by JT Brannan
There was a knock on the door of his private study, and after a quick grunt from Mason, it opened, revealing a thirty-something secretary who could well have been a supermodel in a former life. Mason, a lifelong womanizer, had sacked the old one when he’d moved into the White House, and hired Rebecca Grayson on looks alone. Well, he remembered as he looked appreciatively at her body in the tight secretarial outfit he’d demanded she wear, it was more than her looks – her performance in his study during his interview had immediately put her at the top of the list. As she smiled with those full lips, he remembered with a shudder what else she could do with them.
‘Mr. President,’ she said, ‘your meeting is due to start in fifteen minutes.’
‘Thank you,’ Mason replied warmly, ‘I know.’
She stayed in the doorway, staring pointedly at his cigar. Smoking wasn’t allowed in the White House, even for the leader of the free world, a fact that Mason found ridiculous in the extreme. He could launch a nuclear strike that could kill millions of people, but he couldn’t smoke in his own office.
But he took the point, smiled, and stubbed it out in an ashtray hidden in one of his desk drawers. ‘Thank you, Ms. Grayson,’ he said.
‘Will you need me for anything else?’ she asked, and Mason detected a coquettish look in her eyes as she spoke.
Mason’s smile widened. ‘Maybe after the meeting has finished,’ he said, ‘I may have some work for you.’
She smiled back and bit her lip, before turning and leaving his office, and he stirred as he watched her leave, the shape of her ass in that skirt imprinted on his memory even after the door had closed.
He sighed contently.
It was good to be the president.
At the same time, in a private conference room within the White House West Wing, another meeting was already well underway.
It consisted of just four people, all of whom were connected to the covert counter-terrorism group known as Force One.
Bruce Vinson was the Director of the Paradigm Group, a large and influential Washington think-tank based in Forest Hills that provided legal cover for Force One. He was also the secret unit’s chief-of-staff and – as a former SAS commando and British intelligence officer – he was in charge of the organization while its commander, Mark Cole, was away.
General Pete Olsen was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military officer in the United States and the man who signed off on all military assistance required by Force One, more often than not on an unofficial, off-the-books basis.
The man sitting to his left, Admiral Scott Murphy, had replaced Air Force Colonel Manfred Jones as the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, the branch of the US military that looked after its varied special operations forces, from Ranger troops and Air Force insertion teams to Tier One operators such as Delta Force and SEAL Team Six. Most of the personnel seconded to Force One for covert operations came from JSOC, and Murphy was an invaluable link in the chain.
Catalina dos Santos, the only female in the group now that Ellen Abrams was dead, was the Director of National Security, the most senior intelligence adviser in the administration and the person who supplied Force One with access to the United States’ vast intelligence machinery.
Together, the people around the table controlled the application of Force One and were responsible for its missions. That was how the unit had been formed, as a highly covert direct-action arm of the US government, an autonomous group that had presidential approval and could therefore be regarded as semi-official.
One of the concerns of those people now that Clark Mason was in charge, however, was its continued presidential approval. While papers authorizing the group sat in the White House safe, they were all in the clear; but if Mason decided – as was his right – to disband the group, then who knew what would happen next? Hell, they might even end up in prison for controlling what some might feel was nothing more than a carefully targeted death squad.
It took the unanimous agreement of three people – the president, the chairman of the joint chiefs, and the director of national intelligence – to sign off on any missions undertaken by Force One, the idea being that such unanimity would preclude the unit being used as a personal weapon, as had happened in the past. The fact that Clark Mason was not invited to attend was evidence that no new missions were being approved today; instead, the initial nature of the discussion was simple damage control.
‘He still hasn’t pulled the rug out from under us, at least,’ dos Santos offered as she put down her cup of tea.
‘He’s gathering himself,’ Vinson said darkly. ‘he’s new to the game, he’s finding his feet. Besides which, now he’s president, he can learn all there is to know about us; all the better for taking us down when he’s ready.’
‘Yes,’ Olsen agreed, ‘we’ve had to read him in on the entire set-up, from command and control down to details of each and every mission.’
‘It’s what he’s been after for a long time now,’ said Vinson sadly. ‘Find out everything he can about us, all the better to destroy us.’
‘I’m not sure,’ Murphy said. ‘When we read him in, we laid it on real thick, put our case forward in the strongest possible way. Hell, he seemed to even want to use us himself, what with everything that happened in London. I think he sees a purpose for us.’
Vinson nodded. As a civilian, unconnected to the US government, he wasn’t an official part of the command and control of Force One, in terms of setting missions and deciding how the unit would be used. Missions were decided by the president, Olsen and dos Santos, with Murphy on board as an adviser and facilitator. Vinson – alongside the unit’s commander, Mark Cole – would then plan the missions according to the tasks they’d been assigned, but he played no part in deciding what those missions would be.
In fact, due to their history, Vinson was not even allowed into any meetings with the president.
‘He still holds a grudge against us,’ Vinson said. ‘He might use us now, while he really needs us, but in the long term, he’s not going to be kind to us.’
‘Then we’ll have to make sure we keep being useful to him,’ dos Santos said. ‘And if he holds a grudge at all, it’s probably only with you,’ she added with a smile.
Vinson smiled back, suspecting she might just be right; it was him, after all, who had bribed Mason’s mistress into making a sex tape featuring the then-Vice President dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member mock-raping what appeared to be a black slave-girl. It was only the existence of the tape that had avoided the unit being closed down before, and Vinson still held it over Mason’s head as a source of very damaging blackmail. It was useful, he knew; but he also knew that Mason would never forget, and would always be on the lookout for a way to get even. But if Vinson was the lone target, and that took the pressure away from Cole and the rest of the unit, then it was a sacrifice worth enduring.
‘Still,’ Olsen said, ‘I don’t like Mason knowing about everything. I don’t trust him.’
‘Who does?’ Vinson said in agreement, with a shrug of his shoulders.
‘But talking about ongoing missions,’ dos Santos said, looking across at the Force One chief-of-staff, ‘what’s the news on Navarone and Cole?’
‘Navarone’s still out of the picture,’ Vinson replied. ‘No news as yet, and we have our entire technical department looking into records, Russian government computers, police files, you name it. I take it you’ve still not heard anything on that score either?’
‘Nothing,’ dos Santos confirmed. ‘None of our agencies, nor any of our allies have heard anything about unusual prisoners in Moscow, or anything else that sets our alarm bells ringing.’
‘Cole’s there now,’ Vinson said, ‘he’s going to investigate live, on the ground, so to speak. Scott has been kind enough to organize an extraction team, six operatives who are holed up in a Moscow safe house until they get word from Cole.’
‘Let’s hope he finds something,’ Olsen
said. ‘I don’t like it when one of our own goes missing.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Murphy said. ‘Jake’s one of my own, from way back.’
Everyone around the table nodded in understanding. Back when Scott Murphy had been a Rear Admiral commanding DEVGRU – the Navy SEAL Development Group, more commonly known as Team Six – Jake Navarone had been a Lieutenant Commander in charge of one of the three Red Squadron assault troops, and had operated directly under Murphy’s orders. Everyone also understood that – after several weeks with no word – it was not terribly likely that the young commando would still be alive. He had been infiltrating the Russian government, and – if he had been caught, as everyone suspected – then he would have been interrogated, tortured, and perhaps even killed.
But even as the thought hung in the room like a specter, nobody wanted to give voice to their fears by speaking of them out loud.
‘How’s that Ukrainian plebiscite looking?’ Murphy asked next, changing the course of the conversation. His question was directed at dos Santos, the national intelligence czar.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘the previous elections were discredited due to what we suspect was a massive Russian cyberwarfare operation. We can’t prove that though, so the national referendum is going ahead under the new government this weekend.’
‘Predictions?’ asked Olsen.
Dos Santos shrugged her shoulders. ‘The new government is pro-Russia, and I’m sure that – whatever the real feelings of the people – the vote will show that they want to unite with the Russian Federation.’
‘It will be fixed?’ asked Murphy.
‘Almost certainly,’ dos Santos said, ‘and yet – to a large degree – it might be better this way. At least there will be peace there for the first time in years. Nobody is going to step in militarily, the last thing anyone wants is a full-blown war in the region, and so if reunification happens ‘democratically’, that might be one of the better possible outcomes.’
‘Sounds like the Ukrainians are getting stitched up to me,’ Olsen said in distaste.
‘They are,’ dos Santos said, ‘but even our own sources indicate that many citizens want a break from the civil war, even if it means giving in.’
‘We’ll protest, at least?’ Olsen probed.
‘Certainly,’ dos Santos said, ‘we’ll express our displeasure at the UN, try and stall things.’
‘Okay,’ Olsen accepted, still not happy. ‘And Belarus? They’ve been doing a lot more joint military exercises with Russia, is that something we need to look into?’
Dos Santos shook her head. ‘Our analysts don’t think so,’ she said, ‘Russia and Belarus have been close for a long time.’
‘That was before Krinitsky took over,’ Vinson interjected, referring to the new president. ‘We don’t know enough about him yet for my liking, I’m having my people work up a profile on him.’
‘CIA’s doing the same thing,’ dos Santos noted, ‘we’ll get together soon and see what they’ve got.’
‘Good,’ Vinson said. ‘Now, what about Athens?’
‘Fairly volatile,’ dos Santos answered, pouring herself another cup of tea from the pot on the table. ‘Since the prime minister was killed in London, there’s been plenty of infighting to select his replacement. A couple of the candidates are okay, but unfortunately it looks like the front runner is Alexis Thrakos, a hardliner with strong links to the Russian Federation.’
‘Isn’t Emelienenko helping to bail them out financially?’ Olsen asked.
‘He is,’ dos Santos confirmed. ‘When the EU was demanding payments that Greece couldn’t make, Russia stepped in to help them out. Not that Emelienenko had much money to spare, mind you.’
‘You think he was buying influence?’ Murphy asked.
‘It seems likely,’ dos Santos said. ‘Saw an opportunity to recruit an ally in southern Europe, and he took it. Luckily for us, the old prime minister wanted nothing more to do with him than his money, but this new guy looks highly suspect to me.’
‘In what way?’ Olsen probed.
‘Looks like he might allow Russian forces to be stationed there, to help what he calls “national security”. As you know, there’s been rioting there for months, on and off. People aren’t getting paid, there’s no money, a faltering economy and they’re really only just managing to stay afloat. And with all the chaos from the terrorist attack, the government’s in even worse disarray and the people are going nuts.’
‘So the riots are very much “on” at the moment?’ Olsen asked.
‘They are indeed,’ dos Santos confirmed.
‘It’s a dangerous situation,’ Vinson added, ‘with Greece so close to the powder keg of the Balkans. The last thing we want is for Greece to fail, Heaven only knows what would happen to southern Europe if that happened. But we don’t really want to see Russia exert its influence in the area either. Before he left, Cole asked me to discuss things with you, see if you can press the president for potential operations in the area.’
‘What sort of operations?’ Olsen asked.
‘Just over-watch for the time being,’ Vinson said. ‘We’re monitoring things remotely, and I know the CIA have some assets on the ground, but I’d be happier if we had a few of our own operators there to monitor things and report back to us directly.’
‘Agreed,’ Olsen said. ‘If there’s even a hint of Russian forces being stationed in Greece, we need to know about it asap. It would give them unfettered access to the Mediterranean, and that’s the last thing we want to see happen.’
‘Okay,’ dos Santos said, ‘we’ll ask for approval when we meet Mason later.’
‘Good,’ Vinson said, checking his watch. ‘Okay, looks like you’ll have to get yourselves to the Situation Room, the council meeting starts in five. Mason’ll probably be slapping himself on the back about his speech at the UN,’ he added with a crooked grin, ‘so you best prepare yourselves.’ He saw the others nod, knowing how they all felt about a land invasion of Iran; Pete Olsen, as the country’s chief military officer, was especially against the idea, if only for practical reasons. ‘I’ll get back to Forest Hills,’ Vinson finished, ‘see how things are going there.’
The four people said their farewells and left the meeting room, every one of them ill at ease with the world. Something was brewing, they could all feel it.
They could only hope that they still had the power to do something about it.
3
‘Your thoughts, Vladimir Vladimirovich?’ asked the President of the Russian Federation, his icy blue eyes leveled at the director of Proyekt Yevropy, Colonel Vladimir Dementyev.
They were in the wood-paneled office of the president’s dacha in Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow, where Mikhail Emelienenko often worked in order to avoid causing miles of tailbacks on the city streets. Any time he traveled to the Kremlin, the roads on his route would be entirely closed to traffic, at least an hour before he moved. There were decoy cars too, even decoy routes, which would also be sealed off, and the result was absolute mayhem for Moscow’s citizens. Working from home was, he reflected, more for his people than for himself; he actually rather enjoyed the one-hundred-and-twenty-mile-per-hour car race through the empty streets.
The president’s gaze, which could terrify lesser men, was all but ignored by Dementyev; he knew that it was just how the man looked at everyone, friend or foe. Among Dementyev’s many skills, he was a professional psychologist and an expert in body language. He knew he had nothing to fear from Mikhail Emelienenko. Not yet anyway; but that could all change, depending upon the success of Project Europe. As the man who had dreamed up the idea and sold it to the president, Dementyev’s future within the Russian Federation would hinge on the outcome of his outrageous scheme.
‘It is all going according to plan thus far,’ Dementyev replied.
‘Timescales?’ the president probed. ‘I am getting impatient.’
‘A land invasion force is something that will take time. But rest assured, a
s coalition forces build up around Iran’s borders – whether they attack or not – it aids our own plans nevertheless.’
‘Yes,’ Emelienenko granted, ‘I suppose you are correct. And yet I will be more content when the Americans and their allies are fully committed to their operations.’
‘I understand,’ the colonel said. ‘But we have at least the next week to wait, until the Iranians give their answer to the UN. We have, as discussed, made hints to the Iranian regime that we will defend them in the security council, and – if America attacks anyway – help them in an unofficial capacity during the invasion. Cyber warfare, munitions, and so on.’
‘So we can be fairly confident that Iran will refuse to accede to these demands?’
‘Nothing can be set in stone of course, but the balance of probability would tend to indicate Iranian resistance.’
‘Which means that a vote will be scheduled with the security council next week.’
Dementyev nodded. ‘It is so. And then we can use our position to extract what we need in return for our support. And let us not forget that this is necessary in order to gain the concessions we need, in order for the next stage to go ahead with the minimum of resistance.’
‘Yes, you are right once again, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Our approval of coalition plans at the UN security council meeting should net us a high reward indeed. As a matter of fact, I have just received initial confirmation that the Americans will almost certainly give us what we want.’
‘That is good, my friend,’ Dementyev said. ‘But speaking of the Americans, the man we are holding at Akvadroma still troubles me.’
‘We do not even know for sure if he is an American,’ Emelienenko said.
Dementyev was silent for a moment, thinking about their prisoner. ‘If this man does work for the Americans,’ he said finally, ‘what might he have found out about our plans? What might he have fed back to them? It was perhaps not mere coincidence that he was found near my own office.’