see if I can reasonably get the story back to the path I originally wanted. Or, maybe the adjusted path is better, so I revise the outline. I always remember what one author told me years ago: “You are the god of the book.”

• What are some books or authors that you would recommend to our readers?

    I really enjoy the novels of Steven Pressfield, the author of Gates of Fire. David Morell, the creator of Rambo, is another. In the thriller genre, I’ve liked Brad Thor, Kyle Mills, Jack Carr, and of course the late greats, Tom Clancy and Vince Flynn. In the mystery genre, it’s William Kent Krueger, who sets his Cork O’Connor novels in northeast Minnesota, not too far from where I live in northwest Wisconsin.

• Tell us what you enjoy most about writing thrillers.

    In the thriller genre, I try to take relatively ordinary people, give them some training that most everybody could get if they wanted it—military training, for example, or martial arts—and then put them in somewhat extraordinary situations. I think it’s important for readers to be able to identify, at least to some extent, with the characters, especially the protagonist. Even fantasy readers can imagine themselves slaying dragons and scifi readers see themselves crewing a starship, but my characters are a little more down to earth, and therefore more relatable, I think. There’s certainly nothing wrong with imagining oneself to be a fantasy or scifi character; who wouldn’t want to be Superman or Captain Kirk? But while there are a lot of military veterans and currently-serving troops out there, very few of them were in Special Forces, and there are a lot of us martial artists, but very few of us have actually had to use our skills in real personal combat. We can easily imagine it, though, because we train for it all the time.

• What have you found to be most challenging about writing in [genre]?

    Writing a thriller is like writing any other kind of novel, except it has more action in it than your typical crime or mystery novel, and certainly more than the usual romance story. But you have to pace yourself and not exhaust the reader, not to mention your characters, with nonstop action. There has to be room for them to take a breath, time for character development, and for appreciation of the scene. My wife owns a travel agency, so we’ve been able to go all over the world, which of course provides a rich vein of locations and cultures for me to explore and perhaps adapt to a new book. The challenge there is to be authentic to the time and place, without making it a travelogue. You have to be accurate, because somebody out there will know if you’re not. When I wrote The Red Wolf, the second book in the Vixen series, I set much of the action in Hungary back in 1987. I discovered in my research that many names of places, like streets and sometimes entire towns, were different back then under the communists, so I had to adjust one or two scenes to include the name appropriate to the time. It was a pain, but it had to be done.

• Have you been able to incorporate your previous experience in your jobs/education in your writing?

    I’ve trained in martial arts for the past 24 years, so that enables a lot of my writing. In an action novel there’s going to be physical conflict, and you don’t want your protagonist to be constantly getting the hell kicked out of him or her, so you give them some skills. In the White Vixen novels, Jo Geary has trained since she was five years old in several different martial arts, and since the stories are set in the 1980s, I was able to reasonably include some training with Bruce Lee in the early ‘70s on her bio sheet. Other characters, like Scott in The Man in the Arena, have training from their military careers. I’ve worked most of my post-grad life in radio broadcasting, which really doesn’t translate very well to thriller novels, sad to say.

• Do you identify with your main character or did you create a character that is your opposite?

    I suppose the closest would be Jim Hayes, one of the protagonists in the Quest series. He started martial arts training relatively late in life, as I did (age 43), and he had a career change in his 40s, like me. He also had a first marriage that ended, although mine was by divorce, whereas his was much more tragic. But like me, it took Jim a long time to finally find his niche in life, both as a professional and, more importantly, as a husband.

• Describe the book in 10 words or less for people who are just learning about it.

    When the (manure) hits the fan, they call the Vixen.

• Is there anything you would like people to take away from your book?

    I’d like them to be entertained, first of all, but I’d also like them to recognize how Jo Geary conducts herself, as a woman of strong principles and personal honor, willing to lay her life on the line for her country. She always takes the high road.

• Do you have any odd (writing) habits?

None that I can think of, although I’m open to suggestions.

• What has been the toughest criticism you have received as an author? What has been the best compliment?

The toughest criticism actually came from my writers group one time, but it was constructive. In the first Quest book, I wrote a scene in which the protagonist, Jim Hayes, broke up with his girlfriend. The ladies in the group didn’t like it at all. They didn’t want Jim doing it the way he did. I won’t go into detail, but they said they didn’t like reading Jim like that. Reluctantly, I rewrote the scene along their suggested lines and it actually turned out better. The best compliments I get are from readers who tell me they couldn’t put the book down.

• Share some advice for aspiring authors. What advice would you give to your younger self?

    I would never give advice to my younger self, about writing or anything else. Everything that has happened to me, good and bad, has put me where I am today; anything I might tell myself 15 or 20 years ago might screw that up, unintentionally. What I would tell aspiring writers of any age is, write and write, and then write some more. And don’t stop reading, either. Writing is a craft, like painting or sculpting or making fishing lures. You never get better unless you keep doing it, keep learning how to get better. LeBron James didn’t stop practicing basketball when he became a professional. Shohei Ohtani still takes batting practice. So, there you are, even the very best continue to hone their craft.

• What is your favorite line from your book?

    Early on, Jo tells a Canadian fighter pilot she’s been training in combatives that “You have to know when to engage, and when to retreat.” This is one of many truths we know in martial arts, and it comes into play again for Jo and that pilot at the climax of the story.

• To date, what is your favorite (or most difficult) chapter you have ever written?

    That’s coming in my next book. The Dance We Shared will be a domestic thriller, where my protagonist lost the love of his life some 20 years before thanks to a stupid mistake he made. Now, it appears she’s in trouble and she’s reached out to him. But the message he finds from her is actually five years old already. As he contemplates trying to find her, he has to remember what he did that drove her away from him back then, and how it felt to know he’d lost the love of his life to another man. When I was dating Sue, there was a point at which I thought I might lose her like that, and I felt terrible. Now I’ll have to revisit that to write about Ben’s feelings as he holds that five-year-old postcard in his hand and looks at that phone number. I’m not looking forward to picking at that scab, even though it’s more than 30 years old now.

• What is your take on book boyfriends? Do they actually exist? Or do they set the bar for “real life men” impossibly high?

    That’s a new one. I actually had to look it up. It applies more to romance novels, apparently, where the protagonist is a woman and the man pursuing her, or whom she is pursuing, is the “book boyfriend.” Do I have that right? Not being a woman, I’d have a hard time relating to that. But if there’s a female version, in a story with a male protagonist, and to put it in my genre, I try to make my women (boy, that sounds patriarchal, doesn’t it?) strong and yet flawed in their own way. Gina, the wife of the main protagonist in the Quest books, is a very attractive Italian woman in her late 40s. In Quest for Redemption, one of the plot points is her involvement with a young doctor at the hospital where she’s the head of the nursing department. She knows there’s a line she shouldn’t cross with this guy, but it’s very tempting. How she deals with that temptation is part of what drives the story. In The Man in the Arena, Scott’s new lady friend, Beth, falls hard for him almost immediately, but she’s also a little hesitant to enter into a new relationship because of how she ended her previous marriage. So, I make my women flawed, yet honorable. And, of course, very attractive. Hey, I’m the god of the book.

• Have you ever experienced writer’s block? How did you deal with it?

    I put the laptop aside and go do something else, and because there’s always something else to do, that’s not a problem. Usually, the problem is there’s too much other stuff to do. I always try to do my recreational reading in the evening before bed, and usually that will help release the creative juices. After a good night’s sleep and a workout the next morning, I’m ready to go.

• What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

    I work out a lot. At the gym, I do weight training and aerobic work. I swim a couple times a week, take one or two yoga classes, and one or two trips to the dojo for martial arts training. Sue and I travel a lot; we’ll be in New Zealand in April and go to Antarctica next January. The highlight of our travels so far was last October, when we went to Africa to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and then stuck around for a two-week safari in Kenya and Tanzania. There are still some places on our bucket list. At the top of mine, now that we’ve done the mountain, is the Northumberland region of England, where my family has its ancestral roots. I read where there’s actually a Tynedale castle there. It’s now a bed and breakfast, and I want to spend a night there. We’ll see if there are any ghosts!

About the Author