He motioned to his troops, and said, “go, go, go,” into his throat mic. With no response, he had no option but to send a trooper scurrying around the building in an attempt to coordinate the move. Hitting hard and fast from all angles simultaneously was their normal plan of attack but without comms it was proving difficult. He had no idea what bullshit equipment they had been supplied with, but he was damn sure going to find the useless fucker that had made it and give him a piece of his mind.
Despite their high profile and rather unorthodox arrival, surprise was still on their side. It had been a matter of seconds from wheels down to entry and with no resistance in sight, Pyotr felt confident the building would be secure in less than a minute. Although the plan was as far from ideal as perhaps possible, the defense minister had left him no option. They did not have time to plan anything. There was no time to wait for darkness or skydive soundlessly from high altitude, opening their chutes at the very last second. All the hostage rescue situations they planned for were thrown out the window. Their only mission was to uncover the president and prime minister’s situation as a matter of urgency. Time was the critical factor.
Get your men in a chopper, fly straight to the castle and storm it.
It was that simple, with no room for negotiation. He had tried, but the defense minister had been adamant and, based on how well Pyotr knew him -- which was very well -- he was a very worried man.
The sound of the backup chopper landing only added to the catastrophic fuck-up that was the most important mission with which he had ever been tasked. Pyotr ignored his backup and pushed on. The ground floor was clear, the second floor likewise. Only the top floor and main bedrooms were still to be cleared. Pyotr signaled to five men and led them up the final set of stairs. None of the men had any comprehension just how critical the next few minutes were in the history of the world. A slaughtered president and prime minister would in all likelihood start a war that would very surely change the world forever.
Pyotr raised his hand and everyone froze silently. The slow rhythmic beat of a bass drum could be heard through the solid double doors ahead. The first sign of any life was a welcome sound. Pyotr pressed forward and the men prepared themselves to take the room.
As Pyotr placed his hand on the door handle, the building burst into a cacophony of ringing phones, landlines and cell tones filled the air. Pyotr, like his men, tuned out the ringing and turned the handle. The door opened and swung freely, Pyotr waited for his men to rush past but none moved. They all stood frozen to the spot. Pyotr swung his head to see and gasped. “Oh dear God!”
“
We’ve got comms!” screamed the operator a little too loudly at the Defense Minister. When the screen burst into life, Dmitry forgave the outburst.
“The president’s cell is ringing now!” clamored an intelligence officer, bursting into the room. Her job, like others, was to sit and hit redial continuously until something happened. A chorus of shouts from across the room echoed a similar message, phone lines that hadn’t been connecting suddenly were.
The helmet camera from the SOS trooper beamed back the images from the castle. They watched in Moscow as the hand moved towards the handle and the momentary look around which was explained as the speakers burst into life, with ringing phone lines at the castle.
The door began to open on the screen, and the defense minister, who was not a religious man, prayed to God that everything was okay.
Former KGB colonel and SVR Officer Sergey Petrovich watched as the SOS troopers neared the head of the stairs. The tiny pinhole camera with a fisheye lens was the only piece of electronic equipment capable of emitting any type of signal through the wall of jammers that he had erected. He watched the trooper’s hand move towards the handle of the president’s master bedroom door, and hit the kill switch. Nothing visibly happened. Not that he expected it to. The jammers were buried around the castle grounds, deep enough that the chorus of small explosions that destroyed every component of the jammers’ existence would be undetectable other than to the native ground dwellers. Moles were going to have a bitch of a day.
With his job complete, he closed his laptop and turned his attention to the twelve highly skilled bodyguards who had joined him on the private jet bound for the Caribbean. A new life awaited them all - monies they could only have dreamed and a lifestyle they had all had to watch from the fringes. The many months of planning to ensure that all the men on duty that day were party to his plan had not been easy. Even then, he was amazed at how well it had worked. The president and prime minister’s guards had literally just walked off their posts and joined him at the small airport, leaving their leaders fully exposed to the world around them.
“Na zdorove!”
he raised his glass of champagne and joined the rest of the men in a round of celebration.
“Na zdorove!”
they chanted in unison.
Pyotr tried desperately to shut the door but it was too late -- the helmet camera had seen the worst and the scene would have been recorded for posterity.
The sight of the Russian president being ridden by a young woman with a strap-on to the rhythmic beat of the bass music was not one that Pyotr ever wanted to reimage again. He averted his eyes only for them to fall on the Prime Minster on the other side of the room with another two young women, one of whom looked too young, certainly younger than Pyotr’s sixteen-year-old daughter. Anger raged instantly and it was only thanks to his trooper that he managed not to shoot the Prime Minister himself.
As the doors began to close, the president became aware of the intrusion.
“What the fuck!” he screamed, attempting to regain any semblance of dignity.
As the scene played out on the screen, Dmitry Simonov issued a dictat, “Nobody leaves this room!”
The sight before him as their country lay on the brink of war sickened him like no other. A sight that, if leaked, would damage the reputation of one of the world’s greatest ever nations and a nation that he loved above all else.
“Get me a private line with those buffoons!” he demanded, his voice trembling with rage.
After a heated thirty-minute conversation during which the president and the prime minister pleaded innocence and claimed that some type of drug must have been used on them, it was clear there was no option but for them to resign. The defense minister would maintain control while urgent elections were organized.
As he composed himself for his next call, Dmitry wondered where the guards were, why the comms didn’t work, why two men that barely tolerated each other would be partaking in an orgy together. None of it made any sense but they were where they were.
His call went straight through to the ambassador, who listened without a word while the defense minister explained the situation. When he finished, the ambassador remained silent.
“Hello?”
“I’m sorry but are you fucking kidding me?” asked the ambassador eventually.
“I’m most certainly not!”
“You want me to tell the Americans, while they believe we have all but declared war on them, that you, the defense minister, have removed our elected leaders from office and taken control?!”
“It’s not like that,” he argued, realizing how it could be construed incorrectly.
“The nukes will be flying before I end my call,” the ambassador said, exasperated at the stupidity of his colleague.
“So what would you suggest?” Dmitry asked more timidly, realizing just how much he had gotten carried away.
“Get President Chernov on the phone to the US president as a matter of urgency!”
The White House
Situation Room
“Mr. President, we have the Russian president on the line,” the Secretary of State said, hiding his excitement well as he passed the call across.
“Mr. President,” boomed Jack in his most authoritative voice.
“Mr. President, I am so sorry I have been uncontactable. We have had some communication difficulties,” replied Ilya Chernov, the president of Russia.
A wave from the back of the room alerted Jack’s attention. He turned and looked at a note held up to him; it read ‘
stress
’.
Jack knew the analysts would be all over the phone call, and a stress analysis was obviously suggesting something was very amiss.
“Mr. President… Ilya… you don’t sound yourself,” said Jack.
“I’m fine, Mr. President, and devastated by the loss of your plane and your dear friend James.”
“Thank you, that means a lot,” Jack replied sincerely, looking down the table to a shake of heads. ‘
Stress levels increasing’
read the next note held up.
“I can assure you with great confidence that the Russian Federation wishes no ill toward the United States of America. Whatever happened to flight AA187, we will help with the investigation in any way we can. This had nothing to do with the government of the Russian Federation.”
Jack looked at his analysts who concluded that the content of the message was true but offered under significant stress.
“You raised the readiness of your forces?”
“Only in response to actions taken by the US and the Chinese,” replied Ilya.
Jack looked at Rick Holland, his National Security Adviser, for confirmation on the Chinese and received some nods. He shrugged his shoulders. That was unexpected.
“Nobody wants things to get out of hand, Ilya,” said Jack evenly. “Stand your forces down and we can all rest easier.”
“Of co--” Ilya started to reply, but the line went dead.
Dmitry Simonov, the defense minister, hit the mute button on the call, stopping President Chernov from giving a promise to stand down.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked of his own president. He had insisted that he be party to the call with the American president and was listening in to the call from Moscow, while President Chernov was under house arrest in his own castle.
“What do you mean, you’re averting a crisis?” asked the defense minister, taking over the feed. “What if this is all part of their plan?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” President Chernov said, struggling to hide his contempt for his defense minister.
“Your guards disappear, you vanish off the face of the planet on the brink of nuclear apocalypse and then appear on screen being fucked up the arse by some two-bit whore and you ask what plan?!”
The president paused. His office and reputation lay at the mercy of the defense minister. The footage of his indiscretion was something that would forever hang over him. However, it was not that knowledge that kept him silent. The defense minister was right; something far larger was at play.
“So what do you propose?” he asked.
“Reciprocal stand down,” suggested the defense minister. “It will ensure we are not caught unawares and taken by surprise from
behind
.”
The president did not miss the jibe. “Yes, I agree,” he said authoritatively, trying to recover his power.
Dmitry couldn’t have cared less what the president thought. He was in charge now. President Chernov would be only a figurehead until they could arrange elections. In the meantime, Dmitry just had to avert a nuclear catastrophe. He unmuted the call.
The line remained silent. Upon realizing the Russians had muted the call, Jack had ordered the same. He turned to his Rick Holland, the NSA. “What have the Chinese done?” he asked, a little irritated that nobody had bothered to mention it to him earlier.
“I’m sorry, Mr. President, the news literally just came through to us,” said his most trusted military adviser. “They raised their alert levels on their borders with Russia.”
“On our behalf?” queried Jack, surprised at the Chinese taking such a stance against one of their oldest allies.
“It would appear so, shooting down the plane of our ambassador to China is a massive insult, worthy of war, it would appear.”
“If
they were shot down,” reminded Jack. “Until we see categorical proof, this is all still a maybe.”
“Yes, Mr. President, although we’re talking about one of the most remote areas on the planet, some of it almost inaccessible. It could take months to piece together what happened.”
“Well you’d better get a move on because we haven’t got months. I want an answer in days, not weeks.” He turned away and unmuted the call, leaving Rick with the headache of making the impossible possible.