Tom Clancy - Command Authority

“That’s right.”

“How threatening is it?”

“The fact that it was unannounced is unsettling, to say the least. It looks like it has been in the works, but that’s impossible to know. The Russians’ agreement with Ukraine states that military exercises with fewer than seven thousand participants do not have to be scheduled in advance.”

“Are they operating within those numbers?”

“Doubtful. There are thirty-six warships involved, and that is fewer than seven-K sailors, but there are also an unknown number of land-based aircraft in the exercise. On top of that, they’ve announced the drills will include members of paratroopers, GRU Spetsnaz, and Marines.”

Jorgensen said, “Just eyeballing the announcement, sir, I put the number around twenty-five thousand, minimum.”

“And this is on top of the troops they have already moved into Belarus?”

“Yes, and the forces on Russia’s western border.”

Ryan rubbed the bridge of his nose. “They are going to invade, aren’t they?”

Burgess said, “It sure looks like it. Volodin rattles his saber a lot, but this is a level of mobilization we haven’t seen. Even his attack of Estonia didn’t have these numbers attached to it.”

Ryan said, “The Crimea is a bigger prize.”

“Indeed it is.”

“What are our options?”

“Limited.”

“Limited as in strongly-worded-letter limited, or limited in some other way?”

Burgess said, “Militarily, not much we can do. We have a few boats in the Black Sea, but not enough to intimidate or impact their fleet operations. As far as diplomatic options, I guess that’s a question for Adler.”

Ryan nodded. He would need to confer with Scott Adler as soon as Scott got back to Washington.

He imagined that over in Moscow, Volodin did whatever the hell Volodin wanted. That was the rumor, anyhow. But was it true? Ryan knew there were rampant rumors about Volodin’s ties to organized crime. Although no one had really pinned him down on any involvement with criminal activity, Ryan liked to imagine the bastard was up to his eyeballs in dirty deals with mobsters who had him by the balls. Chances were, Jack knew, that the truth was probably exactly the opposite. With control over the nation’s military, interior ministry, and intelligence agencies, Volodin almost certainly was the one true power in Russia.

Ryan asked, “And the Ukrainian military is weak, correct?”

Jorgensen answered, “Very weak. Their defense spending is a whopping one percent of their GDP, just a couple billion dollars. It’s not enough money for new systems and equipment. They can barely maintain what they have.”

“Tactics and doctrine?”

“They will put up a fight on the border, and they have decent air defenses, but that’s about it. Through NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, we have been able to put about three hundred U.S. military personnel on the ground there. We have Green Berets training their infantry, Delta Force guys working with the CIA to get intel on the situation in the Crimea. All reports I’m getting on the situation is that the best Ukraine can hope to do is bloody the Russians’ noses a bit as they take the Crimea and the eastern regions of the country. If they make it painful enough, maybe Volodin won’t march his army all the way to Kiev in the west.”

“Jesus,” Ryan said. “The best -case scenario is they only lose a big chunk of their nation.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Ryan thought it over for a moment. “Our military on the ground. Do they know to get the hell out of the way if the shooting starts?”

“Yes, Mr. President, they aren’t going to stick around to fight with the Russians. I’ve ordered them all to keep a low profile. Things have been getting dicey in Sevastopol and Odessa, the major cities in the Crimea. Pro-Russian protests are kicking up all over and spreading like wildfire. A good portion of the citizenry wants the Russians to invade. Ukraine is using its military to quell some of the rioting, which just makes the nation look like a police state, which just increases the number of citizens who are backing a Russian ‘liberation.’”

Ryan groaned. “We don’t want any part of that.”

“No, sir,” agreed Mark Jorgensen.

As they were talking, Ryan’s secretary stepped into the doorway. “I’m sorry, sir. AG Murray is on the phone.”

Jack was surprised by this. Dan had just left the Oval Office five minutes earlier. “Put him through,” Ryan said, but he turned back to Jorgensen and Burgess. “I want to convene a meeting of our full national security staff to look over all options we have to stop Russia’s invasion. Let’s say seventy-two hours from now. I need your best and your brightest working around the clock, and I want to see all feasible options.”

The men left the Oval Office, and Jack went back to his desk to grab the phone. “What’s up, Dan?”

“Bad news, I’m afraid. Felicia Rodríguez was hit by a car. She’s dead.”

“Damn it. I thought you were picking her up.”

“I was just making the call when I got word. We had a team watching her, but they weren’t close enough to stop it.”

“And the car that ran her down?”

“Hit-and-run. It happened in the parking lot of her apartment building, no security cameras. Our surveillance team wasn’t mobile. By the time they got into their vehicle, the car was gone. We’re chasing down vehicles fitting the description, but I’d bet you a week’s pay it was stolen and will turn up burning under an overpass somewhere.”

Ryan looked off into space. “Does that sound like a professional job to you?”

“Very much so.”

“Russians or Venezuelans?”

“That’s the only question. Either way, it’s going to create massive headaches internationally.”

“And either way, it was definitely the Russians who orchestrated it,” said Jack. “But we find the truth, and we get it out there.”

“Absolutely. I’m working on it. Sorry about this, Jack. We should have been quicker.”

Ryan could hear the frustration in his AG’s voice.

“This will make your job harder, Dan. But don’t feel too bad for the girl. From what you told me earlier, she was covered with polonium. After having seen Sergey in the hospital the other night, I can say with authority that I would much rather get run over by a goddamned car.”

Throughout the day, Clark, Chavez, and Kryvov moved from one bar to the next, each more shady than the last, drinking beer and sitting around while Igor called and texted people he knew on the periphery of the Kiev underworld. They steered far away from the chaos of Independence Square, and instead remained in remote working-class neighborhoods outside the city center. At each different location men would show up, scope out the table of journalists from across the room, and then, as often as not, leave.

But half the suspicious characters that came into the bars to eyeball the two foreigners and their local fixer did, in fact, come over and sit down. These men were drug dealers, human traffickers, and a man who said he could get any car off a German street and into the driveway of any Ukrainian—for a price. Through these men with firsthand knowledge of the local underworld, Clark and Chavez learned a great deal about the workings of the organized-crime situation here in the city.

While it was true that there were representatives of Russian organized crime active in Kiev, Clark and Chavez were surprised to hear how many FSB active measures operations seemed to be going on in the area as well.

Another troubling bit of information that came to light involved the clashes going on all over the city. The Nationalist Party had taken the presidency the year before, wrestling it away from a pro-Russian party that had been caught up in a series of corruption scandals. But the nationalists were not without issues of their own.