After seven years as a Defense Intelligence Agency civilian employee, serving a variety of positions, he had obtained a coveted position that was right where his SVR masters wanted him. In his new division, he oversaw the transcripts and development of the daily intelligence summaries of the national security council meetings. These meetings included the ones between the President and his staff, advisors, senior military, and intelligence leaders. Once in place, he stayed dormant until the situation in Ukraine began to grow tense. After nearly three years of civil war in Ukraine, his intelligence had helped the Russians continually stay one step ahead of the US and NATO. Now with things starting to spiral out of control with President Gates, his intelligence became critically important.
As he entered his car, he opened the arm rest between the two front seats and pulled out his burner phone. He turned it on and began to write a short, but concise text message. “US preparing for war. DEFCON 2, anticipate hostilities within 48 hrs,” he typed, and then hit send.
Once the message had been transmitted, he deleted the message from the phone’s history, then took the SIM card and battery out of the phone. He opened the car door and got out, dropping the SIM card to the ground and stomping on it, crushing it and rendering it useless. He then kicked it into the storm drain and began to walk towards the building and back to work. As Carl got closer, he walked over to one of the garbage bins and dropped an empty package of potato chips in the bin, along with the phone and the battery. Then he opened the main door, walked in and swiped his card at the security gate before heading to the Dunkin’ Donuts to pick up a dozen donuts and some coffee for the others in the office.
The Day the World Changed
Alexei Semenov, the Minister of Defense, sat down at the conference table and saw that he was the last to arrive. This was never a good thing, but especially when the meeting was being chaired by President Petrov. Before Alexei could even say anything, Vasily Stepanychev, the director of Russian Foreign Intelligence announced, “We received an urgent message from our mole in the Pentagon. He informs us that as of seven hours ago, President Gates made the decision that they would not back down from our deadline. He has also issued orders to the military to prepare for hostilities to begin within forty-eight hours. Given the time delay from that decision to right now, that means that they will be ready to start combat operations in thirty-nine hours.”
Several of the military and political members at the table began to whisper to each other and talk in hushed tones at the revelation of this information. Ignoring them, Stepanychev continued, “The American President also directed the country to move their armed forces to their defense condition 2, upgraded from 4, which means the Americans have placed their strategic nuclear capabilities on full-alert status. Satellite images show that their nuclear bomber bases have increased their state of readiness in just the past few hours. Our observers at their submarine bases have also reported that several of their nuclear ballistic missile submarines have begun to put to sea.”
Alexei saw this as his moment to speak up. “This activity was expected though,” he cautioned. “The Americans will want to keep the war conventional, but they will prepare their strategic forces in case we use our nuclear weapons first.” Alexei wanted to make sure that his colleagues knew that though this information was alarming, it was not something that should be taken out of context.
President Petrov raised his hand. “Thank you, Alexei, both of you. This is critically important information. We intend to keep this conflict conventional, and we can win a conventional war, so I am not as concerned about what their nuclear forces are doing. The Americans would never launch a first strike mission against us, and even if they did, we would still have enough warning to hurt them. Let’s put that aside and focus on what we are going to do about the other information the SVR has obtained for us.”
The President saw everyone nod their heads, and reflected on how the world had changed. Thirty-years ago, the thought of considering the avoidance of nuclear weapons against NATO would have been ludicrous. They had always been a part of the Soviet military doctrine. Nowadays, Russia was not looking to gobble up Europe, just Ukraine, creating a buffer zone between them and NATO.
“The Americans are planning for hostilities to start in 39 hours. Minister Kozlov,” Petrov said, turning to his Foreign Minister, “I want you to play a deception game with the Americans. Reach out to them and let them know that we may be softening our position. Tell them that if the Americans would be willing to consider lifting the economic sanctions on us, we would be willing to withdraw our forces from east Ukraine. This will cause them to pause any preemptive military action they might take.”
Dmitry Kozlov nodded and smiled at the shrewdness of the idea. He loved ruses. “This will be like the 2016 election all over again,” he thought. “It really didn’t even matter who won the election — after all of our rumors of political collusion and corruption, the American people were going to lose confidence in the system and question the legitimacy of their leaders. I love how gullible they are; the media there just eats up any whiff of conspiracy theories.”
While Dmitry was lost in his daydream, Petrov had moved on. “Viktor, is Operation Redworm ready?” he asked.
Viktor Mikhailov was the Chairman of the Government, which meant he essentially ran the administration for Vladimir Petrov. Mikhailov and Petrov were extremely close friends; they had been trading political positions as President back and forth, allowing Petrov to remain in power far longer than any politician should legally have been allowed. Mikhailov was also in charge of a very secretive cyber-warfare program that had been established nearly six years ago. The Russians had invested billions of rubles into the program. To complete their stealthy cyberattacks, they had developed the NDMC Supercomputer; it had a speed of 16 petaflops, making it the fastest computer in the world. They had also created a less powerful (but still impressive) processor in Belarus, with capability of 1 petaflop; both of these devices would be essential for Operation Redworm.
Viktor gave a wry smile and nodded. “We are ready to execute when you give the order.”
Petrov smiled, and nodded back. He could see the others at the table were curious to know what Redworm was, but now was not the time to tell them. They would learn of it on another day. He turned to his naval commander, “Admiral Petrukhin, are your forces ready to begin?”
Admiral Anatoly Petrukhin cleared his throat before responding. He was nervous; his forces were as ready as they were going to be, but he knew they were no match for the Americans and NATO. The best weapon he had was surprise. He would have exactly one chance to hit the Americans. After that, his force would be hunted down and destroyed, and there was little he could do to stop it. Unlike the air and ground forces, President Petrov had not placed the same sense of urgency on the modernization of the Russian navy.
“We are as ready as we can be. As directed, I have two Akula attack submarines at the entrance to the Black Sea. Both subs are now sitting on the bottom of the sea, waiting for the American carrier battle group to make their way through the Bosphorus. That should happen in about nineteen hours. To throw the Americans off, I have two Oscar subs that will be making a lot of noise to distract them from the actual attack. My forces will sink the USS George H.W. Bush Supercarrier,” he said with confidence and pride.