by Dale Brown
“Let’s cut to the chase, gentlemen,” Barbeau snarled. “What all of this proves is somebody in the Pentagon is running a covert operation to help the Poles—against my direct orders! And I want that insubordinate son of a bitch’s head on a platter. Now! Understand?”
There was a moment of strained, embarrassed silence before General Spelling spoke up. “With all due respect, Madam President, that is not accurate. We’ve run a complete internal cross-check on the EIGHTBALL HIGH code phrase. And what is very clear is that no one—not a single uniformed officer or civilian in the Defense Department, or anywhere else in the federal government—is cleared for access to this so-called Top Secret program.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Cohen asked. Barbeau nodded slightly to him, signaling her approval. Everyone knew her chief of staff focused almost entirely on politics, not on the details of national security policy. That meant he could ask the kinds of basic-sounding questions she couldn’t—at least not without the risk of revealing weakness or seeming ignorant to these military men.
The head of the NSA, Admiral Caldwell, fielded Cohen’s question. The admiral’s almost painfully ordinary features concealed a brain of remarkable power. He’d worked his way up through the National Security Agency’s ranks on pure merit and sheer technical brilliance. “What it means, Mr. Cohen, is that EIGHTBALL HIGH is a fake—a phrase entirely without a real-world reference. There is no EIGHTBALL HIGH program. It’s just a designation deliberately created to conceal the activities of anyone who can parrot the code in response to questions from U.S. government officials or members of the military.” He shrugged. “Or at least questions from anyone with access to a secure Defense Department computer system.”
Cohen raised an eyebrow. “So how did this phony piece of code get into our computers in the first place?”
“That is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Caldwell said grimly. He frowned. “At General Spelling’s request, I’ve put my best analysts from the Information Assurance Directorate to work on the problem. But so far, they’ve drawn a blank. The EIGHTBALL HIGH code phrase doesn’t appear in the system’s most recent backups, so we know it wasn’t there a week ago. Which means this is a very recent intrusion—one probably intended specifically to cover this secret transfer of aircraft.”
“Do you seriously expect me to tell Gennadiy Gryzlov that the Poles have hacked our most secure national security computer systems?” Barbeau snapped. “If he doesn’t believe me, he’ll be sure we’re secretly backing Poland. And if he does believe me, that Russian lunatic will know that our so-called cybersecurity is a freaking joke!”
Before Caldwell could respond, Cohen said, “Nope.” He shrugged. “We lie to him.” He looked around the room. “We tell Gryzlov that we did send a few aircraft to one of our bases in Europe, maybe to Italy or somewhere like that. Don’t we still have a NATO air base at Aviano, or somewhere else, like Romania? But that we only did it as a limited precaution in case the war Gryzlov is planning spreads out of control. And we stress that we’re definitely not taking sides as long as this crisis is confined to Poland.”
Barbeau nodded slowly, thinking it through. “That could work, Luke.” Her fingers drummed lightly on her desk. “But the Russians will want to know more details—what kinds of aircraft did we send and where are they based, for example? Damn it, I can’t just make up something out of whole cloth or Gryzlov will smell a rat as soon as his spooks don’t find the planes.”
“Then we send some aircraft,” Cohen said, smiling slightly. “Maybe some of those fancy new F-35 stealth fighters General Spelling is so proud of. Once they’re safely on the ground overseas, we leak the deployment to the press. We just have to make sure anyone who talks to the media stays tight-lipped about just when they flew in.”
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs shook his head. “Our first squadron of F-35s isn’t fully operational, Mr. Cohen. I don’t think we could send more than six fighters to Europe at this point.” He grimaced. “The F-35 is a very capable aircraft, but one flight is too weak a force to have any real impact.”
“Which is perfect for our purpose, General,” Barbeau said pointedly. “If you know that, so will Gryzlov and his advisers. They won’t feel threatened—and we cover our asses while Admiral Caldwell and his NSA whiz kids figure out just who the fuck is screwing around in our secure computer systems.”
Spelling started to protest. “Madam President, I still don’t believe—”
“Can it, General!” Stacy Anne Barbeau snapped, not bothering to conceal her irritation and contempt. Maybe she couldn’t fire the Air Force general now, not with a major international crisis brewing. But she could sure as hell make it crystal clear that he’d better start planning his retirement soon. “I’m giving you a direct order as your commander in chief. You will covertly transfer six F-35s to Aviano or somewhere else, I don’t care, as soon as possible. Is that understood?”
Stiffly, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs nodded. His eyes were equally cold. “Yes, Madam President.”
A cell phone beeped loudly, breaking the awkward, thoroughly uncomfortable hush that had fallen across the Oval Office.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Admiral Caldwell said. Barbeau and Cohen looked angry enough to chew nails at the interruption, so he added, “Only the most urgent call would ring through. Excuse me.” He stood, crossed toward the door away from the president’s desk, and took his secure cell phone of his jacket pocket. “Yes? What is it?” What little color he had drained out of his face as he listened intently. “Good Lord, Lydia, are you sure? When was this? Have you passed the intelligence on to the NRO so they can check the images from their most recent satellite pass? Very well, keep on it and keep me posted.”
He ended the connection and turned to Barbeau. “That was the head of our National Security Operations Center, Madam President. Our satellites and other SIGINT collection stations report that the Russian-occupied air base at Konotop has just been completely destroyed. From the available evidence, it looks like a massive air- or ground-attack caught the Russians by surprise.”
Barbeau stared back at him, caught completely off guard. “Destroyed? But that’s impossible! The Russian ultimatum doesn’t even expire for another three and a half days!”
“It seems that President Wilk and Poland’s armed forces decided not to wait that long,” Caldwell said drily. “They have opted to strike the first blow. This war just turned hot.”
OVER BELARUS
SEVERAL HOURS LATER
Secure inside CID Two’s pilot compartment, Wayne Macomber had the large Iron Wolf robot lie prone on the deck of the big MH-47 Chinook. It was the only way a manned Cybernetic Infantry Device would fit inside the helicopter’s cargo area. He tapped his fingers twice, tying his machine into the other visual, radar, and electronic sensors aboard the Chinook.
They were flying west at low altitude to evade radar detection, practically hugging the dirt. Behind them, the night sky was growing paler, the first sign of the approaching dawn. Far off in the distance, pillars of black smoke and flickering fires marked the site of Baranovichi’s 61st Assault Air Base—the Iron Wolf Squadron’s second target.
Macomber smiled grimly. With the Russians rattled by the earlier attack on Konotop, the Iron Wolf raiding force hadn’t achieved complete surprise. Some elements of the garrison had been on alert, prowling around their outer perimeter on the lookout for trouble. But it really hadn’t mattered in the end. Lightly armored scout cars and fixed defenses were no match for the faster, more agile, and better-equipped CIDs. A defense built around main battle tanks like the T-90 or the T-72 might have offered stiffer resistance—but the bulk of the Russian heavy armor was grinding toward Poland as part of their two invasion armies. The Russians had never imagined anyone could hit their forward operating air bases so hard and so soon.
Well, he thought, now they knew differently.
He switched his attention to the cramped interior of the MH-47. Captain Nadia Ro
zek sat slumped in one of the fold-down seats. She looked deeply asleep, crowded in beside the rest of Ian Schofield’s exhausted recon troopers and the second three-man CID resupply team. He frowned, seeing them. It was time for a little after-action chat with the commander of CID One.
Macomber lifted another finger, bringing up a secure radio link to the other Iron Wolf robot. CID One was flying far ahead of him, crammed into the fuselage of the Sparrowhawk tilt-rotor, along with the other half of the ground strike force.
“Go ahead, Major,” Patrick McLanahan said.
“Want to tell me why you almost fucked up so badly at Konotop, General?” Macomber asked. He kept his tone conversational.
“Captain Rozek and I blew Konotop to pieces, Whack,” Patrick said coolly. “I don’t see that as a problem.”
Macomber set his jaw. “Cut the crap, General. You helped write the battle drill for these gadgets, remember? Including all the warnings about the need to maintain minimum ammunition and power levels, right? All that shit about CID pilots remembering the importance of firepower and speed in successfully breaking off an action?”
The other man was silent.
“Which makes me wonder how you let yourself and Rozek expend practically every frickin’ round of ammo before bailing out of that base,” Macomber went on. “You put this whole operation and this whole outfit at risk. If your kid hadn’t had the brains and balls to kamikaze that Su-35, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. We’d probably both be dead.”
“We still had targets to hit, Whack,” Patrick said stubbornly.
“Hell, General,” Macomber said in disgust, “there will always be more targets to hit. We’re going up against half of the goddamned Russian Army and Air Force, for Christ’s sake! Which means we have to fight smart, not brave and stupid. Save the Charge of the Light Brigade shit for some day when nobody else is relying on you, okay?”
There was another long silence.
“Do you hear me, General?” Macomber growled.
Patrick sighed. “I hear you, Major.” He forced a laugh. “I guess I got a little too fixated in that first raid.”
“Yeah, you did,” Macomber agreed. He hesitated slightly and then went on. “Look, I need you to know where I’m coming from, boss. If I think that metal suit you’re strapped into is starting to drive you kill-crazy, I’ll yank you out of it before you can say Jack Robinson. You hear me?”
“You know that would kill me, Wayne,” Patrick said quietly.
“Yeah, I know,” Macomber said. His voice rasped. “And I would hate like hell to have to do it. But I can’t allow any one man—not even you—to jeopardize this whole squadron and its mission. Too much is riding on this, General. Too many other lives. Too many other people’s freedoms. Do you read me?”
“Loud and clear, Major,” Patrick said. “You’re absolutely right. About the stakes and about the dangers. I’ll keep a tight grip on this Iron Wolf I’m riding. I promise. And, Whack?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you,” Patrick said simply.
Whack smiled despite himself. That was Patrick fucking McLanahan, he thought. The guy was a retired three-star general and ex-president of one of the most successful high-tech firms in the world . . . but you could always talk to him like any other grunt. If you had something to say to him you could always do so. Rank or status didn’t matter. They rarely saw eye to eye on stuff, especially ground or special ops tactics and procedures, but he had his respect. He was a good guy . . .
. . . living one hell of a nightmarish existence. He, Whack thought, wouldn’t trade lives with him for all the silver stars in the Pentagon—or all the sausage in Poland.
THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW
LATER THAT DAY
During his years as an instructor at the Yuri Gagarin Military Air Academy, Colonel General Valentin Maksimov had earned a nickname from the cadets. They had called him “the Old Roman” because nothing—neither personal triumph nor tragedy—seemed able to shake his stoic, taciturn demeanor.
Well, thought Gennadiy Gryzlov disdainfully, his fellow cadets should see their revered former instructor now. Overnight, the so-called Old Roman, currently the commander of Russia’s air force, seemed to have collapsed in on himself, becoming almost visibly smaller and older. He sat hunched over in his seat at the conference table. Beneath his short-cropped mane of white hair, Maksimov’s once-ruddy, square-jawed face was now gray and lined.
“Well, Colonel General?” Gryzlov snapped. “Are your losses as serious as first reported?”
“Mr. President, I am afraid they are . . . worse . . . than we initially believed,” the old man admitted.
Murmurs of shock and dismay raced around the table. For many of Russia’s top-ranking political and military leaders, this emergency session was their first real news of the twin disasters at Konotop and Baranovichi. Officially, according to the state-controlled media, Poland’s treacherous decision to strike first, before Moscow’s ultimatum expired, had inflicted only minor losses in futile, small-scale attacks. Confirmation that both Russian forward air bases had actually been completely destroyed was an ugly surprise for men and women who been assured that any real war against the Poles would inevitably result in a swift and easy victory.
Gryzlov quelled the murmuring with an icy look. He turned back to Maksimov. “Worse? How much worse?”
Dry-mouthed, the air-force commander took a deep gulp from a water glass handed him by a worried-looking aide and then, reluctantly, made his report. “Our losses at both air bases total fifty-three aircraft completely destroyed. Plus another handful that we deem damaged but repairable. Of those planes wrecked beyond repair, roughly half were fighters, mostly Su-27s and MiG-29s, while the rest were Su-24 and Su-25 strike aircraft.”
Gryzlov stared at him. “You’ve lost more than fifty planes? And you let most of them get blown to hell on the damned ground?”
“Several of our pilots based at Baranovichi made attempts to sortie,” Maksimov said, in feeble protest. “As did both the alert fighters at Konotop.”
“And succeeded only in getting themselves shot down while they were taking off!” Gryzlov snarled. “Wonderful, Maksimov. Just grand. Perhaps we should name them posthumous Heroes of the Russian Federation, eh?”
Greatly daring, Foreign Minister Daria Titeneva intervened. “Excuse me, Mr. President, but this news seems absolutely incredible. I thought Poland had fewer than fifty modern combat aircraft? And that most of those planes were air superiority fighters, not bombers?” She shook her head in disbelief. “How was it possible for the Polish Air Force to destroy our bases without even being detected? Or without suffering any losses of their own?”
“These were not primarily air attacks, Daria,” Gryzlov said flatly. “They were commando operations of some kind, using advanced weapons of types we did not know the Poles possessed.”
“Advanced weapons?” Titeneva asked. “Of what kind, precisely?”
“That is unclear, Madam Foreign Minister,” Maksimov said heavily. “Many of our aircraft, armored vehicles, and missile batteries were clearly destroyed by conventional rapid-fire cannons, grenades, and explosives. But many others show massive impact damage, damage that could only be achieved by nonexplosive rounds traveling at enormous speeds.”
“What about the data collected by our sensors?”
“In both attacks, all of our radars, communications, and cameras were knocked off-line first,” Masksimov told her.
“But surely the survivors can tell you what happened? What they saw?” Titeneva pressed.
“Those who survived saw nothing,” the aged colonel general admitted. His face sagged. “Our personnel casualties were severe, with more than a thousand dead or seriously wounded. Only those who sought shelter immediately survived unscathed.” He shook his head. “All we do know is that both raids were carried out with ferocity and astounding precision and speed.”
Gennadiy scowled, looking at Viktor Kazyanov, the minister of st
ate security. “So now we know what Warsaw was hiding from us at Drawsko Pomorskie.”
Kazyanov nodded gravely. “Da, Mr. President. My people are still studying the reports, but there seems to be a clear correlation between what we saw on the satellite photos from that Polish training ground and the new weapons and tactics employed against us last night at Konotop and Baranovichi.”
“But do we really know who used these mysterious weapons?” Tarzarov asked quietly.
Gryzlov eyed his chief of staff. “What are you suggesting, Sergei?”
The older man shrugged. “I am not suggesting anything. I simply wonder whom we are really fighting now. Poland? Employing strange new devices and weapons that do not appear in any intelligence assessment I have ever seen? Or the United States—either indirectly, using the Poles as surrogates . . . or directly, with its own Special Forces?”
“The American President Barbeau has assured me repeatedly that her country is neutral in our dispute with Poland,” Gryzlov said slowly. His jaw tightened. “And she has promised that she is abandoning the aggressive policies of her predecessors, especially those two madmen, Martindale and Phoenix.”
“Do you think President Barbeau is lying to us?” Daria Titeneva asked Tarzarov, watching him closely.
Again, the older man shrugged. “Deliberately lying? Perhaps not. But can we be sure that she herself is not being misled or lied to by her own military? Or even by some small secret faction inside the Pentagon?” He turned back to Gryzlov. “Such lies have been told to American presidents in the past—as we all know only too well. And to our sorrow.”
The Russian president flushed, easily catching Tarzarov’s oblique reference to the repeated and unauthorized American air raids that had finally pushed his father over the edge. The massive revenge attack ordered by the older Gryzlov had led directly to his own death in yet another bombing raid led by the same renegade American who had hit Russia earlier. He grimaced. “Patrick McLanahan is dead, Sergei! Dead, with even his stinking ashes pissed away into a sewer somewhere!”