EndWar e-1 Page 5

  “If you’ve called to discuss that—” she began, immediately growing defensive. The Euros had been staunch opponents of Freedom Star, Perreau calling it “the beginning of a new insanity.”

  “No, ma’am. I’m not calling for that.”

  “Then, Mr. President, maybe you’ve called to explain why your ground forces pulled out of Moscow so quickly?”

  The challenge came from General Amadou de Bankolé, commander of all special forces in Europe. He had even been involved in the design of the Enforcers Corps and possessed one of the most intimidating visages Becerra had ever seen: deep brown skin, a jaw that appeared to have been carved into shape with a bowie knife, and the cold, almost lifeless eyes of a shark.

  Becerra carefully picked his words. “No, General, I’m not at liberty to discuss the specifics of those operations.”

  “I guess retreating is a bit embarrassing.”

  Tucking his fist into the seat, Becerra responded slowly, “I’ll say this: any maneuver by the Joint Strike Force is carefully planned. Sometimes we trade space for time. And as the son of a Marine master sergeant and a Marine reservist myself, I understand that. As a military officer of your status, a man who has studied our tactics, techniques, and procedures, the situation and accompanying explanations should be obvious.”

  There, he’d insulted the bastard.

  And before Bankolé could reply, another voice broke in. “Mr. President, could you answer a question for me?” Capitaine Ilaria Cimino raised her brows. She was in her mid-thirties, an attractive woman who’d already had a distinguished career with Italian special forces units. In some ways, she reminded Becerra of Major Alice Dennison.

  “President Becerra, I asked Capitaine Cimino to join us because she and her team were responsible for intercepting the original transmission and decrypting what they could.”

  Becerra nodded. “Excellent work, Capitaine. I’m glad I have this opportunity to thank you.”

  She grinned. “I appreciate that. But now I must ask for all us — have you learned what Operation 2659 is? Who is Snegurochka?”

  “We are still working on Doletskaya, but the interrogation has proven difficult.”

  “Torture him,” snapped Bankolé. “And get what we need.”

  “It’s not that simple, General.”

  He raised his voice. “Torture him.”

  “I didn’t call this meeting to discuss Doletskaya or our justification for pulling out of Moscow. We have a serious problem, and I need your help.”

  General Bankolé sighed and began to shake his head, but President Perreau quickly said, “Mr. President, sorry for the interruptions. You have our complete attention.”

  Becerra sighed through a nod. “As I said, three cosmonauts headed up to the ISS on a repair and resupply mission. There are two other researchers up there right now: a Japanese scientist and an engineer from Brazil. About twenty hours ago we lost all contact with them and with the Russians, and shortly thereafter the station repositioned itself.”

  “Just a technical failure?” asked Perreau, her tone indicating that she already expected the worst.

  “We had hoped. But following the communication break, we lost two key satellites, the early warning bird around the Arctic Circle and a comm satellite with ELF capability to communicate with submarines under the ice cap.”

  “Mr. President, what do you mean lost?” asked Cimino. “Lost communication?”

  “No, Capitaine. I mean destroyed. We’ve picked up the debris fields. We’re not sure if they—”

  “Mr. President, if you believe the European Federation’s laser satellites were somehow—”

  “No, ma’am. Not at all. And I don’t suggest that Spetsnaz forces have introduced a virus into your system. We’ve been down that dark road before.”

  “You’re trying to make a connection between those cosmonauts on the ISS and your lost satellites,” concluded Bankolé.

  “Exactly. The data’s being reviewed right now. But there’s already speculation that the Russians used the ISS as a platform to take out our satellites. Our missile shield would stop anything they launch with a ground-based trajectory, but they could have smuggled up parts to construct a weapons system and fired it from the station. Could be laser- or projectile-based. We’re uncertain at this time.”

  “What do you need from us?” asked President Perreau.

  “If the Russians have seized control of the ISS, and if they have a space-based weapon onboard that station, one they could use to take out some of your lasers or our kinetic energy weapons, then we need to strike first.”

  “Oh, my God.” Perreau gasped. “You want us to destroy the station?”

  “No, if it comes to that, we’ll do what’s necessary. But right now I’ve got a blind spot up in the Arctic, and other stations have reported that the Russians have flown in some reconnaissance and communication aircraft. I need your lasers to take them out.”

  General Bankolé frowned deeply. “If I may interrupt. Mr. President, if the Russians have done as you say — smuggled up parts to construct a weapon on the ISS, then why would they use it on two of your more insignificant satellites? Why didn’t they pick the obvious targets: your Rods from God and our lasers?”

  “Thirty minutes ago I was sitting here, staring out the window, asking the same question. I don’t know all the details, the science involved. Maybe they couldn’t reposition the ISS to do so. Or maybe they took out the smaller satellites as a test. But believe me, we’re working on it. We’ll get the truth.”

  “Well, if you’re right about the test, we should take out the station immediately,” cried Bankolé.

  Becerra recoiled. “The political fallout from that… I need proof of what happened up there. My hands are tied until I get it.”

  Bankolé’s voice grew more stern. “Madame President, I suggest we direct one of our lasers on the ISS — as a precautionary measure.”

  “Mr. President, you will understand if we do that?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll send word. But you should be prepared to make a statement to the Brazilians and the Japanese if they discover what’s happening.”

  “Of course.”

  “And you’ll take out those spy planes?”

  “With pleasure.”

  “If there’s any change, I’ll contact you immediately. General Bankolé? Capitaine Cimino? Our Joint Strike Force commanders will coordinate with you, as always.”

  “Mr. President,” called Bankolé, “I hope that you are compensating for your satellite problem and still keeping a sharp eye on the Arctic.”

  “Rest assured, General. We are.”

  Becerra said his good-byes and ended the call.

  Of course he’d failed to tell Bankolé that they’d now lost contact with one of their subs and were frantically reactivating the old Michigan ELF transmitter to reestablish ELF comms under the Arctic ice. The old system, shut down in 2010, took twenty minutes per character to transmit its three-letter alert.

  “Mr. President?” called Mark Hellenberg, Becerra’s chief of staff, from his laptop across the aisle. “Bad news from Paris. We lost General Smith. He was forced to call in a kinetic strike on his position. But the good news is that enemy forces were also destroyed and we’re still holding the line there.”

  Becerra nodded, averted his gaze. “Smith was a good man.”

  “One of the best.”

  “Mark, I have a feeling the Russians are planning something even bigger.”

  Hellenberg’s tone grew ominous. “So do the Joint Chiefs.”

  EIGHT

  “Left standard rudder. Steady three-two-zero,” ordered Commander Jonathan Andreas.

  The USS Florida, SSN-805, a Virginia-class nuclear submarine, banked smartly to the left and steadied on her new northwesterly course, the third and final leg to refine the Ekelund range calculation to the target.

  Ekelund calculations utilized listen-only sonar bearings to solve an equation: the distance to a target was
nearly equal to the speed across the line-of-sight of the target divided by the bearing rate (change of bearing per minute, in degrees).

  Andreas didn’t just understand those calculations. As the commander of a nuclear submarine, they were part of his DNA. He liked to compete with the AN/BSY-1, the computer-based combat system designed to detect, classify, track, and launch weapons at enemy targets. It was man versus machine, and he truly appreciated the beauty inherent in mathematical formulas, an appreciation that had taken him far in his military career.

  He was a Naval Academy grad with a B.S. in Marine Engineering, plus two years of postgrad school in Monterey, California, with a dual master’s in Nuclear Engineering and International Relations. He was forty-three, from the Midwest, and married with requisite two kids, a boy and girl ages eleven and twelve respectively. He was on the fast track for captain and needed a deep-draft command such as an amphib, maybe even a nuclear carrier, to get his ticket punched. He was destined for a submarine division or squadron commander billet, even admiral if his political party snagged the White House and he could complete his Ph.D. after the Naval War College. His current rank of Commander guaranteed him thirty years in the Navy even if he was twice passed over for promotion, the automatic death knell for any naval officer.

  Yes, it’d been a good life and a textbook career, most of it served during peacetime.

  But this war, he had quickly learned, changed everything and those changes could begin with the smallest contact on a sonar display.

  In fact, twenty minutes earlier the sub’s BQQ-10 sonar processor had begun stacking dots on its waterfall display amid the background noise of Arctic shrimp. Once the fire-control dot-stacker display had finished its stacking, the right target course and speed had been determined, and consequently they had a weapons firing solution on what they determined to be a multiship contact.

  Andreas took a deep breath, forced himself to relax.

  He had deliberately chosen the new course for his final leg, knowing it would bring him back to a nearby polyna, an area of open water surrounded by sea ice, where he could come up and sneak a peek at the contact, mixing the groan and screech of breaking ice with a cacophony of engine and screw noises.

  Andreas was prepared to execute “emergency deep” if necessary, his crew automatically taking the sub down to 150 feet in a crash dive to avoid a collision or escape an aircraft attack.

  For now, though, he ordered one of Florida’s two photonic masts extended. Each contained several high-resolution cameras with light-intensification and infrared sensors, an infrared laser rangefinder, and an integrated electronic support measures (ESM) array. Signals from the masts’ sensors were transmitted through fiber-optic data lines through signal processors to the control center.

  All the Virginia-class systems — weapon control, sensors, countermeasures, and navigation systems — were integrated into one computer and displayed on the Q-70 color common display console.

  All right. They were fifteen miles due north of Banks Island, one of the Canadian arctic islands, and Andreas and his control center attack team now watched two columns of military assault ships glide through the frigid waters, each column preceded by a broad-hulled icebreaker.

  Andreas’s crew quickly identified the lead ship behind the smaller icebreaker as the Varyag, a former Russian aircraft carrier now converted into a command and control ship and flying the personal flag of a Red Banner Northern Fleet admiral headquartered in Severomorsk.

  Astern of the Varyag was the Ulyanovsk, recently completed and modified as a helicopter assault ship. And behind her was the familiar amphibious assault ship Ivan Rogov.

  The second column consisted of another icebreaker, an oiler, and an ammunition ship.

  “XO, pull the manual and tell me what’s flying on Varyag’s port yardarm and assure me that the Intel officer is recording every pixel on the Q-70 display.”

  After a moment, the XO reported his findings. “Captain, that’s the personal pennant for a GRU general and a Spetsnaz field commander, and we’re getting it all.”

  Just then, the two columns of ships began to split, the Varyag group continuing south along the west coast of Banks Island and the auxiliary column beginning to turn left into the McClure Strait and the east coast of the island.

  “That’s interesting,” observed the XO.

  “And smart,” added Andreas. “He separates his volatile, slower assets and sends them through the McClure and down into calmer waters of the Prince of Wales Strait, where they’ll probably rejoin in the Amundsen Gulf.”

  “Isn’t that a little risky?” asked the Ops officer.

  “Not really, Jack, he’s got assault choppers to provide air cover. They could get across Banks Island in ten to fifteen minutes.”

  The Ops officer nodded.

  Andreas cleared his throat. “Okay, gentlemen, let’s get a slot buoy ready. I want a detailed SITREP. Advise Commander, Pacific Fleet we are in trail of the Varyag and add some pictures, space permitting. Plug in a one-hour transmit delay. We’ll leave the buoy here in the polyna. I’m curious as hell to know what a GRU general and Spetsnaz field commander are doing out at sea with a Northern Fleet admiral.

  “Officer of the Deck, take her down to five-four-three feet and fall in behind the column, rig for modified ultra-quiet.” Andreas regarded his XO. “I believe an OPORDER is forthcoming. So have the Ops officer and Weapons officer in the wardroom in one hour with a plan to wipe out this Russian task force.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  In his mind’s eye, Andreas saw the sub’s four UGM- 84G Harpoon antiship missiles and the Mark 48 (MK- 48) ADCAP torpedoes reduce those ships to burning buckets listing hopelessly until they sank to the cold depths.

  NINE

  The doorbell sent Major Alice Dennison bolting up from her sofa. She noticed the motion-sensor lights on the front porch had already clicked on.

  Who the hell is that?

  She grabbed her robe from one of the bar stools, slipped it on over her long nightgown, fastened the tie, then finger combed her hair.

  It was 9:26 in the evening. No call had come from the gate, so it had to be one of her neighbors, right?

  A quick glance around her 1930s bungalow made her grimace. The rugs had been pulled, the paintings removed, all the light fixtures unscrewed from the walls and ceiling.

  And that was just the beginning. She’d ransacked every room, every piece of furniture, looking for Doletskaya’s bugs. She’d even removed the showerheads.

  Those bastards at the GRU had infiltrated Palma Ceia, the suburb of southern Tampa where Dennison had been living for the past few years. The bungalow she had once called a sanctuary was midway between the international airport and MacDill Air Force Base, where the Joint Strike Force had established one of its many command posts adjacent to United States Special Operations Command (USSOC). Palma Ceia, she kept reminding herself, was a highly desirable neighborhood, and she lived on a private canal, with access to Tampa Bay and the Gulf beyond. Maybe Doletskaya’s men had slipped in by boat to bypass her security system and wire her house for sound and video.

  But she had yet to locate any of his devices, and that was driving her even more insane.

  Maybe they’d already been removed.

  Or maybe he was getting his information from another source. But who? The only friends she had were her colleagues, and they, like her, were so plugged into the work that there was barely any free time. Sleep, eat, get back to work, back to the war… She couldn’t remember how many nights she had spent at the command post, stealing four hours on a cot, putting in a twenty-hour day.

  She grabbed her.45 from the kitchen counter, chambered a round, then started toward the door, not daring to get close enough to stare through the peephole, already imagining an assailant firing through the wooden door.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s me, Alice, open up.”

  Oh, God. She almost collapsed as the tension washed down into her l
egs. She threw the dead bolt, removed the chain, and opened the door—

  To find her father, shock of gray hair and gray mustache, holding a brightly wrapped present in his hands. He smiled and said, “Happy Birthday, sweetheart! I know I’m a couple of days early, but I’m going to be out of town and I wanted to surprise you before I left. That Charlie down at the gate is a good guy, let the old man have a little fun.”

  His gaze finally found the gun in her hand, and he frowned.

  “I wasn’t expecting company, Dad.”

  “Well, Jesus, put that piece away. But I guess I should be glad you’re not taking any chances, especially in times like these.”

  She moved aside, shut the door after him — but not before stealing a furtive glance at the porch and front yard.

  “You should have called, Dad.”

  “Holy… what happened?” He gaped at the place. “Were you robbed? Oh, my God. Did you call the police?”

  “I wasn’t robbed. I did this.”

  “You? What the hell?” He shifted over to the bar counter, set down his gift, which looked like a hardcover book, and came to her, gripping her shoulders. “Alice, what’s going on. Are you all right? Are you… angry?”

  She opened her mouth once, closed it, stammered, “I–I’m… tired.”

  His gaze reached the ceiling, the unscrewed fixtures; that did it for him. “You think you’ve been under surveillance.”

  “I know I have been. Dad, I feel like I’ve been raped.”

  “Come here.”

  “I’m too old for a hug.”

  “I don’t care, you’re still my kid. Give the senior citizen a hug.”

  She did, and it felt good, reminded her of all those times as a child when she had fallen asleep in his lap, feeling utterly protected. And maybe she hung on now a little too tightly.

  “If you’re worried about surveillance, I want you to move. You think they’re watching now?”

  “I don’t know.” She wanted to whirl around, as she’d done earlier, flipping off the Russians.