The Seventh Angel - Страница 20

“No problem, Greg,” the president said. “Are you planning to take over this briefing?”

“Not unless you want me to, sir,” Brenthoven said. “I got the basics over secure phone during the drive in, but I’m sure the commander here is more up to speed than I am. With your permission, Mr. President, I’d rather sit in and maybe ask a few questions.”

“Of course,” the president said. “Pull up a chair.”

The national security advisor did so, retrieving a small leather-bound notebook from the inside breast pocket of his jacket.

The president turned back to Commander Giamatti. “Proceed.”

The commander pointed a remote toward a large flat screen display built into the wall opposite the president’s chair. The Presidential Seal appeared, set against a blue background. “Sir, this will be a preliminary briefing. With your approval, we’d like to schedule a full meeting of the National Security Council for nine AM.”

The president nodded.

Commander Giamatti thumbed a button on the remote, and the Presidential Seal was replaced on the screen by a map of southeastern Siberia and the Kamchatka peninsula. Another click of the remote, and a window popped up, displaying a fairly high-resolution satellite image of a city.

“About two hours ago,” the commander said, “major fighting broke out in the Kamchatkan capital city of Petropavlovsk. Our most current satellite imagery of Petropavlovsk is more than ten hours old, well before the apparent onset of hostilities, and we don’t have any airborne surveillance assets in position for an immediate look. One of our destroyers, USS Albert D. Kaplan, is equipped with Sea Shrike unmanned reconnaissance drones, but they’ll have to violate Russian airspace to get close enough to see anything. The Air Force has already initiated orbital burns on two surveillance satellites to maneuver their footprints to cover Kamchatka. For the moment, we’re relying on HUMINT reports, and feedback from the Russian government. And frankly, Mr. President, there’s not a lot of either at the moment.”

HUMINT was the military acronym for Human Intelligence: information gathered and reported by people, rather than surveillance hardware.

“Understood,” the president said impatiently. “We can’t see anything; we don’t know anything, and we’re reduced to reading tea leaves and staring at the entrails of goats. I’ve got that. But somebody woke up half the government for a reason. I’d like to know what the damned tea leaves say.”

Commander Giamatti’s cheeks reddened. “Yes, sir.” She swallowed before continuing. “Mr. President, we have indications that the Russian military is ramping up to an advanced state of combat readiness. Intelligence sources in Moscow and Vladivostok confirm that Russian nuclear forces have been ordered to an increased alert status. Analysis of Russian Command and Control message traffic is consistent with a rapid escalation of nuclear and conventional readiness. We haven’t seen this level of activity since the worst days of the Cold War. Almost half of the Russian Pacific Fleet is putting out to sea.”

“Why half?” the president asked.

The commander paused. “Pardon me, sir?”

“Why half?” the president asked again. “If the Russians are gearing up as heavily as we think they are, why are they only putting half of their Pacific Fleet to sea?”

Brenthoven looked up from his notebook. “That’s probably the best they can manage, Mr. President. The Russian Federal Navy is in bad shape. I’ll be surprised if they actually manage to get half their units to sea in any sort of realistic fighting condition.”

The president waved a hand. “Continue.”

“Initial indications from Petropavlovsk suggest that the fighting there is military in nature, rather than insurgent,” Commander Giamatti said. “A rough assessment of the scale indicates major combat operations. There’s some fighting scattered through the city itself, but most of the activity appears to be concentrated in the vicinity of Rybachiy naval station.”

President Chandler pursed his lips. “I haven’t memorized the name of every Russian military base, but we’re sitting in the bunker, the Russians are peeing their pants, and the National Military Command Center wants to initiate Continuity-of-Government protocols. So I’m assuming that this Rybachiy naval station is home to part of the Russian nuclear arsenal.”

“Yes, sir,” the commander said. She thumbed her remote again, and a pop-up window appeared on the screen to the left of the Kamchatka peninsula. Inside the new window was a grainy black and white photo of a naval base. Three submarines were moored to battered concrete piers.

The president realized that he’d seen this exact same slide just a couple of days earlier, during the briefing about that Russian courier who claimed to be the middleman in some back-channel deal between the Chinese military and … the president frowned … the Governor of Kamchatka.

“Rybachiy naval station, at Petropavlovsk, is the home port for the Russian Pacific Fleet’s ballistic missile submarines,” Commander Giamatti said. “According to the most recent threat assessments, at least three Delta III class nuclear ballistic missile submarines are based at Rybachiy. Each Delta III submarine carries sixteen Russian R-29R missiles …”

“Also known by the NATO designation of SS-N-18 Stingray,” the president said. “And each missile is armed with three nuclear warheads, for a total of 48 nuclear warheads per submarine.”

The commander nodded. “You’re up on your Russian missile subs, Mr. President.”

“Not really,” the president said. “But I got some of this during an intelligence brief a couple of days ago.” He frowned. “Tell me, Commander, is the Chinese military involved in this somehow?”

The naval officer looked puzzled. “Mr. President, how did you …”

“The intelligence brief I mentioned. I’m just playing connect-the-dots.”

“We do have uncorroborated reports from Petropavlovsk, suggesting that Chinese soldiers — or military personnel who appear to be Asian — are present in large numbers, and appear to be heavily engaged in the fighting.”

“Is this the HUMINT you spoke of?”

“Part of it, sir,” the commander said. “But the source is unofficial and unconfirmed. A twenty-two year-old American college student on an ecotourism vacation to Kamchatka. Her name is Janeane Whitaker. She claims she’s been hiding in an attic above a café since the militia, the local police, began rounding up all visitors and foreigners about twelve hours ago.”

Brenthoven paused in his note-taking and looked up at the commander. “Why did it take us twelve hours to find out about this?”

“Ms. Whitaker’s mobile phone is apparently not compatible with the cellular networks in Russia. Her only means of communication is a palmtop computer or a PDA; we’re not sure which. She tapped into the café’s wireless internet signal and began firing off emails. She’s an ordinary citizen, without any particular connections in the military or government, so she didn’t have any fast-track method of communicating with anyone in positions of authority. She ended up sending emails to the ‘Contact Us’ links on every government website she could think of. The White House, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the Pentagon.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very efficient process,” the president said.

“It’s not, Mr. President,” the national security advisor said. “Every agency in the government receives thousands of crackpot emails every day. I know who shot JFK; my neighbor is running a secret al-Qaeda training camp in his basement, and brain-sucking aliens have taken over the local television studio. Don’t get me wrong, sir. There are some useful suggestions buried in all of that junk, and occasionally even some bona fide intelligence tips, but it’s not easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. An uncorroborated email from a foreign internet café about secret police activity in Kamchatka? Frankly, it’s a miracle that anybody followed up on it at all.”

“They didn’t at first,” Commander Giamatti said. “Until the Russian military went into overdrive.”

“Do we still have contact with this woman? Janeane Whitaker?” the president asked.

“Uh … No sir. She reached her daily spending limit.”

“Her what?”

“Her daily spending limit,” the commander said. “The wireless internet provider charges by the minute, and apparently Ms. Whitaker’s credit card has a low daily spending limit. They cut her off and we lost contact.”

The president stared up at the ceiling. “I don’t believe this. We have a multi-billion-dollar intelligence apparatus and the one person in the entire world who can tell us what’s going on has maxed out her credit card?” He turned to his national security advisor. “Can’t we do something about this? Every agency in the government has at least a few thousand dollars of discretionary funds. Can’t someone get on the phone to the bank and deposit some money into this woman’s account?”

Brenthoven sighed. “The State Department has people working on that right now, sir. Ms. Whitaker’s bank is based out of California, and it doesn’t offer twenty-four hour customer service. State is on the phone to California, waking people up. It’s after midnight out there.”

The president looked down at the table and shook his head. “If we weren’t sitting on the brink of a nuclear emergency, this might actually be funny. Can we just forget about Kamchatka, and launch some missiles at the damned bank?”