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  Something was brewing way up north, and from the urgency of everyone on the various staffs coming back from leave, the gate guards speculated that Poland was having one hell of a time.

  But no one knew anything about Russians anywhere near Stuttgart.

  Both MPs drew their pistols as they cocked their heads at the distant noise.

  “Better call it in,” said the American to his partner.

  The German Feldwebel reached for his radio, his eyes still on the distant smoke.

  CHAPTER 40

  THE PENTAGON

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  26 DECEMBER

  Bob Griggs was asleep just after two a.m., his head on his desk, when the phone rang. He didn’t jolt up; in fact, he let it ring awhile till he reached out a hand and, with his face on the table, answered sleepily.

  “Yeah?”

  “Griggs, it’s Nik. This is just a courtesy call; I don’t have much time. You’ve got Connolly there with you?”

  “Nah. Poor guy was falling asleep at his desk, so I made him go home for a few hours. Can’t have that shit at the Pentagon.” Griggs still had not lifted his head.

  “Well, I’m calling to blow your mind. I’ve been monitoring the Russian exercises in Iran.”

  “I know,” Griggs said. “Because Dan and I asked you to.”

  “Well, right. I agreed it was curious they would send their most veteran general out of the country with a sizable force of armor if they knew they would be attacking Europe. But, looking into it, it appears Lazar moved his entire reinforced brigade the length of the Islamic Republic, north to south, and arrived at the southern coast of Iran after midnight local time. We didn’t have coverage of the area, but when we took another look, we found the Russians are loading onto civilian flagged container ships at the port in Chabahar Bay.”

  Griggs shot upright, phone tight to his ear. “Container ships? What the hell for?”

  “Looks like Lazar plans on doing some sailing. The ships are Singapore-registered dry goods haulers. An analyst looked into their history and didn’t see any ties to the Russian government, but there is no question that they are now serving as troop transport ships. We also detected three other container ships registered to the same company—might be related to the Russians. They are already in the Gulf of Oman, heading toward Chabahar Bay, after setting sail from Bandar Abbas yesterday morning. There are Russian warships in Bandar, by the way, but they weren’t on the water last we checked.”

  Griggs said, “Lazar’s exercise is a ruse! Just like Sabaneyev’s was!”

  “Exactly,” Melanopolis said.

  “What’s your leadership over there doing about this?”

  “Dunno, but here’s my guess. I run it up the flagpole, and my boss runs it up his flagpole. Four or five others will get their meat hooks into the intel, they’ll come back asking for clarification, have meetings about what meetings to have before the meeting where they tell the big shots they need to have a meeting with POTUS to figure out what to do.”

  “Jesus,” Griggs said. “This is fucking huge.”

  “If Europe wasn’t at war and China wasn’t on the brink of war, it would be huger. As it is, it’s a brigade of Russians doing something shitty in the Gulf of Oman. A big deal lost in a cloud of bigger deals. Look, man, I gotta run.”

  Nik hung up, and the door to the bullpen opened.

  Griggs saw Dan Connolly leaning in.

  “Hey, boss,” Griggs said. “Thought you were getting a few hours’ rest.”

  “I got called in by the admiral.”

  “Shit.”

  “It gets shittier. We got called in by the admiral. He wants you and me in Conference Room Two. Now.”

  Griggs stood and headed for the door. “I bet we’re getting raises and promotions.”

  Connolly didn’t smile. “Yeah, Bob. That’s it, for sure.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The Tandberg video teleconference devices were staged on a large oak table in the middle of the conference room. The space was perfect for collaborating with their Pacific cell.

  And it was also perfect for private ass chewings.

  Connolly and Griggs stood at attention. Admiral Herbers stood in front of them, a scowl on his face.

  Connolly looked back in silence, so Herbers switched his stare to Griggs. “No more running around over there at NSA; no more of you two ferreting out matters better left to the intel folks. You are to get back to working Pacific plans for me and the vice chairman. Am I clear?”

  The men nodded.

  The admiral softened his tone a degree. He wiped his face with his hands, exchanging his earlier anger for a strained grimace. “Now, look. I get it that you feel some obsession—some propriety, even—over this Russian computer hacking piece. You earned your place in the sun with some good analysis. But Russia is not your domain at the moment, and we have that situation in hand. Our boys on the deck took the fight right back to the Russkies and the reports from EUCOM do not lie. We beat them. Nailed them hard, says General Miller. His words, not mine.

  “No more reports of Russians crossing into Poland since the first wave. We blunted their assault, stopped them from staging a major invasion, and we’ll beat back the ones that made it through. Europe and NATO will be working on getting comms and sats and such back up for days or weeks, and only then will Russia’s true intentions be obvious; but that’s not my problem, and that’s not your problem.

  “Our problem, gents, is Asia. I need you both back on PACOM. Stat. You got me?”

  “Yes, sir,” they replied in unison. The admiral nodded at their acknowledgment of orders, then turned around to look over the big charts of the Pacific that adorned the walls of the meeting room.

  Then Griggs cleared his throat, clearly unable to remain silent. “Sir, shouldn’t we at least consider—”

  Connolly sighed softly.

  The admiral turned back to face the two, stared Griggs down, and said, “Major Griggs, sometimes you gotta know when to just shut the fuck up. Maybe Plans just isn’t the place for you.” The admiral came closer. “Maybe we need to get you back to big Army. I hear they are still waiting for you to get a weigh-in to determine your fitness to continue this sputtering career of yours.” He pointed a finger at Griggs that nearly touched his nose. “Step sideways one more time and you get tossed back to where you came from. I’m sure Colonel Richter could find some use for you.”

  Griggs’s face twitched at the sound of the name. His voice came out more meekly this time. “Yes, sir. I understand.”

  “Good. I’ll expect progress. I want a brief on your and the team’s findings on Taiwan tomorrow at zero-six. And, Colonel Connolly, square away your partner here—you still have a few shreds of credibility left. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir. Very clear.”

  The admiral turned and walked out the large wooden double doors.

  Both men’s shoulders slumped, and Connolly turned to Griggs now. “You’re fucking killing me. We need to do what the admiral is telling us to do. It’s more than our careers on the line. We do have a whole other theater we are responsible to the vice chairman for.”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “No, sir, Lieutenant Colonel Connolly, sir. We will not do what the admiral told us to do.”

  “Bob . . . I swear to God.”

  “Hear me out.”

  “I’m not listening to another word. You are going to get both of us—”

  “You have to listen.”

  “There’s nothing you can say at this point.”

  “What if I say ‘Chabahar Bay’?”

  “What?”

  “Chabahar Bay. It’s a small coastal harbor in southern Iran. Excellent roads leading to it.”

  Connolly spun toward Griggs and grabbed him
by both shoulders. “So . . . fucking . . . what?”

  “General Boris Lazar just loaded his entire brigade onto civilian cargo haulers in that port. He’s heading to sea.”

  Connolly released his grasp, took a half step back, and leaned against the conference table. “You’re kidding.”

  “He managed to get a whole brigade through Azerbaijan, into Iran, and aboard ships all while everyone was focused on first Taiwan and then Europe. This was the Russian plan. Like a boxer: first a jab. That’s the Taiwan crisis. They didn’t orchestrate it, but their plan is obviously piggybacking on our distraction over there, exacerbated by the effects of their hacking of the admiral’s laptop.”

  “Then a right cross. That’s Europe. Caused us to swing back.”

  “And now that we’re even more distracted, they bring the uppercut.”

  “Bob, spare me the metaphors and tell me where the fuck Lazar is going.”

  “Africa. Where else?”

  Connolly slowly nodded. “Of course. Kenya.”

  “Yep,” Griggs said with a smile. “My bet is they are making a move for that resource-rich rare-earth mine Kenya kicked them out of three years ago.”

  “Has to be it, Bob. Holy shit.”

  Griggs said, “And if we can’t stop them from taking the mine, we probably can’t stop them from fortifying the mine’s defenses. It will take a month or two for us to get any real force to try to retake it, maybe longer.”

  Connolly replied, “You’re right, but we’ll still do it. We won’t let them get away with this.”

  “What the hell?” Griggs said. “We’re either at war or almost at war on two continents right now. Why not make it three?” It was sarcasm, and Connolly nodded in agreement, then cocked his head.

  “So the plan in Europe was to just do a feint into Poland all the way to Germany so Lazar can sneak down to Africa. No other objective? That doesn’t make sense.”

  The men stood silently a moment, and then, at the same time, they said, “AFRICOM!”

  Connolly jolted back upright. “They are going to Stuttgart!”

  Griggs nodded. “They figure that if they kill or capture all our military experts on Africa, who are all stationed in Germany—destroy our command and control there—then they will be able to roll across Africa with little to no response from us. We won’t even be able to help orchestrate a coalition of African militaries to stop them, since we have nothing to offer and our military liaisons will be out of the picture.”

  Connolly said, “And it will take a year to set AFRICOM back up—a year Russia can use to bolster their defenses at the mine. Make it fucking Russian territory.”

  Now the lieutenant colonel had a new thought. “Wait. If you knew this about Lazar, why didn’t you just tell Herbers while he was tearing you a new asshole?”

  Griggs smiled broadly and winked. “Because we aren’t going through Herbers on this. The admiral won’t make the case that needs to be made. We need to go to the director of plans himself to explain everything.”

  Connolly said, “But Herbers will kick our—”

  “This is too important, Dan. Getting the Pentagon to turn its attention to Africa is worth us risking our careers.”

  Dan Connolly nodded slowly, then said, “I hate it when you’re right, Bob.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The two men spent the next hour poring over raw satellite images of Lazar’s force on the highways in Iran and the cargo ships in port. The work involved three calls to Nik Melanopolis for clarification on aspects of what they were looking at, although the NSA man answered only one of the calls and gave them only about three minutes of help before begging off to get back to his own frantic work.

  But Nik called the men back twenty minutes later and, in an about-face, asked if he could drive down to the Pentagon for a meeting.

  * * *

  • • •

  Dr. Melanopolis had brought paperwork. Lots of paperwork. “The Russians have amassed quite a bit of gear, and it’s all apparently with permission of the Iranian forces. Look here . . .” Melanopolis drew up a set of overhead imagery. A small grouping of Iranian naval vessels was tethered together off the Chabahar pier facility.

  “How can they draw enough water to get anything into that port? Looks like all fishing vessels there.”

  “That’s the beauty of it. No one would suspect you could load a deep-draft vessel there. But there is this narrow channel. Enough room to fit one, maybe two wide and deep cargo or oil boats. Not the massive supertankers, but a large enough ship to carry fuel for maybe a brigade for several months, maybe longer, depending on how far they intend to road march once they hit land.”

  Griggs asked, “Why don’t they just send it all via unmarked cargo vessels? Better chance of staying below radar. Why the armed escort?”

  Connolly answered this one. “It’s still a time of war. If they are heavily escorted—you know, big cruisers and stuff—we’d notice. But with the smaller Iranian escorts, they hedged their bets. If we don’t know and aren’t looking, they slip under our proverbial radars. If we are looking, they buy themselves some reaction time and some fine tools to keep curious Yankee destroyers and subs well away. Not a bad plan. Not too big and not too small.”

  Connolly turned back to Dr. Melanopolis. “Now, tell me, what’s all this other stuff? The rows of things in that harbor you have on the other screens?”

  “It took me a while to figure it out. You see how they all have these massive metal cases?” Both men nodded as Dr. Melanopolis tapped his pen on the screen. “Those aren’t cases. They are tubes. Missile tubes. And these things I thought were shipping crates aren’t crates at all. These are Chinese Hóng Qí-9 upgrades, or HQ-9B for short. Hóng Qí literally means ‘Red Banner.’ This is the latest generation of Chinese phased-array antiair missiles. These babies can simultaneously identify six different targets and launch and track six different missiles. I count four of them total.”

  “Is that enough?”

  “It’s enough to keep America’s proud, shiny air forces at bay. And do it all from more than two hundred kilometers over the horizon.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Connolly said. “So the Russkies bought themselves some missiles from China. Smart, too. They shipped them all to Iran, and it just looked like some basic Iranian modernization. It also prevented us from seeing Russians transferring advanced weapons to Iran. Wonder if the Chinese even knew who they were selling these things to.”

  Griggs then pivoted to researching the ships themselves. He looked at MarineTraffic.com to pull up both current and historical information on one of the ships, and from this he could determine the average speed of this flotilla.

  He spun around to Connolly.

  Griggs said, “Lazar is on the water now. If he’s going to Kenya, the closest African port to the Mrima Hill mine is Mombasa. It’s only about thirty miles away. At present speed, I calculate he can reach it in fifty hours.”

  Connolly thought about this. “Two whole days on the open ocean? That’s risky for him, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but his problem, not mine. If we can impress the need up the chain of command, two days is plenty of time to respond to this attack while they’re still on the water. We can have subs, bombers, and cruise missiles in place to pound them with time to spare.”

  Connolly was incredulous. “But . . . but Lazar would know that already. He knows our satellites and comms aren’t degraded in the Middle East or Africa. Why would he sail into the trap he has to assume we’d have waiting for him?” He sat there silently for a moment. “No . . . there is another piece to the puzzle. Has to be.”

  “Like what?”

  “Don’t know. The Russians know what they’re doing. They’ve been a step ahead of us through this whole thing. I don’t believe we’re suddenly a step ahead of them.”

 
Griggs said, “Even if we don’t have all the answers, we have to brief the director.”

  “Yeah,” Connolly said. “About that: How are we going to do that without Admiral Herbers knowing?”

  Griggs said, “I have a plan. I think we should call it ‘Operation Sacrifice Fly.’”

  Connolly sighed. “I fucking hate it already.”

  CHAPTER 41

  NORTH OF STUTTGART, GERMANY

  26 DECEMBER

  The inside of Glitter’s cockpit was muggy from heat and perspiration. She had to keep wiping off her windscreen and her helmet’s visor. It was better than the alternative: opening one of the small hatches and letting the cold winter wind inside. It was probably twenty degrees out there, and flying at 120 miles an hour would only make the whipping wind worse.

  She could always turn off her heater to cool down, but she knew doing so wasn’t the right call. Chances of getting it going again were iffy. A few months earlier, on a cool September afternoon, she’d shut down her heater and then spent the last hour of her flight freezing her ass off.

  Doing it today would be idiotic. Much better to swelter for a little while longer.

  The voice in her headset gave her something else to think about. “Glitter, I calculate maybe thirty more minutes of fuel left,” Jesse said. “That’s at this burn rate. If we do any tricks, we’re going to lose more time.”

  “We have to stay on these guys. Whatever their objective is in Stuttgart, I’m not hearing a lot of other units up on the net. They have a clear shot directly downtown.”

  “What do you think? Are they taking out the airport? On their way to hit Ramstein? Going after EUCOM?”

  “Hell if I know, and with only a half hour of flight time left, I’m not sure we’re going to find out.”

  “What’s your plan, boss?”