“You lost ma’am?”
She turned and saw the analyst, Carl Williams, with his head sticking out of his office.
“You should be in the bunker,” Devlin replied, pointing up at the wall where a loudspeaker blared.
“Shouldn’t you?” he asked, looking at her security detail, who both gave him pained looks. He himself clearly wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere.
She didn’t have time for this. “I need to get a secure line to Washington. What is the quickest way to the Chancery from here?”
“You can do it from my office,” he said.
“But it’s a dedicated…”
“No problem,” he insisted. “Trust me.”
“Sorry,” she said to the secret service officers, “There’s only room for two.” Carl stood aside so she could get into his little cubicle of an office and he closed the door behind her. The critical incident alarm was still blaring outside and she winced. It would make holding a phone conversation a real pain.
Williams read her mind, “You want me to turn that off?”
She hesitated, “I don’t think you should.”
“There’s no threat to the embassy,” he said calmly. “A little skirmish in the air over Saint Lawrence, but that’s all. Nukes aren’t flying, yet. Triggering a critical incident alert based on that is a complete over-reaction by someone in State.”
Devlin was about to ask him how the hell he knew that, but she was learning that with Carl Williams, for deniability purposes it was probably best she didn’t ask.
“Can you shut off the siren without pulling everyone out of the bunkers quite yet?” she asked.
“HOLMES? Can you kill the critical incident siren, but leave the alert in place until it is canceled by State?” Williams spoke towards his laptop.
“Yes Carl,” the cultured British voice replied.
“Do it please.”
The alarm cut instantly, an eerie silence replacing it. No heels on the floors, no voices in the corridor.
“Just sit there ma’am, tell him who you want to call,” Williams said, pointing to his chair behind the desk and laptop. “Once you connect, I’ll leave you alone.”
Devlin sat, then leaned forward over this laptop, “OK, HOLMES this is Ambassador Devlin McCarthy…”
“Confirmed ma’am, I have facial recognition,” HOLMES replied.
“Right, well… I want to speak to Secretary of State, Gerard Winburg please, on his direct encrypted line.”
“Yes ma’am. He is airborne in Airforce 1 at the moment. All communications are encrypted. Putting you through,” the AI said.
Williams pointed at the door and moved toward it, but Devlin reconsidered. There was probably no point in secrecy, and she might be able to use Williams’ help. She motioned to him to stay put.
“That line is busy ma’am,” the AI said. “We are on hold. Do you want me to put you through to the President’s direct line instead? He is on Airforce 1 with the Secretary of State.”
Devlin hesitated, but before she could answer, there was a click on the laptop’s loudspeaker, “Winburg here.”
“Mr. Secretary, this is Ambassador McCarthy in Moscow,” she said. “The critical incident alarm has sounded here.”
“Yes, I authorized it,” the harried voice at the other end said, clearly under pressure. “I don’t know how much you know about current developments over Saint Lawrence McCarthy.”
Devlin looked at Williams. He came around to her shoulder, tapped a couple of keys on his laptop and Devlin saw he had been preparing an intelligence report when she had interrupted him. She put her finger on the screen and started reading.
“Sir, I know that at 0200 Alaskan time this morning explosions were reported in the township of Gambell, cause unknown. Local Russian anti-aircraft missile batteries however responded to an unidentified threat, indicating the source of the explosion was possibly an attack by US aircraft, or they simply panicked. Following this, Russian aircraft stationed in the eastern no-fly zone around Saint Lawrence engaged US aircraft on patrol along the Alaska Coast.” She hesitated, looking at Williams in disbelief, but he nodded. “And as of… five… minutes ago, data from NORAD and Airborne Control aircraft in the combat area indicates the destruction of 17 Russian aircraft for the loss of 23 US aircraft destroyed, eight damaged.” She had to read the last part again. That was nearly as many aircraft lost in one engagement as had been lost in the entire Middle East conflict, and the battle was still going?
There was a silence at the other end, before Winburg came back on the line, “Dammit how are you getting that intel in Moscow?! You have real-time data on kills and losses over Saint Lawrence? That’s more than I have!”
“I have an NSA analyst on station here Secretary,” she winked at Williams. “He’s very… resourceful.”
“Apparently. Anything else?”
“No Sir, we are working to identify Russia’s strategic aims in this conflict. I hope to get back to you soon on that;” Devlin said. “Sir I am not CIA head of station, I know that, but I wanted to report that we have seen no signs of military preparations on the streets here in Moscow, we have heard of no evacuations or civilian warnings and as far as I am aware key senior politicians and bureaucrats are still in Moscow and behaving normally. Russian TV and radio is also running normal programming.”
“OK…”
“Sir I have seen nothing today, or in the last week, to indicate the Russian government is about to conduct a nuclear strike on the USA or that they are anticipating one from us.”
“Which could of course, be part of their strategy,” Winburg said. He was the former CEO of a major defense contractor, and Devlin had heard him say his policy was to trust no one, in business or politics. “Look… this was a good call Ambassador. Good context. Make sure you share what you have with CIA. And you feel free to call me again when you have anything to add.”
“Will do, goodbye Mr. Secretary.”
She looked at Williams, “How do I hang up?”
The British voice replied, “I have disconnected the call ma’am.”
Looking at the data onscreen again, she whistled. “That’s what you call a ‘little skirmish’?”
Williams shrugged, “In the big picture, yeah. I mean, it’s not thermonuclear war.”
“Yet. You heard the man, can you be sure to copy your report to CIA?” She said to the analyst.
Williams looked a little uncomfortable, “Sorry ma’am, no.”
She looked surprised, “No?”
“No, I mean. Someone will. The data is all there; HOLMES is pulling it from servers inside NORAD, DIA, CIA, Pacific Command and so on. I was just putting that report together for NSA to show what he can do in these type of situations. I can’t share data on HOLMES capabilities with anyone outside NSA.” She was clearly not impressed, because he stammered on. “I mean, except you, because, like, you have clearance now.”
“So sanitize it, include the information I gave the Secretary and then send it as soon as the dust settles, can you do that?”
“Sure, I guess, but aren’t there other people who…”
“Carl, right now, the only people above ground here are the two guys outside your door plus you and me, and to be honest only one of us seems to know what the hell is going on out there, and that’s you.”
To Yevgeny Bondarev, it was no little skirmish. It was a tooth and nail fight to the death! The melee over Saint Lawrence had degenerated into a knife fight. Most of the remaining aircraft, about 20 Russian and 40 US fighters, were engaged in one on one, gun on gun combat.
Bondarev had survived the first blizzard of US missiles, registered one, maybe two kills of his own, but was now twisting and turning above the sea with a very determined F-47 on his tail. He had no more short-range missiles left, but apparently, neither did his opponent. As tracer fire flashed over his canopy for the third time, he put his machine into a fast roll, then flicked into a climbing starboard turn to try to gain a little separation from his attacker. He needed altitude for what he had in mind, but it was a desperate last chance roll of the dice. If he screwed it up, he was dead.