Something began vibrating in her pocket, causing her to falter for a moment. It was her mobile phone. A very special phone, one that she dared not ignore.
“Soon, we will all benefit from their…”
Another buzz from the phone.
“From the short-sightedness of our friends in the Gulf States.” She took out the phone and stared at it as it shuddered a third time. “Pardon me. I have to take this.”
She rose from her chair and moved to the edge of the room, where a plate glass window looked down on the city two thousand feet below. A low murmur rippled through the room. An interruption like this was unprecedented, and she was acutely aware of how this would look to the assembled group. Catherine Alexander the Great, CEO of the Consortium, the woman who had fused them together into an engine of unparalleled prosperity, was at no man’s beck and call.
No man except this one, her mentor.
She pressed the button to accept the call. “Yes?”
He spoke directly, as he always did, without any familiarity or affection, and in Russian, a language that she had yet to fully master. “I need you. Immediately.”
Catherine’s gaze flitted about the room. Now, more than ever, it was imperative that she display complete control over the executive board, yet the Consortium existed for the sole purpose of advancing her mentor’s agenda. To let the board dictate her schedule would be tantamount to the sword telling the warrior when he ought to fight.
“Of course,” she replied in careful Russian.
She did not ask for more information. It was not her place to do so. She felt certain that he would tell her what she needed to know, and she was not wrong in that assumption.
“They are getting too close.”
“I heard what happened—”
“This is something else,” he said quickly, as if trying to prevent her from saying something indiscreet. Even though the line was encrypted, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that someone was eavesdropping on them. Her mentor’s anxiety regarding electronic espionage bordered on mania. He almost never used mobile phones or the Internet, conducting most of his business on hard-lines, using an old fashioned private bank exchange telephone system. They recorded everything with manual typewriters instead of computers. “We must accelerate the timetable.”
She considered her reply with great care.
In her opinion, the timetable for Operation Perun, the capstone of his grand plan, was already overly optimistic. Although she had delivered her part of the plan well ahead of schedule, there were certain realities that could not be ignored. It was winter, and the first phase of the plan would be severely hampered by adverse weather conditions. And then there was the matter of the Firebird. If the researchers at Volosgrad could not deliver what they had promised, it would all be for nothing. She was not as confident in the abilities of the lead scientist there as her mentor was.
Nevertheless, this was what he required of her, and she would not refuse. “I will leave within the hour.”
He rang off without another word.
She returned to the table. There was a palpable anxiety in the air. She put on her most confident smile. “I have good news, gentleman. I thank you all for coming and submitting your reports, but none of that matters any longer. Be assured that the game is about to change in our favor. Very soon, we will reap the bountiful harvest we have sown. This meeting is adjourned.”
10
Limbo, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
As the government-issue van in which he rode pulled into the non-descript hangar—a gigantic Quonset hut not far from the flight line at Pope Field—King felt a strange sense of nostalgia. “Who says you can’t go home again?” he murmured.
Bishop gave him a sidelong glance and then shrugged. She had never been to the Decon facility. Rook had nicknamed it ‘Limbo,’ the void between heaven and hell. It was where Delta teams staged their operations, and were debriefed upon returning. Along with the nearby team room, Limbo had been the home station for Chess Team while they had been part of Delta. When that relationship had ended, with the Team severing all ties to the military and moving to the Alpha facility in New Hampshire, they had scrubbed all trace of their existence. But memories were harder to erase.
Snapshots of the good old days flashed in his head like a slide show—throwing horseshoes in the pit out behind the hangar, drinking Sam Adams beer, eating barbecue and playing Go Fish to unwind after their missions. The dour face of Erik Somers—the former Bishop—bristling at one of Rook’s incessant barbs. King had met his wife, Sara, here. As a disease detective for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she had been temporarily assigned to the team to thwart an outbreak of the deadly Brugada virus.
It had been only a few years since they closed up shop, but for King, it had been many lifetimes.
Although he was not fully briefed on King’s personal history, Admiral Ward seemed to sense what King was feeling. “Just like being back on the block, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He shifted to face the Admiral. “But if you think a trip down memory lane is going to convince me to re-up, you’re sorely mistaken.”
Ward laughed. “That ship has sailed, my friend,” he said, cryptically. “Honestly, I don’t want you back.”
Pointedly ignoring King’s questioning look, Ward opened his door and got out. “I’ll explain everything inside. I don’t like having to say things more than once. Your people are waiting in debrief. Before we go in, though, would you mind telling me what happened last night? I called in a lot of favors to get you out of hock with the Company, and I’d like to know exactly what I paid for.”
“A recon op turned out to be more than we expected,” King replied, evasively. “I really don’t know any more than that yet. I’ll tell you what I told the CIA last night. Check out that warehouse. The answers are there.”
“No, they aren’t. Somebody torched the place. Used rocket fuel as an accelerant. The fire’s still burning. It’s so hot that it breaks down water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen and makes it burn even hotter. It’s a total loss. We also came up with zilch on the guys who chased you into Langley.”
King spread his hands. He wasn’t ready to reveal his suspicions about what he and Bishop had discovered to Ward or anyone else. He needed to figure out what Julie’s involvement in it was, and figuring that out meant having a conversation that he had put off too long already. Besides, until he had something more concrete in the way of evidence, it was all supposition anyway. “Well, keep me in the loop.”
Ward’s answer was a non-committal grunt.
They followed the Admiral into the conference room. Most of the seats at the table were already occupied, but King ignored the unfamiliar faces and locked eyes with Queen, his stare a form of nearly-psychic communication.
Is this cool?
She blinked once and gave an almost imperceptible nod.
It’s cool.
He hoped that was what she meant anyway. Ward had succeeded in putting the entire team—even Lew Aleman—together in one place. If he intended to arrest them all and ship them off to the disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth or worse, to some obscure black site, they would be SOL. Or very nearly, at least. Ward hadn’t rolled up everyone. Knight’s girlfriend Anna Beck—who sometimes worked with the team as Pawn—was conspicuously absent, laying low as directed by King. And although his influence was no longer what it had once been, retired CIA director Domenick Boucher was also a friendly resource on the outside.
King’s instincts, however, were telling him that Ward wasn’t planning anything like that. King had a gift for reading people, and his read on the JSOC commander had always been that the man was a straight-shooter. Which made his comments about not wanting the team back under military control all the more confusing.
Bishop, looking both bewildered and a little bit intimidated, took one of the empty chairs. King remained standing, taking in the faces of the five men he did not recognize , who were
seated at the table. One was African-American. Another had short dark hair and an olive-complexion—Hispanic or possibly Native American. The other three were Caucasian. All wore casual attire that could not hide the hard, muscled features of Special Forces operators.
Rook pre-empted the official introductions. “Hey, King. Meet our replacements. This is the new Chess Team. Note that I did not say ‘new and improved.’” He leaned forward, cupping one hand to his mouth as if trying to hide a conspiratorial whisper. “Their Queen is a dude. I don’t judge, but that’s a little weird.”
King rounded on Ward. “You formed a new Chess Team?”
Ward frowned. “Mr. Tremblay has it wrong. You haven’t been replaced.” He gestured to the chair. “Sit. I’ll explain. And please, hold your questions.
“I’ll skip the preliminaries and get to the point. After the incident in the Congo, President Chambers began looking at ways to expand the Chess Team program. Teams that could take on assignments that were either too sensitive from a national security point of view, or otherwise beyond the scope of normal special operations. A unit that answered directly to the President.”
“Chambers wanted his own private black ops detail,” King said.
Ward frowned at the interruption. “I believe that’s what President Duncan intended when the original Chess Team was formed. You all were already off the books, and your…” He sighed. “Your loyalty was somewhat questionable, as you amply demonstrated last year, when you refused to come back into the fold. But that’s beside the point. The Chess Team template was perfect for our needs, so we started recruiting operators to fill the ranks.”
“You could have at least changed the name,” Rook grumbled. “Retired our callsigns like the All-Stars we are.”
“Wrong again,” Ward snapped, with a little more heat. “The name is the most important thing. It’s like football. The players come and go, but the Steelers are always the Steelers. And everybody wants to play for the Steelers.”
“Steelers.” Rook snorted. “Well that explains a lot.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
King waved at the five men seated across from him. “So what’s this, a change of command ceremony?”
Ward surprised him by grinning, though it wasn’t a friendly smile. King thought he looked a little like the Big Bad Wolf about to pounce on Little Red Riding Hood. “Not at all. We created two new teams, White and Red, each with a specific area of operations. White’s AO is international operations. Red team…” He nodded to the men at the table. “Is tasked primarily with domestic counter-terrorism. Blue team is our wild card.”
“You said two teams.”
“I said ‘two new teams.’”
“We’re Blue team,” Queen said, beating King by a fraction of a second.
“Red, white and blue,” Rook said. “Cute. Very patriotic.”
“When you went off the reservation last year,” Ward continued, “our plan was to shut you down, but we realized pretty quickly that there were advantages to having a rogue element in play. You proved that in Mongolia, taking out a threat that no one else could touch. You’ve amply demonstrated that you’re not going to work against the interests of the United States either. So while we can’t officially sanction your activities, we think you’re more useful out there as paramilitary vigilantes, than you would be in the stockade. In short, we want you to keep doing what you’re doing.”
Rook gave a dramatic whistle. “Wow. So it’s like you’re Commissioner Gordon and we’re Batman.”
King shook his head. “What’s the catch?”
“Just that, from time to time, when we need a job done—a mission that only the Blue Team can handle—you do it.”
“See what I mean?” Rook said. “Batman. Ward…can I call you Ward? We’re all usually on a first name basis, but I don’t know yours. How’s this sound? Whenever you need us, just shine a big chessboard spotlight into the sky and we’ll come running.”
Ward gave Rook the stink-eye. “I just thought of one other catch. Keep your people on a shorter leash. Maybe teach them some respect.” He pointed a finger at Rook. “As far as you’re concerned, my first name is ‘Admiral.’ But you can call me ‘Sir.’”
“Is that spelled C-U-R?”
Queen, ignoring the exchange, jumped in. “You could have told us all this in a backchannel e-mail. You sure as hell didn’t need to go all the way to the Arctic Circle to roll us up.”
Ward gave Rook one last withering glare, then turned to King. “As it happens, we presently have one of those situations. You may have noticed that White Team isn’t here with us. They’re MIA, deep in Indian country—” He stopped, frowned and turned to one of the men on Red Team. “My apologies, Hawk. Old habits.”
The dark-skinned operator offered an indifferent shrug.
“They’re missing,” Ward continued. “Five men. Master Sergeant Joseph Hager—King. Sergeant First Class Marc McKeon—Queen. Chief Petty Officer Trace Williams—Bishop. Sergeant First Class Christian Baughman—Knight. Staff Sergeant Chris Baker—Rook. I don’t know if they’re alive or dead, but I do know that they are American soldiers, and they deserve to be brought home. If any of them are still alive, it’s absolutely imperative that we rescue them.”
Knight spoke up for the first time. “Why not send them?” He nodded at the members of Red Team.
“For starters, it’s not their AO. Don’t get me wrong. They’ve already offered, but there are other considerations. Political considerations.”
“You need deniability,” King said.
“We don’t know how badly compromised we are, but an officially sanctioned rescue mission is out of the question. I won’t leave those men hanging in the wind, but I can’t send more troops across enemy lines.”
“And which enemy is that?”
Ward didn’t sugarcoat his answer. “Russia.”
11
“We’ve all got that stamp in our passport,” Queen murmured, but King heard the apprehension in her voice. They had conducted anti-terrorism operations on Russian soil, and had tangled with Russian agents abroad, but they had never gone up against the full might of the Russian Bear in its own den. Queen’s concern was justifiable.
And she doesn’t even know what we found in Virginia.
King wondered if Ward knew his parents, and Asya’s, were former Soviet agents. Bishop had been raised in Russia. What would Ward make of those relationships if he learned the whole truth?
King made a determined effort not to look at Bishop. “Why were they there? Russia’s not exactly an ally, but when did they become the enemy?”
“You know better than that, Sigler. They’ve always been the enemy. It won’t come as news to you that the current president of Russia is an ambitious son of a bitch. In the last few years he’s become increasingly belligerent. Invading the Ukraine. Supporting Assad in Syria and accusing us of collusion with the Islamic State. He’s daring us to do something more than talk, and every time he gets away with it, he gets bolder. But he’s also desperate. Russia’s only real source of wealth is oil, and with oil prices bottoming out, their economy, not to mention his influence on the world stage, is sinking fast. He needs a game-changer.”
“And picking a fight with us does that how exactly?” Rook asked.
“There are a lot of people out there who would like to see him win that fight. But the short answer is that war, or even the possibility of it, drives up oil prices. And if it actually comes to a shooting war, an oil surplus is a huge strategic advantage.”
Queen shook her head. “We’ve still got a lot of nukes pointed at Moscow.”
“Yes, we do,” Ward admitted. “But would we use them? More to the point, would we be willing to go to war over some piece of Eastern European real estate that most Americans can’t even find on a map?
“I’m going to assume that you’re all familiar with NATO. Since the end of the Cold War, a lot of former Warsaw Pact nations, and even a few former So
viet states, have joined NATO. At the time, it was a big strategic victory for us. Better to have them on our team than allied with the Russians. Now, it’s become a huge liability.
“Article Five of the treaty stipulates that if a member nation is attacked, all NATO countries must come to their assistance. Ukraine was on the path to joining NATO when Russia annexed the Crimea and began supporting rebel factions there. If they had actually been a NATO member nation, we would already be at war with Russia.
“And by ‘we’ I mean just that. There are twenty-eight member nations, most in Western Europe, but we’re the big dog. Everyone knows it. Not everyone likes it. A lot of those folks think they’re just—forgive me for saying it—pawns in the same tired old chess game that’s been going on since the end of World War II. Russia versus America. Russia thinks NATO is just a puppet for U.S. foreign policy, and that if put to the test, the alliance would crumble.
“As we speak, the Russian army is conducting winter exercises on the border with Estonia, a NATO member. If the exercise turns into an invasion, the treaty that all twenty-eight member nations signed will require an immediate military response. But several Western European countries have already gone on record as stating that they will not mobilize their forces in defense of Estonia. If that happens and those countries pull out of NATO, then the Russians will pretty much be free to do as they please in Eastern Europe.”
King thought about what he had seen in the warehouse. The supply depot was most certainly not part of a plan to invade Estonia, but he did not doubt that there was a connection. Estonia would be the opening move in a game with much higher stakes.
“Would we?” he asked. “Even if a few countries pull out, we’d still honor our obligations, right?”
Empire (A Jack Sigler Thriller Book 8) Page 9