Ghosts of War

by Brad Taylor

  We kicked around a few isolation contingencies and different ways to stop the vehicle, eventually ending up with a plan—although I thought it was a little Machiavellian. It would get the job done, provided the men inside decided to quit. If they didn’t, we’d be left outside turning red in the face, because there was no way I was going through with the bluff.

  Our getaway after became the focus, and I’d detailed Jennifer to rent some mopeds first thing in the morning. Cars couldn’t traverse willy-nilly, but mopeds sure as hell could, and we’d only be carrying the Torah. We looked one more time at the map, pulling up street view, and I said, “This might actually work.”

  Shoshana said, “Of course it will, with your help.”

  I nodded and said, “I want something in return.”

  “What?”

  “I want that recording we made this morning.” I turned to Aaron. “Did you send it?”

  Aaron said, “No, I didn’t. And now I don’t have to. We have the mission. Whatever those guys were talking about, it’s irrelevant.”

  I said, “It’s not irrelevant. It’s important. What those two were discussing is much more important than some Torah. I’m sure of it.”

  “Pike, I don’t own Mossad assets. We have what we need. The rest is just extraneous intel. Smoke and mirrors that have nothing to do with the mission. I can’t ask them to use their cell to translate. They’re busy with other, more pressing taskings.”

  “You mean you won’t because you don’t want to lose the next contract by being a pest.”

  He leaned back, looked at Shoshana, then said, “Yes, that’s true. I’m not a member anymore. I have to make a living now. I can’t order people. I can only beg, and that has to be tied to the mission. When the translation comes out, it won’t be anything we don’t already know, and it will hurt my company.”

  I kicked the table and said, “I don’t give a shit. I’m asking. Not as a friend in a company, but as a compatriot, regardless of where we’re from. This is important.”

  “Why?”

  I leaned back and said, “I don’t know why. It just is.”

  Shoshana was giving me her weird glow, only this time it was with a twist of understanding. She got it, and I was glad to have her on my side.

  She said, “He feels something. He sees what’s going on.”

  That wasn’t what I expected. I didn’t need all her goofy mind-reading shit. I said, “Hey, don’t go all psychic on me. I just think it’s critical because of what they said. They were talking about Putin, and they mentioned a target.”

  She said nothing for a moment, and I looked at Aaron. He was waiting on her. Waiting on a decision, which is something I’d never seen before.

  Shoshana said, “You ever wonder why you’re so lucky? Why you’re my lucky talisman?”

  Exasperated, I said, “It’s not luck. It’s planning. Come on, all I’m asking is that you send the recording back to see what they said.”

  Shoshana glanced at Jennifer, then gave me a little secret smile. “Yes. You are right. It’s not luck. You are like me. You see things that others don’t. You don’t understand it, but it’s true.”

  Enough. No way was I going to pretend to be some psycho like her. I said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She turned to Aaron. “Do it. Send it to Mossad.”

  Aaron looked conflicted, caught between us in the lounge and his masters at home. He said, “Shoshana, I would love to, but if I do, we’ll be billed. They’ll charge some stupid amount just to punish me when it proves unnecessary. They might even charge enough to cover the profit of this trip, absolving them from paying us.”

  Knuckles said, “So I guess the Jewish stereotype is a little true.”

  Aaron glared at him, and Shoshana said, “Aaron, if you want to sleep with me, you’ll do it.”

  The room went completely silent, each of us trying to ascertain if we’d heard her correctly. She felt the stillness, growing agitated. She finally said, “What? Isn’t that what you do in a relationship?” She turned to Jennifer, her face blossoming red for the first time I’d ever seen. She was embarrassed and realized she’d made an enormous mistake. “Isn’t that what you do with Pike?”

  Jennifer said, “Uhhh . . . no. You and I need to talk. For real.”

  She said, “But you wanted him to move rooms. . . .”

  Completely flustered, Aaron said, “I’ll send it, I’ll send it. But it had better be worth the cost.”

  Wanting to get out of the lounge, afraid of what the little demon would do if she thought we were making fun of her, I said, “It’s worth it. Trust me.”

  Knuckles stood up and said, “Well, this has got to be the strangest mission planning I’ve ever done. See you in the morning.”

  He stood to exit and Jennifer said, “Hang on, I’ll go with you.”

  The door swung closed, leaving me with the Israelis. I said, “Look, if they go all stupid on you, I’ll pay for the translation.”

  Aaron said, “Not necessary. If you feel it’s that important, I’ll send it. I’ll worry about the fallout later.”

  I said, “It is. But if I were you, I’d worry about what happens when I leave this room.”

  He glanced at Shoshana. She’d recovered from her previous comment, but still looked chagrined. Like she’d farted on a first date, which, I suppose, is pretty much what she’d done. I tossed her a bone.

  “We need to get some sleep. Long day tomorrow.” I looked her in the eye and said, “And I’ve still got to move my luggage.”

  She grinned at the words, understanding that in the end, Jennifer had won, and therefore, so could she.

  Not wanting to be left alone with her, Aaron said, “What makes you think that recording is anything other than another criminal act?”

  I said, “What Mikhail said about a target. I think he was talking about the president, and I have a feeling that my government is about to go to war for the wrong reasons.”

  Shoshana nodded solemnly, as if she understood. Aaron simply stared at me, wishing me to remain.

  I pitied him.

  37

  Looking in the distance, President Hannister could just make out the C-17 Globemaster, a small pinprick in the blue sky. He glanced at the honor guard to his right and saw them imperceptibly straighten. This was the one.

  The aircraft rapidly grew in size, until Hannister could make out the windows of the cockpit and the landing gear underneath. It seemed to slow in the air, gracefully approaching the runway of Dover Air Force Base, then touched down with a puff of smoke off the tires.

  The plane rapidly taxied to their location, all other operations halted for this one flight, and wheeled around until its tail was facing the procession. The ramp began to lower, moving at a pace that lent dignity to the affair. Before it touched the ground Hannister could see five flag-draped containers. He heard someone sniffle, and saw Chelsea Warren, Peyton Warren’s daughter, pushing a handkerchief to her face. Peyton’s son, Chad, was stoic.

  There had been some consternation on how the return would be handled, with the staff discussing how best to depict the event for the press, but Libby Warren, President Warren’s widow, had cut it short, saying the return would be handled exactly like every soldier who had come before. In her words, “He died in war, and he’ll be treated with the same respect. No giant processional. No horses or bugles or twenty-one-gun salutes. No parades or speeches. Whatever the soldier gets is what he gets.”

  And so they stood at attention on the greasy Dover tarmac, the sky blindingly bright, the wind whipping the dress hems and pant legs of the procession, watching the ramp lower.

  When it was finished, Hannister could see five men in uniform, one behind each casket. The honor guard began to march, brightly colored in the uniforms of each service, trooping up the ramp in a platoon-size formation. Th
ey broke ranks and positioned themselves in a practiced motion, three men to a side, one at the head of each casket. Hannister could faintly hear the commands in the wind, and all five caskets rose; then, one by one, began the train to the waiting transfer vans, passing by the families who had gathered to pay respect.

  The uniformed men to his left and right began to salute, and he followed suit, wishing he’d had the time for someone to show him how to do it correctly.

  President Warren came by first, followed by the remains of only four of his staff—the few who could be found and positively identified in the time allotted at the crash site.

  A second flight was scheduled later that day, bringing home the remains of between twelve and eighteen people. Those remains would get the same dignified return, but they would be moved to the mortuary for forensic analysis to determine who they actually belonged to.

  The train of the dead passed by, the only noise the clicking of shoes on the asphalt, and one by one the caskets were loaded into a US Air Force transport vehicle, just like every other soldier who had made this same sad trip. The salutes were dropped, and the vehicle drove away. The procession began to break up, the families of the staffers moving to the mortuary on foot, the presidential family standing still, unsure of what to do next.

  President Hannister went to Libby and said some words, then shook the hand of Chad and kissed Chelsea on the cheek. And that was it.

  Within seven minutes he was inside Marine One, flying back to the White House, flanked on all sides by members of his national security team, all of whom had been working nonstop.

  Hannister said, “Anything new?”

  Alexander Palmer said, “It was a rocket. Positively confirmed by the NTSB team. Air Force One was attacked.”

  Hannister looked out the window, the ground falling away as they rose, and muttered, “Christ,” then said, “They found the black boxes? What do you mean, ‘positively’?”

  “Yes, sir, along with other evidence. What they found is irrefutable.”

  “Where did the missile come from?”

  General Durham said, “We’ve gone over all the satellite footage and have a heat source inside Ukraine at the time of the incident.”

  “So it didn’t come from Russian soil?”

  “No, but it was most definitely a Russian-made missile system. We believe it was a Buk, the same system that brought down the Malaysian airliner.”

  “So this could be a mistake? Or do we believe it’s deliberate?”

  The director of national intelligence said, “Sir, the heat signature is inside rebel-controlled territory, which is to say, it’s pretty much in Russian territory. They don’t do anything without approval.”

  Hannister turned to him and spoke slowly. “Be clear on what you’re saying. Very, very clear. Is it your assessment that Russia deliberately attacked and killed the president of the United States?”

  “Sir, Russia has been on the leading edge of Ukraine and Crimea from the beginning. Every single event that has transpired there has been at the behest of Putin. Make no mistake, when he wanted a ‘spontaneous’ uprising, he got it. The fact is that the rebels wouldn’t even have the Buk system if it weren’t for Russia, and they surely wouldn’t have the training to use it by themselves.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. It’s a simple yes or no. Is the intelligence community telling me this is a slam dunk? Because if they are, the end state is going to be the same as last time.”

  The DNI paused, not wanting to use the words his predecessor had used in the run-up to invading Iraq, telling the administration that the existence of Saddam Hussein’s WMD was a “slam dunk.” He finally said, “Nothing is one hundred percent, but knowing what we do about the state of play in the rebel-held territories, it would be impossible for them to fire missiles without being ordered to by the Russians.”

  “Then how did the Malaysian airliner get shot down? Are you saying Russia ordered that as well?”

  “No, not at all, but that is the exception that proves the rule. The Malaysian airline was a mistake that cost Russia and the rebels greatly on the world stage, and because of it, Russia gained complete control of all the systems they had given to the rebels. Precisely to prevent another accidental shooting. If a shooting occurs now, it’s deliberate.”

  Hannister turned to the State Department’s undersecretary for political affairs—now a de facto secretary of state, and said, “What’s Putin saying? Have you talked to their foreign minister?”

  “Yes, sir. They’re not disputing the missile launch, but are claiming a terrorist attack. They’re blaming Ukrainian nationalists, a group called the Crimean Tatars. They were pushed out of the peninsula after the annexation, and are the ones we believe exploded the power grid going into the Crimean peninsula a year ago. Russia is actually using the attack as a way to leverage support against them.”

  “So you’re with the DNI? You think Russia’s behind the death of President Warren?”

  “No. Not completely.” She pulled out a tablet and said, “The foreign minister sent these photos. Of course, there’s no way to tell if they’re staged or when or where they were taken, but he is adamant that this is the Buk that launched the missiles.”

  She flicked through a few applications, then brought up a stark picture: a Buk missile launcher with no missiles mounted. In the foreground were three dead men, splayed on the ground as if they’d been executed, blood running over rebel uniforms.

  Beth said, “The foreign minister says these were the rebels manning the launcher, and that someone killed them and took it over.”

  Hannister used his finger to tap the screen on a black blob, saying, “What’s that?”

  “A human. Someone who was caught in the backblast and literally cooked.”

  Hannister said nothing, letting the picture sink in, truthfully wanting a solution to appear. Anything to tell him what to do next.

  General Durham said, “Sir, I told you this is exactly what Putin would do. Claim a misfire, then storm into Belarus. From there, he’s one more false crisis away from the Baltic states. Make no mistake, he’s going to play you. He doesn’t want a war, and is convinced he doesn’t need one. All he needs is plausible deniability, and one crisis after another. He’s going to walk all over us.”

  “Where do we stand with deployments?”

  “Not nearly as good as we should be. I’ve got one brigade of the 82nd in Poland, and another on the way. I have about fifty percent mission capable on war stocks for the 1st Cavalry Division to fall in on—they needed a helluva lot more work than we expected—so I can’t do anything with that for at least another week. The problem is our ongoing commitments. Iraq and Afghanistan have sucked us dry. Both the 173rd Airborne out of Italy and the 2nd Cav out of Germany are committed in another theater. At this moment, I’ve got a battalion of Rangers, the Marine Corps Black Sea Rotational Force, and a Stryker Brigade out of Fort Carson. I can cobble together a fighting force, but it’s nowhere near what the Russians can bring to bear. The one bright side is airpower. We can absolutely annihilate anything that flies over Europe, which will give us an edge on the ground. Bottom line: I can fight right now, but if you want to seize terrain, I need another month.”

  Hannister nodded at Alexander Palmer, wishing mightily he’d brought Kurt Hale with him. “What do you think?”

  “Well, I’m not as bullish as the chairman on culpability, but it does look pretty incriminating.”

  “Who’s analyzed these pictures? I’m sure someone has.”

  The DNI said, “We did, in fact, analyze them. The Buk in the picture has been seen before in Ukraine. It’s included in some other images we have, and has enough identifying characteristics that we can confirm the specific launcher, so we know it’s an actual rebel Buk and not staged. The rebel uniforms are accurate, as is the terrain surrounding the Buk. It is most likely a com
plete charade for our benefit, but we can’t prove it through the imagery. There is nothing we can find where we could say, ‘Nice try. Why is X in this photo?’ It’s as real as we can prove, but that doesn’t disprove a setup. Remember, the Russians are expert at this sort of thing.”

  Hannister said, “Except for the burned guy. That’s a bit much.”

  Beth from State said, “Yes, yes. I was saying that exact same thing. Why put a burned guy in the picture? The dead rebels are enough to prove what they wanted. It’s just random enough to . . . to . . . be real.”

  General Durham said, “Awww, bullshit. Look, sir, NATO is spinning up over this, and individual countries are starting to rattle individual sabers. We need to get on top of it. Show leadership, or we’re going to have leadership stripped from us, just like what happened in Libya. You can’t lead from behind here. You have to lead.”

  38

  Hannister bristled at the words, saying, “And just what does that mean? Is your sole view of leadership nothing more than wielding a hammer?”

  General Durham took a breath. With over thirty-seven years of service, he’d seen the good and the bad, and he was convinced he was seeing the latter now. He said, “Sir, you’re about to cause World War Three because you’re dithering. You want to fire me, then go ahead, but President Warren nominated me because I don’t dance. I tell it like it is. If we don’t take charge of this, mark my words, it will grow out of our control.”

  When Hannister didn’t respond, he said, “For Christ’s sake! They killed our president! Surely on a personal level that means something.”

  The outburst from General Durham was like a slap in the face. Hannister leaned forward, speaking so low that what he said was lost by the noise of the helicopter to those on the outer ring of seats.

  “General Durham, I appreciate your advice, and I realize I have never served in the military, but if you question my commitment to bringing President Warren’s killers to justice again, I won’t fire you. I’ll rip out your fucking heart.”