“Something doesn’t add up here.” MacWhite was scanning the CIA report again and his mind was obviously now in the grim suburb of Donetsk. He looked at the satellite photo of the shattered ruins of the primary school destroyed by a series of devastating salvos from a BM-30 “Smerch” heavy multiple rocket launcher, capable of firing twelve, 300-millimeter caliber rockets in thirty-eight seconds.
“We know the Ukrainians have used this weapon system in the Donbass previously, but we’re pretty sure their heavy weapons are still situated well away from the combat zone, in line with the Minsk Two ceasefire agreement. This says that none of our satellites picked up any firing from Ukrainian territory… and yet it also says this attack came from the direction of Ukrainian lines.” The general was not so much asking a question as making a statement.
Bear nodded. “I saw that, Sir. The signal traffic picked up by the NSA and corroborated by the British suggests that the Russians are behind this. Either they fired those missiles or their proxies did. The only explanation for a horror on a scale like this, is that the Russians will pin this on the Ukrainians to give them a reason to break the ceasefire.”
MacWhite grunted agreement.
The phone on Bear’s desk rang. He picked it up, listened and nodded. “We’re coming right on over.” He looked at MacWhite. “The President’s ready for your morning update now, Sir. She’ll be in the Situation Room in fifteen minutes.”
Soon afterward they were sitting in the neon, strip-lit Situation Room in the White House with its widescreen TVs, PowerPoint presentations and banks of computers. A grim-faced President was being shown photos of broken children’s bodies being lifted into ambulances or laid out, faces and bodies covered, awaiting transport to the mortuary. Just as the staff briefer was saying that everything pointed to Russian involvement, the live feed CNN cut to an emergency broadcast from Moscow’s Russia Today.
The cameras had closed in on the vulpine face and cold blue eyes of the President as he sat at his desk in his office in the Kremlin, the gold double-headed eagle of Russia filling the background. This was obviously part of a longer speech, but the English subtitles of this short soundbite could not have been more chilling.
“The Motherland cannot stand by while our children are massacred. On top of this outrage American jets have attacked and shot down one of our pilots… The ceasefire in Ukraine is worthless… Ukraine must pay the price…”
Then it cut back to the CNN newsreader and there was silence in the Situation Room.
Bear watched the President as she looked round the table at the guarded faces; nobody as yet prepared to stick their neck out and speak. Lynn Turner Dillon had only been inaugurated as 45th President of the United States of America five months earlier and this was the first serious military crisis of her presidency. Bear had also been in Washington long enough to know that, until the politicians around the table knew how she would react to such an incident, silence was the best way of not incurring her disfavor.
And who could tell how she would she react to this carnage? Sixty years old but looking twenty years younger, a former chief executive of a giant Canadian gold mining company and a tough businesswoman who had risen to the top in a man’s world, she had been the surprise winner of last year’s Presidential elections. She was neatly dressed with highlighted blonde hair and preferred to emphasize her femininity by wearing skirts rather than a trouser suit. This morning, however, she was learning the hard way that while it took tough decisions to reach the top in business, lives were rarely lost by those decisions. Now, two men she had ordered to Ukraine were dead and their comrades had been kidnapped.
Bear’s thoughts were broken by a tap on the shoulder. A Situation Room staffer had come up behind him and he now handed Bear a code word-classified CIA report marked “Top Secret.” Bear quickly scanned the headline, stood up and placed it in front of MacWhite.
MacWhite speed-read the first page and leaned forward, breaking the silence. “If I may, Madam President?”
“Please, General. I need your advice,” she replied.
“Madam President, what we are witnessing are classic Russian tactics: intimidation and manipulation of events. CIA agree that Russia launched this attack against the school in Donetsk. As we have just seen,” MacWhite gestured at the television, still playing but now turned to silent, “the Russian President is using it as an excuse to ramp up the fighting in Ukraine by claiming it is the Ukrainian government which has broken the ceasefire. This latest CIA report,” he held up the document Bear had passed to him, “is very clear on the indicators we have been picking up for some time now. The Russians are about to launch an invasion of eastern Ukraine. Their immediate objective will be to open up a land corridor to Crimea.”
The President narrowed her eyes.
“As you’ll remember, Madam President,” Bear saw that MacWhite had noticed her momentary confusion as to the geography and strategy and was covering for her, “the Ukrainian government still holds the territory between Crimea and Russia. That’s about two hundred and forty miles, border to border. The Russians want to connect it up and make it all part of Russia. Hence the invasion.”
The US president, the most powerful person in the world and Commander-in-Chief of the world’s most powerful armed forces, digested the information before responding.
“General, what do you suggest we do?” Her voice was steady, betraying no emotion.
“Madam President, apart from ensuring all our trainers are extracted to ensure no more hostages for the Russians, there is little we can do. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, so we’re not going to war with Russia over this. That means they will get away with it. But I do have two recommendations. First.” He held up the forefinger of his left hand and grasped it with his right to emphasize the point. “We must try to ensure the West is united. That means calls to our key NATO allies. I suggest you start with the French President. After all, France has consistently delivered in the Middle East and in Africa in the last couple of years. I guess you ought to call the British Prime Minister for old times’ sake, but the Brits have not delivered on the ground ever since Afghanistan and even then they needed to be bailed out by the US Marine Corps in Helmand.”
“No, General. The Brits are beginning to show a bit of their old spirit lately, despite being so late joining in with air strikes over Syria. But they remain our most important strategic partner. It’s vital that I call the Prime Minister first. And your second recommendation?”
“Ma’am, I don’t like what is developing here. There’s something about this belligerence of the Russian President… his rhetoric… We believe he might want to spark something in the Baltic states. Perhaps capitalize on the tension in Latvia and Estonia between the locals and their ethnic Russian, so-called ‘non-citizens.’ We know the Russians have been hard at work fomenting discontent for some time now, hence the wave of recent labor disputes and strikes. It’s not even impossible the Russians make a grab for the Baltics while we focus on Ukraine.”
“What is your recommendation, General?” pressed the President.
“Call a meeting of the Cabinet. You’ll also need the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He needs to give the requisite orders, not me. Meanwhile, we should ask the Pentagon to prepare a proposal to take appropriate measures to ramp up military readiness.”
“Military readiness… Such as?”
“Such as preparing to man the brigade’s worth of vehicles we have warehoused and spread across the Baltic states and Poland,” replied MacWhite. “They are currently mothballed and it will take at least a fortnight to get them prepped, manned and concentrated in one place should we need them. Then we need to ramp up the readiness to move of 6th Fleet, 18th Airborne Corps, Special Operations Command and US Air Force Europe.”