Tom Clancy - Command Authority

But not the second one. The second speck of light on the blue sky also appeared from the east; the men in the portico did not see the origin of the launch, but it rose confidently up to the helo and slammed into its body, just aft of the open side door.

The initial explosion wasn’t much, but almost immediately there was a secondary explosion that blew out the sides of the Mi-8 and then shredded the rotors to pieces. Centrifugal force fired metal from the rotor blades more than half a mile in all directions; the burning wreckage fell three hundred feet toward the ground and slammed into the center of the park, right into a cluster of rioters.

A fireball billowed up over the walls of the CIA compound, and a pillar of black smoke rose out of it higher into the sky.

The one remaining Mi-8 helicopter never fired a shot. It had been circling at one thousand feet, but seconds after the first helo hit the ground the second turned to the north and raced away.

There were shouts and exclamations and curses all over the Lighthouse, but neither Bixby nor Midas spoke for several seconds. Then the CIA station chief said, “I’ll call Langley,” and he stepped back inside.

President Jack Ryan learned about the Ukrainian helicopter crash at the same time as the rest of the men and women in the Situation Room, just three minutes after it happened. The conference room and the wall monitors in front of Ryan were full of men and women conferring with one another; he saw the pained and frustrated looks of those who were scrambling to come up with a backup plan on the fly. Some of these men and women—military officers, diplomatic personnel, intelligence types—had themselves been in harm’s way in their careers, and Jack knew that despite this devastating setback, he did not need to stress that the full force and weight of the United States would be employed to get the Lighthouse evacuated.

Jack Ryan excused the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from her remote attendance in the meeting so she could get on the phone with the Ukrainians to pressure them to try and get ground forces to the Lighthouse. When Ryan spoke with Ukraine’s president a few minutes earlier he had said he’d been informed by the military that all ground forces suitable for a rescue in the area had been moved to the Russian border, so Jack did not hold out much hope for a convoy of armor to come to the aid of the beleaguered CIA installation. Still, he did not want to take any option off the table, so he instructed his ambassador to do whatever she could to try and make this happen.

A digital map on the wall showed the nation of Ukraine and the position of the few U.S. forces there, and everyone in the room had their eyes glued to it while they talked over options. Discussions among those in attendance in the Situation Room turned argumentative quickly, but Ryan brought the focus back to the task at hand.

President Jack Ryan held many titles, but at this moment he was the National Command Authority, the one who had to make the tough calls, and to do that, he damn well needed his experts focused on task and feeding him the best information as quickly and efficiently as possible. Jack was no longer a military officer; he was no longer an intelligence officer. He was an executive, and it was his job to keep the situation organized so the problem at hand could be solved.

As another heated discussion broke out, this one between a White House assistant National Security Council director and a naval adviser to the Joint Chiefs, Ryan silenced the argument by raising his hand. He then looked up at the monitors on the far wall. “I want to hear from Burgess and Canfield only. There must have been some preparations made in case this location was compromised. What contingencies do we have set up to get our guys out of the Lighthouse in case of attack?”

Burgess said, “We do have Delta, Rangers, and Army Special Forces in Ukraine right now, but they are dispersed all over the country in preparation for the Russian attack and are not prepared to operate as a quick-reaction force. We have a couple of Army Black Hawks at a Ukrainian Army base in Bila Tserkva, you can see it on the map there above Sevastopol. It’s a few hours’ flying time to the north. We could put together a QRF and send them down right now, but those RPGs in the area make landing rotary-wing aircraft in the Lighthouse extremely risky unless and until we can get some sort of standoff defense down there in addition to the helos.”

CIA director Canfield had even fewer good operations than SecDef. “Mr. President, since Ukraine is an ally, our contingency plans for getting our men out of there on the fly revolve around local forces providing a QRF.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, strumming his fingers on the blotter in front of him and thinking. “That didn’t work out so well.”

A Marine Corps Pentagon adviser to the White House, a full-bird colonel named Dial, half raised a hand at the end of the table.

Ryan saw the gesture. “Colonel?”

“Mr. President, we have a pair of V-22 Ospreys with a Marine contingent in Lodz, Poland, doing some training with NATO forces. They aren’t a QRF, per se, but they are Marines. I can get the Ospreys and two dozen riflemen airborne and en route in a half-hour. The flight down would be roughly ninety minutes.”

Ryan asked, “What about defending the Ospreys? I remember they have a machine gun on the loading ramp, but that doesn’t seem like much against the threat that’s being described down there around the SMC.”

Dial said, “It’s true, the Ospreys aren’t the best platform for landing in a hot LZ like this. But these particular V-22s happen to have the IDWS, Interim Defensive Weapon System, it’s a belly turret gun attached to a FLIR and a TV camera. It’s operated by a gunner inside the aircraft.”

“Is that enough firepower?” The last thing Ryan wanted to do was send two flight crews and two dozen Marines into harm’s way without a way to defend themselves in the air.

Dial said, “Mr. President, it’s a three-barrel, seven-six-two-millimeter mini-gun that rotates three hundred sixty degrees and fires three thousand rounds per minute. That, along with the fifty cals on the back ramp, will bring a lot of American lead to that fight on landing and takeoff. On the ground I’d put twenty-four USMC riflemen up against five hundred armed rioters any day of the week. I’d prefer to have more guns and platforms there, but considering this is an in extremis situation, I think this is the best we can do.”

“Bob,” Ryan said, looking to Burgess, “make it happen. If we can get the installation evacuated by the Ukrainians before the Ospreys get there we’ll wave them off, but for now, get them en route.”

Burgess nodded, turned to his staff there at the Pentagon, and just like that, the operation was under way.

But President Ryan was not satisfied. “Ladies and gentlemen, that is our plan for two hours from now, but we are not finished. From these reports it doesn’t look like that installation has two hours. I want to know what we can do in the next sixty minutes to keep the Lighthouse from being overrun.”

Burgess blew out a sigh and held his hands up. “Honestly, sir, if we can’t get the local forces to help out, I don’t know what we can do.”

Ryan looked to Colonel Dial, who had no answer, either.

But one of Dial’s assistants attached to the White House was a young African American Air Force major. He sat against the wall behind his colonel on Ryan’s left, and when Dial failed to come up with anything, the major turned quickly toward the President. He said nothing; instead, he turned back away and looked down at his hands, but Ryan got the impression the officer thought he had something to offer.