Commander-in-Chief

10

President of the United States Jack Ryan wasn’t sleeping much these days. The pressures of the job and the physical requirement that the chief executive be present for an ungodly amount of meetings, photo opportunities, official functions, state dinners, diplomatic trips, and the like meant getting eight consecutive hours a night was a rarity, if not a pipe dream for the leader of the free world.

And that was in times without any particular crisis or calamity affecting the nation. In the past year Jack Ryan had endured an enormous succession of emergencies, from hurricanes on the eastern seaboard, to Russian invasions of its neighbors, to terror attacks on Middle Eastern consulates, to coups in South America.

And then there was the big one — the event that defined the past twelve months for the President: North Korea’s assassination attempt of Ryan himself.

The heavy burdens of serving as the nation’s President made catching a reasonable number of hours of sleep all but impossible, but it was this nearly successful attempt on his life several months back, and the continued pain resulting from it, that made his nighttime hours difficult now.

He’d broken his collarbone and suffered some soft-tissue damage in his shoulder during the attack, along with a concussion. The effects of the concussion dissipated in a few days, but even after surgery and a daily physical-therapy regimen, often overseen by his loving but incredibly persistent wife, he found himself waking throughout the night with stiffness and soreness, if not jolting pain.

Cathy Ryan had explained it this way to her husband on more than one occasion: “Face it, Jack. Getting blown up can be tough on the human body.”

Ryan’s physical therapy had been a part of his daily routine in the months since surgery; today he was just finishing up his monotonous afternoon ritual of spinning an arm-pedal exerciser in the gym in the White House living quarters. Although this machine wasn’t particularly difficult or challenging, his surgeon had told him he needed to spend twenty minutes a day on it to prevent a frozen shoulder after the surgery. His shoulder was getting better, slowly but surely, so Ryan followed his doctor’s orders and added the arm-pedal machine to the end of his regular daily routine.

Ryan had worked up a sweat on the treadmill before sitting down at the arm machine this afternoon, and this is what Cathy noticed when she peeked in.

“You okay, Jack?”

“Not really.”

She came in and stood behind him, began rubbing his shoulders through his sweat-covered AIR FORCE ONE T-shirt. “The pain is flaring up?”

Ryan kept pedaling away with his arms, but he shook his head. “No, I’m suffering from acute boredom. I figure in the past month on this damn thing I’ve completed the Tour de France with my hands, and I didn’t even get to enjoy the French Alps.”

Cathy laughed, ended the shoulder rub with a tousling of her husband’s salt-and-pepper hair, checked her watch, then looked to Joe O’Hearn, Jack’s principal Secret Service agent. O’Hearn often worked out with his protectee in the residence, and right now he was doing barbell military presses in the corner. She said, “Joe, I have to go down to the formal dining room to check on the arrangements for tonight’s state dinner. He’s got seven minutes to go. Don’t let him slide.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As if Jack weren’t in the room, Cathy said, “You know how he is. He’ll try to charm you with conversation so he can take it easy the last few minutes. You need to watch out for that.”

O’Hearn smiled and did one more rep of the heavy bar. “I’m utterly uncharmable, ma’am.”

“Good. I watched Jack flirt with Andrea for many years. Always trying to get her to go easy on him when he wanted to do something he wasn’t supposed to do.” Andrea Price O’Day had been Jack’s lead agent, but she was badly injured in the assassination attempt. She’d be okay, eventually, but her career on the presidential detail, or any detail, for that matter, was over, and now O’Hearn was in the role Andrea had filled for so long.

O’Hearn regarded the First Lady’s comment. He deadpanned, “If your husband tries to flirt with me, ma’am, I’ll inform you immediately.”

Cathy laughed again, gave her husband’s shoulders one more squeeze, and headed back into the hall for the stairs. She was just out of earshot when the President said, “Joe, what happens in the White House gym stays in the White House gym.”

O’Hearn put the barbell down and toweled off. “Yes, sir.” And then, “But I think you should shoot for the full twenty minutes. It’s for your own good.”

Ryan grumbled and kept spinning the arm pedals.

But for only a minute more. Then the phone on the wall rang and O’Hearn snatched it up. “Gym.” After a moment he looked up to the President. “It’s DNI Foley for you, sir.”

“More like my reprieve from the governor,” Ryan said. He stopped pedaling, grabbed a towel off a rack, and began to rub his stiff shoulder while he took the phone from the Secret Service agent.

“It’s six p.m. on Saturday, Mary Pat. Something wrong?”

“I’m afraid so, Mr. President. There has been an attack on a Russian troop transport train. Word is just coming in. Looks like there are multiple fatalities. Perhaps dozens.”

“Ukraine?” Ryan asked quickly. The assumption was reasonable; Russia and Ukraine had been fighting a protracted positional war for more than a year. But if this had happened in Ukraine, he wasn’t sure why the director of national intelligence was calling to let him know.

“No, sir.” A pause. “Vilnius.”

Ryan sat slowly in a chair by the phone. “Oh, boy.” Now it made sense why Foley was calling. He thought it over. “This is the sort of thing we’ve been worried about. Culprits?”

“Unknown, but it’s very early still. Of course, with the attack on the Baltic coast, one has to look at this Earth Movement organization, but this is a very different type of target.”

“Right. Bad guys have been coming out of the woodwork lately. Let’s get everyone in the Situation Room.” He looked at a clock on the wall. “Forty-five minutes.”

“I know you have the state dinner tonight with the Japanese prime minister at seven-thirty.”

“That’s right. I can’t duck out of that completely, but I’m going to need to multitask. Pop back and forth if I have to. Can you call Arnie for me and get the ball rolling on this while I get changed?”

“Of course. See you in forty-five.”

Ryan shrugged at O’Hearn after hanging up the phone. His right shoulder ached unnaturally as he did so. “Sorry, Joe. Gotta run.”

“You’re the President, Mr. President.”

Ryan wore his tuxedo as he hurried through the White House Situation Room, a five-thousand-square-foot collection of rooms on the ground floor of the West Wing. He’d just left the gym fifty minutes earlier, his shoulder hurt from the exercise and the injuries he’d received in Mexico, and his bow tie still hung untied on his shirt.

As he entered the conference room he was pleased to see he had a full house. Twelve seated in chairs around the table, and nearly that many others in chairs that ran along the wall on both sides. Four or five of the impromptu meeting’s attendees were also dressed formally. The state dinner was always a big deal, but other than the UK and Canada, no nation was closer to the United States than Japan, so the White House always kicked it up a few notches when the prime minister and his wife came for dinner.

Sitting just to the left of the head of the table was Secretary of State Scott Adler. He wore his tux and looked ready for the party, but he was hunched down, reading a cable to himself from his embassy in Vilnius. And the national security adviser, Joleen Robillio, sat next to him in an attractive gown, but she was huddled over her iPad, reading the latest from her staff on the incident.

Everyone rose when they saw the President enter, and he waved them back down and slid into his chair, which was at the head of the table, nearest the door.

“Those of us going to the state dinner will be there. On time. Let’s do this quick, set up things so we can get out of the way of those we’re leaving behind to do the heavy lifting tonight.”

He looked around the room at all the men and women of the military and Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Department of State, and the various intelligence services, all of whom would be tasked with staying either in the West Wing or at the Eisenhower Building next door, and no doubt working through this Saturday night.

Ryan said, “Damn inconvenient of whoever it was that hit that train at dinnertime in D.C. I’ll have the dining stewards bring everybody something from the state dinner.” He shrugged. “Beats pizza.”

He looked to Mary Pat Foley, who sat near the opposite end of the conference table. “Have we learned anything more about the incident?”

“Yes, and it’s not good. Two witnesses to the attack both report the terrorists wore armbands of the Polish People’s Lancers.”

Jack looked around the room to see if anyone else recognized the name, because he sure didn’t. “What the hell is that?”

Foley said, “A small paramilitary outfit. Civilians. They are a nationalist, anti-Russian group, so that falls in line, generally speaking, with the possibility of being responsible for an attack on the Russian military, but so far we know of exactly zero violent attacks against the Russians committed by the Polish People’s Lancers. The attackers employed two”—she looked down at her notes—“B-10 recoilless rifles to fire on the train from an overpass near the Central Station. The weapons were then left at the scene. I suppose they decided it would take too long to get them out of there after the assault.”

“Have these Lancers released a statement? Either claiming responsibility or distancing themselves from it?”

“Neither. Not yet.”

Ryan cocked his head. “You’d think if they weren’t involved they’d not wait around to make that known.”

Secretary of Defense Robert Burgess was also in a tux. He shook his head. “Mr. President. It takes training and coordination to move a pair of small artillery pieces through the middle of a foreign city and then assault a particular moving train. From the little I know about the Lancers, they aren’t much more than weekend war-gamers. It’s basically a gun club. They do some camping in the woods and marching around. As Mary Pat said, they’ve never orchestrated any violent attacks anywhere against anybody. We found a few references in the newspaper in Łódź, Poland, where one of their more outspoken leaders made some threats against Russian speakers living in his neck of the woods, but other than some arrests for graffiti and demonstrating without a permit, they haven’t run afoul of the law. I find it hard to believe for one second they pulled this off.”

“So… who did it?”

CIA director Jay Canfield said, “Wouldn’t rule out the Russians themselves.”

Ryan said, “Are you suggesting this was a false-flag attack? That Russia attacked their own train?”

“I know it’s too early to make any informed guesses, but we’ve seen it in the past, haven’t we?”

It had been determined by the CIA that Russia had staged an attack in eastern Ukraine that killed pro-secessionist protesters, Russia’s supporters in the troubled region. The Kremlin used the event to justify an invasion, and their tanks rolled over the border shortly thereafter to signal the beginning of the Ukrainian war.

Ryan said, “Yes, we’ve certainly seen it before. What was the train carrying?”

Mary Pat looked down at her notes. “Our Lithuanian partners say it was a scheduled Russian troop and matériel transport. The Lithuanians had beefed up their security at the station like they always do when these trains come through, but they weren’t watching this overpass, because it was a half-mile away or so.”

“Casualties?”

Canfield said, “This is subject to change, because you can be sure there is a lot of stuff on that train that can still explode and cause damage, but right now we are told twenty-two Russian soldiers were killed in the attack, and another sixty-one injured. The train and its cargo are a near complete loss, and five Lithuanian firefighters were killed fighting the blaze. Again, follow-on detonations are going to be a problem.”

“Christ,” muttered Ryan. “Reaction from Moscow?”

“They’ve already gone up to their highest state of military readiness. Here we are, two hours after the attack, and they have made statements on social media blaming NATO, the CIA, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine.”

“The usual suspects.”

Secretary of State Adler said, “You can’t say they aren’t consistent.”

Ryan drummed his fingers on the table. “If the Russians did it, we’d have to proceed on the assumption that this is an opening move to grab a corridor to give them direct access to their military installations along the Baltic Sea. I’ve worried for a long time that Kaliningrad could well be the next Crimea.”

Adler added to his President’s comments. “Actually, sir, Kaliningrad is more Crimea than Crimea. Where Crimea was a Ukrainian province with a Russian majority and a Russian Navy base, Kaliningrad actually is Russian territory, with a Navy base and two air bases, not to mention missile batteries all up and down the coast and multiple Army bases. It’s a legit strategic interest like Crimea and, in this case, Russia has a rightful claim to it.”

Ryan said, “But they don’t have a claim to southern Lithuania, and that’s what they’ll have to take to get to it.”

Adler agreed with this point with a nod, but said, “The question isn’t legitimacy, the question is: Does Valeri Volodin think NATO will actually fight him over a swath of Lithuania?”

Mary Pat said, “Volodin is looking for some sort of diplomatic or military victory. He needs a win badly. Fossil fuel prices are way down, and this has been a disaster in the Russian economy, because over half their exports are oil or gas. The sanctions we pushed through a few months back are already squeezing the nation even more.

“When we armed the Ukrainians we made his easy rout of that nation turn into something more costly than he was prepared to pay for. He lost in Estonia, even though he framed it to his people as a win with a negotiated withdrawal.”

Canfield added, “In the past thirteen months his domestic approval rating has gone from eighty-one percent to fifty-nine percent. That’s not a nosedive, but it’s bad. Considering the fact he virtually outlaws negative media coverage of him and his policies, a twenty-two-point drop is remarkable.”

Ryan said, “A year ago the booming economy made him invincible. The economy is not booming anymore, and there’s nothing he can do about it. So he’s totally changed hats. Now he frames himself as a nationalist, he whips up national symbols, portrays himself as the savior of the Slavic people, who are being oppressed by the West. Blames us, NATO, whoever, for all Russia’s problems.”

Scott Adler said, “The one thing that will bring his poll numbers back up, barring a major jump in energy prices, is a real military triumph. But he’s not winning anywhere. Ukraine is a stalemate.”

Ryan added, “Ukraine is a stalemate because Volodin keeps it there. He could push harder toward Kiev if he wanted to, and he might do that still. But we have to keep our attention on the new flashpoint. These two different attacks in Lithuania could be used as a catalyst, whether or not Volodin was directly involved in them.”

Adler said, “We essentially blackmailed Volodin last year. Told him we’d reveal what we knew about his ties to organized crime and how that brought him to power in Russia. He backed off in the Ukraine, turned his tanks around, and locked his territorial gains at the Crimea and Donetsk.”

Ryan said, “Our blackmail didn’t solve our problem with Volodin, but it did help things. When he stopped his push to the Dnieper River it gave the Ukrainians time to regroup and improve their defenses. We armed them with the best defensive missiles and armor we had, and we increased our military advisers.”

National Security Adviser Joleen Robillio said, “Mr. President, we did the right thing in Ukraine, and we handed Volodin a stalemate, which, considering how fast his troops were moving, is just as bad as a defeat to him. But I worry that if we back this man into a corner, at some point he will realize the only way out for him is to employ nuclear weapons.”

Ryan replied, “You’re right, and he knows that we are factoring that into the equation. He expects us to harass him at every turn, but ultimately he does not expect us to call his bluff. If this Lithuania attack was his doing, perhaps he is considering a new front. Ukraine didn’t work, so he’s probing another location.”

Scott Adler said, “You’re speaking of this as if it is already a war.”

Ryan thought that over for a moment. Then he turned to his secretary of defense. “Bob, what are our options as far as responding to the attack in Lithuania?”

SecDef was ready for this question. “We’ll have to go through NATO to move any of our NATO forces, of course. There is the NATO Response Force based in six Central European nations — Lithuania included, of course — but we’re talking six thousand troops in total. Not more than four hundred in Vilnius. There is a bigger contingent in eastern Poland, but still, not anything close to being enough to thwart a Russian invasion. We’d need a major mobilization.”

“How fast can the NRF deploy in an emergency?”

“The NRF can deploy within a week. Of course, NATO now has another unit that can deploy even faster, within forty-eight hours. That’s the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, and they are good troops, even though there aren’t enough of them to stop the Russians.”

Mary Pat said, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Russia isn’t coming over the border in the next week in any numbers, Mr. President. They don’t have forces in predeployment positions.”

Ryan was not terribly comforted. “But these timelines don’t take into account the decision-making time of the Europeans. None of our partners has the political will to snap their fingers and send troops off to meet the Russians without needing a lot of hand-holding. We’ve got the NATO summit coming up soon in Copenhagen. Why don’t we use this as an opportunity to appeal to the other heads of state to develop some ways to streamline the process of moving forces into defensive positions? With the LNG facility explosion and now the attack in Vilnius, hopefully enough of the member states will recognize how quickly this could develop into war.”

Robillio said, “I really hope you are met with a receptive audience, but you know how these summits go. A lot of talk, not a lot of action.”

Ryan nodded, turned back to his SecDef. “What if NATO sticks its head in the sand? What about U.S. assets not tied to NATO?”

Burgess said, “We have a battalion of Marines, twelve hundred men, assigned to the Black Sea Rotational Force. They are set up as a rapid response, and they aren’t tied to NATO forces.”

“Where are they now?”

“They are in Romania, but they are twenty-four hours away from wherever we need them in theater. This is just the sort of thing they train for.”

Ryan raised an eyebrow. “Twelve hundred Marines train to fight off a Russian invasion?”

“Absolutely. They know they are a stopgap. Something to put into place, coordinating with other U.S. forces if possible, certainly along with local friendlies.”

“Okay. Any other options?”

Burgess gave a little shrug. “One destroyer is in the Baltic on a presence mission. But no carriers, and no real combat capability in comparison to a Russian invasion force. We do have a Marine Expeditionary Unit along with several ships practicing with the Brits on the west coast of the UK.”

Ryan said, “That’s a long way from the Baltic.”

Burgess held his hands up. “That’s true, but it’s two thousand Marines. A couple thousand well-equipped, well-positioned, and well-supported Marines could, in theory, seriously degrade a Russian invasion, if we gave them enough air, but we’d lose a hell of a lot of them in the process.” Burgess’s shoulders sagged. “The good old days of hundreds of thousands of U.S. Army and hundreds of tanks ready and waiting in Europe are behind us.”

Nobody in the room thought those days were particularly good, but his point was understood by all.

Ryan addressed Mary Pat Foley now. “It goes without saying, but we need to be watching military movements in Belarus. Russia will have to go through Minsk to get to Lithuania, unless of course they attack from the Kaliningrad side.”

Mary Pat said, “We’ll add to our eyeballs in Belarus and along the Lithuanian border.”

One of Jay Canfield’s aides entered the room and leaned over the CIA director, conferring with him for a moment. Canfield looked up at the President.

“What is it, Jay?”

“Good news. The fire on the train is out and Lithuanian Land Force personnel have been through the wreckage. The ordnance on the train was all conventional artillery shells, small-arms ammunition, that sort of thing.”

Ryan knew what Canfield was saying. There were no ballistic missiles on board the train. According to rumor and intelligence reports, the Russian Federation had moved dozens, even hundreds, of Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles into Kaliningrad province in the past year. These missiles had the capability to be armed with nuclear warheads. The fact no Iskander-Ms were present during the train attack was a relief to everyone.

Burgess said, “Interesting there were no missiles on that train.”

“Interesting why?” Ryan asked.

“That train just had vanilla troops, and vanilla ordnance. No Spetsnaz, no sophisticated weaponry.”

Ryan had been at this for a long time, so he understood what Burgess was getting at. “From that you infer it was targeted by Russia, because an attack on it wouldn’t destroy anything too valuable?”

“If there had been Iskanders on that train I would have had a hard time believing Russia would be involved in any attack. With the attack comes an inspection of the wreckage, after all, and that would mean that ordnance is going to get examined, possibly seized. The fact there was nothing controversial on board does make me a bit more suspicious of who the actual culprit was.”

Ryan said, “We can speculate all we want, but we do so at our peril. We need hard and fast answers. Volodin is playing a game, ladies and gentlemen. He knows the rules. He has the plan. He is not as masterful as many people make him out to be, and I no longer believe he has the power to do whatever he wants, but make no mistake about this: Volodin is at the controls.”

“The controls of what?” Adler asked.

Ryan stood and motioned for all those heading to the state dinner to follow him. As he walked through the door and began tying his bow tie, he looked back to Scott Adler. “I don’t know, Scott. I hope we figure that out before it becomes apparent to everyone on earth.”