“Mr. Chairman,” Jack turned to his military chief, “that will be all. I would like your resignation on my desk by the time I leave this meeting.”
“But Mr. President--”
“That was an order,” commanded Jack, ending any further discussion.
The chairman stood up, saluted, and left the room.
“Mr. Clark,” Jack turned back to the strategy consultant, “before you leave us also, would you mind sharing your group’s plan?”
“We believe some retaliation has to be undertaken, if nothing more than to show that we mean business.”
“Yes, of course.”
“A surgical strike against the factory that made the missile launchers,” Clark concluded quickly.
“Thank you again,” said Jack, rising and opening the door for Clark, a clear message that his presence was no longer welcome.
“I’d give them enough warning to evacuate the staff,” he added quietly as he squeezed past Jack.
Shutting the door behind Clark, Jack turned and faced a cowed audience. It wasn’t every day that a chairman of the Joint Chiefs was sacked publicly. Jack realized he may have gone a little far but his authority had been undermined. Clark should never have been in the room. The chairman had no right bringing the man in and certainly not without clearing it first. Jack had to show he was in charge and that was exactly what he had just done. He did feel a little sorry for the chairman but he’d get over it.
“Navy,” said Jack, looking to his Navy chief. He had known him almost twenty years and had never called him anything else.
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“Congratulations on your promotion. I s’pose I’ll have to start calling you chairman,” said Jack. Unsurprisingly, the Navy chief had been the natural successor. His name had already been bandied about as the next chairman when the current one had been due to retire.
“So, I’ll ask again, any thoughts on the two plans on the table?” asked Jack authoritatively.
A rush of his advisers rallied against the first plan and could see the merits in the second.
Jack listened politely before raising his hand for silence. “Retaliation is not at the top of my agenda here, but understanding what’s going on most certainly is,” he said, turning to his intelligence chiefs.
Both remained silent. Either they were being uncharacteristically polite and waiting for the other to speak or they had nothing to say.
“Well?” asked Jack more pointedly of his director of National Intelligence.
“To be perfectly honest, Mr. President, until flight AA187 went down with the ambassador, we had not one inkling within the intelligence community of any issues. Certainly none from the Russians.”
“Anyone else?” asked Jack.
“No,” replied both intelligence chiefs in stereo.
“Either we’ve been victim to the best piece of intelligence skullduggery in the history of the modern era, or this is one massive and tragic coincidence of situations,” continued the CIA director.
“Terrorism?” asked the Secretary of State.
“Too grand. Impossible for any one group to have undertaken what has happened here today. Even a coordination of many groups would have been unable to pull this off.”
“Options?” asked Jack with some finality.
“Retaliate and continue to build our troops up?” asked the new chairman.
A series of nods from around the table were met with a nod from Jack. “Take out their factory and give them a ten minute heads-up. No need to create a bloodbath,” he confirmed. “Where are we on deployments?” The Secretary of Defense grabbed the folder that had been sitting in front of the sacked chairman. He quickly ran through a list of movements that would have the Western side of Europe cluttered from top to tail in American hardware over the next few days.
“On top of that our carrier groups are taking up their pre-assigned stations.” Finally he added, “In conclusion, we are more than ready for anything they care to throw at us, Mr. President.”
Jack nodded his approval and thought back to his previous call with the Russian president. Ilya had made the first move and made contact with Jack.
“Get me the Russian president on the phone,” Jack whispered to Kenneth as they left the meeting.
Security Council of Russia
Kremlin
Moscow
It was a far less confident Minister of Defense that walked into the Security Council meeting. He may have secured footage that would embarrass both the president and the prime minister forevermore; however, the firing of the missiles that had killed the two American pilots was indisputably under his watch. The tox screens completed on both the president and the prime minister also clearly showed both had been under the influence of a powerful hallucinogen generally used in sexual assaults. The way they had been abandoned by their close protection and security was another question for the defense minister to answer. Just a few hours earlier, it had seemed inconceivable that he would not end the day in charge of the country. Now it seemed inconceivable that he would end it without charges of negligence screaming for his removal.
“Gentlemen, can somebody please tell me what the hell is happening?” President Ilya Chernov demanded as he entered the meeting through the door connecting to his private office. He only ever joined the meetings once all other attendees had taken their seats.
“We are still invest--” began Dmitry.
“Not you,” said Chernov with some disdain, indicating for the chief of the general staff to talk.
If the defense minister needed any further indication that there had been a full return of presidential power, he had it. He took his rebuke and remained quiet.
“So far, our investigations have concluded that the S-400 launcher fired entirely independently from our command truck.”
“It controlled itself?” asked the president, bemused.
“We don’t believe so, no.”
“But you just said--”
“We believe it was controlled remotely, Mr. President,” clarified the chief.
“Remotely? By whom?”
“Our investigations have led us to this man,” replied the head of the GRU, the military intelligence division of the armed forces. He placed a headshot on the overhead screen that filled the far wall.
“He is the lead software engineer for the Almaz-Antey Corporation, the company responsible for the S-400 missile system.”
“Have we arrested him?” asked President Chernov.
The GRU general shook his head slightly as he changed the picture on the overhead screen. The slumped body of a blood soaked man on a public toilet seat was displayed.
“Found in the toilets of Terminal F at Sheremetyova, throat slit from ear to ear. All we know is that he spent some time on a laptop in the Rembrandt Café. The laptop is nowhere to be found. A large deposit of twenty million Thai Baht was transferred into an account in his name shortly before we believe he was killed. The sender is untraceable.”
“Do we have anything as to why he would have done this?” asked Jack, desperate to make some sense of it all.
“Nothing, although we have found a significant amount of child pornography on his home computer; it seems he had a thing for young boys. From the photos we’re guessing they’re Thai boys, which links in with the funds and a plane that was due to leave for Thailand shortly after his body was found. There was no ticket in his name but one passenger did fail to show up and it would appear those details are fake. We are assuming the ticket was for him.”
President Chernov shook his head in disbelief. Somebody was intent on starting a world war and it was his country that was being set up as the instigator.
“Gentlemen, I need answers. The Americans are going to need ans--”
Before he could finish, the door opened. His assistant appeared, holding a phone nervously. “The American president, sir,” she whispered despite having muted the handset.
A number of the older attendees couldn’t help but look at the walls. The timing of the intrusion as the Americans were mentioned harkened back to the days they believed the CIA listened to everything they said. Days many of them believed had never ended.
President Chernov rose from his seat and excused himself, taking the handset as he passed his assistant. Closing the door to his private office, he took a deep breath and unmuted the handset.
“Mr. President, may I once again apologize for the loss of your pilots? Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and loved ones.”
“I’ve already received your condolences, Ilya, thank you. Now let’s cut the crap. What the fuck are you guys playing at? And please give me something that saves me having to bomb the shit out of your country.”
“Jack, as I said earlier, this is not our doing. I swear to you on my grandchildren’s lives, we’re both being played here.”
“I need proof of that, Ilya. My people will not accept Russian aggression without retribution. Unless you can give me cold hard facts that it wasn’t your missiles, we’re at a stalemate.”
Ilya outlined, off the record, the information they had uncovered to date - the engineer’s backdoor software and twenty million Baht payment. Jack googled twenty million Baht as he listened. He had no idea what the value was. When he found out, he wished he hadn’t; the cost of two US pilots’ lives and their aircraft had been valued at just over half a million dollars.
“So I’m afraid they were most definitely our missiles and were ultimately fired by a Russian, although absolutely not on behalf of the Russian government.”
Jack believed everything Ilya was telling him. It wasn’t just that he had promised on the life of his grandchildren, something Jack knew was sincere, bit it was far more simple. It was the only thing that made any sense of what was a crazy and fucked up situation. But it did leave him with one major issue: he was about to obliterate a Russian factory, which he now knew was most probably unwarranted.
“I also appreciate you need to be seen to be doing something,” said Ilya out of the blue and much to Jack’s surprise.
“What are you saying?” asked Jack.
“Someone is trying to start a war. If you don’t react, they may try something even more elaborate. You also need to show that you’re in charge and will not tolerate our aggression.”
Jack remained silent, and Ilya went on.
“I am clearing the Almaz-Antey factory and will begin an investigation into the missile systems’ fault as of tomorrow morning. Until then, the factory will be deserted.”
Jack could not believe Ilya had just offered up the factory that they had already decided would be their retribution. He considered the possibility of a leak. Somebody could have already alerted Ilya but the timings were too tight. He considered the situation in reverse and to be honest, it was what he would have done. Ilya was a man whom Jack had always respected and with every interaction, his respect had grown.
“You will have to show genuine outrage and threaten repercussions,” counseled Jack.
“Oh, I will, but rest assured, the anger will be for whoever is playing us against each other.”
“Likewise,” replied Jack. “We should also keep to a minimum those aware of our communications.”
“Of course,” replied Ilya before giving Jack a list of numbers to contact him privately, at any time, night or day. Jack reciprocated and both men ended the call far happier than they had started it.
Ilya walked back into his meeting. The room silenced instantly in anticipation.
“Not good,” announced Ilya. He had thought long and hard about just how much he could trust his inner core. It hadn’t taken long. He couldn’t, at least not totally. However, the more pressing question was whether they were capable of orchestrating the actions that had led their country to the brink of war. The answer was a very categorical ‘no’.
The light bulb moment hit him like a sledgehammer. Why it had not been his first thought staggered him. His predecessor was a man who had taken corruption to levels never seen since the Roman Empire. His friends and KGB acquaintances littered the world’s rich lists, as the oligarchs, created under his rule, profited from the endless pool of Russian natural resources. The election result with Ilya Chernov as winner had shocked the nation and the world. Somehow, a genuine and honest politician had won. The attacks from his predecessor following the result had been relentless. Everything he had tried to change would attract a flood of negative articles in the press, all sponsored by the previous president. However, all that had stopped, eighteen months earlier. All dissent had just ceased, not gradually but suddenly. Since then, nothing had been heard from the previous president. Even with Ilya’s anti-corruption campaign seizing and imprisoning many of the oligarchs, the former president remained silent. Ilya had his number one suspect. He considered sharing his suspicions but thought better of it. He had other business at hand.
“I want the Almaz-Antey factory cleared of every living soul,” he announced matter-of-factly.
“Did he say he’s going to bomb the factory?” said Dmitry in panic.
“No,” lied Ilya. “But if I were him, I’d bomb the shit out of it,” he added honestly before leaving the room.