Tom Clancy - Command Authority

Their destination here in the Crimean port city was an old Cold War–era radar installation and military barracks repurposed as a functional but ugly residence. There was a high brick wall around the one-acre property, and inside stood a single three-story building with balconies on all sides and all floors, much like a small beachfront hotel.

This nondescript property in front of a drab park was a CIA SMC, or Special Mission Compound, and the facility held the CIA code name “The Lighthouse.” It was staffed by four technical experts from the CIA, half a dozen private contractors from a U.S. security company, as well as a four-man Advance Force Operations team from U.S. Joint Special Operations Command’s Delta Force. All fourteen of these personnel either carried on their person or had access to a carbine rifle and a handgun, and there were a few small grenade launchers to launch tear-gas grenades locked in the cabinet that served as the armory.

This wasn’t much in the way of firepower, but this was only the Lighthouse’s internal security. A second cordon protected the building; this was made up of a half-dozen Ukrainian security guards who were stationed at the main gate. Most of these men were off-duty police, and each carried just a pistol and a shotgun, but the Americans had a good relationship with the Ukrainians and knew they would warn of any threats.

The security guards knew only that the location was associated with the Partnership for Peace, a NATO program that fostered relationships with non-NATO nations. That none of the foreigners inside wore NATO uniforms had been noticed by the men, but no one thought this location was anything more than some sort of civilian liaison administrative building for an obscure and mostly irrelevant NATO program.

The CIA compound had been in operation here for years, but it had been difficult to keep covert as the tide of public opinion in the area had turned more violently pro-Russian in the past months, especially since the Russian fight with NATO in Estonia. Despite the difficulties of operating in the volatile environment, however, the place had most definitely paid dividends to the United States’ understanding of the Black Sea fleet.

When Russia rearmed the fleet and refurbished equipment and weapons, Delta Force men based at the Lighthouse had photographed key components of the equipment. When the U.S. Navy cruiser Cowpens docked in Sevastopol a year earlier, the men of the Lighthouse had monitored the local reaction to gauge the level of support, or lack thereof, for the United States and NATO in the region. And then, just days earlier, when the port went on emergency activation because of Volodin’s surprise military drills, the Delta and CIA men had recorded audio and video of the process that could be extremely helpful in case of actual naval war in the region.

Even though the majority of the population in the Crimea was decidedly pro-Russian, Ukraine was on friendly terms with the CIA, and Ukrainian intelligence had been aware of this CIA signals intelligence location.

And this was now a problem. The revelation that one of the top men in Ukrainian security services had been caught passing secrets to the FSB had set off panic buttons all around the CIA. Keith Bixby had, seemingly, a thousand holes in his ship he needed to fill now that much of his operation had been potentially exposed to the opposition, but nothing on this long list was as important as getting everyone, and everything, out of Sevastopol.

If the Russians invaded, they would move troops directly into the Crimean peninsula, and they would head straight for Sevastopol. Once here, it would not take long before the Russian Army showed up outside the front gate of the Lighthouse, asking if they could come inside and take a look around.

Bixby was a hands-on station chief, and he had spent much of the day with a screwdriver, disassembling racks of electronic gear so that it could be loaded up into an SUV and driven away. At the moment, he was shredding documents in a long room of cubicles on the third floor of the building.

Twenty years earlier, there would have been days’ worth of docs to shred here, but he thought he’d have every scrap of paper in the building destroyed in a couple of hours.

While he worked, the other men disassembled computers, removing hard drives, put small bills of local currency into envelopes to pay off local support personnel, and performed other rushed duties involved with decommissioning a secret intelligence installation on the fly.

It would take a full day of this work before they’d be able to load the Delta men, the CIA men, and the security contractors into the SUVs parked in the parking circle in front of the building and start the long drive back to the capital. Most of these men, as well as Bixby himself, would then fly out of Ukraine.

The men of the Lighthouse weren’t needed in country now that the Lighthouse was shutting down, but Keith was leaving because it was assumed by all that he had been thoroughly burned to the Russian opposition by the second in command of the SSU.

It was just past nine p.m. now, and Bixby worked alone. A walkie-talkie was on the table in front of him so he could listen to comms among the other sixteen men in the building. As he reached for a manila folder full of radio traffic transcripts, the voice of one of the Lighthouse CIA technical staff members came over his radio: “Keith. Can you come downstairs?”

Keith fed the transcripts through the shredder while he answered with the other hand. “Unless it’s a really big deal, I’d rather you came up to me.”

There was a brief pause. “Sorry, sir, but I’m afraid this qualifies.”

“I’ll be down in a second.”

Bixby flicked off the switch on the shredder and hurried downstairs.

In the lobby, Bixby found the Delta Force officer in charge of the small detachment. His call sign was Midas, but Bixby knew the man was a lieutenant colonel named Barry Jankowski who’d spent years as a highly decorated U.S. Army Ranger. He couldn’t help noticing that Midas had his H&K assault rifle hanging on his shoulder and a helmet on his head.

He hadn’t been wearing either the last time Keith had seen him, a half-hour earlier.

Not good.

With him was Rex, the security contractor in charge of the Lighthouse. He, too, was armed, but he always wore his M4 carbine when he was on the job.

“What’s going on?” Keith asked, as he left the stairwell.

Rex said, “We’ve got trouble. One of the Ukrainian security guys was on his way in for his shift, and he got a call from a buddy on the local police force. The cop told him he shouldn’t come in to work tonight.”

“Did he say why?”

“He said word was spreading this was a NATO facility, and a protest is being organized. The local cops had been told to stay out of it.”

“Shit,” Bixby said, then looked to Midas. “What do you think?”

Midas answered, “I think we should pack up what we can, demo the rest, and get the fuck out of here. But it’s not my call.”

Keith thought of all the classified equipment in the building. “We’ve got a hell of a lot of sensitive equipment left to break down. If we blow or burn the stuff while we’re here we’ll just draw attention to ourselves and we won’t get out of here. We’ve got antennas on the roof and more gear in the commo room. If we set charges, we can’t be sure we got it all, and you can be damn sure the Russians will pick this place apart when they get here.

“We’ll keep working on the double, through the night. We won’t have time to completely disassemble all the satellite equipment on the roof—we’ll have to just unhook everything and cram it in the trucks.” He thought for a moment. “We’ll need a couple more vehicles to make it all fit.”