Adler said, “We essentially blackmailed Volodin last year. Told him we’d reveal what we knew about his ties to organized crime and how that brought him to power in Russia. He backed off in the Ukraine, turned his tanks around, and locked his territorial gains at the Crimea and Donetsk.”
Ryan said, “Our blackmail didn’t solve our problem with Volodin, but it did help things. When he stopped his push to the Dnieper River it gave the Ukrainians time to regroup and improve their defenses. We armed them with the best defensive missiles and armor we had, and we increased our military advisers.”
National Security Adviser Joleen Robillio said, “Mr. President, we did the right thing in Ukraine, and we handed Volodin a stalemate, which, considering how fast his troops were moving, is just as bad as a defeat to him. But I worry that if we back this man into a corner, at some point he will realize the only way out for him is to employ nuclear weapons.”
Ryan replied, “You’re right, and he knows that we are factoring that into the equation. He expects us to harass him at every turn, but ultimately he does not expect us to call his bluff. If this Lithuania attack was his doing, perhaps he is considering a new front. Ukraine didn’t work, so he’s probing another location.”
Scott Adler said, “You’re speaking of this as if it is already a war.”
Ryan thought that over for a moment. Then he turned to his secretary of defense. “Bob, what are our options as far as responding to the attack in Lithuania?”
SecDef was ready for this question. “We’ll have to go through NATO to move any of our NATO forces, of course. There is the NATO Response Force based in six Central European nations — Lithuania included, of course — but we’re talking six thousand troops in total. Not more than four hundred in Vilnius. There is a bigger contingent in eastern Poland, but still, not anything close to being enough to thwart a Russian invasion. We’d need a major mobilization.”
“How fast can the NRF deploy in an emergency?”
“The NRF can deploy within a week. Of course, NATO now has another unit that can deploy even faster, within forty-eight hours. That’s the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, and they are good troops, even though there aren’t enough of them to stop the Russians.”
Mary Pat said, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Russia isn’t coming over the border in the next week in any numbers, Mr. President. They don’t have forces in predeployment positions.”
Ryan was not terribly comforted. “But these timelines don’t take into account the decision-making time of the Europeans. None of our partners has the political will to snap their fingers and send troops off to meet the Russians without needing a lot of hand-holding. We’ve got the NATO summit coming up soon in Copenhagen. Why don’t we use this as an opportunity to appeal to the other heads of state to develop some ways to streamline the process of moving forces into defensive positions? With the LNG facility explosion and now the attack in Vilnius, hopefully enough of the member states will recognize how quickly this could develop into war.”
Robillio said, “I really hope you are met with a receptive audience, but you know how these summits go. A lot of talk, not a lot of action.”
Ryan nodded, turned back to his SecDef. “What if NATO sticks its head in the sand? What about U.S. assets not tied to NATO?”
Burgess said, “We have a battalion of Marines, twelve hundred men, assigned to the Black Sea Rotational Force. They are set up as a rapid response, and they aren’t tied to NATO forces.”
“Where are they now?”
“They are in Romania, but they are twenty-four hours away from wherever we need them in theater. This is just the sort of thing they train for.”
Ryan raised an eyebrow. “Twelve hundred Marines train to fight off a Russian invasion?”
“Absolutely. They know they are a stopgap. Something to put into place, coordinating with other U.S. forces if possible, certainly along with local friendlies.”
“Okay. Any other options?”
Burgess gave a little shrug. “One destroyer is in the Baltic on a presence mission. But no carriers, and no real combat capability in comparison to a Russian invasion force. We do have a Marine Expeditionary Unit along with several ships practicing with the Brits on the west coast of the UK.”
Ryan said, “That’s a long way from the Baltic.”
Burgess held his hands up. “That’s true, but it’s two thousand Marines. A couple thousand well-equipped, well-positioned, and well-supported Marines could, in theory, seriously degrade a Russian invasion, if we gave them enough air, but we’d lose a hell of a lot of them in the process.” Burgess’s shoulders sagged. “The good old days of hundreds of thousands of U.S. Army and hundreds of tanks ready and waiting in Europe are behind us.”
Nobody in the room thought those days were particularly good, but his point was understood by all.
Ryan addressed Mary Pat Foley now. “It goes without saying, but we need to be watching military movements in Belarus. Russia will have to go through Minsk to get to Lithuania, unless of course they attack from the Kaliningrad side.”
Mary Pat said, “We’ll add to our eyeballs in Belarus and along the Lithuanian border.”
One of Jay Canfield’s aides entered the room and leaned over the CIA director, conferring with him for a moment. Canfield looked up at the President.
“What is it, Jay?”
“Good news. The fire on the train is out and Lithuanian Land Force personnel have been through the wreckage. The ordnance on the train was all conventional artillery shells, small-arms ammunition, that sort of thing.”
Ryan knew what Canfield was saying. There were no ballistic missiles on board the train. According to rumor and intelligence reports, the Russian Federation had moved dozens, even hundreds, of Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles into Kaliningrad province in the past year. These missiles had the capability to be armed with nuclear warheads. The fact no Iskander-Ms were present during the train attack was a relief to everyone.
Burgess said, “Interesting there were no missiles on that train.”
“Interesting why?” Ryan asked.
“That train just had vanilla troops, and vanilla ordnance. No Spetsnaz, no sophisticated weaponry.”
Ryan had been at this for a long time, so he understood what Burgess was getting at. “From that you infer it was targeted by Russia, because an attack on it wouldn’t destroy anything too valuable?”
“If there had been Iskanders on that train I would have had a hard time believing Russia would be involved in any attack. With the attack comes an inspection of the wreckage, after all, and that would mean that ordnance is going to get examined, possibly seized. The fact there was nothing controversial on board does make me a bit more suspicious of who the actual culprit was.”
Ryan said, “We can speculate all we want, but we do so at our peril. We need hard and fast answers. Volodin is playing a game, ladies and gentlemen. He knows the rules. He has the plan. He is not as masterful as many people make him out to be, and I no longer believe he has the power to do whatever he wants, but make no mistake about this: Volodin is at the controls.”
“The controls of what?” Adler asked.
Ryan stood and motioned for all those heading to the state dinner to follow him. As he walked through the door and began tying his bow tie, he looked back to Scott Adler. “I don’t know, Scott. I hope we figure that out before it becomes apparent to everyone on earth.”
11
The café on Krivokolenny Lane was legendary, but to only a select few here in Moscow. To most it was just one of thousands of simple eateries in the city. It certainly wasn’t much to look at: just three rooms that didn’t get sufficient light from the street, walls with worn wood paneling, and simple wooden tables upon which dim votive candles burned in cheap glass holders. The building that housed it was old, dating back to before the Second World War.