“Is this about the nuclear thing?” The chairman of the joint chiefs shook his head.
“General, this had better be very important, and that means important by my definition, not necessarily yours!”
General Shaw met the challenge easily.
“None of our satellite photos or RORSAT scans can be relied upon. An enemy has subverted our elint capability by unknown means, possibly by infiltration into the ranks of the NSA. The Chinese have a nuclear powered aircraft carrier task force we didn’t know they had, and it is now at sea… oh, and a guy at CIA thinks Russia may be planning at best to de-stabilise us or at worst to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on us”, he paused momentarily before finishing with. “Depending on your scale of definition, I can either remain here or I can grab a doughnut and a coffee to-go from the kitchens on my way home, sir”. The sarcasm he had felt at the presidents rebuke was absent from his tone if not from his choice of words. The Chief of Staff quickly updated the president on the brief outline of what had transpired. Seeing that the general had apparently not been exaggerating, he ordered a full briefing for himself and the battle staff in four hours’ time.
At Langley a startled Scott Tafler received a call from his Directors office. After twenty seconds he put down his telephone receiver and began scrambling to gather all he needed to present his findings in the White House situation room.
The mobile phones vibrating and its repetitive four chord ringtone roused the Russian girl. She answered and listened to the instructions without expression before speaking quickly and without emotion.
After less than a minute Alexandra Berria broke the connection with Beijing and reset the plug-in encryption module on her cellular before calling the military attaché to confirm the instructions she had just received from Anatoly Peridenko. The colonel was not exactly thrilled with Moscow’s earlier order that he cooperate with her and Carmichael. That he resented his most recently received order to now obey their directions was evident in his voice. All available assets were to be alerted to be on the lookout for Major Bedonavich and Svetlana Vorsoff. They themselves would search the fugitive’s homes for any clues as to their present whereabouts, after which they would collect the Irish from Essex in order to be in a position to move in with force once the pair were located.
She was not alone in bed and awoke the brunette.
“Get dressed.” She told the brunette. “It is time you were leaving.”
At the instruction of a military attaché who was being forced by circumstance to perform an active role, the brunette had brought with her all the information she had supplied Major Bedonavich with previously.
As with the majority of traitors, this young woman was motivated by greed rather than any supposed higher calling. Like had recognised like during this first meeting and after Carmichael retired in preparation for another long day Berria had chosen not to follow his example.
Using the houses telephone she called a local cab firm and awoke her partner in his room, quickly updating him before running a bath for herself.
Carmichael was all smiles whilst dressing and hummed to himself, he was very pleased with Peridenko’s orders regarding Svetlana
A ring of the doorbell announced the arrival of Alexandra’s girlfriend’s cab and once she had waved her off Alexandra went to take her bath.
As the taxi turned a corner the passenger was surprised to see quite a number of uniformed policemen stood just out of sight of the street they had just left. She had only just taken it all in when she was thrown forward by the cabs sudden stop. Both rear doors were flung open by armed officers of the Mets SCO19, Specialist Firearms Unit who dragged her unceremoniously out onto the tarmac of the road. She was too stunned to react. The muzzle of an MP5 was thrust in her face and the orders she was given left her in no doubt that she was going to be shot if she made a single hostile move. Hands roughly bound behind her, she and her shoulder bag were quickly and expertly searched by a female officer in the same black coveralls, Kevlar helmet, goggles, ballistic armour and weapons rig as her male colleagues. One item was separated from the contents of the prisoners’ handbag and handed to the senior officer present. Exiting the cab its driver tossed the car keys to a uniformed constable to be returned to the cabs rightful owner, who waited at the outer cordon where he had been stopped. The Home Secretary had signed the order permitting the police to tap the telephone at the house, so the cabs arrival had been expected. The ‘cabbie’ then approached the prisoner and identified himself as being a Detective Inspector with the Counter Terrorist Command. He then informed the young woman that she was under arrest on suspicion of having committed terrorist offences and then cautioned her, which is the Brit equivalent of being read your rights, before her being manhandled into a waiting police van.
After the previous day the Met deserved some luck. The first catch of the day had been the brunette Detective Constable attached to NCIS. As he watched the van depart the Chief Superintendent in charge of the St Johns Wood operation, until his Commander arrived, looked again at the arrested young woman’s police warrant card, thanking god for small mercies she hadn’t been on duty last night when the tip-off had arrived.
A short distance away a specially equipped van was recording sound transmitted from small bugs placed on the glass of each room’s windows during the early hours’. A copy of the telephone call made by Berria, albeit only half of a conversation, was being listened to by a Special Air Service trooper whose specialist skills included speaking Farsi and Russian fluently in addition to being his team’s medic. Stopping, rewinding and restarting the tape, he rapidly transcribed Berria’s words onto paper in English. On completion he opened the rear door of the van, looking for his own lieutenant but not finding him, he hailed the Chief Super
“Oye, you wiv the braid on yer ‘at”. Accustomed to slightly more respect when being addressed the senior officer approached him. This man was not in his organisation and beside which he rather admired the quiet, yet competent professionalism shown by the trooper and his team leader. The two of them were his liaison/advisors-if-need-be. Two Troops from 22 SAS were at present in Essex poised to tackle the harder target, which would be assaulted simultaneously as SCO19 stormed the house around the corner.
“It is customary to address superior officers as ‘Sir’, is it not?” he enquired of the trooper.
“You ain’t my superior mate” was the reply “You just get paid more than me, so cop ‘old of this, I’m busy” and the van door closed again.
Telephone calls had roused the neighbouring residents and plain-clothes officers had led them to safety whilst the occupants of the target address slept. The next task had been to affix microphones to the windows and move marksmen into position.
Looking at his watch the Chief Superintendent joined the SCO19 Inspector in the Control vehicle.
Unlike the police team in London the troopers from G Squadron, 22 SAS had rather less cover to play with, at least from the point of view of an uninformed observer.
The troopers did not have innocent civilians to clear out of harm’s way, they did have however the bane of all covert rural operations to contend with, animals, and dogs in particular.
Anyone who has ever tried to pass covertly, upwind of a farmhouse, will tell you that no matter how silent you are the dogs will sense you and start to bark. Dogs have extremely sensitive noses. To simply go around downwind may seem the obvious solution, except that sods law dictates that there will be another farm upwind of you as you do so and they will have equally noisy dogs. The original farm dogs may not be able to smell you but they will certainly hear their kin and join in. Close Observation Platoon, ‘The COP’, intelligence gathering soldiers in Northern Ireland, where farms are much closer together than in Kansas, named this nightly embuggerance as the ‘Howl-we-hear-ya Chorus’. For the very dedicated, abstaining from all milk products in their diet goes a long way to altering the human scent that alerts the dogs. Alternatively, modern science has provided chemical masks that although not 100 % proof all of the time, do at least inhibit the dogs from raising the alarm until they can be silenced with doctored meat or cheese wire garrottes.