America's Trust (27 page)

If he did manage to get through to the Defense bosses, he had the Transport bosses desperate to speak to him. Air freight, rail and road haulage were almost dominated by the Trust, and every supermarket gas station and supplier in the US was desperate to get their product to market. People were stockpiling and the companies had product to sell, they just had to get it to where the customers could buy it. There were huge profits to be made during the crisis and it had not slipped the retailers’ and manufacturers’ minds. Prices were rising and customers were still buying three-fold what they had done just two days earlier. Rationing was going to kick in but it would still allow for far greater volume purchasing than normal.

The call from Kenneth was a welcome one. He needed to know when to expect the president to address the program members. It was the only part of the day outside of his control.

“Kenneth, what time?” he asked, answering the call. He was a man who did not waste words.

Kenneth hesitated.

“Kenneth?” he repeated, his tone speaking a thousand words.

“Sorry, I was interrupted for a second. Ten a.m., Mr. Young,” replied Kenneth nervously, having no idea how in one hour he would convince the president to participate in a videoconference he had expressly refused to do.

Roger ended the call without so much as a goodbye. He had what he needed. The call was no longer important. Especially as the movement on the screen to his left meant that something was happening in Baltimore. The dot that had been motionless for over an hour on the screen began to move. It was the tracker fitted to the Land Rover. It was moving. And from what he could tell, it was moving pretty fast. His hand hovered over the telephone handset. He was desperate to call to find out whether the team had arrived and was in pursuit. Almost as quickly as it had started, it stopped. He zoomed in on the map. The dot was motionless once again. It was fixed next to a motel on Reisterstown Road in Baltimore.

His telephone managed a fraction of a ring before he answered it.

“Mr. Young, I just wanted to update you. Our team is on location and is currently in pursuit of the target vehicle,” began a very professional and authoritative voice. The clipped British accent added an air of trust.

“Thank you, Colonel,” replied Roger, despite having surmised most of it from the tracking screen. The Colonel was the one man employed by the Trust that Roger would think twice about upsetting. Neither British nor a colonel, the man was a chameleon.

Raised under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Petlin, had shown an aptitude for sports from an early age and, much to his brother Ivan’s protests, had been taken from his family for specialist education. Ivan had failed the same tests by a tiny margin but the pass and fail were absolute. Either you made it or you didn’t. Similarly, Mikhail had failed, only just, to make the grade for the Olympics and as a result had been sent to military college where his linguistic talents had been nurtured. He could speak Spanish like a Spaniard, French like a Frenchman and English like a well-educated Englishman. Military Intelligence snapped him up for the GRU and with his sporting talents and stamina, he was soon training with the elite Spetznaz troops. Assisting the North Koreans and Chinese to develop their special forces’ training soon followed and just as his star was rising towards being promoted to be the next head of the Spetznaz Forces and the GRU, the wall came crashing down, quite literally. The fall of the Berlin Wall created a new Russia, a Russia he had no desire to be part of. The two brothers parted sides but never their roots. Both would play their part. Ivan had done his part in shooting down the ambassador’s plane, Mikhail’s was too come.

After leaving Russia, Mikhail had picked up a number of jobs assisting various factions in training techniques before stumbling into Roger Young, who had offered Mikhail Petlin a role as Head of Specialist Military Training at the Trust’s training academy. All references to his Communist background were glossed over, helped by his strong British accent and a new name, although he preferred to be called simply “The Colonel”. It also helped that, despite his Russian sounding name, his features were more Asian than Slavic given his parents’ far Eastern ethnicity. Both were from the far reaches of the Eastern Asian continent on the Russian-Chinese border. The role with the Trust had him gaining access to the US Special Forces’ training. Six months with Delta and the SEALs only added to his already bulging experience of Special Forces’ tactics and abilities.

A specialist in Soviet, Russian and Western Special Forces abilities and training, there was probably no better-trained soldier on the planet than the Colonel.

“Another update, Mr. Young. They have secured the Land Rover and eliminated the occupants,” said the Colonel following a pause.

“Excellent,” beamed Roger. He had dealt with the Butler situation in hours when it should have been done months ago.

“The occupants were not the targets,” the Colonel quickly corrected. “Four black males had purchased the vehicle some hours earlier. It is they who have been eliminated.”

Roger managed not to react. The Colonel was a slow and deliberate speaker. It was the only way he spoke English. It was infuriating but very commanding, which Roger knew was exactly why he did it.

“The occupants gave up the location of the targets before we eliminated them,” he said, before adding, “I’ll call you when they are dealt with.”

“Okay, ladies and gentlemen,” said Jack, addressing the National Security briefing. “Can we please have some good news today?”

The room was uncharacteristically quiet. Wall-mounted TV screens were replacing a number of the regular attendees who were videoconferencing in to the meeting safely secured in their alternate locations. As Jack took his seat to a chorus of ‘Good morning, Mr. President’, a very flustered and out of breath Kenneth Lee raced in behind him, pocketing his cell phone.

“Glad you could join us, Kenneth.” Jack nodded a greeting.

“My apologies, Mr. President.”

“Mr. President,” began the Secretary of Defense, who was on the Raven Rock video feed, along with the vice president and the director of the CIA, “I think we do have some good news.”

Jack sat up a little straighter in his seat. “Go on,” he urged.

“It would appear that our deployments are working. The Russians have been repositioning troops. However, from the satellite images, they’re being positioned defensively, not offensively.”

“The rhetoric, from everything we have been able to tap into within the Russian military,” cut in the director of National Intelligence, who had stayed in Washington, “is one of bewilderment at what is happening. We’re tapping into calls and communications with their top military and there is nothing to suggest they’re anything but surprised at the turn of events. They’re petrified we will attack them.”

“It could all be a bluff and they know we’re listening,” Kenneth halfheartedly suggested. A few nods around the table and on the TV screens showed it wasn’t just Kenneth that had considered this.

A shake of the head from the DNI suggested otherwise. “We’re listening to things they have no idea we have access to. For example, we know one Admiral has over seven million euros in an offshore tax haven and we have his internet access details. Trust me, we checked, it’s there. They don’t know we’re listening.”

The meeting progressed with the Secretary of Defense running through their deployments and progress. In short, in the space of thirty-six hours they had already moved a significant portion of the US war machine into position. Between the US Forces’ own airlift capabilities and the Trust’s commitment, in the interests of national security, to enhance the capability with its significant resources when required, a number of battalions and divisions were already in place well before anticipated.

“And our allies?” asked Jack.

The Secretary of State took over. He was on the feed beamed in from Mount Weather. “I’ve spoken with all our key allies and all have stepped up to the plate. They all appear keen to show their support. I have a list of calls for you to make throughout the day to the key leaders, if that’s alright?”

“Absolutely,” replied Jack.

“I’d like to add, Mr. President,” interrupted the Secretary of Defense, “the Brits, the French and the Germans are really taking this situation seriously and have thrown everything they have into the pot.”

“Good to hear. Anything else?” asked Jack.

So far, he couldn’t have asked for a more encouraging update. If nothing else, the mass deployment would prove an exceptional live training exercise that would justify the trillions of dollars spent on defending the nation, and they’d find out just how resolute the NATO alliance was.

“Just one thing, Mr. President,” said Rick Holland. “The Chinese.”

“Yes?” asked Jack nervously. He was really hoping to end the meeting on a high note.

“They’ve stayed true to their word. Their forces are mounting with some volume all along the Russian borders. It would seem we really do have a new ally in the region. They’ve amassed an impressive force, in particular on the Russian-Chinese border between Kazakhstan and Mongolia. This is their nearest point to Moscow, which clearly indicates that they too are taking this very seriously, although they are still some fifteen hundred miles from Moscow.”

“Don’t forget, they have a new heavy transport aircraft, the Y-20, and from what we can tell, they’ve built hundreds of them. Combine that with all the commercial transport aircraft the Chinese airlines have been buying lately and you can shift one hell of a force fifteen hundred miles pretty damned quickly,” said the DNI.

“Exactly how many planes have they been buying?” asked Jack with concern.

“Boeing and Airbus have hardly delivered a cargo plane to anyone outside China in the last eighteen months,” replied the DNI.

Jack turned to him. “Apologies, but the production rate for Boeing and Airbus freighters appears to have slipped my mind. Any idea how many actual planes that is?”

“Yes, that might be more helpful. Our best guess is about fifty to sixty aircraft, all 747s or A380 freighters.”

“That doesn’t sound like that many,” said Kenneth.

“Son,” chirped in the Secretary of Defense, “that would move about thirty thousand fully armed troops in one flight.”

Kenneth ignored the ‘son’ jibe. The man, after all, was old enough to be his father. “Mmm, that does sound a lot,” he conceded.

“Okay,” said Jack, keen to move on. “So much for how we’re reacting to what happened. Any idea as to who did it?” Both the DNI and the CIA director sat quietly, neither rushing to be the first to speak.

Jack was in full swing. He had forgotten just how much he enjoyed being in the driver’s seat. “Gentlemen?” he pressed.

“We’ve got nothing, Mr. President,” replied the CIA director.

“The B2 pilot just took it upon himself to kill his co-pilot and bomb the Kremlin?” he asked, incredulous.

“Nothing,” reiterated the DNI, the CIA director’s boss and the person responsible for every arm of the vast US intelligence community.

“Payments, affiliations, anything?”

“We’ve been through everything, checked everything, and found nothing. The guy was squeaky clean, and I mean
squeaky
clean. He lived alone, has casually dated only a few women, no porn, no hidden accounts. Nothing.”

“Parents, family?”

“Both dead, no other family.”

“So you’re telling me that a highly trained American-born pilot woke up yesterday morning and decided that he’d bomb the Kremlin today and we’ve got no fucking clue why?”

“Well yes, although technically, he wasn’t American-born,” replied the CIA director.

“Technically? What the fuck does
technically
mean?” fumed Jack.

“His parents fled Vietnam. Major Lee Marr was born in Saigon and moved here as a baby,” replied the CIA director.

“So he was Vietnamese?”

“Well yes, but his parents worked with the CIA. We pulled them out just before Saigon fell. They saved many American lives.”

Jack shook his head. “Seriously, you don’t think that there’s just a chance they were Communist agents who suckered us in and managed to get their son flying one of the deadliest pieces of equipment in our arsenal?”

“We considered it,” the DNI stepped in. “Although we have absolutely nothing to go on.”

“Other than dropping a fucking bomb on the Kremlin, you mean?’ Jack’s temper was flaring. “It’s no wonder the Russians didn’t give him to us. He’s probably drinking champagne with the Communist generals who could well be trying to take control of Russia by starting a war with us. While you two get your act together,” he said to the Intelligence chiefs, “does anyone have anything else, before we all go and get some work done?”

“I just wanted to get some time with you this morning, Mr. President,” asked the director of Homeland Security. She was also in Mount Weather with the Secretary of State.

“Is it about the bunker?” asked Jack. He had expected a call from her. The Secret Service ultimately reported to her and if he was refusing to use it, she’d be the one to give him a hard time.