Commander-in-Chief

28

The DataPlanet truck sat on the loose shoulder of a winding gravel road to the east of the town of Pabradė, Lithuania. Within fifty feet of the road both to the north and south, tall, ramrod-straight pine trees shot up seventy-five feet into the air. While Herkus Zarkus pulled rolls of fiber-optic cable out of the back of his vehicle and set them up in neat stacks, Ding Chavez attached a toaster-sized optical laser surveying station to an already positioned tripod, turned it on, and pointed it along the road to the east.

Twelve miles beyond the next bend was the nation of Belarus, and just beyond that was Russia. There, Russia’s Western Military District, numbering thousands of tanks and tens of thousands of men, could be in position to attack Lithuania within days. There was no notice from the CIA that the Russians were on their way here, but the two Campus operators not so far from the border of Russia’s closest ally were taking the events there seriously, to say the least. They knew at any point they might be relying on that little DataPlanet van on the side of the road to outrun tanks and Mi-24 attack helicopters.

Caruso, Chavez, and Zarkus all wore identical uniforms, blue cold-weather coveralls, reflective vests, and orange helmets. Their vest had the name of their company written across the back, and they each wore a utility belt adorned with radios, tools, phones, and other gear.

While Chavez stood next to Caruso, he consulted a tablet computer with the geo-coordinates sent by Mary Pat Foley’s office. Next to the GPS location, a small icon of an arrow directed him to move the tablet computer to the right two meters. He stepped the corresponding distance on the wet grass, and this put him just inside the tree line. The GPS coordinates on his tablet turned green.

“Right here,” Dom said.

Ding moved the tripod to exactly where Dom stood, and he turned the laser surveying device slowly, from left to right. The display on the device gave him a 360-degree reading of the direction of the lens, and Dom told him to turn to heading 098. Ding complied, and the heading marker turned green the moment he pointed his camera in the correct direction.

“On it,” he said.

“Mark it,” Dom instructed, still looking at his tablet.

Chavez pressed a button on a remote device in his hand, the camera inside the laser surveying station took a series of high definition images, and Dom’s tablet signaled the data had been received with a green checkmark.

“Got it,” Dom said.

Ding called out to Herkus, who was just fifty feet away by the truck. “That’s it. Load it up.”

While the Lithuanian American threw his rolls of cable back into the van, the two Campus men began breaking down their equipment, a process that they’d perfected in the past two days of long shifts. While Ding lifted the legs of the tripod out of the soft earth he said, “What was that, forty-nine?”

Dom corrected him. “No. That’s an even fifty. We’ll hit sixty by the end of the day.”

“Which means, at this speed, we’ll be done in ten days.”

Dom helped Ding carry the big device back up a little rise toward the truck. “I hope Lithuania has ten days. I wonder if it would make us work faster if we knew what the hell we were doing.”

Ding said, “I’ve been thinking it over.”

“Any conclusions?”

“Obviously, this is some sort of survey of the battle space. Not sure why they are just doing it now, or what’s different about this that makes it so classified. Normally, with an area like this they’d just have local forces send back images for the military planners. I don’t get all the subterfuge, but that’s not the thing that really confuses me.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, if the Russians come, we assume they will take the Kaliningrad Corridor from Lithuania.”

“Right. So?”

“So we’re about thirty miles north of the corridor. That stretch of Belarus over there isn’t the quickest route to Lithuania’s capital, and it isn’t the closest point to link up with the Kaliningrad side.”

“So your question is… why are we here?”

Ding loaded the tripod, turned around in the road to remove his helmet, and started back for the front passenger seat. He looked up and said, “I have a feeling that is their question, too.”

A four-door Toyota drove up the gravel road from the distant bend. Herkus started for the driver’s seat, but Ding said, “No, let’s take our time. Talk to these people and feel them out.”

The car pulled up and three men and one woman climbed out. They were of varying ages, but they all looked confident.

And suspicious.

“Labas rytas,” Herkus called out to the group. Good morning.

One of the group, a short, fat man in his fifties, waved back idly. Speaking Lithuanian, he asked, “What are you boys doing here?”

Dom and Ding were both looking for the telltale signs of weapons printing under their jackets. Neither man saw anything, but with the thick coats the locals were wearing, it was difficult to be sure.

Herkus said, “Fiber-optic maintenance and survey. We’re putting in super-high-speed Internet cables.”

The man in charge of the little group nodded distractedly, still looking at the men and the equipment.

“Is this your property?” Herkus asked.

To that the man responded, “Do you have some identification?”

The woman and two other men stood in the road, and their body language showed the Campus operators that they were most definitely on guard.

Herkus pulled out his employee badge. “Some kind of a problem?”

The man didn’t even look at the badge. “Where are you from?”

“USA, but my parents are from here. Used to spend my summers near here when I was a kid.”

The man nodded. “And them?”

“We’re all Americans. Look, friend, what’s the—”

“Tell them to say something in English.”

Herkus cocked his head. “What?”

One of the men in the road let his right hand slip inside his open coat. Dom saw this and moved close to the man, ready to drop him with a punch to the jaw if he saw a gun. “Don’t try it, asshole.”

The hand stopped moving, slipped out of the coat. Shaking.

The woman spoke in Lithuanian now. “Tell them to speak English.”

Herkus looked to Dom and Ding. “Say something in English.”

Dom said, “What do they want us to say?”

The bald man turned to the woman. “You don’t think Spetsnaz can learn English?”

Herkus tipped his head, then relaxed noticeably. Turning back to the Campus men, he said, “I get it. They are locals. They think we are Russians.”

Ding slowly pulled his passport out of his coat. It said his name was Thomas Kendall, but it was as good a U.S. passport as any of these four rural Lithuanians had ever seen. Dom pulled his own identification out, giving his name as Andrew Martin. The four Lithuanians looked them over in the road, and collectively they breathed an audible sigh that was almost comical to the two Americans by the van.

The relief was so complete the woman began to laugh. She spoke in halting English. “Sorry. We thought you are Little Green Men.”

Dom looked down at his coveralls. “No, ma’am. We’re medium-sized blue men. We’re just here to work on the Internet.”

The bald-headed man wasn’t smiling. “We don’t need Internet from America. We need tanks from America.”

Chavez nodded. “Trust me, if I had a tank, I’d give it to you.”

Dom said, “Why did you think you would find Little Green Men up here? Russia is threatening the south.”

The woman replied, “That’s what we think, too. But the Green Men are already here.”

“Wait. You’ve seen Russians? Are you sure?”

“We are here our entire lives. We know when someone not belong here.”

Dom and Ding looked at each other. They both knew they had to be careful to not give their cover away. Even though these locals weren’t the enemy, if rumor got out that a group of Americans wearing linemen’s uniforms were asking questions about the Russians, it wouldn’t take a spymaster to put together what was going on. And in rural communities such as here, rumors had a habit of spreading like wildfire. Ding said, “We don’t get paid enough to deal with Russians. Where did you see them?”

“They were in Zalavas yesterday, near the border. Ten men, maybe more. Taking pictures.”

Kind of like us, Dom thought but did not say.

The woman continued. “We told police, but the Russians left before police came.”

The three men in the DataPlanet uniforms broke away from the Lithuanian locals soon after and headed off to the next GPS coordinate on their list. They had planned on breaking off for lunch at noon, but the three men agreed it would be better for everyone if they just kept working as long as there was light to do so.

They were more convinced than ever that Lithuania didn’t have ten days.