Ghosts of War (15 page)

I
heard Knuckles break squelch and stopped talking, hoping we were now in play. We were not.

“No change. I say again, no change.”

I clicked the little microreceiver of my radio, courtesy of the Mossad, and said, “Roger all.”

It was a dinky thing that looked to me like it had been made by a division of Kenner Toys using Easy-Bake Oven parts, but it seemed to work. I would have preferred a Taskforce kit, but beggars can't be choosers, and I certainly wasn't going to complain with Shoshana in my car. When she'd given the equipment to my team, she seemed to think it was the equivalent of a Maxwell Smart shoe phone.

Knuckles said, “Are we sure this information is accurate? I mean, I've been out here all morning. Maybe I should be getting back home.”

Shoshana scowled at the words, a little bit of the dark angel coming out. She didn't take criticism very well. She started to click onto the net and I held up a finger, saying, “Mossad says it's accurate, and you heard Kurt. We stay.”

Between the time Knuckles had taken off from the United States and the time he landed in Europe, the world had become a different place. While he was in the air, the leader of the most powerful country on earth had been killed, and the fragile status quo between East and West was on the verge of crumbling completely, leaving crushed bones and scorched earth in its wake.

As Archduke Ferdinand could tell you, war has a logic all its own, and it was rarely sane.

Jennifer and I, naturally, had been rocked by the news story, spending three hours in front of the television, but very little was publicly known other than the fact that Air Force One had crashed while flying to Moscow. Conspiracy theories abounded, with leaked stories supposedly from F-16 pilots saying missiles had been fired. Ukrainian nationalists blamed Russia, and Russia itself spewed forth a spasm of propaganda denouncing such statements.

The crash site was near Luhansk, Ukraine, close to the Russian border and firmly in rebel-held territory. For its part, the rebel command had immediately cordoned off the area but were refusing admittance to anyone—Russia, Ukraine, United States, or NATO. The decision seemed to stem out of confusion more than anything else, but it wasn't being perceived that way by the media.

It had taken some effort, and a million redials, until I eventually got Kurt on the line and asked if I needed to come home. I was spoiling for a fight, asking for what wasn't being said in the open press. What was the Taskforce seeing? He had very little time to give me any inside skinny. All he did was tell me to stay. I argued with him, but the Taskforce was still on stand-down. He had no way to get any forces into the European continent, and I was conveniently located right near the epicenter. It would do him no good to fly me home only to fly me back. He wanted me as a hedge, so much so that he'd ordered Knuckles to remain with me as well. Against orders, he'd established a Taskforce duty desk manned 24/7, and had directed me to check in with them daily, in his words, “Just in case.” I'd asked him if creating the cell was smart, given the stand-down, and he'd cryptically replied, “I have the ear of those who matter. It'll be okay.”

Knuckles had landed, and in between taxiing to the gate and exiting the aircraft, he'd learned what had happened. He had immediately set about buying a ticket back home, convinced he was going to miss out on a deployment somewhere, until I'd relayed Kurt's orders. He obeyed, but sure didn't like it.

He came over the radio again, saying, “How do we know these pictures are accurate? Who's vetting this stuff?”

Shoshana scowled again, saying off the radio, “I need to finish showing you how to use the camera. Tell him to shut up.”

I chuckled and clicked the microphone. “Shoshana says shut up and continue the mission. I have to learn to work some tech kit.”

“Tell that devil she can get her own ass out here. Oh, wait, she's worthless for this mission. I forgot.”

That was enough. She clicked on and said, “The information is straight from Mossad. It is more accurate than anything you would get from your government, and much better than the stick-figure pictures you had me use in Jordan.”

I waited on a response, but didn't hear one. Knuckles wouldn't admit it, but he was afraid of her. And honestly, she was right. While Jennifer and I had been glued to the television in Poland, Aaron had met a contact somewhere secret and had been given the location of the safe house, blueprints, and very clear photos of Mikhail Jolson and Simon Migunov. Both were Israeli citizens—with Simon having dual citizenship in Russia—and one had worked with the Mossad, so it had been an easy task to get biometric data.

Knuckles's comment about the photos was a little harsh, because they were exponentially better than the ones we usually had for positive ID: some grainy picture of a terrorist with a beard, half-turned away from the camera, and the photo looking like it had been taken in 1960.

When Aaron returned with the information, he'd seemed surprised we were still in Wroclaw. I'd told him we were his for the time being, but we might be called away at any moment. He'd known that was the best assurance he'd get, and we'd set out for Bratislava, passing through the Czech Republic, then swinging through Vienna, Austria, to pick up Knuckles. The total trip took a little over six hours, once
again mildly surprising me that we could travel through so many different countries in less time than it took to drive across the state of Texas.

We'd arrived in the early evening and immediately conducted a reconnaissance of the safe house Simon was supposedly using, formulating a surveillance plan for the following day. I wasn't sure what to expect, but while the opulence of the place wasn't a surprise, the location sure was.

A three-story building made of modern steel and glass set on the side of a hill overlooking the city, it fit the profile for a man who supposedly ran one of the largest organized crime syndicates in the world, but the neighbors next door were not who I would have expected from a master criminal. He had plopped himself right in the middle of some of the tightest security in Slovakia.

The house was situated in rich-man's land, so to speak, and sprinkled in among the neighborhood were the mansions of diplomats and elites of other countries, all bristling with cameras. About a half mile away was the home of the US chief of mission, right where I wanted to set up. Located just around a bend on the winding road that led past the target, it would have been the perfect spot for me to wait, but the surveillance cameras on the building bulged out like warts on a frog and forced me to edge closer than I wanted.

Jennifer and Aaron were parked on the same road, but on the other side of the target house, effectively preventing anyone from leaving without getting picked up by one of us. We had two cars each, depending on who left first. If it was Simon, then Aaron and Shoshana would take the follow. If it was Mikhail, it would be Jennifer and me. Knuckles was in the center, acting as the trigger for any activity.

In our haste to complete the reconnaissance and get established, we hadn't had time to learn the special tech kit the Mossad had provided, so Aaron was in the car with Jennifer showing her the ropes,
and I had the little demon with me. Shoshana was getting antsy to get back to her car, and wanted to finish my instructions before someone began stirring in the house.

When Knuckles didn't come back on with a witty retort to her comment about the photo, she said, “Okay, look here, Nephilim. The key thing is to make sure the autofocus is on the face. It's got to be clear. If the lens focuses on bricks or trees behind or in front, we get nothing.”

In truth, while we had a box built on the target, we weren't sure if we were going to penetrate the house or some other establishment, so we'd opted to develop the situation by following either Mikhail or Simon. To help, the Mossad had provided something I'd never seen before, and I had to admit it was pretty ingenious: a remote lipreader. Something that really was straight out of
Get Smart
.

Basically, it was nothing more than a very small, very powerful lens that could be hidden in clothing. A cable from the lens went to a small tablet with a seven-inch screen, where the camera software resided. You manipulated the zoom of the lens through the tablet, focusing on the faces of whoever was having a conversation, and then hit record.

Software in the tablet translated the movements of the lips into words, or so the Israelis said. Internally, I figured it would work, since teaching someone to read lips couldn't be any more difficult than programming a computer to do the same. It was a pretty unique twist on facial recognition software, and eliminated the problems of distance or ambient noise encountered with acoustic microphones—like being separated from the target through glass—but it did have the one drawback that you had to see the subject's face.

I said, “Can this thing recognize different languages? Lipreading is going to be based on the language they're speaking.”

“No. Well, yes, but not mobile. You have to set it to a language. It's set for Yiddish right now, for a real-time read. If it encounters
another language, we just need to ship the digits back to headquarters and they can manipulate the algorithm.”

“What does Mikhail speak?”

“Hebrew, English, Yiddish, Russian, Spanish, and German.”

“Jesus. He speaks all those languages?”

“Yes. He is very smart.”

She spat the words out as if they were causing her mouth to burn. I didn't want her to get all fired up, so I changed the subject. “Seems simple enough. How much memory?”

“Enough for thirty minutes of filming. But don't try stopping and starting to conserve space. It'll just screw up the algorithm as the computer tries to make sense of what is being said.”

“What's the other box for?”

At her feet was a small Pelican case of about ten inches. She said, “It's part of the system, but it's not something we'll use here. I don't have time to train you on that.”

I didn't press. Instead, I said, “Let me test it on you.”

“I don't speak Yiddish.”

My mouth dropped and she laughed, saying, “You are so gullible. We're too close together for it to work, I think.”

“Let's try.” I pulled back as far as I could, then got a focus on her lips. I said, “Okay,” and hit record. She spoke a couple of sentences, then quit. I stopped the recording, letting the computer do its little dance, and then, like magic, the video played with what looked like closed captioning from a television sports show.

I'm sorry about what happened to your president. I hope you and Jexxxixer can stay and help, but I suppose that is selfish. You'll be called to fight but I wish you wouldn't. Too much death. I don't want to fight anymore.

I noticed that it hadn't recognized Jennifer's name as a word, then saw what she'd said. I glanced up, a little embarrassed, as if I'd heard a secret I wasn't supposed to.

She said, “Did it work?”

“Uhh . . . yes.”

She had a bemused smile on her face and said, “It's true.”

“We aren't going anywhere anytime soon. If I had to bet, my government's probably too busy fighting themselves right now.”

I
t was closing in on three in the morning, and Philip Hannister still had not taken a seat behind the Resolute desk inside the Oval Office, preferring to pace or use the couches as he had as vice president.

In a hurried ceremony reminiscent of President Johnson's in 1963, Hannister had been sworn in to the highest office in the land with zero pomp and circumstance. Unlike President Johnson, he was immediately confronted with debilitating decisions that could lead to total war. An analogy with Johnson would only be accurate if JFK had been assassinated during the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Kurt Hale had been with him since that first awful phone call, and Hannister seemed to want it that way, using him as a touchstone to President Warren, as if Kurt was the only man he trusted in the room. At first, Kurt had tried to break contact and return to his comfortable world of covert action, but Hannister had insisted that he remain, and so he'd sat in the back while the initial investigation occurred, barely uttering a word. Now, after hearing some of the crazy ideas being spouted by the supposed experts in world affairs, he was more than willing to provide advice and assistance.

Hannister was preparing to address his national security team for the first time, and he seemed lost. Kurt wanted to provide what strength he could, feeling an oppressive, unwarranted responsibility for the future of the country. He couldn't imagine what was going through President Hannister's mind.

Looking out the window at the darkness, Hannister said, “They're going to tell me to go to war.”

“Sir, if Putin did this—even by omission—it's unavoidable. War was
his
choice, and he needs to be crushed for that . . .”

Kurt let his voice trail off, not finishing the other side of the coin. Not wanting to be the advisor Hannister believed he was. Craving the safe lane he'd been in for his entire military career, where he simply executed policy, not determined it.

Hannister turned and said, “But?”

Kurt took a breath and let it out, taking the first step into terrain he despised. A world of spin and half statements designed to make the masses happy, but having little to do with true security.

He was now in the game, whether he wished it or not.

He said, “But we don't
know
Putin did it. You don't want to start World War Three based on faulty assumptions. You don't want President Warren to be the catalyst for a war that could have been avoided.”

“I also don't want to be the president who did nothing while Putin rolls into Belarus, Poland, and the Baltic states. And the drumbeat for war in Congress is going to be almost unstoppable.”

“Fuck the politics.” Hannister's head whipped around at the curse word. “Sorry, sir, but having the legacy of possibly destroying the earth as we know it is what you're looking at. Ignore what the damn politicians say. You're the
president
now. Not a member of a political party.”

Hannister took in the words and nodded. He put on his coat, saying, “Let's go see the national security team.”

Surprised, Kurt said, “You want me in there?”

“Yes, if you don't mind.”

“No, no, that's fine. Nobody's going to listen to me, so before we go in, remember that every action has consequences, and what we do could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“What do you mean?”

“You worry about Russia and the Baltic states, and rightly so, but
play it from both sides: If Putin
didn't
have anything to do with this assassination, but he assumes that we
believe
he did, he'll be watching our response. Right now, he's not in Belarus, but if we react like we're going to war, he'll do what he thinks he must to protect himself. In other words, we might drive him into Belarus. And then into the Baltic states. This game isn't one-sided.”

Hannister sighed, the weight of his decisions hitting home. He said, “Let's go see what they have to say.”

—

The White House situation room was in chaos. Empty coffee mugs, trays of half-eaten finger sandwiches, and reams of reports that nobody was reading were scattered around. Instead, Kurt could hear the president's national security team shouting at each other from the open door.

Spittle flying from his face, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said, “Christ almighty, I cannot believe you people at State are still holding out for more evidence. We have the reports from the escort pilots. They were attacked by a Russian missile system. You think we're really going to find a broken ball bearing at the crash site that led to the downing?”

Beth, the beleaguered place holder for the deceased secretary of state, held her ground. “I don't know what we're going to find, and neither do you.”

“Putin wanted into Belarus, and President Warren was going to tell him to back off. He was the only thing stopping that maniac. Now he's dealing with President Hannister. Which one works out best for him?”

President Hannister entered the room at those words, staring full on at General Durham. The CJCS, caught short, stammered, “Sir . . . that's not how I meant it. . . .”

Hannister waited a beat, not uttering a word. When he was sure
that the rest of the room was focused on him, he said, “Well, how
did
you mean it?”

“Putin's trying to retake what the Soviets lost back when he was a nobody KGB agent, and killing President Warren helps him in that goal precisely because of the chaos left behind.”

Hannister turned to the director of national intelligence. “What are we seeing in Belarus?”

“He hasn't entered yet. Russia has stopped all movement to the border, but they're still saying they're going in, and all intercepts we have point in that direction.”

General Durham said, “He's going to cover this up as some sort of misfire, then he's rolling in. If we don't get on war footing right now, we'll be too late.”

“But if I do, I might push him into undertaking exactly what we don't want.”

General Durham took a controlled breath and said, “Sir, you can what-if this to death, looking for the easy out, but the bottom line is that we're an ocean away. We have to start mobilizing
now
. We've already wasted the entire day.”

Alexander Palmer said, “What about options short of full-scale war?”

Hannister said, “Such as?”

Palmer turned to the secretary of defense and said, “Can't we surgically retaliate?”

“You mean kill Putin with a missile?”

“Well, yeah. Tit for tat.”

“Yes, we could do that. It won't be a drone strike. It'll be more like a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles, but it can be done.”

General Durham looked at Hannister and said, “Sir, you'd have to rescind executive order 12333, because it forbids assassinations.”

Kurt finally spoke. “Have you people lost your minds? You're actually talking about assassinating a head of state? And you think that'll stop a war?”

General Durham said, “Who the hell are you?”

The few in the room who were read on to the Taskforce shifted uncomfortably. Hannister spoke. “He's my advisor. And he asked a good question.”

Palmer said, “Well, maybe we don't kill him, but react with enough force to show him we mean business.”

Hannister said, “So we shower him with cruise missiles and you think he'll simply back off? Or will he be driven to go to war by a population that's incensed we just attacked them?”

General Durham said, “Christ, sir, he
murdered
our president! That's the attack we should be talking about. Our entire country is screaming for blood. We have to do
something
.”

Hannister said, “I agree, but that something had better not end with him or us crossing a nuclear threshold. I've found that pride is viewed as much more important
before
an action than after. After, it's usually seen as a mistake.”

He tapped his fingers on the table then said, “Go ahead and mobilize. Do whatever you need to prepare to defend NATO.”

Durham said, “Yes, sir.”

“But
only
mobilize. Nobody crosses the Rubicon until I give the word. Is that understood?”

The secretary of defense nodded, saying, “Yes, sir, of course. What about the crash site? Right now they're still saying we can't get in.”

With a steel Kurt hadn't heard before, Hannister said, “We're moving to the crash site whether they like it or not. Immediately. Who can do that? And don't tell me it'll take forty-eight hours to figure it out.”

“Sir, we have units deployed to the Black Sea Rotation Force in Bulgaria. Right now we have a contingent of the 2nd Marine Division training in Latvia. They have armor. They can do it.”

“Get them rolling, and this is from me: Nobody will stand in the way of us getting to the crash site. Nobody.”

For the first time, General Durham smiled. President Hannister
caught the look and said, “But that is the
only
offensive action right now. Is that understood?”

Chastened, General Durham said, “Yes, sir.”

Hannister took a slow look around the table, then said, “Do not forget who the commander in chief is in this room. I will defend this nation if warranted, but I'm not going to war just to do
something
.”

He left the room without another word, Kurt stepping quickly to catch up. Kurt said, “That was pretty good, sir.”

Retracing his steps to his office, Hannister said, “You really think so? Because I felt completely out of my depth.”

Kurt chuckled and said, “Yeah. You laid down enough priorities, but more important, you took control. That'll be crucial in the future.”

They passed the Oval Office and Kurt did a double take. “Sir?”

Hannister saw what he'd done and smiled. “I guess I still want to be vice president.”

He stopped and said, “You should go home and get some sleep. I might need you tomorrow. I appreciate you stepping in back there. It seems we're not as smart at the executive level as we appear.”

Kurt smiled and said, “It's not that hard, sir. When I was a brand-new second lieutenant, my commander told me something that's served me well in many ambiguous situations. He said, ‘I know you don't have a clue what you're doing, and you'll have to listen to others for advice, but remember, at the end of the day, if you don't think it's right, it's probably not.' Sure as shit, he was correct. Many a time I've been in a room where the smartest guy was advocating something stupid. They mean well, but that's why you have the hat that says ‘commander in chief' and they don't.”

Hannister nodded and said, “Unfortunately, being right might not matter here. Forget proving Russia was behind it. I fear we must prove they positively
weren't
involved. Anything less than that—any ambivalence or loose threads—and we're going to war.”