Kingdom Come

by David Rollins

  I wondered how much Igor knew about Natasha and the president. “Were she and Petrovich … bad? Bad individually. Bad together?” Define bad? Unlikely. We were barely half a step above sign language. I was grasping. I rephrased. “Were Natasha and the president lovers?”

  “Lovers? Nyet. Nyet lovers.”

  “Why would Natasha say they were if they were not?” I asked him, a stream of consciousness question. The fact that she would lie about something like that made no sense.

  “Did President Petrovich like Natasha?”

  “Da. Natasha, she …” He held out his hands like he was feeling a couple of melons, squeezing them for ripeness. This universal signing crossed all language and cultural barriers. Petrovich thought Novikova had great melons. Check. No argument there.

  “What about Natasha? Did she have feelings for the president?”

  “Feelings? What is?”

  “Did she like him?”

  “No like. Ask Natasha.”

  This was an interesting departure from Natasha’s story. Why claim they were trading fluids when they weren’t? A question for the serzhánt. Moving on, I asked him, “Why were you traveling with the president?”

  “Fighting. I teach.”

  He seemed to relax now the questions were moving away from Petrovich and Natasha.

  “You were teaching Petrovich to fight?”

  “Da.”

  “What sort of fighting.”

  “Ju-jitsu. He want make video.”

  I recalled the manner in which Igor had pacified Mazool. According to Natasha, Captain Russia here already had a big rap with the folks back home. And Petrovich was a narcissist fond of posting videos of his machismo on the World Wide Web. A friendly match between the Russian commander-in-chief and the cage-fighting Spetsnaz hero of the Crimea was definitely his style. “Was Petrovich an okay fighter?”

  He rocked his big hand from side to side, which I took to mean no, not really.

  I was sure the YouTube video would have told a different story. And there we were, back at the beginning. “Natasha says one of Petrovich’s bodyguards blew up the Hind. Geronimo, I think the man’s name was,” I said, impressing myself with my memory. “You agree with that?”

  He frowned the frown that says I don't know what the hell you’re talking about.

  I gave it another crack, using my best Russian. “Um, Geronimo … sovich? Something like that?”

  He brightened. “Geronosovich. Arkady Geronosovich.”

  Okay, you wanna split hairs with me, fine. “There you go,” I said, “Geronosovich.”

  “Da.” He pointed to the M26 grenades attached to my webbing. “Bodyguard. He use this.”

  So we got there with the name, and what Geronimo used to blow it up with. “Natasha said Geronosovich was an Islamic terrorist.”

  Igor’s face split into a wry half grin. “Nyet. Nyet terrorist. Nyet Islamic.”

  Okay, so this was also interesting. Another divergence from Natasha’s story. “Serzhánt Novikova told me Geronosovich said, ‘Allahu akbar’ before detonating the weapon.” That, in my book, tended to suggest fairly heavily that the would-be assassin was, at the very least, leaning towards Islam.

  “No terrorist,” he repeated. “Natasha. She know … You ask.”

  If Geronosovich wasn’t a terrorist, why’d he blow up the president’s bird, killing himself, and a bunch of others in the process? Igor believed Natasha had the answer. Somehow now that we were going on a hunt for President Petrovich, this was becoming important to the snooping side of Cooper I’d left behind at Al Udeid. Someone was lying and I didn't think it was Igor. At least, not about this. Igor was lying about other things: specifically why he wanted to hang out with my team and me rather than rejoin his comrades. I’d already asked the question. He said his money was on us beating Mother Russia to finding Petrovich, or words to that effect. Really? Sure, the US has a reputation for having the best surveillance gadgets, but I knew our technological limitations. And I was pretty sure, whether they were prepared to admit it or not, the Russians did too. No, Igor was hanging out with us for a different reason, but what was it?

  “Boss,” said a voice in my ear – Bo. “Company, three o clock.”

  I looked out to our right. Over on the horizon were faint specks. “What have we got?”

  “Bedouins. Folks riding camels, anyway. They’re packing Kalashnikovs.”

  I pictured his drone buzzing them – the 21st century circling the 6th century armed with AKs. Actually, the rifles weren’t relevant. A carbine here was like underwear back home – everyone wore it. A shriek underscored by a thunderous rolling boom disturbed the monotony of the Toyota’s labors. Fighter jets - two of them from out of the east, flaps down and a couple of hundred feet off the deck. Sukhoi SU 27s, a.k.a. Flankers, the Russian version of our F-15 Eagle, painted three-tone gray-green camo. They passed close, the pilots banking hard to eyeball us. “Wave!” I shouted above the racket and we gave them a brace of gestures sans middle fingers. Okay, mine was raised, but the ambulance with its big red crescent would hopefully give them a solid reason to ignore us. Were these Russians an advance search party or was this a chance meeting between them and us? Did they have coordinates for the same search area? If so, how far behind them were the Hinds, BTRs and legions of Spetsnaz? Whatever, the sudden arrival of these Sukhois was a reminder if I needed one that the Pentagon had given us a tall order – to find Petrovich before the Russians did. With any luck, the Kremlin and the White House were right now patching up their differences and we could just stand back and let their military do its thing, find its commander-in-chief, kill the Scorpion and then we could all go back to a world that almost made vague sense.

  Who was I kidding?

  Forty-five

  Ronald V. Small @realSmall

  Today I hit a hole in one. Nothing in life provides more satisfaction.

  The Russian ambassador lowered himself with some care into the chair.

  “Ahh,” he said, the ubiquitous grunt disguised as an expression of appreciation, “the famous desk.”

  Secretary of State Bassingthwaite presented the old GRU colonel with a generous tumbler of Iordanov vodka with rocks. “Mikhail Ivanovich?”

  “It is early …”

  “Breakfast of champions.”

  The ambassador was easily convinced. “Spasibo. Thank you.” The ambassador accepted the drink with the enthusiasm of a man half perished from thirst accepting clean water. Then, leaning forward, he ran a hand along the front edge of the desk and said, “Donated by the British Queen Victoria to President Hayes in 1880. Beautiful.”

  “It’s not so nice.” President Small, seated behind the desk, was dismissive. “I have one in my office back at the tower. It has solid gold knobs. Worth a lot of money.”

  “Ah yes, but this one is made from history – used by many presidents, fashioned from timbers recovered from the Arctic exploration vessel, HMS Resolute. What momentous events it has witnessed.”

  The president said, “Who knew, right?”

  “You did not know this?” The ambassador was surprised.

  Bassingthwaite jumped in. Clearing his throat, he said, “Thank you for agreeing to meet with us, Mr Ambassador.”

  “I like the Oval Office,” Rodchenko said, taking in the surroundings with a measure of awe.

  Looking around, President Small offered, “It’s small. I have much bigger offices all over. But this is a symbolic place. A very powerful place. It intimidates a lot of people.”

  “Is that why you invited me here,” Rodchenko wondered, “to intimidate me?”

  “No, please, Mr Ambassador,” said Bassingthwaite. “We asked you here because President Small –”

  “I can speak for myself,” the president admonished him.

  The SECSTATE smiled thinly. “Of course, Mr President.”

  “I asked you here,” the president continued, “to tell you that the American people are very anxious about Valeriy’s …
ah, predicament … and I wanted to assure you personally that we had nothing to do with his helicopter being shot down, which was very terrible, very grave, and to say we will do anything we can to help find him – are doing whatever we can to find him – and bring these terrorist criminals to justice, because they are very bad people and we need to hunt them down and kill them all until every single one of them is dead.”

  Bassingthwaite examined the old colonel’s scarred and battered face and, as usual, got nothing. It was the perfect face for an ambassador or a gambler – completely impossible to read.

  Rodchenko rolled the rocks around his glass, taking time to consider his response. “Mr President, our own investigators have recovered missile fragments from the helicopter accompanying President Petrovich. They have determined that this missile was made in Turkey.”

  Bassingthwaite was visibly relieved. “So not one of ours.”

  “It was an FIM-92A Stinger missile,” Rodchenko replied.

  The SECSTATE went pale.

  “What is it?” the president asked, wondering at the sudden silence.

  “The Stinger is made in Turkey under license by Roketsan, Mr President,” Rodchenko informed him.

  “So?” President Small’s shoulders were hunched up around his ears, the significance of this news failing him.

  “The Stinger is a Raytheon product, Mr President,” Bassingthwaite informed him, sweat beading on his forehead, one of his worst fears realized.

  “But Turkish, right? Not one of ours…”

  “Technically, it is very much one of yours,” Rodchenko pointed out. “Turkey put them into the hands of anti-Assad fighters. This the Turks did in secret, but they did it with your permission and your blessing. Turkey was merely your proxy. We know this because, of course, we have our own sources. We protested. We warned you through back channels that these missiles would put our pilots at risk, which you assured us would not happen. But of course weapons are captured, and they leak from this group today and pass into the hands of another group tomorrow. Allegiances there shift like the wind. And now our president is shot down and captured and ISIS has crucified him for the whole world to see. This is an insult to all of Russia – to see our president treated this way. The country is united in anger at your betrayal of friendship –”

  “Now wait just a minute,” President Small said, outraged.

  “A betrayal, Mr President. Nothing is clearer to us.”

  “Mr Ambassador, there seems to be some misunderstanding here,” Bassingthwaite said. “You’re saying that your president’s helicopter was shot down by a missile? Our sources –”

  “Misunderstanding? Did not your own president just say he wanted to assure me personally that you had nothing to do with his helicopter being shot down?”

  “Sir, witnesses on the ground at the time reported that a missile shot down only one of the helicopters. An internal explosion of some kind disabled President Petrovich’s helicopter, rather than a missile.”

  “Witnesses? You have witnesses? Were these witnesses soldiers? Your soldiers? Were they, indeed, the very soldiers who shot down these helicopters?”

  Bassingthwaite was suddenly aware of the trap he had just stumbled into, and silently cursed his own foolishness for doing so. “I can assure you, Mr Ambassador, that the United States was not involved in this terrible accident and its outcome in any way.”

  “That is not how it seems to us. President Small, you and President Petrovich were friends and then you were not and then you were, back and forth – a most confusing dance. And now President Petrovich is brought down in the presence of your own soldiers and given to ISIS. There is a faction in the Kremlin that considers this an act of war. You have seen the protests. The riots. There is much anger.”

  “War between our countries would be unthinkable,” Bassingthwaite reminded him, his legs feeling weak. The special operations unit in Syria had confirmed that Petrovich’s helicopter had been taken out not by a missile but by other means. The missile attack on the second aircraft was merely opportunistic. The Hind just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. He sat, relieved that there was a chair under him. “Mr Ambassador, I must insist that there seems to be some confusion here. It’s probable that your president’s helicopter was sabotaged.”

  “Sabotage? You have evidence of this?”

  Bassingthwaite was not going to get caught a second time. “No, but –”

  “No, no evidence. But we have evidence of this missile.”

  The SECSTATE wondered if he should inform Rodchenko that two Russian citizens had been recovered from President Petrovich’s helicopter. But that would likely open another can of worms – why hadn’t he, Rodchenko, been informed; why hadn’t these citizens been turned over to Russian forces; were they in fact being held prisoner by US forces; were these soldiers the so-called witnesses; were the Russian citizens being held by the very unit that attacked the president’s helicopter? No, Bassingthwaite decided. Best to follow Director Hamilton’s advice and not give the Russians anything. Maybe the president and I have given them way too much already. Instead, he pointed out again, “Open hostilities between our two countries would be unthinkable.”

  Rodchenko responded, “Then tell me why your forces have moved to DEFCON Two?”

  “We raised our alert level because you raised yours,” President Small insisted.

  “We raised our alert level because of these events. Terrorists have our president, along with our most senior general and the codes for our nuclear weapons, codes now released on the dark web. This is a catastrophe of global proportions. What did you expect would happen, Mr President? You Americans never seem to understand that when you do these things, there are consequences beyond what you can predict.”

  “But, I insist - we haven’t done anything,” said Bassingthwaite, aware that he sounded shrill.

  “You know where our president is being tortured – the location.”

  “What? No. If we knew, we would inform you immediately! We would not keep that information to ourselves.”

  “I think you are not telling me the truth.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?” Bassingthwaite’s gorge was rising.

  Rodchenko turned to the president. “Did not your own press secretary announce that your military had solid leads? What solid leads are these?”

  Bassingthwaite could see instantly how this statement would look to the Russians.

  President Small said, “In fact, Mr Ambassador, she told the press we are doing everything that we can to help find Valeriy and bring the Scorpion to justice.”

  “And what, may I ask, are you doing in that regard?”

  “Everything we can.”

  “We think you have done more than enough.” Ambassador Rodchenko drained his glass, leaned forward and placed it on the desk on a coaster bearing the seal of the President of the United States of America. “Truly excellent vodka.” He stood and looked around. “You are right. This office really is quite small.” He ran his hand along the desk and appeared to pity it. “And now we have said everything that needs to be said. I must go and make my report.”

  “Mr Ambassador,” Bassingthwaite beseeched.

  Rodchenko put his hand up, the signal to stop. “Enough, please.”

  The SECSTATE went to get the door as the ambassador moved toward it on joints that were plainly giving him grief.

  “No need.” Rodchenko waved him away. “I can let myself out.”

  “I trust you will continue to protect our embassy in Moscow,” said Bassingthwaite.

  “We will do everything short of firing on our own people. Please see that your marines stationed within the building exercise the same restraint. Good day.”

  The door closed behind him. Bassingthwaite let out a long breath, not realizing he had been holding it.

  After a few seconds, President Small said, “The nerve of that guy. But I think he likes me and trusts me. What do you think?”

  Bassingth
waite blinked. “I’m, I’m sure that’s true, Mr President. Nevertheless, it may also be the wisest course to pull our team out of Syria – the one searching for President Petrovich. There is too much risk of a misunderstanding.”

  “Well, I disagree. If we find Valeriy, and find him alive, the Russians will be enormously grateful. Those are some pretty important bargaining chips right there. No, we need to keep some skin in the game. Think of it as a business deal, if you can.”

  “The Russians will shoot our people on sight and claim it was our fault.”

  President Small shook his head and looked at the SECSTATE as if he had no grasp of the situation at all. “Never gonna happen, Ed. Our SEALs are the best in the business.”

  Forty-six

  Ronald V. Small @realSmall

  Evildoers beware! America’s best weapons are its people. And we have over 300 million of them!

  This was the hard part. Major Schelly had called everyone, written up everything, and now there was nothing left to do but hurry up and wait. She considered calling Colonel Simmons at Creech and asking whether the Reapers were back on station, but the colonel had enough to occupy his time without having to field nuisance calls from her. If the killer drones were flying overwatch, then great, zero more to do. If not, there was still nothing she could action to change the situation. Simmons knew the score. Quickstep 3 had the highest priority.

  So, to pass the time, Schelly monitored the BBC, NBC and so forth. The world was in meltdown, but most of what they reported was repetitive regurgitation, some speculative and the rest unnecessary, even unhelpful, the reporting cycle sifting through the backstories of victims of the violence. However, the story just hitting her Twitter feed had Schelly’s full attention. The link said, End of Days. Today’s the day. She clicked on it.

  It was the lead news story breaking on NYTimes.com. Reports were coming in from all over of graveyards being disturbed – in the US, this had happened at Macon and Savannah, Georgia; in Parsippany, New Jersey; Eden Prairie, Minnesota; and Clarkstown, New York; in Canada it had happened at a cemetery in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan; in England, Surrey was the hotspot and half-a-dozen cities in other countries around the world – including, France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand – had experienced much the same thing. It was being called the “End of Days Phenomenon” because the graves appeared to have been disturbed from the inside, “as if the dead within had burst out” according to reports.