CHAPTER 7
Washington, D.C.
The Pentagon
Wednesday
4:27 p.m. Eastern Time
“Ms. Thompson, are you telling me this is verified data?” Four-star Navy Admiral Tommy James Bristol was almost in a panic. While the other service chiefs looked back at her as grimly as the admiral, they remained quiet. Tonya knew that if her data was the slightest bit wrong and the Joint Chiefs briefed this up to the SecDef and the president that she’d never see a second star on her shoulder. She looked over to her direct line boss, VADM Whitburn, who slightly nodded his head in reassurance to her. Tonya turned back to the Chairman and answered slowly, choosing each word very deliberately.
“Sir, this is four-agency and four-sources verified. This is real. We have a rogue Russian officer and a team of very well-trained unknown mercenaries somewhere out there with as many as six nuclear warheads of up to one-hundred-fifty kilotons each. The Russian government had this specific missile TEL Treaty Designated as one of the Topol-M sites with nuclear capabilities. Realizing that the Treaty only allows for one warhead per Topol-M puts them in a precarious spot diplomatically. That assessment is in the brief only for a notice to the State Department. From a military intelligence perspective, we must assume they have more than one.” Tonya pointed out the dismantled nosecone of the now scuttled ICBM with the wireless mouse pointer. The Joint Chiefs of Staff conference room was even larger and nicer than the J2. She’d briefed the chiefs, or at least some of them, at times, but never like this with a real immediate looming threat. “This team knew what they were doing and they did it fast.”
“Do we have any idea where they are now?” Army General Harold “Harry” Galveston asked. “Any word on a buyer?”
“No, sir. We’ve been reverse tracking back to the event with assets of every type, but the culprits were smart. They knew when we would have assets in view and they waited for them to pass overhead before they attacked. The next pass of an asset was eighty-seven minutes afterward, and they were out of sight, hidden, or gone by then.” Tonya paused for that to sink in.
“Eighty-seven minutes to pull up to six warheads?” Admiral Bristol exclaimed rhetorically.
“That sounds impossible.” USSF General Kimberly Hastings added her skepticism.
“Well, General Hastings, I’d agree, but our expert USN CW4 McKagan from DEVGRU believes it is doable with two highly skilled teams and knowledge of the vehicle design. He says he could train his team to do it. But the CW4 has another thought about this, sirs.”
“Go on.”
“Well, if you look at this first image from our overhead asset, just around sunup, there are seventeen Russian Space Force soldiers practically posing for a spy satellite image. In this next image, eighty-seven minutes later, there they are again, including the Russian colonel Lytokov, and appear to be posing again. But note, there are only six soldiers in view. While they could be inside the vehicles, it is possible they had been killed and hidden out of view. The next image was from a polar orbiting asset almost two hours later and here you can see the dismantled nosecone image I showed you just a moment ago. It was taken from this asset almost five hours after the initial image. My analysts and the CW4 all agree that a small well-trained team with inside design and repair knowledge could accomplish this and get away with the warheads intact in five hours.”
“Five hours is more believable than eighty-seven minutes,” the Army four-star added.
“And what’s more, sirs, ma’am, is that I don’t believe they could sell these warheads, not with the U.S. and the Russians looking for them.”
“Then what is it you ‘believe’ they plan to do, Admiral Thompson?” General Hastings asked.
“Well, ma’am, I think they intend to use them, or at least one of them. They have to know they can’t sell them and can’t hide them forever. I’d guess we only have a few days to a couple weeks at best before they can reconfigure at least one of them in a way to detonate it.” Tonya almost held her breath and bit her tongue after saying that out loud.
“Jesus Christ!” General Hastings exclaimed. Tonya had been hearing and saying that a lot today. In fact, she believed she’d heard it more in this one day than during her entire career with the Joint Intelligence and DTRA—the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
“I agree, General. This appears to be an inside job so the engineering and maintenance knowledge of the missile would have been available.” Tonya paused to give the room time to absorb and assimilate the data she had given them. “Sirs, ma’am, to recap, my team and I have no idea to what end the mercenaries are after here, but we do know that now they have at least one nuke, and maybe a half dozen, as means toward whatever that end is. This was done so swiftly and professionally; they were most certainly highly skilled and funded, and on the inside of the Russian Space Force infrastructure. This was no simple ‘arms grab-n-go’ for the warlord markets. There must have been nuclear missile scientists or engineers or at least skilled techs involved. And we know they have one long-term career, highly trained, and perhaps disgruntled, Russian Space Forces colonel with them.”
“Disgruntled, Tonya?” the admiral asked.
“Um, yes sir. Our intel package on Colonel Vladimir Lytokov shows that he was hopeful to be in the Roscosmos Cosmonaut Corps but for—and the intel is sketchy on this—political reasons…and just maybe he couldn’t get out of his own way…he was transferred away from flying to the missile group. Basically, a transfer to Siberia, sir. As far away from the Moon as you can get if you’re a cosmonaut.”
“I see…”
“Who are we putting on this?” U.S. Marine Corps General Alton Cole asked.
“Right now, the CW4 is the only operative I have on it. CIA has put operatives from SAC/SOG on it but are coming up dry. Chief McKagan is on special assignment to me and not active with the SEAL Teams right now, but has requested to put a special team on this, sir.”
“Admiral, no offense to your warrant, but I know just the man for this,” General Cole said.
“Do I pull the chief then, sir?”
“No, we need all the smart eyes and ears on this we can get. Have your warrant connect with my guy and give them all priorities and accesses they need to run this thing to ground,” the general ordered. “This should be a JSOC”—Joint Special Operations Command—“effort with civilian agency involvement too.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You should add one of our experts from Kirtland,” U.S. Air Force General Robert Jeppersons added. “I’ll have Colonel Barnes get you some names.”
“Yes, sirs. I’ll reach across the services.” Tonya realized there were politics that had to be played here.
“Tonya, I have a couple of guys from Delta you need,” Army general Galveston added.
“Yes sir. Please send the information. I’ll be happy to add whoever you want to this task.”
“Doesn’t matter who you need, Tonya. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I will ask the SecDef to authorize the creation of this Joint Forces and Services Task Force. Should be good to go within the hour. Don’t wait on me to get the paperwork started. Get a team together and find those nukes.”
“Aye, sir!”
“And make certain I have all this package. This has to get to the Oval Office within the hour.”
“Aye.”