24. WAR PLANNING

[MISSION DAY 2, FEBRUARY 17, 2033]

[1910 hours local time]

[Operations Command Center, Pentagon, Virginia]

Wilton was hunting ghosts.

If Barnard was right, that would narrow down his list rapidly, but it all depended on finding a person who didn’t exist. He kept an ear on the conversations at the big table while he scanned lists of recently deceased soldiers and matched them against security logins.

“All right,” Gonzales was saying. “Tell me what’s happening here.”

Wilton still wasn’t sure who she was, but she carried some kind of weight. Although she was clearly new to the room, the others deferred to her.

Russell looked at Whitehead, who nodded.

“Advance reconnaissance units report that the Pukes are advancing exactly as predicted,” Russell said. “Standard Bzadian spearhead attack formation. They are heading straight for the town of Wales. They will want to secure an airbase so they can start airlifting in the bulk of the invasion force when the storm finishes.”

“Once they have an airbase here, they’ll no longer be dependent on the ice coverage in the Bering Strait,” Hooper said.

“Any chance they could use the old airport at Wales?” Gonzales asked.

“Unlikely,” Whitehead said. “We destroyed the runway pretty thoroughly when we evacuated the town. It’ll be quicker for them to ignore it.”

“Almost certainly they will just use it as a beachhead,” Russell said, “and roll toward Tin City. We’re already preparing to evacuate. Our fighters will remain there until the last minute, as it’s the closest airbase we have to the strait. But we’ll pull them out once the situation becomes untenable. Before the Pukes get their SAMs within range.”

“The runway there will be destroyed too?” Gonzales asked.

“Yes, as per our scorched-earth policy,” Russell said. “The explosives are already in place.”

“But when they rebuild the runways at Tin City or Wales, or both,” Gonzales asked, “what then?”

“They’ll use the airbase to provide cover for a ground attack, probably on Lost River,” Russell said. “What’s going to slow them down here is the terrain. There are few roads and the tundra is passable, but it’s hilly and rough. It will be slow going; however, they can keep hopping from airbase to airbase all the way to Canada.”

“After that, there will be no holding them back,” Whitehead said. “We have to stop them on the ice.”

“So tell me about the ice,” Gonzales said. “What is our strategy?”

“There is a significant ice ridge to the north,” Russell said. “We’re designating it the Northern Ridge. It extends from the fast ice around the coastline well up to the north. They’ll have to come south of that. They could try to skirt around it, but the ice floes north of it are unstable, and very thin in places.”

“How significant is this crevasse to the south?” Whitehead asked.

“It’s a major rift in the ice floes,” Russell said. “Only happened a few hours ago. It may have had something to do with our bombing to the west. A large chunk of ice broke off from the main ice pack. It split in two, which created this jagged fissure through the center. They could bridge it, but I suspect they will just avoid it. That narrows their approach considerably, but as they usually attack in a tight formation, it probably won’t worry them.”

“So while they’re getting squeezed between this northern ridge and the southern crevasse, we’ll be hammering them,” Whitehead said.

“Yes, sir,” Russell said. “We’re deploying mobile antitank units along the Northern Ridge. The geography will give our guys a lot of protection from the tanks, while enabling them to get close enough to engage them. The Bzadian advance will stall until they clear the ridge.”

“They’ll hit it hard,” Whitehead said.

“We anticipate heavy attacks using rotorcraft and snowmobiles,” Russell said. “We’ve deployed three Spitfire squadrons, along with an entire infantry division backed by hovercraft.”

“They could bypass the ridge by breaking up their spearhead formation,” Hooper said.

“They won’t,” Russell said. “If they break formation, they expose the support vehicles inside, especially the SAMs and bridgers. If we take out their SAMs, they’ll be vulnerable to our cruise missiles. They won’t break formation.”

“And the minefield?” Whitehead asked.

“Of course,” Russell said. “There’s a strip of mines from one end of the ice field to the other at the point where the drift ice meets the fast ice. We blow that and they’ll have a channel twenty meters wide to cross before they can continue.”

“But they’ll just bring up bridging units,” Gonzales said.

“Correct. It won’t stop them, but it will slow them down. It’s a war of attrition. If we can do enough damage to their force before they hit dry land, we have a good chance of turning them around.”

“Is there any way to stop them completely?” Gonzales asked.

Russell and Hundal looked at each other. “No, ma’am,” Hundal said. “Not without a nuclear weapon.”

As always, the threat of a nuclear strike made Wilton look up.

“That’s not an option,” Whitehead said.

“The concentrated nature of the attack makes it ideal for a tactical nuke,” Russell said. “If we stop them at the mine barrier and drop a nuclear weapon in the center while they’re bringing up their bridgers, we would destroy most of the force, and the damage to the ice would make it impassable for days.”

“We have already had this discussion,” Whitehead said. “We are not starting a nuclear war.”

“Yes, sir. I understand that, sir,” Russell said. “I was just answering the lady’s question.”

“General Russell,” Gonzales said. “A direct question. Do you think we can stop them without deploying a nuclear weapon?”

Russell shook his head. “No, ma’am, I do not. We can slow them down. Hold them up at the Northern Ridge and stop them temporarily at the minefield. But apart from that we have about as much chance of stopping this invasion as a tree has of holding back an avalanche.”

Wilton was barely listening. His attention was focused on his computer screen. He had found a ghost.

The ghost was a woman. Lieutenant Colonel Francine Bartholomew. A high-ranking officer in the Bering Strait Defense Force. Her plane had gone down in a storm. She had died on December 3. Yet somehow Lieutenant Bartholomew had accessed her computer in the Pentagon on December 15, precisely twelve days later. Not bad for a dead woman, Wilton thought.

The first access time on the fifteenth was at 0943. Her office was in E-ring, third level. There was a mountain of security footage, but it was all neatly catalogued by date and searchable.

Wilton searched the security video files for that day and waited while the system brought the recording to his screen.

There was light traffic in the corridor that morning, but all of it bypassing the dead woman’s office. Wilton scrolled forward through the video, looking for anyone opening the door of the office.

He reached 0943 and stopped. Whoever it was was already in the office by that time. He scrolled back, stopped at 0830, and played from there. A uniformed officer walked casually to the door of Bartholomew’s office and swiped a key card, entering with a quick glance around.

The man wore a naval uniform, complete with cap, and kept his face low, so it was not visible to the security cameras.

There was no way to identify him.

Wilton scrolled forward again, waiting to see when the officer came out of the door. That happened at 1010.

Again, the officer kept his head down, but just for a brief flash he glanced up at the security camera, an involuntary reflex. Wilton rewound to that spot and went forward, frame by frame, until he found the clearest shot.

His mouth dropped.

He took screenshots showing the time and date and saved them with the details of the assignments and the information about Bartholomew’s death.

Scarcely believing what he was seeing, he logged into the TDA system to see what duties had been assigned that day at that time.

There was a long list, but Bartholomew’s name stood out like a beacon. He clicked on it and brought up the details of her assignments.

There was only one.

It was not Able.

It was for a Special Forces operative named Clordon. Wilton brought up Clordon’s details but did not recognize the photo. There was nothing distinctive or memorable about him, and although Wilton had an odd feeling he had seen the man before, he could not place where.

But there seemed to be no correlation with the Fezerkers or with Little Diomede.

Yet there had to be. What was he missing?

He looked again at the screenshot from the security camera. There was no doubt. The face on the camera was that of General Jake Russell, supreme commander of the Bering Strait Defense Force.

Wilton looked up as an aide arrived at the central table, carrying a radio. He handed it to General Russell, who took it, listened, then handed it back.

“You’ll excuse me for a brief moment,” he said. “We may have a lead on the Fezerker on Little Diomede. I need to talk to one of my investigators.”

Wilton looked back at the screen. Had he gotten this all wrong? Was Russell hunting the Fezerkers too? Was the mysterious Mr. Clordon the investigator he mentioned?

The phone on his desk buzzed and the screen lit up. He snatched at it.

“Wilton.” It was Price’s voice.

“Yeah, how are you guys doing?” he asked.

“We’re good. We may have a way to stick a rod in the spokes of the Puke invasion,” she said.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Wilton said. “One of the guys here keeps muttering about dropping a nuke. I’d get out of there if I were you.”

“Talk them out of it, Wilton,” she said. “Really bad idea. Let ACOG know what we are doing. It may influence their thinking.”

“Okay, shoot,” Wilton said, and listened carefully as she explained it.

When she hung up, he sent a message to Bilal, who read it and glanced at Wilton with his lips pursed.

Would Bilal even let the others know? The Angels had been ordered to leave. What would the top dogs think when they found out that the Angels were planning to disobey that order?

His phone rang.

“You somewhere private?” Chisnall asked.

Wilton looked around at the room full of people. “Not really,” he said.

“Call me back as soon as you are,” Chisnall said.

The elevator was on the far side of the room, which meant skirting around the oval desk in the center. Wilton felt as if all their eyes were on him as he made his way toward the door, although he didn’t look at them to make sure.

The security guard pressed the elevator call button for him and Wilton waited patiently. There were no lights at the top of this elevator to let you know whether it was going up or down or what floor it was on. But he could tell from the whirring noises inside the doors when it stopped, and when it started again, he knew it was descending.

Wilton stared straight ahead at the doors as he waited, not making eye contact with the security guard. There was no sound as the elevator stopped. No ding. The noise of the motors stopped and the doors slid quickly open. Stepping inside, he pressed the button. There was only one. The elevator only stopped at two places, so if you were at one, it took you to the other. The doors closed and the whirring of the elevator motors came from above him. The elevator lurched slightly as it began to move.

And then hell came to the Pentagon.