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Mother Russia

William Bishop was tired.

Not that he'd been doing much today bar acting as a flight instructor. Not that he'd been suffering from lack of sleep. Rather, he was tired of "it all," as the saying went-whatever "it all" actually meant. But sitting in the pub nursing a cold one, he supposed "it all" amounted to the feeling of anti-climax he'd felt over the past decade. Because when you saved Washington from a nuclear attack, when you managed to be an ace in a world where the importance of strike fighters was diminishing, everything else savoured of anti-climax.

And when nothing changed either.

This was just a total collapse and total collapse of an illegitimate government. We can now confirm that there were indeed signs of earlier fighting, as coup forces turned on themselves.

Bishop snorted, drawing a few looks from the bar's other patrons, a great many of them glued to the flatscreen. Luckily, none of their gazes lingered on him. He wasn't in the mood to be singled out. Not after it had been done to death ever since he'd bested Makarov and became the God-damn poster boy for the USAF. Not when the official line was ignorance at best or a straight lie at worst.

But all that seems to have happened before we reached the area. The people have captured…

Screw it. He didn't care either way.

At least, that was what the old fighter pilot told himself. He didn't care about the people around him. He didn't care that Russia seemed to have the worst luck in the world, that not only did the tried and true plot of "Russian coup, shit happens" keep being repeated, but that real life had imitated that idea twice in the past two decades.

"You think the Ruskies really took the rebels out? Nah. Conspiracy, I tell ya."

"You're paranoid. Just drink your beer."

"I'm telling you, there's no way-…"

Bishop rolled his eyes. At least back in his day there'd been no secret that NATO wanted the Russian leadership preserved. He'd flown over Moscow himself, not watched a procession on TV that showed the veneer of civility whereas dirty dealings took place in the shadows. Doug was a general now and they still kept in touch. Kept in touch to the extent where he'd even hinted at some special forces unit that might have been based at Fort Bragg, that might have been in Russia over the past few weeks, that might have been doing a job in Moscow as the president was returned to power.

It was indicative of why he was no longer in a job, the former colonel reflected. Everything was done in the dark now, even if nothing else changed. Russia unstable, Africa still dealing with everything from famine to rebels…it was as if everything he'd done a decade ago had been for nothing. Only difference was, the people who'd done the job in Moscow wouldn't get any credit for it.

Returning to his beer, he wasn't sure if that was a bad thing.

A/N

The idea for this came from watching the cutscenes of Future Soldier. I'll admit, I groaned when it was revealed that yes, yet again, Russia's having problems that involves a coup. Because if there's one thing that every thriller since the end of the Cold War has told us it's that if we need an enemy force, it has to be Russia. A Russia that isn't an up-front antagonist like the Soviet Union might have been during the Cold War itself, but still the enemy of choice.

Anyway, I'm not complaining about the execution of the story (or Assault Horizon for that matter either), but it was basically frustration that resulted in this.