by Tom Clancy
He and Rakken hit the deck as the glass tumbled to the pavement and smoke began billowing from the jagged holes.
Rakken was already on his feet, sprinting toward the mess hall, with Vatz screaming for him to wait up, there could be more bombs.
They charged forward, over carpets of glass and pieces of blinds and other debris.
The pair of glass entrance doors had been blown off, and they couldn’t see through the clouds of brown-and-gray smoke.
“Marc, it’s not safe yet!”
“I don’t care! Jesus, they hit us here?” Rakken gasped.
The question was who. The Russians? Any one of the hundreds of terrorist groups out there? Or was it just some grunt who’d gone insane and strapped himself with explosives before sitting down to breakfast?
After waiting another moment for the smoke to clear a little, Vatz followed Rakken into the mess; an oppressive wall of heat still emanated from the area. He held his breath, spotted a lance corporal on the ground, clutching his bleeding arm. He helped the guy to his feet, got him through the front, and led him to the grass. Then Vatz, coughing hard, his eyes burning, headed back into the mess.
The smoke and dust cleared a bit more, and it appeared that the blast had come from the center of the large dining area; there was a gaping crater in the concrete, tables upturned and shattered by the concussion.
And there were pieces of soldiers everywhere.
Vatz gagged. The rest of it became a blur of images accompanied by the sickly sweet odor of burned flesh. Someone shrieked, and the cry wouldn’t stop echoing.
In the hours that followed, he and Rakken learned the truth: the Green Brigade terrorist group was responsible for the bombing.
Formed in 2012, they were a militant environmentalist /antiglobalist group with cells throughout the world but primarily in Europe and South America. From 2012 until 2018, they were credited with more than a thousand acts of violence, including acts of intimidation against factory and refinery workers and the kidnapping and murder of business executives, military personnel, and computer scientists.
One of their operatives had infiltrated the base and walked into the mess hall. He’d removed his uniform to reveal the explosives strapped to his chest. He’d made some announcement, but no one Vatz had spoken to remembered what he’d said before detonating his bomb.
At the same time, the terrorists had struck a motor pool at Fort Bragg and a dozen other facilities all over the globe, including a few more Euro military bases, a refinery in Venezuela, and even a Japanese whaler.
The group had gone silent after their leader, who dubbed himself “Green Vox,” had been killed when his plane was destroyed by Spetsnaz forces late last year.
Oh, the man portraying Green Vox was dead. But the impassioned true believer who was next in line had simply assumed his place and his identity.
Green Vox was the ultimate terrorist.
You could never kill him.
There was always another one.
Vatz and Rakken had watched the bastard on one of the base’s big screens, standing there in some undisclosed and heavily wooded location, wearing his green balaclava, shaking his gloved fist, and crying out in English but with a thick, German accent: “I am Green Vox. I am alive! I have returned! We are the Green Brigade Transnational. Today marks our return. We will not stop until the warmongers and tyrants raping our dear Gaia and threatening to scorch her from above are wiped out. We call for all free-minded citizens to join us in curing our green mother globe of this disease that will eventually kill us all.”
Soldiers in the room began to throw paper cups and balled-up napkins at the screen, cursing and shouting at the terrorist.
Vatz drifted back to a chair in one corner, collapsed into the seat.
Rakken sat next to him. “I’m still in shock.”
“You? I lose my entire team in Moscow and come home to this. Just who the hell did I piss off up there?”
“Piss off? You escaped death twice. Go play the lottery. We could both use the money.”
“Marc, I should’ve died in Moscow.”
“The survivor guilt is natural, man. You didn’t die there. And you didn’t die here. So that makes me believe you still have a lot of work to do.”
“So it’s fate?”
“I don’t know.”
Vatz sighed loudly in frustration. “I need to work this out, go for a run, do some boxing, something…”
“I hear you. And I don’t know if I believe in fate, but I believe in faith. I got faith in you, faith in me. We’ll get past this, move on. That’s it, man.”
Vatz nodded, took a deep breath, closed his eyes.
And there, in the darkness of his mind, stood Colonel Pavel Doletskaya, wearing a crooked grin. Beside him, materializing from the shadows, came the hooded Green Vox, who folded his arms across his chest.
SIX
They had given him the drugs.
They had spent hours questioning him.
They had grabbed him, shaken him, pummeled him, threatened to kill his wife.
And still, Colonel Pavel Doletskaya would tell them nothing.
Even he could not believe how long he’d held out. Surely, the drugs should have loosened his tongue.
Or maybe they had.
Maybe he’d already told them everything and had simply forgotten his betrayal of the Motherland.
The thought sent chills fanning across his shoulders.
He sat in the corner of his cell, elbows pressing against the painful confines of the straitjacket. He stared up at an energy-efficient fluorescent lightbulb glowing dimly from its socket.
That’s what it was all about. Energy.
No changing that. And here he was. The end of his journey, perhaps. Major Dennison’s people had shoved him into one of the JSF’s submarines, a rather impressive little boat, and had secretly ferried him to Cuba. He’d managed to overhear something about the decoy flight being shot down but nothing more. He’d lost track of time; oddly, that bothered him more than anything. He’d spent his entire professional life chained to the clock, and now he was free of those shackles, only to have them replaced by a prison cell.
He nearly grinned over that irony as he glanced reflexively at his wrist, covered by the straitjacket. Some men had given up the watch, in favor of their phones, but not him.
General Sergei Izotov wore a watch as well, a watch that told him that Doletskaya was still a threat. The chip in Doletskaya’s head had been their only way to silence him. Once the Americans had deactivated it, they had detached him from the system. Even if it took years, the Americans would try to extract intelligence from Doletskaya, one tooth at a time. Yes, Izotov knew that the Americans would keep Doletskaya alive, perhaps even use him as a negotiating tool, but Izotov and Kapalkin would not bargain.
This was his life now. He should resign himself to it.
But how does a warrior do that?
He didn’t know. For now he turned his back on the present and looked to the past, the glorious past, if only to make himself feel better.
It was he and Izotov who’d come up with the brilliant plan to secretly fund the Green Brigade Transnational and train them to attack the Freedom IV lifter at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. The plan was to prevent the Americans from completing the Freedom Star Space Station from which three companies of Marines could deploy anywhere on earth within ninety minutes. It was a simple matter of hiring terrorists to become your mercenaries. The difference was, the Green Brigade actually believed in what they were doing. Ideals were more important to them than money. As the Americans said, it was a win-win situation.
While the attack turned out to be a failure, it led to an unexpected and ultimately beneficial series of events. The JSF tracked Green Vox and his cronies to a training camp in the mountains of Bulgaria, but before they reached him, Izotov was able to plant information on the terrorists linking them to members of the European parliament.
The ide
a was to get the Americans to turn on the European Federation. Start a war between them. And then Izotov and Doletskaya would move in for the kill and seize all of Europe. Green Vox escaped that attack, but the JSF found the information planted by the GRU.
But then the situation turned once more. Green Vox holed himself up in the swamps of Belarus.
And that’s when Doletskaya made his first mistake.
The Enforcers Corps had, in fact, captured Green Vox, but Doletskaya ordered his platoon leader to demand the turnover of Green Vox so that the Russians could deliver him to the United States because the Euros could not be trusted to do that. The Euros refused and, remarkably, wiped out Doletskaya’s men.
And so Izotov and the president were forced to put another spin on the incident: European forces fired on Russian troops as they were attempting to capture Green Vox. As a consequence, Kapalkin stopped the flow of Russian oil and natural gas to Europe. Security forces at an Albanian refinery were overwhelmed by Russian forces, and some of the European shipments were restored.
Of course, blowback from the incident was severe. Russia was on the brink of war with the EF. And if the Euros managed to turn over Green Vox to the United States, he would crack under interrogation and reveal that he’d been funded by the GRU.
Both the EF and the United States would wage war against the Motherland.
That was hardly the plan.
Green Vox needed to die. And so Doletskaya had assembled one of his best teams, who infiltrated Fort Campbell and reprogrammed the base’s air defenses so that the plane carrying Green Vox was blown out of the sky before it could land.
Many bottles of vodka had been emptied in the hours following that crash.
Even better, the Americans were unable to identify Green Vox’s assassins. Of course, Kapalkin was sure to point the finger at the European Federation. And Nathalie Perreau, that infuriatingly brilliant French woman who’d become the first president of the EF in 2016, was quick to return the accusation.
It was in the Motherland’s best interests to drive a huge wedge between the United States and Europe, so Izotov and Doletskaya had come up with a final plan, which took them back to the beginning of it all:
Destroy the Freedom IV lifter, whose launch had been delayed because of the first Green Brigade attack.
Again, relying upon his cunning and two decades of tactical military experience, Doletskaya ordered a well-disguised team of Spetsnaz forces to seize control of a European air base in Finland. They killed everyone, erased all security data, and uploaded a virus into the European Federation’s missile shield.
Hours later, when the Freedom IV lifted off, the virus caused Europe’s laser satellites to misidentify the spacecraft as a missile. The ship was incinerated, killing dozens of Americans onboard. To create even more confusion, Doletskaya arranged for no less than ten terrorist groups to claim responsibility for the Finland base attack and destruction of the lifter.
More bottles of vodka were emptied.
And now there was great mistrust between the European Federation and the Americans.
No, it was not a total victory for the Motherland, but given how badly things could have gone, Doletskaya had been quite satisfied with the outcome.
Now another chapter in the war was about to be written, and it had begun with an elegant dinner and the company of a woman more beautiful and more intelligent than any Doletskaya had encountered.
“Hello, Colonel,” she said, wearing a dark red dress, pearls, and a smile that left Doletskaya breathless. He helped her into her chair, returned to his; and as he sat, she hoisted her perfectly tweezed brows and tossed her jet-black hair out of her eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, Colonel. I’m fine. It’s just I’ve never seen you out of uniform.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “Likewise.”
He smiled. “You have a keen wit.”
Viktoria Antsyforov was a colleague of Doletskaya’s at the GRU, a woman who had recently proven her mettle by helping him coordinate several attacks on selected EF targets. She had worked her way up through the ranks, an impressive accomplishment and evidence of the more progressive policies instituted by the GRU. The first time they had met, she had been quick to point out that Russian women had made major contributions to the defense of the Motherland.
The 1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death had formed during World War I, and while they’d never officially been part of the Motherland’s other armies, their victories had been well documented. She had gone on to give him a history lesson that had proven quite fascinating.
Rumor had it that Antsyforov was an excellent marksman and that she had excelled in all of her martial arts training. Doletskaya hadn’t taken much more time to do research into her background — that was, until she had invited him to dinner to discuss a few ideas.
And so he had learned that at thirty-six she had never been married, had a brother in the navy, and dedicated some of her free time to environmental causes. She also donated a lot of money to charities, particularly those that helped victims of radiation poisoning and those focusing on cancer research.
“You’re still looking at me like something is wrong,” she said.
“Nothing. I’m sorry.” He’d lied. He was having painfully wrong thoughts about her.
The waiter arrived. They ordered vodka, appetizers, and lit up cigarettes.
He glanced around. She certainly knew how to pick a restaurant. The place was called Kupol, owned by the family of world-famous chef Anatoly Komm. The dining area offered a spectacular view of the Moscow river.
“I’ve never been here.”
“Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Even better when you’re not picking up the check.”
She laughed. “It’s okay. I thought if I bought you a nice dinner, you might want to jump into bed with me.”
“Oh, I see,” he said, grinning himself.
“But your wife would not approve.”
He shook his head. “Colonel, I’m in a good mood. And I’m going to let your little joke go unnoticed. I want to thank you for bringing me here. I suspect we will have a magnificent meal.”
Her expression grew more serious. “Yes, we will.”
They made small talk, drank some more, and ate like a king and queen. Not once did she mention any of her “ideas,” and toward the end of the meal, Doletskaya, tipsy as he was, blurted out, “So was this a plan to seize my body… or my mind?”
“Maybe a little of both.” She lowered her voice, leaned forward, and in a few carefully chosen sentences, unfolded a plan that left Doletskaya beaming.
She had taken the obvious, exploited it, turned it around, and made it all seem new again. Step by step she covered the details, as he did, trying to shoot holes in her assertions, but she countered his every attempt.
“I’m sure the Americans have considered this,” he told her.
“Which is why I’ve worked their expectations into our plan. Pavel, a battle plan is like a narrative, a story that must be carefully constructed, familiar yet surprising.”
“A story?”
“Yes. All stories are about desire.”
When the word came out of her mouth, Doletskaya gasped. “Go on…”
“Our desire is to overcome the obstacles.”
“And reach the goal,” he concluded.
She nodded slowly. “But not before the climax.”
“What is Operation 2659? Who is Snegurochka?”
Suddenly, Major Alice Dennison was now sitting at the table with them, demanding that Antsyforov tell her what she wanted to know.
“Please, Major,” said Antsyforov. “We haven’t even had dessert yet. I understand the ice cream here is incredible. You like ice cream, don’t you?”
Dennison, an XO in the JSF and a woman almost always under complete control, would not do what she did. At least Doletskaya thought so. But this was his imagination, and he could imagine her doing anything he wanted.
So
she lifted up the table, throwing everything onto the floor with a horrible crash and drawing the stares of everyone in the restaurant.
As a team of waiters came rushing over, she screamed at Doletskaya, “What is Operation 2659? Who is Snegurochka?”
He and Antsyforov exchanged a knowing grin.
And when Doletskaya opened his eyes, he was sitting in a chair and staring into the beefy, bearded face of one of his interrogators, who asked again, “What is Operation 2659? Who is Snegurochka?”
SEVEN
President of the United States David Becerra, fifty-six and the first Hispanic chief executive, was seated aboard Air Force One flying on a southwesterly heading at 38,500 feet above the Atlantic Ocean.
Recent news had left him with pain behind his eyes and a pit in his stomach; it seemed unlikely those discomforts would dissipate any time soon.
He was on a conference video call with Europe. The screens before him displayed European Federation President Nathalie Perreau, Enforcers Corps General Amadou de Bankolé, and Enforcers Corps Executive Officer Capitaine Ilaria Cimino.
Becerra had already greeted them and took a deep breath before speaking, determined to make the conversation go exactly where he wanted.
“As I’m sure you’re aware, Madame President, three days ago the Russians sent up three cosmonauts to the International Space Station on what our intelligence sources concluded was a resupply and repair mission.”
Perreau, just a few years younger than Becerra and an equally captivating speaker, glanced up from another screen set into her desk. “Yes, Mr. President. We monitored that launch, of course. And I’m still amazed that old station hasn’t crashed into the ocean.” Her English, though spoken with a French accent, was flawless.
“You’re amazed, Madame President? The engineers who worked on the ISS are some of the best in the world. That station will far exceed its lifespan, and it became the springboard for everything we put into the new Freedom Star.”