Blackmail

by Rick Campbell

  62

  VALDEZ, ALASKA

  Staff Sergeant Stu Nelson studied the display on his control console as he pushed forward on his joystick, directing the small dual-track robot toward its destination two hundred feet away—the terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. Minutes earlier, the Commanding Officer of Nelson’s explosive ordnance disposal unit had received the word: the disarm code had been transmitted.

  The small robot closed the distance, stopping a foot away from the explosives attached to the pipeline. The initial indication was favorable. The detonator pressed into the claylike C-4 had gone dead; the red blinking light had been extinguished. Placing both hands into the control mitts, Nelson activated the robot’s claws, reaching forward with one arm. After opening the claw, he slid it over one edge of the detonator, digging the claw’s bottom finger gently into the C-4 explosive beneath. He slowly closed the claw until a firm grip on the detonator was obtained. Shifting to the other arm, Nelson repeated the process, ending with both claws clamped on to the detonator.

  Nelson glanced at the unit’s Commanding Officer, Captain John Brown.

  “Remove the detonator,” Brown said.

  Nelson slowly pulled the robot’s claws back, gradually extracting the detonator from the explosive. His eyes focused on the detonator panel, looking for a reaction. It remained dark. Once the detonating probe cleared the claylike C-4, Nelson put the robot in reverse, quickly opening the distance from the explosive.

  Once the robot was safely away, Nelson let out a deep breath. It could not have gone smoother.

  Captain Brown spoke into his handheld radio, sending orders to five other units of his explosive ordnance disposal company, which were deployed at other points along the pipeline where explosives had been discovered.

  63

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  Forty feet underground in the Pentagon basement, the president strode down the hallway, bracketed by SecDef McVeigh and Colonel DuBose. Upon reaching the end of the corridor, McVeigh swiped his badge and punched in his pass code, and the door opened to the Current Action Center of the National Military Command Center. The CAC dropped down in increments, with workstations lining each tier, descending to a fifteen-by-thirty-foot electronic display on the far wall. Unlike the adjacent Operations Center, which focused only on nuclear weapons, the CAC handled all aspects of the country’s defensive and offensive operations around the world.

  McVeigh led the way to a conference room along the top tier, where the president stopped to examine the monitor on the far wall, displaying a map of the Indian Ocean. Blinking green circles in the Arabian Sea marked the planned starting positions of the four carrier strike groups, while blue circles tracked their present locations. Two strike groups were loitering in their starting positions, with two more rapidly approaching from the southeast, not far away.

  The president entered the conference room and took his seat at the head of the table. Joining him on one side were the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and National Guard, along with the chairman and vice chairman. On the other side of the table sat Vice President Bob Tomkins and members of the president’s staff and cabinet—McVeigh, Dawn, Hardison, and Colonel DuBose. On the far end of the table was CIA Director Jessica Cherry.

  McVeigh kicked off the brief, with each applicable service chief outlining his service’s role in the operation. The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Brian Rettman, whose forces were by far the largest component of the operation, spoke at length, outlining the possible Russian responses and America’s plan to counter each one.

  The Admiral finished with, “It appears our fake upload into Russian and Indian satellites is working. There’s no indication Russia has detected the two additional carrier strike groups entering the Indian Ocean. All available submarines in the Pacific are on station, and will coalesce around the four carrier strike groups when the operation begins.”

  When the brief concluded, the president asked McVeigh, “Where do we stand on disarming and removing the pipeline explosives?”

  “The override code worked as advertised. We’ve successfully removed a half-dozen detonators from explosives attached to the Alaskan oil pipeline. We’ve also informed our NATO allies that they can remove the explosives from the pipelines and pumping stations in their territory, and will inform all other affected countries once military action against Russia commences; we don’t want word that we’ve disarmed the detonators to leak out to Russia until after we engage.

  “However,” McVeigh added, “we have more details on the operation to assassinate Minister Chernov, which I wasn’t aware of until Director Cherry provided more information.”

  When the president looked in Cherry’s direction, she said, “The plan to kill Chernov had to be modified. Chernov worked late after the summit reception, leaving no time for a liaison with Elena Krayev. Then he traveled to his villa in Sochi for the weekend, and unfortunately, he didn’t take Elena with him.”

  “Then how was he killed?”

  “He took Christine.”

  The president raised an eyebrow.

  “She did an admirable job,” Cherry said, “establishing the video link before she killed Chernov. However, there’s a complication. Someone was attempting to enter Chernov’s bedroom as Christine killed him, and we don’t know if she was able to pass his death off as a heart attack or she was discovered.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “She hasn’t requested assistance, but we don’t know if that’s because she doesn’t need help or doesn’t have access to Elena’s phone. If we bust in with an extraction team, the Russians will figure out what we’ve done, plus there’s the possibility Christine will be killed in the process. We’ll monitor the situation via satellite and communication intercepts from Chernov’s villa. Until we know whether Christine is in danger, I recommend we sit tight.”

  After a moment of reflection, the president nodded his concurrence.

  Silence settled over the conference room until McVeigh said, “Mr. President, all preparations are complete and we are ready to proceed.”

  The president didn’t hesitate. “Engage Russia with all assigned units.”

  64

  USS HARRY S. TRUMAN

  “This could be a problem.”

  “Could be,” Randle agreed.

  Captain David Randle stood beside his Operations Officer in the aircraft carrier’s Combat Direction Center, reviewing nearby friendly, hostile, and currently neutral forces. His eyes, along with those of his Operations Officer, Captain Brent Sites, were focused on the Video Wall displays. On one of the large screens, Sites had pulled up the Common Operational Picture, which displayed blue, red, and yellow icons of various designs, each symbol representing the location of a surface, air, or subsurface combatant.

  The Truman strike group was loitering in the Indian Ocean, just south of the Arabian Sea. The Ronald Reagan strike group was twenty miles to the west, and the Bush and Eisenhower strike groups were closing fast from the southeast. Once assembled, the American task force would comprise four aircraft carriers, forty cruisers and destroyers, and twenty fast attack submarines—a formidable armada.

  In contrast, the Russian Navy in the Arabian Sea fielded only one aircraft carrier and eighteen cruisers, destroyers, and corvettes. Although the Russian combatants were fewer in number, they were more heavily armed than their American counterparts. The aircraft carrier Kuznetsov was a good example. In addition to carrying up to thirty-two fixed wing aircraft and twenty-four helicopters, she was outfitted with a dozen Shipwreck surface attack and 192 Gauntlet anti-air missiles. The other surface ships were similarly outfitted; the Russians loaded weapon systems on their combatants like ornaments on a Christmas tree.

  Although there were no hostile symbols ashore, Randle knew there were over a hundred surface-to-air missile batteries hidden on the Iranian coast, ready to engage. The Russians had also deployed four hundred tactical aircraft to Ir
anian bases, keeping one-fourth aloft at all times. After observing what China did to American air bases at the outbreak of their war, they were keeping a significant portion of their aircraft airborne, rotating them in six-hour shifts.

  Even though the Russian Navy was augmented with missile batteries ashore and aircraft at Iranian bases, Randle was reasonably confident the United States would prevail in the air and surface engagement. Russia’s real threat lurked beneath the water: thirty-seven attack and eleven guided missile submarines, with the latter carrying deadly surface attack missiles.

  Captain Randle’s assessment of the surrounding forces was interrupted by a flashing message on Captain Sites’s console. Sites pulled up the message. A new OPORD. The four aircraft carriers were being combined into a single task force and had been directed to destroy all Russian units in the Indian Ocean theater of operations—all air, surface, and submerged combatants. More detailed orders would be forthcoming.

  Randle picked up the 1-MC microphone and directed all department heads to meet him in the Wardroom. Before he left CDC, he examined the neutral forces in the area, which was the original source of his concern; it would be problematic if they joined the battle on the wrong side. India had two operational aircraft carriers and sixteen surface combatants, with the two carriers normally deployed on opposite sides of the country. However, both carrier strike groups were now operating off India’s west coast, not far from Truman and Reagan. Compounding the matter, India’s first indigenous aircraft carrier, undergoing sea trials, had joined them.

  Randle repeated his Operations Officer’s assessment. “This could be a problem.”

  65

  USS MICHIGAN

  Captain Murray Wilson turned slowly on the periscope in the darkness, monitoring the surface traffic. Michigan was in the Aegean Sea at the mouth of the Dardanelles, preparing for its journey through the Turkish Straits. It would be a long, tense transit, with the thirty-eight-mile-long Dardanelles narrowing to just over a thousand yards in some spots. Once into the Sea of Marmara, Michigan would complete its journey by transiting the Bosphorus, a seventeen-mile-long channel only half as wide as the Dardanelles.

  When Wilson received his new orders a few days earlier, he hadn’t been surprised. The Turkish Straits, connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, have been of strategic importance for millennia, dating back to the Trojan War, fought near the Aegean entrance. During the twenty-first century, it served as a crucial international waterway for countries bordering the Black Sea.

  Michigan’s trip wouldn’t be easy. Russian submarines transiting the straits did so on the surface, but that was a luxury Michigan couldn’t afford. At the northern end of the Bosphorus, four Russian frigates patrolled. That meant Michigan would transit submerged. However, even at periscope depth, there were several spots along the way that were too shallow, and Michigan would have to alter course into the southbound channel while passing Kadıköy İnciburnu and Aşiyan Point.

  Compounding the potential for discovery were the one-thousand-plus east–west crossings each day, transporting 1.5 million inhabitants across the Bosphorus on intercity ferries and shuttle boats. The nighttime transit up the straits would minimize the risk of discovery, but not eliminate it.

  Wilson turned slowly on the periscope, looking for a merchant that would suit his needs. With so many waterborne contacts nearby, Sonar was overwhelmed sorting things out, and Wilson’s eyeball was a better sensor at times like this. Finally, he spotted the desired contact: a two-hundred-thousand-ton Suezmax class tanker. Michigan would travel closely behind, its periscope hopefully obscured by the ship’s wake.

  “Helm, right twenty degrees rudder, ahead two-thirds.”

  Michigan turned slowly to the right, falling in behind the northbound tanker.

  66

  USS HARRY S. TRUMAN

  Captain David Randle stood on the Bridge, one level beneath Primary Flight Control in the aircraft carrier’s Island superstructure, as Truman surged northwest into the darkness. Fifty feet below, the first four F/A-18 Super Hornets, their engine exhausts glowing red, eased toward their catapults. Along the sides of the carrier, additional Super Hornets were being raised to the Flight Deck from the hangar bays. As the twenty aircraft in Truman’s first cycle prepared for launch, Randle knew the Reagan, Bush, and Eisenhower air wings were doing the same.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Commander Bill Houston pulled back on the throttles, slowing his Super Hornet as it approached the starboard bow catapult. In the darkness, he followed the Shooter’s directions, his yellow flashlights guiding Houston’s jet forward. The Shooter raised his right arm, then dropped it suddenly. Houston responded by dropping the fighter’s launch bar, which rolled into the CAT One shuttle hook as the aircraft lurched to a halt. The Shooter raised both hands in the air and Houston matched his motion, raising both hands to within view inside the cockpit, giving the Shooter assurance that Houston’s hands were off all controls. The Shooter pointed his flashlight to a red-shirted Ordie—an Aviation Ordnanceman—who stepped beneath the Super Hornet, arming each missile.

  A signal from the Shooter told Houston his weapons were armed and it was time to go to full power. He pushed the throttles forward until they hit the détente, spooling his twin General Electric turbofan engines up to full Military Power. He then exercised the aircraft’s control surfaces, moving the control stick to all four corners as he alternately pressed both rudder pedals. Black-and-white-shirted Troubleshooters verified the Super Hornet’s control surfaces were functioning properly and there were no oil or fuel leaks.

  Satisfied his aircraft was functioning properly, Houston returned the thumbs-up and the Shooter lifted his arm skyward, then back down to a horizontal position, directing Houston to kick in the afterburners. Houston’s Super Hornet was heavy tonight, with ordnance attached to every pylon; tonight’s takeoff required extra thrust. Houston pushed the throttles past the détente to engage the afterburners, then turned toward the Shooter and saluted, the glow from his cockpit instruments illuminating his hand as it went to his helmet.

  The Shooter returned the salute, then bent down and touched the Flight Deck, giving the signal to the operator in the Catapult Control Station. Houston pushed his head firmly against the headrest of his seat and took his hands off the controls, and a second later CAT One fired with the usual spine-jarring jolt. Houston felt his stomach lifting into his chest as the Super Hornet dropped when it left the carrier’s deck, then he took control of his aircraft, accelerating upward. His seat pressed into him as he ascended to twelve thousand feet, where he settled into a holding pattern while Truman finished launching its first cycle.

  67

  FURY 21

  High above southeastern Turkey, Air Force Major Mike Peck checked the map on the multifunction display of his B-1B Lancer long-range bomber, call sign Fury 21. Seated beside him in the four-person cockpit was his co-pilot, while behind them sat the DSO and OSO—Defensive Systems Operator and Offensive Systems Operator. Also behind Peck was a second B-1B from the U.S. Air Force’s 9th Bomb Squadron, headed to the same target. Sixteen other Lancers had similar assignments, with their flight paths and speed coordinated such that all eighteen Lancers commenced their attacks simultaneously.

  As his B-1B bomber approached the Iranian border, Peck adjusted his wings to full sweep, pulling them back to a fifteen-degree angle, then dropped in altitude and increased speed to just under Mach 1. As the ground rushed up to meet his aircraft, he engaged the ground-hugging, terrain-following mode of his AN/APQ-64 radar, and the B-1B leveled off, skimming across the landscape just above treetop height in an effort to avoid detection by Iranian radars and Russian anti-aircraft missile batteries.

  Peck adjusted his flight path, running parallel to the Zagros Mountains as they cut southeast across Iran, hugging the valleys of the multi-ridge mountain range. After an hour-long transit, the mountain peaks tapered off and Peck turned south, cutting between the Folded Zagros Mountains, not
far from his target. As the second Lancer pulled alongside, Peck’s OSO began final preparations to drop their payload of twenty-four GBU-31s: two-thousand-pound bombs, each outfitted with a JDAM—Joint Direct Attack Munition—a bolt-on guidance package with aerodynamic control surfaces and GPS capability, converting free-falling gravity bombs into precision-guided munitions.

  The voice of Peck’s OSO came across the speaker in his flight helmet. “One minute to release point.”

  Peck lifted a switch on his panel, opening the triple bomb bay doors. After a green light illuminated on his panel, he activated the microphone in his flight helmet. “OSO, you have permission to release.”

  The OSO acknowledged the order, and when the Lancer reached the release point, he dropped their ordnance. On Peck’s left, the second B-1B did the same.

  Peck banked to the right for a return trip home as twenty-four tons of ordnance streaked toward their targets.

  68

  BANDAR ABBAS, IRAN

  Under the bright air base lights, Russian Air Force Major Vadim Aleyev guided his tactical fighter toward the left strip of the two-runway base. The Iranian Air Force had been kind enough to open its runways and facilities to Russian aircraft, and Bandar Abbas Air Base, occupying a strategic location on Iran’s southern coast near the Strait of Hormuz, was now home to several squadrons of Russian tactical fighters.

  Bandar Abbas’s hot desert climate, with summer temperatures peaking near 120 degrees Fahrenheit, wasn’t much different from Aleyev’s last assignment. Having spent several months in Syria flying over one hundred missions in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Aleyev was one of Russia’s most experienced combat pilots. He now was preparing to relieve one of the fighters aloft in Russia’s combat air patrol over their ships in the Gulf of Oman, ready to defend them if necessary.