“How about HUMINT?” Ryan asked, dropping the photos and looking directly at Foley.
“Boots on the ground suggest the same scenario that Bob does. Mercenaries loyal to Russia—”
“Spetsnaz troops out of uniform, dressed as little green men,” Burgess said.
“Yep,” Foley said, giving the SecDef a side eye for the interruption. “Anyway, these mercenary little green men will likely start moving west and north, taking over radio and police stations until these installations can be ‘liberated’ by Russian troops. Yermilov’s peacekeepers can come in and protect the populace — and, if they are so inclined, see to rigged elections that would certainly show the lion’s share of the population wishes they could run back into the loving arms of Mother Russia. Odesa Station hasn’t seen any movement yet, but they’re hearing plenty of chatter.”
“Mr. President,” Burgess said. “Yermilov believes we are too distracted to intervene. It is not out of the realm of possibility that Russian troops will roll through Kiev by week’s end. These videos, Internet bots, it all points to Yermilov.”
“I’m not a big believer in coincidences,” Ryan said. “I can’t shake the thought that the meeting between Elizaveta Bobkova and the Iranian protest leader has something to do with this.” He looked at Foley again. “Mary Pat?”
“Nothing new yet, Mr. President,” she said. “But feelers are out and hooks are baited.”
“I recommend a show of force,” Burgess said. “Before Yermilov is entrenched.”
Ryan nodded. “It may come to that,” he said. “Where do we stand in Cameroon?”
Burgess looked at his watch. “Eighty personnel from Task Force Darby traveled down by truck last night from the north. The Cameroonian rapid response troops are naturally worried about their own necks. They stayed behind at Garoua so they won’t have to make a decision about who to support in the event of hostilities.”
Ryan raised an eyebrow. “I imagine Njaya will see that in and of itself as a decision.”
“I’m sure of it,” Foley said. “Considering his record.”
Ryan looked at the notepad on his desk. It was important to give people involved in this kind of incident a name. “And how about Mrs. Porter?”
Scott Adler spoke next since State was his bailiwick. “The same four men from the Cameroonian Army have been with her for the duration. She’s not been harmed physically, though they have been rough on her, according to Adin Carr and Ambassador Burlingame. Water but no food, infrequent bathroom breaks. A lot of verbal abuse. Carr wants to go in guns blazing, and Burlingame isn’t any different. Can’t say I blame them, and I’ve been in my comfortable office and sleeping in my own bed. They’ve been on station for this entire ordeal.”
Burgess spoke next. “Two recce teams from Sabre Squadron B arrived in Yaounde three hours ago. They’re linking up with Special Agent Carr now.” The secretary of defense rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Delta Force soldiers against four exhausted Cameroonian bullies — that should take about a millisecond. They are awaiting compromise authority from you, sir.”
“Understood,” Ryan said. “If any move is made to harm Mrs. Porter, then they have my authority.” He sighed. “Let’s see if Njaya is familiar with the Battle of Pharsalus.”
“The Battle of Pharsalus?” Foley said, admitting, where others would not, that she wasn’t up on her Roman history.
“Caesar’s troops versus Pompey’s. Pompey thought he had the upper hand, but rather than throwing their pila”—he smiled at Mary Pat—“their javelins, as Roman soldiers customarily did in battle, Caesar ordered his legion to march up and thrust directly at their opponents’ faces. This tactic so demoralized Pompey and his men that they fled the battlefield.” Ryan looked at Burgess. “Our assets in the Atlantic?”
“En route now, Mr. President,” Burgess said.
“Good,” Ryan said. “Let’s move this to the Situation Room. It’s time to poke Njaya in his face.”
Five hundred seventeen nautical miles off the coast of Liberia, U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Group Two found themselves the closest American muscle of significant size to Cameroon. The 7,542 personnel, one cruiser, two destroyers, and Nimitz-class carrier USS George H. W. Bush with eighty aircraft had been steaming toward São Paulo, Brazil, after a brief port call in Dakar, Senegal. Flash traffic from the commander of the Sixth Fleet turned them back to the east.
On the flight deck of the 1,092-foot carrier, Lieutenant Sean Jolivette sat in his F/A-18 and conducted a final left-to-right scan of his cockpit. There were just over a thousand Hornet and Super Hornet pilots in the Navy and Marine Corps. Competition for each slot was more than fierce, giving the men and women who won the opportunity to fly them the bona fide right to a little swagger. Jolivette was twenty-seven years old, five feet nine inches tall, and, like all the others in his squadron, “living the dream.”
Both the Hornet’s GE F404 engines were running. Each was capable of delivering 18,000 pounds of thrust — approximately one-quarter of the power of a Mercury rocket. He was in his own airplane today — never a sure thing since schedule rotation and maintenance required pilots to fly whatever bird was available when their number came up. Today, however, Jolivette had drawn 420, the nose of which bore his name, rank, and call sign. While the Air Force seemed to go for cool-sounding call signs, Navy tradition dictated pilots keep one another humble. More often than not, call signs stemmed from some embarrassing incident during training. Lieutenant Jolivette earned “Swipe” after a Tinder date during his time at Naval Air Station Lemoore, which, unfortunately, turned out to be with the base commander’s daughter. The old man himself had given him the name, a reminder that swiping right didn’t always turn out like you thought it would.
Like the other twelve carriers in the U.S. Navy, CVN 77 had the job of projecting American foreign policy around the world — and the four F/A-18s in Lieutenant Jolivette’s division today formed the forward force of that projection.
Lieutenant Commander Mike “Gramps” Wertin, the oldest member of the division, was flying 406 from the starboard catapult off Jolivette’s right wing. As strike lead, Wertin had briefed the division earlier in the ready room, filling in the blanks left by the Intel O who’d described the mission.
Each F/A-18 had a full warload, including AIM-120 AMRAAM, AIM-9 Sidewinders, and GBU-24 Paveway III laser-guided bombs, along with the wing and centerline tanks for extra fuel. Cameroon had a few old antiaircraft guns, but the intel officer said there was not likely to be any pushback from the ground or the air. Still, when it came to fuel and weapons, Jolivette subscribed to the “Better to have it and not need it” school of thought, right down to the SIG Sauer 228 nine-millimeter pistol in his survival vest.
The assistant Air Boss in the tower — known as the Mini Boss — ran the forward cats, but an officer in a yellow shirt — catapult officers were made famous from their exaggerated dancelike nonverbal communication movements to Kenny Loggins in the movie Top Gun—gave the go to launch. Each catapult worked independently, and Gramps’s plane was propelled down the deck next in a cloud of steam. All four F/A-18s in the division — Gramps, Swipe, Minion, and Frodo — would join up at an Air Force KC-135 at coordinates roughly a hundred miles off the Cameroonian coast, prior to going what Navy pilots referred to as “in country.” The bar attached to the nose gear of Jolivette’s airplane was already affixed to the shuttle that would take him down the cat-track. He was good to go. Martin-Baker of the UK offered a membership in the Ejection Tie Club, featuring a commemorative necktie to those elite souls whose lives were saved during an emergency ejection in one of its company’s seats. It was a cool tie, but not something Jolivette aspired to own. Still, he made certain the seat was armed.