Swanson crept back into his thoughts and snapped him out of his daydream. He blinked. He was seeing her wherever he looked. He blinked again. She
was
where he was looking. That was why she had sprung back into his consciousness. She was sitting in the roadside diner he had just driven past. She wasn’t dead; he hadn’t left her to die. He spun a 180 and literally ran into the diner leaving the stolen truck with its engine running and door wide open. Swanson turned as he crashed through the door. The relief on his face was not reciprocated. She stared back at him with…what? He didn’t know her well enough to know, anger or surprise?
When the barrel of the gun touched the nape of his neck, he realized it was neither, it was fear.
Jack watched the CNN report of the devastation to the Russian armaments factory in silence. The images in the background could have been of any bombsite in the darkness, a pile of rubble floodlit by the camera crew while a few wisps of flame still lingered. He wondered if it was just stock footage. The cruise missiles had hit just thirty minutes earlier. Debate was raging over just how many possible fatalities there had been. Anything up to 1,500 seemed to be the consensus across the networks. Fifteen hundred was the total workforce. The fact that it was the dead of night did not seem to factor in the sensationalism of the reporting. The actual casualties were two - two guard dogs. Jack felt terrible for them. People had a choice, animals didn’t.
It had been a busy afternoon. Calls had been coming in thick and fast from around the globe. NATO allies were hesitantly preparing their military to stand by America. Neutrals were calling to plead for calm and restraint. Russia’s allies were calling to plead that this was all one huge mistake. Nobody wanted war.
Except for the twenty-four/seven news networks. Jack couldn’t help but think the producers were sitting with massive hard-ons at the prospect of a war. Their ratings would go through the roof, not to mention their revenues. The coverage was relentless and the wheeling out of ‘specialists’ never ending. Jack hit the mute button. The crap about which they were speculating infuriated him. When would these guys realize that their words impacted the lives of so many people?
“Mr. President?” chirped his intercom.
“Yes?” he answered, relieved that something would distract him from the news.
“I have President Junpeng holding for you, sir.”
Jack sat up a little straighter. The Chinese president had called only once before, three years earlier, shortly after his inauguration.
“Mr. President,” said Jack cordially in greeting after hitting the flashing line.
“President King, my condolences on your losses,” began President Junpeng sincerely.
“Thank you, Mr. President, it’s kind of you to call personally.”
“It is the least I can do. America is our most important world partner and I want you to rest assured that the people of China are by your side.”
“That is very kind of you and on behalf of America, thank you, Mr. President.” Jack was a little surprised at how friendly Junpeng was being. Their previous call had been all business and two previous face-to-face meetings had been rather awkward. President Junpeng was a man with absolute power in his country. Jack had surmised that the man was used to being above everyone and everything. After all, he, unlike most world leaders, had no one to answer to. The people had not voted for him, he had simply assumed power as a divine right.
“Aggression such as the Russians have displayed, has no place in the modern economic world,” continued Junpeng, his tone back to the more dictatorial tone Jack was used to. “I have therefore instructed my armed forces to mobilize fully should you require them.”
Jack almost dropped his handset. The Chinese were offering their war machine in support of the Americans against the Russians? It was one thing bolstering their shared borders with the Russians as a show of protest but offering their full military power to Jack? Unprecedented.
“That is extremely generous but--”
“No buts, Mr. President, we are your allies and will stand with you,” interrupted President Junpeng with a finality that suggested the conversation was over. His clipped English accent was one of total authority, perfected during his three years at Oxford. He had taken power of a modern China. His education and experience had been carefully planned to ensure that China’s growth would continue unhindered by the ways of the old. A western education had been a prerequisite. President Mao Junpeng was a master economist and linguist. He was the ‘new’ China, and their stand by America’s side, although unexpected, was not a total surprise.
“Thank you,” was all that was left for Jack to say as the call ended. He had no intention of calling on the Chinese military. However, it may assist in whatever the Russians were playing at, or more precisely, whatever certain individuals in Russia were playing at, to stop what they were doing.
A short knock at the door was followed by the entry of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Rick Holland, and Kenneth.
“Mr. President, the Chinese have begun to mobilize their entire military,” stated the Rick.
“So I believe,” replied Jack. “The Chinese president just called to inform me.”
“He did?” asked Kenneth with great surprise.
“They’re mobilizing in our support.”
Three stunned faces looked back at him. Chinese relations were good, but their mobilizing against the Russians in such an overt fashion was totally unprecedented.
“Mr. President, if you had told me yesterday where we’d be now, I’d have moved for your removal from office under grounds of mental instability,” said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, taking a seat as instructed.
Jack looked at his most recent appointee and considered his words. The more he considered them, the more he agreed.
“Navy, I couldn’t have put it better myself. This situation is off the scale FUBAR.”
“FUBAR?” whispered Kenneth to Rick.
Jack shook his head in despair. At times, Kenneth was a very strange fish. How could a man who was Chief of Staff not know what FUBAR meant?
“Fucked up beyond all recognition,” replied Rick quietly.
“It’s an old Army term,” enlightened Jack, less than subtly breaking up their private conversation. “Now, where are we militarily?”
The chairman and Rick stood up and laid out a number of maps. For the next twenty minutes, they detailed the logistical movements and troop deployments across the globe. The American military was preparing for a war it had planned for fifty years and had thought for the previous twenty years would never happen. Storage facilities across America and Western Europe were readying tanks and equipment that everybody had prayed would never be needed. With their NATO allies, the US was preparing a defensive force only ever envisioned on paper. Any previous drills had only been a fraction of the scale required, due to the disruption that would befall Western Europe. The scale of the force they could bring to bear on the Russians would be a clear and overwhelming message to back down.
The more Jack looked at the maps in front of him, the less he could comprehend what the hell the Russians were playing at. The power of the US military dwarfed the Russians’ by such a scale that it felt like Gulf War One all over again. They quite simply had not one chance in a million of overpowering the Americans and NATO allies. In fact, they didn’t even stand a chance of effectively defending themselves should Jack decide to attack. Their equipment was almost entirely Cold War era. The NATO equipment could outrun, outgun and outmaneuver their Russian counterparts’.
Jack shook his head. “Gentlemen, none of this makes any sense whatsoever,” he concluded.
The chairman looked at the plans created by millions of man-hours. Every conceivable scenario had been run through in order to ensure troop and equipment deployment would maximize their effectiveness.
“I’m sorry, Mr. President, I’m not sure what you think isn’t right?”
Jack shook his head. “No, I mean what the Russians are doing, not this,” he said pointing to the plans.
“There’s always the chance they’re not planning to keep it conventional,” Kenneth remarked, opening a topic nobody wanted to get into.
“Let’s forget that’s an option unless we really need to,” cautioned Jack. “I’m sure our show of strength will be enough to stop this dead in its tracks.”
“But who are we stopping?” asked Rick. He still couldn’t get over how badly he had been blindsided.
Jack pondered the question, he believed President Chernov. It wasn’t his doing. So that left one question, who the hell was it? It was a question that nobody had even an inkling of an answer to. Jack had quizzed the CIA director but he had been was confused by the day’s events as Rick Holland was. They had nobody within Russia they thought credible or even capable of pulling off the atrocities to date.
Joan interrupted his thoughts. “Mr. President?”
“What are you still doing here, Joan?” asked Jack, more annoyed at himself for not chasing her home earlier.
“I have President Chernov on line two,” she replied.
The room silenced as Jack walked to his desk and lifted the receiver. His audience hung on his every movement. Joan cleared her throat and had them scurrying to the sofas. She had the ability with one word or look to stop grown men in their tracks. As she exited the office, she threw them a glare that made it clear they weren’t to move. All three instantly dropped their gaze to ensure they weren’t caught staring back. A small tut as she closed the door had the three of them breathing a sigh of relief. They leaned forward in order to hear Jack’s conversation from the other side of the office, but not one dared leave his seat.
Jack smiled. The power Joan wielded over the most powerful men in the world never ceased to amaze him. He walked a little closer to his audience to save their blushes and allow them a chance to listen to at least part of the conversation.
Jack hit the flashing button on the phone. “Ilya,” he said in greeting.
“Jack, thank you for taking my call at this late hour.”
Jack checked the wall clock. It was only 8 p.m. in Washington but it would be 4:00 a.m. in Moscow; it was Ilya who was having a late night.
“Not at all, Ilya. What’s keeping you up at this hour?”
“I believe we may be closing in on our conspirator,” he announced with some relief.
Jack turned to his audience, a wide smile spreading across his face. “They think they’ve got the guy behind all of this,” he whispered, covering the mic. He returned to the call and listened impatiently before interrupting. “Yes, but who is it, Ilya?”
Jack hit the speakerphone button. The least the men in the room deserved was to hear the name directly from the Russian president.
“I have a team raiding his home as we speak. The pictures are coming through from their helmet cameras.” Ilya did not elaborate; it was the same team that had earlier helmet-cammed him and the Prime Minister. Ilya had insisted that Captain Bulyinov and his team carry out the operation, as it ensured he had personally briefed them and apologized for what they had witnessed earlier in the day. It had also given him the opportunity to explain that what they had witnessed was not an act of depravity but one of deception.
Jack managed to stifle a smile as the three men tried desperately to stay on the sofa. Each of them had leaned forward so much the sofa bore very little of their weight.
They were all gesticulating for Jack to press harder for the name.
“Who is it?” pressed Jack.
“Hold on, Jack, they’re just breaching the front door!” shouted Ilya, obviously the feed included sound as he was shouting unnecessarily over it.
A number of muffled gunshots could be heard over Ilya’s voice before they heard what they could only assume was one of the Russian soldiers speaking Russian.
“Ahh shit.” On hearing the Russian voices, Rick slumped back into the sofa.
Jack, Kenneth and the chairman ignored the phone and turned to Rick. “What? What is it?” asked Jack, puzzled by the Rick’s look of despair.
“He just said ‘we’re approaching Mr. Kirov’s door.’”
They all recognized the name of the former president and instantly connected the dots, just as Ilya had in Russia.
“Jesus!” exclaimed Jack.
“No, you don’t understand,” continued Rick, but he was drowned out by a cacophony of bangs and shouts coming through the speaker.
Just as he was about to continue, Ilya came back on the line. “I’ve wasted your time, Mr. President, I was wrong.” He concluded the call, devastation evident in his voice.
Jack looked at his NSA, the only one who seemed to have any idea what was going on.
“Former President Kirov is days away from death. He was diagnosed about eighteen months ago with a particularly nasty cancer and has been undergoing extensive and very aggressive treatment for some time. He’s been gravely ill pretty much the whole time he’s been out of the public eye. There’s no chance he has anything to do with this. The treatment has fried his brain and left him in a vegetative state.”
“And I’m just finding this out now?” replied Jack, furious but not entirely sure why.