The Silver Falcon is down in the wilds of the Yukon, and the country that lost it will do anything to keep it out of the hands of anyone else.
Title: The Silver Falcon (Book 4 of the White Vixen Series)
Author: David Tindell
Pages: 292
Genre: Thriller
October 1990. A mysterious object is seen floating eastward over Alaska, resembling a silver falcon of Tlingit legend. Air Force radar can't see it. Fighter jets scramble to intercept the object, but all the pilots can do is watch it cruise across the border into Canada, where it comes down in a remote part of the Yukon Territory.
USAF special operator Jo Ann Geary, the White Vixen, is dispatched to Dawson City to assist Canadian Rangers in the search for the object in the Cloudy Range of Tombstone Territorial Park. They've barely started their hike when all radio comms with Ottawa and Washington go dead, but not before Jo is told about an unidentified aircraft dropping paratroopers north of the target's last known location. Who are they, and why do they want the Falcon?
As the weather deteriorates, Jo and the Canadian intelligence agent in command of the mission worry that the Rangers will be outnumbered and outgunned if they encounter the airborne troops, who are almost certainly Russians. At the White House, the president is told that the Falcon's technology, whether man-made or extra-terrestrial, could be so important that the invaders might possibly call in a nuclear strike from an offshore submarine if they're unable to keep the Falcon away from the allied force.
Thrust into the midst of indigenous Rangers who don't really trust her, unable to get help from Washington or Ottawa, and facing an enemy force that could be desperate enough to risk war, the Vixen must call on all her skills to survive and prevent the Falcon, whatever it is, from touching off a nuclear cataclysm.
The Silver Falcon is available at Amazon at https://bit.ly/TheSilverFalconEbook.
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 1st 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.
David Tindell lives in northwest Wisconsin, where he dabbles in radio, trains in the martial arts and studies the warrior ethos. His White Vixen and Quest series have earned stellar reviews. With his wife Sue he travels the world, seeking out new places to feature in his next thriller. He blogs at www.davidtindellauthor.com. Connect with him at X at www.x.com/davidtindell1 and Facebook at www.facebook.com/DavidTindellAuthor.
Interview:
Where are you from? I was born in Germany, but grew up in southwest Wisconsin, in a small Mississippi River town called Potosi. After getting a degree in radio/TV broadcasting at UW-Platteville, I ventured out into a career in broadcasting that eventually led me to northwest Wisconsin, where I resumed the writing avocation that I’d begun in college.
Tell us your latest news? My wife and I just returned from a trip to New Zealand. She and I met on the air; when I started my radio job up here in 1991, her travel agency sponsored my morning show, and I had her on three times a week. We married a few years later, and we’ve been traveling the world ever since. I’ve lost track of the number of countries we’ve visited together, but it’s pushing 40.
hen and why did you begin writing? I was inspired to write by a couple of great English teachers in school down in Potosi, Mrs. Millman and Mrs. Leonard. I wrote some things in high school and college, won a couple of short-story contests but then real life intervened, as it tends to do. Around 2012, Sue was reading a book one evening and tossed it aside. “You can write better than this junk,” she said, so I got to work on what became The White Vixen.
When did you first consider yourself a writer? I’ve retired from my “day job” three times now, so I’ve never really considered myself a full-time writer. But I’ve written nine novels and a whole bunch of newspaper columns and magazine pieces, so I guess that qualifies me.
What inspired you to write your first book? When Sue got me pointed in the right direction, I had to think about what kind of book to write. I prefer adventure stories, so that was a natural genre. As I got into it, I realized that this was a good way to explore some themes I’m interested in, like personal honor. When the chips are down, what will you do? How will you meet that challenge? I wanted to dive into that by creating characters like Jo Ann Geary, from the White Vixen series, and the Hayes brothers from the Quest series, who are presented with those challenges and have to deal with them.
Do you have a specific writing style? I like writing dialogue, so it’s sometimes a challenge for me to write scenes where there is none. Then again, it’s always from one character’s point of view, so there we have internal dialogue, at least to a certain extent. I don’t spend a lot of time writing about how a sunbeam dances across a dusty tabletop, for example; I figure my readers are there for the action, so I have to get to it. At the same time, character development and scene-setting are important.
How did you come up with the title? The Silver Falcon is book 4 in the series, and each one has a color and an animal. This makes it a little more challenging to come up with a title, but something eventually presents itself.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp? There aren’t necessarily any “bad guys” in the book. Yes, there are adversaries that Jo encounters, but nothing is starkly black-or-white. Each group of people in pursuit of the Falcon are doing so out of their national self-interest, but personal motivation also plays a large part in every character. There are rarely any occasions in life when we encounter something that can be easily categorized into “good” or “bad.” That, of course, only makes our decisions even tougher.
How much of the book is realistic? Anybody who would doubt that something like the Falcon floating across Alaska would really happen only has to look back a short time when a foreign object drifted across the entire continental U.S., and the government did nothing about it. The Silver Falcon is set in 1990, and the administration then in charge decides that action must be taken, and quickly.
Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life? I’ve trained in martial arts for nearly a quarter-century, so that informs a lot of my writing. I made Jo Ann an accomplished martial artist because I knew she’d be in personal combat a lot during these books, and I wanted her to have a realistic basis for her proficiency. Also, I wanted to use the books to help people understand a bit more about the martial arts. They’re much more than just knowing how to kick or punch.
What books have most influenced your life? The books of Tom Clancy got me really interested in being a writer in this genre. Before that, I remember Mrs. Millman, back in 7th grade, introduced me to the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. More broadly speaking, the three-volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris was a great influence, fueling a decades-long interest in TR’s life and times. But of course rising way above any other book is the Bible.
If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor? I’ve been fortunate to meet some of the top thriller writers of today, in addition to reading their work: Brad Thor, Jack Carr, Michael Deaver, William Kent Krueger, and others.
What book are you reading now? The Emperor’s General, by James Webb.
Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest? Jack Carr exploded onto the scene a few years back with The Terminal List, which of course became a highly-regarded TV series.
What are your current projects? I have two stand-alone novels, The Heights of Valor and The Man in the Arena, which I’ve loosely grouped together in a series I call “Men of Honor.” The next one in that series, The Dance We Shared, is in its early chapters right now. It’s about a man in his early 50s who lost the love of his life 20 years ago, thanks to a dumb mistake he made. She married another man and left town. Now, he stumbles upon a card she mailed to him, which got stuck inside a catalogue. On the card is her phone number and, in her handwriting, the words, “Please help me.” The problem is, the card was sent five years ago…just before she quit her job, left her husband and disappeared.
Name one entity that you feel supported you outside of family members. I got a lot of support early in life from some great teachers, two of whom I mentioned earlier. Another one was Mr. Peake, my geography teacher in high school. He opened up the world to a young kid from a small river town who thought that going to Europe would be only slightly more attainable than going to the moon. My basketball coach, Coach Widelski, was a great influence on me and all my teammates. He taught us the values of hard work, sacrifice for the cause, and teamwork.
What would you like my readers to know? If you’re ready for adventure, then the White Vixen series is for you!
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