Steve Abbott - Devil's Gambit

FLASH, FLASH, FLASH, 08/14/14 02:00 ZULU. IDENT: PROMETHEUS

THREE WARHEADS HAVE BEEN STOLEN FROM MOBILE ROCKET FORCES BASE OUTSIDE BATUMI, GEORGIA. NO SOLID EVIDENCE AS TO PERPETRATOR AT THIS TIME. REQUEST IMMEDIATE RETURN OF NEST TEAM FROM LOS ALAMOS. REQUEST FULL COOPERATION OF STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE ASSETS IN BLACK SEA REGION, 08/14/14. MORE TO FOLLOW.

Master Seamen Harry Bell read the note twice before grabbing his telephone and dialing Command Duty Officer Seale’s number.

“Yes?”

“Sir, I have FLASH Traffic from the Russians. It came over the hotline.

“Get confirmation. I’ll be right there.”

The hotline Teletype had been installed by the Russian and the American governments after communications difficulties experienced during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The communications breakdown had resulted in the Russians transmitting their counter proposal to American demands over the Radio Moscow antenna. The hotline Teletype was used only in event of a nuclear confrontation, even though the once powerful Soviet Union was now a fractious collection of states. People forgot that the remaining ICBMs, with the exception of the Ukraine, were still under the unified command of Moscow; a power the Russian President was still reluctant to give up to individual states.

Bell quickly typed in Russian a request for confirmation and transmitted it to Moscow.

CDO Seale arrived just in time to see the confirming message return. He tore the message from the machine and read it. “Oh sweet Jesus. Better get CINCSAC on the line.”

“Aye, Sir.” He need not have bothered. A second branch of the hotline terminated in the underground fortress of Cheyenne Mountain. Moments later, the Command Duty Officer had the voice of CINCSAC on the other end of the phone.

“Has this been verified?”

“Yes, sir. It checks out as authentic.”

“Okay, forward the alert to NSA, CIA, DIA and the joint NEST team at Los Alamos. I’ll notify the President myself.” The line went dead. CDO Seale, the black console phone still clutched in his right hand, looked down at Bell. “Send it out to NSA, CIA, DIA and Los Alamos.”

Bell’s hands began to fly over his message center keyboard.

The Russians, although possessing a fairly good telephone system for official use, could still not quite grasp the size and depth of the United States secure communications lines. The Russian FLASH traffic was transmitted almost instantly to every destination specified. The one to Los Alamos, New Mexico, did take a half second more than the two to the NSA and CIA, but even light travels only so fast. To say that the message galvanized each organization into action would be an understatement.

FLASH Traffic is the military equivalent of an ambulance going ninety with its lights and sirens on. Its contents, like any victim of dire circumstance, are checked over and possible causes of action to control damage are discussed by a trauma team. If it’s required, outside specialists are called in to consult.

The mainstay of the CIA is its ability to take large volumes of intelligence data and successfully disseminate a great part of it into useful information. To aid in this daunting task is a IBM supercomputer designated, “ASCI White,” connected to a vast network of IBM PC’s and Data Entry Retrieval consoles. ASCI White, or at least part of its vast memory core, is programmed to flag sections of incoming messages containing “Hot” words for cross reference.

The information request on Andrew Verkatt, and his dealings with the North Koreans by a Senior Officer of MI6’s South African station, contained ninety percent of words the computers needed to “Hit” and fulfill the flag criteria. The FLASH Traffic was tagged with Hamilton Smythe’s MI6 Pretoria request and processed. The request, because it was coupled with the FLASH Traffic heading and because it also mentioned arm’s trading, activated a very old, little-used subroutine called BUCKLE in the supercomputer’s core program.

The request and the attached FLASH Traffic message were sent directly to the Director of the CIA and to the Director of MI6 before the safety interlocks installed in the latest update of the main program detected the error and tried to stop the data. Sir Arthur Harris, the Director of MI6, was notified in Whitehall, London, of the Russian’s problems in Georgia and the request of the MI6 station in Pretoria at exactly the same time as the Director of the CIA.

Sturmovic looked at the four bullet-ridden bodies. Three of them were his missing officers, but the fourth was unknown to him or any of his men present. More disturbing, the corpse was dressed in the uniform battledress of a Marine Forces Major. The commanding officer of the GRU detachment, Oleg Zatolutin, stood just behind him, conducting the scene. Two men in a boat were dragging the waters beside the dock, and another four were going over the ZIL heavy truck in great detail with Geiger counters.

Hours of exposure to the water in the bay had leached the color from the four bodies and swollen their skins. The Commander felt no pity as he viewed the corpses. They had received no less punishment for their treachery than he would have carried out himself.

The base doctor, a man half of Sturmovic’s age, struggled to do a hasty on-site autopsy on the bodies. It was a desperate attempt to find any physical clue that would allow them to get to the bottom of the theft of his warheads.

“Ah, got you, you little bastard!” The doctor held a bullet he had extracted from the body of Major Pieter Boskovitch, in the ends of a pair of surgical tweezers.

The doctor turned the bullet back and forth, frowning. “That is strange. It does not appear to be Russian. The round is too light, Commander, but the corpse on the end that we have not been able to identify has stainless steel dental work.”

Only ex-communist countries used stainless steel. There had been no identification on the mystery corpse. A series of photographs were taken of the man’s swollen face, to be flown by an interceptor fighter to Moscow. The pilot had been told not to worry about damaging his engines.

The small, misshapen bullet solidified his worst fears. This was a wide-based conspiracy. Perhaps even one originating outside Russia’s shores. Sturmovic squatted down and took the tweezers from the doctor’s hand. He turned the bullet around to get a better look. Mushroomed and bent as it was, the object was still identifiable as a NATO 5.56 millimeter round.

The doctor cleared his throat, “Commander, we are lucky that the bodies were not exposed longer to the water. The fat and skin react to the moisture and create a soapy substance that would have erased the traces of this.” The doctor had cut open the sleeve of Pieter’s left arm to the forearm and was pointing with his finger at a cluster of small brown dots over the vein in the crook of the elbow. There was triumph in his voice, “Injections. Injections I did not administer. All of the others, with the exception of our mystery corpse, have the same marks.”

“Drugs?”

The doctor confirmed this. “Da, and expensive ones at that. Heroin, most likely. I would have to send the brain for study in Moscow to confirm the purity level though.”

Sturmovic shook his head. “That will not be necessary, if you are sure.”

“I am sure.” The doctor moved his finger up to a faint bruise that encircled the upper bicep. “See this bruise here? That is where the rubber tourniquet was applied. A bruise like that would suggest a large amount of injections in a small time, the sure sign of a regular user, but one thing does puzzle me.”

“And that is?”

“Well, if this man had been a user for a long time, the veins on his arms would have collapsed by now from the scar tissue created by repeated puncturing. Also, injections in this area are noticeable. Most serious addicts trying to hide their drug use inject themselves between the webbing of their feet.” The doctor pointed to Pieter’s bare feet. “As you can see, there are no injection marks there. It would have been impossible for him or any of the others to hide such a serious addiction from his colleagues.” The doctor shook his head. “No, someone gave this man a large series of injections in a short period of time. Heroin is a most addictive drug and the side effects can be horrific. Once hooked, this man, as well as the others, would have done anything to avoid the withdrawal symptoms. Did these men have any recent leaves?”