by Dale Brown
“The commandos he sent to Turkmenistan—”
“The ones he sent in to sneak into Mary and reconnoiter the Taliban positions — I remember,” Filippov said. “What about them? Were they successful?” He looked at Sen’kov’s horrified, incredulous expression. “Some of them get hurt?”
“All of them… got dead,” Sen’kov breathed.
“What?” Filippov cried, rising to his feet. “All of them? How many…?”
“Three hundred.”
Filippov was too stunned to speak.
“Gryzlov is shutting down the airspace over Turkmenistan, and he’s going to send in a large bomber force,” Sen’kov went on. “You need to contact the American foreign ministry and the White House right away, notify them what happened, and tell them that for our protection we are imposing a blockade of Turkmen airspace.”
“Sir, we didn’t discuss doing that — not even as a contingency,” Filippov said. “Besides, we can’t legally just close off another country’s airspace. My advice would be to let a bunch of journalists in to see what those Taliban raiders did. Then the world might be more on our side when we’re ready to strike.”
“General Gryzlov is sending over an execution order for me to sign right now,” Sen’kov said. “He’s already issued a warning order to his bomber forces.”
“Well, fuck him until you decide what you want to do first,” Filippov said. “He’s not the—” Filippov stopped and looked at Sen’kov with a perplexed expression that quickly turned to shock. “Wait a minute… Gryzlov was yelling at you on the phone just now? He was telling you what he was going to do, and he ordered you to comply?”
“He threatened me,” Sen’kov said.
Filippov had never seen the president so scared before — in fact, he thought he’d never seen anyone so scared before, even Zhurbenko just before they hauled him away to prison.
“He threatened to kill me, blow up the Kremlin — and he’s serious, Ivan. He’s not crazy — he’s dead serious.”
“He needs to be arrested — no, he needs to be disposed of!” Filippov cried. “Threatening the president of the federation, threatening the lives of government officials — who in hell does he think he is?”
“Who’s going to dispose of him, Ivan? You? Me? He’s threatened to turn every uniformed man and woman against me. And after what happened in the Balkans, I don’t think the Duma or the bureaucrats will stand in his way.”
“Don’t let him bullshit you, sir,” Filippov said. “The MVD Interior Troops and the OMON special-assignments command forces assigned to protect you are not under his command — they’re part of the Interior Ministry.”
“That’s… what? A few thousand troops? Maybe ten thousand? He controls over a million battle-ready troops.”
“He doesn’t command them — he runs the general staff,” Filippov said. “He can’t get on the radio or TV tomorrow and order all those troops to do what he…”
But Filippov’s voice trailed off, and Sen’kov immediately knew why. They both knew that General Anatoliy Gryzlov might just be popular enough to do exactly that: get on TV and the nationwide radio system, address the Russian people, order a coup, and roll his tanks into Red Square to take over the government.
Tomorrow. Maybe even tonight.
“What are you going to do?” Filippov breathed.
“We’re going to do exactly what he told us to do,” Sen’kov said nervously. “We are going to get Gurizev to immediately rescind his invitation for the Americans to visit Ashkhabad, and we’re going to announce an air cordon of Turkmenistan. And then we’re going to let Gryzlov pound the hell out of those Taliban.” Sen’kov thought for a moment, then added, “And we are going to use every opportunity, quietly and publicly, to distance ourselves from this military action.”
“But you’ve got to sign the execution order.”
“I said I would sign it, but Gryzlov said he was going to deploy his troops immediately and attack as soon as they were in place,” Sen’kov said. “I think we could arrange for Gryzlov’s office to think I signed the order….”
“So if the attacks work, you can show you signed on to the plan,” Filippov said. “And if it doesn’t work…”
“I’ll show I didn’t sign the order, which makes Gryzlov look even more like a berserker than he already is.”
“But if Gryzlov finds out that you double-crossed him?”
“We’ll just have to be sure that he’s taken care of before that happens,” Valentin Sen’kov said. “We’ll start building a ‘watch file’ on Gryzlov with the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Bureau.” The Federal Security Bureau was the new name of the old Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnoti, or KGB, the main foreign-and internal-security and intelligence agency in Russia, whose commander reported directly to the president. “I’ll need a copy and transcript of his tirade on the phone to me. That’ll show the world that the man’s insane. Then I won’t be accused of murder — I’ll be praised for ridding the world of yet another mad dog.”
OVER THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA
A short time later
Assistant Deputy Secretary of State Isadora Meiling stepped quietly past the sleeping berths occupied by former president Kevin Martindale. Oh, God, she thought. All she could think about was sneaking in there and giving him a kiss — or maybe something more. What was it about that guy anyway? His supernatural silver locks? The tight ass? Or the sheer power that seemed to ooze from every pore of his body?
She knocked twice on a locked door, swiped her passkey on the lock, and went inside to the private cabin in the rear of the Air Force C-32A transport, a modified VIP version of the commercial Boeing 757 airliner. The private VIP cabin had a walkway on the port side of the aircraft, making room for two soundproof sleeping quarters on the starboard side. The cabin then opened up into the main working area. There was a large semicircular desk, a small eight-person conference area in front of the desk with a table and laptop computer hookups, another desk on the starboard side, and electronic and office equipment in glass-enclosed soundproof racks. Two aides were working away at their computers; behind them Deputy Secretary of State Maureen Hershel was also busy typing on her laptop.
She looked up and noticed the worried look on Meiling’s face. “What do you have, Izzy?” she asked.
Meiling glanced around to see who else might be in the room.
“Martindale is finally taking a nap. I’ve never seen people use the phone as much as he and his staff do — he probably had every transponder channel on every satellite in earth orbit tied up. So what do you have?”
“The latest from Turkmenistan,” Meiling replied. She placed a folder on Hershel’s desk. “Late yesterday some Turkmen and Russian military forces attacked those Taliban insurgents.”
“What was the outcome?” Hershel asked, opening the folder and studying the maps. “Anything left of the Taliban?”
“The Turkmen units and their Russian officer corps got slaughtered,” Meiling said.
Hershel’s jaw dropped in surprise.
“Sixty percent casualties in less than half a day. The Taliban insurgents are firmly in control of the city of Mary and the TransCal Petroleum lines.”
“Oh, shit,” Maureen said. “Well, that’s what General McLanahan predicted all along. We can expect the rest of his predictions to come true, too — including the Russians’ counterattack. Anything else?”
“The Russians’ counterattack, ma’am.” She dropped another folder on Hershel’s desk. “Shortly after the battle outside Mary, the Russians tried to insert about three hundred commandos northeast of the city.”
“ ‘Tried’?”
“The Taliban troops were waiting for them,” Izzy said. She tapped the folder with a long, red-painted fingernail. “Looks like every Russian helicopter was shot down, and every Russian soldier is either dead or captured. The satellite photos, sent from Battle Mountain, are pretty explicit.”
“My God.” Maureen thought for a moment
. “Ask Colonel Briggs to come in here.”
The tall, good-looking black officer was brought into the VIP cabin within moments, followed by Sergeant Major Chris Wohl. Maureen handed Briggs the message form.
“Your thoughts, Colonel?” she asked.
Briggs studied the reports for a few moments, then handed them to Chris Wohl. “Any word from the Turkmen foreign ministry?” Briggs asked.
“Just the warning that insurgents have taken Mary.”
“Has Turkmenistan revoked our overflight authorization?”
“No,” Isadora Meiling said. She turned to Hershel and said, “The closest divert base is Athens. Ankara, Turkey, is ahead, or we can reverse course and go to Rome.”
Hershel looked puzzled. “Land in Europe? We’ve already got clearance to land in Bahrain, and we’ve got permission to land in Ashkhabad. Why do we need to reverse course?”
“Why? A major shooting war just started in Turkmenistan!”
“I agree with the deputy secretary,” Briggs said. “If everyone is going to respect our diplomatic credentials, we should keep on pressing forward.”
“Land in Turkmenistan? In the middle of a war? Excuse me, Colonel, but that sounds crazy,” Meiling said incredulously. “Is there any guarantee that the Taliban or the Russians are going to respect our credentials? Is someone’s air-to-air or surface-to-air missile going to respect our credentials before it blows us out of the sky?”
“Good points,” Chris Wohl said.
Izzy Meiling nodded and smiled at the big Marine — and Hal Briggs nearly fell over in a dead faint when he saw Wohl nod and even appear to favor her with a half smile in return. When Chris Wohl was on the job, he usually remained as serious as a nuclear war. That microscopic smile was the closest Hal had ever seen the big Marine come to emotionally connecting with a woman — Hal hesitated to call it a “flirt”—in eleven years of working with the guy.
“It might be safer to land in some neighboring country — the United Nations base at Samarkand in Uzbekistan would be my first choice — and proceed by land or helicopter, or conclude your business by phone, or have the principals come to you,” Wohl added.
“All good suggestions — except I don’t feel we have the time,” Hershel said. “I know there’s a risk involved, but I want to proceed.”
There was a knock at the door. Meiling checked the peephole. “It’s President Martindale.” The phone rang at that moment, and Hershel picked it up immediately as she waved for Meiling to let Martindale in. “Hershel… okay, operator, going secure.” She pushed a button on her phone and waited for the beeping and hissing to stop. “Yes, I’m secure, thank you, operator…. I’ll stand by.”
A few moments later: “Maureen?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“I don’t suppose I can assume that because your plane hasn’t diverted, you didn’t get the word.”
“I got the information on the attacks on the city of Mary and the Taliban ambushing those Russian commandos, Mr. President,” Hershel replied. “But unless they revoke our landing permission, I intend to complete this mission.”
“Miss Hershel, you know I try not to involve myself in my staff’s decision making, but this is one instance when I think the smart thing would be to postpone your trip to Turkmenistan until things have calmed down.”
“I’ll talk it over with my staff, sir.”
“But your inclination is to go ahead with the trip.”
“It is, Mr. President.”
Maureen heard the president sigh, but he did not contradict her. Instead he said, “I heard you brought along some… help.”
Not one word of advice, second-guessing, or questioning — Maureen liked that. This was a president who trusted his staff, all right. “I hope that’s okay, sir.”
“It was a good call. What’s your plan?”
“If we’re allowed to land, I’m going to meet with Gurizev,” Hershel replied. “If they refuse, I’ll make a courtesy call to Niyazov — maybe he’ll have some information. Then I’ll meet with the Russian ambassador, if he’s still in the capital. And then I’ll try to meet with the Taliban general.”
“And what about your new ‘security personnel’? What are their plans, once they get to Turkmenistan?”
“Their plans, sir?”
“In light of what’s happened in Turkmenistan these past few days, Miss Hershel, I think they’ll be more effective on their own, not tied to your embassy staff or your travel contingent,” the president said.
Hershel looked at Briggs and Wohl — and only then realized that they were probably not going to want to stick around just to baby-sit her. “I think I see what you mean, sir. I’ll find out and let you know.”
“Sounds fine, Maureen,” the president said. “Keep me advised. Good luck.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.” And like that the call was over. Maureen looked at the receiver as if wondering if that was really all he had to say, then put the receiver back on its cradle. “The president wished us luck.”
“What’s happened, Maureen?” Kevin Martindale asked. He saw Briggs and Wohl and extended a hand. “How are you boys doing?”
“Very well, sir,” Hal Briggs replied.
“Mr. President,” Chris Wohl chimed in, as warm as he ever was — which was never very warm at all.
“I heard that Thorn reinstated you and gave you promotions. I’m glad to hear it.”
“Thanks to you, I hear, sir,” Briggs said.
“Just trying to undo the mess I caused by signing us on to that deal in Africa,” Martindale said. “I know I’ll never undo the pain I’ve caused Patrick. How is he?”
“Just fine, sir.”
Maureen Hershel’s face brightened when she heard Patrick’s name. “I didn’t realize you knew each other,” she said.
“We go back a long way,” Martindale said. “I didn’t know they were part of this trip, but, by God, I’m glad they’re here.” He clasped Wohl on the shoulder. “I hope you brought all the gear with you.”
“We did, sir.”
“And Patrick…?”
“Standing by, sir.”
“Excellent.” He turned to Hershel. “What’s happened, Maureen?”
“Things are getting pretty tense over in Turkmenistan, Mr. President,” Hershel said. “There’s been a skirmish—” She stopped, then said, “No, I won’t try to soft-pedal this. Sir, there’s been a serious development. The Taliban insurgents decimated a Turkmen army force outside the city of Mary.”
“My God,” Martindale breathed. “Thorn should expect the Russians to counterattack, maybe try to land some commandos behind the Taliban forces in the city, maybe send some long-range bombers to pound the crap out of them like they did in Chechnya—”
“The Russians apparently tried to airlift about three hundred commandos into the outskirts of Mary,” Maureen said. “Some Taliban forces ambushed them with shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. All of the Russians were either killed or captured.”
“So it’s war,” Martindale muttered. “Have we been ordered to turn around? Have our landing or overflight rights been canceled?”
“No, sir.”
“Did Thorn order you to turn around?”
“The president advised me to postpone the trip,” Hershel replied, “but he said it was my call.”
“And?”
“The conflict happened almost two hundred miles from the capital — I think we’ll be all right,” Hershel said. “But I’m more concerned about your safety, Mr. President. I’m concerned about not making it to Turkmenistan.”
“I only need to know one thing: Is Patrick McLanahan on the case?” Martindale asked.
Maureen Hershel blinked in surprise. “He happened to be the first person I called when I planned this trip.”
“You did exactly the right thing, Maureen,” Martindale said, barely disguising a sigh of relief. “I can guarantee that the general has been doing little else but watching over things in Turkmenistan si
nce you first called.”
That made Maureen Hershel feel very good, and she wasn’t ashamed to let everyone see it. “Then I recommend we continue the mission,” she said. “If overflight or landing privileges are revoked, we’ll need to reassess.” She turned to Briggs and Wohl. “What do you gents need from me? Satellite phones? Computers?”
“Access to our equipment,” Briggs said. “We may have you take a few folks off the manifest in Bahrain and make the necessary calls to Ashkhabad.”
“Some of you aren’t going to Turkmenistan with us?”
“Oh, we’ll be there, ma’am — just not as part of your contingent,” Briggs said with a smile. “We might have the need to move rapidly, and it would be easier if we weren’t forced to stay with the group.”
Maureen held up a hand. “I didn’t hear that,” she said. “You’re sick, you need a wisdom tooth pulled, you’re going to have a baby — just tell me what I’m supposed to tell the Turkmen government and I’ll do it.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll be nearby,” Briggs said. “You just make all your visits and keep to your schedule — we’ll do the rest.”
“We especially want you to insist that the Turkmen government allow you to travel outside the capital to meet with the Taliban fighters,” Wohl added.
“I wouldn’t count on that.”
“Then we’ll take a meeting anyway—our way,” Wohl said.
His voice made Maureen Hershel’s skin turn cold and break into goose bumps. She was amused to see it had the same effect on Isadora Meiling — except hers didn’t appear to be goose bumps of fear, but goose bumps of pleasure. Izzy Meiling, who had her pick of any man in Washington, D.C. — falling for a broken-faced, gravel-voiced, jarhead Marine? Well, why the hell not?
NORTHWEST OF MARY, TURKMENISTAN
That same time
The twelve Russian Tupolev-160 “Blackjack” bombers had flown all the way from Engels Air Base for this mission. The Blackjacks carried a maximum load of twenty-four Kh-15P long-range attack missiles on rotary launchers. Each of the missiles had three-hundred-kilogram fuel-air explosive warheads, designed to knock down and kill any Taliban forces not in the safety of shelters. The Russians wanted to preserve as much as possible of the infrastructure at the two major airports at Mary for the eventual invasion forces that would soon follow.
