Jack Mars - Any Means Necessary

“Does Don know about any of this?”

“It’s very strange. He does know. He went racing out of here when the intel came in. Don is not himself.”

“Did he say anything about me?”

“He said he talked to you. You had an argument. You told him you were going to bed. He said not to bother you, but I guess I knew better than to think you were actually sleeping. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you fall asleep for any reason.”

“Trudy, Don is trying to kill me.”

The words came out before he knew they would. Once they were out there, he was okay with it. It was a fact, and Trudy was a big girl. He couldn’t protect her from the facts. There was a long silence over the phone.

Luke zoomed past a sign for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Five miles. In ten minutes, he would go racing by David Delliger’s corpse again.

“Trudy?”

“Luke, what are you talking about?”

“If I tell you, I’ll be putting your life in danger.”

“Tell me,” she said.

So he told her. At the end, there was more silence. Luke was moving fast, ninety miles an hour, climbing the on ramp to the bridge. The roads were empty. He hadn’t so much as glimpsed a cop.

“Do you believe me?” he said.

“Luke, I don’t know what to believe. I know that Don and Bill Ryan were friends at the Citadel. They used to take their families on vacation together.”

“Trudy, they’ve taken my wife and son.”

“What?”

He told her about it. He kept his voice firm. He stuck to the facts of it, the things he knew for sure. He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream.

“It was a coup,” Luke said. “There are people in the intelligence apparatus and the military who want a war. Probably the defense contractors, too. Don was in on it. A bit player, but in on it nonetheless.”

Trudy’s voice shook. “Just over half an hour ago, Bill Ryan declared war against Iran. Immediately afterward, the airwaves went berserk. ECHELON, all the listening stations, Fairbanks, Menwith Hill, Misawa Air Force Base in Japan, a bunch of others… they’re picking up Russian chatter. The Russians haven’t announced it yet, but they are prepared to treat an attack on Iran as an attack on Russia. They are getting missiles ready. I can’t believe Don would want any of this to happen.”

“Here’s what I want you to do,” Luke said. “Get Swann… Is Swann still there?”

“Swann never goes home,” she said.

“Get Swann to access Don’s computer. Look for any evidence that Don knew about the attacks beforehand. Emails, files, anything. Don didn’t organize the attacks, but he knew they were coming.”

“What good would that do, even if we found something?”

“It might give us an angle on prosecuting Ryan and whoever was behind this. If we get Don, then maybe we get Ryan, then the next one and the next one. We knock them down like dominoes. If we can keep the Vice President alive, we can force Ryan to step down. Once he does, he’s no longer protected by his position. If we have any evidence against him, he is as good as toast.”

“Okay, Luke. I’ll have Swann see what he can find.”

“I know he’ll find something,” Luke said. “Call me as soon as he does.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. Call Ed Newsam and tell him to get dressed. I can’t have him lying around in bed at a time like this.”

“What will you be doing?”

“Me? I’m going to save the Vice President – if it’s not already too late.”

8:56 a.m. (Moscow Time)

Strategic Command and Control Center – Moscow, Russian Federation

Yuri Grachev, twenty-nine, aide to the Defense Minister, walked briskly through the hallways of the control center, on his way to the large situation room. His footsteps echoed along the empty corridor as he pondered the situation. The worst-case scenario had arrived. It was a disaster about to happen.

For reasons no one had explained, in the past forty-five minutes the Minister’s black nuclear suitcase, his Cheget , had been handcuffed to Yuri’s right wrist. The suitcase was old, it was heavy, and it forced Yuri to lean to his left side as he walked. It contained the codes and mechanisms to launch missile strikes against the West.

Yuri didn’t want this horrible thing attached to him. He wanted to go home to his wife and young son. Most of all, he wanted to cry. He felt his entire body trembling. His impassive face threatened to crumble and break.

Four hours ago, the American government had been toppled in a coup. An hour ago, a new President had emerged on radio and television and declared war on Iran. In Russian government circles, the new President was widely understood to be a madman, and a front for war-mongering elites who hid in the shadows. His possible rise to power had long been thought of as a worst-case scenario.

The coup, and the declaration of war, had triggered a series of long-dormant protocols here in Russia. The protocols were known by several names, but most people called them the “Dead Hand.”

Dead Hand sent Russian defense systems into a state of high alert, and gave far-flung missile stations, airplanes, and submarines semi-independent decision-making authorization. It decentralized command.

The idea was that Dead Hand gave Russian defenses the ability to counterattack after a surprise American first-strike wiped out the leadership in Moscow. If communications were severed and unusual seismic signatures or radar readings were detected, then regional commanders and even isolated bunkers could decide for themselves if an attack had happened, and whether to launch retaliatory nuclear strikes.

But the system didn’t work. It had been deteriorating for more than two decades, nearly Yuri’s entire life. Eight of the original twelve monitoring satellites had fallen into the ocean during that time. None had been replaced.

Communications were constantly severed to outlying stations. There were always unusual seismic readings – at any given moment, small and even large earthquakes were happening across the globe. Worst of all, radar routinely misidentified missile launches. No one in the leadership would admit this, but it was true.

Yuri himself had been on hand here in the control center three years ago, when the Swedes launched a scientific rocket into orbit. The early-warning system mistook it for a missile launched from an American submarine stationed in the North Atlantic.

The nuclear suitcase (at that time, thankfully not attached to Yuri’s wrist) began to sound an alarm. It sent alarm messages to combat stations, yes, but it also made an audible sound, an ugly clarion screeching.

Missile silos across the Russian heartland reported combat readiness. If the rocket was an American first strike, it would make impact in perhaps nine minutes. Was it an electromagnetic pulse weapon that would disable Russian response capacity? Would it be followed by a larger attack?

No one knew. To their credit, the General Staff held their breath and waited. Long minutes passed. At the eight-minute mark, a radar station reported that the rocket had left Earth’s atmosphere. A tentative cheer went up. At the eleven-minute mark, the radar station reported that the rocket had assumed a normal orbital pattern.

No one cheered after that. People simply went back to work.

Dead Hand was not in effect that day. Combat stations waited for orders from the central command. But today Dead Hand was in effect. A mistake, a downed communications system, a rat chewing through wires, could put nuclear decisions in the hands of faraway people who were drunk, or tired, or bored, or insane.

The Americans had done something no one expected. A dangerous cabal had seized the government in Washington, and their next moves were unpredictable. In response, Russia had activated unreliable and unsafe procedures that put the entire world at risk.