Command Authority

60

The direct-action phase of Operation Red Coal Carpet began shortly before four a.m. on the second morning after the Russians crossed the border. Air-to-air battles, mostly between Russian Kamov-52 attack helicopters with sophisticated night-flying technology and Ukrainian Mi-24s that had no night-flying technology but were airborne anyway, had raged over the hilly forests east of Donetsk throughout the night. Below them, a twelve-man A-team from 5th Special Forces Group had positioned themselves on the roof of a press box above an abandoned soccer field in the town of Zuhres. From here, with their sophisticated optics, they could see twenty miles to the east, and range targets with their Special Operations Forces Laser Acquisition Marker at more than twelve miles.

It was a mostly clear night; the Americans watched the helicopters in the distance, pinpricks of light mostly, until fighting started, and flashes and streaks around the pinpricks created a futuristic show. This continued for hours. Occasionally, a fast mover would race overhead, and rarer still, a ground unit of Ukrainian troops would themselves fire artillery to the west, creating two sets of flashes on the horizon.

But shortly before four, the A-team spied a column of vehicles through their FLIR units moving unobstructed up Oblast State’s H21 Highway. The American forces ID’d the vehicles as BTR-80 armored personnel carriers, which was armor in use by both Russian and Ukrainian forces. They radioed back to the JOC, letting them know they had possible targets inside the engagement zone, but they could not positively identify the vehicles as enemy, or “red,” forces. The JOC tried to get positive confirmation from the Ukrainians, but the Ukrainian Army was fully engaged and in a state of chaos, and even the Air Force was slow to respond.

After fifteen minutes, the BTR-80s had approached to within eight miles of the Special Forces team. Midas ordered one of the patrolling Reaper drones in the area to overfly the column, and it quickly arrived overhead and began transmitting images back to the intelligence personnel at the JSOC facility.

The Reaper showed all vehicles to be wearing the Russian flag. The Reaper itself had two Hellfires on board, but Midas ordered his communications officer to relay the target mission to the Ukrainians again.

This time a pair of MiGs arrived on station quickly. They read the laser designation from the SOFLAM laser designator fired by the Americans, and soon the Ukrainians began raining Kh-25 air-to-ground missiles on the column that was moving up the highway.

The 5th Group A-team on the ground was pleased with the progress of the attack at first, but it soon became clear that the Ukrainian MiGs were dawdling too long over the target area. The team commander relayed his concerns through the JOC, but only half the Russian column had been destroyed when inbound missiles appeared from the horizon in the east. The 5th Group men had not seen the attacking aircraft, but figured them to be fast movers twenty miles or more away.

One of the Ukrainian fighters exploded into a fireball, and the second broke off the attack.

The 5th Group men lased two of the four remaining targets for the Reaper Hellfires to destroy, but two BTR-80s survived.

Operation Red Coal Carpet had begun with a very qualified success. Yes, they had destroyed six pieces of Russian armor well inside Ukraine, but it had come at the cost of one of Ukraine’s most powerful air weapons. Midas knew this was an attrition rate that worked to the advantage of the Russians.

President Ryan met with Attorney General Murray in the Oval Office. Both men were tired from overwork, but both men also had the experience and discipline to know how to power through the exhaustion in times of national crisis.

Ryan had spent the morning in conversations with his military advisers, but by necessity he had kept a normal schedule. The Russian attack was getting a lot of attention in the United States, of course, but the White House was busy making statements about sanctions, protesting to the UN Security Council, even threatening to cancel U.S. attendance at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Russia, and other diplomatic “combat” that no one in the Ryan administration thought would do much of anything. But this front of diplomatic hand-wringing was necessary to hide the hard measures America was using to counter the Russian advance, the covert U.S. military action on the ground in eastern Ukraine.

President Ryan didn’t have time for many Oval Office visits from cabinet-level staff who weren’t in the U.S. military or members of the intelligence community, but he made time for Dan Murray. They sat across from each other and Ryan poured coffee for them both. “Dan,” he said, “I really hope you have good news.”

Murray could have simply told Ryan what he’d discovered or passed him a two-page brief on the investigation, but he knew his boss liked to get his hands on actual intelligence product, so the AG laid out a set of photographs on the coffee table.

Ryan picked the first one up. It was a color photo of surveillance quality of a young Hispanic-looking woman entering what appeared to be a 7-Eleven-type market.

Jack said, “This is the suspect in the Golovko poisoning?”

“Correct. Felicia Rodríguez.”

Jack nodded and looked at the second picture. It appeared to have been taken in the same location, but a different person was passing through the doors. Male, short hair, a fit build, and he wore shorts and a white linen shirt. The photograph was surprisingly clear — it occurred to Jack that the prevalence and quality of CC cameras had been a hell of a boon for counterintelligence and law enforcement work in the past couple of decades.

“Who’s he?”

“We don’t have a real name yet, but using facial-recognition software we found that he entered the United States on a private jet from London. His passport is Moldovan, the name on it is Vassily Kalugin, but it doesn’t check out. The jet is registered to a shell corporation in Luxembourg. It doesn’t check out, either.”

Ryan understood the ramifications of all this. “He’s a spook.”

“Damn right he is.”

“A Russian spook?”

“Don’t know for sure, but we just put out a BOLO with his face and bogus passport info.”

Ryan reached for the next photo.

This was a copy of a passport photo and page of a man named Jaime Calderón. “Another spook?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. He is a Venezuelan intelligence officer. Real name is Esteban Ortega. We’ve tracked him into the U.S. before, we’ve watched him, but we’ve never had anything solid on him.”

“I still don’t see anything solid here.” Ryan held up the last photo. It was an excellent-quality image of a small yellow house with a palm tree in the fenced-in front yard. “Tell me what’s going on in this little house.”

Dan said, “We know Ortega flew into Miami and rented this house in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. He was there for two days.

“The mystery Moldovan, whatever the hell his real name is, cleared customs at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. Ninety minutes after landing in Fort Lauderdale, he popped into this market, which happens to be ninety-five feet from this little Venezuelan intelligence safe house.”

Jack just looked up at Dan. “Ninety-five feet exactly?”

“Exactly. Went down myself yesterday.”

Ryan smiled. Dan still liked to use his own shoe leather. “Go on.”

“Then, the day after the mystery Moldovan and Ortega arrive, Felicia Rodríguez shows up. She goes in the market, for what it’s worth, but more importantly, a GPS track of her mobile phone puts her inside the Venezuelan safe house.”

“Hot damn,” Jack said in excitement.

Murray added, “She was only there an hour, then she checked into a hotel in the neighborhood. The next morning, she drove back to Kansas.”

Ryan looked over all the pictures again quickly, then up at Murray.

The AG said, “Before you ask, we picked up very faint traces of polonium-210 in the house and in Rodríguez’s hotel room. However it was stored at that time was much better than how it was stored right before Golovko was poisoned. Clearly, Rodríguez had it in some sort of lead-lined container, but she took it out at the cafeteria at the University of Kansas.”

Ryan said, “So let me see if I follow you here. We think the mystery Moldovan is a possible Russian FSB agent who brought the P-210 into the U.S. in the private jet, and then passed it off to the assassin with the help of Venezuelan intelligence officer Ortega.”

“That’s our theory. It’s impossible to say for sure if the Moldovan was in the safe house himself, but again, he was spitting distance away. I know we don’t have a real smoking gun here, but—”

Jack cut him off. “We need to find these guys. Ortega and the other guy.”

“Actually, we only need the other guy.”

“Why don’t we need the Venezuelan?”

“Because three days after the meeting in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, the day before the Golovko poisoning, Esteban Ortega was murdered in Mexico City. A drive-by shooting into his taxi. Gunman on the back of a motorcycle, no real description. Only witness was the cabbie, and he was pretty useless.”

Ryan leaned back on the sofa. “Covering their tracks.” He blew out a frustrated sigh. “They will kill anyone who can pin this on them. Get whatever you need for an international arrest warrant. If we can figure out who the Moldovan is, then we can pick him up.”

“Will do.”

Ryan looked again at the photo of the young Venezuelan woman. She seemed so young, her entire life ahead of her. “What was her motivation?”

“Not sure we will ever know. She has family back home in Venezuela, there could have been threats against them. We are pretty sure she had no idea what she was handling, so we think the Russian or the Venezuelan tricked her.”

“And any clue why the Venezuelans would be involved?”

“Not yet. Again, quite possible Ortega didn’t know anything more about what Rodríguez was actually putting in Golovko’s Sprite than she did.”

“So,” Jack said, “Russians get like-minded useful idiots to help them in a plot, and then the Russians screw them over, use them for their own devices.”

Murray nodded.

“That sounds like the playbook of Roman Talanov.”

“The FSB guy? Really? Sorry to say, I can’t say I know too much about his past.”

“No one does, for sure,” said Ryan. “But I’m working on rectifying that.”