“What we’re suggesting, sir,” Blake finally replied, “is that we avoid a nuclear war. Yes, it is a highly controversial solution. But let me put things into perspective by asking you this question. Years from now, when you are seventy-five, and lying awake in your bed, which action will make it more difficult for you to sleep? To remember how you ordered the elimination of an insane tyrant who was preparing to use nuclear weapons? Or how you sat on your hands and did nothing while thousands of people were sent to their deaths?”
The President leaned forward in his chair and shook his head. His eyes were drawn and tired. For a while he stared off into space and said nothing. “This is indeed a lousy business that we find ourselves in,” he finally commented.
Blake and Coy nodded their heads in agreement.
Allen remained silent for some time, and then said, “One more problem. Let’s say that, by some freak of nature or unforeseen circumstance, let’s say that someone finds out. Be it the Russians, or God forbid, our own press. There’s so much that could go wrong. What if this Ammon fellow gets shot down and captured? Or what if the Russians detect the missile and somehow trace it back to us?” Blake opened his mouth to speak. Allen lifted his hand to cut him off. “Now I know that you say it is impossible, but let’s face it, in the fog of war, anything can and will happen. So, let’s just go ahead and plan for the worst. How do you propose we respond?”
Blake didn’t hesitate to answer the question. “In the first place, sir, should the Russians ever even hint that we had anything to do with eliminating Fedotov, most of the entire civilized world would simply stand up and applaud. If we are successful in stopping a nuclear war, then who could argue that the means didn’t justify the end? But, should the Russian government insist on taking it further, should it ever appear that the Presidency or our nation is implicated in any way, then we simply tell them the truth. It was a Ukrainian operation. Flown by two Ukrainian agents. They stole our weapon. They precipitated the whole attack. We wash our hands of the whole operation. It will be as simple as that.”
“Deny any foreknowledge of what happened?”
“Yes, sir. Of course. We have absolute deniability. It’s the most beautiful part of this plan.”
“And what about our man, Richard Ammon?” the President asked in the softest voice he had used during their entire conversation.
Blake shifted around in his seat. “Sir, I know what you’re asking,” he answered. “And we have considered how best we can help him. We can divert a few of the fighters. Send them north when they need to go south. And we can thin out the Naval defenders as he makes his way across the Mediterranean Sea.
“But the hard truth is, there isn’t a lot we can do. By and large, we have to let the thing play itself out. We can’t just hand them a bomber with its nuclear missiles, then send them merrily on their way, while we dear a path for them to go and bomb Russia. And to help him out, in even a small way, would take a great deal of planning and coordination. It would involve far too many people. And we have to be very discreet. Very, very discreet. No one must ever know what we’ve done.”
“Besides,” Coy broke in, “it would be highly illegal. As we have already discussed.”
Allen glanced at Coy with a look of contempt.
Blake saw the look on the president’s face. “In addition, sir,” he quickly continued. “If we made things too easy, Ivan Morozov would become suspicious.”
President Allen turned away from Coy and pulled at his chin. A smoldering fire began to burn in his eyes. “And does Ammon realize we won’t be there to help him? Does he understand he will be on his own?”
“Sir, to my knowledge, it has never been discussed. But it is something he would have to understand. He is a soldier. There are certain things we don’t have to tell him. There are certain things that he knows on his own.”
“And what about Morozov? Do you think he will go along with the plan?”
“No, sir, he won’t,” Blake said matter-of-factly. “While killing Fedotov would be a good thing to him, we fear it would not be enough. For one thing, it leaves the Russian military completely unharmed. And the Ukrainians are determined that they be destroyed, especially their nuclear weapons. The only way to do that would be to carry out their plan and instigate a major U.S./Russian confrontation. In addition—and this may be the most important—it would appear that Morozov is seeking revenge. Revenge upon Fedotov. Revenge upon the whole nation! He will settle for nothing less.”
“So where does that leave us, then,” Allen wondered, “if Morozov won’t go along with our plan?”
“Sir, the thing is, he doesn’t have to know. The physician out in Kansas has assured us that he won’t remember a thing about being taken captive. As far as Ivan Morozov is concerned, he will awake in the morning, thinking everything is on track and going according to schedule. And it won’t be until they are just beginning to cross the Russian border that he finds out. Then, Ammon fires the missile, and it’s over. There will be nothing Morozov can do.”
The President settled back, closed his eyes and raised his hand to silence them both. Coy remained cocked and loaded on the edge of his seat. Blake glanced around the room and loosened his tie. The Oval Office was always too hot. As they had talked, he couldn’t help but think back on President Nixon and his White House full of bugs. He prayed that Allen would never be so foolish. Nor any President ever agam.
“Okay, then,” Allen said after a while. “Let me think about it. Something like this is going to take some time.”
Allen started to push himself back from his desk, a signal to his mcn that the meeting was over. But before hc could stand up, Milton Blake interrupted.
“Sir. Actually, that’s not quite true.” The President looked down with a scowl. Blake glanced over to Coy and then continued.
“We need an answer, sir. This afternoon. Really, right now. For if we don’t move within the next few minutes, if we don’t begin to make our preparations, we will ruin our cover.” Blake thought of what Morozov had told them. Tuesday. 1415 Zulu time, 0915 D.C. time, 0815 local time in Wichita. He glanced at his watch. Less than sixteen hours to prepare.
“Sir, I apologize,” he continued. “You know how I feel about bringing this to you with such short notice. But we really have no choice, sir. It’s something that came up really just a few hours ago. And unfortunately, it’s either now, or we come up with some other plan, for by nine fifteen tomorrow morning, if we don’t act, the whole option will just go away.”
The President swore and sat back in his scat. “Okay,” he said, “tell me once again. Complete deniability? Right? No threat of exposure? Right? Fedotov will not have any warning? He’ll have no chance to respond?”
“Sir,” Milton Blake was quick to reply. “I promise you, he’ll never see anything coming. One second, he’s there. The next second, he’s gone. Without any notice or warning. We strike like a bolt from the blue.”
WICHITA, KANSAS
Fullbright walked quickly into the room. Ammon and Tray raised their eyes from their charts and their pencils. “It’s a go! Everything is falling in place!”
Ammon nodded his head as his stomach tightened up. Tiny drops of sweat began to trickle down his ribs. He turned away from Tray and stared off into space. So that was it. He was on his way. But he wasn’t surprised. What other choice did they have? He knew it would go all along.
“The CIA has a few of their very best people working on the matter,” Fullbright continued. “They are also sending out the materials that you asked for. We should have it in less than an hour.”
Neither Ammon nor Tray replied. Turning to their charts, they went back to work. They still had an enormous amount of planning to do. Tray picked up the laptop computer and silently tapped in the next coordinates of the flight plan.
Three hours later, they were on their way back to the motel. It was dark. Morozov was slumped over in the back of the van. He wouldn’t wake up until morning. And when he did, he
wouldn’t remember a thing. Not so much as a whisper in the back of his mind. Beside him was his friend from the diner. He too had been laced with enough drugs to guarantee that he slept through the night.
Oliver Tray rolled among the light traffic, switching lanes to pass a small trailer. As he drove off the freeway and down their exit ramp, he turned to Ammon and said, “It’s going to work, Richard. I really believe that it will.”
Ammon stared ahead in the darkness. The success of the mission was not his only concern. After several minutes, he quietly asked Tray, “Have you ever killed a man, Oliver?”
Oliver winced. Of course, the answer was no.
Ammon waited, then nodded his head. “Neither have I. Never thought of myself as an assassin.”
Oliver didn’t respond. There was no time now for moral discussions. They both knew what they had to do. And to him, it wasn’t even an issue. Killing Fedotov to avert nuclear war? He’d pull the trigger in less than a heartbeat. Never think twice. It wasn’t even gray. It was straight black and white.
But then again, he wasn’t the man flying the mission. He wasn’t the man launching the missile. And it wasn’t he who was putting his life on the line. So he didn’t respond. He had nothing to say. Nothing that hadn’t already been said. Except for maybe one thing.
“You know, Richard, if you can pull this thing off, if you are successful, though forever untold and forever anonymous, you will be one of the few men who have ever lived who actually changed the course of human events.”
McCONNELL AIR FORCE BASE, KANSAS
The B-1 was silently towed back into the hangar and the enormous doors rolled shut again. After chocking the wheels and grounding the aircraft with static-dissipation lines, the weapons specialists went to work. Opening the mid-bay internal weapons door, they downloaded a B-93 nuclear bomb. Then, very carefully, another weapon was loaded up in its place, a large, black, dart-like cruise missile. Five hours before, the missile had been sitting in a test hangar out at Edwards Air Force base. Now here it sat, in the belly of the Bone, awaiting its first operational mission.
CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE CENTER, FLORIDA
The space shuttle Endeavor’s launch date had already been moved up by more than two weeks, at a cost of more than eight million dollars and an additional twenty thousand man-hours of labor. And now, by order of the President himself, the launch time had been moved up again.
Inside the Endeavor’s cargo compartment was an enormous satellite, one of the largest and heaviest payloads the shuttle had ever lifted into space. It was thick and white. And extremely expensive. Even more so than the shuttle itself. It was also one of the most highly classified satellites that the Department of Defense had ever developed. Its true capabilities were astounding, and if it lived up to its expectations, it was sure to become one of the most significant pieces of equipment ever launched into space.
WICHITA, KANSAS
Colonel Fullbright listened as the phone patch was put through to the White House. The line clicked and then buzzed as the voice encryption system kicked into gear. A small, red light on his mobile transmitter turned green, signifying the line was now secure. Three seconds later, Milton Blake picked up the phone.
“They’re back in position,” Fullbright said.
“Okay. Good. I’m seeing the President in about ten minutes. I’ll tell him everything is ready and in place. Now, what else can we do?”
“Nothing. We’ve done all we can.”
For a moment, Blake didn’t respond. The secure phone line buzzed in the background. Then he finally said, “Okay, then. Now I want your final appraisal. What do you think are his chances of success?”
Fullbright didn’t hesitate. “Seventy-five to eighty percent, sir. And that’s a consensus from all of the planners. The Russians will never even see the B-1 coming. All they’II see is a sudden explosion. A hidden bomb, I’m sure they’II suspect. And by the time the confusion is over, the Bone will be safely back in our midst. Our appraisal of the mission has not changed. Ammon’s chances are still very good.”
On the other end of the line, Blake smiled and nodded as he wrote the figure down. Seventy-five to eighty percent. That was what he would brief President Allen. The mission was looking very good.
TWENTY-SIX
___________________
___________________
WICHITA, KANSAS
RICHARD AMMON PUSHED AGAINST MOROZOY’S BARE SHOULDER, AND Morozov finally rolled over to stare at the clock. Five A.M. It was still dark outside. The motel was deathly quiet. It had seemed like a very short night. Morozov stretched and pushed himself up. His brain came slowly to life. He felt groggy and tired.
Ammon stared at him for a moment. “You feel okay?” he asked.
Morozov coughed and shook his head to clear it. “Let’s go,” was all he said.
The two men began to dress in the semi-darkness, the room illuminated by one small bedside light. Neither of them spoke. They pulled on black leather flight boots and Air Force flight suits, complete with name tags, rank, and B-1 squadron patches. Over the flight suits they wore brown leather jackets. They packed what little they had into two small duffel bags, and then they were ready to go.
Before leaving, they parked their car in front of the motel and walked through the tiny lobby to the smoky diner. They sat down in a corner booth and ordered breakfast, then ate in silence.
After a few minutes, Morozov leaned across the table. “Do you have any final questions?” he asked.
“No. I know the plan.”
“Any concerns about our route of flight, or the threats we expect to encounter? What about the fighters out of Florida, any problem with them? Or our routing through the Ukraine?”
“No, no, no. We’ve been through it all a thousand times. I know the plan better than you do. It isn’t perfect, but nothing is. Given the time constraints and the limited amount of intel that we have had to work with, I’d say we have a reasonable plan.”
“So you think we are ready?”
Ammon considered the question. “I think it doesn’t matter. We both know we are going to go.”
Morozov studied Ammon for a moment, shook his head in a barely perceptible nod of agreement and then said, “I hope this goes well for us, Ammon. For Jesse’s sake.”
Ammon swallowed hard and fought to control the look on his face. Morozov was doing his best to play out his cards. But Ammon knew. And it made all the difference.
A tiny smile spread across Ammon’s lips. He stood up from the table and turned and walked from the restaurant, leaving Morozov somewhat perplexed.
After a few minutes, Morozov got up and paid their bill. He went outside and saw Richard Ammon standing by the car, watching the morning sky.
For the past three days, it had been miserable. Overcast and cold, with a nearly constant freezing drizzle. But now it appeared to be clearing up. The eastern sky was just beginning to glow with the rising sun. They could see patches of deep blue and purple surrounded by a brightening pink. A south wind was beginning to blow, bringing the promise of warmer weather.
“Looks like a beautiful day,” Morozov said as he approached the car.
Ammon studied the sky for a moment longer, then slipped into the car without responding. Morozov climbed in and started the engine. Within a half hour, they were driving north on highway 15, which would take them to the front gate of the base.
As Morozov drove, Ammon retrieved one of the canvas duffel bags from the back seat and pulled out a small plastic container. He reached inside and pulled out their fake identification, two laminated plastic cards for each of them. One was a standard military identification card. It was embossed in light green, with their pictures prominently displayed in the center. But it was the other plastic card that was the most important. This was their flight line identification. It was this card that would allow them access to the flight line and the B-1s that were now sitting on alert, fully loaded and ready to fly.
Morozov to
ok his identification cards and shoved them into a pocket of his flight suit. But Ammon hung on to his. He studied them for a moment, staring at his picture. Finally he pulled out his wallet and slipped the two cards inside.
It only took a few minutes before they were approaching the main gate to McConnell Air Force Base. Standing at the gate were two guards. One of them held a burly German shepherd at bay while the other stopped the oncoming cars to inspect their occupants and check them for proper identification.
When it was Morozov’s tum, he pulled up to the gate and rolled down his window. The guard bent down to look inside. Ammon didn’t look in his direction but stared straight ahead, trying to appear as uninterested as he could. The guard was the first one to speak.
“Good morning, sir,” he said to Morozov. “May I see your ID, please?”
Morozov pulled out his military identification card and handed it to the guard. The sergeant inspected both sides of the card, then looked a little closer at Morozov; holding the small card up to the light that shone down from his guard house, pulling it close to his nose, absorbing every detail. Then he bent over and peered back into the car.
“Sir, there appears to be a problem with your identification,” he said.
Ammon’s heart nearly stopped. What was going on? Surely Morozov’s people hadn’t screwed up such a simple thing as forging an ID card? Surely they hadn’t come this far, just to be arrested by some nearsighted sergeant? After all the preparation, it couldn’t come down to this. As Ammon turned to the guard, he tried to look bored and tired, but inside he wanted to scream.
Morozov didn’t even flinch. He reached out and took the card from the security policeman, as he replied in an innocent voice, “What seems to be the problem, Sergeant?”
“Sir, your ID needs to be updated. It is printed on the old Air Force Form 215. We started converting to the new Form 311 last month. I’m surprised that no one has pointed this out to you. You really need to get a new ID card issued. Especially in light of the current situation. Security has got to be tight.”
Shattered Bone Page 27
