Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4) (5 page)

“I'm watching the building you lent us burn to the ground right
now.”

“You're what? What the fuck is going on out there? I thought
you guys were doing that job that I asked you never to speak to me
about.”

“Yeah, we did that job that we aren't going to talk about just
fine but now we’re arriving back in time for hot sandwiches and
we’ve discovered that we are homeless vagabonds. I just hope that
we're not unemployed homeless vagabonds, because I'm trying to run a
jobs-for-vets program over here.”

“No, no, no. Listen, I was going to call you and bring you up
to date. Things are blowing up over here at corporate.”

“Yeah, here too it seems.”

“I don't know what the hell is going on but the Russians are
going apeshit.”

Deckard appreciated the vernacular, Eliot being a former Marine
who had heard of Deckard through the old-boy network, but he wasn't
feeling any more illuminated about their current situation.

“Talk to me.”

“My contacts in the Russian government are saying that they got
hit. They are telling me that it was Site 17 in the Ural Mountains.
Supposedly a highly secure facility. We were thinking it was
separatists from Chechnya or Dagestan, but something is going on. The
Russians are scrambling forces into the Arctic.”

“Who the hell tries to make a getaway into the Arctic Circle?”

“Think of all the commercial shipping lanes opening in the
Arctic. That’s the whole reason why we sent you guys up there. No
one is really telling us what is happening and I'm beginning to think
that not many people in the Russian government know in the first
place.”

“And they burned my place on their way out? What for?”

“Maybe they were expecting you guys to be there.”

Deckard let that sink in for a moment.

“Listen,” Eliot continued. “Just lay low for a few hours
until I can sort things out on my end. We'll divert you to another
one of our company’s stations up there once we figure out what is
going on. You should know that the Russians have Navy icebreakers and
fighter jets sweeping the entire region, presumably looking for
whoever hit their base in the Urals.”

Otter looked down at the computer screen, which displayed the
ship's Automatic Identification System, or AIS. AIS was a VHS
responder and transmitter that displayed the call sign, heading, and
speed of commercial vessels in the area. After seeing which
commercial vessels were in the area, Otter then turned his attention
to the radar display.

“Yup, look at that,” he said. “AIS is showing a dozen
commercial ships just within a few miles, and radar is picking up a
few more ships not displaying any AIS information. That must be the
Russian Navy.”

“Any idea who they are after?” Deckard asked.

“It looks like they are trying to intercept a couple of these
call signs,” Otter said, pointing to the AIS screen.

Deckard picked up a set of binoculars, knowing that he was going
to have a hard time spotting anything at night.

“Deckard,” Eliot’s voice came from the Iridium phone. “You
still there?”

“Hold on. I think—”

Suddenly, a burst of yellow flashed on the horizon.

“Oh shit,” Otter grunted.

A second flash came a few kilometers away from the first, and a
little farther out. Then a third. Otter reached over and grabbed the
binoculars from Deckard.

“Fire boat,” he said after examining the burning fires in the
distance. “They go back all the way to ancient Greece.”

“Loading a ship with explosives and then using deception to
lure in an enemy vessel,” Deckard thought aloud.

“And then they both go
kablooey
,” Otter finished.
“They just used decoys to take out the Russian Navy.”

Otter was right about the fire boats, even if the modern term
used was SMVIED.

“Deckard,” Frank whispered. “This isn't some half-assed
Chechen terrorist action. This is an act of war.”

“Eliot,” Deckard said, picking up the phone. “I think we're
in deep shit.”

“Tell me about it. Turn on the television. Any channel will
do.”

Kurt reached up and turned on the satellite television mounted in
the corner of the helm. The sound was muted, but they didn’t need
to hear. One of the major news networks was reporting on a series of
terrorist attacks against Americans at home and abroad.

Deckard looked back out at the sea, seeing several more flashes
across the ocean and a few more in the sky as Russian aircraft were
shot down.

“Welcome to the Thunderdome,” Frank mumbled.

* * *

Tampa, Florida

Outside a nondescript building, a man in a black trench coat lit
up a cigarette. Flicking the lighter closed with one hand, he quickly
looked down at the insignia etched into the side and remembered
another time.

Another place.

“Hey,” someone shouted from behind him, “it's done, Will.
You're all set.”

Taking a deep drag on his cancer stick, Will dropped it on the
sidewalk and stubbed it out with the sole of one of his cheap dress
shoes before turning to face the man holding open a glass door.
Exhaling a cloud of smoke, he walked over to the door.

“I've never heard of a security clearance being reinstated that
fast,” Will said sarcastically. “It reeks of desperation.”

“Don't start. I had to pull some serious strings to bring you
back in.”

“I'm sure World War Three cooking off helped, Gary.”

At the front desk, a bored-looking kid in an Army uniform checked
Will's ID card and then issued him a visitor’s pass. Both men were
then waved through a security checkpoint. As they walked, Will looked
around, seeing that not much had changed since he had left. He still
had a lot of bitter memories about the place. He never expected to be
allowed back inside.

At an unmarked door, Gary swiped his security pass against a
scanner, and a light above the doorknob turned green. Stepping
inside, he walked around a table where several other men were already
seated. Will stood in the corner, eyeballing the group. They were
drilling holes in him as well.

Craig wore old-man glasses with a cord that ran behind them so
they could hang around his neck when he wasn't reading something.
Joshua wore a pink polo shirt and sported a perfect military buzz
cut. In Will’s eyes they were a bunch of geriatric spies, despite
his being just as old as they were.

“Let's welcome Will back to the team, gents,” Gary said, his
words ringing hollow with the other three men.

Joshua nodded toward Will. Craig sat motionless. The second hand
on a wall-mounted clock ticked slowly.

“We’ll get Will read back onto the project in a more formal
manner, but right now we have more pressing concerns.”

Will took a deep breath.

“What are we looking at?”

“We've been tasked with assessing a situation developing
in the Arctic Circle. The Russians got hit at one of their Ural
facilities, and we are now receiving reports that they are losing
naval ships and fighter aircraft in the Arctic Ocean.”

“So we’re in agreement that today’s attacks, including in
Russia, are not merely a coincidence?” Will asked patiently.

Craig and Joshua looked at each other before turning back to
Will.

“We are,” Craig answered.

“But we are not just to assess,” Gary elaborated. “As of
0300 this morning, SCOPE has been operationalized. NORTHCOM has the
lead for anything in the Arctic, but domestic terrorist attacks and
cyber-war penetrations are keeping them tied down. Resources are
being diverted everywhere but to our area of concern.”

“Operationalized? SCOPE is just a think tank for JSOC,” Will
said. “I guess someone finally found their balls.”

“The White House signed another exemption letter in order for
us to support Arctic operations,” Gary informed him. “I don't
think I need to tell you that they are desperate.”

“Desperate and scared,” Will said.

“And apparently someone felt that you were needed here,”
Joshua said bitterly.

“Don't be such a sourpuss, Joshua. How many times did I try to
warn you about this? Instead, you railroaded me right out of SCOPE
and threw me out on my ass after stripping me of my clearance.”

“You only have yourself to blame for that,” Craig said. “For
the record, I was completely against bringing you back. I regard you
as an unbalanced lunatic at best, and a national security disaster at
worst.”

“Thanks for the endorsement. Maybe I can put that on my
resume.”

“You should be pitching old ladies Amway products in a
supermarket somewhere.”

“I thought ponzi schemes were your forte, Craig. Think I forgot
about your little foray with discretionary funds in Algeria?”

“You know what Will,” Craig countered. “This reminds me of
the time you tried to brief the director of Central Intelligence on
9/11 conspiracy theories.”

“This reminds me of the time I fucked your wife at 29 Palms,
but you don’t hear me bragging about it.”

“Motherfucker—” Craig’s chair shot out from behind him as
he stood up.

“Sit the fuck down!” Gary ordered. “You two are yakking
like a couple girls in junior high. For Christ’s sake, I thought
this was a professional organization.”

“More like a fucking high school organization,” Will said
under his breath.

“I told you to knock it the fuck off, Will. Now sit down so we
can get to work. Last time I checked, we were hours away from a
global fucking war.”

Will and Craig sat down.

“Bunch of drama queens I have to work with,” Gary muttered.

“Getting back on track,” Joshua interrupted. “We're looking
at a nuclear incident in Missouri; our embassies in Kenya, Libya, and
Saudi Arabia under attack; the White House was penetrated both
physically and via cyber attacks; gunmen shot up a movie theater in
North Carolina; the Russian northern fleet is under attack; a Special
Forces team got taken out in Croatia; and suicide bombers detonated
themselves in Washington D.C. and in Austin, Texas.”

“They are trying to overwhelm our ability to respond by using
swarming tactics,” Will said.

“Yeah, but who are
they
?” Gary asked.

All eyes went toward Will.

The disgraced intelligence operative cleared his throat.

“America's enemies are now emerging from the shadows. They have
prepared the environment for decades using probing techniques,
testing our defenses. They know where our stovepipes are, they know
about our bureaucratic rice bowls, they have assessed our reactions
to cyber attacks and know damn well that we won't respond to hacker
penetrations with military force. Now they have hit three embassies
and launched domestic terrorist attacks to overwhelm our
counterterrorism forces. Three Delta squadrons, three embassies. Do
the math.”

“But we still don't know who they are,” Craig said.

“Again, do the math. Make an inference.”

“Stop being cryptic, Will,” Gary said in frustration.

“Through our actions, America has created a coalition of
countries who see themselves as adversarial to us. If we don’t like
what a country is doing, we call them rogue states. We sanction them.
We try to strategically encircle them. We sabotage them. Sometimes we
even use military force against them. It was only a matter of time
before we had to face the aggregate result of our political
policies.”

“Here we go again,” Craig said, rolling his eyes.

“The nations we’ve ostracized have begun working together to
counter America's status as a global hegemon. We are heading toward a
multi-polar world, but they don't want a multi-polar world. They want
a world crafted in their own image.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Joshua said in
frustration. “I told you Gary, we're getting nowhere here.”

“American power has side effects, and this is one of them,”
Will continued. “By isolating and casting out various nations from
the global community we created after World War Two, we inadvertently
created a coalition of enemy states. A shadow NATO.”

“This is pure conjecture,” Craig said. “You can't prove a
fucking word of it. Not a single national intelligence estimate
supports any of your conclusions.”

“That's because people like you got comfortable. You thought
things would stay the same; you had hoped they would so that your
bureaucracies would remain relevant. But the old rules don’t apply
anymore. The players involved will soon signal their hand. Watch for
Russia to invade what is left of Ukraine and for China to take over
some key islands in the South China Sea. That, or they simply go for
the killing blow that takes America out as a global power.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Craig said as he threw his
hands in the air.

“We can debate what might be true some other time,” Gary
said, trying to get the think tank back on track. “Let’s address
what is. We have HUMINT and SIGINT data coming in that the Ural
facility was not just attacked, but that something was stolen. The
Russians are panicking and are deploying their forces into the Arctic
as fast as they can. Then they get blown up by players yet unknown.”

“Players without names.” Will shrugged as he tapped a
cigarette out of his pack.

“This is a federal building, you can't smoke in here, Will,”
Gary said before continuing. “Considering what happened in Missouri
and the reaction of the Russians, I think we have to assess a
worst-case scenario.”

“That terrorists hijacked a Russian nuclear weapon?” Joshua
asked.

“Yeah,” Gary sighed. “DOD thinks this conclusion is
premature, but we have to consider the possibility.”

“You’re probably right,” Will said. “Except in thinking
that it was terrorists who stole it.”

“So the question is, what kind of assets do we have in the
Arctic that can intercept the weapon, if that is in fact what
happened?” Joshua asked.