by James Rosone
A few people were taking notes, and because everyone was listening so intently, the sound of their pens on the paper was audible whenever Castle paused. He continued, “I want our carriers on the east coast to put to sea immediately and head to Europe. I also want all our anti-submarine warfare assets to begin peppering the waters off the east and west coast with sonar buoys. Get our attack submarines out immediately. Issue a cancelation of all military leave and recall all of those currently on leave. I want a full activation order of the Services Reserve branches immediately. Tell the governors that their national guard units are being placed on alert for federal activation. Then start activating the tier one national guard units and get them moving to their deployment centers.”
A flurry of activity then took place throughout the operations center as aides, operations officers, and non-commissioned officers began to start drafting the various orders. Keyboards were clicking at a ferocious pace as people cranked out copious emails. The din of chatter slowly grew as more and more people began making the necessary critical phone calls on the secured nets.
It was nearly midnight at the Pentagon as they began to recall everyone back to the office to start work on preparing the nation for war. It was going to be a busy 48 hours; that was all the time they had left on the Russian deadline, and hostilities could begin earlier. No one knew for sure when or if they would.
A Traitor in Their Midst
Pentagon North Parking Lot
Carl Wiggins walked briskly through the parking lot, casually looking around to make sure no one was paying him any undue attention as he walked to his car, smoking a cigarette. He had arrived at the office an hour ago and once he had seen the meeting notes from the President’s conference in the Situation Room, he knew he had to find an excuse to head to his car and send an emergency message. The best excuse he could come up with was the need for a cigarette break and a java fix. He directed his staff to continue with their duties while he volunteered to grab a bunch of coffees and donuts for everyone to help them get through the long hours. Several people took him up on his offer.
As he walked through the parking lot with his cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth, he observed dozens of cars driving into the parking lot. The spaces began filling up quickly with all of the people responding to the midnight recall. It was not often that the Pentagon conducted a 100% recall of military personnel and critical government civilians, but today was not a normal day. It was 0345 in the morning; the sun was still at least a couple of hours away from rising.
Carl slipped his hand in his pants pocket and pulled out the keys to the black 2016 BMW 525i that he had purchased last year. He had been well-compensated by various individuals for providing intelligence leaks about the Gates administration. It was almost too easy; everyone was eager to know what was going on, and as one of the communications officers who wrote intelligence summaries of the President’s meetings with the National Security Council, he had exceptional placement and access to the inner workings of the administration.
Carl was a deep cover Russian spy. He had spent nearly his entire adult life working to get into the position he now found himself in. He felt the best way to ensure peace and security in the world was to make sure everyone knew what the other group was thinking. He admired Edward Snowden and Chelsie Manning for their bravery in revealing the illegal intelligence collection that the American government had been perpetrating. Their actions helped to reassure him that what he was doing was truly in the interest of world peace.
He was not Russian by birth or heritage, but during college, where he had been a Russian studies major, he came to realize that it was the West who was in a constant state of demonizing Russia. The military industrial complex of America needed a boogieman; they needed a constant threat and enemy so that they could justify spending over $620 billion a year on defense. It was during this time of self-reflection and searching that he had been recruited by the SVR (part of the Russian FSB) to become a spy.
During his senior year in college, Carl was encouraged by his new handler to go into military intelligence, obtain a security clearance, and work his way into a government civilian intelligence position at the Pentagon. He felt like James Bond during his recruitment phase. After obtaining his commission in the Army, he was selected for an intelligence career track based on his Russian studies background. While in college, Wiggins had become fluent in the language, and had even spent a semester abroad as an exchange student in St. Petersburg; since Russian was such a difficult language to learn, there weren’t many people who could fill this need.
During his first four years in the Army, he was stationed at Ft. Meade, Maryland, and assigned to the NSA as a Russian specialist on the Russian desk. His handler in the SVR could not be more thrilled with his posting. He intended on staying at his post with NSA for as long as possible--it was a cushy job. Then President Bush announced the troop surge of 2007, and he suddenly found himself deployed.
When President Bush announced the surge, there was a critical shortage of intelligence officers deploying with the new combat units. Unfortunately for him, Carl was selected to join an infantry unit on their deployment to Baghdad as the battalion’s S2 or intelligence officer. His Russian handlers were not happy, but they had no choice in the matter and neither did Wiggins. Besides, filling an S2 billet was a needed requirement for getting selected to Major later in his military career.
During his deployment to Iraq, he was severely injured during a rocket attack on his Forward Operating Base. Shrapnel had torn through his left leg, shredding it to a point that he had to have his leg amputated below the knee. Even though he would be able to walk again with the new prosthetic limb he was provided, Carl’s injuries meant he was going to be medically discharged once he had recovered. He was incredibly depressed at the thought of losing his career in the Army and his secret life as a spy. While Wiggins was recovering from his injuries, his SVR handler approached him again, and gave him hope. “We want you to try to leverage your war injury to obtain a government civilian position,” he directed. “After all, you still have your clearances. Maybe this will be a stroke of luck for us after all.”
After seven years as a Defense Intelligence Agency civilian employee, serving a variety of positions, he had obtained a coveted position that was right where his SVR masters wanted him. In his new division, he oversaw the transcripts and development of the daily intelligence summaries of the national security council meetings. These meetings included the ones between the President and his staff, advisors, senior military, and intelligence leaders. Once in place, he stayed dormant until the situation in Ukraine began to grow tense. After nearly three years of civil war in Ukraine, his intelligence had helped the Russians continually stay one step ahead of the US and NATO. Now with things starting to spiral out of control with President Gates, his intelligence became critically important.
As he entered his car, he opened the arm rest between the two front seats and pulled out his burner phone. He turned it on and began to write a short, but concise text message. “US preparing for war. DEFCON 2, anticipate hostilities within 48 hrs,” he typed, and then hit send.
Once the message had been transmitted, he deleted the message from the phone’s history, then took the SIM card and battery out of the phone. He opened the car door and got out, dropping the SIM card to the ground and stomping on it, crushing it and rendering it useless. He then kicked it into the storm drain and began to walk towards the building and back to work. As Carl got closer, he walked over to one of the garbage bins and dropped an empty package of potato chips in the bin, along with the phone and the battery. Then he opened the main door, walked in and swiped his card at the security gate before heading to the Dunkin’ Donuts to pick up a dozen donuts and some coffee for the others in the office.
The Day the World Changed
Moscow, Russia
National Defense Control Center
Alexei Semenov, the Minister of Defense, sat down at th
e conference table and saw that he was the last to arrive. This was never a good thing, but especially when the meeting was being chaired by President Petrov. Before Alexei could even say anything, Vasily Stepanychev, the director of Russian Foreign Intelligence announced, “We received an urgent message from our mole in the Pentagon. He informs us that as of seven hours ago, President Gates made the decision that they would not back down from our deadline. He has also issued orders to the military to prepare for hostilities to begin within forty-eight hours. Given the time delay from that decision to right now, that means that they will be ready to start combat operations in thirty-nine hours.”
Several of the military and political members at the table began to whisper to each other and talk in hushed tones at the revelation of this information. Ignoring them, Stepanychev continued, “The American President also directed the country to move their armed forces to their defense condition 2, upgraded from 4, which means the Americans have placed their strategic nuclear capabilities on full-alert status. Satellite images show that their nuclear bomber bases have increased their state of readiness in just the past few hours. Our observers at their submarine bases have also reported that several of their nuclear ballistic missile submarines have begun to put to sea.”
Alexei saw this as his moment to speak up. “This activity was expected though,” he cautioned. “The Americans will want to keep the war conventional, but they will prepare their strategic forces in case we use our nuclear weapons first.” Alexei wanted to make sure that his colleagues knew that though this information was alarming, it was not something that should be taken out of context.
President Petrov raised his hand. “Thank you, Alexei, both of you. This is critically important information. We intend to keep this conflict conventional, and we can win a conventional war, so I am not as concerned about what their nuclear forces are doing. The Americans would never launch a first strike mission against us, and even if they did, we would still have enough warning to hurt them. Let’s put that aside and focus on what we are going to do about the other information the SVR has obtained for us.”
The President saw everyone nod their heads, and reflected on how the world had changed. Thirty-years ago, the thought of considering the avoidance of nuclear weapons against NATO would have been ludicrous. They had always been a part of the Soviet military doctrine. Nowadays, Russia was not looking to gobble up Europe, just Ukraine, creating a buffer zone between them and NATO.
“The Americans are planning for hostilities to start in 39 hours. Minister Kozlov,” Petrov said, turning to his Foreign Minister, “I want you to play a deception game with the Americans. Reach out to them and let them know that we may be softening our position. Tell them that if the Americans would be willing to consider lifting the economic sanctions on us, we would be willing to withdraw our forces from east Ukraine. This will cause them to pause any preemptive military action they might take.”
Dmitry Kozlov nodded and smiled at the shrewdness of the idea. He loved ruses. “This will be like the 2016 election all over again,” he thought. “It really didn’t even matter who won the election--after all of our rumors of political collusion and corruption, the American people were going to lose confidence in the system and question the legitimacy of their leaders. I love how gullible they are; the media there just eats up any whiff of conspiracy theories.”
While Dmitry was lost in his daydream, Petrov had moved on. “Viktor, is Operation Redworm ready?” he asked.
Viktor Mikhailov was the Chairman of the Government, which meant he essentially ran the administration for Vladimir Petrov. Mikhailov and Petrov were extremely close friends; they had been trading political positions as President back and forth, allowing Petrov to remain in power far longer than any politician should legally have been allowed. Mikhailov was also in charge of a very secretive cyber-warfare program that had been established nearly six years ago. The Russians had invested billions of rubles into the program. To complete their stealthy cyberattacks, they had developed the NDMC Supercomputer; it had a speed of 16 petaflops, making it the fastest computer in the world. They had also created a less powerful (but still impressive) processor in Belarus, with capability of 1 petaflop; both of these devices would be essential for Operation Redworm.
Viktor gave a wry smile and nodded. “We are ready to execute when you give the order.”
Petrov smiled, and nodded back. He could see the others at the table were curious to know what Redworm was, but now was not the time to tell them. They would learn of it on another day. He turned to his naval commander, “Admiral Petrukhin, are your forces ready to begin?”
Admiral Anatoly Petrukhin cleared his throat before responding. He was nervous; his forces were as ready as they were going to be, but he knew they were no match for the Americans and NATO. The best weapon he had was surprise. He would have exactly one chance to hit the Americans. After that, his force would be hunted down and destroyed, and there was little he could do to stop it. Unlike the air and ground forces, President Petrov had not placed the same sense of urgency on the modernization of the Russian navy.
“We are as ready as we can be. As directed, I have two Akula attack submarines at the entrance to the Black Sea. Both subs are now sitting on the bottom of the sea, waiting for the American carrier battle group to make their way through the Bosphorus. That should happen in about nineteen hours. To throw the Americans off, I have two Oscar subs that will be making a lot of noise to distract them from the actual attack. My forces will sink the USS George H.W. Bush Supercarrier,” he said with confidence and pride.
Petrov smiled and congratulated him on his well-developed plan to sink one of the American Supercarriers. “What about the Atlantic Fleet, though?” he asked. “The Americans are sure to deploy the Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier group.”
Admiral Petrukhin nodded. “The Truman is currently on station in the eastern Mediterranean, conducting anti-ISIS operations with the Arab Coalition. The Eisenhower set sail two days ago and will head to the North Sea on its way to the Baltic Sea. To counter this, I have deployed six Kilo submarines, two Oscars and four Akulas. NATO and the Americans will be very busy in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.”
The admiral cleared his throat before he continued. “Mr. President, I anticipate that we will lose most of these submarines to American and NATO anti-submarine forces. It is terrible, and there is little I can do about it. Our submarines are just not up to the same standards as those in the West. However, their loss will not be in vain.”
President Petrov nodded. He knew the risks.
Petrukhin explained further, “Like playing chess, one has to sacrifice some pawns or even a bishop to get at the queen or king. That is what we are doing. I have the Severodvinsk, our only Yasen class submarine, lying in wait for the Bush. They have taken nearly a week to get on station, and now they are settled on the bottom of the sea, lying in wait for the right time to strike. As the Bush battle group moves into the Black Sea, they will strike. I am not optimistic of their chances of surviving the strike, but the captain assures me he can launch his torpedoes and still get away.”
Petrov could see the pain in the admiral’s eyes. He was being asked to essentially sacrifice his servicemen for the good of the country. It was hard to commit so many men’s lives to a battle plan that would almost certainly result in their deaths, yet that is what needed to happen if they were to succeed. By sinking two of America’s Supercarriers, they would significantly reduce the number of combat aircraft the Americans could bring to bear in the coming conflict. It would be a huge political win for Russia, and a massive disaster for the Americans.
“Admiral Petrukhin, I know we are asking a lot of your service. But we cannot achieve victory without the sacrifices your men are being asked to make. I make this solemn promise to you--when we are victorious, we will rebuild the navy and return it back to its former glory,” Petrov said reassuringly.
“Gentlemen, this war with the West is going to be won
or lost within the first couple of weeks. We have to strike fast and hard if we are to win. Unlike wars of the past, this conflict will be fought on many battlefields. I am counting on each of you to instill within your subordinates a winning attitude. For too long, the West has looked at us as a shell of our former glory. What they do not know is that we are stronger now, more advanced than at any time in our past. For all our past glory, we never had the ability to control so much of the public perception like we do now through social media, or this new ability we’ve developed to deliver a knockout blow through our cyber-warfare division.” He paused to let his words settle in, and then casually took a sip of tea.
His military leaders and trusted advisors were hanging on his every word. They had spent the better part of six years working on this plan, and they had poured billions of rubles into designing the computer systems, disinformation programs, and everything else that would be needed to win. They had even employed several American and British fictional war authors to help them identify weapons of the future and how to employ them. They truly had taken a holistic approach to rebuilding their military.
“Our objective is clear comrades; we will capture and then hold the Ukraine. Our intent is not to recreate the Soviet Union. We are not going to bite off more than we can chew, and we are not going to expand the war any more than is necessary. Once we have achieved our objective, we will push for a ceasefire in the UN and call for calmer heads to prevail,” Petrov said, convinced that this plan would not fail.
Opening Salvos
The Russians had given the US and NATO 48 hours to vacate eastern Ukraine and move back across the Dnieper River. That deadline was still twelve hours away…everyone was tense, unsure of what would happen once it passed.