EASTERN ESTONIA, NEAR THE GULF OF FINLAND —22 SEPTEMBER

What stunned Marcus was that the first missile came slicing across the cloudy morning sky —low and sizzling hot —from behind them.

The moment it hit its target and created a deafening explosion, Annie grabbed his arm. Seeing that, Pete shot Marcus a look deadlier than the missile. But more were coming. Almost instantly six additional air-to-ground rockets came streaking overhead, all from behind them. The roar of the explosions and the magnitude of the resulting fireballs startled the senator and his staff. For Marcus and Pete, it brought back their years in the corps, both their training and their tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As Prime Minister Jannsen, standing beside them, explained why his forces conducted live-fire exercises when most militaries in the world did not, helicopter gunships and attack choppers came swooping in. Each were firing .50-caliber rounds at faux Russian battle tanks constructed out of cinder blocks and wood in a long and heavily forested valley stretching out before them for several kilometers. Soon Estonian tanks and armored personnel carriers emerged from a glade to their left. They, too, opened fire, and when they did, the prime minister’s words were immediately drowned out. Moments later, Black Hawk helicopters came into view from their right. Commandos began fast-roping to the deck and sprinting for cover, firing American-made antitank missiles and tossing grenades as they did.

The entire exercise lasted about an hour. Marcus found himself impressed by the professionalism of the ground troops and their air support as well as by the intelligence briefing Jannsen and his generals provided afterward. These men were deadly serious about defending their nation from the Russians, whether NATO came to help them or not. But the message they were trying to convey was painfully clear: while they would all fight to the bitter end, that end would come brutally fast unless NATO —and especially the Americans —kept their Article 5 commitment and came to their rescue.

Over a working lunch in their command bunker, Senator Dayton asked one insightful and penetrating question after another. Marcus could see he was not here to grandstand. He genuinely wanted to understand the latest intelligence that was causing the Estonians and their Baltic neighbors such angst. He also wanted to grasp as much of their game plan for resisting the Russians as they felt comfortable sharing, given that of all the senator’s staff members, only Annie had a top secret security clearance.

That evening Dayton and the team dined back in Tallinn with the U.S. ambassador to Estonia inside the embassy compound. Over dwarf herring, smoked eel, plenty of black bread, and red wine, they compared notes with the ambassador —a career Foreign Service officer in her fifties who had served in a half-dozen other East European posts and was fluent in Russian, Polish, and German and conversant in Estonian —on the readiness of the local forces as well as the reluctance of NATO commanders to send more manpower and machinery. The senator also pressed the ambassador on what she made of the Russians’ snap exercises. She insisted this was “business as usual” and “one of dozens of such exercises I’ve seen since being posted here.” She intimated that the prime minister’s growing concern of a Russian move was “slightly overheated, between you and me.” That said, she conceded she was genuinely worried Luganov might make a move —and soon —deeper into Ukraine. Whether he was crazy enough to go all the way for Kiev, she couldn’t say, but she indicated that she had conveyed her concerns to the State Department as recently as that morning.

Just before dessert came, Marcus received a phone call from Washington. He apologized for the intrusion, excused himself from the table, and stepped out of the ornate dining room into a hallway. The number was from the White House. On the other end of the line was Bill McDermott, who had recently been promoted to deputy national security advisor by President Clarke.

“Bill, good to hear from you,” Marcus said when he’d found a bit of privacy. “Congrats on the new gig.”

McDermott let loose with a tirade of profanity. “Estonia? With the likes of Bob Dayton? Are you insane?”

“Whoa, whoa, take it easy, Bill. What’s gotten into you?”

“The president is preparing for a major reelection campaign, and suddenly I hear you and Pete are cavorting with the enemy?”

“We’re hardly cavorting, Bill, for crying out loud. But we are taking a hard look at a real enemy. You might want to try it.”

“And just what’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know very well what it means,” Marcus said, fighting hard to keep his voice down to avoid attracting attention from either the Estonian bodyguards or his own team members stationed up and down the hallway. “Luganov is massing forces on the border of the Baltics, but the president isn’t sending more troops to create a trip wire. Nor has he made a full-throated defense of our allies here. He’s hedging on Article 5. People over here are getting worried, and for good reason.”

“So Dayton’s going to hit the president —again —for not being tough enough on the Russians? Give me a break. Dayton’s a political dead man.”

“I have to say, Bill, you sound awfully defensive for a man in a position to advise the commander in chief to actually get tough with the Russians.”

“Just to be clear, Ryker, have you formally signed on to advise a raging left-wing Democrat, one who very well could end up being the president’s chief rival?”

Marcus was surprised by how personal McDermott was being, and how political as well, especially given the apolitical nature of his job. Marcus decided to deescalate the conversation. There was no point burning an old friend, much less a man in a position so close to the president. Prime Minister Jannsen had been clear that the only reason he’d agreed to meet with Dayton was to enlist him as a leading voice in the Democratic Party to go back and talk to Clarke in private and try to persuade him to do more on a bipartisan basis to bolster NATO forces in the Baltics.

“No, I haven’t,” Marcus said, his voice calmer and his tone more circumspect. “Pete has, but I’m just along for the ride. The senator asked me to put together a security detail for him. Pete wanted to get me out of the house. He’s worried about me, thought a trip like this might be good for me.”

Bill’s tone softened. “Maybe he’s right.”

“Maybe.”

“Fine. Come see me when you get back. Maybe I’ll hire you instead.”

“Hire me?” Marcus asked. “What on earth for?”

“To keep you away from Pete Hwang, for starters,” he laughed. “Take care.”

“You, too.”

And with that, the line went dead.