by DJ Scott
“I hope nobody minds that I invited Rick. He’s an old friend so when Jean let me in on the subject of the briefing I thought he might provide some useful insight. He studies the technical characteristics of foreign nukes.” Of course, as a Rear Admiral and Director of the ONI, Costello could invite anyone he wanted to any meeting, but unlike many Washington insiders, he also understood that respect began at the top.
“Jean, can you get us started?”
Kraus nodded towards her subordinate. Costello listened intently as Lieutenant Miller, eyes red from lack of sleep, but clean shaven and wearing a fresh uniform, began by recapping what he’d discovered the day before. He added, “Overnight we learned they suspect the director of the reconditioning facility along with his girlfriend and her brother to be responsible for the theft. All three have disappeared. Most of the communication on this subject has been handled through Northern Fleet headquarters and we can only intercept calls to and from Gadzhiyevo. We do know there are orders to do complete systems tests on all warheads of the Third Submarine Flotilla, no matter what their origin.”
“Did we know they were using reconditioned warheads on those Liners?” the admiral asked.
“I looked into that without letting on why I was asking,” Kraus said. “Farragut has known about production problems with their new miniaturized warhead, but apparently this is the first confirmation as to the purpose of the plant in Severomorsk, or that they’re actually mounting old warheads on their new missiles.”
“Not really relevant to our current problem.” Costello looked at his aide. “But make a note to look into their warhead production problems in more detail. There might be something more to it.”
His aide nodded and scribbled a note.
CDR Denise Nguyen followed with a summary of new NSA communication data. “Sir,” Nguyen said, “there’s been a dramatic increase in message traffic between Northern Fleet and the GRU, but not the FSB or Moscow. All heavily encrypted. We were able to decrypt some traffic between GRU and the border police at St. Petersburg asking about that factory manager. Apparently this Alexi Kovolenko, his girlfriend Anna Voronina, and her brother Boris all arrived in St. Petersburg on a commercial flight from Murmansk on August 11. They stayed the night and the following day took a train to Tallinn where immigration notes their arrival. As of last night, there is no further information on their whereabouts.”
“They’re gone now, probably under new names,” Costello said. “Monitor their search as best you can. And work with our friends from Langley. They’re good at finding people who don’t want to be found. It would be in our interest to find these people before the Russians do. Any word on movement of the warheads?”
“The theory in Gadzhiyevo is that they were sent out in three twenty-foot shipping containers. They apparently had the container numbers on file so we were able to track them. They arrived by truck at the port in Tallinn on August 15. Records show they were then loaded on a small container ship bound for Sweden on the 17th, cargo listed as machine parts.”
“And what are the chances that the containers with the weapons still carry their original identifiers?” growled Costello.
“Pretty small, sir,” replied Nguyen. “That would require people who have been very smart up to now getting very stupid.”
“Exactly. But we better check it out. When is that ship due to arrive?”
CDR Nguyen consulted her notes. “Tomorrow, Admiral.”
“I know Nils Jensen, the Swedish Naval Intelligence Chief, pretty well. I’ll get him to check out those containers.” Costello looked down at his notes. “I’m going to arrange a meeting this afternoon with the National Security Advisor, and I’m sure he will want both CIA and Homeland Security represented. The Director of National Intelligence, as you know, is up at Walter Reed with a bad gall bladder, so we better take this directly to the top.”
“Sir,” Miller said. “Forgive me, but . . . if the containers do turn out empty, what do we do next?”
Costello closed his notebook. “That, Lieutenant, is what we’re trying to figure out. Good morning.”
Chapter 7
August 19, 2017 1930Z (1530 EDT)
The White House
National Security Advisor Richardson ‘Sonny’ Baker was not a happy man. Only one month on the job and already beset by multiple crises. But hell, maybe constant crises were the job. He was now about to meet with the Directors of ONI, CIA and Homeland Security about the latest threat.
And yet the media acted as if he’d taken this plum job away from the disgraced Samuel Morten. They knew damn well that Morten had earned his dismissal. A year and a half ago when Iran detonated its first small nuclear bomb, Morten, a think-tank academic, had called for an immediate and massive U.S. attack to eliminate the Iranian threat once and for all. He became a senior strategist for the then virtually unknown presidential candidate Brendan Wallace, who rode fear of Iranian nukes all the way to the White House. When Wallace tapped Morten to be his National Security Advisor, the new administration had to deliver.
In late February, the United States launched the largest air campaign since the 2003 attack on Saddam Hussein. Cruise missiles followed by B-2 stealth bombers wreaked havoc with the Iranian air defense system. This was followed by bombing of the nuclear installations, and anything even remotely connected to them, by B-1B Lancers. These strikes included the 30,000 pound massive ordnance penetrator which, after multiple hits, destroyed even the deepest facilities. The air campaign also included destruction of as much of the large Iranian stockpile of ballistic missiles as the strike planners could find.
Morten and Wallace confidently predicted the Iranian government would fall, and be replaced by one eager to restore normal relations with the outside world. But that was before dissidents in the majority Shia island nation of Bahrain staged a coup against their Sunni rulers. Aided by Iranian agents already in place, they then ‘invited’ Iran to help secure their revolution. The Iranians obliged by landing more than a thousand of their Quds Force special operations troops—who were conveniently waiting on a ship in the harbor. It took three months for the Bahraini National Guard, assisted by Saudi troops, and a regiment of U.S Marines, to dislodge all the Quds operators and to get the government back under control. More than two thousand Bahraini citizens were killed, and an American destroyer in port at the time of the coup was heavily damaged by hits from multiple RPGs. The Marine regiment remained in place to protect the U.S. 5th Fleet Headquarters and anchorage.
Even worse for American prestige, on the third day of the air campaign, the Iranian Kilo class submarine Tareq penetrated the protective screen around the three American carriers operating in the Gulf of Oman, and put two torpedoes into the USS Ronald Reagan before being sunk. Though not at risk of sinking, the huge carrier was put out of action, spent three months in Singapore undergoing temporary repairs, and was now in San Diego where estimates were that it would take at least a year to put her back at sea. The Iranians crowed over their victory; “Allah has blessed our holy warriors” read the signs—in English—held aloft for the TV cameras in Teheran. The press had, of course, dwelled on the subject with story after story asking whether the age of the carrier was over and whether they were ‘sitting ducks.’
Winston Churchill, when Prime Minister, reacted with some equanimity to the loss of the HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales off Singapore. Not so Brendan Wallace. The CNO was a holdover from the previous administration and was forced to resign. His replacement, an old friend of the President, understood that destroying Iran’s remaining submarines was his top priority, and that each such destruction was to be accompanied by maximum publicity.
Both Bahrain and the Reagan were bad, but were ultimately tolerable prices to pay for the successful elimination of the Iranian nuclear threat. But it was what happened a few weeks after the bombings that changed everything.
On March 27, a Liberian-fla
gged, Dutch-owned tanker was seriously damaged by a mine in the Strait of Hormuz. A second incident the following day involving an American-owned vessel resulted in a large spill of crude oil. Three days after that, small boats operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard boarded a small Greek general cargo vessel bound for Oman. They killed the crew and sank the ship with explosives. Teheran announced that the Gulf was now closed to all shipping.
Almost immediately, the U.S began round-the-clock bombing of Iranian Naval facilities; if it could float, it was sunk. There were raids by Special Forces on Revolutionary Guard facilities along the Gulf and at this point even reluctant European allies began to send a few ships, mine sweepers in particular. Saudi Arabia, in a vote of no confidence, accelerated construction of an oil pipeline across the desert, through western Yemen and down to the Gulf of Aden where it could move its oil far away from the troublesome Iranians.
On April 16, in an operation put together with phenomenal speed, a brigade combat team from the 82nd Airborne Division was flown non-stop from Ft. Bragg using most of the available C-5 and C-17 transport aircraft, and then parachuted onto the western end of Qeshm Island which controlled the northern side of the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, an amphibious assault—the first since the Korean War—landed the Fifth Marine Regiment on the middle of the island. The island’s garrison was overwhelmed, the secret underground submarine facility was seized, and three Ghadir-Nahang class submarines destroyed.
Secretary of Defense William Jackson, another holdover from the previous administration, had been largely cut out of the planning for this operation after he voiced opposition directly to the President. When his counsel was ignored, he resigned. There was now no SECDEF, Wallace’s choice for a replacement being mired in a confirmation battle. Morten, and now Sonny Baker, essentially served the strategic functions of the SECDEF pending Senate approval of Jackson’s replacement.
On Qeshm, engineers quickly constructed an expeditionary airfield and a floating pier to unload ships. Within a week, almost sixteen thousand troops, with artillery, attack helicopters, and two battalions of Stryker armored vehicles were in place within sight of the Iranian coast.
The Iranians were not happy. Thousands of troops poured into the nearby port city of Bandar Abbas, and many were infiltrated onto the island in small boats. The result was that American forces were engaged in persistent daily combat. Continuous artillery fire was rained onto U.S positions, dozens of Iran’s remaining ballistic missiles targeted the airfield and port, and Iran sent scores of civilians living on the island towards the invaders as suicide bombers. The mullahs also targeted the Sunni states in the Gulf with occasional longer-range missiles landing in Dubai, Oman, and the Saudi oil terminals. Newly-upgraded American Patriot and ship-based Aegis anti-ballistic missiles stopped the majority of these weapons, but at a cost of millions of dollars per shot.
U.S. casualties were already mounting even before the so-called ‘Qeshm Massacre’. Unable to make any headway against the U.S. conventional forces, the Iranians infiltrated increasing numbers of their Quds force with the goal not of taking back the island, but of simply killing as many Americans as possible. A force of eighty Quds fighters infiltrated deep into the rear area, and attacked an Army field hospital. Due to scrupulous adherence to the laws of war, the American commanders had only provided a platoon of light infantry for security, and the medical personnel were minimally armed. Attacking with grenades and automatic weapons, the Iranians focused on the wounded and the medical personnel. When finally cornered by Marines who arrived after twenty minutes to join the battle, the Quds men then became suicide bombers. When it was over, one-hundred-eighty Americans, including eighty-nine wounded and fifty-one medical personnel, were dead, along with all the Iranians.
The fury of Brendan Wallace and the American people was unlike anything seen since 9/11 or possibly Pearl Harbor. A congressional resolution to withdraw from the Geneva Accords was passed on a near unanimous voice vote, and the President signed it within the hour. He then announced that the U.S. would not attack the medical personnel of other nations, but from then on our personnel would be fully armed like regular soldiers and be regarded as regular combatants. Unlimited combat troops could be attached to medical, supply, or engineering units. Hospital ships would be armed and henceforth travel with the fleet. By Presidential order the distinction between line and staff officers was erased.
A twenty-mile exclusion zone around the island was declared, an area which included well over a hundred thousand civilians, most of them on the mainland. When Iran refused to evacuate civilians, and indeed began to move their forces into civilian areas, American aircraft began to bomb Iranian artillery positions and vehicles, without restriction.
Over the succeeding six weeks Bandar Abbas and most of the civilian areas on Qeshm itself were reduced to rubble with an unknown, but huge, number of casualties. Intelligence intercepts revealed total Iranian military losses at more than sixteen thousand killed and about three times that number wounded. Civilian losses were even larger. At the same time U.S. losses of twenty-six hundred killed and almost nine thousand wounded were horrifying the public.
By early summer Qeshm was relatively secure. Almost all the surviving civilians had finally been driven off the island, which was now held by the entire First Marine Division and the Army 4th Infantry Division. Marine air and logistic requirements meant that the remainder of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, the 1 MEF, was spread between Qeshm, Bahrain, and ships underway in the Gulf. There were also substantial troop commitments to the nervous Gulf States. Virtually the entire Iranian port infrastructure had been destroyed, and American air power was now starting to focus on Iran’s oil production. Though embargoed by sea, both their Shia neighbors in Iraq and their Russian neighbors to the north were providing food, fuel, and most important—weapons. The American President was demanding removal of the Islamic Government, a demand to which Iran would not even respond.
With Iranian oil exports reduced to near zero and production from the other Gulf States also down, oil prices—despite increased US fracking production—soared to well over a hundred dollars a barrel. U.S relations with China had also fallen apart. China, which imported almost 10% of its oil from Iran, had stated publically that they regarded the bombing of Iran’s ports and oil infrastructure as ‘an attack on China’s vital interests.’ India was also hostile, but its criticism was muted by oil production from her new oil platforms in the Andaman Sea, a joint project with Burma, and by recent Iranian support for Pakistani acts of terrorism.
By July, public concern over cost and casualties, plus international outrage over civilian deaths and environmental damage, was putting tremendous pressure on the President. On July 3, North Korea’s mercurial Kim Jong-un launched several artillery bombardments along the DMZ, one of which killed a dozen civilians near Seoul. He announced that resumption of hostilities was imminent. Though most observers felt this was just more North Korean bluster, President Wallace was forced to dispatch a regiment of Marines, two Army armored brigades, and an Air Force fighter wing of the new F-35s to South Korea, both as a show of support and to make clear to other potential trouble-makers that America could still respond when necessary.
Stories with titles like “America Under Siege” became staples on the evening news. To placate his critics and in hopes of putting a floor under his plummeting approval numbers, the President asked National Security Advisor Samuel Morten, architect of the Qeshm Island operation, to resign. In his place, he appointed his old friend and classmate at The Citadel, Sonny Baker, to try to clean up the mess.
So, here they were. Baker was sensible enough to realize the Iranians could not be bombed into cooperation. He recommended scaling back on the air campaign. That helped with both the allies and with the public. Though not formally acknowledging the connection, Iran responded by stopping their missile attacks on Qeshm and their Gulf neighbors. This was probably becau
se they were running out of missiles and didn’t want to throw any more at the increasingly effective missile defense network, but Baker understood it to be a vital first step.
And, now what?
Richardson Baker along with his own Chief of Staff and a couple of specialists from the NSC entered the secure West Wing conference room where the Directors of ONI, CIA and Homeland Security, along with a small group of subordinates, stood to give him news that certainly would not be good. Aware that the Director of National Intelligence was hospitalized, Baker had decided to take the lead on this new problem rather than letting the gathered intelligence chiefs jockey for position.
Baker laid his well-manicured hands flat on the table. “Okay Justin, lay it out for me.”
Admiral Costello began by describing the telephone intercepts from Gadzhiyevo and increased message traffic between Northern Fleet headquarters and the GRU.
Baker interrupted, “You’re convinced this is real, not some Russian deception?”
“They would have to know about Bearpaw, and there is no suggestion that they do. Agent Stella has confirmed that the intercept instrument is well concealed and that, aside from himself, nobody has even been into the building in weeks. Besides what do they gain by convincing us they’ve got loose nukes?”
“Off the top of my head?” Baker replied. “The Russians have shipped those warheads to the Iranians and are using this deception as cover. Alex, what’s your take?”
Alexander Clarkson, Director of the CIA, turned in his chair to look directly at Baker. Another holdover from the previous administration, Clarkson was the intensely ambitious, Princeton-educated scion of a New York banking family, all qualities Baker normally despised, but Clarkson had cleaned out a lot of deadwood at Langley and put energetic young officers into key positions. Clarkson got results, and that Baker could live with.