The Moscow Offensive

Twenty-Three

President Stacy Anne Barbeau took her seat at the conference table with a sense of relief. For the first time in nearly forty-eight hours, she was back on solid ground. This briefing room was situated on the lowest of five levels in the new Strategic Command bunker buried deep below the surface of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It shared the same overbright LED lighting and drab institutional carpet and paint scheme found aboard the E-4B… but at least it wasn’t in constant motion and at the mercy of high-altitude winds and turbulence. Or in danger from some mercenary-piloted stealth aircraft or air-to-air missile.

Far from it, in fact.

This secure bunker had been built at tremendous expense to replace its predecessor, destroyed along with the rest of Offutt Air Force Base in a Russian nuclear-armed cruise-missile attack more than a decade ago. It was housed inside a thick cube of steel, which was, in turn, encased in solid concrete, the bunker’s command, intelligence analysis, and communications facilities designed to ride out a full-scale nuclear war. In short, she was safer here from a missile or bombing attack than anywhere else in the United States.

Barbeau caught the eye of Colonel Daniel Kim, the Air Force officer in charge of security for the facility. “Have those Ohio National Guard armored units arrived yet?” she demanded.

Kim nodded confidently. “Yes, Madam President. The heavy tank transporters carrying Charlie and Delta companies from the Hundred and Forty-Fifth Armored Regiment rolled through Gate 15A an hour ago.” He checked the digital clock displayed beneath one of the large LED wall screens that lined the briefing room. “Their twenty-eight M1A1 main battle tanks should be fully deployed within the next fifty minutes.”

Barbeau nodded, satisfied by this news. Not even those Iron Wolf CIDs could fight their way through two full companies of armor mounting 120mm guns. Sharply, she rapped her knuckles on the table. “Enough chitchat, people. I need answers, and I need them now.”

The assembly of high-ranking civilian and military officials she’d summoned to this gathering abruptly fell silent. Apart from Luke Cohen and Ed Rauch and Admiral Firestone, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, most of them were ranking deputies and senior staffers in the various federal agencies and departments essential to national security — the CIA, NSA, FBI, the Defense Department, Homeland Security, State, and the Department of Justice. These were the men and women who could make things happen.

Luke Cohen hunched forward in his seat. He’d changed into fresh clothes flown out from D.C. on the same plane that ferried Rauch and the others to Wright-Patterson. Only the dark circles under his eyes showed the ordeal he’d been through. He cleared his throat nervously. “Uh, Madam President? We’re getting some pretty pointed queries from Congress. Both the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader are asking when you plan to return to the White House.”

Barbeau’s lips thinned. “Not anytime soon. The White House is too vulnerable, too exposed to attack. We’d have to evacuate half the city to set up a defensive perimeter solid enough to stop an attack like the one that smashed Barksdale. And it doesn’t make sense to tie down the huge numbers of troops and combat aircraft a defense of that magnitude would require.”

She saw Admiral Firestone and some of the other Defense Department types nodding sagely in agreement. How nice, she thought tartly. It was always an added plus when concern for her own personal safety meshed so closely with military common sense.

Cohen looked even unhappier. “We could take some serious political damage if you stay off the public stage much longer,” he warned. “People get kind of nervous when they start thinking that the nation’s commander in chief is running scared.”

“Maybe so,” Barbeau snapped, feeling her temper flare. “But I’d sure as hell rather be a lame duck than a dead duck!” Angrily, she glared at her chief of staff. “And it’s your job, Luke, honey, to convince the American people that I’m acting in the interests of national security… and not to save my own skin. So you do your goddamned job, or I’ll find someone else who can. Do you understand me?”

Miserably, he nodded.

She swung her icy gaze toward Rauch. To his credit, her national security adviser didn’t flinch. Working for her administration must be toughening the little man up. She’d put him in charge of coordinating the federal investigation into what they were still calling a terrorist attack on Barksdale Air Force Base. “What have you got for me, Ed?”

“Info on one of the cruise missiles used to hit us,” he said quietly. “We think either the engine or the guidance package failed, which is why it crashed into a bayou about two miles east of the runway.”

“Let’s see it.”

Rauch tapped the screen of his laptop, opening a file and sending the images it contained to one of the briefing room’s video screens. Photos blossomed on the LED display, showing the mud-smeared, crumpled gray fuselage and fins of what was unmistakably a missile. Shots showing the wreckage being loaded into a sling beneath one of the Air Force’s Pave Hawk helicopters gave a sense of scale.

“Have our people been able to identify this weapon?” Barbeau asked.

“Yes, Madam President,” Rauch said carefully. “The wreckage has been examined by specialists from both the Air Force and the intelligence community. There’s no question that what you’re looking at is a Kh-35UE short-range, subsonic cruise missile.” He brought up another image, this one a file photo showing an intact version of the same missile. “It’s a Russian design, comparable to our own Navy’s Harpoons. And like the Harpoon, these missiles can be fired by a wide range of platforms — by fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, ships, and ground-based launchers. In fact, some analysts have nicknamed the Kh-35 the ‘Harpoonski’ because they’re so similar.”

Barbeau narrowed her eyes in annoyance. “Dr. Rauch, are you telling me this was a Russian attack after all?”

He shook his head. “Not with any certainty.” Seeing her confusion, he explained. “The Russians have been selling export versions of the Kh-35 around the world for decades. Plus, several countries — some of them with governments that are extremely unstable and corrupt — build their own copies under license.”

“Which means there’s no way to tell how many of these missiles have made their way onto the black market,” she realized.

“Correct,” Rauch agreed. “And since we can’t find the usual serial numbers on any of the components in this missile, that’s probably what we’re looking at. Certainly, there’s no doubt that whoever sold these weapons doesn’t want them traced back to the source.”

Admiral Firestone stirred in his seat. “That applies to the Russians, too,” he pointed out. “They’d have just as much interest in sanitizing any Kh-35s transferred from their own arsenals.”

“Yes, sir,” Rauch agreed. “Which is why I want our interagency scientific groups to examine different methods we might use to narrow down the provenance of these weapons — perhaps by analyzing the kerosene fuel blend we found in that wrecked missile’s engine or by studying the precise chemical composition of its warhead.”

“That’s a hell of a tall order, Ed,” one of the CIA officers objected. “Without other intact Kh-35s from known sources to use as controls, how can we possibly draw any reliable conclusions from—”

Barbeau felt her eyes glazing over as the discussion spiraled off into a long and highly technical debate. Instead, while her advisers wrangled, she sat wrapped in her own thoughts, wrestling with an array of contradictory evidence and wild speculation. It would be a typical Martindale move to use Russian-designed missiles to muddy the waters, she fumed. Was the raid on Barksdale his doing after all — part of some insane scheme to lure the U.S. into an open confrontation with Gennadiy Gryzlov? If so, it might explain why he’d opted for an all-out deadly attack instead of simply trying to embarrass her politically by sabotaging the B-21 Raider prototype.

But if Martindale was trying to spark a war between the U.S. and Russia, why use a weapons system, the CIDs, that pointed the finger right back at himself?

Unless, Barbeau thought, the Poles were right after all. If the Russians had their own combat robots—

Impatiently, she dismissed that thought as even crazier than all the others. Top U.S. government weapons labs had repeatedly failed to replicate the cybernetics and engineering breakthroughs needed to build new CIDs. How could the Russians, who were so far behind the U.S. in those same technologies, have suddenly leapfrogged past them? The idea that Moscow could achieve so many separate technological breakthroughs by simply scooping up a few broken and burned-out pieces off a battlefield was ludicrous.

If that weren’t enough, the idea that this was a Russian operation didn’t square with any diplomatic or political reality Barbeau could see. Why would Gennadiy Gryzlov order an attack that could easily have killed her? She certainly wasn’t his ally, but she also worked hard to avoid any unnecessary confrontation with Russia… and she’d paid a significant political price for her restraint. Why on earth would the Russian leader risk handing the presidency to John Dalton Farrell? The Texan was another unreconstructed cold warrior, a would-be Ronald Reagan. For crying out loud, he was already colluding with two of Moscow’s most determined enemies, Piotr Wilk and Kevin Martindale. How could Gryzlov possibly see clearing Farrell’s path to the Oval Office as being in his country’s best interest?

No, she thought coldly, when faced with two or three improbable scenarios, it didn’t make any sense to choose the one that was the nuttiest of them all. Which left Martindale… or Patrick McLanahan, if he was still alive somehow. They were the only two men in the world who controlled a force of stealth aircraft and combat robots. She made a mental note to push Rauch to crack the whip on the intelligence experts tasked with reexamining the evidence of McLanahan’s death over Poland three years before.

“Oh, that’s just great,” Barbeau heard Luke Cohen mutter from beside her. Her chief of staff was staring down at an e-mail he’d just received on his smartphone.

“More trouble, Luke?” she asked pointedly.

He nodded. “Farrell has just requested a detailed intelligence briefing on this situation.”

Barbeau frowned. By custom, presidential candidates didn’t receive access to classified intelligence information until after their party formally nominated them at its national convention. In Farrell’s case, that wouldn’t be for some weeks yet. “On what grounds?”

“His argument is that the severity of the crisis confronting the nation warrants moving the regular timetable up.”

“Not a chance,” Barbeau said icily, not even bothering to waste time thinking it through. Her suspicions were now fully aroused. If the Texas governor was a political stalking-horse for Martindale and his hard-line allies, every scrap of secret intelligence they gave him would end up in enemy hands. And even if she were wrong about his role in this mess, there was no doubt that Farrell or his operatives would find ways to leak any damaging or embarrassing information they learned. After all, she knew that was exactly what she would do if she were in his place.

“But, he’ll go running to the press—”

“Let him whine,” Barbeau snapped. “You tell J. D. Farrell for me that the United States has just one president at a time. And right now, that’s me.” She folded her arms across her chest. “This is my watch, not his. For now, he can go peddle his Texas he-man political bullshit to the rubes while I’m doing the hard work to keep this country safe.”

Brad McLanahan squatted down next to Captain Ian Schofield. The Canadian lay prone at the very edge of the camouflage netting that sheltered their encampment and protected the XCV-62 Ranger from prying eyes. Even under its welcome shade, the very air was so hot and so bone-dry that it seemed determined to suck every drop of moisture from their mouths and eyes.

Schofield lowered the binoculars he’d been using to survey their surroundings. Under the scorching rays of the sun, the high desert plateau seemed utterly lifeless. Nothing seemed to move except for the heat waves dancing above a barren landscape of sagebrush, wind-eroded rock, and bare, sunbaked dirt. “You know,” he said reflectively, “I really should stop volunteering for missions in the less salubrious parts of the globe.”

Brad moistened his cracked lips and managed a painful grin. “Hey, show a little respect, Ian. Battle Mountain is my home turf. Summers here aren’t usually so bad.” Then he shrugged. “Well, as long as you’ve got air conditioning, anyway. Or at least an ice chest full of cold drinks.”

“All of which are in extremely short supply just now,” Schofield pointed out.

“Yeah, there is that.” Brad sighed. “Water is the big problem, isn’t it?”

The Canadian nodded. “It is. We have plenty of food.” He smiled wryly. “None of it especially gourmet, to be sure. But water is bulky, and in this heat, we all need to drink a fair amount.” He sat up. “With reasonable rationing, we can maintain our position here for another four or five days. After that, we’ll need a resupply mission. Or we’ll have to leave.”

Brad nodded. There was no way Scion could fly in more supplies to them — not covertly, anyway. The Ranger was their only stealth STOL aircraft. The stealth-modified PZL SW-4 helicopter they’d used to fly Sam Kerr and her fellow agents out of Russia was thousands of miles away. Knowing Martindale, he was sure there were other Scion-operated aircraft and helicopters based in the U.S., but nothing that could land here without setting off a lot of alarms.

“Any news from the OP?” Schofield asked.

Using their CIDs, Brad, Nadia, and Macomber were taking it in turns to man an observation post they’d established high up on the slopes overlooking Battle Mountain. The position they’d selected gave their passive sensors a clear field of view over every likely avenue of approach to the Sky Masters complex around the airport.

“Well, Colonel Macomber says he’s pretty sure he’s tagged every FBI surveillance team based in or around Battle Mountain. My friend Boomer was right. There are a lot of them… and they’re not being real subtle. The feds have two-man teams parked right outside every gate and at key vantage points that give them a good view of the airport.”

Schofield frowned. “What about others?”

“Like the Russians?” Brad shook his head with a frown. “Nothing so far. Which means either they’re not here at all, or—”

“They’re very, very good,” the other man finished for him. He shrugged. “I’ve studied the personnel records those Scion agents you rescued snatched from Bataysk. The Spetsnaz troops who hired on with Gryzlov’s mercenary force are top class.”

“As good as your guys?” Brad asked seriously.

Schofield smiled. “Perish the thought.” Then he shrugged his shoulders again. “But good enough to give us some trouble in a fair fight? Probably so.”

“Great.”

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think I could work any of my men into position outside Sky Masters without your CIDs spotting us,” Schofield said firmly. “The terrain is too open. Between your thermal and audio sensors, and those advanced motion-detection algorithms programmed into your computers, I doubt a field mouse could sneak up to the perimeter fence without being spotted, let alone a man.”

Brad sighed. “Let’s hope you’re right.” He rose to his feet. “Speaking of which, it’s my turn on sentry duty.” He chuckled. “The last time I checked, Whack was so bored that he was starting to place bets with himself on how many big rigs he’d count per hour driving along Interstate 80.”