Tom Clancy - Command Authority

Keith Bixby had moved to the second floor, to an office above the lobby. He looked out a window, past a balcony, and then beyond the front wall of the property. The crowd had thickened to more than one thousand, and there was a chaos to the scene now that a small amount of tear gas had been dropped in the middle of the action. But although rioters ran around in all directions to get away from the gas, the streets were still choked with a thick mass of humanity.

The CIA station chief raised the walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Midas, we can forget about driving out of here. With that gunfire and all the pax on the road, we’re going to need air support and extraction.”

Midas spoke calmly into his radio. “I agree. Everyone back inside. We’ll have to go to the Ukrainian Air Force for air extract.”

Clark, Chavez, and Caruso bailed out of their SUVs along with the others, and everyone ran back to the building. A few cracks of distant rifles could be heard over the near-constant crashing of debris landing all around the property, thrown over three of the four walls by the angry crowd.

Once everyone was back inside the three-story building, Midas sent men to cover the compound from balconies, positioning two or three armed men facing each direction on the higher floors. He then ran up the stairs to the roof to get a firsthand look at the cover his two men were using to stay out of the line of fire.

The Lighthouse had one rifle suitable for long-range shooting, a semiautomatic AR-15 with a nine-power scope and a bipod. It was a Delta weapon, but the best long-range shooter in the building had been determined to be Rex, the head of the six-man security contractor team. Before going into private-sector security, Rex had served first as a scout sniper in the Marine Corps and then as a sniper on SEAL Team Ten. Midas made sure Rex and the scoped rifle were in a good position on the roof, with Mutt staying up to spot for him, and then the Delta officer returned to the ground floor, where he positioned his men with the tear-gas launchers by the front door so they could step out under the portico and fire grenades at the gate if needed. “Anybody tries to come through that gate, you let them have it. I’ve told the men upstairs not to fire on the crowd unless they ID weapons, so if unarmed rioters climb the fence or smash it in, it’s up to you to keep them back.”

Bixby appeared from the stairwell and he held his sat phone up. “I’m on the phone to Langley now. Washington is in the process of getting the Ukrainian Air Force to send in an air extraction.”

Midas said, “Works for me.”

Just as he said that, a call crackled over the walkie-talkie. “Man down! Man down!” One of the security officers, positioned in a two-man team on a second-floor balcony facing toward the gate, had been hit.

Midas raced past Bixby for the stairs to evaluate the status of the injured operator.

President Jack Ryan hurried into the conference room of the White House Situation Room at seven a.m., wearing an open collar and a blazer he’d been handed by an aide on his walk over from the residence. He’d been notified a half-hour earlier in the residence that there was a situation involving American military and intelligence personnel in Ukraine, and SecDef Burgess was asking for an urgent Situation Room meeting.

Jack was surprised to find the conference room was empty of senior advisers. Yes, there were some White House military personnel and Situation Room staff in attendance, as well as some senior national security staff, but NSA director Colleen Hurst, DNI Mary Pat Foley, CIA director Jay Canfield, and Secretary of Defense Bob Burgess were all on monitors, speaking from their respective offices. The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was on a monitor from Kiev, and Secretary of State Scott Adler was on-screen from a secure communications room at the U.S. embassy in Brussels.

Jack sat at the end of the table, then motioned to the men and women sitting along the wall. “Come on, this is ridiculous, fill up the table here with me.”

Quickly, several intelligence and military advisers took seats at the table that was normally used just for the President and his senior staff. After all twelve remaining seats were filled, there were just a few junior personnel still seated against the walls.

Jack looked at the bank of monitors displaying his cabinet members, and he found the CIA director on the far left. “All right, what’s happening in Ukraine?”

Jay Canfield sat in McLean, Virginia, on the seventh floor of CIA headquarters. He said, “Mr. President, we have a special mission compound, essentially a SIGINT listening post in Sevastopol, Crimea. Its code name is Lighthouse. Like much of our infrastructure in Ukraine, it was compromised in the affair with the SSU earlier in the week, and we were in the process of shutting it down. There were a lot of sensitive electronics that needed to be disassembled and hauled out of there, so it took some time. Unfortunately, the men at the SMC did not vacate before word of the Lighthouse broke to the opposition, and now they appear to be under attack.”

“What do you mean ‘appear to be’?”

“There was a protest for a couple of hours, it got bigger, rougher, but in the past half-hour a riot has broken out and the Lighthouse has come under small-arms fire from the nearby hills and buildings. We have reports of some injuries to our personnel, though no fatalities as of yet.”

“Who is there in the facility?”

Canfield replied, “Normally, at the Lighthouse there is just a four-man JSOC team—Delta guys, that is—along with four CIA technical personnel and a half-dozen security officers. Usually, this is supplemented by Ukrainian security and intel personnel as well, but not at present. Unfortunately, the chief of station and two covered case officers from Kiev were there to help close the facility when the attack started.”

“This is that Bixby guy you mentioned the other day?”

“Keith Bixby. Yes, Mr. President.”

“And they can’t drive out of there?”

“No, sir. They say the streets are blocked, the gunfire is steady enough, and the local cops are just watching it all happen from up the street.”

“Son of a bitch. Who is doing the shooting?”

Burgess chimed in on this: “There are reports of irregular forces in the area, though at this point we can’t be sure.”

Ryan said, “We need to talk to the Ukrainian government.”

Scott Adler spoke up: “The Ukrainian president is aware of the situation, and he has ordered Ukrainian Air Force helicopters to pick up the Americans. They are en route to a forward staging area now.”

“Good,” Jack said, but he caught an uncomfortable look on the Ukrainian ambassador’s face. “Is there a problem with that, Arlene?”

Ambassador Arlene Black said, “Mr. President, he is asking—I should say he is demanding—that you call him personally to request the extraction.” Black shrugged. “You know Kuvchek. He is a showboater.”

There were groans in the room from some of the junior advisers.

Ryan just looked back over his shoulder at one of the Situation Room communications staff standing by the door. “Get Kuvchek on the phone. I’ll make the request. He’s a jerk, but this is no time to stand on protocol. I’ll kiss his ass if that’s what it takes to get our people out of there.”

Gunfire into the CIA compound known as the Lighthouse was picking up; windows had been shattered on all sides of the building, indicating the fire was coming from all directions, and the roof was pockmarked, revealing the fact that at least some of the shooters were firing from high positions. So far, none of the Americans positioned on the balconies or on the roof had managed to positively ID anyone in the crowd or in the neighboring hills and buildings doing the shooting.