Collateral (Tier One #6)

Ember Tactical Operations Trailer (TOT)

SOCOM Compound

MacDill Air Force Base

Tampa, Florida

0816 Local Time

Mike Casey strode down the hallway of what the team had cynically dubbed the Ember TOT—substituting a T, for Trailer, for the C in the ubiquitous Tactical Operations Center acronym. During his turnover and indoc with Baldwin, the Signals Chief told him that TOT was actually the second acronym they’d adopted. Apparently, Dan Munn had originally dubbed their nascent headquarters at MacDill the Tactical Information Trailer and insisted on using its acronym at every opportunity, but Baldwin had shut that down. It wasn’t the first time an off-color acronym had found its way into the DoD lexicon. When Casey was a junior officer in the submarine training pipeline, a subset of instructors at Naval Nuclear Power School were tagged as Direct Input Limited Duty Officers. When he’d shared that story with Baldwin, the man’s cheeks had actually gone pink.

“That’s horrifying,” Baldwin had said, quickly deciphering the acronym. “You’re kidding me?”

“I wish I were,” Casey had said, shaking his head. “And it stuck for years, too, before finally being purged from the books. Thankfully, all the DILDOs were good sports about it. As a submariner, I’m something of an expert at being on the receiving end of offensive humor. I’m telling you, having a sense of humor about military service—and life in general, for that matter—is definitely a tactical attribute.”

This had earned a chuckle from Baldwin, and they were off to the races afterward with a smooth, amiable handover of control of America’s preeminent counterterrorism black ops task force. Unfortunately, having a good sense of humor wasn’t enough to deflect the shit storm presently raining down on their heads. The President had set Defense Condition 2 and the world was on the brink of war. Both the American and Russian propaganda machines were running at redline, churning out disinformation in every conceivable media channel to camouflage the reality that a hot war had already started in Mariupol . . . a hot war in which Ember’s SAD and their “cousins” from SEAL Team Four had already been bloodied.

“Director Casey,” said the analyst everybody called Chip, sticking the upper half of his torso into the hall past a doorframe. “I think we have something you’re gonna want to see.”

Casey nodded and walked into the trailer’s only conference room, which had been transformed into an ops center. In submariner speak, this room was equivalent to the conn, the nerve center and communications hub for all tactical activities. What he found most interesting was that everybody just seemed to hang out in the room all the time, leaving their respective offices sitting vacant. As a former CO, he took this as a very positive sign.

A crew that’s tight together, fights together.

“Whatcha got for me?” he said.

“It all started when Buz made an offhand comment about how the Russians have a bad habit of inadvertently telegraphing strategy in their propaganda,” Chip said.

“How so?” he asked, glancing at Buz, who was sitting beside Baldwin in a chair pulled back from the table, legs crossed ankle over knee. The “retired” Cold War expert gave him a nod, smiling under his eighties-style mustache.

“They do it all the time,” Ember’s spook in residence explained. “A state-sponsored media outlet will post an article about how some enemy of the Kremlin is suspected of this or that misdeed, and then weeks later that same person is arrested, ousted from power, or turns up dead.”

“Why would they do that?” Casey said. “To desensitize the public in advance?”

Buz nodded. “Exactly. The Kremlin loves to disparage its targets prior to taking action. Russia is pathologically image conscious, like a middle school girl at the dance trying to make sure everyone sees them as one of the cool kids. And just like an insecure teenage girl spreading mean rumors about the pretty girl, they often construct a negative aura around a particular adversary, so that when the hammer strike comes later, they’ve already built a case against their target in the court of public opinion and established themselves as the good guys.”

“Interesting,” Casey said. “And you’ve seen enough instances that you believe it’s predictive?”

“It doesn’t always pan out,” Buz said with a spymaster’s twinkle in his eye, “but there are certain bylines I never ignore.”

“And you think you found one I need to know about?”

“Three days ago, Russian Times posted this article.” Buz motioned for Chip to show Casey his tablet. The headline read, “Kiev Readies Weapons of Mass Destruction for Use on Citizens in Mariupol.” A photograph beneath the headline showed a mobile ballistic missile launcher with ordnance raised and ready for launch. “The author tries to make the case that the Kiev government blames pro-Russian separatists for the civil unrest in Mariupol and that it will take proactive steps to avoid another war of secession like in Donbas.”

Casey screwed up his face. “They’re claiming Ukraine is going to bomb its own people?”

Buz nodded. “Yep. The author says they did it in Donetsk and they’ll do it again.”

“Are those Iskander missiles?” he asked, focusing on the picture.

“Very good, sir,” Chip said, jumping in. “A pair of Iskanders shown on an MZKT-7930 transport erector launch vehicle.”

“Petrov is putting those damn Iskanders everywhere—Kaliningrad, along the Belarusian and Ukrainian borders, and more recently on the Crimean peninsula.”

“A true statement,” Baldwin said. “The Iskander is the successor to the Soviet-era Tochka SRBMs that came into service in the mid-nineteen seventies. The Russian military is systematically phasing out its inventory of Tochka missiles and replacing them with Iskanders.”

“Okay,” Casey said, rubbing his clean-shaven chin. “So you guys think this article indicates Petrov is somehow planning to provoke Ukraine into firing Iskander missiles on Mariupol, thereby giving Russia an excuse to escalate?”

“Well, here’s the thing: the Ukrainians don’t have Iskanders. The missile was developed by Russia after Ukrainian independence. Ukraine does have an inventory of Tochka missiles, carried over from back in the days when it was an extension of the Red Army,” Buzz said, “but no Iskanders.”

“Hold on . . . show me that picture again,” Casey said, turning to Chip. The young analyst passed him the tablet. “But there’s a Ukrainian flag painted on the side of that transporter.”

Buz grinned at him like a kid who’d just snuck a cookie from the jar. “And the photo caption is mislabeled, identifying the missiles as Grom-2s.”

Casey cocked an eyebrow. “I’m not familiar with the Grom-2.”

“Grom-2 is the homegrown Ukrainian SRBM,” Chip said. “The Ukrainian Tochkas only have a range of one hundred fifty kilometers, and Russia won’t sell Ukraine the Iskander because that platform would be capable of hitting Moscow. So, Kiev tasked the Ukrainian defense contractor YMZ with getting to work on an SRBM that could potentially do the job.”

“Are the Grom-2s even in service yet?” Casey asked.

“Kiev officially says no, but we suspect otherwise,” Baldwin said.

“Guys, I think I see where you’re going with this,” he said, loving the strategic thought process they were using, “but I gotta tell you, it’s a stretch. There’s a lot of speculation here. If you can get me something resembling proof, I’ll run it up the flagpole, but without hard evidence . . .”

“Oh, we’ve got proof,” Buz said, smiling under his mustache. “Collectively we’ve just spent the past six hours putting all the puzzle pieces together, and we’re ready to brief you.”

“Then I’m all ears,” Casey said, pulling out a chair.

For the next twenty minutes, Baldwin and the others made their case—showing him signals intercepts, security camera grabs, and satellite imagery. With a ninety-five percent confidence interval, they’d placed Arkady Zhukov in Odessa traveling under the German Hemmler NOC that Amanda had harvested from Bessonov yesterday. They also had a facial rec hit at a hotel in Odessa on the Zeta they believed was behind the assassination of the Vice President in Kiev. They had encrypted comms between a phone being used on Zhukov’s biz jet and the Zeta in the hotel. And the coup de grâce, they had satellite imagery of an 8×8 heavy haul truck, resembling the Iskander transporter, driven into covered storage at a warehouse near the Odessa airport—the same warehouse where they had a signal hit from the Zeta operator’s phone—only five hours earlier.

Casey shook his head in disbelief. “Guys, it’s amazing work, but two things I don’t understand. One, how did you put this all together so quickly; and two, why am I just hearing about this now?”

The Ember gang collectively looked at one another, as if silently negotiating whose turn it was to be the sacrificial lamb. After a pause, Baldwin said, “Sir, the thing about Ember, and maybe any team engaged in intelligence collection and assessment in today’s world, is that without a spark the fire rarely catches. In this case, we had two sparks. First, Amanda providing us with Arkady Zhukov’s German legend from Bessonov. Without that, we wouldn’t have had any SIGINT to prosecute. We pulled satellite imagery for every SIGINT ping, and it just so happened that Buz was sitting next to Chip when he was looking over the satellite imagery for the warehouse near the Odessa airport. We weren’t working a missile theory. That epiphany was all Buz.”

Casey looked at the old spook.

“You can put a dress and lipstick on a pig,” Buz said, knitting his fingers together behind his head, “but it’s still a pig . . . and the MZKT Astrolog transporter is one pig I can recognize anywhere: blocky design, step-up cab with a forward-sloping windshield, and the eight-by-eight chassis. I knew immediately what I was looking at. As soon as I saw it, I remembered the RT article about Ukraine planning to launch WMDs at Mariupol. So, we worked backward. Using imagery sourced from multiple partner satellites, Chip reconstructed the vehicle’s track. We traced it all the way back to Crimea.”

“What type of potential damage are we looking at here?”

“The MZKT Astrolog carries two Iskander-M variant missiles,” Chip said, jumping in with nervous enthusiasm. “Iskanders were designed to be used in theater-level conflicts to hit either soft targets, like troop concentrations, or hard targets, like communication bunkers. They can be equipped with a wide variety of warheads: conventional, fuel-air explosive, EMP, high-yield frag payloads, or a hundred-kiloton tactical nuke. Each missile can be independently targeted, guided, and launched. They are supersonic, cruising at Mach six, and programmed to conduct antiballistic maneuvers.”

“Wonderful,” Casey said through a sigh. “What’s the range?”

“The published range is five hundred kilometers, but some sources indicate that’s a conservative number.”

“How far is Mariupol from Odessa?”

“Five hundred kilometers.”

“Of course it is.” Casey inhaled deeply as a hypothetical scenario began to unfold in his mind. “Ukraine forfeited all their nukes in the nineties . . . the Russians wouldn’t fire tactical nukes because they’d lose the element of plausible deniability . . . The Marines from the 13th MEU are moving east toward Mariupol as we speak. Instead of targeting the population zone, why not make the Marines a target? It’s what I’d do if I were Arkady. And in the propaganda campaign that follows, you call the event a tragic case of friendly fire—collateral damage from a desperate act of retaliation by a desperate nation.” He looked at Baldwin. “Tell me more about the fragmentation warhead.”

“It has a high-explosive yield and is quite deadly—capable of spraying fifteen thousand pieces of frag per warhead over a five-hectare area,” Baldwin said. “It is worth noting that this is the same warhead installed on the Ukrainian Tochka missiles, so again, this would only bolster the Russian propaganda narrative we are hypothesizing.”

Casey looked from Baldwin around the room, with his gaze finally settling on Buz. “Anything else I need to know?”

“This type of stealth repositioning of assets and hardware, along with advance propaganda, has all the hallmarks of a Russian false flag operation. In the past, I’d try to convince you that this op was Arkady Zhukov’s brainchild. Today, thanks to this team, for the first time in twenty years, I finally have his fingerprints on the crime before it happens.”

Casey extended his hand to Buz.

For a moment, the old spy didn’t react, as if Buz were questioning his sincerity. But then he leaned forward and clasped the submariner’s, and his newest boss’s, hand.

“I understand from DNI Jar . . . I mean Vice President Jarvis, that this day has been a long time coming for you, Buz,” Casey said.

“Yes, sir.

“And that pursuing this man took a helluva toll on your career and reputation . . .”

“That, it did.”

“Then I think congratulations are in order,” he said, giving Buz’s hand a final pump before releasing it. “Looks like Ember SAD is going to Odessa.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you want to give them the good news, or should I?”

“Prevent the missile launch at all costs?” Buz asked.

Casey nodded. “Plus bonus tasking.”

Buz smiled wide at this. “Capture/kill?”

Casey grinned back. “If it’s all the same with you, I was leaning more toward the kill side of that equation. I don’t think Zhukov gets to walk away this time.”

“Did you clear that with the big boss?” Buz asked, unable to hide his anticipation.

“Not yet, although I have a pretty good feeling what his answer is going to be,” Casey said. But his submarine skipper’s mind was already beginning to contemplate contingency scenarios. “In the meantime, we need a backup plan in case Ember can’t get there in time.”

“I’ll have Chip prepare a list of all the assets in the region with the capability to shoot down a ballistic missile for you,” Baldwin said.

“Perfect,” he replied, but his mind immediately went to the Donald Cook and her Aegis Combat System and SM-3 antiballistic missile cache. “You know what, Mr. Baldwin, scratch that. No point reinventing the wheel. Just get me the Ballistic Missile Defense Officer Europe on the phone.”

Thirty minutes passed—two of which were spent talking with the O-5 Ballistic Missile Defense Officer and twenty-two of which were spent arguing with the Vice Admiral in NSA Naples in charge of Sixth Fleet. After that conversation, Casey was patched through to Commander Dustin Townsend on the USS Donald Cook.

“Donald Cook Actual,” came the voice on the other end of the line, as clear as if he were in the next room. The CO sounded weary as hell, Casey thought, and after the ordeal the Cook had gone through over the past forty-eight hours, he could relate. As a submarine skipper, he’d known a little something about long hours.

“Captain Townsend, this is Commander Mike Casey,” he began, hoping the Navy rank might help smooth things along. “I assume you saw the flash message traffic with your new national-level tasking?”

A pause lingered on the line, and Casey could well imagine what was going through the Naval officer’s head.

“I don’t know who you are, or who you work for, Commander, but when a three-star sends me a message, I read it pretty quick. So, tell me, what can the Donald Cook do for your little sideshow?”

“I’m afraid this is much bigger than a sideshow,” Casey said. “We have intelligence indicating that Iskander short range ballistic missiles could be launched from Odessa targeting US forces in eastern Ukraine. We have a covert direct-action operation spinning up to stop it, but if that fails . . .”

“Let me guess, you want us set to intercept the missiles if they launch?”

“That’s correct. Donald Cook’s Aegis Combat System and SM-3s are the only viable antiballistic platform in theater.”

“Well, you see, Commander, there are several major problems with your plan. Number one, I’m not in a position to oblige your request. To intercept those missiles, we’d need to be parked off the coast of Ukraine, but we are steaming south below the forty-fifth parallel. Number two, the Iskander is a fast fucking missile. If your operation fails and they launch, I will literally have seconds to respond, and there is no guarantee the SM-3 will successfully intercept the Iskanders. And number three, if I launch missiles north of the forty-fifth parallel, there is a better than fifty percent chance the Russian Black Sea fleet will assume I’m launching at them and sink my ship. So, um, as much as the Donald Cook would like to help you, I think you’d best look at another option.”

“I hear you, Captain,” Casey said, “and as someone with experience commanding a fast attack nuclear submarine in similar ass-puckering situations, I understand your reservations. But unfortunately, I’m going to have to pull rank.”

Casey looked at Baldwin. “Mr. Baldwin, if you could send that follow-on ‘eyes only’ message to Commander Townsend . . . the one from the President.”

Baldwin nodded and looked at Chip, who sent the message with Presidential authorization for the operation. In the background, Casey could hear Townsend being informed of the incoming flash traffic.

After a long pause, Townsend said, “You’re really going to send us back into the lion’s den?”

“I’m afraid so, Commander,” Casey said, bowing his head. “And I pray for all our sakes, I don’t have to use you.”