Unfortunately, this fact alone wasn't very surprising, only the potential of confirmation. Since the start of the Second Balkan War the previous year after worsening tensions in Macedonia, the Russian army had swept into the Southern Caucasus and breakaway Azerbaijani republics in an attempt to stem the flood-tide of ethnic rebellion that threatened to eat away at the flanks of the former Soviet empire.
The neo-Soviet presence in Bulgaria had set Yugoslavia ablaze with war and tied up NATO and European Self-Defense Initiative forces in that regional theater. It had been deliberately calculated to divert the world's attention from the neo-Soviet Union (NSU) counterinsurgency campaign on Russia's southern flank. As a diversion, Moscow Center's strategy had been fairly successful, though otherwise it had proved a dismal failure.
Instead of destroying separatist guerilla enclaves, the campaign had merely broken them up and dispersed the survivors to found new fighting cells. Ethnic rebellion had spread rather than waned, driving separatist exiles into border enclaves in northern Iraq, southern Turkey and northern Iran, where they formed liaisons with Peshmerga -- Kurdish rebel forces -- scattered in these areas. Ethnic unrest was now spreading into the Middle East and toward the flanks of NATO, and this latest news from the front showed that the Russians were in desperate straits.
The Soviet debacle had been the subject of the breakfast meeting in the SecDef's office, attended by the chiefs of staff, the CJCS, the DepSecDef, and other deputies and assistants.
Dalhousie had sat at his customary place behind the enormous Pershing desk that had bolstered the dignity -- and more often the feet -- of his predecessors at the post, and while his secretary served fresh coffee and a polite young Marine officer wheeled in a tray of bagels, danishes and muffins, Dalhousie had begun the discussion about strategies, options and political damage control.
CJCS Starkweather had as usual argued for his pet project, the Snake Handlers. But "Bucky's SMF's," as they had come to be called by the chairman's critics at the Building, had temporarily fallen out of favor. The special missions unit led by Ice Trencrom had caused a crisis in the Pacific the previous month on a mission to stem China's acquisition of silent Kilo-class submarines equipped with cruise missile delivery technology. The subs no longer posed a problem, but the destruction of a multibillion dollar sub pen complex off the coast of Kinmen Island had created political fallout that the president was still ducking.
Trencrom's crew was not an option this time, thought the SecDef. But there were other hole cards that the US might yet pull out of its sleeve. These would be discussed at the White House with the president and members of the NSC. Later that afternoon, after Dalhousie's return to the Building, there would be further discussions with the assembled chiefs in the Tank.
First things first, though. Just ahead, out of the late morning fog, loomed the black iron gate of the West Wing entrance. The Lincoln slowed, the gate was opened for the vehicle flying the DOD chief's flag, and the big limousine rolled inside, onto the White House grounds.
▪▪▪▪▪▪
The National Security Council Situation Room is a small, soundproofed meeting chamber buried two stories beneath -- but not behind, as some claim, confusing it with the Cabinet Room -- the president's Oval Office. The Situation Room is flanked by an operational command center staffed by military personnel and which has available secure Hammer Rick communications links -- commonly known as the "hotline" -- direct to the Kremlin in Moscow.
The NSC Situation Room, which was constructed following the establishment of the National Security Act of 1947 which, among other things, created the CIA, has played host to numerous meetings prompted by international crises.
It is a cramped chamber dominated by a large square meeting table and lit by overhead light panels. The sit room is not a place conducive to comfort. It is a place of decision, a seat of judgment, and it looks and feels the part.
As the Secretary of Defense was ushered into the West Wing entrance of the White House, the NSC chamber was occupied, as it had been on many a crisis before, during and after the Cold War, though not by the president or his chief advisors.
A group of mid-level cabinet deputies manned the situation room this morning, providing a skeleton staff in the event of a new emergency. President Travis Claymore preferred to meet with advisors in the Oval Office whenever possible; the sit room made him claustrophobic.
Today was no exception, and the SecDef was informed upon arrival at the White House that the meeting was to be held in the Oval Office. A Marine guard soon ushered him into the famous circular room, where he found the small circle of the president's closest advisors already seated in the customary horseshoe arrangement of chairs just in front of the fireplace. The seating arrangement placed all advisors in positions facing the president's desk.
"Lyle, come in," said President Claymore. "We've been expecting you. Sit down. Help yourself to coffee. The turkey sandwiches are pretty good today."
Dalhousie took a BLT off the buffet that had been set up by the entrance and sat in a vacant seat, his customary one beside State near the center. The SecDef bit into the sandwich as the president leaned back in his desk chair and steepled his palms for a moment. Damn, he was hungry.
"Lyle, you know the shit that's been mellowing in the Caucasus. As of this hour we've got a hopper full of confirmed reports the Russians have used chemical weapons on the Uzbeks. I've already taken calls from the Europeans ... President Le Blanc, Prime Minster Benchley, and several other heads of state have phoned to express grave concerns.
"I'm concerned about the possibility of the ESDI going off on its own hook and doing something dumb. In fact Prime Minister Kelly LeBrock was on the line just before you arrived. As you know she's been a strong opponent of the ESDI right from the start. She gave me a few ideas and I've enlisted her to take the pulse of the European military and political establishment on this issue."
"She's a grand lady, and a damn good ally to have in our corner, Travis," replied the SecDef after swallowing a bite of the sandwich. "If anybody can reign in the hawks in the ESDI -- and I can think of two offhand –"
"-- Caillou and Potenza," interjected Russ Conejo, the White House National Security Advisor.
" -- And let's not forget our friend 'Falcon' Hull," put in Dougless Galvin, the Secretary of State, technically outranking the SecDef but more often requiring the coordination of the National Security Advisor between the two major foreign policy departments. "That sonofabitch's been spoiling for a fight ever since the damn Gulf."
"All three. Certainly," agreed the SecDef, sandwich now finished. "Field Marshall Hull especially. 'Whale' Weisskopf threatened to punch him out to stop him from making a unilateral move on Sumatra."
That remark brought a laugh. Someone remarked, "It would have been a hell of a bout, though. In this corner, the Whale. In this corner, the Falcon."
"You were there, weren't you, Lyle?" chimed in State, after a fresh round of laughter.
"Damn right I was, Mike," answered Dalhousie. "And didn't Hull raise a stink over it too. If we hadn't kept as close a lid on the fucking press as we did back then, who knows what would have happened. It could have blown the "special relationship" right out of the water. And mind you, Hull was only a chickenshit two-star then. Today he's a field marshall."
"Gentlemen," the president interjected, silencing the byplay, "all this inside baseball bullshit notwithstanding, we've gotta craft a policy on this issue. When this is over it's my intention to phone Premier Starchinov and address the issues directly. I want to be prepared." The president leaned forward. "Lyle, your assessment, please."
"Mr. President," replied the SecDef, "this morning I conferred with the Chiefs of Staff. As you know, we have been monitoring the situation closely. We are gravely concerned about the implications of this action on the part of the Soviets, but more along the lines of ancillary or corollary actions that might flow from it than the action itself."
"Explain."
"
Mr. President, as Burt may have already told you (he referred here to Burlington Downes, Director of CIA), while we have confirmed the Soviets' deployment of a chemical weapon -- delivered by long-range artillery -- all evidence so far points to the agent's being a fairly benign, if I may use that word, form of antipersonnel agent."
"We'd discussed the agent, CS-X, with the president just before you arrived, Lyle," added the CIA director, addressing Dalhousie."
"OK. Then Travis, you already know that what we're dealing with here's essentially a very concentrated form of tear gas, which in military strength can cause severe vomiting, dizziness, and shortness of breath."
"Yep, I heard that, Lyle," answered Travis from behind the presidential desk. "But CS-X is also like a nerve gas in some ways, isn't it, and can be lethal."
"Travis, Mr. President, yes, yes it can," replied the SecDef. "That's true. I don't want to give you the false impression that it's not a powerful or potentially deadly weapon they used. But I want to put it into perspective. Compared to chemical agents we know the Soviets to have available to them --"
"-- The binary shells?"
"--Yes, Mr. President, the binary weapons, or binary artillery shells, if you will, these binary weapons can disperse truly horrendous nerve agents such as tabun or sarin, which are many orders of magnitude deadlier than those which the Soviets have used. They also have stocks of biologicals including anthrax and chimeric botulin available. Truly deadly, horribly deadly, agents."
"You said this word?"
"Chimeric?"
"Right."
"That means, Mr. President, that the viral or biological agent is an artificially mutated strain."
The President leaned back, silent a moment.
"Bucky wanted to turn loose those lunatic Snake Eaters on this Kamera facility out near Sebastopol somewhere. That's where all this germ shit they got's supposed to come from. What do you think of that?"
"Snake Handlers," the Secretary of State corrected.
"Right, Bucky's Snake Handlers."
"Mr. President, I have just a short while ago conferred with Chairman Starkweather and I can report that he and the chiefs of staff firmly agree that a strike on the Kamera, or any other Soviet installation of its kind, would be neither strategically sound nor politically expedient at this time."
"Then what?"
"We believe that the use of CS-X agent was due to the indiscretion of a particular field commander acting under the authority of the FSB. As you know, the Kremlin has been frustrated by lack of progress against rebel forces. Control of many sectors has been taken from the GRU and placed it in the hands of the state intelligence service, the FSB. The field commander in question is believed to have been recalled to Moscow.
"What concerns us is the threat of command and control slipping from Soviet military forces in theater, leading to the use of deadlier weapons of mass destruction farther down the line. Secondly, we're worried about the ESDI overreacting and doing something foolish. Thirdly, we're gravely concerned about the escalation of the Caucasus fighting to the fringes of neighboring countries, and fourthly --"
Suddenly there was a knock and the door of the Oval Office was opened by a Marine guard.
"-- Sorry I'm late," the CJCS said as he came in, accompanied by an aide carrying an assortment of maps, charts and audiovisual aids. "There was a really bad accident on the way. We got stuck in traffic."
"That's okay, Buck," said the president. "Have a seat. We'll fill you in. Lyle?"
"Actually, Mr. President," said Lyle Dalhousie, "the chairman's got all the presentation materials to fill you and the working group in on the fourth point I was about to get to. I think we should let him have the floor."
"Buck, how about it?" the president asked.
"Be happy to, Mr. President," replied the CJCS, and stepped to the fireplace where his aide was already setting things up.
▪▪▪▪▪▪
The Premier and General Secretary of the Neo-Soviet Communist government replaced the telephone receiver in its cradle and sat for a few moments gazing out the window of his dacha, across the grand, sloping greensward that ran parallel to the Moskva River for almost half a kilometer before the view was obscured by the beech woods surrounding the country estate.
The dacha was situated only a few miles from Moscow Center, yet was blessed with all the peace and solitude a man could want. A short ride from his Kremlin office, there was this solitude, and the General Secretary took advantage of this fact whenever possible. Boris Andreyevich Starchinov now watched a freight vessel pass along the darkened river, its running lights revealing the ship's ghostly outline against the deeper darkness of night.
The General Secretary's mind flashed back to his first encounter with the dacha, during the height of the November Revolution of a decade past. What heady days they had been! As a young FSB agent, loyal to Oleksandr, the director, he had been among those who had been hand-picked to detain the traitor Kuzmin and his foul-mouthed wife Anastasiya under house arrest.
Had he been given instructions to carry out the execution of the two traitors to the Party, Starchinov would have done so with pleasure. But the order had never come. Instead, there had been the ignominy of defeat and the ascendancy of the doddering bizhdenok Chapayev and his Vlasti -- Oligarchs -- to power at the Center. That had been the beginning of the end, though only for a time.
Little had he dreamt on that day, when both the birthmarked one and Anastasiya were in his grasp, that he would one day occupy this place some years later. He could thank the squint-eyed ferret Lebed for the honor.
The fool had preferred him and all the while he worked against him. Of course, this is precisely what Lebed's own sponsor, Semyan Chapayev, had done with Stepashin, Lebed's chief rival, promoting the poputchik to fill the spot for which he was actually grooming the ferret. If nothing else, Chapayev had been a master second only to Stalin in the fine art of using poputchiks to do his dirty work.
After disposing of Lebed, Starchinov had hunted down Chapayev and had him executed. In Red Square, the people had cheered. Lebed had been his first poputchik. There had been several others since then. Tomorrow, there would be yet more. Such was the equation of power that it demanded poputchiks at every stage.
Boris Starchinov turned from the window, the ghost ship having disappeared into the gloaming. The eternal Moskva was again silent, the night still, and broken only by the chirping of crickets in the grass and trees. The Soviet Premier and General Secretary of the Party turned to his assembled advisors.
"I have considered the words of the US president," he told them. "We have larger goals, and this incident must not be allowed to interfere."
"But the chernozhopyi rebellion. It must be crushed. And quickly. We are running out of time. This has turned into a real bl'adki." Some raised their eyebrows at the speaker's boldness in his choice of metaphors.
"Yes, it surely has become a circle jerk, Misha, I know this. And besides we seem always to be running out of time," Starchinov replied with sangfroid. Yet his lens-like eyes stared out, assessing the faces of his advisors, one by one, taking their measure in his gaze as it slowly passed across their faces.
Starchinov stood and snapped his fingers, a signal for his personal valet to hand him a vodka martini, his favorite drink. He sipped the alcohol and set the glass down on the desk.
Again his gaze crossed the faces of his advisors.
"Tovarischi -- Comrades," he began. "Here is what I propose."
He began to tell them his plan, leaving out the fact that he had decided upon whom his next poputchik would be. When he would finish, the advisors would be asked their opinions.
No matter what their true thoughts, each would strive to outdo the other in voicing their wholehearted approval.
▪▪▪▪▪▪
Twenty-five miles north of Tel Aviv, an unmarked limo with bulletproof glass, armored transmission gearbox, and tires capable of rolling at high speed even if struck by grenade shrapn
el, nimbly ascended a steep, winding road. Its destination was a series of low-rise whitewashed buildings strung along the crest of a low bluff.
The complex, which included an Olympic-sized swimming pool, could easily be confused with any number of resort hotels throughout Israel. The concealed snipers who monitored the limo's ascent up the serpentine drive suggested strongly that it was anything but that. In fact, the complex was the main -- though not the sole -- headquarters of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.
The vehicle was expected. The concealed surveillance/sniper teams were officially told only that it contained a VIP. However, the teams were familiar with the prime minister's personal car by this time and knew that Gershon Simchoni was paying a visit to the head of Mossad, former General Yehuda Peretz.
No one besides Simchoni, Peretz and a handful of close advisers knew the reason for the meeting, but those in the know had not slept well because of the knowledge they possessed.
Once again, Israel's existence was threatened by the Arabs surrounding it. Israel would have to launch defensive plan Ken Tsa'rot -- "Nest of Hornets." The operation might well prove to be the most desperate one in that nation's history.
Ken Tsa'rot would have to work the first time. There would be no second chance. But then, Peretz mused, since when had it ever been otherwise for the holy land?
▪▪▪▪▪▪
Book II
You Ran, Not Us
▪▪▪▪▪▪
Chapter Seven
Insertion into the Reshteh-ye Kuhha-ye Alborz -- the Elburz mountain range -- had been a predictable bitch. A-Comm (A-Command) of Detachment Omega was on a tight timetable, and this added to the logistical problems faced by the Eagle Patchers. Precision timing was vital to the successful outcome of Omega's mission. So was secrecy.
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