Tom Clancy's Op-Center--Dark Zone

by George Galdorisi

  “General Yershov, with respect, a solitary-target application of my resources, of Colonel Isaev’s men, of our satellites, would consume a great many assets for possibly negligible results,” Zharov said. “And other dangers might slip through.”

  “The GRU has watched his family without success,” Yershov said.

  “I understand that, sir,” Zharov replied. “What I would suggest is that we reverse-engineer the search. Assign a few eyes and ears to watch their forward armored units. Move through the entire array in an organized cycle. If any vehicles move toward the east, we can key on their communications and follow them backward. Somewhere there will be a source. Most likely encrypted, but that in itself will tell us where he is. Then we watch that place from the ground, from the sky, from space. We watch for him.”

  Yershov considered this. He was impressed that the man had crafted this plan over an empty table setting.

  “Thank you, Major,” the general said. “A very sensible approach. Do it.” He signaled to his adjutant, who stood at the rear of the hall. “But after dessert,” he said.

  The men exhaled like a beach ball deflating here, then there. Relaxed expressions returned to their faces. Yershov missed none of it. It had been an important first exchange with his command: he wanted them to know that he not only expected results but expected officers who were more dedicated to the mission than they were to rubber stamps and promotions.

  The rest of the meal was as relaxed a gathering among officers as any could recall, with every man eager to be about the business of organizing the full, integrated, and powerful activation of Sudzha Base.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Op-Center Headquarters, Fort Belvoir North,

  Springfield, Virginia

  June 3, 2:30 PM

  By the time Matt Berry arrived from the White House, Op-Center was already deep in preparations to send Volner’s team to Ukraine. He was shown to Williams’s office as Bankole was making the case for Flannery to accompany the team.

  “Paul, we’ve both been with wounded men,” Williams had said. “I don’t have to see the way he’s protecting his left side—I can see it in his eyes. This man is hurting.”

  Neither Flannery nor Bankole had denied it. Nonetheless, they pressed their argument. Ultimately, Williams had relented and left it up to Volner to make the go, no-go call.

  “If you can take the bouncing and turbulence of the Clipper, then you can probably endure the boat ride,” Williams decided. “But that is his call, upon the advice of Sergeant Carson.”

  Levi Carson was the team medic. Though he didn’t have veto authority over personnel, his advice weighed strongly on any decisions Volner made.

  The men had departed then, after which Williams sat with Berry, Anne, Wright, and Dawson to review the plans as they existed to that point. The general strategy was firmly in place. Volner and Bankole would work out the rest, with Flannery’s input, during the flight to Amasya Merzifon Airport, a military air base in Turkey near the Black Sea. The details that remained were to arrange the journey by sea through the Kerch Strait into the Azov.

  Berry excused himself to brief Harward, who would relay the information to the president.

  Lunch was ordered, and the team had their first break since morning.

  “You look the way I feel, Chase,” Dawson said as he unwrapped a taco.

  “Oh? How do you feel?” Williams asked, not yet touching his cheeseburger, only picking at the fries

  “I have never, not here or in the military, gone into a powder-keg situation with less information than we have now,” Dawson said.

  “Which is why we’re going,” Williams reminded him. “To get intel.”

  “Right,” Dawson said. “Gathering intel about a powder keg in a minefield.” He shook his head. “That’s got to be a new kind of rose-colored crazy, and I’ve been accused of some stouthearted calls.”

  “I know,” Williams said. “Russian maneuvers ramping up on one side. A possibly rogue, surgical Ukrainian military operation likely setting up on the other. NATO on a war footing, continuing to load Poland with materiel in the event of a Russian attack—a small army right on the doorstep of both sides. And our team winding its way through the middle in a hemisphere where Putin watches everything.” Williams looked at Berry. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t like the other choice—doing nothing,” Berry said.

  “Agreed,” Williams replied. “Though Putin could make an argument, one that would play across the globe, that we’re participating in whatever is being planned in Crimea.”

  “But your team will withdraw at the first sign of movement,” Berry said. “Yes?”

  “That’s the plan,” Dawson told him. “Assuming they don’t get pinned somewhere, in which case we don’t dare go in to extract them.”

  Williams’s phone had beeped. He saw that it was McCord and put him on speaker.

  “I just got word on what caused the Bionic Hill fire,” the intelligence director informed him. “A blast from a Russian mortar. They found shell fragments in the ruin, and a mortar in a nearby shed.”

  “Markings?” Willams asked.

  “Scraped off,” he replied. “They’re going through security footage, but whoever fired it did due diligence. There are definitely blind spots.”

  “Roger, it’s Brian,” Dawson said. “How does someone smuggle a mortar past security?”

  “Trucks full of crated equipment come and go all the time,” McCord replied.

  “It would’ve been stupidly easy.”

  “Any idea who fired it?” Williams asked.

  “Not yet,” McCord replied. “And it may not matter.”

  “What do you mean?” Williams asked.

  “Whether the Russians did it or the Ukrainians did it to make it seem like the Russians did it, all the Ukrainian public west of Crimea will hear is ‘A Russian mortar was fired,’ and they’ll be inflamed.”

  “Which would suggest Ukrainians looking to raise sentiment against Russia,” Williams said.

  “It doesn’t need raising,” Dawson pointed out. “It could just as well have been the Russians looking to anger the Ukrainians into launching a reckless attack—bigger than the one that’s being planned.”

  “Why would Russia want a bigger attack?” Williams asked.

  “Looks better to have that many more flaming Ukraininan tanks and artillery,” Dawson said.

  “It could also be the Ukrainians using a distraction to cover their tracks,” McCord suggested. “Or they may simply have wanted to obliterate that building and whatever they were doing there. Blaming it on the Russians was just a bonus.”

  “Good point,” Williams said.

  “We’re trying to find out more, but the truth is no one even knows for sure who was working in that back room.”

  “Do we know anything else about who Galina Petrenko or Fedir Lytvyn may have been working with?” Dawson asked.

  “Nothing,” McCord said. “We know they used burners. Fedir’s only had local embassy contacts on it.”

  “I’ve been wondering about something,” Dawson said. “There’s been a lot of talk about NATO being an empty suit, that if Putin attacks a member nation the United States would never become involved militarily. If something does get triggered, will Putin take a shot at Poland or another member to see what we do?”

  “Sort of the way Saddam Hussein fired Scuds into Israel during the Gulf War, trying to provoke them,” Williams said.

  “Exactly,” Dawson replied.

  “I’ve been leaning in that direction since this started,” Wright said. “Something that forces international involvement and, in lieu of war, lands Putin a treaty that legally gives him a new, more favorable map.”

  “You know, that could explain the secret involvement, perhaps, of members of the government in Kiev,” McCord suggested.

  “How so?” Williams asked.

  “There are many members of the Ukrainian Parliament who were frustrated by o
ur inactivity while Crimea burned,” McCord said.

  “We sent them arms through Turkey,” Dawson grumbled.

  “We sent rifles and semiautomatics on a fleet of fishing boats,” McCord jumped back. “I’m with Jim on this. My sources tell me that some members of Parliament actually found the delivery system insulting, as if we were saying that’s the proper conveyance method for a peasant population. There’s a bloc in Kiev that still wants us to commit at a higher, more visible level.”

  “By getting Putin pissed enough to attack a NATO member,” Williams said.

  “That’s right,” McCord replied. “And it’s three years later, when their frustration has metastasized into anger and impatience.”

  “Flirting with World War Three because you were insulted by arms shipments,” Anne said.

  “Look, I’m not justifying it, Anne—” McCord said, his voice rising.

  “I wasn’t implying that—”

  “But many of my colleagues inside the Beltway are looking at this very, very warily—that everything we’ve seen could be a provocation directed at Putin but really aimed at us. He overreacts, we’re forced to get involved. You want to talk paranoid? My counterpart at the CIA thinks Putin is actually orchestrating all of this, financing the rogue Ukrainians, to cause a rift in Kiev and use that as a reason to move in from Sudzha, ‘stabilize’ the region, and ensure peace on the border—from thirty, forty, fifty miles into Ukraine.”

  “Which he will then annex,” Anne said.

  “Unless NATO ousts him,” McCord said. “Which it probably won’t. Hence, a treaty. Hence, a new map with him not moving backward.”

  “I’m not buying this as Putin’s idea,” Dawson said. “The killing of the two agents doesn’t fit that scenario. I think this is just what it seems like: a bunch of crazy Ukrainians who have had it with Putin and Kiev. A sort of military coup without the coup. We just don’t know what the bigger picture looks like, if there even is one.”

  “I hear both of you,” Williams said. “We have to proceed under the assumption that there is a military plan afoot. Which is why, for a change”—he glanced back at Berry—“I’m with the president. We have to be very, very careful about what we say and do. My divining rod here is Ambassador Flannery. This is a man who knows the region and the people, and he doesn’t fool easily. He is very concerned, which is why we need Volner and Bankole and him on the ground there. Until we hear from them, let’s keep watching for signs of deployment large or small on either side of the border.”

  The meeting broke up without a consensus, which was the norm for the team … for any committee in any government. Anne was the last to depart—with a sympathetic glance back at Williams as she closed the door.

  The director sat back. He tried to eat, gave up. Trying to profile leaders and assemble clues that might define plans—it was all too damn speculative. And then lives were gambled on imperfect conclusions. It was like playing stud and betting everything on just one card. Frankly, he liked it better when he was in the field, following orders, with a target to take out. There were rules of engagement, objectives to be achieved, and officers who, if they had opinions, didn’t offer them unless asked.

  This job made him respect men like Flannery even more—the “geopolitical jugglers,” as Wright had once dubbed them, which was why he had deferred to the ambassador’s agitation and his insistence that he go abroad. That was really the tipping point for Williams: the older, injured man had made that request without knowing fully what hardships might follow. He didn’t know because Volner and Bankole hadn’t finished formulating the plan. If a veteran like Flannery was that concerned, then Williams should be, too.

  Williams angrily tossed the takeout tray into the trash. Thinking of the danger, fear, and deprivation he had known at times in his military career, the burger, the forced air of the office, the fact that he could walk outside into safe, warming sunlight made him feel decadent. The old excuse—“You’ve paid your dues”—didn’t find purchase when he thought of the sixty-two-year old in harm’s way.

  Fortunately for Williams, there was a solution and he applied it now, turning to emails. When he was at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, an ensign in their Germany and the Nazi Experience class had asked the professor a question:

  “I don’t know how I could have handled nine days of the Dunkirk evacuation,” he’d said, “thinking of all the troops that were trapped there.”

  “Thinking,” the teacher, USMC Major Tara Fitzpatrick, had replied. “Sometimes it’s best not to.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Atlantic Ocean

  June 3, 4:22 PM

  There was a Roy Rogers lyric that Mike Volner’s maternal grandfather, Albert, used to sing to him when he was very little:

  “I’m back in the saddle again…”

  It was the only part of the song Albert knew, and he kept repeating it, adding an “oh” before each refrain Volner had been too young to realize it at the time, but Albert and his Grandmother Eugenie were the only stability he had in his life. He lived with them from the time he was eight. Following a rancorous divorce, Volner’s father, a college professor, left the country and, four years alter, was killed as a bystander by a car bomb while teaching in Pakistan. His mother fell prey to the ravages of solitary drinking and prescription painkillers to the point of having to be institutionalized. That was when the living arrangements with his grandparents, in Germantown, outside Philadelphia, became permanent. Visits to Independence Hall, Valley Forge, Gettysburg, set him on the path to enlistment and his career.

  The military stopped well short of being a passion for Volner. He didn’t like going around in uniform, being peppered with the well-meant but unsolicited “Thank you for your service” comments from waitstaff and bank tellers and total strangers. He was raised with a respect and a love of America and what that stood for, even the old movie and TV cowboys, and this was the best way he felt he could serve the nation.

  “At least until the job of Lone Ranger opened up,” he had told Grandfather Al when he went off to Iraq for his first tour.

  He had no less respect for the man sitting to his left, Ambassador Flannery, than he did for the generals at Belvoir or Bragg. This man not only loved his country; he loved another nearly as well. That took a special kind of heart, and being here took a unique kind of courage. Especially because the rocking, rattling ride that marked any trip on a C-17 was obviously causing him pain. Sergeant Carson had rebandaged Flannery’s torso to mitigate the pain but still allow him to breathe, and prescribed a powerful aspirin, instead of painkillers, so he’d be alert.

  “As long as you don’t puncture a lung, you’ll be okay,” Carson had said in the medical bay at Belvoir.

  “How will I know?” Flannery had asked.

  With a crooked grin, Carson had replied, “Sir, you won’t have to ask.”

  Op-Center had acquired its own transport for long-haul trips, a matte-gray, unmarked C-40A Clipper. The Boeing aircraft was a workhorse for both the Air Force and the Navy, and this particular plane had seen service for the latter. The population at Pope Airfield took verbal jabs at Volner for using an “enemy” aircraft, but they cared for it as if it were their own. From Williams’s point of view, the Clipper had a value among the green-money voters in Congress: it exceeded international noise and environmental standards, which had the practical benefit of making it more fuel-efficient and allowing it greater range. The aircraft could carry up to a hundred and twenty-one passengers in a standard two-three seat arrangement but also had a combi configuration that could accommodate three cargo pallets and seventy passengers. Volner liked having the ability to evac civilians or other military personnel if necessary. It could also land on shorter runways than a C-17 or an equivalent behemoth required, such as their current destination in Turkey.

  Once they were airborne, sitting three across, Volner had huddled with Bankole to review the plans to get to the Arrow. They were looking at networked tablets, which show
ed a map of the region. Flannery sat on the aisle.

  “The area of the Black Sea we have to cross is a little over three hundred miles,” Volner was saying. “I can get us a fishing cruiser out of Samsun that can accommodate all of us and our gear below deck. It can do sixteen knots—a little over eighteen miles an hour, which gets us to the strait in about sixteen hours. Plenty of time to rest, and we don’t have to worry about going through a Russian radar net.”

  Flannery was listening and nudged the major.

  “The Russians know about the black ops,” he said, using the name for the secret fleet that crossed the Black Sea. “They knew about it in 2014, at the height of the gun running.”

  “Did they harass the boats?” Bankole asked.

  Flannery shook his head. “There were too many ringers making their way into the Azov from Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania. Some of them were paid, some of them were actual fishing boats. It would have tied up too many assets for Mosow to form an airtight blockade. They buzzed aircraft, shot at a few, brought down one civilian aircraft as a warning—which is why the shipments weren’t made by air.”

  “The Russians aren’t fighting a war right now,” Bankole pointed out.

  “And Kiev isn’t on an embargo footing,” Flannery said. “They’re purchasing arms from Belarus, Brazil, other nations. The Russians are likely to leave us alone.”

  Volner had assumed as much from the DOD intelligence reports on the region, but he was grateful for Flannery’s participation and insight, and thanked him.

  “We get an air-to-air refuel out of Ramstein and will be landing at Trabzon Airport on the eastern Black Sea,” Volner went on. “From there it’s a short bus ride to the vessel. Our captain will be Kaan Hamzaçebi.” He brought up a picture of a swarthy man in his forties, with an eye patch and a full beard. “He served in the Turkish Naval Forces, lost an eye while testing an air-cushioned landing craft. He’s got a small pension and a big grudge against the Undersecretariat of the Sea and the Australian firm that made the vessel.”